So here we go. I've been ruminating on this story in one form or another for quite a while now. Years, even. I originally planned to write it for the Naruto fandom, but eventually felt that such an AU was unnecessary, based on the action of the source material. This is supposed to be one of those long, winding narratives that immerses the reader in its world and mythology, and I hope I'll do a good job of living up to that ambition. I'm hoping, very much, for feedback regarding the progression and execution of this story, particularly if there's something that seems off, if there are apparent plot holes, or if characters' actions don't make sense. As for pairings, they're not really the focus of this story, but we do have: past, possible future Crenny, established Crendy, Style, and a few others. I hope everyone enjoys.
Sixteen and he kissed her. Without thought, without poise. His lips lingered for heartbeats. Mint. She tasted like mint. The taste, the smell, filled his mouth and expanded in his nose, washing out all the other senses like a cyclone. Cool and firm. She blushed just after he registered the taste, and smiled as he realized the smell, and spoke only after he'd returned his own, the thin break on his lips stinging as he stretched it, not yet breaking. It's like that. Think of it like that, like a cut on your skin. It's thin and weak just barely keeping fluid in. He moved again, taking her by the hand, slowly. Her eyes followed, just trailing the tips of his fingers by the looks of their position, and she understood. She did. Reaching out she took his hand in hers and they left, into the street, their reflections rising in the lake of glass of the shop windows. One small nick or too much of a stretch and you're finished. That's how memory is.
They moved to the park, walking beneath the green canopy of the ginkgo trees. If they all fell, every leaf on top of them, they'd drown in a sea of green, from above and from below. They almost looked drowned now; they couldn't see the sky from between the leaves, only the pin points of sun that shuddered as the wind rustled over them. He said they wouldn't need the sky and didn't know what he meant by it. She said that it would always be there anyway, whether they needed it or not. He smiled, the curve of his mouth mimicking her own and he can just feel her shiver against the cool air. Cool like her skin. He leaned in and kissed her again. She smelled like lilac. Tasted like mint. Wore purple. All those colors and scents meshed until he could almost exchange any of his senses, site or smell or touch, and still make them out. He looked at the sky. Pinholes of light.
Kenny blinked, his vision ready to blur, his thought punctuated by the steady crackling of explosions in the distance. Almost a tear. He rubbed his eyes and his fingers came back wet. This wasn't exactly like before. Maybe he'd experienced nostalgia just now, coupled with regret and the edge of tragedy. He smiled a little.
Eunice wasn't next to him. No. She was...
"She couldn't have gone to the hospital." Kenny muttered. He sat up and looked around the still dark room. His phone started vibrating, grinding against the nightstand.
Kenny grabbed it on impulse.
"Eunice?" Hope and anxiety made him breathless in a beat, and he started to sweat.
"No, Kenny. It's Wendy. Is someone with you?"
Kenny lowered the phone and looked around the room again. Dark. His bed was directly in front of a wall of windows; there was no moon tonight. He regretted that. Regretted that he'd never taken that walk on the beach with her, the one chance they had before he was shipped off to Vladivostok to help buffer the Russian front, when he could still walk without aid. His leg.
Kenny squeezed his right calf until his nails broke skin. God, his leg.
The bullet had shattered against his fibula, splintered and shredded the muscle and then, then.
His pants are wet, his leg is wet. Dead. He's on the ground and he's dead He can smell the metal, wet and fresh, twisted and burned and He's screaming. His hand is wet.
"Kenny!" Wendy shouted from somewhere. She sounded small, so small and alone.
Kenny released his leg and slumped out of the bed. He hit the floor and felt his chest. His skin, slick and cold, made him think of the corpse his team had dragged out of the river last week. A user.
"Twenty seven. Female. Dead for two days. She was laying on the bank and didn't move when the river swelled because of the rains." Kenny nodded. His breath steadied. He was never in Vladivostok. He'd never lost his leg. He didn't know anyone named Eunice.
"Kenny."
"Wendy." He had the phone to his ear, reacting to the panic in her voice.
"Yeah. Yeah I'm fine. I just had a little...problem. Forgot where I was for a few minutes."
