Warnings: In this chapter there is: swearing, vague hints of slash (which I can promise will be in the next chapter!), flashbacks, lots of talking.
Notes:Wow, ten reviews! I want to seriously thank all of my reviewers.
Diala - I've seen your fanart at deviantArt before and I love it all. That picture of Kyle "expressing himself" on Stan is genius... and slightly disturbing.
Jean - Aw, shucks, you made me blush. I'm happy to say that some of your questions will be answered in this chapter (kind of).
E2K - I was afraid the first chapter might confuse some people. Hopefully, as the story goes on, everything will be made much clearer. (P.S.: I love your stories so much.)
Lamia - Thank you again. With any luck, you'll stay hooked.
AngelofShad0ws - Oh, the slash will be coming up soon. I wouldn't dream of depriving you all... and myself, of course.
Leela's tears - I've always been a big action/adventure person, and that isn't going to stop. If you thought that first part was Mission: Impossible/spy movie-esque, just wait until some future chapters.
Cellar door - Thank you to the most beautiful combination of sounds in the English language!
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Keeping Secrets
Chapter 3
"A secret is like a dove; when it leaves my hand it takes wing."
Arabian Proverb
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- Present day -
Stan absently fiddled with the mug of black coffee in his hands. He was in a small diner sitting across from Kyle. Kyle Broflovski. A man who, by all accounts, was dead and buried. Just the thought made him wish he had something stronger than coffee.
If he was honest with himself, he could see the bits of Sheila and Gerald Broflovski in the man across from him. The set of his jaw, the shape of his eyes. Little things that confirmed Stan's greatest hopes and fears.
"What happened to you?"
Kyle was turning his mug around in circles. He let his words go carefully, cautiously. "What does everyone think happened?"
Stan frowned and glanced over the rest of the diner. It was almost empty. "They think you're dead. Officially, you are dead. You just never showed up for school one day, and never went home." He wrenched his gaze up. "They found your body."
Kyle raised his eyebrows.
He nodded. "Almost a year after you disappeared. It was in Wyoming. There wasn't... your parents couldn't identify it, but they had DNA..." he choked on the words.
"It was a fake."
"Well no shit, Sherlock," was his sarcastic answer. "Obviously. But how the hell did they manage to pull that off?"
Kyle shrugged and snorted derisively. "With South Park's completely inept police force? I imagine it wasn't that hard. I'm sure nobody looked close enough, but the actual DNA comparison was probably done by a national lab, and not a regional one. I think the FBI took care of it. The information is false. The actual body was probably just some orphan they dragged off the streets."
A harsh stare. "How do you know all of that?"
Kyle — Stan was sure he'd never get sick of that name — didn't meet his eyes. "Because I wasn't the first person they'd done that to, and I wasn't the last." He shifted in his seat and switched the topic. "What about South Park? What happened after..." He trailed off, obviously looking for the right word, but there was none. "After."
"Everyone looked for you." Stan said. "You know your mom. She had the whole town on a 24/7 Kyle Alert for the first few weeks."
"What about after that?"
Stan picked at something crusted onto the table. "She couldn't handle you being gone."
The other man sat up straight at Stan's words. "What? Is she—"
Stan realized what that must have sounded like and quickly cut off Kyle's train of thought. "No, no, she's still alive and around, but... she isn't the same."
"How?"
"She just doesn't care as much. You know how she was. She started a war over a few bad words. Now..." Stan shrugged. "I don't even think she'd care if they made that movie now."
This news, above anything else he'd heard, seemed to hit Kyle. His face was blank as he stared into his coffee mug. Stan studied the man for what seemed like the thousandth time that night.
It was a lot to take in. For both of them.
"What about everyone else?" Kyle asked, determined but also tentative. "Cartman? Kenny?"
Stan finished up the last of his coffee and smiled. "Oh, they're around. Cartman is in California. He has some big business and a new, beautiful gold-digger on his arm every week."
Kyle smiled and Stan saw a ghost of the ten-year-old in him. "Kenny?"
