I know I said I was going on hiatus, but I got really inspired by Kyuubikun on deviantart's beautiful artwork. Go check her out, please, she's quite amazing!

This story is quite dark, and the ending is stupid, but I hope you will enjoy it regardless. Please point out stupid typos.

Music:

Seven Nation Army, by The White Stripes

Baptism, by Crystal Castles

Never Say Never, by The Fray

Part One

Someday, Stan Marsh and Kyle Broflovski will be in love.

Most love stories begin with deep desires, descriptions of beautiful men, and the promise of a happy ending.

Stan Marsh has no desire to be with his best friend, just like he has no desire to be treated like a lab rat and experimented on. He will experience both delights regardless.

Kyle Broflovski is not beautiful, and starvation will render him skeletal, pale, and disgusting.

And, of course, any happiness either of them will feel will be promptly stamped out by the bitch that is human nature.

Because this will not be a love story.

They find the egg at the bottom of Stark's pond. To be precise, Stan finds it. They're having a competition to see who can swim the deepest underwater.

The egg is so white it shines blue, vibrant against the depths of the water. He kicks over to it, bubbles swelling from his lips and rising to the surface. His fingers slip around the egg, then hold. He tugs. The force of the weight makes more air fly from his lips.

He kicks back to the surface and announces his find. No one believes him, least of all Kyle.

But Kyle agrees to dive down with him and help it to the surface, because whether or not he believes him, Stan is his best friend.

They kick it over to the bank, struggling under the weight. Cartman, Kenny and Butters help them when they see the genuineness of the egg. The five of them deposit it in the sand and collapse next to it, shivering from the wind. Even in July, South Park barely rises above freezing.

They towel off and crowd around it. Butters pokes it. It rolls over. It's the size of a soccer ball, only oval. They all swear they can hear it humming.

"It's an ostrich egg," Kyle announces after a few seconds of staring.

"No fucking way that's an ostrich egg," Cartman says. "Do they come in blue?"

"Only ostrich eggs can get this big, fatass. What else could it be?"

"No fucking way it's an ostrich egg-"

They start to argue. Stan sighs. He, Kenny, and Butters continue to examine the egg in their own ways. Kenny licks it.

"Dude, what if it does something to your brain?"

"I hope it will," Kenny says, grinning. He continues to lick.

"What if it's radioactive and you die?"

"I've always wanted to get high off a nuclear egg."

"Okay, then!" Cartman yells. The three of them glance up to see him and Kyle practically choking each other.

"If you're so certain it's an ostrich egg, jew, then I dare you to eat it!"

The egg smells like sulfur when it's cooked, and it looks even more disgusting scrambled. They eggs lie limp when Kyle ladles them off the pan and onto the plate the five of them stole from Stan's house. They're still out in the woods, although the night is drawing nearer.

Kenny stamps the fire out. The other four stare at Kyle as he stabs the eggs with his fork.

"Uh, m-maybe we should a-a-ask our parents first, fellas," Butters says, shivering.

Stan elbows him. "Don't be an idiot. Parents always make us do boring things! They wouldn't go for something as cool as this."

They all stand over Kyle, watching.

Kyle hesitates with a bite of the egg an inch from his mouth. "I don't know, guys. What if it's poisonous?"

"Don't try to jew me out, Kahl," Cartman warns.

Kyle narrows his eyes. "Fuck you, fatass!" He sticks his fork in his mouth, chews, and swallows.

They wait for him to explode into flames.

He stares at his fork for a few seconds, then says, almost hesitantly:

"It's really good!"

In the end, greedy Cartman eats the most. Butters, always the pushover, winds up with barely any. The other three fight for their share. By the time night falls, there isn't a scrap left.

Cartman is the first to wake up the night with a sore back and a numb, tingling body. This is because he absorbed the most of the toxins the night before.

Kyle is the next to jerk awake, sobbing and shuddering as his whole body seems to vibrate. This is because he has the weakest immune system.

Stan vomits into the toilet at about three in the morning.

At first, Kenny just thinks he's on a bad acid trip.

And Butters doesn't feel the effects of the venom until dawn.

They meet at Kyle's house the next day to discuss the issue. None of them have told their parents, afraid to admit what a rash thing they did.

"Everyone feels the same, right?" Kyle says in a hoarse voice. They're all lying on his floor, too tired to find chairs. "Sore back, tingly body, weird spots in your eyes."

He's already confirmed with Stan, but the rest of them nod.

"We should go to the hospital," Butters says.

"Yeah, I really don't want to die from this!" Cartman says.

"Shut up!" Kyle says. "Don't be an idiot!"

"Yeah," Stan agrees. "Our parents will be so pissed."

"We could die, you idiot!" Cartman sits up and glares at him. Stan glares back.

Cartman is the first to look away.

The tingling and the spots fade. The world seems sharper to all of them, the colors more vivid. They find they can see things from farther away than before.

The pain in their backs also fades, but does not vanish completely. At night it keeps them up, shaking, hugging the pillows. If they were older, they would tell their parents. If they were younger, they would tell their parents. But ten-year-olds are at the perfect age for secrets; too caught up in freedom to do anything to jeopardize it.

Kyle and Stan spend many of these long summer nights playing video games to distract themselves. The other three have no best friend and are thus alone.

When the wings rip from his back, twisted and shriveled, dark and monstrous, Kyle knows it is finally time to tell the adults.

Part Two

Kyle's parents believe in the government. They believe in hospitals and the power of the common people. They believe if you go to the doctor and you have enough money, the authorities will make you better and send you home.

Since this isn't a happy story, and the people who take an interest in the five winged boys in South Park are not happy people, it does not pan out quite like that.

"I'm Doctor Morganson."

The pretty lady in the white coat stretches out a hand. Kyle pauses, eyes her manicured nails, then extends and shakes.

He's only his boxers, sitting on a hospital bed and white paper that crinkles whenever he shifts.

She has firm, cold hands.

"You can get them off him, right?" His mother twitters. "You're a specialist from Denver. Of course you can help!"

Who the hell specializes in mutant wings? Kyle wants to ask. He flutters the wings. They drape down his back, almost six inches long, tiny, batlike, furry.

He hates them. They're hideous and they hurt.

"Of course I can," Doctor Morganson agrees. She pulls up a chair and she asks him questions.

She asks him if he's eaten anything odd in the past few weeks (he tells her the story of finding the egg, and his mother's face is red and furious). She asks him if anyone else touched the egg.

"Yes," he says, and he tells her their names.

