Xerotic

Summary: In which Johnny is the victim, and Ponyboy is the attacker.

Warnings: Some AU, coarse language, hinting at 'abuse' and violence, and dark themes.

A/N: Aly208 here! Well, I have another one-shot on my hands! This is for ninjaninja cant find the ninja, who is just pure awesomeness! I hope you really enjoy this!

Dry –

A) Dull.

B) Unemotional.

C) Having lost all wetness over a period of time.

D) Dried up.

Now, which one describes him?

. . .

A hospital room. The blinding sun shining through the colorless curtains. The dark-haired boy lying in the white, yet comfortable bed. He is severely injured. Burns are all over him, dark bruises scattered throughout his body, and he has scrapes and cuts just about everywhere.

None of this compares to the emptiness of his broken heart.

Let's, for a minute, go back to the past.

Two boys – one fourteen and the other sixteen. Except for them, an otherwise vacant church.

They're alone with each other, far from other people.

It's all the fourteen-year-old could ever wish for.

When the seventeen-year-old comes to visit them, he notices that nothing's wrong.

The fourteen-year-old is as normal as he could be – still reading books, lost in his own little world. The only thing different is his newly dyed blonde hair.

The sixteen-year-old is still quiet. He's a little more tense and silent than he usually is, having a depressed look in his eyes, but the seventeen-year-old assumes that this is because he killed someone.

He was wrong.

Dead wrong.

The church again. This time fervent and flaming flames have overtaken it, dominating and killing the small wooden building for worship.

At the very moment the fourteen-year-old sees the church, he sprints towards it. The seventeen-year-old threatens and shouts for him to come back, but his yells fall on deaf ears. Even the sixteen-year-old next to him barely hears his words. Instead, the sixteen-year-old is drawn to the retreating back of the fourteen-year-old. He immediately wonders what his attacker is doing, but then he hears the screams of adults around him and shouts that sound like kids' voices coming from the building.

There are children in that church.

Let's rephrase that. There are children in that burning church.

And the fourteen-year-old wants to rescue those children from the burning church.

A shot at redemption, maybe?

Guilt?

He winces here. Gallantry?

Whatever it was, the sixteen-year-old ignores the pleas of the seventeen-year-old and chases after his attacker to the church.

Because if the fourteen-year-old wants salvation, so does he.

The sixteen-year-old wakes up and feels searing, unadulterated pain run through his body, especially at his back. He lets out one scream, releasing his anguish into the unbiased air.

This again? He instantly thinks, but when he doesn't feel a body next to his, touching and groping him, he knows something isn't right.

He looks at the bland, white ceiling with unfocused eyes. White? The church wasn't white. It was dark – like the night.

Then, he notices the people in uniforms, fretting constantly over him and shouting to one another hurriedly. A few of them touch him, and all he wants to do is snap at them to leave him alone.

He doesn't, though. The agony in his back is too intense for him to concentrate on making legible words.

So another scream rips out of his mouth.

Once again, he wakes up. This time he notices that he's alone and it's dark outside.

He lays on the bed, unmoving. It even hurts to twitch his finger; so instead, he's on his back, just idly counting the design patterns in the ceiling.

It was boring.

But he'd rather do it than be with his attacker.

An hour later, the sixteen-year-old decides to test his body out.

Bad decision.

After cautiously and gingerly moving the upper parts of his body (minus his back, God how that still hurts), he ends up attempting to move his legs.

Keyword: attempt.

Frantically, he tries even harder to stir them back to use, but it doesn't work. Then, after a few minutes of desperately pleading his legs to move, he gains an idea. He carefully pokes his left leg.

Nothing. He feels absolutely nothing.

Horrified, he touches the right leg more harshly than the left.

Again, nothing.

At this point, he realizes that he's no longer in control of parts of his body.

His fearful yells could be heard a mile away from the hospital.

A few hours after the shock of noticing that his legs were now impediments and completely useless to him, a nurse with a friendly smile and a caring face comes into the room and starts to talk to him.

He merely nods as she talks and talks. The sixteen-year-old wants to say so much more, because so far he likes this woman and the things she says, but he can't. The aching pain in his back prevents him from doing so. Not to mention that he was still a bit in shock.

She soon leaves, though, having provided him some company and checked out how he was faring. She has to get back to her other patients.

He starts to think – once again back to the forlorn and secluded isolation of his mind.

