Well! I've got some good news, and I've got some bad news! The good news is that HOLYSHITONASHITPANCAKE I have actually returned to update this story after a freak wave of inspiration. The bad news is that it has in fact been an entire year since I've done so, and that this chapter is really more a transition into the next chapter than anything else. But let's ignore the bad news for right now! Woohoo!

For anyone that is still reading this... my god, you have no idea how incredibly sorry I am. My lack of willpower should really have me imprisoned for life. But to everyone that has reviewed and given me support over the years (see how pathetic that sounds?): you are my muses. Honestly. My life has been so hectic that I hadn't even noticed until recently how much I FREAKING LOVE AND MISS this fandom and this community.

So let me buy you all a steak dinner and we'll call it even!

Chapter Thirteen — Homeward Bound

Sleep was impossible that night. God knows I tried; I wanted to get the figurative taste out of my mouth. Until that point, everything about that afternoon had been like some distant, childhood nightmare. I’d never spoken a word of it to anyone, and somehow that silence had served as a blanket to muffle the memory with. Being forced to relive that experience – and the nightmares that had accompanied my entire middle school career – just to satisfy Damien’s morbid curiosity... it was like tearing open a wound that had never properly healed over in the first place. Every time I rolled over and closed my eyes in an attempt to get some sleep, I saw that creature’s broken and mutilated corpse plastered to my eyelids. Retching emptily into the sheets in a cold sweat was getting really old, really fast. But every time I flung my sheets off and made to get up and beat the living shit out of Damien for opening up this can of worms... I realized with a pang of humiliation that I just couldn’t bring myself to be angry at him.

I should’ve been. I should’ve wanted to kill him. None of this – none of this – was his business, and I still couldn’t bring myself to accept that he’d seen any of it. We would’ve seen him first.... I brought the heels of my palms up to my eyes, nose stinging. He’d given me a dream – a dream, without any solid grounding in reality, a dream that could’ve been symbolic for anything – and I’d had to hand him the single most humiliating moment of my life on a platter. He was such... a fucking... piece of shit.... I swallowed heavily in an effort to push back the nausea. But he... fuck, he....

The only people that had known about what happened in the woods behind the school that afternoon looked down upon me after the incident with the same utter lack of remorse. I would catch glimpses of guilt in Kyle’s face every now and then, but I never got an apology, and I was pretty sure that he was more concerned with his clean record than my emotional well-being. But Damien, who’d been a self-satisfied asshole throughout our entire stint across Colorado, who looked so fucking ridiculous all tangled up in his sheets wearing the most repulsively paisley pair of boxers I’d ever seen in my life... I laughed inwardly. He’d actually reacted to the story with something like compassion. And for the life of me I couldn’t figure out why. A part of me – a big part of me – wanted to believe that he had looked on with pity back then for the same reason he’d shown me mercy that night in Middle Park, or sat with me in that Motel 6 bathroom for hours with a cup in his hand. That, whether he had remembered me or not those few chance times we ran into each other over the years... some part of his subconscious had stowed away the memory of a stupid little blonde kid who’d held out his hand to him... and that, maybe, that kid had meant something to him. It was a ludicrous, conceited idea... but it kept me from hating him, and I liked the feeling of warmth it sent through my stomach. It was better than the nausea, in any case.

The night was still restless, and any sleep I did get was punctuated by rapid-fire images of blood and gore and black hair... but I was... okay. And that was sort of incredible.

o o o

I didn’t give Pip time to wake up and fake casualness. The second I woke up, I was out of there. There were a few things I still needed before attempting to pull all of this off.

