OK, so I wrote this while listening to "Title and Registration" by Death Cab for Cutie. You might want to YouTube it and listen along if you like that sort of thing. Also, whoo for my twentieth story and my longest oneshot.

Disclaimer: I don't own South Park.

Daisies in the Snow

Wendy liked being alone. It gave her time to think.

When she really needed to be by herself, she walked to a meadow. Normally it was either covered in snow or swampy mud, but she couldn't forget something that had happened when she was a girl.

"Look, Wendy," her father says to her, pointing at the snow-covered ground. "It's a daisy."

He sets his daughter down, and she looks at the delicate little flower. It almost seems to shiver with the cold, but it's very much alive. Wendy touches the flower, but her father stops her.

"No," he whispers. "Don't pluck it."

"Fuck you, Eric!" Wendy screamed. Their debates always ended like this, she found.

"Shut up, you dumb ho!" His chubby face grew red, making him look like a tomato with hair on top. Wendy remembered having told him this a while ago.

"Maybe we should end the meeting," said Mr. Robinson. He said that every time Wendy and Eric got into a fight.

The debate club filed out of the small meeting. Wendy and Cartman were desperately not looking at each other.

"What happened today, Wendy?" Mrs. Testaburger asked, as her only child entered the house.

"Nothing, really."

"What a boring life you must lead. Whenever I ask you what happened at school, you always say nothing."

"Whatever." Wendy dumped her backpack by the door. "I'm going for a walk."

Wendy was walking on the shoveled sidewalk when she noticed a car slow down next to her. She glanced at the truck. Eric Cartman was at the wheel.

She stopped and turned to face him. He stepped on the brakes. The two teens stared at each other as cars swerved around Eric, shouting obscenities as they passed.

"What do you want?" Wendy said, after a long pause.

"I was wondering where you were going," Cartman said, putting as much contempt as possible behind his words.

"None of your damn business."

"Fine, bitch." He drove off. Wendy continued walking. She looked up to see Cartman make a U-turn a few hundred yards ahead. Wendy quickly lowered her head until she heard the whoosh of his truck going past her.

Had he followed her?

Wendy was an expert in climbing icy trees.

She had fallen off before, but there was always a soft cushion of snow to catch her. As she sat on a branch, clinging on for dear life, Wendy remembered her one serious injury.

Wendy's wrist is enclosed in itchy plaster. She'd chosen a purple cast, and she'd brought a bunch of Sharpies to let her peers sign the cast.

The first one she sees is none other than Eric Cartman.

"What's wrong with your arm?"

"Broke my wrist," Wendy says, a slight blush settling on her cheeks. She still remembers their kiss, not so long ago.

"Oh." Eric looks at it. "Should I sign?"

Wendy is taken aback by the request? Eric, sign her cast? "I-if you want."

She pulls a Sharpie, plain black, out of her bag and hands it to Cartman. Cartman uncaps it, scribbles a short message on her cast, and then hands back the pen with a muffled thanks.

As he walks away, Wendy reads the writing. Cartman's penmanship is terrible, but she thinks she can work out what it says.

"Get well soon, ho. Cartman."

Pretending to be sick never worked with Mrs. Testaburger.

"It's your junior year, Wendy. Every day's important!"

"I know that, Mom," Wendy said, having given up the charade, "but don't you remember what day it is?"

"Of course I do," Mrs. Testaburger whispered. "But you can't stay home every year."

"But, Mom..."

"Get ready for school."

It'd been five years since Wendy's father died.

"You OK?" Bebe asked her during lunch. Bebe knew what day it is.

"Yeah," Wendy lied, staring at her salad.

"Don't worry," Mr. Testaburger says, smiling weakly. "It's completely treatable. I just have to have an operation, and I'll be OK."

"You're sick, Dad," Wendy says, barely hiding her tears. Her father runs his fingers through her black hair.

"Don't worry," he repeats. "It'll be OK."

When Wendy gets the worst news in the world from her mother after school three days later, she runs up to her room. She grabs the scissors from her desk and begins hacking at her hair. They aren't very sharp, but they do the job. She keeps snipping them, tears streaming from her eyes, not caring when she cuts her fingers.

Wendy skipped the debate meeting that day. She couldn't face Cartman on this day.

She ran to the meadow and sat down in the snow. She could feel the snow soak through her pants, but she couldn't bring herself to care.

Her mother never should have made her go to school.

Wendy took off her jacket. She'd read somewhere that hypothermia victims start feeling hot just before they die. It didn't sound like such a bad way to go.

She heard the snow crunching behind her. She turned to see Cartman walking up to her.

"Go away."

"What's wrong with you, ho?" He sits down next to her.

"Nothing."

"You're a shitty liar."

"What are you doing here, anyway?"

"You missed the debate meeting. I've seen you here before, so I thought I'd come get you."

"Good for you." Wendy hugged her knees, not looking at Cartman. "Would you go away, please?"

"No," Cartman said. "Why didn't you go to debate?"

"Why do you care?" she yelled. "All we do is argue, anyway!"

"I thought the whole point of debate was arguing."

That was Eric Cartman all over – she got into a tizzy, and he was always so smooth and calm and smug.

"If you have to know," she spat, "my dad died five years ago today."

Neither of them said anything for a long time.

"Sucks," Cartman said, feebly.

"You think?"

"But at least you knew your dad," he continued. Wendy looked at him. "Well, I do know my dad. It's just that my dad is my mom."

