The smell of copper and familiar nicotine, the taste of blood and the strawberry bubblegum he had been chewing. Ringing in the ears. Matted down hair. The sound of sirens. And yet, he was experiencing all of this.
Why wasn't he dead?
He could see the flashing of red and blue against his closed eyelids; he was conscious of the blood soaking into his parka and the hard(ly) paved road digging into his back.
Kenny was conscious. But somebody else was not.
—
It had been a week since Kenny had stepped out onto the street with every intention of nonchalantly walking away from his arguing friends. It had been a week since Kenny had looked up from his PSP, half way across the first lane of the road, to see Christophe racing towards him, motioning for him to turn back. It had been a week since Kenny, stupidly, had stopped walking, staring at the Frenchman in confusion.
A week since Christophe had tackled him out of the way, the cherry of his lit cigarette mashing into the skin right above Kenny's left eyebrow, leaving a perfect little scarred ring of burnt flesh.
A week since Kenny's PSP flew out of his hands, smashing into the pavement and shattering. Since Christophe's shovel bounced and smacked into the top of his head, causing his head to snap back and hit the sidewalk, rendering him unconscious and bloody.
A week since the eighteen wheeler ran directly over Christophe's midsection, crushing the teenager internally and snapping the shaft of his shovel in half.
—
Kenny sighed and sat up in the creaky hospital bed, not being able to sleep any longer. Hell's Pass was quiet at this early in the morning, but it was not silent enough.
Carefully swinging his legs over the side of the stretcher, Kenny glanced up at the clock on the far wall. 6:03 AM. He silently wondered what he could do at this time without having to call one of those too-happy nurses for help; he had escaped the car accident with his life, but it had not left him completely unscathed.
A sprained ankle, busted-open skull, split lip and a mild concussion was what had him temporarily sheltered within the hospital walls, instead of out and about and with his friends like normal. His friends…
He couldn't even remember what Kyle and Stan had been arguing about. Probably something stupid, something typical of the two. He couldn't remember what Christophe was yelling at him in French before.
'Before what? Before he pushed you out of death's way? Before he practically saved your fucked up, stupid, worthless life? Before he…Before he…'
Kenny pushed back the tears and pushed off his bed, ignoring the throbbing pain of his ankle and the developing headache as he made his way to the open door of his room and slipped out into the hall. No staff in sight. Perfect.
—
The wayward immortal came to a stop beside the door of the room he had been looking for. He peeked his head around the wooden frame, seeing no one but the current resident of the room laying on the bed. He almost cracked a smile, before realizing that he was the reason why Christophe was even in the hospital in the first place.
He padded into the room as quietly as he could, coming to a stop by the head of the teen's bed. Gently, ever so carefully, and with trembling fingers, Kenny brushed a bit of unruly hair out of Christophe's eyes. He steadily inhaled and exhaled, matching the breathing he could clearly see by the misty clouds appearing in the oxygen mask fixed on the teen's face.
No longer could he refuse the tears, and as they streamed down his face, they dripped down onto Christophe's and stirred the injured teen from his slumber. Christophe opened his eyes just in time to see Kenny's flutter shut out of pain.
"…Kenny." It was a weak and muffled sound, but it startled the crying teen all the same. His eyes snapped open and his stifled a gasp against his hand, simultaneously trying to wipe away his tears and failing.
"C-Christophe..?" He mumbled out against his hand, watching as the other moved slowly to remove the oxygen mask hindering his speech. He was finally broken out of his sort-of revery when Christophe tried to sit up, immediately expelling a watery-sounding cough and falling back against his pillows.
"Aidez-moi, s'il vous plaît…" ("Help me, please…")
Kenny didn't understand much French, but he got the message and placed a gentle hand across the other's back, helping to pull him into a sitting position against the pillows once more. And, damnit, he was crying again.
"Kenny…" Another cough. "Ken…It's okay."
Kenny tried to stay silent, but a soft sob wracked his frame and he covered his face with his hands. He stood there for a few more seconds before he felt two hands pulling at his shirt, propelling him forward and into the bed to rest beside Christophe and to be held while his tears continued their trek down his face.
Then, Christophe started singing softly in French.
"Now the light, she fades, and darkness settles in…But I will find strength, I will find pride within…" This seemed to only make Kenny cry harder, but the other teen carried on. "Because, although I die, our freedom will be won…Though I die, La Resistance lives on..!" An even more nerve-wracking cough came from Christophe that prevented him from singing on.
Kenny looked up when he felt something wet drip onto his head, panicking when he saw Christophe with his hand over his mouth, a bit of blood speckling the white sheets before the two.
Quickly, Christophe tore the IV out of his arm, tossing it aside and moving the oxygen mask completely off of his face. He sat up even more, moving through the pain, turning his gaze to his companion while the heartbeat monitor attached to his finger set the mood in the room.
