Author's Note: Well, this is some of the biggest bit of depressing I have ever written. And this is something very different. Thanks for reading.
It wasn't suicide that killed him, and in a sick way he was thankful for that. Thankful that his own son hadn't been so desperate that he would end his life. But that gratefulness was swallowed up by the fact that it was his fault; all his fault. His son, his only son was dead because of him, and nothing would fill that chasm of complete despair in his chest.
Every night the same scene played out in his head. He couldn't shake the squealing tires, the crunch of metal on metal, the vertigo from flipping in a two-thousand pound or more vehicle, or the screams from his wife and son. Each and every night he would smell the blood, and wish he had done something different.
He had been in the hospital for three weeks. Sharon only for two days. Shelley blamed herself because they were on the way home from visiting her at college in Boulder. But Randy Marsh knew who was to blame; himself and Sharon.
And now he was finally home, sleeping on the couch, holding Stan's football jersey to his chest because that was everything he could have asked for. His son, the star football player. His son.
"Dad, dad!" He heard Stan shout, and something clatter upstairs. Randy jerked awake and pushed the fleece blanket from his body as he scrambled on weak legs to the stairs.
"Stan!" Randy called, "I'm coming, Stan, it's okay!" His son needed him. His son was scared and hurt and he would sit with him and talk until he fell asleep. Maybe even hug him, but it had been so long since they had done that.
Randy barged into his son's room and furrowed his eyebrows when he saw the empty bed. He slid down on his knees and peered under the full-sized bed, reaching his hand underneath to find his son. As a child that had been Stan's favorite place to hide when playing hide and seek; or when he couldn't stand to hear the fighting.
"Stan?!"
He heard the door creak open and spun his head around.
"St-" he trailed off, "Sharon, what are you doing?"
"Randy, come here," she whispered in that voice he hated so much. She was weak, defeated. That wasn't his wife. Her eyes were puffy and red, constantly, and the light in them had faded; leaving them a muddy brown.
"Stan needs me, Sharon, he-" the middle-aged man began, "he..."
"Stop doing this to yourself, he's not here."
"Don't be ridiculous, I just heard him, he-"
"Randy, our son has been dead for five weeks."
There it was. The anvil had dropped. They had been avoiding that sentence; our son is dead. And now... now here they were accepting what is instead of trying to change things. But deep down they knew there was no way they could fix this. There was no way they could bring their son back. He was dead.
And for the first time in five weeks, Randy broke down. He hadn't shed a tear when he found out, hadn't let his emotions get the best of him at Stan's funeral... but now... now it was different. Now that Sharon had finally pulled the pin they were left to face the wreckage of their lives. Now they were forced to deal with what they had been avoiding. Their son was dead; and how can they move on from that? How could anyone?
He clutched tight to his son's inhaler that lay abandoned on the floor, and pressed the plastic to his mouth. His shoulders shook with gut-wrenching sobs, and for a moment Randy was alone. Completely alone. Sharon wasn't there. No one was... it was just him in his son's room. It was cold and empty. It felt wrong, and sent chills down his spine.
"Randy, I..." Sharon trailed off, putting a hand on his shoulder. He jerked away from her and buried his face against the side of Stan's bed. The sheets smelled like their dryer sheets and weed. "I'm sorry," her voice wavered as she choked back her own tears. The man just shook his head and gripped tight to the blue and orange blankets on his son's bed. He fell asleep that way, and woke up feeling raw and numb.
He hated going to work; people constantly did his work and asked him pointless questions. He hated going to the bar after work; someone would buy him a beer until he was plastered and everyone would glance at each other as they waited for him to say something. He hated this town; he hated their pity and their fake smiles and their redneck bullshit because they knew. They knew.
And he was so fucking sick of seven layer casserole.
No one would understand their pain, his pain, because no one's child had died. No one had to bury their own child. And no one would be at fault for their child's death.
Everyone knew Stan had been depressed and nearly unstable. He knew the first thing everyone thought was suicide. But how could they? How could they dishonor him like that? And how could he walk around trying to fake it through the day knowing who was at fault?
