A/N: So, this story gets a lot sappier than anything in canon. (At least, I think it does. I haven't exactly been keeping up with the show and it's...been a while.) So if you don't like/are not in the mood for cheesiness, you might want to click on something else.
Something was wrong with Kenny McCormick.
Not wrong in the sense that he was depressed or upset (though that happened sometimes too.) No, something was viscerally wrong with him. No one could really explain how or why, it was just a feeling. A shiver down their spines as they looked at him, like he shouldn't be there. Like he didn't belong. A flash of black in his eyes betraying a hidden darkness deep inside him. Nobody knew what to do about these feelings, it's not like they could ask Kenny about it, they wouldn't even know how. So they tried to shrug it off. It was ridiculous anyways. This was Kenny, there was no reason to be afraid of him. Hell, he was a fucking superhero, he saved people, he didn't hurt them. His friends especially thought it was ridiculous. They had known him since preschool. They were friends for Christ's sake, they shouldn't fear a friend. (Well, ok, they were still kinda friends with Cartman, and he scared them. But he had actively murdered someone, Kenny had done nothing but be kind of unsettling in their presence.) So they didn't think too much of it. They would get the chills, wonder about it for a minute, then something else would inevitably come along and distract them. It didn't really bother them until one day when they were all 16.
Stan, Kyle and Kenny were all crammed into Stan's dad's car and were driving around town. Kenny was driving. This was something they did often ever since they got their licenses, get out of their houses and just go driving around, even if there was nowhere to go in their small town. Kenny especially loved it, the freedom to leave his house and go anywhere he wanted was intoxicating. He would often borrow his parent's crappy car and go joyriding. Oddly enough, despite his risk taking personality Kenny was a very safe driver, well, he was when someone else was in the car with him. Which is why the accident was such a shock to Kyle and Stan. It was a total freak accident, a truck was speeding down the wrong side of the road coming straight at them. Stan and Kyle panicked. Kenny didn't. He quickly turned the wheel and angled the car so the driver's side was facing the truck, making sure that he got most of the impact. Stan and Kyle were shocked. What was he doing? That could get him killed! "Kenny! No!" They shouted. But it was too late, the truck hit.
In the end Kyle and Stan both walked away with minimal injuries. Kenny did not. The boys were too shocked to say their "oh my god they killed Kenny!" lines. In fact, they didn't say anything at all. Kenny had just given his life to save theirs. Why would he do that? He didn't even have to think about it. It was like his first instinct was to protect them instead of himself. Did he value his own life so little? Despite it not being their fault, Stan and Kyle felt guilty. If he hadn't tried to protect them, maybe he would still be alive. Their parents eventually came to pick the boys up, their injuries not serious enough to have to go to a hospital. They held them close and tried their best to comfort them, but nothing they could say could make them feel better. Their best friend was gone, and there was no fixing that.
Both boys' parents let them take off one day of school to recover, but sent them back the next morning. They said that they knew that they were shaken from the accident, but that they weren't too hurt and they didn't want them to fall behind. They tried to argue that it wasn't the accident but the death of their friend that had them so shaken up but they were cut off and shoved out the door before they could protest. Both headed to the bus stop. Yes, they could drive but neither one had a car, and their parents had to use their cars to go to work. Besides, after the accident neither of them wanted to drive a car for a long, long time.
"Can you believe they're making us go to school today?" Stan complained.
"I know." Kyle agreed. "What, one day and we're supposed to forget our friend died? Move on already? It's outrageous." Stan nodded and looked at the ground.
"It's gonna be weird, you know? Not seeing him there." he said. Now it was Kyle's turn to nod as the bus pulled up. They didn't say anything else as they rode the bus to school. They didn't know what to say. The other kids thought it was weird that they weren't chatting like normal, but they had heard about the car wreck, maybe they were still shaken from that? It wasn't like them to be so shook up about something like that though. They've been in more dangerous situations than that all the time. The two got off the bus and mentally prepared for a long day at school when Kyle spotted something in the courtyard that made him freeze.
