Limits

Summary: Taken from a prompt on the Glee Angst Meme. Burt Hummel's dead, Kurt Hummel's doing his best to stay under the radar of Child Services, and the bullying is quickly bringing him to the end of his steadily shortening rope. The tiny, unused razor in the jewelry box seems to agree with that assessment. So it is really any wonder that when he catches sight of a blue police box left open just a crack that he would run inside?

Disclaimer: Nope. No, no, no.

AN: Yeah okay, so if you keep up with the Angst Meme, you'll have probably seen this before. My eternal apologies. This is my first foray into Who fic and I wasn't initially going to take this prompt, but in the end I really couldn't resist. Please regard me kindly.

It was a strange feeling that was becoming more familiar by the day.

Kurt Hummel had finally begun to liken it to the feeling of drowning, if one could drown over the space of several months. It was a constant feeling of being dragged under, inch by critical inch. Every so often, his head broke the surface, just long enough for him to grab a quick and hasty, panicked breath before the fingers around his ankles tightened and pulled.

Burt Hummel had never woken up and had in fact been deceased for exactly three months.

Like Kurt thought every time he woke or made the futile effort to settle down to sleep:

Drowning.

Like the tides and waves along the shore it was also like a push and pull, steadier and more regular than anything else in his life right then.

It shouldn't have been so easy. Every time Child Services began sniffing around, Kurt pleaded and begged in a distant relative and for just a day or a few hours while the officials hung around, Kurt had enough of a family to throw them off. Just enough.

It wouldn't work forever, he knew that.

It wouldn't be too long before they got suspicious again and Aunt Mildred wouldn't be able to make it (the potpourri-scented, alcoholic old bag) or one of the mechanics would realize that his only superior was Kurt and that there were laws against that sort of thing. When that time came, Kurt knew that he wouldn't have a choice but to come up with another plan. He couldn't lose this. He couldn't lose his home and the shade of a life that he'd picked up from the broken pieces left on the floor.

Kurt Hummel had already lost his father and was well on the way to losing himself.

He wouldn't lose his home too.

"Kurt, you want to stay the night with me?" Mercedes asked, sidling close to bump her friend gently with her shoulder, "Your aunt wouldn't mind, would she?"

Kurt forced a smile and shook his head.

It was the only thing that would ever work.

Icy replies and cold looks would never work on Mercedes, never in a thousand years. She knew him too well and loved him far too much and while someone like Puck or Tina might cringe at such a tactic, she never would. Not before either, but certainly not after the heart monitor had slowed and stilled and Kurt had hurled the entire I.V. at the nurses.

He'd been screaming.

He'd screamed at the doctors for failing him and for failing the only person in the world who'd never failed him. He'd screamed at the nurses, the orderlies, the paramedics, the EMT's.

He'd screamed at Mercedes too and had asked her, harshly and with tears slipping down his cheeks, where her God was now. She'd fallen to her knees and wept. He hadn't broken her beliefs, but that hadn't been his purpose. Kurt hadn't had a purpose; his mouth and his eyes had been the only usable gateway for the anger and hurt that had spilled out of him and back into him, a horrible cycle that he hadn't been able to break.

She'd seen him at his worst; spines would never have worked. Easiness, however, was a tactic that Kurt had never used before now and it worked with a vengeance. If Kurt hadn't been standing in a hallway, struggling for breath, he might have felt guilty.

If Kurt Hummel ever felt human again, ever had room for something other than pain, he'd definitely feel guilty.

Mercedes turned away from him then, unsuspecting. Kurt's smile twisted and went bitter as he watched her back, watched her retreat. Retreating from him. She probably didn't even know that that was what she was doing but he did. He'd planned it, forced it. God, he loved her but if she knew…

If she knew, Kurt knew that all of those pieces that he'd gathered of his life and clutched to his chest would drop and they'd be smaller than they were even now.

A sudden hand thrust into his vision and shoved.

Kurt's back hit the locker and he imagined that he could feel the numbers being written into his skin, hot and sharp.

"Morning, faggot."

And Kurt drifted.

The nights were awful.

The physical pain only came in the daytime because no one in the world could be scared off by Burt Hummel anymore and Sue Sylvester couldn't be around all the time, but Kurt much preferred it to the nights, where the shadows were so deep and dark. Sleep was always far away and always restless. Peace never came, only fear and anger and bad dreams where nothing went right. He'd give anything, absolutely anything he owned for a dream in which Burt Hummel had opened his eyes.

Kurt was so tired of being angry.

Sometimes he thought that he hurt so much that he thought that there couldn't possibly be any room left for anger, but it was always there anyway. It was always there, bubbling just underneath the surface, just under his skin, just under him and what was left of Kurt.

