Chapter Text
"Where are you going?"
Brian looked at him in confusion, seeing him quickly filling his backpack.
"Out." Out. Now that he'd said it out loud, it seemed so simple. Out.
"Out where? We're expected in Atlanta in three hours."
"Yeah, I'm not going."
"The hell you're not. This is the most important speech of the year. Kurt, we talked about this...what are you doing?"
"Going."
"Kurt, you're up for the directorship. You can't just..."
"Yes, I can."
"You ... This is insane. Kurt, please ... WAIT."
Walking quickly to the elevators, Kurt could hear Brian's footsteps following him.
Arriving in front of the door he pressed the button and waited impatiently for the elevator to reach the floor. "Kurt, please."
Brian stood beside him, panting slightly, and Kurt looked up. Poor Brian. He seemed shocked and, for a split second, he felt a little sorry for him.
But he would be fine, as usual.
"What are you doing? You-you can't leave like this! It's essential that you go to Atlanta! Everyone will be there waiting for you!"
"Well, I won't be there, I'm sure they'll figure something out."
"Kurt, it's not that simple and you’re the only one that can go over there. There are people who value you, who appreciate you, who count on you ...
Kurt, are you even listening to me?"
Kurt didn't answer him, but a quick shrug and a completely unimpressed expression made his unspoken answer clear.
Brian tried another approach: “What’s up with you lately? Is everything all right at home? You know you can talk to me about anything, right?"
Kurt turned his head, looking at him briefly, and scoffed. Home... Home meant Diane to him. She was the only thing he could consider “home” for so many years, and now that everything had changed, he didn’t even know what “home” is anymore. The only thing he knew for sure was that he didn't want to talk about it at that very moment, and certainly not with Brian. Why does everyone always want to talk? Or rather: why did everyone want HIM to talk? He shook his head.
How damn long did it take for that elevator to come?
The sound of the elevator going up to the floor increased Brian's panic and, as soon as Kurt moved to get in, he instinctively grabbed him by the elbow, trying to hold him back, and said, in a shriller voice than he had expected, “Kurt, think about this please, don’t do that!”
The intimidating look Kurt gave him was enough to make Brian let him go and allow him to enter the elevator. Brian stood there, still watching him, dumbfounded at how quickly things had crashed in the last few minutes. As the doors began to close, he tried to say something again, but Kurt, reaching out a hand to keep the doors from closing, looked him straight in the eye and said,
"Listen, Brian. This is nothing personal, but I quit. I'm done. I'm hell out of here, forever."
Kurt took his hand off the sensor and stepped back, letting the doors take their course. Meanwhile, he continued to stare Brian in the eye. He wasn't the thug type, but, when necessary, he could land a good punch. Brian looked petrified, and just a second before the doors closed completely, he uttered one last, "Kurt!!!"
Arriving on the first floor, Kurt quickly headed for the exit. Luckily Brian hadn't dared to follow him into the lobby. Good. He had no more time to waste arguing with him.
Walking down the street to his car, he felt the weight of the backpack on his shoulders, which he had filled with some stuff from his office and some photos of Diane that he randomly picked up. He almost chuckled; what did he think he was going to do with those photos? He didn't know exactly, but at that moment it seemed like a wise decision.
Wise.
Few of his moves recently had been particularly wise. It surely was not wise not to realize that he was losing his wife, probably to someone else. He hadn't even realized what deep discomfort she was going through, or maybe he had not wanted to understand it, as focused on work as he had been lately. Work, yeah. A job he didn't particularly like, but one that allowed him to not sit on his hands and be engaged in an area he thoroughly enjoyed under the circumstances.
Kurt had always seen himself more as a person of action than as a talker. He could argue for hours about some things: weapons, for example, and politics, of course. Yep, he is always ready to talk and compare ballistics and politics. The former is a science: with clear elements, where a cause always corresponds to an effect. Of course, errors could occur, and variables could intervene, but in the end, everything comes to an inevitable and clear result. The latter is the other constant in his life and is somehow related to the first. He couldn't call himself a radical Republican and, certainly, he doesn’t feel represented by that buffoon, Trump.
He had opinions, even strong ones, but he is always willing to debate them, listen to other opinions, and look at things from a different angle. Not that he ever had to debate about anything at work or the polygon, quite the opposite. But with his wife... Diane is probably the only person with whom discussions are stimulating and interesting.
Or, he thought with a sigh, he should say "were."
But when it comes to talking about his emotion and his feelings it’s completely different. That’s really something he had never been strong at, and Diane had always teased him about it. They had laughed at that stoic, silent cowboy pose that was short on words but good and could pull out words of wisdom when needed. Ever since their first date, when he wanted to kiss and muffle her. Over time, it had become almost a game, a banter that could sometimes escalate into an argument, but was usually the prelude to extraordinary sex. But looking back now, it almost seemed like the stages of a long journey that, by now, seemed to have led them to nowhere.
Lately, well, to be honest, during the last years, things had been changing so much, so quickly and so slowly at the same time, that he'd barely noticed. At least until...
He couldn't help but think back to the last time he had met his wife. A few days had passed, but it already seemed like an eternity.
"I'm getting an Uber, goodbye," he told her and got out of the car.
He couldn't stay in there another minute. He felt his heart pounding in his temples, his palms sweating. He didn't have the strength, or perhaps the courage, to look into her eyes, to read in those blue, beloved, clear eyes, her despair mixed with irritation, and surrender. What frightened him the most was the determination with which Diane had just actually ended their marriage. Not with the threat of divorce, they were almost used to that by now, but with something worse.
