“Shhh. It's okay, Kurt. It'll be okay. Blaine's gonna get someone to fix you up. You'll be fine, I promise.” Sebastian spoke to Kurt in a soothing voice, while behind him, Brittany wailed, crying to make the rafters above them ring. The blood from Kurt's wounds was a pervasive entity, and soaked through Sebastian's shirt and sleeves to his skin. Sebastian didn't care that his shirt was ruined. Just so long as Kurt came through alright.

“Oh, Tana,” Brittany whimpered. “What if he don't make it? What if his husband killed him this time?”

“He's not gonna die, alright?” Santana said, even though she'd been thinking the same thing. “So, don't think that.”

Santana rushed ahead when they reached Blaine's room, letting go of Brittany to open the door. Sebastian hurried inside and laid Kurt down on the bed. Kurt shivered when Sebastian put him down. He kicked and mumbled, and Sebastian didn't want to let him go, but the sound of Blaine hurrying up the steps, calling out, “Let me through! Let me through!” reminded him that he wasn't the one taking care of Kurt. He wasn't the one going to save him.

Blaine came in and Sebastian moved away from the bed, giving Kurt over to Blaine's protection, not that he liked doing it.

“Thanks, Sebastian,” Blaine said, but he didn't look at him. He only had eyes for Kurt. “Could you head back downstairs? Keep an eye on things?”

“Sure,” Sebastian said, walking backward from the room. “Whatever you need, Blaine.”

Sebastian hung in the doorway. He didn't want to leave. He didn't want to be downstairs while Kurt was up here, suffering. He wanted to do more than carry him upstairs and leave him in Blaine's bed. He wanted to ease Kurt's pain. He wanted to hold his hand, and tell him that everything would be alright.

Blaine heard footsteps coming down the hall, and shot a look over his shoulder, hoping to see the doctor. He frowned when he saw Sebastian still there. Sebastian ducked out, hoping that someone might think to send word downstairs if Kurt was okay.

When. When Kurt was okay.

“Blaine!” The voice coming down the hallway didn't belong to the doctor, but Blaine knew it belonged to someone who could help. “Hey, Blaine. I heard all the screamin'. Was there a fight or sumthin'?” A tall blonde woman walked in, airy skirts settling around her ankles as if they were wings and she had flown. “You injured? I thought that I could help…”

Holly Holiday, one of Blaine's girls who mainly stuck to the cathouse, was usually the one they called in to handle things that couldn't be fixed by the use of a simple bandage. She gasped when she caught sight of the man lying on the bed, covered in a blood drenched skirt.

“Oh dear Lord! What in the world…”

When she heard the ruckus, she'd made the assumption that a fist fight had broken out, maybe a knife fight judging from the amount of screaming coming up to her window from the saloon next door. She didn't expect to see a boy, no older than her own son, looking like he was wearing on the outside most of what should have been inside him.

“Oh, thank heavens!” Blaine said, grabbing her hand and pulling her the rest of the way into the room. “Do you think you can help him?”

“I don't know, Blaine,” Holly said, watching Blaine hasten to the bed and peel down the skirt. “I'm not a doc…”

Holly had to stop and swallow hard when Blaine removed the covering, her stomach turning inside-out. Those gashes, those cuts. He looked like he'd been through a meat grinder.

“Please,” Blaine pleaded when she didn't say anything else. “Just…do what you can till the doctor comes? Please?”

Holly didn't have any idea who this was that'd been injured. He seemed important to the lot of them, but she didn't want to find herself out of a job and homeless by accidentally killing this kid, not when she had one of her own to support.

But then, Blaine didn't beg for anything. Not that she knew.

She couldn't say no.

“Alright,” she said, tying back her shoulder-length blonde hair with a ribbon from her dress. “I'm no doctor, but I'll do my best.”

From the doorway of the room, Brittany's shoes scuffed the floorboards as she fought with Santana to get inside.

“I wanna be with him!” Brittany cried, grabbing the door jamb and trying to yank herself through.

“I know, baby,” Santana said, losing the battle against shedding tears as she tried to quell Brittany's grief. “I know, but you have to let them work, or he won't get better.”

Brittany's voice turned shrill, and Holly flinched. She threw Blaine a significant look.

“Blaine,” she said, “I can't work if…”

“Santana, here” - Blaine broke off and rummaged through the top drawer of his dresser, coming back to Santana with a palm-sized glass bottle, “give her some of this.”

