Glee!AU: In The Dark
So, I wrote a Glee fairy tale because that was my childhood, and the sort of natural next step for me is a fantasy novel, because that was my teenage years? At this rate it means we're moving onto my early twenties and Super Pretentious Novels next, that'll be *awesome* ;) (Also, if any FMA peeps are reading this - I am *so sorry* I'm taking so long with that stuff right now. I am tapping away at TSDoMEM, still very slowly and painfully. We *will* get there. One day ^^;)
In The Dark, Glee!fantasy.
Rating: R, bit of swearing, violence and squick, just not suitable for kids, basically.
Disclaimer: Guess who owns it. NOT ME.
Warnings: No real spoilers (well, post NBK) because we are so AU it's crazy. Only whenever I write fantasy I seem to end up writing horror, which is weird because I don't *read* horror, I have really pathetic squick levels. So, beware the disproportionate squick levels? Also, character death. Basically, again, I didn't write it for kids and don't want to give kids nightmares, so read age-appropriate stuff and don't get me in trouble, thank you <3
Summary: Blaine's a not-quite-knight determined to rescue two missing mages. It turns out that 'rescue' is a more complicated concept than he thought.
Note: Okay, I *love* my mages. I've had them squabbling and singing and throwing stupid parties in my head since I was a teenager, and I've just never found a *coherent* novel to put them in, though I'm happy enough to have them around while I work one out. (I did post a story I wrote *years* ago - seriously, coming on for a decade ago, so, um, very embarrassing teenage writing - on another journal if you would like to read them as they are; not quite so standard fantasy as written here, they dip in and out of our world and steal a lot of our stuff, in a way that it's hard to hate them for.) And when it occurred to me that ND would make an amazing coven in that world, my brain pretty much went 'splode. I do not want to spend the rest of my life writing sequels to this. It's really tempting though ;_; Also I could not write mages speaking with American dialect, I am sorry, I just can't. It's 'arse' or nothing from here on out. Fantasy, like fairy tales, I'll write in the words I *know* ;)
Now he's beginning to think that this was a mistake. No, wrong wording - he knows it's a mistake, he knows it's not a sensible thing to do, he knew that from before setting out, now he just knows that it's going to cost him a lot more than he'd thought it would. Because walking alone through the forest in the dark, listening to the metallic hush of the undergrowth skimming the armour plating over his shins, he'd felt nervy and hyper-alert with what he could be walking into, but he just walked through something. Through something invisible, something that felt like breaking the skin on top of water, so fine as to barely exist but so utterly different, the world on the other side. Every hair on his body tried to shiver independently, and the back of his neck tightened, and he clicked his sword a thumb's width out of its sheath without even thinking.
And now he stands in the dark, and hears his own breath amplified in the helm, echoing in the hollow metal cave he wears. And he wets his lips, and thinks that Wes was right; but then, Wes is always right.
He tries to listen. He'd heard owls, before, calling to each other through the dark, but they've gone silent. He'd heard a stream, somewhere, chuckling distantly, but it's stopped like the water just ran out. All he can hear are his own breaths, and the clink and shift of his armour, and the leaves shifting underneath his feet. He looks up. Through the leaves (still, now, no dance of silver-and-dark as the wind turns them), the sky is blue-black and starless. He thinks of noting the pole star when he slipped out of the city, to orientate himself.
He thinks, Damn. and begins easing himself backwards. Whatever he just walked into he needs to walk out of it. He needs to get out of whatever he has walked through and tell the mages that he knows where they are, now, but there's nothing he can do and -
The wrongness of walking away and leaving someone else in trouble gnaws at his insides. Blaine chews the inside of his top lip and tries to think rationally, tries to order everything in his head: he is not a knight, not yet, he's a squire, these duties aren't actually his yet. Wes will pop a vein when he finds out what Blaine did. If he does end up in trouble then Thad, who helped Blaine get his armour on for this, will have a nervous breakdown. Blaine probably can't help anyway. If this is mage trouble then it's magic trouble, and Blaine is only a boy, he can't interfere, he can't fix it. What can Blaine's sword do against magic? If it turns out that Blaine even can use his sword when it comes to it . . . ?
But he remembers the mage's anxious face, two missing mages no older than Blaine is, and if anything has happened to them - can't Blaine do something, just something, if no-one else will - ?
He turns, feels in the air for the barrier he just walked through, but his hand touches nothing. He takes a few uncertain steps but there's only air there. Okay. He just walked into something and now he can't walk back out of it again. Okay. Not good. It's fine, it will be fine, but he does now know why even Wes said no, when Wes is a good guy and Blaine knows that. Because this is mage business, not knight business, what can a man in a metal suit do against magic? What can a boy in a metal suit do against magic?
Whatever this magic is, what can it do to two young mages?
A twig snaps under his foot and from his side there is a sudden scream and what he thought was a bush in the dark lunges at him, swinging a club around its head and straight at Blaine's. Blaine lets himself take one step backwards so he can put some strength into propelling himself forwards, ducking in under the club (a branch, bent, still with a leafy twig fluttering from its end) and unsheathing his sword hard enough to swing the hilt into his attacker's head. He sees eyes widen with shock as they meet his, as they both realise half a second too late that they're attacking the wrong person.
There's not a lot that Blaine can do. His fist around the sword hilt still hits the other boy hard in the face, smacking his head sideways, but he loses all momentum and balance and when the boy's body hits his he goes down with him, thumped into the loam like a dropped sack, the other boy's mage robes flumping over them both as he lands like a felled tree on Blaine's chest plate. Blaine's heart beats hard in his ears, as he stares across at his own hand holding his sword limp on the forest floor, his brain rattled hard by the fall. On top of him the boy scrambles himself up, kicking himself away from Blaine, one hand still holding that branch like a club, the other held to his jaw where the swelling is already evident, where blood is gathering in the corner of his mouth. He sits there in the leaf mould and whispers, "Who the hell are you?", staring at Blaine, blinking too fast.
Blaine coughs, stabs his sword into the forest floor to hike himself to sit. "Hi," he says weakly, and pushes the visor up. "Um, ow. My name's Blaine. Are you Kurt or David?"
It's dark, but the boy's face is as pale as a small moon, Blaine can see every twitch of expression passing over it. "I'm." He takes his hand from his jaw, winces, touches the blood and looks dumbly at his own fingers. "You hit me."
"I'm so sorry," Blaine says automatically, and then blinks. "Actually, you did attack me first."
"I thought you were - you hit me. That really hurts."
"Seriously, you were going to knock my head off."
"I thought you were going to kill me! That - you absolute -" He can't even seem to find a word to cover his outrage. "- brute. Ow."
