Sorry this chapter's late but school's been brutal (I'm actually procrastinating homework to post this) but I hope you enjoy this chapter.
Shocked. Numb. Robert Karofsky couldn't think; he barely noticed as everyone ambled slowly out of the courtroom. Guilty, his son had stated. Guilty, his son had pleaded. But, his son was guilty of no crime; he had not done anything wrong. So what if he got a little handsy with that ditz cheerleader? From what he heard, she was a bit of a slut anyway. And of those accusations that Berry girl had, not one of them was even founded. David was innocent, and yet, he had pleaded guilty.
Robert watched as his son was approached by his lawyer. Mr. Anderson, Robert remembered, had a gay son. He remembered how David seemed off since Mr. Anderson had been appointed. Could it be that he had convinced his son he had done something wrong? Had he made his son plead guilty by twisting and constraining his thoughts to fit the ideals of the Berry's?
Angrily, he convinced himself that was so and he approached Mr. Anderson and David with those thoughts in mind. "What the hell? What have you been telling my son Anderson? Pleading guilty when we both know he's damn innocent?" Eyes locked solely on Anderson, he didn't notice his son shifting nervously.
"I can assure you, Mr. Karofsky, that David's plead was as surprising to me as it was to you." Eyes blood-shot and tired made it easy for Robert to make out dishonesty in them.
"Yeah, just as much as you weren't whispering how you knew he was guilty in his ear each step of the way? You were biased from the start, having that abysmal son of yours being what he is!" Anderson glared daggers at the larger man.
"How dare you? My son has nothing to do with this! I have never in my entire career done anything to jeopardize my client's case!" Anderson was breathing heavily, his chest heaving up and done. Robert made to advance, whether to argue more or simply hit Anderson, he wasn't sure. Before he could do either, David stepped in between the two men, hands on either chest to push them away.
"Dad, stop." Robert was surprised at the tone of his son's voice and stopped struggling. David's eyes dropped to the floor.
"David?" He asked quietly. His son looked at him them, light brown eyes pleading. Robert understood then, in that one moment, what his son had been trying to say; what his son had done. "Oh God, David, why?" David looked away, not at the floor, but to Rachel Berry. She gave him a small nod and an encouraging smile. Robert wondered when the two had become so close that they were the only two to understand what was happening. Robert's eyes followed David's as they made their silent way across the courtroom.
"Tell him David," Rachel Berry's voice was soft and kind, but it didn't stop a terrified look from crossing David's face. Robert didn't understand it, but Rachel seemed to for her smile turned reassuring. "Not about that, you'll never have to him about that if you never want to," Robert watched his son relax slightly and wondered who she was talking about, it couldn't be him that his son was so freaked out about. "I'm talking about the incident David." She placed so much emphasis on the word that even Robert knew what she meant.
"I can't." David was shaking his head again. "I deserve this Rachel; I don't want anyone to know about that." Rachel's eyes hardened and for such a small women, she looked suddenly frightening.
"You deserve to get slapped upside the head David! It could save you!" Something that could save his son? Robert wondered what on earth the small girl could know that could save his son. David was shaking his head again adamantly, and Robert got the feeling that he and Rachel had this fight quite often.
"I deserve punishment Rachel, what I did was horrifying wrong. You know I'm not just talking about that, Rachel. I'm talking about what I did to Kurt, to Brittany, and to everyone else that I hurt because I was ashamed of myself." Rachel shook her head, her brown eyes shining.
"You're right. You deserve something, what you did was wrong, but not this," her arms gestured around the courtroom. "Kurt, Brittany, everyone else, they've all gotten over what you did to them, it's trivial in comparison to what they think you did. It's all just down to this. This and letting go of all these things you cling to. You need to find closer, David, for what you did. Going to jail isn't going to help you forgive yourself, it's only going to cement the ideas that what you did in moments of foolishness is unforgiveable and it's not."
Rachel's eyes shone with unshed tears and Robert realized that this girl cared quite a bit for his son. Why did she? Why did she care if he had hurt her so? If he had hurt her friends so? Rachel steadied herself and Robert realized just how badly she was shaking. Was it her injuries, not quite as healed as she made them appear, or simply the over-turn of emotion she had?