"Kenny. The reminiscences are getting worse, aren't they?"
"I guess. It's over now. This one only lasted a few minutes." He tried to stretch his leg, said simply, "It hurt."
"Do you need me to come over?"
"No. Come on. I'm not actually injured. Just a little shaken."
"Are you sure?"
"Forget about it." He chuckled. "I did something there."
Wendy sighed, maybe in relief, maybe in capitulation.
"As long as you're all right."
"Good as I'll get. What about you? Is there something wrong, or did you just need someone to talk to?"
"Stan. He's missing." She said the words with practiced lethargy; an hour ago she might have demanded to lead a full blown search party through the woods.
Kenny stood. His weight sank onto his left leg, and he stumbled, his proximity to the night stand saving him from falling. He took a few deep breaths, flexed his right leg to confirm its relation to the rest of his body. After a few seconds, Kenny realigned his weight and made his way to the bathroom. The lights went on the moment he passed beneath the door frame.
"How long ago?" He pressed the phone between his cheek and shoulder and started to take off his pajamas.
"A few days. A week. I don't know." Her voice fell at the end, deepened. Kenny could see her pressing her palm against her forehead. "I hadn't heard from him in two days, and I didn't think anything of it. But he's not answering his phone. I mean he's a grown man, he has a job, he pays his own rent, so..."
"Don't. Don't obsess over that." Kenny grabbed the spare pants he'd placed on the hamper. "If I can function day to day, why shouldn't Stan be able to?"
Maybe because Stan can't function without what he's been through. What's been taken away and what's been invented.
"You two are completely different cases."
"Yeah. Stan actually has a case. I'm just a freak. Or something." He laughed, briefly and benignly elated. He pulled on shirt. Shower could wait. Teeth would come after the phone call.
Wendy ignored his comment. "I don't know where he could be. South Park, I guess. We could start looking there." Now her voice rose, nowhere near hysterical, but the contrast grated anyway.
"Right. Right." Kenny rubbed his eyes. "Is Craig there?"
"Where else would he be?"
"Who knows? He never told me where he went. He just went. And came back. And life went on."
"He's here." That closed the topic.
"OK. Good. We'll need Craig. And you. And..." Kenny rolled his eyes at himself. "I'll be there in twenty."
"I told Ike."
Kenny stopped. He frowned, couldn't connect the two, Stan's absence and Ike's involvement.
"Why?" He reached for the toothbrush.
"Because he can help us."
"Yeah, he can. But I don't think he will. He's not interested in Stan. Hasn't been since he found out about the alterations."
"He'll help." Another certainty. They were all amalgamating, and Kenny hoped they'd stay together long enough to get everyone through this."
"Great. So you, me, Ike and Craig. Our own little foursome." Kenny wouldn't have minded that in a more suggestive realization.
Good. If I can think about banging, things are good. Anything to stay grounded. Keep Eunice out of my head.
Wendy extrapolated in the practical direction.
"We'll find him. Between us, we will."
Kenny just nodded, gave her an affirmative response and ended the call. He wished Craig would have called instead. There was nothing more reassuring to him during a crisis than someone speaking in slow, steady terms without embellishment or unfounded speculation.
'It's a huge country. He's one guy. Unless he starts dancing naked in a city square, we probably won't find him anytime soon.'
Kenny started brushing, smiled.
'Of course, no telling if he won't start dancing naked anyway.'
Ten minutes later, and short another protein and fiber set, Kenny took the private access elevator to the small garage in the apartment complex's basement. He swiped his badge at the second gate, started humming and tapping his foot when the computer took a few excess seconds to process his credentials. Kenny didn't understand the paranoia. No one had ever begrudged him for owning a car; he received more sullen glances over his gun. Drawing his weapon sometimes goaded more violence than it deterred.
Outside the air was cool and wet; water condensed across the windshield and windows, fine droplets, a translucent cloud. Kenny drove without activating his car's Security Force insignia. The scanners would recognize his credentials regardless; his implant or face feed, they could take their pick. A block from his apartment, and a thin, bright blue line swept across the hood of his car, lingered on his face for a beat, and past on without incident. Another vestige of unnecessary restraint. Half the scanners were so old their sensors didn't even emit proper, coherent light; they were just expensive, flying flashlights.