"I'm sorry," Blaine says again, and he actually does mean it, head ducked bashfully. He gets himself to his feet now, his ribs a little jarred but not really any the worse for the knock. "Sorry, seriously, I - didn't know I could do that. Are you Kurt or David? I'm looking for both of them, I'm assuming you're, well, one of them."
The boy licks the blood from his lip, quick flash of the tongue colourless in the dark, and grits his jaw as he pulls himself to his feet again. "David is dead," he says, very quietly, and gives a mechanical half-bend of a bow. "Kurt. Go back and tell them Dave - I couldn't stop it." He clutches at that branch with both hands and swallows hard, working his wounded lip into his mouth, quickly licking the building blood away again. "I couldn't stop it, it had - already happened when I got there. I'm sorry." His face twists around his eyes and mouth, tightening with trying not to cry. "I'm sorry -"
Blaine takes him in, as much as he can in the dark. There are scratches on the side of his face, probably from thorns in this dark woodland. His mage robes are a little silvery even in the pitch dark, baggy as mage robes are but bound with a belt clasping in a low V against his waist, emphasising his slighter build than Blaine's, though he is taller than him, not that it's so unusual for Blaine to meet a guy taller than him. Their hems are torn around his boots, and there are dark stains of leaf mould on his front and side. And he's shaking. Only so slightly, and so constantly that Blaine almost hadn't noticed, but he's quivering like the last leaf holding on as autumn folds to winter, tightening and shifting his hands around that branch. "I'm sorry," he whispers again, and drops his head, chokes, "I'm sorry, I - I couldn't do anything -"
"It's okay," Blaine says, and Kurt shakes his lowered head quickly, drops the branch, wraps his arms around his stomach and shivers.
"I couldn't have done anything - what could I do? It ate him out and it's wearing him like, like some sick suit and -"
"Hey, hey, it's okay," Blaine whispers, and tries to walk to him and take his arm but Kurt skips back, wipes his cheeks off on his dirty hands and whispers the scream at him, "It took my magic out of me and laughed and it is going to kill me and eat me oh gods I hope in that order and it killed Dave, it - opened him and ate the magic right out of him -"
"Okay, hey, okay." Blaine catches his arm, feels the start of Kurt's muscles through his leather gauntlet. "You're going to be fine. I'll take you back to the city and-"
Kurt doesn't whisper the scream this time, inches from Blaine's face. "It has my magic!"
He tries to sound steady, already a little unhinged by the headiness of Kurt's sheer fear. "Okay, I'll take you back to the college, the other mages can help-"
"It has my magic you cretin! Where the hell I can go - it has my magic and it is going to kill me and what the hell are you even doing here, you need to go."
"I came to - rescue you."
Kurt stares at him. Saying the words out loud makes Blaine realise their true idiocy, what a stupid child he's been; he's come to rescue this boy, this mage staring at him trembling and folding his hands into fists at his sides, breath coming slow and tight through his nose. "You came to 'rescue' me," he spits out, and then his face tightens again, tear-streaked through the dirt. He says, loud and hard, "Run away." and turns, marches off but Blaine grabs his arm again and his robes flare as he spins to him again. "Let - go you idiot just let me-"
"Tell me what it is that did this. I can - maybe I can help."
The anger is turning into contempt around Kurt's mouth. "It's a faery."
Blaine's hand goes limp on Kurt's arm and Kurt snatches it back. "Oh," Blaine says, and doesn't know what else to say.
"Yes." Kurt says, taking his face in. "So run away, and tell them - I'll be dead by the time you get back. Just tell them it was a faery and there was nothing anyone could do." He swallows. "Tell them to tell my dad that I love him," he says shakily, and swallows again, and again, and draws his breath in, lets it loose. "Please."
". . . I came through some, um, barrier."
"Yes. Go back through it. I can't."
"I - can't. It doesn't seem to be there anymore. It should've been - around - here?" He points to a vague point between two trees. "But it's just not there on, on this side of it."
Kurt's face is very still, and then he closes his eyes and makes a soft choked noise. "If I had my magic - if I could just - oh gods it's right there. We could . . . no. You need to hide. It might not even notice you, you might not even register with it, if you just hide the barrier might break when it kills me. Just wait for the dawn and run."
"Stop - saying that. I can - I know, okay, faeries are serious, I get that-"
"Serious-" Kurt hisses.
"- but we can fight, still, can't we? You don't have to act like of course it's going to kill you-"
"Of course it's going to kill me," Kurt snaps at him. "Of course I'm going to fight. There's no reason not to, I have nothing to lose, do I? But it has my magic. All I can do is - swipe at it with stupid sticks - it'll kill me anyway. You should hide. Please. They won't even know where I am, I don't want my dad never knowing, if you just don't get yourself killed you can tell them-"
"I can help," Blaine says, waving his sword. "Iron's the one thing they can't magic, isn't it? I can -"
Kurt's eyebrows fold. "That's true," he murmurs, looking at the sword in Blaine's hand, then he puts his hands around Blaine's wrist - Blaine's arm goes oddly loose at the sight of his dirty but so white fingers around the leather of his glove - and slips the sword out of his helpless grip. "Okay," Kurt says, testing the weight of it, bouncing the sword a little in his grip. "Thank you. Now go hide."
He turns to walk off again, this time holding Blaine's sword. "I meant that I would fight it," Blaine says, trying not to sound like he's sulking, and Kurt laughs without even turning, and it's a strangely sweet noise in the dark, bright as clear water.
"Find somewhere to hide," Kurt calls over his shoulder. "You'll know when it's over. I'll make it scream before it gets me, I will make it regret this-"
Blaine jogs to catch up with him. "I want to help."
"You will help. Make sure they know what happened. Stop them worrying."
"I can help."
Kurt stops walking and stabs the sword at him. "Okay, I am sorry to sound rude but what kind of knight are you out here on your own and I'm very sorry but more than a little on the short side, don't they have a height restriction for knights?"
"They don't, actually, it's hereditary. Um, knighting, not height, though I guess that too. And I guess I'm not actually exactly officially a knight yet?" Kurt glares at him, defensive and worn down with fear but no longer shaking now he's speaking to Blaine, now he has a sword in his hand. "I'm still a squire. One of the mages, he said he was called Will - he came to talk to Wes, the guy I'm squiring for, asking him to help come find the two of you, no-one knows where you went and he said he didn't know why you'd have gone off alone-"
Kurt looks down, at the sword tip resting in the loam. His eyes are dark, and it's impossible to tell what colour they are in this lighting but Blaine finds himself curious about them; blue, he guesses, they're not dark enough to be brown. "Dave asked me to come out here to 'talk'. We . . . we have a complicated sort of history."
