Disclaimer: I don't own Glee... but I can still write Kurt angst :D

Sorry for the wait. Not quite happy with this chapter, but went with it.

"Wasn't so long ago that you and I were here. Only you were the one rambling in the chair, and I was the one in the bed. Remember that? It was so good seeing you when I woke up. Somewhere in my head, I was worrying about you. But you were right there when I opened my eyes, you were waiting for me. You know I'll wait for you, right? You know I'll do whatever it takes, I'll do anything, to see you okay again. You and me, that's what it's always been. I'll go to the ends of the earth to make you better."

Beep.

"I'm right next to you, you know. You know I won't give up on you, no matter what happens. And the doctors say that maybe, if things get bad, they might have to... Well, if it comes to that, if something goes wrong in that head of yours, it won't matter to me. I won't think of you differently. I'll just take you back home, and we'll sit down and watch something together. Chicago, that's one of your favourites. I know half the words to that god-damn thing, the number of times you've had it on."

Beep.

"It's not just me, you know. There's a hell of a lot of people who want to see you back on your feet. Seriously, I'm expecting a call from that club of yours any second. Mercedes is still texting Carole. I'm guessing they'll be in here as soon as they can, singing something for you. Better have some good news for them next time Mercedes calls, right? Don't want to be keeping her up all night."

Beep.

"Wish they didn't have to make you so damn cold, you know. Hope it doesn't mess up your skin routine, huh? You'd hate that, wouldn't you? Sound like a lunatic, muttering away to myself here. It's okay if you can't hear me. If you can, though, I'm here for you. I gotcha, okay?"

Beep.

"Can you hear me, kid? Please say you can hear me. Just give me something, just squeeze my hand or something, because I'm falling apart here. I'm a mess. I just need you to give me some kind of sign that you're gonna be okay."

Beep.

"I'm holding your hand. I'm right here."

Beep.

"Kurt?"

The curtain twitched open suddenly, and Burt Hummel looked up sharply, his grip automatically tightening on Kurt's hand. Every time those curtains opened, he was certain that a surgeon would appear. He was certain that they would start coming at his son with silver instruments, ready to drill into his skull. But it was Carole who slipped into their small cubicle, her eyes ringed with darkness, her face strained. She smiled at him, crossed to the bed.

"How's he doing?" she murmured.

Burt jerked one shoulder in a shrug. It was clear just how Kurt was doing. His skin was covered in a thin sheen of cold sweat, his body was shaking violently, his eyes were roving madly beneath their lids. His hair was plastered to his forehead, his skin translucent. His clammy fingers were limp in Burt's hand. It was as if he had already been pulled into another world, a world that Burt couldn't reach, a world that might soon claim him forever...

"Doctor Ansten said maybe you should have a break."

Burt huffed a mirthless laugh. "No."

"Just come and get a coffee from the machine. Stretch your legs a little."

"Carole-"

"I'm not asking you to abandon him, just to remember that you're only human, and that it's four in the morning." She held his gaze, steady, calm. "Two minutes."

Burt sighed heavily, and then squeezed Kurt's hand. "I'm coming right back," he said softly. "Don't you worry, okay?"

He paused, as if waiting for a reply. Carole reached for his arm, and eventually he heaved himself to his feet and shuffled with her out into the corridor. The bright lights of the hospital bored into his eyes, drilled into his head. He drifted aimlessly after Carole, passing others like himself, others who had the same empty gaze and heavy limbs. He went with Carole to the machine at the end of that long, silent corridor. She pressed the buttons and put in the money; he simply watched. He felt suddenly like a child himself, completely lost, terrified of every stranger that passed him by. She stood back while the machine gurgled and poured, turned to face him.

"How're you doing?"

He shook his head. "How's Finn?"

She shook her head, and then pushed both hands over her face. "It'll all be all right," she said quietly, almost to herself. "It has to be."

He stared at the coffee. His throat had suddenly grown tight, as if he had just swallowed something too big to eat. He swallowed, blinked hard through stinging eyes. "What if it's not?"

