Waiting for a Happy Ending - Part Five C
Title: Waiting for a Happy Ending
Author:
firefly_ca
Pairing,Character(s): Kurt/Blaine, with appearances by Stevie and the Evans family, the Andersons, and large swaths of Glee clubbers (New Directions and Warblers)
Rating: NC-17 for disturbing themes, scenes, etc.
Word Count: 104K - this section is around 20K
Spoilers: All of S2 and up to around 3x12
Summary: AU. Blaine Anderson lived under another name for almost nine years with an abusive man he was forced to pretend was his father. He always thought his own family had given up on him, but now that he's found out the majority of his life was spent believing a lie, he has to try to reconcile the life he had with the life that was taken away from him. Sequel to Looking for a Happy Ending.
Note: Huge thanks to my betas LoonyLevicorpus and callmerayray for taking the fic and trying to help me avoid stupid typos and things that make no sense this time around. Any mistakes you find are all from last-minute edits I made before I posted. Because sometimes I can't leave good enough alone.
A/N: The conversation between Cynthia and Blaine is not inspired by "Superboy and the Invisible Girl," but as I was finishing the scene, I realized I was singing it to myself, so... do with that information what you will.
The week heading into the trial is hell for Blaine. After a few nights he gives up on trying to sleep properly at all and Dr. Hong arranges for him to get some medication to help him through the nights, even though he hates the way it makes him feel in the morning. It's still better than night after night of nightmares where he's on the witness stand and no one believes him, and he gets in trouble for being a liar and hurting an innocent man. In the worst ones his parents give him back. He'll stop taking the drugs after the trial is over, but for now he needs at least one part of his life where his paranoia isn't taking over every aspect of his psyche.
He tries to distract himself by taking Dr. Hong up on her advice and asking people besides Kurt and his parents what they'd do next winter if they were him, and how they chose what to do after graduation. David seems thrilled when Blaine mentions it the night he calls to wish everyone luck on the trial, but he doesn't have much to say that's particularly helpful.
"The academic advisor gave me a list of schools my freshman year that 'suited my scholastic aptitude,'" he says. "I read the brochures and picked the school I liked the best. I didn't have to do a lot of soul-searching, I just had to keep my grades up and write a really good letter."
"You didn't care about leaving home?" Blaine asks, hoping he doesn't sound too pathetic. David doesn't seem to notice if he does.
"Sometimes I get a little homesick around midterms," he says. "But it's not too bad. I talk to them a lot and everyone has to leave home sometime, right?"
Quinn is a little better, but only marginally. She's still drunk on success after getting accepted to Yale and is obviously struggling to see beyond her own dreams coming true to actually manage empathy.
"When you see something you want, take it," she says. "People always used to tell me that I'll look back on high school as the best times of my life. We both know that's crap, so I plan on college being my do-over."
"No more breakdowns and pink hair?" Blaine asks. She just knocks into his shoulder with her own.
"I was never as bad off as everyone thinks I was," she says. "I might have gotten lost for a while, but I've never lost my drive to get out of this place. Lima hasn't done me any favours, my mother likes me better from a distance, and the only thing my daddy needs to give me is tuition. I'll miss glee and my friends but they're not enough to keep me in a place full of nothing but mistakes and painful memories."
"You think I should move out next winter," Blaine says.
Quinn shrugs noncommittally.
"You have to decide that," she says. "I just think we both deserve better than what we're getting."
***
Detective Warren is back in Westerville to testify along with Detective Carter. When she sees him the day before he asks her if it's normal to feel like he's the one who's done something wrong, because from everything the prosecution's been telling him, that's all the defence will try to prove once he gets on the stand. He's not sure why he's talking to her about any of it. A part of him wonders why she's so good at making him tell her every little thing going through his head without even trying to coerce it out of him, but there's just something about Detective Warren that makes him want to tell her things. Like she's safe in a way few other people are. He knows she won't placate him with a meaningless word of comfort instead of talking to him frankly. It's unsettling to be so open to someone he barely knows, but still reassuring in a strange way. Or, it's reassuring to a point.
"You feel like you're the one getting punished because you are," she says, shortly. She sounds distracted and tired. "We have a legal system that tries to protect everyone and ultimately helps no one."
Blaine only stares at her, shocked by the blunt, angry words. She deflates a little when she sees his expression and tries to explain.
"In a perfect world there wouldn't be liars, Blaine. People would own up when they did something wrong so they could be properly dealt with, and people wouldn't tell stories to satisfy their own personal grudges. People like you wouldn't go into court waiting to be hurt all over again while lawyers try to convince strangers to make value judgments about your character. Luckily you're very young, and you were heartbreakingly young when this all started, so they'll likely go easier on you, but..."
She trails off, so Blaine finishes the thought for her.
"But they're still going to make me look like a liar."
"Probably," she agrees. "I'd like to laugh it off and say it's because defence lawyers are bad people, but that's not really fair, either. There are plenty of guys who never deserve to see the outside of a cell again, but there are others sitting in prisons because people just as disgusting as Brenner aren't afraid to use the law to get what they want, even if it destroys the system. People go into court, swear an oath to tell the truth and then lie their faces off, even about things as horrible and destructive as rape, and when they're found out, it hurts people like you, because now there might be someone on that jury expecting you to be a liar. You're paying for someone else's crime before they even pass a verdict."
"Wow," Blaine says after a long moment of silence. "Is there something you'd like to talk about? You seem kind of..."
"Preoccupied?" Detective Warren offers, before forcing a fraction of a smile onto her features. Blaine can see her visibly trying to relax the tension in her shoulders. "Sorry. I'm not really at liberty to give out details, but things haven't been fun at work lately. The police were dragged into the middle of a custody battle and things weren't adding up. The mother admitted she'd been feeding the daughter lines to get back at the father for leaving and now I don't know what's going to happen to that kid."
Her jaw is tight and her hands are balling up into fists as she talks.
"She'll get a slap on the wrist compared to what should happen after ruining another human being's life, and I get to come here to testify at a trial where I get to listen to people try to convince a jury that you're as full of it as she was."
"Wow," Blaine says again, because she's going into this expecting the exact same thing he is and he should be panicking but mostly he's fighting the urge to give her a hug. "Are you okay? You look like you want to punch things."
She blinks a few times and smiles at him for real when she says,
"You know, I really do like you. I'm fine. Promise. I just feel like I've been having a lot of cases like this lately and I'm getting tired of how they play out once I stop working on them. I don't know, maybe I need a change of scenery."
"You think somewhere else would be better?" Blaine asks, because things don't look so hot for him in Westerville, either.
"Probably not," Detective Warren admits. "But sometimes dealing with the same problems in a new place doesn't make them seem so impossible. Maybe I've had enough of crime-fighting in West Virginia."
"They'd love you in Ohio," Blaine offers, but she only laughs at him.
"No offense, Blaine, but if I put West Virginia behind me, I want at least a state between us."
"Where would you go?" Blaine asks. She shrugs.
"I don't know," she says. "I lived in New York until my teens. I always loved it there."
"My boyfriend's going to school in New York in the fall," he says. Warren grins at him, suddenly smug.
"I see," she says. "So Kurt is your boyfriend now. I thought the name they were throwing around on the news sounded familiar. Good. I'm happy things are working out."
"For now," Blaine mutters. At her raised eyebrow, he adds, "I don't know what I'll do after high school. I don't know what will happen to us, either."
"No one ever does," Warren says, sympathetically. "But whatever you two decide, be as selfish as you can. Both of you."
"That's the advice you're going with?" Blaine asks. "Really?"
"Trust me," she says. "Pick what's going to make you happiest. If you're both selfish in the same direction, perfect. If not, it's better not to drag things out. Be as happy as you can, as soon as you can."
Blaine falls asleep that night without having a nightmare about Tom for the first time in weeks. Instead he spends his dreams sitting and staring at blank walls, with shadows looming up behind him so close they almost brush against his back, as he worries about what it means if the thing that makes him happiest isn't an idea or school or plan at all. He wonders what it means if the thing that makes him happiest is Kurt.
***
He gets to the courthouse early the next morning with his mom and dad. The lawyer calls at an ungodly hour and asks that they get there as early as possible so there's time to discuss a last-minute change in proceedings before everything starts. Thankfully Cynthia is spending the night at a friend's house, because he's too jumpy to deal with Cynthia at the breakfast table, demanding why he's not giving her enough attention as she retells her dreams from the night before in excruciating detail. He works at keeping his face as blank and emotionless as possible when they wade through the reporters taking pictures and yelling to get their attention. They've been banned from the courthouse but that hasn't stopped them from getting as good a view as possible on the property line. He hopes they won't still be waiting when they're leaving at the end of the day.
In the courthouse, neither lawyer is anywhere to be found, and no one seems to know where they are.
"Why would he bother to call last night if he wasn't even going to be here to talk?" Mom asks, a little worriedly as they finally give up and go into the courtroom to find seats. "I hope everything's alright."
