True to his word, Paul Karofsky had a legally binding marriage contract drawn up overnight. Kurt had thought it an ambitious notion when Paul mentioned it the evening before, so he was sure he'd have until early afternoon before he had to worry about it, but Mr. Karofsky accomplished the task miraculously fast. Kurt had suspicions that the man had had the contract prepared some time ago, with addendums made at the last minute to match Kurt's conditions. Paul had David bring it by in the morning, as promised, the younger man so effervescent and gleeful when he saw Kurt sitting on the porch - bleary-eyed and bedraggled from a night of no sleep though he was - that he seemed like a different man altogether from the David Karofsky that Kurt knew. Kurt didn't know whether that made things better, or if it disturbed him more, this ability of David's to switch demeanors at the drop of a hat.

Better to side with the devil you know. Wasn't that the way the saying went?

David came to the Hummel house by buckboard, accompanied by another gentleman. This man, in his stark, black suit; starched white shirt gleaming in the morning sunlight; and shiny black shoes, had to be Paul's lawyer. He had a certain indistinguishable and unpleasant look about him. He had hard brown eyes; a squared, well-shaven jaw; and hands that, from what Kurt guessed by his unmarked skin and his manicured nails, hadn't done more than move papers or pick up a pen in his life. The man didn't smile his entire visit, not even when Rachel came in to the kitchen to get a glass of water. Most people smiled in the presence of a pregnant lady, especially one as beautiful as Rachel, but the man gave her only a fleeting glance, and a curt hello. He let David introduce him, and spoke just a handful of times, using very few words, as if he paid for them by the letter.

Kurt read the marriage contract over twice before he signed it, though he didn't understand half of what was written. David stared at him non-stop during the exchange, smiling in an unnerving, dreamy sort of way. A couple of times Kurt swore David wanted to take his hand, but each time he returned his hand to his side, flexing fingers that itched for something to hold.

After the contract was witnessed, signed, notarized, and a copy sent to Kurt's house, Paul went ahead and dealt with the few remaining creditors Burt Hummel had left, as a show of good faith. Paul claimed it as a wedding present, but Kurt saw it for what it was - proof that the Karofskys had Kurt locked in. There was no backing out for him, not without serious consequences. But hearing those words made what Kurt was about to do suddenly too real, and he spent an hour out back of his house, bent over a hole he had dug in the earth, throwing up, hands clutching at his knees with his knuckles turned white, until his eyes burned from squeezing shut and his throat felt like it was on fire.

Kurt didn't want to live a life of revulsion. He didn't want a permanent pit dug for him for the purpose of losing his stomach day after day. He wanted to make the best out of marrying David; he honestly did. He searched exhaustively for the bright side of a life spent with a man who once threatened to pummel him into oblivion. Kurt sat down on his bed and wrote out a list of pros and cons. Under pros he listed, of course, money, safety, security, a potential future, a chance at a life outside of Defiance, and assurance that Rachel and Carole would be safe. Under cons, the only thing he could think of to write was that he didn't love David, and probably never would.

The pros definitely outweighed the cons, but that was one really big con.

Seeing as this marriage was more a matter of business than anything, Kurt expected a simple ceremony on the steps of City Hall, but Paul insisted they marry in the church. Kurt had considered explaining, as plainly and politely as he could, that he didn't believe in God. But after going over several conversations in his head and their possible outcomes, Kurt concluded that it wasn't worth the hassle. After all, he didn't care. The ceremony wouldn't mean anything to him anyway, and not believing in God might turn out to be his loophole in the end.

Kurt had always imagined planning his wedding, down to the tiniest minute detail - designing the suits and dresses, coordinating the flower colors to compliment the attendants' gowns, picking out China, silverware, and stemware that would best reflect the overall theme in conjunction with the season, venue, and time of day. He preferred the idea of a wedding at sunrise, where traditionally most people would choose sunset. He wanted his wedding to occur when the day itself started anew, not as it was coming to an end, and on the first day of spring right after the thaw, when the land was starting to wake from its winter slumber. Those were but some of the elements of his picture perfect wedding. There were literally dozens more.

