Crimson
Kenny McCormick had always been afraid of blood.
It seemed like such a contradictory statement, when one considers how it's subject, the aforementioned Kenny, would occasionally be involved in situations that resulted in his untimely death. Whilst not all of his deaths involved the spilling of crimson, he had spilt enough blood over the years to swim very comfortably in a swimming pool filled with it, if he wasn't so abjectly terrified to touch his own blood in the first place.
The first time Kenny remembers seeing his own blood was during one of his usual tussles with fate. It was one of the more mundane ways to die, especially since Kenny would acquire a veritable repertoire of deaths as the years went by. A white sedan, driven by an expectedly intoxicated driver, hit Kenny as he was crossing the road with his three friends. The impact had sent him flying clear into the air, and before Kenny even hit the ground he knew that he would be meeting Death yet again, this time at the tender age of seven and five seventeenths.
What he didn't expect was the continued throbbing and dulled pain that he felt even after his body had made contact with the hard ground. Realizing that he wasn't quite hurt enough to die just yet, he weakly turned his eyes to his three mortified friends who were standing on the sidewalk. He then looked down, saw the bright red that was pooling dramatically under his broken body, and felt his stomach flip. The fates decided to be merciful to him that day, taking him mere seconds later and sparing him the indignity of letting his friends see his corpse swimming in a pool of blood and vomit.
Repetition had done nearly nothing to ease Kenny's hemophobia, one of the many terms that Kenny had realized were used to describe his particular fear. Over the years, Kenny's methods of death ranged from the boring (falling from a tall building) to the downright spectacular (an accident involving a guillotine, an antelope, and handcuffs). A few of the deaths had brought Kenny the unpleasant experience of seeing his own blood, and not once did the boy fail to dry heave, taste his stomach contents in his mouth, or actually projectile vomit right before being taken in the arms of a cruel, sadistic God.
A cruel, sadistic God who really appreciated the beauty of irony, no less.
The first time Kenny remembers seeing blood that wasn't his own was during a particularly boring day that was solely made interesting by a noteworthy incident. Kenny McCormick loved his friends, even fat anti-Semitic Eric Cartman, and as much as he sometimes felt like a fourth wheel in the adventures that their little group somehow found themselves in, he was merely happy that he was allowed to share in their debacles and occasionally actively participate in whatever scheme that one of the others (usually Cartman) cooked up.
Most of the schemes would end up with the boys getting in trouble though.
On an ordinary Tuesday afternoon, one of the boys suggested an activity that was relatively mundane compared to whatever they used to do on a Tuesday afternoon. Riding their bicycles down a dangerously steep hill just outside of town was, in retrospect, a very stupid thing to do, but to four hyper eight-year-olds with close to no danger awareness, it sounded like the perfect activity to waste the afternoon away. As the quartet barreled down the slope repeatedly, it seemed like everything was right in the world.
Until, of course, something went wrong.
Little Kyle Broflovski hugged his tiny head as he convulsed on the ground in pain, his bicycle bent into an awkward position lying next to him. Stanley Marsh was the first to arrive at the scene, hopping off his own bicycle and squatting at his best friend's side, horribly worried and unsure of what to do. As the little Jewish boy started to sob, their resident fatass arrived and started laughing uncontrollably, calling his arch nemesis names like sissy and faggot and receiving a string of angry expletives from his friend in the red poof ball hat in return.
Kenny, being at the very top of the hill when the incident had transpired, was as usual the very last to join and complete the group of four. As he took in Cartman's laughing visage and Stan's expression of anger and simultaneous concern, Kenny's eyes moved to the green and orange heap in the ground. A gaping wound had opened up when Kyle had fallen and hit his head on a nearby rock, a wound that was at that very moment spilling blood down the sides of Kyle face that mingled with his tears in a runny amalgam of Kenny's nightmares.
The next thing Kenny remembered was loosing his already meager lunch right there and then, Cartman pausing his bigoted tirade to screw up his face in utter disgust at the sight of Kenny's half-digested food on the ground.