Blaine doesn't answer, just sits with his hands clenched tightly in his lap, barely registering when Mom reaches over to squeeze them reassuringly. Dad is planning to sit through every day of the trial, and Blaine can't begin to imagine how he'll do it, when Blaine isn't even certain how he'll manage the first half hour. An entire day in the same room with Tom again feels like one of his nightmares.
He knows nothing will happen in a room full of people, that he has nothing to be afraid of, and he's not, not exactly. But seeing Tom's face again, in person, after almost an entire year of not getting hit or hurt or forced to do anything he doesn't want to do is overwhelming and intimidating, no matter what the logical part of his brain keeps trying to tell the rest of him. If he's so nervous about just seeing Tom, he has no idea how he'll actually testify in the same room as him.
The room is filling up with people now. He recognizes a few of the faces, although the lawyer is still nowhere to be seen. Detective Warren is sitting a couple seats away, and Mr. and Mrs. Evans are just behind them. Stevie isn't there and won't be showing up later on, either. The actual trial for his case is going to happen a few weeks after Blaine's, but any testimony that he gives for either one will probably be pre-recorded the night before and played to the jury when the time comes, like Wes predicted. Blaine's happy at least one of them will get to avoid the crowds and the chaos of the trial, but he can't help wishing the offer had been extended to both of them.
The lawyers for the defence and prosecution show up at almost the same time. They look nervous and a little flustered. Blaine wants to find out what's happening but before he gets the chance, the side door opens and his eyes register a brief flash of prison orange before he starts and turns away. He stares intently at his hands as the bailiff leads Tom past and everyone gets settled into place. By the time the judge has taken a seat, Blaine manages to work up enough courage to risk a glance. Tom is looking straight at him. He smiles at Blaine briefly - almost sadly - when their eyes meet. Blaine's stomach lurches and he quickly goes back to staring at his fingernails. Things have just gotten started and already Blaine doesn't know how much more he can handle.
It feels like he might be having a panic attack, the droning voices at the front of the room sliding in and out of focus against his will. He shakes his head a little, trying to clear it so he can concentrate on what's happening around him. Tom is whispering something to his lawyer. They seem to be having some sort of last-minute debate about something. Blaine frowns. They've had months to get ready for this morning. There's no reason for the defence lawyer to look this unprepared.
"Mr. Wallace?" The judge says, impatiently and possibly repeating himself. "How does your defendant plead?"
"Your honour," the lawyer says, finally turning away from Tom. "My client requested late last night that he would like to accept the plea bargain that had been offered to him previously."
The judge raises her eyebrows before looking at Mr. MacFarlane, the prosecution lawyer.
"You were aware of this?" She asks.
Mr. MacFarlane nods, saying, "Mr. Wallace informed me early this morning. Given the circumstances and the emotional well-being of the witnesses, we would still be more than willing to offer the plea bargain to Mr. Brenner."
"Am I to understand that this offer includes Mr. Brenner pleading guilty to all charges of kidnapping and assault?"
Blaine stops listening again as the lawyers start talking in earnest. If he thought his head was swimming a few minutes ago, he was sadly uninformed. He feels like if he doesn't focus on his feet staying perfectly level on the ground he'll fall out of his seat. It's been such a long time since anyone has spoken to him about the possibility of a plea bargain, he'd forgotten it was even an option.
His heart is hammering in his chest and as he sits in his seat as motionless as possible, he can feel the energy radiating off his parents in waves. He's obviously not the only one who wasn't expecting this. It's only when he finally manages to make his body start acting on the commands he's trying to give it and he forces himself to turn his head slightly to look at Tom again that the reality that this is actually happening really starts to sink in.
He knows there was never much incentive for Tom to take the plea bargain in the first place - the only one the prosecution had been willing to offer only dropped one charge of sexual assault, the charges relating to prostituting and sexually exploiting minors, and about a quarter of the physical assault charges. This late in the game it seems ridiculous that Tom would even consider it - it's a little ridiculous that anyone seriously thought he'd consider it at any point. But Tom is merely staring somberly at the judge now, intently listening to what she says. He doesn't look back to Blaine again once, or do anything to indicate that there are people behind him at all. Blaine keeps staring at the back of his head, unsure if he's trying to will Tom to turn around, or to keep ignoring his presence. He doesn't realize he's shaking until Mom reaches out and sets a hand on his shoulder to rub at it softly.
Individual implications of what this all means catch up with him one at a time, almost as if they're waiting in line for their turn to approach him. Tom is going to go to jail. For years - probably a longer period of time than Blaine was even with him. All of the sudden he can't remember the minimum jail time Tom is facing for the things that he's done. He knows that it must be for a very long time, but in his distracted state of mind, he can't begin to imagine why the sentence would need to be longer than eight years. For Blaine, eight years is over half the time he's been alive. For him, eight years that lasted so long they effectively erased most of his memories of the first seven. In Blaine's mind right now, the only thing he can think is that over eight years in prison would be just like being in prison for life. Eight years would just about cover it, but the longer he stares at the back of Tom's head, the harder he hopes for 80.
He feels almost weightless now, like there's not enough oxygen getting to his brain. He can feel Mom's eyes on him, can sense how she keeps glancing at him every now and then, trying to sort out how he's handling what's happening in front of them. Blaine keeps staring ahead, fighting to keep his face blank like he has ever since he walked into the courthouse. He's not sure why, but he can't afford to lose control now, not when his world is going to pieces around him, even if there's a small voice in the back of his head telling him this is all for the best, that now he can hide from the people questioning him and his morals, that now no one is going to accuse him of wanting it or being dirty and a disgrace to his family. It's hard to listen to that voice when the rest of him is so scared.
And he is scared, because he's been forcing himself to get ready for this one thing for so long, now that it's just disappeared in front of him, he has no idea what is going to happen to him. He doesn't know what he's supposed to be doing, and he hasn't felt this helpless since Tom locked him up in a bathroom in West Virginia and left him alone with his imagination for hours, terrified about what was going to happen and what he was going to be forced to do. He still doesn't know what Tom is going to do, and a small part of him wonders if this is all some big plan of Tom's to satisfy himself that Blaine is still his to control and scare and intimidate, that he can do anything at all, and Blaine will do exactly what he's doing right now: panic about what comes next and if he's going to get in too much trouble.
When Tom is led out of the courtroom, he finally turns to face Blaine's direction again. For a long moment they stare at each other before Tom is pulled away and Blaine can't read the expression on the other man's face - apologetic maybe, but he doesn't know what Tom has to feel sorry for, what Tom is even capable of being sorry for. It feels like an elaborate trap of some sort, and Blaine knows it, but he can't do anything to get out of it.
Mom is pulling slightly on his arm, trying to encourage him to his feet.
"Are you okay?" she asks. Her voice is echoing in his ears. Everything around him is suddenly too loud and all Blaine can focus on is the movement of the crowd on all sides around him and the way Detective Warren is staring at him with a worried expression and that the Evanses are trying to catch his eye so they can talk to him and he can't be in this place anymore. If he doesn't leave now, he's going to go crazy.
He shrugs off his mother's hand and pushes past everyone as he makes his way into the hall, heading straight for the first set of bathrooms he sees. He locks himself into one of the stalls and sits down heavily, burying his face in his hands. He's not sure how long he sits there with his head spinning, or when his hands become wet with tears he didn't know he'd been crying. There must be something so wrong with him to be reacting to what should be good news like this, but he can't stop. It feels like he's dying.
At some point he somehow manages to reach into his pocket and pull out his phone, like there's only one person on the planet who can miraculously make this all go away, who can make him feel like a real person, even though Blaine knows the world doesn't work that way. It doesn't matter though. He just wants his boyfriend. It takes Kurt a few rings to answer, and Blaine wonders if he has to run out of a class before he can talk to him, face red as everyone stares as he leaves. But none of that matters when he the ringing stops and he hears the anxious, "Hello?" on the other end of the line.
He doesn't answer, just listens to Kurt's voice as he tries to steady his breathing and straighten out his thoughts.
"Blaine?" Kurt asks, quietly. "What's going on? Why are you calling so early?"
Blaine still can't find the words he wants, the words he needs to explain everything that's happened in the last half hour, so he just mutters, "I'm sorry," and doesn't say anything else.
"It's okay," Kurt says automatically. There's a brief pause as he speaks to someone who has evidently joined him wherever he is on campus right now to ask him something before he hesitantly turns his focus back to Blaine to ask,
"Blaine? Can you tell me what's happening?"
"I don't know," Blaine manages. "There's just too much."
"Are you okay?"
"I think so?" Blaine grits out, his jaw too tight to work the way he wants it to. "Just... please don't go?"
"Of course not," Kurt says, as Blaine wearily leans his head against the stall wall, listening to Kurt breathe on the other end of the line.
***
It takes a surprisingly long time for Dad to come get him. He's been on the phone with Kurt for over an hour when he hears a light tap on the stall door. After he says goodbye to Kurt and swings open the door, his dad smiles at him sympathetically and asks,
"How are you doing?"
"I honestly have no idea what I'm feeling right now."
