A/N: So, here is the first chapter of my new story, A Thief's Heart, which I really hope that you will all enjoy :) It's set in Victorian London, and starts off with a similar basis to Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens, however, it will become different to this after a few chapters - also, there are some rather obvious parallels between the characters in a way, which I'm sure you'll see :) I really hope that you enjoy it! :)

Thank you for the support and response to On The Home Front! You guys are all awesome, and I hope that you will support this story too :) I'm kinda hoping that this story will be slightly different to my others and won't quite be so happy and sunshiney, but I doubt that it'll turn out like that!

Disclaimer: I do not own Glee and I do not own Oliver Twist.

The workhouse building was made of cold, grey and dull brick, having been battered by the equally cold and grey winds which whipped around the countryside and turned the landscape into a monotonous sea of dampened grass and sodden mud. What should had been the beautiful English countryside had been transformed into a thoroughly unappealing dismal mire which was avoided by everyone except those who had no choice but to pass through it.

Inside the workhouse, the conditions felt much the same as outside. The windows were loose, and rattled when the wind blew, filling the rooms with swirling grey mist and a constant dampness. The workrooms were dank, and in the summer would become swelteringly hot with so many bodies in such close quarters.

In one such room sat several boys, none of them older than seventeen, picking away at the stitches on several pieces of old cloth which needed repairing. They were all working under the supervision of five older men, who had all trained as tailors, and had now taken them on as unpaid apprentices. The boys had been at this work for nearly three hours now, and it would be another hour until they had a break for lunch. If you could call it lunch, that is, for it was little more than a few spoonfuls of watered down gruel slopped into a metal bowl and a hunk of dried bread; on Sundays, if they were lucky, they might get the off-cuts of a sausage each.

One of the boys was a tall blonde, thin but muscular in some way, though fortunately, he had been saved from the task of the stone breaking when it had come down to the overseer to choose which boy would move on to which adult job. His blonde hair, which he tried to keep at a manageable length, still fell in his eyes every time he looked down, and where it was getting too long at the nape of his neck, it had curled at the ends.

It was the constant movement he had to make to flick his fringe out of his eyes that caught the attention of one of the overseers.

"Sterling! Yes, you, boy! Stop doing that and get on with what you're doing!"

The boy in question kept his head down and made a show of vigorously removing one stitch from the cloth he had in his hands, without saying a word. There was no point giving the overseer a polite acknowledgement because that could be seen as answering back, and it might earn him a nasty punishment.

He'd seen enough boys returning from punishments to know that they should be avoided.

Finally, the tolling bell signalled that it was time for lunch, and all of the boys set down their work, to be resumed later, and got up silently. They lined up in the same order as always and filed out of the door at the same time as the rest of the doors along the corridors opened, and there was suddenly the sound of hundreds of feet echoing on the cast iron stairs.

It was the same routine everyday, and it was likely to be the same routine for a very long time for a certain blonde. That was, of course, until one rather chance opportunity would change the course of his life forever.

It was well past nightfall before the boys were allowed to go to bed that night, and it would well before dawn that they would be awoken for breakfast the next morning.

The dormitory rooms were filled with around one hundred boys each, with the rows of beds packed almost completely together down each wall, only a small crooked bedside table separating each one. The beds were furnished with one rather grimy sheet and an equally grimy blanket, but to have anything to cover themselves with at night was a luxury which could not be afforded by all. At one end was a high up window, perhaps two feet by two feet in size, with blackened glass which should have been cleaned every once in a while, but looked as though it had quite possibly never seen a wiping cloth in its lifetime.

"You done, Jeff?" a tall brunette asked the boy who was currently washing his face and hands in the pot of water at the end of his bed.

The tall blonde from earlier nodded once and moved out of the other boy's way; they had to share, several boys to one pail of water, and not a drop could be wasted.

The other boy was a tailor's apprentice as well, several years older than Jeff, and on his way to finishing his apprenticeship within a few months. He was Jeff's older brother figure in some sort of way, though the two were not related, and he'd helped the blonde through the times when life got far too tough.

"Kurt?" Jeff spoke up suddenly, addressing the other boy.

"Yes, Jeff?"

"Do you ever wonder where your parents are now?"

