Author's Note: Hey guys! So here we go, yet another Outsiders story from me, haha. If you're familiar with my other stories just know this one will be very different than any of the others that I've written. I'm trying to get away from the Vietnam theme that I've been stuck on, at least a bit so it doesn't become too redundant, though I will still be working on the one that I just posted this past weekend. And you can expect regular updates with this story each week.

Now be forewarned, I'm going to be playing with some time jumps in this story. I'm going to do my best to make it as clear as possible where we are in the story though, so make sure to take note of any bolded indications of time at the beginning of different sections. If it works out like I think it will work out in my head hopefully it'll make the story that much more interesting as you find out what happens and the go back and figure out what led to that.

Anyway, I like to jump right into the action, so expect some excitement in this chapter. Please remember to review and let me know what you think!

Chapter One

Darrel Curtis stood in the doorway of his younger brothers' bedroom, leaning up against the doorframe with his hands shoved in his pockets. He stared at the empty bed with the blankets skewed and falling to the floor. He was having a hard time getting his head around how everything had fallen apart so quickly. They were just beginning to put their lives back together and then suddenly everything had gone downhill in an instant. He rubbed his eyes tiredly. He knew that he wouldn't sleep well again until he managed to fix this. And he hoped desperately that he would be able to find a way to fix this. There just had to be a way to make this better. And he was going to find it, no matter how long it took. He was going to bring his brothers home.

XxXxX

Friday, September 23

(Three weeks earlier)

"Let's go, you two are gonna be late," Darry called for the third time as he walked into Soda and Pony's room. Soda moaned loudly as he pulled the covers over his head while Pony blinked sleepily, appearing to at least make an effort to wake up. Darry leaned over them and shook them both. "C'mon, get up."

He stood there waiting as Pony slowly rolled out of bed, yawning loudly as he made his way out of the room.

"Just five more minutes," Soda mumbled from under the covers.

"I gave you five more minutes twenty minutes ago," Darry pointed out. He reached over and pulled back the covers, getting impatient. If they didn't get going soon, he was going to be late too. "C'mon, get up."

Soda sighed as he slowly pushed himself up into a sitting position. "Alright, alright," he muttered, sounding a bit moody. Darry realized his tone had been a bit harsher than he had meant it to be, but he was too tired to really care about that right now.

"Maybe it'd be easier to get up for work if you weren't out so late with Steve last night," Darry pointed out, annoyed. "You let the door slam when you came in last night too. Woke me up."

"Sorry," Soda said, not sounding very sorry at all as he climbed out of bed, letting the blankets fall to the floor as he did so. "But I haven't been out for a while and I actually wanted to have some fun. I don't want to turn into you, just workin' all the time with no social life."

Darry just watched as Soda stalked from the room. He sighed. He knew that Soda could be cranky when he didn't get enough sleep. He had been taking more hours at work the past month to help pay off Pony's hospital bills. It was hard to believe it had already been a month since Pony and Johnny had run away for a week after getting caught up in the murder of a Soc. It was still hard to believe that Dally and Johnny were really gone for good. They were all still trying to get over it.

Darry shook himself out of his thoughts as he headed back out of the room and into the kitchen. He already had breakfast on the table by the time Pony wandered in, already dressed for school and still looking sleepy. Darry watched him carefully as he sat down at the table and began picking at his breakfast. He was still concerned with how skinny he looked. He had lost a lot of weight during the week he had run away and continued losing weight even afterwards when he was trying to deal with the aftermath of what had happened. He had finally begun to gain some of it back, but not as much as Darry had been hoping. Overall Pony had come a long way since that awful week, but Darry knew he still had a ways to go and he was still keeping a close eye on him.

Suddenly there was a honk from outside. It was probably Steve and Two-Bit here to pick up both Pony and Soda. They would drop Soda off at work before they headed to school, just like most other days when Soda was running too late to walk to work.

"Finish your breakfast, Soda's not even ready yet," Darry said as Pony started to get up from his only half eaten plate.

Pony lowered himself back down and went back to pushing his food around his plate. "Were you and Soda fightin' this morning?" he asked, looking up at Darry curiously.