"This is definitely a surprise," Dad agrees.
"Sorry for making you and Mom wait so long," Blaine says, but Dad just waves him off.
"It worked out better this way," he says. "The press all think you snuck out the side entrance by now. They've almost all left."
"Did they wait a long time?" Blaine asks, more out of a need to say something than a real desire to know the answer, which is good, because Dad stays silent. Blaine suddenly notices the tension in his father's shoulders and it starts to make him a little nervous.
"What happened?" he asks.
"It's not important right now," Dad says, but Blaine sees how his mouth tightens and the lines around his eyes seem to get deeper.
"What happened?" he asks again.
"What happened is you've had a very draining morning and it's not fair to pile anything else onto you before you've even left the courthouse."
"Did he do something?" Blaine demands, his voice rising despite himself. "What did he do?"
Dad puts his hand on the back of Blaine's neck and squeezes it gently.
"It's okay, Blaine," he says, softly. "It's not going to change anything, except get him into more trouble. Brenner's got a lot of expectations he's going to have to live up to if he wants a lighter sentence and he's already screwing it up for himself. The person he's hurting most right now is him."
"Dad," Blaine says, desperately. "Please."
Dad sighs in defeat.
"He released a statement through his lawyer. I don't what he thought he would gain by it, but I promise, it just created a buzz with the journalists because it's so unusual. It's not as bad as it sounds."
***
It's not as bad as it sounds because it's actually a whole lot worse. It's true when Dad says Tom is effectively shooting himself in the foot by making himself look like an asshole to the judge, but it's obvious to Blaine that this isn't about the judge at all. Not for the first time he wishes he didn't know Tom Brenner as well as he does.
"He doesn't care about how long they're putting him in jail, Mom," he says when Mom tries to make him feel better once they've gotten back home. "He just wants to take me down with him."
Mom can't seem to find a convincing argument against that, so she just makes an upset noise as she hugs him hard, watching the footage of the frankly beleaguered-looking lawyer on the courthouse steps getting ready to read his client's prepared statement.
"My client would like to express his deepest and most sincere apologies to the two families that were hurt by his actions. However, for as sorry as he is for the pain caused to them, his first concern in all of this is Blaine. This plea was agreed to on the understanding that it would be of the greatest benefit to him. The statement he wanted me to give you says, 'I'm still deeply saddened by Blaine's decision to leave last year, even though I now understand that taking him when he was young was wrong. He is like a son to me and I've come to realize that if pleading guilty will make his transition into his new life easier, I owe him that much. For me, he will always come first.'"
"He's making it look like he's doing me a favour," Blaine says. "Like he's trying to be the better person after a bad break up. As if enough people don't think I'm a liar already."
"No one thinks he didn't kidnap you," Mom points out. "And even his lawyer looks like he'd rather be getting tortured than reading that garbage."
"No," Blaine says, darkly. "They all just think I had a great time while I was there, like I'm so dysfunctional I was actually the only 7-year-old on the planet who thought getting raped was awesome, and now he's found a way to make even more people wonder if it's true. I don't get it. Hasn't he done enough? How miserable do I have to be before he's happy?"
But aside from the usual homophobes on talk radio who think Blaine is a menace who turns ordinary men into dangerous pedophiles or whatever, most of the media treats the new development with disapproving fascination. Blaine would be grateful but all that really means is suddenly all the experts are being called back to do interviews about coercion and control tactics abusers resort to to keep the upper hand in relationships. He's back to being Poor Blaine in the news again, but now he's become Poor Blaine Who Was Hit By His Boyfriend, and half of the comments about the case turn it into a case of a runaway getting a guy charged with statutory rape. Blaine is so tired of people rewriting his life he wants to scream.
***
Giving a victim impact statement used to seem like something that wasn't going to happen until far into the future. The trial would have to happen and a verdict needed to be given before sentencing could even start. It felt like there would be time to deal with it later, maybe when Blaine's world wasn't so hard. But now that Tom has pled guilty, sentencing has been moved up and will be starting on Thursday. Blaine has no idea what he wants to say.
This is his chance to explain to the people in the courtroom why he didn't leave before Stevie came and why Tom isn't making a great sacrifice for Blaine's sake by pleading guilty. His parents keep telling him that the only person he needs to talk to is the judge and not to worry about what anyone else is thinking about him, but that is so much easier to say than it is to do. Ever since this started people have been talking about him, and over him, and at him. He's never had the chance to fully explain what his life was like with Tom. Even when he was questioned by Detective Warren, he stuck to what happened and not how all the things he went through destroyed so much of his childhood. When he talks to Dr. Hong it's always to sort out some crisis he's in the middle of, forcing them to focus on tiny details instead of the bigger picture. What he says in the courtroom in a few days might be his only chance to vocalize the magnitude of what his life has been, and it's certainly the only chance he'll get to say any of it to Tom's face. He doesn't want to waste the opportunity.
He's sitting at his desk staring hard at the blank word document open on his laptop in front of him, and has been doing so for half an hour as the importance of his task presses down on him, when he's distracted by shouting coming from the family room. He can hear Dad's voice trying to calm the angry one, which obviously belongs to Cynthia, but his sister is having none of it. Her voice raises in pitch and she becomes completely unintelligible as she gets started. Dad gets louder, too, and when Cynthia is almost screeching, he gives up trying to reason with her and barks out,
"Cynthia that's enough. Go to your room."
There's another squawk from Cynthia and then Blaine can hear her thundering up the stairs. He takes a moment to be impressed at how someone who doesn't weigh over 50 lbs soaking wet can make that much noise coming up a set of solidly built stairs, but before he thinks beyond that, he realizes that the angry footsteps coming down the hall aren't headed to her room at all.
His door flies open, and Cynthia is standing on the threshold, her face a portrait of anger and frustration. It would be funny if it weren't for the desperate confusion also accompanying it. She looks like someone has told her to do university level calculus and that her whole future depends on getting the right answer. Her tiny little world has been knocked off its axis and she's obviously looking to vent her frustration on the nearest and most obvious target.
"You're a liar," she spits. Blaine doesn't say anything, just stares at her tiny little body as it shakes with rage. He waits to see what she says next, shocked that he cares enough that the words sting as she says them. "You were supposed to be the best brother but now that you're here you're the worst. You don't deserve to be in this family."
For a moment Blaine considers rolling his eyes and herding her out of the room, forcing their parents to deal with her again, but she's standing in front of him and tears are starting to roll down her cheeks and for the first time, Blaine looks at her like she's more than just a hurricane of energy and obnoxious behaviour. She looks like her world is going to pieces and she can't take it anymore. It's a feeling Blaine can relate to so strongly he can't bear the thought of writing it off and shutting her down. So he asks,
"What did I do?"
"Nothing," she hisses, her face contorting and her hands clenching into fists at her sides. "You're a liar and Mom and Dad don't even get mad at you, even though you ruin everything. Being quiet when someone else needs to know things is another way to lie to them. My teacher told me when I asked her last week and Lola told me when I asked at Christmas time, but you never get in trouble. I get in trouble when I tell on you for keeping secrets and it's not fair! You're just a sad, sad boy who I'm not allowed to talk to or ask questions at or play with. I wish I had the brother in my head instead of the one really here because he doesn't ignore me and he doesn't hate me like you do."
"I don't hate you," Blaine says, vaguely aware that he's looking at her like there's an alien crawling out of her chest. "I have a lot really bad things I'm trying to sort out, Cynthia. They aren't nice things, so I don't tell you about them, that's all."
"I know they're not nice," Cynthia says. "But everyone else gets to know them and everyone else gets to help you feel better. Everyone is lying to me and it doesn't feel very good to me."
Her voice breaks as she makes the most pathetic whimpering noise Blaine has ever heard in his life, which is also when he hears to footsteps of his father on the stairs, obviously now aware of the fact that Cynthia is yet again disobeying orders. He makes a split second decision and gets up, grabbing her arm and gently pulling her inside enough to shut the door before they can be interrupted. He carefully leads her to the bed and sits down beside her.
"No one wants to make you feel bad, Cynthia," he tries. "You know that the reason we're not telling you everything is that if you know all of it you just get upset, right?"
"I'm upset right now," Cynthia sobs, almost sounding inconsolable but still curling into him the second he puts a tentative arm around her. "I just wanted to see if you would play a game with me and I can't even do that because you're too busy writing secrets."
"This is because I won't play Monopoly or whatever with you?" Blaine asks, disbelieving, even though it would be just like his sister to treat a board game like the death of Santa.
"Dad said you couldn't because you had to finish what you were doing by the end of the week but he won't even tell me what you're doing," Cynthia says. "I just wanted to help you finish faster and no one will let me."
"Okay," Blaine says, slowly. It's starting to feel like he's got the ground back under him, at least a little. "You know they're keeping secrets from you because they love you, right? They don't want to scare you, that's all."
"You're not scary," Cynthia scoffs, still feeling enough like herself to manage that.
"Thanks," Blaine says. "But there are things that happened to me while I was gone that are really hard to understand. You're only seven, Cynthia."
