Silent All These Years (Or - What If I'm A Mermaid) (PG-13)
Title: Silent All These Years (Or - What If I'm A Mermaid...)
Rating: PG-13, for language
Word Count: 2,240
Warnings: Discussions of death. Tears.
Spoilers: none
Summary: Character study of sorts on Kurt's mother, or at least, the way I imagine her.
The first time he saw her, Burt Hummel knew he was a goner.
The first time Burt really spoke to her, Elizabeth knew that she’d finally found solid ground.
---
Elizabeth Curtis hid behind her clothes. If people focused on what she was wearing, she thought, then maybe they’d leave her alone. It was one thing to have someone criticize an outfit, but it was another thing entirely for them to criticize her. It’s not that she had a problem with being criticized (her mother did so much of it over the years that it had come to feel as natural as breathing), but it just felt so tiring, at times, and she’d always felt the need to fill whatever time she had with the best she could, and just brush the unpleasantness aside.
This hiding, she also knows, is to keep others from really giving her much notice. Aside from her various Art instructors, no one ever really did pay her much notice. Not, at least, until Burt.
Burt was different. On some level, Elizabeth knew it was ridiculous to use that word to describe him. Everyone’s different, when you get right down to it. No other word really seemed as perfect, though. Burt was a jock, but he wasn’t as loud as the others. At least, he wasn’t when he was with her. Elizabeth, for her own part, was actually louder around him. After years of feeling adrift and unsure, she’d found in him a place of comfort and peace. She would prattle on (her words) about all of the ridiculous things that came to mind, and he’d just drink it all in, looking at her like she was (in his words) the most amazing thing he’d ever seen.
She didn’t know how to tell him she felt the same.
---
They’d been dating for just under two years when she realized she was late. A couple of days later, she showed up at the garage and produced the pregnancy test she’d taken earlier that morning.
“I know this isn’t how this is usually supposed to happen, and this isn’t as romantic as a ring, but I want this baby, and I want you, Burt. Please tell me that I can have both?”
All the color had left his face for a moment, before he turned and walked away. Her entire body went cold before she realized he was walking to his coat, hanging on a hook near the door to the office. He reached into the inner pocket and fished something out before coming back to her.
“This was my grandmother’s,” he said, holding a tiny ring in his outstretched palm. “I’ve been trying to work up the nerve to give it to you for over a year.” He took one of her hands in his and lowered himself to one knee. “I’ll say yes, if you do.”
All she could do was fall to her knees and into his arms, and let the tears she’d been holding begin to flow.
---
They got married a month later. Her parents weren’t happy about it (to say the least), but Elizabeth’s very serious threats of never allowing them to see their grandchild if they didn’t start treating Burt a little better were enough to make them plaster artificial smiles to their faces as the vows were exchanged in a local park.
It was a simple ceremony, just the barest of minimums with Burt and Elizabeth each saying a little something to one another with their voices, but so much more with their eyes. Her dress was simple, just a loose white shift, and she’d insisted on going barefoot and wearing flowers in her hair instead of carrying a bouquet. Her mother hadn’t approved, but she appeared to be learning that her approval didn’t mean much of anything compared to Burt’s. Burt, whose face was a mask of pride and joy through the abbreviated ceremony. Burt, who took her in his arms and lifted her clear off the ground when they were named man and wife. Burt, whose solidness and steadfastness would be there, Elizabeth knew, until the day she died.
---
Six months to the day after they wed, Kurt came out of her and into the world.
His name had been recorded incorrectly, and whether it was the hormones running rampant through her system or some momentary flash of narcissistic brilliance, she could never be quite sure, but she’d been adamant that they keep it as it was. She’d just forced a camel through the eye of the needle, and damn it, she wanted some recognition for it.
Right from the start, he was a screamer. She heard the nurses complaining about how loud he was. How he kept the other babies awake. ”Screw them,” she thought to herself. ”He’s just making himself heard. I’m not about to let anyone shut him up the way I was.”
---
Every mother thinks their little one is special, but Elizabeth knew Kurt was more special than most. Sometimes, that knowledge made her heart hurt with the realization of all it would mean for him. Mostly, it made her proud of how much of his own person he was, even from such a young age.
