A/N: This had been a long time in the making, and I want to thank all of you who have patiently waited for this rewrite to happen. I hope it will live up to your expectations.

Dawn's Early Light

Heart pounding in my chest, I bolted upright in the bed and fought against the covers tangled around me, a scream of terror lodged in my throat. I could feel myself shaking violently from the after effects of the nightmare, and I hoped that I hadn't screamed loud enough to alert my brothers. It had been a while since I'd had one that I couldn't remember, but I knew it would worry them if they had even the slightest idea that I was having them again.

The shaking increased as a portion of the terrible dream popped unbidden into my mind; those glowing, red eyes burning out at me from the dark depths of a hooded figure as if trying to scorch my very soul. That voice speaking, a gravelly rasping that echoed in my head like rock on sandpaper, when the figure had raised one hand and pointed at me with a claw-like finger.

Free the soul, Ponyboy, and the rest will follow.

Looking around the bedroom and trying to shake off the panic that was making my chest tight, I realized it was almost dawn and a dim, gray light was coming in the window from outside making everything look like the black and white surreal-scape of the television. The house was quiet except for an occasional popping noise from the furnace vent in the hallway outside the bedroom, and I remembered my oldest brother, Darry, saying that the old thing had one leg in the appliance graveyard and the other perched on the edge of the ravine.

We're going to need a new one soon, but … I shivered as a cold draft skated across the bed and silently cursed the furnace for the strike it was on. There was no way we could afford a new one or the money it would take to fix the one we had. With fall of the year already upon us, I had a sinking feeling that we were looking at having to layer our clothes to keep warm when winter finally arrived. Darry will figure something out. He always does.

A low snort from my left reminded me that my brother, Sodapop, was still sleeping beside me, and I breathed a quick thank you that he was such a sound sleeper. He could sleep through a tornado spinning right through our bedroom.

I rubbed my eyes to clear the blur from the edges of my vision and looked around the messy room. Sodapop's beige work pants from the day before were hanging halfway off of the edge of the cluttered dresser, his DX shirt was hanging on the corner of the half open door, and the hardwood floor was only visible in patches among the other junk that had accumulated over the past month. The room already looked like a tornado had hit it.

With a sigh of relief that I hadn't woke Sodapop up this time with my screaming, I pulled my knees up to my chest and wrapped my arms around them in an attempt to stop the shaking before the shuddering of the bed under him did the job for me. It was hard enough dealing with the lingering after effects of that dream without having my brother questioning me about it and looking at me with that worried concern in his eyes.

Lowering my forehead to rest on my knees, I closed my eyes and slowed my breathing. I'd had nightmares before, but nothing like these and it scared me something fierce. At least my other dreams were gone when I woke up. These stayed and haunted me for hours afterward even though I could never remember a damn thing that was in them except for those eyes and that voice. That was enough, though, and part of me was glad I didn't remember more.

"Pony?"

Raising my head, I met my brother's sleepy brown eyes. He must've seen the remnants of my nightmare reflected in my eyes because his gaze darkened slightly with worry. Here we go … twenty questions that I don't know the answers to.

"M-Morning, Soda," I forced myself to say with a small smile that I really didn't feel like letting show. My lips hurt almost immediately from forcing them to bend against their will, but I ignored it and kept them firmly in place. "You're awake early."

Yawning widely, Sodapop pushed his blondish-brown hair out of his eyes and peered around groggily. "You okay?"

Without waiting for an answer, he added, "What time is it?"

I glanced at the clock on the nightstand beside me. Five fifty-eight … no wonder it's so light outside. "Almost six o'clock."

I flinched when a hand came down on my shoulder, and I turned back to face him. "You can go back to sleep, Soda. I'm fine."

When he looked doubtfully at my still shaking hands, I hurried to reassure him. "Really, Soda, I'm fine. It's just a nightmare. No big thing."

Sodapop frowned briefly. "You sure? I can stay up with you a while, you know."

Another shudder of icy prickles coursed through me that had nothing to do with the furnace's laziness, and I shook my head, sliding over to the edge of the bed. "It's too early, Soda. I'm gonna go smoke."

I could feel his eyes on me as I rummaged through the cloths piled on the floor and quickly got dressed in a pair of jeans and a t-shirt that I wasn't sure belonged to me or not. It was a little big on me, but I'd lost some weight recently so it could've been mine. I didn't have time to worry about possession being nine-tenths of the law, though. I had to get away from Sodapop quick or he would pry the details of my dream out of me, and I didn't want to talk about it since that would mean admitting that I couldn't remember what had happened. The fear was still too close to the surface.

