This story, which obviously takes place in the 'Arrogance and Aggression' universe, picks up hours after its direct precursor, 'Impatience and Impulsivity.' The stories all connect, and they can be read in any story order, but this particular story is very much linked to the events of that one.

As for the froth that can be found all over 'A&A' and throughout 'I&I…' say goodbye to a lot of it. This is what we in the business (read: me, in my imagination) call "the trauma fic."

Also, keep in mind, we're in the midst of a Dally redemption arc. So, if you're like, "Why is he just ... like this?" ... that's part of it. :)

The year 1968 was signalized by a single piece of mail, a terrible and senseless request, which doubtless, no one would ever forget. Sodapop Curtis sat at his family's kitchen table and kept staring at the thing in his grasp, wondering how in the world (yet knowing full well) it had had gotten there.

Dallas Winston leaned forward and nearly snatched the thing out of the kid's hands. His wife, Ms. Lucy Bennet (And she wanted everyone to know it was Ms., not "Miss Bennet" or "Mrs. Winston."), stared daggers at him to keep him from doing something she could make him regret. He rolled his eyes and sat back in his chair, knowing that whatever he was going to say was the wrong thing.

"Man, why do you keep lookin' at it like that?" Dally asked. "Ya think it's gonna change color or somethin'?"

"Dally," Lucy said.

"What?"

Lucy sighed and rushed to the other side of Soda at the kitchen table. He'd been alone and babysitting Lucy and Dally's eleven-month-old daughter, Elenore, when he'd received his draft card. In retrospect, they all should have been expecting it. Two-Bit and Steve were in Vietnam already; Dally had been exempt back in '66 on account of Lucy getting pregnant with Elenore. It was only a matter of time before the wind blew Soda away, too.

"And you really haven't told anyone else?" Lucy asked.

Soda shook his head.

"Naw. I wouldn't have even told you two if ya hadn't come by to pick up Elenore. I just couldn't hold it in anymore. Had to … had to tell somebody."

It hurt worse than almost anything to hold in his tears in front of Dally. He'd changed a lot since he married Lucy (and even more since Elenore had been born), but that didn't mean it was OK to cry in front of him. That would probably always feel wrong.

"What about Sadie?"

"Ya think I'm gonna call Sadie on her wedding night? You're crazy."

But just like on cue, Sadie, looking distraught in the same white dress she'd worn to city hall when she and Johnny got married earlier that day, burst through the front door. For the first time all evening, Soda looked up from his draft card and ran to the doorway to hug his twin sister.

"I ran out of there so fast," Sadie said. "Johnny must think I abandoned him."

"Ya know, I don't think that's really somethin' we should joke about," Dally said.

Sadie eyed him curiously, not sure what he and Lucy were doing there. Off her look, Dally got up from his chair at the kitchen table and walked toward Sadie's room (Sadie's former room now, which was strange to think about, even for Dally).

"I'm gonna go check on Elenore. She was fussin'."

"If she starts cryin', I got another 45 of 'Goodnight, Irene' in there," Soda said. "You're welcome."

Dally waved his hand at the kid before turning the corner and walking into Sadie's room to see Elenore. It was already the most bizarre day that anyone in that house had ever seen.

"Did you really just up and leave Johnny?" Soda asked Sadie.

"No, not for real," Sadie said. "Told him I couldn't shake this feeling that you were in trouble, and I had to see you right away. When Lucy and Dally were here, I figured I had to be right. Please don't tell me I'm right."

Soda didn't say anything. He tried to form his tongue around the words, but none of the right ones came out. Lucy, who noticed his struggle, popped up from her place at the kitchen table and tried to help him.

"Dally and I are only here because we asked Soda to babysit Elenore," Lucy said. "We needed a little alone time after the wedding, and we knew he'd be home. We're just picking her up."

Sadie shook her head.

"That's not all," she said. "I know that's not all, Lucy. I don't get these feelings in my blood when I'm far away from him for that to be all."

Lucy sighed and hung her head. She really didn't want to be the one to have to tell Sadie about what Soda had received in the mail that day, and thankfully, she didn't have to be. Soda finally found the right words.

"You're not wrong, Sadie Lou," he said. "That ain't all."

He picked his draft card off the table and handed it to her. In the meantime, Lucy snuck out of the room and went to go check on Dally and Elenore, well aware that this was not her place.

Sadie was the first person to touch the draft card apart from Soda himself. Neither of them really knew why, but it felt significant at the time that they were the only two people to touch it – like the experience was Sadie's, too, in some way.

