Author Note: Huge, huge thanks to Notebook Chen, xxSay, Dretastic, let's point out the obvious, ticktock1029 and Freddysgirl123 for the reviews! And to everyone who alerted and favourited! I had the largest response to this story's first chapter than any other I've written and it's been wholly positive, thank you all so much!

I meant to say in the last chapter and forgot; I can't promise that everyone will like where this story goes. There's a lot of twists and I tried to make it so nothing is as it seems at first – I hope you'll bear with me. I'm planning to update at least once a week and this might just be the fastest I've ever posted a second chapter. Chapters three through seven are also written already, along with the bulk of all the chapters after that. I got carried away, heh heh. The next chapter of WHY is pending though, I hope not to keep you waiting too long with that. And... that's enough of my nervous rambling. Enjoy! Review! Always take a towel!

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Someone told me long ago there's a calm before the storm, I know – it's been coming for some time...

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Ike finds himself outside the police station later on that day, which seems to have been modified and grown since the last time he was in town. That is not a surprise though, South Park has always been a strange town and the precinct has adapted to reflect that. On the rare occasions his father has reminisced about the town, he has mentioned how at one point it was small enough to be policed by a single cop with the aid of the Denver department, but by the time Ike started school there was a larger force. It seems that now there are even more cops, but there is a good chance that there will be someone who remembers his brothers case. This is not the city after all, in small towns cops tend to be a part of the community, a local, and remain at the same precinct for large parts or even the whole of their careers.

He explains himself to the young police woman on the desk, who looks about the same age as Ike himself. She does not seem very impressed with his story about finding out more about his brothers case, but speaks to someone on the phone and it appears to be a slow day in town, because twenty minutes later a red-haired cop appears. Ike finds him vaguely familiar, but it could be his imagination he supposes. The cop introduces himself as Sergeant Yates and asks Ike to come to his desk, in an open plan office on the ground floor. There are a few people around, but they don't seem to be paying much attention to Ike, nor are they working especially hard. There is occasional laughter, the ringing of phones. It's different from what TV has led Ike to think.

"Kyle Broflovski." Yates sits at his chair, looking at Ike sympathetically. "I caught that shout. I'd had dealings with him before, and with you. Kyle came to us when you got into that thing with your teacher. Nice." He smirks without malice and Ike blushes, wondering not for the first time if that nightmare was what put him off women for life. And remembering how it was Kyle who was there for him then.

He taps on the file and Ike surmises, correctly, that Yates retrieved it when he heard who was looking for him and why. "There's not much to tell you that you won't already know. A guy taking a walk with his dog found your brother below the observation deck we've got over town – seemed like a good idea at the time to build the thing, you can see the whole of South Park from up there. But you have to drive or it takes too long, and then you have to walk some of it anyway. Damn cold and wet in the snow and it's pretty much always snowing. So it's not the popular spot the mayor thought it'd be. Pure chance he was found so quickly, with the weather being what it was. Guy might have walked past if it wasn't for the dog."

Ike envisions his brother, gradually buried beneath a layer of snow, some nondescript mongrel sniffing at his barely-exposed arm. He shivers and Yates must see it, because he moves on.

"It was ruled an accident." Yates opens the file to check a couple of details. "His back was broken and there was damage to his skull, consistent with a fall. The fence up there was lousy, still is. The wind was coming in from the north, it was slippery underfoot. The theory was, he got a faceful of wind and snow, slipped back, fell right over the railing. Landed just right for the fall to kill him outright. An hour or so later the snow might have broken his fall, but the hill protected the ground where he landed from getting too covered. And then the wind changed, so it started covering him."

"Sergeant." Ike catches Yates's eye and holds it, hoping that a mask of calm will get him the honesty he needs. "If it was that late and that unpleasant, then why was Kyle there at all? He didn't have a car. I know you must have thought of that, so I need to know – did you call it an accident for my parents sake?"

"You're smart." Yates closes the file again. "We wondered how he got there, yeah. There was no reason for him to be there, no girl for him to go sneaking around with, no one else with him to raise the alarm. So, we considered the suicide theory too."

