Chapter Text
it takes a long time, but god dies too [adventure]
It was a dusty day in south Colorado, the sun beating down hard. Old red dirt, kicked up by the overexcited hooves of local horses, drifted through the air, stuck in your mouth, crusted the corner of your eyes and made you want to sleep. Kyle was sitting on the porch, picking at his nails with his knife and staring down the dirt road. He felt something in the air, heavier yet less tangible than all that dust, a sort of omnipresent ominousness, the type of feeling he always got before a good fight. The last time this happened he'd ended up in a shootout, spent the night in jail. It was only due to the debt the sheriff owed him then, and owed him now, that he got out.
The sky lit up a pretty blaze of orange and pinks. Kyle stared at it, thinking of his parents. He shook his head as if that could send the thoughts themselves away, then turned his attention back to the road. Part of the conditions of his bail were to stand guard for the town until the sheriff could find a real deputy. In the past few months he'd apprehended a sole outlaw, a man who went by the name of Tweek, with wild hair and crazier eyes—opium, Kyle suspected—and saw to a caravan of shady-looking individuals who wanted to settle near them. The sheriff didn't trust them, for religious reasons, he said. Kyle didn't press the issue, hiding his necklace, the mark of his own faith, under his shirt and vest.
He startled when he saw the horizon spit a man out onto the road. From this distance, he looked like a native. He was wearing white man's clothes, but they were bedraggled and torn, and he had long hair swinging over his face, a headband decorated with feathers trying to keep it clasped in place. He walked with a limp, the details becoming clearer to Kyle as he dragged his body down the path. Kyle put his knife in his pocket and pulled out his gun, descending the porch.
"Stop!" he called when the man got in earshot. Surprisingly, he did, coming to a shambling halt. From this distance Kyle could make out the color of his skin and his features—he was white, alright, even if he looked like an Indian.
Kyle approached him, keeping a tight grip on his revolver. "Who are you, and what do you want?" he asked, narrowing his eyes.
The man spoke. His face was scraped up, and Kyle could see blood on his clothes. "They call me Stan of Many Moons," he said, coughing a bit as he spoke. He had a deep, soothing voice, even though it sounded raspy. Possibly due to his injuries, possibly due to the dust.
"And what do you want?" Kyle asked again. He raised his gun, showing this man its presence.
"Help," Stan of Many Moons said simply. He showed the palms of his hands. "I don't have any weapons. They took 'em from me."
"We ain't offering help," Kyle said. His conviction wavered—these were the sheriff's orders, not his own. The man in front of him had black hair but blue eyes. So blue Kyle felt like he shouldn't be looking at them.
"I walked for three days already," the man said, voice sounding pained. "Please, I haven't had any water since yesterday."
Kyle shook his head, not at the man's request, but at this whole situation, the tyranny of the town he found himself living under. "We've got no help to offer you here."
The man brushed his hair from his eyes, and again Kyle felt that same shock when he saw just how blue they were. He must be around Kyle's age, in the twilight between adolescence and real manhood, where things were expected of you but you still felt like a newborn colt walking on shaky legs through life. Or at least, Kyle had, until about a year ago. He saw the shakiness in this man though, and it was making his heart hurt. He'd thought he'd put a lock on it as tight as that on one of the sheriff's jail cells and yet here this man was, rattling his cage.
"Look, Mr. Stan of Many Moons—"
"You can just call me Stan, if it makes you more comfortable." Stan smiled. He had unusually sharp-looking teeth. Kyle couldn't believe he was finding the time, or the strength, to be sarcastic.
"You're gonna plead your case to the sheriff," Kyle said, keeping his voice as steady as he could. He holstered his gun, and as he did, he said, "Don't make me regret that."
"I'm not the fighting kind," Stan said, though the scrapes on his knuckles belayed that statement.
Kyle, unwilling to turn his back to the man, pointed at a building down the way. "After you."
The walk to the sheriff's place was, of course, short, and Kyle glared at the few citizens that came from their houses to peer at the strange occurrence in the middle of the street. They'd know all about it by tomorrow; gossip spreads fast and hard in a town of so little people. Kyle despised it, itched to get back into the wilderness, into anonymity. When he'd apprehended Tweek, he nearly offered to run away with him, but Kyle knew that if that happened the sheriff would've had them both hanged.
Kyle pushed the door open, more certain Stan wouldn't try anything once they were inside. The sheriff, snoozing in the chair of the desk in the parlor, bolted awake. He looked sweaty, probably sweltering inside the fancy get-up he wore, fat as fuck and clearly not practicing much of his real duty. He sent guys out like Kyle, short-term contracted lawmen, out for him until they died. He had a woman working for him, too, but Kyle had never met her. They called her Calamity Heidi, and the rumor was that she took care of the threats up in the mountains, and also that she fucked the sheriff. Literally: that she was the one that did the fucking, not him. The sheriff's name was Eric Cartman, but Kyle only thought of him as Cartman.
"What's this all about?" Cartman said, looking at Kyle. He slapped one of his own bloated cheeks, trying to smack the sleep out of himself.
"He turned up on the road." Kyle took a stance against the wall, leaving Stan to get stripped bare in Cartman's maniacal gaze. "Says he needs help."