Kurt sighed heavily.

"We've talked about this before," he said, "Now, come on, just go to bed."

"But don't you ever think about it?" the blonde boy insisted, lying down on his bed and tucking his blanket up to his chin, looking almost like a small child again. "In your head, don't you make up stories about who they might be?"

"Sometimes," Kurt admitted, "Not so much anymore though." He got up from the water bucket and sat down on his own bed, looking across at the younger boy.

"Why not?"

Kurt smiled sadly.

"There comes a point," he said, "Where you realise that it's futile and imagining what might have been will get you nowhere. Now, go to sleep, Jeffrey."

But Jeff seemed to be in no mood for sleeping.

"Then what did you used to imagine?" he continued, "Did you imagine that they lived in a big house, with a hundred servants? And they served three course meals every night, and you could eat as much as you wanted to?"

"Sometimes," he said, "Other times, they lived in a cottage on a farm and tended to the sheep. Now, that's enough for tonight."

There was silence as Kurt pulled his own blankets over himself and he wondered whether Jeff had fallen asleep already.

"Kurt?"

No, he hadn't.

"Yes, Jeff?"

"Your parents, when you imagined them, did they love each other?"

Kurt frowned.

"Yes," he replied, "Always. Why?"

"Nothing," Jeff said, and he rolled over and faced the other way, effectively ending their conversation.

The older boy shook his head and fell asleep almost immediately, having been tired out by the long day.

But in the other bed, Jeff was still awake, his knees pulled up to his chest and his arms wrapped around himself as he let a small tear trickle a path down his cheek and drip softly onto the sheet below him.

His parents had died, he knew that, but at least Kurt had the comfort that he had never known his mother and father, so he could imagine whatever he wanted about them. Jeff's mother had died almost as soon he was born, living long enough to say that his father was also dead, that she had no relatives, and that his name was Jeffrey. The workhouse had given him his surname.

His only way of remembering his mother was the simple silver locket that she'd left to him when she'd died. In some act of compassion, one kindly woman had saved it for him until he was old enough to understand what it was, and had one day handed it over to him. He'd worn it every day since, but the locket itself was empty, engraved only with a pattern that Jeff could not properly recognise, it sometimes seemed to reminiscent of what Kurt said was a coat of arms, but other days, it looked like little more than a few random swirls; the dirt it had accumulated did not help.

Jeff just wished that there was that possibility that his life could have been different or that he could at least pretend that there was, but he knew the fate of his parents and he couldn't seem to shake that fact from his mind.

He wanted Kurt's parents to love each other in the other boy's mind at least because Jeff couldn't tell whether his parents had loved each other or not, and he always believed that everyone should find love in their lifetime. Except being stuck in a workhouse for what seemed like the rest of forever gave Jeff almost no hope of finding love himself, and that seemed to put him in a perpetual state of longing and anguish.

It was alright for Kurt, he wanted to become a tailor, and at least, he had that opportunity now, and with his skills, he was likely to become a successful one too. But Jeff was adequate at his apprenticeship at best, and he wanted nothing more than to run as far away from his life as possible.

In his head, he always his imagined his future as one in which he would find someone who loved him as much as he loved them, and would care for him and look after him. They'd live in a little house in the countryside somewhere, and they might have a family, but they might not, and that wouldn't matter because they would have each other and that's all that they would need.

But in the workhouse, in the middle of nowhere, all of Jeff's dreams seemed like distant flashes of light on the horizon; he could see them but he couldn't ever grasp them. He was desperate to escape the confines of his current life and to run free to wherever he pleased, taking control of his future and letting his own free will guide him instead of being dictated by what the overseers did and wanted.

Suddenly, the dormitory was plunged into darkness as someone slammed the door, extinguishing all of the candles simultaneously it seemed. The darkness brought the first feeling of sleepiness over the blonde and his eyelids fell wearily. He gave up his hoping; failing to see even those lights on the horizon now in the darkness, and fell into a dreamless sleep.

"Jeff, what would you like most in the world?" Kurt asked suddenly the next morning.

Jeff looked up in surprise at the question from where he was folding his blankets atop his sheets in the few minutes before the bell would ring for breakfast.

"Is this in return for my questioning last night?" he said with a smile.

