Hey, hey all! First and foremost I hope you all had an excellent (and safe) Halloween weekend!
Second of all, I got a little (okay, a lot) overeager writing this chapter, which is why it's a million years long but I figured it's better that way, right? Haha.
And just one last thing before I promise I'll shut up. I noticed that there's a little character sub-section for ensemble fics (I believe it's under the tag "New Directions") and I was considering switching this story over to that for accuracies sake, but I wanted to take a poll first cause I know how confused I get when things switch over in the middle of everything and I didn't wanna just spring it on anyone. So let me know what you think.
Gracias everyone, as always you're loved by me on all levels!
Chapter 8
Fractions of a Whole
(Kurt Hummel)
Kurt Hummel didn't even remember anymore what it felt like to have a mother in his life.
In the eight years that it had been since he had been graced with a maternal figure, he had learned to compensate for his loss with a complete regression of any recollection whatsoever towards what it had been like at all, the theory being that it was harder to miss what you couldn't remember having in the first place…
So sure, Kurt Hummel didn't even remember anymore what it felt like to have a mother in his life, but that didn't mean that he didn't remember what it felt like to want one.
For being the hopeless romantic that he was, Kurt had almost ruined the moment in its entirety.
"DAD! Dad, have you seen my moisturizer?" His tiny feet pounded like thunder against the wooden staircase leading upward from his basement bedroom as he screamed at the top of his lungs, his high-pitched soprano tone carrying in a manner that made it so had there been anybody still asleep inside of the Hudson-Hummel house at 6:00 on the morning of Friday, June 4th, 2010, there sure as hell wasn't anymore.
"Dad, I can feel my skin drying with each passing minute, I…" Rounding the corner into the kitchen, he stopped dead in his tracks, finding, rather than his small container of overpriced face soap, something else instead…
The first thing that Kurt had actually noticed was the hideous old used-to-be-red-now-faded-to-pink apron tied carefully across the back of Burt's neck, stained hopelessly with crusted pancake batter and frayed with numerous burn holes reminiscent of all of the times that he'd stood too close to the griddle as he cooked.
The second thing that he'd noticed was that his dad was down on one knee against the kitchen floor directly in front of Carole, who was trembling as she clutched onto the countertop for support.
In retrospect, Kurt wanted to kill his father for his lack of romanticism; a trait that he had certainly not inherited from him, that was for damn sure…
And as if that weren't enough, he could have definitely killed his father for not coming to him first with this proposal that seemed to Kurt, to have been as spontaneous as a flash mob in Grand Central Station.
Kurt would have designed this so that there could have been flowers lined from wall to wall. He would have made it so that a string quartet glistened poetically in the background, silhouetted by smooth, romantic lighting… He would have made it so that at the very least, there would have been a change in scenery apart from their messy kitchen floor…
"Dad…" Kurt questioned slowly, watching as his father paused mid-motion in his shock towards a third-party presence, his two hands intertwined with Carole's single left one, halting just as he had begun sliding a ring up the length of her narrow finger.
"Uh… Kurt…" Burt stumbled unceremoniously across his words, clamoring awkwardly up and onto his feet, his hand still entwined within Carole's so that he'd almost broken the finger that he'd just been sliding an engagement ring onto mere moments before.
Of course, Kurt doubted very much that Carole had actually noticed seeing as how both adults were much too occupied trying to play it off as if nothing had been going on between the two although clearly, it had.
And with their faces starkly resembling that of two middle school kids who'd just been caught making out on the couch by their parents; Kurt couldn't help but to smirk.
"What's burning?" From behind him, the lumbering grumble of Kurt's apparently soon-to-be step brother echoed in the back of his head, the oversized Finn Hudson stepping directly besides Kurt so that his towering frame miniaturized the smaller teen impossibly.
But Kurt was certain that despite a seeming acute sense of smell, Finn's eyes must have been still stuck shut with sleep, at least, it was the only reason he could think of as to why Finn hadn't picked up on their parents' suspiciousness, eliminated only by the chaos unleashed upon Finn's inquiry.
"Oh, crap!" Burt cursed aloud in his response to the burning pancakes behind him as small flames began to lick at the undersides of the starch discs, a reflection of having been left on the griddle for what Kurt was certain had been a very, very long time.
His father and Carole stumbled unceremoniously over one another, rushing towards the burning breakfast, now stinging heavily at Kurt's nose as thick layers of black smoke began billowing upwards, clouding the kitchen impossibly so that Kurt could just barely make out his father's form as the older man began prying the pancakes, burnt and singed to their surface, off of the griddle as Carole smacked precariously at the flames with a hand towel.
Above their heads, the smoke detector began to blare angrily, stinging obnoxiously at their ears until finally, Burt had smacked at it hard enough with a spatula to knock the device off of its wiring in its entirety, leaving it to hoot feebly against the floor only briefly before silencing completely.
For several tense seconds, nobody moved, nobody spoke, nobody so much as breathed.
At one end of the kitchen stood Kurt and Finn, standing stock still with arched eyebrows, confused as to what exactly had just sparked this sudden display by their parents… On the other end, Carole and Burt were hunched like teenagers, guilty innocence splayed across their faces as Burt held his arms delicately behind his back and Carole scuffed the toes of her slippers gently into the wooden floor.
It could have been hilarious had the two teens not been so damn confused.
"Morning, guys!" Carole shouted brightly, breaking the silence as she forced her face to glow with a sense of perkiness that absolutely no human being should hold the capacity to possess at 6:00 in the morning.
"What's going on?" Finn asked slowly, his mouth hanging open in his shock and confusion, residual drool from the previous night's sleep still prominent against his lower jaw.
"Burt and I are making breakfast." Carole stated as if this fact had been the most obvious thing in the world, holding up her singed hand towel as a measure of distinct proof towards her statement, although it would have been more believable had it not been for the giant burn hole glistening in a perfect ring around its center.
"Yeah, who wants pancakes?" Kurt's father followed in Carole's chipper lead, piling the burnt silver dollars onto a plate before practically dragging the two boys towards the dining room table where he dispensed the inedible food products evenly.
"Is this some kind of protest to try and start making me do more chores?" Finn asked his mother, poking at the pancake, where it lay blackened and solid, hesitantly with his fork.
