CHAPTER 2 - I Would Be So Happy

Once he'd put on his usual jeans and one of his dad's old Kurt Cobain tee-shirts, Kenny quickly picked up Craig's trail again and furtively followed him for several blocks, staying hidden. Craig finally made his way to Stark's Pond, where he sat down with his back against a tree and stared at the ground between his shoes.

Kenny observed him for several minutes from behind a juniper bush; Craig appeared to be just sitting there with his back against the tree, doing nothing. Kenny finally broke cover, circling around so he approached him from the front so he didn't sneak up and startle him.

Craig was sitting, staring at the ground with empty eyes. Kenny sat down cross-legged a few feet away and regarded him carefully. "Hey dude...are you okay?"

There was absolutely no response. Craig continued to stare at the ground with empty doll's eyes; the last time he had felt this bad, this alone, this disassociated was the time his father (in one of the few father-son moments they had shared that actually seemed to matter) had told him: "I like gay Craig...I love you" and then handed him a hundred dollar bill.

That moment had never made sense to him, and with the events of the last hour, Craig was remembering it for the first time in almost a decade and doubting everything about his life and how the universe worked.

"Dude...c'mon," Kenny said after a minute. "You're scaring me here."

Craig's eyes finally shifted, looking at Kenny for a moment before quickly looking away again.

"You changed," Craig finally said.

"Huh?"

"You changed," Craig repeated slowly, as if he was speaking to a moron. "Your clothes. You put your underwear back inside your pants...and put on a normal shirt."

"Oh, yeah."

They lapsed into another awkward silence, which Kenny finally broke. "Talk to me, man. What's going on with you?"

"I don't know why I'm involved in this," Craig said angrily. "I mean...you guys all just pretended to have these weird superpowers when you were kids, and now all of a sudden you actually have them." He brushed angrily at a sudden surprising tear running down his cheek. "Well, except for Cartman, and now that Cthulhu has come back, he's the one that should have the power he used to have. Meanwhile, I got hijacked to Peru because of you assholes, and stepped on that stupid platform and shot laserbeams out of my eyes one fucking time..." He sighed unhappily. "And now I'm mixed up with you guys again."

Kenny nodded. I thought so, he almost said, and didn't. Instead he waited to see if Craig had anything more to say, which he finally did.

"I get the feeling I'm expected to save the world again. And I don't want to. I just want to finish high school, go to college, and find a career that I might actually enjoy and make enough money to get by on, something that won't suck the life out of me...you know? I would be so happy if I could just have a normal life. You know...like a regular kid? Is that too much to ask?"

Kenny sighed. "Yeah, I thought so," he said, voicing the thought he'd had a moment ago. "Dude, look—"

"You and your friends are so full of shit," Craig interrupted angrily, words pouring from him now as if a dam had broken. "You haven't changed a bit since you were kids, doing all this stupid shit, and somehow finding a way to drag me into it. So Kyle and Clyde can fly now, and Marsh can control power tools with his mind. You guys only pretended to be able to do that shit when you were kids. I actually shot laserbeams out of my eyes once when I was eight..." He trailed off and resumed studying the ground between his shoes. "I'm the only one that actually did something..." Another tear slid down his cheek, and Kenny resisted the urge to wipe it away with his thumb.

"Craig," Kenny began and faltered on his next words. "Look...you're not alone here—"

Craig slammed his heels into the ground, kicking up a small puff of dirt. "Yeah...I am." He buried his face between his knees, wiping more tears from his face. "I am alone with this!"

"No, you're not!" Kenny told him. "Look, dude...what if I told you that I have a superpower too, one that I don't want to have either; but it's one I'm stuck with, just like you are?"

Craig raised his face from his knees to look at him.

"Oh, bullshit," Craig snarled. "You have a superpower too, huh?" Kenny realized that part of the reason Craig was this angry at him was because he thought Kenny was mocking him. "What...you have the power to clean up nice if someone gives you a bar of soap and some shampoo?"

Kenny sighed, and was about to give him an angry retort when Craig interrupted him.

"Okay, look: I'm sorry, okay? That was mean. But...what do you mean you have a superpower?"

Now that Craig was allowing him an opportunity to speak, it was Kenny's turn to get angry. "You wouldn't believe me if I told you. None of them believed me back then either..." He almost stood up to walk away and then didn't; if his best friends didn't believe him when he tried to explain his curse of immortality when they were kids, then why would this sarcastic asshole?

Craig at least seemed to be starting to become engaged in this conversation, and it was the only thing that kept Kenny from storming away. "Kenny...what the fuck are you talking about?"

Kenny glared at him, suddenly wishing he hadn't take off his costume. It might have added a small amount of credibility to what he was about to say.

"None of my friends ever believed me before, why would you?"

Craig straightened up against the tree he was leaning against. "Kenny, I just watched Cthulhu kill a reporter on live TV; your friends got their pretend superpowers back, something just grounded the whole world's military and said we're the only ones allowed to fight him, and I just incinerated a wasp that almost stung Tweek by firing lasers from my eyes at it. Why wouldn't I believe you at this point?"

Kenny nodded and made a mental note to ask him later about the wasp. "Okay...okay, wow, yeah, you're right." He sighed. "All right...I'll try this again." Kenny scooted closer, leaning his back against the tree, his shoulder an inch from Craig's. "Look dude...I DO have a superpower, all right?" Kenny closed his eyes for a moment and opened them again. "I'm immortal, okay?"

Craig stared at him, not sure what to make of what Kenny had said. "What do you mean, you're 'immortal'? Like...you're never going to die?"