Santana looked at the label and crooked an eyebrow. “Laudanum?” She shook her head. “But what about Kurt?”

“I've got another bottle,” Blaine said to dismiss her. “Don't look at me like that,” he griped when she continued to stare. “Now's not the time to count my sins, is it?”

“Not a one,” Santana said, taking Brittany by the arms and leading her to her room.

Blaine could hear Brittany throw a fit over being forced away. She was beside herself with heartache, and Blaine didn't blame her. Kurt was hard to look at. Even if he'd been a nobody, Blaine would have been sympathetic. But Kurt wasn't a nobody, and looking at him, curled in on himself, muttering mindlessly, restless with pain, made Blaine's heart sore.

Holly might not be a doctor, but she had talented hands. In her younger days, she'd traveled with a regiment. During the in-between times, she staved off boredom by learning nursing from some of the older whores who traveled with them. It was an important skill for the women to have while traveling across the country, since men tended to be stupid and lazy about many things. Women, being one. Cooking, another. But healing the sick in general - yes. The men they traveled with seemed to be all or nothing creatures. Without the women to remind them, most of the men spent their time chewing tobacco and playing cards, forgetting to change their bandages, then having to cut whole limbs off when they turned black with rot. It confused Holly, seeing how most city doctors tended to be men.

“City doctors, maybe,” one of the women, Terri, had said to her, “but ya don't see a doctor out here, do ya? Because a doctor outside his cushy office is good for nothin'. It's the nurses what do all the work, sewing up the wounded, delivering the babies, and cleaning up the piss and vomit after.”

Holly wasn't certain that she fully agreed. The doctor who delivered her son when he was feet first and in trouble was a man. A really nice man. But she'd decided that when she became too old to be a whore, she'd become a nurse.

Or a teacher. She was on the fence.

***

“Here. Bring it here.” Sebastian waved Kitty over, the girl leading a man lugging a sack filled with sawdust. Sebastian had only seen this man in The Canary Cage twice before, and at the gambling tables, but he agreed to help when Kitty offered him a dance in exchange for hoofing sacks of sawdust in from the stables. “Drop it here.” The man hauled it over, upturned the sack, and spread the sawdust on the floor. Sebastian watched the first layer of dust suck up the tacky pool of blood, the second and the third layer covering it completely. Sebastian had started cleaning to keep himself busy, the urge to run upstairs and check on Kurt every five minutes nearly too much, but he was in no mood to get down on his hands and knees and scrub. He decided to just put down sawdust and tackle it later.

“It got kind of quiet in here, didn't it?” Sebastian remarked, pulling up a barstool and taking a seat. Blaine would definitely give him an earful if he saw him sitting down, but Sebastian was about dead on his feet. He'd stolen a few minutes (thanks to Kitty watching the bar) to sponge Kurt's blood off his arms and chest. He changed out of his ruined shirt and pants, and into freshly laundered clothes, but they did little to make him feel any better. When he came back to reclaim the bar, he found that most of the saloon had emptied out - The Canary Cage's less reputable clientele, anyway.

“Yeah, well, a guy stumbles in, all messed up, then Jake and Noah” – Kitty mentioned their name with pride – “turn up out of the blue? Nobody smart would want in on that kind of trouble, no matter what side of the law they're runnin' on.”

“Doctor's here,” Tina announced, sauntering into the gambling hall, an older man carrying a leather bag rushing in past her.

“Yeah, well, you sure took your ever-lovin' time getting' back,” Sebastian scolded, motioning to the doctor and leading him to the stairs. “Did you get stuck in a ditch or sumthin'?”

“What?” she said, acting the innocent – a performance she couldn't quite pull off. “I went straight there and came straight back. I swear.”

“It's been close to an hour,” Sebastian said, “and doc's house ain't more than thirty minutes away round trip by buggy.”

“Don't be so testy,” Tina said, following behind to continue the argument. “It's not like that guy's gonna die or anything.”

She snickered to herself, brushing at a spot of sawdust on her skirt. A low voice in front of her snarled, “Excuse you?” and Tina rolled her eyes.

“Excuse yourself,” she said, snapping her head up, expecting to see a sour-faced, lovesick Sebastian staring back at her. But it was Blaine on the landing, taking the steps down to meet her halfway.

“Blaine,” she said, changing her tune at breakneck speed. She could tell by his glare that he'd heard her comment about Kurt, “I'm sorry, Blainey. I…”

“Shut it,” Blaine cut in. “I don't wanna hear it.”