"What's this?" she asked, but judging by the crack in her voice, she knew.

Soda didn't know what else to say, so he swallowed back another round of would-be tears and just said, "I gotta go."

Sadie shook her head. It was her worst nightmare, and after being eighteen for a whole year without hearing a word, she stupidly thought that Soda was safe. If she could have gone with him, she would have. Maybe she still could. She'd read both Twelfth Night and As You Like It. They'd been pretty decent guidebooks on how to walk like a man. If it meant sticking close to Soda … the most vulnerable part of herself…

"Don't start cryin'," Soda said. "I don't want you cryin'."

"How am I supposed to not?"

"'Cause you got married today. And I could be wrong, but I don't think husbands are usually too happy about it when their new wives up an' leave 'em on the wedding night to go be with their brothers."

"Johnny can wait."

"Sadie."

"He can wait."

Soda took one step back from his twin and sighed. He could always count on her to know more about himself than even he did. That night, Sadie knew that Soda couldn't handle being alone. She knew that Darry or Ponyboy or Jane Randle wouldn't understand what Soda was feeling in the same way that she could. She would give Johnny a call and tell him they'd have to push back their wedding night. In that moment, the only thing that mattered was Soda – keeping that most vulnerable part of herself, the one that existed outside of herself, safe and secure.

Before Soda knew it, he had stepped closer to Sadie again, and closer still. She flung her arms around him and pulled him close to her chest. After a few seconds of silence and stillness, Sadie was confused. She'd expected Soda to bawl into her shirt like he always did. He'd shed far more tears for what felt like much less, like when they were ten years old, and Soda lost Mickey Mouse, or when they were seventeen, and Soda broke up with Jane Randle because he thought it was the noble thing to do. But for this – the moment he learned he was going to have to go to a place he'd never been for a reason he wasn't entirely sure of – he was firm. Sadie squeezed him tighter, maybe in an effort to get him to cry. It wasn't that she wanted him to be sad. What she wanted was a status quo, and Soda's being a bawl baby was a big part of that.

But that night, he wasn't crying. Sodapop Curtis wasn't crying about being shipped off to a place he might never come back from, Dallas Winston was in the back of the Curtis house trying to be a good husband and a good daddy, and Sadie Lou Curtis was now-and-forever Sadie Lou Cade. The status quo that Sadie so craved had walked out back and shot itself, and it wouldn't be back.

On their way home, Lucy and Dally tried not to think about Soda. This, of course, proved impossible. Without knowing it for certain, they both knew that he'd be sent to the frontlines. For Lucy, this translated into instant death. She knew that Soda was every bit as tough as he was kind, but she also knew that the war was tougher. And to think, in the past eleven months, there were moments where she watched him play with Elenore and thought maybe he wouldn't be drafted at all. Maybe, by the grace of God or the U.S. government, it would miss him. She pictured herself a few years down the line, showing old pictures to Elenore. Those pictures wouldn't mean anything if Elenore couldn't recognize Soda in them. Suddenly, Lucy felt very ill.

Though he wasn't going to say anything, Dally felt twice as sick about the thought of Soda going to war. Part of him felt guilty (despite his not knowing the precise word for it), as he'd been able to escape the draft where Soda couldn't. As much as he loved his baby (a surprise to him and everyone around him), he knew he was the one who deserved to go fight for and lose his life in Vietnam. The world needed Sodapop Curtis. It didn't exactly need Dallas Winston. Dally himself was sure of it. Every time Soda's eyes flickered back to that card between his middle and index fingers, there was a part of Dally that wanted to stand up and take his place. Even though he knew he couldn't, he never even told Soda that he wanted to. It would have pissed Lucy right off, he did want to see Elenore grow up, and for the first time in his life, he gave a damn whether he lived or died. He wanted – however bizarre or unfitting – to live. He wanted Soda to live, too, and it was looking less and less likely to him as the seconds wore on.

They put Elenore down in her crib, quietly thankful that she was becoming a sound sleeper. As they climbed into their own bed, Dally let out a long and audible sigh. He could feel, based on the way Lucy carried herself as they walked home, that she wanted to make it one of those nights. They were supposed to be good for him, and he knew that. There were even moments where he welcomed it. But that didn't mean he enjoyed it.

"I know what you're gonna say," he said.

"Do you?" Lucy asked. "Because I was pretty sure I hadn't said anything."

"Yeah, but after what happened to Soda, d'you really expect me to believe it's not on your mind?"