It was actually kind of unbelievable, how easily I slipped back into my old routine when Pip wasn’t around. For one, I was much more ritualistic about my actual method of transportation. I just didn’t have the time for it when he was around, but the second he was out of the picture it was all so practiced and mechanic. I watched and waited against the wall of the building with a cigarette I wasn’t really smoking for a suitable specimen. The first car to pull in belonged to a young businessman who hit every stereotype in the book; he never put down his cell phone the entire walk to the front doors. He wouldn’t do. He’d be back out in a second. People like him ran on caffeine pills and the fumes of their own egos. He’d be too busy to stop. It didn’t matter that it was ass crack in the morning. He’d have somewhere he absolutely had to be. And in fifteen minutes, tops, there he was again, climbing back into his car. I let out a pretend puff of smoke and shifted my weight. I could do this all morning, baby.

The next one looked like a hopeful even as it was pulling in; it was weaving slightly, which meant that whoever was driving it was either exhausted, drunk, or Asian. Two out of three. Not bad odds. A balding white man stepped out of the car with two suitcases, and a grin crept slowly across my face. He looked like absolute shit; his eyelids were barely open, and there was weariness written in every line of his posture. The guy’d been driving all night. He’d take two steps into his hotel room and collapse. I had plenty of time to take that piece of shit he was driving out for a spin and have her back in time for lunch. I gave him twenty minutes to make it up to his hotel room, realize he’d forgotten something and come back for it, but the front doors stayed resolutely shut. Showtime.

If I’d had a shred of decency, I might’ve been looking for a 24-hour pharmacy. No; scratch that. I wouldn’t have been looking for a pharmacy at all. But I was decidedly lacking in that department, and at the moment this seemed completely rational. The moment I spotted a CVS, I made a sharp turn into the shopping center and hopped out of the car, the driver’s side mirror wobbling dangerously as I did. If I’d had any cash on me I might’ve left some for the poor bastard driving this thing. I didn’t, of course, and at the moment I had more important things on my mind anyway. I approached the drugstore with both hands shoved deep in my pockets and a furtive glance to each side. Really wouldn’t do for anyone to notice this; the second my eyes were back on the CVS, the entire store shorted out, several sparks fluttering down from the neon sign over my head. I needed any security systems that might be set off to get a few minutes of shut-eye, but pushing open those automatic doors manually was always a pain in the ass. The second I’d squeezed my way in I got to work.

The pharmaceutical counter itself was easy to find, but slipping behind it and digging through shelf upon shelf for just a few damn pills was a lengthy process, and each passing second made getting caught a much realer possibility. I guess I shouldn’t say “getting caught.” It was hard to take into custody someone who could have your brains dripping out your ears with only a glance. But Pip was so damned sensitive about that sort of thing, and – all things considered – I just didn’t think the timing was right to be leaving a wake of corpses behind me. Admittedly, I— oh ho ho. Restoril. That’d work. I pocketed a few pills and hopped back over the counter. It was all sort of fun, in a twisted way. Much later, after Pip had forgiven me, I’d try to relay the humor to him.

Maybe the most bizarre thing about the whole situation, I mused to myself as I was driving back, was that the thought of Pip wasn’t bothering me at all. It probably should’ve had me antsy; there had been a little too much sentiment shared last night for my taste. But that wasn’t what I’d been trying to keep off my mind all night. Hell, I wasn’t even trying to avoid the thought of him at Cartman’s mercy... though that was admittedly the reason I was out on the road at six in the morning with a pocketful of prescription drugs. What had been eating at me, the reason I’d devised this entire scheme to keep my thoughts otherwise occupied... was what I’d been trying to avoid even with my arms around Pip. What Cartman had done to him? It was murder. It was rape. It was torture.

And I’d done it all without remorse.

I didn’t have a single stain on my conscience, because there just wasn’t any sin in the world uglier than what was already writhing around inside of me. That’s the way it had to be if I was ever going to become what I was born to be. But... there was something that was different with Pip. There was something like regret that responded to that insufferably ignorant face. There was something that he evoked in me like—

“You are appalling.”

My eyes shot immediately up to the rear-view mirror. “Figured you’d be sporting a black eye after that night on the balcony.”