But Kurt Hummel always had a backup plan.

Whenever the anger got just a little too potent, he'd reach under his pillow and pull out a jewelry box. It had once held his mother's wedding band long ago but he'd buried that with his father; he'd deserved it much more than Kurt ever had or ever would. Now it held a tiny, unadorned straight razor.

Kurt had never used it on himself, not like most people who had razors did, but he used it in another way. Sometimes he'd just sit there on his bed and run long, shaking fingers over the sides and think. If he hadn't cut into himself yet, that meant that he was still strong enough. Strong enough for what he wasn't sure, but strong enough. As long as he was bearing his fangs to the world around him and not taking them to himself, he could still do it. He was still Kurt.

He still wanted to make the world burn, long and slow and hot, because he didn't know for how much longer he could stand the cold.

There was really only so much that a person could take on. Kurt knew this, knew it when his body protested the impact of metal. He knew it when the top of the dumpster closed down on him and wouldn't budge when he shoved at it because Karofsky and Azimio were sitting on it. He knew it when he'd finally begun to cry and scream, throwing himself against the walls and pounding his fists on anything he could reach until he bled. Kurt heard them laughing the whole time.

Finally, his vision went white and fuzzy and he sat down, right on top of a bag of day-old banana peels from breakfast and old spaghetti from lunch. Kurt didn't know if he was shaking or if the world was shaking but nothing held still.

When the lid finally lifted (how long had it been, hours or days?) and light poured in, Kurt recoiled from it until hands reached in and hauled him out.

He knew those hands but he didn't trust them, didn't trust any of them, and the moment his feet hit pavement, Kurt was off like a shot. He had more stamina than Will Schuester had ever had and it wasn't hard to outpace him.

He could hear the man shouting at his back, heard the concern and the worry and the fear but Kurt didn't stop. Couldn't stop. If he stopped he'd start shaking again and he couldn't do that. Stopping was bad. Stopping would put him right back in the dumpster again.

He saw red jackets and he cross-hopped away from them. They saw him anyway.

"Look, someone pulled the homo out! I think we need to stick him back where he belongs, don't you think?"

Kurt didn't know who spoke and he didn't care. Their faces had blurred to him by now, all but Karofsky's, whose own burned his brain and whose hands left marks on his shoulders and whose lips might have turned him off of kissing forever.

Kurt Hummel had been a Cheerio and if he'd learned anything from it, it was how to outpace, outthink, and outmean an opponent. He utilized that skill, running even after his pursuers breaths went ragged and hoarse because even if they'd slowed they were still following.

"How long you gonna run, lady boy?" they taunted and he didn't bother replying. The old Kurt would have tossed back a snappy comeback even if he would never have been stupid enough to stop running. The old Kurt would have a planned route, a destination. The old Kurt would probably have headed to the choir room or to Coach Sylvester's office or home.

Problem was, old Kurt had died right along with his father and everything he trusted, and this new Kurt was nothing like him.

New Kurt knew that the only thing that waited for him at home was emptiness and the only things he'd find at school were platitudes and pity, thick and nauseating.

Kurt scanned the street, looking for any place that might be safe enough to hide out in and which might have a back door. The convenience store was out, so were the gas station and the grocery and the local McDonald's. But over there, just a little too far away for comfort and nestled up against a fence in an empty lot was a blue, vintage police box that would have been much more at home on an old British movie set.

Kurt didn't know how long it'd been there; he surely would have noticed something like that before now, right? Now that he'd noticed it, it was far too distinctive for anyone with eyes to miss. The footsteps behind him jogged him out of his thoughts, however, and Kurt picked up speed, gunning for the call box.

If he was lucky, he might make it. Kurt hadn't been lucky in a long, long time.

With one last burst of speed, the boy reached the police box. The door was open just the tiniest crack and he wrenched it open to slip inside, slamming the door shut with a resolute thud. Fists pounded on the walls and Kurt sunk to the floor without even looking up to see where he was, back pressed up to the door and his knees folded up to hit his chin.

"What the—who the blazes are you?" A sudden, distinctly British voice asked and Kurt jumped, blue eyes raising up to see… a girl. A blonde hazel-eyed girl was standing in front of him with her arms crossed over her chest, staring at him as if she'd never seen another human being before. And behind her was… holy shit. There was nothing that he might have expected, no tiny, dingy corners and an old phone or a posted paper with numbers to call.

Instead, coiling branches of what looked like coral held up the domed ceiling and holy hell, it was massive. A rounded consol was set in the middle of the room, covered in complicated levers and buttons and blinking lights and connecting up into a glowing tube, and it was absolutely impossible.