Lucy frowned. She liked that her husband cared enough to know her as well as he did, but there was always a dimension of frustration that came along with intimacy. Oh well, she thought. At least he cared enough to be intimate at all.

"OK, you're right," Lucy said.

"Knew it. I'm always fuckin' right."

"We're both always right. We're a package."

"I think that's the first time you ever let somebody share bein' right with you."

"Hmm, well, if it had to be anyone."

Dally almost smiled. He leaned back and tried to get into position to sleep, but Lucy practically chased after him. He wasn't sure how she'd managed to chase him in bed, of course. That didn't matter. As far as he was concerned, Lucy could do anything.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"I'm goin' to sleep, Bennet. It's Friday. You know how early Elenore likes to wake up on Saturday. It's like she knows we both got Saturdays off."

"Oh, c'mon. I saw the look in your eye when Soda showed you his draft card. Isn't it … I don't know, isn't it something we should talk about?"

Dally snorted and tried to roll over on his side so that he didn't have to face Lucy anymore. She beat him to the punch and grabbed him around his stomach so that he had to look at her. Granted, she hadn't really bested him. He just didn't want to resist her. He wanted to have this conversation, regardless of it would bring. It was odd. That didn't mean it wasn't true.

"When did you get all soft on me?" he asked.

"You're one to talk."

"I ain't soft. Think I proved that to ya this afternoon, but I ain't gonna complain if you need a reminder."

"Will you stop … oh-happy-daggering me?"

"Huh?"

Lucy rolled her eyes. She'd been spending too much time around Jane as Sadie prepared to get married, and Jane still truly believed that Romeo and Juliet was a romance instead of a domestic tragedy. All of a sudden, she thought of Jane and how devastated she would be to find out about Soda. It was too much for Lucy to process all at once, so she turned her full attention back to her husband and his own repressive hypothesis.

"Doesn't matter," she said. She rested her chin on his shoulder, and after almost three years together (It no longer sounded strange to admit they were together, in all things and at all times.), she was still surprised he didn't try to jerk away. Her voice dropped an octave when she next spoke to him. The lower and slower she spoke, the more likely Dally always was to listen to her. After nearly three years together, she'd figured parts of him out.

"What were you thinking about when Soda showed you his draft card?" Lucy asked. "I saw your eyes. You went away again."

Lucy loosened her grip around her husband's midsection, trusting him enough to know that he wouldn't try to leave. Dally exhaled again. He wondered how long he could stay quiet and stoic before Lucy finally gave up on him. But he wasn't stupid. He knew that it didn't matter how reticent he was. Lucy Bennet wasn't going to give up on him. She didn't give up on anything, even when she probably should.

"I was thinkin' about this one night when I was about twelve or somethin'," Dally finally said. "Happy?"

"With something unspecific? No. Can't say I am."

"Why's it matter if I talk to you about this shit, anyway?"

Although Lucy tipped her head toward Elenore's crib to remind him, she hadn't needed to. Anything he did now was because of Elenore. He was going to do right by her if it killed him. Dally had spent so much of his youth trying to prove everybody right – getting busted for things he could've gotten away with, getting drunk so he didn't have to be sober, getting beat up when he probably could've bested even the best after a while, among other things. He thought it was what he was supposed to do; thought the fate of the world rested on him being a fuck-up. Then he met Lucy, who was as big a fuck-up as he was (in a different way), but she was the kind of fuck-up he couldn't live without. Now that they had Elenore, it was worth it to stay alive. Now that they had Elenore, it was Dally's pleasure to prove them wrong.

"I'm in the park with a buddy of mine," Dally began, confused by how easily the words were falling out of his mouth. Lucy had that effect on him, he supposed. "He's … I don't know, he's a couple years older than me, I guess. Not much in the way of role modelin', but he's all I got. This scrawny-lookin' girl, 'bout my age, I think, runs up to him. He says she's his sister. I don't think nothin' of it, not even that I got a sister back in Tulsa I haven't heard from in a year. But this guy's sister starts tellin' him about a pal of his who tried to stick his hands down her pants. An' she's twelve. An' ya know what that buddy of mine says to her?"

"I'm afraid to ask."

