Posted originally on the Archive_of_Our_Own at https://archiveofourown.org/
works/877459.
  Rating:
      Explicit
  Archive Warning:
      Graphic_Depictions_Of_Violence, Underage
  Category:
      M/M
  Fandom:
      Glee
  Relationship:
      Blaine_Anderson/Kurt_Hummel, Carl_Howell/Emma_Pillsbury, Rachel_Berry_&
      Jesse_St._James
  Character:
      Kurt_Hummel, Blaine_Anderson, Jesse_St._James, Blaine's_Parents_(Glee),
      Cooper_Anderson, Carl_Howell, Adam_Crawford, Emma_Pillsbury, Rachel_Berry
  Additional Tags:
      Mutilation, Non-Consensual_Drug_Use
  Series:
      Part 3 of The_Boy_Who_Wouldn't_Grow_Up_Trilogy
  Stats:
      Published: 2013-07-10 Chapters: 1/3 Words: 16055
****** The Boy Who Swallowed A Star ******
by inkystars
Summary
     Junior fashion designer Kurt Hummel and murder mystery novelist
     Blaine Anderson head to the foggy streets of London, the setting of
     their bestselling novel, in order to stitch together the mystery
     around the murderer who's stalked them since Paris, all the while
     dealing with an outpour of Anderson family secrets, a copycat killer,
     the return of an old foe, and what really happened in Venice.
                   (Cover art by sweet-peach-tea on tumblr)
Part_1:_Sinker
 Tea Cups and Biscuits and Murders, Oh My!
 Written by Blaine Anderson and Judy Porcelain
Chapter 1: An Interruption at the Salon 
It was a dark and stormy night when Elliott Grey first met and became intrigued
by one Alexander Bergamot. 
It happened quite abruptly and was extremely to-the-point. Elliott Grey was an
earl of significant fortune, and yet at the primed age of thirty-six he was
mostly alone with his own company. He had acquaintances every now and then, but
his primary enjoyment lied in riding, reading, dueling, and enjoying a good cup
of tea. 
He was indulging in the lattermost of said activities in his favorite salon--
the Maraschino Tea Room--when a peculiar young lad sat down at his table.
He was of a wiry build and seemed to have a certain energy thrumming just below
the skin as he gazed at Elliott in a queer sort of way, his eyes fixated.
Taking a sip of his tea from a personal cup rather than one of the
establishments’, he opened the conversation with an extremely odd topic. 
“Have you heard of the murders occurring about town?”
***
The birds outside were chirping even though it was still dark. 
Kurt’s eyes slowly opened, eyes darting to the window. The sky was that
cerulean color that it gets just before dawn, when the sun is still preparing
it’s ascent. He blinked, eyes sliding over to the nightstand, where Tea Cups
and Biscuits and Murders, Oh My!sat, the cover flap bookmarking a few pages in-
-the only amount he’d been able to read the prior night before he had to shut
it. 
He’d read the novel from cover to cover dozens of times and was intimately
familiar with the story, but now it just left him feeling slightly hollow
inside. 
Blinking sleep out of his eyes, he sat up in bed, stretching wide to twist out
the cracks as the dream he’d been having started to slip from his memory like
sand in a sieve. Something about someone leaning over him while he slept. 
He let the dream slide away instead of examining it. He was pretty sure he knew
who he’d dreamed about. 
There was the uncomfortable prickling in the back of his neck that suggested
that maybe, just maybe, it hadn’t been a dream. Because he had felt very awake
during it. 
But no, when he’d dreamed he hadn’t been in this bed. 
And besides. Blaine wouldn’t break his promise like that. 
At least, he hoped that he wouldn’t. 
***
Kurt whisked eggs together, adding a splash of cream before pouring it into a
pan and waiting. He crumbled smoked salmon into the egg and little dabs of
cream cheese, letting it cook on low while he caramelized onions and mushrooms,
sliding them in as well. Folding the omelet up together, he flipped it twice on
higher heat before sliding it onto a plate with mango salsa. He grabbed a glass
of green apple juice and went out to the balcony to watch the sunrise. 
It had oddly become one of his favorite morning activities--which was good
because he didn’t sleep much. 
Then again, it wasn’t that out-there, considering he’d always been the morning
person while Blaine--
He sighed, leaning against the balcony rails while he cut into his omelet and
enjoyed his Upper East Side view. 
It had been a simple deal. Blaine had told him that if he moved in with Rachel
and Jesse, he wouldn’t contact Kurt again. Kurt had all-too-eagerly accepted,
blatantly ignoring the small voice in the back of his head that told him that
Blaine clearly cared because why else would he want Kurt to stay with Rachel
and Jesse if not to make sure that he was okay?
Things had been...well, they’d been. It’d been a little over three months since
Venice. Kurt spent most of his days trying to forget and being unable to. The
most he could accomplish was an odd disassociation with it, like it’d been some
crazy fever dream. 
But it hadn’t been. Because Blaine had left his plague mask behind. 
So Kurt dealt. Rachel and Jesse had been surprisingly good about the whole
thing. Neither asked questions, but they both seemed to just know that
something really bad had happened. Maybe Blaine had called ahead. There were
times when Rachel looked like she really wanted to ask him a question, but
she’d force it back and walk away. 
Kurt remembered the first time he’d come to this apartment--when he’d been
convinced that Rachel was slaughtering her female cast members, and then he’d
come to the conclusion that Blaine was. 
He’d been so convinced, because all Blaine ever did was lie. And he always lied
to Kurt. 
He should’ve learned from history. 
The sun came up bright yet it was unable to cast away Kurt’s shadows. 
***
Jesse was up by the time Kurt was rinsing his plate, and from the sounds of the
elliptical machine in the next room, Rachel was up as well. 
“How are you feeling?” Jesse asked as he went to the expensive espresso maker
on the counter and started fiddling with it. It was a question he’d taken to
asking quite a bit, recently. Everyday, he’d always ask Kurt how he was
feeling. 
There was something routine about it that Kurt unexpectedly appreciated. 
“Clearheaded,” Kurt replied evenly, setting his plate on the counter next to
the sink. “Very, very clearheaded.” 
“That’s good,” Jesse said earnestly, nodding with a small smile. “That’s good
then.”
Kurt nodded back at him and returned to his room to figure out something to do
for the day.
***
 “Violetta!”
 Violetta snapped out of her daydreaming and looked over at her twin sister who
was glaring at her from across the table. Amazing how a face identical to hers
could look so utterly different. 
 Liliana lifted her own needle, thread, and lace up for emphasis. “We still
need to finish this before noon.” 
 Violetta sighed and looked down at the floral design she was supposed to be
copying for the lace pattern and set back to work, though her mind kept
straying to green witches and ruby slippers and technicolor. 
 She’d only been able to see The Wizard of Oz once because the closest cinema
was on the mainland and besides, it’d cost her allowance to go. Aching to go
back, she tried to focus on her work, but her mind kept drifting back to the
film. 
 After another hour, Liliana sighed. “Go, have lunch. And try to be less
useless when you get back.”
 Violetta repressed a smile as she set her work down and picked up her covered
bowl of the fish-vegetable-rice dish that her sister was so fond of making,
heading down to the water. 
 It was a clear day and the lagoon sparkled turquoise in the light, flashes of
silver sun reflections blinding her briefly. She sat on a large warm gray rock
and looked out over the water to where Venice barely was seen against the
horizon. Sighing, she pushed her thick curly hair behind his shoulder and
started eating. 
 “Excuse me?”
 Violetta turned, blinking in surprise to suddenly see a young man standing
next to her rock, gangly and tall with obviously tailored clothing. 
 He smoothed back the side of his head, where some of his hair was trying to
escape from the pomade that held it back. “Could I maybe ask you a question?
I’m new here.” 
 Violetta’s eyes widened, and she tried to ignore the way her ears turned red.
“My name’s Violetta.”
 He smiled, and it managed to blind her worse than the sun flashes off the
lagoon, his clear blue eyes twinkling. “I’m Theodore. Theodore Anderson.”
***
Riding the subways was oddly cathartic. Something about going at such a fast
speed that his mind could finally just slow down and try to process. 
But every time it would go to examine the details, it was like there was just
this block on everything and he’d focus on the tunnel lights streaming by
instead. 
Or occasionally, his eyes would drift down to his wrist. 
He’d started wearing the green-brown glass acorn that Blaine gave him as a
bracelet. There’d been a point when he’d almost thrown it away, but he
physically couldn’t. 
But it felt like a betrayal resting under his shirt against his heart, so he
wore it in another fashion. 
He just felt generally...numb about the whole thing. And angry, of course, but
mainly confused. Because he had no idea why Blaine had done what he’d done. 
Well, a vague idea about protecting Kurt from him or whatever Edward Cullen
bullshit he’d come up with. 
But Kurt didn’t understand why Blaine hadn’t just talked to him about it. Or
even lied and told him that he simply wasn’t happy with Kurt anymore and broken
the engagement that way. 
Why did he have to create such a large elaborate ruse justto prove to Kurt how
much they shouldn’t get married? Especially when he used marriage as part of
the ruse.
Speaking of marriage...
Kurt’s second engagement ring hung on the cord around his wrist, next to the
acorn. 
He vastly preferred it as a belly button ring.
Sighing, he leaned his head back against the window as they hurtled along. 
An odd prickling feeling triggered the hairs on the back of his neck and he sat
up straighter, eyes doing a quick casual-looking glance around the car. 
Someone at the far end was staring at him.
Kurt breathed out, heart pumping as he looked forward, willing himself not to
look back and draw suspicion. Okay, he had a tail. Wouldn’t be the first time.
The train screeched to a stop and he stood, fighting against the incoming crowd
to get off as he walked across the platform and slid onto the stalled train
heading back uptown. 
A minute later, the train pulled out from the station and Kurt breathed a sigh
of relief as they pulled out. He hung onto the cool metal railing as he looked
out the side window at the connecting car in front of his. 
The man was in there, staring at him. 
Kurt looked away, breath coming out quicker as he formulated a plan. 
Three stops later, Kurt lurched off his car and into the crowd before turning
left and running up the stairs. They were in the Time Square station, where
four different colors of trains met up. He heard commotion behind him and kept
running, skidding down the long hallway. He contemplated heading back to the
apartment, but instead veered towards the red lines. 