Her face went blank with surprise.

“Oh, Blainey,” she insisted, “but, I…”

“If you insist on bein' useless, can you do it someplace else?” he interrupted unkindly. “‘Cus right now, I don't want you up here…”

“Blaine…”

“…and I don't wanna see you.”

“B-but,” she stuttered. “Blaine, you don't really mean…”

“Take a walk,” he said and turned back, whatever he'd meant to go get forgotten.

Tina watched him go, heard him walk down the hall to his room. She turned with a huff and stormed down the steps.

“Come on, Mike,” she said, grabbing the arm of the man who'd gone with her to get the doctor. “We're goin' next door.”

She hadn't seen the point in rushing all the way out to the doctor's house. People got beat and shot and cut up in town every night. So she'd had Mike stop the buggy by the side of the road for a tumble. She didn't understand what the big deal was about Kurt, why everyone made such a stir when he came in. So he got beat on by his husband. So what? It's not like he was the first. Not likely he'd be the last. It was annoying enough when he was hanging around getting everyone's attention. But now he was getting Blaine's, and that wasn't something she'd bargained for. She was Blaine's number one. He didn't say it outright, but that didn't matter. She knew.

And she'd be damned if this guy was going to come into The Canary Cage and mess up the good thing she had going.

***

Holly had most of the bleeding stopped and the cuts cleaned up by the time the doctor arrived.

“I…I did the best I could, doc,” she said, stepping out when he bustled in, wringing her hands with worry. “Like I said, I'm not a doctor.”

In her life, Holly had seen gunshot wounds galore. She'd seen men with black eyes get black eyes on top of black eyes. She'd seen men nearly gutted. She'd been in Indian Territory; had been one of three survivors of a raid. She'd seen slaves tied up in the center of town and whipped for trying to run from their masters. But she'd never seen a man thrashed the way Kurt had been.

For as much as she didn't want to be in the presence of this boy's hurt any longer, she didn't want to leave, neither. She might not know his story, but her heart went out to him. He looked young, underfed, and when he woke up, he'd be in intolerable pain.

But Holly needed to know that he would wake up.

“Do you think he's…”

The doctor took a cursory glance at the job Holly had done on Kurt's injuries.

“He'll be fine now, thanks to you,” he assured her with a tired smile. “I couldn't have done much better for him.”

That was enough for her. She turned and left, taking her tired self to bed for what was left of the night.

The doctor looked over Kurt carefully. He seemed to know, without being told, where to touch, and what he should be looking for. He examined Kurt's stomach, pressing it gently with his fingertips. He watched Kurt's face for a reaction, and checked Kurt's legs for the appearance of fresh blood. He lifted Kurt's lids and checked the whites of his eyes for changes in color, then the examined the skull around the sockets for any breaks. Blaine watched the doctor negotiate Kurt's cuts and injuries, fixing what he could by closing up the gashes. Kurt had passed out long before the doctor arrived. He lay limp, like a ragdoll, and this man, with his bloodied needle and thread, mended him like one, stitching him together.

From the look on the man's scrunched face, it seemed to Blaine that he had stitched Kurt up plenty.

The doctor saw the scrutiny on Blaine's face and sighed.

“Yeah, I've seen these before,” the doctor admitted with shame. “Some of these are old. They look worse than they are, believe me. He's lucky, though. He's young and strong. He'll heal up fine. Be good as new in a couple of days.”

Blaine wanted to strangle the man. Be good as new? In what world of decency and common sense did this haggard old man actually think that Kurt would be good as new after this?

“You've seen these before?” Blaine asked. The doctor nodded, knowing he'd entered into an argument where he had no ground to stand on. “On him, you mean,” Blaine accused. “You've seen him beaten before?”

The doctor moved to the basin of water beside the bed. It had been dumped and refilled at least three times since he'd started his work, and four times prior, he'd been told, when Holly was there. The second he dipped his hands into it, the water turned crimson, and he knew it would need to be dumped and filled again.

“Yes,” the doctor admitted. “Yes, I have. His husband brought him by. Afraid he'd broken his arm. Claimed he'd fallen out of his buckboard.”

“But you knew he didn't,” Blaine said.

“I knew,” the doctor said. It wouldn't do him any good to lie. Blaine wouldn't believe him, even if he could make it sound convincing.

