2.
THE ME THAT YOU KNOW.
Once upon a time, Kyle Broflovski had been a straight arrow.
He had his goals, shining beacons dotted about the bull's-eye, ahead of him, and behind him the memories of past achievements, discarded as dead weight. Morally, he sat atop a pedestal; the very definitions of right and wrong etched inside his skull with permanent marker, while he abandoned his appreciation for the greyness of the human condition. His was no halfway house. Everything that opposed him burned and turned to ash, incinerated by nothing more than his fierce, unrelenting will.
Once upon a time, Kyle Broflovski had been a supernova in his own right.
However, as he sped, swiftly slicing through the resistance, a lightning bolt with a sharpened tip trailed by feathers, he had never accounted for the winds. The ruthless winds. The winds that could – would – blow him off course.
As he expected, Kenny was sitting, prone, on his tiny single bed, the duvet a crumpled pile on the floor.
"Hey, Ky." Drawled the blond, grinning obscenely.
The Jew returned his smile, flopping down on the old mattress by his friend's feet. The bedsprings gave a loud creaky complaint as he continued to make himself comfy, throwing his bag onto the floor, closely followed by his old ushanka.
"Dude." Kyle flipped over onto his stomach, hand outstretched towards the other. "How's life?"
Kenny took a long drag on the glass tube before passing it on, the grin fading into a content smirk. "Shit, as always, dude." The redhead gave a little chuckle, sucking in the thick white smoke spewing from the pipe. "Sorry about today. I got, like, caught up and shit. Bebe was all, like–"
Taking another drag, the shorter of the two waved a hand dismissively. "I knew you weren't coming, so it's fine."
"You know I hate leaving you hanging."
Catching the sympathy that undercut Kenny's voice, Kyle scowled. "I know, dude. Don't care." Talking was becoming a little more difficult, his lips pleasantly numb. Almost like being drunk. Actually, quite a lot like being drunk; the little filter between his brain and his mouth suddenly vanished. It seemed as if the same had happened to his blue-eyed companion, who'd started talking about some girl he'd never heard of and her amazing tits.
"I, uh, met someone today."
That snapped the blond out of his little monologue, and he snickered, the familiar perverted smile playing across his features. "Who?"
"Don't know his name. But… I dunno. It was just a conversation, but yeah. The only interesting thing in my whole fucking day." Apart from getting his ass handed to him by Cartman, but that humiliating ordeal hurt his brain too much, so he tucked the memory away for another time.
Another drag and a pause as the boy with the orange parka exhaled, a little cloud drifting upward into the smog that obscured the low, cracked ceiling. "Is he hot?"
"Dude, what the fuck? I'm not a fucking fag."
Kenny scoffed. "Yeah, and the Pope's not Catholic."
"Bubbie, is that you?"
He froze in the doorway, afraid to so much as breathe.
'Shit.'
"Bubbie?" His mom walked through from the kitchen, a frown set on her aging face. Her eyes betrayed her rage, but her words rang of nothing but concern. "Where have you been, Kyle?"
The boy stepped into the house, shutting the front door behind him with a pleasant 'thud'. "I was studying with Kenny, Mom. Sorry I'm back so—"
"Kyle." Oh, fuck. Sheila looked less kind than before, the anger from her glowing eyes slowly radiating out to the rest of her body. Even with her pathetic height, the Jewish woman was a formidable force to be reckoned with; her son daren't test her patience. No, not today. "You know what the rules are, young man."
The statement was true: he did know the rules of the house. He knew them so well that he could recite them off the top of his head while juggling knives and writing a love sonnet simultaneously. But, he was sixteen, and he would be damned if he kept to that sodding, useless curfew. Nine thirty? How old did they think he was? Thirteen?
In all actuality, they'd already argued the laws of the land to the point of oblivion. The same problem arose time and time again, a point that had nothing to do with the rules and more to do with the tyrant of a woman imposing them and the delinquent of a teenager who had the nerve to challenge her. Simply put, the two redheads were far too alike for any good to come of it; both had the very same passionate, turbulent, explosive qualities to their personality that left the other two members in their family trying to put out the flames.