"Of course not Finn, don't be silly." Carole assured him, trying to salvage the fact that they had been trying to keep the proposal that Kurt clearly wasn't supposed to have seen, quiet.
"Then what is it?"
"Yeah dad," Kurt intervened, eyeing his father with a look that told Burt that he knew everything, and that it was time for him and Carole to spill. "What is it?"
"Okay, listen boys," Burt sighed after a moment's hesitation, placing his fork back down against the table in his emphasis towards the fact that he was no longer trying to fool the two seemingly fool-proof boys, "Carole and I were going to surprise you at dinner tonight, but I guess that now is as good a time as any to let you know…"
His sentence drifted into nothingness, him and Carole flashing each other quick glances, their mouths twitching upwards in their profession of youthful love before they shouted in the exact same instant –
"We're getting married!"
"The ring was pure, 10 karat white gold." Kurt fawned over the gorgeous piece of jewelry as he practically floated off of the seat of his lunch table at the mere thought. "It was flawless. If my fiancé tries to give me anything less when I get married, I'm dumping his ass straight to the curb."
"So… does that mean that you and Finn are getting married too?" Brittney asked him, her characteristic display of confusion prominent across her face as she struggled to wrap her head around what exactly this announcement meant for her two friends.
"No…" Kurt emphasized distinctly.
"Jesus Brittney," Santana cut into Kurt's answer harshly, dismissing the boy's gentle tone with not nearly the same level of sensitivity. "They're not getting married, they're gonna be step brothers."
"Like the movie?"
"Yes Brittney," Kurt intervened quickly just as Santana narrowed her eyes into an expression of the beginnings of some wise-ass retort, trying to save the poor blonde from the wrath of a frustrated Santana, "Like the movie."
"Oh, cool." Brittney shrugged with an air of non-whimsical carelessness before turning from Kurt, her interest in him vanishing rapidly as she pulled a small envelope from her backpack and handed it over towards Santana, seated on her left. "Hey San, can you help me with this?"
Kurt couldn't help but to smirk at the two Cheerios, their conversation drifting from his ears as he turned his attention instead upon Finn, his future step brother staring blankly at the wall before him with an apparent lack of interest as he munched absentmindedly on the sandwich that Carole had made him following the whole pancake debacle.
He couldn't lie, he was worried about Finn.
Of course, he would never admit this fact to him. He was nervous that it wouldn't be appropriate for him to be worried about Finn; he wasn't certain whether or not the two were at a stage in their relationship where it was okay for him to hold onto his concern for the boy.
But never-the-less, Kurt couldn't help but notice that Finn wasn't looking like himself today, and Kurt had the strangest feeling that he knew the exact reason why...
It wasn't as if Finn still disapproved of the relationship between his mother and Kurt's father, he'd gotten past that months ago… And okay, so maybe it had been more than a little bit strange at first, but Finn had been slowly adjusting to the idea, he'd learned to enjoy the company of sharing a living space with two additional people, he was getting used to the ideal of exiting within that perfect nuclear family.
Or at least, Kurt had thought that he was.
Finn had spent the majority of that morning's Hudson-Hummel family breakfast relatively silent… He hadn't spoken a word to Kurt as Carole dropped them off at school earlier that morning, and, just because their schedules just so happened to be polar opposites of each other that morning, Kurt hadn't even really seen much of Finn at all…
Kurt couldn't help but to get stuck with the impression that their parents' announcement had caught Finn off guard in a manner that left the towering teen struggling to process the news, but in a perfect world, Kurt couldn't help but wish that Finn would accept this notion towards the idea that they were all soon to be related…
Of course, based on Finn's stringent avoidance of Kurt all morning and his relative silence that had lasted the majority of the day thus far, Kurt wasn't so sure that this was a possibility anymore.
Kurt found himself drilling a hole through Finn's skull with his stare throughout the opening minutes of their lunch period, but the boy's expression was dull, empty to the point that Kurt couldn't tell whether or not Finn was simply ignoring Kurt's concerned glances, or if he truly just didn't notice them…
But the latter notion wasn't exactly likely considering the fact that Kurt hadn't stared this intently at Finn since back in the days where he'd been crushing on the boy so hard that he could barely distinguish between his dreams and reality anymore…
Of course, as their familial status gradually continued closing in all around them, Kurt couldn't help but positively gag at the mere idea of getting together with Finn anymore…
Kurt didn't even hear the first gunshot.
Instead, it was moments later, after the distinct echo of a fading bang had dissipated entirely that Kurt noticed, not the mysterious presence of noise, but the uncharacteristic absence of it.
His head slowly processed the change in the sound level of his environment, conceptualizing the anomaly solely based on the fact that his thoughts were steadily growing louder, clearer in the back of his mind as a result of the cafeteria fading into silence in the background.
"What was that?" Brittney's voice was the first conscious recognition towards the world around him that he'd actually processed; her soft voice piercing through his deep set fog as her and Santana glanced quickly up and over the paper that she had previously asked for Santana's assistance with…
But the only sound that was met to Brittney's inquiry was silence… Nobody answered her, but truthfully, Kurt was fairly certain that nobody really had an answer for her anyway.
His vision tunneled automatically inwards towards Finn; the boy, previously lax with disinterest and dull with boredom was suddenly stiff as a board and perfectly erect in his seat, his widened eyes staring directly ahead of him as his hands gripped firmly against the edge of the table below.
Kurt could feel his heart lurch with a sudden pang, violent against his ribcage as Finn pushed himself harshly away from the table, lingering only briefly on his feet before darting suddenly towards the cafeteria doors.
"Finn, where are you going?" Quinn asked him, her words forcing the lumbering teen to slow only slightly as he swiveled his head over his shoulder and narrowed his eyes towards the glee club lunch table where they subconsciously locked with the first object that he saw; Kurt.
"Get out of here."
Somewhere inside of the innermost depths of Kurt's throat, his breathing became obstructed impossibly…
Had Finn been talking to everybody when he'd said that, or was their eye contact indicative of the fact that he had been addressing Kurt and Kurt only…
Confusion barreled through each one of Kurt's senses as he watched his future step brother stumble into the hallway… What the hell had just happened?