“You can’t possibly know how sorry I am to disappoint.” My lips twisted upwards, and both of our smiles were grim. “You are falling for him.”

I swerved so unexpectedly into the next lane that I actually clipped another car. The owner of the car behind me slammed on her brakes and held down the horn of her car long enough to wake up the entire county, but I didn’t give a rat’s ass one way or the other. Filing a hit-and-run on this license plate number wasn’t gonna hurt me. “What the fuck are you talking about?!”

“You suspect something already!” hissed the face in the mirror as I moved quickly back into my original lane. I didn’t need that bitch on my tail. “Something buried deep in the recesses of your mind has been holding onto the memory of this boy. You don’t know why, but I know what you are most afraid of. You fear so much—”

“That I cared for him, yeah, I know,” I spat back, hands sweaty around the steering wheel. “But that hardly qualifies as ‘falling’ for him.”

“You’re heading back to South Park against all semblance of caution just to even the odds for that little brat.”

“I owe him one. And the dick that did it to him has it coming.”

“His memory really has struck a chord in you, hasn’t it? That you’re still reacting so violently—”

“The kid was decent to me, alright? I treated him like shit and he was still standing there waiting every time I came back to him. Dad’s little trick wasn’t prepared for that, and the kid inadvertently slipped through some loophole in it. That’s all it is.”

“Is it really? Then what woke it up?” The smile reflected back at me was venomous. “You have suffered beneath the skin every time you’ve seen him hurt, but never until now have you acted on it. Something has changed.”

“Yeah.” I loosened my grip on the wheel, wiping my left palm on my jeans. “He found me again, and after years of getting shit on by people just like me he was still the same guy. Dad’s system fucking collapsed.”

I glanced up at the mirror and laughed, but nobody responded.

o o o

I felt like a kid at the end of the summer holiday, so damn bored with the monotony of doing nothing that even school was starting to look appealing again. I guess it was different for Damien; he had a means of transportation and probably twenty different kinds of identification to get him into bars or clubs or... well, some chick’s pants, I guess. I had the three books Damien had picked up for me – each of them a Harlequin Romance, because apparently I struck him as just that type of guy – and twenty channels of pay-per-view porn. But after dragging up the ugliest memory of my life and then being promptly abandoned by the guy who’d helped me do it, there just wasn’t enough nudity or phallic imagery in the world to keep me occupied.

I didn’t have a car – or the means to borrow someone else’s – but there was bound to be a public transportation route near the hotel, and I did have daddy’s plastic. (I chose to ignore the fact that “daddy” was, in this particular case, Satan.) I’d only taken two steps out of the room, however, when I all but collided with the last person I’d had my heart set on running into.

“Sara...?”

She only kept her eyes on me long enough to look horrified, shoot me a vicious snarl, then actually lift her hand up to flip me the bird. After that, she was perfectly content to storm off furiously. It was stupid and irrational, and I’d promised Damien that Wendy was the only girl I’d even speak to... but there was just something in that poor kid’s expression that had me chasing her down the hallway.

“Sara, wait!” I cried, reaching for her wrist and wrapping my hand around it in such an accurate vice grip it surprised even me. She shot me another contemptuous glare over her shoulder and yanked her arm in the opposite direction, but she wasn’t quite strong enough.

“Get your hand off of me, Philip!” She looked so genuinely distressed that I was tempted to just let her go, but the pathetic, sniveling part of me that I was so grateful Damien wasn’t here to see wanted so badly to make things right again.

Hell, it really wasn’t a surprise that I’d been taken advantage of as often as I had, was it?

“Look, I know you—” I managed to catch her other arm right as her elbow made for my nose “—are clearly still upset about the other day, but please, for the sake of my own sanity, let me explain to you what a complete dickwad my friend is.” That seemed to slow her down enough for me to force her elbow back down to her side where it wasn’t in any danger of giving me a black eye.

