Hello,

So…I've been out of the fanfic world for a few years. And then, like most of the rest of the world, Glee ate my brain. And I ventured back into the fanfic world, and realized that yes, plot bunnies are still just as rabid as they ever were. And I found a lovely gem on the Glee Angst Meme requesting an AU from Grilled Cheesus wherein Kurt's life takes a turn for the worse. I'm not going to give away too many details (you can find the prompt on the angst meme if you're curious), but this will heavily feature the Warblers and has a Klaine endgame. Also, New Directions is not portrayed in the best light possible, but I think it's a pretty realistic one given some of the circumstances here. Please enjoy, and concrit is always welcome!

Nothing comes easily

Fill this empty space

Nothing is like it was

Turn my grief to grace

Nothing comes easily,

Where do I begin?

Nothing can bring me peace

I've lost everything

I just want to feel your embrace

Grace, Kate Havenik

He breathed.

The day around him was beautiful—the breeze was crisp and refreshing, the air just chilly enough to require a jacket. The morning sun was shining brightly, promising to warm the day to near perfection in a few short hours. Somewhere a bird was chirping, a lilting counterpoint to the low, smooth voice to his right. The words might have been important. He knew he should be listening.

He breathed.

The chair he was sitting on was too hard, cheap plastic digging into the backs of his thighs where the seat was a little too small to be comfortable. It listed slightly to the left where the legs had sunk into soft ground. He was surrounded on all sides by familiar presences, arms that kept draping round his shoulders, hands that kept trying to clutch at his fingers. He kept his own hands folded primly in his lap and tried not to hear the soft, choked noises coming from the people around him.

He breathed.

There was shuffling around him as the low voice that had been talking for the past ten minutes finally silenced. The soft arm that had been wrapped around his shoulders since he sat down lifted, one of the presences at his side vanishing to join the large group standing directly across from him. Someone pressed a button, probably on a portable CD player, and the soft strains of music floated over the chilled morning air. Some distant part of him recognized it-a hymn that was wildly overplayed at…these events. Familiar voices rose in song, beautiful as ever, and he knew it was meant to be comforting. A gesture for him, the only thing they knew to do in…this situation. The same distant part of him that recognized the song even wished he could appreciate it, however much he didn't believe in the sentiment behind it.

He knew he should look up, meet his friends' eyes. He should give them some signal that he recognized they were singing for him. He knew they were worried about him, Mercedes especially. At this point she was probably even desperate for him to scoff at their song choice. Something. He couldn't. He could only sit, back so ramrod straight it was actually starting to hurt a bit, hands folded in his lap with his nails biting bloody grooves into his palms. He could only listen to the thunder of his own heartbeat in his ears, a dull rush that leant every other sound a strange, underwater quality.

He stared with dull, deadened eyes at the dark walnut casket, brass fittings gleaming in the sunlight as it rested on the supports over an open grave. A spray of cheery yellow roses rested on the lid. Red or white would have been more apropriate…but his mother's wedding bouquet had been yellow roses. His dad always smiled when he saw yellow roses.

Had.

Had always smiled.

He breathed.

There was more shuffling around him and he realized the song had come to an end. His friends melted back into the crowd surrounding the gravesite, and Mercedes reappeared at his side, sinking back down onto the chair beside him and wrapping her arm around his shoulders again. For a moment, he tried to break his gaze from the casket, tried to lean into her touch, to loosen his fists and reach for her hand. He couldn't do it.

The funeral director—no priest; he could not remember the last time his dad went to church, and he certainly wasn't going to hunt one down—stood again, began reading something from a small book in his hands. The thunder of his pulse was suddenly louder in his ears, faster, his heart beating as though it was trying to hammer its way through his ribs. He couldn't hear the words, he only knew that when the man finished that would be it. The coffin would be lowered into the ground next to his mother's and his dad would be gone.

He breathed.

His nails dug harder into his palms, the skin of his knuckles whitening. His teeth ground together until his jaw ached. Mercedes' arm tightened around his shoulders and he thought she whispered something into his ear, but he couldn't hear it. The funeral director's words came to an end, and the mourners began to break up, drifting away from the gravesite in small groups.

