The Friday before.

"Brass knuckles, Sue?"

"William, do you have some unhealthy obsession with Jeopardy? I ask because you have a habit of stating the perfectly obvious as a question. It's not the most irritating of your habits, mind you, but it is there." Sue paused from unpacking the boxes to give him a piercing stare and then returned to her task.

"All right, Becky, I've given you the list of people to give these boxes to. Do you know all of them? They're the ones who burst into song in the hallways and the rest of the Cheerios."

"Yes, Coach." Becky nodded eagerly.

"Good."

Will said, weakly, "I thought they'd be ribbon pins. There's got to be a color for bullying."

"Ribbons? Ribbons are overdone. Nobody even notices them any more," Sue scoffed. "But 1.5 inch wide brass knuckle pins, those get attention. Rather like your use of hair gel, except that's more of a cry for help." She looked around. "Becky's giving the pins to your Gleeks and the Cheerios to distribute. Manga-eyes is giving them to the Science Club and you and I will stand at the doorway and give pins or boxes to anybody else who should wear or share them."

Sue had called an emergency assembly for third period, alerted the media, prepared camera-ready footage, gotten Rachel's dads to have handouts ready just outside the No Soliciting zone, and ordered pins for students. Will realized that he should have asked one or two more questions on exactly what kind of pins she had ordered.

"Oh, good, here comes Figgins. I think he looks a little flustered, don't you?"

"Sue Sylvester, what is this? Last night you aired our school's dirty laundry in public, and now you have called a special assembly, which I shall immediately cancel. You have gone too far!"

Sue took three steps forward. "I agree entirely that I aired our school's dirty laundry in public because you didn't have the guts to wash it in private. You just let it pile up. What's more, I have not gone too far. You have not gone one step far enough."

"You cannot just call a special assembly like this!"

"And yet reality is saying that I have." She ignored Figgins to stride over to two students who had arrived early. "Have you ever been bullied? Or bullied anybody?" The two looked at her in confusion and one said, "Uh, sometimes?" with the air of somebody desperately trying to be anywhere but there while simultaneously not moving a single muscle.

"Then wear these. Everybody who has bullied or been bullied at McKinley is wearing one today." Sue strode back to stare Figgins down. "In case the sound of your own chattering teeth didn't let you hear, everybody here who has bullied or been bullied is wearing one of these today so that this town can see just how bad the problem is. There are two lawyers and their interns arriving to share handouts about how bullying interferes with the legal right to an education and, by some strange coincidence, about how class-action lawsuits work. I prefer swift Sue Sylvester style justice, myself, but I think the school board might pay more attention to the threat of a lawsuit."

As more students filed through the doors, Will noticed Puck going through the crowd putting the pins on several jocks, without the preliminaries of asking. Brittany came up to ask Sue for another box, "since the bear ate mine. She likes them better than doughnuts." Sue came back to Will just as the bell for class started. "I'd imagine that right about now, Figgins is discovering that he can't use the announcement system. I must admit, Lauren has some raw talent for demanding bribes and delivering on the results."

As Will went to his class, he heard a confident voice from the loudspeaker. "Despite the inane ramblings that you might have heard, the third-period assembly is taking place. It is mandatory for all students and the media will be present." He shook his head, laughing under his breath. What the threat of Sue might not accomplish, the lure of television cameras would.

The assembly was uninterrupted by Figgins' attempts to have the auditorium doors locked, since Will had removed the locks the night before with the assistance of a sympathetic janitor who said that he'd seen enough bullying to make him sick. Finn was the first on the platform, so naturally the assembly started with terrible microphone feedback and several "Oh, is it on now?" questions.

"I was supposed to be a leader here, but for a long time, I led bullies, then I let bullying happen, even when I knew it was wrong. The administrators were supposed to make this a place where people can learn, but they didn't care about learning." He looked at his hand in what looked like panic and then turned it over and continued. "They just cared about whatever numbers would make them look good. But now we're going to hold them accountable and we're going to hold ourselves accountable. Uh, this next part gets kind of mathy so somebody else is going to do it."

Will closed his eyes and reminded himself to tell Finn about the difference between script and notes. But he also noticed more than a few cameras going off and that most of the students were paying attention.