". . . but the knights didn't want to get involved in mage business, and, well, I guess now I see why. But I followed the mage, to ask him some more questions and - and he said they couldn't 'feel' you two anymore, and he can't get enough mages together to search properly, he doesn't want the younger mages out looking for you, but if the knights would organise a patrol - but they won't. So, uh, I came on my own."
Kurt gives him a patient sort of glare. Blaine says, "It seemed like a less stupid idea at the time, I just thought you'd maybe got lost."
Kurt looks down again, at the sword. "They won't be able to feel our magic anymore, not through that barrier. They would never be able to find us, they would just - just panic. I would, if I couldn't sense one of my coven's magic anymore. They'll try to use magic to find us but through that barrier - they'd never even find our bodies."
Blaine reaches for his hand, closed around the sword hilt, and Kurt looks startled at him, blinking fast. "Tell me what happened," Blaine says. "Everything. What it is, what it can do. I need to be able to help."
Kurt looks at Blaine's hand around his, around the sword handle, like that small touch through Blaine's glove is somehow the most terrifying part of this nightmare. "You-" he says, and his breath shivers out of him. "You can't help. I can do it on my own. You hit them with the sharp end, it's not difficult-"
"I'm here. It's better than me not being here, right? So tell me everything you can, and we'll - we'll plan. We'll work something out."
Kurt's eyes flick up to meet his again, and Blaine feels something, low in his stomach, something he is very used by now to pushing aside and ignoring. "It won't help," he says quietly. "Blaine, it will kill me."
His fingers are loosening around the sword. Blaine murmurs, "Let me try to help."
"It's only playing with me," Kurt whispers, his fingers shaking again around the sword hilt. "It could've killed me already, it's only doing this for fun-"
"I'm here now." Blaine manages to get his fingers closed around the sword hilt, as Kurt's go too limp to hold onto it anymore. He feels a lot better for having his sword back in his hand. "Come sit down. Tell me what happened, and we'll work something out." He holds Kurt's eyes, as Kurt stares back dumb and pale and the lines of old tears show through the dirt on his face. Something about his face is slowly turning something low in Blaine's stomach; he ignores it, ignores it, ignores it. "Just let me help."
*
Kurt sits beside him on a log, huddled in his baggy robes, cloak pulled around himself, and looking at his own boots he says, "Dave put a note under my door, to ask me to come out to the forest to talk to him. It's private, out here. The college is a bit of a gossip mine."
Blaine says, "You don't have to tell me what he wanted to talk about if it's private."
"No," Kurt says softly. "I'm going to die, I want to be honest. You don't have to tell other people, though, I don't know if," his voice goes thick, "I don't know if he would have wanted that. He . . . he and I have had - some antagonism. Because there are things mages can get away with, that most people can't. And we all know that, when we come to the college, but when you've had a lifetime knowing that it's not okay before that, it's hard to - it's hard to - adjust. It's just so difficult, people make it so difficult, and I was so relieved to be there and be safe but you never forget before, when you weren't safe -"
Blaine has no idea what he's talking about, watching Kurt's face as his eyes flit all over the darkened clearing around them, touching every last tree before he makes himself meet Blaine's eyes. "I like men," he says, in his soft, sure voice, his eyes checking Blaine's, flicking between them as Blaine feels his own face go oddly numb. "I know - what could have happened to me in this world if my magic hadn't come through. But it's different for mages. We're - we're allowed more." He swallows. "But it takes us some time to realise that. I still had some, some trouble with other young mages, sometimes. David . . . Dave used to . . . he really used to make things difficult for me." He looks at his hands on his lap, squeezes his fingers together.
The guys joke about it sometimes, when one of the more chivalrous knights - Wes, or David, or any of the knights Blaine really wants to emulate when he's old enough - isn't around to stop them with a glare. They use pretty horrible words. Blaine stays quiet and doesn't think about it. Doesn't think about how he doesn't think about girls, makes an effort not to think about anyone. Chastity is a virtue, and if you work at your sword skills, practise and practise and practise, then when you collapse into bed at the end of a day you don't have the energy to even think about it . . .
I like men. Like it's just a fact and he's not ashamed of it, though he knows Blaine might turn on him in a second for it. Blaine looks at his own gloved hands, resting around the sword hilt for safety.
Kurt says, and it's like Blaine's seen him for the first time again, heard him for the first time, his voice so low and woodwind-soft, turning the simplest sentence into a song, "About a month ago I - I just snapped, I just couldn't do it anymore, getting treated like I deserve crap and acting like maybe I do. He knocked me over in a corridor and I went after him to yell at him. His magic's not that much stronger than mine, he can't do that to me, he doesn't have the right to do it to me because of who I might hypothetically fall in love with - and we had a fight and it was horrible and the magic was going crazy all around us but I was so angry I wasn't reading it right, I didn't know - all I knew was that finally I'd rattled him - until he kissed me."
He gives a small shrug, clasped hands tilting, and looks up and outwards again, his face getting a little tighter, a grief he can't grasp the size of yet, can't yet feel properly, may never get the chance to properly feel. "And after that it was even worse. It got so bad I had a shield up almost all the time, I didn't even mean to, the magic just - does that when you want it enough - and I couldn't eat or sleep or think about anything but how he - followed me and looked at me and - said things to me sometimes - and I could feel his magic against mine and it made me feel sick." He lifts his hands to cover his eyes, head hanging. "When I found the note I thought I had nothing left to lose and we had to talk it out or I would -" He laughs, suddenly, dropping his hands, bright and wicked in the dark. "I thought I'd die, like a dramatic teenager, when this-" He looks around, at the unnaturally dark forest all around them. "This, this is what death is like."
He draws a little breath in. "When I got here he was - standing oddly. Standing - he wasn't standing, I hadn't realised yet. He was - hanging. His feet weren't quite on the floor. It had eaten the magic right out of him, and when I realised, I - we can see faery magic, it's different to ours, I knew and I was so scared I couldn't move - I felt it notice me." He shudders, and Blaine, very uneasily, touches his shoulder; Kurt sucks his breath in sharp. "It dropped him and he hit the ground all wrong. It doesn't have a body like we do, I just felt it grip my shoulders - like hooks I couldn't see - I know I screamed - and I must have fainted. I woke up on the ground. It was all dark, like this." He waves a hand at the sky. "And my magic was gone."
