All the Good Girls go to Hell

When Kurt pictured churches he saw Catholic cathedrals, with ornate gold adornments, or large evangelical halls, modern religion melded perfectly with commercialism. The Rock Fellowship was neither of these things. No spires stuck out from the humble, converted barn and it was so badly advertised he might have missed it if he weren’t looking. Upon seeing it, he wondered whether he’d made a wrong turn, but Kendra assured him they were at the right church, if it could even be called that.

As Kendra told it, the barn had belonged to an old farm house, centuries ago when the Smiths had first settled the area. The family that had owned it had long since faded into obscurity, unlike the other clans that resided in the area, but they had been the farmers who fed the blacksmiths, healers and miners who made the settlement so prosperous. However, hard winters and shrewd deals to bring produce in from out of town cheaper gradually put the farmers out of business, and the land was sold.

Since then, the dwelling house and the adjacent barn had passed from hand to hand, often being fixed up and renovated, but never being of much use until the Rock Fellowship began renting the premises a few decades earlier. The upstairs of the barn became host to weekly meetings, frequent prayer circles and occasional food drives. Their good works had brought them in to contact with the Wynwicks and Thirlbys, though not always on amicable terms. Being openly bisexual, Fiona disliked the organisation, which, of course, made them the perfect partners whenever Sela wished to irritate her sister.

Inside the barn, it was furnished simply, minimalist and unassuming, and yet cosy and inviting. The ground floor lay claim to a few sofas, several chairs and a table where coffee and cakes were offered after the service. Though, having come uninvited, there was no one to welcome Kurt and Kendra, and, without anyone to stop them, the pair ascended to the first floor.

The main room of the barn was long and unobstructed, with chairs set up in rows like pews, all facing towards the front. They were few in number, about 120-150; small by most standards, but perhaps unsurprising for a town more concerned with money and sex than the nature of the soul. A large wooden cross had been inset in the old stone wall behind a hand craved lectern masquerading as a pulpit. And there, at the makeshift altar, kneeling with hands clasped, was an angel with a crown of gold flowing down her back like a river.

“Victoria,” Kurt called out at once and ran towards her.

He stopped abruptly, a middle aged man blocking his path, stepping in from his periphery, the sight of Victoria before him so distracting that Kurt hadn’t even bothered to look around the room.

“Sir, I’d ask that you please don’t disturb people whilst they’re in prayer,” said the man. Though he was older and clearly in authority at this organisation, he didn’t seem anything like what Kurt might have imagined. He was dressed simply in a plain shirt and chinos with spiked up hair, or what was left of I, so as to look completely common, unlike the priests and reverends who were easily distinguishable by their garb.

“Oh, sorry, it’s just, my friend, we’ve been looking for her, Fath…” Kurt paused unsure how to address the man. ‘Father’ almost slipped off his tongue but he lacked the clerical collar of the Catholics or Anglicans.

Seeing the teen’s struggle, the man offered a gentle smile and said, “John is fine. Since we are all co-heirs with Christ and great high-priests in our own right, I aspire to no lofty titles.”

“Right…” Kurt scratched his head, not quite sure how to respond. He just wanted to talk to Victoria but he wouldn’t be allowed through by being offensive. “Um, can you tell me, has she been here long? We’ve been looking for her. I just want to know if she’s okay.”

“She was quite distressed when she arrived, though she refused to talk about it. Some time in prayer has seemed to calm her though.” John gestured for them to return down the stairs. “Perhaps we should discuss this elsewhere, and leave her with her time with God.”

It was an order rather than a suggestion. Kurt grimaced in frustration, annoyed that he had come so close to Victoria, having finally found her, and was still unable to reach her. As he turned to leave, herded out, a voice called to them. “It’s okay, Pastor. I want to talk to him.”

Victoria was standing at the front of the church now, facing them, her back to the pulpit, the large wooden cross looming like a monolith behind her. Kurt’s eyes were fixed on her face as he walked down the aisle towards her, John stepping aside to allow passage, taking slow, deliberate steps. As he neared, he saw her eyes, dry but plainly having been crying, though there was nothing in the stare that seemed sad. Something had changed, he could see that much in her emerald green eyes, sparkling with a renewed resolve.

