Words: 883
This was written for a grade, in school. Yes, I know, my teacher told me to write fanfiction. Great assignment.
"Well, that hurt," Dally muttered to himself, and absently rubbed his chest.
He stood up, his hand brushing the wet grass. With a groan, Dally checked his clothes, expecting to find them wet, and to curse his location to Kingdom Come. But his pants were dry. Clean. Worn and comfortable, but almost new. His shirt, at second feel, had no bloody, bullet-shaped holes in it.
Dally followed the fresh green field, not sweating form the sun overhead. He stepped on some flowers, maybe dandelions, carelessly, but they sprung right back p when he moved his heavy boot off them. The path—or what passed as a path, since the grass parted before the blonde—seemed endless, a sea of grass leading him off into the horizon.
Dally snorted at his thoughts, disgusted and embarrassed at how poetic they sounded. Not that there was anyone around to know about them. Not even a bird. Not even a bee.
Grunting in a sudden annoyance, Dally kicked the air, wishing that is was a rock, or, even better, a Soc. It did nothing to alleviate the feeling, nothing to stop the rage that threatened to spill over him. Dally let a scream out onto the sky, gaining satisfaction as everything seemed to still.
"Did that help?" a sudden voice asked, and Dally whirled around with a cry.
"Johnny!" he ran to the boy and embraced him tightly, before giving him a light slap on the side of the head, not enough to hurt, but enough to show his feelings. "You idiot!"
"What was that for?" Johnny asked, his dark eyes wide in confusion.
"That was for dying," Dally replied thickly. "You promised you wouldn't."
"What was it that you did, then?" Johnny demanded, thumping the slightly older boy's chest with a fist. "A walk in the park when you just happened to commit suicide?"
"They killed me, Johnnycake," Dally reminded him.
Johnny raised an eyebrow and snorted. "Technically."
"There's no 'technically' about it," Dally argued. "I ran, they shot me."
"Fine," Dally shrugged. "We'll get back to it."
"Can we get back to it?" Dally wondered, quickly looking around then the turning back to Johnny.
"Of course," Johnny replied. "We can do anything now."
"'Anything'?" Dally echoed, and his eyes shone.
Johnny nodded encouragingly.
That Dally would be so thrilled at the promise of complete freedom, to one who knew him as intimately as Johnny did, was not much of a surprise. The tough, devil-may-care hoodlum, for all his independent anti-societal actions, could not remember the last time he had not been weighed down by something, whether it was his father's ragged belt or the threat of long-term prison.
"Are we all alone here?" Dally asked as the grass ruffled from an invisible wind.
"There was a butterfly," Johnny answered, "Earlier. It was colorful."
"A colorful butterfly?" Despite his sarcastic tone, Dally sneaked a glance to search for it.
"Aw, come off it, Dal," Johnny started following Dally along the field. "You'd think you'd never seen a butterfly before."
Dally had the decency to look sheepish as he said, "Not in a while."
"It'll come back," Johnny encouraged, then remembered. "You ever seen a sunset before?"
"'A sunset'?" Dally repeated, his nose wrinkling. "Not in a while."
"I wrote you a letter, did you know that?" Johnny said. "Told Pony to show it to you."
"Guess I'm not going to get to see one now," Dally pointed out, almost disappointed, gesturing to the seemingly eternal day, dismissing the accusatory glance Johnny sent him at ignoring his question.
"Did you forget already?" Johnny questioned incredulously, not saying anything about Dally not answering his previous inquiry. "Anything is possible here."
Dally nodded.
Neither noticed that their soft footsteps, quiet on the grass, has started shuffling as the ground beneath them turned to sand.
"Look!" Johnny stopped and pointed ahead, starting Dally, who had gotten used to the monotony of their walking.
Nevertheless, Dally did so. His blue yes settled and softened a she looked out onto the water. Over the clear shimmer of the small waves, beyond the foam that gathered on the shore striped of yellow mixed with patches of orange. On the sky itself, the round sun, getting larger as it swam towards the horizon line, cast light on the whisps of clouds near it, turning them pink against the steadily darkening heavens. It took less than a few minutes, once it had touched the round, for the ball of light to completely dissolve, sliver by sliver, and even less for the darkness to settle above the land.
"Where to now?" Dally wondered, wishing he at least ha a cigarette to light up the way.
"Home," Johnny stated, as if it was the obvious answer to a useless question, and Dally shuddered to think of him all alone here, before he had come.
"Hey, Johnny?" Dally voiced his thoughts. "You said we could have anything, right?"
"Yeah," Johnny confirmed.
"I had smokes in my pocket," Dally told him. "When I came here."
"And?"
"They're gone, now," Dally said matter-of-factly.
"Maybe this place thinks they're bad for you," Johnny offered.
"Ridiculous," Dally muttered to himself, already missing them, as they walked through the door of whatever was designated to be their home. "No one ever died smoking."