Kurt shook his head.

"I'm just curious," he replied, "So, what would you like most?"

It took Jeff barely a second before he was voicing his answer.

"To get out of here," he said, adding in his head that he wanted to be loved too, but he'd never said that aloud to Kurt, or anyone in particular; even if Kurt had been the one to introduce him to the idea of love in the first place through the stories he always told.

"Where would you go?" Kurt asked, and Jeff's mind span with the questions, for while he was accustomed to asking Kurt things, the other boy rarely asked him anything, instead, usually merely opting for encouraging whatever ideas he had himself.

"I don't know," Jeff shrugged, "Anywhere but here, London, perhaps, if the fancy took me; London sounds fascinating."

Kurt suddenly glanced around himself furtively, before taking a step closer and pressing something thin and small into the palm of Jeff's hand, closing the blonde boy's fingers around it securely.

"Don't react," the older boy whispered softly, "This is a piece of wire, I stole it from the workshop yesterday. After breakfast today, on the way to the workshop, I will create a distraction by the junction of the corridors in the east wing, when you can, take the east corridor right until the very end. There, the end window should be relatively hidden from the eyes of anyone, you can open it with the wire. Once that is open, you have only a few feet before the fence, it's the closest part of the building to the outer perimeter, as well as the lowest part after it was damaged by that falling tree last month, climb over the fence and you're free."

"And then what?" Jeff's voice came out as though he was in a trance, as all his hopes and dreams seemed to be becoming closer and closer.

"Run, Jeff," Kurt said, "Run to wherever you want to, you should have the cover of the trees. Now, when you reach the third oak tree in line with the window you have come from, the one with the patterns in the bark that I pointed out to you once on the way to church, there is a bundle containing food in the branches. I'm afraid that I could not secure any money."

Jeff was astounded, and he stared at the other boy for several moments while he let this news sink in.

"Thank you," he said breathlessly, "I, I don't know what to say, thank you." He frowned. "But why me? And why now?"

Kurt shook his head.

"There is not enough time for me to explain it all to you," he said, "But know this, you are finally old enough to look after yourself and make your own choices. You should not have to be stuck in here against your will, all because of where your parents decided to leave you."

Suddenly, the bell tolled loudly, and the boys around them began filing towards the door. Jeff kept the small length of wire tightly held in his palm, hiding it from view, while Kurt fell into step behind him.

"And Jeff," Kurt added softly so that only the two of them could hear his words, "Don't think I don't know that you cry yourself to sleep at night."

Jeff could barely eat his breakfast in the anticipation of what was about to happen, and also whether it would work or not. The gruel, which on most days was unpalatable and unappetising, seemed to Jeff to threaten to choke him as he tried to take spoonfuls, and his heart leapt into his throat every time an overseer looked over at him, making him feel as though they had already discovered his secret.

He kept one hand under the table, gripping the wire tightly, and at the same time, the locket, on its chain around his neck, seemed to grow heavier in itself, as though also aware of the stress and anxiety that its wearer was feeling, and by the end of the meal, Jeff was sure that he had given himself away by looking entirely suspicious.

Finally, after what had felt like a test of strength to the young blonde, the bell went again, and he suddenly found himself in line with the other apprentice tailors, walking steadily towards their workshop on the ground floor.

For a moment, Jeff almost forgot what was about to happen, as he traipsed aimlessly behind the boy in front and tried to not to think about anything in particular.

And then Kurt began his distraction.

He gave a sudden loud cry, clutched wildly at his stomach, and then collapsed on the floor, whimpering to himself as though in great pain. The other boys suddenly halted, and someone was sent to fetch one of the nurses, or at least, one of the women who were classified as nurses by the workhouse's standards. The overseer tried to get some sense out of Kurt as he continued to make a strange noise, and since the older boy was his most promising protégé, he didn't seem to mind so much when the other boys fell out of line and gathered round.

Jeff suddenly saw his opportunity as the others were distracted, and he immediately turned down the east corridor, running as fast as he could without drawing attention to himself with the sound of his feet. He knew that the east corridor would not be being used at this point in the day, and he had a pretty slim chance of running into anyone; and it would awfully bad luck if he did.