"He says, 'I don't care.' Some fuckin' guy tries to mess with his sister, and he says he doesn't care. And I'm thinkin' I nearly got myself killed for tryin' to help my sister. So I say somethin' to him, and he tells me I'm a …"

He paused and looked at Lucy, who was still listening intently. It was the strangest thing. Before, he would have thought that somebody like Lucy was only listening to him and his memories – the ones he had so long tried to drink and beat away – to feel better about herself, like he was an intellectual charity case or some shit. But that wasn't the look on his wife's face. She looked at him like she was there for him, not for her own edification. That was how the parole officer's wives always looked at him, but Lucy couldn't have been different.

"I ain't gonna say it 'cause I know you don't like it," Dally finally said. "Ya know, when guys use girls' words to make each other look bad."

"I know."

"Yeah. Well, I didn't wanna be what he said I was. If carin' about somebody made you a girl, then I didn't wanna care about nobody."

Lucy shot him a look, as if to say that he couldn't keep up such an attitude if he was going to be her husband or a father to his daughter. Off her look, he reminded her that he was twelve.

"Sure," Lucy said.

"But I kept thinkin' about how it really wasn't different. Ya know, what happened with that kid and his sister and what happened with me and mine."

Lucy nodded. In the past year, Dally had been trying to work through a number of traumatic memories – some he'd repressed all the way and some he'd been refusing to let himself completely or correctly remember since they'd happened. His most painful memory occurred in his childhood kitchen – in the same house where his younger sister, Violet, who was now eighteen, still lived, though their father was scarcely around these days. It was shortly after their mother's suicide, and Dally had discovered that the old man's friends had been beating up on Violet when Dally wasn't looking. When Dally finally noticed, he tried to beat up the old man for enabling it, and he almost killed Dally for it. That was the night Dally hopped a Greyhound and made his way to New York by himself, not even thinking about taking Violet's hand and pulling her out of the very place he knew was causing her pain. He hadn't cared about anyone except for himself, and he thought he was still paying for it. He was working on it. Lucy was listening. It was the only thing she could do, though Dally made it abundantly clear that he wished she could do more. Lucy wished it, too, but she knew better.

"Why did Soda's draft card make you think about that?"

Dally was quiet for a long time. He knew exactly what he wanted to say. He always did. After all, he was Lucy's intellectual equal (according to Lucy herself, anyway). The problem was that almost never liked to speak at the rapid-fire pace that she preferred. With time, she'd gotten better at slowing down – at allowing space for his emotional obstinacy and cerebral wit to catch up to one another. But Dally could still feel Lucy's wheels turning in her head. He would have done anything to make her stop thinking so loudly.

"I don't think Soda's gonna die over there," Dally said. He knew he was right, too. If Dally had gone, he would have died. There wouldn't have been much more to him than a body if Elenore hadn't come along. Soda was different. There was plenty more to Soda than soldiering and dying.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. He ain't gonna die there. But it's gonna kill him to leave that girl."

Lucy nodded.

"You're right," she said. "He loves Jane."

"I ain't talkin' about her. I'm talkin' about Sadie. 'F I got regrets about leavin' V behind when we was kids, ya know Soda ain't even gonna be able to leave Sadie."

Lucy swallowed hard and fell flat on her back, not sure she wanted to keep the conversation going after all. As she left the Curtis house that night, she saw how destroyed Sadie looked. She didn't say anything to her, knowing that anything out of anyone's mouth would have only served to make things worse. But Lucy knew. Who was so bold to think they could separate a woman from her reflection (and a man from his)?

"Ya think he can knock Jane up in the next couple days?" Dally asked.

Lucy didn't answer. She knew it would never work. It may have ripped her heart out to think of Soda leaving (leaving Sadie, leaving Jane, leaving Elenore, who loved him more than almost anybody in the world), but in that same heart, she knew the difference. He was supposed to go. It took her back to something Sadie said years earlier, when she recounted a story about being stood up for a Valentine's Day dance in '62.

"That's the way it's supposed to be," Sadie had said. "That's the way it'll always be. He'll go, and I'll stay."

Sadie wasn't wrong. When it came to Soda, she never was. Lucy reached for her husband's hand under the blankets, and he took it, which still took her by a small surprise. She felt nothing but guilt. She knew she should have been mourning the loss of Soda at home, even though he hadn't gone anywhere yet; even though Dally was certain he wouldn't die. She knew that. Still, Lucy was relieved. At least, she thought (and hated herself for thinking it), she hadn't lost her other half.

"Thank you for telling me the truth," she said, her voice so quiet she wasn't sure Dally could hear her at all.

Except, of course, he did.

Darry and Pony reacted exactly as Soda and Sadie predicted they would. When Soda showed the draft card to Darry, he curtly nodded his head one time and asked if there was anything he could do to help before then. Sadie knew (better than Soda did) that he'd break down and cry when they weren't looking, but he knew better than to break down in front of them. That would give them more reason to be afraid.

