Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 78th cycle. Now cycle 79!

"Dust Off"
In Gen1!world: G2!Kurt, G1!Burt...
Berry-St series
(all series now listed under the communities tab in my profile)

It might have been the hardest thing he had ever come to realize, but it was true. He'd given up on his dream. He'd worked so hard to hold on to it, even when the whole world felt as though it was against him, and for all his effort, all he'd gotten was… nothing. He hadn't even seen it all slip away from him, and that might have been the worst part. It had started coming back to him in time, when he was thrown from his world and into another, a world where he was not only out but happy and still thriving in the thing that had once driven him. He'd started to see then, but it had not fully hit him, not until one day in his father's shop.

"Hey, you alright?" his father asked him, and Kurt looked back to him.

"What?" he blinked. Burt nodded to the picture on the wall, which Kurt had been staring at. "I… Yeah, fine, Dad," he promised, looking back at the frame hanging on display.

He knew by now this was from his Glee Club's victory at Sectionals the year before, that wasn't the thing that had made him get lost in his thoughts so much as it was that it was here, in his father's shop, for all to see. Burt Hummel was proud of his son, and he wanted the world to know.

Of all things, it had made Kurt think about his mother. It had been years since they'd lost her, since it had been just him and his father, so in any world, be it this one or the one where he was really from, she would never have seen what became of her son. She wouldn't know the one who had come to accept exactly who he was and lived his life with one clear and driving dream… nor would she know the one who had chosen to hide, the one who'd given up…

He'd been happier here, hadn't he? He'd stepped into his counterpart's shoes and run with them as though he'd earned his stride. This was what he'd wanted all along… And now he knew it was true, that he hadn't just lost it: he'd given it up.

There was no warning. One moment he'd been sitting on that stool, staring at the frame on the wall, and the next his eyes were rolling into the back of his head and he was slipping to the ground.

"Kurt? Kurt!" his father's voice was the last thing he heard, swelling into echoes in the dark.

X

He'd dreamed of his mother. He dreamed he was on stage, just him in the spotlight, and just her in the front row, watching him, smiling, her eyes welling up. When he'd finished, she'd jumped to her feet, clapping madly, and he'd smiled, blowing a kiss toward her.

Then he jerked awake, confused, not remembering where he'd been or knowing where he was now. He blinked, rubbed at his eyes, then looked around.

He was in a bathroom… at McKinley, yes. This was the boys' room, and he was flat out on the ground. Once that thought registered, he hurried to get up. Knowing the kind of people who tended to use this room, the place was probably a walking germ factory. Thankful he was on his own, he dusted himself off, fixed his h…

"Ow!" he winced when his fingers brushed the back of his head. He looked at his fingers, but there was no blood. Still, as he stumbled out of the boys' room, he made his way to the nurse's office. When he told her he'd woken up on the bathroom floor and his head was hurting, she made him sit and asked him if he'd passed out. "I… I must have," he blinked.

She gave him an ice pack and made him hold it to his head, no matter how much it hurt at first. Eventually, the cold did help diminish the pain. In the meantime, she examined him, concluded that the worst might be the bump on his head but, to be safe, she would have his father come and pick him up and take him to the ER.

As he'd waited for his father to arrive, Kurt had looked around, still feeling like something wasn't right, like he was forgetting something.

Burt came sprinting through the door fifteen minutes later.

"What happened?" he asked, looking his son over.

"I… I don't know," he said just as it dawned on him. He didn't know how he'd ended up on the floor, passed out… Had he bumped his head that hard?

"Alright, well we'll get you checked out. Don't worry, everything will be okay," his father promised, and Kurt gave a smile.

As they drove though, he felt more than ever like something was escaping him. He knew how he'd ended up there, he had to. What was the last thing he remembered, before the boys' room, before…

The picture…

"I was in the shop, with you…" he spoke aloud.

"What?" Burt spared him a look as they were stopping at a red light.

"I was there, I was looking at that picture on your wall, the Glee Club, and…"

"Glee Club? Kurt, you're not making any sense," Burt looked concerned all over again.

Then he remembered. He remembered sitting on the stool, slipping off, but it was more than that. He remembered he'd been in an alternate world, where there had been the Glee Club, where he'd been part of it, unlike his own world… This world. He'd gone back, he was home.

"N-nothing, never mind… I must have gotten mixed up, yeah, I think I need to take a nap and…"

"No, you don't, the nurse said I shouldn't let you sleep, not now. You stay with me, alright?" Burt clamped his shoulder, and Kurt let out a breath, looking at him.

"Right, I won't sleep," he promised.

So if this was his own world again, and what Rachel had told him was true, then somewhere in this version of Lima, there was a version of Quinn and Jesse who knew about all of this. He had to find them… after the hospital, but he had to talk to them. Maybe his dream wasn't dead after all…

THE END

A/N: This is a one-shot ficlet, which means that signing up for story alert will not bring you any alerts.
In the event of a sequel, the story will be separate from this one. And as chapter stories go, they are
always clearly indicated as such [ex: "Days 204-210" in the summary] Thank you!