When Kurt said something, he really meant it. He didn’t feel the need to bother with cushioning blows or pretending disinterest, he just said what he felt and what he wanted, and her heart ached with how sharply he held his world in focus. It wasn’t that he didn’t have a filter, it was that his filter was so finely tuned to his own sensibilities that everything he said was precisely what he meant, with no hope of being misunderstood.
Jesus, her kid was smart. She’d been a good student, and Burt had been slightly above average, but there was a kind of brilliance in the way Kurt seemed to see things that could genuinely scare her. He would have a great future, she knew, but the worried endlessly about the years between now and that nebulous then when he’d be able to leave this place that she’d always loved, but was clearly too small to hold him.
Someday, she knew, she would have to let him go.
She didn’t know when that day would come, but she knew it would be too soon
---
It was her thirtieth birthday when the call came from the doctor’s office.
She hadn’t been able to focus on much of it, aside from the general message of ”oh, hey, you’re dying. Happy fucking birthday!”
She wanted to scream. Wanted to cry. Wanted to punch her fist through the nearest window and not even care about how the glass would get everywhere.
She didn’t though, because Kurt was tugging on her skirt with a homemade card covered with stickers and glittery handprints, and picking him up suddenly seemed like the most important thing in the world.
---
On the last day of her life, she and Burt fought. He had been spending almost every waking minute in her hospital room for months, but he’d refused to let Kurt spend all of his time watching his mother die. She’d tried to point out that watching your wife die wasn’t much better, but Burt swore he could handle it, and she knew that he really could.
What he couldn’t handle, though, was being alone with their son. Burt loved him, she knew, but he just didn’t understand him. If Elizabeth was afraid of how smart Kurt could be, Burt was positively unnerved by it. Burt was a simple guy who tried to see the best in people. Kurt was an increasingly complex child who didn’t see the need to pretend anything was better than it really was. The only thing they’d ever really had in common was their equally large hearts. That, and their love for her.
They wouldn’t be able to rely on that much, anymore.
So she’d insisted he spend a day alone with their son. Told him to take him to the zoo, or to the mall, or have a tea party, of anything that Kurt wanted, really. “You need to learn how to be with him when I’m not around, Burt. It’s going to be your day to day life, before too long.” He’d protested, asserting that he knew she was going to beat this. That she was going to be one of the lucky ones that came out the other end, and they were going to grow old together and watch their son get married, and hug their grandbabies together, and, and, and…and all she could do was bite her tongue to keep from telling him just how wrong he was.
Until there was no need to bite it any longer.
---
It was ten years after Kurt watched his mother’s casket lowered into the ground when he had the dream.
His mother was standing before him in a flowing white dress with flowers in her hair. Her smile was brighter than he remembered it, and it occurred to him that he didn’t really remember much about her before she got sick.
Maybe she’d always looked like this.
“Hey, Baby,” she called to him, her arms spread wide to take him in. He didn’t need to think twice. He dropped the bag from his shoulder to run at her full-speed. She still smelled the same as he remembered, and he did his best to breathe every molecule of her scent, hold every inch of her body, hear every note of her voice. It had been over half of his life since he’d last seen her, and though he never remembered seeing her like this before, he knew it was a truer version of her than the one that frequently crept behind his eyelids in the night.
“Mom…” he said, not really knowing what else to say. His heart felt like it was going to burst from the strange crush of emotions running through him. Aching, longing, fulfillment, pain, hope, love, sadness, relief, comfort, and so, so much more, were all battling it out for the principal feeling in his heart, and he couldn’t do much more than just cling to her and sob like he hadn’t sobbed since he was a very, very small boy because he just misses her so damn much and even in this beautiful dream of having her, he knows she’s really gone.
He’s slightly jolted when she sings softly into his ear. “Baby, don’t look up. The sky is falling.” It takes a minute, but he finally recognizes it as part of a song she’d listened to a lot when he was very small. Her voice grows stronger and clearer as she pulls away to place a finger on his lips and look into his eyes. “I’ve been here, silent all these years,” she sings to him with a sad smile.