“So, did he fall out of the buckboard any other times?” Blaine asked, stalking over to the man. The doctor expected this might go on awhile, so he sat, planting himself on a clean spot on the bed.

“A couple times,” the doctor said, drying his hands on the tail of his shirt, the white linen tinged pink.

“And what did you do for him then?” Blaine asked. Blaine didn't know why he needed specifics. It was cut and dry in his mind. He hated David, and Kurt needed to be cared for. But this doctor - he might have some owning up to do.

“I did what I'd do for anyone who stops by with a treatable injury,” the doctor said in his defense. “I patched him up and sent him on his way.”

Blaine nodded, wholly under-impressed.

“Did you see him for anything else?” Blaine was searching for some indication that someone in this piss-end town saw something and tried to help.

Hoping that Kurt asked for some.

“His husband sent for me once when he” – the doctor looked at Kurt when he jerked suddenly, but he settled back down – “when he cut himself cooking, when he got kicked in the head by his husband's horse, when he fell washing the windows. Got to the point that I'd stop by on my way through to town, to make sure he was getting on alright.”

“Well, that's just great of you, doc,” Blaine grumbled, smacking his thigh. “Just mother-frickin' fantastic.”

“What did you expect me to do, Blaine?” the doctor asked, exhaustion and guilt getting the better of him. “You may not know it up here in your Ivory Tower of moral turpitude, but for us poorer folk living out there in the dirt, the Karofsky name is a powerful one. It holds weight around these parts. Everybody and their grandfather's been in debt to them at one time or another. I'm surprised you haven't been!”

“Yeah, well, I take care of my own business!” Blaine hissed, dropping his volume a notch when Kurt's eyelids fluttered. “I don't rely on handouts from abusers and rapists!”

“No,” the doctor said, rising to his feet, “you just make money off them, selling them booze and whores!” Blaine stepped up to him, but the doctor wasn't done, and he wasn't going to be intimidated into keeping silent. “And by the way, your young man here was in neck deep with the Karofskys because his father'd done just that, so you might want to curb your tongue when he comes to!”

Behind him on the bed, Kurt let out a moan, and a tear trickled down his cheek. Blaine didn't know if he'd heard anything in his unconscious state, but the doctor was right. Blaine needed to watch his mouth where Kurt's father was concerned.

Blaine did something then that he didn't often do. He yielded. He left his fight with the doctor, and went to Kurt's side. The doctor might have come to town at this Godawful hour to stitch Kurt up, and for that, Blaine was grateful, but Blaine didn't want to have anything to do with the man now.

Who Blaine supplied alcohol to was a matter of business. He didn't have to ask for a man's life story when he walked through the door. Men came to his establishment to forget themselves, not to be persecuted for their faults.

But doctors had rules. They had oaths. They were supposed to protect people, make them well, and do no harm. In Blaine's eyes, this doctor broke those oaths when he tended Kurt's injuries and then said nothing to no one who might have been able to step in and help.

“Look, Blaine” – The doctor breathed a long sigh, and ran a hand through his hair – “I told him to leave. I told him to head to the city, but he said no. He had a reason for stickin' around, and I had to respect that. There weren't no more I could do.”

Blaine didn't turn to acknowledge him. He didn't want to relieve him of his guilt. Forgiveness, in this instance, wasn't his to give.

“Thanks for stitchin' him up again, doc,” Blaine said, waving him off. “Sebastian'll see to your bill.”

“Yeah,” the doctor said wearily. “Anytime.”

“Yeah, well, now that he's here, that won't be no time soon,” Blaine said, and those words were the last the doctor got before he left the room.

Blaine sat beside Kurt on the bed, finding another patch of clean sheet, and making a mental note to have one of his girls come in and help him with a change. Santana, if she was still awake. Or Kitty.

Brittany was, hopefully, counting sheep.

Sebastian would be the better choice, but Blaine didn't want his help. Blaine saw the way Sebastian looked at Kurt. He didn't like the idea of his bartender harboring any crushes.

Blaine examined the wounds on Kurt's back for himself, this time really looking, and sucked in a breath through his teeth. He'd known things were bad with Kurt, and Blaine had let himself imagine plenty bad, but this somehow was worse than that. It beat out all. David never seemed to let Kurt heal before he bore into him again. Blaine figured that the way the bruises looked on his face were the way things were all over his body, but he was wrong.

If Blaine hadn't decided before that Kurt belonged here, this cinched it.