"Shit, I can see that. Don't bleed on my things."
"I'm not bleeding," Stan said. He looked down at his clothes. "This is old."
"Says he's been walking for three days," Kyle added.
"Well, why'd you bring him to me?" Cartman looked at Kyle, swiping sweaty hair out of his face. "I told you we aren't accepting any new people."
Kyle shrugged. The sight of Cartman made him seethe and shake with anger, and he was trying to keep his cool, annoyed by the debt they owed each other, the way both their lives belonged in each other's palm. Kyle wasn't sure how he was supposed to get out of this situation, but he could at least present an obstacle to Cartman: Stan.
"Well, take a seat and give me your story." Cartman gestured at the chair in front of the death. "Why are you wearing that thing on your head? You some kind of Indian?"
"I'm a white man by birth," Stan said. He stood, not taking the offered seat, his hands clasped behind his back and his hair shadowing his profile so Kyle couldn't make out his face. He looked like a hanged man already. "The tribe slaughtered my village, my father included, but they took my mother and me prisoner. I was just a babe, you see. I've got a sister, they took her too."
"So you grew up with them," The sheriff said, spitting the word them onto the floor. "So you are some kind of Indian."
"I sympathize with my people," Stan said, looking up. His eyes had gone hard. "If that's what you're asking."
"I don't want no Indian sympathizer," Cartman said. "They cause enough trouble here as it is." He looked to Kyle, expecting agreement, but Kyle kept his jaw shut and the line of his mouth straight.
"I don't want to live here," Stan said. A hint of something—annoyance, probably—broke into the calmness of his voice. "I just want some help."
"You got anything to give?" Cartman sat up in his chair, putting his elbows on the desk and placing his three chins over his interlaced fingers. Greedy bastard, Kyle thought. Greedy, fat fucking bastard. He wished he could voice these thoughts out loud, knew he'd have his head blown off in an instance if he did. Just like Cartman would lose his if he ever mentioned the glint of gold around Kyle's neck.
Stan's hands ghosted over the pockets of his trouser but then he shook his head. "We were attacked," he said. "They didn't take kindly to my ma, one of theirs, shacking up with the Indians. My sister went, but I wouldn't, so they tried to kill me."
"Who's they?" Cartman asked.
"Other white men," Stan said, saying it with as much hate as Cartman had said them earlier. "Back east. I been moving west."
"What happened to your mother?" Kyle spoke up, curious.
"They killed her." Stan looked at Kyle, saying the words like it was a challenge. "She wouldn't leave, she loved the Indians. She'd become a medicine woman. The townspeople, they hated it. Killed her for being a traitor, then killed the rest of the tribe for crimes against them." Turning back to the sheriff, Stan said, "Look, sir. I already lost two families. I'm tired and I'm cut up, but if I had a few days' rest, well, I've got a strong back and sane mind. I'll work for a bit to repay the favor, and then I'll be on my way."
Cartman snorted. "You aren't sane," he said. "You love them Indians. Get out of here, before I have you hanged. Crimes against white people, that's right."
Stan left. Kyle shot Cartman a dirty look, letting him know of his disapproval, then hurried after Stan. He shouldn't feel any kind of allegiance to him, given everything, but he couldn't help it. He clearly stood for something, which Kyle could respect, and he'd challenged Cartman, and more than that, he had those blue eyes, the brightest thing beside the sky Kyle had seen in months. That same sky was darker now and when Stan went to turn down the other side of the road, Kyle stopped him.
"There's nowhere else, Stan," he said, grabbing him by the shoulder. Stan turned around, eyes wide. "This is it. The rest out there, it's outlaw country 'til California."
"Then I'll be an outlaw," Stan said. It wasn't a declaration as much as a sad acceptance of fate.
"Shit," Kyle swore. He stomped his boot in the dirt. "Come with me, back to my house. I got a room, and the sheriff thinks he knows everything, but he doesn't. The woman that runs it, she's real nice. Real sympathetic."
"You heard the sheriff," Stan said. "He'll have me hanged."
"No, he won't. That's all talk." Kyle rolled his eyes. "He owes me a life debt, it doesn't matter what I do, so long as I don't kill him. Or worse, insult his pride."
"I can tell he's a prideful man," Stan said. Kyle picked up on just the slightest bit of sarcasm again and laughed. He shouldn't like Stan, he told himself. Shouldn't like what he represented. But he did, despite it all.
"Come on." Kyle walked off in the direction of the house. "Follow me."
Stan did, relief flooding Kyle's chest. Kyle looked to the sheriff's building, not caring if Cartman looked at him from behind the windows; he'd deal with that later, after Stan got his help. The women on the porches, attending to imaginary chores like rinsing the same cloth over and over, watched them as they went, and Kyle glared at them, too. The women here hadn't taken fondly to him, keeping their daughters away, but Kyle wasn't exactly fond of them, either.
"What's your name?" Stan asked Kyle as they walked.
"Kyle," Kyle responded, simply.
"No family name?"
"None." Kyle clenched his jaw.
"I had a family name, once," Stan said. "Don't care for it much, now. Don't feel like it fits."
