Thanks for the lovely reviews, guys. I hope you all enjoy chapter three :)

"Finn, are you awake?"

There was no answer, but Kurt could tell by the accentuated heavy breathing that his step brother was just feigning sleep even though it was nearing two o'clock in the morning and they had school the next day. His whole world had crashed down on him at the news he had been delivered earlier and his heart had been beating so loud ever since, he could hear it drumming constantly in his ears. It seemed even louder now, lying in bed in the dark bedroom that he shared with his stepbrother. Kurt had previously had some beautiful pink sheer-like curtains but then Finn complained that he couldn't sleep unless all light was totally shut out and as Finn was the one moving in, and out of his old bedroom, Kurt only thought it was fair to give in to the complaint and replace them with some thick black ones.

"Finn, I really need to talk to you about this," Kurt pleaded.

He was only met with silence for a moment, until Finn replied, "Dude, it's too late now. Your dad and my mom have decided already." He sounded resigned.

"Finn, please." Kurt sat up in bed and looked over to Finn's bed adjacent to his. Finn was rolled onto his side, facing the wall, so he didn't have to be witness to Kurt's begging. "Can't you say something to them?"

"Like what?"

"I don't know," Kurt cried in frustration, throwing his hands up in the air dramatically before resting his back against the headboard. "Just something. Anything." Tears started to form in his eyes and he blinked them away angrily. He hated crying in front of Finn as much as Finn hated Kurt crying in front of him. "This isn't fair!"

Seven hours had passed since Burt had dropped the bombshell on Kurt; that at the end of the week, he'd be transferring to Dalton Academy and would start there the following Monday. He just threw it into the dinner conversation casually, standoffishly even. From the way Carole was busying herself cutting up her meat, eyes kept down on her plate and Finn awkwardly squirming in his seat and looking everywhere but Kurt's eyes, Kurt knew that this was only new information to one person at that table. Himself.

"Do you think I should be sent there?" Kurt asked, remembering the guilty look on Finn's face earlier.

"No!" Finn replied, a little too quickly. He sighed. "Look, your dad'll probably miss you after a couple of days and drag you out of there himself so stop worrying."

"It's boarding school Finn," Kurt snapped, folding his arms. "I can't just go after a couple of days."

"Well after the first semester then, whatever. You'll be home by Summer, dude, trust me."

Kurt shook his head. "They won't let me leave."

Finn had the utter audacity to chuckle. "It's military school man, not prison!"

"Finn!" Kurt exploded. "They force you to eat soap! They make you walk barefoot through stinging nettles! They regularly practice electric shock treatment and people have died there."

"Kurt, those are things called rumours," Finn replied patiently. "We have them at McKinley too… Like the one about that exchange student who supposedly killed herself in the girls bathroom ten years ago."

"Brittany says she molests her every time she goes in there to pee," said Kurt.

"Burt'll miss you as soon as he drops you off and you'll be back home before you know it," Finn continued, as though Kurt hadn't spoke. "You won't even be there long enough to take anything in. And if you are, then… you know."

"No, I don't know," replied Kurt, even though he knew exactly what Finn meant. "What?" Finn was still rolled on his side facing the wall and the long silence that passed frustrated Kurt even more than it would have if he could see his facial expressions. "FINN!"

"Dude, shut up it's the middle of the night," Finn snapped.

"Then tell me what you meant," Kurt shot back in an exaggerated whisper.

"It'll just… help you toughen up a bit, you know? It's not like you wouldn't benefit from it. It's probably the reason your dads sending you there in the first place."

Even as Finn was saying the things he was saying and Kurt was taking them in, there was something in the back of his mind telling him that this wasn't right. He leaned over to the bedside cabinet where a desk lamp was situated and flicked the switch, blinking awkwardly for a few seconds at the change the dim light the lamp provided.

"Sometimes… you can be such a fag, Kurt." Finn concluded this statement by rolling over to face Kurt for the first time that night and Kurt recoiled in sickened horror as he saw the face of Karofsky staring back at him in the bed that was supposed to be his stepbrothers, grinning a sadistic grin. Karofsky swung his legs out of bed and stood up, towering over Kurt, more bigger and frightening than ever before.