Had Finn's sudden departure been a result of the cafeteria's silencing; an outside source that Kurt hadn't even managed to pick up on? Or had he merely just gotten sick of being in such a close proximity to Kurt after everything that had happened between them that morning that he believed his only option was to simply discard their propinquity all together?
"What?" In a way, Puck's expression of interest towards why Finn was acting so strangely all of a sudden made Kurt feel a little bit better… At the very least, it had left him with the distinct impression of the fact that the rest of his glee club had felt the pressures of Finn's abruptness and it wasn't just him.
"Just do it!" His voice thundered in a tone that Kurt had never before heard from the male baritone, and with that, Finn was gone, disappearing behind the opposite side of the cafeteria doors so quickly that Kurt blinked and Finn had already vanished.
"He's crazy…" Kurt recognized Puck's voice, but refused to detract his eyes from the cafeteria's entranceway, "It must be from dating Rachel; I think that she's starting to rub off on him."
Kurt knew that it was stupid of him to be getting so worked up over this, so offended towards an event that he wasn't even certain was about him to begin with, but he just couldn't seem to help himself so that as the rest of his friends slowly slipped back into casual conversation, Kurt was left continuously looking towards the door, waiting for Finn to return through them with an apology, or at the very least, an explanation prevalent on his lips.
But Finn never came back… In fact, the only people that Kurt did see flushing through those damn double doors were Suzy Pepper and Jacob Ben-Israel so that with a sigh of defeat, Kurt averted his eyes with the realization that wherever Finn had just run off to, he was long gone.
He had just turned away, just convinced himself to stop worrying about a concern that he wasn't even certain of when something inside of him suddenly snapped – a recognition of the visual acuity that hadn't immediately registered with him, the back of his mind processing the image of his two fellow classmates lingering between the hallway and the cafeteria in a manner that made him turn his head back towards them so quickly that it made him dizzy.
Were those guns that they had been holding?
He made the motion to evaluate his own personal inquiry, but before his eyes could properly identify exactly what it was resting between the hands of Suzy Pepper and Jacob Ben-Israel, his hearing confirmed it; a fleeting array of gunfire clouding his brain's every process until he could no longer so much as hear himself think…
A flash of red overwhelmed his eyesight, the unforgettable image of a human body reeling backwards and onto the ground registering within his visual field despite it having been hazed over with adrenaline and fear.
Kurt recognized the man immediately – Dr. Roscoe, the celebrated AP Physics professor that Kurt had never been smart enough to actually get to know personally… and now, never would.
But despite his knowledge of this man being strictly superficial, that didn't make it any less overwhelming as he watched him stagger backwards dramatically, limbs flailing in every which direction as the force of the multitude of bullets that had just pierced his chest pushed him down against the ground below him where he lay still as a clear night, sprawled unceremoniously in front of the only exit door that the cafeteria had to offer them.
Before him, the entirety of the cafeteria fell into an eerie sense of silent, muddled confusion; a thousand teenagers struggling to decide whether or not this act before them had been real, or had been some sort of a sick prank.
Even Kurt was surprised by the alarmingly even tone of his breathing, surprised that while shaky, panicked students before him began whimpering and trembling in their fear, he remained in a collected state of calm, his mind pacing itself evenly, organizing the few options that he had into plausible categories.
His eyes never once left the brooding forms of Jacob Ben-Israel and Suzy Pepper as they advanced slowly into the cafeteria, their footsteps broad and elongated as their heads swiveled like pendulums in every which direction, taking their time in formulating their plan of attack as their guns weighed their arms down with an impossible heaviness.
Kurt considered the possibility of escape. He considered making a run for the exit door, but at the same time, the potential success rate of darting for freedom as fast as his scrawny legs could possibly carry him seemed miniscule, and he struggled to decide whether or not that was a risk that was actually worth taking…
The fact of the matter was that with the only exit door currently being involuntarily barricaded by the dead body of Dr. Benjamin Roscoe, and a thousand other students all guaranteed to be, at the very least, considering an escape route very similar to his at the moment, Kurt couldn't help but feel that should he make a spontaneous dash towards the door, his chances of being shot were much higher than his chances of actually achieving the escape he so desperately sought.
Sure, the windows were still a viable option… But the more Kurt thought about that, the more he realized that those stupid windows didn't even open all the way, that the time and effort that would entail shattering them and then climbing through might make a window escape less likely for success than the front door.
No, the more he thought about it, the more it seemed to Kurt that his only tangible option was to remain where he was, ducked underneath the first source of cover that he could find as he prayed to a God that he didn't even believe in to get them out of this one alive…
Kurt's mind had been so poised, so prepared for positively anything, that when a sudden gunshot finally did ring out, no more than a minute following Suzy and Jacob's entrance, Kurt hadn't even so much as flinched…
But apparently, the remainder of his classmates hadn't possessed a common mindset…
There was a single, additional split second; a lingering moment of blissful silence in which Suzy Pepper drew her smoking shotgun smugly against her shoulder, taking no notice to the smoldering remains of the ceiling tile that she had just shot out falling in chunks all around her, but in an instant, Kurt had blinked, and that quieting sense of calm had vanished, replaced instead, by the shrill screams and clamoring footsteps of panicked students.
And as his classmates swiftly pushed and shoved themselves through the muddled pile of bodies that had wedged their way into the narrow spaces of each potential exit that Kurt had already considered and bypassed, he realized that any potential that he had for an escape had suddenly gone.
He just wasn't sure that he was ready to deal with that fact quite yet.
But ready for it or not, he knew that he wasn't going to be presented with much of a choice in the matter, which is why he knew that if he didn't figure out a way to adjust quickly, he wasn't going to make it out of this school alive.
He hadn't even noticed the barreling senior clamoring towards the table that he was currently sitting at with his equally as shell-shocked glee clubbers until a flailing elbow managed to connect directly with his sternum, jabbing into his ribcage so deeply that it pushed the oxygen clear from his lungs, leaving him wheezing and frantic to control his breathing, already labored with fear.
He could feel his chair tipping sideways in its loss of equilibrium, knew before it actually happened that there was absolutely nothing that he could do to stop its motions as he toppled over, the entirety of the table following suite, leaving him sprawled against the floor, spread eagled and defenseless behind it.