"If you want to live with the white men again, you're going to have to take it back," Kyle said. They reached the porch, the old groaning under their weight. A cat, belonging to the lady of the house, was sleeping on the bannister of the building. It shot them a dirty look and sauntered off.
"I don't want to live with the white men," Stan said, both decisively and sadly.
"You know what?" Kyle said, opening the door for Stan. "I don't really want to, either. But we all have to do things we don't want to do."
Stan smiled at him. Kyle felt it in his gut, a sort of punch and pride all at once.
The house was empty. Kyle was one of four residents, of which he barely saw one, and the other two spent their time at the saloon when they weren't working. The building itself was stuffy, the windows shut against the dust but the curtains opened to let the light in, giving everything the appearance of being older than what it really was in the dim, dank light. The floorboards creaked beneath their feet and half the furniture, mismatched and banged together, sat untouched. Kyle always felt like he was trespassing when he walked inside, and in a way, he supposed he was.
He led Stan into the kitchen, where he expected to find Red. She was there, her hair down and long over her back, barefoot. Kyle always told himself that if he had to marry it'd be to a woman like her, but mostly she reminded him of his mother. The red hair, the fiery personality and simultaneous fierce protectiveness that always seemed to accompany that color.
"Did Snowpaws bring that in?" Red asked, gesturing to Stan with a wet rag. Her voice sounded both suspicious and amused. Snowpaws was the cat that they'd interrupted on the balcony; he kept the rats out of the house, and sometimes, if you caught him in the right mood, he'd curl up in your lap in the sitting room, purring as if he'd had a long, hard day and this was all he needed, the fire and a few careful strokes down the back. Kyle could relate.
"He's in bad shape," Kyle said, clearly not talking about the cat. "He needs some help. He can stay with me, it's just for a while."
"Well, alright." Red put the dishrag down over the side of the washtub and wiped her hands on the apron, coming over to Stan. She was tall for a woman, but not taller than him. She brushed the hair back from his forehead and felt the skin. Kyle watched him, waiting for a reaction—Red had a mystical effect on most men, and was the most sought-after woman in town—but Stan remained placid. "No fever," she announced, stepping back. She took his hands. "These are awful cut-up, though. And I noticed you walking with a limp."
"Got my leg caught between two rocks and fell," Stan explained, looking at the leg in question. "I don't think it's broken, as I can walk on it."
"I think you just need a rest, honey," Red said. "A rest, and a bath, and a warm, homecooked meal. Lucky for you, I can give you all of that." She flicked her hair over her shoulder, and though Kyle knew she wasn't flirting, that this was just how she was, how she could make money, get all the single men to stay in her house, he felt weirdly jealous. He felt like Stan was something he'd discovered for himself, a mystery for him to solve, the trump card in his hand.
"I'd like some water," Stan said.
Red went over to a pitcher on the counter and poured some, bringing the glass to Stan. He drank the whole thing; Kyle watched his Adam's apple bob, his own mouth suddenly dry. He accepted a glass himself when Red offered one to him.
"Dinner's soon," Red said, looking out the window at the sky, its glorious light faded into a dark blue dusk. "But you got enough time to take a bath. Kyle can show you to the washroom, I've got to finish cooking." She turned around without another word.
Kyle took Stan to the washroom, the one all boarders shared. He turned around to leave Stan there, to go outside to the pump to wash up for dinner himself, but Stan stopped him. When Kyle turned around, Stan was holding the headband out to Kyle. Kyle took it, shocked, fingering one of the feathers.
"She didn't ask about that," Stan said, meaning Red.
"She's not the questioning type."
"That's good." Stan sighed, letting loose a long breath. He took his hair from the two braids it had been in; it was so disheveled Kyle hadn't realized it'd been braided at all. Stan's hair wasn't as long as the hair of other Indian men Kyle had seen, just over his shoulders. Though matted, Kyle could tell it'd be smooth when washed. His own hair embarrassed him terribly, and he wore his hat everywhere, even inside, not caring about being seen as rude. Stan said something, breaking Kyle from his thoughts, and he listened to the words. "Can you keep that safe? It's important to me, but I don't want any more questions about it. For now."
"Sure," Kyle said. "I'll bring it to my room."
"Thank you," Stan said, and Kyle knew he was being thanked for more than just keeping the headband safe.
He went to his room as he had promised and placed it on his dresser, where it stood stark, like something on an altar. Kyle left and went back outside, to the pump in the backyard, rinsing his hands and splashing water on his face. He felt like he needed it, needed the clarity.
Dinner was a meat and potato stew, what they had nearly every night, but Red always made it taste as good and as different as possible from the night previous. Stan ate two bowls, a little sloppily but still within the realm of polite manners, surprising Kyle. He supposed he shouldn't be surprised, that it came from his own bias against the natives, but he liked the way Stan wiped at his mouth with the back of his hand, the one hint of uncivility. The only other boarding house resident that ate with them that night was Kevin Stoley, one of the ones that frequented the saloon, claiming he needed the food to soak up the liquor he was about to drink. Red laughed, made sure he ate plenty.
"Who're you?" Kevin asked eventually.