"If you're sure …"

"I am," I snapped, my tone unintentionally brisk. Guilt flooded me as I recognized the hurt in his features, and I tried to soften my tone. "You have to get up for work in a little bit, Soda, so go back to sleep. I'll be fine alone."

Without waiting for him to reply, I made my escape into the hallway and pulled the bedroom door back into its half closed position behind me, ducking the DX shirt as it swung through the opening toward my face and hoping like hell he wouldn't follow me. I didn't feel like talking about anything right now, especially not about that dream. I just wanted to forget it had happened; push it to the back of my mind and forget about it for now.

The same way you've done Johnny and Dally, a small voice accused from somewhere inside my brain. You can't keep pushing things away just because you don't want to face reality.

I shivered from the slight chill in the house as I entered the living room and firmly told that voice to shut the hell up. There was nothing it had to say that I wanted to hear.

Peeking into the kitchen as I went by, I sniffed the smell of coffee lingering in the air along with the slightly charred aroma of toast, and I knew that Darry was already gone for a day of roofing houses. He was always the first one up, even on Sundays when he didn't have to work.

Crossing the living room, I wasn't one bit surprised to see that our couch was occupied by a lump under the colorful quilt we usually kept folded up on the back of it. Darry's "open door" policy usually meant waking up to someone sleeping on the couch, and sometimes there would even be two or three other people sacked out on the floor.

I couldn't tell who it was under the quilt since the only part of them showing was their nose, and that just wasn't enough for me to make identification. It wasn't like I went around memorizing everybody's nose and filing it away in my head for later use. Whoever it was would be revealed soon enough when Two-Bit arrived to give me a ride to school … if he managed to crawl his lazy ass out of bed on time that is.

I'd been tardy three times already because of him, and the next time would mean having to get Darry to sign a note from my first period teacher. I didn't even want to think of what my brother would say to that. At least he can't blame me for it. I could walk there and be on time if he'd just let me.

Leaning over the coffee table, I snagged my pack of cigarettes and the battered lighter from it as quietly as I could manage while trying to see more than just that nose around the bunched up folds of Mom's quilt before I headed outside to indulge in my only bad habit. There was no telling who it was crashed out on the couch, but I knew it couldn't be Steve or Two-Bit since the large pair of brown construction boots, or shit-kickers as they were called, that were poking out the far end of the quilt weren't familiar at all to me.

Probably some friend of Darry's who was too drunk to make it all the way home last night. I opened the front door as quietly as I could in deference to our unknown guest still snoozing on the couch despite the urge to slam it as hard as I could just to get a look at them and stepped out through the screen door into the chilly morning air of early October.

It wasn't much warmer outside than it had been in the house as I padded out onto the porch in my socks and dropped down onto the top step, but I ignored the chill bumps that rose up on my arms. While I drew in the first lungful of smoke, my gaze focused on the amber and violet glow on the horizon above the shabby houses and cluttered yards that made up our part of town.

The sun would be up soon, and the peace of the neighborhood would be shattered by angry shouts and banging from the inhabitants as they arose to another day of drowning their misery and poverty in fights and booze. Sometimes it was amusing to watch the different dramas playing out up and down our street, and the height of entertainment was when the police were called out to mediate a disturbance. It almost always ended up with somebody cuffed and stuffed into the back of a patrol car, and it was better than watching I Love Lucy.

I took another draw from my cigarette and leaned my back against the porch post as the fear of my nightmare slowly dissipated in the wake of the rising sun. We didn't have it as bad as some in our neighborhood, but money was still pretty tight. Darry worked full-time as a roofer and Sodapop worked at the DX full-time, but they still barely made enough to keep the bills caught up.

At least we had each other. That was more than most people had. After the events surrounding Johnny and Dally's deaths a month before, we had been sure that the state would separate us and put me into the foster care system. We had ridden out the aftermath of that night in the park and the fire in Windrixville, though, and had been allowed to stay together with a few conditions added in for good measure.

Sodapop and I couldn't get into any trouble or we'd risk our family stability all over again, but that wasn't a problem. Neither of us had been in big trouble before anyway so keeping our noses clean wasn't too hard a thing to manage. We had the gang to keep us on the straight and narrow when Darry wasn't reminding us to behave.

That annoying voice piped up in my head again just then, You mean what's left of the gang, don't you?

It seemed to love reminding me that we'd lost two of our closest friends in such a small amount of time. I missed Johnny and Dally … Johnny most of all. He was my best friend and my confidant; the only person that understood me and didn't ridicule my thoughts on the things around us. I doubted if I would ever meet another friend like him again no matter how long I lived. That kind of bond was a once in a lifetime kind of thing.

