This was a request from one of my favorite reviewer DreadfulStar! She likes death and destruction, so be mindful of upcoming tragedies. She guessed the plot correctly for "Aid to the Helpless." Remember, you don't have to actually guess some plot component for me to write a story for you! Just PM me! "Span of a Heartbeat" and "Somewhere only We Know" are both suggestions!

I don't own the Outsiders.

"I am as old as I have ever been." Johnny and I were sitting in the lot, legs crossed, cigarettes ablaze, and this mantrum kept running through my head.

Well, actually, only Johnny had a cigarette lit. Darry figured out a useful and annoying as hell parenting technique: using cigarettes as rewards.

I don't have any money, and Darry forbade the gang to give me cancer sticks anymore. So, whenever I do something wrong or I have a track meet coming up, or Darry just needs an outlet for his anger (it seems like that's happening alot lately) He'll put me on "Smokes probation."

So anyway, I was thinkin' about how two years ago, My parents died, then six months later, Johnny and I were almost killed by a Socs. We would both be dead now if Soda and Darry hadn't followed me after I ran out that night.

I was grateful for my life, and at the same time, a little resentful that my brothers didn't trust me. But more grateful.

But it really dawned on me that every second I was getting a little older, a little wiser, hopefully a little taller.

"Whatcha thinkin about Pony?" Johnny asked softly, flicking his ashes at a colony of ants that had made a home in the dried Tulsa grass.

"Cigarettes." I answered immediately. Johnny and I didn't really tell eachother everything anymore. When we did talk, it was about girls, booze, and drag races.

Afterall, I was sixteen and Johnny was eighteen. We needed to act our age. I wasn't really allowed to watch sunsets anymore, because the gang made fun of me too much.

Also, it's kinnda gay to tell a guy everything. People in Tulsa are really conscious about that sort of thing, and Soda and Steve were jumped a while back for always hangin' out together. Actually, a long while back, almost a year.

They don't hand out exclusively together anymore, and Steve doesn't really think of me as a tag-along kid anymore.

I guess this is just growing up, but I don't like it. I wish I was still fourteen, that Soda was still the person I loved most in the world, and that Two-Bit was still always jokin' around.

When Dally left us, everything changed. He sort of just left for New York with out any warning and only a note that literally said "I'm going to New York. See ya greasers, Dally." He left the note at Bucks, and it took us two weeks to find any evidence of it, because Buck couldn't read it, so figured it wasn't important. Dally isn't all that great of a speller.

On the plus side, I got my first book published. Well, sort of. I went under a pen name. Darry didn't want any press or anything, so we got the money from it, but no credit. I guess that's ok. Since we got the money, we are more middle class.

Actually, speakin of money, Steve is sort of a prodigy turns out. He's good at playing the stocks, which he found out when he somehow "accidently" won over a million dollars, then gambled it all away thinking that he could increase it. Greedy pig.

So, we're all pretty much just living the good life.

When Johnny and I arrived home from the lot, a rare scene met our eyes. The entire gang (save Dallas) was watching (and thoroughly making fun of) and old episode of little house on the prairie.

I think the gang has more fun watching bad movies than good ones sometimes. Johnny and I sat on the floor like we used to when we were little, and for a second I felt completely relaxed.

Then, quite suddenly, pain exploded throughout my body.

It felt as though I were a tube of toothpaste, being squeezed by an invisible hand so that all of the blood left my heart, leaving it dried and burning and went to my head, where it couldn't escape my thick skull, but I knew that at any second my head would explode and my heart would come out through my ears.

I think I screamed. I didn't feel the hands pinning me down, but I knew they were there because when it stopped, quite as suddenly as it started, Darry, Soda and Steve were pinning me down.

"Pony, What the hell happened?" Darry roared, but he didn't sound angry, more confused and scared. I didn't even know Darry could sound that way.

"I-I don't know." I stuttered. I didn't feel any pain now, save a beer bottle poking painfully into my back.

"Are you ok, man?" Soda asked. He had let go of me, and gestured for the others to do the same.

"I-uh-" I felt tears brim in my eyes. Don't cry, don't cry I repeated to myself. I think Steve saw the tears that threatened to spill, but he didn't laugh like he would have a few years ago.

I guess since I cry less often now, people think it's a bigger deal. "I-um-" I tried again.

"Were you in pain? Where did it hurt?"

"Yeah, no, it's fine. Um, I- goodnight." I sort of scurried out of the living room and collapsed on my bed.

I found myself asking the same question that Darry had. "What the hell just happened?" I said aloud to the darkness. It didn't answer.

There was a knock on my door, and Soda entered without waiting for an answer. "Just making sure you're ok. You want to go to bed early?" I saw a glimpse of my used-to-be compassionate brother.

"Yeah, I'm going to. Goodnight."

"Night."

Soda POV

I woke in the middle of the night with a jolt. Screaming was coming from Pony boy's room, a sound I hadn't heard since he was thirteen.

I don't think it was a nightmare this time though. He was writhing around on the bed in pain, whimpering and screaming, and clutching at his throat.

I suddenly felt the old paternal instinct that I had always displayed towards him when he was little. He had sort of decided after a fight that he was too old to need his older brother, and I tried to understand, as Darry and I had been through the same thing.

But it was so hard with Pony. I just wanted him to stay young forever, or at least act young forever. I wouldn't wish immortality on my worst enemy.

He had calmed down, and was just sort of whimpering now. I lay down next to him and lay my head on his chest, listening to the race of his frantic heart.

"I missed this." I thought, before I drifted off.