fic: Sugar Spell It Out 3/5

[notfar]

back to part two

Part Three

Santana Lopez didn’t bother going home most days. Her dad always off on his ‘business trips’, and her mom was constantly working, and so what if she didn’t feel like being alone.

Brittany’s parents never said anything about her staying over, curled up on Brittany’s bed. She wasn’t getting much sleep anyway, but at least there, in B’s room with the purple wallpaper and the mountain of stuffed toys and the smell of her shampoo on the pillows, she felt a little better.

It meant she was there when they got the call, just before six in the morning. Britt’s mom answered, and it was her shriek that roused Santana into awareness.

“Oh my god. Oh my!” she cried. “She’s. Steve, get the keys. Get the girls. They found Brittany!”

And then it was a wordless blur; pulling her jeans on, riding in the backseat of the station wagon to the hospital, pacing restlessly in the waiting-room.

Finally, they got some news. Santana pushed her way through the various members of glee who had arrived at some stage, until she was at the front, where a doctor was talking to Brittany’s parents. He glanced at her, but, taking in her facial expression, chose not to question whether she was part of the blonde-haired, blue-eyed family.

“She’s hypothermic and dehydrated,” the guy was saying. “We’ve got her on a drip, and we’re warming her up to treat that. She looks a little banged up, a little worse for wear, and she hasn’t said a lot since she was brought in, but there don’t appear to be any major injuries.”

“Thank god,” Brittany’s mom said, her hand pressed over her heart. “Can we see her?”

The doctor nodded. “As soon as the police are finished talking to her.”

Brittany’s mom and dad pulled her sister into a big family hug, and Santana found herself turning back to the rest of the group who were watching anxiously.

“She’s okay,” she reported, digging her hands into the front pockets of her jacket. “The police are still with her.”

It was Mercedes who broke the resulting silence.

“But what about Kurt?”

Santana swallowed. There’d been no mention of Hummel. The thought hadn’t even occurred to her, swept up in the rush of events since the phone call came through. She wondered if anybody had called Kurt’s dad yet. Finn wasn’t with the group in the waiting room, but that could mean he didn’t know yet, or he did know, and he was staying with his family.

She couldn’t think about that. She had to think about Brittany, and if she’d be okay. She had to see her.

Brittany’s family went first into the hospital room, one floor up from the general waiting room, curtains drawn. Her mother stayed by her side, but after half an hour, Brittany’s sister and father emerged from the room, looking weary but relieved.

Santana went inside.

Brittany was sitting up, hair loose and hospital gown slipping down one shoulder. She was bundled in blankets, one hand connected to a tube thing and the other in her mother’s tight grip.

She looked exhausted. But she was alive.

Santana took a deep breath. Brittany looked up.

“Hi!” Her voice was soft, lips cracked. There was a faint bruise on her temple.

“Brittany.” Santana found herself smiling for the first time in fifteen days. “Brittany, oh my god.”

“I missed you so much, S.” Brittany shifted over in the bed, and Santana immediately climbed into the space created, careful not to disturb the IV line or Britt’s cocoon of blankets.

“I missed you more. Tell me you’re okay.”

Brittany’s pinkie wound its way around Santana’s. She squeezed back, then took Brittany’s whole hand in hers.

“I’m okay. Kurt looked after me. He taught me how to wash clothes too. Did you know you can just do it in the sink?”

There was no fucking way Santana was going to cry. Not after all of this. Not when Brittany was alive, and still herself, trembling in Santana’s arms.

“Oh my god, B. Tell me what happened.”

When it was over, her resolution to stay dry-eyed was long forgotten, and she was holding Brittany tight enough to bruise.

~

The phone rang early in the morning, just as Burt was heading out to the shop. Usually, he wouldn’t head in til eight or nine, but lately he’d been in need of a distraction. Spending twelve hours at the garage didn’t make him stop thinking about Kurt constantly, but it kept his hands busy, and kept his head occupied enough that he wasn’t going completely out of his mind with worry. Most of the time, anyway.

Two weeks, and every time the phone rang, the whole family held its breath. Ninety-five percent of the time it was someone from the media calling. The other five percent was usually Karen, Brittany’s mother, or Finn’s girlfriend calling to talk.

He picked up the phone. “Hello?”

“Mr Hummel? Detective Fisher here. There’s been a development.”

Burt listened, and when he hung up, he could feel Carole’s presence behind him.

“They found Brittany. Some guy driving a milk truck picked her up on the side of the road four hours ago. Recognized her from the news and took her to a police station. She’s at Lima General now.”

Carole’s hands slid around his middle. “Oh. And they didn’t say -”

He shook his head. “Nothing yet. She’s still talking to the police, they’re going to let us know.”

“Oh, Burt. I’ll get my coat.”

Finn wanted to come too, once he heard the news. Kurt’s friends were all gathered in the waiting room when the three of them walked in, Rachel attaching herself to Finn’s side as soon as she saw him.