Gasping in an effort to compensate for the air no longer contained within his starving lungs, he clawed at the linoleum flooring, channeling all of his strength into the efforts of his fingernails as he pulled himself underneath the full coverage of the table that he had been sitting upon mere moments before, his outfit staining with its littered remains – residual bread crumbs of unfinished sandwiches, puddles pooling around half-drunken juice boxes – without him so much as realizing.
He paused amidst his hiding spot, the allusion of safety leaving him curled up into a tight ball behind the wooden panel, knees digging deeply into his chest and eyes squeezed shut as he raised his hands over his ears in an effort to block out the overwhelming noises stemming from the world around him.
But no matter how seemingly hard he tried to distance himself from his surroundings, no matter how much he willed his body to fall inwards and away from his external environment, he couldn't seem to consciously allow himself to refuse to believe anything that was clearly happening all around him.
He would have sworn on his life towards the fact that he spent an eternity lying upon that ground.
In fact, he had spent so much time curled up inside of the tightest fetal position that his body could possibly muster that by the time the noises around him had finally ceased, by the time he'd finally managed to unfurl himself and lift his body upwards and into a seated position against the back of his table, his joints were so stiff that he could barely so much as move them…
"Hi, everybody!"
The voice ran his blood frozen in his veins, leaving his heart pumping overtime in its effort to sift the thick chunks of ice throughout the length of his body. He could feel the organ pounding relentlessly against ribcage, its unsteady cadence echoing so loudly into the distance that Kurt feared the revelation of his hiding place strictly based on the traitorous thumping of his heart.
His pupils constricted instinctually, the adrenaline filtering across his body as his head began to swivel rapidly back and forth in his formal lookout for the whereabouts of the two gunmen.
Through the corners of his eyes, he breathed with a heightened sense of relief as he caught a glimpse of a small group of his friends immediately adjacent to him – Matt, Brittney, Quinn, Mike and Puck all huddled in a tight ball, limbs tangled within one another's as they struggled to fit all five of them underneath the small table that they had all been happily eating lunch over not moments before.
But turning directly upwards, Kurt's heart lurched as he registered the catatonic image of Santana, still seated in the precise location that she had been in before, cross-legged with hands clutching at the edge of the table so tightly that her trembling body shook the entirety of the wooden frame above the heads of her five hidden friends.
Her eyes stared unblinkingly ahead of her as she retained her position hovered amidst the shadows where thankfully, Jacob and Suzy had yet to notice her… And as Brittney and Mike tugged continuously at her legs in their efforts to pull her down underneath the cover that had befallen the rest of them, Kurt could only pray that Brittney and Mike would achieve success before Jacob and Suzy did…
But despite their harsh insistencies, despite the fact that the two were currently placing every fraction of their strength into forcing Santana to move, Kurt already knew that Santana Lopez was not one to be easily persuaded under normal circumstances, so that now, as they detracted further and further away from the norm, Brittney and Mike's efforts seemed downright impossible.
Reluctantly, Kurt turned his attention away from the small group… Santana had all of the help that she needed right now, and Kurt had made it his personal mission to account for all of his friends right now.
He had deemed it his responsibility to keep tabs on all of the people that he cared so much about, scattered in response to all hell breaking loose so that, as difficult as it was for him to do so, for the time being, the only thing he could truly do for Santana was cross his fingers and hope for the best…
Heaving a heavy sigh of relief, his mind was put to – at the very least – a sense of ease as he quickly spotted an individual placed directly at the top of his mental list of missing friends.
Mercedes bore a stark resemblance to Santana in this moment, solely in terms of the fact that the unexpected, one-sided shootout had too, rendered her frozen, standing firmly besides the windows, trembling slightly as tear tracks stained the length of her cheeks, her prominent frame trying, yet failing to blend with the harsh white walls as the sunlight streamed in waves all around her – a makeshift spotlight that seemed to be achieving nothing more than pointing Jacob and Suzy straight towards her.
But unlike Santana, Mercedes had found herself fallen into solitude; she had nobody to try and coerce her into hiding, nobody to physically carry her into hiding if need be… she had nothing, no one.
And that notion was what had made Kurt's heart drop more than any other… He knew that he had to do something, and he had to do something quickly.
Standing carefully to his feet, Kurt's knees creaked as he crouched uncomfortably behind the cover of the sideways table before him, prepared to launch himself outwards as quickly as humanly possible, grab Mercedes by the arm, the hair, the freaking neck if he had to, and pull her back to safety…
"No please don't do it, please! No!" The voice sounded foreign simply in terms of its tone, but at the same time, familiar enough that Kurt was practically forced to pause in his motions, his heart sinking to his knees as he turned his head over his shoulder only to watch Jacob Ben-Israel sinking down to one knee, bringing himself eye level with the group of kids cramped underneath an upright table in much the same manner as half of his glee club currently was, gun drawn and cocked, still smoking with the remnants of its last victim.
He couldn't identify any of the kids currently stuck at the wrong end of the barrel of Jacob's ruthless pistol from his angle, but he knew that he couldn't linger, the fact of the matter being that with Jacob's concentration currently distracted, and Suzy peering periodically out into the hallway, standing guard, now was the best, and quite possibly the only time that he would get to safely guide Mercedes into hiding.
But just as he had begun his swift journey to save his best friend, he was stopped once again…
It had been the smallest of shifts, the simplest of motions – Kurt had drifted slightly to the left at the same exact instant that Jacob moved slightly to the right so that all at once, the kid hiding beneath the table currently being terrorized by Jacob Ben-Israel, the one with the barrel of a gun pressed firmly against the center of his forehead was revealed…
And Kurt found himself unable to help but to pause amidst the image of a trembling, terrified David Karofsky, unable to stop the small flutter of his heart that accompanied the notion that finally, his tormentor was beginning to understand what it was like…
He was beginning to understand how Kurt felt every single time he walked into his high school, terrified of every shadow lurking around the corner.
He was beginning to understand how Kurt's heart positively stopped beating every time he saw the towering group of jocks barreling down the length of the hallway towards him.