By now, the others have all sprouted wings and are in agony over whether or not to go to the hospital. So, for Stan, it's almost a relief when the black van pulls up in front of his house and the men from the government knock on the door.

They show their IDs, and they have a doctor with them, and they get Stan to show his back off to his parents. He's embarrassed, flushing red, but he does it anyway.

His parents are frightened. He can see it in their wide eyes and his father's babble.

But the men have all the verification they need, and they promise that Stan will only be gone for a week, just long enough to make him better. And he can call them every day.

So his parents concede and help him pack. Pajamas. Seven changes of socks. His favorite Terrance and Phillip boxers. A stack of comic books.

He says goodbye to his sister, who calls him a idiot but gives him a half-hearted hug anyway. He wants to call Kyle but the guys from the government say there's no time and he'll see him where they're going, anyway?

"Where are we going?" Stan asks as he slides into the backseat of the car. One of the government men sits on either side of him while the third drives. He shifts and clutches his backpack to his chest.

"A hospital," the driver says.

He hesitates.

"You're lying, aren't you?"

They snigger.

"You guys aren't really with the government."

Their laughter grows. He considers crying for help, screaming, jumping from the car, and knows they will stop him before getting anywhere.

They stop at a gas station to fill the tank for a long drive, and to toss his backpack into a dumpster.

He never sees his family again.

Kyle wakes up with a headache, wearing an orange jumpsuit, in a cell with no doors and no windows. Six by six. Air conditioned. It tastes like nothing in here. It's bright enough to hurt, the florescent lights pounding. It feels like a cage in here.

He panics and screams and punches the wall until a voice crackles over a sound system he can't see.

"Kyle Broflovski, there is no need to be alarmed. We already know the source of the anomalies growing on your back."

He recognizes the voice: Dr. Morganson. He screams louder.

"What the fuck am I doing in here? Let me out! Let me see my parents! You said I was going to a hospital!"

"But you are in a hospital," she continues. "And the anomalies are nothing to be concerned about. They are actually dragon wings."

"How the fuck did I get-"

"You ate a dead dragon egg three weeks ago. Throughout human history, we've had instances of people with these wings. Up until a hundred years ago, they've been burned as witches. In the last century, we've found a dozen adults who had consumed dragon eggs, and studied them to the best of our abilities. However, never before have we had children who consumed the eggs. You're going to be very helpful to our research, Kyle."

"What's it going to do to me?" he shrieks. "I don't want these! Get them off! You promised you would get them off!"

He pounds his fists until he runs out of energy and slouches to the cold metal floor. His shoulders shake. He leans against the wall. His wings, now almost eight inches long, flutter against his will.

"I want to go home," he whispers.

"I'm afraid we can't let you do that, Kyle."

They let him out three times a day. He gets to use the bathroom and have a meal morning and night. In the middle of the day, he is taken out to the exercise arena, which is basically just supposed a long track he's supposed to run around.

Only the other four are allowed on the track at the same time.

They're all angry at him at first, even Butters. But they get over it. They all realize they would have had to tell eventually. Kyle was just the first to do it.

They run around the track together for an hour. They plot their escape. Then they are led back to their cages, because calling them cells would be too fucking kind.

After the evening meal, which he eats in a small dining room, terribly alone, he is taken into the disinfected, hospital room, and tested.

Always the testing.

They check his pulse, his blood pressure, his reflexes. They measure his wings. (After a week, they're almost a foot long, and they give him a white tank top to wear instead of the orange jumpsuit top). They have him try and flap. He feels stupid.

He asks how long they're going to get, and they say they don't know.

Sometimes they give him pills. Sometimes he throws up or grows drowsy as they try to figure out what works on him.

His wings continue to ache as they grow. He asks for pain pills. They refuse.

The boredom here is agony. He spends his days daydream, imagining, hoping of the world outside. He flaps his wings and imagines flying.

His senses grow sharper, his body grows stronger, as the dragon venom infects him.

After a week in this hellhole, they run a different test on him. They put him in a room with a rabbit and ask him to kill it.

"What?"

He can hardly believe what they say.

Doctor Morganson peers through the glass wall between the two rooms. "Just kill the rabbit, Kyle!"

"No fucking way!"

They leave him alone with it for half an hour. He spends the thirty minutes hunched over in a corner, his wings folded up around his shoulders instinctively, even if they're still shriveled and tiny.

"What was that all about?" he asks when they let him back into the main testing room.

"Just testing to see if the venom had awakened any primal instincts within you," Doctor Morganson explains as she steers him down the hallway to his cage.

"Did it?"

She laughs. "Don't worry, that was the least animal thing I've ever seen."

He is not reassured.

The next day, a miracle happens.

He is taken into another room, split by a glass wall. On each side of the glass wall are two beds and a door leading into a small bathroom, complete with a shower.

Kenny and Butters are on the other side of the rooms. Stan grins from ear to ear when they lead Kyle onto the same side as him.

They hug. The doctors close the door as they embrace, locking him in. He grins at Kenny through the glass and waves, even mouths 'hello' to Butters.

"What's all this about?" he asks. "And where's Cartman?"

Stan sits on a bed and Kyle sits on the one opposite him.

"They had you do the freaky-ass bunny test, right?"

"Uh, yeah."

"Right. I ended up hugging mine. He was cute. Anyway. So they were testing to make sure we weren't going all animal, right? And apparently Cartman got bored after five minutes and stamped on his until it was a bloody mess."

Kyle grits his teeth. "That fatass would."

"So they're testing us to make sure we still have the ability to feel, like, compassion. See, if they lock us up here long enough and we don't try to kill each other, we must not be complete monsters."

"There must be easier ways to figure that out," Kyle says bitterly. "They could just ask us. We're still human. We still speak, like, the English language."

"Yeah," Stan says, "but at least I'm here with you."

And so they are. And so the days are much less horrible, the drugs stop affecting him as much, and the wings start hurting as they grow at a slower, barely trackable rate. Kyle starts to hope for the day when the scientists have learned all they need, and will let them go back home to their parents.

But it's not that kind of story.

Part Three

"I'm just sick of this all, you know," Kenny says as they walk around the track.

In the past two weeks since they moved into the joint cells, he joked at least once a day about how much it all sucks, how unfair it is. His dark blue eyes are full of hated and humor.

"Uh-huh," Kyle says. He kicks a pebble along with his bare feet. The cold wind slices through his thin clothes, and he hugs his arms to himself. What are the scientists going to do to make them exercise when it snows?