Down another flight of stairs with footsteps not far behind, he jumped onto a 3
train just as the doors were closing. They started moving and the man came down
onto the platform, looking murderous. Kurt shot him a cheeky grin before he was
swallowed into the darkness of the tunnel. 
***
He got off a few stops later and ran up the escalator into the familiar
Greenwich air. Twisting his way through the crooked streets, he eventually made
his way to Blaine’s apartment, climbing up the fire escape and in through his
window, which was always unlocked. He locked it this time and pulled down the
shade, taking his key from under his pillow and attaching it to his keychain
before heading over to the kitchen. 
It was his first time coming back since, well...since he’d sat on the floor of
the kitchen and cried until his potstickers and hot chocolate grew cold. 
Sighing, he walked over to the couch and collapsed on it, eyes drifting over to
the blank whiteboard when they’d tried to work out who the Tinman killer was,
and planning on using the bits and pieces in the novel they’d come up with
together, with no idea of what on earth was to come ahead... 
***
Alexander Bergamot was a queer fellow, to be sure. 
At the oddest moments, he’d pop up in Elliott’s townhouse, presence
unannounced, as he’d ramble on and on about whatever killer was loose in the
streets. 
Even queerer was that despite his initial protests, Elliott would give up and
listen to Mr. Bergamot’s ramblings and indeed, even become caught up in them. 
Two young girls from some of the seedier areas of London had been killed. The
two seemed unlinked, yet Alexander insisted that there was a connection between
the two of them, and that he was going to discover it. 
He also insisted that Elliott call him “Alex”.
Elliott insisted on sticking to “Mr. Bergamot”. 
***
In the end, it was really Rachel who gave everything away.
Well, not everything, but she clued Kurt in that something was definitely off. 
Jesse not bringing up Italy, he could understand. Despite his bravado, Jesse
did know when not to say anything and just let Kurt deal. Not to mention that
he was probably feeling some guilt in light of his overall failure as a Kurt-
babysitter. 
But it made absolutely no sense why Rachel wasn’t saying anything. 
He knew her. He knew how she operated. Yeah, the first few weeks weren’t that
odd because despite what Blaine (okay and Jesse that one time they got him
drunk) said, she did actually have a modicum of tact. 
But he’s heard nothing from her since he got back. She hasn’t asked him about
what happened once. 
Nothing from her end at all. 
His first thought was that Blaine told them. Jesse seemed to know something bad
had happened, and it wouldn’t be a stretch for Blaine to reach out to them to
look after Kurt, even if Kurt really didn’t want to think about that.
Though if that were the case, Rachel would still offer to talk about it at
least, or try to make it about her in some misguided yet endearing way. 
Radio silence. Blackout. Dead zone.
Plus she’d been oddly nice to him which just weirded him out on some deep
level. Even at their best, they stills squabbled whenever they were thrown
together in any sort of situation. 
There was definitely something up, that much he could surmise. 
And he hated a small part of himself when he realized it.
Because there was nothing he wanted more than for Blaine to be there to help
him figure it out. 
***
 Violetta toed her way across the flat dock railing, arms held out as she
balanced and walked, the dock three feet down on her left, and the water to her
right, four feet down. She was softly singing nonsense words to the tune that
Dorothy sang at the beginning of The Wizard of Oz, ignorant to the actual
lyrics as they were in English. 
 (Though she’d added several phrases from the movie to her admittedly small
collection of English sayings that she planned on using if she ever went to an
English speaking country.)
 “There’s no place like home,” she recited, tongue fumbling slightly over the
foreign words. “There’s no place like home. There’s no place--” 
 “Wizard of Oz, right?” 
 Violetta stumbled, feet jumping as she tipped off the railing to her left,
dock-side, and landed in a pair of arms. 
 She was met with a dazzling smile and a single raised eyebrow. 
 Theodore righted her on her feet before going on a long ramble, entirely in
English. 
 Violetta just stared at him, slightly bemused and slightly dazed. How come she
hadn’t noticed before that his eyes matched the lagoon? 
 Theodore stopped suddenly, looking sheepish. “I’m sorry,” he said, switching
back to Venetian and moving a hand back to press against his hair. It must be a
nervous tick. “You don’t actually speak English, do you?”
 Violetta shook her head. 
 “It’s just, my Venetian isn’t the best and I thought--”
 “We could speak in Italian,” she offered, switching. 
 He sagged in relief. “Thank you.”
 “So...” Violetta leaned back against the dock railing. “What brings you to
Burano?”
 “Well,” Theodore leaned against the railing next to her. “I was told that the
lace here is some of the best in the world.”
 “You’re in the market for lace?” Violetta raised one eyebrow, trying to
imitate the way he’d done it. 
 “You could say that,” Theodore shrugged. “I was also told that the women here
are some of the most beautiful in the world.”
 Violetta felt her ears turned red, but she refused to look away. “So you’re in
the market for women?”
 Theodore’s smile broadened. “You could say that.”
 Violetta leaned close to him, biting her lip softly. “Well then...you should
go down the east canal at night. You’ll find plenty women willing to
accommodate your ‘market’.” 
 And with that she pushed off of the rail and walked off of the dock, not
looking back once and a smile teasing her lips. 
***
Kurt started listening at doors. It wasn’t the most glamorous spying method,
but it at least got the job done. 
(He learned not to do it when they thought he was out of the house though,
because Mimi/Roger musical roleplaying sex was something that he honestly did
not want to ever hear sung in like...ever.)
Fortune struck one night when he feigned going to sleep early and snuck back
out, pressing his ear against their door and hearing Rachel and Jesse speaking
in hushed tones.
“I just don’t like it,” Rachel said softly. “I think we should tell him.”
“And I think that’s a terrible idea,” Jesse argued. “You know the repercussions
if this goes south.”
“But I hate lying to him! And he’s going to find out anyways, especially if
Carl keeps calling here trying to reach him.”
“We can block his number, but Kurt’s wellbeing is our prior concern.”
“I know, it’s just...” she sighed.
Kurt had heard enough.
***
He called Carl the next morning, from a pay phone down in Grammercy. 
 “Kurt, where the hell have you been?”
“Laying low for a bit,” he sighed, rubbing at his eyebrows before he remembered
that it was a tick that Blaine had. “Italy was...a lot’s happened. I’ve been in
New York. What’s up?”
 “Kurt...while you’ve been gone...a lot’s happened here too.”
Kurt blinked. “What? What’s happened?”
“Well first, there’s the toxicology report from Shelby’s death--” he cut off
abruptly. 
“Hello?”
 “But we can go over that later. What happened in Italy? I mean, I’ve only
heard rumors but...they’re worrying rumors, Kurt.”
Kurt’s shoulders sagged. “You mean like me killing Blaine?”
 “Well--”
“Oh come on, Carl, you can’t actually think that I’d kill Blaine,” Kurt said
exasperatedly. “I didn’t flip out and go crazy, don’t worry. Blaine’s...he’s
still in Italy. If you can get ahold of him to corroborate the story, more
power to you.”
 “What the hell happened?”
“I went to prison for a few weeks because everyone thought I’d killed Blaine,
then I went to Venice and...” he trailed off as a thought occurred to him.
“Hey, how many international contacts do you have?”
 “A few? Why?”
“Any in England?”
 “Sure? I mean, I know a few. Kurt--”
“Look, there was an agent on Shelby’s case in Paris and he followed me to
Venice and...he got caught in the crossfire. Agent Adam Crawford from the
British Secret Services. He’d been reporting about everything that happened
and...” The heavy guilt that commonly came whenever Kurt thought about Adam
settled on his chest again and he gulped. “So if you want to inform them that
he, uh...that he’s gone, you know, that’d be nice.” 
There was a long silence. 
 “Kurt, I think you should come home.”
“Can I even get into an airport?” Kurt frowned. “I mean, unless I’m no longer a
wanted man...”
 “Just take Jesse’s plane then, to be safe.”
“Are you sure this is a good idea?”
 “We’ll need to get your statement in person and also we can fill you in on
what we have on our end.”
“Okay,” Kurt said. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow then.” 
 “Hurry over.”
***
To add to the long list of peculiarities of Alexander Bergamot, there was the
odd way in which he drank tea. 
It was a commonality that he’d show up in Elliott’s salon at the most random of
times and demand a pot of jasmine or orange spice or lavender tea--always
something exotic and whatever would come to mind. He claimed that he was
looking for the perfect tea that he could settle with forevermore and not have
to worry about hopping from one to the other, dissatisfied. 
But as for the manner of drinking, he always refused Elliott’s own china in
favor of an odd little chipped teacup of his own. It was made of a very fine
porcelain with little mock orange blossoms painted onto the side of the cup and
the curve of the saucer. Alexander would always fill it two thirds of the way
full and decline Elliott’s offer of his preferred lemon slice in favor of honey
and the occasional spot of cream. 
Upon drinking, he would bring the cup up to his mouth, the chipped corner first
up to his lips, where they would linger in an almost caress as his eyes would
slide shut and his mouth would move along the rim approximately ninety degrees
around the circumference of the cup and he’d take a deep sip. After he was done
drinking for a time, his tongue would dart back to the chip, laving at it
briefly in precaution for any drops. 
Elliott found the entire process fascinating for some inexplicable reason and
he’d quite often lose focus from Alexander’s ramblings because he’d be too
distracted watching him drink. 
For some odd reason, it never occurred to him that he should maybe correct
Alexander on his improprieties. The very notion in fact seemed a blasphemy. 
Probably because they’d grown to be such close acquaintances. 
On the eve of the thirtieth of October, Alexander was sitting in his customary
chair, soaked utterly to the bone, and looking stricken. He was shaking. 
Elliott stepped in front of him, concerned. “Alexander? My dear fellow,
whatever is the matter?”
Alexander refused to look at Elliott. Instead, he wordlessly handed him his cup
and saucer with a shaky hand. “Chamomile with honey. And a splash of brandy, to
calm the nerves.”
Shocked that he was offered such a treasure, Elliott took it without question.
He prepared the drink as asked and set it down on the small table next to the
armchair that he was quickly starting to refer to as Alexander’s. 
Elliot sat down in his customary chair across from Alexander and folded his
hands, waiting. 
After several sips of his alcoholic tea, Alexander looked decidedly calmer, and
the shakes in his hands had gone down. “There was a third killing,” he said
measuredly. “I--” his voice cracked slightly as he took another shaky sip. “I
knew the victim. She was an old friend, actually.”
