When Burt returned home from the Berrys' house, Franklin Solokov's mug shot clutched in his hand, he found Kurt in the living room, sitting cross-legged next to the coffee table with several markers and papers scattered over the floor around him. Burt quickly folded the mug shot in half and stuck it into his jacket's inside pocket before sinking onto the couch. "Hey, buddy," he said.

"Hi," Kurt replied, adding whiskers to a shape that looked vaguely like a cat.

"What're you drawing?"

"A lion."

Burt yawned, scratching at the back of his neck. It'd been a long day. "Phineas and Ferb isn't on?"

Kurt shook his head. "Carole said I watched too much TV and she turned it off."

"She's right," Burt said. "That stuff'll rot your brain and make it ooze out your ears."

Kurt giggled. "You're teasing," he grinned.

Burt smiled back. "How do you know? For all you know your brains could be starting to ooze right now."

"No, 'cause then your brains woulda oozed out your ears a long time ago. 'Cause you watch way more TV than me."

Burt laughed. "I do, don't I?" As odd as it might seem to others to hear Kurt talking like a four-year-old boy, Burt was perfectly used to Zack's mannerisms and actually enjoyed his company. After all, Zack was Kurt, albeit a version of Kurt that should have been left behind a long time ago.

"Hi, boys," Carole said, coming down from the stairs with a basket of laundry in her hands. "How was your day, Burt?"

"Fine; you seen Finn?"

"He went out with a couple of Glee friends," Carole said before heading to the basement. Burt stood up to follow her.

"Where you going?" Kurt asked. "I'm almost done drawing Simba."

"You can show me in a few minutes, okay?" Burt told him. "I have to talk to Carole about something."

"Okay."

Burt left Kurt in the living room and went down to the basement after his wife. Carole was in front of the washing machine, turning Finn's clothes right-side-out. She smiled as he came over. "Long day?" she said. "You look tired."

He pulled the mug shot of Franklin Solokov out of his pocket and unfolded it. "Carole," he said. "This is him. This is Franklin."

Carole froze, staring at the photograph. "You—?" she started, her eyes suddenly brimming. "Where did you find that?"

"Hiram called me up," he answered. "He had some connections and he got a list of all the sex offenders who could have done it. This guy was the only one in the area at the time."

Carole had dropped Finn's shirt back into the basket. "Wh-where is he? Do you know?"

"He's in the state penitentiary in Columbus," Burt said solemnly. "Carole… he's a convicted pedophile. He's in for life on thirty-sixincidents involving boys under the age of eight."

"Oh my god," Carole breathed, still staring at the photo. "What are you going to do?"

Burt set his jaw, folding the mug shot back into his pocket. "If I had my druthers I'd go straight into that prison and beat his ass to death with a crowbar," he said. "But Hiram knows the law better than me, and he says we've got to make sure it's him first. I have to see if Kurt recognizes him."

Carole swallowed, her eyes widening. "Are you sure you want to subject Kurt to that?"

"Of course I don't. But it's the only way to know for sure," he replied. "Even if Kurt doesn't recognize him, one of the alters will. It'll trigger something."

"You mean Zack."

Burt sighed, nodding. "Him or Eleanor. She seems to remember too."

"Zack's awake now, Burt," Carole said. "You should do it quickly. Don't show it to Kurt – he won't want to remember this."

Burt let out a long breath, knowing she was right. Really, he was just stalling. "I know," he said.

Carole took his hand in hers. "You want me with you?"

He nodded. "Yeah."

"Okay." She gave him a kiss on the cheek and then the two of them went back upstairs, leaving the laundry forgotten. "Zack, honey?" Carole said, sitting down on the couch. Burt sat stiffly on the armchair beside it.

Kurt looked up from his coloring. "What?"

"Burt and I want to talk to you about something."

He put his marker down and leaned back on his hands. "Okay."

Burt felt his heart skip as he pulled the photograph out from his jacket. "Can you tell me if you recognize this man?"

Kurt rolled onto his knees, leaning closer to the picture. "No," he said a few moments later.

Burt's eyebrows snapped together. "No?" he echoed.

"He kinda looks like Santa," he observed.

"Zack, I need you to think really hard," Burt said. "Have you ever seen this man before?"

Kurt shook his head, entirely unperturbed. "No."

Burt exchanged a look with Carole. He'd been wrong. He had nothing.

Kurt's lungs weren't opening properly. His heart was racing and he was face-down, hurting everywhere. The pain wasn't like anything he'd experienced before – it was sharper than a knife and radiating from his gut all the way to his fingertips and it was so overpowering that he couldn't move. He knew he was crying – he could feel the wetness on his cheeks – but he couldn't hear his own sobs over the sounds of his heartbeat and the grunts from somewhere above him. A massive hand was holding both of his wrists above his head hard enough to bruise, and the other hand was pressing down on the back of Kurt's head with so much weight that Kurt thought his skull would crack.

He hoped it would crack. Then this would be over.

He wanted to scream, to yell for the man to please stop, please, but his mouth wasn't working the way it was supposed to and his face was pressed into the mattress so that anything he tried to say would be distorted anyway.

He couldn't breathe.

It hurt.

The hand lifted away from Kurt's head and instead snaked below his small body, down between his legs and lifting him up. Pulling him harder against the knife stabbing into his gut. Kurt spasmed and squeezed his eyes shut, clamping his teeth onto his tongue because the man had told him to be quiet or it would be worse.

Nothing could be worse than this.

But Kurt didn't want to find out if he was wrong.

His insides felt broken, like he was something made of glass that had been thrown into the wall and now the fragmented shards beneath his skin were grating against each other, breaking into smaller and smaller pieces. He could taste blood on his tongue.

He cried out when the man roughly turned him over, making the glass splinters in Kurt's stomach scrape and stab through his abdomen. The man's hand had blood on it and his large fingers gripped Kurt by the jaw, making Kurt's teeth ache. Kurt's breath blew over the back of the hand, and the man leaned down very close, snarling, "Keep quiet and hold still."

Kurt whimpered into the man's palm.

"And watch the teeth."

The hand disappeared and in an instant the knife was back, now ripping Kurt's throat apart. The glass in Kurt's head was breaking; he could feel it stabbing out through his ears. He tried to scream, but there was no air in his lungs at all. His legs kicked and he was rewarded with the knife pulling out, quickly followed by a sharp blow to the head. Kurt barely noticed it as he sucked in a huge gulp of oxygen just before the hand clamped down on his neck, trapping the air in his chest.

"You don't want it there? Fine."

The man flipped him over again, and Kurt squeezed his eyes shut and bit his tongue and tried to be somewhere else.