Blaine had seen similar marks on his girls, not to this extent, but they always healed up, and the men who made them, sometimes they weren't seen in this town again. That was one of the blessings of finding men like the Puckerman brothers – men with plenty of morals, but little conscience.

There was a delicate balance to it, and Noah and Jake had mastered the art.

Blaine had seen many men beat. He'd seen them beat each other to bloody pulps in bar fights, cut each other to ribbons. But these bruises, engraved in Kurt's skin, were unlike any he'd ever seen. There was an anger in the marks on Kurt's back like none Blaine dreamed existed. They were a patchwork of hate. They grew up silver like mountains, and split open, with gorges in between.

They were personal, filled with rage.

In part, a handful were probably because of him. Because Kurt had found The Canary Cage, and tried to make a place for himself here.

But also because Blaine hadn't caught this problem sooner. And then talking to him the way he did in the street?

God! How could he be so dumb?

But it was a fault of ignorance. Blaine didn't know. When his girls came to him, it was after they left their abusers. Blaine didn't have to deal with them. He didn't know the etiquette.

It was then that Blaine saw the irony in the doctor's words. A hundred abusers, and abused men and women passed through his doors every day. He didn't care about the lot of them. Their business was their business, except for his girls.

But Kurt mattered. He mattered a lot.

He reminded Blaine what life was like before he ended up in Lima.

There weren't much soft in Lima, except for his girls. It was a rugged land in a dangerous part of the country. Bedding down with them didn't suit Blaine no more. It never really much had. It was mostly a means to an end, a way to leech the poison from his system, but it never quite did it enough.

Blaine didn't make assumptions that Kurt was soft. He held his own just fine, otherwise he wouldn't still be here. He was mindful of what he said, but that didn't mean he was afraid to speak his mind. But people mold the land, and the land molds them right back. Even his girls were developing raggedy edges from living out here so darn long.

But Kurt, well, maybe Blaine and Kurt could understand one another.

Maybe Kurt would be just soft enough to suit Blaine.

“You're gonna make it, Kurt,” Blaine said, and hoped Kurt could hear him. “You're gonna pull through. You're a strong man. You're gonna get yourself to New York. I know it. Just…hold on.”

***

Jake arrived back in town around two hours later. He had to ride for miles out of his way, circle back, cover his tracks, and then switch roads, giving himself no discernible trail before heading back to Lima. On his way out of town, he'd go over the tracks again to make them even more difficult to decipher.

He stowed David's buckboard and his horse in the stable behind The Canary Cage. He watered the horse, covered the buckboard, and brought Kurt's things up to Blaine's room, where Blaine locked them safely away.

Blaine paid Jake his salary, and his bonus, and bid him a fond farewell. After the damage he'd done that night, Blaine suggested he get as far from Lima as he could, and lay low for a while.

Jake didn't have to be told twice.

But he stayed at The Canary Cage until right before sunrise, to have one last visit with Kitty before he hit the trail again.

Kitty hated these times when both brothers went away on a job. If they were going to go, couldn't they do it one or the other so she could have one of them with her? But that's not how they worked. It was either together, or not at all.

That's why she loved them, and why she could never choose between them.

Over the days that Kurt lay in bed, a high fever took hold, brought on from walking so far with nothing on his body to protect him against the cold. Along with exposure making him weak, something else had invaded his system, through numerous cuts in the soles of his feet. It traveled through his veins and arteries, turning them bluish-black, marking their progress.

Blaine sent Sebastian to fetch the doctor this time, since Kurt's declining health didn't seem an urgency to Tina. The doctor used up every bit of antibiotic he had to fight it, but after Lima's last bout of scarlet fever, his supply was almost nil, so he advised Blaine to go to send away for more.

The medicine came at a great expense, and his girls looked at him funny the minute he footed over a good portion of his wallet without complaint or question.

Tina didn't like it one bit.

The medicine Blaine got for Kurt did its job, killing the infection and ridding his body of the bluish-black gunk, but the high fever stayed, and brought on weird dreams. Day and night, night and day, Kurt relived long lost memories trapped in his subconscious. Voices of the dead came to visit him in the night, bringing with them their tales of woe, and leaving Kurt with very little peace.

He saw visions of his mother's smiling face.

He saw her twirling in the field of lavender out behind their house.

He heard her laughing with him in the orchards as she lifted him up on her shoulders to pick the apples from the low hanging branches, trying to beat out his dad as a much younger Burt Hummel scrambled up the trunk to get the larger fruit from the top.