After a few moments of confusion, Ponyboy began to cry a little and managed, somehow, to turn his anxieties about Soda in Vietnam into anxieties about Soda leaving him behind. It was lots of, "I don't know what I'm gonna do if you're not here" and "You mean I'm gonna start college, and you ain't even gonna be around?" He must have come up with thirty different ways to ask the same two terrible questions. Sadie put up with it for about an hour, but she could tell that Soda's own patience was wearing thin. Nobody liked it when Soda couldn't take it anymore and finally yelled at them – Soda liked it least of all – but Sadie's yelling was just a fact of life and had been since she was a little girl.

"Goddamn it, Pony!" she snapped.

"Why are you yellin' at me?" he yelled back.

"Because your brother's gettin' drafted, and you're sittin' here, worried and cryin' that he ain't gonna be here when you and Carrie finally stop pretendin' like all you care about is … thinkin' and talkin' about thinkin'."

"That ain't fair."

"No, you ain't fair."

Soda looked at her, his eyes pleading with her to stop before either of them got out of hand. Sadie saw the look on his face and dismissed it. Soda had spent their whole lives trying to protect and stomp for her. The least she could do now was try to rally for him, even if she was taking it out on Ponyboy.

"How?" she asked, her voice shrill and tired at the same time. "How could you have possibly found a way to make this about you?"

"'Cause when he goes, I'm gonna be alone!"

"What are you talkin' about?"

"I'm talkin' about how Soda went and got himself drafted on the same day you married my best friend. That's what I'm talkin' about, Sadie."

Sadie took a step back and folded her arms across her chest. It didn't seem right to yell at Ponyboy anymore. That was a conversation for another time … when they'd all processed Soda's getting drafted a little more. She wasn't happy with Pony, but it didn't mean she needed to yell at him. Soda shot her a look, as if to say, "I told you. You shouldn't have yelled at him," which Sadie (out of embarrassment) ignored.

"Ya still didn't need to make it about you," she muttered. "This is about Soda."

It's also about me, she thought, but she dared not speak that out loud.

"C'mon, guys. C'mon, Sadie," Soda said.

It nearly shattered Sadie's heart that he was still playing the middleman, even when the night should have been about him (and about her).

"You ain't gotta fight about me," he said. "I'm gonna be fine."

You don't know that, Sadie thought, but again, she'd never speak it.

They were quiet for a long time. Each of them, at some point, thought back to the day they'd put their parents in the ground. They'd all been so much younger then, so unaware that one day three of them would stand in the same place, putting the first of them into the ground, too. Now, with the smoking gun in the middle of the kitchen table, each of the siblings had their suspicions about who would go first. There was no way to forget those suspicions now, no matter how hard they tried to erase and rewind, erase and rewind. Two of them, as they would learn, were correct.

"Soda?"

The four siblings looked up and toward the door, which Sadie had purposely left unlocked, knowing what was to come. Jane Randle was standing in the doorway; staring straight at the only man she'd ever wanted to love. Sadie's breath hitched at the sight of her oldest friend. It wasn't because Jane looked distraught. No, Jane looked stronger and tougher than ever, and that was what really killed Sadie. The status quo took itself out back and got shot one more time. She wasn't sure if she could handle a third bullet.

Darry, Pony, and Sadie dismissed themselves after a little while. Darry went to bed, Pony went to finish Narcissus and Goldmund so he could determine whether it was a good fit for Carrie Shepard's tastes (It wasn't, but he figured that was why she should read it.), and Sadie went back to be with Johnny, considering it was still the night of their wedding. They left Soda and Jane on the couch.

They sat facing one another, knees almost touching but not quite, cross-legged on a couch that could barely support cross-legged seating. Lucy's folks tried to give them their old couch for free a few months earlier, but Darry refused it. He wasn't one for charity, and it wasn't as though the Bennets were particularly wealthy. Secretly, the other siblings were glad about it. There was something about that couch that couldn't be replaced – something they weren't prepared to replace. They'd had it since Ponyboy was born.

"There's one thing I can't figure out," Soda said.

"What?" Jane asked.

"How did you know?"

"Sadie called me when you were busy with your brothers. Told me to get over here as fast as I could. That nobody was hurt but that I probably needed to see you. Guess I just picked up on it."