He closes his eyes, hunches a little tighter. "I know you don't understand. It feels like something I never even knew was a part of me is gone, there's a hollow place, this horrible sick hollow place - it's so wrong - it's so wrong I could go crazy from it -" He presses his arms over his stomach. "I sat up - I was so - everything was wrong and I was alone - and I saw David, standing -" He bites his lip hard, then hisses at its tenderness and lifts a hand to it, but that second's pain seems to have settled him some, and his shoulders straighten, he looks at Blaine again. "It was inside his body. It was making his muscles work all wrong, like it wasn't used to legs. I - well, I threw up. It was horrible. And it had my magic in its - his, his hand, it had my magic in his hand, I could see it and feel it and it was maddening and I was so scared - and I could hear it laughing but Dave's head was just hanging, it wasn't using his mouth, I just heard its voice telling me to run. And then Dave's legs began moving, all wrong, towards me. So I did run. I ran and ran, I fell over and got lost and ran and . . . it's only a game, I know it's only a game. It has my magic. It knows I can't run, not forever."
Blaine feels sick. "Why would it . . ."
Kurt shakes his head a little. "They live forever, unless something kills them. I suppose they just get bored. I suppose this is how they kill the time." He swallows. "I can't escape the barrier it's set up without my magic. But even if I could I wouldn't. It's a part of me, my magic, it is me. I feel - I can't even tell you." He puts his hands over his face. "It blinded me. It put my eyes out. I feel wrong, wrong, sick, ruined, wrong, like it broke me. It'll find me, and eat - eat the part of me you'd call a soul - and then eat my magic - and there'll be nothing of me left but a body it can wear if it feels like it, oh-" Bending forward like he might throw up again, while Blaine rubs his back and is afraid, cold all the way through with it, but he has no more choice than Kurt does. How can he leave him alone to face this? What kind of knight would he ever be, what kind of person would he be?
He can't leave him alone to face this. That monster will crush Kurt's brittle, stubborn strength like it's barely an obstacle, it's had him alone and lost in this dark for fun, chasing him with the corpse of . . .
Of what? Of Kurt's worst tormentor?
. . . of Kurt's first kiss . . . ?
That monster will see him broken, Blaine knows that, knows that that's the point of this game. Kurt is still stubborn enough to fight, still furious and so strong to want to fight, but it will make him break, it will make sure he knows he's beaten before it kills him. And it can't. It won't. Blaine will not let it. Kurt is astonishing to him, Kurt is a revelation, and Blaine will see him free, see him safe, he'll do anything for it. He's a knight. Nearly. This is what he does.
(It's not because his skin looks so soft, like milk, like a dove's clean breast.)
(It's not because of the way he meets Blaine's eye and Blaine is half crazy for wanting to know what colour they are in daylight, it's a reason all on its own to see Kurt safe to the dawn.)
(It's not because he's beautiful in ways that women aren't, in ways Blaine shouldn't, shouldn't notice. It's just the right thing to do. Blaine always does the right thing. Blaine has spent his entire life doing the right thing. He'll do it now even if it kills him, because it's the right thing to do, not because he wants to touch-)
"How do you fight faeries?" Blaine says, and Kurt takes his hands from his face, looks across at him pale and tight-mouthed with nausea. "You must be able to fight them or they'd have wiped mages out, right? How do you fight them?"
"Magic," Kurt says, and crosses his arms to rub them like he's cold. Probably he is, Blaine's armour feels frosty on him through his clothes. The air is cold in an odd dry way in this dark, silent, dead place. "Those of us who are strong enough to. We fight them in covens, usually, not on our own. You'd need to be - strong, on your own, to take one down." He looks at the ground, his smile twisted wry. "Even if I had my magic I wouldn't be enough."
Blaine remembers that mage with frown lines scoring his forehead, quietly talking to Blaine outside the gates of the practise ground where he'd tracked down Wes for his help. If something - happens. David is competent, but he could easily come into difficulty against anyone stronger. Kurt - he could be strong. He'd sounded puzzled, forehead wrinkling harder. He should be strong. I don't even know why . . . maybe he just hasn't grown into his magic yet. I worry what could - happen to him. Both of them. Blaine had thought at the time he'd said the last line a little oddly, like maybe he worried more for one than the other; if he knew what had happened between them, maybe he did. Maybe he wanted knights involved because mages don't want to deal with that, two of their own fighting, hurting each other-? Was that what David called Kurt out to the forest for, to attack him? Was that mage genuinely worried that David would hurt - kill, if he could - Kurt, and scared to go face the aftermath of that?
". . . why did you come?" he says. "When you found that note. If you knew he - he's hurt you before."
Kurt rubs his arms, eyes distant. "It's hard to adjust to realising that it's alright. That you're alright. I know he's angry, I know he hates - hated. I know he hated me. But I thought if we could talk, just briefly, if we could talk . . . he must have been so unhappy." He closes his eyes. "He must have been so, so confused and unhappy, and now he's dead."
"I think you're stronger than you give yourself credit for." Kurt looks across at him, eyebrows lowering. "You're still alive. And I don't think you were as unhappy as him even when he was trying to make you that unhappy. You're stronger than you think."
"I don't have any magic," Kurt says, softly. "It took it out of me, I feel hollowed out, I feel sick. If I'm not a mage - I can't fight it like this. All I can try to do is be angry at it. I'd still rather die angry than scared."
"So we need to get your magic back. That's how we'll beat it."
"Oh how simple a task," Kurt says wearily. "Even with my magic I'm nothing to that thing. It's a millennia old magical monster, Blaine, it eats mages' magic, how strong do you think it is? And what am I? I get shoved around by my own classmates and my magic's all - I don't know. It doesn't matter anymore. It's gone. It was all I ever had to keep myself safe with and it's gone, and now I'm dead whatever I do."
"We'll get your magic back," Blaine says stubbornly, "and you can fight it. You can, because you have to, and because you're stronger than you think." He smiles. "Okay?"
Kurt looks at his face and something like confusion crosses his eyes before he looks away, folds his arms closer around himself. "You shouldn't have come," he says quietly. "You should be safe back in the city, you should be saving yourself to rescue damsels in distress, not - not me."
"I think against that thing," Blaine says, slowly, "we'll have to rescue each other, because it sounds really incredibly too much for either of us alone. And I'm glad I came. You shouldn't have to do this on your own." He reaches across, squeezes one of Kurt's hands, and Kurt doesn't seem to know where to look and Blaine wishes he wasn't wearing a leather gauntlet, wants to know if his skin feels as cool and soft as it looks, wants to really feel those delicate visible bones running to his wrist . . .
Then he stands up, and offers Kurt a hand, sword still in the other. "Come on. We have to find it to get your magic back from it."
