Please keep an open mind when reading this…

Pony placed a booted foot on the front step of his house. He looked dubiously at the flickering porch light, trying to remember if he'd left the damn thing on when he'd taken off for Buck's a good two weeks ago.A brief wave of concern washed over him as he wondered what the electric bill would look like after the light having been left on for so long. He pushed the splinter of apprehension back down as he remembered that he'd quit trying to keep up with the electric bill a long time ago. Worrying about it wouldn't make the charges suddenly evaporate.

He climbed the steps to the porch, trying not to remember the time when the house had always been filled with people, laugher, chocolate cake and card games. He resolved not to notice how much he'd let the place go as he fished around under the doormat for the key to the front door, which was now always locked.

He kept himself oblivious to what was behind the door as well. He didn't have to look to know what was there; the couch that sagged with depression and the permanent slope in the cushions from having seven teenaged boys constantly occupying it, the coffee table that had held enough feet and drinks that there were stains from both, and the empty spaces that had once been filled with shouting, laughing, and cursing from the gang.

The gang was long gone though.

After Johnny and Dallas had died things just hadn't been the same. Their deaths had changed the boys, somehow; made them all a bit more cynical. It only took a year for everything they knew to fall apart.

Soda and Steve had done the unthinkable: enlisted in the army and taken off for Vietnam. Ponyboy had refused to write his brother, or even so much as look at any of the stacks of letters Darry had received from him. To him, Soda enlisting was as good as him just up and abandoning him. That was something they'd solemnly sworn never to do.

Steve was only overseas for two months before he was gunned down by a Vietcong Guerilla in some godforsaken jungle. The remaining boys had learned this by a tear-stained letter Sodapop had written to Darry. By that time it was too late for them to attend the funeral. The Randles hadn't thought to let Steve's friends know of his death.

Somewhere along the lines Two-Bit had virtually crawled into a bottle of whiskey. No one saw much of him anymore; except for the occasional night when he would drag his unkempt self out to Buck's for a few rounds. Even then, he sat alone, he drank alone and he went home alone.

After everything he'd known had fallen apart, Ponyboy had taken to spending a lot of time with Curly Sheppard and his gang of brutes. Tim had gotten himself locked up for quite some time, which left a new pecking order and Curly was at the top. Ponyboy felt safer, somehow, when he was with Curly or at Buck's than he did in his own house and had quickly managed to make himself indispensable to Curly. He felt like he was somehow closer to Dallas in some strange respect.

Pony finally found the key and opened the front door, letting it slap shut behind him. Shrugging out of his jacket, he tossed a sideways glance at two haphazardly kicked off shoes beside the arm chair. He tried to will himself to remember who shoes those even belonged to but it was too hard to piece together anything logical. He felt foggy and slow and thick, still being a big hung-over from the night before.

For a brief instant, he though of Soda who would always kick his shoes off in the same place. He had to remind himself that Soda was long gone too; probably pushing up daisies in a pair of combat boots he could never kick off. American troops had been pulled out of Vietnam two years before, but Soda had never come back. No one had heard so much as a word about him or where he might be, but Ponyboy had been developing his suspicions for quite some time, considering that he'd abruptly stopped sending letters a few years back. Pony had all but chalked him up as dead at this point--just like everyone else.

Pony ran his hands through his hair and cringed. His neck and ears itched and he suddenly realized how long it had been since he'd had a good hot shower. He kicked the door to the bathroom open--deftly avoiding seeing himself in the mirror--and turned on the faucet. He hoped foolishly for hot water but remembered all too quickly that he hadn't been paying the heating bill and settled for the icy blast that shot out from the shower head. It was better than nothing.

Pony suddenly remembered stupidly spending hours in that bathroom trying to comb his hair in a way that would make him look more like Sodapop. He fought back the urge to smash his fist into the medicine cabinet, trying not to imagine how satisfying the glass shattering would sound. Lately, it was getting harder and harder for him to control this newfound rage that had seemed to replace the aching sorrow he'd felt deep in his chest for so long.

A creak on the ancient floorboards behind him made him spin around, his hand instinctively reaching for the switchblade in his back pocket.

"Take it easy, Pony." The familiar voice startled him so much that his knife clattered to the floor.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Ponyboy spat snatching his blade up off the floor, embarrassed that he'd let his guard down, if only for a moment.

"You get tough like me and you don't get hurt. You watch out for yourself, and nothing can touch you man," Dally's words still echoed in his ears. He quickly pulled himself back together, letting his eyes slowly--deliberately--roam up the figure in the hall.

He should have known. If the porch light being on hadn't tipped him off, the shoes in the living room should have. Sodapop was back.

"Well, I used to live here at one time," Soda drawled, giving his brother a half-smile, as if testing the waters between them.

Pony scoffed at the man standing before him. He looked exactly the same as he had when he left. Looking in his eyes though, Pony could tell that he'd seen a lot--really experienced the world in a way that Pony never had. For a moment he was wildly jealous that Soda had gotten out, even if it was to go gun down a bunch of gooks.

"Not for the past four years, you haven't," he spat at Soda, whose eyes suddenly darkened. "They pulled everyone out of Nam two years ago, Sodapop. I took you for dead, you know? Where the fuck have you been?"

Soda didn't make a sound. Ponyboy seethed with anger as he realized that Soda hadn't give one ounce of thought to what he'd say if he was greeted with this blatant hostility instead of the warm welcome he'd so clearly been expecting. Pony stared, pitilessly, as his brother struggled to come up with some sort of explanation. For one brief moment he caught sight of himself in the mirror and had to fight back another urge to put his fist through the glass. The detached, composed mask had been stripped from his face and replaced with a cool, hard knock-off of Dallas Winston's.

"When I stopped getting your letters," Soda started softly, "I just figured I wasn't wanted around here anymore."

Pony rolled his eyes indifferently. There was a time when seeing Sodapop acting so timid would have devastated him, but he didn't have time for that childish nonsense these days. "I never sent you any letters in the first place."

Soda looked confused, then pulled his wallet out from his back pocket. He fished around inside of it for a minute, coming out with a worn envelope, yellowed with age.

"This was the very first letter I got from you." He offered it to Pony. Ponyboy instantly recognized the writing on the envelope as belonging to Darry. Only Sodapop would be fooled so easily by such a diluted plot.

"Must have been Darry." Pony shook his head refusing to take the letter. "I didn't send you shit."

Soda bit his bottom lip and nodded his head, visibly trying to make sense of this. Ponyboy set his jaw, intent on proving that he wasn't the same fifteen-year-old kid Soda had left behind. Didn't he understand that adopting this new persona was his only choice?

"Okay, so you're still mad at me. I get it," Soda finally said, dropping his arms and turning to leave to bathroom. Apparently, he wasn't up for an all out brawl just then. "I guess I'll just go wait in the living room until Darry gets home."

A sharp stab ripped through Ponyboy's chest for a split second.

"You're gonna be waiting for an awful long time," he spat at the back of Soda's head. "Darry's gone."

Soda froze. "What do you mean?" he asked without turning around.

"You get dumber since you left or something?" Pony asked coldly, shouldering past him--desperate to hurt Soda in any way that he could. "The guy's dead. He's never coming back."

BIG thanks to fanfar3 for putting up with my horrific grammar, helping me polish this up and encouraging me to continue with chapter 2. -Hannah