"Kyle, what-?" Stan started to ask when he saw it too. Both Kyle and Stan's mouths dropped. Right there, in front of the school, was Kenny McCormick. Alive and well. They both blinked, trying to dispel what was clearly an illusion, but there was no mistaking that bright orange parka. But Kenny was supposed to be dead. They had seen him die! Was this some kind of sick joke? A prank of some kind? Did someone hire a lookalike and put an orange parka on him? "Kenny?!" Kyle asked in disbelief. Kenny turned around at the mention of his name and saw the two boys. His face brightened as he walked over. His friends looked ok, no visible casts or anything. Thank god. He wasn't sure if that self-sacrifice move he pulled was going to work.
"Hey, I saw that you weren't in school yesterday, are you guys ok? I was so worried!" Kenny asked. Ok, definitely not a lookalike, this was really Kenny. But that just raised further questions. Most of them different variations of "what the fuck?"
"You were worried? You were worried?! Dude, I thought you were dead! I saw it! I saw you die!" Kyle shouted right before pulling Kenny into a bone crushing hug. Kyle was getting hysterical, tears in the corner of his eyes. He never thought he would see Kenny again, never thought he'd be able to touch him. But he could've sworn he saw Kenny die. How could he be ok now? And how dare he make him worry like that if he was fine? He felt like he was going crazy. He would've thought he was going crazy if Stan didn't remember it too. He didn't think two people could both go crazy at the same time. Meanwhile, Stan was inspecting Kenny for signs of injury. He even managed to get Kenny's hood down, which Kenny himself was too shocked to notice. He couldn't believe it. They remembered. They actually remembered. But how? Why now? He opened his mouth to say something but Stan beat him to the punch.
"Kenny…you…you look completely fine. You don't even have a scratch on you."
"What?!" Kyle said, breaking the hug and looking over him himself. It was true. Kenny looked completely unharmed, like the accident never even happened.
"Kenny, what the fuck is going on? I can understand how you could survive the crash, but not how you could walk away without so much as a bruise. Even Kyle and I have cuts and bruises and we weren't hurt nearly as bad as you were. How is that possible Kenny? How is any of this possible?" Stan asked, tears dripping down his face. Kenny felt guilty. He didn't mean to make them worry so much. He thought they had forgotten, like every other time.
"I don't know." Kenny admitted. "But I can explain, I promise. Just…not here. There's too many people around. People will think we're crazy."
"I think that I'm crazy." Kyle admitted.
"I know what you mean." Kenny told him. "But you're not crazy, I promise. Just follow me." Kyle and Stan decided to do what they were told. At least Kenny seemed willing to talk. Kenny led them to what he hoped was a secluded enough area, while silently freaking out the whole time. How was he supposed to explain this to them? He wanted them to know but he never actually planned what to say if they did find out. How did they find out anyway? He'd thought it was impossible.
"Ok, no one can hear us. Now, explain yourself McCormick." Kyle said.
"Ok, ok. God, I didn't think I'd ever have to explain this." Kenny said. "Well…the thing is… I can't die. Well…I can, I do, it just doesn't stick. Every time I die, no matter the cause, no matter the method, eventually I just wake up back in my bed, good as new." Stan and Kyle just stared at him in silence, whatever they expected him to say, it certainly wasn't that. Dying and coming back to life? Where did he even come up with something like that? Then again, it would explain a lot, he looked pretty damn dead the last time they saw him. And wasn't this something he mentioned before? When they were kids, playing superheroes, wasn't Mysterion's power that he never died? The memory was kinda fuzzy, it had been a long time ago, they couldn't remember exactly what powers everyone had picked for their superhero game, but that was it, wasn't it?
"Why should we believe you?" Kyle asked. He was actually pretty close to believing him. He knew what he saw that night, and Kenny had definitely died, but a stupid, stubborn part of himself tried to remain rational. People couldn't just come back from the dead….right? Kenny's heart skipped a beat when he heard this. They had finally remembered, but what if they still didn't believe him regardless? He was so close, so close, to having them understand, to having them know. He didn't realize how much he still wanted that until he almost had it.