He felt her holding his hands, her skin soft as rose petals. She taught him to dance, letting him spin her, and pretending to let him dip her, even though he was only six, and shorter than her by over a half.

He saw her face years later, when she started to get sick. His mother, who never frowned and rarely cried, became sadder and sadder, her face drawn, her cheeks hollow, her eyes sinking in, but never losing their sparkle.

He remembered the times he'd caught her in her garden, kneeling over a tomato plant or a bunch of carrots, too tired to stand, weeping into the soft earth.

He remembered how he sat with her in her bed, a child of seven, reading to her from his book of fairy tales because her eyes couldn't see the words, and she didn't have breath left in her body to read them.

He remembered the day they put her to rest, in the simple pine box that his father had spent one whole day and night making for her. He remembered kissing her cold cheek, her skin white with powder to cover the dark veil of death underneath.

When they lowered his mother into the ground, he'd put his favorite stuffed bunny in her casket with her, so she'd never be alone.

His saw stepbrother, Finn, the way he would always remember him.

His superhero.

His first real crush.

The boy Kurt knew would always run to his rescue, until he learned how to rescue himself.

It didn't seem to matter where Kurt was, or whether he could see him. Finn would somehow always be there when Kurt needed him.

Kurt took it for granted that he always would be.       

They danced together at their parents' wedding, in front of the whole town. That was the kind of brave that Finn was, willing not only to defy their class or their school, but the whole state of Ohio, to defend the people he loved.

At Finn and Rachel's wedding, Finn looked so handsome that Kurt was actually jealous of Rachel for finding her Prince Charming and for having it be Finn. But Finn came up to him right after the ceremony, before he and his bride walked down the aisle as husband and wife, and hugged him. He thanked him for the work he'd put in to helping them plan the wedding. He said they couldn't have done it without him. He called Kurt ‘little brother', and that made everything alright.

He remembered Finn just recently, kneeling on the floor in the living room at Rachel's feet, putting an ear to her stomach to try and hear the baby. This was their ritual every night. Finn would sit with his ear pressed to her belly and listen for any sign. He talked to the baby, sang to the baby, told the baby jokes.

Really awful jokes.

Then he'd laugh. Kurt always accused Finn of being gauche for laughing at his own jokes, but Kurt secretly loved it. Finn had the best laugh.

Finn was so looking forward to being a papa. And he would have been a wonderful one.

A cave in in the mountains was no way for Finn to die. Trapped in the dark. Injured. Frightened. Kurt didn't know that it turned out that way, but it could have. He would never know for sure, and the uncertainty made it worse. He often prayed that Finn was killed instantly in that rockslide.

The alternative was too unthinkable.

His father.

He remembered the day his father first tried to teach him to ride a bike. Kurt was so fearless, so independent. He didn't need anybody's help…till he got on the damned thing. Then he was terrified. He couldn't get the back to move. His father tried to help him by giving it a nudge, but it hit a divot in the rode and tipped over. But Kurt didn't hit the ground. His dad was there. He'd caught him in mid-air. Kurt was so stunned, he burst out laughing.

They would still laugh about that memory, years later.

He saw him and his mother through his father's eyes – all those times Burt Hummel would take a step back and watch his son and his wife just be. Dancing, running, playing tag in the grass. Burt's greatest joy was watching his two favorite people in the world have fun together.

He felt his father's hand in his, standing by side at his mother's funeral. His father had real hands, Kurt always thought. They were mostly rough and calloused from his father working with them. They had lines that crisscrossed and were embedded deep. Where his mother's hands were soft, his father's hands were hard, like stone, but not in a bad way.

Kurt's father was his rock. He was part of the reason he stood so strong. His father was a part of his soul, and Kurt felt that every time he held his father's hand.

His father made him believe every day that he mattered. That he was someone worth knowing. That his feelings were valid – even the ones that other people didn't approve of.

His father helped instill the groundwork for the man Kurt wanted to be – through his words and through his actions.

His father wasn't infallible by any means, but he tried. He tried harder than anyone Kurt had ever met, and till the last day Kurt saw him, he was still trying.

It was difficult for Kurt to come to grips with the fact that his father was gone. He could deny it all he wanted, say it wasn't so because he hadn't seen it. But his heart knew different. His heart knew without him needing to get word from anyone that the man he looked up to his whole life, the one person who fought so much to know him and understand him and love him, no longer walked the earth.