Suicide, sneers Kyle in Ike's mind. As if.

"A lot of kids feel depressed and don't show it outwardly," continues Yates. "And some of them feel like there's no way out. That didn't seem to be the case with Kyle though, he seemed normal and happy enough, but who can tell sometimes? The injuries weren't really consistent with suicide though. If he'd jumped, he would have fallen forward – but it could have been that he'd changed his mind, tried to climb back up and slipped, fallen backward. It still didn't sit right though, the observation deck just isn't high enough to be certain of success and there were no drugs or alcohol in his system that might have clouded his judgement. And kids who make cries for attention usually make sure someone's gonna find them right away, so they do live. It can't be ruled out entirely, it's not like there were witnesses, but it's not very likely. I'd bet my retirement fund he wasn't planning on killing himself when he went up there."

Ike nods. He expected that dissection, he has turned the possibility in his head for ten years and returned to the same conclusion every time. Which leads to the question he has been dreading giving voice to. He expects that Yates will be pissed at him for asking, might not give him the time of day any more, but he has to know.

"Did you consider there could have been someone else up there with him?"

Yates sighs and Ike braces himself to be told off, like some child who has pushed good humour too far. Instead, Yates merely shakes his head and speaks, outlining the theories to Ike. And why not? The case is closed and there is nothing confidential about it.

"Are you implying that your brother may have been murdered Mr Broflovski? Because we did examine that theory too. We weren't anxious to just close the case and have a doughnut, no matter what some people think about small town police forces."

"You didn't find anything?"

"Not a thing. Kyle had people who didn't like him, but there are degrees and remember, he ended up dead."

Like I could forget thought Ike bitterly.

"His school friends spoke well enough of him," said Yates. "Not all of them liked him, but none of them seemed to hate him and they didn't mention him being bullied. We looked at the hate crime angle, we got a lot of pressure about that one. Kyle was a Jew and there's been several Anti-Semitic incidents in town over the years. And of course, one of Kyle's peers was Eric Cartman." Yates gives a wry smile and Ike can almost read his mind. Yates does not like Cartman, even after all these years. "There were rumours that Cartman was involved in the Hitler Youth organisation, white power and that kind of thing. But it was just rumour. Cartman went out for chicken that night, time confirmed by the receipt and workers. His mother had a gentleman caller, who vouches that he returned with the food and never left the house until the morning. He wasn't involved."

Yates glances around, leans his head on his hand, elbow on the desk. "There was just no evidence of anyone having been with him anyway. Kyle had no bruises on him that might have indicated any fighting, his wallet was in his pocket, he was clean. And the only half-assed theory I had that involved someone else didn't include Eric Cartman."

Ike glances at him sharply. "You suspected someone then?"

"Not seriously. It was even less plausible than the suicide theory." Yates takes his head from his hands and folds his arms over the desk. "But people talk and it's one of the things that still sometimes gets mentioned over the whole Broflovski case." He sighs, as if trying to work out the best way to word things.

"Kyle's best friends were two boys called Stan Marsh and Kenny McCormick, reports say that the three were more or less inseparable. Earlier that day, Mr Marsh was playing in a football match – he was the star quarterback, that boy could have made a real career out of the game. But he got into a bad tackle that day, taken off in an ambulance. I remember it well, I was right there watching the game and that was nasty. Stan Marsh was the best hope the Cows ever had of winning the State Championship and most of the town were at the game, but that dogpile ended any hope of going all the way right there. Kyle and McCormick went with him to the hospital. McCormick left, but Kyle stayed awhile. Mr Marsh spent a couple hours in surgery, got out, but he was unconscious until the next day. Pain meds, general anaesthetic. Kyle was told to leave and come back in the morning. Only we know he never went back."