“I’ll be in the office, if you need me,” John noted, and left once Victoria had nodded.

“How did you find me?” she asked, curious rather than annoyed.

“We’ve been looking all over town for you since we noticed Kendra’s car was missing,” He looked over his shoulder for the brunette girl, but she was standing by the entrance, staring absently at a painting on the wall. “We went to your house, and your dad suggested that you might be here.”

“I’m sorry I made you worry. I’ve been doing that a lot lately, making everyone concerned for me,” Victoria bowed her head and looked at her hands, still clasped together in a ball.

“It’s just good that you’re okay,” Kurt assured her. “So long as you didn’t go back to…”

“Shawn,” she said his name more easily than he could, worried that it might trigger something in her. “Yes, I can see why you might have thought that, after I called out his name while we were fucking.” Her frankness took him aback, and when he didn’t know what to say, she continued, “But I don’t think I could simply go back to him now, do you? He’d want something in return, as reparations for leaving him in the first place.”

“Yeah, I can see him making those sort of demands,” Kurt admitted awkwardly, the conversation going a lot differently than in his head. “So, does this kind of thing really help you?”

Religion wasn’t really something that Kurt had ever really cared about. Agnostic or atheist, it didn’t really matter to him, he simply lived his own life and categorized matters of the soul along with stories of ghosts in basements and alien abductions. If it made some people happy to believe in a high power, whether it be Jehovah or Mother Nature, Kurt didn’t care, so long as they didn’t shove it in his face. But he had never seen a ‘church’ like this, and he’d never seen Victoria quite so serene.

“It did. I was curious in the beginning, and then it was nice to be around people who were genuinely joyful and helpful. The idea of someone suffering for me, instead of me, seemed so amazing, like some white knight going through trials to save the princess. Now…” She turned and looked up at the cross, and Kurt wondered if she had become disillusioned, just as Dustin had. After all, she’d been through, he wouldn’t blame her for thinking that whatever higher power was out there didn’t really care for her. “It’s still amazing. After all the suffering I’ve endured, falling to temptation, having my reputation obliterated for all to see, it only makes me realize how much more wonderful he would have to be to endure all of that, to take all of that sin upon himself. But, eventually the dam has to burst right? How much sin is too much sin?”

Kurt shrugged, absolutely bewildered.

“Let me put it another way,” she offered. “Do you think I can be forgiven?”

“Forgiven? By who?” Kurt countered. “I can forgive you, and your friends will come around. Most of them understand the situation you were in.”

“The situation I was in, was that I willingly walked into that room to be with Shawn, and consented to play his game. I forsook all that I knew, that I held dear, in one night to be with him,” Victoria laid out the facts without embellishment, her tone even and sure, without a hint of bitterness or regret. “Do you think God can forgive that?”

“God? I dunno.” Kurt looked towards the stairs. “Wouldn’t you be better asking that John guy about this stuff?”

Victoria shook her head. “I already know what he’ll say. I want to know what you believe.”

Kurt didn’t believe much of anything. He put the afterlife, if it existed, in the category of adult things like settling down and figuring out how taxes worked, things he’d get around to at some point in life when he wasn’t so young and had a vast expanse of possibilities laid out before him. He’d been to exactly one Sunday School class in his entire life. The rest he absorbed through cultural osmosis, like remembering that Lot’s daughters got him drunk and took turns fucking him in a cave, but that was unlikely to help Victoria right about now.

“Well…God’s a father, right? He’s the father of Jesus and all mankind, in a way,” Kurt extracted the thought while it was still gestating in his mind. “He’s probably like any good father when their kid messes up; disappointed, but still loves you.”

“I can’t imagine what my parents must think of me,” Victoria remarked pensively. “Having to see their daughter degraded and sexualized on the cover of their newspaper. Disappointed probably doesn’t cover it.”

