Disclaimer: I don't own Glee, it's characters, or anything else involved in it. Nor do I claim to own any locations that will make an appearance later on in the story; I only own Grace Karofsky.

Author's Note: It took me a little over two weeks to research for this story (which is an on-going process) and to write this prologue. Every few chapters or so will be told in alternating POVs from various people close to Kurt and Dave, as well as the two of them themselves. It is highly unlikely it's going to have any (or any long-lasting) non-angsty/dark scenes for a while, so be warned. It's canon up until 2x08, and will probably be AU from 2x09 on.

This story is unbeta'd.

Edited for minor fixes 12/10/2010.

Enjoy. :)

Until the Sun Shines Again

...

Prologue

...

"When it is dark enough, you can see the stars."
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

If someone were to describe Grace Karofsky, they would tell you that she was a proud mother of a son and daughter – one in high school, the other in college – and was a loving, devoted wife to her husband. They would say that her children were some of the most well-behaved, well-mannered children that they'd ever had the pleasure of meeting, and must have been the types to not rebel or act out due to the overwhelming love they received at home. They would say that she was the perfect mother, the perfect wife, the woman that women everywhere should model themselves after.

To an extent it was all true- she loved her children more than anything else in the world, and her husband just as much. She was a hard worker that took nothing for granted and took special care of the people around her. She was kind, caring, and lovable; she had a good family, lived in a good part of town, had a good job...by all rights her life was absolutely perfect without a flaw in sight.

But her life was far from perfect and it was only a matter of time before the other shoe fell.

And fall it certainly did.

When she had returned home that fateful day, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Her husband was still at work as usual (he started and ended work two hours after her) and David was at hockey practice, which didn't end until 5, still half-an-hour away. Or, rather, he should have been at practice, but as it was, she would soon find out, he never managed to make it there.

With a long-winded sigh she set the groceries she had gotten on the table and walked over to the phone hanging on the wall, whose incessantly blinking red light alerted her that messages awaited her attention. Deftly she pushed the 'play' button before she returned to the groceries' side to put them away, her attention only half pinned on what the answering machine was reciting back to her.

There were two messages.

The first was from her husband informing her that he'd be late coming home and that she needn't set aside any dinner for him, and that he loved her (they've been married for 20 years now and that still brought a girlish smile to her lips).

The second message, however, made her pause with what she was doing and stare in confusion at the phone as if it were more than an automated message sent from...David's school of all places.

"This is the William McKinley High School Attendance Office, calling to inform you that your child, David Karofsky, was absent or tardy for one or more periods."

The rest of the message (something about a contact number if she had any questions about her son's absence or tardy) flew past her head as she sat down heavily into one of the chairs at the table. Tears sprung to her eyes- would she ever have any respite from her son's recent – as of a couple of months ago, as far as she remembered – turn toward misbehavior? It was something she'd rather not think about but was forced to on a daily basis, ever since he got argumentative and confrontational. He used to be a well-behaved, caring boy too...

A noise caught her attention from the direction of the stairs, instantly making her apprehensive. A chilling thought interrupted her worries about her son: what if someone had broken into the house?

Cautiously Grace stood and slid the chair back under the table where it initially hadn't been, then tip-toed her way to the phone. Quietly she removed it from the charging port, and, finger on the first number in 911 just in case it was an emergency, she slowly made her way to the stairs. When she arrived at the base of the stairs, she couldn't spot anything out of the ordinary, and, deciding that she would learn nothing by staying where she was, carefully – slowly – made her way up, pausing every couple of steps to listen for any noises that were strange to hear in a house that was supposed to have been empty aside from her. When she reached the top nearly two minutes later she stopped and surveyed her surroundings.

The doors leading to all the bedrooms were closed as they were supposed to be, as were the doors that led to the closet at the end of the hall and the bathroom. Nervously she let out a sigh – maybe she had just been hearing things? – and turned to go back down the stairs when she froze, gaze locked on the light streaming through the crack under the bathroom door that definitely shouldn't have been there. With panic rushing through her veins she quickly took the few steps to the nearest room, opened the door, practically throwing herself inside, and shut it behind her, all the while praying that whoever it was in the house with her hadn't noticed.

Her hands shook as she locked the door with one and held the phone up to her ear with the other, her finger poised over the '9' as she readied herself to make the call. She turned and put her back against the door as she hit the '9' followed by one of the '1's before she paused and took in what lay before her. Momentarily – and it truly was only for a moment – did she forget just why she had gone into that room in the first place when her gaze landed on a backpack that shouldn't have been there, along with David's cell phone and iPod (things he professed to never leave behind whenever he'd leave the house). Puzzled, Grace glanced down at the door handle to make sure she had indeed locked it before she walked over to the cell phone and picked it up, the other phone held forgotten in her other hand.

Hesitantly (she always hated breaking her children's privacy) she unlocked it and was greeted with a notification of "5 Unheard Voice Mails" and another notification of "4 Unread Messages". Curiosity getting the better of her, she ignored the messages and immediately went to the voice mail. An angry voice greeted her.

"Where the fuck are you man? Practice started like half an hour ago! Coach is fucking pissed at you! Get your ass over here!"

Followed by another, sent not even five minutes after the first, from what sounded like the same person:

"Goddamnit Karofsky! Answer your fucking phone! Coach is gonna have your ass if you don't hurry the fuck up and get here!"