"We have to go looking for the faery that already killed one mage today and is now walking around in his corpse holding my magic like a toy, thinking up amusing ways to kill me."
"Pretty much. Are you ready?"
"That's the dumbest question anyone has ever asked me," Kurt says, but he takes Blaine's hand all the same.
On to part II.
In The Dark, Glee!fantasy.
Rating: R, bit of swearing, violence and squick, just not suitable for kids, basically.
Disclaimer: Guess who owns it. NOT ME.
Warnings: No real spoilers (well, post NBK) because we are so AU it's crazy. Only whenever I write fantasy I seem to end up writing horror, which is weird because I don't *read* horror, I have really pathetic squick levels. So, beware the disproportionate squick levels? Also, character death. Basically, again, I didn't write it for kids and don't want to give kids nightmares, so read age-appropriate stuff and don't get me in trouble, thank you <3
Summary: Blaine's a not-quite-knight determined to rescue two missing mages. It turns out that 'rescue' is a more complicated concept than he thought.
Note: Okay, I *love* my mages. I've had them squabbling and singing and throwing stupid parties in my head since I was a teenager, and I've just never found a *coherent* novel to put them in, though I'm happy enough to have them around while I work one out. (I did post a story I wrote *years* ago - seriously, coming on for a decade ago, so, um, very embarrassing teenage writing - on another journal if you would like to read them as they are; not quite so standard fantasy as written here, they dip in and out of our world and steal a lot of our stuff, in a way that it's hard to hate them for.) And when it occurred to me that ND would make an amazing coven in that world, my brain pretty much went 'splode. I do not want to spend the rest of my life writing sequels to this. It's really tempting though ;_; Also I could not write mages speaking with American dialect, I am sorry, I just can't. It's 'arse' or nothing from here on out. Fantasy, like fairy tales, I'll write in the words I *know* ;)
Now he's beginning to think that this was a mistake. No, wrong wording - he knows it's a mistake, he knows it's not a sensible thing to do, he knew that from before setting out, now he just knows that it's going to cost him a lot more than he'd thought it would. Because walking alone through the forest in the dark, listening to the metallic hush of the undergrowth skimming the armour plating over his shins, he'd felt nervy and hyper-alert with what he could be walking into, but he just walked through something. Through something invisible, something that felt like breaking the skin on top of water, so fine as to barely exist but so utterly different, the world on the other side. Every hair on his body tried to shiver independently, and the back of his neck tightened, and he clicked his sword a thumb's width out of its sheath without even thinking.
And now he stands in the dark, and hears his own breath amplified in the helm, echoing in the hollow metal cave he wears. And he wets his lips, and thinks that Wes was right; but then, Wes is always right.
He tries to listen. He'd heard owls, before, calling to each other through the dark, but they've gone silent. He'd heard a stream, somewhere, chuckling distantly, but it's stopped like the water just ran out. All he can hear are his own breaths, and the clink and shift of his armour, and the leaves shifting underneath his feet. He looks up. Through the leaves (still, now, no dance of silver-and-dark as the wind turns them), the sky is blue-black and starless. He thinks of noting the pole star when he slipped out of the city, to orientate himself.
He thinks, Damn. and begins easing himself backwards. Whatever he just walked into he needs to walk out of it. He needs to get out of whatever he has walked through and tell the mages that he knows where they are, now, but there's nothing he can do and -
The wrongness of walking away and leaving someone else in trouble gnaws at his insides. Blaine chews the inside of his top lip and tries to think rationally, tries to order everything in his head: he is not a knight, not yet, he's a squire, these duties aren't actually his yet. Wes will pop a vein when he finds out what Blaine did. If he does end up in trouble then Thad, who helped Blaine get his armour on for this, will have a nervous breakdown. Blaine probably can't help anyway. If this is mage trouble then it's magic trouble, and Blaine is only a boy, he can't interfere, he can't fix it. What can Blaine's sword do against magic? If it turns out that Blaine even can use his sword when it comes to it . . . ?
But he remembers the mage's anxious face, two missing mages no older than Blaine is, and if anything has happened to them - can't Blaine do something, just something, if no-one else will - ?
He turns, feels in the air for the barrier he just walked through, but his hand touches nothing. He takes a few uncertain steps but there's only air there. Okay. He just walked into something and now he can't walk back out of it again. Okay. Not good. It's fine, it will be fine, but he does now know why even Wes said no, when Wes is a good guy and Blaine knows that. Because this is mage business, not knight business, what can a man in a metal suit do against magic? What can a boy in a metal suit do against magic?
Whatever this magic is, what can it do to two young mages?
A twig snaps under his foot and from his side there is a sudden scream and what he thought was a bush in the dark lunges at him, swinging a club around its head and straight at Blaine's. Blaine lets himself take one step backwards so he can put some strength into propelling himself forwards, ducking in under the club (a branch, bent, still with a leafy twig fluttering from its end) and unsheathing his sword hard enough to swing the hilt into his attacker's head. He sees eyes widen with shock as they meet his, as they both realise half a second too late that they're attacking the wrong person.
There's not a lot that Blaine can do. His fist around the sword hilt still hits the other boy hard in the face, smacking his head sideways, but he loses all momentum and balance and when the boy's body hits his he goes down with him, thumped into the loam like a dropped sack, the other boy's mage robes flumping over them both as he lands like a felled tree on Blaine's chest plate. Blaine's heart beats hard in his ears, as he stares across at his own hand holding his sword limp on the forest floor, his brain rattled hard by the fall. On top of him the boy scrambles himself up, kicking himself away from Blaine, one hand still holding that branch like a club, the other held to his jaw where the swelling is already evident, where blood is gathering in the corner of his mouth. He sits there in the leaf mould and whispers, "Who the hell are you?", staring at Blaine, blinking too fast.
Blaine coughs, stabs his sword into the forest floor to hike himself to sit. "Hi," he says weakly, and pushes the visor up. "Um, ow. My name's Blaine. Are you Kurt or David?"
It's dark, but the boy's face is as pale as a small moon, Blaine can see every twitch of expression passing over it. "I'm." He takes his hand from his jaw, winces, touches the blood and looks dumbly at his own fingers. "You hit me."
"I'm so sorry," Blaine says automatically, and then blinks. "Actually, you did attack me first."
"I thought you were - you hit me. That really hurts."
"Seriously, you were going to knock my head off."
"I thought you were going to kill me! That - you absolute -" He can't even seem to find a word to cover his outrage. "- brute. Ow."
"I'm sorry," Blaine says again, and he actually does mean it, head ducked bashfully. He gets himself to his feet now, his ribs a little jarred but not really any the worse for the knock. "Sorry, seriously, I - didn't know I could do that. Are you Kurt or David? I'm looking for both of them, I'm assuming you're, well, one of them."