His father passing didn't just mean he'd lost a person.

Kurt had lost a part of his soul.

The day his fever broke, Kurt woke to the sound of a voice in his room, singing a familiar tune. Like the piano at The Canary Cage, his mind followed the rhythm, believing it was meant for him. It was sad, but also kind of sweet. It was slow when he thought it should have been upbeat. He chased it, hoping it would lead him where he needed to go.

As he crept closer and closer to consciousness, he realized vaguely that he was listening to his voice singing.

And he wasn't singing alone.

Kurt blinked, eyelids heavy, and he groaned with the effort. It took almost as much strength to blink his eyes as it would normally to stand, so he decided that blinking was all he was going to shoot for today.

Kurt could scarcely move his head on the pillow. Once open, his eyes couldn't get the hang of focusing together, but even shrouded by a haze that shifted when he blinked, Kurt recognized the head of honey-blonde curls in his line of sight, and the person they were attached to, sitting at the foot of the bed, watching him with relieved sky blue eyes.

Rose pink lips smiled, and a gentle hand patted his leg.

“Hey, Kurt,” Brittany said.

“H-hey, Brittany,” Kurt said, trying out his voice and finding it gravelly to his ears.

“You sing real pretty,” Brittany said, a compliment that seemed contrary to what Kurt knew. “Even when you're asleep.”

“Thanks,” Kurt croaked. He winced. Either he inexplicably sang better unconscious, or the girl's ears had been irreparably damaged by the abominable piano playing from downstairs. “So do you.”

“Aw, thanks,” she said, blushing close to demure, “but that ain't nothin'. You have an amazing gift.” Brittany scooted closer, folding her legs underneath her body. “It'll be nice to have you singin' for us. And playin' the piano.”

“Blaine told you about that?” Kurt asked, mildly surprised that it would come up.

“Oh, yeah,” Brittany said. “He were all sorts of excited.”

“He was?” Kurt found it hard to believe. He figured Blaine's asking him to sing was a courtesy – a gamble, really, since he only had Kurt's speaking voice to go off of, but Blaine couldn't do much worse than the pianist The Canary Cage had working for it now.

“Yup,” Brittany said, bouncing the bed unintentionally. Kurt hissed, the movement jarring his stitched wounds, and Brittany gasped. “I'm sorry, Kurt! I forgot!”

“It's alright,” Kurt said, trying to raise a hand to wave her worry away, but his hand didn't want to lift. “How's Blaine doin'?” he asked, curious, but also to change the subject.

“He's worried for you,” Brittany said seriously. “He left me to watch you, make sure you're alright, and that ya don't need nothin' until he come back.”

“Come back?” Kurt asked. “How long's he been here?”

“Since you come in,” she said, rolling her eyes up to think. “A few days? Maybe more.”

“Really?” Kurt mused, flattered by the man's concern. He regretted that he'd earned that concern because of David. Kurt had gotten Blaine Anderson's attention, but it came at the price of being battered when it should have come for something else – like his playing, or his singing, or his ability to create.

Kurt didn't want Blaine developing affections for him because he felt sorry for him. Relationships like that never went off well.

“Oh, yeah,” Brittany said. “He leaves from time to time to make sure things are alright downstairs, but not so much since he hired another gun hand. I think he went to get himself a clean shirt, a shave, and a bite to eat. He looked famished.”

Blaine was always clean shaven when Kurt saw him, so close that his skin looked baby soft. Blaine with stubble, or a five o'clock shadow…it hadn't crossed Kurt's mind.

But it was, and Kurt longed to shut his eyes and keep thinking about it.

“Aren't you hungry?” Kurt asked. He wanted a little time to lie quietly and daydream, but he also felt bad that his convalescing under the saloon's roof had thrown off so many schedules…especially Blaine's.

This was his business. He didn't need to waste his time playing nursemaid.

“I was,” Brittany said, “but Santana brought me sumthin', so I'm all taken care of.”

Kurt sighed, and regretted it. His chest felt like it had been pounded on by a meat grinder. He prayed that when he finally got to see the marks on his body that those wouldn't be found.

Brittany leaned in, a thoughtful look in her gaze. “You really gonna go to New York City?”

“Yes,” Kurt said, attempting to sound confident, though so many doubts had dug roots in his head and started to flower. “Yes, I am.”

