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: Sorry, kids, we've got another super short one, mostly as a lead-in into the next arc of the story. Sorry about that.
Chapter Nine: Intermezzo
There hadn't been a single day in the last six months in which Mercedes Jones hadn't thought about Kurt Hummel at least once. Sometimes, someone would say something and she'd laugh, and then she might cut herself off because Kurt would have found it funny too. Or she'd look at herself in the mirror and ask herself, as she had for the longest time, what Kurt would have said about her outfit.
Sometimes, especially in the beginning, all she'd have to do was the think the words Technicolor zebra and she'd laugh. Then she'd start to cry.
Sometimes he was just there in her head, and every time she thought about him, she was even more aware of the hole in her heart that he'd left.
The day he disappeared, it had been so cold and Mercedes couldn't make herself believe that Kurt had killed himself.
Some people believed that. A lot of people did, actually.
Some people thought he was dead but that he hadn't done it himself, that someone or someones had simply jumped him one day and tossed his body.
Everyone had a story or an opinion and for the first couple of months, Kurt Hummel had become the major story on the news, not because of his disappearance but because of the background behind it.
After he'd disappeared, it had all become so clear. Police had searched the house and investigated relatives and not a single one had been living with him, and whenever Mercedes thought about it, living in that big empty house all by himself without anyone to help him and with nothing but memories to keep him company, it physically hurt. Living by himself, sleeping by himself, running the shop by himself, how much had that hurt?
It had been so obvious, so why had she fallen for it? She'd known Kurt, known him like very few ever would, so why had she fallen for his okays and his smiles when in the back of her mind she had to admit that some part of her had known that they were fake?
She didn't know what she could have done to help him. She thought she'd done everything she could, offered everything, gave every opportunity, so why hadn't it been enough?
In her more rational mental debates, Mercedes could admit that she'd done and tried her best, and it just hadn't been enough. That didn't make it okay or that she didn't feel horrible about it, but she knew that she hadn't just let him slip. At her most irrational, Mercedes felt as if she'd pushed him off the ledge herself, could almost feel the way his shoulders twitched, warm and familiar under her hands right before the shove. According to a professional, feeling that way was common and natural, but that didn't mean that it made it any easier.
Therapy had helped quite a bit.
The weirdest thing about the disappearance of Kurt Hummel wasn't what was but rather what wasn't.
There hadn't been any sign of struggle through the house, and Mercedes had been asked, as someone familiar with the Hummel home, to do a walkthrough and see if anything was off. Nothing had been missing except for the fact that Kurt's entire wardrobe and the contents of his bathroom had gone missing. Not a single photo had been taken, not a single keepsake, not even the bottle of his mother's perfume that she knew he kept on top of his vanity.
His only indicators were the texts he'd sent out to his friends and when the police found Burt Hummel's cell phone in the kitchen drawer, they found one more text that begged for forgiveness.
So really, Mercedes didn't know.
She wanted, more than anything, to believe that somewhere in the world, her best friend was somehow alright. That he'd run away and found somewhere safe that he could heal. That maybe he could be happy again.
Mercedes had to believe that because if he hadn't, there really was nothing fair or right in the world.
The fact that Kurt had told Noah Puckerman that he loved him was what made him absolutely positive that Kurt Hummel had killed himself.
How many times had Puck tossed him? Threatened him, hit him, degraded him, slushied him?
Sometimes, Puck wondered if that tiny, three-word text message hadn't been Kurt's essentially flicking him off for all of that, that he was saying Hey, look at what all you've done to me. But, you know? I love you and I hope you're happy. Go to Hell.
And that more than anything was what had cemented, in Puck's mind, that he really, really was the king of all fuck-ups.
He hadn't bullied Kurt since the past year and he'd come to honest to god like the little pixie because he was sharp and snarky and didn't just roll over at a threat, but it had hit him and hit him hard. Puck had known that he'd lost his dad. He'd known that Kurt was still being bullied.
And what had he done to help him, someone he considered a genuine friend?
Nothing.
Finn had cried for a long, long time.
He didn't know what he thought. Some people were saying that Kurt had killed himself. Some people thought that he'd run away. Some people even thought that someone else had killed him, probably for being gay.
How could Finn know what he thought when there wasn't a single arrow to point him in the right direction?
How could he think anything when, while still mourning Burt, his mother cried endlessly for the boy who'd seemingly followed him?
It got to the point that it had all just made Finn furious because Kurt would probably have become his brother, and all the stories on television were trying to make money off of him and stir the pot. To them, Kurt was the tragic poster child for intolerance and the face of the government letting children slip through the cracks.
They didn't know him at all, didn't know how carefully he chose his clothes to match exactly how he was feeling that day or what he liked to eat for breakfast or how he lit up and smiled when Brittany walked into a room. Finn would regret forever that, minus the last one, he'd never know either.
Rachel was sure that Kurt had been murdered because he was way too strong to have killed himself.
He hadn't been strong at all right before his disappearance, but Kurt had his pride even at his worst and somehow, she just knew that it wasn't something that he would have done.
On the flipside, Rachel was capable of rationality and she knew that there was no way that Kurt could have physically carried his entire wardrobe out of that house. She'd seen his wardrobe; his collection of shoes alone would have broken a couple of moving men.
Foul play didn't explain Kurt's disappearing wardrobe, but hell, it made more sense than suicide because it at least had monetary value; what good would it do Kurt in the afterlife?
The first time Rachel met Blaine was at Sectionals, and all of them were feeling low and unmotivated. Rachel met that boy and knew, knew that Kurt would have liked him. That was what had motivated her to put aside her feelings of competition and introduce herself before they performed, sticking her hand out to grip his tightly. His hands had been large and warm and he'd shaken hers fearlessly, grip firm and shameless.
Kurt would definitely have liked this boy.
Somehow, she'd already failed Kurt.
Maybe if she tried, she could take care of Blaine.
Santana cried once, just once.
She didn't cry when she heard the news of Kurt's disappearance. She didn't cry the next day in glee club when almost everyone else was sobbing like babies. She didn't cry when everyone eventually gave up and held a small, private funeral for him that Mercedes threw a fit over and refused to go to. It wasn't when they won Sectionals and Berry broke down in a tiny, scrunched-in little heap on the stage.
Santana Lopez cried just once, late at night.
She called Brittany who hadn't sounded at all like she had even been sleeping and openly bawled into the receiver, not even hearing the comforting words that filtered through it.
Santana cried only once.
Brittany didn't cry because she knew that Kurt wasn't dead, just gone.
She didn't bother to say this because no one would ever believe her, not even Sanny, but Brittany just knew that her gorgeous and favorite ex-boyfriend was somewhere better and that somewhere was absolutely not the afterlife.
AN2: Once again, my apologies for the brevity. As always, please leave me feedback if you liked this, are liking it, still like, or even if you hate it, that's fine too.