Please re-read the warnings and notes at the beginning of this story before reading this chapter.

Chapter Seven: Midnight is the Devil's Hour

"What the hell just happened to him?" Burt grabbed Kurt's arm, squeezing tightly. His eyes were wild with panic, and Carole stood beside him, hand secured over her mouth in shock. Kurt blinked at the commotion.

"Huh?" he croaked, throat sore from hours of speaking.

His brother slammed his palm against the call button again. "Dude, are you alright? You completely spaced out!"

"I'm… f-f-fine." Kurt stopped. He needed to know, now. "But d-do you…"

"Do I what, man?"

Hazel eyes, midnight hair, honey voice. "Blaine," he answered, clear as day. "Do you… kn-kn-kn-know him?"

The room stilled. "What?" Finn said.

"Blaine," he repeated. Finn's lip twitched as he processed the unexpected question.

"No, Kurt, I don't… What the hell!" Solidly, he rested his fist against the wall. "Kurt, you can't just… get lost like that."

"M'sorry," the boy replied, staring distractedly at his legs that were covered by the thick blanket. "But…" That voice, the light in the dark that pulled him upwards…

Rachel, who had propped the door open when Finn hit the call button, filled the nurse in when he arrived. "He stopped responding and had this faraway look in his eyes."

"How long was he non-responsive?" asked the nurse as he checked Kurt's pupils.

"About…" She glanced at Finn who held up two fingers. "… two minutes."

Carole chimed in, "I'm worried he might be concussed."

"Any headaches?"

"Not that I know of, but this has happened before. The day he woke up, he was in and out for hours."

The nurse, knowingly, said, "Frankly, I'm not surprised. It's perfectly understandable that he's a bit rattled, after everything that's happened. I'll let Dr. Anderson know of the episode and we'll go from there, but at the moment, I don't think it's anything of concern."

Kurt gnawed at his lip. "I'm f-f-fine."

"I know you are, kid," Burt said, patting his arm. His eyes were anchored on Kurt and yet only half there, the other half in some faraway place where parents go to worry about their kids.

"Um, this might be a weird question but, I think," Rachel faltered, "he mentioned a name."

"Blaine," Kurt supplied determinedly.

"Right, Blaine. Do you… know anyone?"

"Me?" The nurse paused for a moment, contemplating, and then shook his head. "Sorry, I don't. No one who works in this hospital goes by that name."

"Oh. Well, thanks anyway," Rachel conceded. Finishing his notes in Kurt's chart, the nurse nodded to them before hurrying back into the ER.

Kurt produced an exasperated sound from his throat. "He's here, I kn-kn-know it. In the hospit-t-tal."

"Why do you say that, sweetie?" Carole asked, sitting on the bed and brushing his hair back. "Who is this Blaine?"

"H-He… He's… a d-doctor. C-Curly black hair, g-g-glasses."

"Did he take care of you when you woke up?"

Kurt shook his head, disheartened. "I h-haven't seen h-him since… since bef-fore…"

Clutching her sweater at the chest, Rachel came to his bedside. "Before the accident?"

"It wasn't an accident," Finn muttered, turning away to face the window. He stopped, gaze landing on the vase on the windowsill, where twelve dandelion stems rested, stripped of the white clouds around them. There had been a man, the night Kurt had woken… a man with dark, coiled hair and thin glasses that tipped off his nose who, despite his rush to escape the room with a waking boy, stopped for just a moment to run a finger along the dusty windowsill.

"H-He saved me… sang…" There was something about the way that Kurt's eyes shifted that struck fear into Finn's heart — it was almost… reverent. Neither of them could afford to be reverent, or trusting, or open again. Especially not to a man who wouldn't even show his face.

"No, Kurt. You're remembering wrong. Dr. Anderson was the one who saved you that night, not this Blaine. He also said you might have experienced some hallucinations, and that's what this is. Ok?"

"But F-Finn-"

"Kurt. You're getting better every day, and soon you'll see that this was just a dream." He clasped his good hand against his brother's shoulder and squeezed. "Don't worry, man. It's all good."