He was beginning to understand how Kurt woke up every single morning terrified of what was going to happen to him at school that day…
Karofsky's eyes were firmly affixed with Jacob's as he continued to mutter his stammering pleas for his life, but Kurt couldn't help but wish that the boy would risk taking a glance over towards him… He wanted to see the fear in David Karofsky's eyes; he wanted to know what it was truly like to witness his tormentor become the tormented for a change…
And with this idea in mind, for the briefest of seconds, the quickest of moments, Kurt Hummel actually found himself able to sympathize with the plight of Jacob Ben-Israel…
But this idea alone disgusted him to the point that his stomach churned violently within itself; the fact that the image of himself holding a pistol pointed at David Karofsky's head had even crossed his mind nearly making him so violently ill that he was forced to squeeze his cheeks inward and hold his breath just to contain the bile that had risen half the length up his throat.
He practically forced himself back upwards and onto his feet, forced his eyes away from the scene before him knowing that had he lingered too long upon it, it would rob him of his mind completely - and considering the fact that his mind seemed to be the only thing that he truly had left at the moment, he knew that he simply couldn't afford to part ways with it.
He approached Mercedes swiftly from the side, his feet moving with a professional silence as he extended his two arms out towards her general direction, clamping one against her shoulder, the other simultaneously against her mouth to silence the shriek of terror that he'd accurately predicted was bound to result amidst the clash of her tension and his unexpected attack…
"Shh," Kurt whispered quietly as the warm air of her muffled scream sent a stream of mist across his palm, "Come on, get under the table."
He watched her relax underneath his assurance, nodding quickly as Kurt deemed it safe to remove his hand from her mouth and instead, grabbed at her forearm where he practically dragged her back down underneath the cover of the table that he had, until now that is, been hiding besides in solitude… He vaguely registered her release of a soft grunt of pain as he pulled her downwards against the solid flooring, forcing her knees to connect harshly against the linoleum as he guided her every movement, seeing as how she had clearly forgotten the exact mechanism of voluntary locomotion herself, pulling her into a seated position behind the table so that their backs had just pressed back upwards against the underside of the wooden frame as Karofsky's voice once again filtered across the thick air behind them.
"Don't shoot me, please. I don't want to die, please!" Kurt flinched at the boy's pleas, the uncharacteristic faltering of his voice physically paining Kurt's ears as, despite his better judgment, he swiveled his head beyond the table's edge to watch the scene before him, his muscles tensing with anticipation as Jacob's muscles flexed against the trigger of his weapon preparedly…
"Please man, I'm sorry, I…"
Kurt's eyes widened involuntarily in response to the flash sparking from beyond the barrel of Jacob's gun, as, despite the fact that Mercedes hadn't even been looking, he could feel her muscles tense alongside the accompanying explosion, which Kurt would swear held the capacity to deafen ears from miles away.
And in the fraction of the second that the bullet lingered seemingly motionless in the air before them, every single painful, mortifying memory that Kurt possessed of David Karofsky flashed before his eyes like a movie reel – a lifetime of fear, a lifetime of anguish revolving across his mind in a millisecond.
He was in elementary school and Karofsky was practicing his new-found peewee hockey skills by hip-checking Kurt into the lockers with every opportunity he found.
He was in middle school and Karofsky was holding Kurt around the neck in an impenetrable half-Nelson as he lifted the smaller boy into the air with an impressive ease only to drop him straight down into the school dumpsters.
He was in high school and Karofsky and his friends had cornered him in the hallway, vowing that their revenge against Kurt's gaudy self-expression was coming, and it was coming soon…
But it never was, it never would… This was it; it was all over now, Kurt's final memory of David Karofsky forever being the image of a spiraling slug, breaking the barrier of time and space as it connected with the thick flesh of Karofsky's left temple, opening his skull for the entire cafeteria to see…
And despite the fact that Kurt and David Karofsky had sure as hell had their differences in the past, as Kurt watched the boy's body, previously tense with fear, fall limp as it teetered sideways atop his shell-shocked friends lined up behind him, he knew that nobody deserved to die like that… absolutely nobody.
Ultimately, it had been the feeling of Mercedes' body shifting besides his own that had turned his attention from the terrorized lunch table of the varsity football squad as well as all of its scrambling inhabitants, all struggling to pull themselves out from underneath it before they met a fate similar to that by which had befallen their captain…
He turned towards his friend with vague interest towards her intentions, glancing at her just in time to watch her raise her bedazzled Blackberry up to her ear…
For a second, he merely eyed her suspiciously, his expression dancing with confusion towards who the hell she could possibly be calling at the moment… His first thought was that it must be her parents; that she must have been preparing herself to say goodbye to them before it was too late… In fact, Kurt had just begun to wonder whether or not he too should be placing that phone call to Burt, whether or not he should be preparing himself to say goodbye to the father that had done him so well, that had been so good to him until the muffled voice of a woman on the opposite line projected her true identity, causing realization to glisten instantly across Kurt's features…
"911 what is your emergency?"
"Please, I'm at William McKinley High School, there's a shooting at my school!" Any fractional sense of calm that had previously washed across Kurt's body in response to Mercedes' reaching out for help had vanished in its entirety upon hearing the panic behind his friend's voice – a panic that he couldn't help but to have rub off on him.
It was suddenly as if all of these pent up emotions, all of these tears that he had been trying to contain straight from the very beginning had suddenly been released all at once through Mercedes' single, brief sentence.
Tears stung at the corners of his eyes, the sensitive receptors aligning the length of his skin following their path down his cheeks so that he could only vaguely concentrate on his gratitude towards the fact that Mercedes' impromptu shouting had, by sheer luck managed to fall amidst ears deafened by yet another blast from Jacob's pistol.
With pure saline now clouding impossibly at his vision, Kurt squinted his eyes desperately in an effort to keep up with the scene before him, one ear constantly attentive towards Mercedes' bid to bring them all to safety.
His eyes followed the ravished football players, their frequent screams unusually high in pitch as they continued to push and shove their way past each other by any means necessary in an effort to find a route of escape that wouldn't result in their being shot…
But the resultant chaos left Jacob undeterred… In fact, he seemed to only thrive upon the pandemonium, the presence of the fresh targets as he paused steadily to reload his weapon with the swiftness of experience and a look upon his face that made it seem as if he might as well have been performing an action as mundane as buttering toast.
