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: Thank you so much for all of your reviews! It really fills me with joy not just to get them, but to see the same people reviewing because it really means that you're enjoying this. Please keep reading!

I'm sorry, this is also shorter than usual. If you've been paying attention, you'll know that I have quite a bit more of this written than I have posted on either here or the Angst Meme, mostly because I don't want to risk losing motivation. This also gives me the advantage of being able to post faster and/or regularly.

Kurt felt sort of like he was floating. Not the fun floating where you felt like a balloon wafting about through the summer sky, but more like one of those diving torpedoes that got tossed in the pool, that were supposed to sink but never did it properly.

He sort of remembered being lifted to his feet and the smell of oil; in retrospect he'd been so dazed that he was surprised that he'd even known his own name at the time.

He remembered being hefted into the living room and sitting down on the couch and there'd been a hand running through his hair that had to have been Rose because the Doctor hugged and held hands but hair carding was something that Kurt associated almost solely with girls. That association held in this case as well. He remembered the Doctor pacing up and down the length of the living room in agitation and he remembered the man kneeling down in front of him, still serious and grim.

He remembered the question, word for word.

"Would you like to leave this place?"

Rose's eyebrows had shot into her hairline.

Kurt remembered his own answer that had come quickly and without hesitation.

"Yes."

Packing was easier with a willing accomplice, even though the Doctor stood in the doorway and sighed heavily as if deeply burdened by the idea of one more person who actually needed to bring things along with them. It was enough to bring his clothes and a few personal things; the lovely birdcage chair would have to stay behind, as would almost everything else in the house. The red rimming Kurt's eyes and settling high on his cheeks had gone unsaid and the sight of Rose staring spellbound into his closet was one that Kurt would remember forever, even longer than he would remember the feeling of removing every article of clothing that he owned. Stacks of pants, shirts, scarves and shoes and more shoes and accessories and so many bow ties were removed from the closet and from his drawers and Rose asked him more than once how in God's name he actually got into those pants and was that a corset?

"Shut up, bad roots. Sam takes better care of his hair than you and I swear he uses lemon juice on it."

"Oi! Are you going to rip on my hair the whole time?"

"No, just until I fix it. And I will."

The Doctor snorted and Rose had glared at him, mouthing 'baldy' under her breath.

Now he stood for the first time in months in the master bedroom, staring at his mother's dresser. He knelt down and opened the drawers for what he was going to consider the last time, tucking his head in and breathing deeply. The perfume scent was heady and familiar and hurt more than it ever had before, and Kurt breathed it in until he couldn't anymore, until the tears hazed his vision again and the tiny box in his pocket felt as heavy as lead.

Standing, Kurt dug his hand into his pocket and pulled it out, running fingers down the velvet surface, stroking it almost reverently.

He popped it open.

The blade was still there, glinting in the mid-morning light that shone in through the window because the lamps had been left on and at some point the bulbs had burnt out. For a while, Kurt just stared at it.

He made up his mind.

The razor slipped out easily and Kurt fiddled with it between his fingers, avoiding the edge. The box went into the middle drawer of his mother's dresser, replacing the blade with the piano key necklace she had always worn. It fit awkwardly because the box was meant for a ring, but Kurt thought his mother would probably have forgiven him for it anyway.

The blade was dropped into the bathroom trash bin.

Kurt didn't change the bulbs, he didn't dust, and he didn't take anything from the room, but when he walked out to join the Doctor and Rose downstairs, the door stayed open.

To: Mercedes Jones
FWD: Artie Abrams, Rachel Berry, Mike Chang, Tina Cohen-Chang, Sam Evans, Quinn Fabray, Finn Hudson, Santana Lopez, Brittany Pierce, Noah Puckerman, Matt Rutherford

I love you.

Sent:
Mon Jan 10, 1:13 pm

To: Dad Cell

Please forgive me for this.

Sent:
Mon Jan 10, 1:15 pm

The doors of the TARDIS closed and the blue box faded.

In the middle of math class, Mercedes and Rachel, sitting next to one another and pretending not to be bored out of their minds each received a text simultaneously. Mercedes flipped her phone open underneath her desk and read the three words, read them over and over again until her eyes began to water for a reason she couldn't pin down and they all blurred together into something that looked and felt suspiciously like a goodbye.

She looked at Rachel the moment Rachel looked at her, brown eyes wide and a little scared because while Kurt was known to drop that word like an emotionally shocking metaphorical warhead, it had never been with her.

Kurt's car wasn't in the school parking lot. He had never come to class that day and wouldn't for the next, or the next or the next. He wouldn't reply when Mercedes texted him back. When the police eventually did a search of his house, the only things that were missing were his clothes and some personal effects.

No struggle, no warning, no body.

No one around town had seen him.

And no one would for a very long time.

The TARDIS could very quickly become his best friend, Kurt had decided upon throwing open the door to the room that, according to the Doctor should probably suit his needs in terms of vanity. He would never be able to have a normal closet again. Ever.

At least not one that didn't have multi-angle mirrors and spiraling hanging bars because those were seriously the coolest things he'd ever seen.

The rules of inhabiting the TARDIS seemed relatively simple.

1) For the love of everything holy, do not go off on your own until you get your bearings. No one likes to think about Adam Mitchell or remember what his pulsing brain looked like.

2) Do not attempt to set the TARDIS on fire.