Sharon woke up in the middle of the night when she heard a violent crash and glass shatter. She slowly got out of bed, unsure of what to expect, and opened the door from their, now her, bedroom. There sat her husband on the floor, knees pulled tight to his chest as he clutched a broken picture frame. Glass lay strewn all around him, and his hands were bleeding as his shoulders shook with sobs.
"Randy..." she trailed off. "Randy, it's okay. Put the picture back. I'll fix it in the morning."
"You can't just put everything off, Sharon! You can't just deal with it later, you can't just..." he trailed off, "I broke this. I ruined this..." from the light from the moon outside, she could see the picture in his hands. It was Stan in between them, in his football jersey, with the biggest grin on his face.
"Randy, it's not your-"
"I should have been driving."
Sharon looked up from the picture and narrowed her eyes on her husband. She took a step back.
"What are you saying?"
"I should have been driving. I should have been the one behind the wheel. I would have... I could... Stan could be in his room sleeping right now. Did you check the mail?" Sharon's breath hitched as she nodded. "His scholarship from CSU came through. Full ride, he was accepted. That was his future, Sharon. But..."
"You are not blaming me for this." Randy remained silent as he looked at the picture.
"I should have been-"
"This is neither of our fault. I... how dare you?" she spat, then slammed the door to their bedroom.
Randy woke up to an empty house and a note from Sharon saying she was moving in with her mother up in Denver until Randy could accept that she wasn't at fault, and that he wasn't either. She said time would do them some good, as they were healing in different ways.
But he needed her. He couldn't be alone.
He slept in Stan's bed; but woke up crying every day because he realized he was tainting his son's scent. How fucked up was it that he was so desperate for his son that he fell asleep sniffing his fucking pillow? But it reminded him of Stan, and playing football, going fishing, trying to connect on some level...
They weren't that close, he realized. There was so much about Stan that he didn't know. Such as why he was depressed. Why he spent so much time on the internet but never having a Facebook account. Why he got home so late at night. He didn't know what his favorite movie was, his favorite joke, who he liked, what he wanted to be.
He didn't know his son at all. Yet here he was, missing him.
That's what hurt the most; he had lost his chance of attempting to better their relationship. He had lost his son.
He stopped going into work; he could work at home. He could drink at home. More often than not he'd end up passed out over a map with a bottle of Jack Daniel's spilled over it. More often than not he woke up in his own vomit. But it was better than dealing with the fact that his life was ruined.
Gerald tried to talk to him; tried to get him to go over for dinner every Monday and Friday. Sometimes he would just sit with him. Stephen told him the word of God would help him cope. Stuart let him be; this was his life, he could cope how he wanted. Except Randy did feel a little bad for breaking his nose when he heard the man say he could understand.
No one could understand this; they all had their children. They all had sons.
Soon, Randy had no place to grieve over Stan. If he wasn't in his room, Kyle Broflovski was; wearing his football jersey and sobbing into his pillow as he placed an unopened letter in the top drawer each day. Eric Cartman sat at the bleachers of the football field, staring at the endzone. Kenny McCormick fell asleep at his grave, one hand in the dirt, the other wrapped around the tombstone. Butters Stotch sometimes sat with each of them, and if he was alone he would constantly look up at the sky. Randy never had the heart to disturb them. Any of them. They were already so disturbed.
He never heard from Sharon. Sheila made him dinner every night. But after awhile they just let him be, left him to his own destruction. His stomach was bloated and his eyes were yellow from the alcohol. He went out in public less and less, until never. He slept on the couch, the floor, the bathtub... anywhere but a bed.
Nothing changed. He still blamed himself. He still blamed Sharon.
Until one day he came down the stairs when he heard the television and a guitar. Two guitars. He stumbled down and covered his mouth as he watched Kyle Broflovski and Butters Stotch playing "Guitar Hero" to "Carry on My Wayward Son" while Kenny McCormick lay on the floor eating a sandwich and reading a book while glancing at the television, and Eric Cartman pigged out on the couch while eating cheesy poofs.
