Kurt had forgotten how strong Santana and Brittany were. For just a second, as the pair of them supported his weight and got him up the first three steps hope swelled in his heart. Artie was already safe outside (had he seriously asked to be left behind? Kurt was a little concerned he'd hallucinated that from blood loss. Hallucinations were a bad sign.) and there weren't that many steps between them and freedom.

They hadn't moved fast enough, and there was a gunshot.

There was a second's hesitation as everyone needed to assure themselves none of them had been shot. Or, you know, in Kurt's case, had been shot again. Except those few seconds, the realization that Jacob was close enough behind them that he could take one of them down on the way up the stairs. "Run." he mumbled.

They hauled him up one more step. He forced his voice to its top volume, and even he winced at how high the pitch ended up. "Run!" It was still so quiet...fear flooded through Kurt. His voice was weakening, he needed help...

As quickly as it came the fear abated. He'd thought; for so long, that losing hope would be the most terrifying thing that could ever happen to him. It wasn't. There was a strange sort of peace in just knowing. "The hell I..." Santana tried to argue as she and Brittany started pulling him up another step.

"Santana." he still had enough strength to cut her off, but only just. So his voice was weaker than he'd ever heard it when he said "Put me down, take Brittany and get out. The next shot could hit..."

He didn't need to finish the sentence. In a crisis like this, someone's real priorities showed through. Kurt closed his eyes as he found his body suddenly hanging lopsidedly as Brittany kept trying to support him and Santana stopped. Something tore at his wound and he swallowed hard to keep from crying out. Eventually, Brittany let go too, more gently than Santana had, and the pair rushed for safety at a speed they couldn't manage with Kurt hanging uselessly between them.

Turning around was painful, and this time he didn't bother to stop himself from crying out. Because he already knew what he would see once the pain stopped being blinding. He'd see Jacob Ben Israel looking at him from behind the barrel of a gun. He didn't need to see that again, so he just cut right to the point.

"...why?"

The noise of a gun being cocked really was dramatic, and something in the back of Kurt's mind almost appreciated that fact. He dismissed it as sick and disturbed and demanded "...Jacob, why?"

He fully expected those to be his last words, and terrible last words they'd be too. Except for the part where they weren't. Instead, the pain continued...and there was silence.