“Why are you here?” Kurt’s not really sure why he’s asking this, why he isn’t just holding onto her tighter and trying to find some way to bring her back into reality with him (because in the logic of dreams, this thought makes perfect sense).
“He loves you, you know. He loves you the way I love your father. He just hasn’t woken up to it, yet. Be patient with him, Kurt. I sent him to you on purpose.”
And then she’s gone.
She’s gone, and Kurt is half-screaming, half crying, and all-over shaking when he wakes up. He’s so upset, so confused, that it takes a while for the fact that someone’s holding him to register.
“Kurt? Are you okay? Was it a nightmare?” It’s Blaine’s voice, and it’s his hands, Kurt now realizes, that are holding his upper arms. It takes a minute for Kurt to remember that they’re in his dorm room, and to realize that he must have fallen asleep while they were watching ”Moulin Rouge”. He’d feel more humiliated by the situation, if he wasn’t still battling the storm of emotions from his dream.
“No, not a nightmare,” he says simply. “It was Mom, actually. It was wonderful, until she disappeared.”
Blaine goes quiet and just slips his arms around him, rubbing his back with slow circles. The same circles, Kurt thinks to himself, that his mom used to make. “It’s okay,” Blaine whispers to him. “Just do whatever you have to.”
So he does. He sinks into his friend’s arms and allows the tears to come as he tells him about her. Everything about her, because it’s the first time he’s ever really talked about her, and once you open the lid on something so strong, it’s hard to keep it contained. When he’s finally said all he can think to say, he pulls away, mortified at the mess of tears and snot he’s left on Blaine’s shoulder.
As if he can tell what Kurt’s thinking, Blaine gives a shrug and comments about how tomorrow’s laundry day, and it’s an old shirt, anyway. ”This is why I love you,” Kurt thinks to himself, and a shy smile spreads across his lips.
Blaine’s face clouds in a way Kurt’s not familiar with, and he pulls back a bit. “Your eyes,” he says, “look amazing right now.”
And then he goes silent, because this is Blaine, and he’s probably more oblivious to himself than anything else.
”Except maybe,” Kurt thinks, ”not as much as before.”
-----
Title and lyrics from "Silent All These Years", by Tori Amos.
online mba
Rating: PG-13, for language
Word Count: 2,240
Warnings: Discussions of death. Tears.
Spoilers: none
Summary: Character study of sorts on Kurt's mother, or at least, the way I imagine her.
The first time he saw her, Burt Hummel knew he was a goner.
The first time Burt really spoke to her, Elizabeth knew that she’d finally found solid ground.
---
Elizabeth Curtis hid behind her clothes. If people focused on what she was wearing, she thought, then maybe they’d leave her alone. It was one thing to have someone criticize an outfit, but it was another thing entirely for them to criticize her. It’s not that she had a problem with being criticized (her mother did so much of it over the years that it had come to feel as natural as breathing), but it just felt so tiring, at times, and she’d always felt the need to fill whatever time she had with the best she could, and just brush the unpleasantness aside.
This hiding, she also knows, is to keep others from really giving her much notice. Aside from her various Art instructors, no one ever really did pay her much notice. Not, at least, until Burt.
Burt was different. On some level, Elizabeth knew it was ridiculous to use that word to describe him. Everyone’s different, when you get right down to it. No other word really seemed as perfect, though. Burt was a jock, but he wasn’t as loud as the others. At least, he wasn’t when he was with her. Elizabeth, for her own part, was actually louder around him. After years of feeling adrift and unsure, she’d found in him a place of comfort and peace. She would prattle on (her words) about all of the ridiculous things that came to mind, and he’d just drink it all in, looking at her like she was (in his words) the most amazing thing he’d ever seen.
She didn’t know how to tell him she felt the same.
---
They’d been dating for just under two years when she realized she was late. A couple of days later, she showed up at the garage and produced the pregnancy test she’d taken earlier that morning.
“I know this isn’t how this is usually supposed to happen, and this isn’t as romantic as a ring, but I want this baby, and I want you, Burt. Please tell me that I can have both?”
All the color had left his face for a moment, before he turned and walked away. Her entire body went cold before she realized he was walking to his coat, hanging on a hook near the door to the office. He reached into the inner pocket and fished something out before coming back to her.