Yates drums his fingernails against the desk quietly. "McCormick was seen at the hospital, but he left before Kyle did, to pick up Mr Marshes things apparently. Kyle went to his place afterwards instead of home, stayed maybe two hours we were told. Then he left and went to the observation deck. Kenny McCormick was the last person to see your brother alive. There were two things wrong with his story though. First, the timing isn't right. From the time Kyle left the hospital, to getting to the McCormick's slum, spending two hours there and then walking to the observation deck – he didn't have the time. Forensics put Kyle as dead before he would even have been all the way there. It would have worked if he drove there, but we know Kyle didn't have a car with him that day."

Ike shakes his head. "It must just have been less time than he thought."

Yates nods. "That's the opinion. But between leaving the hospital and being interviewed by the police once Kyle had been found, McCormick had been given a damn good beating, by persons unknown. He was, pardon my French, half-way to fucking killed. He had his hood up when I talked to him, but cops notice these things. Black eyes, split lips and he moved like he was in pain. Breathing like an asthmatic. Said he'd been in a scrap with his brother, but that was a lie. Kevin McCormick was in a drunk tank in Denver that whole weekend."

Ike half-gets to his feet, leaning across the desk, eyes wide. "But then, he could have been the one who~"

"No, he couldn't." Yates stands, puts a hand on Ike's shoulder to sit him down again. "Like I said, McCormick had been in a fight, but Kyle hadn't. No signs on his body, or his hands. His knuckles would have been bruised to hell if he'd done that to McCormick and they weren't. And McCormick's hands were torn up. He got some licks in – just not to Kyle. Even if he'd been there with Kyle, the state he was in, he could never have gotten home without transport."

He shakes his head. "And there was no motive. Everyone said that Kenny McCormick thought the world of his friends, they hadn't fought, they'd been seen together as friends that day. And I was the one who told McCormick what happened to Kyle." Yates's voice softens. "I've never, ever seen anything like that. It was like something inside him just – broke. You can't fake that much grief. I'm convinced he had nothing to do with it."

Yates sighs again. "Things rarely get wrapped up in a neat little package in police investigations. Yes, there's still things we don't know about that night and things we never will. Inconsistencies, questions. But that's the nature of death. Without witnesses, there's only the line that the evidence leads us in and in Kyle's case, the evidence says he was the victim of a stupid accident and we don't know why. And that's all I can tell you."

Ike nods. "It's pretty much what I was expecting, but thank you Sergeant. Can I just ask, did you tell Stan about Kyle's death too?"

"No." Yates frowns slightly, trying to remember. "I only spoke to him once afterwards. He already knew. It was just routine, there wasn't much he could have known, with him being in the hospital under sedation the whole night. He was – flat. Not emotionless, more as if he didn't dare show anything. I've seen it before, it's a coping mechanism. The person convincing themselves it's all a dream or a mistake and of course, he was still on some heavy painkillers, doped to the back teeth. He answered the questions, didn't tell me anything new and that was that. Except I was still having problems with what McCormick told me and when I asked how he and Kyle had got on, if they'd had a falling out – huh."

He smirks a little at the memory. "Let's just say it was a good thing Mr Marsh was strung to the ceiling in a cast, because I'm convinced he would have chinned me if he'd managed to get off the bed and he wasn't a small man. That was when he showed his anger... and his hurt. But his parents moved to Denver when he was transferred out of Hells Pass. They had a better physical therapy programme there I heard, and he wasn't going to play football again, but he might learn to walk without a limp."

"I guess there sure as hell wasn't anything left for him in South Park," muses Ike."One weekend and his best friend dies, another gets beaten half-way to hell and some out of town thugs ruin his chances of going pro."

Yates gives him a startled look. "Out of town thugs? It wasn't the other team who busted Mr Marshes leg. There was some kind of confusion on the field and he was smashed by three guys at once, all playing for the Cows."

Ike's eyes widen. "His own team? What happened? Didn't they get into trouble for it?"

"The three involved were cut from the team." Yates shrugs. "No big loss really, none of them were good enough to go pro, college football perhaps. And the Cows weren't going to be able to cut it without Marsh, so it wasn't going to make a difference to the team as a whole. I had fifty bucks riding on that game, but mostly I remember it because of what happened after, your brothers case and because of Marsh getting creamed. But even before he got hit, the game was going down the fucking pan. No one could get the ball to the quarterback, it was like the guy was invisible because it went in every direction but his. And then when he finally intercepted it – whammo!"