Darry sighed. "He's just tired 'cause he didn't get in till late last night," he said. Pony looked back down at his plate but Darry was surprised to see that he was smiling. "What?" he asked, confused.

"You and Soda never fight," Pony said. He smiled lightly at up Darry. "It's just nice that it's not me for once."

Darry rolled his eyes at him. At least one of his brothers was in a good mood this morning though. The honk from outside came again and Darry could hear Soda hurrying down the hall.

"You ready, Pony?" Soda called.

Pony was up from the table in a second, hurrying after Soda. Darry eyed Pony's plate with disapproval, he had barely eaten half of his breakfast, but he did his best to brush it off. He knew that Pony ate well for dinner and he did his best to leave it at that. He'd just make a big dinner tonight. He also tried not to worry about Soda not having any breakfast, figuring he'd grab something when he got to work.

Darry quickly cleaned up breakfast, just tossing the dirty dishes in the sink to deal with later, before gathering his things and heading out to his truck. As he glanced at his watch he was relieved to find that he was only running a few minutes late, which would be easy to make up as he drove. By the time he made it to the work site he was stepping out of the truck right on time.

"Mornin' Curtis."

"Hey Cooper," Darry said, nodding at one of his coworkers who was getting out of the car next to his.

James Cooper looked up at the house they had been working on for the past few days. "Looks like we got a good rain last night," he commented. "Looks pretty slick up there."

Darry looked up at the roof, seeing that he was right. By the looks of the pools of water in the tarps it seemed like they had gotten a pretty good rainstorm last night. Darry must have slept right through it.

"Yeah, looks like," Darry agreed.

James looked at him curiously. "You look pretty tired," he said.

Darry sighed. "One of my kid brothers came in pretty late last night," he said by way of explanation.

James laughed. "Kids, huh?"

Darry chuckled. "Yeah, no kidding."

They both headed for the house where most of the other workers were already gathered, talking and finishing coffees before work officially started. Soon enough the site manager was ushering everyone up the ladders while a few stragglers were running up. Darry grabbed a bundle of roofing before heading up the ladder with everyone else. They carefully removed the tarps, dumping the water down to the ground before they began working.

The morning was uneventful. Everyone had to go slower than usual and a few guys stumbled a bit due to the wet conditions, but nothing too exciting. Darry was just glad that the rain had brought around some cooler weather. Yesterday the sun had been beating down hard on them, but today was actually pretty comfortable.

Even though Darry was one of the youngest roofers on this particular job, he was noticing more and more how immature some of the other guys acted at times. They liked to horse around and play pranks on each other, which didn't appeal much to Darry. He mostly kept to himself, working in his own area and getting more done than most.

He had long ago stopped paying attention to what the other roofers were doing and was thinking about Soda. He felt bad for giving him a hard time this morning. He hadn't asked Soda to take more hours to help with Pony's hospital bills, he had done that on his own and it had helped out immensely. Darry was grateful for that. And Darry certainly didn't want his life for either of his brothers. He didn't want them working themselves ragged at two jobs in order to make ends meet.

Darry was so deep in thought about this that he didn't even realize what was going on around him. One of his coworkers had taken a handful of water from one of the tarps that they had left in place and was throwing it at other coworkers. They were laughing and joking loudly.

"Curtis, watch out!"

Darry was standing up in order to get more roofing and turned just in time to see Hank Thomas laughing as he walked backwards, unaware that Darry had been crouched behind him as he worked. He had no time to react as Hank ran right into him, knocking him off balance. He immediately slid backwards on the part of the roof that didn't have shingles yet and there was nothing he could do to stop himself. He felt himself hit the gutter before he was flung out into empty space. He felt air rushing past him and suddenly there was a sharp cracking noise and everything went black.

XxXxX

The first thing that Darry was aware of was a vague beeping noise. His entire body felt heavy and all he wanted to do was sleep. After some more time had passed and sleep would not come Darry slowly blinked his eyes open. It took a minute for the scene in front of him to come into focus. He was confused. This wasn't his bedroom. He looked around at plain white walls. There were tubes coming out of his arm. There were wires crossing his chest. He couldn't even begin to fathom was what going on.

He shifted a bit but found that he didn't have the energy to even think about getting out of bed. So he just lay there, hoping someone would show up soon so he could find out what was going on.