“Well, that's smart,” Brittany said. “I think you'd make out good in New York. A voice like yours…” As if by a bizarre sense of irony, Kurt began to cough, his dry throat objecting to all this talk without a single sip of water to lubricate it. Brittany hopped up and rushed to his side. She grabbed the damp cloth from the basin of clean water by the bed, wrung it out, and pressed it to his mouth. He pursed his lips and sucked at it, grateful to have the moisture on his parched tongue. “I wanted to go to New York City,” she continued. “Be a dancer on a real stage. You know, not in a place like this.”

“Why didn't you?” Kurt muttered, keeping his lips pressed against the cloth lest she think he was done and put it back in its basin. He was so thirsty, he felt ready to crack and crumble into dust.

“Because I don't think I can make it there,” she said, using the tail of the cloth to wet Kurt's forehead. “Not alone, I mean. I ain't that smart.”

“Brittany,” Kurt said. “That's a horrible thing to say.”

“Well, that's what my dad always said.” Brittany dipped the cloth again, wrung it out, and put it back against Kurt's lips. “And he's kinda right. I ain't book smart. Not like Blaine, or Santana, or Kitty. I'm lucky I have them. They help me. They tell me what to charge, how much I give Blaine, and they help me keep my money safe, so customers don't find it and steal it.”

“Wouldn't one of them be willing to go with you?” Kurt asked, suddenly invested in this girl's dream as if it were his own.

One of them should make it to New York at least.

“Well, Kitty and Jake and Noah have an understanding,” Brittany explained. “She wouldn't want to go nowhere without them. And Santana…I can't ask her to leave. She's supportin' her grandma with the money she makes here. She's sick and she's old…and she's mean…”

“I still think you should consider going,” Kurt said. “If you want to be a dancer, there are schools you can attend. Schools where they let you stay so you won't need to find a place while you're there.”

Brittany looked excited for a second, but only a second.

“Nah. My papa said that the only girls that make it in the city are pretty girls. And I ain't pretty.”

“Did your papa tell you that?” Kurt asked. “That you're not pretty?”

“Yeah.” Brittany looked at her skirt, smoothing out wrinkles that resisted being smoothed. This skirt looked older than the skirt she mostly wore – her favorite blue one. The one that matched her eyes.

Kurt wondered why the change.

“If you don't mind my saying,” Kurt said, reaching out a hand to touch the back of hers, “your father sounds like a horrible person.”

Brittany smiled, focused on Kurt's fingers, the nails jagged, the skin not much better. She inched her hand closer when she saw he was having trouble moving. His fingertips lightly brushed her skin as she slid her hand underneath his.

“I don't mind you sayin' that,” she said. “I guess I make it sound that way, but, you know, it's alright. My papa and I, we were all we had, and…”

Her eyes went sad, fixed on the blanket beneath them, tracing the dots of dried blood soaked through from Kurt's wounds that hadn't completely healed.

“Did he…pass on?” Kurt asked. “Is that how you ended up here?”

Brittany's lower lip quivered. She nibbled on it to make it stop.

“I'm sorry, Brittany,” Kurt said. “I shouldn't be asking. You don't have to tell me if you don't want.”

“It's fine,” Brittany said. “It ain't a secret around here. My papa liked to drink, and he ran up a hefty tab drinkin' here. One night, Blaine came collectin', but my papa didn't have a cent to his name, so Blaine offered to take me instead. Then he told my papa never to come back.”

Kurt was astonished.

“That's awful,” Kurt said.

It sounded barbaric. How could Blaine do such a thing? Collecting on a man's daughter because he didn't have money to pay for his drink? Why didn't he cut him off?

There had to be something else to it. There just had to be. That didn't sound like Blaine. Brittany had to have left something out.

“It ain't all that bad,” Brittany said. “I like it here. Bein' frank, I like it here better than with my papa. There's heat during the winter, and hot water and food. I got a bed to sleep in instead of the floor. Blaine takes care of us girls real good, and he doesn't make us do nothin' we don't want, if that's what you're thinking. ‘sides, if it weren't for him, I wouldn't have met Santana and Kitty and the rest.” Brittany smiled up at him. “And you.”

“I guess that makes us friends, huh?” Kurt said with a weak smile.

“If you don't mind me sayin',” she said, “I think that makes us family. Unless you wouldn't want to be family with the likes of us.”

Kurt got his fingers to wrap around her hand, and he held on as tight as he could.

“Brittany, I think that sounds just fine.”