The rest of the kids were sitting in silence. A few of them looked like they were still wearing their pyjamas, like they literally came as soon as they heard. The only one missing was the other cheerleader girl, the one who spent all her time at Brittany’s house.

“Santana’s with Brittany right now,” Burt heard Rachel saying. “She’s been there a while, she’ll probably be back soon.”

“Mr and Mrs Hummel,” one of the officers said, coming over, and Burt didn’t bother correcting him. “The hospital's provided a room for us to work from. Please, follow me.”

It was a meeting room, and Burt and Carole sat across from the police officers at a table crowded with papers.

“According to the man who found her, Brittany was dazed and confused,” the officer started. “Hypothermic shock, most likely. From the account we’ve gotten from her, both subjects were being held in a house. She escaped, and walked for several hours before anybody stopped. Unfortunately, it was dark both when she was taken into the house and when she left, and she was unable to provide us with a description. We’ve got a general location from the driver of the truck, but it provides us with a very large search radius.”

The man slid a map towards them, a wide circle drawn on it. “We’re sending teams out as we speak to search every house within this area, but it this will take time. ”

“What about a sketch artist? They were there for two weeks, Brittany might be able to give a description,” Carole suggested.

The officer nodded. “We’ve already called one in; he’s on his way. The medical team thought it was best to let her rest and see her family. We’ll get a much more detailed description of events as soon as she’s capable of giving one.”

The officer paused, looking at them both with undisguised sympathy. “I understand what a difficult situation this puts both of you in right now. But believe me, this is a very significant break-through. We have confirmation that your son was seen alive eight hours ago. It's the first positive sign we've had since they went missing. We’re putting all possible men into the field, and we will find him.”

Burt swallowed, and squeezed Carole’s hand.

“C’mon, honey,” she said. “I saw Steve in the waiting room. We should talk to him.”

He nodded, clearing his throat. “Right. Yeah. Thanks.”

The officer smiled at him, pulling the map back to his side of the table.

Two weeks had given Burt plenty of time to think up scenarios. Worst case scenarios, which physically hurt to imagine. Best case scenarios, like Kurt tripping and giving himself amnesia, then letting Brittany convince him that they should catch a bus to LA and go to Disneyland for a month. He hadn’t thought of this. One kid being fine while the other was still missing. And somehow, it felt like the worst scenario of all.

~

Santana didn’t want to leave, even after Brittany fell asleep. She’d stopped shivering somewhere along the line, breathing in little puffs of warmth against Santana’s arm.

She glanced at Brittany’s mom, sitting close to the bedside, still holding Brittany’s hand. She had tears in her eyes, but Santana couldn’t tell if they were tears of relief or tears of sadness after listening to Britt’s recital of events.

She didn’t really want to know, either way. It was her job to report back to the glee club, and she had to concentrate on that. There was no way the doctors would let ten teenagers plus Schue and Coach Sylvester traipse through the room, not while Brittany was still exhausted and the cops were still waiting to talk to her.

So it fell to Santana to fill them in, and the thought made her feel sick. Santana wasn’t afraid of anything, and she didn’t back down from anything, ever. But the rules didn’t apply to Brittany. She was the exception. She was the chink in Santana’s armour, or something. She mattered, and Santana wanted to stay by her side in the bed. Or she wanted to go and kick some kidnapping-scumbag ass to the deepest pits of hell. She didn’t want to go and tell the tale of events to the waiting room.

Better her than Brittany, at least. Or B’s mom, who looked more ready to fall apart than she had since the police declared Britt and Kurt officially missing. She sighed, gave Brittany’s hand one last squeeze, then stood up, sweeping her hair back behind her shoulders.

“I’m gonna go talk to everyone. Tell them what’s happening,” she told Brittany’s mom. “I’ll be back soon, if Britt asks.”

Brittany’s mom gave her a watery smile. “Okay, dear.”

Santana cleared her throat and put her best bitchface on, then pushed through the door.

~

Mercedes was pretty sure she’d cried more tears in the past two weeks than she had in her whole almost-seventeen years of existence. She wondered, sometimes, how she hadn’t run out of tears already. Surely there was a limit to how much a person could cry before their tear ducts dried up completely.

She was a diva. She didn’t do crying. She was sassy, and tears never, ever matched with that. Kurt was a diva too, but he got away with it. There was always a sensitive, vulnerable layer hidden underneath the designer clothes and the practice-perfected bitchiness. Mercedes didn’t see it often, but she knew it was there.

But to her, crying was unfamiliar, and she hated it. She needed Kurt to come back so she could remember how to smile again.

And she liked Brittany, she really did. But Kurt was hers. And listening to Santana’s monotone description of what had happened set her off all over again, bawling against Matt’s side.

They locked her baby boy in a basement for a week. They were starving him and taunting him, and maybe worse, judging by the haunted look in Santana’s eyes.

“B said Kurt distracted the two assholes so she could escape. She waited for him for hours, but he didn’t come,” Santana finished. Mercedes bit her bottom lip, twisting around to see the rest of the group.