Yates emphasises his point by using his left fist to knock his right hand back onto the table. "A needless accident, caused by total stupidity and a team that didn't communicate well enough. Wish there'd been another way for them to learn their lesson."

Ike bites his lip, staring into the distance. "It seems to have been the weekend for accidents."

"Those three boys had a shitty run of luck," agrees Yates quietly. "But that was all it was."

For a moment Ike is quiet, then he returns his focus to Yates. "I was hoping to talk to Kenny, but he didn't answer the door earlier. Do you know if he's...?"

"Dead?" Yates shakes his head. "I haven't heard if he is, but I don't always. Far as I know, he's alive and kicking – but McCormick isn't exactly Mister Sociable. See him around sometimes, locked him up once, but I see him more often when I peel the corpse up from somewhere and send him off to the morgue. You know, with the reunion this weekend, he might just be ignoring the door altogether. I don't think he's got fond memories of Park County High."

"I thought of that." Ike worries his lower lip a little with his teeth. "Are you allowed to tell me why you locked him up?"

"Bar fight." Yates meets his eyes. "You don't see Kenny McCormick in the bar much, more his dads thing, but him and Stuart were together that night. Some things were said, accusations made and McCormick dragged the guy outside and pounded him into the ground." He raises an eyebrow, the warning clear. "Something you might want to consider before you go finding out what he has to say about things."

Ike nods slowly, thanks the officer and shakes his hand before taking his leave of the station. He had already known the bare details of Kyle's death, but there was only so much he was told back when he was a kid and not much he felt he could ask his parents about it later on; a lot of what Yates has said is new to him.

He can remember Stan's injury for himself, heard something about it the night it happened, back when he had assumed Kyle was still alive. But he does not recall the details, just Stan in a wheelchair at the funeral, the stark white of his cast contrasting with the dark clothes of everyone else. That Kenny was hurt too is not something he remembers, trying to think of the blonde on the same day he remembers only that he was hiding behind his damn overgrown hair and keeping his head bowed. It fills him with unease. Stan's injury might have been mishap but the circumstances of Kyle's death remain unknown and that Kenny was hurt too – it's a hell of a coincidence.

Could it be something to do with the reason Kyle was so far from where he should have been that night?

He stands outside the police station for a moment, looking around the street. It is as he remembers the town from the days before Kyle died, everyone going about their business, most of them knowing each other and giving a friendly greeting or occasionally, looking pointedly in another direction. Small-town fallings out. His own mother was strident and opinionated enough to have had her fair share of those, back in the day. He shoves his hands in his pockets, realising they are quite cold now he is outside, and his fingers touch the edge of the beermat he wrote Kenny's address on. Kenny was not home – but there was someone else Henrietta suggested and that person at least is unlikely to have gone anywhere.

There is a man approaching him and Ike gives him a friendly smile, asks for directions to the street where Tweek Tweak lives. The man is ungracious but his directions are clear enough and Ike thanks him and goes on his way, realising only after he has almost reached the end of the street that the reason the man seems vaguely familiar is because it is his old kindergarten teacher, Mr Garrison. He's aged a great deal and seems to have settled on the one gender, but Ike is certain it's him – almost certain. Now the man is out of sight, Ike wonders if he has superimposed the teachers likeness onto a stranger with vaguely similar characteristics. As if he is expecting all his old ghosts to haunt him while he is here.

