He didn't know how long it was now, that he had been alone.
He was born in a simple way, from a humble family, but he had worked his way up the proverbial social ladder until he stood at its highest terrace, and still he had been unhappy. He could have had any girl he wanted. Miss Fabray, Miss Berry, Miss Cohen-Chang, Miss Lopez, Miss Pierce, or even the feisty Miss Jones. All beautiful, all unique like precious jewels. And he, the player that he was had often called them one, giving a jewel to each one. Miss Fabray was the unbreakable diamond, Miss Berry the deep and delicious ruby, and so on, and so forth. Of course, none of it mattered now, as they were all dead and gone, but their memory still remained with him. Alas, he forgot nothing.
When he was only a young man of sixteen, and he was living on the banks of the Thames along with so many others at that time, a mighty sickness hit, later to be called The Bubonic Plague, but then called the Black Death. He watched as everyone near to him slipped away, felled by the terrible sickness, holding onto his eyes each time with their last gasps of life fleeing their lips. He watched as each one left him through the months, until he was the last one left, and at the age of eighteen he was finally orphaned. Living in England during the fourteenth century was difficult enough, and the plague only made it worse.
He had to give all his funds on making a proper funeral for his father, step-mother, and step-brother, which he mourned greatly. He would not have them buried without the proper tradition however, although so many bodies were left to rot in the streets at that time. He would only find out later what could have saved his family, and by then, it was far too late. Heartbroken, he took to wandering the streets at night, with nothing left to make him smile again. Whores could not please him, or the view of the Thames spreading itself out into the ocean. He seemed to be only craving one thing, the return to what once was; the retrieval of his family. He would have liked to have joined them in death, but he was cursed with immunity to the horrid disease, and he was too proud to kill himself. Instead he seemed to go searching for death, cheating, stealing, and defiling virgins much like the devil himself. And how he would have loved to have joined him.
Nothing satisfied him. His heart sat inside his chest like a cold rock, and no laugh lines had ingrained themselves into his face. As the last remaining Hummel, he gave a shoddy remembrance of what the family once was, but he did not care. He slipped into and out of personifications like no other man that people knew, and he might as well have been a travelling actor for all the characters he took upon himself. But still, he was forever unsatisfied, until one fateful night.
It had been a regular evening, one spent in a back alley of London with a young group of boys, joking around, and his eyes as empty as his place in the family mausoleum. There had been drinking, of course. Nothing was without the liquid amber these days. He used it to stay upright, rather than most people, who used it to fall down deep. Being used to it, the boys around him stumbled as they slowly strolled down the ways, moonlight smiling at them every now and then, but otherwise they were in shadow. And that is how kurt wanted it. He saw it as fitting for his last moments. He was nineteen now, and he wished to die before he turned twenty. Because Finn would never reach that age either. He had an innate fear that if he reached that age, all would be lost, a barrier would be crossed, and he would never see him again. And he had to see him again, because Kurt's secret was that Finn had always been more than a brother to him, he had been his very first crush. But of course it didn't matter now. Finn was dead, and Kurt's heart had never been fixed.
So that was what gave him the courage to lazily smash a bottle against a brick wall, and hold it up to the throat of a pretty blonde. Of course, in an instant, a punch landed on the side of his head, and he fell to the ground, as unresponsive as a dead bird, not a peep coming from him. He felt angry beatings from every direction, quietly falling away into blackness, pleased with the thought that he was going to die this time. He had been searching for it for so long, that he only realized now how he had been skirting it. It was easy to die in London, but he had been afraid. Not anymore, this time death was surely here for him. And he thought he felt him, circling him, patiently waiting for him to finish getting his punishment, and he was thankful to see him at last.
But in the next instant, he felt himself being hoisted up, and he wondered idly if he was to be deposited in the Thames. That would be fitting, he decided. To wash up on the shores of some place that was not his home, as he had stopped belonging there long ago. But the hoist wasn't cruel, in fact, it was rather gentle. Sam leaned against the boy beside him, and he knew the body to be male, by the broad shoulders supporting him. He let himself be dragged to the wall, and felt himself fall against it, sitting down, his body hunched over, tired and broken, and he was still not finished. Still undone, but still alive, and he felt tears come only then. Miserably, they fell from his eyes, as he yearned for a death that would not come for him. Through the mask of his pain, he saw a blurred shape kneel in front of him. "Oh Kurt. I have been watching you. All you really need is the courage for life." The shapes voice was soothing, yet dark, and velvety, and smelled of uniformed normalcy, but also of London, as everyone did. Kurt did not speak in reply, but only watched as he waited for the death that was sure to come.
He could feel himself bleeding inside, this man hadn't come swiftly enough to save him, and after a moment, his brain asked what had happened to the boys that were doing him such a favour, but found he couldn't bring himself to care too much about it. It was if his body had finally decided to let him die as his heart already had, and for once he felt an inkling of hope, waiting for the light that would take him home at last. He shut his eyes, waiting to see his father again. The smell of oils following him where ever he went, which came from his job as an inventor. And Carol, who had expected him of his, fancies all along, but had enjoyed his company none-the-less. And Finn who had broken his heart more than a few times, but he still chased like a bee tapping at the glass panes at the churchyard.
He felt himself slipping away, as he slowly slid down the wall further, falling into filth and more filth, staying out of the sun forever. He closed his eyes then, the effort of keeping them open far too much for him. But as he went he heard only one thing, "Oh no, you won't be going anywhere," and suddenly there was a warmth in his neck, and the reaction to the sharp pain only came later. It was as if someone had stuck him there with a needle, no, two of them, and he felt himself tire further, until he feared he would be an empty shell soon, to match his empty mind. Then there was a tearing sound, and the pain was gone. Warm rain fell on his lips reflexively he licked it away, only to find that it was not rain at all, but something inexplicable, a taste so rare that it filled his thoughts. It tasted of the summers before the plague had happened, and suddenly he wanted more. Trying to find the source, he reached up, and found a welling of the rain on a cold limb. Taking it into his mouth, he drank hungrily from the spring until suddenly he felt it being pulled from his hand.
Perhaps it had been his initiation into heaven, or perhaps it had been his entrance into hell, because nothing so sweet could bode so well for him. Nothing ever had. But as soon as the source of elixir was gone, he felt a deep pain start somewhere inside of him, and roar through his insides, making him convulse, the pain worse than that of the beating he had taken earlier. It roared through, him, making his breath come faster, and his heart beat less and less and less until it stopped all together, and finally, he had gotten what he had wanted. His heart was no longer beating. But there was strangeness to this death, it did not feel right, it felt as if he was more alive than ever before.
He looked up then, opening his eyes to the night sky, and instantly crowing in wonder at the dazzling lights that looked as if they had been relit after years of slowly dimming. He turned his head to see a the wall beside him now, and couldn't help but stare at all the new patterns that he saw in the rock. The smell of filth was suddenly overpowering him, and he quickly sprang up, too quickly, but he was fine, poised and balanced, and all his bruises were gone.