Kurt’s dad was there, listening. He looked as torn up as Mercedes felt, and another teary shudder shook her body. She couldn’t imagine how he was actually feeling, because she couldn’t imagine feeling any worse, and she had only known, really known, Kurt for a year and a half. Mr Hummel’d had seventeen years of Kurt.

She fished a crumpled tissue out of her pocket and wiped her eyes, then her nose. She could see a bunch of police officers milling around a doorway just down the corridor, and she had a good mind to march over there and shout at them to hurry up and find Kurt already. Causing a scene would probably be counterproductive, though, so she swallowed heavily and sat back against the hard chair, feeling Matt’s fingers close in a circle around her wrist.

She just wanted her boy back.

Everyone was back in the choir room by Friday, with the notable exception of Brittany and Santana. And Kurt.

Will had driven to the hospital on Thursday morning when he’d heard the news, but he could only stay for an hour before he had to get to work. He wasn’t surprised when none of the kids made it into school.

He managed to speak with Brittany’s mom on the phone late on Thursday night. Brittany was being discharged in the morning, and from the sounds of it, Santana didn’t plan on leaving her side anytime soon.

Will couldn’t blame her. Two weeks was a long time.

But everyone else was back in their chairs, looking worn out and miserable, listening Rachel to fill them in on the latest news she’d picked up on her police scanner. Will didn’t really want to know how she’d come across one, or how she’d managed to get her hands on such a large map of Ohio. There was a circle drawn around Lima and all the surrounding counties, little silver stars marking the locations the police were still to search.

“Now, as you can see, the red stars indicate the properties officials have already searched. Unsuccessfully, of course,” Rachel explained. “I’m saving a gold star for the house they will undoubtedly find Kurt in.”

“I’m sure Kurt will be super glad to hear that,” Puck said.

“Puck,” Will cut in, ready to point out that sarcasm wasn’t productive in any way, but Rachel didn’t need his help. She was already moving on, handing sheets of paper out to the group.

“Now, if you’ve been following the 24-hour news cycle like I have, you’ll already know that Brittany spoke with detectives and the official police sketch artist yesterday evening. They’ve been faxing these images through to every police station in the tri-state area, and I suspect they’ll be released to the public by lunchtime. Statistics show that a physical representation is much more effective in encouraging witnesses or associates to come forwards with information. I’m sure somebody will recognize one if not both men and contact the authorities immediately. A picture really is worth a thousand words.”

Will grabbed the spare sheets from Mike, moving back to the piano to look at them properly. They were both in colour; the faces of two men staring up at him from the baby grand.

“The first image is the man Brittany identified as ‘John’,” Rachel told everyone. “According to Santana, she never learnt the name of the second man, the one with the blue eyes.”

“Creepy,” Artie said, holding both pictures up to his face.

“Very,” Tina agreed.

Will nodded. It was possible it was his own bias showing through, but to him, both men looked dangerous. The kind of people you cross the road to avoid. He couldn’t imagine why Brittany and Kurt would ever willingly get in the car with either one of them. But that was a question to come much, much later.

“According to my projections, the officers will have completed their search of the properties by lunchtime tomorrow,” Rachel continued. “I suggest you all keep your phones on your person. We could hear news anytime now.”

Hearing it put like that sent something akin to a wave of energy through the group. Will watched; they all sat up a little straighter, schooling their emotions.

Nobody dared to hope, of course. But they had Brittany back already, and the police were closing in on tracking down Kurt. Things were falling into place. People were thinking, acting, making progress. For the first time in at least a week, the kids were starting to believe that a happy ending was still possible. Maybe they'd actually taken something out of singing so much Journey in their first year as a club.

The bell rang, and everyone was slow to get up, tucking the papers into their bags, hugging, whispering into each others ears. As they filed out the door, they all paused to look at the map Rachel had taped up to the whiteboard.

And the sheet of gold stars hanging beside it in wait.

~

Sue Sylvester was not known for her patience. She considered this a good thing, because she did not enjoy being kept waiting. Her aptitude for cultivating an environment of abject fear came in handy here; a preceding reputation ensuring that she was never forced to endure the banality of queuing, making appointments or abiding by someone else’s schedule.

It also meant nobody wasted their breath raising questions when she strode directly into Brittany’s hospital room three hours after the official end of visiting hours.

Sue Sylvester was not a visitor. Her importance was far too great for nursing staff to even try and comprehend. Add to that the fact that she had been kept waiting for two entire weeks and she was a force to be reckoned with. Even more so than usual.

Brittany was hers, but despite her emergence from the disease-riddled wilderness, Sue’s squad remained incomplete. And that was unacceptable. The police had proven themselves to be completely incompetent - something that Sue had been aware of ever since a spotty-faced rookie dared to pull her over for driving on the wrong side of the road.