She seemed to know that there was no answer for that. So she put her arms around him, and he clenched his fists in her cream jacket and breathed in her scent and tried to stop sobbing.

Kurt had walked the length of the corridor and back again so many times that he had lost count. He had hammered on the great doors and screamed until his voice was hoarse and his knuckles bled. He had screamed for help, clawed at the lockers, searched every inch of the place for a phone or a hammer, or something... And always, there was nothing. Nothing at all, no signal of hope. Every classroom he entered revealed nothing but the things he wished never to think of again. He felt again every biting insult, every blazing punch just like the first time. He cried for a little while, hot tears that hurt to weep. He knew that he was panicking, but he didn't care. He just wanted out.

He had no idea what was wrong, or what had happened to him. He didn't know how long he had been in the school. And worst of all, he didn't know why nobody was coming to help him.

The ice on the floor made it hard to shove at the end doors. The voices ringing through the building made it hard to think of something else to do. When he closed his eyes, all he could see was a blinding whiteness. And his nose wouldn't stop bleeding, no matter what he did. He had stopped trying to wipe it away. The heat of blood on his lip at least gave him something to hold onto, some feeling that would confirm that he was still thinking clearly. That he wasn't going insane. Because that, really, was the only possible answer to everything that was happening to him. He must have at last been driven over the edge by all the bullying.

He had sat down in the corner near the main doors, unable to do anything else to escape and hoping that he might hear someone outside and call for help. Even though he was almost completely certain that there was nobody outside, nobody looking for him. Outside, there was only that blazing whiteness. He had also put his hands over his ears to block out all the shouting that was going on. Maybe that was why he didn't notice when everything went quiet, and that other sound started up. A strange sound that seemed to pulse through his very body, steady and insistent, repetitive, endless... a sound he had a strange feeling had been there for a very long time, but that he just hadn't quite noticed before... He lowered his hands and lifted his head, sniffing, frowning at the sound. A beeping. Like an alarm clock, but a little quieter. Something that could either tick him away to sleep or prey on his mind. He sat motionless for a few minutes longer, and then slowly rose to his feet.

Just go and look. Has to be better than just sitting here...

He began to walk, passing by the closed doors of the classrooms he had already been in. He ignored them now. He followed the sound, drawn by some invisible string, driven to it. His head was beginning to throb with agony, but he tried to close himself off to it. Something very important was connected with that sound. There was something important that he was missing, something he had forgotten or failed to notice. Something that would explain everything. He followed the corridor, his pace quickening as he recognised the route he was taking. He was walking towards the canteen. It had to be the canteen, because something had happened there very recently, something he just couldn't quite remember. He was almost running by the time he reached those big blue double doors. He put both hands on them, and then froze.

He took a deep breath. He tried to steady his nerves. His hand slid down the wood, closed over the handle, and then pushed.

The door slid open noiselessly, smoothly, easily, and gave way to a completely different world.

A hospital bed, sectioned off on its own by a curtain the exact same shade of blue as the doors of the canteen. A bed surrounded by bleeping machines that hissed and whirred quietly, gently. It was dark, the lights turned down, the sheets lit mostly by the green glare of the monitors. In the bed was somebody that might once have looked like Kurt. Somebody little more than a body that flinched and twitched, a shivering wreck hooked up to IV lines and wires, a broken puppet tangled in its own strings. He moved closer, stopped short of the bed. He couldn't believe that the person in that bed was himself, even though that person looked just like him... but it couldn't be. His skin wasn't tinged grey like that, his eyes couldn't possibly be that sunken and dark. He couldn't look that fragile, that breakable. And yet...

When that person breathed, when that person's pants clouded the plastic oxygen mask, Kurt was breathing icy air. When Kurt held his breath, that person stopped breathing. When Kurt blinked, the person's eyelids clenched slightly. It couldn't be him... it couldn't...