I jumped as a loud bang echoed from across the street, and I jerked my gaze away from the colors spreading across the sky above me. Surprise filled me when I noticed for the first time that I wasn't the only one on the street up this early. Across the street at the old Morgan house, a figure with what looked to be a long, dark ponytail trailing down its back was standing at the edge of the porch with a hammer in one hand and what looked to be a two-by-four in the other.

It looked like a woman to me what with the long hair and all, but I wasn't sure if my eyes were seeing things right or not. Very few women around our neighborhood would be caught dead banging on boards with a hammer at this ungodly hour of the morning no matter what kind of repairs needed to be made. That was the man's job to do even if the libbers did want to argue that a woman could do anything a man could do.

I remembered Two-Bit saying something about somebody moving into the abandoned house, but for the life of me I couldn't remember what he had said after that about them. I shrugged to myself. I was probably reading or thinking when he told the gang about it. I'm bad about zoning out like that. Besides, one more face in the neighborhood wasn't going make a difference any way.

Wincing a little when the figure slapped the board down onto the porch and started nailing it down, I tossed my cigarette into the dirt beside our porch steps and got to my feet. It was time to get Sodapop moving or he'd be late to work. The noise echoing from across the street would surely wake my brother up, and quite possibly our unknown guest, too, if I was lucky. Curiosity was beginning to get the better of me.

I was about to go back inside when a loud shout resonated from across the street behind me, and the clearly male sound of it made me spin around on the porch to stare at the long-haired figure again. Maybe I had been mistaken in thinking it was a woman after all.

"Get your ass down from there, Sidney! You're gonna break your stupid neck!"

I couldn't keep the laughter from coming through my lips when I spotted the smaller figure of a kid perched on the porch roof of the old Morgan house with his feet hanging over the edge. Blond hair almost as long as that of the other figure reflected the rising sunlight that was now peeking through the trees to dapple our front yard with golden spots, and I squinted at the tan colored blob in the kid's hands.

The sun-faded football in those hands brought back memories of the time we'd played football and Dally had punted Steve's new ball all the way across the street where it landed on the roof of the old Morgan house. It had rolled down the shingles to wedge in the corner where the eaves had pulled loose a little, and Dad had forbidden us to retrieve it from its resting place. The football had just lain there in the sun, snow, and rain over the last three years taunting us when we were sitting on the porch, but none of us had dared disobey Dad's order to stay away from that house ... not even after he and Mom died in that wreck. Such was the power of my father's authority over us and our friends.

"I found a football, Des!" The blond kid dropped the football over the edge between his legs and it narrowly missed hitting the man below him. I could see now that it was a boy despite the long hair, and I wondered if our neighborhood was going to be hosting one of those 'commune' houses Two-Bit had talked about a few weeks before. "Looks to be in okay shape, too!"

"That's great," the man answered in a voice that was clearly sarcastic, his head tilted back and one hand shielding his eyes as he stared up at the kid. "Now get your ass down from there right now."

I could make out markings on his arms, and my mind registered them as possibly being tattoos of some kind. It wasn't unusual for the guys in our part of town to ink themselves as a show of toughness that they could handle a needle puncturing their skin over and over, but from my vantage point … this guy had way more than I'd ever seen before on any single person. Maybe he's one of those Hells Angels that we saw on the news the other night. God I hope not. Darry will pick our house up and drag it away himself.

Dropping his arm, the man nudged the bleached out football with one foot while the boy flipped over onto his stomach and dangled his legs over the edge of the roof. "You got one of your own, Siddy. Why would you want this old thing?"

Anger flared in me at his words, and I wasn't sure if it was because of the tone of his voice or that his words somehow cheapened the memories I had of the football. It was a link to the past when we still had Mom and Dad around to guide us through the world, when Darry still had dreams of college, when Sodapop wasn't a high school dropout, and when Dallas and Johnny were still a part of the gang in more than just memory.

There's no way he can know what the football means to you, the snappy voice in my head reminded me. No use in getting all uptight about it.

Sighing as I realized the voice was right for a change, I pulled the screen door open and headed inside to start the day, ignoring the voices still echoing faintly from outside the house. There would be plenty of time to find out who our new neighbors were, and I was sure Two-Bit would be the one to tell us all about them. He seemed to soak up gossip like a sponge and spill it back out without much reluctance, so we were never in the dark about anything going on in our part of town for long.

Updates will be once a week on Wednesdays, but there will be times when I will post chapters on other days depending on my time and that of my beta.