She didn’t submit to the irritating whine of the sirens and the flashing lights in her rear-vision mirror, of course. Sue did everything for a reason, and the hapless rookie needed to be educated in the finer aspects of a high-speed chase. When she did finally slow, stopping her hummer in the middle of the road - because Sue Sylvester stepped aside for nobody - he then moved to question the large quantities of high-level explosives she was carrying in her vehicle. Of course, he failed to locate the three firearms she was also transporting, but that was entirely unsurprising. Instead, she was forced to spend eight-and-a-half minutes of existence explaining the finer points of retribution to the sorry excuse for an officer, his mouth gaping like the empty cavity that undoubtedly lay between his ears.

He was in tears after seven minutes, and Sue used the remaining ninety seconds to ensure she would never be subjected to the eyesore that was his face as long as they were both still breathing. Then, finally, she was free to switch the ignition back on and return to the mission of the moment: seeking her glorious vengeance.

Those girl-scouts never disturbed her peaceful sanctuary of contemplation and warfare again, that was for sure.

That brought her back to the situation at hand. Having once and for all proven the uselessness of the men in blue, Sue knew it was necessary to take action, the responsibility falling to her exquisitely formed shoulders. The police claimed to have taken a complete and comprehensive history of events from Brittany, but Sue wasn’t so easily fooled. Trusting the law to get the job done had been her first mistake. Waiting two weeks to come to this conclusion was her second.

Well. Less a mistake, and more an oversight, because Sue was not capable of making mistakes. It wasn’t part of her personally-designed post-forces reprogramming. It was an oversight. One she planned to correct immediately.

She needed her full squad back. They had an appearance booked at a shopping mall in Columbus in a matter of weeks, and nothing less than perfection was acceptable.

Brittany was asleep, and Sue took a moment to examine her appearance with the highest degree of scrutiny.

The circumference of her biceps suggested that she had lost a significant amount of weight. Perhaps, Sue considered, too much, even for a Cheerio. Brittany would be exempt from weigh-ins for at least a week upon her return to school, Sue decided. She was bruised and grazed, but bruises would fade. Sue had her own special ointment formulated to prevent even the faintest of scars remaining. She made a note to pass a jar onto Brittany at the soonest convenience. All that remained in question was her mental state.

She cleared her throat, and Brittany began to rouse. She had always been one of the most obedient members of the squad. Sue nodded her approval and sat, staring until Brittany opened her eyes fully.

“Coach Sylvester,” she said, blinking. “I’m really sorry I missed practice.”

Judging by the standards Sue had designed with Brittany especially in mind, Brittany was of sound mental capacity. With only a moderate degree of prompting, she was able to recite the series of events that occurred between the gymnasium and the road where she was recovered.

Sue was pleased. Filled with an indescribable volume of pure, potent rage, but also pleased. She was proud of her two kids. They had remembered their training well.

“You did good, B,” she told her cheerleader, watching steadily until Brittany nodded in response, soothed by the praise. “Get some rest.”

Sue waited until she had exited the room before she allowed the hatred to expand, spreading through her circulatory system like the toxic venom of an aggravated, temperamental snake.

Nobody was allowed to touch her Cheerios. Abduction was completely out of the question. And now, fully informed, she was determined to do what the police could not. She would recover her missing Cheerio. And heads would roll, in a completely literal sense.

And, apart from a conniving mind capable of unimaginable greatness and a body Madonna would be right to envy, Sue had something the police didn’t.

She had an idea.

She had a description of the car the revolting thugs had used to steal away her people.

Infuriatingly, the operation leaders refused her recommendation that she lead the search brigade, even rejecting her offer to share her personal rocket launcher. Their intelligence was questionable, but that was long-established.

Fortunately, Sue was able to bribe her way onto the search helicopter. Coupled with her military-grade binoculars and the map of the region she had liberated from an unoccupied meeting-room, she directed the pilot. Pleasingly, perhaps gifted with the brainpower to recognize one more intelligent than himself, he listened.

In Brittany’s own, soft-spoken words, the vehicle in question had been dark, and big. And it had windows that ‘went down when the driver pressed a button'.

The properties they were currently flying over belonged to farming folk. The driveways were occupied almost exclusively by pick-up trucks. Aside from Hummel’s monster of a car, and the fleet of Range-Rovers belonging to that far-superior show choir a few townships away, SUVs did not belong in Lima. They didn’t belong in Ohio, period. They belonged in California, in the driveways of overcompensating men and uneducated, vaguely attractive middle-aged women who required a raised chassis to navigate the leaf-lined suburban streets.

Not in Ohio farmland.

Which is precisely why, peering into her binoculars, Sue ordered the helicopter lower, sighting the distinctive black shape of an unnecessarily large vehicle parked in front of the house below them.

And, at 7:13am on a Friday morning, fifteen-and-a-half-days after two nameless, unattractive nobodies had dared to disrupt the unity of her squad by taking two of hers, Sue knew without a doubt that she was onto something.

“That’s the one,” she told the pilot sitting beside her.

He reached for the radio.

~

Kurt’s heart had never pounded so hard. The door was swinging open, and he was still inside, hunched over on the floor with his pants halfway up his thighs. His increasingly blurred vision was the only indication he had that he was crying; tears and snot and worse dripping down his chin.

