Notes: Originally part of a class assignment, rather depressing with love/angst and all that. Like, hate, it's your time to review :)
Disclaimer: Belongs to S.E. Hinton. All praise her.
Dally ran from the hospital, pushing past people blindly. White uniforms, white walls, white clean smell, unearthly, too clean, too pristine to be a place of death, nothing but white fake lies. He drew his lips back viciously in an animal snarl, unaware of the fury on his face. He didn't care. Anger filled the coldness inside him with a rage like fire, burning him to pieces. It hurt, but he'd rather have it hurt than feel the nothing that came with Johnny's death-
No. Johnny could not die, not after all this, not after all the work Dally had done, not after he had saved the kids from the police, not after he had jumped into the building just in time to watch the burning beam fall across Johnny's back. He felt his eyes prickling and shut them tightly. He was Dallas Winston, the hoodlum, the gang member, cared about no one, cool, tough, impenetrable. He would not cry, he could not cry, because Dallas Winston didn't cry. So why were the tears still there?
He blinked them away and it was only then that he looked around and realized that people were staring at him with expressions of shock, horror, and pity on their faces. Good, he didn't care if they were shocked or horrified, but he didn't want their pity. He didn't care what they thought at all. These people didn't matter, no one mattered but Johnny. It wasn't right. These people were still alive, still breathing, and Johnny should be dead. It should be these people dying, not Johnny, not Johnny Cade…
He shook his head, white-blonde hair falling into it, and only then did he realize his face was still contorted in an expression of anger, his teeth drawn back, jaw clenched, eyes screwed up against the whiteness, the white clean death of this hospital, this death-house. Slowly, he forced himself to smooth it out, relaxing his muscles and unclenching his jaw, forcing his face into the cool indifference that had been his shield for so many years. He looked around the room once more and this time it was pity, pity mixed with fear as he glared at the people, feeling his eyes prickle again. No. He'd be damned if they'd pity him, pity from people who were nothing, nothing next to Johnny.
Turning, he pushed past the people, pushing out the front doors to his car, illegally parked right outside the emergency room door. His face was pale, white as death, and his bright blue eyes didn't see anything, blazing with cold, an inner inferno of ice inside him. He didn't care. He wanted the fury, welcomed it, fed it, embraced it, anything at all to give him something besides the cold dark numbness in his soul, anything to keep him from slipping down into the abyss within himself. He was crazy and he knew it and he didn't care.
He moved towards the car, his eyes focusing on it at last, but stopped, eyes blazing, fists clenched and shaking uncontrollably. Damn her, he thought and meant it, his eyes burning crazily in the sunset's light. Cherry stood in front of the car, her face white from fear under her red hair, green eyes fully of pity and something else worse than pity he couldn't, wouldn't understand. They faced each other, an arm's reach away, and the silence ticked on.
Cherry stared at him, fear in her eyes but never once wavering, immobile as he. She could take his cockiness, and would have welcomed it. She could deal with that; that meant that he was okay, that he was himself, that nothing in the world mattered to him. She didn't know how to handle his heartbreak. He had been hurt, hurt beyond anything he had ever felt and she was totally lost. Dally was not like other people. She couldn't comfort Dally without hurting him, not without losing him…and she wanted him. Her words to Ponyboy came back and haunted her with their truth: "I could fall in love with Dallas Winston. I hope I never see him again, or I will."
And now she was only an arm's reach away. She could see every shadow on his face, and it haunted her. Her heart quivered and she wanted to cry for him because she knew he wouldn't cry.
His eyes were cold, indifferent to her. "Move," he said, and his voice was low, hoarse, intense, full of carefully but precariously controlled anger, hate, rage, pain, and grief. She wavered, hesitating, but he said it again: "Move!" and the control wavered. Cherry sidestepped and he grabbed the door handle, wrenching it open with enough force to tear it off the car, throwing himself inside. She grabbed the door before he could shut it, her right hand gripping it so hard the knuckles were white.
"He's dead," she said quietly.
Dally clenched his teeth. Why did she have to interfere? She was a Soc and he was a greaser-more than a greaser, he was a hood and proud of it. He knew that he could slam the door and break her fingers, and his hand gripped the door with frightening intensity that equaled her own.
"No," he said and his voice was the same; so full of emotion that it was merely bland. "Johnny can't die."
Her eyes flickered with pity and his eyes grew colder, more challenging, more dangerous, smoldering with blue fury. He opened his mouth quickly to defend himself from the onslaught of pity he expected and loathed. "I don't want pity, don't give me that crap. Johnny's not dead. I saved him, didn't I? I ran into that burning church to save him and his stupid heroic little butt. Stupid little kid always played the hero. He couldn't leave well enough alone." There was a lump in his throat and he couldn't talk around it, but he couldn't stop talking. He swallowed hard but the lump refused to move; still he could not stop the words tumbling from his mouth.
"Such a stupid kid. He should have listened to me-ten of those kids weren't worth what he was worth." Anger rose and he let it-it helped him to pull himself out, away from the spiraling darkness inside him. "He got what he deserved," he said angrily. "Stupid dumb kid! He couldn't stand by and save his own skin, he had to be heroic! Well he paid for it!" His voice was rising as he talked and somehow that seemed strange, but he couldn't bring himself to care. Cherry's hand gripped the door tightly, her face ashen.
Dally's hand shook. "I should have been there. All I wanted was to get back at the Socs for what they did to him, for doing this to him. I should've been there. I was so selfish; all I wanted was revenge. He was nothing like me and he adored me, stupid little kid. I should have done something, anything. He shouldn't have looked up to me. He wanted to be like me and I was too weak to tell him that he should have looked up to Ponyboy, or Darry, or anybody but me."
Cherry touched his hand on the car door with her left hand, covering it quietly, feeling it tighten under her fingers, and she tried to give some comfort through her touch. "It wasn't your fault," she said quietly but intensely. "Don't blame yourself."
Dally gave a hollow laugh. "I was the one who caused all of it, I saved him after he killed that Soc, I sent him to Windrixville, I gave him the money and the stupid gun." His voice was strangely high-pitched, and he marveled at that, like he was an outsider watching someone else talk. His voice cracked. "He got what he deserved."
They were still, and Dally stared at the steering wheel, his eyes prickling as he tried to control himself. Damn it, he couldn't cry in front of her, he couldn't break down now, he had to be cold, indifferent, the apathetic nonchalant hood who didn't give a hoot about anybody but himself. You can't trust anyone but yourself, a small voice in his mind whispered, nagging. This only proves it. You let yourself care about him and look at what you got. You deserved it for letting yourself care.
Cherry's hand tightened on his and she let go with her other hand, starting to come around the car door. "Dally-" but he wouldn't do this, couldn't do this, he didn't want her pity or her love. Love? A dim corner of his mind asked and he laughed at it. He pushed her out of the way roughly, watching as she fell the concrete. She wouldn't die, and in some small way that made him glad. He could have loved her, if he had known what love was.
He slammed the door and drove away, his foot pressing the pedal to the floor and tears blurring his vision. All he wanted was to die.
And Dallas Winston always got what he wanted.