“Your dad didn’t seem disappointed when I talked to him. They’re just worried about you, and so am I,” he said, taking a step closer, as if emotional intimacy would flow from physical proximity. “Dealing with the aftermath of Shawn’s attack has been a struggle for them , I think, but they don’t blame you for any of this.”

“Maybe they should,” Victoria countered, looking wistfully at the ceiling. “I debased myself with Shawn because I was tired of being the good girl, of doing the right thing, of being responsible and reliable. I willfully disobeyed everything I knew to be right. Disobedience is one thing, but to do it with forethought? That’s the worst, right? It's the difference between manslaughter and ****."

“There’s a lot of things to consider. Your state of mind at the time, the lies he told, the context makes it not quite as willful as it seems,” Kurt said, trying to be comforting. “It’s not a simple matter of yes or no. Nothing in life is.”

“You keep defending me. For what?” Victoria looked him in the eye. “Because I’m hot? Because we had sex, or you hoped to have sex with me? But it sounds like nothing I do can cause you to look at me with anything other than rose-tinted glasses. What would it take to make you hate me?”

“Does that matter? Hopefully, you aren’t planning on testing my limits anyway.” Kurt shuffled on his feet apprehensively. “I don’t want to hate you, and I’m don’t believe you really want me to hate you either. That would just be easier than you already hating yourself. God or other people, I’m not sure they really matter. The most important person who has to forgive you is you.”

“You’re right. I’ve just been here, thinking, about us, about Shawn, about me. Before this trip I had a very simple idea of who I was, what I believed, and what I wanted out of life, but after everything that’s happened, even the basic question of who I was became much more confusing,” Victoria explained, tracing her finger along the edge of the pulpit. “I came here because it was a place of reflection, because I have a big decision to make about the future, and about myself.”

“Listen, we’ve all done things we aren’t proud of. Near the start of this trip, I managed to overhear Ashley and Zack talking in the wood, cheating and fucking, and my first thought wasn’t to out them or mind my own business. It was how I could use it to get my own dick wet.” Kurt glanced sideways at Victoria who was watching him with a hard stare that made his face turn red. “Well, it ended up biting me in the ass when I started catching feelings, but the real wake-up call was when I met Shawn. It felt like looking into a crystal ball and seeing my future, seeing how my single-minded pursuit of sex was using people, even people I had grown to care about. Maybe that’s why I work so hard to defend you. I need you to be able to beat this. If you succumb to the darkness, then maybe so will I.”

“You won’t succumb; you have actually changed, for the better. I want to, but I can’t even get fucked without thinking about him. I wanted to regain my voice and get some clarity on the situation, and I suppose I did get both. It’s clear, as much as I want to pretend otherwise, he’s still stuck in my head.” She looked upwards, her voice taking on an airy tone, directed more at herself than anyone else. “What’s done is done. I can’t change the past, but maybe I can change my fate.”

“Fate, future, you’re talking more about things that are to come than what’s already happened.” Kurt folded his arms as he drew his conclusion. “You’re not looking for forgiveness for something you’ve done, but something you’re going to do, right? Like you’re trying to price how much of your soul it cost you the first time.”

Victoria turned her eyes on him again, watching him for a long, contemplative minute, before saying anything. “That’s true.”

“I see,” he accepted, though he’d hoped he had been wrong. “I won’t stop you, if that’s what you decide. If that’s what you want, I won’t stand in your way. And as much as I’d like to say that I’ll be here if you ever need help, I’m not sure if I’ll be able to pull you out next time.”

“Thank you,” Victoria said with a relieved exhale. “We can go now.”

“Really? You got your answer from that?”

“Yeah, I got what I needed to know.”

“And that was?”

Her eyes met his again, penetrating him as hard and deep as the words she spoke. Two simple words.

“The cost.”

“That means you’ve made your decision?” Kurt pressed her. “About the future, and yourself?”

She nodded firmly, her bright golden hair bouncing with her head. “I just need to ask you one favor though.” Stepping close to Kurt, she kissed his lips and rubbed her cheek against his face, drawing her mouth close to his ear as she whispered, “Remember me the way I was.”