Stan had changed from his torn clothes into a plain set Red had lying around from a previous tenant, and with his hair tied in a ponytail at the base of his neck, he looked—well, normal, Kyle supposed. Like a member of society as they knew it. He turned to face Kevin with a plain face.
"A transient," Stan supplied. It was answer enough.
After dinner they went to the sitting room, where Stan sat in a chair and Red tended to his wounds. Cleaned, they saw his knuckles were scraped but scabbing over, and while he had a few deep gashes on his chest and his back and his leg was still sore, he was in otherwise alright shape. Kyle looked away when Stan shed his shirt and Red cleaned his wounds, face hot, sympathetic.
"The sheriff letting you stay?" Red asked absentmindedly.
"No," Kyle said, turning back around. He was standing by the fireplace, running his hands over the cool stone. "'Course not, you kidding?"
Red shook her head. "I don't know what he expects," she said, and she straightened Stan with a hand on his shoulder while she dug into one of the deeper cuts. When she rinsed the rag in the bucket beside her, it came back bright red, and Kyle swallowed down some of his stew. "This place is gonna become a ghost town, the way he runs it. We ain't even got a school for what few babies we got."
"He'll be gone," Kyle said, scowling. "Nobody puts up with someone like him for long."
"Thought it'd be you." Red looked at him pointedly. "That would get rid of him."
"You know I can't." Kyle broke eye contact, not liking the accusation.
"What's all this about?" Stan asked. He turned his eyes to Kyle. "Is it the life debt, or what you called it?"
"Look at you!" Red laughed, stepping out from behind Stan. "Sticking your nose where it doesn't belong already."
"It's alright," Kyle said. "Seeing as I guess I owe him a life debt, too." He smiled at Stan, just slightly.
"You gotta be careful with all those debts, Kyle," Red said. She picked up the bucket with the bloody rags and touched Kyle's shoulder as she made her way out of the room. "You can't keep gambling with your life, or the devil's gonna collect eventually."
She left and Stan and Kyle looked at each other; for some reason, they burst out laughing, doubling over. Kyle wasn't sure what was funny, exactly, but he felt he was looking at the scene from outside himself, looking at them laughing at if he were a bystander in the corner. They stopped when Stan groaned with pain and sat back up. Something about the way he spread his thighs, got more comfortable, made Kyle start to itch under his collar. He cursed himself silently and took the chair across from Stan.
"Want to play cards?" he asked.
"Red told you not to gamble." When Stan smiled at Kyle, he did so without hesitation. Mouth wide, those white teeth and blue eyes, and Kyle knew he had to be careful.
Kyle sat back and waved his hand. "She thinks she can tell me what to do."
"Maybe she likes you?"
Kyle laughed at that, shook his head. "She's like this with all the men. It's how she gets them to stay. If she were with somebody, it would break the illusion, you know?"
"Illusion." Stan repeated the word, like it was a pebble he could roll around on his tongue.
"It means—"
"I know what it means." Stan didn't seem offended. "My mom, she made sure my sister and me got some sort of learning, you know. And the Indians—they aren't uncivilized, like you all think they are." He narrowed his eyes. "We ran into white people before. Most of them, they just told us to stay away. But this time, they took a real offense."
"I'm sorry," Kyle said, not quite sure what he was apologizing for. "What a life, that must have been. Growing up. Sounds almost, I don't know. Romantic."
Stan tilted his head up, as if he could see the night sky through the ceiling, read the history of his path from it. "It was romantic," he said. "Shit, it is romantic. I can't live like this, Kyle." He tilted his head back down and nodded to the room. Kyle looked at it, and felt that he had woken up from a long dream, and realized, too, where he was: a dusty, claustrophobic sitting room with ugly furniture, on the main street of a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, under the thumb of a fat greedy bastard of a sheriff.
"Me neither," Kyle said, finally.
"You keep saying that, and I don't know what you mean." Stan made eye contact, holding his gaze.
"I don't want to be here," Kyle said. He spoke low, though he thought none of what he said would shock Red or would be something she hadn't guessed already. "I got into trouble a few months back, nearly died, and the sheriff found me and saved me, in exchange for having me work for him. I've known him a long time, you see, and we had this arrangement that was working out just fine. I've saved him and he's saved me, you see."
"What was the trouble you got into?" Stan asked, raising his eyebrows. He seemed curious but not surprised.
"I was alone, out west. Outlaw country," Kyle reminded him, and they shared a smile like it was a private joke between the two of them. "It was stupid, you shouldn't go out there alone. Wasn't by choice. I was attacked by a group of bandits, they wanted my things, my horse, and they got them, alright. Left me for dead. Cartman found me—he's in the habit of doing that. It's like he's got a sixth sense, finding people in hopeless situations, getting them under his control. Eventually I got into a bit of a problem with a townsperson. Cartman threw me in jail, then told me he wouldn't kill me if I worked for him."
Stan crinkled his forehead. "But you say he owes you, too, right?"
"That was from a while ago," Kyle said. "This town—I've used it as a base for quite a bit. Just haven't been employed." He laughed. "If you could call it employment."
"Seems real awful," Stan said finally.
