LINDY ULTIMATELY DID end up going on her drive across Washington. After she fiercely hugged Krist, making him promise to come find her or at least leave a voicemail on her home phone if any news on Kurt's whereabouts developed, Lindy decided what she needed to do if she were to keep her head on her shoulders.

She was strangely calm as she got into her car, looking down at her hands as they gently laid themselves upon the steering wheel. They weren't shaking, which was odd enough in itself. Her hands always shook when she was scared.

She had just learned that Kurt was missing, nowhere (and clearly not wanting) to be found, but she wasn't crumbling into a pile of dust over the thought. Yes, it felt like Kurt was slipping away faster than she could catch him, but an eerie tranquility had settled around Lindy, keeping her steady as she pulled her car away from her apartment and out onto the main road.

Mostly, she tried not to think of the baby. It was a hard thing to do — after all, the little human was living inside her, a constant reminder that she was never really alone. But thinking of the baby meant thinking of it never meeting Kurt if he was not found. And that was an imagination that Lindy didn't want to entertain.

She drove and drove, indecisive as to where the winding roads she was on would take her. For a brief second, she thought of visiting Trae. But that would not do any good. She wanted to be alone. She didn't want to hear anyone else's voice crowding her mind, at least not anyone else's voice but Kurt's. Lindy didn't want to have to repeat the words Krist had told her aloud to her brother.

Regardless of her choice not to involve Trae, Lindy steered her car towards Aberdeen anyway. She was drawn there by invisible force, her sense of direction carried to the small town as if by a breeze of wind. Every turn of her wheels and push of the gas pedal was made by someone else. Or at least that's what it felt like. Lindy didn't really know what she was doing as she drove out of Seattle's city limits.

Kurt would not be in Aberdeen. No, not even if hell froze over would he return to the place where he'd grown up. That was the difference between Lindy and Kurt. She welcomed the pain of confronting her past, but Kurt despised it. It was easier for him to bury it away in a place where not even he could find it.

But still. It would have eased Lindy's burden if she would have been able to find him in the simpering small town where his life had began. That was merely the best case scenario. Find Kurt then, so there would be no worrying later. Finding him would mean being able to hold him, to know that he was okay.

As Lindy finally arrived in Aberdeen, she felt suddenly surrounded by thousands of ghosts. It was all the same scenery that she had seen countless times before, but now there was absence and mystery in this old environment. There was something lacking in the places that she had once walked in and out of and around as a kid.

It was all because Kurt's life was about to end. She felt it, she felt it deep in her bones.

Don't start, Lindy thought.

They had made it so far. Every hurdle had been jumped over and this was only a final test, one last obstacle that Lindy remained determined to shove out the way so she could finally be with Kurt once and for all. She had fought since she was a teenager to keep her happy ending with Kurt in clear sight.

Every stop Lindy drove by was a trinket of a memory from long ago. These ordinary places, so insignificant to anyone passing through Aberdeen, had Kurt marked all over them like visible handprints. There was the record store, Spin City, where Trae had worked endlessly to secretly fund Lindy's schooling and where Kurt and Lindy had shared their real first kiss over Skittles.

She passed by the Music Center that she and Kurt had broken into not long after their relationship first began. Kurt had played his cover of 'Love Buzz' for her, solidifying her faith that he would be successful one day.

They had been so young then. So unknowing of what they would someday face, their individual struggles blending into mutual ones all because of the graceful way that they'd fallen in love. It had been fast at first, but then slow, carrying them both the way a lullaby carried someone into peaceful sleep. The moment they had concluded they were in love had lasted forever. Years of discord and distance had done nothing to keep them apart.

When Lindy passed the cemetery where both her father and mother were buried, she nearly broke down. It wasn't just because the two people who had given her life were laid to rest there — it was because this was another destination that she had been in with Kurt. Another place where she'd looked into his eyes and felt like she was seeing the rest of her life.

Hiccuping on a sob that nearly escaped her lips, Lindy clutched the steering wheel harder and turned around. There was one last place that she wanted to visit. As she had guessed before, he would not be there. The bad memories kept him from coming back. But she wanted to go, carrying their unborn child, to one of the very first places where she realized that Kurt was the one.

She parked her car at a nearby gas station, getting out and staring up into the sky. It was going to rain, which could have strongly hindered what she was about to do. Muddy river banks and rainfall did not go well together, especially for someone who only donned a pair of flimsy Converse sneakers.

Lindy checked that no one was watching as she walked beside the Young Street bridge, glancing right and left before she disappeared down the slope of damp earth beneath it. The closer she got, the louder the sound of the rushing Wishkah became. That sound brought a swell of memories to mind, a dozen flashbacks of Kurt's boyish smile coming along with it.

Not much had changed in Kurt's old hangout spot beneath the bridge. There was more graffiti, most of which Lindy could not make out, and perhaps more litter since she'd last visited. But one obvious thing stood out the most.

There was no Kurt.

Tucking her hand in her jacket pockets, Lindy sucked in a deep breath that rattled down her throat and into her lungs. Being in such a place was harder than she thought. It was a place of emotion, no matter how unusual it may have been to an unsuspecting passerby. To anyone else in Aberdeen, the niche under the bridge was just a haven for the homeless. But for Lindy, this was the place where she learned who the real Kurt was.

She could hear it in her head. Kurt's low voice, uttering words into song. 'Something In The Way' was playing on repeat in her head, and even though there was no sound except for that of the river, the song was blaring all around Lindy as if Kurt was actually there performing it.

He wasn't though. He was somewhere else, his hiding place under the bridge long behind him. The only decent times he had ever spent beneath it were with Lindy, his head in her lap as he stared up at her delicate face.

Lindy closed her eyes. It was here that she could hear him, whether he was singing or talking to her or producing the gift of music through his hands. His spirit surrounded her like a blanket, and soon enough, she was trembling down her body.

Things had changed, even more so than she thought. Kurt was gone. Maybe, he'd never even come back. Maybe she felt so close to tipping over the edge because he was already gone, his life blown out like the flame of a candle. She was pregnant with a baby who might never meet its father. Its wonderful father, who sang melodies from heaven, thought brushing his teeth was a chore and believed women were meant to rule the world.

Her baby might never know that man. The same man who had shown her endless, pure love even in the darkest of times. The same man who was a sensitive and beautiful creature who wasn't from this world, whose soul was bursting with the pain of simply existing in it.

Lindy lowered her face into her hands, pressing her palms against her mouth so the scream she let out wouldn't echo out into the distance. She sank to her knees, feeling them make contact with the small concrete ledge that she and Kurt had once sat on reading William Burroughs while they fell in love.

It was agony, knowing the chances of him ever sitting there again were gone.

[ what the actual FLIP, 100 chapters?! guys, i remember when i almost gave this story up back in july and now we're here, 100 chapters down and very close to the end. thank you guys so much for caring about this story as much as i do. your comments and votes mean the world to me, and when you all continue to read, it gives me the motivation to keep writing. i love every single one of you, which sounds so cliche and unrealistic but it's true. this story would not be what it is if it weren't for you guys who gave it life. it may be coming to an end, but i promise you guys i won't stop writing! I LOVE YOU ALL ]