The third from a different person, this one much calmer:

"Karofsky, man, seriously, you need to get here. Coach's gonna make our practices longer if you don't at least call the guy to tell him why your ditchin' out on us!"

The fourth one from a voice she recognized as being Coach Jones, David's hockey coach:

"Dave, I don't know what's going on but I'm starting to get worried about you. It's not like you to skip practice – and school, if what your teammates are telling me is correct – and even less like you to not inform me about your absence. Please call back- we've been trying to get a hold of you for nearly 15 minutes now."

The fifth and final voice mail only contained three words:

"Fuck you, man."

With that the messages ended.

Stunned, Grace ended the call and put the phone back on David's desk, her hand going slack as soon as she released it. David...hadn't gone to practice. David...hadn't gone to school, a fact only reinforced by what his coach ended up letting out. His stuff didn't look like they had changed location much since that morning now that she thought about it, a thought that replaced the previous feeling of fear with red-hot anger.

While feeling absolutely ridiculous for being afraid just moments earlier, she turned back toward the door, unlocked it, and roughly threw it open before she practically stormed across the way to the bathroom. Angrily she pounded on the door. "David Karofsky, if you're in there get out here now!"

A few moments of silence followed by more pounding and yelling yielded no results. Her anger only escalating further, Grace grabbed the door knob and turned it, surprise running through her at the realization that it wasn't locked. David always locked the door to the bathroom, a habit he had acquired ever since his sister started playing pranks on him when he was still in elementary school. Suddenly unsure about what she'd find – David wasn't hurt, was he? – she slowly opened the door and froze with a loud gasp as the phone she was holding clattered loudly to the floor.

David – her son, her baby – was sprawled on his side across the bathroom floor, entire body limp and unmoving. Near him was the bottle of Tylenol that she had bought not 4 days ago, mostly empty from what she could see with a couple pills laying outside of it. Terror shot through her as she fell to her knees, her hands barely reaching out in time to catch her fall against the linoleum tiles below her.

"David?" She called out weakly, her voice going hoarse from fear as she hesitantly crawled forward toward her child. With each movement tears sprung to and fell from her eyes. Shakily she called out again. "H-honey? David, t-this isn't funny!"

"...David?" She was close enough now that she could reach out and touch her son, but she refrained from doing so out of fear of discovering something that she didn't want to acknowledge. "Davie? Honey, answer me! Tell me you can hear me!"

And suddenly she was upon him, shaking his prone body, with tears running freely down her face and eyes wide with emotion. "David! Please, answer me!" Sobs racked her body as she shook her son harder, his seemingly lifeless body moving easily with the motion. "Please David...please wake up!"

Hiccuping mixed itself with her cries as she fell onto her son, her arms wrapping themselves around his still-warm body. Her son was...her son was...

Before her mind could fill in the blank with her worst fear, a soft voice reached her ears.

"...Mom?"

Grace froze. No...it couldn't have been, could it...?

And then again:

"...Mom? It hurts..."

She pushed herself off her son with a gasp and rolled him onto his back. There looking up at her with half-lidded eyes, face twisted in pain, was her very much alive son. "David!" Her expression turned to one of worry as her son's words hit her. "What hurts, honey? What happened?"

David grunted in pain, his body curling in on itself as tears leaked out of the corner of his eyes. "It...h...urts...it wasn't sup...posed...to hurt..."

Her eyes widened further in panic. "What wasn't supposed to hurt? Davie, you're not making sense!"

"Ty...le...nol..." With that last word her son went limp once more as he faded back into unconsciousness.

"David! Wake up!" Her body trembled as she sat back on her haunches, mind racing. "What about the Tylenol? David! David!"

And then it hit her like a ton of bricks. The almost empty Tylenol bottle, her son laying unconscious – dead? No, she couldn't think that way – on the floor...

With a strangled cry she grabbed the phone that had been laying there forgotten and fought to push those three simple numbers that would save her son's life.

He would make it; he had to.

Author's Note: So there's that. Updates will be slow, maybe once a week but more than likely longer, since I'm putting more effort into this story than any other that I've written, and 'coz I've not written anything like this (or anything at all, really XD) in a while. That's all ya need to know about updates, but if you're interested in the background of the story (in a nutshell), go ahead and continue reading this long A/N XD

So, as I said in my first A/N, it took be about 2 weeks to get to this point. Ever since Dave kissed Kurt – like everyone else XP – I've been thinking about just what goes on in that head of his. Around that time I was also researching about drug overdose (acetaminophen, in this case) and how in-patients at psychiatric hospitals (or, at least, the psychiatric ward that most hospitals have) are treated compared to out-patients. And, well, sometime along the line these suicide fics started popping up and I started to think about Dave attempting suicide but failing, and then my research and the idea kinda merged into...this. Surprisingly enough 2x08 actually helped my story rather than hindered it, which I found kinda funny XD

Just a couple more points before I shut up XP

1- I don't know if Dave and Kurt will get together in this fic. I am writing this story as a Dave self-acceptance/healing/redemption story, so Kurt's only marginally involved in like 75% of the story (hence why I didn't use a character tag for Kurt) XD This is going to be a long one, so by the end they may be friends or something more, but as I said that's not the focus so I have no idea right now haha

2- Just to get this out of the way XP I don't ship Kurtofsky, but I don't not ship Kurtofsky either. I do, but I don't. I'm gonna wait before putting all my eggs into one basket haha

And finally, please review! :)