Kyle shrugged. "What'll happen is I die, or he'll find somebody else that he doesn't owe his life to, and he won't need me anymore. And then I'll be on my way."
"Where to?"
"I don't know that part yet," Kyle said. He turned away from Stan and stared at the door. He knew who he wanted to go to, but not where he was, and he'd given up looking a long time ago. He knew, though, that as soon as Cartman released him, he'd be off again, alone, crawling through, looking for him. He turned back to Stan. "What about you? You can't go west, I said."
"South, maybe," Stan said. He looked down at his hands. "I'd want to go back to my people."
Kyle sighed. He didn't want to tell Stan at this moment, but he had a hard time believing another group would take him in, even if he did have the headband and knew how to braid his hair and paint his face. "What a bunch of sad fucks we are."
Kyle asked Stan if he wanted to go to drink some of the liquor Red had saved in the house, as Kyle was sure Red would let him have it after knowing Kyle wasn't a drunk, but Stan's eyes darkened at the mention of alcohol. He called it poison and refused. Kyle told him to suit himself, and between that and their earlier conversation, Kyle started to get that same feeling of heaviness in the air once more. Stan went to sleep shortly after, on the trundle bed in Kyle's room, and Kyle took his journal down to the sitting room to write about the day in the lamplight. It was a bit fanciful, this journal, but he'd had it since before everything went down, and he tried to write a page a day. I had quite the strange encounter, he started today's entry, with the strangest man I have ever met.
When he finished his journal entry, he tucked the thing inside his vest and walked to the window, looking out at the street. This particular window needed a scrubbing both inside and out, and Kyle could barely make out a thing, but he could see the full weight of the moon in the sky. Stan of Many Moons, he'd called himself. What moons were there beside the one they could see? Must be an Indian thing; a mystical thing. Kyle touched the gold chain around his neck. He'd had religion, once. Or, if not quite religion, a system of morals, of values, of rituals and traditions. There was no doubt an appeal in pushing into the frontier, in forming all of those systems yourself and on your own accord, as they did here, but it was nice to feel like you belonged to something larger than yourself. To feel that safety and security. It was kind of an anonymity, like living in the wilderness. Kyle shook his head—that was gone, now, and he belonged to himself, now, even if it wasn't in the way Cartman thought he did, in the way that Kyle's own parents had envisioned. He turned away from the window, took his hand from his necklace and took his journal from his vest, and then he went back to his room.
When he went to put his journal back on the dresser, next to Stan's headband, he saw something new. A pair of woman's earrings, small but clearly precious. Pearls, catching the moonlight. Kyle raised his eyebrows and thought of the way Stan had touched his pockets in front of Cartman earlier, mildly shocked that he'd laid his treasure out for Kyle to see. Kyle touched one of them, lightly, thinking that maybe these were the other moons, and then he undressed and went to bed himself.
When he woke Stan wasn't in the room. The headband was still there, but the earrings weren't. Kyle wondered if he'd imagined them, or if Stan had left them out on purpose, wanting Kyle to see. He couldn't think of a reason why Stan would do that, so he stopped thinking about it, dressed and shaved in the small washbasin and mirror in the corner of his room, and then went down to breakfast.
He found Stan in the kitchen with Red, helping. "I like this one," Red said when she saw Kyle. "He can stay, free of charge."
"Ha." Kyle took a plate of eggs and cured venison she gave him.
They ate just the three of them, the other men either hungover or already up and out to work. Red sat at the head of the table, eating in small bites while working on repairing a pair of boots. The combination of the sound of squelching leather and the feeling of venison between his teeth vaguely nauseated Kyle, though not enough to stop eating.
"How are you feeling?" Kyle asked Stan.
"Much better, truly," Stan said, smiling wide. "Another day or two and I should be able to be on my way."
"We'll just keep you secret 'til then," Red said without looking from the boots.
"Will that sheriff really kill me?"
"Anything to keep this town under his control," Kyle said, cutting into his eggs as if they were Cartman's head. "He has nothing else."
"A town is a whole hell of a lot to have," Stan noted.
Kyle looked up, staring at Stan. "He's the son of a whore and nearly died to gambling debts before I saved his ass," he said. "Dumbest thing I ever did, but I knew him as a boy."
He was crass mostly to gauge Stan's reaction. Stan's eyebrows raised, his lip quirked, but just slightly. He seemed amused, more than shocked. "I think that says a lot about you as a person," Stan said, speaking to Kyle in a way that made him feel like the only other person in the room, if not the world. "You aren't like most gunmen I've met."
"He sure isn't," Red added softly, with what Kyle knew was genuine fondness.
"Point is," Kyle said, "you have to leave as soon as you can. Cartman isn't fucking around."
After breakfast, Stan tugged on Kyle's jacket. He went to go into the drawing room, but Kyle shook his head, leading him up the stairs. The windows were grimy and curtained, sure, but he couldn't risk some nosy pioneer woman looking in, reporting back to the sheriff to try and win herself and her family some favor.
"This whole thing seems like some real fucked-up shit," Stan announced, sitting on Kyle's bed. The trundle bed had been stashed away.