With a sigh of relief, Kurt watched onward as Daryl Santiago, one of the several fleeing football players successfully reached the doorway before him, streamlining out of sight and down the length of the hallway, his escape providing Kurt with, at the very least, the sense that if he could make it out of there, than so could the rest of them…
But this relief was short lived as the reality that Daryl was soon to become the only of his fellow Titans to achieve freedom filtered slowly through him as he watched the star senior cornerback, Connor Putnam slip steeply across the floor, his feet, running in rapid short steps sliding out from underneath him upon his stepping on a discarded Oreos wrapper, launching him forwards so that his head slammed up against the edge of an abandoned lunch table, rendering him unconscious and exposed straight in the center of the room.
Following suite was the trio, Nathan Gilmour, Vinnie Meccia and Chris Basil, banding together however making the foolish decision to brave hiding amidst the dead end that was the cafeteria's kitchens, the ones that the government had already threatened with sanctions a mere month before due to its lack of fire exits, the ones that the school still hadn't gotten around to fixing quite yet.
And finally, Kurt's eyes fell upon Azimo Addams, watching with bated breath as the enormous teenager bid his time; strategically crawling out from beneath the back end of the table before darting towards the door, praying – despite their differences – that what had proven to be a successful escape for Daryl Santiago could perhaps work out for Azimo as well.
But Kurt identified Azimo's efforts for the failure that they would soon become the second that he saw Jacob turning calmly from the still body of David Karofsky, watching only briefly as the football player ran maniacally towards the door, swerving and zigzagging in a manner that made him look drunk rather than simply overpowered by the sense of adrenaline and fear, so strong, he couldn't even manage to move in a straight line.
Without hesitation, Jacob fired the first carefully aimed bullet towards Azimo, and with bated breath, Kurt's heart leapt hopefully as the slug soared straight past the boy's head, missing him, albeit missing him by mere inches.
And suddenly, all eyes fell upon Azimo, hearts stilled and breathing rushed with anticipation as the boy successfully achieved three steps, four steps, five…
Kurt was positive that the only thing that could have possibly brought his hopes crashing down harder than they had already fallen was the fact that he had raised them so high in his convincing that Azimo was going to escape successfully…
Jacob however, barely flinched, taking but a mere moment to regroup himself in response to his initial miss before firing three successive rounds into the air before him, watching with a content satisfaction as they pierced the barreling teenager's back, striking with an exact precision that forced the older boy to immediately pale, pausing completely in his motions so that previously frantic running was replaced with an instant, tentative teeter.
Kurt's proximity had been so close to Azimo that he managed to make out the soft grunt of pain that had been subconsciously emitted from Azimo's mouth… He could see with vivid detail, the boy's eyes roll backwards into his skull until only the whites were left showing, feel the shuddering of the ground below him as Azimo somehow managed two or three more tentative steps forward before collapsing completely, the force of his massive body colliding with the linoleum underneath them emanating like an earthquake around them.
"Oh my God…" Mercedes' mutterings into the phone beside him was a roughly accurate description of his exact feelings as well… "Oh my God, they just shot him… They shot him. I think he's dead, oh my God, I think he's dead!"
Mercedes' voice was steadily increasing in volume once more, growing exponentially loud in a manner that Kurt didn't even bother to silence; he just didn't see a reason for it any longer, a reason why he should silence her voice when it had suddenly became so clear to him that these were the last moments that she would have to use it.
They were dead.
There was no longer a single doubt in Kurt's mind, no longer a reason to believe otherwise… They were all freaking dead.
Closing his eyes firmly, he could feel his chest heaving up and down, the entirety of his ribcage rising and falling dramatically alongside the motions so that the structure beat uncomfortably against the table that his back was pressed so firmly into…
And now that he was forced to face this sudden reality of his own mortality, he couldn't help but wonder what it might be like to die.
He wondered if it would hurt, if the final feeling to cross his brain would be the excruciating burn of a bullet piercing his skin, or if it would happen so quickly that he simply wouldn't feel anything at all.
He wondered if he would be met with the little white light, or else the eternal fire… he wondered if he would be met with anything at all…
Maybe his mother would be there… he wondered what it might be like to see her again, if she would be there to comfort him, if she would be there to tell him that everything was going to be alright.
He wondered if she would even recognize him anymore.
"Sorry… I'm sorry; I just saw one of my friends." Mercedes' voice rang through his ears combined with a quick nudge of her elbow against his ribcage as to indicate that she had been talking to him as well as to the 911 operator on the other end of the phone.
His mind turned back towards a state of conscious thought, he turned towards her, noticing that she had been pointing an indicative index finger directly over his shoulder towards something so that he was forced to turn his head over his shoulder in order to investigate, sucking in a relieved breath towards the site before him…
With Artie and Tina being the only of his friends that he hadn't yet managed to account for other than Rachel and Finn, who he could only hope and pray had managed safety from their positions outside of the cafeteria, seeing them lying beneath the table directly adjacent to them overwhelmed him with a sense of calm that emanated with the sense of a five hundred pound weight being lifted off of his chest.
And despite the fact that Artie had been knocked sideways from within the confines of his wheelchair, and appeared to be bleeding heavily from what, at first glance looked to Kurt to be a broken nose, they seemed to be no worse for the wear, and at this point, that was all that Kurt could truly ask for.
"I think… I think he needs help." Mercedes spoke in a manner that didn't allow Kurt to distinguish exactly who she had been talking to, but either way, he chose to address the stupidity of her intentions.
He forced his eyes onto Mercedes', locking their vision together with the seriousness of his glare before placing an expression upon his face that told her just how bad an idea he knew her plans to be right now.
"Mercedes don't," Kurt hissed, understanding that despite the fact that his words sounded harsh, despite the fact that he presented as if he didn't care about his two friends; his hesitation towards providing them with assistance was merely based on his true belief that right now, staying put was what was best for them all.