"I-" Kurt stared at the white wall in front of him, a mask of concentration so thick on his face that it was hard to distinguish his features. "Ok…"

Rachel tugged at her boyfriend's sleeve and pulled him towards her. She hissed, "Finn, are you sure about-"

"Yes. He's not real. When me, mom, and Burt got here that night, there was only Dr. Anderson. If there had been anyone else, I'd have known. I'm sure of it." They locked eyes, and if Rachel saw the uncertainty in his, then she kept it to herself.

"Fine," she conceded, backing away towards Carole and Burt. She grabbed her bag and her phone. "I should head out, get back to class. I'm already late. Um, sorry, everyone."

"Bye," Finn said as she left, watching the door for a moment before turning back to Kurt. The boy's features were schooled into an ambiguous expression, lids falling down over his eyes as though they carried the weight of his entire body. "You should get some rest, bro. You look exhausted."

The words fell on deaf ears — by the time he'd said them, Kurt was out cold. Burt sighed, following Carole's lead and lifting up one end of the covers over his son's sleeping form, tucking it under his chin. "The kid's had a long day," he said.

"It's hardly been 36 hours since he woke up, and I doubt he's slept much since," Carole mused, sitting in the armchair. "Not that I blame him. But his speech has already improved dramatically and, other than the episodes, he doesn't seem to have any lasting symptoms."

"That's not true," Finn interrupted, cheeks flushing with temper. "He hardly eats, and he's always thirsty. He can't walk properly or say what he wants without trying really hard. His skin's paler than before and those bruises still haven't gone away even though it's been almost two weeks. He's not normal."

"Finn," Carole soothed, pulling him down into her lap and running a hand along his hair like she would when he was a child. "I know it hurts to see your brother like this, but even though bruises heal slowly, they still heal."

"Yeah," he whispered, swallowing a thick lump in his throat. Why does that always happen when you're trying not to cry? It doesn't make it any easier. "Maybe the physical ones do, mom. But you didn't see what I saw."

His step-father crouched in front of the two, knees cracking like dynamite before it explodes. "They told me when we first got here that my son had been assaulted," Burt said, that same murderous expression finding its way back, darkening the lines of his aged face. "They told me that someone had hurt him. All I could think of was that I never really knew how dark the world was that I'd brought a kid into, but I'd still promised to keep all that darkness away from him. I failed. Miserably."

"Burt, you-"

"You said the kid's name was Karofsky. Last night, before Kurt woke up. How did you know?"

Finn sniffled softly. "He was always awful to Kurt. I tried to fight off as much as I could after you and mom got married, and I really thought he'd stopped. Or, at least, taken up just making fun of him behind his back, which still sucks but what can you do? He's gay, and this is Ohio, not New York."

"So he's complained about many a time," Burt added thoughtfully.

Finn hesitated. "I wasn't sure about it being Karofsky until I… until I talked to Kurt about it."

"What?" Carole exclaimed, sitting up in the armchair. "We talked about this. No one was supposed to mention what happened to him until Dr. Anderson cleared it. That's why we held off the police!"

"He couldn't form a full sentence, mom," Finn said matter-of-factly. "The police wouldn't have been able to use anything he said."

Burt stilled. "How about now? He's up and talking… well, not up. But he can communicate, and the sooner the police get his statement, the sooner we can lock up the son of a bitch."

"If it's even him," Carole reminded pointedly.

"It's him," Finn reinforced. "The moment I started talking about it, he grabbed my arm and… the look on his face, it was… terror. Pain. Just, like the worst thing you could ever feel, that was on his face."

Burt stood abruptly, slamming his fist into the wall with a harrowing crunch. "I'm going to see the detective. When Kurt wakes up, tell him and Dr. Anderson that the police will be here tomorrow morning after breakfast."