Tina was next on the stage. "I asked students to add up how much time they lost to bullying so far this year. The numbers add up to 935 hours, or more than a year's worth of time. On average, the student body loses 17 hours a day to bullying, times 5 days a week, over the eleven weeks so far, that's 935 hours. That's just the 935 hours that people admit to losing. Don't you think that our students deserve better than that? Or even if you don't, don't you think the taxpayers deserve better value?" Will and Sue were standing to the side of the stage to make sure that nobody interfered, and he felt her take his hand and squeeze it in triumph.

Rachel was next. She hadn't even grumbled too much when Will and Sue had said that it really wasn't appropriate for her to sing, and he was almost suspicious that she might, anyway. "I was unusually nervous about this because bullying is such an important topic, so I was fiddling with the pin, which is made of rather flimsy plastic." She was going off script. Seriously off script. "I accidentally broke the middle knuckle. Then my sense of theatricality told me that breaking it is an excellent symbol. If you have been bullied and aren't going to tolerate it any more, or if you have bullied and pledge not to do it or to tolerate it any more, also break the middle knuckle to show that you're breaking the bullying culture here." When Sue leaned over to whisper in his ear, "Good touch," he did his usual hallucination scan of the room—no, no pink elephants or flying monkeys here—to make sure that he had actually heard Sue praising Rachel. As he heard the crackling sound of plastic throughout the auditorium, Will nodded in agreement to Sue and grinned his approval to Rachel.

Not that he had any illusion that it would be enough by itself. But if he and Sue and the students who filled the leadership vacuum kept the pressure on the administration and kept reinforcing whatever culture change they saw, every difference would build up. It would be hard and sometimes discouraging but it would happen.

Back to Saturday morning.

David truly did not like what he was hearing. What he most disliked was the growing uneasy sensation that Hamza had a couple of good points. To rebut them, David kept returning to the one unassailable fact: Kurt and New Directions knew what Trophy Rules involved and they agreed. They agreed to it. Those were the consequences. He and Hamza had been arguing for nearly 20 minutes and it kept coming back to that.

Hamza shook his head wearily. "I know. I know he did. I can't dispute the facts or that it's legally sound or that a deal's a deal or that Blaine or anybody else on the Warblers would have accepted the consequences, too." He sighed. "That's why I can only ask you. And that's what I am doing. I'm asking."

David got up and paced yet again. "It's not even up to me. It's up to Blaine. And if you think he'd give Kurt up for good, give him the option to leave, you're crazy."

"Probably." Hamza's voice and eyes were somber; he wasn't joking around at all. "But don't you think they both deserve the chance?" He sat up from his slouched position. "David. How about if I don't ask you to agree, I don't ask you to side with me, I only ask you to ask Blaine to listen? Could you live with that?"

David sat down again, stared at his shoes, and considered. It would satisfy his conscience, which was steadily reminding him of Kurt's thousand-yard stare last night. He'd stopped, yes, but he'd come uncomfortably close to a line he had never, ever, thought he'd approach, let alone come near crossing. "Okay. I'll ask him to listen."

Hamza added, his voice uncertain, "There's one other person I want to help ask Blaine, this Mr. Schuester, who knows Kurt better than any of us. Kurt said that he's been something of a guardian to him." David was ready to refuse, to say that Hamza couldn't bring in outsiders to pressure Blaine, but as he opened his mouth, he remembered meeting Mr. Schuester after that bully from McKinley had come to pressure Kurt. He was so clearly concerned about Kurt that somehow it would have seemed unfair for him not to be there.

He rubbed his forehead as he muttered, "Fine." He only hoped that this wouldn't somehow end in disaster. Blaine was pretty damn intense about Kurt, to put it mildly, and now he was going to ask Blaine to listen to somebody who wasn't even a Warbler, for God's sake, ask Blaine to give him up. Exhibit A was going to be how Blaine had tried to do something unbelievably unselfish for him. A sense of foreboding gripped him and looking again at Hamza, he saw the other student was as uneasy as he was. David nearly said, "Look, I've realized how crazy this is, let's let well enough alone, I'll tell Blaine not to lend Kurt around like a book he'd recommend, it won't happen again," but he had given his word. In a strange rush of certainty, he thought back to Lynne. Her word and her commitments meant nothing to her. Breaking them wasn't even worth explaining. He would never be a person like that. His word, once given, would never be broken lightly.