"Um, OK," she replied. "But yeah. My dad and I were really close. He's the first one who took me here. On his way home from work, he'd stop here. And he'd noticed that there was a daisy growing in the snow. So he brought me here to see it."

"Let me guess. You come back here every fucking day, hoping to see another damn daisy?"

Wendy didn't respond.

"You can't get over anything. We kissed once, and you act like a spastic around me to cover it up. Your dad died, so you can't function on that day. You come back here, to the site of a fucking anomaly, hoping to find it again. Stop living in the fucking past, Wendy."

And with that, Cartman got up and stormed off.

Wendy sat in the snow for a few more moments, and then stood up. She started to shiver. So much for a nice hypothermic death. She put her jacket back on and climbed the tree.

She must have been out there for hours. The sun was setting. True, the days were so short in a South Park winter, but still. Wendy sat on the branch, watching as the orange sun set.

When Wendy woke up, she was back in her bed. Her hair was wet, but she was wearing her dry pajamas. She turned to look at the clock. Nine in the morning. At first Wendy rolled over, and then she bolted up.

Wendy pulled off her PJs and threw on the first dry outfit she could pull out of the closet. She yanked on her socks and ran downstairs.

As she slid into the kitchen, she saw her mother sitting across from Mrs. Cartman, chatting over a cup of coffee.

"Gwendolyn!" Mrs. Testaburger said. Wendy winced. Her mother only used her full name when she was really mad. "What were you thinking, climbing a tree in the middle of winter?"

"What happened?"

"You were up in a tree somewhere and you fell asleep. If Eric hadn't found you..."

"Cartman?"

"Yes," Mrs. Cartman said. "My sweetums got you out of the tree and brought you to our house. He didn't know where you lived, so I drove you back here."

"Cartman saved me?"

"Thank God he did," Mrs. Testaburger said. "You could've died! Do you know what that would have done to me?"

Wendy hung her head. "I'm really sorry, Mom. Thank you, Mrs. Cartman."

"Well, all's well that ends well, I suppose. Get back to bed, and I'll bring you something to eat."

There was a knock on Wendy's door.

"Come in!" she said. When the door opened, she saw Eric Cartman, holding some books.

"Oh. Hello," she said.

"I brought you your homework," Cartman said.

"How did you get my books?"

"I got them to break your lock."

"You..." Then Wendy sighed. "Thanks."

"You're so fucking dumb," he said, as he sat on the end of her bed. "Seriously. Who the fuck falls asleep in a tree in the middle of January?"

"Well, excuse me," Wendy said, but with no real vitriol. "I just wanted to say... Thanks. For saving me. And all."

"Whatever, ho."

Wendy had to go to school the next day. And the next day was also a debate meeting day.

For once, Wendy and Cartman's argument didn't dissolve into petty bickering.

When she got home, Wendy told her mother that she was going over to Bebe's house. For some reason, Mrs. Testaburger believed her.

Of course, Wendy headed to the meadow, and, of course, she climbed the tree. Despite what Cartman had told her, old habits died hard.

She sat on the same branch and looked down at the same ground. Nothing ever changed. Here, she could pretend that she had never started fighting with Cartman. She could pretend that her father was still alive. Here, she could pretend that daisies grew in the snow, and that life was magical.

And then he had to show up and ruin everything.

"What the fuck are you doing up there?" he called, cupping his gloved hands around his mouth. As if she couldn't hear him.

Wendy carefully stood up on the icy branch. Was that anger flashing across Eric's face? Or fear?

"I'm pretending!" she shouted back.

Then she heard the creaking of the old wood, weakened by ice.

Wendy screamed, and waved her arms around, desperate for something to grab onto.

"Wendy!"

The branch gave way, and Wendy fell. I would've preferred hypothermia.

Then she fell into Cartman's arms. Of course, it wasn't the perfect catch she'd seen in so many movies. Her momentum pushed Cartman into the ground.

She lay on top of him, squirming to get off.

"You dumb bitch!" Cartman shouted. "What the fuck were you doing up there? You could've died! I'm not always going to be here to save your skinny ass from killing yourself!"

Wendy managed to get off of him. She lay next to him in the snow, propping herself up on her elbow. He was grinning, despite his yelling.

"You know, Cartman, that's the second time you've saved me in two days."

"No shit."

"I guess I owe you something, huh?"

"What..."

And she kissed him.

Cartman's hands grabbed her waist, and they rolled on their sides. Wendy grabbed onto his shoulders and scooted into him. She felt the cold water seep into her hair (which might have been in a ponytail before, but definitely wasn't now) and her clothes. Yet she could also feel Cartman's body heat as he pressed against her, as if he was trying to absorb her. Wendy's hands moved up to his face as she gently pulled away, her cheeks flushed with cold and excitement.

Then her eyes wandered to the ground beside him. There was a single crumpled daisy.

"What this?" she said, picking it up.

"Fuck," Cartman said, when he saw it. The two sat up. "It's all fucked up now." Most of the petals were either missing or crushed, and the stem was bent. "I figured that, if I gave you a damn daisy, you'd stop coming here."

"Why did you want me to stop coming here?"

"Like I said, ho," he said, "I won't always be here to save you."

Wendy grabbed his neck and kissed him again. The daisy in her hand pressed against his cheek.

"Don't worry, Cartman," Wendy said, when they had broken apart. "You won't have to."