The curtain flew back, and Kurt flinched violently. And then tensed as his heart juddered to a halt in his chest. The person who had suddenly ducked into the small, curtained cubicle was not Finn, was not his father, was not even Carole. It wasn't Mercedes. It was a tall, muscular boy wearing a red and yellow football jacket. It was a boy Kurt had expected never to see again, especially after their last violent meeting in a cold, damp back yard...

Karofsky looked almost as bad as the body in the hospital bed. His forehead shimmered with tiny beads of sweat and his jaw was working furiously as he dragged the curtain closed, shielding himself from prying eyes. Kurt stared as he listened for anyone that might have seen him, unable to believe what was going on before his eyes. This wasn't a past memory. This couldn't be real. But if it was real, then that body in the bed was him, and Karofsky had sneaked into the hospital to... to do what?

"Did it," Karofsky muttered breathlessly.

"Get out. You're not... I don't want you here." Kurt's own voice sounded strange. Echoing, unreal, distant. He raised it all the same. "D'you hear me? Get away from me!"

Karofsky wasn't looking at him. He was looking down at the person in the bed, his eyes wide, his lips pressed tightly together. His hands had clenched into fists. Kurt didn't recognise that expression on his face, didn't know how to read it, didn't know what it meant. And that scared him, because usually Karofsky only sneered when he looked at Kurt, only smirked or curled his lip in disgust at the sight of him.

"What're you going to do?" he said, knowing by now that Karofsky couldn't hear him.

"Hummel," Karofsky mumbled. "You're... oh god. I never meant for this. I never wanted this to happen to you. I just got so angry..."

He paused, rubbed a hand across his mouth. Kurt gazed at him, not daring to speak, unable to conceive what he was listening to. Karofsky didn't talk like this. Karofsky didn't speak in a voice that shook and sounded as if it was about to give way to tears. And yet here he was.

"Thought you might be lying when you said about brain injury. But you looked so bad. You looked like... I dunno. You scared me. But I heard about what happened at school, and I thought if I don't say it now, I might not get another chance. If I don't explain..."

He broke off, shutting his eyes. Kurt took a step closer, intrigued despite himself. Explain? What was that supposed to mean? Explain what? Karofsky was chewing on his lip. When he spoke again, his voice was even quieter.

"I didn't want to believe it because it didn't fit. I'm not a fag, I don't prance around singing like you do. I had my whole future worked out, and being... that... wasn't a part of it. Only then you came along, and every time I looked at you I felt... you must know. You must know how you make me feel, how you screw around with my head. When you're around, I can't think straight. And I wanted to punish you for destroying everything I was supposed to be..."

God, the words coming out of Karofsky's mouth... Kurt couldn't stop staring at him. He felt like he was intruding on something private, something he wasn't supposed to hear. Nobody was supposed to hear this. But he couldn't move, couldn't leave. Karofsky's face was taught, his eyes slightly red, his shoulders trembling with each heavy breath out. Every sentence came in a hesitant rush.

"I hated you. I thought if I destroyed you, it would all stop. I thought I could make it stop. But every time you just kept fighting, you kept coming back. I wanted your strength, your confidence, I wanted to be able to stand up for myself like you could. But all I could do was tear at you..."

Kurt dragged himself forwards. His head was spinning. Everything was beginning to turn foggy. Not yet, he thought desperately. I have to hear this. I can't stop now, I have to...

Karofsky had moved closer to the bed. He reached out suddenly, the movement clumsy and abrupt, and put his hand on top of the white, still one on the bed. Kurt stiffened. He didn't want Karofsky to touch him, no matter what he said.

"I'm going to turn myself in, Kurt," the footballer said quietly, his voice shaking. "I'm going to do it for you. I'll turn myself in if you promise you'll wake up. And for what I did to you... Maybe one day you'll be able to forgive me."

