I DO NOT OWN SOUTH PARK

You may recall that I said I would not write anything else until my chapter fic was finished. You may also recall that I said I was lying.

Sort of wrote this a lot more for me than for the ffn community archives. Whatever.

TRIGGER WARNINGS: Death, Suicide, Homosexuality, Funerals, Drowning, Reality Crisis

NOVEMBER 17th

I ambled down the cobblestone bridge, my shoes slipping on the black ice beneath me. Wearing nothing except for an old faded band shirt and a pair of jeans, I leaned over the side rail. Rapids crashed and churned underneath, carrying chunks of ice with them as they sloshed down the riverbank.

"Is this it?" I asked aloud, glancing at my surroundings. I silently decided that this was the prettiest and most secluded of all the available suicide bridges in South Park.

I'd never had that painstaking need to off myself- but I've never really had the desire to live, either. I was sort of trapped in the metaphorical living purgatory. Tapping my blunt nails on the stone rail that guarded me from an icy death, I sighed.

Things were finally looking up for me. I got all high marks for my freshman year, I got a small job at the bakery down the street from Tweak Bros., and I found an amazingly beautiful boyfriend. Hell, I had conquered the biggest road bump in my life- paranoia. So as I looked down into the flowing white foam, I wondered why I would throw that out the window.

Maybe it was because nothing seemed to interest me anymore. Maybe I was just sick of waking up and dealing the pressures of life. I didn't think my reason mattered that much; there wasn't someone who would interrogate a dead body for suicide motives.

I picked up my head and looked at the stars above me as if they were an audience.

"You know, I had a eulogy written up, but the more I think about it... Not really anyone around to care." I hummed thoughtfully. I pulled the lined sheet of paper out and scanned it over. It was just a list of funeral instructions that I'd like if anyone found the note. Closed casket, white flowers, and don't you dare dress my dead corpse up in a suit and tie- I'm not sleeping for eternity in that itchy monkey suit.

I knelt down and felt around the stones composing the bridge. This one was fairly old, and so finding a loose rock was quick business. I pulled it out and wedged my note in the gap, shoving it back in place.

"There."

I waited for about an hour for someone to stumble upon me and talk me out of killing myself and hey, maybe say that I wasn't alone or something. But this is reality. Stuff like that just doesn't happen. I did feel my phone buzz about halfway through my waiting, and I felt my heart lurch hopefully, but when I checked it, it was just a service data message:

VERISON WIRELESS:
YOU HAVE USED UP 75% OF YOUR DATA
PLEASE GO TO YOUR VERISON ACCOUNT TO FIND OUT MORE

"Well. Looks like I'm going to have to do it. I've already frozen my balls off. Too late to chicken out now! I hope someone doesn't try and stop me!" For a moment, I feared that I would get pneumonia and die- but then I recalled that that was sort of the point.

Nothing. I sighed, poised myself over the edge of the bridge, waited for a few extra minutes, and then leaped.

As I was in the air of the fifteen foot drop, I heard a voice cut through the air- a blood-curdling scream.

"NO! TWEEK!"

Craig.

That's the only thing I could process as I felt nothing but cold surround me, consume me, and fill every gap and crevice around me. I didn't try to hold my breath. Tossed around like a rag doll, I let the water take my breath away as if it were a suave dance partner. I was beginning to feel the numbness of death. Or was it just the cold? Ice filled my lungs. I felt my head strike against a rock. It didn't hurt, although it should've. I was dying.

And then I felt a jerk. My arm was pulled back from the powerful center of the river and slowly inched towards the shore. My systems were already shutting down, and the person gasping and cradling my limp body was but a blur. I could hear a garbled string of sobs wracking their voice, thundering through their chest and making it rumble.

"Don't let go, don't let go, don't let go," is what it chanted.

With the last of my strength, I forced a weak chuckle and whispered back, "it's okay."

Then, there was nothing.

Death proved rather short for me, as my seemingly not-dead eyes cracked open to see a dimly lit room. I was positioned on my side, fluids dripping out of my mouth and into an orange Home Depot bucket. For a while, I simply watched it fill.

Drip, drip.

Drip, drip.

Etc.

My body was wrapped in a heated blanket and stripped naked. Awkward, but whatever. I could deal with that. What I could not deal with- I realized- was that I was breathing.

Because, you see, the point of dying is to not-breathe, which was pretty much the opposite of what I was doing. I frowned.

In the middle of my brooding, I heard the door creak open and a tall, familiar boy walk through.

"You're awake," was all he whispered before he nearly dropped his tray and sprinted towards the bed. He set the tray down on the floor and eagerly wrapped an arm around my back. His nose dug into the crick of my neck (my favorite place for it, coincidentally), and he kissed my skin.

"Tweek, thank God. You're awake!"

"Unfortunately," I quipped back with a hoarse voice that was hardly audible.

"What? You're alive," Craig responded, startled.

"Craig, the point of committing suicide is to not be alive. Do you see the issue here?" I snapped back.

Craig bit his lip and pulled away from my neck, he studied my face and cupped it with his calloused hands. "Why?" His parted, yet nonspeaking lips whispered.