Kurt was relieved when he discovered that he would have no hand in the planning of this dismal affair. He didn't object when David's father jumped the gun and hired a tailor from Columbus to come to Defiance and make their suits for the wedding. Kurt could have seen it as a slap in the face, but not having to labor over his wedding ensemble gave Kurt the opportunity to use what time he had left in Defiance to finish the jobs he'd been commissioned to do, collecting on what tabs he could in order to leave behind something for Rachel and Carole to live on until he could find work and send them something from his new home…wherever it would be.

Rachel had her new dress to wear, and Carole, knowing that Kurt was short on time, working hard, in part, for her benefit, opted to have him freshen up a frock of hers she hadn't worn too often, which made it basically new.

Kurt and David's wedding was far from an elegant ceremony, orchestrated mostly for show on the part of Paul Karofsky. Standing side by side in matching black suits at the front of the church, they looked like they were attending a funeral, not a wedding – something Kurt had always planned to avoid at his own wedding. A cruel voice in Kurt's head reminded him that this was his own wedding. But Kurt wasn't marrying the man of his dreams, so he convinced himself that this didn't count.

Kurt didn't believe in marrying young, the way Finn and Rachel had. He had pictured marrying later in life, after living in New York for several years, establishing himself as a designer, a performer, or a teacher if both those fell through. Kurt had huge dreams, but he wasn't opposed to doing an honest job and earning an average days' wage.

His mother had been an elementary school teacher up till the day she died. She took the proficiency test straight out of school and passed it at the tender age of sixteen. She had said it was the most rewarding thing she'd done aside from marrying the man of her dreams and giving birth to Kurt.

The man of Kurt's dreams would sweep him off his feet. He'd be a gentleman, worldly, well-educated, dignified and refined. He would be a bit more in the know than Kurt, and usher him into married life gently, with patience, love, and compassion.

Kurt doubted that that was the kind of evening David had planned.

In the days before the wedding, Kurt threw himself into all the work he could so he didn't have to think about his wedding night, looming in the too near future. But standing at the altar, looking into David's smiling eyes and reciting his halfhearted vows, Kurt started thinking about it. He not only thought about it, he started to picture it in his head. He imagined David undressing him, kissing him, holding him down by his wrists, naked on their bed, entering him with a refrain of grunts and moans.

The image made Kurt shake uncontrollably, every inch of him wanting to turn tail and run.

But his father's persistent cough, bouncing through the church from where he sat near the door, reminded Kurt why he was going through with this. His cough had gotten worse in the last few days, so much so that sometimes he couldn't catch his breath. When Kurt's dad was gone, there would be nobody around to take care of his stepmother and his sister-in-law.

Without this wedding, they'd have no place to live.

Without this marriage, their lives would be over.

Kurt repeated these things to himself over and over. He repeated them when he said, “I do,” and David kissed him for the first time, holding Kurt's head in his hands and claiming his lips as if he'd wanted this his entire life.

Kurt repeated them when he and David danced their first dance. When they shared a slice of cheap, tasteless cake from a bakery in town Kurt didn't shop at. When they shared their first glass of champagne.

Kurt repeated them over and over and over while David loaded up his things in his buckboard, deciding that they wouldn't leave the next day like they had originally planned to give Kurt one last night with his family, but right after the reception.

He repeated them when he realized with a final tearful hug good-bye that he wouldn't be there to see the birth of Rachel's baby.

And he might not be there to sit by his father's side when the end came.

Where they would live, in what house, and everything in between had been decided by Paul and David without Kurt having any say. David's father arranged for David to live and work from a town by the name of Lima. It would get them out of Defiance, but only about 47 miles out. They wouldn't be traveling East the way Kurt had hoped, but 47 miles was a good start. Kurt figured he'd be able to work the subject of New York into a conversation or something somewhere down the line.