Obviously, neither Kyle nor Sheila would ever admit that they shared more than just hair colour. Maybe hubris was genetic?
"Why are you back half an hour past your curfew?"
The dreaded question. The Jewish boy bit the inside of his lip, still faintly numb from his one major vice. No matter what he said now, no matter how good his excuse was, he would be grounded.
And that was the last thing he needed.
"I was with Kenny, we have a project to do for English, and we were making a start on it tonight. I didn't mean to be back so late, but the first bit took a lot longer than we thought it would."
Plausible, but not foolproof. If his mom didn't believe him, he knew she'd phone up the school and demand knowledge of this non-existent English project, which would leave him grounded for even longer. But, if it got him out of trouble and harm's way, then it was well worth it.
"Well, if that was the case, Kyle, then why didn't you call?"
Shit.
Fuck.
FUCK.
He wished he didn't still have that wonderful feeling of floating across an ocean of contentment pricking at the surface of his skin. He wished he could think clearly. He wished he hadn't messed up.
"Look, I'm so sorry mom—"
"Really? Then why didn't you call?" Her voice rose in pitch by a whole octave, her body trembling with pent-up fury. "Why do you never call, Kyle? I didn't raise you to be this selfish! Think of us, Kyle. Think of us, sitting here, wondering if something happened to you on your way home from school; if you're off doing something totally irresponsible—"
The remainder of the lecture sounded more like static buzzing in his ears, like a million bees flying about his head in orbit. Her painted pink lips were moving, but the only sound her vocal chords could make was nothing more than white noise.
Standing impassive at the foot of the stairs, he watched as her movements became more and more exaggerated, her face darkening to mimic the pigmentation of her curly hair. The teenager saw her get more worked up, more angry and more righteous in her condemnation of his actions.
"GO TO YOUR ROOM, KYLE! I WILL NOT HAVE YOU DISRESPECTING THE RULES OF THIS HOUSE!!"
It was the same every fucking time.
Every. Fucking. Time.
Underneath a bed, locked inside a box, stashed in a hidden compartment lay a book. Inside the book, stashed inside a compartment, locked inside a box, underneath a bed, there were hundreds of scribbles. Messages, written in a cryptic cipher, spanned the pages, drawings and cut-outs wedged between, glued securely or fastened with copious amounts of tape.
Inside the book lay the ramblings of a madman.
Or, if not the workings of a madman, those of one standing on the precipice, staring down into the abyss.
The cool, muted rays of morning light brought a new perspective to the small town of South Park. Streets, often so tired and weary from the frosty climate, paint starting to peel and foundations groaning silently under the weight of the snow, were given new life. Children on their way to school walked alongside their elders who trampled dutifully to work. November air worked its wonders, and, soon, the place was animated; not on the same scale as a city, no, never, but the inhabitants were out and about, bravely venturing into the snow and ice like only they knew how.
And, standing and watching this fascinating transformation, was Christophe.
Atop a whitewashed hill with his trusty shovel clutched in his muddy, calloused hands, he contemplated leaving the safety of the woods for the energy of the town. It wasn't a welcoming prospect; the school sat on the other side of the settlement, just beyond the hospital he so fervently avoided.
Gun shot wounds and the like weren't terribly inconspicuous. Besides, he didn't want to die of exsanguination in the emergency room because of a stab wound in the gut, while he waited on incompetent doctors to come to his aid.
'On fait son petit bonhomme de chemin, non? Ce qui ne tue pas rend plus fort.'
It was times like this he missed his homeland. The powder white snow, the smell of mountain air… His little town of Annecy, so old and so beautiful, was so very, very far from this corner of hell. Paris was closer, the faint memories of le Tour D'Eiffel at night, in all her glory, illuminated by that stunning golden light, were still more vivid than those of his birthplace.
The brunette cursed his mother, the fucking bitch, and her worthless faggot of a lord for dragging him across the shitting Atlantic. For what purpose? Distance. His mother was a weak-willed woman, too terrified of her own past to remain in Europe; too terrified of her future to leave the ways she'd vowed to cast aside.