Soda gave Jane a sort of half smile. That was part of what had always drawn her to him, even before he was particularly aware of it. Like him, Jane was sensitive and sentimental. She had a high emotional intelligence that her brother, Steve (as much as Soda adored him), hadn't really figured out. But in the span of an hour, Jane could go from crying about her folks to wailing on somebody who'd done her wrong. Like Soda, Jane was every bit as tough as she was soft. When he looked at her, there was always this whispery voice in the back of his mind that said, "Ah, there you are." To think that soon, he wasn't going to see her everyday … to think that he wouldn't hear "Ah, there you are …" each time he met her gaze … he couldn't think about it. Suddenly, but only for the briefest second, he understood why Dally always tried to keep moving.

"I don't wanna go, Jane," he said.

It was the first time he'd said it. He wanted to say it when he was first hugging Sadie, but he knew she'd break down twice as hard as she already was. Where Jane silently understood Soda, Sadie felt him, and he felt her. As hard as it would be on Jane for him to be gone, he didn't even know how Sadie was going to wake up in the morning. He didn't know how he could carry on knowing she was far away … knowing he couldn't walk across the hall and knock on her door if he wanted to. He shook his head and tried to forget he'd ever thought about losing Sadie and about feeling her pain.

"I know," Jane said. Her voice was surprisingly steady. "I don't want you to go, either."

Soda sniffed one time, trying not to cry. As the night wore on, it became harder and harder to play tough. If Jane wasn't crying, and she was a more notorious bawl baby than even Soda was, he knew he couldn't shed a tear. He'd rather hold it in than upset her. He loved her too much.

"Got any ideas?" Soda asked with a tiny laugh. Anything to keep it light.

"Well, we know how Dally dodged the draft. But we ain't got time."

"I think that's the least of my worries about havin' a baby, Jane."

"You're right. I ain't ready to give up my figure, and you ain't ready to see it go."

Soda laughed harder this time, and Jane crawled into his lap to kiss him. She was never going to get sick of this, but if she wasn't careful, she was going to get sick of missing it … of missing him. She was already missing him, and he was right in front of her.

"I love you," Soda said.

"Well, if you didn't who else would?"

They laughed one more time, but as Jane's lips shrunk back from their smile, she wondered if Soda knew she was really asking him. If he weren't around to love her, and Steve (who had always loved her, in his very Steve way) wasn't around, either … who was left?

Almost two weeks after Soda got his notice, Lucy was working down at Great Books with Eddie, who was reading a picture book to a crying Elenore. He looked over at Lucy, who was taking notes at the counter, and asked her to see what was the matter.

"I don't think she likes the book," Eddie said.

Lucy walked over to her boss and her baby, confused. That didn't make sense. Elenore liked every book. She even liked when a desperate Dally read names to her out of the phonebook. In hindsight, Lucy thought, that might have been about the sound of his voice. He did have a great voice. Eddie, on the other hand, spoke in nasally tones, and made all of his vowels shorter than they needed to be. This was, almost doubtlessly, what was making Elenore cry.

"What book are you reading?" Lucy asked.

Eddie turned the book around, and Lucy rolled her eyes when she saw the cover. It was Where the Wild Things Are.

"Well, that's the problem," she said. "You're reading her a book with the scariest monsters I've ever seen."

"It's a great book!"

"She's one."

"So what? Dallas once got her to stop crying by reading the first page of some damn Dickens novel I never even heard of, and I own a bookshop."

"And did any of those books have scary monsters with pointy teeth in them?"

"Only the scary, pointy-toothed monster of Victorian London. The economy, Lucy. The economy."

Lucy smirked a little and picked Elenore up to carry her around on her hip. As soon as she recognized that she was with her mother, she calmed down. Her eyes were scanning the tall shelves of books, like she knew she was going to be better than pure picture books one day. They were in the poetry section, which typically didn't speak to Lucy, unless it was Plath or her own writing (which, much to Virginia Woolf's dismay, she hadn't been focused on much since Elenore was born). That day, however, there must have been a book on that shelf that was calling out to her. She tried to look for it, and judging by the look on little Elenore's face, she must have been looking for it, too.

"Where're you at, Lucy?" Eddie's nasal seemed far away. She tore her eyes away from the shelf and looked in his direction.

"What?"

"Where're you at? You've seemed real far away for a couple of days."

