Sodapop may be back, but a war still rages inside of him.

Disclaimer: The Outsiders belongs to S.E. Hinton…The lucky woman.

I wish I had died.

There's no doubt about it anymore in my head and sometimes I start thinking about it and I get the mind to grab Dad's old gun from the closet and do it myself, but that wouldn't be fair, would it? I would be an ungrateful bastard for ending it when I had been one of the lucky ones. I had lived.

Like I mentioned, though, I wish I was gone. I still see those fuckin' gooks, chargin' at me with their machine guns as they trip over the marsh and I watch 'um go up because the guys in my unit had one hell of a shot. I see those God damn kids- the cute ones who had no business being there- becoming collateral damage because their parents weren't smart enough to get them the fuck out. I see the grenades and hear the shells. Every day.

It's been a while since anybody's asked me about it, asked me what it was like or if I killed anybody. I mean, who asks someone that? How the hell does it come up in a decent conversation? Even Ponyboy was askin'- Ponyboy- Out of all the people to ask me, my own little brother pushed me closer to the edge. I knew he meant no harm, but I still yelled at him when he asked and Darry still got mad at me for bein' an ass.

They don't get it, though. They don't understand. Steve would be the only one to understand and, hell, he's gone. God rest his soul because obviously no one else would give that guy fuckin' peace. Steve didn't deserve to die. No one over there deserved to die.

Fuck, we were all just a bunch of people, shooting at one another because some guy told us to. I may have even liked some of the jerks I shot. No one knows and no one will ever know. Nothing can bring them back. Just like nothing can make me forget.

I wanted someone to shoot me.

I heard people all the time. He's changed. Wow, he sure acts different. He used to smile a lot. He doesn't grin as much anymore. Yeah, I changed. Yeah, I act different. Yeah, I used to smile a lot. And yeah, I don't grin as much anymore. I don't wanna be happy. I don't wanna pretend I'm okay. I don't wanna smile and dance and be free again.

I will never be free again. The war has me in chains. I'm forever her prisoner until death- and even then I may end up in hell for killin' so many people and have to relive that part of my life all over again.

I saw Dally go down. I heard about how Johnny looked. I could imagine my parents' states after they got killed, but I ain't never had to deal with the shit I saw at war. I never had to hold a man while his leg was being amputated. I never had to see a guy get blown to pieces because of a land mine. I never had to deal with a group of boys, screaming in agony because they had been shot down in No Man's Land where the chance of survival was slim to none.

I ain't never had to, not until war.

I dreamt about it at night. I remembered it in the day. It all was permanently etched into my brain. I would never forget. I would never not remember.

War had punished me in the worst way possible. That is, it made me remember every day; life wasn't letting me take the easy route. I couldn't just up and shoot myself because I felt like it, even though I very much wanted to. I couldn't just ignore it because when it came down to it, you just couldn't.

War was a game. You played until you died. And I wasn't dead yet.

I cried about it a lot, but I didn't care. I was a greaser through and through, but if I cried then I guess there was nothing we could do about that.

It was over for me. It was all over for me. I may have made it out alive, but the fact of it all was that my life was over. I was ready to die whenever. I was ready to end it any day.

I may have killed people, but war had murdered me and I wasn't even dead yet.

Quick one-shot. It popped into my head and I kind of just went with it. So, let me know if you loved it, liked it or despised it.

~Review