"They could at least give me a fucking cigarette." He snickers like it's funny.

Kyle and Stan entertain themselves by fighting over who gets to kick the pebble next. Kenny's voice trails off as he flaps his wings absently.

Butters doesn't talk much anymore. If they're talking about escape (which they've been doing less and less of lately) he'll pipe in with a comment. Otherwise, he just stares off into space.

It must be boring to room with him.

None of them know where Cartman is or what happened to him. Kyle assumes him to be dead.

"I want to tell them to fuck off somehow, you know?" Kenny continues. "You know what I'm going to do? A hunger strike."

Kyle only considers it for a few seconds.

"They'll just make us eat," Stan says.

"Don't be such a fucking pessimist," Kenny says cheerfully.

"No point in being hungry as well as trapped," Kyle points out.

"Way to think on the bright side," Kenny mumbles.

I'm not be negative. I'm being rational. Logic is better than freaking out. He feels the angry churning inside of him, but it's always there, burbling below the surface, waiting to be released. They just have to push his buttons wrong once, and he'll snap.

Until then, he remains calm and distant, copying Stan and Butters.

Kenny must think he's the only sane one left.

Kenny really does go on a hunger strike.

Ever since they moved into the joint rooms, the doctors bring them their food three times a day and only take them out for exercising and the occasional experiments. So it's quite easy for Kenny to pass his food off to Butters.

The next day during the exercise, Kenny relays what they told him last night when he was taken the the experiment room.

"They said if I don't eat again by tonight, they'll force feed me! Poor fuckers!" He snickers. "I'm the white trash in town, I'm more than used to being force fed shit I don't want to eat."

"Except usually you will eat it," Kyle points out.

"Not this time. Fuckers. Maybe I'll eat if they give me cigarettes."

Kyle feels a surge of optimism. "You can do it," he says. "Show those assholes who's boss. I'll join you."

All four of them refuse their food that night. The doctors who bring the trays just sigh and confer.

They drag Kenny away, but they don't force feed him.

They beat him.

He comes back a bloody wreck, shaking, unable to hold in his sobs. He collapses on his bed, seeping red, and Butters tends to his rooms with shaking hands.

Kyle and Stan watch from the other side of the room.

"Those assholes!" Kyle seethes, and he wants to shout, but then he really sees how scared Kenny is, and he shuts up.

Kenny manages to stop crying after an hour. Kyle sees him mouthing, "I'm okay, I'm okay," although he can't hear anything through the glass.

Butters cries long after Kenny stops.

In the morning, Stan and Kyle and Butters receive the same threat that Kenny did a night and a half ago. During exercise, they all promise not to eat.

But they're only ten, and they haven't seen as much as Kenny. They don't know what it's like to be hungry, to be constantly afraid. And so that night when the threat comes again, they eat. Kenny still refuses.

They beat him again.

On the third day of his hunger strike. Kenny is weak and shaky and still teasing. He makes jokes about Kyle and Stan sharing a room. Kyle and Stan make jokes about him sharing a room with Butters in retaliation.

That night, they skip the beating and try to force feed him. When they deposit him back in his room, he runs to the bathroom and throws it all up.

He grins at Stan and Kyle through the mirror. "Not gonna let them fuck me up," he mouths.

The fourth day, the other three have to help him around the track.

The doctors force feed him again, and this time keep him for half an hour to make sure he starts digesting it. When they take him back to the joint room, he spends a long time throwing everything up.

On the fifth day, they take him away. He winks at them and mouths, 'they'll never break me!'

He doesn't come back that night.

Kyle lies awake curled up on his bed. Butters looks terribly lonely with no one in the bed next to him.

"Stan?" he whispers.

"Yeah?"

He hadn't thought Stan was awake.

"Are we ever gonna get out of here?"

"Course we are," Stan says, but his reply is hollow.

"We've fought against worse than this, and we've come out perfectly fine," Kyle says. "We've fought against crazy cults and aliens and gods."

His wings fold around his shoulders, almost a foot and a half long now, enough for him to notice the weight.

He's turning into a monster. They're all becoming monstrous, and the scientists know it.

He tiptoes over to Stan's bed and climbs in next to him. Since Kyle's the taller one by a couple inches, and they're scared and need to cuddle, he ends up with Stan spooned against him.

They've been here almost a month. He's been counting the days. It's late August now. School would be starting soon.

He misses his mom.

"This is really gay," he says in apology, and pressed his chin against Stan's wings. They're warm and soft and not all that hideous on another person.

"Don't tell Cartman, then," Stan mutters.

Kyle laughs until he cries.

Kenny returns two weeks later, skinny and hollow-cheeked and pissed-off.

"I didn't eat," he says as they walk around the track. This time he can pull his own weight. "I swear I didn't."

"We believe you."

"They put me on an IV drip, but I pulled it out. They restrained me but I got free. They drugged me but the narcotics didn't have an affect on me because of how the wings are screwing us up. I got so skinny it wouldn't have mattered what they did."

"So what happened?" Butters asked.

Kenny smiles thinly. "I died."

"I died and I came back to this fucked-up place."

Stan's listening at the door. Kyle tries copying him, but even with his enhanced senses, he can't make anything out.

"I can hear every word they're saying." Stan mouths.

Kyle nods and waits.

After a few minutes, Stan's face goes white. He pulls back and sits on his bed.

"What?" Kyle demands, crouching next to him.

"They think . . . they think that since Kenny came back to life . . . that none of us can die from starvation. From how the dragon egg affected us. They want to make sure it's true. And they say that if they screw up, they only really need Kenny, only really need one of us, anyway."

Part Four

Kyle is hungry.

After just two days, he's absolutely starving.

He regrets ever skipping a meal.

They don't let them out for exercise anymore. They don't let them out for experiments. They just stay and stew in the room, like they've been forgotten about.

"This is a terrible idea on their part," he says, over and over, like it's some kind of lifeline. Like maybe they'll hear them on the microphones.

With nothing to distract them, he rants and raves.

He and Stan talk first about escape. The mechanics of it. They come up with dozens of possibilities that could never work.

Then they talk about what they miss. Their parents. Their siblings. They both admit it after the hunger sets in for real (gnawing, deep agony) and they are desperate to distract themselves.

They both miss xBox games and ice skating and making faces at old people. They miss the crazy things their town would get up to. They miss school, even. Stan briefly mourns Wendy. Kyle mourns Bebe, who he had a crush on for about a week before they were cancelled. But they don't have the energy to think about girls, about romance.

It doesn't matter.