After clearing the first roundabout, Kenny glanced at the car clock. 3:22. The city and sky were dark. Only the power stations, hospitals and security stations were fully lit. The other buildings rose, black, cold and sharp outlines, pierced through by points of clean light. Kenny liked to guess what those people were doing. When in a good mood, he usually settled on sex. When he couldn't sleep, he figured someone else must be sorting through decades of thought and memory, and when Craig returned from whatever late night skulking he indulged in, Kenny imagined being woken by someone like him was the only thing that made paying the extra usage fee worth it.
The sidewalks were clear along 6th, and Kenny remembered the man he'd found three months ago, standing on a street corner, back erect, arms still, mouth parted, eyes wide and wet and glittering like amber. People in the street had streamed past him like water around a rock. Kenny's department had only become involved because of an active missing person's report, filed by a distraught wife who knew nothing of the months her husband had spent re-living the best moments of his previous marriage. Two weeks out of detox and Mr. Johnathan Monroe had been fired from his job as a power distribution engineer in Denver, and reassigned to work on reestablishing a stable grid in the Alaskan neutral zone. Kenny thought it a poor way to help a man back to recovery, but at the very least, his talents weren't going to waste.
What the hell is Stan going to do? If he left the city, if he's wandering on the side of the highway, if he's a statue in the middle of a forest...
Kenny licked his lips and focused on the road. They hadn't started yet. All their options were still on the table, still tangible.
Minutes later, Kenny merged onto the highway. The road stretched out before him, silent and empty. A scant few interstate supply trucks would start making their rounds in an hour or so, and Kenny was glad to miss them. He'd never liked the sight or sound of a large vehicle passing close by his car. His hands would sweat, his fingers would turn bone white around the wheel, and he'd have to slow down and fall back. Craig said it was because of the war he'd relived from so many different perspectives, all of them rife with screaming aircraft and lumbering tanks. Kenny never commented, and that was good enough for both of them.
Wendy and Craig lived in a nearly vacant subdivision a few miles from the Denver city limits. Craig had been given the house as payment for his contributions to the Basic Research and Development Initiative, its previous owner having died thousands of miles away, years earlier after fleeing the country. Kenny remembered helping Craig move in, could still see him standing on the back patio, dumping boxes of old papers into a fire. 'Some old dead journalist,' Craig had said in response to Kenny's question about the house's previous owner. 'Apparently thought writing inflammatory articles about the population control project wasn't a good way to get into the government's good graces.'
Kenny stopped before the subdivision gate and tilted his head to the gate computer, its only indication of activity an iridescent dot of blue at car level, planted in the center of a sleek, black exterior. The light dimmed for a few seconds before flaring back to life.
"Identity confirmed. McCormick, Kenneth. Non-civilian designation. Association with Tucker, Craig confirmed, and Testaburger, Wendy confirmed."
The gate opened and Kenny drove into the development. He pulled into the driveway and killed the engine. The house was built in an old style, smooth, grey stone walls and rectangular pillars, a slanting metal roof lined with solar panels. The windows and walls looked to merge seamlessly, as though the architect had somehow manufactured transparent stone. There wasn't a single curve anywhere on the exterior. Years ago, the land around the house might have been filled with grass, but now it was a garden of stone and rock and white barked trees, dotted with stone benches and cut by paths. Kenny walked along the driveway to the entrance.
Wendy answered the door, looking no worse for wear than when he'd seen her two weeks ago at the bar. She looked dressed for work, in a cleanly pressed shirt and light slacks.
"Hey," Kenny said as though he'd just ran through the neighborhood.
"Come in." Wendy stepped aside and held the door open wide.
Kenny touched her shoulder after she'd shut the door, squeezed it in silent reassurance as they walked down the hall and into the kitchen, where Craig sat at the table, eating a sandwich. He looked up when Kenny walked in.
