Author's Note: Hello. It's been a long, long time, hasn't it? But I've never forgotten these characters, and I've never forgotten you. So here's a little Christmas story; a little gift to whoever remembers, and wants a little more. Merry Christmas.

It wasn't that Stan didn't want to hold Kylie…it was just that the thought of holding such a tiny, fragile human life in his hands sort of…terrified him. What if she cried? What if she screamed? Kylie had practically wailed her lungs out when Bebe had tried to hold her at the hospital, and it had been just as bad for Wendy and Jason, and while Marjorine had faired better (Kylie had either liked her enough to only mewl and hiccup, or just run out of energy), it was only when she'd gone back to Vicki that the baby had quieted down and gone to sleep.

Stan hadn't even tried, and it seemed like no one had noticed.

And that was fine.

Then after a couple of days, and a couple of more visits to the new mom and infant at Hell's Pass, Stan had noticed that it wasn't just Kylie reacting to being held by someone who wasn't 'Mom'. Because she slept fine as Kenny held her—especially just after she'd been fed—and she seemed quite happy when Kyle held her. Kylie would stare up at him with those wide, unfocused, pale eyes as Kyle would hum tunelessly to her, and rock her as she was held (usually calming her down after someone else had tried to take a turn). To him, it seemed to come as naturally as it had to Vicki and Kenny, and he explained it away as his mother insisting he learn how to hold a baby over the summer, while Vicki had still been pregnant, and Kenny had still been dead, and it sort of made sense that Kylie would respond to her godfather's voice since he'd spent so much time around Vicki, but…

Stan wanted it to come just as easily to him, without the fear of doing something wrong, but it wasn't. So he didn't try.

Instead, Stan and Wendy went back to New York, back to NYU where Wendy had decided she would take English and Gender Studies, and Stan had followed to go to Film School. For a month he muddled through classes, doing fine, and getting by, with Wendy drilling him on his class readings, and reading over every assignment he handed in. Until the semester was over, and the winter break had begun, and Stan was ready and packed as soon as exams had ended to get on a plane back to Colorado, back to South Park, and away from New York.

At his parents' house, all his mom wanted to talk about was how big Kylie was getting, and how well Vicki was doing, even though Kenny had gone back to work at the car garage. Yes, Carol was going over nearly every day to help as much as she could with dishes and laundry, and both Sharon and Sheila were stopping by a couple of times a week to watch the baby for an hour or so while Vicki got a little more sleep, but that's what family and friends are for. Because after all, it takes a village to raise a child. And wasn't it so good that Kyle was driving home every weekend from Colorado Springs just to be with them…?

It made Stan feel guilty.

He tried to ease the guilt by going over to Kenny and Vicki's little house out in the woods the next morning, while Wendy was over at her parents' house, and imagined himself strolling in and plucking Kylie out of the arms of an exhausted Vicki, telling her and Kenny to go get some sleep, while he took care of the baby, like a super friend who was there to support his friends. Like a damn hero or something.

Like a potential future father.

Instead, Kyle was the one who opened the door, Kylie leaning against his shoulder as if he had been in the middle of burping her, with a casual "Hey dude, how was the flight home?"

"Fine." Stan sighed, as he toed at the snow on the welcome mat under his feet. "You just drive in?"

"Last night, right after my stats exam." He stepped back, allowing Stan to come into the house. "Ma wanted me to go with her to do some Hanukkah shopping, but I always come over on Saturdays, so Ken and Vic can go get some groceries without this little one making a fuss."

"Oh, right." He should've known that. They'd talked about it before, right? Kyle must have mentioned it one time when they were texting, and Stan was trying to ignore that his dormmate was doing yoga in his boxers and toe socks like he did every Saturday morning. But at least if he was in his dorm he wouldn't be drilled by his girlfriend on dates and directors for old black and white silent movies no one had ever heard of outside of a film studies class… "Kylie's gotten a lot bigger, though."

"Yeah, last time you saw her, she looked more like a gremlin than a baby!"

"Kenny texts me pictures of her all the time."

"She's daddy's little Instagram model." Kyle chuckled, as he took Kylie off his shoulder, and tossed the vaguely discoloured burping blanket onto a small pile of laundry in a basket beside the couch. An empty baby bottle sat on the coffee table, next to a plastic rattle that vaguely looked like a smiling bee, a cup of coffee, and a battered old copy of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. "I'll put her down; she'll probably sleep 'til Kenny and Vic get back. Coffee's still hot if you want some."

Stan found a clean mug up in the cupboard (the same one his mom kept them in), a clean spoon in the cutlery drawer (again the same), and was a little disappointed that the cream was on the right side of the fridge, instead of the left. It wasn't quite a perfect copy of the Marsh family kitchen after all, he supposed. Going back into the living room, Stan eased himself into the squashy armchair in the corner, just as Kyle came out of the bedroom. "Dude, you made sure not to put Vicki's milk in there, right?"

"Dude, I think I can tell the difference between breast milk and coffee cream." He fake-groused, as Kyle stretched himself out on the couch like he lived there. "So are you gonna be the live-in nanny when you come home for the summer?"