"Guys, please, you saw me die! Like Stan said, I don't have a scratch on me. I don't have any scars at all. Remember when I cut myself on the can opener three months ago? Look, that scar is gone now." Kenny took off one of his gloves and showed his hand to the guys to prove it. "And don't you think it's weird that Cartman's eyes changed color when he was eight years old? And they're the exact shade of blue as mine? They were my eyes! He used one of my corpses for an organ transplant! And what about in fourth grade when I "recovered" from muscular dystrophy? Yeah, you can't do that. It's impossible. There's no cure for it, it's a lifelong disease. I just happen to have lives to spare." Kyle's eyebrows went up. That was true. He remembered looking up the disease when Kenny first got it and being devastated when he found out there was no cure. He was so happy when Kenny had recovered from it that he didn't question how. Why didn't he question how? "I've caught way more diseases than you guys have combined, and I "recovered" instantly, with no long term effects. Hell, can you even remember seeing me with any long term injuries? Any serious ones? Broken bones don't heal that quickly, you guys have to know that!" Stan and Kyle thought back. Kenny was right, they couldn't remember seeing him with any long term illness or injury. He would be out sick one day and be perfectly healthy the next. That wasn't normal. None of this was normal, how did they not realize that sooner? Kenny was making sense, he was making way too much sense. "I keep dying, and I can't manage to stay dead. I'm not crazy, you're not crazy, and I'm not making this up. Please, you've got to believe me!" The desperation in Kenny's eyes caused Stan and Kyle's minds to go into overdrive. It all added up, Kenny getting out of a car accident without a scratch on him, his lack of a panicked response when the truck came, why he decided to sacrifice himself to save them. Hell, it even explained things from long before the car wreck, like why Kenny was such a daredevil, why they would get an odd feeling sometimes when they looked at him, like shivers down their spine, why he would suddenly disappear in the middle of hanging out together for hours at a time. God, they had even made jokes about that last one! The evidence was overwhelming. It was true. It was all true, Kenny had actually died two days ago, and from the way he was talking, it wasn't the first time.
"Oh my god. Oh my god, Kenny!" Stan blurted out. Kenny's face lit up at Stan's shock. Finally! He did it! He got through to him! Someone finally believed him! "You…. you're fucking immortal dude! You can come back from the dead!" Kenny nodded at both of these statements, not really knowing what to say.
"But….How?...Why?...How is this possible?" Kyle blustered.
"I have no idea." Kenny admitted.
"What's it like to come back to life?" Kyle asked. Kenny opened his mouth to answer but Kyle kept talking. "No, wait, better question, What's it like to die?"
"What's the afterlife like?" Stan cut in.
"Have you met God?"
"Or The Devil?"
"Is Hell even real?"
"How exactly did you die each time?"
"Do you think you'll live forever?"
"How long has this been going on for?"
"How did we not know about this?"
"Why didn't you tell us about this earlier?"
"I tried! Many times! You never believed me!" Kenny shouted, cutting off the question tirade. "I would shoot myself in front of you to try and prove it but you never remembered! I even tried to film myself doing it but the next day the memory card was wiped! You guys have no idea how much it means to me that you finally remember!" Tears were forming in his eyes and running down his face as he said this. Kyle and Stan were stunned by the tears. They were in such a shocked state that they didn't even think about how Kenny had felt about all this. He had died, multiple times, and no one had even remembered it happened. They couldn't imagine what it was like to have to pretend everything was normal after dying the night before. How did he do it? Stan and Kyle gave their best friend a hug, forming two ends of a Kenny sandwich. Kenny returned the embrace and sobbed in relief on his best friend's shoulders. God, he had been going through all this alone for who knew how long. Stan and Kyle felt awful. They were supposed to be his best friends, how could they not have known about this? Even if they did have their memories wiped, shouldn't they have known that Kenny's stories, his excuses, hell, even their own memories, were off? Shouldn't they have seen the pain in their friend's eyes when he came back from a death? Shouldn't they have noticed something was wrong? Hell, they had believed that Kenny had somehow recovered from an incurable illness, so why didn't they believe this?
"Dude, I am so so sorry that I didn't believe you." Kyle told him.
"Me too," Stan added.