"Yo." He gave a wave, but didn't stand. He was dressed in a tee shirt and jeans, both free of wrinkles an probably less than a week old. He'd cut his hair above the ears, and his bangs ended halfway down his forehead.
"Looks like lunch." Kenny took a seat adjacent to Craig, examined the bread, tomatoes and cold cuts spread before him. It was a rectangular table, carved out of stone that had been come with the house.
Craig shrugged. "We're up late, probably going to be pulling an all niter . I figured we might as well eat."
Kenny couldn't argue, and helped himself to a slice of bread laden with globs of dark purple jelly. Blackberry, as it turned out.
"Oho. Fancy. Sliced meat, lights on past midnight. You guys must be rolling in it." He chuckled and did so alone.
"Meat's not that expensive," Craig put in. "And we grow the blackberries in a little plot out back."
"You guys pay extra for the water to do that too?"
"Last time I checked it still rained."
And last time I checked a lot of people were still afraid of rain.
"Let's please focus." Wendy sat opposite Kenny, before a plate littered with crumbs and red smears. Her hands rested in loose fists against the table.
"Right." Craig conceded. He held his sandwich like a prop.
"So. We don't think you should involve your friends in the Security Force just yet." Another bite and he dropped the burden of conversation.
"Mhmm." Kenny nodded quickly, humming around a mouth of bread and jelly. He swallowed. "We can't file a missing person's report yet anyway. Unless we bring in Stan's exact circumstances, and I don't want to do that unless I have to."
"His circumstances shouldn't matter anyway. Stan's missing, and he could be basically anywhere." Wendy looked at Kenny, but spoke to both of them.
"Not anywhere." Craig dissented. "We can rule out the East Coast. There's nothing tying him to that area." He scoffed. "There's barely anything left over there at all. And I don't think Stan ever went to the South. I think we should limit ourselves to the West and Southwest." He looked briefly uncomfortable. "And we should probably start with South Park."
"He never got a tracer?" It was almost rhetorical, but it would be easy, so easy, and Stan would be safe again. Kenny's mouth went dry, and he had to struggle to swallow.
"There wasn't a reason. Kenny, you know Stan wasn't dangerous, to himself or anyone else. And we just...I kept an eye on him." Wendy pulled back, averted raised her chin. "And I didn't do a good enough job."
Kenny started to lean forward, to assure her, but Craig spoke first.
"Enough. Let's stop the blame game. You did more than enough. Marsh was responsible for himself, just like he was when he got himself altered." Craig's voice was soft at the beginning, detached by the end. Wendy nodded, sat straighter and continued.
"Kenny, if Stan goes through any major cities, won't the scanners pick him up?"
"In theory, yeah. But even if they do, that data isn't saved for more than a few hours. It's just to keep the streets clear of unauthorized vehicles. If he's on foot, his name won't even be stored for that long." Kenny sighed, reality finally pressing into him. "And that's assuming he's in a major city. And that the scanners are in use. They're dismantling the network in Utah and Nevada."
And he could be wandering the forests, or the desert. He could think he's on a camping trip, a vacation with Kyle.
"Christ," Kenny muttered. He pushed his plate away. "How many days, since he's been missing?"
Wendy shook her head. "I don't know. Like I said, I went to his apartment two days ago, and he wasn't there. He hadn't been showing up to work for three days before that."
"Let's say a week." Kenny cleared his throat. "One week, and we assume he's going to familiar places. If he's in South Park, great. Short trip. If not, then I say California. Los Angeles. He could have gotten there by train in about five hours."
"That's wishful thinking," Craig said. "He goes to LA, and then what? Sits there for a week?" Craig shook his head and leaned back. "Why don't we forget about discretion? You access the national tracking network on the pretext that a user has crossed state lines, he's not a danger to those around him, but he might not be living in the present. You can get access to his transaction history, and at least see if he's where we think he is."
"Stan isn't a user," Kenny speaks almost in tandem with Wendy. "He never was."
"Suspected user, then. You've got enough rank to pull something like that off without involving the whole department. No need to have the full force on this." Craig at least held his ground, even in the face of potential ignorance.