What matters is the hunger.

After three days Kyle doesn't want to talk anymore. He takes endless showers, scrubbing himself as clean as possible. For a day he's obsessed with the idea that they've got chemicals on him, to see how they'll react. Stan kicks the door down when he hears Kyle screaming in the shower, scratching his skin off with this fingernails.

"We're stuck here," Kyle sobs when Stan drags his naked, shivering body from the bathroom. "We're stuck here forever. We're gonna die here."

"No, we're not dude, we're not!"

Kyle's bleeding from his scratches. Stan freaks out and screams obscenities at the cameras he's sure are all over the ceiling. No response.

He cries right next to Kyle, then manages to get him a towel and help him back into his clothes.

Kenny and Butters are just as hungry.

Kyle can't hear them of course, but he can see the way they stop pacing around their side of the room, how they stop looking at each other.

They aren't super best friends the way Stan and Kyle are.

This is dangerous.

On the fifth day, Kyle watches as Butters' mouth moves, like he's talking to Kenny. He doesn't even know what it is he says.

Kenny stands up. Then he lunges for him, pins him against the ground, and starts punching him.

Butters doesn't fight back. He just lets Kenny ram his fists in him again and again. Blood splatters against the glass wall.

The scientists rush into the room and drag them apart. Kenny's wings are flaring, his mouth open in an endless scream, as they haul him out the door. Butters is next, eyes closed, curled up, empty.

The scientists don't bring them back. It's just Stan and Kyle now.

They start talking about their wings because they don't have anything better to talk about. It hurts to lie on their backs unless the wings are spread just right, so they face each other, laying on their sides.

They move their wings around, which are both a bit more than a foot and a half, and talk about the Future.

Kyle hates talks about the Future, usually. Especially in this hellhole. But talking about the Future of the wings is okay, because even though they're hideously ugly, they represent Possibility.

Like, hey. Maybe we'll fly someday.

"Hey, dude?"

"Yeah?"

Stan looks up from where he's sitting on the floor, trying to weave a rope from his bedsheet. He'll use it to strangle the first scientist who comes into their room. If they're not picking up their corpses.

"You would never do what Kenny did to Butters, to-"

"Dude."

Kyle stops talking.

It's kind of nice how he doesn't need any confirmation.

It's Stan's turn to cry about how he wants his parents after a week of no food.

Stan doesn't like to cry in front of other people, and for a few minutes Kyle is at a bit of a loss. After a while he just hugs him, which seems to work well enough. Their wings tangle together in the darkness.

"I hate my mom and dad," Kyle says idly late the next night. His words are distant and strained.

"Why?" Stan asks in the same tone.

"Because they're the ones who brought me here. They're the ones who told the scientists who I am."

Stan rolls over (they're sharing a bed, spooning again) and says, "It's not their fault. Blame the villains, not the people they use." He notices Kyle's expression. "It's not your fault, either."

Kyle rubs his eyes and nods.

The next night they're freezing cold, hugging each other, their rail-thin bodies too weak to supply any warmth.

"I hope wherever Fatass is, he's going through the same thing," Kyle mumbles, which makes Stan laugh. Kyle laughs onto his face. Stan stills.

"What? Does my breath smell?"

"No- do that again."

Kyle laughs, then exhales deeply, because he can feel it now. His breath is hot. It doesn't hurt him, but he can feel how heated it must be on Stan's skin.

"Dude," Stan whispers. "You're a fucking dragon."

After an hour of experimentation, Kyle figures out he can make it normal or warm enough to heat Stan's skin.

"Guess no one really knows what the dragon egg will do to us," Stan whispers. He's tried it himself but can't do it. They are trying to keep as quiet about it as possible, so the scientists won't have an excuse to take Kyle away from him.

Kyle warms Stan's back with his breath, holding the blankets around himself so he won't freeze to death in the process.

"I wish we'd never found that egg," he mumbles.

"Yeah," Stan agrees.

"At least I'm with you."

They curl up together under the blankets. They can't really do anything except sleep these days, it takes too much effort.

"Stan?"

"Yeah?"

"I love you."

Stan is silent.

"Just wanted you to know that before I die."

He flaps his wings weakly and tries to smile.

But they don't die.

Maybe the scientists finally believed Kenny when he says he's the only one who could come back to life. Maybe they realized the cruelty of their tests. Maybe they were just sick of seeing the ten year olds starve to death.

Because the next day the wake up to find themselves in a hospital room, and they're on IV drips for a couple days and then they're given real food, and they're allowed to watch TV. And those two little things make Kyle so happy he almost cries again. And most importantly of all, Stan is sharing a room with him, and he says "I love you," back after he wakes up.

So he's finally happy.

Then a week later, the Chinese government buys Stan for ten million dollars, and they come and take him away.

Part Five

Seven Years Later

Stan is on display.

It's not unusual that he ends up like this. Eight-foot-and-still-growing wingspan, tips outstretched, arms raised, eyes lidded. At least this time his handlers let him wear clothes.

A foreign crowd gawks up at him. He keeps his head tipped down, staring at the floor of the stage. The foreign crowd is full of reporters. They snap pictures and shout questions in Mandarin. His handlers answer in the same language. They seem so proud, like they're the ones who created him, like it wasn't a freak accident that deposited him into a nightmare.

The press conference keeps going on and on. He's shivering in just a tank top and baggy jeans. Outside on a stage in the middle of a park in Hong Kong. It smells like city, like life. He's grateful for that, at least. He enjoys the feeling of being around people.

People are looking at him like they expect him to fly. His wings have grown to the point where he has to hunch over a little bit to support the weight, and he hasn't gained that much weigh in the past seven years, even when he grew almost a foot and now stands a couple inches under six feet. (the scientists tell him, in broken English, that it's because of the way the venom screwed with his physiology and the way his body fits together). But he still can't fly.

So he just stands there awkwardly, ignoring the questions throw at him because he still only stands a few words in Chinese. He's spent most of the last seven years in a drug-induced haze, too high to fight back. They let him have his cats, they let him stay doped up and fed well enough to stave off the hunger pains, and he stays passive and doesn't try to fight anymore. It's a fair trade.

Kyle is meeting with Doctor Morganson.

This is also not unusual. A few years after Cartman and Kenny and Butters and Stan were taken from him, she started insisting. So once a month, he meets her in her office at the top floor of the hospital and they talk about what they expect from him. New experiments, new findings.

Kyle has a lot of scars from the past seven years.

"How are the flying attempts going?" she asks pleasantly.