"Seven's big," Cynthia protests. "I'm not a baby, I know things."
"Yeah, but there are some things you shouldn't have to know," Blaine tries again. "Tom Brenner took me away when I was seven, and I should have been having fun and being like all the other seven-year-olds, but he didn't let me. It's not good to know about those kinds of things too soon."
"But you had to," Cynthia insists. "Why not me too? It's not fair to have to live where you're the only one who doesn't know."
"You already know some of it," Blaine says, a little desperately. In his mind's eye he can see the conversation carrying on to its inevitable conclusion and he just hopes it doesn't end up with nightmares or getting yelled at by Mom and Dad. He can't even believe he's trying to sort out what exactly is safe to tell her and what he needs to leave out to make sure she still sleeps at night.
"I know about stranger danger and that I'm supposed to run away when people try to make me go with them, or if they touch me so I feel creepy. When I asked Mom what that meant she said it was when people touch you where you go to the bathroom. That doesn't mean anything. No one does that. It's gross," Cynthia doesn't sound very impressed and Blaine distantly remembers about how all the lessons and talks his parents had with him about abuse didn't even begin to mentally prepare him for what happened, on any level. Maybe his sister has a point.
"Grown ups do that," he says when he notices she's looking at him very pointedly, obviously waiting for an explanation. "Touch each other there for fun, I mean. It's not gross when you're old enough and feel like you want to, but if you don't want to do it it's terrible."
"He touched you where you went to the bathroom."
It's not even a question, just a statement laced with disgust, but she's not flinging herself away from him or throwing a fit either, so Blaine figures she's taking it fairly well.
"He touched me all over," Blaine tries to find the right words, aware that Cynthia is still staring at him hard. "Sometimes it's not about where someone touches you, it's the way they're doing it that isn't right."
"Am I touching you bad right now?" Cynthia demands. Her little face is starting to show slight signs of relief, like she's been waiting for answers to these questions for a very long time, probably even longer than she's known Blaine.
"This is good," Blaine reassures her. "Bad touching is more about... Okay, you know what sex is right?"
"I'm not stupid," Cynthia tells him, looking a little insulted.
"And you know it doesn't have to just be a guy and a girl who have it, right?"
"Blaaaine," Cynthia's voice is whiny and fully exasperated now, like she can't believe how dumb he's being.
"Okay, okay," he relents. "But I didn't really know that when I was as old as you are, and that was bad, because when Tom touched me in a bad way it was because he wanted to have sex with me."
"But he didn't, right? Because sex is for grown ups who want to make babies or who want to get babies."
Cynthia sounds like she knows exactly what he's going to say and it makes him feel like he's destroying something in her that he can never take back when he says,
"No, I had sex with him. He used to make me because he was a grown up and he was in charge and it didn't matter what I said or did, I couldn't make him stop."
Cynthia does push away from him at that to protest,
"You could too! All you had to do is tell Mom and Dad and they would have brought you back. You can't yell at me for saying that, because you know I'm right. I can't help if you're stupid."
"I'm not going to yell at you," he says. "You're right. I could have found someone to take me back home where everything would have been okay again. Not right away, but a long, long time ago. Before you were born yet."
"Why did you stay? Did you like it?"
"I hated it," Blaine says firmly, and it's so much easier to sound decisive like this when he's dumbing it down to a level where he would have been able to understand it when he was just starting to live through it. "I stayed because I thought Mom and Dad hated me, and he made me scared to talk to anyone who wasn't him. I thought other people would hate me more than he did."
"If he hated you why did he take you?"
"I don't know," Blaine says. "Sometimes if felt like he just wanted someone he could hurt."
"Did he hit you?" Cynthia asks. "I asked Lola at Christmas if you were hit when you were away, when they were talking about spanking kids, and Mom made me leave the room."
"He hit me," Blaine confirms. "Not like spanking though. Not like what Lola was probably talking about. He would try to hurt me."
"He broke your arm," Cynthia says, like she's just starting to understand why Blaine was so tired and sore when he first got back home. Blaine nods and there's a long pause before she says in a small voice, "I would have just left and made Mom and Dad take me back even if they didn't want me anymore. They wouldn't break my arm."
"He told me they would just send me back," Blaine says. "I used to wish I'd never been born instead. Some days it felt better thinking I could have never existed."
"I'm sorry," Cynthia whispers.
"Why?" Blaine asks.
"I used to wish you were never born, too. When I'd get in trouble for taking toys out of your room."
"You wished I never existed because a kid you had never even seen kept you from playing with toys he wasn't even using," Blaine says, matter-of-factly. "That's not really bad, Cynthia. You didn't know me, you just didn't like the idea of me."
"I wished you had never been born last Thursday," Cynthia's voice is sober, like she's giving a confession at a church. "And last night when Mom said I had to save the last piece of pie for you even when you said you weren't hungry."
"Oh," says Blaine. "Well, that's... not nice."
"I know," says Cynthia. "That's why I wished it, but I'm mostly sorry now. I promise I won't do it as much. Will you still answer me?"
"What do you want to know?" Blaine asks, cautiously. He's still not even close to being willing to tell Cynthia everything, although he's pretty sure she doesn't know enough to ask the questions with especially traumatizing answers.
"What was the meanest thing he did? I asked Mom before when you first came back because you were so frowny all the time and she told me not to ask silly questions. It's not a silly question, it's a good one and I want someone to tell me."
Blaine is quiet for a really long time before he finally figures out how to answer in a way she'll understand.
"He made me forget I was a person."
She wrinkles her nose at him in confusion, so he obviously hasn't done a very good job at meeting her on her level.
"He would beat me up and tell me mean things and force me to do bad things that I didn't want to do. Real people don't have to live like that. They can leave and say no and be treated the way they deserve. I was with him for such a long time I forgot I could do those things, even though I knew other people could. It was like I forgot that I was a real person."
"That's really weird," Cynthia says.
"It's really scary," Blaine corrects. "Especially when you come back here where everyone's normal, but no one realizes you're so different inside. They treat you like you know you're the same and nothing makes sense."
"Are you better now?" Cynthia asks.
Blaine only shrugs.
"Sometimes," he says. "Sometimes I still feel like no one around me is treating me the right way, like they're making a mistake and I shouldn't be treated like I'm a part of this family, or like I deserve to have friends."
"Well stop that," Cynthia says. "It's stupid."
"Is that supposed to help?" Blaine asks.
"Yeah," Cynthia's voice is defensive and hostile, like she knows she's not behaving the way she's supposed to but isn't prepared to stop without a fight. "I always tell when someone's acting dumb. So they aren't dumb after. It helps. I help."
"Maybe you do," Blaine says, quietly.
Cynthia preens a little before reaching over to the dresser and picking up Horton.
"He's gross," she tells him. "We should give him a bath."
"Okay," Blaine agrees, because there are worse things he could be doing on a school night when Kurt is busy studying for his APs. "Give me half an hour first though, okay? I have to finish writing something."
***
The first time Blaine speaks to the media about his past is the day Tom Brenner has been sentenced to three consecutive life sentences. He's pretty sure that Kurt keeps a file of the video hidden on his computer somewhere, even though he can't get him to admit it. His mom shows him some of the fallout in the days that follow, mostly he won't believe her when she says no one is being as spiteful towards him as he's convinced they must be. While it's true that there are still some people talking about how he's more manipulative than the pedophile who took him, and some speculation that he's going to end up using his "new celebrity" to sell his story, she's not wrong. For the most part it's all articles talking about how he deserves a chance to be a normal kid and that it's horrible that he felt the need to take something so painful to the public because "some people can't figure out that a seven-year-old or even a 16-year-old doesn't solve problems the same way a 60-year-old journalist does."
He hadn't been planning on saying anything at all, but when he walked out of the courthouse when it all should have been over to see a host of cameras and microphones, desperate for footage they can twist around to suit their own means, something snaps. It's not that he's angry or frustrated, he's just had enough. He carefully pulls himself away from the arm his dad has wrapped around his shoulders and walks over to the reporters before anyone can say anything or try to talk him out of it. The flock of journalists look shocked and stare at him dumbly, forgetting their job descriptions the moment it looks like they won't have to be obnoxious to find a good sound bite.
"Hi," he says, nervously. He has no idea what he's planning to say to these people, and is almost wondering if it would look really bad if he just turned around and walked back again, but then he thinks about Tom's statement, and the way people think it's suspicious and wrong that he's gay, and how no one ever gets to hear his side of things. He stays where he is and is silent another few seconds before finally taking a deep breath and continuing.
"Um, I guess thanks? For helping my family keep looking for me for such a long time, I mean. But they know where I am now, so even though I'm glad you cared then, could you stop caring now? At least for a while? I wasn't happy where I was and I didn't want to be there, but I'm not going to explain myself to you, either. There are a lot of things you don't need to know about, and it would be nice if you didn't start making stuff up just because I'm not going to talk to you about any of it. I'm just... really tired of other people telling me who I am. I'm ready to find out for myself."