Lucy sighed. She hadn't told anyone (apart from her parents) about Soda yet. It wasn't like Lucy to share personal details with people who weren't in the most immediate of her immediate circles. Then again, Eddie did let her family live above his store, even once they had a baby who liked to cry every now and then. She figured it wouldn't hurt to tell him a little bit. She would try to leave out the parts where she called him a lucky son of a bitch. Like Dally, Eddie was able to dodge the draft on account of his wife and two daughters. Lucky sons of bitches, Lucy thought. She wondered if Dally had a point before and whether it really was too late to get Jane knocked up.

"My friend, you know, Soda?" she asked. It felt peculiar referring to Soda as something so casual as my friend. "Elenore's godfather."

That still wasn't right, but Eddie nodded. He'd seen Soda enough times to recognize him out and about.

"He got his draft notice about two weeks ago," Lucy said. "He's not even the first boy I've known to get one. Dally got one the day I found out about Elenore, but I knew I'd get to keep him. I've got friends whose brothers are still over there. I don't know. With Soda … it's just different. It's like…"

Lucy was going to say that it felt like she had more to lose. She was almost as close to Soda now as she had ever been to Sadie, and the thought of losing him (even to something as deceptively simple as distance) felt like losing a limb. The relief she'd felt a week and a half earlier that at least it wasn't Dally (at least it wasn't their family) had vanished. It might not have been her husband this time, but it was still her family.

"I mean, he's Elenore's godfather," Lucy said. "That means something different than if he were just my friend. Do you know what I mean?"

Eddie nodded, then pointed to Elenore. Concerned, Lucy immediately tightened her grip on her daughter to see if anything was the matter. Thankfully, she was just Elenore … a baby who seemed to understand why her mother was so upset.

"Looks like your kid knows what you mean, too," Eddie said.

Lucy glanced down at Elenore's hand, noticing that her tiny index finger was pointing to a very specific book on the shelf. After squinting to read the title a bit, Lucy squatted down and pulled Siegfried Sassoon's collected poems off the shelf. She smirked at the title. She really was a smart kid, that Elenore.

"How much for this?" Lucy asked.

"For you? Free."

"Oh, that doesn't really seem reasonable."

"Neither's the draft. Consider us even."

Lucy smiled. The free book didn't make up for the fact that Eddie thought it was a good idea to read Where the Wild Things Are to her child or the fact that Soda was going away, but it was all she had. She would have to pretend like it was enough.

A little while later, when Lucy closed the shop and headed up to the apartment with Elenore, Dally came through the door after his shift at the grocery store. He had that dumbass fucking vest balled up in his fists, wishing he could throw it in the trash altogether. If he didn't love Lucy and Elenore so much, he'd probably set it on fire in front of that twerp boss of his. Twerp boss. What would Lucy have called that again? Some kind of moron.

But he kept the job. He'd had it since Elenore was born and since Two-Bit was shipped off to Vietnam. He hated every second of it. He hated the people who asked him questions and hated the people who smiled at him more than the people who whispered about him. The only parts of his job that he didn't hate were the money he made (however little) and the minute he got home to see the girls he was making money for. While he tried not to show it, a little part of him was always gladder than glad when he walked through the door, and Elenore would grin up at him. She didn't know he was Dallas Winston. She only knew that he was her daddy, and she kind of loved him.

"Dad!" Elenore shouted, almost as though it had been eight years since she'd last seen him, as opposed to the eight hours it had actually been.

"How come you always sound so surprised when he walks through that door?" Lucy asked. "Doesn't he walk through that door everyday?"

Lucy and Dally shared a look. Somewhere in the back of her mind, young and unshaped as it was, Elenore must have known that it was still a surprise that her father came home every night. She must have known that at least once a month, Lucy would jolt awake and feel for Dally on the other side of the bed to make sure he was still there. She had frequent dreams – nightmares, really – about him leaving her, though he swore to her he wasn't going to. It was easy to want to believe him. Unfortunately, part of being matched with Dallas Winston meant that Lucy Bennet was every bit as cynical and jaded as he was. It didn't matter how many times he told her that he was all in. There was still this … thing … floating over her head. She didn't like it, but that didn't mean she knew how to make it go away.

"I know 'm late," Dally said. "Stopped by to see Soda."

"Why? You never just 'stop by to see Soda.' Not without Elenore and me."

"Don't you remember what today is?"

"Wednesday?"

"Kid reported today."

"To the draft board?"

"Naw, he wrote an editorial for the paper. Of course to the fuckin' draft board."

Lucy's heart stopped. In the midst of reading Chaucer (whose work she despised) and trying to take Elenore, she'd completely forgotten that today was it. Sadie must have been furious with Lucy for not stopping by … for not calling to make sure they were OK. Lucy was furious enough with herself. She couldn't even imagine the wrath of Sadie.