"Kenny! Sick, dude!"
After a visit to the doctor, a few stitches and a few more tears, Kyle escaped the ordeal with a thin scar on his forehead that would slowly vanish over the years and joke material about him crying that Cartman would use for about a week before getting sick of it. Kenny, on the other hand, left the incident with the first hand experience of watching a friend bleed crimson in front of him.
He didn't particularly enjoy that experience.
On that very day, Kenny vowed never to let any of his friends spill blood ever again. And if he was unable to stop it from happening , he vowed that he wouldn't be there to witness their bleeding out.
The fates were a funny thing. They could punish someone who was upright and just just as easily as they would spare someone who was unconditionally evil and sadistic.
Stanley Marsh would forever be proof of the former. Stan was the perfect example of a model teenager. With his good grades, aptitude for sports and his winning personality, Stan had nearly everything in the world going for him. Kenny was proud to call him a friend, and his parents were proud to call him their son.
That didn't stop the fates from snatching Stan away as a mere teenager. Kenny broke his vow for the first time that day, when a freak accident caused Stan to lose his footing and plummet six stories to his almost definite death. Kenny had watched him fall, matched the look of horror in Stan's eyes as he lost his balance, and stuck out his hand far too late. As he looked down and saw blood pooling around Stan's broken body, the only thing that stopped him from vomiting on the spot was the instinct to grab onto Kyle and pin him to the ground. His instinct proved to be right, as Kyle would flail and kick at him as he screamed bloody murder, voicing out his desperate urge to follow his super best friend down the building in the same fashion in the hopes that that would bring him back.
Stan didn't come back, though.
Stan's funeral, like Stan himself, was simple, sweet, and pretty much perfect. Relatives and friends shared their experiences with the model teenager, everyone shedding tears and sharing hugs as the place was flooded with good memories and well wishes. The only thing that would put a damper on the experience was at the end of the service, when Kenny walked a heartbroken Kyle home and listened quietly as the Jewish boy, hysterical with grief, proclaimed that the fates should rightfully have taken Cartman in Stan's place for all the atrocities that he had committed. Kenny didn't say a word throughout Kyle's sad rant, silently wishing that his friend didn't actually mean what he had just said.
What made life seem all the more hilarious was the fact that the fates, heartless bitches as they were, would sometimes listen. Almost as though to prove the point that they were not prejudiced against the good or the evil, Eric Cartman was snatched away a mere two years from Stan's accident. Once again, Kenny broke his vow and watched helplessly as one of his friends died in front of his own eyes. The death had been almost entirely Cartman's own fault, another failed scheme to get rich that saw the fatass get a harpoon stuck through his stomach and out his back. In a happier context Kenny might have made a whaling joke, but the moment just wasn't right. He merely watched in horror, clutching his friend's hand as the life faded from his cruel, greedy eyes. Kenny had thrown up that time, holding back his gag reflex right up to the point where Cartman had passed, so as to spare Cartman from having the sight of Kenny vomiting next to his bleeding body as his final memory.
The fates really didn't like Kenny and his friends.
Cartman's funeral, like Cartman himself, was over the top and downright obnoxious. As per his wishes a grand party was thrown in his honor, though few people attended the service, making the venue seem sad and melodramatic amidst the dance music that was blasting from the ceiling. Kyle looked a little shaken by the whole thing and stayed silent, partly in respect for the boy who had tormented him from the moment they had learnt how to speak. Kenny wondered if Kyle was feeling bad about the comment that he had undoubtedly not forgotten he had made two years ago, but decided asking him about it.
The quartet had become a duet. Kenny wasn't going to risk what he had left over a stupid, unnecessary question.
Even before Stan and Cartman's unfortunate demises, Kenny had felt an indescribable connection to the group's fiery redhead. Perhaps it had to do with the fact that while the three of them had grown considerably ever since hitting puberty, Kyle had always maintained a below average stature. His small size, coupled with his sometimes childlike demeanor and cute mannerisms (Kenny almost used the word 'adorable', but decided against it as it was too gay) reminded Kenny very much of his little sister Karen, whom he had tried to shield from the horrors of the world for as long and as much as he could.