Kurt climbed into the front seat of the buckboard beside his husband, with Carole's kisses on his cheeks and Rachel's tears drying on his shoulder. He rode with his head facing backward so he could watch them till the very last. Paul had a chair brought out for Burt so he could see his son off, and Rachel leaned against Carole, curling into her side. Kurt watched his family wave their farewells at him. Their faces, and then their bodies, blurred into the crowd as the buckboard hit the end of Main Street. Too soon, David turned his horse down the road that would lead them out of Defiance, and away from everyone Kurt loved.

***

Surprisingly, the trip to Lima wasn't that long by buckboard. Kurt thought it would feel like an eternity, even if it was only 47 miles. It probably took less time with a single horse and rider, which would explain why Paul and David chose it. David wasn't much of a conversationalist, which suited Kurt fine, since he could think of nothing to talk about – not even his desire to go to New York - his mind completely consumed with thoughts of what his life would be like once they got to Lima.

What his life would be like as David's husband, in a house to themselves.

Lima wasn't much bigger than Defiance. It had a larger mercantile and an additional, much larger saloon, with its own cathouse luring the deacons away after services on Saturday night, making for interesting sermons come Sunday morning.

David stopped the buckboard briefly in town, to pick up some food and to put Kurt's name on the books at the mercantile. David looked at Kurt's signature after he wrote it and frowned.

“Kurt Hummel?” he read.

Kurt didn't think he'd be required to change his name. Now he knew. He should have asked, but David seemed extremely put off. It was strange to Kurt that David would be upset over such a small thing. His reaction made Kurt's hackles rise.

“Oh,” Kurt said. “Sorry. Force of habit. I've only been married a few hours, you know. I mean, it might take you quite a while to get used to writing your name David Hummel from now on.”

Kurt meant it as a joke. It was obvious that David wouldn't be changing his name, but it didn't seem to improve David's humor.

In fact, it seemed to make it worse.

“I'm kidding,” Kurt pointed out, and David smiled, but not in a way that softened his features. It reminded Kurt of those fake, sarcastic smiles that Paul Karofsky wore when he stopped by the house to hound his father.

“Right,” David said with a strained chuckle. “Right. That's funny.” Then he laughed some more.

Kurt put a single neat line through his signature and rewrote it, this time taking care to write Kurt Karofsky.

There. He had blighted out his own identity and replaced it with a new one.

David drove them through town, giving Kurt a quick tour, which boiled down to places he was allowed to go, and places that he wasn't. The two saloons in town were apparently off-limits according to David, even though he'd been to The Buckhorn Saloon in Defiance to watch Kurt play.

The smaller of the two saloons – Holy Moses – had customers coming in in drips and drabs, most of them stumbling, unable to keep their feet. No music played from within. Kurt suspected they might not have a piano, or anyone who could play. The saloon was more of a plain, single-room shack, surrounded by stores on both sides, with one cut-out window in the front wall.

But the second saloon – The Canary Cage – was enormous, taking up nearly the entire block it had been built on. It joined to the building beside it, and Kurt saw customers weave in and out, girls from the saloon hanging on their arms. No music played at The Canary Cage, either, but that didn't seem to matter. The girls and the patrons sang along to nothing being played. Such a noise the crowd made, customers from inside numbering so many, they spilled out on to the street, and at this early hour. The sun hadn't even begun to set.

As opposed to Holy Moses, whose customers appeared to be poor ranch hands and cowboys, looking to get drunk in the fastest manner possible, the men patronizing The Canary Cage were finely dressed, wearing expensive guns on their belts and shiny spurs on their boots. Kurt wondered if those were their Sunday clothes, or did they actually ever ride a trail. There were a couple of less festooned cowboys tossed in the mix, but they had at least taken care to wear clean shirts and grease their hair back. A few had even shaved.

Standing front and center, leaning against a post, stood a man like none Kurt had ever laid eyes on before. He wore a fine suit himself, but somehow managed to look less pretentious than the company he kept. He had a devilish smile, and dark eyes he kept shaded with the brim of his hat, the resulting shadow across his face casting a mysterious aura about him. He held a dark-haired girl about the waist with one arm while she jabbered up another man beside her, but as Dave turned the buckboard down the street, the man pulled away from the girl to follow. He caught Kurt's eyes and smiled, tipping his hat hello.