He stood slowly, more at Mercedes' prompting than anything else, as people filed past him, offering words of sympathy and condolence. There were more people than he had realized. The guys from the garage and their families…customers who had been coming to his father for years…Mr. Schuester and the rest of New Directions, of course. The faces blurred together before his eyes as he woodenly accepted their words, barely reacting to any of it.

He almost cracked when Carole made her way to his side, tears pouring down her face, and gently drew him into her arms. She had made his dad so happy…he'd been pretty sure his father was going to start feeling him out about making Carole and Finn a permanent part of their family soon. She'd loved his dad, too, and he allowed himself to rest his head on her shoulder a moment. Just a moment.

He pulled back quickly, though, unable to continue the interaction. He couldn't afford it. There was still the gathering back at his house to get through. There would be people piling casseroles in his kitchen and whispering behind their hands about "that poor boy." There were the sidelong glances of his Uncle Larry and Aunt Margaret, who'd arrived from Cleveland just this morning for the…for the funeral, and the expression in their eyes that he didn't really want to analyze too closely.

There was still the suffocating press of his friends to deal with. Their anything you need, Kurt, just let us know's, and their just talk to us, Kurt, tell us what we can do's, and the way they tried to constantly hug him, pat his shoulders, hold his hands. He tolerated Mercedes' touches because the small part of him that was still tracking his surroundings couldn't stand to see the hurt in her eyes when he'd initially shrugged out of her grip, but the others…

They didn't understand that he needed them with him, desperately-but he couldn't talk, yet, couldn't let them hold him, yet. He couldn't find the words to tell them.

He breathed.

He breathed, and he focused on the breathing. In and out, deliberate expansion and contraction of his lungs, and that was the only way he could keep from crying out the litany of no, no, no, please, no that had been clawing at his throat since the moment the doctor had exited his father's room, face grim and expressionless. He breathed, and tried to hold the shell of his calm together. Tried to ignore the fact that he felt like one wrong move, one uneven breath, one second where he let go of anything and he would shatter into a million pieces. If he let go of even a fraction of his control, let himself take an ounce of the sympathy his friends were offering—he was afraid he'd just start screaming and never be able to stop.

Mercedes hooked her hand under his elbow and began leading him away from the gravesite, her parents right behind her. He craned his neck as they walked, his eyes still on the casket, the bright yellow roses. It hurt, oh it hurt, but when he looked away that would be it. The only person on Earth who loved him wholly, totally, and unconditionally would be gone.

He was alone.

He breathed.

Dear Mercedes,

Kurt finished typing the salutation and simply sat, staring at the blinking cursor on the screen. It had been two months since he had left Lima to go and live with Larry and Margaret Taylor and their three children in Cleveland. His aunt and uncle had never been huge parts of his life. He vaguely remembered them attending his mother's funeral, but beyond that their communication with Burt Hummel's older sister and her husband had been limited to yearly Christmas cards. The day he had entered Larry and Margaret's house had been the first time he'd even met two of his cousins. Two months. He shook his head lightly and refocused his attention on the screen.

There was a loud crash above him, followed by peals of laughter and his aunt's voice raised in fond exasperation. Kurt's oldest cousin, Michael, had invited a group of his buddies from school home for dinner that night. Kurt had taken one look at the various letterman jackets and retreated to the finished basement that had been converted into his bedroom. There was another crash, more laughter, and he sighed softly.

Dear Mercedes, I still can't stop crying at night. It's supposed to get easier, isn't it? It's supposed to hurt less. Sometimes I wake up in the mornings, and for a few seconds I can pretend that it was all a dream. I can pretend I'll open my eyes and Dad'll be up in the kitchen, drinking coffee. Those are the best seconds of my day.

Highlight. Delete.

Everything still hurt so much. The icy numbness that had enveloped him in those first few days had long ago abandoned him. Raw, burning grief had barreled in behind it, crushing pain that stole his breath and left him lying in bed at night with hot tears pouring down his face and a lump in his throat that threatened to choke him. He was so tired of hurting.

Dear Mercedes, You promised me that we'd stay in touch. You promised we'd always be friends, no matter where I lived or how far apart we were, and I believed you. I know I haven't made it easy. I'm sorry. But I thought we'd be able to work through anything.

Highlight. Delete.