"That's not how it works." Kenny looked around. "Do you guys have anything to drink? I mean water would be fine."
Craig gestured to the refrigerator. "Help yourself."
Kenny did, filled a glass half with ice, half with water. Fat droplets fell to the floor as Kenny returned to the table. Wendy had moved her chair closer to Craig's, and they looked ready to start a hushed conversation.
The clack of Kenny's glass on the table brought them both back to attention. Kenny didn't sit.
"No broad involvement from my department. Not yet." Kenny paused. "Tomorrow, I'll call Stan's parents, maybe he's gotten into contact with them."
"They could be holing him up," Craig offered.
Kenny rolled his eyes. "From what? He's not a fugitive."
"From his life. He's already done that, with his memories."
"Now you sound like Ike," Wendy sounded regretful.
"What did Ike say? When you told him?"
"Jesus, only, 'Oh, well that's interesting. They probably fucked up the procedure to begin with." She finished with a look of disgust.
Kenny winced. "I'll talk to Ike. I need to get my eye implant looked at anyway, so I can at least have an excuse."
"Fine, great. Which of us are actually physically going on this hunt?" Craig was carefully peeling an orange, his thin fingers seemingly made for the task.
Wendy spoke immediately. "I am." She was back to normal, no hint of guilt or uncertainty in her posture or tone.
Craig nodded at Kenny. "And you? Can you take off for more than a week without the city falling apart?"
"Surprisingly. I'll request a week of personal time. My boss assumes that former users need periods of uh...convalescence." Kenny finished with air quotes.
Wendy glanced at Kenny, who looked to Craig. He looked to be sucking the orange slices straight off the peel. When he finished, he wiped his mouth.
"Sorry. So you and Wendy. South Park. I'll stay here, see if Token can help dig up anything. I can also review Stan's last brain scans."
"The memories were stable. We went over them together. But, you're right. We could have missed something." Again, she gave Kenny a look.
Come on, Wendy. Just say you want to take a look at me. Don't make it sordid.
"What could have caused Stan to..." Kenny didn't finish.
"Destabilize," Craig supplied, though he didn't sound happy about the word.
"Yeah."
"He had almost ten years of his life restructured. And not just the memories...the emotions. The pain, the joy. The love." Craig's voice diminished at the end, his arms loosened and he gestured broadly and vaguely. Kenny laughed, a short burst without control.
"The love was real. You can't...you didn't see it as closely as I did." He felt foolish, like a teenager trying to show his parents that he was wordly and confident.
"We know," Wendy said gently. Craig touched her hand; Kenny felt absurd for wanting to join his hand with Craig's, to form some kind of botched group therapy circle. He remembered kneeling before shattered stained glass windows of a church in Seoul that he'd never set foot in, remembered the heavy scent of smoke and incense, the din of sonic pulses. God, the noise.
"Hey, Ken." Craig grabbed Kenny's wrist. His hands were still soft.
"Sorry." Kenny smiled, thought it should have been private. But Craig relaxed, and so Kenny kept his smile, almost parted his lips to show his teeth, and he had Craig clearing his throat and leaning backward.
Kenny downed half his water. He sucked his lips in to warm his gums. Wendy kept unabashed eye contact with him, her face drawn up in confusion and concern. Kenny spared them all and withdrew from the table. He leaned against the opposite wall.
"I'm fine. Just a little unexpected recall. We can talk in a little while." He finally mitigated both their uncertainty. "I'm gonna talk to Stan's parents and Ike, and then me and Wendy can head out to South Park. After that, it's California, unless something else comes up." He waited for agreement or dissent.
"Fine." Craig pushed away from the table. "I'm gonna send Token a message." He left without another word, and Kenny immediately distracted himself with Wendy.
He gave a small smile.
"So. Wanna look inside my brain?"
"I really don't know how you can be so calm." Wendy didn't speak with accusation, or in exasperation, but with a kind of wonder that Kenny felt was sorely undeserved on his part.