"Oi, are you listening to me? How'd you even get in here?"

Oh, the girl was speaking and had kneeled in front of him, trying to peer up into his face. Kurt lowered his head to let his bangs, unstyled and damp with sweat, drift in front of his eyes.

"I opened the door," he muttered.

"But you can't have—I locked it," she insisted.

"Apparently not," Kurt replied faintly, "It was open a crack. I—I'm sorry, I don't know what the hell this is or how the hell this is and if you're going to eat my brain or something –could you not?- I can't really stop you, but can I just sit here for a few minutes until they go away? It shouldn't take long; they're stupid." He didn't look up to see her blink in shock but he did hear her laugh, surprised and boisterous.

"Eat your—I'm not going to eat your brain! A bit morbid, are you?"

"There are people outside who could and would easily kill me and I'm inside a police box that looks like a spaceship. I wouldn't be missed so if you're lying to me and you are going to eat my brain, make it quick."

The girl sighed and rubbed her temples.

"Oh, the Doctor's going to have a fit when he gets a load of this." At her words, Kurt finally chanced a look, hoping that she wouldn't still be staring intently at him. He'd never been lucky and the moment he raised his head, he got a piercing look. "What's that all over your clothes?"

Kurt glanced down at his sleeves and sighed.

"If I'm not wrong, some repulsive mixture of spaghetti and rotten fruit."

The girl cringed.

"Well, this wasn't included in my instructions. Stay in the TARDIS, Rose. I'll be back in a few hours, Rose. Lock the door, Rose," she muttered to herself and Kurt had the distinct impression that she was mocking someone, "Well, I did all those things. Everything else is out of my book." Sighing a bit, she looked him over and for the first time in a long while, Kurt thought about how he must have looked, huddled up in a ball on the floor of what was very likely the spaceship belonging to something (someone?) that ate brains. "Nothing to be done for it now, and I'm certainly not going to throw you back to those brutes outside. Never liked the rude and violent type, myself. Now, before the Doctor gets back and throws his hissy, how about I show you somewhere to get cleaned up a bit? Rotten fruit does nothing to improve your look."

Kurt honestly didn't know what to say in response to that.

For the first time in months he had questions bouncing around in his head. He opened his mouth to speak, fully intending to say that the floor was lovely, thanks, but all that came out was,

"Doctor who? And don't talk about my look when you've got roots showing."

(Fake) Blondie grinned at him.

"If I had ten pence for every time someone asked me that, I'd be as rich as a Sultan, you know?"

Kurt didn't know but he could guess.

"Anyway, he's just the Doctor; best leave it at that. I'm Rose, feel like getting up off the floor?" The girl -Rose, he told himself- rocked to her feet and glanced down at him, extending a hand to him. Kurt just stared at it for a few seconds, wondering about hidden tentacles or claws but finding none. "Hey, I'm human, I promise. And I won't eat you." She waggled her fingers and Kurt finally took her hand, warm and normal underneath his fingers.

"Uh…nice to meet you. I'm Kurt."

Something, whatever this whole thing was, was beginning to catch up with him and Kurt tried desperately not to think about how this was working or why this huge room was inside an old police box. He had a feeling he didn't want to know. He'd try and wash the garbage out of his clothes and hopefully his pursuers would have gotten bored by the time he was done.

Despite Rose's impressions, Kurt wasn't positive that he wanted to stick around long enough to meet this 'Doctor', especially if he was going to be throwing a hissy fit over Kurt's half-falling into his giant box.

By now, Rose had pushed open a door -Lord's hairy balls, it was bigger?- and was beckoning him to follow her down a hallway that seemed to go on forever.

"There's a loo just in here," she informed him, pushing open another door that opened into an admittedly marvelous bathroom. "Take your time."

And then the door closed and Kurt was left in there with all the marble and porcelain inside an old call box. For at least two minutes, all he could do was look around and try to get his bearings back, examining the tub and the toilet and the sink, all of it huge and luxurious. Rose had appeared genuinely shocked that he'd been able to enter when, in all actuality, the door had already been open. In retrospect, Kurt wasn't sure why they opened to the inside when they had rather obvious little pull handles on them, but that was neither here nor there. He didn't even know where he was anymore, much less capable of reasoning out why the doors were wrong.

The hallway was quiet and finally, after steadfastly ignoring his reflection in the large mirror, Kurt began to strip off his clothing, nose wrinkling at the smell.

AN2: Next part coming up soon! Please leave me some feedback if you liked this; I've never so much as breathed in the direction of Doctor Who fic in my life. I take criticism gracefully, I promise. The next chapter will likely be up very soon, as I mostly have to separate my sections and do a final edit on them.