“I’m sorry,” Elliott said sincerely. “Honestly, I cannot fathom what you must
be going through right now.”
Alexander downed the rest of his tea easily, looking darkling at the fireplace,
his hands starting to shake again. 
Elliot sighed and picked up the bottle of brandy off of the mantlepiece,
filling his cup. “To help with the nerves.”
Alexander nodded, taking a sip while Elliot partially filled his own tumbler. 
“I feel stricken, certainly,” Alexander offered after another long silence.
“But mostly I feel very clear-headed. I know where to go with this.”
“And where’s that?” Elliott asked. 
Alexander finally looked up at him. “I’m going to find this murderer. And then
I’m going to kill him.” 
There was a heavy pause that settled in between the two of them as the weight
of Alexander’s words sunk in. Finally, Elliott spoke. 
“I’m going to help you.”
***
Kurt stared out the window as a good chunk of the country passed by. It’d taken
a large argument to get Jesse to loan him the plane, but he’d relented after a
while. 
But there was still something tickling the back of Kurt’s brain about all this,
and what role he played. Because there were still so many pieces of the puzzle
missing. 
And so he sat, and watched, and waited, until the plane settled down at Sea-Tac
Airport. 
***
 “Are we ever going to talk about your suitor?”
 Violetta nearly jabbed herself with a needle as she looked up at her sister
vehemently. “He is not my suitor.” 
 “Of course he’s not,” Liliana rolled her eyes. “It’s not like he’s been
loitering outside of our shop for the past two weeks with a new bouquet of
flowers every day.”
 “I just don’t know how to avoid him,” Violetta groaned, focusing back on her
pattern. 
 Liliana sent her an incredulous look. “Are you serious? If this is you trying
to avoid him then I’d hate to see what you actively encouraging his affections
looks like.”
 “Well what do you suggest I do?” Violetta said desperately. 
 “Glare at him when you leave,” Liliana shrugged. “That’s the only way he tells
us apart. I either glare or stare at him disparagingly. You either won’t meet
his eyes or give him the most ludicrous puppy dog expression.”
 Violetta sighed.
 “Also, if you run into him at the market, decline his offer to walk you home.
And stop accepting those cakes he gives you. And don’t show him that shortcut
across the canal that you did last week. And don’t show him that magenta house
over east that you want to live in. And definitely don’t tell him that it’s
your dream to marry someone and raise kids in that house.”
 “I was just being friendly!” Violetta protested. 
 Liliana sent her a look. “He bought the house the next day.”
 “Clearly to tease me.”
 “And why would he do that?”
 “Rich traveling Englishmen don’t stay in places for long,” Violetta said
defensively. “They look for an exotic distraction while they travel and then
they return home to their wives. There’s no way he isn’t married or at least
engaged.”
 “Well why don’t you actually ask him before jumping to conclusions?” Liliana
stood, taking off her apron. “I’m going to lunch. Watch the shop.”
 “What?” Violetta said. “No--”
 Too late, she left.
 Violetta kept her head down and worked astutely, tensing slightly as she heard
the bell ring as the door opened. 
 “Good afternoon.”
 She looked up from her work to see Theodore in the doorway, looking handsome
as ever, with a bouquet of poppies.
 Where did he even get those?
 He placed them in front of her, looking so naively hopeful that she caved and
accepted them. Honestly, they were quite pretty. 
 “I was wondering...” he went on. “If you’d like to go on a vaporetti ride with
me--”
 Violetta rolled her eyes. “A romantic ride across the lagoon? Really? Hoping
for a happy ending in the boat because if you think--”
 “Actually,” Theodore cut across her, holding up two tickets. “I got tickets to
the cinema on the mainland and I was wondering if you’d accompany me.”
 Violetta blinked, looking at the tickets and the familiar title proclaiming
which film they’d be seeing. Her eyes widened. “Really?”
 “Well, I remember you saying how much you liked it, and if you needed a
translator while we watched...” he trailed off with a shrug.
 Violetta leaned over and pecked him on the cheek. “I’d love to go.”
 Theodore looked surprised before a goofy grin lit up his face.
***
Kurt took the lightrail from the airport into the city, the uncomfortable
prickling at the back of his neck that always alerted him whenever something
wasn’t quite right refusing to go away. So he let his eyes slide shut and let
the comfortable lull of the train soothe him into complacency. 
He sighed as they pulled into the bus tunnel and he prepared to get off at his
stop, grabbing his overnight pack. 
Looking up out of the train windows, he saw someone across the platform staring
at him. 
Kurt froze, keeping eye contact with the man, but not daring to get off. 
The man started forward, but the doors slid shut and the train went on through
the tunnel. 
Kurt breathed out a sigh and gripped his bag tightly, intent on getting off at
the next station. 
***
Weaving through pedestrians, he was able to make it to Carl and Emma’s
apartment relatively unscathed, though he kept glancing behind him every few
minutes to make sure he wasn’t being followed.
He knocked on the door to the apartment and smiled in relief when he saw Carl,
throwing his arms around him. 
“It’s so good to see you!” he grinned, squeezing tight. It was true. It’d felt
like a lifetime ago when they’d all been in Paris, carefree. 
(Well, okay, they were being stalked by a murderer and half of them were tied
up in the string of crimes and they were constantly watching each other’s
backs, but yeah, it was pretty carefree for them.)
Carl let him into the apartment, where he exchanged hugs with Emma and saw a
surprising sight over her shoulder. 
“Finn?” Kurt said incredulously with half a laugh as he started towards his
stepbrother. “What are you doing here?”
“Have a seat, Kurt,” Finn said in a measured tone, gesturing to the chair in
the room. 
Kurt looked behind him at Carl and Emma, who looked oddly somber. 
Warily, he sat down, folding his hands neatly. 
Finn stared at him intently to an almost unnerving degree. Carl moved to stand
by the window, folding his arms. Emma was looking on, worried, at the door. 
Kurt blinked. “What’s going on?”
Finn took a deep breath. “When were you going to tell us about what really
happened in Italy?”
Kurt felt his chest immediately clench up and his fingers flexed. He proceeded
with caution. “What do you mean?”
Finn continued to stare at him. “Kurt...the last that anyone heard from you
until yesterday, you and Blaine went off together for a week in Northern Italy.
Then nearly two months later you show up in New York and no one knows where
Blaine is and last week I got a bill from some mental hospital in Italy for
your time there--”
“Wait, what?” Kurt interrupted, holding up his hand. “What are you talking
about?”
Finn sighed. “We know about the hospital, Kurt.”
“Well I don’t,” Kurt said, crossing his arms. “What hospital? I never went to a
hospital.” 
“Don’t lie to us, Kurt,” Finn said, voice raising. “This is serious! Not to
mention that you escaped in under three weeks. Vespaciano has policies against
that--”
“Vespaciano?” Kurt said sharply. “The prison? I mean yeah, I escaped, but I was
innocent! Blaine isn’t even dead so I shouldn’t have been convicted, you know
that!” 
The silence in the room was palpable. 
“Finn, he doesn’t know,” Carl said gently. “I told you that it might end up
like this.”
“Don’t know what?” Kurt demanded. “What’s going on?”
Carl looked over at him before letting out a weary sigh. “Kurt, do you remember
Shelby Corcoran’s death?”
“Of course I do,” Kurt frowned.
“And how oddly she reacted to you stabbing her with a needle?” Carl pressed.
“Yes,” Kurt said exasperatedly. “What does this have to do with anything?”
“We found...something in her bloodstream,” Carl said slowly. “Something that
entered her body with the needle. And she had an allergic reaction to one of
the main components.”
Kurt blinked. “And...?”
Carl shifted off the wall, unfolding his arms to put his hands in his pockets.
“Shelby Corcoran was deathly allergic to poppies.”
A cold sweat broke out on the back of Kurt’s neck, but he ignored it. “What are
you saying?”
“I’m saying that a strain of the same drug that was used to...subdue you years
ago was found on your needles. And several of your other belongings.”
Kurt felt his hands start to shake and he gripped the material of his pants in
an attempt to stop them. “How did it get get on my belongings?”
“We don’t know,” Carl said quickly. “And we aren’t blaming you because you’re
clearly the one who’s suffered from it.”
“Suffered from it?” Kurt asked, bewildered. “How have I suffered from it?”
Carl licked his lips nervously. “Well, we’re still doing research, but we think
that it may have been taken in through your skin and your body started reacting
to it, which brought up another crop of hallucinations.”
“But I haven’t been hallucinating,” Kurt protested, standing. 
“Yes, you have Kurt,” Finn cut in.
“Finn, I thought we were going to take a different approach,” Emma said gently.
“There’s no way to sugarcoat this!” Finn snapped before turning back to Kurt.
“Kurt look, you started hallucinating during the trip, which is why Blaine
checked you into the hospital--”
“What?” Kurt squawked, before a rush of anger came over him. “Did Blaine tell
you that?” 
“No, we haven’t been able to get a hold of Blaine,” Emma said.
“Well isn’t that convenient!” Kurt laughed. “So you’re going off hearsay that
I’m a crazy loon that had to be locked up?”
“No, we’re going off of the statement that the hospital sent us,” Finn said
coldly, handing Kurt a paper. “That you escaped in the middle of treatment and
they’re requesting that you return to complete your stay.”
Kurt stared at the paper with technical terms that flew right over his head.
“It’s not a hospital,” he murmured, turning away from the paper in disbelief.
“It’s a prison. I was there for murder. I got out through the basement and went
to Venice...”
“Can you even hear yourself right now?” Finn said earnestly. “Do you have any
idea how crazy you sound? You went to a prison and somehow managed to escape in
less than three weeks?”
“Of course it sounds crazy, but doesn’t everything in my life?” Kurt snapped
back before rounding on Carl. “And did you even try to contact the British
Secret Services?”
“I did,” Carl nodded.
Kurt gestured wildly. “And?”
“And there’s no record of anyone named Adam Crawford who’s worked for the
British Secret Services in the past fifty years.”
Kurt stared at him. “Well, he was probably using that name as an alias--”
“That’s what I thought,” Carl nodded. “So I asked about your case specifically.
You aren’t even on their radar. Which means that there’s no way you went to
prison because if you did then INTERPOL would’ve tripped.” He gave Kurt a long
look. “I also did a search throughout England for Adam Crawford, just to be
sure. There were six. Three were above the age of fifty, one sixteen year old,
and two under ten.”