He put his hands on his thighs and got up. "You call Mr. Schuester. I'll go tell Kurt, if he's awake, to lie low in my room."

Will picked up the phone. "Hello?"

"Mr. William Schuester?" It sounded like a student, but Will couldn't place the voice.

"Speaking."

"My name is Hamza Khouri. I'm a friend of Kurt's at Dalton."

Will thought he heard a tremor in the boy's voice. "Is something wrong?"

"No, not wrong, but...I'm sorry, I'm not explaining things very well. Kurt says that you've been helping him."

"I've been trying to. Does he need help now?"

"I...I do. Blaine, Blaine nearly did something terrible to Kurt, he tried to share him with David because, because David's girlfriend dumped him, and fortunately David didn't do anything to Kurt, he, he realized that it would have been wrong, and I sort of took the moment and thought that if David, who's another Warbler and really close to Blaine asked him to listen, that maybe we could talk him into letting Kurt go home?"

Will wasn't at all sure that he followed. "So who's we? You and David or you and Kurt or all three of you?"

"No, no, David, David isn't convinced, he's just convinced enough to ask Blaine, and I can't ask Kurt, what if Blaine says no, and then Kurt would have to know, but I thought you might? You've known Kurt longer and...and I can't do it alone!"

"Okay, calm down, let me get this straight. You're going to try to get Blaine to let Kurt come visit?" Was Blaine really refusing to let Kurt come back to Lima even for a quick visit?

"No, I mean to release him from the whole trophy thing." Will hadn't realized he'd been staring at the ceiling in silence until he heard an uncertain, "Hello?"

"Yes, I'm still here. That's...that's ambitious." He was still digesting the concept. After his first appeal to Blaine, which had been more a warning of Kurt's potential fragility, he had never thought of something like this. When Will had seen Blaine after the Karofsky incident, he certainly didn't show any signs of wanting to let go of Kurt. Nor had any of Kurt's calls or emails or texts sounded as though it was likely. Will was fairly sure he knew how to read between the lines of comments such as "'Attentive' might be a good word for Blaine."

"But will you help?"

"I, yes, of course."

There was nothing funny in the situation, Will knew that perfectly well, but the huge sigh of relief that came over the phone almost made him laugh. It had been a long time since anybody thought that he'd be the one with answers, he realized, suddenly sobered again.

"Can you come here right away?"

"I'm about an hour and a half away. I'll leave now."

"Thank you very much, Mr. Schuester. Perhaps I can meet you at the front gates?"

"I'll see you then."

Will hung up, then saved the student's number in his contacts. He had a feeling that this was crazy and wished that Sue were around instead of visiting her sister. She somehow knew how to deal with craziness, if only because most crazy couldn't stand up to Sue levels of crazy. But it sounded like speed was vital. He'd use the drive to sort out his thoughts and see what on earth he could figure out.

Once on the highway, he considered calling the Glee kids and spreading the word that there was a possibility, but realized just as quickly that he couldn't raise their hopes like that. He even worried that this Hamza kid was putting too much hope in him. It wouldn't have been very well-placed.

Snap out of it! Will could almost hear Sue's voice so clearly that he wondered if she had really implanted something in his brain. After all, she had been running her fingers through his hair quite a lot more than somebody who kept saying she loathed it would. Fortunately, it was his own inner voice that continued. Self-pity may make you feel better about yourself but it's not getting anything done. You didn't take your chance to stop it, but maybe this is a chance for redemption. Think carefully and think about doing what's right, not what's easy. Start now. If you were Blaine, what would convince you? And what would make you refuse? Will wished he could think of more ideas in the first category and a lot less in the second, but he had to have hope. He'd do what he could and if it failed, he'd be ready to pick up the pieces. He only wished that he could feel confident, instead of almost sick with dread. Maybe that was what the saying really meant, that courage isn't the absence of fear, but persisting in the face of fear. He hoped that the sayings about courage and stupidity being closely related weren't true as well.

Thanks for all the reviews! I kept rereading them to push through the writer's block when it seemed like I could spend a week staring at a single sentence that would stare back with a kind of "Yeah, your move, lady" expression, and they helped me figure out what was working and what was a dead end. Thanks!