"Kenneth. I—" Kenny cut him off with a venomous shake of his head.
" 'Tophe, you should have just let me get hit! I would have came back, and you damn well know it! And now, you're sitting here, fucking dying because of me, and how am I supposed to feel about that? How could you be so…so…careless?!"
Instead of the angry retaliation he had expected, Kenny flinched when he felt a rough hand rest at the crook of his elbow, gently rubbing calming circles on his skin. A slow chuckle made him open his eyes in slight yet wounded curiosity.
"That's funny, Kenneth. Because I could ask you the same thing."
Kenny was stuck, just staring at his friend while they both tried to contain their trembling; one from the sheer pain and the other from adrenalin and anger and a weird mix of sorrow and relief.
"You know how hard it is to watch you die, time after time? I remember, Kenneth. And I wish I didn't, but I do. And I would rather give my life up to save yours than watch your blood get splattered across the pavement any day, because I know how painful dying is. Besides, Kenny, I owe you one." This time, the coughing was intensified, and Kenny watched helplessly as the fit painfully wracked Christophe's body, flecks of blood soaking up into the sheets and making him feel so much worse than he already did.
"Christophe..!" They both flinched at how loud Kenny's voice seemed to be in the tiny, cold room, and serious, pained chocolate orbs turned to teary baby blues. "Calme, mon ami. La douleur n'est rien comparé à vos cris."
("Quiet, my friend. The pain is nothing compared to your cries.")
Biting down on his bottom lip and adding pressure until he felt it split open again, the fresh blood dripping down his chin and onto his skin and the sheets below him, Kenny tried to hold in his distress as he watched Christophe's breathing become more shallow and his heartbeat start to race. Shyly, quietly, he entwined his fingers with the Frenchman's, squeezing lightly when he got no response and the room went silent.
Silence was not what Kenny wanted at that moment. Hell's Pass was quiet in the early morning, too silent, and it briefly crossed his mind to wonder where all the doctors and nurses and people were. And at that moment, he blinked back tears and wondered why Christophe had never told him that he remembered. Why he himself had never told Christophe thank you. Or, Je t'aime.
—-
It was almost morbid, how long he had spent on those damn flowers. Ten roses, not twelve, bare of all thorns and leaves and colour. Kenny had spray painted them black and picked off everything on the stems until his fingers were black and bleeding, too. He had bought a small pint of pure white paint, poured some out into a large bowl and watered it down, dipped his sore hands in it and splattered it on the roses, making a mess in his already beyond-repair bedroom.
And he was okay with that, because it never felt quite like home to him, anyway.
The day of the funeral, Kenny couldn't bring himself to cry. There were only a few people there, and mostly because he had asked them to come. Stan and Kyle were standing a few feet away, partly feeling guilty and partly disinterested—- they hadn't really liked the mercenary; but Kenny asked them because it was important to him. Cartman wasn't there, and neither was Christophe's mother, but Kenny was somehow okay with that, too.
Gregory had showed up, but only to confirm the death and to sarcastically congratulate Kenny on managing to get rid of one of his "best recruits". Kenny wanted to strangle him. Punch him. Slam his pretty boy fresh-from-yardale face into the frozen ground, scream at him, 'Do you even care?!'
But he didn't. Because he knew that Christophe hated scenes, and even if the now-dead French teen was prone to bouts of unnecessary brutality, this was his funeral, and goddamnit, it was going to be a peaceful one if it was the last thing Kenny did.
So, before the upturned earth was pushed back over the simple mahogany coffin, Kenny violently smashed his emotions down and released his clenched fist, knuckles white and bruised and split from where he had thrown punch after punch at his wall, screaming "Why?!" until Karen came into his room crying and asking him to stop.
He opened his hand and let the black and white roses drop down into the grave, his knees going weak but not failing him, his heart stuttering and promising to burst and take his lungs with it if it had to deal with one more minute of all this goddamn heartbreak and silent screaming.
—
That night he lay on his ratty, stained mattress, breathing shallowly through his mouth and waiting for all those sleeping pills to take effect. Kenny didn't remember dying ever taking this long, but he supposed that things really speed up when you just want them to pause and rewind. So he took one last, deep breath, letting his eyes flutter shut, trying to focus on his still-beating but slow heart, through the inky-darkness his mind was succumbing to.
Typical of his deaths, he woke up in Hell.
Untypical of his deaths, he woke up with not only Damien, but Christophe hovering over him, too.
His knuckles were bandaged, and the first thing he smelled over the brimstone was that familiar brand of French cigarette. He had just barely opened his eyes, and yet there was a smile tugging at his torn up lips and tears tracing a new path down his face.
"You fucking dick, I wasn't ready to say goodbye to you yet."