Kurt clenched his hands tightly. “So maybe he had a different nationality or--”
“Kurt,” Carl interrupted. “Did...did anyone other than you ever see Adam?”
“I--” Kurt broke off, thinking back. “Well, I’m sure someone did--”
“No one did,” Finn said. “None of us saw him.” 
“He was at the ball!” Kurt protested. “He dressed as Prince Charming!”
“Along with half of the other guys there?” Finn shot back. “Kurt, you made him
up. He doesn’t exist!”
“Yes he does!” Kurt yelled, hands shaking badly. “I know he does!”
“You don’t know, because you were at a mental hospital for weeks!”
“No, I wasn’t!”
“Yes, you were! Blaine even checked you in!”
The silence was deafening. 
“What?” Kurt whispered.
“He was the one to check you in,” Finn said.
Kurt breathed in heavily as things started to fall into place. 
Blaine.
This was all Blaine.
Apparently he hadn’t been satisfied with playing with his mind for nearly a
month, so he decided to toy with it some more. 
Kurt’s jaw clenched and then released slowly. “Well the next time you see
Blaine, you can tell him to stuff it. But I’m out of here.” He turned to leave.
Finn grabbed at his arm. “Kurt, this is serious. Stop kidding around.”
“Oh, I know it’s serious!” Kurt snapped. “Which is why I’m going to fix this
now!”
“Kurt--”
“Finn, get off!”
Kurt managed to wrench his arm back, his sleeve cuff tearing partially as he
yanked it away, and his bracelet baubles falling through.
Carl’s hand replaced Finn’s suddenly, as he yanked Kurt’s arm up for his
inspection. “Kurt,” he asked in an odd voice. “Where did you get this acorn?”
Kurt looked from the acorn back to Carl in confusion. “From Blaine. And if you
guys would pull your heads out of your asses for five minutes, maybe you’d
realize that he’s the person who should be locked up in a mental hospital.”
He pulled his arm from Carl’s and turned, Emma scattering to the side as he
left, slamming the door behind him.
***
Being a member of high society, there were a great deal of noblemen and women
that Elliott had to interact with on a daily basis. 
One such member was Lord Clive Huntington, one of the lords of Lancaster. His
town apartment was two blocks due east of Elliott’s, and their social circles
often coincided, so they saw each other semi-frequently. 
Elliott utterly loathed the man, but tolerated his company because of their
shared acquaintances. 
On one particularly chilly November afternoon, Elliott hosted a garden party at
one of the nearby arboretums that he was a patron of. The dually thick scents
of gardenia and jasmine filled the air as the socialites sampled a lovely rose-
lemon tea that Elliott had procured, delicate little French biscuits in varying
pastel colors. 
The night before, he’d practically begged Alexander to make an appearance, just
to stave off a modicum of the boredom he was anticipating. 
Alexander did not disappoint. 
He made conversation with just about everyone, lacing his own dialogue with
heavy yet subtle double entendres that had Elliott taking several hasty sips of
tea to hide the quirk of his lips. 
The two found themselves over by the table of appetizers--Alexander’s
insistence because apparently he hadn’t had breakfast--with Alexander making
intentionally ludicrous comments about the names of the colors of the various
dresses and handkerchiefs, when Clive slid forward to join them.
Elliott immediately took a long drink to cease his laughter before
straightening with his custom friendly smile. 
“Mr. Grey, I must say that this is an excellent party,” Clive said with stiff
frivolity. 
Elliott schooled his face into superior gratitude as he studiously ignored the
imitating face of Clive that Alexander was pulling behind his back. “Thank you,
Mr. Huntington. It was not without the expense of great effort.”
Alexander rolled his eyes behind Clive, and Elliott knew he was scoffing at the
word “effort” considering that Elliot had barely lifted a finger in the process
of party-planning. 
“I do love the raspberry honey,” Alexander cut in, voice semi-haughty with just
an edge of mocking. “I think it really set off the flavor of the rose and
lemon. Excellent choice, old chap.”
“Thank you, Mr. Bergamot,” Elliott said, doing his best not to roll his eyes at
the familiar ‘old chap’ jibe. Elliott was only fourteen years Alexander’s
senior, and Alexander barely even looked his university age of nineteen. “Your
input is always welcome and I hold it dearly to heart.”
He took the suppressed smile on Alexander’s end as a victory.
Clive turned to give Alexander a long appraising look. “Mr. Bergamot, is it? I
must say, we’ve all been quite curious as to the manner of gentleman that Mr.
Grey has been keeping such close company with over the past few weeks.” 
“Well, the manner is what I present,” Alexander said amiably, gesturing to
himself. “Observe if you must.”
Clive smiled then. The thing about Clive Huntington was that he was not one for
genuine smiles--they were often calculated and for a specific purpose. “Oh, I
highly doubt that,” he crooned. “You certainly put on quite the show, Mr.
Bergamot, but I can spot lower class when I see it.”
“Clive,” Elliott said sharply. “How dare you insinuate--”
“Oh, I insinuate nothing, Elliott,” Clive said easily before turning back to
Alexander. “I met an acquaintance of yours nearly a fortnight back, Mr.
Bergamot. A Miss Daisy Carlisle?”
Alexander froze suddenly, his hand going rigid against his peculiar teacup. 
Elliott flicked his eyes between the two, trying to read the situation and
wondering why the name sounded so familiar...
“She was just recently murdered, was she not?” Clive carried on with little
remorse. “Distasteful business, though not entirely uncommon in that area of
town. She was the landlady of one of my former maids that I sadly had to let go
of--got herself with child, you see. Couldn’t work anymore. I went to check-up
on the girl and Miss Carlisle happened to mention in passing a certain young
Mr. Bergamot who lived down the hall.” 
Clive tilted his head as he took another step towards Alexander. “I saw you
come in the building and the name stuck with me all this time. And that
building was seized in the wake of Miss Carlisle’s death, and all inhabitants
had to find other residences. I did some inquiring of my own and found out that
no one in the area had taken on a Mr. Bergamot.”
He turned to Elliott with relish. “So, dear Elliott, you’ve been hosting a
homeless indigent for over a week. I just thought you’d find this information
interesting.”
“I did find lodgings,” Alexander cut across before Elliott could respond, his
eyes flashing. “But I opted to give it to a Miss Caroline Cartwright, whom I
believe you know because she used to be your maid. The one you claimed “got
herself with child”. Interestingly, she often told me stories of her employer
who would come to her room late into the night.”
Clive grew a horrid shade of red. “Are you insinuating--”
“Oh, I insinuate nothing Mr. Huntington,” Alexander said without remorse.
“What--you were rich enough to hold decadent dinners every fortnight but too
cheap to put up the mother of your own child in proper lodgings?”
“How dare you--”
Elliott reached out and grabbed Clive’s wrist sharply as it moved to strike
Alexander. There was a tense silence between the three of them before Elliott
finally turned to Alexander. 
“Is it true?” he asked quietly. 
Alexander breathed out suddenly and gritted his teeth before nodding. 
Elliott raised an eyebrow. “Well that’s preposterous. You should have told me
immediately.” 
Alexander’s jaw clenched as he looked to the side. “Well I was hoping that my
class status wouldn’t matter.”
“Not your class status, you imbecile,” Elliott rolled his eyes. “The state of
your lodgings. Had I known that you had none, I would have offered you a room.
You know I have far too many already.”
Alexander blinked, looking back at him.
Clive sputtered. “Elliott, you cannot be serious--”
“Mr. Huntington,” Elliott said coldly, giving the wrist an extra squeeze. “I
think you’d better remove yourself from the grounds. I’d hate to see Mrs.
Huntington’s reaction if she ever found out about your dalliances with the
maids.” 
The look that Clive then gave him would have been terrifying to any other men,
but it just filled Elliott and Alexander with a great deal of self-
satisfaction. With a huff, Clive stormed out.
Alexander raised his eyebrows. “We’re still informing Mrs. Huntington,
correct?”
“Of course,” Elliott grinned. “It’s our civil duty.” He glanced over to see
Alexander staring at him queerly. “What?”
“Just...” Alexander started before breaking off with an abrupt laugh and
shaking his head. “Nothing, Mr. Grey. Nothing at all.” 
***
Kurt marched all the way down to Second and took a sharp left, on a warpath as
he headed to Pioneer Square. 
Something was seriously wrong. He wanted to blame Blaine for most of it--the
mental hospital seemed to scream Blaine--but for everything that Blaine had
done, he’d never sent anyone to follow him or act like they wanted him dead. 
Which was the feeling he got from the two different men who’d followed him in
train stations in two separate cities.
And one of those cities had been Seattle.
And if anyone knew about criminal activity in Seattle... 
Kurt jumped onto the dumpster and hooked his leg over the fire escape, climbing
up to the third floor and smashing in the window with his foot. 
Dustin Goolsby looked up from where he was sitting at his dining room table in
his boxers, eating scrambled eggs on toast. 
Kurt clambered through the window and grabbed one of the larger shards of
glass, starting towards him. 
“Woah, woah, woah!” Goolsby protested, standing and holding his hands up, still
clutching his piece of toast in one. “Jesus, Porcelain, give a guy some
warning!”
“Who is it, Goolsby?” Kurt snarled, grabbing him by the shoulder and shoving
him back until he stumbled against the counter. 
“What, did you hit your head again, because someone sounding cuckoo--” he was
cut off by Kurt  placing the tip of the shard in the hollow between his
clavicles. “Easy!”
“Who is it, Goolsby?” Kurt repeated, pressing in slightly. “Who wants me dead?”
“Okay, okay!” Goolsby said hurriedly. “Jesus, you’d think you’d have some
courtesy after what I’ve done for you.”
“You mean taking advantage of a sixteen year old boy who thought he was a girl
and pimping him out?” Kurt shot back.
“You consented!”
“I was half-crazed out of my mind!” Kurt snapped, digging the shard into his
chest until a drop of blood oozed out. “And enough of the antics, what do you
know?”
Goolsby stared at him hard before sighing. “Alright, a hit has been place on
you, but they don’t want you dead. They want you alive.”
Kurt glared into his eyes hard before deciding that Goolsby honestly had
nothing to gain from lying to him in this situation. “Who?”
“Hell if I know. Someone seriously rolling though, because whoever he is, he’s
hired some big guns to come after you.”
Kurt pressed forward. “You have to know at least something.”