"Ha ha, very funny. Like I haven't heard that one." He tossed a furry orange pillow vaguely in Stan's direction. "I like being here; I miss seeing them every day, and it beats Ma poking at me about my grades and getting a new girlfriend."

"…She wants you to get a new girlfriend already? You almost got married a few months ago; it'd be kind of soon, don't you think?"

"That's how I feel about it, yeah. But Ma's got it in her head that she needs grandbabies, even though we're eighteen, and Vicki and Ken having Kylie was not something they were planning on happening…Well, Ma's not always the most rational person in town."

That was putting it mildly.

"Mom wouldn't talk about anything but Kylie last night, and everything you guys are doing to help with her." Stan confessed. "It was kinda like she was trying to guilt-trip me for being at NYU, but then she's always going on about how proud she is that I got accepted there, same as Wendy." Like no one had believed that he was good enough to go to the same school as his brilliant and ambitious girlfriend.

"Don't feel bad about it, dude. NYU is a great school, and you're in a great program, and when you direct a documentary that wins you all the awards ever, you'll be glad you went there." The mix of sincerity and sarcasm was comforting in it's familiarity. "And you're glad to be there with Wendy, right?"

"Of course. But…you probably could have got into whatever school you wanted to, dude. So why did you decide to go to Colorado Springs?"

Kyle sat up, face a bit more serious than it'd been since Stan had arrived. More like it had been during those long months when it had seemed like Kenny was gone for good, and he was prepared to take on the responsibility of being a husband and father to a woman that didn't want him, and a child that wasn't his. That expression had been washed away by relief when Kenny had barreled into the church in time to stop the wedding. It felt strange to see it return now, when everything had gone back to 'right'. "You know I applied before Vicki even got pregnant, but…I wanted to go to a school where I could still drive back on the weekends, so I could see everyone all the time, still. Especially Kenny and Vicki. I don't know how to describe it, but something about them just…Well, it worked out good; I get to spend more time with Kylie than I could if I'd gone out of state."

And there it was again, that twinge of guilt between Stan's heart and gut.

Before more could be said, Kenny and Vicki returned home, and there was a flurry of bear-hugs and hair-ruffles, kisses on cheeks and warm smiles that lit tired eyes. Meanwhile, Kyle quietly took in the grocery bags, and started putting the perishables in the fridge, and eventually Kenny joined him, while Vicki sat on the couch in the place Kyle had vacated, practically begging him to tell her everything about what he'd been doing in New York, and what the city was like. He obliged, understanding that she wasn't asking out of polite interest, or vague curiosity.

Vicki drank in every word about classes, and campus, and his dorm mate, and nearly being run over by some asshole driver every time he tried to run to the bodega. To Stan, it felt like a mixture of bragging and complaining, but she was listening like it was secret knowledge being imparted to her by a sage.

Because she couldn't be there.

In junior year, Kenny had dropped out of school, and started working at the car garage as a mechanic's apprentice. He was good at it; Kenny was always good with his hands and with mechanical things. When you were poor, and could not always go out and buy a replacement when something was broken, you had to either go without it or figure out a way to fix it. That same year, Vicki had declared her intention to graduate, then go straight to work. Not everyone had to go to college; Sharon, and Liane, and Linda Stotch, and many other women in South Park had gotten jobs straight out of high school. And no, they didn't make a ton of money, but it helped keep a family going… It must have seemed a lot easier then, before Stan, Wendy, Kyle, Bebe, Token, and Clyde had left town to go to school. Even more so with Butters, Jason, Craig, and Annie going to South Park Community College, still there in town but living very separate lives than she and Kenny were. While Vicki—who'd loved English class, and Geography, and Biology—sat at home with the baby. She wouldn't admit it, but she must've felt like she was missing out.

Stan left when Kylie woke up, before he could be asked to hold her.

Somehow, he avoided the McCormicks' house (and their baby) until Christmas Eve. Someone, at some point, had decided that they would celebrate a little Christmas together at the house; Kenny and Vicki, Kyle, Bebe, Butters and Jason, and Stan and Wendy. Vicki's parents had cancelled their plans to come see their grandchild, but wired her the money that would have been spent on plane tickets for a rather generous Christmas gift, so she was quite happy to spend a good chunk of it on the people she'd chosen to stay with in South Park, and have their first Christmas dinner in their new house.

Wendy's mom had called her over to her house, from where they'd been staying with Stan's family, to get her help with prepping for the big Christmas Day dinner she was planning to throw for both the Marsh and Testaburger families, and so rather than find himself sitting listing to his father talk about things he knew nothing about as if he was an expert (he'd had enough of that all week), Stan decided to go over to Vicki and Kenny's house and peel vegetables, or chop wood, or take out the trash, or whatever they needed him to do.