"Fantastically," he says, which they both know means 'no progress.' He's' been trying for five years, to no avail. "What new fuckery are you assholes going to put me through? Gonna let me out?"

She laughs, like he was joking.

"Funny you should ask." She folds her hands in front of her on the desk. The years have treated her well. She wears the same smile, has the same greedy glint in her eyes.

"Our next experiment has a bit of a story behind it," she continues, "but I'm sure you'll appreciate it."

"Tell away."

They started giving him books a while back, but he plows through them too fast and he hasn't had a new paperback in a couple days.

"Your friend, Kenny-"

"Kenny's alive?"

"Of course he's alive." She ignores his interruption with a wave of her hand. "A while back, he raped a girl."

Kyle blinks and stares at her. He's forgotten a lot of the rules of society. All the contact he has is from the scientists and the fantasy world his books bring him to, both of which are not necessarily accurate. He's seen some hell in the past seven years. But he knows rape is not one of those things Kenny would do, not one of those things any of them would do.

"When did he ever get an opportunity to rape a girl?" he inquires after a few seconds. Some horrible part of him sneers, why am I not getting that sort of opportunity?

"We rested Kenny's ability for compassion after three years, again with Leopold, and found that he no longer had any urge to kill him. So we tried to see if he would show the same compassion towards human children his own age. The first few girls were fine. But then we made a mistake. We didn't know to the extent the dragon venom had affected him. It made him able to sense when a girl was ovulating-"

Kyle wants to laugh at the word.

"-the same way a male dragon would in the wild. At least, we think so. We're still not sure about how dragons work."

"That's why you're studying us, right?" Kyle says. "So when you find an opening into their world, you'll be able to defeat them. And you'll be able to destroy them."

She pauses. He laughs. She's never confirmed anything. None of them like to tell him anything. But he's had a lot of time to think in the last seven years.

"Continue the story," he says.

"Ah. Well, he went crazy and raped her. He wasn't himself, so we don't consider it to be his fault, if that makes you feel any better."

"I don't care." It's true, he doesn't.

"Why didn't you guys stop him? You had video cameras, right?"

"Oh. We wanted to see if he would form a mate-bond with her when he was finished, the way male dragons do with females each year. At least we think they do. We're not sure. That's why we need you." She smiles."

"Okay. You let a girl get raped. Okay."

"Well, he didn't form a bond with her, but he didn't kill her either, which was encouraging."

Kyle tries to imagine Kenny after he realized he'd raped someone. He tries to think of a slightly older version of the snarky, grinning boy he barely remembers, violating anyone like that. His imagination is fairly good after reading so much.

"Okay."

"She became pregnant. She wanted an abortion, of course, but we wouldn't let her. The possibilities were endless. The child she gave birth to had the same anomalies as you five."

"Why didn't you tell me this earlier?" he demands.

"You had no reason to know," Doctor Morganson says, and smiles coolly. He doesn't shrink under her gaze (he's stopped being afraid a long time ago).

"So we tested out his DNA on more girls. In case you're interested, we tested him with more ovulating girls. He isn't himself when he rapes them."

The image of the smiling boy in his head completely disappears.

"That's why we've been careful around you," she continues, "to make sure you don't have interaction with females on potentially dangerous days."

"Yeah," he echoes. He can't imagine raping anyone. It sounds like it would take a lot of effort, and he's kind of tired from experiments right now. "You do realize you've fucked with Kenny's head by not stopping him, right?"

"We're not even going to pretend you five don't have horrible PTSD," she says. "We have about a dozen half-blooded children who appear to have most of the abilities of you five, with slightly less potent senses."

"Cool?"

"We grouped them together because it would be easier to care for them. However, we didn't expect them to develop a hive mind. Even at four years old, they have a clearly established leader of the group, and the rest deter to her. It's quite fascinating. They behave in an extremely orderly fashion and only follow the directions of the leader . . . who, of course, follows our directions."

"Cool?" He kind of can guess what she's getting at, and it makes his stomach clench.

"We are going to test to see if you the five of you can develop the same kind of herd-mentality mindset if left within the same living area, sleeping quarters, et cetera. The way the children's is structured is absurd. They follow social structure and dominance rigidly. We want to see if four of you would deter to a leader within the group and obey them instinctively."

"Cartman's still alive?"

"All of you are still alive."

He knows it will be an all-out blood-battle for dominance between him and Cartman if they end up working the same way as the kids. "So they're coming back here?"

"Yes."

"Even . . ."

She smiles, because she knows what she has over him.

Stan.

"The Chinese have agreed to lend him to us for six months."

Six whole months.

His heart rate picks up.

"Why are you telling me all of this in advance, then?"

"We don't want you to have a heart attack when you see him in two days," she says dryly.

"Fuck you," he says, and his mind is racing, and he doesn't know what to say.

He heads back to his room on his own. He doesn't try to escape anymore. He knows they have a tracer chip implanted in him somewhere - buried deep within some part of his body - and they would track him down before he went five miles. There are soldiers on every exit.

He used to try to escape all the time. He would fight tooth and nail for access to a door. Then Doctor Morganson sat him down and asked him, with absolute seriousness, what he thought he was escaping to.

"You'll be all on your own," she says. "You can't fly. And with your wings like that, everyone will know you're a freak immediately. We have the tracer chip in you. What are you trying to attain with all these escape attempts?"

So he stopped trying to escape. They gave him a new bedroom. He has a bookshelf in this one, and Terrance and Philip posters on the wall, and lots of pillows and blankets on the bed. It's just like home to him.

As he steps back into his bedroom, he wonders, idly, if his parents are still looking for him.

They probably gave up years ago.

He lays back on his bed, glares at the video cameras, and closes his eyes. Smiles.

Because he knows he can get out of here.

His breath is hot in his throat. He holds down the urge to exhale heat, because a couple years ago he figured out how to breathe flame.

The scientists were thrilled, of course, but he's made sure never to show off exactly how much he can do. His abilities have grown. The sparks he used to keep Stan warm years ago have grown into a blaze. He's getting out of here. And now he's hoping a little.

Because now he'll have someone to escape with.

He still has nothing to stay to Stan.

The next day is agonizing. Writing words down. Scribbling them out. He reads an adventure novel, trying to figure out what the heroes say to their long-lost loved ones. Then he realizes he's not the hero of this story and throws the book away.

He opens the door to a knock the next morning. Kenny stands there, grinning, tapping his jeans with the fingers of one hand, his other hand curled into a fist, ready to hit the door in another knock.