Then there were feet and legs in front of him and Kurt realised he was trembling. Not just from the pain and the shock, but from fear too, and Kurt couldn’t pinpoint when he turned into the kind of person who actually cowered in fear.

“Figured you finally earned yourself something to eat.” That was John’s voice, Kurt knew, wiping his face and forcing himself to look up.

He still felt sick. He never wanted to eat again.

John set the two bowls down on the table beside the bed, apparently deciding that Kurt, covered in all manner of bodily fluids, half-dressed in a pile on the floor, would be receptive to conversation.

“You know,” he said, “that really wasn’t so bad once you stopped with the kicking and screaming, don’t you agree. If you fight it, it’s only going to get worse. You might as well enjoy yourself while you’re here. I know we’re a little more your type than Barbie.”

Oh god. Vomiting was suddenly seeming more and more likely. In a matter of moments, John would go into the bathroom to find Brittany and she wouldn’t be there and the window would be open and. Oh god.

He had to delay John as long as he could. Every second took Brittany a second further away from the house.

And delaying John meant opening his mouth and using words.

His mouth tasted like salt and copper and mucus. Opening it was a start.

“Fuck off,” he said. Not the most eloquent words to ever leave his mouth, but he figured he could be forgiven for that.

John just laughed, and Kurt finally succeeded in pulling his pants all the way up.

“You’ve offended me,” John told him, sounding anything but offended. Amused, mostly. “I’ll have to go and cry myself to sleep. Here, eat. We like ‘em skinny, not scrawny.”

He grabbed one of the bowls from the table, shoving it into Kurt’s hands. It looked like mac and cheese. It smelt awful. Then John stood up, heading in the direction of the bathroom.

The way Kurt saw it, he had no choice. John would be furious, but he’d also be distracted.

Kurt threw the bowl.

It hit his chest, the plastic bowl clattering down to the floor leaving John covered in the goopy contents.

And then, a moment of silence.

All traces of mirth gone, John shook his head, his eyes clearly indicating that Kurt was going to regret his actions for a very long time. “You’re a lot dumber than I thought.”

He pulled the ruined shirt over his head, tossing it in Kurt’s direction. Then he walked into the bathroom.

Again, there was silence.

“Shit!”

John stormed out of the bathroom and over to the still-open door.

“Get in here! Barbie’s escaped!”

The blue-eyed man appeared just as John was yanking Kurt upright by his shirt. He dragged him into the bathroom, the blue-eyed man following them in.

“Look at this. She’s gone. Jumped out the fucking window. I told you to board the goddamn windows properly. Fuck!”

“Aww, shit,” the blue-eyed man said. He seemed more disappointed than outraged. “I knew we shoulda fucked her while we had the chance. Are we going to go after her?”

“Let her freeze to death,” John snarled, slamming Kurt back against the wall. “Go and get some rope. And the hammer, and more nails. We’ve got all we need right here.”

~

“I bet you thought you were being noble.”

Kurt was tied up again, hands behind his back. At least the bathtub was marginally cleaner than the basement floor. In front of him, John was standing on the cistern, pounding the boards back into place. The blue-eyed man stood on the ground behind him, hands supporting his legs.

Kurt winced, shifting in position. It was probably too much to hope that John would lose his balance and break his neck in the fall. Maybe even knock out the blue-eyed man in the process. He shifted again, trying to find a position that didn’t make it feel like his insides were ripping apart.

The blue-eyed man noticed him fidgeting. “Suck it up, pretty boy.”

“You thought you were being noble,” John continued, finished resecuring the boards and climbing down off the toilet. “When really, what you did was ten shades of stupid. How long did it take you to figure your little plan out, huh? Bet it didn’t take long. You could’ve climbed through, run home to your parents and you might’ve made it out of this whole experience alright. But instead, you decide to be noble and let the princess climb through first. We all know she’s too dim to escape by herself.”

He shoved the hammer into the blue-eyed man’s hands, striding closer. “But here’s where you screwed up, Kurt. We don’t hurt girls. We fuck them, sure, but then we let them go. Rough ‘em up a little, drug them up to their eyeballs so they can’t remember anything, then we send them off down the road and they live happily ever after. But here’s the thing. You’re not a girl. The rules don’t apply. We’re going to do whatever we fucking want, and you’re going to wish you never interfered.”

Kurt swallowed. The rope around his wrists was tighter than ever.

“You were being noble that night in the car park. You could’ve just gone home, and we woulda returned Barbie to you in a few days anyway. But you came, and we had to mix things up a little. That, we didn’t mind so much. Two for one. But now there’s only one of you, and there’s two of us.”

“And we’re kind of pissed off,” the blue-eyed man told him, climbing into the bathtub and reaching around Kurt’s head for the rope.

“Don’t bother,” John said. “Leave him; it’s hard to get blood out of the carpet.”

“Good point,” the blue-eyed man said. And punched Kurt square in the jaw.