Kurt, per usual, didn't wear a hat, but he inclined his head, careful to not let David notice.

Under any other circumstances, The Canary Cage and that one man might be worth whatever other suffering Lima might cause him.

The house they moved into sat miles outside town, and was one in a long list of properties owned by the Karofsky family. Owned meant seized, the way Paul had been preparing to seize Kurt's father's home, and the nausea in Kurt's stomach that wouldn't seem to go away made a powerful and unexpected resurgence.

Digging a pit in the backyard now seemed like it would become a necessity.

It wasn't an overly large house, which would make it easy for Kurt to handle without the addition of any other help. That was how Kurt assumed things would turn out. David would be traveling between Lima and Defiance, so he'd been told, which would leave Kurt to tend to the house.

Which would preclude Kurt from getting any work.

Kurt was determined to make money to send to Rachel and Carole. So he might need to ask David for an allowance?

Kurt wanted to sink into the ground and disappear thinking about that prospect.

“I hope you like it,” David said, grabbing Kurt's wood chest out of the rear of the buckboard and taking it up the front porch. “This house was my mom's favorite. My pa thought you might like it best.” It was an offhand comment, an opener to a conversation, possibly an attempt on David's part to show Kurt that they had been thinking about him, his likes, things that might make him comfortable, but for some reason, it sounded like an insult. Kurt wanted to argue that it was a house, and any house would do, but what would that get him? Why argue for the sake of arguing?

This wasn't exactly the best time to be ornery. As the sun began to make its way towards the horizon, Kurt had more harrowing matters to concern himself with.

They settled in quickly. The house had two floors, and was already decorated from top to bottom, with furniture in every room and wallpaper on the walls, so it seemed Kurt didn't have that to worry about either.

He had gone from being devoid of a foreseeable future to having his whole life planned out for him in a matter of weeks. It made his head spin.

David didn't seem to need Kurt's help unloading the buckboard, and he'd already said he'd tend to the horses without him, so Kurt got started on making dinner, not because he was falling into any particular role (though that had been chosen for him, too), but because he needed something to do, a habit he picked up from Carole, who immediately started cooking and cleaning whenever she got tense or nervous.

The day after his father was diagnosed, the entire house was treated to a fresh coat of white paint – porch and fence, too.

Kurt took a minute to get acquainted with the kitchen. Whosever it was, David's mother's or some poor Joe who couldn't pay his debts, everything was logically situated – dishes and cups in one cupboard, pots and pans to the right of the stove, larger casserole dishes hanging from hooks on the wall behind. There were dry goods galore in the pantry, and they had just picked up a few pounds of meat at the mercantile. He could throw together a stew, maybe even a roast, or possibly a…

The brush of a finger behind Kurt's ear shattered his thoughts. The lips that followed, kissing a trail down the back of his neck, made him shudder, an unseemly concoction of buttercream frosting and alcohol churning in his stomach and vying to show itself.

“C-can't this wait till after dinner?” Kurt asked. “It's been a long drive. You must be hungry. I know I am…”

“I don't want to wait,” David whispered against his ear. “I've waited too long.”

David touched Kurt on the arm lightly, and Kurt shivered, but not because he was looking forward to this. He wasn't excited about losing his virtue to David Karofsky.

David was eager to have it, though. He had already gotten one kiss from Kurt, in the church back in Defiance, and he hungered for another. Kissing Kurt wasn't like kissing anyone else. It was fierce and exhilarating, like swiping smokes from his dad's dresser in his bedroom while the man was in the kitchen one room away, or sneaking wine from the church at recess. It was thunder and lightning rattling around his head, filling his body with fire.

David knew that having sex with Kurt wouldn't be like having sex with anybody else, either. David was tired of whores. He was tired of spending money on women who faked at moaning and kept their eyes glued to the clock on the wall.