Goolsby seemed to hold his breath before he let it out in a long exhale. “Just
a word, okay? And I have no idea how it even relates--”
“What is it?”
Goolsby licked his lips. “Hook.”
Kurt blinked, loosening his grip and taking a step back, his mind reeling. 
“Look, that’s all I know,” Goolsby sighed. “There’s a hit on you but whoever
this guy is, he wants you brought in, because I guarantee, if he wanted you
dead, you would be.”
A red dot appeared on Goolsby’s forehead. 
Kurt barely opened his mouth before the second window in the apartment smashed
and there was the briefest sound of whizzing before Goolsby lurched back and
crumpled to the floor, a bullet between his eyes. 
Kurt jumped back, dropping the shard as he secluded himself in Goolsby’s
kitchen, grabbing a knife out of the chopping block and holding it close, eyes
locking with the second window, where the shot had come from. 
But after staying put for half an hour, there were no other shots and no
movement towards the apartment. So Kurt called 911 and left, a plan already
formulating. 
***
 “But maybe he just sees me as a friend.”
 Liliana looked over at Violetta like she was an imbecile. “He’s been here for
four months. I’m pretty sure it’s not for our dazzling winters either.” 
 Violetta fiddled with her needle. “He’s never even tried to kiss me.”
 “Maybe because you made it clear that you don’t want to be a side dish and you
want to be courted and he’s respecting that,” Liliana said flatly. “I honestly
don’t understand why you’re upset about it.”
 “Because it’s so boring,” Violetta sighed, pillowing her arms under her head
on her work desk. “I thought he’d whisk me away by now.”
 “Where, to England?” Liliana snorted. “You do realize that this would
literally be the reverse Wizard of Oz, right? You’d leave the rainbow houses
and turquoise waters of Burano and head over to England. Where it rains.
Apparently daily. And everything is gray.”
 “But it’d have Theodore,” Violetta sighed, and Liliana grumbled to herself,
something about hopeless cases. 
 The bell tinkled and Violetta straightened up, grinning instantly when she
caught sight of Theodore. 
 The juxtaposition of her sister’s identical face looking moody was an
unsettling one. 
 “I’m just going to go in the back and...get something,” Liliana sighed,
standing and walking out.
 Violetta moved forward eagerly, stopping just short of Theodore.
 Theodore smiled, shifting the parcel under his arm. “It’s carnival this week.”
 Violetta nodded.
 “I was wondering if you’d like to go to the ball with me this Friday?” he
hedged carefully.
 Violetta smiled broadly. “I’d be honored.”
 “Well, I was wondering if maybe you’d wear these to the ball.” Theodore handed
her the parcel. 
 She pulled at the twine strings and unfolded the parchment paper to find a
pair of ruby red slippers, perfect for dancing. She looked back up at Theodore,
lost for words, when she saw that he wouldn’t meet her eye.
 He was staring down at his hand, which was holding up a ring. 
 “I was also wondering if you’d maybe wear this,” he said, finally looking back
up at her. “It was one of my mother’s and...”
 It was a gold ring with dozens of small emeralds encrusted around the band.
 “It reminded me of your eyes,” he plowed on, rambling slightly. “But if you
don’t like it, then I can ask for a different one, I mean she has a lot--”
 “Theodore,” Violetta interrupted, placing a hand over his. “You’re asking...?”
 Theodore blinked. “Right, I--will you, I mean, unless this is too fast? I
could try with more wooing or--”
 Violetta leaned forward and kissed yeses into his lips. 
***
He dropped by a drugstore first and grabbed two different hair products and a
cheap makeup kit. On a whim, he also snagged a pair of shiny Aviator
sunglasses. From there he headed to one of the main department stores downtown,
grabbing a gratuitously padded gel bra, some ambiguously lumpy sweater dress,
and a beanie. His last stop was at the grocery store where he bought several
pieces of fruit and a dispenser of saran wrap. 
The first step was his hair, so he used the first tube of hair products,
combing liberal amounts of it into his hair and tying it back while he did the
rest of his shopping. After two hours, he washed it out, giving a resigned
smile to his locks which were now leeched of color entirely, leaving it ashy
blonde.
He prepared during the taxi ride back to the airport--thanking god that he
still had one of the three fake IDs on him that Puck had bequeathed him when he
was nineteen--dressing in the sweater dress and adjusting his makeup with
practiced ease. He’d neglected cutting his hair for months, which was now
helping him as he fluffed it around his head and placed the beanie cap over
it. 
Carefully, he gave each piece of fruit multiple layers of plastic wrap before
sticking them in his bag, along with his last tube of hair product, makeup kit,
and his change of clothes that he’d packed.
Carl was fast and he’d no doubt stick the police on him. 
Sometimes it was convenient to switch genders.
***
“Blair Andrews,” the security check guard read aloud on Kurt’s false ID as he
passed the black light over it. Kurt had a lie on his tongue ready about dying
his hair from brunette to blonde, but it wasn’t needed. “Have a nice flight
Miss Andrews.” 
“Thank you,” Kurt purred as he headed his way through security. 
Once through, he headed to his gate. It was relatively empty--thanks to the
nature of red-eyes--and he set his bags down before heading to the bathroom. 
Once in, he got to work, taking his first tube of hair product and carefully
combing small amounts of it into his pale hair. He diligently unwrapped his
fruit from their plastic wrap and wrapped up his hair instead, covering it with
his beanie so it couldn’t be seen. Satisfied, he threw the miscellaneous items
away and went out to catch his flight. 
***
It was a long flight, but he stayed awake most of the time, quietly plotting
out his course of action.
He felt...normal, as odd as that sounded. But he was getting back to his roots,
so to speak--when he’d snapped out of his daze of being Dorothy and had clicked
into Kurt. He’d gone off on his own a lot and only really relied on himself. 
He’d been relying on Blaine for the past few years, he’d almost forgotten how
to just rely on himself. 
Plus it was better this way. There was only one person he could be disappointed
with.
***
He fell asleep briefly. And he had a nightmare. 
In the dream, he was tucked up in bed, comfortable, mellow, and then something
entered the room. Something creeped up over him and watched him.
A monster. It was a monster.
He yelled out for help, yelled out for Blaine, but the monster grabbed him and
he felt blood everywhere and he pitched off the bed, scrambling to escape--
And that was when he woke up, breathless and confused.
***
Landing at Newark, he was ready.
He got off the plane easily, but the voice over the intercom asked for Blair
Andrews to come to the main terminal. 
They were fast.
But he was two steps ahead.
He went into the bathroom and tore off the beanie, throwing it in the trash,
along with the sweater dress. He changed into the skinny jeans he’d packed and
pulled his boots back on over them before tearing out the plastic wrap and
leaning over the sink, thoroughly washing the dye out.
Looking up with a slight grin, his hair was now a pale blue.
He scrubbed his face clean of makeup and started over, applying a bunch of gray
around his eyes to give him an exaggerated dark-circles look. After pulling on
a black turtle neck, he then took out his little travel-sized sewing kit and
stared disparagingly at the tiny scissors for a couple of seconds before
putting them to his hair and hacking one lock at a time.
It was tedious, but worth it as clumps of light blue hair fell into the sink.
He dried his head under the hand dryer before fluffing up his newly shorn hair
and sliding on his sunglasses. What he didn’t need, he threw into the trash and
he walked out of the bathroom a different man. 
***
Kurt half-expected the police to be waiting for him back at Rachel and Jesse’s,
but it was only the couple that was there.
Though from the looks they gave him when he walked in, he almost wished that it
was the police instead. 
“What the hell happened?” Jesse snapped, standing. “Seriously, nothing happens
for months then the one time I let you out of my sight--”
“What the hell happened to your hair?” Rachel squawked.
“--and I don’t understand how I haven’t put a tracking device on you by now--”
“It looks like it was cut by a sloth.”
“--do you have any idea how worried we were when you didn’t come back on our
plane--”
“And that color makes you look like you want to play Frenchie in an all-male
production of Grease.”
“You guys!” Kurt yelled over their synchronized lectures and they quieted. He
looked between the two of them. “Okay, will someone please tell me what the
hell is going on?”
Jesse and Rachel both looked at each other, but neither spoke.
“Really?” Kurt snapped with a slightly hysterical laugh. “Silence? That’s what
you two are going with. The two people I know who hide from silence like it’s a
plague and neither of you will give me a straight answer?”
Again, more silence.
Kurt felt his nose prickle as he turned to Jesse. “Jesse, really? After all
we’ve been through?”
Jesse looked up at him like it physically pained him. “Kurt...”
“Please, Jesse,” Kurt begged. “It’s like nothing is making sense.”
That seemed to get through to him. “Look, all I know is that Blaine said--”
“Blaine?” Kurt said sharply, the word resonating through his chest like a
plucked string. He took a step back. “Wait...you’re listening to Blaine?”
“Kurt, please,” Rachel pleaded. “He just wants to help--”
“Help,” Kurt said, disbelievingly. “Help? Do you remember what he did to me?”
“Kurt, if you’d just listen--”
“No,” Kurt shook his head. “I don’t want to hear what Blaine has to say about
me, because Blaine can honestly go fuck himself. And you two can as well, if
you’re going to take up with him on the matter.”
He turned, slamming the door shut behind him.
***
Really, there was only one place he could go. Only one place that no one knew
about except for him and Blaine. 
Well, and Sam, but he took care of that easily. 
 Black sheep. Tell Sam not to tell anyone. He’ll understand. 
He sent the text to Mercedes, knowing that she’d get the reference and would
comply and that Sam wouldn’t want to go against her. 
He hated that it was his last resort, but honestly it was his best bet. 
So he headed down to Greenwich Village.
***
Upon entering the apartment, he knew that something wasn’t...quite right.
Something was off. It wasn’t anything that jumped out at him. It was just a
shift in the air that set Kurt’s teeth on edge. 
The apartment was dark and he locked the door securely behind him, walking
forward cautiously. 
The change became glaringly obvious when he entered the living room and saw the
giant rectangle that took up most of the space, nearly touching the ceiling. It
was covered with some sort of heavy canvas cloth that draped around it. 
Apprehension tickling his spine, Kurt walked forward and turned on the lamp
text to the couch, bathing the room in a soft glow as he slowly walked forward
to the cloth. Taking a deep breath, he reached forward and yanked it down. 
His hand flew up to clap against his mouth as he took two staggering steps
backwards.
