Kurt Hummel's mother died when he was eight.
Eight is a very tender age.
It's the age where you begin realizing that the girl next door is actually a lot prettier than you thought. It's the age where you start choosing air craft models over stuffed toys. It's the age where you start not wanting your parents to show up to your football games because it's "not cool" and "embarrassing."
Eight years old was also the age that Kurt Hummel lost one of the most important people in his life.
The funeral was brief. Tears were silently shed behind hankerchiefs. Kurt expected more people to show up, but then he guessed that cancer didn't exactly help keep your friends.
Once they finished burying his mother, Kurt held his father's hand tightly as he stared down at the mound of dirt. His mother was there, underneath a layer of soil and the hard smoothness of the coffin lid, her eyes closed and her skin pale and her lips slightly parted. He missed her when she was in the hospital and he missed her as he stared at her resting place.
"Kurt, buddy, we're going to make it."
How, he wanted to ask.
"You and I, we're going to make it."
At ten, Kurt's new stepmother moved into his house.
She was called Natalia Karofsky and had hair the color of dark chocolate and eyes that made you flinch if they were directed at you for too long.
Her son, David Karofsky, was a burly slightly chubby boy of Kurt's age. He had squinty eyes and short hair. Kurt remembered never seeing him smile for his first week at the Hummel-Karofsky house hold. He also remembered never seeing David not standing by the side of Azimio, the just as burly boy who lived a few blocks away.
Kurt hated David.
He hated Natalia as well.
He hated how Natalia stole his dad away from him. He hated how when he was trying to hold a conversation with his father, Natalia would swoop by and give his father a kiss on the cheek and drag him away. He hated seeing David and his dad talk about football and he couldn't join them because Kurt hated football.
At eleven, Kurt Hummel got his first bruise on his back from his stepbrother shoving him against the floor because he had stared at David too long when he came out of the shower wrapped in a towel.
Kurt was just trying to see if that was a blob of paint or a pimple on David's face.
At twelve, Kurt's father left for New York for a business trip. The night after he left, Natalia had ordered him to get on his knees and clean every room in the house and he had gotten three new bruises from David.
At thirteen, Kurt was used to the bruises and the taunting and the surprise business trips his dad took that led to Natalia and David treating him like hell.
At fourteen, Kurt wished he could grow wings so he could fly away.