When Larry and Margaret announced that he would be coming to live with them in Cleveland, they had all promised him that they would stay in touch. They would still get together, still talk. He wasn't entirely surprised when, by the end of the first month, Tina, Artie, and Mercedes were the only ones he was in regular contact with. He and Rachel were frenemies at best. The likes of Puck, Quinn, and Santana would never have acknowledged his existence except to bully him had it not been for Glee. He could count on one hand the number of times he'd talked to Mike and while he and Brittany genuinely liked each other, he'd have honestly been surprised if the blonde girl knew how to turn a computer on, much less send an email.

Not hearing that often from Finn had hurt more than he was expecting, and not for the reasons he was expecting. He often found himself wondering if he, Finn, Carole, and his dad would've been happy together. If they could have been a real family.

By the end of the second month, phone calls had stopped. He hadn't even bothered to log into his Skype account in the past two weeks. Emails were sporadic and mostly limited to surface pleasantries and summaries of the latest drama in New Directions. Intellectually, he knew that he was as much to blame for it as his friends. They had been awkward and stilted when talking to him, wary of upsetting him, and he just couldn't make himself meet them halfway. Eventually the awkwardness had turned to distance and now he wasn't really sure how to bridge it. Still reeling from grief, from his entire world literally being turned on its head, he wasn't sure he had it in him to try.

Dear Mercedes, I look in the mirror and I hardly recognize myself anymore. It scares me, sometimes.

Highlight. Delete.

He glanced up at the mirror on top of the scuffed dresser Larry had dragged down from the attic for him. His eyes almost immediately skittered away from his reflection. He really didn't recognize himself anymore. There were bruise-dark shadows under his eyes, souvenirs of night after night of fitful, interrupted sleep. He'd always been pale, but now his skin was near colorless. He'd lost a good fifteen pounds, only five of which had been weight he could actually afford to lose.

Gone were the flashy clothes he'd worn as proudly as a peacock spreading its plumage. His closet space in this room was limited to the dresser and a cheap plastic armoire in one corner, so most of his things were still carefully stored in cardboard boxes stacked against one wall. What he'd left out were the most subdued pieces of his wardrobe, clothes he'd—for the first time since he'd learned who Alexander McQueen was—laid out for comfort and ease rather than for the statement they would make. He wondered idly how his former classmates would react to seeing Kurt Hummel walking down a school hallway in simple jeans and sweaters. Still well-fitted and obviously expensive, but not even a fraction as outlandish and fabulous as the things he'd worn at McKinley.

It wasn't him. It wasn't who he was and two months ago he would have laughed at the idea of compromising his impeccable taste and blending in with the rest of the plebeians who worshipped at the altar of the Gap. Then again, two months ago he hadn't felt hollowed out, the effort of putting one foot in front of the other seemingly monumental. Two months ago he hadn't been hanging onto the edge of his sanity by his fingernails. Two months ago he hadn't been so damned tired, so drained of the stubbornness and strength that carried him through the persecution of McKinley's bullies and he just could not face it at his new school.

Could.

Not.

So he hid. He kept his head down in the hallways, and he avoided drawing attention to himself, and tried to ignore the feeling that he was compromising a major part of himself.

Dear Mercedes, I hate it here. I hate it. Margaret and Larry are

Highlight. Delete.

It was not-it was not that his aunt and uncle were cruel to him. They fed him, they clothed him. They had followed the instructions his father had left for the sale of the house and business precisely. The money had been used to pay off debts and medical bills, finish the basement for him so he could have his own room, and the few thousand left over had been put into a trust fund for him for college. No one in his aunt's house had ever raised a hand or a voice to him in anger.

They were not cruel to him…overtly. It had not escaped Kurt's notice, however, that in two months he had never been alone in a room with his two youngest cousins, eight year old twins Eric and Jason. He did not miss the wariness-and sometimes outright repulsion-in his uncle's eyes. Kurt noticed the way his aunt stiffened every time he came within a few feet of her, and how easy laughter and family activities only began after he had left the room. They did not touch him. They barely spoke to him. They gave him what he needed to survive and not a single thing more.

He felt, sometimes, that he was drowning inch by agonizing inch. He missed his dad so much it was a constant, physical ache inside. He missed his home. He missed his friends.

Silence pressed in on him at night, while he lay in bed and remembered what it was like to have music and laughter in his life. He clutched at those memories like a drowning man might clutch a lifeline. What it was like to be happy.

What it was like to be loved.

Dear Mercedes,

Highlight. Delete.