“I’m sure you’ve got a pretty story, but—”

“Just give me a second.” I spun her around to face me, giving her the expression I usually saved for Wendy when I was low on change and I needed to make a xerox. It wasn’t quite as effective on this girl, though it did seem to take her glare down from “destroy” to “stun.” “I’ve felt like absolute shit since that morning and—” well, okay, that wasn’t entirely her doing, but “—I’ve... well, to be honest, I didn’t really think I’d run into you again. But... since I have... please let me apologize. Even if it’s for... whatever the hell Damien said I did. What did he call the guy...? Mark...?”

Sara surveyed me with a slightly tilted head and a pouted lip. “Damien.... That’s your friend?” I let out a little laugh.

“If you can even call it that.” I rolled my eyes without really meaning to, and Sara’s arm loosened in my grasp. I released my hold on her, but she didn’t run. She didn’t look particularly thrilled with me, either, but at least she was giving me a chance. “Look, if there really was some other... guy....” God, even saying that made me cringe. “I would’ve been with him. Not with the asshole I’m sharing that room with.”

“Kind of weird to be splitting a hotel room with a guy like that, then, isn’t it?” Her eyebrows were raised and her tone was patronizing, but there was the faintest hint of a smile on her lips and my heart leapt for it.

“Heh... trust me: I’ve heard enough of that to last a lifetime.” The smile I shot at her was tentative, but she returned it, albeit reluctantly.

“The whole thing still leaves a bad taste in my mouth. You know that, right?” I nodded, defeated.

“I know, I know... and if nothing else, I apologize for my terrible taste in company. Please... let me make this right. I can’t stand having you... well, flip me off the way you just did.” She finally laughed, and it was no small victory.

“Alright, then. Here’s the deal. I was only heading down to the front desk to see if I could get some more toilet paper for our room; my mom eats the stuff. But both of my parents are out on a dinner date while I sit around the room renting pay-per-view porn just to piss them off.” Been there. “You take me out somewhere nice, and we’ll call it even. Unless Mark actually shows up. In which case I will quite literally beat the living shit out of you.”

It was a bizarre sensation, being asked out so brazenly by a girl who’d just tried to break my nose.... On one hand, Damien would murder me if he even knew this conversation was taking place. He had quite specifically laid out the terms of agreement for our living situation, and this violated about fifteen of them. On the other hand... the girl was cute, and I wasn’t the sort of guy that got asked out a lot.

“I’ve got Damien’s credit card. Where do you want to go?”

It really shouldn’t have been as fun as it was, going out with her. We’d only met a few days ago, and that brief acquaintance had ended with my getting backhanded – which hurt, for the record. But she was warm, and friendly, and hardly bitched at all when I warily explained that Damien had the car. It was admittedly cold outside, though, and after about a mile we both agreed that Applebee’s was plenty nice enough for us. To compensate, we both ordered enormous steaks that neither of us had the remotest chance of finishing and toasted to my dark-haired friend’s misfortune.

“Really, though,” she asked at about the six ounce marker, “if the guy’s such a douche, why do you hang around him?” I shrugged, finishing off my onion ring, because we’d gone ahead and ordered some of those, too.

“You know that old, cherished childhood friend that you don’t realize is a dead weight to society until you’ve been friends way too long to tell them to screw off?” Sara laughed, blonde hair bouncing at her shoulders.

“You must be nicer than I am. I just go ahead and tell my girlfriends to screw off, anyway.” She snorted into her coke, which was cute and sort of disgusting at the same time.

I smiled a little sheepishly, tugging defensively at the ski cap on my head. “I... hell, I don’t know. Maybe it’s just ridiculously stupid, but there’s this lingering attachment to him that I just can’t shake. And, despite everything... even he’s got his good qualities.”

“Like being a jealous, overbearing sociopath?” I tossed my next onion ring at her, because that leering grin was unbearable.

“I’ll grant him the ‘sociopath’ bit. The rest....” I shifted a little in my seat. “He’s got his reasons.”