"Well," Kyle said, walking aimlessly to the window. His hand settled on his holster, as it tended to do. "That's the way it is." He knew it was a non-answer, a non-statement.
"You got work today?"
"Every day of the week, but it don't matter when or if I show up. If there's real trouble, Cartman'll come and collect me." Kyle walked away from the window and over to the dresser, placing his hand on the smooth wooden top. He wanted to ask about the earrings but bit his tongue for now.
"We should get to know each other," Stan said. Kyle knew what he meant, but an unwanted bonfire lit in his belly anyway. Stan had tied his hair back again today. He had a strong chin.
"I don't want to get to know you."
"Why not?" Stan leaned back. With his eyes wide and eyebrows just slightly up, it felt like—
Kyle couldn't think that way. "You'll be gone soon," Kyle said instead. He took his hand from the dresser, disconcerted by just how much he was starting to enjoy that smooth texture.
Stan sighed. "What am I supposed to do until I'm better, though?"
"Rest?" Kyle looked at him. "So that you get better sooner?"
"I'm not much one for resting." Stan leaned forward again, starting to jiggle one leg.
"Well, what did you do, before? With the tribe?"
"You can sit down, you know." Stan patted the bed beside him.
"I'm good. I should get going soon."
"You said you didn't have work."
A standstill. Kyle became aware he was still cradling his holster, as if he might need to shoot Stan at any moment. He imagined it, briefly: Stan's body, blood and brains splattered all across Kyle's rented bed and walls. It disturbed Kyle deeply, and he shook his head, which Stan must have taken as a response to his statement.
"I did most of the animal stuff," Stan said eventually. "Broke horses. Hunted. Tanned hides. That type of thing. I helped my mother with the medicine, too."
"That's nice," Kyle said absently. He went to his door. "Maybe you can find Snowpaws. Trim his nails, or the like."
Stan laughed. Kyle did not wait to engage in further conversation and left his own room, his face hot. He took the stairs too fast, his boots clamoring so loud Red yelled at him from the kitchen, told him to watch it, and that if he fell through, she wasn't going to help carry his broken ass back up.
Kyle spent the rest of the day away from the boarding house. He went around the town, making home checks on some citizens, seeing if there was anything they wanted to do. The most he got was one family asking him to keep a lookout for their dog, who had gone missing; Kyle told them it'd probably been taken by a coyote and moved on.
He visited Cartman late in the afternoon, finding him behind the desk and sucking the residue of some meal from his fat fingers. "The Indian gone?" he asked.
"He wasn't an Indian," Kyle said. He took the seat in front of Cartman and crossed his arms, spreading his legs.
"Fine, whatever. Is he gone, though?"
"Yeah. The dumb bastard headed west."
Cartman laughed, a single short bark. He hadn't laughed like that when they were boys; it must be an affectation. Kyle shook his head again, unsure why he was thinking so much about the past, when it was generally his principle not to do so. "What're you doing here, Kyle?" he asked, after Kyle didn't move. "I ain't got work for you."
"That's the thing," Kyle said, narrowing his eyes. "When are you going to let me go?"
Cartman leaned across his desk. "You and me both know the answer to that," he said, stretching the words out, his tongue poking between his lips. "It's your life."
"It's not fair," Kyle said. "We paid each other back."
"You're indebted to me again," Cartman said. "And you're serving out your sentence."
The gaze they held said all that needed to be said. Kyle knew this was pointless, futile. He'd have this conversation before; he'd probably have it again. It did no good to go poking the bear, to go try and scrounge up some hope, but Stan's appearance had nearly made Kyle forget that. It seemed so easy, cheating Cartman like this. But Kyle knew Cartman wasn't dumb. He was a lot of things, but he wasn't dumb. Stan would have to leave soon, or risk being hanged; Kyle would have to serve Cartman to the end of his whims, or risk the same.
Kyle returned home from dinner wearing a scowl, resenting that he felt too clean, a sign he'd done nothing all day. He found Stan leaning against the porch, petting Snowpaws's head, and gasped.
"You dumbass!" Kyle hissed. "Get inside, before the sheriff sees you!"
"Why have you been so cold, Kyle?" Stan asked instead. There wasn't any accusation in his tone. "Not just to me, but to everybody. You walk around like you have the entire weight of the world on your shoulders."
"I don't need any character assessment from a man I met a day ago," Kyle said.
"You sure about that?"
"It was the Indians, alright?" Kyle turned to Stan, glaring at him. "It was the Indians that killed my family."
Stan said nothing, his face twisting into an expression Kyle had not seen before. He was clearly and finally shocked.
Kyle leant against the railing beside Stan. The cat jumped off, annoyed. "They killed my family while we were going west," he said. "They ransacked the caravan. I saw my mother and my father killed before my eyes. My brother, Ike, he ran. He was young. Small. Fast. I don't know what happened to him. Probably dead, too. Eaten by a coyote."
Stan was still quiet, staring down at his shoes.
"So forgive me for not wanting to engage with an Indian sympathizer," Kyle said, "and let him tell me how to live my life."