He doesn't really mind at first. But then he thinks of the fourteen-year-old who he had saved from dying, only to have him viciously stab him in the back and do something utterly horrifying to him.

Is it ironic that something so vile happened in a place considered so holy?

His 'friends' – the eighteen-year-old and his attacker – walk through the hospital door about a day later.

The sixteen-year-old isn't quite sure how the fourteen-year-old can act like he had done absolutely nothing wrong to him. If it had been the elder boy, he would've already lost it and confessed everything.

Nonetheless, the sixteen-year-old also pretends that nothing's wrong. Except for the fact that he's a bit tense and his goddamned back is still persistently hurting, he acts as if he's alright.

He's so good at pretending that he almost fools himself.

Almost.

He wakes up again later, but the funny thing is that he doesn't remember ever drifting off to sleep. All he remembers is his attacker, the eighteen-year-old, his nurse, and the mention of his mother.

Later, when he confusedly asks the nurse what happened to him, she smiles very sadly and softly, with a gleam of melancholy in her eyes, and says, "Oh, honey, you passed out."

Why?

"Well, you were so vexed by your mother coming to visit that you just couldn't handle it."

What?

"I'm sorry, Johnny. It'll all be okay in the end, though."

He bites his tongue to stop himself from saying a smart and angered remark. How she could lie through her teeth with such a kind expression on, the sixteen-year-old doesn't know.

He was dying.

It was official now – even the doctor said it.

Not to him, of course. Never to him. He eavesdropped on a conversation between his nurse and doctor, and he had specifically heard the words, "He's dying."

It doesn't take a genius to figure who 'he' was.

As the sixteen-year-old lay in his bed, he thought about his life.

It was a shitty one, to be honest.

From the moment he was born, he was cursed. His parents hated and abused him physically and emotionally. He killed a Soc in self-defense and for his 'friend.' He ran away with that fourteen-year-old friend to an abandoned church so the police wouldn't catch him. The fourteen-year-old had also abused him in such a horrific way that he couldn't even say what happened between them. Then, when he tries to redeem himself by saving children from a burning church, he ends up getting third degree burns and his back broken, which ends up to him not being able to use his legs. Ever.

But what the fourteen-year-old had done . . . that was unforgivable. The sixteen-year-old isn't sure why he hadn't told anyone; maybe he wants the fourteen-year-old to have a good life. He could've easily told the seventeen-year-old, though, who would've believed him without even a shred of evidence.

Dammit, he had trusted the fourteen-year-old. Killed a life for him, even. And he repays him by touching him? What kind of world did he live in?

Well, technically, what kind of world he has lived in, according to the doctor. He's still dying.

He ponders whether he's going to Heaven or Hell.

He thinks some more about his life.

He refuses to cry over the fourteen-year-old.

Well, not so much refuse as he simply can't.

His tears have dried up a long time ago.

"Johnnycake? Johnny?"

The hoarse voice slowly rouses the sixteen-year-old from sleep. He had decided that waiting for his own death was quite boring and a bit nerve wrecking, so he had drifted off to dream again for the last time.

It was, simply put, a nice dream. Very soothing, which calmed him down.

The sixteen-year-old stirs and opens his eyes, greeting the seventeen-year-old and the fourteen-year-old. Lordy, his attacker was here in his last moments on Earth?

The seventeen-year-old starts talking. He listens to his friend ramble too quickly in a tone that was too calm, barely comprehending what he's saying, but then the sixteen-year-old catches a few words that make his dark eyes glow in content and happiness.

The words? "We're all proud of you, buddy."

The sixteen-year-old had always wanted to make the seventeen-year-old proud. It was a bit silly, but he had always venerated his elder friend. Thought he was real tuff – which the sixteen-year-old wasn't. Not at all, in his opinion.

He then calls the fourteen-year-old over, who looks rather anxious with his hands fumbling with one another and the pained expression on his face. What he was anxious about, the dying teenager had no idea.

Was it about him dying?

Was it the guilt deteriorating his insides?

Well, he'd never know.

The sixteen-year-old takes a deep breath – knowing that this will be exactly the last thing he'll ever say – and says quietly, "Stay gold, Ponyboy. Stay gold."

Jonathan Cade, the sixteen-year-old, sank back into his pillow and simply died, leaving a dried up and shriveled body behind. He never was able to finish what he was saying, though –

'Cause what you did to me wasn't gold.

. . .

The answer –

All of the above.