“This was my grandmother’s,” he said, holding a tiny ring in his outstretched palm. “I’ve been trying to work up the nerve to give it to you for over a year.” He took one of her hands in his and lowered himself to one knee. “I’ll say yes, if you do.”
All she could do was fall to her knees and into his arms, and let the tears she’d been holding begin to flow.
---
They got married a month later. Her parents weren’t happy about it (to say the least), but Elizabeth’s very serious threats of never allowing them to see their grandchild if they didn’t start treating Burt a little better were enough to make them plaster artificial smiles to their faces as the vows were exchanged in a local park.
It was a simple ceremony, just the barest of minimums with Burt and Elizabeth each saying a little something to one another with their voices, but so much more with their eyes. Her dress was simple, just a loose white shift, and she’d insisted on going barefoot and wearing flowers in her hair instead of carrying a bouquet. Her mother hadn’t approved, but she appeared to be learning that her approval didn’t mean much of anything compared to Burt’s. Burt, whose face was a mask of pride and joy through the abbreviated ceremony. Burt, who took her in his arms and lifted her clear off the ground when they were named man and wife. Burt, whose solidness and steadfastness would be there, Elizabeth knew, until the day she died.
---
Six months to the day after they wed, Kurt came out of her and into the world.
His name had been recorded incorrectly, and whether it was the hormones running rampant through her system or some momentary flash of narcissistic brilliance, she could never be quite sure, but she’d been adamant that they keep it as it was. She’d just forced a camel through the eye of the needle, and damn it, she wanted some recognition for it.
Right from the start, he was a screamer. She heard the nurses complaining about how loud he was. How he kept the other babies awake. ”Screw them,” she thought to herself. ”He’s just making himself heard. I’m not about to let anyone shut him up the way I was.”
---
Every mother thinks their little one is special, but Elizabeth knew Kurt was more special than most. Sometimes, that knowledge made her heart hurt with the realization of all it would mean for him. Mostly, it made her proud of how much of his own person he was, even from such a young age.
When Kurt said something, he really meant it. He didn’t feel the need to bother with cushioning blows or pretending disinterest, he just said what he felt and what he wanted, and her heart ached with how sharply he held his world in focus. It wasn’t that he didn’t have a filter, it was that his filter was so finely tuned to his own sensibilities that everything he said was precisely what he meant, with no hope of being misunderstood.
Jesus, her kid was smart. She’d been a good student, and Burt had been slightly above average, but there was a kind of brilliance in the way Kurt seemed to see things that could genuinely scare her. He would have a great future, she knew, but the worried endlessly about the years between now and that nebulous then when he’d be able to leave this place that she’d always loved, but was clearly too small to hold him.
Someday, she knew, she would have to let him go.
She didn’t know when that day would come, but she knew it would be too soon
---
It was her thirtieth birthday when the call came from the doctor’s office.
She hadn’t been able to focus on much of it, aside from the general message of ”oh, hey, you’re dying. Happy fucking birthday!”
She wanted to scream. Wanted to cry. Wanted to punch her fist through the nearest window and not even care about how the glass would get everywhere.
She didn’t though, because Kurt was tugging on her skirt with a homemade card covered with stickers and glittery handprints, and picking him up suddenly seemed like the most important thing in the world.
---
On the last day of her life, she and Burt fought. He had been spending almost every waking minute in her hospital room for months, but he’d refused to let Kurt spend all of his time watching his mother die. She’d tried to point out that watching your wife die wasn’t much better, but Burt swore he could handle it, and she knew that he really could.
What he couldn’t handle, though, was being alone with their son. Burt loved him, she knew, but he just didn’t understand him. If Elizabeth was afraid of how smart Kurt could be, Burt was positively unnerved by it. Burt was a simple guy who tried to see the best in people. Kurt was an increasingly complex child who didn’t see the need to pretend anything was better than it really was. The only thing they’d ever really had in common was their equally large hearts. That, and their love for her.
They wouldn’t be able to rely on that much, anymore.