"There you go, some more painkillers. That headache of yours should be gone in twenty minutes, tops. Don't you worry, kiddo," the nurse reassured; the amount of writing he was doing in Kurt's chart had the opposite effect. Hopefully, the pain meds they gave him were drowsy because his mind was spinning in all directions and he'd already slept half the afternoon away.

Carole caught the nurse in the doorway. "He's not a complainer," she whispered, watching the kid close his eyes, not because he was tired but because there was nothing else he could do. "It was bad. He woke up screaming and grabbing his head. We had to push him down or he would have torn his stitches, or worse."

He glanced down at the first page of the clipboard. "When he first came in, Kurt had a blunt force trauma to the head. Now that he's awake, we're watching him closely. Headaches aren't too alarming, and we want to wait for more intensive tests until he's a bit stronger."

"I understand," she said. Of course she did. "Thank you, Harry."

"Not a problem, Carole. Best wishes." The nurse clicked the pen closed before setting the chart down and telling the family goodnight. Carole tapped her finger impatiently against the doorframe, watching the hall. Burt still wasn't back, stuck at the station with the detective. Finn was gone, too, having left a few hours before to talk to Rachel — he'd texted staying he was going to sleep at home tonight, but Carole had her suspicions. But the entire day after Rachel left, his phone had been chiming non-stop, and he'd been ignoring it for Kurt's sake, so she let it slide just this once.

A sharp tapping noise pulled her back into the hospital room; Kurt's overgrown fingernails rapped against the wooden table, and his lips were tight with frustration. "S-s-sorry," he croaked, running his long fingers down his throat, "I th-think… too m-m-m-uch…"

"It's alright," Carole cooed, grabbing the glass of water and bringing it to his lips. He drank slowly, painfully, and coughed to clear his throat. It burned.

Thank you, he mouthed, ignoring his step-mother's poorly hidden flinch.

"Of course, darling. What is it?"

I'm just… tired, he lied. Can you go see if dad needs anything at the station? It was glaringly obvious that he wanted her to leave, but she tried not to take offence — the boy hadn't been alone since…

Carole sighed and grabbed her purse. "Sure, hon. But I'll be letting Harry know so he can keep an eye on you while we're gone." In a subdued excitement, Kurt nodded and clenched his fists in anticipation — an action which was met with resentment from his weakened muscles — as she left him alone in the darkened hospital room.

For a moment, unsure what to do with the solitude, Kurt just allowed himself to take it all in. The walls were white in the sunlight, but now, after sunset, they seemed almost beige in the yellow glow of the lamp — it was warmer now, despite the cold of nightfall, and felt more like the vague memory he had of his bedroom. One of the nurses had brought in a whiteboard yesterday and drawn him a calendar after he'd had a hard time remembering what day it was — he admired the snowflakes curled around 25 - Christmas.

But there was another day coming up that Kurt had been looking forward to more than Christmas. Sixteen days from today, in Finn's messy sideways letters:

Sec-

tion-

als!

He traced the lines of his swollen throat. Two days ago, he hadn't been able to breathe on his own — the moment he'd woken up, thrashing, grasping at the thick tube down his windpipe but maybe not actually moving at all, weak, broken, still in one piece but that piece was so frayed at the edges that it didn't fit in with the puzzle anymore.

Before, he hadn't gone a day without singing since the moment he learned to speak.

He hummed softly to himself. It burned, like small needles pricking his trachea. He pushed on, letting out a small note, not unlike the way he would match the piano man's chord before starting a song, or the way he and Rachel would bounce harmonies off of each other in the echoey auditorium when no one else was around.

The note caught in his throat and died there. And maybe a part of him died there, too.

When the girls had come to visit at lunch, they'd tiptoed around what had happened to him. They'd told him stories from his absence, reminisced on memories from before, but they hadn't spoken about… The way they looked at him, like he was just broken in body, something told him that they didn't know the entirety of the story, just the surface, just the blood and bruises and not the broken everything else.