Because within this cafeteria, as it quickly fell still and silent all around them, the watchful eyes of Jacob Ben-Israel and Suzy Pepper scanning for the slightest indication of movement, Kurt knew that Mercedes so much as crawling the ten feet separating them from Artie and Tina was enough to attract their unwanted attention.
Besides, Tina was there with Artie, and Kurt knew that Tina was more than qualified to care for him. Tina would make sure that nothing bad would happen to him…
"I'm going to go. I'm gonna go help him." Mercedes merely shook her head towards his hesitation, pure determination written across the every length of her features as she discarded her cell phone and lifted her body into an impressive squat that left her no taller than what she had been when she'd been seated, still safely guarded by the table in front of her as she began slowly goose stepping towards Artie and Tina.
"Mercedes, stop!" Kurt hissed his quiet demand, making a desperate lunge to grab for her… But his palms had suddenly become so slippery, so slick with his own sweat that Mercedes slipped easily from his grasp, quickly removing herself to beyond an arm's length away from Kurt, leaving him to his useless methods of verbal persuasion to try and turn his friend around again before it was too late.
"You're gonna get yourself killed, Mercedes! Come back!"
But Mercedes simply continued to disregard his calls, continued to act as if she hadn't even heard him as she trudged forward, advancing closer and closer towards Artie and Tina with every step she took and further and further from Kurt, as well as that façade of safety that they had somehow managed to establish.
"Oh God… Oh my God," Kurt muttered under his breath, slowly beginning to hyperventilate as silent tears streaked the length of his cheeks.
His heightened senses kept him alerted to Jacob and Suzy's every movement, allowing him to easily register the swiftness in their steps as they strode past the bodies littering the floor in layers – pausing every couple of feet to evaluate the bullet holes that had since turned mere students into sieves.
To Kurt's direct right, he flinched as Jacob's foot rolled prominently downwards against a discarded yogurt cup, the hard plastic crunching with resound beneath his foot.
Jacob was so close that Kurt could actually see the surprisingly thick muscles lining across his upper back rise and fall prominently with each motion of his lungs as Jacob took several deep, steadying breaths before lowering his semi-automatic weapon to his side, picking up an abandoned cup of soda resting against a lunch tray so that he could take a sip, warding off the offending cottonmouth that Kurt was certain must come hand-in-hand with the adrenaline rush of mass murder.
He took a single, deep gulp before allowing the Styrofoam glass to slip from between his hands, landing against the floor with a splash as the residual beverage scattered across the floor alongside half-melted ice cubes…
And finally, no longer able to watch Jacob as he rounded the cafeteria, progressing with a horrifying air of normalcy, Kurt squeezed his eyes shut firmly, feeling as the tears forced their way between his tightly sealed eyelids where they rolled down his cheeks before plummeting in a suicidal free fall off of his chin and onto his prized outfit below.
The first thing that he was made aware of upon his abrupt departure with reality was the shifting of the light before him – bright fluorescents, previously beating powerfully downward, even behind closed eyelids, rapidly blocked with a painful suddenness, replaced only by a shadow that left Kurt trembling with the recognition of the fact that this could have only be caused by one thing, and one thing only…
"Please Jacob," The sound of Mercedes' voice, uncharacteristically vulnerable despite the girl's sharp personality forced Kurt's eyes to open on their own accord, forced him to peer outwards from beyond his hiding place, risking his own exposure in an attempt to identify the extent of the mess that Mercedes had just gotten herself into, and a solution as to how to get her out of it. "Please don't do this. Just walk away… there's still time, Jacob. Just walk away."
Kurt's breath had fallen ragged and irregular, his mind racing blindly so that suddenly, he couldn't seem to manage a single, distinct thought… he couldn't seem to find a solution that would get Mercedes, that would get any of them, out of this mess alive.
He had to act; at the very least, he had managed to identify with that much… He had to act, he had to save his best friend…
He just wasn't sure that he knew exactly how to do that.
Quickly and carefully, he studied Jacob Ben-Israel's brooding form, his empty eyes, his pale face sprinkled with evidence of his rampage in the form of glistening droplets of blood positively sparkling against milky white skin…
But Kurt couldn't help but be left with the impression that Jacob hadn't heard a single damn thing that Mercedes had just said to him… And the more he thought about it, the more he realized that actually, he probably hadn't.
Jacob's brain was on autopilot, that much Kurt was now certain of. His mind had dismissed itself from reality in its entirety, his muscles left to involuntarily control in order to commit to the acts of murder he never would have held the capacity to perform had he allowed himself to linger too heavily on the consequences.
And suddenly, Kurt knew that if he was going to have any chance of saving Mercedes, of saving any of them, he was going to have to do the same thing. He was going to have to release himself from the confines of the world; he was going to have to do what he had to without so much as thinking about it beforehand.
He, like Jacob, couldn't linger on the potential consequences of his actions, or else they would never get done.
But this was a task that he knew would be easier said than done as, for the first time in his entire life, he begged himself to fall into the mindset of Jacob Ben-Israel, begged himself to become completely and utterly empty on the inside.
And with the idea of becoming just like Jacob in mind, he suddenly knew exactly just what he had to do; he knew exactly how it was that he would distance himself with his reality… All he had to do was employ the tactics that he had since mastered, the tactics that kids like himself, as well as Jacob Ben-Israel learn become instinct alongside daily torment.
He considered all of the times him and Jacob had laid side by side amidst the trash within the school dumpsters.
He considered all of the times he had been driven into a locker so hard, it would leave him with bruises up and down the lengths of his arms, Jacob meeting a similar fate directly across the hall.
He considered every time him and Jacob had been in close enough proximity to each other to leave the football team free to grab at them, smashing their miniscule bodies into each other so that their heads collided painfully… And just as the stars, indicative of an obvious concussion, began to clear, he always just managed to make out the jocks yelling "homos" at them from down the length of the hall.
So what had been Jacob's final straw? Why this, why now after so many years of incessant torment that Kurt never believed to have been any worse than what he had experienced, had Jacob Ben-Israel decided to walk into their high school this morning with a gun in his hand and not him?
In his bid to place distance between his physical and mental being, he found the innermost workings of his mind being tested beyond the concept of rational thought, being stuck beneath an overturned table with his life flashing before his eyes and his mind racing with the wonderment of how much time he would be granted to remain on this Earth offering him an overwhelmingly unique perspective on life.