To Masterpost
Author:
firefly_ca
Pairing,Character(s): Kurt/Blaine, with appearances by Stevie and the Evans family, the Andersons, and large swaths of Glee clubbers (New Directions and Warblers)
Rating: NC-17 for disturbing themes, scenes, etc.
Word Count: 104K - this section is around 20K
Spoilers: All of S2 and up to around 3x12
Summary: AU. Blaine Anderson lived under another name for almost nine years with an abusive man he was forced to pretend was his father. He always thought his own family had given up on him, but now that he's found out the majority of his life was spent believing a lie, he has to try to reconcile the life he had with the life that was taken away from him. Sequel to Looking for a Happy Ending.
Note: Huge thanks to my betas LoonyLevicorpus and callmerayray for taking the fic and trying to help me avoid stupid typos and things that make no sense this time around. Any mistakes you find are all from last-minute edits I made before I posted. Because sometimes I can't leave good enough alone.
A/N: The conversation between Cynthia and Blaine is not inspired by "Superboy and the Invisible Girl," but as I was finishing the scene, I realized I was singing it to myself, so... do with that information what you will.
The week heading into the trial is hell for Blaine. After a few nights he gives up on trying to sleep properly at all and Dr. Hong arranges for him to get some medication to help him through the nights, even though he hates the way it makes him feel in the morning. It's still better than night after night of nightmares where he's on the witness stand and no one believes him, and he gets in trouble for being a liar and hurting an innocent man. In the worst ones his parents give him back. He'll stop taking the drugs after the trial is over, but for now he needs at least one part of his life where his paranoia isn't taking over every aspect of his psyche.
He tries to distract himself by taking Dr. Hong up on her advice and asking people besides Kurt and his parents what they'd do next winter if they were him, and how they chose what to do after graduation. David seems thrilled when Blaine mentions it the night he calls to wish everyone luck on the trial, but he doesn't have much to say that's particularly helpful.
"The academic advisor gave me a list of schools my freshman year that 'suited my scholastic aptitude,'" he says. "I read the brochures and picked the school I liked the best. I didn't have to do a lot of soul-searching, I just had to keep my grades up and write a really good letter."
"You didn't care about leaving home?" Blaine asks, hoping he doesn't sound too pathetic. David doesn't seem to notice if he does.
"Sometimes I get a little homesick around midterms," he says. "But it's not too bad. I talk to them a lot and everyone has to leave home sometime, right?"
Quinn is a little better, but only marginally. She's still drunk on success after getting accepted to Yale and is obviously struggling to see beyond her own dreams coming true to actually manage empathy.
"When you see something you want, take it," she says. "People always used to tell me that I'll look back on high school as the best times of my life. We both know that's crap, so I plan on college being my do-over."
"No more breakdowns and pink hair?" Blaine asks. She just knocks into his shoulder with her own.
"I was never as bad off as everyone thinks I was," she says. "I might have gotten lost for a while, but I've never lost my drive to get out of this place. Lima hasn't done me any favours, my mother likes me better from a distance, and the only thing my daddy needs to give me is tuition. I'll miss glee and my friends but they're not enough to keep me in a place full of nothing but mistakes and painful memories."
"You think I should move out next winter," Blaine says.
Quinn shrugs noncommittally.
"You have to decide that," she says. "I just think we both deserve better than what we're getting."
***
Detective Warren is back in Westerville to testify along with Detective Carter. When she sees him the day before he asks her if it's normal to feel like he's the one who's done something wrong, because from everything the prosecution's been telling him, that's all the defence will try to prove once he gets on the stand. He's not sure why he's talking to her about any of it. A part of him wonders why she's so good at making him tell her every little thing going through his head without even trying to coerce it out of him, but there's just something about Detective Warren that makes him want to tell her things. Like she's safe in a way few other people are. He knows she won't placate him with a meaningless word of comfort instead of talking to him frankly. It's unsettling to be so open to someone he barely knows, but still reassuring in a strange way. Or, it's reassuring to a point.
"You feel like you're the one getting punished because you are," she says, shortly. She sounds distracted and tired. "We have a legal system that tries to protect everyone and ultimately helps no one."
Blaine only stares at her, shocked by the blunt, angry words. She deflates a little when she sees his expression and tries to explain.
"In a perfect world there wouldn't be liars, Blaine. People would own up when they did something wrong so they could be properly dealt with, and people wouldn't tell stories to satisfy their own personal grudges. People like you wouldn't go into court waiting to be hurt all over again while lawyers try to convince strangers to make value judgments about your character. Luckily you're very young, and you were heartbreakingly young when this all started, so they'll likely go easier on you, but..."
She trails off, so Blaine finishes the thought for her.
"But they're still going to make me look like a liar."
"Probably," she agrees. "I'd like to laugh it off and say it's because defence lawyers are bad people, but that's not really fair, either. There are plenty of guys who never deserve to see the outside of a cell again, but there are others sitting in prisons because people just as disgusting as Brenner aren't afraid to use the law to get what they want, even if it destroys the system. People go into court, swear an oath to tell the truth and then lie their faces off, even about things as horrible and destructive as rape, and when they're found out, it hurts people like you, because now there might be someone on that jury expecting you to be a liar. You're paying for someone else's crime before they even pass a verdict."
"Wow," Blaine says after a long moment of silence. "Is there something you'd like to talk about? You seem kind of..."
"Preoccupied?" Detective Warren offers, before forcing a fraction of a smile onto her features. Blaine can see her visibly trying to relax the tension in her shoulders. "Sorry. I'm not really at liberty to give out details, but things haven't been fun at work lately. The police were dragged into the middle of a custody battle and things weren't adding up. The mother admitted she'd been feeding the daughter lines to get back at the father for leaving and now I don't know what's going to happen to that kid."
Her jaw is tight and her hands are balling up into fists as she talks.
"She'll get a slap on the wrist compared to what should happen after ruining another human being's life, and I get to come here to testify at a trial where I get to listen to people try to convince a jury that you're as full of it as she was."
"Wow," Blaine says again, because she's going into this expecting the exact same thing he is and he should be panicking but mostly he's fighting the urge to give her a hug. "Are you okay? You look like you want to punch things."
She blinks a few times and smiles at him for real when she says,
"You know, I really do like you. I'm fine. Promise. I just feel like I've been having a lot of cases like this lately and I'm getting tired of how they play out once I stop working on them. I don't know, maybe I need a change of scenery."
"You think somewhere else would be better?" Blaine asks, because things don't look so hot for him in Westerville, either.
"Probably not," Detective Warren admits. "But sometimes dealing with the same problems in a new place doesn't make them seem so impossible. Maybe I've had enough of crime-fighting in West Virginia."
"They'd love you in Ohio," Blaine offers, but she only laughs at him.
"No offense, Blaine, but if I put West Virginia behind me, I want at least a state between us."
"Where would you go?" Blaine asks. She shrugs.
"I don't know," she says. "I lived in New York until my teens. I always loved it there."
"My boyfriend's going to school in New York in the fall," he says. Warren grins at him, suddenly smug.
"I see," she says. "So Kurt is your boyfriend now. I thought the name they were throwing around on the news sounded familiar. Good. I'm happy things are working out."
"For now," Blaine mutters. At her raised eyebrow, he adds, "I don't know what I'll do after high school. I don't know what will happen to us, either."
"No one ever does," Warren says, sympathetically. "But whatever you two decide, be as selfish as you can. Both of you."
"That's the advice you're going with?" Blaine asks. "Really?"
"Trust me," she says. "Pick what's going to make you happiest. If you're both selfish in the same direction, perfect. If not, it's better not to drag things out. Be as happy as you can, as soon as you can."
Blaine falls asleep that night without having a nightmare about Tom for the first time in weeks. Instead he spends his dreams sitting and staring at blank walls, with shadows looming up behind him so close they almost brush against his back, as he worries about what it means if the thing that makes him happiest isn't an idea or school or plan at all. He wonders what it means if the thing that makes him happiest is Kurt.
***
He gets to the courthouse early the next morning with his mom and dad. The lawyer calls at an ungodly hour and asks that they get there as early as possible so there's time to discuss a last-minute change in proceedings before everything starts. Thankfully Cynthia is spending the night at a friend's house, because he's too jumpy to deal with Cynthia at the breakfast table, demanding why he's not giving her enough attention as she retells her dreams from the night before in excruciating detail. He works at keeping his face as blank and emotionless as possible when they wade through the reporters taking pictures and yelling to get their attention. They've been banned from the courthouse but that hasn't stopped them from getting as good a view as possible on the property line. He hopes they won't still be waiting when they're leaving at the end of the day.
In the courthouse, neither lawyer is anywhere to be found, and no one seems to know where they are.
"Why would he bother to call last night if he wasn't even going to be here to talk?" Mom asks, a little worriedly as they finally give up and go into the courtroom to find seats. "I hope everything's alright."