The police are coming in the morning, Kurt. You're going to have to tell them everything you remember. Carole's gentle warning rang in his mind, turning it to mush. Tell them everything… you remember…

He remembered everything. He remembered how he'd hidden in the shower stall until six o'clock, how he'd gone home and hadn't been able to help Carole with dinner, how he'd gone to school the next day after two hours of sleep and crashed in Glee club, only to be assigned his first-ever competition solo. He remembered how excited he'd been to tell his father, how dejected he'd been when he'd realized that Finn had gone off with Rachel and left him at school, how… frightened he'd been as he tucked his boots behind a fake plant and tiptoed through the halls.

He remembered the paralyzing pain, the sinister voices, the hands — hard at first, slamming into him, forcing a metal pipe into his gut, and then the hands were sweaty and hot, palms open, exploring…

A razor-sharp clanging outside his room pulled him back, and Kurt realized that his body was trembling, shaking, sending bullets of pain through his ribs and back. He stilled himself forcibly, sucking in lungfuls of air at a time, and his eyes flew open. From his window, he saw a dark figure watching him, a figure that must have noticed he was awake because it hid without delay.

He blinked, shaking his head. It must have been hallucinations, like Finn said. There was no one watching over him, protecting him, just like there was no Blaine. The song he heard must have been on the radio, and the words just a figment of his imagination.

The night was quiet for a moment then, the first time in weeks. Kurt glanced fleetingly at the clock on his bedside — it was almost midnight, his least favourite time. He clicked the lamp off and was plunged into darkness. Carefully pulling the covers under his chin, he settled back and decided to try to sleep. If he was lucky, he would sleep through the devil's hour entirely.

The door opened softly. He smiled to himself, knowing it was Harry trying to check up on him without waking him up — he figured he'd had his fill of being alone for a while. It was too hard to keep the memories away when he was alone. A click meant the door was shut, and Kurt sank back into his bed, comforted.

"You look even worse than I imagined," said a sour voice, punctuated by footsteps growing louder. "My boy really did a number on you."

Kurt's blood turned to ice, melted back into water and then evaporated into the thin air. Wait… he forced himself to relax… it wasn't real, it couldn't be. He was starting to really hate these hallucinations.

"It was surprisingly easy to get into your room, you know. There are much worse people who could give you a visit than me." The man circled around to the head of his bed, sitting on the nightstand. He narrowed in, menacing. "Look, I can't stay for too long in case someone finds me here and uses it against my boy. So I'm going to make this perfectly clear: they should have no reason to suspect him at all. Am I understood, Lady?"

Just an illusion, just an illusion… The phantom glared down at him, eyes illuminated by the shred of light from the hallway window. His foot came up to rest on Kurt's stomach, and he pushed down against the stitches.

If Kurt had been able to, he would have screamed. Visions don't cause pain like the pain he just felt. And he didn't know what was worse — the agony or the gleaming, demonic eyes of Azimio. Trembling like a freshly-struck cymbal, he stuttered, "Wh-wh-wh-wh-what-t-t-t-"

The hateful eyes gleamed even brighter as a coat of unshed tears lined them. "You put Dave in a hell of a spot, Lady. So what if we maybe went a little far? It's not like you didn't deserve it, and — fuck — you really screwed us all."

"I-I-I… d-d-d-d-did…"

"Dave told me what happened. All of it. And you know he's my boy so I'll stand by him, but it's fucking disgusting, that's what it is. You fags really do like to spread it around, don't you?" The corner of his mouth turned up, twitching. "There's no way in hell I'm letting anyone else find out about this, you hear? You breathe a word to the cops or anyone else and we'll come after that fairy you call a brother. He's out of commission with that cast, ain't he? Shouldn't be too hard between all of us to put him in a matching bed."

"N-N-N-No… p-p-p-p-please…"

"Not to mention the 'rents, they've been pissin' me off with that sunshine for years, and that auto shop with the faggy name, every time I pass it on my way to school…"

Kurt all-but-shouted, "F-F-F-Fine… I w-w-won't-t… s-say…"

"Good," Azimio concluded, clapping his shoulder forcefully, "then I'll be on my way. Don't make me have to come back here and sew your lips together, Hummel. I know how much you like having them around a nice, thick-"

Kurt blocked out the rest, tears blurring his vision and filling his mouth as he sobbed quietly. The football player left, a tilted smirk playing on his lips, knowing he would never have to come back.