But when he arrived, it was to raised voices, and rushing, and Kylie crying in the bedroom, and blood on the kitchen floor. Vicki, wrapping a towel tight around Kenny's hand, and looking relieved to see him, explained that Kenny had sliced open his hand while cutting yams, and she needed to drive him to the hospital for stitches. She'd called Kyle, and gotten his voice mail, but he'd be on the way soon. So if he could just stay with Kylie, and maybe feed her a bottle—

The word "okay" was all he choked out before Vicki was hauling Kenny out to the rusty old Pontiac that had once been Mr. Mackey's, and speeding off down the road. Leaving Stan in the living room, squalling baby in the bedroom, a mess in the kitchen, barely an idea of what had happened or what to do.

Alone.

First things first; Stan needed to figure out what needed to be done first. So far as he knew, Kylie could wait a minute; she wasn't going to die from crying in the next couple of minutes. But if he was going to get her a bottle, he should probably get it warming up…There was a baby bottle warmer sitting on the counter. Good. He stepped over the drops of blood on the floor, grabbed one out of the fridge, and popped it into the machine, hoping it would beep at him when it was ready. Until then, he had time to grab one of those burping towels, and…

And maybe clean up the bloody knife and board sitting on the counter? Wipe up the floor before the mess got tracked through the rest of the house? Kylie could stay in her crib until the bottle was ready, Stan assured himself. He didn't need to go grab her now, and maybe by the time the warmer was done, Kyle would be here and he could take over—

Ding ding ding

It was already done. Oh.

Stan pulled the baby bottle out of the warmer, tested a couple of drops on his wrist like he'd heard someone somewhere say you were supposed to do, and guessed it was okay since it was warm but not hot. Setting it on the coffee table, he slowly made his way into the bedroom, noticing that the squalls had not reduced by a single decibel since he'd arrived. And it made sense; Kylie had probably been woken up by her parents after Kenny's accident with the knife, and since then had been lying in the dark, alone and confused and afraid, and probably hungry. Stan figured if he were a baby, he'd be crying too.

"H-hey there Kylie." He said softly, as he reached the crib. Talking to babies was supposed to be good for them, right? "It's okay, I'm…I'm here." Reaching down, Stan put one hand under her head and neck, and the other under her back, and slowly, carefully, lifted her out to hold against his chest. Kylie didn't stop crying, but she did seem to calm down a little bit. "Okay, let's go feed you." Once he was in the living room and settled on the couch, he shifted his hold on her to free up his right hand, and held the bottle up to her open mouth, and as soon as Kylie felt the rubber nipple, she clamped down on it, and started to suck. "Huh, I thought that was going to be harder."

The house was nearly silent, save for the little sucking sounds from Kylie, and the fridge running in the kitchen. And here Stan was, holding the baby, without Kenny or Vicki or even Kyle around, and things were fine. Totally fine. Kylie had not fallen apart in his hands like an old rag doll, or been dropped and shattered like a china figurine. She was okay, and he was okay, and yes, she was very small and very vulnerable, but he'd once been the same, and neither his dad nor his sister Sheila had killed him (and this was Kenny McCormick's kid; for all they knew she could come back from the dead too).

When the bottle was almost empty, Kylie let it slip from her mouth, made a sort of snuffling sound, and closed her eyes, slowly relaxing into sleep on Stan's arm, against his stomach. Well, he wasn't going to be cleaning up in the kitchen now. He'd stay on the couch until Kylie woke up. Though if she did, she'd probably need her diaper changed. Gross. But she looked pretty cute right now, in a yellow and pink striped onesie, hands sort of grasping at the air…

On impulse, Stan stuck his finger into her hand, and was a little amazed at the strength of her grip on it, even in sleep. "Bet you'll grow up to be a tough little girl, like your mom and dad." He whispered. "But you'll have it easier than they did, 'cause you've got them, and Auntie Bebe and Uncle Kyle…"

…And him.

The sound of the door opening interrupted that train of thought, and Kyle eased into the house. "Hey dude, Vicki texted me you were here with Kylie. How is she?"

"Asleep."

"She usually goes out like a light after a bottle." He chuckled. "Need me to take her?"

Stan looked up at his best friend, then down at the baby. "Nah, I think I'm good."

"Good." Kyle settled into the chair where Stan had sat on that first, awkward day. "It's a good look for you, holding her."

"Yeah?"

"I always thought you were dad material, you know. You're the strong guy, but you've got a soft side, you know?"

"But you're really good with Kylie."

"I've had more chances to practice and bond with her. That's all it really is."

After a little while, Kylie woke up and started crying, and Stan got a demonstration on how to change a wet diaper, then Kyle left him to wave a rattle in her face (which she really seemed to like), as he cleaned up in the kitchen and picked up where dinner prep had been left off. Vicki and Kenny made it home just a bit before Wendy and Bebe, and they all seemed very happy and very relieved that he was getting on so well with Kylie. He guessed they'd noticed his reluctance after all.

But apparently all that was needed to bring Stan and Kylie together was ten stitches on Christmas Eve.

I have a little list of ideas for the characters as I wrote them eight-ish years ago. Maybe there will be a few more one-shots like this coming this year; we'll see. I realized as I wrote this how much I've missed writing this series.