"I'm not. I've just had practice." He waited for Wendy to move, then followed her into the master bedroom. It was simple, like the rest of the house, symmetry its overriding feature. The bed frame was made of dark wood, set low to the ground, flanked by two nightstands of the same make. The windows were the largest in the house, taking up the whole East wall and extending into part of the corner. Craig said the self-polarizing windows were annoying, and would have preferred curtains. Wendy had always opted to support technology firms.
"Just sit on the bed." Wendy opened the bottom drawer of her dresser, pulled out a sealed metal box with an electronic keypad on top.
"I know the drill." Kenny made himself as comfortable as he could; he'd never be able to relax in this bedroom, even alone.
"What do you think happened to Stan?"
Wendy paused in entering a code. Her shoulders tensed, then relaxed.
"I don't know. I wish...it would have been so much better if I could have done a full, in depth scan of his brain, so I could really test all his memories. But then." She stopped, turned to Kenny, looked terrified before composing herself.
"You don't know."
"No. No one knows. Maybe he would have gone...crazy, maybe he would have completely forgotten who he was, maybe nothing would have happened. And Craig spent months working with volunteers, and then...nothing." She laughed. "It's just amazing to think, if that car accident had never happened, if they'd gotten together sooner, spent a little time together, we wouldn't be looking for him right now."
Kenny didn't say anything to this. Maybe Stan and Kyle wouldn't have worked, maybe they both would have wound up alone, with only memories and possible futures and pasts to keep them going. At this stage it didn't matter.
"I'm sorry. We've been over this so many times." Wendy turned her attention back to the box, opened it, and took out the scanners and display pad.
Kenny leaned back and lifted the hair covering his temple for the first scanner; it fit into place with a minor prick and tingling. Kenny bowed his head and winced when the second was placed at the base of his skull.
"Are you all right?" Wendy's voice soothed him from above.
"Yup. No white hot wires digging into my eyeballs or head." Kenny raised his head and gave a robust nod.
Wendy examined the screen in her hand. She pursed her lips, drummed her fingers against the display, and spent several minutes on what Kenny knew were calibrations, by the spread of pins along his head.
"Normal so far," Wendy assured him.
"Mhm." Kenny concentrated on his daily trip to work, from the time spent in the elevator, to the last block before he pulled into the security bureau's parking lot. Section 4-F.
"All right." Wendy lowered the monitor. She looked worried. "Do you want me to induce recollection of a specific memory set?"
Kenny licked his lips. "Yeah. Uh. Just...let me...let me think of something that doesn't involve me loosing a leg."
"Kenny..." Wendy knelt next to the bed, touched his arm and made small, slow circles with her thumb.
Kenny indulged in her touch for a few moments, wishing he could be subject to memories of this make more often. He saw her consternation and broke contact.
"Hey, I'll be fine. I'm still here, and you know once the memories pass, so does the pain. Or pleasure." He added the last word uncertainly. There had been pleasure. Sex. Kids. Lush front lawns. Even food. And most of the recollections were mundane, trivial things their original owner would have cherished, but which Kenny found to be no more than a nuisance.
"We don't have to do this now. Not with Stan and the other memories you've just added."
"No. Let's get it over with. I'll think of something nice." He already knew what. The trees, the sun, the leaves. Mint. Risky, but it would give better results.
"All right." Kenny closed his eyes as though to sleep. Wendy was counting down, but he could already smell lavender. Pinpoints of light...
They return to the same park days before he leaves and she's wearing the same dress he bought her for their first anniversary Blue and it left her arms and shoulders bare Mint it's the same she chews it instead of gum He kisses her under the same trees They kiss in the grass and she tells him tells him that they'll have a child when he returns And he can't tell her that he won't that they're going to war because there are too many, too many of them that he loves and hates her for that He closes his eyes and starts to weep
"Kenny."
No it's Robert he's never known a Kenny
"Kenny!"
No no it must mean that he's finally lost it the way he lost his leg The doctors must be dragging him away
"Kenny!"