The boy licks the blood from his lip, quick flash of the tongue colourless in the dark, and grits his jaw as he pulls himself to his feet again. "David is dead," he says, very quietly, and gives a mechanical half-bend of a bow. "Kurt. Go back and tell them Dave - I couldn't stop it." He clutches at that branch with both hands and swallows hard, working his wounded lip into his mouth, quickly licking the building blood away again. "I couldn't stop it, it had - already happened when I got there. I'm sorry." His face twists around his eyes and mouth, tightening with trying not to cry. "I'm sorry -"
Blaine takes him in, as much as he can in the dark. There are scratches on the side of his face, probably from thorns in this dark woodland. His mage robes are a little silvery even in the pitch dark, baggy as mage robes are but bound with a belt clasping in a low V against his waist, emphasising his slighter build than Blaine's, though he is taller than him, not that it's so unusual for Blaine to meet a guy taller than him. Their hems are torn around his boots, and there are dark stains of leaf mould on his front and side. And he's shaking. Only so slightly, and so constantly that Blaine almost hadn't noticed, but he's quivering like the last leaf holding on as autumn folds to winter, tightening and shifting his hands around that branch. "I'm sorry," he whispers again, and drops his head, chokes, "I'm sorry, I - I couldn't do anything -"
"It's okay," Blaine says, and Kurt shakes his lowered head quickly, drops the branch, wraps his arms around his stomach and shivers.
"I couldn't have done anything - what could I do? It ate him out and it's wearing him like, like some sick suit and -"
"Hey, hey, it's okay," Blaine whispers, and tries to walk to him and take his arm but Kurt skips back, wipes his cheeks off on his dirty hands and whispers the scream at him, "It took my magic out of me and laughed and it is going to kill me and eat me oh gods I hope in that order and it killed Dave, it - opened him and ate the magic right out of him -"
"Okay, hey, okay." Blaine catches his arm, feels the start of Kurt's muscles through his leather gauntlet. "You're going to be fine. I'll take you back to the city and-"
Kurt doesn't whisper the scream this time, inches from Blaine's face. "It has my magic!"
He tries to sound steady, already a little unhinged by the headiness of Kurt's sheer fear. "Okay, I'll take you back to the college, the other mages can help-"
"It has my magic you cretin! Where the hell I can go - it has my magic and it is going to kill me and what the hell are you even doing here, you need to go."
"I came to - rescue you."
Kurt stares at him. Saying the words out loud makes Blaine realise their true idiocy, what a stupid child he's been; he's come to rescue this boy, this mage staring at him trembling and folding his hands into fists at his sides, breath coming slow and tight through his nose. "You came to 'rescue' me," he spits out, and then his face tightens again, tear-streaked through the dirt. He says, loud and hard, "Run away." and turns, marches off but Blaine grabs his arm again and his robes flare as he spins to him again. "Let - go you idiot just let me-"
"Tell me what it is that did this. I can - maybe I can help."
The anger is turning into contempt around Kurt's mouth. "It's a faery."
Blaine's hand goes limp on Kurt's arm and Kurt snatches it back. "Oh," Blaine says, and doesn't know what else to say.
"Yes." Kurt says, taking his face in. "So run away, and tell them - I'll be dead by the time you get back. Just tell them it was a faery and there was nothing anyone could do." He swallows. "Tell them to tell my dad that I love him," he says shakily, and swallows again, and again, and draws his breath in, lets it loose. "Please."
". . . I came through some, um, barrier."
"Yes. Go back through it. I can't."
"I - can't. It doesn't seem to be there anymore. It should've been - around - here?" He points to a vague point between two trees. "But it's just not there on, on this side of it."
Kurt's face is very still, and then he closes his eyes and makes a soft choked noise. "If I had my magic - if I could just - oh gods it's right there. We could . . . no. You need to hide. It might not even notice you, you might not even register with it, if you just hide the barrier might break when it kills me. Just wait for the dawn and run."
"Stop - saying that. I can - I know, okay, faeries are serious, I get that-"
"Serious-" Kurt hisses.
"- but we can fight, still, can't we? You don't have to act like of course it's going to kill you-"
"Of course it's going to kill me," Kurt snaps at him. "Of course I'm going to fight. There's no reason not to, I have nothing to lose, do I? But it has my magic. All I can do is - swipe at it with stupid sticks - it'll kill me anyway. You should hide. Please. They won't even know where I am, I don't want my dad never knowing, if you just don't get yourself killed you can tell them-"
"I can help," Blaine says, waving his sword. "Iron's the one thing they can't magic, isn't it? I can -"
Kurt's eyebrows fold. "That's true," he murmurs, looking at the sword in Blaine's hand, then he puts his hands around Blaine's wrist - Blaine's arm goes oddly loose at the sight of his dirty but so white fingers around the leather of his glove - and slips the sword out of his helpless grip. "Okay," Kurt says, testing the weight of it, bouncing the sword a little in his grip. "Thank you. Now go hide."
He turns to walk off again, this time holding Blaine's sword. "I meant that I would fight it," Blaine says, trying not to sound like he's sulking, and Kurt laughs without even turning, and it's a strangely sweet noise in the dark, bright as clear water.
"Find somewhere to hide," Kurt calls over his shoulder. "You'll know when it's over. I'll make it scream before it gets me, I will make it regret this-"
Blaine jogs to catch up with him. "I want to help."
"You will help. Make sure they know what happened. Stop them worrying."
"I can help."
Kurt stops walking and stabs the sword at him. "Okay, I am sorry to sound rude but what kind of knight are you out here on your own and I'm very sorry but more than a little on the short side, don't they have a height restriction for knights?"
"They don't, actually, it's hereditary. Um, knighting, not height, though I guess that too. And I guess I'm not actually exactly officially a knight yet?" Kurt glares at him, defensive and worn down with fear but no longer shaking now he's speaking to Blaine, now he has a sword in his hand. "I'm still a squire. One of the mages, he said he was called Will - he came to talk to Wes, the guy I'm squiring for, asking him to help come find the two of you, no-one knows where you went and he said he didn't know why you'd have gone off alone-"
Kurt looks down, at the sword tip resting in the loam. His eyes are dark, and it's impossible to tell what colour they are in this lighting but Blaine finds himself curious about them; blue, he guesses, they're not dark enough to be brown. "Dave asked me to come out here to 'talk'. We . . . we have a complicated sort of history."