Finn slammed the door shut, rattling the frame. "How could he? I fucking know he was lying! Dammit!"

"Honey, breathe-"

Burt's face, beet red, seemed minutes from bursting. "Don't tell him to breathe! I want to know…"

"Burt, Finn-"

Finn exploded, "No, mom! I told you, you didn't see his face…" Carole took his fist in her hand, unfolding it. Four deep crescent-shaped marks scarred his palm, and tears streamed down his cheeks. "Why would he…"

The detective, a young man with spiky black hair and electric blue eyes, shook his head. "I'm afraid that, without Kurt's word, we don't have much to go off of other than this kid bullying him in school."

"I found him in the locker room! What about forensics? There can't be no evidence!"

He hesitated. "There were some tests done when Kurt first arrived…"

"But?" Burt pressed.

"But they're still being processed in the crime lab."

"What do you mean, still? It's been two fucking weeks!" Finn shrieked.

"Finn Christopher Hudson!" Carole reprimanded, pulling him back by his shirt. "Detective Gilbert is doing his best to help Kurt, and yelling at him will solve nothing."

"Right," he conceded despondently, "sorry."

The man waved it off. "It's fine. DNA testing can take anywhere from two weeks to a month or even longer, especially in cases like these, and with that rogue truck incident a few weeks ago, the lab's been booked up. Lima, Ohio isn't exactly known for its high crime rate, you know, so we never prepared for something like that."

"So you're saying," Burt interjected, "when you get those tests back, you might have enough to get this… Karofsky?"

"I'm saying," he replied cautiously, "that we'll likely have more to go off of. And possibly evidence that could convict a suspect, but anything found at the crime scene or even on the kid could just be from ealier that day, since it's a locker room and you said Kurt was bullied a lot. There's really only one kind of sample that could-"

"I'm gonna assume that vague bull crap is to cover your own ass," Burt responded. Detective Gilbert raised his eyebrows, amused but not confirming, and Burt's lips tilted up. "I can respect that, kid."

White coat floating up, Dr. Anderson stalked down the hallway in long strides and stopped in front of them. "Mr. and Mrs. Hummel! I heard there was a commotion going on in front of my favourite patient's room. Care to fill me in?"

Burt nodded. "Well, Dr. Anderson, we were just speaking with the detective here-"

The two in question shook hands, and Dr. Anderson said, "Nice to see you again, Elliott."

Carole, intrigued at the familiarity, asked, "Do you two know each other? Outside of hospital business, I mean."

Detective Gilbert, Elliott, grinned. "I'm an old friend of his brother's — we were in a band together back in college. It had been a while since Cooper and I had seen one another, back when I was first assigned Kurt's case."

"Yes, I think the last time was…" The doctor trailed off, nose twitching for a second before he composed himself. No one caught the movement but Finn, who watched him, curious.

Det. Gilbert bit his lip. "Since the wedding, I believe."

"Oh, how lovely!" Carole gushed. "Are you married, Detective?"

"No, it was my wedding," answered Dr. Anderson, lifting his hand to show the band that Finn had seen the day before. "Unfortunately, my wife passed away six months ago."

"Oh, God, I'm so sorry," she said. The doctor acknowledged this, and a moment of silence passed before he coughed and continued with the conversation.

"So, this commotion I heard about…"

The family visibly tensed, and Burt elaborated, "Detective Gilbert spoke with Kurt today about the assault, who told him that he didn't remember who the culprit was."

Dr. Anderson, taken aback, said, "I thought he knew? And told Finn?"

"That's what I thought," Finn muttered, stewing in his discontent. His phone buzzed in his pocket, and he snarled, taking it out and shutting it off angrily, grumbling under his breath, "Damn her."

