For Kurt Hummel, life had been one misfortunate event followed by another. Such inopportune proceedings of his seventeen years of life had undoubtedly lead to his own existential existence.

He stopped believing at age fourteen. Stopped pretending that things would get better, stopped lying to himself that one day life would finally give him the tiniest of respites.

And with the start of his high school years, came the start of a new Kurt. The change hadn't been conscious, more of a slow development until it finally outwardly encompassed the inward troubled soul of a tortured teenage boy.

Kurt had been on his own since he was fourteen. His mother had already died and six years later Burt followed. Though to be perfectly honest, Burt wasn't dead, nonetheless it felt that way to his son. The accident had left the man with brain damage- trauma induced early onset dementia, they called it. Basically all it meant to Kurt was that he went home to a stranger every day. Some days were better than others, there were always those rare incidents of lucidity the teenager cherished.

Carol would stop by from time to time, insistent that they were still family. Kurt just thought she had some screwed up sense of obligatory familial instincts that would be better served towards her own son. He had survived on his own so far.

Survived being the operative word. Was it really living he was doing? Floating would be a more accurate representation of what his life had become, the saddest and thereby most important fact was that he didn't care. But he never expected for someone to come along who would make him start caring again.