Title: Keeping Secrets
Author: Megan Ann
Genre: Drama, Angst, a hint of romance
Rating: PG-13 (for now)
Pairings: Stan/Kyle (in future chapters)
Disclaimer: I do not own anything even remotely related to South Park. I don't own Kyle, or Stan, or Cartman, or Kenny. Honestly, do you think I'd be writing this if I did?
Warnings: Slash (duh), flashbacks, violence, and a lot of swearing in this chapter (but if you're reading South Park fanfiction, violence and/or swearing really shouldn't shock you)
Notes: Okay, this chapter begins me kind of splitting the story in two. Most of it will be in present day, but there will be flashbacks to sixteen years ago, so you can see what actually happened. I tried to make it pretty obvious when I flashback, but I'm sorry if I confuse anyone.
And I'd like to thank my one reviewer, Lamia Astaroth! And that was extra special, because I love your stories. I read all of your work on , including Why Don't You Love Me? (and I reviewed anonymously as 'Me'... I know, uncreative). So that was just pretty darn cool. Sorry for the groupie-type gushing there.
And for all you slash freaks (of which I am one), it should crop up soon?
---
Keeping Secrets
Chapter 2
"To him that you tell your secret you resign your liberty."
Anonymous proverb
---
- Sixteen years earlier -
"Dude, where the fuck is the Jew?" A ten-year-old Eric Cartman asked of his two friends. The three boys stood next to a stop sign in the snow that South Park was perpetually covered with.
"Shut up, fatass," Stan said in defense of his absent friend. "Maybe he's sick."
"Yeah, that's what he gets for being a fucking Jew."
"Shut up, fatass," Stan said automatically.
"He looked fine yesterday," Kenny added, the words muffled by his orange hood.
"What the fuck do you know, Kenny? You're too poor to know. That's why poor people aren't doctors."
Cartman was saved from a severe beating by the bus pulling up in front of them. The metal doors swung open wide to the irritated face of Ms. Crabtree.
"Get the fuck on the bus!" She screamed, near incomprehensibly.
The three of them filed into the relative warmth of the school bus.
When Stan got home later that evening, he threw his backpack into the corner of his room and sat down to get some serious cartoon time in. School normally sucked, but school without Kyle sucked even more. Without Kyle there to defend himself, Cartman was even worse than normal, which said a lot. Of course, Stan tried to defend his absent friend, but gave up about halfway through the day and just tried to tune the fat boy out.
He hadn't even noticed it getting dark until the ringing of the phone snapped him out of his TV induced trance. He grumbled as he went to pick it up.
"Hello?"
"Hello? Stanley?" It was the high pitched and more than a little annoying voice of Mrs. Broflovski.
"Hello Mrs. Broflovski," he said, voice just barely tinged with annoyance. Kyle's mom had never been his favorite person, although she liked him just fine.
Never one to waste words on manners when she needed something, Sheila plowed ruthlessly on. "Is Kyle over there? Tell him to come home."
"Kyle?" Stan asked in confusion.
"Yes, Kyle. And tell him he's in trouble when he gets back! He knows he's supposed to be home before it gets dark, and—"
Stan frowned. "Mrs. Broflovski, didn't Kyle stay home sick today?"
"No, he went to school. He had a math test today."
"He wasn't at the bus stop."
"What, what, what?" Mrs. Broflovski screeched in her trademark manner.
"He never went to school." The implications of this seemed to hit Stan all of a sudden, and he sat down heavily on his couch.
"Are you sure?" Sheila's voice screeched through the phone.
Stan's stomach turned and he could feel the blood draining from his face. "He wasn't there. We all figured he was sick. I..." He trailed off, unable to continue.
Suddenly, the panicking mother he'd heard just a second ago was replaced by the woman who had declared war on another country just for making an inappropriate movie. "He could be at his other friends. I'll call them. If you see or hear from him, call me, okay Stanley? Can you think of anywhere else he might be?"
Stan shook his head, forgetting that she couldn't see him. "No."
"I'll find him. And when I do, he is going to be in more trouble..." mumbling to herself, the phone cut off as Kyle's mother obviously started on a campaign to call every household in South Park.
Stan sat, still holding the buzzing phone. Somehow he knew that this wasn't as simple as Kyle playing hooky. Kyle would never skip out of school because he knew that his mother would kill him. And even if she wouldn't, that just the kind of person that Kyle was.
"Kyle, dude," Stan muttered to himself. "I really hope you're okay."
---
- Present day -
The next thing twenty-six-years old Stan Marsh knew was the sensation of his fist forcibly connecting with someone else's flesh. His vision was tinged red, and he could hear the sound of glass shattering.
When his vision cleared, he had Evington—the bastard couldn't be Kyle, this was all a sick joke—by the throat, pinned to the booth. He felt hands on him, attempting to pull him off, but he wasn't going to be deterred so easily.
"You bastard," he hissed angrily. "You sick bastard. Who the fuck do you think you are?"
Evington, for all that he was being viciously attacked, just lay there passively. "Kyle," he answered back.
This was too much for Stan. Letting go of the man's throat with one hand, he drove a fist into his stomach. And another. And another. And one to his face. And another.
And Evington did nothing. He simply took the beating, which just enraged Stan more. "Fight back, you sick fuck!"
"I'm not going to fight you, Stan."