"So either you tell them, or I will." Her voice was clear, clear and compassionate but still David's face shone with fear, his look pleading to Rachel. Rachel herself glared determinedly right back and Robert doubted that she was fibbing. Whatever his son didn't want people to know, this girl was going to tell a judge and a jury. A part of him, the protective, fatherly part, wanted to stop her but he remained transfixed, torn between consternation and curiosity. David remained silent, neither stepping up to the challenge nor running away from it, merely staring at Rachel with those large sad brown eyes.
The girl in question seemed to steel herself before taking a deep breath and turning to the judge and jury. "It was an accident." She said to the tumultuous silence around her. "When I confronted David," her eyes glazed over momentarily as she thought of the accident. "and after we had a few words, none too polite mind you, and I turned to Brittany and we began walking and David," she paused again her eyes closed, "had yelled, and started running, it wasn't to push me down, or Brittany either."
Several members of the jury leaned forward at that, as did the judge whose face was caught between disapproval at the way the court proceeding was going and human curiosity. The Berrys were staring, transfixed, at their daughter and Robert's own son was staring at the girl impassively.
"He was running to the stairway, it's the only one on that side of the wing. When I was pushed into, it was more of a brush of his shoulder as he ran blindly past. He hadn't meant to harm me like that but as I am so much smaller than him," she gestured between her small frame and David's noticeably larger one, "I lost my balance and fell." She finished, her brown eyes not leaving the judge's sharp ones.
The judge stared down at Rachel through her glasses, a frown weaving itself onto her features, as she looked thoughtfully at the small group. "If what you say is true, why didn't David Karofsky say so himself, and why if he never wanted to hurt someone, did he threaten the life of Kurt Hummel?" The questions, Robert feared, had stumped Rachel and he was sure that was the end of the small possibility of David's freedom.
Rachel's eyes traveled to David and although his eyes seemed fixed at the wall just beyond the judge's head, he gave her a minute nod, his jaw set. She turned back to the judge. "David didn't say anything because he felt he deserved the full extent of the law, even though the crime was an accident." She answered honestly. The judge stared for a few moments.
"That doesn't explain my last question, Miss Berry." She retorted, her body sliding back into her chair. Rachel closed her eyes momentarily. Robert wondered if she was sending out a silent prayer.
"Well, I can't tell you explicitly why David had done what he'd done, that's for him to say if and only if he feels himself ready but I can tell you what he felt when he did it." Rachel said once she'd opened her eyes, "He was scared. Frightened, and like a young child, he lashed out. In a moment of – weakness I suppose, he had revealed something to Kurt that he'd told not a breath of to anyone else. Once he realized the full extent of this, he reacted with the only way he knew how to. He threatened Kurt to keep the secret quiet."
"It's not a nice thing," she shot David a disapproving look, "but can any of you," she gestured towards the judge and jury, "say you have never done anything similar. Not threaten to kill," she added hastily to the angry, indignant looks that arose at her statement, "but have any of you not done something you're not proud of to keep a secret?" No one spoke for a bit and when they did, the question was directed to David, not Rachel.
"Tell us, Mister Karofsky, what this secret is that was deemed so important that Kurt Hummel's life needed to be threatened to keep it?" Her voice was cold and inquisitive. David looked scared, like a small animal in the presence of a larger, and his eyes shot around. They landed on Rachel and she merely smiled. She winked and thoughts of Alec came to mind. He thought of what he knew of the boy, the dark, messy hair, the bright hazel eyes and the way his mouth turned upwards into that adorable smile of his. He thought of the quiet hello's and flirty winks, the bracelets that adorned his arm.
He thought of other things, of things that could happen. He, David, holding hands with the boy, as they walked down the street, either oblivious or simply not caring of the people around them. He thought of Alec, a dancer as he had told everyone during the mandatory group therapy, forcing him to the dance floor with a challenging smirk and sharp tug of his hand. He thought of everything they could be, if David was ever willing.