It was a painting of him in a pretty blue frock, his eyes wide and terrified,
arms strung up with gold thread like a marionette’s, and his mouth stitched
completely shut with black thread. His arms and legs were covered in whip
marks. His feet were nestled in a patch of forget-me-nots and blue-black
poppies. On his head sat a gold crown. 
At the bottom of the painting, in fancy gold leaf, was the word AVARICE.
It took a good five minutes of Kurt staring at it in horror before he slowly
took out his phone. He’d promised that he’d never call this number again, but
these were pretty extenuating circumstances.
The other line picked up on the fourth ring.
“Kurt?”
Kurt blinked at the familiar voice, though it wasn’t the one he was aiming for.
“Hermes?”
“Yes, I--what’s wrong?”
Kurt glanced back at the painting. “Look...if he thinks this is a joke or
something, just tell him to cut it out because it’s really actually freaking me
out, so surprise his plan worked--”
“Kurt, Kurt, stop. What are you talking about?”
“Look, just--just tell him that the painting was pushing it a bit too far,
okay? I have to go.”
“Kurt, wait--”
He hung up, sitting down on the couch to stare at the painting, unnerved. He
curled his legs up underneath himself as he wondered how the hell he was
supposed to get it out of the apartment. 
He’d almost dozed off twice before he even noticed. There was a note attached
to the side of the frame. He walked over and picked it up, hands shaking as he
opened it and read.
 My sweet little Dorothy, I’ve found you at last
 Did Blaine think he could just hide you from his past?
 I’ll take that small needle and thread that you use 
 And show that your charmed little life’s just a ruse.
 To mar up that porcelain skin is a crime
 But I’ll muddle through it to make you my mime.
 And with your sweet lips stitched up tight in a beam
 I’ll take what I want while you try hard to scream
 Don’t worry, we’ll put on a fun show for Blaine
 As he’s forced to watch his dear lover in pain
 So I’ll lock you up in my cage, little bird
 For children are meant to be seen and not heard.
The note shook in Kurt’s hands as he turned it around and read the ten words
that had been viciously written in splotchy ink across the back.
 I’ll get you, my pretty. And your little dog too. 
***
“You’ve seemed focused,” Elliott remarked in an attempt to make conversation
with the recently silent Alexander. “Ever since the incident at the opium den.”
“And you’ve seemed distracted ever since the incident at the opium den,”
Alexander shot back. “Would you care to elaborate on that matter?”
Elliott felt the tips of his ears grow red, because that matter was something
he only ever admitted to himself late at night when his guard was down. 
Alexander sighed. “I’m sorry Elliott, it’s just...” he broke off, his jaw
clenching. “It’s just that there’s something particularly despicable about a
killer of women.”
Elliott frowned leaning back against his chair. “Because women are inherently
already at a disadvantage?” 
“No,” Alexander shook his head. “I mean, yes, but not in the way you think. The
women I grew up with...they’re strong. All the women I know are strong, just
not in ways that men realize. Yet our society demands that women be these
dainty little delicacies which is completely absurd considering this country is
under the rule of one woman. But already, since birth, women are set back by
this society that favors men, but they do reach forward and succeed, despite
the extraneous circumstances that they have to overcome. 
“Then a man comes along and exploits their institutionalized weaknesses
seemingly for his own perverted pleasure and starts killing them. He’s taken
the lives of these four women and essentially spat in their faces. It’s
disgusting and a mark of literally the worst type of person.”
***
A few days later found Kurt at the convenience store just around the corner
from the apartment. He hadn’t wanted to leave, but there was only so much
canned soup in the apartment. 
Plus getting away from the painting, even for a short while, was a blessed
relief. 
He stuck to the basics--potstickers, nutella, and milk--and paid quickly before
heading back. 
But he was only twenty feet from the store when the familiar prickling settled
in on the back of his neck. 
Someone was following him.
Gripping his bags tightly, Kurt rushed down the street, refusing to look back
as he closed in on his apartment building. Once inside, he raced up the stairs
until he reached his door, unlocking it hurriedly and sliding in, slamming it
firmly shut behind him and locking it. 
He breathed a sigh of relief, his forehead falling to the door in quiet thanks
before he squared his shoulder and turned around to go put his groceries in the
kitchen. 
There was someone standing in the living room.
Kurt dropped his groceries as his eyes darted around for possible weapons--the
knife block was too far away, but keys always worked--and he was settling on
just running back out when he realized who it was.
“Blaine.”
Blaine looked up from the note that had been attached to the painting, his
scarred face grim. 
“Hello Kurt.”
There was a pause where they just looked at each other. And even though Kurt
had rehearsed a thousand different versions of what he’d say to Blaine if this
particular moment ever came, but now there was only silence.
Kurt was the one who broke it. “I know you didn’t send it. I realized after
calling and talking to Hermes, I mean...I probably should’ve realized it
beforehand. You wouldn’t have pushed that far.”
“You didn’t talk to Jeff, you talked to me,” Blaine said quietly.
Kurt stared. “What--”
“I...wasn’t sure why you were calling. So I used a quasi-middle man.” He looked
back at the painting. “I wouldn’t have pushed at all. Well, unless I had to.”
A chill went down Kurt’s spine as he watched Blaine look at the painting. He
was half in shadow, and the scars across his face stood out in stark contrast.
His hair was similar to the last time he’d seen him--the top half wild and
curly and the bottom half shaved around his flower tattoos. It suddenly
occurred to him that he had no idea when Blaine had gotten that tattoo on the
back of his head. It didn’t look new, which mean that he’d had it while they’d
been together, but he’d never cut his hair short enough for Kurt to see it...
And the scars. Everything in Venice had happened in such a whirlwind that he
never really took time to dwell on them, but he suddenly found himself curious
as to how on earth he’d gotten them. 
And then Blaine’s words registered and he felt the familiar hot anger that’d
been steeping for the past three months bubble up.
“You wouldn’t have pushed ‘unless you had to’? What the hellis that supposed to
mean, Blaine?” Kurt erupted, taking a step forward. “What, everything that
happened between us in Italy was because you felt it was necessary to pushme?
Pretending to be dead instead of just popping up and saying ‘Oh hey Kurt, I’m
alive! Let’s not have you suffer through prison for weeks before barely
escaping!’ You could have fixed everything if you’d just stepped up then, but
instead you decided to pretend to be my prison guard, play some fucked up mind
game where you killed some of the other inmates before leading me to freedom,
but instead of revealing yourself then and there, I squander starving around
Venice for over a week until I managed to find a job, all the while wondering
what the fuck happened to you.
“And then,” Kurt laughed, throwing up his hands. “When I start looking into the
crop of killings and meet some psycho named Hades, I go along with his fucked
up mind games, even promising to marry him, all for the sake of finding you and
making sure that you’re safe because I loveyou. Then when I do find you, you
tell me to leave but I try to save you then you try to leave with me then you
tell me to leave again then I go along with Hades and then after all that,
thenyou decide to reveal yourself.”
Kurt stared at Blaine in disbelief, breathing heavily. “I’m mean seriously
Blaine, what the fuck?”
Blaine just stood there with the oddest expression on his face. He almost
looked like he was going to cry.
“Well?” Kurt yelled, the word echoing between them.
Blaine took a deep breath, the air seeming to rattle out of him as he
swallowed. “Do you remember when we first went to the Alps?”
Kurt blinked because that was not the direction he thought Blaine would go in.
“Yes, of course.”
 “Oh my god...” Kurt gaped, looking around. The sweet little cottage was
nestled against a small crop of trees, a large meadow of wildflowers with
connecting creeks and ponds spread out for acres, the whole valley surrounded
by mountains. 
 Kurt laughed, dropping his bags as he ran into the flowers. “This place is
gorgeous, Blaine!”
 Blaine grinned, running forward and tackling him into the flowers, the two of
them rolling over and over. “Good cool-down after Paris?”
 “Great cool-down after Paris,” Kurt agreed, kissing him. “How did you even
find this place?”
 “It was one of my uncle’s,” Blaine shrugged, rolling over to lie on his back
and look up at the sky. “He left the family when I was young and gave up all
his inheritances to his nephews and I got this one, as well as a couple of
others further south. During summer break at college, I’d come here a lot.”
 Kurt frowned, turning on his side to look at Blaine. “On your own?”
 “Yeah...” Blaine said quietly before a smile brightened his face. “But not
anymore.” 
“And...” Blaine went on. “You remember what happened there?”
“Well we got into a fight--”
“About what?”
Kurt stared. “About--why does that matter?”
“And how long did we fight again?” Blaine said softly. “Remind me.”
Kurt’s brows furrowed. “A day...no, more...I--what does this have to do with
Venice?”
Blaine kept staring at him with that same borderline haunted look. “When we got
to the cottage...the first morning, I received a note in the mail box. It told
me that I could get rid of you on my own terms, or I could watch as someone
else got rid of you for me. I received the same thing everyday and--”
“And you chose the former,” Kurt said quietly, glancing down. “I...a part of me
considered it. That all of this was some big elaborate plot to strategically
push me away and ensure that I’d stay away. That that would be your reasoning,
and you’d say that I can’t argue because I did the exact same thing with
Sebastian in New York--”
“No.”
Kurt looked up. “What?”
Blaine’s eyes were wide and full of dread. “That’s...that’s not what I did. I
thought about it. I sincerely thought of hundreds of different ways to push you
away, to make you hate me, anything to get you to safety. Because let’s face
it--we’re each other’s weak spots. Threaten one of us, and the other will
easily comply.”
“But...” Kurt pressed, feeling more and more confused by the second. 
“But...I remembered New York. I remembered you putting yourself on the line for
me and I remember how well that turned out, which was not at all, because I
just came running after you. We both come running after each other. Even when
we really shouldn’t, or we should just call the police first, we always panic
and drop everything and run...” he started rambling, his words growing faster
and faster. “Which is stupid. We shouldn’t keep doing it and so I...I...” He
looked back over at Kurt, his eyes terrified. “I called their bluff.”
Kurt stared. “You...”
“I didn’t comply,” Blaine swallowed, his throat bobbing slightly. “In fact, I
wrote back a letter, challenging them to just come out face to face. We were
going to meet at the west edge of the valley, over by the forest...” He sighed,
rubbing his face. “I was so stupid. I thought that if I could just...find a way
to leave you out of it then...” 
His hands dropped back to his side. “I was knocked out. Came too not much later
and my face was screaming in pain and wet and I could feel the slash marks.
