He made it to September and our coffee date. He was bed ridden at that point, his chubby cheeks completely gone, his tan skin paler than mine where it could still be seen between the dark red sores. I went out and got two lattes and brought them back to the house, practically stripping off all my clothes once I was through the door due to the sauna that it had become. He still shivered though, teeth chattering so much as he sipped his drink that I was terrified he would spill it. He did. And we both broke into sobs because of it. Him, humiliated that he couldn't even take me on one last date. Me, because of everything, that he was so hard on himself and maybe my presence was making that worse, and that I had actually found someone who cared so much and loved so much and this is what life had reduced them too and it wasn't even done yet.

He died October 20th. Heavy in my arms in our bed as he slept.

I've gotten so used to his body limp and warm on top of mine like that it's weird to be alone now. Quinn offered to come with me. In case customs gave me a rough time or something. It was probably more of the something. She's nice like that. If there was one good reason for Blaine to like his job, she was it. But I need to get used to being alone now. I guess.

It's weird that way. I've never felt so far from everyone else on this planet in my life and yet this world is in a constant state of becoming smaller and smaller, bringing everyone closer on an ever finer grid from which we cannot escape. Telephone wires decorate every street like garland, planes crisscross continents daily, and latitude and longitude lines intersect at every infinitely varying point around the globe. They are used to map, track, or locate, someone or someplace or something.

For the better part of his adult life Blaine was glued to his pager, a device which connected him to an extensive grid of electromagnetic waves. He was always reachable. A phone call away. His mother was not. We never did find her. She managed to evade the ever invading grid. There was no phone number, address, not even a name. She had lived for some time 52.9550oN and 7.7970oW but after that she vanished without a trace. The grid was the gift and burden of our generation, not hers. His dying wish was to find her. Within her he thought he would find home and himself. They say to find yourself though you have to get lost first but Blaine could never fall off that grid. It was his death sentence. Now though, maybe now he is finally free. Free to go where he pleases without coordinates and electrons following his every move like a virus. Maybe now he can find her. Maybe not though. Maybe he is still trapped to this earth. No one really knows. But I'm not willing to take chances. The paper work was a nightmare – yet another form the grid invasion – and his parents in their pastel leisure suits were not much better. Thank god for Quinn because this was not a battle I was prepared to lose even if I had already lost the war. And so I pushed and I boarded the transatlantic flight with his coffin in tow and buried him in the small graveyard behind the Sean Ross Abbey in Roscrea, Ireland. It was a last place his mother had been known to be and hopefully one day she would return to the point she vanished from and find him. Or better yet, she would be able to show him her secret and he could finally escape from the grid.

A/N: Done! God that always feels so good. I just want to say thank-you to everyone who read this. I know most of you were silent but I always looked at the number of readers for each chapter and each number really, really meant a lot. Huge special shout out to nebula2 for sending me her thoughts, good or bad. Hope you all enjoyed this. I really loved writing it!

Oh, random add in. I went on a rant in one of my early A/N about coming up with a better title. It was 'A HAART Beat Away'. Because Blaine died 6 months before they came up with HAART which is the current HIV treatment that seems to actually keep people alive. I never found a way to work it into the story outright but obviously the play Kurt was writing was going to have that title. So yeah. Be impressed with my brilliance :P