"I don't know- I was bored? Sick? What do you expect from me, a list of childhood traumas?"

"No. Just- I want to know why. Why didn't you tell me? Was it something I did?"

"No!" I hissed. "You're as close to perfect as anyone could ever be, Craig Tucker. No- it wasn't you."

"Then why?"

"I'm tired. Rub my back," I whispered, feeling my chest ache. Craig never feels insecure. He never feels like it was 'something he did'. I was ungraciously presented with the fact that this is all my fault. I hoped that he didn't hate me for it.

Craig said nothing. He leaned over the mattress and wrapped his strong arms around me. He used the tips of his fingers to trail down my back, and then back up to my shoulders. I shivered. I always felt weak when he did that. Sort of like he was controlling me. Not in a mean, commandeering way- but more like an artist controls clay. Like he was making me his. I arched my back and smiled gently.

My eyelids grew heavy.

"It's okay," I mumbled calmly. "It's okay."

"Don't close your eyes," Craig whispered back. "Focus on something. My voice. Focus on my voice."

That proved counterproductive, as his soothing voice only made me sleepier.

"You're so stupid," I laughed softly. "You know you would've died in that river if you failed to save me?" The thought made me twitch.

"I know," Craig responded. "That's okay. I don't think I could live without you, Tweek. If I did die, then at least my last moment would be hanging on to you."

I bit my lip and nuzzled into his coat. Never, ever, will I deserve Craig Tucker, I decided. Hot water welled up in my eyes and I sniffled. Craig moved back.

"You're crying," he muttered, scrunching up his eyebrows in distress.

"I am? I didn't...realize...I..."

"Shh, it's okay," Craig interrupted, returning back to his earlier position. "I don't see anything unless you want me to." He knows that I hate looking weak. He knows that I hate crying in front of other people. Fuck, he's so damn beautiful.

"Why do you have to be so good?" I whimpered. "Why...? What fucking disgusting God wasted you on me? I hate him. I hate him, I hate him, I hate me."

"Shut up," Craig snarled. I jolted. This was the angriest I'd ever heard him with me. Eyes wide, I said nothing. I waited, a dull nervous tremor going through my body.

"Just shut up, okay? You are just as good as I am."

"Yeah? Who's the one here who was about to kill himself and leave you behind?"

"It's not your fault."

"I would never die for you, Craig Tucker. I just wouldn't. And you risked yourself to save me or drown trying."

"It's okay."

"You deserve so much more than someone like me."

"I still love you."

"I want to die."

"I think we all do," Craig whispered back, his hand moving from my back to my hair, fingering through the knots seamlessly. "Think about it. You ask anyone on earth if they'd like to live forever. Of course they wouldn't. They wouldn't want to live while everyone and everything they love dies around them. Everyone wants to die, Tweek. They just want to die in their own time."

"I think my time is now."

"It isn't."

"How do you know?"

"I just do. Trust me."

I wiggled my arms out of the warm blanket and coiled them around Craig's middle. My eyelids were still threatening to drop, but unlike several minute ago, this time, I fought it. I tapped my fingers on Craig's back. I kept talking about pointless things to keep my brain working. What am I wearing tomorrow. Do you think they're going to have any good movies out this year. I wonder if there are also sock-gnomes in addition to underpants-gnomes.

Craig fell asleep about four in the morning. I knew, because his fingers stopped running through my hair. Despite being exhausted and wanting nothing more than to join him, I kept talking, and I kept seeing the blue walls of his room.

I wanted to sacrifice one thing- just one thing for him. I would never be good enough, or strong enough, or brave enough to be worth Craig's love. But I could try.

And I think that would be enough.

I finally fell asleep an hour later, listening to his gentle snoring, and feeling his warm arms around me. My vision faded to black, then to white, and then to nothing. The last word I heard, curiously enough, was a soft, broken, "goodbye".

NOVEMBER 23rd

A sea of black gathered at a lonely cobblestone bridge overlooking a riverbed. They bowed their heads in mourning for the boy who had requested a closed casket. A man in austere white robes read some prayers that proved to be lost on the people who were to consumed in their own sadness.

A boy stood away from the rest of them, at the edge of the riverbed. He watched the gently swirling and deceptively smooth motion of the water within. He was joined by a young girl with brilliant red hair and the same blue eyes.

"You're not going to throw yourself in here, right?" she asked.

"No. I just- I don't think he heard me say goodbye." The boy choked on his last word and turned away to wipe away a fresh stream of tears. Their appearance had become a typical phenomenon.

"That's okay," she amended, grabbing his hand to comfort him. "I heard that sometimes when people die, they're allowed to have a moment of closure with someone they love."

"You think?"

"Of course. Since when am I wrong?"

The boy smiled sadly and looked up at the sky, pretending that the stars concealed by daylight were an audience.

Tweek Tweak- died November 17th of hypothermia and shock, as Craig Tucker did not pull him from the river fast enough.

I don't know. I think that was satisfyingly sad. Review, or Favorite (or both!).