And then there were enough people clawing at him to pull him off of Evington. Stan fought like a man possessed, screaming and thrashing in a futile attempt to get out of the others' hold on him. He wouldn't take his eyes off of Evington. "Fuck you! Fuck, fuck, fuck you, you sick son of a bitch!"
And it wasn't until Evington's image blurred that he realized there were tears in his eyes.
"How dare you, you fucking cocksucker?!"
Evington was talking to another man, whom Stan distantly recognized as the owner of the restaurant. He didn't care.
"Fight me! Fight me!" He screamed until his voice broke.
He was being led outside. The only reason he didn't struggle even more was that he could see Evington walking ahead of him. The cold air hit him as they left the building. His jacket was still inside.
Evington turned around as soon as they reached the parking lot. "You can let him go."
"Are you sure?" someone asked him, obviously hesitant to just release the crazed man.
"Yes."
Suddenly there were no more hands on him. Stan stood there, staring Evington down, and listened to the footsteps fade away as everyone went back in the restaurant.
They stood there for ages until Stan broke the silence. "Who. Are. You?"
Evington's face was stoic, though his eyes were sad. "I know you don't want to hear it—"
"Don't." Stan warned sharply. "Don't tell me that you're Kyle. You are not Kyle. You can't be Kyle."
Another eternity passed in silence. Stan's ragged breathing slowed and quieted. His shoulders stopped heaving. He glared at the other man. "Kyle Broflovski vanished sixteen years ago. He's dead."
"I never died." Evington said quietly, but steadily.
Stan shook his head and turned away, then back. He looked at the man, and then into the distance, and then back again. He sighed. "Fine, then. Prove that you're Kyle. Tell me something he'd know."
The dark brown eyes glanced around, as if trying to find something to help him. "You... you have a sister named Shelly who beat you up every day, or for as long as I knew you."
Stan laughed, but the sound was angry and dark. "That's not exactly a secret."
"You were in love with Wendy Testaburger, but threw up anytime you two even got close."
Stan barked out another laugh. "And neither is that."
Evington bit his lip. "You started La Résistance to impress Wendy."
Stan said nothing.
"I had a lawyer dad, an overbearing mom, and an adopted Canadian brother."
Stan closed the gap between the two. He had a few inches on the other man, and used them to seem as imposing as he could. "None of this is really anything that you couldn't find out. You want me to believe that you're Kyle? Prove it."
The imposter shook his head. "I don't know what you want, Stan. I could tell you so many things. We once got an Ethiopian that we named Marvin in the mail instead of a watch. You hated those time immigrants when they arrived in South Park because they took our shoveling business. We once snuck into a top secret government facility to get a game system back. I could go on forever, but you have to believe me. I am Kyle."
Stan grabbed at the man's shoulders and studied his face. Of course, he knew that even ten-year old Stan Marsh didn't look exactly like twenty-six-year old Stan Marsh. And he also knew that, despite his best efforts, through those sixteen years he'd forgotten a lot of what ten-year-old Kyle Broflovski looked like. But something deep inside him hoped that he'd be able to see his friend in this man, that he'd be able to instinctively know if he was who he claimed to be. He wracked his brain for details. "Kyle had green eyes."
The man reached up and squeezed around the iris of his eye, dislodging a thin piece of tinted plastic and throwing it to the ground. "Contacts."
Stan stared at the single startlingly green eye and faltered. He swallowed thickly. "Kyle didn't have black hair."
He smiled again, sadly. "Hair dye. I was undercover for a long time in that operation."
Stan shook his head mutely. His throat felt thick and his eyes stung. He didn't how, but his grip on the shoulders of the man claiming to be Kyle Broflovski had changed from a furious hold to just trying to hold himself up.
"Kyle?"
Mismatched eyes met his. "Yeah, dude."
It was hard to say who broke first. Both men would probably say the other one. But in any case, anyone walking through O'Malley's parking lot just before 9:00 that night would have seen to grown men clinging to each other as if they were the last two people in creation.
---
- Sixteen years earlier -
"Yes, Sheila. No, I completely understand. No, it's no trouble. I'll ask. Yes, I'll call you back..."
Stan listened in on his mother's phone conversation in the other room. He sat on his couch, the TV blaring away in front of him, but he couldn't even tell what was on.
Kyle had been missing for a week. Thanks to the ruthless Sheila Broflovski, everyone in town knew that he was gone. What's more, after seeing the normally strong and controlled woman break down into a mere shadow after only seven days of her son being gone, they all cared.
Stan had told the police and both of Kyle's parents every moment that he could remember from the past two weeks. He really didn't put all that much trust into Officer Barbrady as a competent police official, but he knew the kind of determination that the Broflovski's had.
His mother walked into the room then, the phone dangling from her fingers.
Stan looked at her. "I don't remember anything, Mom. Everything was normal."
"I know, Stanley." She didn't even bother to ask how he knew what she was going to say.
"I've tried to help!" Stan insisted, getting off the couch, too restless to sit anywhere. "I told everyone everything, but... I don't know what happened!"
Sharon Marsh knelt down in front of her son and wrapped her arms around him. Stan didn't move. "I swear I don't know anything. I want to help... I want Kyle back."
"Shh... I know, Stan, I know..."
And the boy who hadn't cried at so many other things over the years, burst out into tears.