“So, there's no room for love?”
“I don't... I don't know. I mean...Yes, there's always room for love. But that just feels so inconsequential next to...Next to everything that's going on.”
Her voice cracked as she said these words, but Kurt couldn't bring himself to say any comforting words for her, nor could he think of making a consoling gesture. He was only able to articulate:
“So, what then?”
“Well, I mean...You go to D.C. for your convention…”
Diane’s voice reached his ears muffled, overpowered by the sound of his heart beating violently in his ears.
"Inconsequential", she said.
How could their love, their whole story be inconsequential? After all they had been through. Good times, bad times, losing themselves, looking for each other, finding each other, the tears, the laughter, the kisses, the tenderness, the love, the sex ... There was still the shadow of the affair with Holly, of course, there will always be. It was the one mistake that he could never forgive himself for, and that maybe she never really absolved him from, not completely at least.
And the worst thing about it was that he didn’t even find the strength to confess it to his wife, and that had come out in the worst possible way, in a courtroom, during a trial, in front of everyone. But somehow, they had overcome that, too. One step at a time, one day at a time, he regained her trust, and they rebuilt their relationship.
And then, Diane had told him about that guy, Tully. They had never delved into what exactly had happened between them, Kurt had not wanted to know. They decided they needed a clean start: no more ghosts from the past, that was the deal. But can the ghosts really disappear? They also promised to have no more secrets between them, but now, after her outburst, he could clearly sense that she kept way more than one secret from him lately.
When Diane had talked about the "people" she was seeing, who had made it clear to her that she wanted something different in life, Kurt could not avoid thinking that she was referring to another man and he had felt the anger and the pain come out overwhelmingly.
She did say that she hadn’t met someone else, not in the way he meant, but somehow, he could not entirely believe her. His hands had slowly crushed the steering wheel in front of him, almost driven by an uncontrollable force; he had been afraid to say something he might regret, or perhaps to make a scene, he wasn't exactly sure, and he ended up saying nothing at all.
All he knew was that he had to get out of there, so he pulled over and got out. And now, surrounded by darkness and silence, he forced himself to stare into space as he waited for his Uber. He couldn't turn around and look at her in that car for another minute, even though he could feel her gaze on his shoulders. God, despite the separation and the distance, there had always been something in his heart that held them together and that hadn't broken forever, and he had always been quite sure that had been the same for Diane.
But now everything seems to be dark. No lighter at the end of the tunnel, no more doors ajar. There, in the cold, leaning against the car, he realized that, paradoxically, he had so much to say to her, so many thoughts, too many and too complex to be expressed in a reasonable and understanding way.
Five minutes the screen said, just five more minutes.
Inconsequential. Inconsequential.
Kurt had reached his car, lost in his thoughts. Once he got in, he took a deep breath and said to himself, "Let's go."
As expected, the streets around Diane's firm were closed, so he parked the car a few blocks away. He decided not to take anything with him, he didn't need anything except his phone. Kurt somehow managed to find a way through the crowd of protesters, even if he failed to understand what they were protesting for.
For months there had been these protests, these explosions, attacks, and violence, but he couldn't figure out what it was about, or who they were angry at, it seemed to be more an outburst of anger and violence for its own sake than anything else. but he'd think about that at another time, for now, it was enough that no one stood in his way, preventing him from reaching his destination.
Finally, he reached the entrance of the building and went through the glass doors directly to the receptionist to ask if he could go to the firm's floor... Suddenly he realized that he wasn't sure what the firm's name was now: Reddick, perhaps? He remembered Liz's last name but wasn't sure if that was it or if it had changed again. This was another thing to which he had paid little attention recently.
Admittedly, it was difficult to keep track of all the changes that had taken place in the firm over the years, and at some point, he had stopped taking notes. The receptionist, oblivious to his confusion, helped him out by simply telling him, "You can't go upstairs, the elevators are blocked, but if you want, you can sit here for a moment and wait for the problem to be fixed."
Kurt sat down and looked around. Not that there was much to see, it was a simple atrium like millions of others, but outside the explosions and screams could still be heard and the situation seemed anything but calm. The large windows seemed to him like a barrier and at the same time a bubble separating him from another world. But patience had always been one of his strengths. He could wait.
A few minutes had passed and the doors opened again, letting in a man. Nothing unusual and he wouldn't have even noticed him if he hadn't overheard him say: “I have an appointment with Diane Lockhart.”
Diane Lockhart? His Diane? Why on earth had he an appointment with her? And why? Was it a date?
Trying not to betray his interest in the newcomer and the nervousness he felt slowly rising inside him, he watched unnoticed the man who had taken a seat a few feet away. He was quite tall, with short white hair, and well dressed. He didn't radiate any particular charm, at least nothing that he could perceive, but he could understand why a woman might find him charming. And, even worse, he could understand why Diane could find him charming.
He just seemed like the kind of man who could take her to the opera, or at the museum, or in a nice restaurant, who would show up at the door with a beautiful bouquet and a gentle kiss; a typical carefree, quiet, reliable person. Democratic, for sure, he thought. Exactly his opposite. Could he be one of the “people" Diane had mentioned?
Suddenly it seemed unbearable to stay sitting there, and, as he quickly directed his gaze to the opposite side of the elevators, his eyes focused on the sign "Stairs". It took him about five seconds to decide.
"There's nowhere to go but up".
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