I couldn’t tell whether the look on her face was forced or genuinely sympathetic; it was hard to distinguish between the two when she was chewing a piece of steak the size of her fist. “Bad twack recowd?” Yeah, this girl would definitely not be welcome in polite society.

“You could say that.” It wasn’t really a lie, was it? None of my relationships had ever had much of a happy ending, romantic or not. It wasn’t the reason Damien was keeping such close watch over me, but it wasn’t necessarily a lie, either.

“Maybe he’s just looking out for you, then.” That smile might have been endearing if it hadn’t been accompanied by a statement that nearly made me choke on my drink in an attempt to stifle a laugh.

“Not his style. If anything, he’s probably just looking to avoid cleaning up the mess that tends to trail in the wake of romantic involvement.” Sara waved a dismissive hand.

“Pfft. It’s not his mess to clean up, is it?” In this case, yeah, it would be, but I couldn’t really tell her that. “Listen. He’s your friend. He’s either worried about you, or, y’know... wants you for himself.” She shot me a lewd wink that made my stomach flip over, and with nearly half a pound of steak in it... wasn’t so comfortable, gotta be honest.

“You know... I’m seriously guessing that’s not the issue.” Something about that sentence came out a little more self-loathing than it was supposed to, and it was reflected on Sara’s face. Her smile was sympathetic, and her words were way softer than warranted.

“Does that bother you?”

My entire face went up in flame. “No! No. God, no!” I let out an awkward laugh, holding up my hands. “Hell, if I were gay I’d have trouble loving that guy.” How the hell did this conversation wind up here? “I mean, honestly, he....” But I couldn’t summon up words for what he was. Because in a warped sort of way, he was looking out for me. Not when it came to this kind of thing. This was too trivial for him. But the shit that really mattered.... All I could think about was holding onto him last night with every ounce of strength in my body, probably to the point that I’d left bruises. And he hadn’t said a word. The asshole had left this morning, and a part of me was still furious... but god, last night....

Maybe it showed on my face, because with a resigned smile, Sara set down her knife and fork and slid her plate forward. “I should really get going, Philip. My parents will chew me out if I’m not there when they get back. I’ve had a great time tonight, though. Thank you.” Then, with commendable grace, she slid out of the booth, stepped over to give me a quick kiss on the cheek, and walked out of the restaurant. She didn’t leave a number, but it was alright. I wouldn’t have called.

Damien never came back the entire day, and I sort of hated him for it.

o o o

Pip was already asleep when I got back in, which was a small blessing. Given that I’d come back in at midnight, of course, that really didn’t come as much of a surprise. And since I’d been killing time in town for hours in the hopes that he’d be passed out when I got here.... Not the point. I stepped over to his bedside with a twisted little grin that disappeared the second I actually bent down to put my hand on his shoulder.

“Pip!” I whispered urgently, shaking him with enough force to get his attention, but not so violently that I’d get punched in the face as a result. “C’mon, get the hell up!” He rolled over with a bleary expression, face contorting when he realized it was me above him.

“Wuh...?”

“We’ve got to get out of here. I’m sorry to spring this on you in the middle of the night, but we’ve got to go. Get up and get your shit together.”

Apparently he was still too groggy to take in any of what I was saying. “Wh... why...? What’s... going on...?”

“I left a girl here... I don’t even remember the slut, but apparently she remembered me. She got a hold of my ID when we ran into one another at the gas station a few blocks down, and there was no way to wrestle the thing away from her with that many witnesses present. The ID’s about as real as my credit card is, but it’s still got a photo, and if she hands it in....” The story made even less sense when I said it out loud, but I didn’t really think Pip was awake enough to properly evaluate that fact. “This is the reason you can’t get attached to chicks on the road. We’ve got to get the hell out of here.” With that typically trusting face, he nodded sleepily, all but falling out of the bed in an attempt to get up.

