Roberts carefully made his way back to the car, holding the piping hot coffee at a carefully balanced angle to ensure limited spilling. It was the perfect plan for a man who spent the majority of his mornings swiftly changing shirts due to coffee stains. The door, however, he had not factored in. It was closed, mocking him in its sleek black shades. He bit back a curse and carefully maneuvered one of the cheap Styrofoam cups from the full of his hand to a three finger grip clutched tightly to his chest and tried in vain to jerk the door handle open with two fingers.

Finally, after many failed half-openings he opened the door with such an unwarranted flourish that half the coffee cup spilled down his front. Fuming slightly he slid into the passenger seat next to Michaels. If his partner had actually noticed him, he showed no sign of it. Instead, he was staring vacantly into the distance as if seeing something only he could notice.

Roberts could feel his anger evaporating as concern filtered through. He had seen that expression before plenty of times, and it had never boded well. "Hey," he watched as Michaels practically jumped before turning to look in his partner. Roberts could see him try to bite back a smile as he took in his waterlogged appearance. He reminded himself that Michaels was having a hard time and that was all that stopped the anger from returning.

"You okay?"

Michaels just turned away and stared back at the window for a moment. When he spoke, his voice was kept as neutral as possible without seeming completely indifferent. "Who are we checking today?" He didn't know why he wouldn't confide in Roberts with this, Roberts was and had been since their teenage days, his best friend but whenever he brought himself to talk, to explain how he couldn't sleep because his son, as bloody and battered as the day he died, was no longer the only shadowed human that followed him in the realms of subconscious.

Now, as he twisted and turned along the well-beaten paths his nightmares brought him, he was not only escaping the horrors of his past, but of the present. A small, badly beaten girl followed him. She conveyed no words, in fact she always appeared mute, but her eyes, wide doe eyes the color of melted chocolate, conveyed all of her problems. She always seemed to wish to tell him something and her eyes pleaded with some invisible God that he would understand.

They were different from his son's, cold and accusing twirled with hopefulness and tragedy in a sort of never-ending heartbreaking dance. He woke every night drenched in cold sweat and tears streaming down his cheeks. He couldn't explain about how even in the daytime, those terrified brown eyes seemed to follow him, to accuse him of helping a monster. He couldn't explain it, so he didn't.

Instead he pulled from the person who had best understood him his entire life and delved back into a 'safe area'. "Whose alibis are we checking out today?" he asked again, pulling the car out of the parking lot and hesitating just before the turn out. He saw from the corner of his eye (he point blank refused to stare him straight in the eye) Roberts shuffle through some papers.

"We need to question the last one David Karofsky accused, Noah Puckerman." Michaels nodded, "If you turn right here and carry on down until you reach Robin Way, and then turn left onto Dudley Road. The address is 420." Michaels looked at him, obviously confused. A boy with a track record like Noah Puckerman just simply did not leave in that part of town. "I called his mother earlier and she said he was spending the day with his girlfriend Quinn Fabray." He explained as Michaels pulled from the parking lot.

"Let me guess, another glee club member?" Roberts nodded and Michaels swore under his breath. This damned glee club was going to be the death of him, by guilt of helping the man who'd been accused of sending one of their members to their own long term visit to the hospital or by the sheer knowledge that they'd done it and having absolutely no proof.

Roberts watched through worried eyes as his partner seemed to tear himself apart all over again. If he'd known that this case would affect the man so badly, he would have never accepted the case. To say he was worried would be the biggest understatement of his life. Michaels was closing in on himself, he wasn't speaking to people that could help him. Roberts was worried his partner was going to do something stupid.


Rachel was laying by herself in one of the truly rare moments he had gotten alone. It perhaps, could very well have been the only time since her accident someone hadn't been by her side. It was odd, but slightly comforting at the same time. The others had been worried, not unwarranted, at how she would take her accident. She herself could admit to being rather surprised at what she felt about the whole thing.

If she were honest with herself, she could say that she expected to be angry. That revulsion and hatred for her attacker would real about inside her as she mutely lamented her anguish at why this had happened to her. She wasn't fond of not speaking; it was heartbreaking to her that she wasn't able to communicate even the simplest of statements to her family, but no anger was found there.

She was tired of hurting from every inch of her body, that laughing caused pains to shoot sharply from her to the point where she was gasping for breath in hopes of reprieve. She was sick of not being able to walk or even leave her bed with being confined into a wheelchair. She was tired of not being able to pick anything up or brush hair from her face without some sort of pain. Still, no matter how hard she sought it, from the very dredges of her own body, she tried to find the anger and couldn't.

Looking back, thinking of Karofsky, there was no anger or hatred, but pity. She was sorry for the man who had broken himself so far beyond repair that he couldn't find all the pieces. She cried, in this time she had alone, for the scared little boy that couldn't admit who he was. She was filled with sorrow for him, this man who'd tortured her friends and hurt her. The tears spilt from her cheeks as she worried about horrors unfolding on to him.

Without it willing to, consciously or subconsciously, her mind drifted back to that day the police had come. She had been terrified of police from a young age, ever since some had come when she was four, barely old enough to remember, and taken her from home. Some people had filed charges against her fathers for abuse and she had been kept from home for almost a month before the police were forced to admit that it had merely been a 'precaution' because of the unique living arrangement Rachel was in.

She didn't believe them, Blaine or any of her other friends, when they told her they weren't involved with the attack on Karofsky. She wanted to; she wanted to trust them blindly, believe them incapable of such acts, but she knew. She knew the moment she had awoken to see every member of the club, vigil beside her death bed, and every day since, how protective they had gotten.

She heard the anger in their voices when they talked about him, no matter how hard they tried to hide it. So she worried. Worried that they'd done something irrevocable and incredibly stupid.


David Karofsky Senior prided himself as an observant man. He knew when someone was ready to sell or buy depending solely on their body language. That's why the confusion he felt whenever he was around his youngest child was so shocking. It had become more pronounced after his attack.

Obviously, he had expected some sort of withdrawal. The court mandated psychiatrist had told them that was the norm, but David's case seemed to go far and beyond the realm of normalcy. Every time he even mentioned the case, or catching who had done this atrocious crime to his son, David withdrew, and he didn't understand.

He pegged it on the rumors flying around, the ones saying his own son had been the one to push that girl down the stairs. He'd prided himself on not believing such rumors, so confident in how much he knew about his son, but even he had to admit the guilty looks he sometimes saw on his son's face whenever the girl's name had even come up, he was worried.

So when he found the full bottle of Vicaden never opened from the hospital in his son's room along with the furtive, almost guilty looks, he worried. He worried for something stupid his son might have done, but more so, as he sat in his chair awaiting his son's return, the bottle in front of him, he worried for something stupid his son might do.


Thank you for all your reviews! I'm sorry for the botched Filipino and thank you for correcting me. If I ever use Blaine's grandparents again (I rather liked them) I will definitely ask for help from you guys instead! I was originally going to write this as Puck's alibi (his is my favorite I think) but it's rather late and that chapter was going to be long and I kind of wanted to tie some things in better so instead I gave an insight to Michaels and I tried to bring foreshadowing with Rachel's and David Senior's. I probably failed but I hope you enjoyed it anyway. Until Next Time!