"What's the matter, little brother?" Karofsky sneered, before two mammoth paws seized Kurt by the shoulders and lifted him up out of bed easily, so he was forced to face Karofsky head on, Kurt's legs kicking and flailing uselessly, not able to make target with him. "Don't you like me anymore?" He crushed Kurt against his chest and forced him into a bruising kiss that Kurt unsuccessfully tried to break.

The tight hold was like a pythons on its victim and Kurt slowly felt the life being squeezed out of him. Several dark spots danced in front of his eyes and a swirling, churning sickness was rolling around in the pit of his stomach. As he struggled for breath, his surroundings seemed to melt. Various shelves occupied by books and ornaments started to twist and turn and dissolve into each other. The beds began to sink into the floor as if balanced on quicksand, and the colourful posters of his idols began to turn monochrome and peel themselves from the walls. He reached out for help, from his father, from his mother, for anyone to save him but his surroundings started to turn hazy and then everything went black. The next second he screamed and sat bolt upright in bed, panting heavily with one hand instinctively covering his heart. It was just a nightmare. And yet, despite suffering the aftermath of the more realistic nightmares like the aftermath he was suffering now, Kurt preferred nightmares to dreams. Dreams were cruelly snatched away from him when he awoke every morning and found everything was as he left it. He was in Dalton Academy and he wasn't coming out.

Brisk footsteps approaching the dormitory broke through the memories of his nightmare and he lay back down in an instant. He felt hot and cold at the same time and his heart felt as though it was about to explode. He was done for if they found him awake. He heard the door open and then flinched when it slammed against the wall loudly. He shut his eyes and was careful not to screw them up too tightly to blow his cover and tried to breathe as evenly as possible, despite the swirling pit of dread in his stomach that threatened to turn itself into vomit and make him throw up.

"What, may I ask, did I just hear?" The low voice rang slow and sadistic and Kurt swallowed hard. It was Banks, the Gym teacher. All the staff at Dalton were cruel, but they all had different techniques in displaying their cruelty, Kurt had come to learn. Banks' speciality was a brutal mix of drill sergeant and no-holds-barred violence. He was huge with bulging muscles, had extremely hairy arms and legs, and his face was covered in various pockmarks and deep, ugly scars, probably the result of teenage acne that had held him back from being popular and leaving him dateless for the prom which consequently built him up to the rage-fuelled, twisted prick that he was today.

He'd probably heard him whimpering in his sleep. Any excuse to come up and throw his power around. Not that he, or anyone, ever really needed an excuse to punish... Kurt heard the flickering of a light switch and then saw light from underneath his eyelids and bit down hard on his bottom lip to stop it from trembling.

"I'm going to ask one more time," said Banks, his voice a little louder. "What did I just hear?"

Kurt stayed breathing as evenly as he could and held onto the tiniest flicker of hope that he'd got away with it when he heard someone pipe up from the corner. "Sir, Hummel was yelling out in his sleep."

Kurt screwed up his eyes tight as he heard footsteps from behind approach his bed and then visibly shrank into a ball as a hand clamped down on his shoulder. He dared to snatch a look at Banks, who was staring back down at him with uncontained rage in his eyes.

"You were yellin' out in your sleep?" he spat.

Kurt recoiled. "I was having a nightm -"

That was all he managed to say before he was dragged out of bed by his legs, his body hitting the hard wooden floor with a sickening crack. He screamed uncontrollably as Banks neatly rolled him onto his front with his boot and knelt one heavy knee across his back so he was pinned to the floor. Despite Kurt kicking his legs in all directions, Banks easily stripped him of his underwear.

"How many do you deserve, Hummel?"

Kurt gulped. He didn't know the correct answer to this question. Sometimes it was best to stay quiet and so he did. He noticed Blaine peering out from underneath his bedcovers in his bed in the corner and he looked at him desperately before he felt Banks' hand close in on a fistful of his hair, yanking his head back sharply and then Kurt knew it wasn't best to stay quiet. "Oww - twenty?" he cried urgently.

Banks let out a chuckle. "I think we can do better than that. Crewe!" He barked.

William Crewe, the boy who had gave Kurt away sat up in bed tentatively. "Sir?"