Blaine doesn't answer, just sits with his hands clenched tightly in his lap, barely registering when Mom reaches over to squeeze them reassuringly. Dad is planning to sit through every day of the trial, and Blaine can't begin to imagine how he'll do it, when Blaine isn't even certain how he'll manage the first half hour. An entire day in the same room with Tom again feels like one of his nightmares.
He knows nothing will happen in a room full of people, that he has nothing to be afraid of, and he's not, not exactly. But seeing Tom's face again, in person, after almost an entire year of not getting hit or hurt or forced to do anything he doesn't want to do is overwhelming and intimidating, no matter what the logical part of his brain keeps trying to tell the rest of him. If he's so nervous about just seeing Tom, he has no idea how he'll actually testify in the same room as him.
The room is filling up with people now. He recognizes a few of the faces, although the lawyer is still nowhere to be seen. Detective Warren is sitting a couple seats away, and Mr. and Mrs. Evans are just behind them. Stevie isn't there and won't be showing up later on, either. The actual trial for his case is going to happen a few weeks after Blaine's, but any testimony that he gives for either one will probably be pre-recorded the night before and played to the jury when the time comes, like Wes predicted. Blaine's happy at least one of them will get to avoid the crowds and the chaos of the trial, but he can't help wishing the offer had been extended to both of them.
The lawyers for the defence and prosecution show up at almost the same time. They look nervous and a little flustered. Blaine wants to find out what's happening but before he gets the chance, the side door opens and his eyes register a brief flash of prison orange before he starts and turns away. He stares intently at his hands as the bailiff leads Tom past and everyone gets settled into place. By the time the judge has taken a seat, Blaine manages to work up enough courage to risk a glance. Tom is looking straight at him. He smiles at Blaine briefly - almost sadly - when their eyes meet. Blaine's stomach lurches and he quickly goes back to staring at his fingernails. Things have just gotten started and already Blaine doesn't know how much more he can handle.
It feels like he might be having a panic attack, the droning voices at the front of the room sliding in and out of focus against his will. He shakes his head a little, trying to clear it so he can concentrate on what's happening around him. Tom is whispering something to his lawyer. They seem to be having some sort of last-minute debate about something. Blaine frowns. They've had months to get ready for this morning. There's no reason for the defence lawyer to look this unprepared.
"Mr. Wallace?" The judge says, impatiently and possibly repeating himself. "How does your defendant plead?"
"Your honour," the lawyer says, finally turning away from Tom. "My client requested late last night that he would like to accept the plea bargain that had been offered to him previously."
The judge raises her eyebrows before looking at Mr. MacFarlane, the prosecution lawyer.
"You were aware of this?" She asks.
Mr. MacFarlane nods, saying, "Mr. Wallace informed me early this morning. Given the circumstances and the emotional well-being of the witnesses, we would still be more than willing to offer the plea bargain to Mr. Brenner."
"Am I to understand that this offer includes Mr. Brenner pleading guilty to all charges of kidnapping and assault?"
Blaine stops listening again as the lawyers start talking in earnest. If he thought his head was swimming a few minutes ago, he was sadly uninformed. He feels like if he doesn't focus on his feet staying perfectly level on the ground he'll fall out of his seat. It's been such a long time since anyone has spoken to him about the possibility of a plea bargain, he'd forgotten it was even an option.
His heart is hammering in his chest and as he sits in his seat as motionless as possible, he can feel the energy radiating off his parents in waves. He's obviously not the only one who wasn't expecting this. It's only when he finally manages to make his body start acting on the commands he's trying to give it and he forces himself to turn his head slightly to look at Tom again that the reality that this is actually happening really starts to sink in.
He knows there was never much incentive for Tom to take the plea bargain in the first place - the only one the prosecution had been willing to offer only dropped one charge of sexual assault, the charges relating to prostituting and sexually exploiting minors, and about a quarter of the physical assault charges. This late in the game it seems ridiculous that Tom would even consider it - it's a little ridiculous that anyone seriously thought he'd consider it at any point. But Tom is merely staring somberly at the judge now, intently listening to what she says. He doesn't look back to Blaine again once, or do anything to indicate that there are people behind him at all. Blaine keeps staring at the back of his head, unsure if he's trying to will Tom to turn around, or to keep ignoring his presence. He doesn't realize he's shaking until Mom reaches out and sets a hand on his shoulder to rub at it softly.
Individual implications of what this all means catch up with him one at a time, almost as if they're waiting in line for their turn to approach him. Tom is going to go to jail. For years - probably a longer period of time than Blaine was even with him. All of the sudden he can't remember the minimum jail time Tom is facing for the things that he's done. He knows that it must be for a very long time, but in his distracted state of mind, he can't begin to imagine why the sentence would need to be longer than eight years. For Blaine, eight years is over half the time he's been alive. For him, eight years that lasted so long they effectively erased most of his memories of the first seven. In Blaine's mind right now, the only thing he can think is that over eight years in prison would be just like being in prison for life. Eight years would just about cover it, but the longer he stares at the back of Tom's head, the harder he hopes for 80.
He feels almost weightless now, like there's not enough oxygen getting to his brain. He can feel Mom's eyes on him, can sense how she keeps glancing at him every now and then, trying to sort out how he's handling what's happening in front of them. Blaine keeps staring ahead, fighting to keep his face blank like he has ever since he walked into the courthouse. He's not sure why, but he can't afford to lose control now, not when his world is going to pieces around him, even if there's a small voice in the back of his head telling him this is all for the best, that now he can hide from the people questioning him and his morals, that now no one is going to accuse him of wanting it or being dirty and a disgrace to his family. It's hard to listen to that voice when the rest of him is so scared.
And he is scared, because he's been forcing himself to get ready for this one thing for so long, now that it's just disappeared in front of him, he has no idea what is going to happen to him. He doesn't know what he's supposed to be doing, and he hasn't felt this helpless since Tom locked him up in a bathroom in West Virginia and left him alone with his imagination for hours, terrified about what was going to happen and what he was going to be forced to do. He still doesn't know what Tom is going to do, and a small part of him wonders if this is all some big plan of Tom's to satisfy himself that Blaine is still his to control and scare and intimidate, that he can do anything at all, and Blaine will do exactly what he's doing right now: panic about what comes next and if he's going to get in too much trouble.
When Tom is led out of the courtroom, he finally turns to face Blaine's direction again. For a long moment they stare at each other before Tom is pulled away and Blaine can't read the expression on the other man's face - apologetic maybe, but he doesn't know what Tom has to feel sorry for, what Tom is even capable of being sorry for. It feels like an elaborate trap of some sort, and Blaine knows it, but he can't do anything to get out of it.
Mom is pulling slightly on his arm, trying to encourage him to his feet.
"Are you okay?" she asks. Her voice is echoing in his ears. Everything around him is suddenly too loud and all Blaine can focus on is the movement of the crowd on all sides around him and the way Detective Warren is staring at him with a worried expression and that the Evanses are trying to catch his eye so they can talk to him and he can't be in this place anymore. If he doesn't leave now, he's going to go crazy.
He shrugs off his mother's hand and pushes past everyone as he makes his way into the hall, heading straight for the first set of bathrooms he sees. He locks himself into one of the stalls and sits down heavily, burying his face in his hands. He's not sure how long he sits there with his head spinning, or when his hands become wet with tears he didn't know he'd been crying. There must be something so wrong with him to be reacting to what should be good news like this, but he can't stop. It feels like he's dying.
At some point he somehow manages to reach into his pocket and pull out his phone, like there's only one person on the planet who can miraculously make this all go away, who can make him feel like a real person, even though Blaine knows the world doesn't work that way. It doesn't matter though. He just wants his boyfriend. It takes Kurt a few rings to answer, and Blaine wonders if he has to run out of a class before he can talk to him, face red as everyone stares as he leaves. But none of that matters when he the ringing stops and he hears the anxious, "Hello?" on the other end of the line.
He doesn't answer, just listens to Kurt's voice as he tries to steady his breathing and straighten out his thoughts.
"Blaine?" Kurt asks, quietly. "What's going on? Why are you calling so early?"
Blaine still can't find the words he wants, the words he needs to explain everything that's happened in the last half hour, so he just mutters, "I'm sorry," and doesn't say anything else.
"It's okay," Kurt says automatically. There's a brief pause as he speaks to someone who has evidently joined him wherever he is on campus right now to ask him something before he hesitantly turns his focus back to Blaine to ask,
"Blaine? Can you tell me what's happening?"
"I don't know," Blaine manages. "There's just too much."
"Are you okay?"
"I think so?" Blaine grits out, his jaw too tight to work the way he wants it to. "Just... please don't go?"
"Of course not," Kurt says, as Blaine wearily leans his head against the stall wall, listening to Kurt breathe on the other end of the line.
***
It takes a surprisingly long time for Dad to come get him. He's been on the phone with Kurt for over an hour when he hears a light tap on the stall door. After he says goodbye to Kurt and swings open the door, his dad smiles at him sympathetically and asks,
"How are you doing?"
"I honestly have no idea what I'm feeling right now."
"This is definitely a surprise," Dad agrees.