"Well, he's alive, and I suppose that's pretty good for him. He's married to Kelly and they have a kid on the way." The name seemed to strike something in Kyle and he appeared to be searching for the memory it came from. Stan smiled at his old friend's confusion. "The girl from Getting Gay With Kids. Remember Costa Rica? They ended up both going to Colorado University. They met each other completely randomly and hit it off, again."
"That's a pretty big coincidence."
The absurdity of those words struck the two men just then and they both laughed. The tension that had filled the air between them vanished. As Kyle laughed Stan remembered that he'd forgotten what that sounded like. It was beautiful.
A matronly waitress appeared at their table and they moved their coffees to be refilled. She gave them a kindly smile and moved on.
"Where did you go?"
The question was so simple that it took Kyle by surprise. Stan's face was more relaxed than it had been only a second ago, but there were questions stated plainly in his eyes. "I can't tell you exactly where. The less you know, the safer you are." The new drink was too hot, and he waited patiently for it to cool down.
"But I'll tell you the rest. You deserve to know." He paused again, casting his mind into the past and trying to find a place to start. "I was walking to the bus stop..."
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- Sixteen years earlier -
A ten-year-old Kyle Broflovski hummed a tune under his breath as he hopped down the concrete steps of his home. There had been a snowfall the previous night and everything seemed healthy and refreshed.
He was three houses down when the crunchy sound of tires slowly compacting snow made him glance to his side. There was a black SUV creeping along the sidewalk, and moving steadily closer to him.
He turned back around and sped up his step just a little, all the time telling himself that he was just being paranoid.
He saw the truck pull level with him out of the corner of his vision and kept his eyes on the pavement. The truck stopped and he kept going.
"Kyle Broflovski."
Despite his best judgment, Kyle stopped and turned. A man was standing ankle-deep in snow, the back seat car door standing open next to him.
His first thought was that they were wasting perfectly good heat.
Of course, that was absurd.
Kyle looked around, but the streets were empty this early in the day. The bus stop was around the corner. He knew that he couldn't outpace a car, but if he cut through some lawns, he might just be able to make it.
"Kyle Broflovski," the man repeated, getting the boy's attention again. "You are going to come with us."
Kyle laughed. "Like hell I will." He gripped the strap of his backpack tighter and prepared to run for it.
The man shook his head. "You will, because if you don't your family and friends will die for it."
Dumbstruck, Kyle gaped at the man. He was wearing sunglasses. He had to be lying.
As if sensing the boy's thoughts, the man continued. "I assure you I am telling the truth."
Kyle closed his mouth with a snap and glared at the man. "If you were lying before, then you are just lying again now."
Instead of surprising or angering the man, this made him smile. "Very logical, but incorrect. We have snipers positioned right now. All they need is my word." He stepped back, to the side of the open door, and gestured in.
Kyle shook his head. Did they really think he was that dumb? "Prove it."
The man waved a hand, and there was a strange, hissing sort of noise, then a loud crack and the snow at Kyle's feet sprayed up into his face. He jumped and looked around. They'd just shot at him! Eyes wide in fear, he looked back up at the man, who was still smiling, though the expression was hard and cruel.
He took a hesitant step forward, stopped, and looked at the small crater in the snow. Squaring his shoulders, Kyle got into the back seat of the truck. The man stepped in after him, closed the door, and they were gone.
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- Present day -
Stan's mouth hung open as Kyle finished his story.
Kyle laughed quietly. "Of course, I was a complete moron. This was a secret program. Massacring people in such an obvious way, a way that would have gotten national news coverage, wasn't their modus operandi. Too public."
"So you could've walked away?" Stan asked, still shocked by the truth about his friend's mysterious disappearance all those years ago.
"No, of course not," Kyle stated matter-of-factly. "They would've killed me, I'm sure. But they wouldn't have gone any farther than that."
A chill ran through Stan's body at his friend's casual mention of death.
Kyle, oblivious, went on. "After that was kind of boring. Training. Lots of school, very fast."