The blow sent Kurt reeling, the rope keeping him from toppling entirely. Before he could catch his breath or try and swallow away the blood pooling in his mouth, the blue-eyed man was kneeling over him. The second punch hit his cheekbone, knocking Kurt’s head into the tap.

Then things got kind of blurry. John joined in, and somebody was wearing steel-toed boots, because they connected against his ribs and it hurt more than a thousand dumpster-tosses. Then someone kicked him again, right in the same spot, and Kurt could hear the crack of bones even over his own cries of pain.

It didn’t stop. They kept going, until it hurt too much and used up far too much energy keeping his head lifted. Kurt finally gave in, slumping forwards, breathing shallowly to try and get some air into his lungs without creating even more pain.

Both men were stepping away, out of the bathtub, and then John reached forwards, hand grasping the knob over Kurt’s head. Cold, cold water showered down over him, and Kurt kept his head down, trying to concentrate on breathing. They wanted a response, that was all. Wanted his to say something, beg them to stop, because being beaten to oblivion was enough without being cold and wet and wracked with shivers.

Kurt couldn’t defend himself against their fists, but he still had control of his voice, at least. And he wasn’t going to give them anything.

The water finally cut off, and gradually his vision focussed enough to make out John standing in front of him. He could still taste blood, thick and coppery at the back of his throat, and it made him feel nauseous.

John smiled, lips thin.

“Tell me, pretty boy. How noble are you feeling now?”

Apparently boarding up the windows wasn’t enough. They left him tied up in the bathroom. The shower nozzle was dripping; fat, cold drops of water splashing down onto his forehead in an irregular rhythm. Absently, gritting his teeth as every minute movement aggravated the pain in his ribs all over again, Kurt wondered if the dripping water was unintentional or deliberate. The hick version of Chinese water torture, maybe.

He wasn’t so sure. The two men seemed more the physical torture type and less the psychological torment sort - unless locking two kids in a basement and convincing them that participating in oral sex against their will wasn’t so bad, all things considered, counted. And in that case, they were psychological torture experts.

They switched off the lights when they left, and there, in the dark, it occurred to Kurt that this was the first time he had been alone, really alone, in more than two weeks. It had only been a matter of hours, but he missed Brittany. He missed the sound of her breathing and the random conversation topics she would come up with and even the way she hummed the same Nickelback tune for two weeks straight without even realising she was doing it.

But Brittany was out, and Kurt could only hope that she made it back home okay. It was pitch black outside, and it would be so easy to get lost, or to stray away from the dirt road and never make it to the main highway. He hoped she didn’t spend too long waiting for him - because the men had implied she wasn’t worth the chase, but who really knew - and he hoped she didn’t manage to get into even more trouble.

There were some strange people in these areas - the two men who’d just finished beating the shit out of Kurt being prime examples - and it definitely wasn’t anywhere near safe to wander the roads alone. Especially not if you were a leggy blonde girl in a cheerleading uniform in the early, early hours of the morning.

He had to stop thinking like that. He hurt enough without adding more things to the list of worries. He just had to cross his fingers that he bought B enough time to get out properly. And then maybe she would lead the police back

And then Kurt wondered if he still had the ability to hope. Thinking about a possibility and actually believing in its likelihood were two very different things.

The hours trailed by and the dripping water and the renewed ache in his shoulders and the constant, all-encompassing pain added up and up as the morning crept closer. By the time the sun came up again, tiny dots of light sneaking through the almost-invisible gaps in the boards, Kurt was convinced that rescue was an impossibility. There were too many stars that had to align, and karma had already proven that it wasn’t on his side. There was no guarantee that Brittany - assuming she made it back to civilisation and eventually Lima - would be able to give enough information for the police to find their way to the house and get him out. It was dark when the car had first brought them to the house - and Brittany had slept on Kurt’s shoulder through most of the journey. Then it had been dark when she climbed out the window.

It was hopeless. End of story.

John came back the next morning. He said very little. The interaction seemed to mostly consist of John seeing how many times he could land his boot on the very sorest part of Kurt’s ribcage, and Kurt seeing hard he could bite down on his lip before he tasted blood.

Then John changed his angle, and his foot connected with Kurt’s shoulder. Already under strain from the rope, the pain was enough to make Kurt forget all about holding his tongue. And once he stopped screaming in agony, he realised that his shoulder was completely out of place, the head of his humerus sticking out at a gruesome, unnatural angle.

John just nodded and left, shutting off the lights again. That was it, Kurt realised. There was no hope. No happy ending. He really wasn’t making it out of the house. Or even the room.

And really, the biggest injustice of all was that he was going to die wearing his poly-blend cheerleading uniform.

They left him alone all day, like usual. And Kurt had thought the being-unable-to-move-without-pain thing had been bad before, but this was so much worse. His shoulder was dislocated. Kurt was glad it was dark, because he was pretty sure it looked almost as bad as it felt.