"Sorry for making you and Mom wait so long," Blaine says, but Dad just waves him off.
"It worked out better this way," he says. "The press all think you snuck out the side entrance by now. They've almost all left."
"Did they wait a long time?" Blaine asks, more out of a need to say something than a real desire to know the answer, which is good, because Dad stays silent. Blaine suddenly notices the tension in his father's shoulders and it starts to make him a little nervous.
"What happened?" he asks.
"It's not important right now," Dad says, but Blaine sees how his mouth tightens and the lines around his eyes seem to get deeper.
"What happened?" he asks again.
"What happened is you've had a very draining morning and it's not fair to pile anything else onto you before you've even left the courthouse."
"Did he do something?" Blaine demands, his voice rising despite himself. "What did he do?"
Dad puts his hand on the back of Blaine's neck and squeezes it gently.
"It's okay, Blaine," he says, softly. "It's not going to change anything, except get him into more trouble. Brenner's got a lot of expectations he's going to have to live up to if he wants a lighter sentence and he's already screwing it up for himself. The person he's hurting most right now is him."
"Dad," Blaine says, desperately. "Please."
Dad sighs in defeat.
"He released a statement through his lawyer. I don't what he thought he would gain by it, but I promise, it just created a buzz with the journalists because it's so unusual. It's not as bad as it sounds."
***
It's not as bad as it sounds because it's actually a whole lot worse. It's true when Dad says Tom is effectively shooting himself in the foot by making himself look like an asshole to the judge, but it's obvious to Blaine that this isn't about the judge at all. Not for the first time he wishes he didn't know Tom Brenner as well as he does.
"He doesn't care about how long they're putting him in jail, Mom," he says when Mom tries to make him feel better once they've gotten back home. "He just wants to take me down with him."
Mom can't seem to find a convincing argument against that, so she just makes an upset noise as she hugs him hard, watching the footage of the frankly beleaguered-looking lawyer on the courthouse steps getting ready to read his client's prepared statement.
"My client would like to express his deepest and most sincere apologies to the two families that were hurt by his actions. However, for as sorry as he is for the pain caused to them, his first concern in all of this is Blaine. This plea was agreed to on the understanding that it would be of the greatest benefit to him. The statement he wanted me to give you says, 'I'm still deeply saddened by Blaine's decision to leave last year, even though I now understand that taking him when he was young was wrong. He is like a son to me and I've come to realize that if pleading guilty will make his transition into his new life easier, I owe him that much. For me, he will always come first.'"
"He's making it look like he's doing me a favour," Blaine says. "Like he's trying to be the better person after a bad break up. As if enough people don't think I'm a liar already."
"No one thinks he didn't kidnap you," Mom points out. "And even his lawyer looks like he'd rather be getting tortured than reading that garbage."
"No," Blaine says, darkly. "They all just think I had a great time while I was there, like I'm so dysfunctional I was actually the only 7-year-old on the planet who thought getting raped was awesome, and now he's found a way to make even more people wonder if it's true. I don't get it. Hasn't he done enough? How miserable do I have to be before he's happy?"
But aside from the usual homophobes on talk radio who think Blaine is a menace who turns ordinary men into dangerous pedophiles or whatever, most of the media treats the new development with disapproving fascination. Blaine would be grateful but all that really means is suddenly all the experts are being called back to do interviews about coercion and control tactics abusers resort to to keep the upper hand in relationships. He's back to being Poor Blaine in the news again, but now he's become Poor Blaine Who Was Hit By His Boyfriend, and half of the comments about the case turn it into a case of a runaway getting a guy charged with statutory rape. Blaine is so tired of people rewriting his life he wants to scream.
***
Giving a victim impact statement used to seem like something that wasn't going to happen until far into the future. The trial would have to happen and a verdict needed to be given before sentencing could even start. It felt like there would be time to deal with it later, maybe when Blaine's world wasn't so hard. But now that Tom has pled guilty, sentencing has been moved up and will be starting on Thursday. Blaine has no idea what he wants to say.
This is his chance to explain to the people in the courtroom why he didn't leave before Stevie came and why Tom isn't making a great sacrifice for Blaine's sake by pleading guilty. His parents keep telling him that the only person he needs to talk to is the judge and not to worry about what anyone else is thinking about him, but that is so much easier to say than it is to do. Ever since this started people have been talking about him, and over him, and at him. He's never had the chance to fully explain what his life was like with Tom. Even when he was questioned by Detective Warren, he stuck to what happened and not how all the things he went through destroyed so much of his childhood. When he talks to Dr. Hong it's always to sort out some crisis he's in the middle of, forcing them to focus on tiny details instead of the bigger picture. What he says in the courtroom in a few days might be his only chance to vocalize the magnitude of what his life has been, and it's certainly the only chance he'll get to say any of it to Tom's face. He doesn't want to waste the opportunity.
He's sitting at his desk staring hard at the blank word document open on his laptop in front of him, and has been doing so for half an hour as the importance of his task presses down on him, when he's distracted by shouting coming from the family room. He can hear Dad's voice trying to calm the angry one, which obviously belongs to Cynthia, but his sister is having none of it. Her voice raises in pitch and she becomes completely unintelligible as she gets started. Dad gets louder, too, and when Cynthia is almost screeching, he gives up trying to reason with her and barks out,
"Cynthia that's enough. Go to your room."
There's another squawk from Cynthia and then Blaine can hear her thundering up the stairs. He takes a moment to be impressed at how someone who doesn't weigh over 50 lbs soaking wet can make that much noise coming up a set of solidly built stairs, but before he thinks beyond that, he realizes that the angry footsteps coming down the hall aren't headed to her room at all.
His door flies open, and Cynthia is standing on the threshold, her face a portrait of anger and frustration. It would be funny if it weren't for the desperate confusion also accompanying it. She looks like someone has told her to do university level calculus and that her whole future depends on getting the right answer. Her tiny little world has been knocked off its axis and she's obviously looking to vent her frustration on the nearest and most obvious target.
"You're a liar," she spits. Blaine doesn't say anything, just stares at her tiny little body as it shakes with rage. He waits to see what she says next, shocked that he cares enough that the words sting as she says them. "You were supposed to be the best brother but now that you're here you're the worst. You don't deserve to be in this family."
For a moment Blaine considers rolling his eyes and herding her out of the room, forcing their parents to deal with her again, but she's standing in front of him and tears are starting to roll down her cheeks and for the first time, Blaine looks at her like she's more than just a hurricane of energy and obnoxious behaviour. She looks like her world is going to pieces and she can't take it anymore. It's a feeling Blaine can relate to so strongly he can't bear the thought of writing it off and shutting her down. So he asks,
"What did I do?"
"Nothing," she hisses, her face contorting and her hands clenching into fists at her sides. "You're a liar and Mom and Dad don't even get mad at you, even though you ruin everything. Being quiet when someone else needs to know things is another way to lie to them. My teacher told me when I asked her last week and Lola told me when I asked at Christmas time, but you never get in trouble. I get in trouble when I tell on you for keeping secrets and it's not fair! You're just a sad, sad boy who I'm not allowed to talk to or ask questions at or play with. I wish I had the brother in my head instead of the one really here because he doesn't ignore me and he doesn't hate me like you do."
"I don't hate you," Blaine says, vaguely aware that he's looking at her like there's an alien crawling out of her chest. "I have a lot really bad things I'm trying to sort out, Cynthia. They aren't nice things, so I don't tell you about them, that's all."
"I know they're not nice," Cynthia says. "But everyone else gets to know them and everyone else gets to help you feel better. Everyone is lying to me and it doesn't feel very good to me."
Her voice breaks as she makes the most pathetic whimpering noise Blaine has ever heard in his life, which is also when he hears to footsteps of his father on the stairs, obviously now aware of the fact that Cynthia is yet again disobeying orders. He makes a split second decision and gets up, grabbing her arm and gently pulling her inside enough to shut the door before they can be interrupted. He carefully leads her to the bed and sits down beside her.
"No one wants to make you feel bad, Cynthia," he tries. "You know that the reason we're not telling you everything is that if you know all of it you just get upset, right?"
"I'm upset right now," Cynthia sobs, almost sounding inconsolable but still curling into him the second he puts a tentative arm around her. "I just wanted to see if you would play a game with me and I can't even do that because you're too busy writing secrets."
"This is because I won't play Monopoly or whatever with you?" Blaine asks, disbelieving, even though it would be just like his sister to treat a board game like the death of Santa.
"Dad said you couldn't because you had to finish what you were doing by the end of the week but he won't even tell me what you're doing," Cynthia says. "I just wanted to help you finish faster and no one will let me."
"Okay," Blaine says, slowly. It's starting to feel like he's got the ground back under him, at least a little. "You know they're keeping secrets from you because they love you, right? They don't want to scare you, that's all."
"You're not scary," Cynthia scoffs, still feeling enough like herself to manage that.
"Thanks," Blaine says. "But there are things that happened to me while I was gone that are really hard to understand. You're only seven, Cynthia."