It was only a few minutes later when Darry was aware of someone entering the room. He slowly turned his head and immediately recognized Steve and Two-Bit walking in, deep in some kind of hushed conversation that he couldn't quite make out. They hardly even looked at him as they walked into the room. Darry felt a wave of relief upon seeing them though. It was good to see something familiar.

"Hey guys," Darry croaked, finding that his throat was dry and his voice caught in his throat.

The reaction was immediate. Steve and Two-Bit both whipped their heads around to look at him, mirrored expressions of shock on their faces. They froze for a moment before Two-Bit turned and sprinted from the room. Darry felt confused by this reaction, but before he could question it Two-Bit came back into the room with a woman in scrubs in tow. Darry was finally starting to understand that he was in the hospital.

"You're awake!" the nurse exclaimed. She quickly began checking him over, checking his heartbeat, taking his blood pressure, shining a light into his eyes. Steve and Two-Bit were both standing back a little bit, looking like they had seen a ghost. The whole thing made Darry feel uneasy. The nurse turned back to address them. "He's stable," she told them. "I'll tell the doctor and he should be in soon." Then she left just as quickly as she had come.

Darry turned his gaze to Steve and Two-Bit, wanting answers. "What happened?" he asked.

Two-Bit stepped forward, carefully approaching the bed with Steve close behind him. "You fell," Two-Bit said slowly. "You fell off the roof of a house and hit your head. Don't you remember?"

Darry thought hard for a moment. He had some hazy memories of falling, but he couldn't really grasp the circumstances. He was beginning to get a pounding headache and he wished the light in the room wasn't so bright.

"Kinda," Darry finally answered. He looked back up at the two friends at his bedside as something slowly dawned on him. "Where're Soda and Pony?" he asked. It seemed strange that neither of them were there if Steve and Two-Bit were. There was silence following the question as Two-Bit shifted uncomfortably and shared a glance with Steve. Darry felt even more uneasy at this. Suddenly he was getting the feeling that something was very wrong.

"We… don't know where they are," Steve finally said reluctantly, shoving his hands in his pockets and not meeting Darry's eyes.

"What do you mean you don't know?" Darry demanded, a hint of panic in his voice.

Two-Bit sighed and dropped into a chair next to Darry's bed, suddenly looking defeated. "We tried to stop them," he said quietly, looking down at his shoes. "But there wasn't anythin' we could do, Darry. Honest."

"What are you talkin' about, Two-Bit?" Darry said, getting impatient for an actual explanation. "Where are my brothers?"

Two-Bit finally looked up at him, sadness in his eyes. "The state came and took them away," he finally said flatly.

Darry felt his breath catch in his chest. After everything they had gone through in order to stay together they couldn't just be gone. "How long ago?" Darry asked quickly. Maybe it wasn't long ago; maybe he could still get them back.

Two-Bit bit his lip uncomfortably and looked up at Steve who was still standing behind him. It was Steve who spoke up this time. "About a week ago," he said flatly. He paused, as if counting in his head. "A week and three days ago," he corrected.

This bit of news hit Darry hard. His mind was reeling, hardly able to comprehend this information. Suddenly he realized he had no idea how much time had passed. "How…?" Darry said, unable to complete his thought.

"Darry, you've been unconscious for a while," Two-Bit said slowly. "Your accident was almost two weeks ago."

Darry felt himself pale and he felt sick. Almost two weeks had gone by?

"They wouldn't even tell us where they were takin' them," Steve said, bitterness clear in his voice.

"They didn't leave your side for about three days," Two-Bit explained. "The doctors said that the trauma to your head was so much that… that you might not ever wake up. That's when the social worker came and took Soda and Pony away but she wouldn't tell us where."

As Darry was still trying to get his mind around this a man with a white lab coat walked into the room. Darry assumed he was a doctor. "Mr. Curtis, it's good to see you finally awake," the doctor said with a smile. "How are you feeling?"

"I need a phone," Darry said, ignoring his question. "And the number for social services."

(Wednesday, October 5)

Author's Note: So? What do you think so far? I know Soda is a little out of character at the beginning of this chapter, but don't worry he will be back in character from here on out. Somehow I just don't see Soda as a morning person, haha. Anyway, please review!