It's….It's ok." Kenny said between sobs. "It's not your fault that you couldn't remember."
"No, it's not ok!" Stan insisted. "We should've believed you anyways! This is South Park for christ's sake! Stranger things have happened!" Kenny didn't really have a good response for that. It was true, stranger things have happened to them, though not by much.
"Yeah, but you usually remember those." Kenny told them. "I mean, why wouldn't you trust your own memories?"
"But we should've trusted you!" Kyle insisted. "You had no reason to lie to us."
"It's a crazy story." Kenny admitted. "I'm not sure I would've believed it if it wasn't happening to me. I'm just glad you believe me now."
"Of course we do." Kyle said, hugging Kenny even tighter. "And thank you, so much, for saving our lives."
"It was nothing, really." Kenny insisted. "I can come back, you guys can't. Seemed like an easy decision."
"It's not nothing." Stan told him. "It means a lot. And I'll bet that's not the first time you've done that, is it?" Kenny shook his head.
"No." he admitted.
"Well, thank you, for each and every time."
"Of course, I love you guys." Kenny said simply. Kyle and Stan both got a little misty eyed.
"We love you too dude." Stan told him.
"We do." Kyle confirmed. He broke the hug and instead stared into his friend's eyes. (Eyes that did, in fact, match his sworn enemy Eric Cartman's perfectly now that he thought about it.) "But god Kenny, there was this whole other side to you that we had no idea about. This part of you that we never knew. How much do I really know about you?" He asked, a few tears escaping his eyes. He didn't blame Kenny for his ignorance. Like he said, he tried to tell him, he was the one who didn't listen. He didn't see this side of his friend even when it was staring him right in the face.
"Kyle, you know me, you do. I'm still the fun loving, foul mouthed, loveable sex maniac that you've always known. I just happen to also be immortal, that's all." Kyle giggled despite himself. "Just happen to be immortal" was certainly a sentence that he never thought he would hear. Kenny did have a point, he was still all of those things, but knowing what he knew now gave a lot more context to traits that he originally shrugged off as just quirks. (Except for the "lovable sex maniac" part. He couldn't think of a way that would tie back to his immortality, so that probably really was just a quirk of Kenny's.)
"No, you're a lot more than that." Kyle told him. "You're braver and more selfless than I ever thought you were. Like that superhero game when we were kids, it was more than just a game to you, wasn't it? It always was, you were the one who started it! You used your ability to help people, to save them like you saved us. That's why you did it, isn't it?" Kenny nodded. "We were just a bunch of kids playing pretend, you were an actual fucking superhero, and we had no idea." Kyle looked away from his friend in shame, causing Kenny to look away too.
"Ok, maybe there is a lot you don't know about me." Kenny admitted. "But I promise I'll tell you about all that stuff. It's actually amazing that I can talk about all this with someone and they'll actually believe me. I'll tell you everything and you can get to know that other side of me. No more secrets, ok?" Kenny grasped Kyle's hand, causing Kyle to look into his eyes once more. He nodded. No matter how much he didn't know, how much he missed, Kenny was still one of his best friends, and he was grateful for the second chance to get to know him. If Kenny wanted to talk, he would listen. He would hear him out, get to know the person he really was. He owed him that much, at the very least.
"No more secrets." Kyle agreed, before pulling him in for another hug. "I missed you so much Kenny. I'm so glad that you're back. We were a goddamn mess without you."
"You were?"
"Of course we were." Stan said. Kyle nodded in agreement. "You're our friend dude, you mean a lot to us. Did you think we wouldn't be?" Kenny broke the hug and looked down, not wanting to look his friends in the eyes.
"I dunno." Kenny admitted. "Sometimes when I die it feels like you kinda brush it off? And sometimes it kinda feels like I'm the third wheel in the friend group. Especially since we don't really talk as much with Cartman. Not that I blame you guys for that, I don't want to talk to him either, but…" Stan and Kyle's hearts sank. Did he really think that? That they didn't care? And did they really brush off his deaths? They couldn't remember them, so they didn't know. But it didn't seem like something they would do.