He couldn't help but to explore all of the what-if's, the why not's… But the more he thought about it, the less he seemed to find himself able to rationalize what Jacob and Suzy had done today… No matter how hard he tried, no matter how much he had been through within the very walls of this high school, he just couldn't picture himself in their position, couldn't picture perceiving things as so bad that he would have to resort to this.
And with this thought in mind, he finally achieved success in relaxing his mind into that separated state that he had so desired; and with the idea in mind that there was absolutely no way in hell that he could ever be a killer, he decided to solidify that fact by turning into a hero instead.
"Mercedes, no!"
Motivated not by the similarities between him and Jacob, but instead by the differences, he lifted himself to his feet, his body moving entirely on its own accord as he sprawled his arms outwards, exposing the entirety of his wingspan in an effort to protect Mercedes, shielding her behind his body.
But unfortunately, beyond this one spontaneous action, Kurt hadn't really considered his need for a follow up. In fact, besides turning his body into a human shield, he had found himself completely at a loss for ideas, a factor that he clearly hadn't anticipated on until he found himself standing face-to-face in front of Jacob's loaded, cocked pistol, ready to fire and aimed directly at his head.
And as counterproductive as the action may have seemed, the only thing that he could actually think to do was to shut his eyes… so that was exactly what he did.
With his vision barred from the physical presence of an outside world and his brain cycling with the colors of sound, his remaining senses became magnified, his hearing poised and prepared so that when he finally did hear the booming gunshot, releasing the bullet he knew to be designated for him, his body was already prepared for it.
He could feel – in its every excruciating detail – the motions of the bullet as it worked its way beneath his skin. He could feel, as if in slow motion and with an obscure fascination, the aerodynamically carved framework tunnel its way through the caravans of muscle and bone surrounding the girth of his right shoulder, digging deep before escaping, in its bid for freedom, out of the other side, straight through his shoulder blade.
And yet still, he didn't feel any pain.
He knew that he had just been shot, he knew that a bullet had just ripped straight through his body, leaving an untold amount of damage behind, but despite all of this, there was absolutely no pain.
Endorphins flooded through his veins, fogging the receptors with a layer of haze that left him feeling weightless, blissful, almost high…
For a split second, he staggered into this feeling, swaying slightly on his feet as the blood puddled around him, staining a prominent circle against his favorite outfit although he didn't seem to care. Suddenly, none of that seemed to matter, he didn't need clothes anymore; he was warm, he was comfortable, he was downright cozy.
His legs giving out from underneath him was ultimately what brought him back into his harsh reality, his body adjusting to the temporary rush of its natural pain killers so that the throbbing finally stuck him like a truck, so harsh, so intense that his vision faded into a screen of pure white, his surroundings perceived as mere shadows as his body attempted to suck in a shuddering breath only to fail, leaving him coughing and sputtering for air.
Instinctually, he lifted his left arm to cover his injured right, the feeling of blood seeping between the cracks between his fingers standing out even beyond his overwhelming agony, leaving him to gag despite himself, the contents of his stomach churning threateningly as the metallic scent of blood travelled from his nose to the back of his throat so that he could literally taste it.
He had almost forgotten why he had chosen to throw himself into such a stupidly dangerous situation, why he had endured this suicide mission to begin with until the sound of a second gunshot, the whoosh of air as a body was sent barreling downwards, the sickening thud as it landed harshly on top of his own reminded him.
Some hero he had turned out to be – how typical.
His eyes tearing to the point that he could no longer see, he coughed and spluttered as he directed all of the strength that his muscles still possessed into his uninjured arm in an effort to try and coax Mercedes off of him, to try and convince her that she needed to move, that he couldn't breathe underneath her weight.
But she was limp above his trapped limbs, deaf to any pleas that he made with her… But it wasn't until he finally managed to shift the entirety of her body weight away from him and sucked in a deep breath of air that left his eyes tearing with relief that he truly realized exactly what that meant for Mercedes…
He never believed it possible for a human being to look that pale, that still, that silent, but there she was; white as a sheet, lips already tinted in an impossibly deep shade of blue, stiff and unmoving as she lingered in a silence that somehow registered to Kurt as being the loudest nose that he had ever heard in his entire life.
He could feel her warm blood, that precious liquid dripping freely from her body, robbing it of all of its color, all of its life, pooling heavily against his skin and combining with his own in a manner that created a puddle that managed to seep across two layers of clothing, an undershirt, and, Kurt would swear upon his life, his skin itself.
But ultimately, it was her eyes that had truly gotten to him; it was her eyes that finally forced his head away, unable to look for fear that if he allowed himself to get trapped inside of her infinite stare, after a while, he would begin to see the blame inside of them regarding his inability to save her.
"M… Mercedes…" He stuttered, his single word emitting as a choked sob as he begged his best friend for a response that he knew he was never going to actually get.
"Mercedes, please!" He shouted again, no longer concerned with the idea of who could hear him, or what they would do in response…
With a newfound strength, he shook the girl resting on top of him as hard as he possibly could, but his every effort was met with a limited success, her only movement being that of her flaccid limbs, rolling like a ragdoll in response to Kurt's shoves so that eventually, just as Kurt's muscles began to burn in protest, he was left to merely accept the fact that no matter how hard he pushed her, no matter how hard he yelled at her, Mercedes wasn't coming back.
Tears sprang upwards and into his eyes, his lungs starving for air once more as he choked on the combination of blood, saliva and shock currently restricting his windpipe impossibly; a panic attack resultant of sheer guilt.
His vision began blackening rapidly, his world closing in all around him; but this time, instead of fighting the darkness, he chose instead to welcome it, his thoughts comforted with the idea that wherever it was that he was going, maybe he would see Mercedes again, maybe he would have the opportunity to tell her how truly sorry he was, how he had never meant for things to happen this way…
He wanted, no he needed to let her know that he had never intended on her becoming a living and breathing example of an idea that he had known of all along; the idea that working harder in life only leaves you to fall even harder…
Until finally, you find yourself losing absolutely everything that you have ever truly loved to begin with so that other than your own personal vices, you find yourself left without a single goddamned thing at all.