He lowers his hand. "Oh, hey, dude," he says, grinning.

Kyle kind of just stares at him for a second. Kenny is a lot taller than him, bone-thin, long blonde hair, straggly muscle. Somehow, he has a tan. A while ago, he deduced from some files he'd stolen that they'd sent him off to another hospital in Seattle. He looks surprisingly cheerful.

Kyle used to be able to tell what Kenny was really thing just by looking into his eyes. Sometime in the last seven years, he lost the ability.

Did you really rape someone? he wants to ask. He doesn't want to ask. Like he said before, it doesn't matter.

They hug. He hasn't hugged anyone in seven years.

"Glad you remembered me," Kenny mumbles. Kyle clutches him tighter. He's not crying, because he's forgotten how to cry, but it certainly does feel good to cling to another person once again.

"Butters just came up to his room. I was saying hi to him again. Haven't seen him in a couple years. Want to visit?"

"Fuck yes."

Apparently, all the newcomers are supposed to take rooms in this hall. Butters has bruises all over the right side of his face, but he's smiling anyway. His fingers flutter behind his back. He's barely more than a few inches over five feet, shrunken from malnutrition. He clings to Kyle and cries like a little girl.

"I'm so h-h-h-h-happy to see a friendly face again," he sobs out.

"Jesus Christ, Butters," someone yells from the hall. The three of them poke their heads out of Butters' new bedroom to see Cartman being escorted by the soldiers. He's about the same height as Kyle, as starved-skinny as the rest of them (it looks bizarre on the fatass, and Kyle is annoyed for a second that he won't be able to call him that anymore) but more muscular and healthier looking than the other three put together.

He smirks when he sees them, but not in a pleased-to-see-you kind of way. Cartman hasn't changed at all.

"Hey, freaks. Heard you're a serial rapist now, white trash."

"Yup, that's me," Kenny says, popping the 'p' without a hint of remorse. Kyle knows it's not Kenny's fault what he did (right? right?) but the way he says it still makes him shiver.

"Jew," Cartman says, nodding at him.

"Fatass," Kyle spits back automatically. Their friendship was one of the last few real social interactions he ever had. He can't shake the habits now. They smile a little tersely for each other. They both know they're going to end up fighting.

"Butters," Cartman acknowledges. Butters runs up to him and hugs him. Cartman can shake him free for several minutes. It's almost amusing to watch. They've all been starved for affection, Kyle figures, and although he's kind of forgotten the mechanics of hugging since Stan left, it's still nice to fumble his way around it.

"He's not here yet," Kyle says, glancing down the hall.

"Chillax, bro," Kenny says. "Your boyfriend will show up soon enough." He steers them all into Cartman's room. "So. Anyone have exciting stories to share?" He flaps his wings, grinning lazily. "Anyone figure out how to fly? Not you, obviously, fatass."

"Shut up, you fucker," Cartman says, smiling without humor. "Before anyone starts anything, I just want you all to know I'm going to be in charge around here."

The atmosphere drains. All of them are tense, ready to fight as needed. Cartman's smile is thin; he's not playing around anymore. The Cartman they knew seven years evolved into this.

"Keep telling yourself that," Kyle sneers at him, because what would be a group meeting without a bitch-fight between the two of them?"

"Guys, the solution is obvious," Kenny says. "Butters should be the leader. Duh."

Cartman throws a punch. Kenny doesn't even try to dodge. It slams into his face, cracking his nose. He stumbles back into the wall, leans back against it, and touches his fingers to his bloody face. He's still grinning as he examines the red on his hands. Cartman glowers at him.

"Oooh, just like that, baby," Kenny coos. "Give it to me hard."

Cartman snorts. "You're pathetic."

"I'm a compromiser. There's a difference." His voice is nasally from his gushing nose. "So. Butters as leader. What do you think?"

Butters is staring at them, mouth open. "F-f-fellas, we shouldn't fight," he stammers out. "Why, we're all each other has-"

"Correction," Cartman says. "I'm all I have. I don't need you fags."

Kyle crosses his arms and leans backs against the dresser. He guesses this will be more a battle of wills than of violence. Good thing, too, because he's skinny as a stick and can't fight worth shit.

He's about to snark something, try to get a reaction out of Cartman to judge the best line of attack, when he hears footsteps in the hallway and suddenly the petty battles for leadership don't matter anymore, the fact that doesn't have anything to say doesn't matter.

He rushes into the hallway, where Stan is being escorted towards his room by two armed soldiers. His wings trail behind his back, dark and huge. He holds a pet carrier in each hand.

"Stan!" he yells, almost wails.

Stan turns to look at him. His eyes are dark and for a second, for a horrible second, Stan doesn't recognize him.

(the world dissolves)

Then Stan smiles, and the world comes back again.

Kyle barely registers the cling! when he drops the pet carriers, and two cats' resulting protesting. He doesn't hear the other three jeering at the two of them. Because there is Stan.

And since he doesn't have anything to say, he just runs for him and grabs him up and kisses him. Stan seems surprised for a half second before he starts kissing back.

Kyle used to give his mom quick pecks on the cheek before he went to bed, used to accept sloppy kisses from his grandma on the forehead. This was back when those people were a real part of life. Now life is experiments and books and quiet loneliness and his life doesn't incorporate kissing, doesn't incorporate Stan, certainly doesn't incorporate kissing Stan.

He's never kissed anyone like this before, and he doesn't know how, and he knows he must be awful, but he doesn't care. Stan ends up pressed back against the wall, legs curled around Kyle's hips, as they kiss passionately. Their wings form a cover around them, flaring up around their bodies. They have about seven years to make up.

"I missed you," Kyle whispers when he pulls back after an immeasurable amount of time. "Did you change?"

"Probably," Stan's voice is rusty, cracking.

"Why does your voice-"

"I haven't talked for a couple months."

"Haven't - jesus, Christ." And he still doesn't know what to say, so he kisses him again, doesn't care who's watching. It's just him and Stan, Stan and Kyle, the way it was always meant to be.

"Have you changed?" Stan asks him back.

"I think so," Kyle admits.

They return to kissing.

The story doesn't end here, because real life goes on and on until you die.

Part Six

They're lying in Kyle's bed late that night, fully clothed but cuddling, trying to meld into each other. They stroke each other's wings as they talk. They hug. They caress.

So much has happened, and neither of them want to talk about it.

He eventually turns to talk of escape.

"I can get us out of here," he mumbles into Stan's ear. "I can breathe fire."

