Author's note: This is the first story I've ever written that I let others see, so I hope you guys like it! :)

At least once in a lifetime a person gets swept away in a Wizard of Oz I don't believe I'm in Kansas anymore daze. Kurt Hummel experienced this twice in eighteen years, once when he was eight years old and now, ten years later. Kurt had a very good reason to feel similar to Dorothy, except he didn't have a dog or little people singing to him to follow a yellow brick road. He thought that he would have enjoyed Dorothy's fantasy much more than his reality.

Ten thousand feet in the air, Kurt's plane stuttered and the intercom crackled on. A voice mumbled over the speakers, "We ask that everyone fasten their seatbelts. The plane will be landing in less than ten minutes. Thank you for flying with us, and we hope you enjoy your stay in Lima, Ohio." Kurt blew out through his teeth and he closed his eyes, his fingers tightening around his seat buckle. Even though the belt was wrinkling his cashmere coat, he was too worried about his future in his career and with his family to notice. His aunt had told him that it took a person with guts to pack up his entire world and fly halfway around the globe for someone he loved, but he was blind to his own bravery in any of this.

When he was eight years old his mom had died, and though he didn't remember her much since she had lived in Paris, taking care of her own mom until the awful car accident, he and his dad had flown the distance and attended the funeral in her honor. Very soon after that, his aunt had moved into his mom's old house and started looking after his grandma in his mom's place. Burt, Kurt's dearly missed dad, had also, of course, stepped in and tried helping, but getting a job in Paris hadn't exactly been simple, especially being an American citizen who couldn't speak French.

After five years of living in Paris, Burt was called by his own dad who had fallen ill. Torn between two worlds, Burt had spoken to Kurt about it, who promised his dad that because he was thirteen years old he could start helping out with his grandma and Burt could return to the states without worry. Burt eventually bent on his argument and headed for the states, leaving Kurt behind in Paris more by force than choice. After a while, Kurt's grandma passed, but Kurt, who had fallen in love with Paris, stayed there with his aunt, with a dream of one day being on Broadway.

But that dream was left behind when an American doctor had called him with word that his dad had a severe heart attack. So severe, in fact, that the doctors didn't know if Burt would even be there by the time Kurt got off his plane. Dreading this trip, dreading returning to the land which he'd been birthed to, Kurt blinked away tears that swelled in the corners of his eyes because of how much he missed Paris. He didn't remember much of Lima, except that it resembled nothing of his true home. He wiped his eyes and puckered his bottom lip to keep it from trembling, hating himself for being so selfish when his dad might not live for very much longer.

The plane smacked down on the ground ten minutes later and Kurt waited his turn to stand and hobble through the slim aisle, bumping bodies and bruising his shoulders along the way. A moment of jostling and maneuvering spat him out of his plane and into an airport three times less than the size of his French airport. Even the signs here were strange, written in a bold English print, while in Paris, he was used to his first language being the highlight of signs and English being the fine print underneath.

Kurt simply wasn't sure he could handle this new life.

Wandering blindly through the airport, struggling to read the signs and understand what the more challenging English words meant, he tried to bat down the urge to simply drop to his knees and sob a puddle of tears onto the floor. He wanted to go home. Wanted his dad to be alright. Didn't want to spend his next year in any school except for his French academy. Here, Ohio had nothing for him. Paris was his heart.

He rubbed his puffy eyes with two tiny fists and tried to smile politely for the man holding the sign that stated, Mr. Hummel. Well, it'd been the longest time since anyone had addressed him as mister. He'd always been called Monsieur Hummel. The man acknowledged him with half of a nod, a bored expression on his face as though he wanted to be doing anything except taking a language-disabled foreigner to his dying dad. "Mr. Hummel? I'll take you right to the hospital."

"Merci," Kurt breathed in a hushed tone, and at the man's strange face he remembered that here French wasn't exactly the top language to speak, but it was too late to apologize in English.

He simply stepped into the cab and tried to come to terms with the fact that here, in Ohio, he was the strange one.