There was a note for me on the ground. It said that I shouldn’t have left you
alone. I ran back, half blind from blood and sweat and I got back to the
cottage. You were still asleep in bed so I tried to wake you up, but you
wouldn’t, so I started shaking you and you woke up and started screaming.
Horrible, horriblescreaming and you looked so terrified and you kept calling
for me but you kept backing away and it took me a while to realize that you
didn’t even recognizeme.” 
 “Kurt!” Blaine finally yelled, standing across the room. “Kurt, it’s me!”
 “Blaine!” Kurt screamed, sobbing hysterically. “Blaine, where are you?”
 “Kurt!”
 “Blaine!”
 Blaine started forward and Kurt screamed some more, shakily standing to his
feet and turning and running out the door. Blaine tripped over the overturned
chair, ignoring Kurt’s phone that was lighting up with missed calls and took
off after him, into the trees.
“I ran for hours, trying to find you,” Blaine said, sinking down against the
back of the couch. “It was like when we first started living together in
Seattle, the night Virginia died and I thought it was you so I drove all around
the city looking for you. Except this time I knew for sure that you weren’t
just upstairs sleeping.
“And I couldn’t find you. I searched everywhere but you’d vanished and I didn’t
know what to do and...” Blaine broke off, looking down at his fingers.
Kurt’s heart pounded in his ears. “What...what are you talking about? I don’t
remember--”
 He yelled out for help, yelled out for Blaine, but the monster grabbed him and
he felt blood everywhere and he pitched off the bed, scrambling to escape--
Kurt shook his head to block out the memory--no, dream. It was a dream. “That
didn’t happen,” he insisted. “We got into a fight and then--”
“The fight that you can’t even remember?” Blaine guessed. 
“I do remember it!” Kurt snapped. “We fought because you were being standoffish
and you wanted to call off the wedding!”
Blaine stared at him. “Kurt, you remember the beginning of that week. How on
earth would I go from that to not wanting to marry you in six days?”
Kurt thought back, his mind racing. “Because of our age difference--”
“When has that ever bugged me in the past? Like seriously, it should’ve when we
first met, but if it didn’t bother me then, it sure as hell doesn’t bother me
now.”
Kurt’s breath started coming out heavy as he leaned one-handed against the
wall. He reached up with his other hand and felt that his cheeks were wet. “Why
am I crying?”
Blaine looked like he was close to.
Kurt clenched his hand against the wall. “Blaine?”
“I went to Venice,” Blaine said in a rush. “It was the closest place I had
friends and everyone else had gone back stateside. I needed help to find you.” 
 Blaine stepped out of the gondola and up to the familiar M gates. Nick and
Jeff had done it as a joke since both of their old Greek god nicknames started
with the letter. He pushed them open and headed inside. 
 He reached out and grabbed Flint’s arm sharply, twisting it around and yanking
the knife from his hand. “Honestly, Flint? You do the same thing every time.”
 Flint’s eyes widened as he took him in. “Blaine? Oh my god--wait, what
happened to your face?”
 “Long story,” Blaine sighed. “Nick and Jeff in? I could really use some help.”
 “Blaine!” Jeff leaned over the top of the stair balcony, face melting from
shock to delight. “Thank god. Did you come to help?” In the blink of an eye, he
was sliding down the stair railing and hopping off the end. “Because things
here have been insane.”
 “What happened?” Blaine frowned.
 “We have no idea.” Nick came up from over by the side hall. “Everything’s been
relatively quiet in the city for...well, for nearly two decades. There’ve been
the typical skirmishes and trouble from the Casanova gang, but then about a
month ago...bad things started happening. Nasty characters started cropping up
all around the city. Aristocrats. They went after the homeless kids and their
caretakers too. We lost Simon last week.”
 “Simon?” Blaine stared. “Not...our Simon?”
 Nick nodded.
 Blaine turned to Flint. “Flint, I’m so sorry--”
 “It gets worse,” Flint said grimly. “Tonight, Marco died.”
 “The orphanage head?” Blaine’s heart dropped. “But he was the main funder--” 
 “And all the kids were kicked out of the building. The city seized it,” Nick
nodded. “We’ve been getting them all homes, but so many aren’t accounted
for...”
 Blaine sighed, his shoulder’s sinking under the weight of two disasters.
 “Why are you here, Blaine?” Jeff piped up suddenly. 
 Blaine licked his lips. “My fiancee was kidnapped two days ago. I need to find
out what happened to him and where he went.”
 Nick nodded. “We’ll help.” 
Blaine reached up to scratch at the hair behind his ear. “We reached out
through our networks and finally found you a few days later at Vespaciano
Mental Hospital.”
“It’s a prison though,” Kurt said, his voice cracking. “Vespaciano is a
prison.”
“It’s a mental hospital,” Blaine said, expression pained. “Kurt, I’m sorry, but
it’s always been a mental hospital. It tends to cater more to the criminally
insane, but it’s not a prison. You...you’d been...” He licked his lips, looking
down at the floor. “Kurt, he gave you an overdose. It was the same opiate that
the Karofsky’s gave you, but whoever administered it gave you way too much. It
was made to look like an overdose. They got into the hospital records and
locked you in confinement. You couldn’t have any visitors. I broke in one night
to get you out, but...”
 Blaine ducked his head as he walked through the halls in his white lab coat,
pushing into the side door at the end of the hall. 
 Kurt was sitting alone at a desk surrounded by fabric, stitching little
flowers. 
 Blaine walked over to Kurt’s desk and pulled up a chair, sitting across from
him. “Kurt?”
 Kurt looked up at him, pupils dilated. He cocked his head to the side
slightly. 
 “Kurt, do you remember me?” Blaine said, leaning forward.
 “Dr. Ampelio,” Kurt frowned, staring at his needle before glancing up at
Blaine. “Why don’t you call me Celeste?”
 Blaine’s heart sank as he looked down. 
 Kurt was still staring at him, but his fingers were working away at sewing,
seemingly from memory. 
“I got another note that night. It said that when people would loose their
minds, they’d rely on basic point-memory, little bits of reference that they’d
recognize. But something even as familiar as a father or brother or...fiancee
could become unrecognizable if something about their appearance had changed
drastically.” Blaine glanced up at Kurt. “Like, say...if they got their face
carved up.”
Kurt didn’t move. He didn’t dare.
Blaine sighed. “I snuck in the hospital, sneaking in when I could, keeping an
eye on you. I took you to the showers late at night, and even in the bright
hallways, you’d always mutter about how dark it was...But I kept asking for
bits of sewing as payment, because it was something that was you, something
that you would always focus in on.
“But most of the time, it was like you didn’t even know where you were. You
kept calling me Ampelio and yourself Celeste, or a few times you called me
Eurydice and yourself Orpheus... It was like the way you associate everyone
with characters, but cranked up to eleven, because you couldn’t seem to
distinguish...”
 Kurt laughed, watching Blaine walking through the meadow with a flower crown
in his hair, picking wildflowers. He was curled up in a chair, the window open
so he could enjoy the breeze as he read the thick tome of Greek mythology that
he’d found on Blaine’s bookshelf.
“It was clear that there was someone on the inside who kept drugging you up but
we couldn’t figure out who. We were trying to figure out a way to smuggle you
out, but then Renato, an old...well, enemy of mine recognized me and they
questioned your roommate and then they went after you and...” 
“You killed them?” 
Blaine clenched his jaw. “They knocked you out in the shower and dragged you
down into the old treatment room and started shooting you up with whatever they
could find... Nick, Jeff, and Flint were with me then. We all wore masks
and...yes. We killed them. And we broke out and had to escape on motorcycles.”
Blaine pushed off the back of the couch, taking a step towards Kurt. “Kurt,
I’m...I’m sorry, I didn’t know what to do. I took you to my aunt’s place and I
called Jesse.” 
 “I think he has a fever,” Liliana muttered, dabbing at Kurt’s forehead gently.
“If it breaks by the morning, he should be okay physically.”
 “If?” Blaine asked desperately, dialing his phone. “God, Jesse, pick up!”
 Thankfully the fever did break by morning, but Kurt was in a daze when he
awoke. 
 “Seriously though, what the fuck happened? You guys just disappeared off the
map--”
 “Kurt was drugged and kidnapped. The same drug used from the Karofsky’s. It
looks like he overdosed, then was administered it on a daily basis and we
managed to get him out, but there were other drugs in his system, and he seems
out of it. Like...really out of it. Out of it like I’ve only seen him when I
found him at Dalton.”
 “...shit.” 
 “I mean, he doesn’t even recognize me. He didn’t at first last time, but he
was able to in the end. But now he’s completely out of it and he doesn’t know
anyone and--”
 “Blaine, listen to me, whatever you have to do, you need to snap him out of
it. If it continues like this...” 
 “Continues like what?”
 “Look, the last time Kurt went through substantial drugging and then was cut
off it abruptly and thrown into a new environment where he didn’t know anyone,
he snapped. Lost his identity completely and ended up working in an alleyway in
Seattle for months. And even after Emma found him, it was another few months
until he finally came back to reality and remembered himself.”
 “So you’re saying...”
 “He’s going to go under again. Can you get him back home?” 
 “Not legally if he’s not coherent. I’d need him to play along but I don’t
think he’s in any state to, especially since he doesn’t even know how I am.
Plus we’re being watched. Can’t we borrow your plane?” 
 “Fuck. It went in for repairs as soon as we got back from France. It won’t be
done until the end of June.”
 “Does Kurt even have that long?” 
 “There isn’t another choice unless you can think of a way to snap him out of
it.”
 “I’ll work on that. You work on getting the plane ready.”
 “Blaine?” 
 Blaine turned to see Liliana by the door, a package in her hand. 
 “This was left outside. It has your name on it.”
 Frowning, Blaine took the package, stomach dropping when he recognized the
handwriting on the top. Carefully, he unwrapped it. There was something
swaddled in cloth and a note on top. Blaine read. 
 Don’t worry, Blainey. Freeing Kurt from his cage is simple. Because triggers
are like marionettes--pull a string and the puppet will react accordingly. 
 If you pull this string, your Pinocchio will turn back into a real boy. 
 Blaine picked up the cloth and unfolded it to peer at what had been sent.
 The cloth and whip fell from his hands as he took a staggering step back. 
“I wouldn’t do it,” Blaine murmured. “I couldn’t do it. You once told me that
it was your biggest fear...” 