"I mean I can't fucking die, that's what I mean." He shook his head angrily, his own tears now threatening. "No...I mean, I can...and I do all the time..."

Kenny told him everything, about how he died at least once a month (and more when he was younger, sometimes as often as once a week), and then returned within a day or two, and no one ever remembered anything about it.

"I shot myself in the head...twice...when we were kids, the first time that whole Cthulhu thing happened. I told them to fucking remember the second time I did it. But the next day? They didn't remember a goddamned thing...and there were no blood stains on the floor."

Kenny waited for Craig to decide what to say next, and Kenny didn't expect him to respond the way he did.

"Wait a second," Craig whispered. "Okay...just wait." He looked as though he was deep in thought and shifted closer to Kenny, who settled against the tree and waited for Craig to go on. "You know what…what you just said explains something I've always remembered, or at least thought I did….that never made any sense to me. At least until now, if you're telling the truth."

Craig stopped talking, and Kenny waited patiently while he gathered his thoughts.

"You had muscular dystrophy back when we were in fourth grade, didn't you?" Kenny's eyes widened at that question; he had thought no one remembered that. "The school held a benefit for you, and when you died, the town paid for your funeral." Craig's eyes were boring into his, waiting for him to say something to either confirm what he'd said, or tell him he was crazy.

Kenny could only respond with the truth. "Yeah Craig...I did."

"Uh huh! I fucking knew it!" He reached up and angrily brushed tears from his cheeks. "And all these years I thought it was just a dream I had. I sometimes thought I was crazier than Tweek for believing that...but it's true: You did die!"

Kenny could only nod in response.

"And after you died, Marsh was a fucking mess because he said he didn't visit you enough while you were in the hospital, and he told everyone about it who would listen." Craig was studying him carefully, looking for something in Kenny's eyes to contradict what he was saying and not finding it. "I remember going to your funeral and watching them lower your casket into the ground, and oh goddamnit, all that really did happen, didn't it?"

"Yep," Kenny replied at once, closing his eyes painfully at the memory of dying alone in that hospital bed, wondering why Stan never came to visit. Of his many deaths, he hated this one the most.

"You were gone for like a year after that happened, and then one day you just showed up again, and it was like nothing ever happened. And I chose to forget about it, because it was either that, or lose my mind." He scooped up a handful of dirt from between his feet and let it sift back down between his fingers. "You used to disappear for a couple days at a time," Craig finally went on. "And it was because you died in some stupid accident, or got trampled by a herd of cows or something. I used to notice weird shit like that."

"Shit..." Kenny whispered. "I can't believe you actually remember that," Kenny said. "I thought everyone always just forgot..."

"I didn't!" Craig replied. He turned and looked at Kenny with an anguished expression. "I tried to forget because everyone else did, and couldn't."

Craig's lips trembled and he looked away, back at the ground between his feet. Kenny could see he was fighting tears.

"It's okay to cry, you know," Kenny told him quietly.

"No it isn't!" Craig said angrily even as he swiped angrily at fresh tears with the heel of his hand. "I can't cry, Kenny! I can't–! I..." He trailed off.

Kenny studied him for a moment; Craig was obviously moments away from completely breaking down. "Why? Why can't you cry? Because it–" he was about to say because it feels good to sometimes, when Craig interrupted him.

"Because I CAN'T, all right? Because if I do..." his voice hitched. "I'm afraid I won't ever be able to stop."

Craig completely lost it, bursting into tears and burying his face in his forearms while his shoulders heaved with sobs.

"Oh...crap." Kenny reached up, hesitated a moment, then put his hand on Craig's back. "Jesus dude, I'm sorry." He half-expected Craig to pull away, but instead he came closer, hiding his face against Kenny's arm while he wept miserably and Kenny rubbed his back. It took several minutes, but Craig eventually stopped crying, sniffed loudly, and wiped his face against his forearm.

"What a fucked up thing for us to bond over, huh?" Craig said quietly, and Kenny pulled him closer.

"I know, right?" Kenny replied. "You know...it's kind of nice having an ally with something in common, even if it's something stupid like having superpowers that neither one of us asked for."

Craig nodded and sat up straighter. Kenny regarded him carefully.

"I suppose we should probably go back to Cartman's house," Craig said.

"You mean 'the Coon's house'," Kenny replied with a smile. Craig returned it and nodded. "Might as well get used to it...and calling us by our superhero names too. It seems to be what whoever is doing all this wants."

Kenny stood up and offered Craig his hand. Craig smiled weakly and allowed Kenny to pull him to his feet. Once he was standing, Kenny tried to let go, but Craig held on, not letting him.

Kenny looked at him curiously. "Um...dude? What about, um...Tweek?"

Craig shook his head. "That was a long time ago. We've moved on; I mean, we're still friends, but...we're not together any more."

Kenny nodded and squeezed Craig's hand. Craig looked down at their joined hands for a moment, then back up at Kenny.

"So I guess this is all right." He cocked his head. "You really could die any time?"

Kenny nodded. "Yeah. And if I do...don't worry about it too much okay? Because—"

"Because you'll come back the next day like nothing happened, and everyone will have forgotten about it. I wonder if I'll remember we talked about this when the time comes?"

"Let's cross that bridge when we get to it, okay?" Craig nodded. "Right now...we should get back to Cart...I mean The Coon's hideout."

"We have to stop at your house first."

Kenny looked at him curiously. "Why?"

Craig smiled. "Because you guys are supposed to wear your costumes, remember?"