Stan doesn't say anything for breathless minutes.

"We don't have anywhere to run," he says.

They've fed him the same warnings, then.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, but-" He presses a kiss into his jaw. "We have each other, you know?"

"Mmm," Stan says, and doesn't say anything else for almost half an hour.

Then he brings his cats in from his room, carrying them one by one. "Their names are Thelma and Bolster," he says. "They're both girls."

"Kay." One is black and one is white. Stan sets them on their bed and they curl around him, purring. Kyle wonders why Stan cares.

Then he realizes these two cats are what has kept Stan alive for the past seven years. For Kyle, it's been the hope of seeing his super best friend again. For Stan, it's been the things they give him, shallow presents to dampen his will.

He hasn't realized how much Stan has changed until now.

"We have to escape," he says again, not caring if the microphones will pick it up.

"We've got tracer chips in us," Stan says, "and there are soldiers, and we're freaks." He bats his wings to emphasize his point, and wind stirs, making their hair wave. "It's good enough to just be here with you."

"No," Kyle spits, "that's not enough."

They stare at each other.

Kyle stands up and stalks from the room.

The doctors were concerned that Kyle Broflovski might attempt an escape when reunited with Stan Marsh. Just in case, they've posted extra guards on all the exits.

After monitoring the argument, they've decided they no longer need to worry.

Kyle finds himself on the exercise track under the full moon. It's early June, a month from their seventh-year anniversary of hell. He squats in the dirt and trails his fingers in the earth.

He thinks about their story and he tries to imagine a happy ending.

Maybe one where we wake up, still ten years old, and it was all just a dream.

It never hurts this much in dreams.

Maybe our wings disappear and they decide they don't need us anymore.

But he knows the wings are there to stay. He tightens them around his upper body, shielding his skin from the wind. They're as much of a part of him as his arms and legs.

Maybe we die in the end, Romeo and Juliet.

He really doesn't want to die.

Kyle doesn't cry. He's forgotten how to cry.

A while ago, the hospital was upgraded to add a gymnasium for exercise. It's built almost like a playground, with a climbing wall and a huge, towering jungle gym. They're supposed to test their wings, to discover new possibilities in here.

They're half-hearted at first, but then Kyle manages to forget how frustrated he is at Stan, and they engage in an epic game of dodgeball, and the other three join in after a few minutes.

A cough makes them free. Doctor Morganson stands in the corner of the room near the door, holding a clipboard. Several soldiers surround her for insurance, to make sure they do what she wants.

"I need just one of you for an experiment," she says. "Who will it be?"

None of them volunteer. They glance at each other. Kyle knows this is one of their fucking mind games designed to see how they five will group together under duress.

He sees Stan open his mouth.

"I'll go," Kyle says quickly. Stan stares at him. He shrugs and starts to step forward, heart pounding in more than a little fear over the experiment.

"No, that's okay!" Butters says. He steps in front of Kyle, tiny, shrunken, wings shriveled and pathetic behind his back, a mockery of a guardian angel.

"I'll go," he says, and Kyle blinks and stares at him because the Butters he remembers wasn't self-sacrificing, he was just a pushover.

"Uh. Okay." Because Butters is one of those people you don't care about, ever.

They lead Butters out of the room. After that, the game dissolves. Cartman says he's bored and leaves to go back to his room. Stan says he's tired and follows after a quick smile good-bye to Kyle. He's probably going to go play with his fucking cats.

Kyle attacks the punching bag in the corner a few dozen times.

Kenny's the only one left. He saunters over to him and watches him punch.

"Dude, you want to talk about it?"

Kyle whirls on this.

"I don't want to talk about anything with you," he spits. Kenny recoils just a little bit. The smile remains firmly in place.

"Jesus, cool the Jewish rage, Kyle."

"Fuck you," Kyle mumbles. He slumps to the ground and leans back against the climbing wall, careful not to press against his wings. Kenny copies him.

"So," he says. "Butters. Pretty good leader, huh?"

Kyle blinks. "He's a pushover."

"I think he'd be fucking fantastic," Kenny says cheerfully.

"Fuck." Kyle tips his head back and thinks about how Stan just left when the tension got too bad, because he would rather play with cats and pretend or something.

"They let you make requests, you know," Kenny says. "I'm sure you just ask for books."

Kyle nods and wonders what he's getting at.

"I ask for drugs but they won't give me the harder stuff, say they don't want it to negatively affect me. But they give me the girls I ask for. Some of them are willing. Some of them aren't." He shrugs. "It doesn't matter in the end."

"I thought you were a good guy."

"I was," Kenny says. "But I was lonely. I didn't have anyone to hug."

He looks so depressed just then, like he's a victim (they both are).

"You're fucked up," Kyle says, because the sweet, mischievous ten-year-old he used to know has been murdered by the monster sitting next to him.

"I'd say that's a pretty accurate description."

"Why'd you tell me that-"

"Because I'm still lonely." His expression turns bitter. "I've never had a super best friend like you always did."

Kyle goes back to Stan's room and clings to him for an hour, won't let go until Stan's hugged and kissed his trembling arms away.

"We should escape."

He knows Stan's answer before he says it, and he hates him in that minute, hates him more than he's ever hated anything before in his life.

"No."

"What's it like?"

He and Kenny are on the track, shivering in the cold, warming themselves with their wings. It's late enough at night that the soldiers guarding the gates are yawning. Kyle tips his head towards the open air and stare at the three-quarters moon.

"What's what like?" Kenny asks, even though he already knows.

"Raping someone. Loosing yourself because of your primal instincts. You can't control it when it happens, right?"

"Right," Kenny says. He doesn't respond for a few minutes.

"During you don't feel anything other than want. And after . . . when you're yourself again . . . you feel afraid. Sometimes you have blood on you. The other person is always crying and curled up."

"That sounds horrible."

"It is."

"So why do you keep asking to do it again?" He almost can't believe he's having this conversation, but at the same time, it feels perfectly natural. Why shouldn't they talk about depraved, demented things when so many depraved, demented things have happened to him?

"Because I'm so angry," Kenny says, "so angry I can't think without wanting to hurt something. And the anger you feel while you're hurting another person-"

He smiles thinly.

"It feels slightly less frustrating than any other kind."

Part Seven

The next night, after everyone else is asleep, he goes into the brightly-lit cafeteria and fills a mug from the keg of beer he's never touched before.

He drinks slowly, trying not to wince at the taste, and is almost startled when Butters pads into the cafeteria and sits across from him.