He’d never had a stomach for those sort of things. There was a girl on the squad whose shoulder popped out all the time. She just shrugged and fixed it back into place herself while Kurt stood back and tried not to puke all over his shoes. He couldn’t imagine dislocating his shoulder so many times that it stopped hurting and was just a normal thing. An inconvenience.

It just hurt like nothing else, and his instinct was to fix it, to get the shoulder back in place, but with his arms behind his back, it was completely impossible.

He was almost relieved when the men came hours later and the blue-eyed man leaned over to start untying the rope. But relief was an entirely inappropriate reaction, because, he realised as he sat there, wincing with every tug of the rope, being untied carried several implications.

Firstly, that he was going somewhere, and that meant moving, and moving meant pain.

And secondly, similar to the first but not quite, he was being moved. And that meant that the men wanted to do something that couldn’t be done in the cramped bathtub.

Fuck.

But moving had to happen before anything else could, and since Kurt had been unable to stand by himself even before they came in and punched and kicked the life out of him, it meant the men were hauling him up, and Kurt had to put all his energy into making sure they didn’t come near his shoulder.

The sleeves of his shirt were short, and with the lights on and his hands untied, it was even more obvious how displaced his arm was. The men had to have noticed, because when John leant forwards to pull him up, he wrapped his hands around Kurt’s ribcage instead, and christ, that was even worse.

He kept his teeth clenched, and if there were tears budding in his eyes by the time the men deposited him on his back on the bed, well, he wasn’t going to say anything about it.

“Had to make sure you didn’t try to escape again,” John told him, the tilt of the head indicating he was talking about Kurt’s shoulder.

“And we had to make sure you understood just how much you fucked up by letting blondie escape,” the blue-eyed man added. Kurt assumed he was explaining why they’d felt the need to beat him up the day before. Lovely.

“But we didn’t bring you here to be our new punching bag, you know that,” John said. “And if you keep up with the struggling, I’ll fuck up your other shoulder.”

They only tied up his good arm. Kurt kept the other one cradled against his throbbing ribs.

At least they let him keep his shirt on. It still hurt just as much as the first time.

Then they left him there, tied to the headboard, switched off the lights and bolted the door.

And Kurt found himself crying again, the force of it leaving his throat raw and his chest aching. It was a distraction from the other parts of his body that were hurting renewed.

He couldn’t sleep, not with the way his shoulder grated with every movement and the drying tackiness between his legs. Instead, he was left lying there, waiting for the night to tick by to morning already, faced with the undeniable truth that this was his reality.

This was all he had to look forward to, and then death.

Nothing else.

He’d only just managed to doze off when a loud bang startled him. He sat up without thinking, and then mumbled out a string of Puck-worthy curses when that turned out to be the most painful idea he’d ever had. There was another bang. It reminded him of the noises he’d heard with Brittany from the basement, when the men were doing their home renovations. But now he was on the ground floor, not the sealed-off basement.

Which is why he heard the voice loud and clear.

“Police! Open up!”

~

Will Schuester waited for all his kids to file out before he left the choir room on Friday morning. Then, the two sheets of paper still in hand, he headed down the corridor to Figgins’ office.

His secretary was engaged in some sort of fight to the death with her printer, so Will walked in unannounced.

Figgins looked up from his paperwork.

“Schue? Don’t you have a class to teach? It’s bad enough that Sue didn’t even show up today.”

Will flapped his hand dismissively. His Spanish class wouldn’t miss him.

“Came to show you these,” he said, handing Figgins the papers. “Based on Brittany’s descriptions of the two men.”

He didn’t have to elaborate any further. Figgins nodded, holding the papers up to his face.

“Why are you showing me these?” Figgins asked.

“Just a thought. Brittany and Kurt were taken from school grounds. I thought you might’ve recognized one of them. We don’t really have much else to go on.”

“You think I have some association with these. These childnappers? Just because we took down the surveillance cameras in the back parking lot after they were vandalized a fourth time?” Figgins sounded offended. Will had to backtrack.

“No, no, definitely not. It was just a… a stupid hunch.”

He made to take back the papers, but Figgins held his hand up, stopping him.

“Wait. I know this man.”

“What?”

Figgins had his brow furrowed, thinking hard. The picture in front of him was the man Brittany said was named John.

“He worked here,” Figgins said finally. “Months ago. I know his face.”

“Do you know his name?” Will asked eagerly.

Figgins pointed to the word at the bottom of the page in capital letters, JOHN.

“That sounds about right.”

“Well what did he do? I know he didn’t teach... gardener?”

Figgins shook his head. “Janitor. I need to look through my files to make sure.”

Will’s mind was reeling. If one of the men had been a janitor that opened up so many possibilities. It meant the man knew the layout of the school.

It meant he knew when the Cheerios had practice.

Jesus.

“John Louis Thompson,” Figgins announced, looking up from the stack of folders he’d removed from the filing cabinet. “We hired him onto the janitorial team at the start of the school year. He resigned after a month. Never heard from him again.”

“Call the police,” Will told him. Figgins nodded his rapid agreement and picked up his phone.

