Chapter Text
I am writing this while I should be studying for my anatomy class. Enjoy!
***
Stan supposed everything went wrong right about the time he turned ten years old.
Everything began to feel like shit. All the time. Over the course of a few days, his friends left him, his parents ignored him, Kyle left… and eventually, he tried to numb the pain in the only way he really knew.
Alcohol.
It was effective, but it took quite a bit to knock Stan into any sense of normalcy. He’d only been drunk enough for it to work a few times, and his intoxication was so beyond obvious to the people around him that he eventually had to give it up entirely.
But then the world felt like shit again.
So, he tried to get used to it. He acted like everything was fine, and everything was normal again. For a while, he felt like he could actually do it. Maybe his mask would even become reality and his years of depression could be left behind as a distant memory.
And then Kyle died.
It was so sudden, a mystery, they’d said. Their only clue was the two puncture wounds on his neck. No fingerprints, no footprints, no motive… nothing. The case was cold before the heat left his body.
Stan made it through the funeral, but after that… he just collapsed.
His parents had the discretion to keep alcohol away from him at least, but the pain was just too much. He couldn’t drag himself out of bed, it took too much energy to even wake up some days and when he did, all he wanted to do was go back to sleep.
Kenny, Tweek, Butters and sometimes even Craig tried their best to reach out to him and help, but it quickly became obvious that this was not the same Stan. He was barely a shell of himself, and eventually, he stopped responding to their texts and calls. Hell, he wouldn’t even respond to his mom when she tried to talk to him.
First they tried therapy, then they tried medication, and eventually they just sent him to a psych ward.
But nothing helped. Not really. Stan just got better at hiding it.
And he found… different ways of coping.
***
During his time at the psych ward, one of the other boys talked about cutting. Stan thought it was counterintuitive at first. How do you numb pain by causing yourself even more pain? But, a few days after he came back home, he understood. He was just curious, and his acting had eased the nerves of even the most suspicious doctors, so his parents left him alone for a little while.
He took apart one of his sister’s razors. It was a cheap little thing, so it broke fairly easily. But the blades were sharp, and that was what he needed.
He sat against the door of the bathroom, rolled up his sleeve, and slid the blade along his wrist.
At first, the pain was stinging, burning up his arm but eventually it turned into a dull throb as he bled on the bathroom floor.
Calm washed over him as blood seeped out of the wound. It was a relief unlike anything he had ever felt before, the world didn’t seem quite so shitty anymore, in fact, it felt almost normal. He sat there for a few moments, watching the blood, his blood, drip down his arm with a sick sense of satisfaction.
The pain throbbing up his arm was cosmic justice, though it didn’t even scratch the surface. As soon as the bleeding slowed, he cut again, the same stinging feeling turning into a sense of relief as his wrist cried onto the yellowing tiles.
He was calm. He was steady. He was in control.
Once he was finished, he quickly wrapped the wound in some gauze, meticulously scrubbed the bathroom floor with some bleach, and placed the precious blade in his nightstand drawer.
***
That was four years ago.
Stan was sixteen now. Six years of the world feeling like shit and four years of having to slice his arm to feel better.
And he was tired.
Tired of trying to pretend. The cutting wasn’t enough anymore, alcohol was off the table, and therapy taught him nothing more than how to pretend.
So, he looked to the only way out he could think of.
The one Kyle had taken. A permanent solution, but a solution all the same.
Death.
***
Stan had planned out his last day on earth almost down to the minute. He would go to school, slip the letters into Kenny’s, Tweek’s, Butters’, Craig’s, and Shelly’s lockers at the end of the day, leave a letter at his mom’s house, drop a note at his dad’s, go to Kyle’s grave, and… end it in the mountains nearby.
It was perfect, and it all went according to plan.
Kenny had detention, Tweek and Craig left early, and Butters and Shelly had to stay late for debate, so it wasn’t too hard to get the letters into their lockers without them noticing. His mom had been busy, so he got away with a short talk before leaving the letter on his bed.
His dad yelled drunken slurs at him for a while, but eventually just gave up and passed out on the couch. Stan set the note on the table and walked out.
And that left… Kyle’s grave.
Stan went there fairly often. The therapist had told his parents that it was a healthy way to move on, so they had let him do it. In reality it probably made it worse, but that didn’t mean he wanted it to stop.
Walking the path he had made in the snow time and time again, he knelt down in front of his grave, and took a deep breath.
“Kyle… I’ll see you soon, okay? I’m sorry for being such a bad friend while you were alive… I was such an idiot. My problems shouldn’t have become yours. Hopefully, the pain will be gone by the time I meet you… wherever you are, and we can be super best friends again.
I love you, Kyle. We’ll be together soon enough.”
Stan stood up, got in his car, and drove up into the pass, parking his truck at the side of the road. There was a small, barely maintained trail there that led to a beautiful cliffside view of the town. He decided that would be as good a place as any to bleed out into the snow.
***
As he hiked, he got the eerie feeling that someone or something was watching him. As he kept moving, the feeling followed, ebbing and flowing at the edges of his consciousness with every step he took up the hill.
The night was clear, quiet, and dark. The starlight cast ghostly shadows across the mountainside, and the biting winter cold snuck under his many layers of clothing, chilling him to the bone.
As Stan approached the spot he had chosen to die, he heard the great, tall pine trees swaying in the canyon wind, creaking on ancient trunks, before abruptly pausing as soon as it started in an almost consuming silence.
No animal cries. No wind. Just the sound of his own breathing and his sneakers crunching into the snow.
It was far too quiet to be normal, but he was far too tired to care.
He sat down and pulled out the small blade from his sister’s razor. He used a more durable razor now for the cutting, but he figured that the first blade that sliced his wrist should be the blade that would take his life.
And, with barely any hesitation, he rolled up his sleeves and began to cut.
As he pushed the blade deeper and deeper, more blood began to spurt out. He turned to his other wrist, pushing it into his white flesh as dark spots floated in his peripheral vision. He moved to do it again when he heard the trees next to him shuddering and creaking again under some sort of weight.
Stan turned and looked up to find a pair of wide green eyes staring directly at him.
He screamed and jumped up, heart pounding, black spots swimming in his vision as he tried to stumble away. Whether it was out of instinct or a sudden change of heart he didn’t know, but he only made it a few paces before immediately crashing to the ground, moving in and out of consciousness as the snow around him stained crimson.
The figure jumped down from the trees and stalked towards him with an almost predatory fervor.. Stan struggled to move through the snow, but it was no use. His hands trembled as he lost strength in his limbs, almost like he could feel his body shutting down…
As it got closer, the figure began to look sort of familiar… at least, in Stan’s blood loss addled brain. It was tall, taller than Stan, and it almost seemed to glide as it moved into the moonlight, revealing a mess of red curls, a long, aristocratic nose, and glinting fangs.
What was it… or who…?
And suddenly, he knew.
“Kyle…” He choked out what could almost be an expression of surprise, but the world was dimming….
Kyle crouched down next to him, his cape sweeping around his form as he turned his friend on his back with almost supernatural ease.
The last thing Stan saw before losing consciousness were those familiar green eyes carrying a deep, unfamiliar sense of worry.