David saw Kurt's shoulders quiver, heard his voice fail him a little, and he almost couldn't contain himself.

He turned Kurt around to face him, expecting a second kiss, but Kurt couldn't give it. He was repulsed by the idea of kissing David, a man who, as a boy, made his every day a living nightmare. Who bullied him, threatened him. Part of how Kurt met Finn was because of David's constant haranguing. Finn came to his rescue on that schoolyard, time and again. When Kurt looked at David, aged some over the years, with stronger arms, thinning hair, and more girth than he had at thirteen, that's what he saw. Kurt saw the boy that was his tormentor. He saw the man who might have sat by while his father planned the death of a beloved stepbrother. He saw this person who selfishly took advantage of a desperate family's plight to get something he wanted.

That alone made Kurt furious, but it made him frightened, too. He didn't want this, and as much as he told himself that he had to, he couldn't make himself. He just couldn't. Maybe he could grow to love David Karofsky, as ludicrous as that seemed, but that day wasn't today.

“I…I'm sorry, David,” Kurt said, finding the courage to step out of David's grasp and back away. “But I can't. I can't do this.”

David moved forward, putting his hand on Kurt's arm where it had slipped off.

“What do you mean, you can't?” David asked, tightening his grip.

“I…I thought I could,” Kurt admitted. “I thought it would be an easy thing, but it's not.” Kurt felt David's fingers biting into his skin, but he was in too deep to recant. “I…I don't love you.”

David's brow knit together, and his expression became grim.

“You don't love me?” David growled. Kurt watched David go from mild to livid in the space of a few words. But he didn't just seem angry, he seemed hurt and confused. “But you agreed to marry me!”

“Yes, I did,” Kurt said, fighting jelly legs and chattering teeth to stay cool in the face of this bull about ready to charge. What did David's father say to him when he told his son that Kurt had agreed to this match? How did he make it sound? “I agreed because my family owed your family money. I…” Kurt didn't see how David could miss that part. How come he didn't seem to be able to put the two together?

David ran his hands through his hair and glared down at the floor, pacing, getting everything straight in his head, from the day his father told him that Kurt agreed to be his husband up until that moment. Then David stopped, nodding to himself. He turned on Kurt with tremendous speed, grabbing him around the neck with strong fingers, squeezing progressively tighter.

“That's fine,” David said with a blood curling level of calm. “You don't need to love me for what I got planned.”

David dragged Kurt upstairs to the bedroom. Kurt kicked. He screamed. He scratched at David's hand and wrenched to get free. David rushed into the bedroom and threw Kurt to the bed, but he hit the metal frame with his forehead and rolled onto the floor. He landed on his tailbone, a fantastic spray of pain shooting up his back, but he bit through it, scuttling on his hands and feet to get away. David moved faster. One hand tore off Kurt's shirt before Kurt could blink, popping the buttons and sending them flying, while the other hand grabbed at his belt buckle.

“No!” Kurt's voice cracked as he struggled to escape the behemoth hands ripping the clothes from his body. Kurt looked into David's eyes, begging him to look past his anger and see the person he was assaulting, but the mask of determination on David's red face was solid in its resolve. “No!” Kurt screamed, hoping there was a way to get through to him. “David! Stop! Please!”

“You're mine,” David grunted, tugging Kurt's pants down to his knees, deciding that was good enough. “You married me. You belong to me. I get to do what I want to.”

“No!” Kurt shoved at David's shoulders when he tried to spread Kurt's legs, locking his knees and kicking out with both feet. He wasn't particularly aiming his blows, just flailing in a panic and hoping he hit something. Kurt's struggling and shoving did nothing but upset David. The man reared back and slugged Kurt across the face, snapping his jaw from the socket for a second of blistering hot pain.

“You should really stay still,” David said, planting a hand on Kurt's chest and holding him to the floor. “It'll hurt less that way.”