He turned to his father. Robert Karofsky hated everything abnormal; he was the one that taught David it was wrong to feel the way he felt, he was the one that said anyone who felt that way was going to hell, where they deserved to be for falling into such evil temptations. "Like God punishing the foolish Eve for biting into the forbidden fruit", he remembered his father telling him at a young age, when he was explaining to his three year old son why he had called social services on a couple with a young girl his age," we need to punish these homosexuals, men and women, for their sins. To raise a child in a sinning household and to even maintain the face of a holy family with their trust in God, is a crime and no child should ever have to go through such painful times."
"I did it to save her, Davie" he remembered his father trying to comfort the small boy as he cried about how the only kind that would play with him in the playschool was suddenly gone. Would his father feel that way about him, that he was a sinner going to hell, if he admitted what he was?
He looked to Rachel, her lustrous dark hair framing her beautiful face, her eyes bright and smile encouraging. He knew that Rachel accepted him for all his faults and would support him. He knew she would be there for him if his face turned out to feel so. He closed his eyes and thought. Thought of his choices, he could go back to his old life, living in the shrouded lies he constructed and the approval of his God-fearing father, or he could turn to a new life, basking in the light of honesty, and the possibility of his father hating him.
He made his choice in a split second, opening his eyes and muttering the words before he could change his mind. "I'm gay." Silence followed and he closed his eyes before he could see his father's reaction, "I slipped up and kissed Kurt one day. Then, when I realized he told Blaine, his openly gay friend, and that he could tell anyone else he wanted to if he ever felt vindictive enough, and that it could get back to my father who's homophobic, I panicked and told him if he told anyone else I would kill him."
He explained it all in a breath and opened his eyes, and focused them on the judge. So determined that he would not turn around, he didn't notice the relieved smile of Rachel as she knew how hard it was for him and how much it had just saved him, or the pitying look of Mr. Anderson as he realized what the young boy had been hiding, or the understanding one of Leroy Berry, the angriest Berry father, as he recalled the painful moment in his own teenage life that he had come out to his own disapproving father. He didn't notice his father's shocked look as the words reverberated in his head.
He didn't notice any of these looks, he didn't notice when the judge gave a short bang with her gavel and declared a mistrial, he didn't notice when the crowd came piling back in, three blondes following a brunet to Rachel to find out what had happened. It was too late to take back all the things he'd done, all the wrong he'd committed. It was too late to take back all the things his father had deeply branded into him in order to 'save' him. It was too late to take back what he'd just revealed to the world.
It was too late for it all, he knew, but as Rachel ran to hug him in relief, as her friends followed to grudgingly apologize, and as Alec gave him a surprisingly shy smile and slid his lean hand into his own larger one; David realized he didn't care.
For once in his life, he didn't worry about his father's disapproval or how much he'd be hated by him if he knew the truth, and as he was gently steered out of the courtroom by the Berry men who wanted a word with the boy, he didn't care how late he was; for he had finally found himself and that felt a hell of a lot better than his father's approval.
Robert watched his son go with the Berrys. His gay son. David's words echoed in his ears and he, at first, wondered where he had gone wrong. Then, he watched as people approached his son, as a brunet he didn't know grabbed his son's hand and he saw the smile, that tiny but relieved smile that lay on his son's lips. David was happy and in that moment he realized it didn't matter what he thought, only his son's happiness mattered.
But, he realized as his son walked out of the courtroom, another father's hand on his shoulder to guide him, he was too late. Too late to teach his son his happiness mattered beyond all other things. Too late to tell him he loved him. Most of all, he was too late to tell him he loved him no matter what; that he always had and always would.
Robert was too late to tell his son this, and despair became his company in the quickly emptying courtroom as he realized he might never get another chance; as he realized he had found the acceptance his wife had tried to teach him too late in his life.
So, David didn't really mean to hurt her, it was all an accident and Robert Karofsky kind of ended up the bad guy. This story really changed from the very first chapter to this one, the second to last. I kind of thought of leaving it at this but I figured you guys hate me enough for all the plot twists, secrets, lies, and crazy connections in which all the characters were a part of, so I have an epilogue planned out all nice. And I can promise you, it won't be all negative, but happy. Any way tell me what you thought and if you have anything or anyone specific you would like to see in the epilogue. For the very last time (for this story at least) until next time!