By the time Kurt turned seventeen he seemed to have everything planned out. He managed to finish school with a perfect GPA of 4.0 and got his high school diploma. He and his dad had talked for a long time until Burt Hummel finally agreed to sign the permission slip allowing Kurt to apply to Juilliard one year early.

Since it was quite unusual to send in an application at such a young age and even rarer with grades like Kurt's, they assumed that he had a pretty good chance of getting in.

Even though Burt knew next to nothing about the ballet he was still convinced that once they saw his son dance they would welcome him with open arms. And much to Kurt's embarrassment he told everybody that his little boy would be attending Juilliard in the fall (despite many protests from Kurt).

Needless to say that every resident of the Hummel house was absolutely thrilled when the letter from the school arrived telling them that Kurt was one of the finalists. He was requested to come to New York and perform in front of the admissions committee at the end of July.

To Kurt it felt like he was finally reaching his destiny - everything seemed to fall into place. And he couldn't remember ever being this happy since the day his mom had passed away.

But as they say: Nothing good can last forever.

Kurt was in the middle of his daily 30 minute stretch before his practice when he got a call from the hospital telling him his father had been brought in an hour ago. He barely managed to put on some normal shoes before he was already heading out the front door. He might have sped a little on the way to the hospital and run over a few red lights (sue him his only living relative had been rushed to the ER).

When he arrived at Lima Memorial he frantically sought out the front desk and practically screamed his Burt's name at the nurse sitting there. After several minutes spent anxiously waiting for his father's file being located and the doctor being paged. The man finally appeared in the hall and took him to the room. He informed Kurt that his father had suffered from a severe heart attack while working at the shop, and due to the lack of oxygen to his brain had fallen into a coma.

They didn't think he would make it.

Even after hearing all the hard facts about his father's condition Kurt refused to believe that Burt would leave him so utterly alone in the world. So he ignored the doctors and nurses pleading for him to let his father go, and instead spent every waking hour of the next three weeks on his dad's bedside. He talked to him, read to him, pleaded with him to wake up and told him how much he loved him and that he couldn't lose him too, over and over.

But there was no use.

23 days after Burt had been rushed to the hospital he died from a second heart attack. When Kurt got to his room (like every day before this) at the beginning of visiting hours Burt's bed was empty and the room had already been cleared. The nurses (who all knew him be now and had sent him several pitying looks in the past) sat him down in one of the waiting room chairs until the doctor appeared. Kurt didn't listen to him talking about how his dad's heart just couldn't handle it anymore and had stopped beating at about 4:15 this morning. He already knew that his father was gone and that he was now truly alone in the world. Why should the details of it happening make him feel better?

The funeral was small but tasteful (it had to be since Kurt was the one organizing it). For once Kurt didn't feel like dressing up (but he did it nevertheless of course). The whole thing was a very quiet affair: There was no preacher since neither he nor his father were even remotely religious. And since he had been his father's only living family, for Kurt it was all just a blur of condolences and speeches from Burt's friends about what great man he had been (Kurt couldn't think of anything to say, so he just didn't and watched everything quietly). After 40 minutes they lowered the coffin into the ground. And that was it. Everything was over, just like that.

Kurt stayed at the cemetery for a long time after the other guests had left and stared at the headstone and the engravings on it:

"Elizabeth Hummel, loving mother and wife. "

(And the newer, slightly darker one below) "Burt Hummel, devoted father and husband. Rest in peace. ".

He felt like crying but didn't think he could manage to (considering how much time he had spent crying in the last days, he honestly doubted that he had any tears left). It had only been 6 days, but to Kurt it had felt like 6 years in the least. At sunset, 5 hours after everybody else had gone Kurt finally left the cemetery behind to drive back to the now empty house that once was his home.