Kurt remembered that well, somewhere in the time between Blaine coming back and
their engagement. They’d been lying in bed together when Kurt had just started
talking and then it had been like he couldn’t stop. 
 “The whipping was the worst,” Kurt whispered. “The drugs were terrible, but I
could isolate that to a sick fascination of Paul’s. And everything that Dave
did...It was Dave, and I can at least pretend to bury that with him. And
Sebastian and the axe...that was Sebastian being psychotic. And all the other
little things, I can categorize and compartmentalize, but the whipping...it was
the worst because it was almost...commonplace. It was done to me under the
claim that I’d done something wrong, and I got so used to thinking that...the
other things, I could always step back and say that they were horrible things,
and that they were done to me because of horrible people, but the
whipping...that I could never differentiate entirely because I was so used to
it being my fault, not theirs.” 
“Jesse found out and he told me to just do it because it would get you back and
we needed to leave as soon as possible, but I just...I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. I
would never...”
Kurt’s breath started to get shallow as he stared at Blaine, who was little
more than a dark smudge against the blackness of the apartment.
Blaine let out another long breath as he looked down. “Liliana took care of you
while I tried to balance everything that was happening in the city as well. She
asked me what you were doing when you seemed most...well, you. I told her it
was when you sewed so she set you up at her lace shop. And you seemed to get
better, at least a little at a time. You stopped calling yourself Celeste, but
you wouldn’t really call yourself anything at all.
“And then you mentioned Marco’s murder to Liliana who mentioned it to me
because you’d seemed lively and invested and interested and very rational and
clear-headed... It was the first actual sign of progress...” Blaine started to
trail off.
It clicked in Kurt’s mind. “That’s why the other murders started
happening...wasn’t it?”
Blaine clenched his teeth. “Well...no. They would’ve happened anyways. Usually
we go for imprisonment or managing to get people locked up in Vespaciano, but
with the rate that people were starting to suffer, especially the children, not
to mention that Flint was out for blood after Simon’s death...they would have
happened even if neither of us were there. But after Marco’s death, there was a
theme we could go with, especially since it fit our old aliases when we were
teenagers, so we just slipped back into those and everyone played their parts.
“It was easy after that. You caught on our scent. We threw together the
Narcissus Ball so that you could approach us and try to figure out the
mystery.”
Kurt licked his lips. “But the wedding proposal--”
“Part of the time limit,” Blaine sighed. “Jesse said that he could get us out
by the twenty-first at the earliest. And...whoever set this up...they said that
if I pulled your trigger, you’d remember. And though I wouldn’t pull your
biggest one...I did know that I would be willing to prod at a few of your
smaller ones if it would bring you back. Marriage was one. Being told to lose
who you were was another, which is why I kept reiterating it. 
“The jewelry just ended up fitting in unintentionally. Nick had found it
amongst Renato’s belongings, all bent out of recognition and twisted beyond
belief. So I put your ruby somewhere safe, I recast your rings into another
one, and then I used the engagement ring as thread so that you could keep
sewing since it was helping. 
“We thought it wouldn’t work at first, because you kept referring to yourself
as Persephone, even when you thought others weren’t listening, but then you
switched to Ariadne, and that seemed to work at least some, so we decided to
put it to the test. I told you intentionally that I was going to the Cerbera
Cafe that night so you’d follow me, and then I switched into regular clothes
and had Nick cuff me in the attic and you came in and...you recognized me. For
the first time since early on in the Alps, you actually immediately recognized
me. 
“But then you mentioned Agent Crawford and the fight and you still weren’t
coherent about matters, so I played along with the fight because I had to even
though I honestly had no idea what it actually entailed, and I thought I could
use Crawford as a way to get us both home safe. 
“So the masquerade was the next night, which was going to be our cover of
escape. You still hadn’t snapped out of it, so I tried prodding a bit more, but
everything was interrupted when Nick told me that there were people trying to
force their way in. So I got changed and took you up to the roof and we tried
to make our escape. 
“But after we fell into the canal and everyone was running by, I realized it’d
be easier to just draw them off and let you go on with Crawford, and then I
could just come later on.
“But then the next morning, you came back to my house and you were back to
calling yourself Persephone and it was like you’d had this relapse and you
wouldn’t even sew anymore and each day you just got worse and worse and
worse...
“The twenty-first came and we were just going to head out to Jesse and take his
plane back, so I came to get you and you just...you were you. Completely you.
You screamed it at me and went on your rant about who you were and I can
honestly tell you that I’d never been so glad to get screamed at in my entire
life.
“Nick knocked you out with some herbal concoction that he’d come up with so
that it wouldn’t trigger your body’s nervous system response to standard
medical drugs. We didn’t want you to relapse. Jesse met us and we flew home and
I brought you back to this apartment and thought up some plausible lie about my
actions. Then you woke up, I revealed myself and...well, you know the rest.” 
Kurt blinked, wiping at his eyes, which wouldn’t seem to stop crying. “Why
didn’t you just tell me?”
Blaine snorted. “After what had just happened? ‘Hey Kurt, I know I’ve been
lying to you for the past month, but seriously, it’s all because you actually
lost touch with reality because of several rounds of forced drugging, but
you’re fine now, just believe me’. I’m pretty sure that there’s no way you
would have believe me. Besides, I could keep the damage contained to Europe
while you could actually recover here.”
“And Jesse was in on it,” Kurt whispered. “God, of course he was.”
He didn’t even notice that he’d slid to the floor and was hyperventilating
until Blaine was suddenly in front of him, panicked. 
“Kurt!”
“Blaine, are you lying to me?” Kurt gasped out. “Please, if this is some sort
of elaborate--”
“I’m not,” Blaine shook his head. “I promise I’m not, and I’m sorry, I’m so so
sorry, this is all my fault--”
“Oh my god. Oh my god.” Kurt wrapped his arms tightly around himself and rocked
back and forth, trying to choke down a solid breath. He wasn’t able to. “Oh my
god oh my god oh my god oh my god--”
He didn’t want to believe it, but fragments of dreams that he’d been having
over the past three months came back to him and clicked in with Blaine’s story.
And suddenly things started to make sense. Why he couldn’t remember all of the
fight between him and Blaine, or the trial that had convicted him. Also the
entire trial in his head had been in English. Shouldn’t some of it have been in
Italian? 
And down under at Vespaciano. How had he even heard about that in the first
place? And he called them the Casanova gang, but he’d never told Blaine that
and so how had Blaine known that he called them that unless everyone called
them that? And how was it that he never once had seen Ampelio’s face?
His time spent starving in Venice was a blur and how would he have been able to
read Liliana’s add if he wasn’t fluent in Italian? And--
And everything that hadn’t seemed right about Venice, all those questions he’d
been ready to scream at Blaine were suddenly at least partially answered.
“Kurt, listen to me. You have to breathe, okay? Breathe. Just breathe.” 
Kurt found himself steered to the couch, sitting diagonally across it in
spooning position with Blaine behind him, Blaine’s hand on his chest and moving
it up and down with his own breaths. Kurt copied his as best as he could, his
heart rate slowly lowering.
“Thanks,” he murmured.
Blaine paused slightly. “For what?”
“For snapping me out of it. And for refusing to use the whip. I don’t think I
would have ever forgiven you if you had.” 
Blaine just wrapped his other arm around Kurt, hesitantly. 
Kurt had no idea where they currently stood because he honestly needed to sleep
the whole thing off and then think about it rationally, but at that point in
time, he felt shaky and frayed at all his edges, so he leaned back into
Blaine’s embrace and reached up his hands to hold Blaine’s arms. 
“That night I was supposed to leave with Adam, I got to his place early in the
morning and there was blood everywhere. Someone wrote ‘Don’t test me, dear
Persephone’ on the wall in blood.”
Blaine tensed. “It wasn’t me. I didn’t even know where he was staying.”
“I know,” Kurt said softly. “I mean, I assumed it was Hades at the time, and
that terrified me, but after learning that you were Hades...I always tried to
blame you for that, but it could never quite stick in my mind.”
“Why’s that?”
Kurt smiled wryly. “You would’ve called me darling, not dear.” 
“So we should add ‘killing Adam Crawford’ to the ‘Whoever’s Stalking Us Is
Seriously Twisted’ list.”
Kurt licked his lips. “Actually...there might be some debate as to Adam’s
actual existence. Considering I’m the only one who apparently saw him and he
seemingly doesn’t exist anywhere, the popular theory is that he’s actually a
figment of my imagination. And after what I just heard in the past ten
minutes...that theory seems to actually bear some weight.”
“Don’t worry, he’s real,” Blaine said confidently. “I do have a very concrete
reasoning for that as well.”
“Care to share?”
“Maybe later. We still have to talk about that.” He gestured across the room.
Kurt glanced over at the painting. “Right. That. Creepiness central.” 
Amazing how much more objectively he could look at horrific things whenever
Blaine was around. 
“Can’t we like...throw it out?” Kurt frowned. “It’s kind of putting a damper on
the decor. Granted, I’m not entirely sure how to even get it out of here...”
“Kurt, if you can’t think about how to get it out of here, then how the hell do
you think it got in?”
Kurt froze, looking at the painting, because yeah, that thing was huge and
definitely couldn’t fit in through any of the doors or windows. “Okay tell me,
how did it get in?”
“The frame is collapsible, but it looks like the painting was actually
just...well, it was painted here.”
Kurt’s eyes widened. It hadn’t been there that time he’d come after the subway-
-
Which, of course, was when he’d lead whoever was chasing him back to the
apartment. 
Perfect.
Just perfect.
But that also meant that it had been painted sometime while he was in Seattle. 
And that was just plain creepy. 
“How does all this scary stuff keep finding me though, like honestly.”
“You’re not the only one to have gotten one,” Blaine said wryly. “I just got
mine yesterday.”
“How many people received them?”
“Seven.”
“Any connections?” 
Blaine snorted. “You could say that. My mother, my biological mother, my
father, my uncle, my brother, my fiancee, and finally myself.” 
Kurt twisted his head to look back at him. “That’s a pretty specific target
group.” 
“You’re telling me,” Blaine nodded.
Kurt leaned his head back against Blaine’s shoulder. “So are we gonna catch
this guy, or what?”
“That’s the plan.”
“Do we have any leads, or...?”
“Kurt...” Blaine sighed. “I think at long last it’s time that I told you about
my family.”
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