They looked older, sadder, distant. Not the little boys that played imaginary games in his backyard. They were trying to pick up the pieces without their leader; and they were doing it well. Kyle no longer wore his green ushanka, but a blue hat with a red poofball barely hid his poofy hair. Butters wore a taped wristband as he laughed with Kyle, and Cartman wore a "save the whales" t-shirt.
"Carry on,
You will always remember
Carry on,
Nothing equals the splendor
Now your life's no longer empty
Surely heaven waits for you..."
He rested against the frame as he heard Kenny sing quietly along to the music. He no longer wore his parka; and a part of Randy figured somewhere down the line he had accepted the role as 'pseudo-leader'.
"Carry on my wayward son,
There'll be peace when you are done
Lay your weary head to rest
Don't you cry no more-" this time they all sang, louder, bopping their heads and laughing as Butters missed one of the chords on the game.
"NO MORE!" They belted out at the end, then they all laughed and smiled together as they managed to snake a few extra points. Randy watched with tears in his eyes and glanced up at the ceiling.
Somewhere down the line he lost his son. But as he looked in the living room, he realized he really didn't. He still lived on in the lives of his best friends. They carried pieces of him wherever they went, always. They chose to live their lives to make him proud.
Would he be proud of his father? Not right now.
He could change that. He couldn't change his relationship with his son... but he could find himself trying to repair anything with the lives of the four people he couldn't live without. He didn't realize how much he missed seeing them take up space in his living room and eating his food.
They could help him... and maybe he could help them.
"Boys, boys, boys..." Randy finally said, a small smile on his face as they jumped and looked to him with wide eyes. "You think that's rocking out? Let me show you how it's done."
"The last time you tried this," Kyle began, "you got our dads wanting to play in a Rush tribute band."
"And Rush fucking sucks," Kenny said, the other three snickered. Randy gave them all a look before he scoffed and walked to the garage, where his old Fender and Marshall amp lay unused, for years.
"It's like, take a dying cat, give it it's swan song, and you've got Rush," Cartman added on, causing the boys to howl with laughter as Randy entered the room.
They all hushed as Randy began to play the introduction to "Carry on My Wayward Son". Tweenwave be damned, Rush be buried, this was for his son. For his friends. For everyone.
And just like that, something changed. The boys came over to watch television or play video games every day. They invited Randy to their basketball games, play performances, or stayed the night when things got to rough at home, or needed male advice. They had a special Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner with him and Shelley, and eventually Sharon. He was there when they went off to college, or the army. They were his sons, not by blood, but by relation. And he would give them a place to go or a shoulder to lean on if no one else would.
They had learned to cope, and so had he, with their help. They allowed him to see his son in everything; the first football game, the first snowfall, the first leaf in spring, his favorite song on the radio... Stan would live with them. Until the last person to know his name breathed their last breath.
It was hard, but not so hard with their laughter in his life. It was easier to breathe and think, and soon the pain was replaced with pride as he watched Kyle graduate Yale with high honor, and Butters land his first role in a movie, Cartman find his way in a successful company, and Kenny fight his way up to Command Sergeant Major McCormick and a purple heart.
He found life again; he found a way to accept what happened to his son. He never truly moved on, but coped in better ways, and he was, in every sense of the word, happy. And Sharon was too. And as he looked at the four men who were his de-facto sons, in their suits, designer clothes, and uniform, he knew that Stan would be proud of all of them. Even him, he supposed.
He knew Stan was with them; when Kyle failed his bar exam two times and nearly gave up. When Butters brought home the love of his life to his parents, when Cartman nearly made his company go bankrupt but pulled out a scheme from his ass, and when Kenny nearly died from an explosion after clearing out his soldiers that resulted in burns on his face and loss of feeling in his left leg. Stan had been there to keep them strong and safe. And Randy was there each and every time they returned home, and to give them constant support, even if their parents didn't.
And as he watched them all talk and laugh as they gathered around on their living room couch, joking as if a day hadn't gone by that they saw each other, he realized that yeah, Stan would be damn proud of them all. Even him.
And that was the best feeling in the world.