On the day Stan died, Kenny immediately elevated Kyle's status amongst his friends to best friend, albeit unofficially as Kyle would grieve over Stan for a very long time. He silently promised himself that he would look after Kyle just as Stan would have. When Cartman died, and Kenny's fear over a twice-broken vow manifested into obsession, Kyle became a de facto little brother, to be cared and protected just as well as Karen.
Initially, Kyle was nearly oblivious to the change in Kenny's treatment of him as he fought to find some kind of Stan-like figure in his life. As time passed, however, and Kyle started to come to terms with the fact that Stan was in fact gone, Kyle started to grow uncomfortable with the amount of affection that Kenny was consistently showering upon him. Kenny didn't appear to ever want to leave his side, walking him to his door after school every single day and glaring down anybody who tried to look at him funny. As much as Kyle appreciated his presence, Kenny was starting to get overbearing and suffocating.
Eventually, tolerance turned into resentment. Kyle would remind Kenny, sometimes angrily, that he wasn't a child and didn't need to be babied like an eight-year-old. Kyle's discomfort eventually led to a full-on shouting match over cold weather and a coat, Kenny holding up Kyle's jacket and insisting that he put it on before he went outside, and Kyle screaming that he didn't need his fucking coat, and stop treating me like a fucking child goddammit. Kyle stormed out of his house jacket-less after that, and though Kenny felt something akin to anger stirring in his chest, he shook the feeling and followed Kyle from a short distance away as he made his way to school.
Kenny could forgive Kyle for blowing up on him. All that mattered was that Kyle was protected.
The fates, supposedly bored after a few years of not wrecking havoc on the duo's lives, decided one day to throw a wrench into Kenny's disillusioned concept of eternal protection for Kyle. The wrench took the shape of yet another white sedan, barreling down the street at a violent hundred kilometers an hour, and seemingly destined to strike little pint-sized seventeen-year-old Kyle Broflovski and splatter his blood across the road.
What the fates didn't expect was for Kenny McCormick, their favorite plaything that always bounced back for their amusement, to shove Kyle out of the way and take the full brunt of the impact. As Kenny's back broke instantly upon contact with the car's windshield, his last seconds alive were spent staring back relievedly into the eyes of a stunned Kyle Broflovski, glad that he had been able to protect him yet again.
As with all his previous deaths, Kenny would come back the next day, and Kyle would have zero memory of him dying. The only thing Kenny was concerned about whilst in limbo was wondering if Kyle was safe.
It was after that particular incident that Kenny finally found true value in looking after Kyle's back. If he died, it would hurt like crazy, but he'd always come back to live another day. If Kyle died, that was it. The Jewish boy would remain dead, and Kenny would never forgive himself for as long as he lived. Kenny died with far greater frequency than when he was younger from that point on. He took everything that the fates attempted to throw at Kyle, gunshot wounds, freak drowning incidents, car accidents, and so on. He knew that as long as Kyle would forget his deaths, his actions would never be appreciated, but Kenny didn't care.
He had never needed Kyle's approval.
Prior to these deaths, Kenny saw his own blood far more often than he would have liked, but his nervousness and uncontrollable gag reflex were finally dulled into a mere discomfort at the sight of crimson. He no longer cared if blood was spilled, as long as it wasn't Kyle's. Kenny would willingly spill rivers of blood before he let anything happen to his little brother.
He had already broken his vow twice. There was no way in hell he was breaking it again.
Author's Note - I don't do many one-shots, but Kenny and his inability to die has always fascinated me. Before anyone asks in a comment or review, no, there was no intention for any slash to surface in this little story.
Reviews greatly appreciated, and I hope you all enjoyed this story. Writing a one-shot has turned out to be quite an enjoyable experience, I might try to do it again at some point.
And if you all don't mind some shameless plugging, check out my other South Park story "Life Support" and give it some love.
~SUITELIFEFAN