"Count out Hummel's punishment. He seems to think he deserves twenty. I think that number should be doubled, wouldn't you agree, Crewe?"

Kurt raised his eyes to William's and waited for the answer he knew was coming.

"Yes sir."

"And I think the amount should then be doubled again, for the sheer desperation of attempting to avoid a sufficient punishment that fits his crimes. Would you still agree, Crewe?"

"Sir."

"And if he so much as utters a whimper I want you to start from the beginning."

Kurt found it the greatest of difficulties to even simply lie still in bed after the punishment he took for his loud and premature awakening. That bastard Banks had given him eighty relentless slaps across his bare ass. He was grateful that Banks had mercifully spared the rod (or worse) and only used his hands but (and he shivered disgustedly at this) that meant that the pervert had got to grope his ass whenever he felt like it, in full view of the others who had kept quiet in their beds so not to direct any of Banks' anger toward themselves. He had made Kurt thank him after every stinging strike and it was with bitter hatred that Kurt noted it was the most ugliest staff at Dalton that made them beg and submit the most.

They were like the bullies at his old school, only much, much worse, because they had all the power. And though Kurt had felt like he had been through hell and back every day at McKinley, one thing the bullies there had never had was power. Not over him. They could trip, shove, beat on him and throw as many slushies in his face as they wanted but never once did they ever exert any power over Kurt. He was too strong to let them feed from his fear. Unfortunately, this was made impossible at Dalton. Fear ruled Dalton. Hope that his dad would realise how much he missed him and bring him home now seemed like a long way away - he'd pretty much left that hope in his bedroom the night he and Finn talked about his moving.

The month he had been there seemed like years under the reign of terror that the staff put him and the other students through. The fact that they were hardly allowed outside at all didn't help matters either. Time felt slow and he was left alone with his thoughts for so long he felt like he would scream and then the next second everything was moving in double speed and he found it hard to keep up with the strict regime and got punished for it. He wanted to know how others were coping. Some walked around with a permanent glazed expression on their face, a telltale sign that their minds had been damaged with too much punishment and not enough treatment. William always had a shocked expression on his face, like there was a permanent scarred image in his mind that he couldn't remove and William, Kurt reasoned to himself with a grim hatred, had only tattled on him to get himself in the somewhat 'good books' of Banks for the next couple of days. That's the way Dalton worked. That's the way the others coped.

When one got threatened with the belt,

it made them cry and most sold out.

He wanted desperately to talk to someone. But apart from a few snatched conversations in the middle of the night when they were supposed to be asleep, he'd hardly said a word to anyone and nobody had hardly said a word to him. Talking without permission ended up in severe punishment, much like the way any rule broken ended up. The staff figured that talking equalled planning an escape and perhaps it would have, if they were allowed to do it. And so it was because of this Kurt felt like he had no means of escape. He couldn't ask for any help from the others because he didn't know who to trust and nobody seemed that keen on speaking to him anyway in case they got into trouble themselves. They were friendly enough in the dormitory of a night, the only time they were away from the eyes of any staff for a prolonged period, and shot him sympathetic looks when a teacher or mentor wasn't looking, if he had gotten punished by one of them, but apart from that, nothing.

The boys of Dalton Academy kept their heads low and their spirits lower and that's the way the staff at Dalton liked it to stay.

Poor Dalton boys :(

Does it seem depressing and rather soul destroying? I hope so. That's what I'm aiming for.

One reviewer of chapter two asked some questions, including, "What about the Warblers?" I'm in two minds of whether to include them or not. Not that i've decided how this is going to end yet, but introducing that part of the school would allow a way for the guys in the group to potentially interact with the 'outside world' but do you think it would be befitting to the story? Naturally, being in the group would involve some sort of nastiness and mind-fuckery led by some sadistic music teacher, but I don't know whether it would keep in line with the strictness of not letting the students out. I can work it in, either way, but I'd like your opinions. You guys are the ones reading after all :)

Next chapter up some time next week hopefully!

Again, any questions or suggestions you have, please leave them in a review so I know what to resolve and not. And please review if you liked it. Or hated it, i don't mind :)

Johnny

xoxo