He stepped back suddenly, releasing his hand. Kurt's head was hurting so much, burning, searing, and whiteness was closing in all around him. And somewhere nearby he could hear that golden laughter that haunted his dreams like a prayer. If he just followed that sound, maybe he could find some release from all this pain, all this horror... He could just make out the dark shadow of Karofsky, still standing beside that hospital bed, shoulders slumped, beaten. Instinctively, Kurt took a few stumbling steps closer, reached out one hand. If he could touch the footballer, physically touch him, then it all had to be real. His fingertips brushed against the jacket, felt the warm skin of his hand - and then Karofsky suddenly turned on his heel and hurried away, vanishing from sight into the whiteness. Kurt stood motionless, unable to breathe.

I'll turn myself in if you promise you'll wake up...

Kurt pressed both hands over his ears, shut his eyes tightly, and still the white glare persisted. The laughter was growing distant. His head roared with agony, and he felt his legs give way beneath him. But he never hit the floor. He couldn't even move any more. All he wanted was to follow that laughter, those sounds from his childhood, where maybe he would find peace at last. He didn't want to have to hold on any more. He wanted to let go.

"I'm back, Kurt. You okay?"

He winced at the voice. It was too loud, hard to understand. He wanted to ignore it but with every second the whiteness was receding. His body was growing leaden, terrible shudders ripping through him, his skin prickling. He was so cold, so heavy, so tired... Why was it so hard to breathe? God, he wanted it all to stop. The voice was still talking, but everything had become muted... he had nothing but the feeling of the cold plastic on his face, the pain in his head and side, the freezing cold. A hot touch on his hand, calloused skin pressing against his own.

"Please, Kurt. There's only a few hours left. Just try, please, just give us something..."

He knew that voice. He knew who that was. Only he had rarely heard his father sound so broken, so helpless. Something had to be terribly wrong for him to sound like that. Kurt wanted to ask him what was going on, but he couldn't speak. His lips refused to move, and his throat was so dry that nothing could escape it but breathy rasps.

"The Doctor's coming to see you again soon. Doesn't think there's much hope. I just can't lose you like this Kurt, not like this. I wasn't there for you when you needed me. I need you to stay with me, I need... come on, Kurt, just... just..."

He tried to reply, but it didn't work. His voice had shrivelled into nothing. Something thin and reedy that didn't qualify for human speech.

"Kurt?"

The hand had tightened on his. Kurt managed to twitch his fingers, the mammoth effort leaving him exhausted. The voice yelped, grew louder.

"Kurt! It's okay, I'm right here, I'm right next to you..."

"Daauh..."

Did that sound come from him? That wasn't a word, just a jumble of vowels. Either way, to his father it seemed to mean the world. The next moment he was yelling, tears choking his voice, the pressure of his fingers wrapped around Kurt's the only thing anchoring him to reality.

"Nurse! He's trying to call for me, I heard him! And look, he's holding my hand, look!"

Another voice, softer, small hands pulling at his eyelids. He flinched away from the bright torch angled into his face, clenched his eyes shut. Too loud, too sudden. More voices now, everybody speaking at once, asking him to squeeze their hands or open his eyes. All of them felt so hot against his own skin. He cracked his eyes open blearily, saw a bright orange tie swing out of sight. Ansten? What? He couldn't see much else, everything was too hazy.

"Daah," he heaved out, the word scratching past his lips.

"Right here, right here, kid, don't you worry..."

And then, all at once, everything was falling away from him at an alarming speed - the bed, the people, the voices... the only thing that remained was Burt's tight grip. Kurt let himself lose it. He had a feeling it was okay to let go now, somehow scheduled in his life for him to sleep. He would be happy to sleep for years if he got the chance. The last thing he heard was his father, sobbing as he spoke, his voice shaking with sheer relief.

"It's gonna be okay, he's gonna be okay... oh god, Carole, he did it..."

He wasn't sure what that meant, but it didn't really seem to matter. He was too tired to care. So he slipped into darkness and let himself stop trying at last.

Hope you enjoyed Karofsky's scene. Hard to work out how he acts when nobody is watching him. Hmm.

Reviews are welcome.

SUPRNTRAL LVR.