"Seven's big," Cynthia protests. "I'm not a baby, I know things."
"Yeah, but there are some things you shouldn't have to know," Blaine tries again. "Tom Brenner took me away when I was seven, and I should have been having fun and being like all the other seven-year-olds, but he didn't let me. It's not good to know about those kinds of things too soon."
"But you had to," Cynthia insists. "Why not me too? It's not fair to have to live where you're the only one who doesn't know."
"You already know some of it," Blaine says, a little desperately. In his mind's eye he can see the conversation carrying on to its inevitable conclusion and he just hopes it doesn't end up with nightmares or getting yelled at by Mom and Dad. He can't even believe he's trying to sort out what exactly is safe to tell her and what he needs to leave out to make sure she still sleeps at night.
"I know about stranger danger and that I'm supposed to run away when people try to make me go with them, or if they touch me so I feel creepy. When I asked Mom what that meant she said it was when people touch you where you go to the bathroom. That doesn't mean anything. No one does that. It's gross," Cynthia doesn't sound very impressed and Blaine distantly remembers about how all the lessons and talks his parents had with him about abuse didn't even begin to mentally prepare him for what happened, on any level. Maybe his sister has a point.
"Grown ups do that," he says when he notices she's looking at him very pointedly, obviously waiting for an explanation. "Touch each other there for fun, I mean. It's not gross when you're old enough and feel like you want to, but if you don't want to do it it's terrible."
"He touched you where you went to the bathroom."
It's not even a question, just a statement laced with disgust, but she's not flinging herself away from him or throwing a fit either, so Blaine figures she's taking it fairly well.
"He touched me all over," Blaine tries to find the right words, aware that Cynthia is still staring at him hard. "Sometimes it's not about where someone touches you, it's the way they're doing it that isn't right."
"Am I touching you bad right now?" Cynthia demands. Her little face is starting to show slight signs of relief, like she's been waiting for answers to these questions for a very long time, probably even longer than she's known Blaine.
"This is good," Blaine reassures her. "Bad touching is more about... Okay, you know what sex is right?"
"I'm not stupid," Cynthia tells him, looking a little insulted.
"And you know it doesn't have to just be a guy and a girl who have it, right?"
"Blaaaine," Cynthia's voice is whiny and fully exasperated now, like she can't believe how dumb he's being.
"Okay, okay," he relents. "But I didn't really know that when I was as old as you are, and that was bad, because when Tom touched me in a bad way it was because he wanted to have sex with me."
"But he didn't, right? Because sex is for grown ups who want to make babies or who want to get babies."
Cynthia sounds like she knows exactly what he's going to say and it makes him feel like he's destroying something in her that he can never take back when he says,
"No, I had sex with him. He used to make me because he was a grown up and he was in charge and it didn't matter what I said or did, I couldn't make him stop."
Cynthia does push away from him at that to protest,
"You could too! All you had to do is tell Mom and Dad and they would have brought you back. You can't yell at me for saying that, because you know I'm right. I can't help if you're stupid."
"I'm not going to yell at you," he says. "You're right. I could have found someone to take me back home where everything would have been okay again. Not right away, but a long, long time ago. Before you were born yet."
"Why did you stay? Did you like it?"
"I hated it," Blaine says firmly, and it's so much easier to sound decisive like this when he's dumbing it down to a level where he would have been able to understand it when he was just starting to live through it. "I stayed because I thought Mom and Dad hated me, and he made me scared to talk to anyone who wasn't him. I thought other people would hate me more than he did."
"If he hated you why did he take you?"
"I don't know," Blaine says. "Sometimes if felt like he just wanted someone he could hurt."
"Did he hit you?" Cynthia asks. "I asked Lola at Christmas if you were hit when you were away, when they were talking about spanking kids, and Mom made me leave the room."
"He hit me," Blaine confirms. "Not like spanking though. Not like what Lola was probably talking about. He would try to hurt me."
"He broke your arm," Cynthia says, like she's just starting to understand why Blaine was so tired and sore when he first got back home. Blaine nods and there's a long pause before she says in a small voice, "I would have just left and made Mom and Dad take me back even if they didn't want me anymore. They wouldn't break my arm."
"He told me they would just send me back," Blaine says. "I used to wish I'd never been born instead. Some days it felt better thinking I could have never existed."
"I'm sorry," Cynthia whispers.
"Why?" Blaine asks.
"I used to wish you were never born, too. When I'd get in trouble for taking toys out of your room."
"You wished I never existed because a kid you had never even seen kept you from playing with toys he wasn't even using," Blaine says, matter-of-factly. "That's not really bad, Cynthia. You didn't know me, you just didn't like the idea of me."
"I wished you had never been born last Thursday," Cynthia's voice is sober, like she's giving a confession at a church. "And last night when Mom said I had to save the last piece of pie for you even when you said you weren't hungry."
"Oh," says Blaine. "Well, that's... not nice."
"I know," says Cynthia. "That's why I wished it, but I'm mostly sorry now. I promise I won't do it as much. Will you still answer me?"
"What do you want to know?" Blaine asks, cautiously. He's still not even close to being willing to tell Cynthia everything, although he's pretty sure she doesn't know enough to ask the questions with especially traumatizing answers.
"What was the meanest thing he did? I asked Mom before when you first came back because you were so frowny all the time and she told me not to ask silly questions. It's not a silly question, it's a good one and I want someone to tell me."
Blaine is quiet for a really long time before he finally figures out how to answer in a way she'll understand.
"He made me forget I was a person."
She wrinkles her nose at him in confusion, so he obviously hasn't done a very good job at meeting her on her level.
"He would beat me up and tell me mean things and force me to do bad things that I didn't want to do. Real people don't have to live like that. They can leave and say no and be treated the way they deserve. I was with him for such a long time I forgot I could do those things, even though I knew other people could. It was like I forgot that I was a real person."
"That's really weird," Cynthia says.
"It's really scary," Blaine corrects. "Especially when you come back here where everyone's normal, but no one realizes you're so different inside. They treat you like you know you're the same and nothing makes sense."
"Are you better now?" Cynthia asks.
Blaine only shrugs.
"Sometimes," he says. "Sometimes I still feel like no one around me is treating me the right way, like they're making a mistake and I shouldn't be treated like I'm a part of this family, or like I deserve to have friends."
"Well stop that," Cynthia says. "It's stupid."
"Is that supposed to help?" Blaine asks.
"Yeah," Cynthia's voice is defensive and hostile, like she knows she's not behaving the way she's supposed to but isn't prepared to stop without a fight. "I always tell when someone's acting dumb. So they aren't dumb after. It helps. I help."
"Maybe you do," Blaine says, quietly.
Cynthia preens a little before reaching over to the dresser and picking up Horton.
"He's gross," she tells him. "We should give him a bath."
"Okay," Blaine agrees, because there are worse things he could be doing on a school night when Kurt is busy studying for his APs. "Give me half an hour first though, okay? I have to finish writing something."
***
The first time Blaine speaks to the media about his past is the day Tom Brenner has been sentenced to three consecutive life sentences. He's pretty sure that Kurt keeps a file of the video hidden on his computer somewhere, even though he can't get him to admit it. His mom shows him some of the fallout in the days that follow, mostly he won't believe her when she says no one is being as spiteful towards him as he's convinced they must be. While it's true that there are still some people talking about how he's more manipulative than the pedophile who took him, and some speculation that he's going to end up using his "new celebrity" to sell his story, she's not wrong. For the most part it's all articles talking about how he deserves a chance to be a normal kid and that it's horrible that he felt the need to take something so painful to the public because "some people can't figure out that a seven-year-old or even a 16-year-old doesn't solve problems the same way a 60-year-old journalist does."
He hadn't been planning on saying anything at all, but when he walked out of the courthouse when it all should have been over to see a host of cameras and microphones, desperate for footage they can twist around to suit their own means, something snaps. It's not that he's angry or frustrated, he's just had enough. He carefully pulls himself away from the arm his dad has wrapped around his shoulders and walks over to the reporters before anyone can say anything or try to talk him out of it. The flock of journalists look shocked and stare at him dumbly, forgetting their job descriptions the moment it looks like they won't have to be obnoxious to find a good sound bite.
"Hi," he says, nervously. He has no idea what he's planning to say to these people, and is almost wondering if it would look really bad if he just turned around and walked back again, but then he thinks about Tom's statement, and the way people think it's suspicious and wrong that he's gay, and how no one ever gets to hear his side of things. He stays where he is and is silent another few seconds before finally taking a deep breath and continuing.
"Um, I guess thanks? For helping my family keep looking for me for such a long time, I mean. But they know where I am now, so even though I'm glad you cared then, could you stop caring now? At least for a while? I wasn't happy where I was and I didn't want to be there, but I'm not going to explain myself to you, either. There are a lot of things you don't need to know about, and it would be nice if you didn't start making stuff up just because I'm not going to talk to you about any of it. I'm just... really tired of other people telling me who I am. I'm ready to find out for myself."
To Masterpost