"Oh," he says. "Hi."

Butters gets a cookie from the desert table and eats it like a squirrel, picking it apart and stuffing crumbs into his mouth. He's perched on the edge of his chair, jittery, nervous. He has new bruises on his face. His wings fold behind him, almost defensively.

"Whatever you're planning to do, Kyle, I want you to think really hard about it first."

He refills his mug of bitter beer and forces himself to drink it. "I don't know what you're talking about."

Butters hesitates, chewing on his cookie. He's curled up in his seat, looking defensive and wary. His shoulders are tense.

"I don't want you to do something you'll forget later."

Kyle observes him.

"Kenny's been fucking you against your will the last couple days," he says after a few seconds, "and you haven't done anything to stop him."

It should have been obvious from the beginning. Fear is as good of motivator as anything else, and fear and pain have finally made Butters come out of his shell.

Butters smiles, rather shy.

"He doesn't mean to hurt me."

"That's a lie, and you know it."

"Well," Butters says, shrugging. "That's what we optimists do. We lie to ourselves."

Kyle watches him, and he wonders if it feels good to hurt another person. He wonders if it makes your own wounds hurt less.

"And I guess pessimists are always thinking about how much the future will hurt," he says.

Butters keeps on smiling, keeps on lying.

"I'm probably going to kill myself soon," Kyle says, "so will you make sure to wipe that smug smile off Cartman's face for me?"

"Sure!"

Kyle refills his mug of beer. When he comes back, Butters looks like he's trying not to cry.

"So," he says. "What did you say to Kenny all those years ago? The one that made him angry enough to try and choke you to death?"

Butters wipes away his tears and doesn't meet Kyle's gaze.

"I said, 'it's going to be okay'."

The world is swirling by the time he makes it up to his bedroom. Stan is on the bed, reading one of his books.

"Shhh," Stan says when he enters. "I'm at the ending and it's really exciting."

"They all die," Kyle says, and pushes Stan's shoulders so he falls back on the bed. His head hurts, his vision splatters, and he's so very, very angry. He towers over Stan.

"What are you-"

"Shut up," he says, and smothers Stan's voice with a kiss. The kiss turns violent when he bites. The blood tastes copppery, nasty, but the sheer action feels extremely satisfactory. Stan whimpers a little.

"Kyle - calm down-"

"Shut up," he snarls. He's ripping at Stan's tank top now, pushing him back into the bed. "Just shut up, okay? I don't want to hear it, don't want to fucking hear it-"

He expects screams and kicks and he expects Stan to push him back. What he doesn't expect is for Stan's arms to go around his chest and for Stan to sigh.

"You can break me however you want," he says, "and I won't mind."

Kyle leans against him and tries to hear the words again in his mind. It takes a few seconds to process it. Stan isn't fighting. No matter what, Stan will never fight again.

"Don't say that," he hisses, and somehow he's angry and heartbroken all over again, and he wants to go home.

He turns and runs from the room.

This is the part in the story where the hero goes through some deep emotional realization and figures out the solution to all his problems.

Unfortunately, Kyle Broflovski is still not a hero.

He runs through the hallways, almost wishing someone would stop him. Nobody does.

He enters the gymnasium and climbs to the highest part of the jungle gym. He knows this is a stupid, juvenile way to die, but he doesn't have any better way to go about it, and the fall will be fast. He could slow him decent, limit himself to a couple of broken bones, if he spread his wings, but he'll keep them tight around his back.

The fall is about thirty feet. He can barely see the bottom through the darkness.

But he can hear Stan scream, "Kyle!"

He looks down through the darkness and sees the teenage boy trembling and shaking.

"We're never getting out of here!" Kyle yells back. "There's no point, okay? We're trapped and I'm sick of being trapped. I just want it all to be over, you know?"

"I can't do it without you!" Stan screams. "I don't want to survive if I'm alone! I'm sick of being alone!"

Kyle is still angry. For a moment, he considers suggesting a double suicide.

But this is not Romeo and Juliet, and this is still not a love story.

He climbs back down.

He refuses to hug Stan. "We have to escape," he says. "I don't care about anything else, we have to escape or we're dead regardless."

Stan is crying. He's always been a crier.

"Okay," he says. "Whatever. I just don't. Don't want. You know. I'm sorry. For everything."

Kyle has a lot to be sorry for, too.

Instead of apologizing, he suggests they run as fast as possible. The doctors have no doubt been watching this on the cameras and know of their intentions.

"What about my cats?" Stan pants as they race through the hallways.

"Forget the fucking cats!" he snarls with enough force to make Stan wince.

"What about Kenny and Butters and Cartman?"

They turn a corner and race down a flight of stairs. An alarm is wailing now, a mechanical voice chanting, 'prisoners are attempting to escape' over and over again. They keep on running. Their wings beat automatically, accelerating their pace.

"We have to leave them behind," Kyle says. "They're broken, anyway."

"We're broken, too," Stan says.

"Yeah." Kyle kicks down a door. At the end of the hallway is an exit, flooding moonlight into the outside world. A dozen guards stand in their way.

"But we have each other."

He breathes fire.

There are screams.

Then gunfire, but Stan and Kyle press themselves against the wall as the guards shoot blindly, and they avoid the spray of bullets.

Some of the guards rush past them, flames bursting over their bodies, shrieking as their flesh burns and sears.

Some of them end up curled up on the floor, begging.

Kyle drags Stan out the door and into Freedom before any more guards can come.

They're about a mile from the hospital by the time he notices Stan shivering.

They've been trekking along the highway and towards the nearest town for quite some time now. They're both barefoot, and since it's Colorado, there's snow on the ground, even in June.

Kyle doesn't feel the cold much anymore.

They're close to a city, where they can blend in, reassess their options.

Stan's teeth are chattering. He hasn't looked at Kyle.

Kyle wonders if he's afraid of him now, afraid of what he was willing to do for them to be free.

He cups his hands and breathes heat, enough to warm, not enough to scorch. Stan's eyes widen as the heat rolls over his shoulders, warming him the same way he did when they were kids.

"I'm sorry," Kyle says.

Stan smiles. "I missed you."

They continue walking towards the town, hand-in-hand.

They still have the tracer chips in them. They are still freaks with mutations on their back, singling them out in front of their whole world. They are still horribly broken.

But they're close to civilization, and maybe there they can find something to eat and cover up their wings and they'll figure out a way to get the tracer chips out. They'll be running their whole lives, and they both know it.

But maybe someday they'll be able to fly.