Kyle went inside then, feeling overheated and caring not if Cartman saw Stan on the porch and shot him on the spot. The words he said to Stan tasted like lies, but at this point, he didn't know what the truth was. Existential dread was not new to Kyle, but he'd never felt it this strongly, a knife between his ribs, puncturing his lung, taking his air, the blackness nearly visible in his vision. He wanted to run, to kick up dust. He wanted to travel back in time—before Stan, before South Park, before the death of his family. He wanted to be a boy again, a bright-eyed, quick-witted boy, sitting on his mother's lap and impressing people with his mathematics and his literacy. Tears of anger stung his eyes. He wasn't gambling with his own life, but at times, it felt like God sure was.
Kyle heard the door open and knew it was Stan. He went through the kitchen—Red was not there, for once—and out the back door. Red's place wasn't fenced in, and so he ran, ran past the chicken coop and into the hills, until he felt out of breath for real and not just in his mind. He stared at the sunrise, those brilliant colors, and wondered how nature could have the cruel audacity to look like this. Wondered if Stan's other moons were any kinder than the one in this sky.
He forced himself to trudge back when he felt hunger getting the best of him. Red was a good cook, but more than that, it wouldn't do to stir up suspicion. He didn't need anything about him questioned. He needed to keep his head low and wait it out. He'd done it before, he'd do it again.
Most of the boarding house residents attended this meal, allowing Kyle and Stan to lose each other in conversation. They dispersed after dinner and Red took Stan into the drawing room to look at his wounds once again. Kyle retired to his room and wrote his thoughts in his journal, forcing himself to reach into the corners of his psyche, to drain all the shit that had built up, exposed by Stan's appearance. Like shining light on the bugs under a rock.
When Stan came up he seemed to be in a good mood, his cheeks pink from recent laughter. Kyle could hear it downstairs. Kyle put his journal away and watched as Stan took the earrings from his pocket.
"I saw those earlier," Kyle said, though he told himself he wouldn't talk to Stan.
"They were my mother's." Stan put them on the dresser and then dropped his trousers. "You know, Kyle. I lost things to the Indians too, and I don't hate them."
"I don't hate them," Kyle said immediately. "I just don't trust them."
"You trust me?"
"I don't know you."
Stan sighed. "Let's turn in," he said.
"Don't talk to me like you're in charge of me." Kyle narrowed his eyes and patted the gun.
Stan looked at him as if he was about to say something but didn't. He just took his vest and shirt off and pulled the trundle bed out, settling in. Kyle stood and allowed himself to be angry for a few moments before turning into bed himself. It felt simultaneously too intimate and not intimate enough, this arrangement, and Kyle slept poorly. The same dream played on repeat: he found Ike, then discovered Ike was actually dead, Kyle up to his elbows in cold wet dirt and holding his brother's rotted corpse, dug from an unmarked grave.
The morning was cold and it smelled like rain was approaching. Kyle woke before the rest of the house, so he went out to the back porch, wishing he had a shawl to wrap around himself. Like a woman, he supposed, but what did it matter? Instead he rolled and smoked a cigarette, dipping into the little stash of tobacco he kept for when he was really and truly stressed. Stan's appearance—Kyle resented it. He had flipped Kyle's life upside down, and not just by his challenges and probes. The fact was, in a dusty town full of dim-witted men, fueled by grudges and complicated life debts, Kyle could ignore his unnatural leanings. But when he looked into Stan's blue, blue eyes, or stared at his tan, tan skin, or the strong, strong slope of his back, Kyle could not ignore him. Stan set Kyle on fire in every worst, best, possible way.
He finished his cigarette and rubbed the butt into the wood of the porch with the toe of his boot, feeling too self-pitying to feel bad about his mistreatment of Red's establishment. When he returned inside he found her sleepy-eyed and slow in the kitchen.
"You're up early," she said.
"I didn't sleep well." Kyle rubbed at his face, another bad habit. "I don't much like having somebody else in my room."
"I don't think that's it," Red said softly, though the way she looked at Kyle was rather hard.
"What?"
'What?" Red repeated. "Nothing, I suppose. Stan's just quite a character."
Kyle returned her hard look. "Call me for breakfast."
"It might do you some good to talk to him. Listen to what he got to say."
"I'll be on the front porch."
Kyle went to the front porch and watched the sun rise, the town begin to stir from sleep and gently nudge itself into another day of work. Kyle knew he hated all of this. He knew it, but he'd been dealing with it. Stan—Stan could go into the wilderness, for all Kyle cared. Could return to his Indians and get murdered. Kyle's eyes stung.
Red called him for dinner about half an hour later. Kyle dragged himself, feeling like he was walking to be executed. He'd had a mark on his back for a long time, but he thought he'd covered it up well enough, kept himself hidden, discreet. It was true for so many things—his religion, his preferences, his very life and soul—and here Stan was, immediately detecting Kyle as marked, as hidden, and as more than that, so tired, his thread of existence worn so thin.
After a tense breakfast of Red and Stan talking easily and Kyle burning and fuming, Stan pulled him into the drawing room. Kyle noticed that Red had gone out to tend to the chickens, all the other tenants at work; the house was empty, every sound of settling wood ringing in Kyle's ear, a sign of warning and foreboding.
