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When Blaine was little he loved to pretend he could go back in time. They’d had a treehouse in the backyard growing up and he’d play it was magic, like Jack and Annie's, that he could go back and see dinosaurs or pirates or knights in shining armor. Or sometimes, when he was feeling far less grand, he would only go back a moment, just to get that step right, hit that note, and then Cooper wouldn't have anything to criticize. He'd be perfect.
He grows up and the treehouse gets torn down but he still pretends sometimes, in an absent minded sort of way, that he can go back to a long gone moment and do it over, do it right. He spends his sophomore year of high school thinking of one moment in particular; he’d go back and be smarter, stronger, he wouldn't run away. But you can't go back, not really, so he spends the year standing up to someone else's bullies instead.
He starts his junior year the happiest he's ever been and ends it the loneliest. New York is practically all Kurt talks about and by spring break it’s like he’s already halfway gone. Blaine pretends sometimes, to go back and choose differently, to stay at Dalton with the Warblers and his friends. Maybe then they would still be his friends, maybe then he would be used to the idea of being without Kurt, maybe he wouldn't even be with Kurt, he'd be with - but no, Blaine doesn't think about him.
Sometimes though, when time seems to be moving too fast, he pretends to go back to those first few weeks, to when he was ecstatic to be going to school with his boyfriend and starring in the school musical, to before the Warblers walked away from him in that parking garage. To that day when he'd gone to visit them at Dalton, when everything was golden in the afternoon sunlight and their faces had all broken into smiles the moment they saw him. (To when he'd seen a boy across the choir room, their eyes had met and - ) He goes and relives it over and over and over again.
But you can't go back, not really, so he clings to Kurt like a life raft even though he knows he's slipping away.
His senior year becomes defined early on by one huge mistake and he spends much of the following days, weeks, and months pretending he could go back and undo it. He'd ignore that Facebook message and go to New York to visit his boyfriend and they would talk and everything would be okay (until he had to go back home to lonely evenings and cut off phone calls).
But on some days, like the one when he realized he was the last to know about Kurt’s new boyfriend, he thinks he'd like to go back and call a different number instead. It was what Kurt had expected wasn't it? When Blaine had told him what he'd done there had been no surprise, just utter certainty. It was Sebastian, wasn't it? Loneliness wouldn't have excused that level of betrayal, but some days, ones that he always feels guilty about after, Blaine doesn't care.
But you can't go back, not really, so he begs for forgiveness until Kurt takes him back. He gets in everywhere he applies for college and he chooses NYADA because Kurt goes to NYADA (because he never learns the right lessons from his mistakes).
Months later, remembering all those letters, all those different futures, he sometimes pretends that he chose differently. He goes out west, to palm trees and sunshine and running lines with Cooper. He goes to Yale, to ivy covered buildings and coffee dates with Quinn, him in his bow ties and her in her pearls. He goes to NYU and studies medicine or music or education and carves out a space in the city that's all his own. (He goes to some undefined school that looks a lot like Dalton and sees a familiar face across the room. Their eyes meet and - )
But more often he pretends smaller things, that he could stop eating so much and be there early and let things go. He would be perfect and Kurt wouldn't leave.
He spends weeks lying in bed doing nothing but pretending to go back, trying to figure out which moment was the one that would have made this turn out differently, what would have made Kurt stay.
But you can't go back, not really, so eventually he gets out of bed and goes home. He coos over Mr. Shue’s baby and lets Sam make him laugh. He changes his look, then changes it back again, then marches into the halls of Dalton and gets himself hired as show choir director despite his utter lack of qualifications. He reapplies to colleges and begins seeing all those paths not taken stretching out in front of him again.
He goes out alone for drinks and dancing and all of a sudden the crowd shifts to reveal a figure sitting alone at the bar. Their eyes meet and for a moment Blaine thinks he really has gone back in time - he's sixteen again, feeling that forbidden little flutter at the sight of Sebastian Smythe's smile.
“Well of all the shitty gay bars in all the world. And here I was thinking I was the only one unlucky enough to be stuck here this summer.”
He smiles and feels something starting all over again. “Funny, I'm actually not feeling very unlucky right now.”
You can't go back, not really. You can only move forward.