"How…?" Lucy couldn't manage the full question. Besides, she had too many.

"They gave him 1-A," Dally said. "What? You expect somethin' different?"

No, Lucy thought. Just wished for something different, that's all.

"So, he's really gonna go," she said.

"Looks like it, don't it?"

She wanted to tell Dally that she loved him, but she only told him that when he was desperate to hear it. He'd still never told her, though she knew, deep within, that he did love her. She wanted to tell him that she was glad he was there with her – that although Elenore had been a surprise, she was thankful for it because it meant she got to keep him and got to meet their daughter. There were so many beautiful and poetic phrases dancing on the tip of her tongue; yet, she knew she couldn't actually speak any of them. That wasn't the kind of love she and her husband shared. They were wild, they were passionate, but they were not poetic. They were not sentimental.

Instead, Lucy nodded a few times, trying not to cry in front of Dally. She knew, even though they were becoming increasingly vulnerable in front of each other, that he wouldn't have been able to handle the sight of her like that. And was this really her cause to cry? Lucy adored Soda, but he wasn't her brother (not really). She should be phoning Sadie. She should be holding Sadie while she cried, not standing there with Dally, holding in the tears she was too proud to let go. This was not her place. This was not her place, and yet, she couldn't seem to move from it.

"Well, I guess I better go see him," she finally said, trying to clear out the lump in her throat.

"Yeah, guess so," Dally said. Lucy was so caught up in her own thoughts that she didn't even pick up on the fact that Dally sounded a little dejected himself. "Take Elenore with ya."

Lucy cocked her head to the side, finally noticing that there was something the matter with Dally – something more than usual. She knew they still had reservations about being vulnerable in front of one another, but they'd both been getting better. If he didn't want to talk, she wouldn't make him, but Lucy saw it as her responsibility to ask. Now that they had Elenore, getting Dally to talk seemed more important than ever.

"Wait," she said. "What's the matter?"

"Bennet, don't fuckin'…"

"No, you don't fucking do this. You said you were gonna be more honest for Elenore. Did you mean it?"

Dally looked at Elenore, who was still smiling at him, blissfully unaware that her mother was becoming progressively angry with him. He looked at Elenore and fell in love with her all over again. He didn't want her to grow up with an old man who didn't care about himself. That would mean he couldn't care about her, and damn, did he ever care about her. There were only two people in the world Dallas Winston cared about enough to wear that dumbass fucking vest for, and they were both in that apartment.

Still, that didn't mean he was going to give Lucy some pretty speech about how he felt walking home from the Curtis place … how he felt after talking to Soda and seeing Pony cry, Sadie bawl, and Jane Randle's eyes turn red with exhaustion and fear. He could have, and he'd thought one in his head on the way back home. But he wasn't going to share it with Lucy. He knew that she loved him (though she hardly told him so, for fear that he would panic and leave – probably a wise choice on Lucy's behalf, when he thought about himself like that), but there was a part of him that figured she'd ridicule him for being honest. Like it was all some sort of trick that only a broad as tough as Lucy Bennet could pull over him. Until he stopped thinking that way, being honest with her was always going to be like pulling teeth.

In the end, Dally could only get out a few words.

"It shoulda been me, Lucy," he said. "Shoulda fuckin' been me."

Lucy didn't say anything. There was nothing she could say. Dally wouldn't have listened to words or to reason – not when he was in one of those moods. Instead, Lucy took one arm, wrapped it around her husband's waist, and looked him in the eye until he finally let go of enough pride to look at her back. She hoped, though she wasn't certain, that it would do the trick – that he would hear how much she loved him and how glad she was that he was there with her… how glad she was that he never left. The guilt didn't matter now. This was between them, and she wanted him to hear her without speaking.

Though he'd never confirm it, he could.

Why, yes, the title of this story is taken from a song by The Kinks! It's quite a departure from the Austen-esque titles of yore (read: the months of March and April), but I think it works better with the areas of this "expanded universe" that I'm beginning to shade and flesh out. Yikes.

Hinton owns The Outsiders. The Dickens novel that Dally supposedly read to Elenore is never mentioned in the text, though I think it's important to mention that in my head, it's Dombey and Son, which is one of his more obscure novels (and my favorite). In this universe, there's something about Dickens that Dally, strange as it seems, just gets. Dickens, of course, is an author whose works are all in the public domain.