Stan spoke, his arm on Kyle's elbow from dragging him into the drawing room.
"Let's run away."
Though he knew it was coming, Kyle laughed in disbelief. "Cartman's right, you are crazy."
"I'm a lot of things, but I ain't crazy." Stan's eyes were steady, calm, sane, and he took both of Kyle's hands in his, acting like he was proposing marriage.
"We can't," Kyle said, shaking his head. "I told you, the sheriff—he'd find us, he'd have us both hung. He puts up with a lot, but he wouldn't put up with this."
"If I don't want to be found, I won't," Stan said. "I'm strong, I'm smart, and I know you are, too. I know you're the same as me."
Kyle flushed. "I can't, Stan." He took his hands and looked away. "Where would we even go? There ain't nothing west but wilderness."
"To Mexico," Stan said, and Kyle knew he'd already had it all planned out. "We can start again. They won't know us there, won't know who we are, what we been through."
He was right, and it sounded appealing. Even if they didn't make it to Mexico—the West was dotted with little towns like this, lawless places with a handful of rickety buildings and crime, thirsting for people like Kyle and Stan, people with strong moral compasses and no convictions at all about applying them. Kyle imagined them stumbling upon somewhere near identical, somewhere with as terrible a sheriff seeing over things as here, but a sheriff that didn't owe Kyle his life as much as Kyle owed him his, keeping them in this deadlock of a power struggle. He imagined setting up of a life, and realized he was imagining it with Stan, as partners, as equals.
"I know you want to," Stan said, whispering. He was right.
Kyle shook his head. "Even without Cartman," he said. "How can I trust you? I barely know you."
"I know you feel it," Stan said, still whispering, still keeping his voice low. "Like this is what's supposed to go. Like we lost everything so we could found each other."
Kyle swallowed, his mouth dry again, tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth like the dust in the air had turned to sludge.
"We'll find Ike." Stan grabbed his chin, in order to keep their eyes on each other's. "We'll find Ike, and we'll all go to Mexico. I'm feeling better, Kyle. Strong. We can do it."
Kyle ripped his head free of Stan's grip, knowing what would happen if he allowed him to keep it there. "You make it sound so easy," he said, throat thickening. "Just leave—sure, Stan. I lost everything, and I lost it to your people. I had to rebuild, again and again, and I just don't think I can trust you, trust this."
"Kyle," Stan said, and Kyle wanted to hear his name again in that deep, raspy voice, hear it in night at bed, before and after, forever. He leaned in, speaking directly into Kyle's ear from behind. "We could kill him."
"Stan!" Kyle swiveled around, so fast and so close their noses bumped. Stan took a half-step back. "He's awful, sure. But—I've known him since we were boys. I can't kill him, I just can't." Kyle shook his head. "That's what this comes down to, alright? Like I said that first night. There are things we want to do, that we can't."
"But we can." Stan looked behind him, briefly, and then he leaned into Kyle, pressing his mouth to Kyle's. It took all of Kyle's will not to immediately fall to his knees.
"Don't kiss me," Kyle said, breaking the kiss far earlier than he wanted. "Don't do that, Stan. Please. You don't know—"
"I do know," Stan said. "We're the same, alright? Soulmates."
"Stan," Kyle pleaded through the lump in the throat. He hadn't truly cried in years, since his parents died.
"Here." Stan reached into his pocket and pulled out the earrings. He pressed them into Kyle's right palm, closing Kyle's hands over them. "I trust you with these, alright? All I got left of my mother, my family, my life? I trust you, so you can trust me, too."
"I can't!" Kyle cried, keeping his fingers over the earrings. "Goddamn you, Stan, I want to, but I can't!"
"You can," Stan said again. He wrapped his arms around Kyle and brought him to him. He was only a few inches taller, his nose bumping against Kyle's forehead. "You make me feel right," he said, taking Kyle's hat off his head so they could be closer. "It's so right."
"Ain't nothing in my life ever been right," Kyle sobbed. He still hadn't broken the seal and let the tears come, but he felt like he'd swallowed all the dust in the world.
"Let it be me."
Kyle closed his eyes and swayed, knowing he was playing a dangerous game, knowing he was gambling, knowing, too, that Stan was the trump card, hidden up his sleeve, the cheat. "If you really mean it," Kyle said, "if you really mean it, and you aren't playing me for a fool, take me to bed."
- The story of Gunslinger Kyle and Stan of Many Moons would become a favorite for queer historians. It was undoubtedly romantic, a paragon of that lightning in a pan that was the era of the West: two men, bound to each other and only each other, with nothing else, parading through small towns and lawless outposts, cleaning up, kicking ass, taking names. Stan's mysterious Indian background and kind eyes; Kyle's precision and fierce eyes; people loved them. They didn't know that then, of course, when they ran away from South Park, but by the time they'd returned fifteen years later the rumors had spread and Cartman bowed without much of a fight. Not all stories have sad endings, the historians say. Truth can be stranger than fiction. Kyle took his journal to the grave, but if anybody were to find it, they would see this story, but it was useless, really. The one existent photograph of Stan and Kyle together told you all you needed to know: in the end, in their end, they could, and they did.