Ha. The hired hand had lived more life in his sixteen measly years than she had in her thirty-five long ones.
A yellow bus trundled along one of the slick roads, wheels wrapped in chains for traction's sake. His eyes, a dark, foreboding shade of brown, closer to the black pit carved into their heart, follow the vehicle as it winds across the town. In his mind's eye, he could picture them all sitting there, laughing and talking without a care in the world.
Ignorance is bliss.
For a brief moment, he was stilled. Was it wrong to envy their innocence? Possibly. But, it was his own choice to live the life he lived, his own childish need for the exhilaration of the chase, the hunt.
'…The slaughter.'
Hoisting the heavy metal over his shoulder, he began his descent, sliding on the balls of his feet down the steep incline. The weight of the shovel almost set him off balance as he reached the base of the hill, his speed mixed with the all-too efficient grip of his ex-Soviet boots could have resulted in a most unfortunate face-meets-floor accident, if it wasn't for the large tree in his path.
Instead, it was a collision between his face and the solid, frozen bark of the pine.
"…Merde."
Even mercenaries had their off days.
"Dude, where's your hat?"
"Huh?"
"Your hat, dude, what happened to it?"
Kyle looked at Stan as if he'd lost his mind.
"What do you mean, 'what happened to it'?"
The football player pointed at the mass of curls on his friend's head, still confused. "You always wear that hat, man. Did Cartman take it, or something?"
"Uh…" Running a hand through his hair, the redhead gave a sheepish smile and laughed. "No dude, I just… Sorta… Forgot it."
Unimpressed by this, his best friend turned to his locker. "At serious risk of sounding gay, you do look a lot better without it though, dude. That hat made you look like a total fag." Laughing, he started to pull books out and, without checking the subjects on them, piled them into his bag.
However, the Jew didn't share his friend's sentiments. "Hey, that's real nice of you to say so, Stan." Huffing, he started to take his textbooks out of his own locker, grimacing. "You couldn't have told me you hated my hat ten years ago, could you? Oh no. You have to wait—"
"Dude, seriously, fucking chill, alright. I was making a joke. But, you seriously look better without it." He put a hand on Kyle's shoulder, soothing the forever-moody boy. "What's been eating you lately? You're so on-edge, man. I thought only the fatass could piss you off so much."
Yet again, Kyle found himself waving off another's concern with a small smile and lacklustre laugh. "Don't worry about me, Stan. I'm fine. I've just got tonnes of fucking homework and shit to do." The brunette chuckled, the worry in his eyes receding. "See, I'm fine. You guys worry too much about me. Seriously."
Stan smiled, nodding. "You're probably right, dude."
"I know I'm right."
"Well, you would say that." Glancing at the clock on the wall of the hall, he swore under his breath. "Shit. I'm supposed to be meeting Wendy, like, five minutes ago. Uh, bye Kyle! See you in English, yeah?"
Before Kyle had a chance to reply, his 'super best friend' was sprinting down the hallway, dodging the other students like a pro. He didn't want to think about how pissed Wendy would be with Stan, despite how close they'd become over the years. Fuck. It wasn't as if he could follow their relationship, anyhow. Their 'love' was more complicated than calculus, and calculus was a bitch, even with all that 'daywalker' blood running through his veins.
Sighing, he wandered in the general direction of his first class, clutching the strap of his messenger bag like a lifeline.
AN. Yeah, another boring chapter xD I know it may not be terribly good, but I had the sudden urge to write, which is a very rare thing for me. Plus, a super-speedy update! :3 Anyway, this story will probably be quite long, as I'm a bit OCD about unravelling things slowly, even though it annoys a lot of people.
Anyway, read and review~ 3 (Thank you to those who did review ^^; just thought I'd mention it, because you people rock. Seriously.)
AND, the translations for the French:
'One gets on with life, no? What doesn't kill one only makes one stronger.'
Merde = Shit.
Tour d'Eiffel = Eiffel Tower.
xD I just realised I didn't add the french translations for the last chapter. Ooops.
— Coma.