A/N:Hey guys, sorry for the late update, but life's crazy right now, but I do porimise to finish this story. I might not be the fastest writer, but until now I've finished all of my stories and I didn't plan on changing that.

So the first two chapters are a little revised which will be important for the new chapters. Don't worry. I'll go back to the old plot, but I decided to change the chronology of events to: 1. make everything more plausible and 2. to give the characters a little more room to develope.

The third chapter is more or less totally revised. I think I havenow found my idea where I want to head with the story.

Thank you all sooooooooo much for your patience and I hope I can reward you for it at least a little =)

Prologue:

Ryan always knew that he was different from the other kids. He was odd or strange or something and that night he got the proof, although he didn't understand it then. He always felt like an outsider at school and at home. Of course he was odd. They said he was sick, but he thought it was a lie. He didn't feel sick, only the medicine they made him take made him feel awfully sick. There had to be something wrong, obviously. Wasn't medicine there to make you feel better and not worse? And weren't you supposed to feel really bad before you took the medicine and not afterwards? He didn't understand what was going on with him then, but he trusted his Mom when she told him that everything was going to be alright with him. His Mom always had been his anchor, because she was the only one who didn't make him feel like an outsider. They had a lot in common, probably from the very beginning. She loved music as much as he did. She taught him how to play the piano when he had just turned four. Since then, he couldn't live without it anymore. It was as if this very moment had turned his whole life upside down.

"Come here Ryan," his Mom gently ordered him to come over to the piano stool on which she sat. He did as he was told and when he was within his Mom's reach, she picked him up and sat him down beside her. It was the first time that he looked on the clavier. He was mesmerized by the polished shiny white and black keys. He reached out for one to touch, but then draw back again. Too afraid to damage it, he didn't dare touching even one of the keys. He would have never forgiven himself for it, because he knew how much his Mom loved that piano.

"Touch it. Don't be shy," his Mom told him. He looked up at her, unsure whether he had understood what she said.

"Give me your hand," his Mom said after Ryan was staring at her for a long moment. He reached out for her and she gently took his hand, guiding it toward the keys and laying it gently on the clavier. For the first time Ryan felt the cold, even and perfect key. It was that very moment in which something happened with him, something he still had no explanation to and something he wished had never happened, because it made him drift even further apart from his Dad to a point from which his father seemed unreachable for him. With his Mom's help he pressed the first key and was amazed what sound he was capable of producing. Amazed he looked at his Mom.

"You like it?" she asked a big smile drawn on her face, which made Ryan even happier than he already was. He nodded.

"Shall I show you how to play?" she asked him again and he nodded. And from then on she started teaching him. When he turned older and knew more about how to play, they spent hours playing together, all to his father's dismay. But at that point he and his father had drifted so awfully apart that Ryan started pretending that he didn't care what his father thought about him. He also reached that point at which he understood the meaning of what had happened the one night in hospital when his Mom met the man he had never seen before. He must've been about eight. He has had surgery a few days ago. It was already late. Ryan knew that, because all lights were either switched off or dimmed. His Mom stayed with him during the nights. He was already old enough for being alone at day, but at nights he still was scared. He was supposed to sleep, but he couldn't. Even today he had trouble getting proper sleep in hospital. His Mom had stepped out of his room to a man he hadn't seen again since then. He could see him through the window of his room from which he could see what was going on in the corridor. The man had blond, long unruly hair and Ryan thought he was a friend of his Mom's. The door wasn't closed and now Ryan was old enough to understand that it wasn't supposed to stay open.

"Kurt, what are you doing here?" his Mom silently hissed, casting a glance over to him. Ryan immediately closed his eyes, because he didn't want his Mom to know that he was eavesdropping.

"I'm here to see him," the man replied in low voice. Ryan didn't get whom he meant with "him".

"That's not a good idea and I told you so," his Mom told the man.

"But he's my son too." That was the sentence which took Ryan years to understand. He had always thought of his Dad being his Dad. Okay, they didn't have a lot in common and his Dad didn't like him being around, but his Mom always told him it was because he had a difficult job and was exhausted when he was home. Ryan never questioned his mother.

"Kurt, don't make it even more difficult as it already is. I don't want to put Sandy through this. He had endured enough with things as they are, so please go and don't come back," his Mom whispered an explanation.

"You can't do this to me. You told me you love me and that you want to leave Sandy."

"It was a mistake. I've been mistaken. You need to understand. It had been a difficult time then and…I needed some sort of help."

"Oh and now you don't need me anymore? I have rights too and if you won't give them to me I'll go and take them myself," the man sounded upset saying these words. Ryan felt like a little spy, listening to this, whatever it was about, while his Mom thought he was asleep. Later Ryan would wish to not having listened to a single word of it.

"Kurt, please don't. Ryan has enough on his plate. I…want to protect him from any further pain. If not for me then do it for him. It's not his fault. He shouldn't suffer the consequences of our mistakes."

"Laura, it's not that easy as you think and you know it."

"Do you think it's easy for me? Think about Sandy. I don't want to know how hard it is for him."

"Alright. I got it," the man finally said and then left. He watched his Mom standing in the corridor watching the man leave, retrieving a tissue from the pockets of her trousers and wiping her eyes. His Mom was sad, that much he got. But he didn't know why and he didn't know what to do to make her happy. Somehow, he never knew what to do to make her happy. She seemed to always being surrounded by a melancholy he had no cure for.

Ryan stared at the ceiling of a foreign home, a home in which he wasn't any more welcomed than in any other he'd been before. Maybe he should go looking for this blonde man from the hospital corridor. But how? He got up from the bed and started his notebook. A search engine wasn't helpful since he had no name. Within seconds he was staring at the homepage of Julliard, where his Mom had been working. He was browsing through the side listing the teachers, but nobody on the pictures looked like this man. But where else could his Mom have met this guy? His Mom might have met him before. She hasn't been on tour the day he was born, at least that was what she blamed his father for every time they fought about who got to take care of him. His glance focused on a picture of Carmen García. She's been his mother's best friend. Maybe she knew? But could he just write her and ask who the man was his Mom had an affair with? Could he simply do that? His Mom must've had a good reason for keeping this man away from him and he didn't want to disregard her efforts. He was sure she wasn't ridden by selfish or bad motives, but his inner self was pressuring him to break free from the cage he was caught in, from the cage his father kept him in. All he was looking for was acceptance, maybe some nice words of true acknowledgement or some words of comfort. He sought for nothing more, just a place where he didn't feel as out of place as he did here. He wasn't sure whether he could survive here, whether he could survive exposed to his father's neglect or anger on a day-by-day basis. He gathered all the courage he had left and started to write an e-mail to his mother's best friend. It took him what felt like hours until he eventually was satisfied enough to send it.