"Kenny." Stan said softly. "I don't think of you as a third wheel. Yeah, me and Kyle are close but you're our best friend too! You're great Ken, you're fun, you're funny, you're a good listener, and you really care about people, more so than we thought." he said, thinking about how Kenny sacrificed himself for them. "Besides, you have the best access to alcohol out of all of us, that alone is worth keeping you around." Stan joked, trying to relieve some of the tension. Kenny gave a small smile, so it looked like it worked. "I know we've been kinda distant sometimes, but honestly? That's because we thought you didn't want to hang out with us anymore."
"What?!" Kenny said.
"Well half the time we made plans you either wouldn't show up or would leave in the middle." Stan explained, coming to a bit of a realization as he did so. "But…. none of that was your fault, was it? All those times, you had died and we just couldn't remember it." Kenny nodded vigorously. He had never thought about how his sudden disappearing acts must have looked to his friends before. First he was frustrated that they couldn't remember the truth, then he was just resigned to it. But of course it was going to look like he'd been bailing on them for no reason if they couldn't remember that he died. How did he not realize that before?
"Yeah, you're right! Of course I wanted to hang out with you! I always do! I just can't control when I die is all. It had nothing to do with you guys, I swear!"
"Kenny, god, all those times we thought you ditched…." Kyle mused. "My thirteenth birthday party when you said you went to see a relative in the hospital?"
"Does it count if the relative was me?" Kenny asked sheepishly.
"When you didn't show up to our study session two weeks ago?" Stan added on.
"Decapitated by a ceiling fan."
"Disappearing right before our first performance when we formed a boy band in third grade?"
"Crushed by an elevator."
"When you were at a rehab facility for physical therapy for six months?"
"Didn't we already establish that I never recovered from muscular dystrophy?"
"I know, but six months Kenny?" Kyle shouted. Kenny just shrugged. He didn't have the answer to that one either. Must've been a glitch in the timeline. He hoped that he never had to lose that much time again, but he checked the calendar every day after a death now just in case.
"Kenny…. that's a lot of deaths. How many times have you died?" Stan asked.
"I lost count." Kenny admitted. "But it's been hundreds."
"Hundreds?!" Both Stan and Kyle shouted. They weren't expecting it to be that high. They were expecting a number in the 20's or 30's, which was still a lot, but hundreds?! "Holy shit dude, that's way too many!"
"I know!" Kenny shouted. "I don't want to die, I really don't! It's painful! It hurts! I try to be careful! But it's like the universe goes out of its way to try and kill me! I've been crushed by a piano, eaten by a giant bird, and impaled on a flagpole, it's like something out of a fucking cartoon! I can't control it! I can't make it stop!" Kenny's tears started up again so Stan took one of his hands and gave it a squeeze in reassurance. God, that sounded awful (and, admittedly, kinda funny, but the way Kenny was crying about it was no laughing matter.) He couldn't even leave his house without risking a horrible demise. Hell, the way his house was he probably couldn't even leave his room.
"I didn't think that you wanted to die Kenny." Kyle told him. "I understand that you can't control it."
"I just want to be normal." Kenny admitted. "I want to be a normal kid who hangs out with his friends, plays video games, and doesn't know what burning to death feels like. I want to not have to scan every room I enter for objects that could kill me. Want to not know exactly how every object in that room could be used to kill me. I want to not worry about hanging around you guys, worrying that if I stand too close then whatever gets me killed would kill you too. I want to just be able to live my life without thinking about death every ten minutes. I just…I just want to live." Stan and Kyle didn't know what to say. How do you reassure a friend about their immortality? Immortality that you didn't even know existed until five minutes ago?
"Look, Kenny, I'm not gonna sugarcoat this, this whole thing is supremely fucked up." Kyle told him.
"Extremely" Stan chimed in. Kenny chuckled a bit in between his sobs.
"It really is." he agreed. But Kyle wasn't done.
"It's horrible, it's painful, it's strange even for South Park, but you don't have to go through it alone anymore. Our little group has tackled so many weird things together, we can tackle this together too. I promise, we'll do whatever it takes to break this curse." Kenny's eyes widened. Break the curse? He didn't really mean that, did he? It was impossible! Stan was shocked too. Were they sure they should be trying to break the curse? What if that was the only reason that Kenny was even alive right now? What if breaking it caused Kenny to become permanently dead? That was the last thing he wanted.