Stan attempted to imagine a life that was nothing but constant school and work, with no time in between for fun. A life that didn't have any of his major milestones; his sixteenth birthday, homecoming dances, proms, dating, graduating.
"How'd you stand it?"
"Well, there were... others." All of a sudden, Kyle's mind seemed a thousand miles away. Maybe, Stan guessed, it was.
"Others?" Stan prompted. "Like you?"
Kyle smiled. "Yeah, I guess. There were two when I got there, and one a few months after. There's always someone leaving, and someone new to take their place." Kyle's smile was fond and there was a story in it, but Stan knew that now wasn't the time to act.
They sat companionably until this time Kyle broke the silence. "What about you, Stan? You told me about Kenny and Cartman, but how have you been doing? And more importantly, why the hell the army? I mean, when we were kids you couldn't even shoot a rabbit."
Stan laughed. "Hey, who wants to kill a little bunny? I still can't. Hunting is never going to be my thing."
Kyle shook his head in amusement. "And the rest of it?"
Stan shrugged. "Well, I wanted to go to college, but my parents aren't exactly rich, so I figured I'd join the army. When I got there, I just liked it a lot more than I expected, so I stayed."
"Misters?" The two of them looked up at the motherly waitress from before, who was standing next to the table with an apologetic look. "I'm afraid we're closing."
Shocked, Stan glanced at his watch and found out that it was past twelve. The building was empty except for the staff. The woman put the bill on the table and went back to wiping down the tables.
Before Stan could even take out his wallet, Kyle had two twenties on the table and was leaving. Stan grabbed his jacked and slipped it on as he walked to catch up. "You do know that the bill was under twenty dollars, right?"
Kyle grinned. "I had to give a tip, too." Stan raised a skeptical eyebrow. Kyle laughed. "Trust me when I say that I have plenty of money."
"You work for the government," Stan pointed out. They stepped outside into a dark parking lot.
"Ah, ah, ah," Kyle objected, holding a finger aloft. "I work for the secret underground-type of government, which pays just fine. Off-shore and numbered Swiss accounts."
Stan rolled his eyes. "Your Jewish ass would end up with a fortune. Know what the military pays these days? Even the 'secret, underground-type' military?"
Kyle smiled. "Of course I know, but that's your own damn fault for signing up for the grunts." He looked around cautiously, the action almost invisible. Reaching into his pants pocket, he pulled out a slip of paper. A pen appeared in his other hand from the depths of his jacket. He scribbled something on it quick and handed it to Stan. "This is a number you can call me at. It can't be tapped, so it'll be safe for the most part. Be careful what you say anyway."
Stan nodded and pocketed the paper, then turned towards his car.
To his credit, he only looked back once.
---
Stan may not have been trained to be a spy for over half his life, but he knew enough not to call in the first week after meeting Kyle. The other man had hinted at being followed, watched, and listened in on. So Stan went about his normal business for the next week. He collected his pay for a job well done, filed all the necessary reports, fed his fish, and generally made use of his two weeks of downtime.
He also told his landlady that he was moving out. Stan had been staying here because of the mission, but he'd be reassigned once his two weeks of downtime were up. The old witch grumbled about having to file out paperwork, but her much milder husband gave Stan a smile and said that he'd miss the kind boy.
Six days after his meeting with Kyle, Stan picked up his phone and dug out the slip of paper, which he'd hidden underneath a drawer.
Kyle answered on the second ring. "Evington."
Stan winced at the name. "It's me."
"Hey." Stan could almost hear his smile. "I was wondering when you'd call."
"Well, wonder no longer. Do you want to get together?" Stan wasn't sure how freely Kyle could speak on his side.
Kyle's voice became muffled and hushed, and Stan could practically see him ducking down and mumbling into the cell. "Zoe's Café. Corner of 13th and Morgan. The twenty-fourth. Same time."
Stan smiled. "Not a problem."
Kyle's voice cleared and the smile was back in his voice. "I'm looking forward to it."
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