At the end of the corridor was the window that Kurt had been talking about. It was narrow but tall, almost shaped conveniently like any other door, and since it seemed to have no real purpose as a window, Jeff wondered whether it had been installed on the basis that it would be used as a point of exit.

The lock was about halfway up on one side, and Jeff founded that he could easily insert the wire into it and after moving it around a little, he felt the lock mechanism itself start to shift. It seemed as though it hadn't been used in a long time, but it didn't take too long before the lock itself clicked barely audibly, and Jeff knew that he'd done it.

Lock-picking was something that Jeff had discovered that he had a talent for; ever since he'd stolen a family item back for another boy out of the parish beadle's own private room, he'd been hailed as the go-to man if someone wanted a job like that done. He knew that that was why Kurt had trusted him with this method of escape, because if anyone could break themselves out without damaging any of the property, it was Jeff.

Kurt had also been right about the position of the fence from the window, for while the rest of the perimeter stretched out into the courtyard at the front of the building, as it came towards the east wing, it curved inwards in order to accommodate the woods on the other side. The fence itself was itself was made of cast iron railings, reaching up high, but the designer had put in bars about halfway up, which would serve as good footholds for the blonde to use.

Glancing behind himself once, Jeff placed the piece of wire inside his empty locket, a convenient place for something which might have further use, before turning to the outside world. He put one foot out onto the stone paving outside, and then the other, revelling in the overwhelming sense of trepidation it gave him. He knew that running should have felt bad, but instead, the thought of freedom seemed so right and natural. And so, without taking another glance back, Jeff quickly ran the few yards to the fence, put one foot on the iron bar, lifted his other leg over and dropped down smoothly onto the other side.

His next focus was the old oak tree, the one with the patterns carved into it which Kurt had once pointed out to him on their way to church on Easter Sunday, Jeff seemed to recall it being.

He'd always wondered how Kurt had known that that tree was there, but he'd never questioned it; he'd never really thought to question anything that Kurt knew.

When he finally reached the tree itself, the bundle of food that the older boy had left was easy to locate, sitting up on the first branch, and Jeff barely had to stretch up to reach it and bring it down. He wanted to look inside and eat some of it immediately, but he decided instead to do that once he was a further distance from the workhouse.

He took a few moments instead to catch his breath, and used this time to inspect the carvings in the bark. Most of the scratches where indecipherable, but in others, Jeff could pick out various letters and words. In a spur of the moment decision, he found himself a sharp stick and hurriedly scratched a quick thank you and added his initials underneath, hoping that Kurt, since he seemed to be able to get out there whenever he wanted, would see it and know how grateful he was.

When he did finally decide that it was time to move on, he gathered up the bundle of food under his arm and set off in the opposite direction to the workhouse, east, he supposed, if he used the sun's position as guidance. He, however, had no idea where exactly he was, nor where the workhouse was actually located in relation to London, but he hoped that if he headed far enough, he would reach a major road, and from then on, he might be able to ask his way.

It wasn't until he was out of the woods and staring at the horizon as though it was actually calling to him that it suddenly struck him that he'd never properly had a chance to say goodbye to Kurt; when he'd left, the other boy had been curled up on the floor and Jeff had not even glanced back as he'd run. The blonde turned around and over the tops of the trees could just catch a glimpse of the roof of the workhouse, and somewhere inside would be Kurt. He reached a hand up to the locket around his neck slowly, and grasped it within his fingers. He lifted it up and pressed it to his lips softly as if that signalled his goodbyes.

And then, wondering if anyone had noticed his absence yet, he turned back to the horizon and set off purposefully in the direction of his future.

A/N: So, what did everyone think of the first chapter? Nick shall be appearing shortly, of course, but I wanted to set this story up like this :)

Thank you for reading, and please leave a review to tell me what you thought or to ask a question about the history :)

Historical Points:

1. Workhouses were institutes set up in England and Wales in order to provide places of accommodation for the poor and unemployed - they were especially prominent in the 19th century due to mass unemployment at the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815. Many children were abandoned in workhouses or their mothers died having sought shelter there, they would either be used for labour, oakum-picking - picking apart old ship ropes to remove the tar-like substance - stone breaking or as apprentices to a number of skilled jobs, such as tailoring.