Kurt had never been beaten in his life. His mother never made him cut a switch. His father never took a belt to him. In school, he was bullied, roughhoused a little, but Finn was always there, stepping in to make sure the situation never came to blows.

That wasn't the case for Kurt this time. He had sacrificed everything for the sake of his family, but when he needed someone most, there was no one there to save him.

On what should have been the most beautiful, most romantic night of Kurt Hummel's life, his husband violated him, forced himself on him, beat him until every inch of pale skin was bruised black and purple. David kept one hand clamped over Kurt's wrists and another over his throat as he tore into him, squeezing both tight. He stared at Kurt, into his eyes as he fucked him, and Kurt knew those eyes would be the last thing he saw when he finally passed out.

But David let up just as Kurt sucked the last breath he could into his lungs.

David's hips stuttered, and then they stilled, and Kurt prayed to a hundred different deities he'd heard of but didn't believe in that his husband was through. David stood abruptly, making the pulling out almost as painful as the pushing in. He yanked his new husband up by a fistful of hair, looked him dead in the eye, and said in a voice so menacing it would haunt Kurt for years to come, “Now, don't you think about taking yourself out of this house until those bruises heal up some, ya hear? People might think you're accident prone.” David laughed, impressed by his own wit. “Might consider you a danger to yourself, and take you away to some hospital or something, and they can't do that because you belong to me.”

He shook Kurt like a rag doll and threw him to the ground. There Kurt lay, too paralyzed by fear and pain to move. Kurt bit his tongue to stifle his whimpering. He didn't want to provoke David. If David turned back and raped him again, Kurt wouldn't likely survive.

David left him there, naked and bleeding on the cold, wood planks of the bedroom floor. He got himself dressed, took his sweet time, too, choosing a new shirt and a pair of clean pants. He whistled as he dressed, slicking back his hair, even splashing on a handful of aftershave. He pulled on his boots, and walked out the house like nothing had happened. He saddled his horse, climbed on up, and rode off to the nearest saloon to drink himself stupid.

Kurt listened to him go, to the horse galloping away, the pounding of its hooves into the dirt, a sound that Kurt had known for a good portion of his life. It was a sound he'd never forget, especially now. He knew that sound would become his saving grace. It would warn him when his husband was coming home.

Kurt didn't move. He didn't dare breathe. His eyes swelled so he couldn't cry. He fell out of consciousness the same way a shot quail falls out of the sky – quickly and completely.

David Karofsky wasn't much of a pistoleer. He had a legendary short fuse, was real easy to temper. He lacked the patience to develop the nuance and the skill that came with identifying a target, taking aim, knowing where his shot would land before he even pulled the trigger on the gun. His father tried and tried to teach him from a young age, well before most kids ever pick up a gun, but anything David couldn't master in under an hour wasn't worth his time.

He was a huge child, and he grew into a mountain of a man. He became quite the pugilist, but David could win most fights just by showing up, and his Colt rarely had the occasion to leave his belt. He was heavy handed, and on top of that, he liked his drink.

He liked his drink a lot.

All in all, David Karofsky was a crap shot, but he was a virtuoso when it came to delivering a beating.

The one he gave to Kurt on their wedding night was a doozy, and it was only the beginning.

When Kurt came to the following morning, he was a plug of rage, sadness, and humiliation. He didn't stand up. He didn't know whether he could. He didn't try. He felt something in his leg, a twinge of pain in his knee and ankle that he figured would keep him from putting weight on it. He lay still, wondering if a human being could possibly will themselves to die. He stared at the floor of his new home and realized that he was nothing. He was less than nothing. The life he had wasn't even a shadow of the life he had always dreamed of. It was barely a shadow of the life he had in Defiance.

Kurt had talked about his dreams so often that it had become an echo, following him everywhere he went, staying behind long after he left a place. He thought he was made of quality stuff – the kind of talent that would precede him, a reputation that would pave the way for him in life.

But none of that mattered. Not anymore. The truth – the one that he didn't want to see - was that he was Mr. Kurt Karofsky now, and he was worth less than the dirt that covered his boots.