"Do you think he's lying, Finn? Or that he really doesn't remember?" the doctor asked.

"He's lying, I'm sure of it. One hundred percent. I just don't know why."

"Huh," he contemplated, squinting his eyes in concentration. He turned to Burt and Carole. "Would you allow me to speak with him for a moment? I might be able to help."

Carole looked to Burt, who quickly nodded. "If you think it will help, I'm willing to try anything. My kid isn't leaving this building until that sicko is behind bars."

With those words, Dr. Anderson pushed the door open, met with a blank face as it swung shut behind him. He took a moment to assess Kurt's progress since the night he'd been brought in; his black eyes were practically gone and the cuts and bruises along his nose and cheeks were faded to pink, but his lip was still swollen and the large gash on his head that he'd stitched up still looked bad.

Having been the person who saved his life (well, one of the ones), he knew better than anyone that the worst of it wasn't on the surface: it was inside. He'd come in with several broken ribs, one of which punctured a lung, as well as a few resulting injuries to his organs, not to mention his severe head trauma — quite frankly, the doctor had had doubts himself about the likelihood of his survival.

But, two weeks later, he was here, alive, and awake, despite the various machines helping him along. If he wasn't a doctor, the sheer number of tubes and needles he was presented with upon entering the patient's room may have scared him far away. Just the amount of pain the kid must still be in…

"Hey there, Kurt," he began. The boy didn't move, only swallowed loudly in response. The doctor picked up his chart and pretended to read it. "Not in the mood to talk, eh? I can imagine, since the detective must've asked you a bunch of questions. Plus your throat is still a bit swollen, isn't it?"

He nodded but didn't speak.

Dr. Anderson smiled encouragingly. "I understand why you didn't say anything to him, Kurt." The boy stared, suspicious, and the doctor continued solemnly. "Last summer, my wife was killed in a break-in. I was at work even though it was midnight because it was the last month of my fellowship in trauma surgery. I was here almost, well, always. But my wife wasn't alone at home — my daughter was with her."

Kurt's lip trembled as he wondered what had happened to the girl, like when you watch a movie about the past and you know the ending is tragic but you still hope it's not, like maybe that'll fix everything. Dr. Anderson's eyes hardened, as though he was forgetting why he was telling the story. "Lily, my daughter, wasn't injured too badly, just a few cuts and bruises, but I was here when they brought her in on that stretcher — just a precaution, they told me, because she's so young. Six years old."

Why are you telling me this? Kurt mouthed, hiding his shaking fingers under the covers. The doctor snapped back into reality, trying to remember.

"She saw him, the man who… killed her mother, but for the first few weeks after it happened, she wouldn't say anything. Not just about him, but at all. She didn't utter a word for seventeen days. But eventually she did, and they caught the bast- guy, and now he's rotting away in prison for life and I'm not scared when my kid goes off to kindergarten."

Kurt steeled himself, realizing the purpose of the story, and responded, I told the detective already that I don't know who it was that did this to me. Kurt wouldn't tell them who hurt him, ever. Not after Azimio's threats, however empty they may have been — but they didn't sound empty, not even in the nightmarish memory he had of the encounter after less than an hour of sleep.

Setting down the clipboard, Dr. Anderson watched him knowingly but didn't comment further. "Alright, Kurt. I have to go see some patients now, but I want you to try to speak some more today, so we can exercise that voice box of yours."

"…Ok," he said, fighting the urge to scratch his puffy throat as the doctor left him alone in the hospital room. There was just a minute between when he left and when the others came back in, but to Kurt, it felt like an eternity.

In that minute, in the daytime, the white walls and the room they made were lit only by fluorescent lights that made something in Kurt's stomach overturn like a ship caught in a thunderstorm, and, yanking his body over the side of the bed, he emptied its contents onto the wooden floor.

A/N: Thanks for reading, and let me know your thoughts in the reviews!

Anyone in the mood for a Blaine chapter? I know I am

:_ )

Love,
Naya

PS: Happy New Year everyone!