And he's on the ground Dying He's dying again He's
Kenny gasped like a drowning man breaching the water. He clawed at the floor and his vision blurred. He couldn't breath. He opened his mouth gasped again. Something pricked his arm and slid into him. Air rushed through him and his body slackened. He tried to stand but couldn't coordinate his body, couldn't find the strength to lift his arms and legs. Someone's hand pressed against his chest.
"Ken, stay still."
Craig. Kenny would have laughed if he didn't think it would choke him. He settled for what he thought was a smile but might have just been a spasm. Craig's fingers pressed against his neck.
"What the hell happened?" Craig sounded more shaken than angry. It was all directed inward. Kenny knew. That stopped him from trying to defend his and Wendy's decision.
"I don't know. I..." Wendy cleared her throat. Kenny tilted his head as far as he could, saw that her face was ashen but dry. Small consolations.
"It's...Kenny your body sent you into shock. It wasn't just a fraction of the pain from the memory, your brain actually responded as though you'd suffered trauma and blood loss."
Kenny took slow, shallow breaths. Wendy and Craig waited for him to find his voice, but it was like he'd swallowed a bucket of sand. Kenny grit his teeth, clenched his fists and raised his head, his neck tendons straining.
Craig put one hand behind Kenny's head, the other on his back, and together with Wendy helped Kenny into a sitting position against the bed. Craig went into the bathroom and returned with a glass of water, and held it to Kenny's lips until he'd drained it.
He coughed.
"Thanks." His voice was barely audible. He cleared his throat a few times. "That was pretty fucked up."
Craig exhaled a long breath. Wendy lowered her head and massaged her temples.
"Hey-"
"Don't." Wendy raised her head, her expression fierce. "It's not OK. It's not... This...this isn't normal, Kenny. Even a properly implanted, solidified memory shouldn't force the body into a reaction like this."
"I did end up in the hands of some pretty shitty sandmen back then."
The consolation fell flat. "If the owner had died in any of these past lives..."
"Most dead people didn't have their memories archived," Kenny said bitingly. He'd just re-lived getting a limb ripped up twice in the same day, so he figured he was entitled to something.
"How long?"
Kenny prepared to brush Craig's concerns off too, but stopped short.
Craig's hands were trembling, his eyes were wide and his skin paler than Wendy's.
Shock. Christ he's in shock just at the sight of me. He's. No.
Craig's shoulders were hunched, his fingers stiff and his breath heavy.
Rage.
Kenny reassessed his options.
"Two weeks and three days," he admitted, embarrassed. Craig and Wendy might as well have canceled their application for a gestation pod. They had a child to look after and reprimand right here and now.
"Fuck." Craig turned turned away, stared at his hand like he didn't understand its place on his body. He jerked his arm down and stared at Kenny, hurt finally slackening his features.
"You're such a fucking moron." His breath hissed though his teeth. "You..." His shoulders seized again and turned in a half circle.
"Criag. Christ, I...I'm sorry." Kenny hadn't let his voice swell like this since he'd last apologized to Craig, when he'd returned from a botched infiltration mission he'd volunteered for. Kenny's actions had saved three lives and earned him a promotion, though he'd never thought less of an accomplishment.
"No need," Craig said, though is voice was still tight. Wendy walked next to him and he took her hand in his and placed it against his chest.
It really is good you have her.
Craig's voice leveled out.
"I'll go with you two to South Park."
Kenny opened his mouth but couldn't find any words. Craig wouldn't be a hindrance, just the opposite, and there was no credible way to deny him regardless.
"Sounds good then. Help me up." Craig and Wendy each grabbed an arm and hoisted Kenny to his feet. He steadied himself against them before testing his weight against his body.
"No spasms or seizures. I'm not on the ground again. Everything's in order, then."
"This isn't over, Kenny," Craig said, face blank, eyes betraying his anxiety.
"I can handle this. I have you two, and I've never wandered off or had an episode during the day or while not hooked up to a scanner. First Stan, then me. Deal?"
Wendy and Craig exchanged a look, again pondering what to do about their errant child.
"Fine," Wendy conceded. Craig only nodded. "But if things get worse, I wanna hear about it."
Kenny smiled without humor.
"I'm sure they'll get worse. And we'll be right in the thick of it all."