Kurt was sure that there were more, but he was pretty sure that he could follow those, and he made a mental note to ask Rose about that Adam guy because the Doctor glowered at her and looked like he'd sucked a lemon every time his name came up.

He also tended to resentfully mutter "pretty boy" in a badly done stage whisper.

The boy thought, briefly, that the first stop they made would be somewhere dramatic and meaningful and full of poetic poignancy. That idea lasted until the door opened and he looked out upon the landscape to see a planet that was, in its entirety, an empty, grassy meadow. He might have asked why they were there if not for the fact that Rose had bodily dragged the Doctor out of the TARDIS and had flopped onto the ground.

And now they were both apparently relishing in rolling around in the sun like overgrown cats.

All he could see of Rose sticking out of the tall grass was her hand waving in his direction, beckoning him closer.

"No way am I getting grass stains on this. Do you have any idea of what I paid for it?" Kurt had retorted, gesticulating towards his clothing.

"Two words: magic dryer. Now quit your whining and get over here."

Kurt scowled but eventually the giggling and the desire to see what exactly the Doctor was doing to Rose to get her to swear like that got the better of him and he shrugged off his jacket.

"This had better be the best damn grass in the universe."

Nerves and the newness of the whole situation worked for a while.

For the first few days…nights…well, Rose had gotten into the habit of calling them cycles because there was no day or night in the vortex of time and space, Kurt had actually slept. His brain was too full to do anything else and the inhabitants of the second place they visited had a hostility for anything bipedal that had led to the lot of them running for their lives back to the TARDIS.

Apparently this happened relatively often.

But it was getting harder and harder and Kurt had tired of pacing the perimeter of his bedroom.

He wondered where the Doctor was because the man never seemed to actually need sleep. Surely he had to get some sometime but when that was, Kurt didn't have a clue.

That was how he found himself, three hours into what would be a sleep cycle for normal people, sitting on the floor in the TARDIS' main control room and handing tools down to the Doctor when he asked for them.

"Let me ask you something, kid," the man said conversationally, voice slightly muffled by the metal paneling that currently obscured his face, "Have you always been an insomniac or is it a recent thing? You're pretty used to it."

Kurt cringed just the slightest bit.

The question was discomforting.

"I…I was always a night owl," he started, twisting his hands behind his back, "But I never had sleep issues until…until my mother passed away. I guess I never really grew out of them but I got pretty good at functioning on five or six hours a night. Then when… you know," he couldn't even say it, "I couldn't even do that. My brain just gets stuck on everything and I can't turn it off and I can either lay there forever or get up and do something until I tire myself out."

Like go walking around outside in the middle of winter.

"Hand me that… that thingy with the curvy thingamabob on the end."

"That's a scientific name."

"Quit nitpicking and hand it over."

It was silent for about a minute and Kurt shifted until he was no longer sitting upright but draping himself over the shaft, peering in to where the Doctor was working.

"What is it that you're trying to fix?" he asked, because the Doctor was alternating between actually using the tools and occasionally giving a panel or a chip a swift, openhanded whack.

"A lot of technical mumbo-jumbo that'll go completely over your head."

Kurt scowled and went quiet again, settling for just watching him work.

"Can I ask you something else?" the question came softly, and the boy received an affirmative grunt in reply, "If this is a time machine that can go anywhere… does that mean that we could-?"

"No," the Doctor answered without waiting for the rest, "I know where you're going with this, and no."

"You don't even know what I was going to ask!"

"I know exactly what you were going to ask, I don't need to hear the rest. I won't take you back to try and save your father."

Kurt reeled backwards as if he'd been slapped, wide-eyed and open-mouthed.

"But—!"

There was a clatter and the Doctor hefted himself out of the shaft of the TARDIS, settling down on the floor to look Kurt properly in the eyes.

"No. You need to listen to me. No. And answer me this, what would you hope to accomplish?"

"I could… I could save him. I could…"

"How? He had a heart attack, Kurt. What would you do, go back ten, twenty years and tell him to eat better, to take better care of himself? What would you do that you didn't already do? You could go back and see him in the hospital but you'd run into yourself at his bedside. You could go see him alive and himself one more time, but what would that get you? He's gone—"

"He died disappointed in me!" Kurt exclaimed, voice breaking, "The last thing ever said to me was that he was disappointed in me and that he thought I was better. That I didn't know what was important." The boy clenched his fingers in the hem of his shirt, willing himself with everything he had not to cry. It didn't work very well.

"I never met your father, ever. Not once," the Doctor said lowly, running a hand over his close-cropped hair. His eyes were shadowed. "But even I know that that man loved you. All anyone has to do is look inside that bedroom and then look at you to see it."

A choked sob made its way past Kurt's lips.

"I won't take you back there, not now and not ever. It won't help you. Don't ask me again; I learnt my lesson the last time I did that."

Furiously, Kurt wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and sniffed because while he might be a messed up, broken wreck, he absolutely would not go runny-nosed inside of a time machine and in front of someone who had at least eight-hundred and eighty-some years on him.

And then the Doctor had slid back underneath the floor panels, grabbing Kurt by the ankle and giving it a swift tug.

"Get down here. It might be mumbo-jumbo to you but if you're going to sit and watch, you might as well learn something."

AN2: And there you have it! I hope you all enjoyed, please leave a review if you liked this, or even if you'd rather drop-kick me into the sun for making this story go so slow. Feedback really is a writer's lifeblood.