He presses on, walking down another street and passing one of the landmarks the man who might have been Garrison mentioned, the Mayors office. It was here that the major announcements were made and where most of the riots that occasionally plagued the town kicked off, where the Christmas tree was lit every year. Although Christmas was a touchy subject in the Broflovski household, Kyle took him to the switch-on every year since Ike turned five, keeping a tight grip on his little brothers hand until the year Ike deemed himself too adult for such a thing. Ike had watched the tree with anticipation, barely listening to Kyle and his friends talk. Stan would be reminiscing about past adventures and hoping for new ones, while Cartman would spew forth a seemingly endless list of things that he wanted, pausing only to rag on Kyle and Kenny; Kyle for being Jewish at Christmas and Kenny for being too poor to get good gifts. Both boys would respond with an angry fuck you fatass whenever his attention fell to them. But the older boys had more or less ignored Ike and their chatter had gone over his head almost totally.

The only person outside the mayors office at that point is a small boy of maybe seven, picking solemnly at a scabbed knee and Ike moves on. Further into town, it is even more like being swallowed by his own past and he realises uneasily that his route will take him past the end of the street he grew up on. He has a morbid urge to run to the house and ring the bell, wait for the new people to emerge and bombard them with questions. Did they keep Kyle's room the same? Because his mother had, as if expecting him to return. Did they paint over the marks where his father recorded their heights every year on their birthdays? They'd been there the day the Broflovski's left for good. Did they have any idea of what secrets the two boys had shared with each other and the ones they hadn't while they had lived there? Because Ike clearly had not known them all.

He doesn't go. A house is just a house and seeing it again will do him no good. Worse, he can already tell he is leaning to melancholy and their old home will make that much more severe.

There in the distance, the bus stop they would wait at every morning so they could be taken to school; he had followed Kyle to it more than once until it was his own turn for education and he'd learned that Kyle wasn't having as much fun without him as he'd assumed. If he takes a right, he will end up at the train tracks, near where Stan and Kenny lived on opposite sides of the divide. He takes a left instead, realising that it is all coming back to him and although he has not been here for a long time, he barely needs to think about the directions that maybe-Garrison gave him. He knows how to retrace his steps to get to the sandbox where he sometimes played as a child and where, Kyle once told him, their father had gotten high, stripped to his underwear and fought nine-year-old Kenny over a pair of imaginary breasts. He knows the shortcut that will take him to the park, the dilapidated basketball court, the school. The spot beside the school, next to a field, where the Goth kids hung out with their cigarettes and their music, allowing Ike to be there with them because there was nowhere else he could stand to go. The only place in town it seemed, that Kyle had never been and Ike was not watching for his arrival.

This town is full of ghosts, says Kyle and Ike nods to himself, agreeing. The ghosts of what happened back then rather than the literal ones, more real than some floating vapour. He returned to exorcise those ghosts, but he is starting to feel as if twenty-two year old Ike Broflovski, successful and independent, is the real shadow.

He thinks back to the people his brother called friends back then, people who have been hazy and unreal in his mind for a long time, but being back here and being able to see the places his memories were formed has brought them back into sharper focus. Stan Marsh, tall and handsome and completely devoted to Kyle; a peaceful animal lover who either didn't notice or didn't care about his own popularity, he played football for the love of the game and not the attention it brought. Kenny McCormick, possibly best described as a loveable pervert, perpetually scruffy, easily pleased and equally devoted to Kyle – he had quite literally died for him. And Cartman, foul mouthed and fat with a streak of genuine malice, yet it was he out of all Kyle's friends who was there for Ike at school after Kyle had died, not cloying but asking after him, looking out for him. Ike chose to believe it was out of respect for Kyle that he did so, there was certainly no other reason behind it.

And Kyle himself, pragmatic and smart and fiercely loyal to the people he loved. Always full of life and trying to solve the mysteries behind the world with his own brand of no-nonsense logic, sometimes leaping into flights of crazed fancy when he over-thought the issue too much. That night, Kyle had been at the observation deck for some unknown reason, Cartman had been at home with his fried chicken, Stan had been in the hospital still blissfully unaware his dreams of going pro had been forcefully ended and Kenny had been... where?

Ike pauses at the end of Tweek's street and takes a deep breath. Maybe Yates was right and there are no answers. Or maybe it's been long enough and people are tired of keeping their secrets. Either way, Ike intends to get every piece of information from everyone he can. Starting with the only person who knew Kyle back then that he knows where to find.