"Kyle, you can't break it. I've tried. I've spent hours researching immortality online and the only things I could find was information on fictional vampires, and hacks to make your character immortal in video games. It's hopeless." Kenny said.
"I don't believe that." Kyle told him. "There has to be a way to fix this. Maybe we can think of something you didn't. You did once tell me I was the smartest kid you knew."
"You're never going to let go of that, are you?" Kenny said with a smile. Kyle's heart leapt at the fact that Kenny was teasing him again. That had to mean that he was feeling at least a little bit better.
"Nope, never." Kyle told him. "Come on Kenny, you're miserable like this. At least let us try helping you before we decide it's impossible. It's not like we haven't done impossible things before!" Kenny sighed. He was both annoyed and kind of touched at Kyle's determination to help him. But that was just like Kyle, once he got an idea in his head there was no stopping him.
"I have a feeling that you're going to look into this with or without my approval, so I might as well let you help me." Kenny said. Not exactly the overwhelming acceptance that Kyle was hoping for, but he'll take it. "But what if we can't break the curse?"
"I don't believe that-"
"What if, Kyle?" Kenny interrupted, his gaze almost piercing through him.
"Then we're gonna have to wrap you in bubble wrap or something so we can keep you safe." Kyle said, only partly joking. "Seriously though, if we can't break the curse, then we'll do our best to help you live with it. We might not remember every time you die but you can tell us when you do, and we'll believe you this time. We can try and look out for you so you don't die as often. And you can talk to us about any of this whenever you want. You don't have to deal with the burden of these memories alone anymore." Kenny looked away, overwhelmed by the show of support.
"Thanks Ky. You guys are such good friends." Kenny said. Stan and Kyle looked guilty, they felt like if they were actually good friends they would've known about all this long before now. But maybe they could make it up to him now that they knew. "But wait, when you say we….you're not going to tell Cartman about this, are you?"
"Oh, fuck no!" Kyle was quick to comment. "Are you insane? You know what he would do to you if he found out?" Horrible images of Cartman torturing Kenny filled his mind. Killing him, ripping him apart, seeing how long he could last before dying ... .and he would never be caught because Kenny would just come back and everyone would forget. No, he couldn't let that happen. Stan's thoughts went in a similar direction and he looked kinda queasy.
"I promise I won't tell him. This stays between the three of us." Stan told him.
"It probably wouldn't matter if you do." Kenny said. "Didn't he once get a call from his future self telling him not to do something, and he still thought it was a prank so he decided to do it anyways?"
"Oh yeah, that's right." Kyle said, reminiscing. Just then the school bell rang, jolting the three away from their conversation. "
Looks like we're late." Kenny said dryly. "We should get going."
"Uh, no. We're not going to school today." Stan told him. "We just found out that one of our best friends since childhood is immortal. And you look like you've gone through the wringer. No, we're taking a sick day, a death day? Whatever."
"Besides, I still want answers to all of those questions I asked earlier." Kyle cut in. "And I have a ton more for you. You promised you'd tell me everything." Kenny nodded. He'd already missed plenty of days of school due to death, what was one more? Stan and Kyle stood on each side of Kenny as they wandered away to nowhere in particular.
As they walked away from the high school Stan saw another flicker of darkness in Kenny's eyes. Stan smiled. He understood why it was there now, or at least a part of it. That darkness inside him was what made it possible for him to be walking alongside him now. The feeling of wrongness came from seeing a dead boy up and around again, looking no worse for wear. Subconsciously they knew that he shouldn't still be there. But he was, he was, and for that Stan was eternally grateful. They were right all along, there was nothing to fear. Kenny may have a darkness inside him but he'd never let it consume him. If an occasional chill in his spine meant that they got to keep Kenny around he'd welcome it with open arms. Maybe the universe thought it was wrong that Kenny returned, maybe it wanted to get rid of him. But to two mortal boys in South Park Colorado, the world was better off with him in it. And that was all that mattered.