". . . but the knights didn't want to get involved in mage business, and, well, I guess now I see why. But I followed the mage, to ask him some more questions and - and he said they couldn't 'feel' you two anymore, and he can't get enough mages together to search properly, he doesn't want the younger mages out looking for you, but if the knights would organise a patrol - but they won't. So, uh, I came on my own."
Kurt gives him a patient sort of glare. Blaine says, "It seemed like a less stupid idea at the time, I just thought you'd maybe got lost."
Kurt looks down again, at the sword. "They won't be able to feel our magic anymore, not through that barrier. They would never be able to find us, they would just - just panic. I would, if I couldn't sense one of my coven's magic anymore. They'll try to use magic to find us but through that barrier - they'd never even find our bodies."
Blaine reaches for his hand, closed around the sword hilt, and Kurt looks startled at him, blinking fast. "Tell me what happened," Blaine says. "Everything. What it is, what it can do. I need to be able to help."
Kurt looks at Blaine's hand around his, around the sword handle, like that small touch through Blaine's glove is somehow the most terrifying part of this nightmare. "You-" he says, and his breath shivers out of him. "You can't help. I can do it on my own. You hit them with the sharp end, it's not difficult-"
"I'm here. It's better than me not being here, right? So tell me everything you can, and we'll - we'll plan. We'll work something out."
Kurt's eyes flick up to meet his again, and Blaine feels something, low in his stomach, something he is very used by now to pushing aside and ignoring. "It won't help," he says quietly. "Blaine, it will kill me."
His fingers are loosening around the sword. Blaine murmurs, "Let me try to help."
"It's only playing with me," Kurt whispers, his fingers shaking again around the sword hilt. "It could've killed me already, it's only doing this for fun-"
"I'm here now." Blaine manages to get his fingers closed around the sword hilt, as Kurt's go too limp to hold onto it anymore. He feels a lot better for having his sword back in his hand. "Come sit down. Tell me what happened, and we'll work something out." He holds Kurt's eyes, as Kurt stares back dumb and pale and the lines of old tears show through the dirt on his face. Something about his face is slowly turning something low in Blaine's stomach; he ignores it, ignores it, ignores it. "Just let me help."
*
Kurt sits beside him on a log, huddled in his baggy robes, cloak pulled around himself, and looking at his own boots he says, "Dave put a note under my door, to ask me to come out to the forest to talk to him. It's private, out here. The college is a bit of a gossip mine."
Blaine says, "You don't have to tell me what he wanted to talk about if it's private."
"No," Kurt says softly. "I'm going to die, I want to be honest. You don't have to tell other people, though, I don't know if," his voice goes thick, "I don't know if he would have wanted that. He . . . he and I have had - some antagonism. Because there are things mages can get away with, that most people can't. And we all know that, when we come to the college, but when you've had a lifetime knowing that it's not okay before that, it's hard to - it's hard to - adjust. It's just so difficult, people make it so difficult, and I was so relieved to be there and be safe but you never forget before, when you weren't safe -"
Blaine has no idea what he's talking about, watching Kurt's face as his eyes flit all over the darkened clearing around them, touching every last tree before he makes himself meet Blaine's eyes. "I like men," he says, in his soft, sure voice, his eyes checking Blaine's, flicking between them as Blaine feels his own face go oddly numb. "I know - what could have happened to me in this world if my magic hadn't come through. But it's different for mages. We're - we're allowed more." He swallows. "But it takes us some time to realise that. I still had some, some trouble with other young mages, sometimes. David . . . Dave used to . . . he really used to make things difficult for me." He looks at his hands on his lap, squeezes his fingers together.
The guys joke about it sometimes, when one of the more chivalrous knights - Wes, or David, or any of the knights Blaine really wants to emulate when he's old enough - isn't around to stop them with a glare. They use pretty horrible words. Blaine stays quiet and doesn't think about it. Doesn't think about how he doesn't think about girls, makes an effort not to think about anyone. Chastity is a virtue, and if you work at your sword skills, practise and practise and practise, then when you collapse into bed at the end of a day you don't have the energy to even think about it . . .
I like men. Like it's just a fact and he's not ashamed of it, though he knows Blaine might turn on him in a second for it. Blaine looks at his own gloved hands, resting around the sword hilt for safety.
Kurt says, and it's like Blaine's seen him for the first time again, heard him for the first time, his voice so low and woodwind-soft, turning the simplest sentence into a song, "About a month ago I - I just snapped, I just couldn't do it anymore, getting treated like I deserve crap and acting like maybe I do. He knocked me over in a corridor and I went after him to yell at him. His magic's not that much stronger than mine, he can't do that to me, he doesn't have the right to do it to me because of who I might hypothetically fall in love with - and we had a fight and it was horrible and the magic was going crazy all around us but I was so angry I wasn't reading it right, I didn't know - all I knew was that finally I'd rattled him - until he kissed me."
He gives a small shrug, clasped hands tilting, and looks up and outwards again, his face getting a little tighter, a grief he can't grasp the size of yet, can't yet feel properly, may never get the chance to properly feel. "And after that it was even worse. It got so bad I had a shield up almost all the time, I didn't even mean to, the magic just - does that when you want it enough - and I couldn't eat or sleep or think about anything but how he - followed me and looked at me and - said things to me sometimes - and I could feel his magic against mine and it made me feel sick." He lifts his hands to cover his eyes, head hanging. "When I found the note I thought I had nothing left to lose and we had to talk it out or I would -" He laughs, suddenly, dropping his hands, bright and wicked in the dark. "I thought I'd die, like a dramatic teenager, when this-" He looks around, at the unnaturally dark forest all around them. "This, this is what death is like."
He draws a little breath in. "When I got here he was - standing oddly. Standing - he wasn't standing, I hadn't realised yet. He was - hanging. His feet weren't quite on the floor. It had eaten the magic right out of him, and when I realised, I - we can see faery magic, it's different to ours, I knew and I was so scared I couldn't move - I felt it notice me." He shudders, and Blaine, very uneasily, touches his shoulder; Kurt sucks his breath in sharp. "It dropped him and he hit the ground all wrong. It doesn't have a body like we do, I just felt it grip my shoulders - like hooks I couldn't see - I know I screamed - and I must have fainted. I woke up on the ground. It was all dark, like this." He waves a hand at the sky. "And my magic was gone."