So she’d insisted he spend a day alone with their son. Told him to take him to the zoo, or to the mall, or have a tea party, of anything that Kurt wanted, really. “You need to learn how to be with him when I’m not around, Burt. It’s going to be your day to day life, before too long.” He’d protested, asserting that he knew she was going to beat this. That she was going to be one of the lucky ones that came out the other end, and they were going to grow old together and watch their son get married, and hug their grandbabies together, and, and, and…and all she could do was bite her tongue to keep from telling him just how wrong he was.
Until there was no need to bite it any longer.
---
It was ten years after Kurt watched his mother’s casket lowered into the ground when he had the dream.
His mother was standing before him in a flowing white dress with flowers in her hair. Her smile was brighter than he remembered it, and it occurred to him that he didn’t really remember much about her before she got sick.
Maybe she’d always looked like this.
“Hey, Baby,” she called to him, her arms spread wide to take him in. He didn’t need to think twice. He dropped the bag from his shoulder to run at her full-speed. She still smelled the same as he remembered, and he did his best to breathe every molecule of her scent, hold every inch of her body, hear every note of her voice. It had been over half of his life since he’d last seen her, and though he never remembered seeing her like this before, he knew it was a truer version of her than the one that frequently crept behind his eyelids in the night.
“Mom…” he said, not really knowing what else to say. His heart felt like it was going to burst from the strange crush of emotions running through him. Aching, longing, fulfillment, pain, hope, love, sadness, relief, comfort, and so, so much more, were all battling it out for the principal feeling in his heart, and he couldn’t do much more than just cling to her and sob like he hadn’t sobbed since he was a very, very small boy because he just misses her so damn much and even in this beautiful dream of having her, he knows she’s really gone.
He’s slightly jolted when she sings softly into his ear. “Baby, don’t look up. The sky is falling.” It takes a minute, but he finally recognizes it as part of a song she’d listened to a lot when he was very small. Her voice grows stronger and clearer as she pulls away to place a finger on his lips and look into his eyes. “I’ve been here, silent all these years,” she sings to him with a sad smile.
“Why are you here?” Kurt’s not really sure why he’s asking this, why he isn’t just holding onto her tighter and trying to find some way to bring her back into reality with him (because in the logic of dreams, this thought makes perfect sense).
“He loves you, you know. He loves you the way I love your father. He just hasn’t woken up to it, yet. Be patient with him, Kurt. I sent him to you on purpose.”
And then she’s gone.
She’s gone, and Kurt is half-screaming, half crying, and all-over shaking when he wakes up. He’s so upset, so confused, that it takes a while for the fact that someone’s holding him to register.
“Kurt? Are you okay? Was it a nightmare?” It’s Blaine’s voice, and it’s his hands, Kurt now realizes, that are holding his upper arms. It takes a minute for Kurt to remember that they’re in his dorm room, and to realize that he must have fallen asleep while they were watching ”Moulin Rouge”. He’d feel more humiliated by the situation, if he wasn’t still battling the storm of emotions from his dream.
“No, not a nightmare,” he says simply. “It was Mom, actually. It was wonderful, until she disappeared.”
Blaine goes quiet and just slips his arms around him, rubbing his back with slow circles. The same circles, Kurt thinks to himself, that his mom used to make. “It’s okay,” Blaine whispers to him. “Just do whatever you have to.”
So he does. He sinks into his friend’s arms and allows the tears to come as he tells him about her. Everything about her, because it’s the first time he’s ever really talked about her, and once you open the lid on something so strong, it’s hard to keep it contained. When he’s finally said all he can think to say, he pulls away, mortified at the mess of tears and snot he’s left on Blaine’s shoulder.
As if he can tell what Kurt’s thinking, Blaine gives a shrug and comments about how tomorrow’s laundry day, and it’s an old shirt, anyway. ”This is why I love you,” Kurt thinks to himself, and a shy smile spreads across his lips.
Blaine’s face clouds in a way Kurt’s not familiar with, and he pulls back a bit. “Your eyes,” he says, “look amazing right now.”
And then he goes silent, because this is Blaine, and he’s probably more oblivious to himself than anything else.
”Except maybe,” Kurt thinks, ”not as much as before.”
-----
Title and lyrics from "Silent All These Years", by Tori Amos.
online mba