“A... right, just... lemme get my stuff....” If only to speed the process up, I helped him round up everything he’d brought with him – which wasn’t really much more than a change of underwear and a toothbrush – and stuff it back into the plastic bag we’d originally come with. I tossed him his sweatshirt, which he pulled on gratefully (though he didn’t seem to acknowledge any need for pants), and ushered him out of the room. It was a little like guiding a crippled eighty year old, but the less conscious he was, the better, so I didn’t push my luck. We made it to the parking lot without incident, and he allowed himself to be shoved into the nearest car. It was kind of nice, this quiet obedience of his. I resisted the urge to rake my fingers through his hair like I might a dog. It did look incredible in the moonlight, though.

“Thanks. I really am sorry, dragging you out in the middle of the night like this. There’s a 7-Eleven right on the edge of town; I’ll get us some coffee.” He nodded, probably more out of reflex than anything else, and I twisted the key in the ignition.

He slept all the way to the convenience store, and I can’t say I didn’t feel guilty stepping out and looking over at him all curled up and half-naked in the front seat. This needed to be done, though. I stepped into the 7-Eleven with a polite enough smile for the woman working the graveyard shift behind the counter and made my way over to the coffee. I actually could use the caffeine. Pip... not so much. I poured him a small decaf, though half of it was probably just cream and sugar. I figured he was the kind of guy that ordered a Frappuccino even in the winter. But stirring in those two pills... I couldn’t even watch myself do it. God, I was pathetic. Feeling more like a woman – and more like Pip – than I really wanted to, I took the two cups back over to the counter and handed the girl my credit card. Normally, I would’ve taken some time to fill her up with false hope. Tonight, I was in too much of a rush. I took back my card and got the hell out.

He was drooling against the passenger side door when I came back, and I was tempted just to let him sleep... but natural sleep wouldn’t keep him knocked out long enough, and frankly I needed someone to open the door for me. I gave the car a violent kick, which woke him up with a start. He looked around for a few seconds in total confusion before figuring out what I wanted and leaning over to get the door for me. I gave him a curt nod and crawled in, passing him his coffee. “I’m not gonna lie; the coffee’s not great. But I’m guessing it’s the caffeine you’re interested in, anyway.” He shot me an appreciative little smile and gratefully accepted the drink, downing about half of it in a second flat.

“Could use some more sugar.”

“For fuck’s sake, Pip, there’s about half a cup in there. Grow some balls.” He just grinned and leaned back, eyes closed and expression content.

Just stay that way for a little while longer.

Did I feel like shit, lying to him? Yeah. Drugging him? “Shit” probably wasn’t a strong enough word. If there’d been a way to go about the whole thing honestly, I would’ve done it. I didn’t want to be just another jerkoff that fed him false promises. But what I needed to go back to South Park for wasn’t something he’d condone, or – hell – even turn a blind eye to. He’d stand there with that stupid, ignorant air of morality and try to protect the guy that had broken him down into the miserable, self-loathing kid he was now. But I needed to kill him. I needed to make him bleed. I needed to make him hurt, make him suffer, make him feel all the pain and humiliation that he had made Pip feel. I needed to cut him into pieces so small he couldn’t even materialize in my dreams. Pip wouldn’t fight this demon on his own. So I’d do it for him.

I’d go crazy if I didn’t.

It had to have been at least five hours before Pip woke up, and from the disoriented look in his eyes I could tell he was still lingering under the effects of the pills. It took him three minutes to realize he was in a car, two minutes to figure out that he’d been stowed away in the backseat of this particular one, and about ten to sit up and fight the wave of dizziness that accompanied it. Eventually, though, he did manage to lean forward like a drunkard over my shoulder, several questions spilling out of his mouth almost incoherently.

“Dami... en... what the fuck are we....” He took a brief pause to put a hand to his head. “Wh... what’s going—” And then it all snapped back to him. He gestured to an overhead sign, suddenly sober and livid. “Why does that sign say ‘Park County?!’”

And then the bowels of hell opened up.