They had the results of a police search in a matter of minutes. There was only one John Louis Thompson in the general area with a matching police record. A police record that included many things, the most terrifying being jail time served for sexual assault of a minor.

“How could you let someone like that work around children?” Will already knew the answer. Background checks cost money, and the school could barely afford janitors as it was. He didn’t push the point any further. He was pretty sure Burt Hummel would be in the office within the hour to do it for him.

This was so much worse than he’d imagined. How many months had Thompson spent lurking in the dark outside the gymnasium, waiting for the opportunity to get one of the girls alone?

There was only one piece of the puzzle missing. And finally, Will had a clue. He pulled his phone out of his pocket, calling Santana. He had the numbers of all his glee kids in his phone, ever since the ill-fated field trip to see a community production of West Side Story a few townships over, when Puck convinced the entire team - bar Rachel - to sneak out of the theatre and play hide-and-seek instead. Will was not amused when it turned out he was the seeker. Chasing eleven kids all over town wasn’t his idea of fun.

“What?” Santana answered.

Will didn’t bother with hellos. He was quite sure Santana wouldn’t care. “Santana, did Brittany get a look at what the man was wearing in the parking lot?”

“Why?” she replied, but Will heard her repeat the question to Brittany in the background. “She says it was a uniform. Dark blue.”

“Thanks.”

He hung up. McKinley janitors wore dark blue. And surely two kids alone in a parking lot would be more likely to trust a man seemingly employed by the school when he offered them a ride rather than a complete stranger.

That had to be it.

~

The helicopter pilot refused Sue’s demands that he land the chopper immediately. He seemed less than delighted by her suggestion that he was dropped repeatedly on his head as a child, but stubbornly kept the helicopter in the air.

“The ground teams are on route,” he told her, the force of her glare loosening his tongue. “Their eta is less than ten minutes. Then we can close off the road and land there. There’s not enough clearance to land on the road leading to the house, and we won’t be able to do anything without reinforcements.”

“Move aside,” Sue commanded. “I’ve landed jumbo jets on narrower runways.”

Again, the pilot refused. Sue was far less than impressed.

“This would have been over already if you hadn’t taken away my rocket-launcher,” she informed them.

Her time was valuable. Every second they spent hovering uselessly was one second better spent reinforcing every single weakness of every Cheerio on her squad in the knowledge that it would eventually raise them to possess an unshakable mindset of total superiority. She already had her suspicions that the officers had been paid off by a rival team to delay the inevitable perfection of the routine that would win her 7th straight Nationals title. This was further proof. Nationals was only 8 months away.

“Uh. Wouldn’t a rocket-launcher defeat the purpose of a rescue mission?” one of the officers asked from behind. “We want the kid alive.”

Now that was just offensive. “Are you suggesting that a member of my championship squad would be incapable of recognizing the distinctive high-pitched whistle of a highly explosive missile headed straight for him and therefore fail to assume the correct brace position?”

The officer twitched.

“Thought so,” Sue told him, and turned back, raising her binoculars to her eyes.

The helicopter had fallen back so that the noise of the rotor wouldn’t give away their presence before the ground teams arrived. That in itself was frustrating. As was the lack of parachutes or ropes in the craft preventing her from jumping out and doing the work herself.

Finally, after too many seconds spent breathing the same contaminated air as the undoubtedly diseased occupants of the helicopter, the ground teams arrived; 3 teams in trucks hurtling down the dirt road.

“About time,” Sue announced. “Now, will you land this helicopter or will I be forced to locate your pressure points, render you unconscious and do it myself?”

The pilot began to lower the helicopter.

There was a vehicle waiting on the asphalt to transport them to the house. The officers’ unimpressive and illogical attempts to convince her to stay in the helicopter proven fruitless, Sue strode from the helicopter, ducking her head to prevent any injury to her glorious tresses of hair.

The back doors of the car were open awaiting their landing. Sue Sylvester sat in the backseat for nobody.

“Get out,” she told the driver.

Predictably, he opened his mouth to protest. Sue had long passed the end of her tolerance. She reached in, bodily hauling the man out. Then she got in and turned on the car.

“Move it or lose it,” she called down to him, and the man scrambled to jump into the backseat in time, the toe of his shoe still scraping against the road as Sue put her foot to the floor.

The house was an estimated thirty minutes from the main road. Sue Sylvester didn’t believe in estimation. She believed in precision and excellence. And speed.

They made it to the house in eight minutes flat, and only two of the officers produced a physical embodiment of their uselessness by vomiting in the backseat.

She escaped from the car before the smell of their weakness could permeate through her pores.

The three cars had arrived only minutes before her, something she faulted entirely upon the pilot. Men were swarming like bees on the porch, and two men had been apprehended, held in handcuffs against the poorly constructed wooden rail.

Sue stormed closer. Her laser-keen eyes couldn’t detect the distinctive presence of Ladyface, despite the police having arrived on the property at least two minutes earlier. And that was unacceptable. There was only one way to solve the situation.

Sue Sylvester was going in.


part four