He closes his eyes, hunches a little tighter. "I know you don't understand. It feels like something I never even knew was a part of me is gone, there's a hollow place, this horrible sick hollow place - it's so wrong - it's so wrong I could go crazy from it -" He presses his arms over his stomach. "I sat up - I was so - everything was wrong and I was alone - and I saw David, standing -" He bites his lip hard, then hisses at its tenderness and lifts a hand to it, but that second's pain seems to have settled him some, and his shoulders straighten, he looks at Blaine again. "It was inside his body. It was making his muscles work all wrong, like it wasn't used to legs. I - well, I threw up. It was horrible. And it had my magic in its - his, his hand, it had my magic in his hand, I could see it and feel it and it was maddening and I was so scared - and I could hear it laughing but Dave's head was just hanging, it wasn't using his mouth, I just heard its voice telling me to run. And then Dave's legs began moving, all wrong, towards me. So I did run. I ran and ran, I fell over and got lost and ran and . . . it's only a game, I know it's only a game. It has my magic. It knows I can't run, not forever."
Blaine feels sick. "Why would it . . ."
Kurt shakes his head a little. "They live forever, unless something kills them. I suppose they just get bored. I suppose this is how they kill the time." He swallows. "I can't escape the barrier it's set up without my magic. But even if I could I wouldn't. It's a part of me, my magic, it is me. I feel - I can't even tell you." He puts his hands over his face. "It blinded me. It put my eyes out. I feel wrong, wrong, sick, ruined, wrong, like it broke me. It'll find me, and eat - eat the part of me you'd call a soul - and then eat my magic - and there'll be nothing of me left but a body it can wear if it feels like it, oh-" Bending forward like he might throw up again, while Blaine rubs his back and is afraid, cold all the way through with it, but he has no more choice than Kurt does. How can he leave him alone to face this? What kind of knight would he ever be, what kind of person would he be?
He can't leave him alone to face this. That monster will crush Kurt's brittle, stubborn strength like it's barely an obstacle, it's had him alone and lost in this dark for fun, chasing him with the corpse of . . .
Of what? Of Kurt's worst tormentor?
. . . of Kurt's first kiss . . . ?
That monster will see him broken, Blaine knows that, knows that that's the point of this game. Kurt is still stubborn enough to fight, still furious and so strong to want to fight, but it will make him break, it will make sure he knows he's beaten before it kills him. And it can't. It won't. Blaine will not let it. Kurt is astonishing to him, Kurt is a revelation, and Blaine will see him free, see him safe, he'll do anything for it. He's a knight. Nearly. This is what he does.
(It's not because his skin looks so soft, like milk, like a dove's clean breast.)
(It's not because of the way he meets Blaine's eye and Blaine is half crazy for wanting to know what colour they are in daylight, it's a reason all on its own to see Kurt safe to the dawn.)
(It's not because he's beautiful in ways that women aren't, in ways Blaine shouldn't, shouldn't notice. It's just the right thing to do. Blaine always does the right thing. Blaine has spent his entire life doing the right thing. He'll do it now even if it kills him, because it's the right thing to do, not because he wants to touch-)
"How do you fight faeries?" Blaine says, and Kurt takes his hands from his face, looks across at him pale and tight-mouthed with nausea. "You must be able to fight them or they'd have wiped mages out, right? How do you fight them?"
"Magic," Kurt says, and crosses his arms to rub them like he's cold. Probably he is, Blaine's armour feels frosty on him through his clothes. The air is cold in an odd dry way in this dark, silent, dead place. "Those of us who are strong enough to. We fight them in covens, usually, not on our own. You'd need to be - strong, on your own, to take one down." He looks at the ground, his smile twisted wry. "Even if I had my magic I wouldn't be enough."
Blaine remembers that mage with frown lines scoring his forehead, quietly talking to Blaine outside the gates of the practise ground where he'd tracked down Wes for his help. If something - happens. David is competent, but he could easily come into difficulty against anyone stronger. Kurt - he could be strong. He'd sounded puzzled, forehead wrinkling harder. He should be strong. I don't even know why . . . maybe he just hasn't grown into his magic yet. I worry what could - happen to him. Both of them. Blaine had thought at the time he'd said the last line a little oddly, like maybe he worried more for one than the other; if he knew what had happened between them, maybe he did. Maybe he wanted knights involved because mages don't want to deal with that, two of their own fighting, hurting each other-? Was that what David called Kurt out to the forest for, to attack him? Was that mage genuinely worried that David would hurt - kill, if he could - Kurt, and scared to go face the aftermath of that?
". . . why did you come?" he says. "When you found that note. If you knew he - he's hurt you before."
Kurt rubs his arms, eyes distant. "It's hard to adjust to realising that it's alright. That you're alright. I know he's angry, I know he hates - hated. I know he hated me. But I thought if we could talk, just briefly, if we could talk . . . he must have been so unhappy." He closes his eyes. "He must have been so, so confused and unhappy, and now he's dead."
"I think you're stronger than you give yourself credit for." Kurt looks across at him, eyebrows lowering. "You're still alive. And I don't think you were as unhappy as him even when he was trying to make you that unhappy. You're stronger than you think."
"I don't have any magic," Kurt says, softly. "It took it out of me, I feel hollowed out, I feel sick. If I'm not a mage - I can't fight it like this. All I can try to do is be angry at it. I'd still rather die angry than scared."
"So we need to get your magic back. That's how we'll beat it."
"Oh how simple a task," Kurt says wearily. "Even with my magic I'm nothing to that thing. It's a millennia old magical monster, Blaine, it eats mages' magic, how strong do you think it is? And what am I? I get shoved around by my own classmates and my magic's all - I don't know. It doesn't matter anymore. It's gone. It was all I ever had to keep myself safe with and it's gone, and now I'm dead whatever I do."
"We'll get your magic back," Blaine says stubbornly, "and you can fight it. You can, because you have to, and because you're stronger than you think." He smiles. "Okay?"
Kurt looks at his face and something like confusion crosses his eyes before he looks away, folds his arms closer around himself. "You shouldn't have come," he says quietly. "You should be safe back in the city, you should be saving yourself to rescue damsels in distress, not - not me."
"I think against that thing," Blaine says, slowly, "we'll have to rescue each other, because it sounds really incredibly too much for either of us alone. And I'm glad I came. You shouldn't have to do this on your own." He reaches across, squeezes one of Kurt's hands, and Kurt doesn't seem to know where to look and Blaine wishes he wasn't wearing a leather gauntlet, wants to know if his skin feels as cool and soft as it looks, wants to really feel those delicate visible bones running to his wrist . . .
Then he stands up, and offers Kurt a hand, sword still in the other. "Come on. We have to find it to get your magic back from it."
"We have to go looking for the faery that already killed one mage today and is now walking around in his corpse holding my magic like a toy, thinking up amusing ways to kill me."
"Pretty much. Are you ready?"
"That's the dumbest question anyone has ever asked me," Kurt says, but he takes Blaine's hand all the same.
On to part II.