Some people would call this a miracle. But a miracle is just another word for a cosmic mistake.
The truth is; our lives begin as a union of impossibilities. Two distinctly separate worlds forced together to make a whole, living, breathing entity. And from the moment of our birth to the second of our deaths, we are anomalies that happen only once, and never again.
Like Hunter Clarington was born in 1991 and died in 1960.
Like the hurricane. Like the plane crash.
Never again.
~ Kurt Hummel (1997- 1963)
…
Static crackled weakly.
White noise fluctuated and tremored in the dark.
The hiss of a half-heard radio whimpered over the din of metal moaning against the pressure of the ocean. It closed in around the skeleton of the plane, squeezing its cylindrical form into a crude, unholy visage.
A voice pitched, fading in and out and away… distant.
"I can't stay with her anymore, because she doesn't exist…"
The pilot's door rose open, bubbles frothing up, water streaming in. The whirr of the engines bellowed, earsplitting. The aircraft screamed in the night.
Somewhere, a movie still played, a ghost of twenty minutes ago… when everything was still okay… when they all were only sleeping.
Flickering, flickering… the voices from the tiny screen grew distorted, swallowed by a gathering silence.
It played as if, only moments ago, terror hadn't torn throats bloody and the air pressure hadn't pulled whole seat rows away, sending bodies thrashing through the air, searching for a perchance that would never come.
"I'm the only thing you do believe in anymore…"
Oxygen masks dangled and twirled on their cords, gasped out life as the last lights began to gutter. Somewhere, another groan rent steel in two, breaking into steam, bleary oblivion tightening, suffocating.
"I wish… I wish more than anything… but I can't imagine you with all your complexity—
The electricity cut out with a shutter and left nothing but the lurching of the propellers, powering down into an emptiness punctuated by the sea as it streamed in, consuming the front seats.
With a slow keen the plane rolled onto its side, half of it filling, sending broken bodies, still propped in seats, tumbling into the black water that was swelling, swelling, pouring in through the adjacent windows, frigid, painfully cold.
One wing dipped under the surface of the black ocean as the aircraft began its plunge to death, a tragedy in slow motion.
Somewhere in the world they didn't know yet. They didn't know that flight 4236 was never coming back, they didn't know yet, that their sons and daughters would never come home. They didn't know yet.
They would spend months looking for a crash site… that didn't exist…
"SOMEBODY!" a boy's voice called out, gravely, panic stricken, distorted by the gulp and sputter of water. "ANYBODY?!"
Kurt's neck felt craned, his shoulders ached, and it took him a moment to realize that he was hanging from the strap of a seatbelt-digging into his waist, cutting off his breathing.
A cough and another splash, the slam of a palm against the outside of the plane, again and again…
"CAN ANYBODY HEAR ME!?..." it broke into whimper. Another groan of steel and they began the measured nosedive to death. "Ohhh fuck… fuck… fuck… PLEASE! ANYONE!"
The rising water engulfed row after row of seats now, causing the tail of the aircraft to lift into the air, bubbling as it filled.
Groggy, his head throbbing, blood soaking his hair across the side of his face That voice roused him from his unconsciousness. He fumbled, tasting blood in his mouth, trying to move his arms. Kurt Hummel's delicate fingers finally found the latch of his belt, weakly pressing the release.
His body fell forward, hitting the plastic backing of the row of seats in front of him, slamming his face against it, as he pitched and tumbled down the isle, landing with a splash in the dark water below. The aircraft was like a throat now, sucking the bodies down with it, water streamed in.
He gulped in salt water, inhaling it into his nose as he sputtered.
"SOMEBODY!" the voice was much farther away now. "PLEASE!"
In the freezing water, his limbs lost their feeling, his breathing stiffened. He snorted as his hearing was distorted, and his head was pulled under the water by the suction of the plane as it gained speed.
Gulping, half conscious, Kurt forced his body to kick, dog paddling clumsily towards the gaping tear in the aircraft where the water was pouring in. He gripped the jagged metal, feeling his fingers slice open on the edge as he pulled himself out against the current, kicking into the frigid sea.
His eyes stung with salt, the ocean around him was on fire, bits of shrapnel and floating luggage bobbed around him. He fumbled for a hold on a floating suitcase, his hair hung down in his face, and his body was seizing from the cold, his teeth already chattering, his hands shaking from adrenaline.
Kurt cast a look behind him, watching as the tail of the plane started to drop down beneath the blackness of the water, to sink for miles before reaching the bottom, taking his friends with it. Most of them anyway. As he looked around he started to realize that there were a few bodies floating face down in the flames.
The image burned itself into his eyelids and even when he turned away, he still saw them, like wax figures melting in the heat.
"HEY!"
Someone called out, and Kurt tore his gaze from the fire, casting past it to a set of distant lights… artificial light, cool… electric. He blinked the water from his eyes and looked up, vertigo turning his stomach. There in the middle of the black sea, stood a pillar, a tower into the sky. A lighthouse.
He pushed the suitcase away from him and his head went under again, cold plunging his senses, he desperately clawed himself through the water, kicking numbly and with increasingly weaker strokes.
Leading down to the water, was a set of slippery stone stairs lit by pale lanterns. There, on the steps was a boy. The survivor who'd been shouting. He kicked harder at the sight. The boy was waving towards him, as though he were trying to land a jet.
"Hey!" The boy stood at the lower step, the ocean lapping at the toes of his shoes, his white shirt sticking to his body, his tie hanging loosely around his neck, drenched, water still running rivelets down his face. He waded back into the water, reaching for Kurt's arm and hauling him out so hard that Kurt thought he'd dislocated it.
The weight of the water pulled him down and they both collapsed to the wet stairs, Kurt sputtering.
It was Hunter. Hunter Clarington who'd pulled him from the water. Kurt looked up into his face, and recognized that military jaw. The handsome face that had been, just hours ago, so completely smug… was now stricken with panic. He pulled his hands from Kurt's body as the two locked eyes.
"No one else?"
Kurt could hear the tremble in his voice, it was a raw sound that etched itself into his mind. Suddenly, it was all so real. His friends… they were gone. He remembered the thunder of one wing breaking away from the plane as they dropped, would never forget the sound bodies made when they are torn from their seats, the wind roaring as they plummeted.
Hunter made a sound in his throat. There wasn't any need to answer, Kurt just lay there, against the stairs watching the shrapnel burn. The other boy climbed up a few stairs and tore his Iphone from his pants pocket, he fidgeted with it for a moment before cursing.
"Fuck! FUCK IT! FUCK ME!" He shouted punching the home button furiously. But the phone screen stayed dark and unresponsive as the starless sky above them. "Kurt- that's your name right? Do you have a phone?!"
Kurt didn't move, not able to tear his eyes away from the wreckage. "It was in my lap. I was listening to music." He said his voice soft, lucid with shock.
"FUCK."
There was a bought of pregnant silence.
"They will come for us, right? I mean THESE kinds of things happen all the fucking time? Right? I mean they are probably aware of it right now. They will have helicopters all over this place. In no time at all!"
Hunter was shouting again, talking to himself.
Kurt let him. A shroud of darkness fell into the pit of his stomach… an indescribable feeling of hopelessness and he couldn't explain it.
"Give them like, an hour or two, and everything will be fine! Right, right? Kurt… Kurt? Right?"
"yeah…" he replied softly, still laying on the stairs, water dripping down his nose down into his mouth. Salty and suddenly sulfurous. "They'll be here…"