I don't own The Outsiders. Obviously. Also, this is what I like to call experimentational. So don't try to hunt down my family or anything.

Dallas Winston, on the brink of his fifteenth birthday, had been on his own since he was twelve years of age. Not entirely alone, but alone enough so that he knew he had no one else to rely on but himself. There really was no one else to trust, and it was every man for himself. Yeah, it was real stupid, trusting anyone who wasn't you. Twelve years was a young age to come to such a grim and miserable revelation, but that was when he'd had to face facts. Come to the truth about life, make it by himself. That was when his mother, of her own accord, had dropped dead. No explanation was ever given, no one said anything. She wasn't the best mom; she slept around a bit and was hardly ever there, but a mother is a mother, and she had a roof over her head that Dallas was sort of welcome to stay under whenever he liked.

She didn't care. Dallas knew she didn't care. Dallas knew that everyone else knew she didn't care. But why should that have bothered him? Was there any sense in caring about anything or anybody but yourself? Still, when your mom drops dead for no reason, you ain't gonna bounce back straight away. Not even Dallas Winston was that untouchable. Well, not before that anyway. As far as Dally was concerned, that was when his father had laid down and died along with her too. Dally hated him, more than anything - and that was certainly saying something. He'd just . . . It was like he had died or something. Except that when you're dead, you stop caring about yourself along with everyone else. And he damn sure still cared about himself. It was just everything else really.

So Dallas had took off. To New York, to be more specific. Not like he'd been specific enough to tell anybody or anything. It might not have been the most ideal lifestyle, living on the rough side of New York, but Dallas was well suited for it. He liked the idea of the organization of all the gangs and the rumbles. It was strange, but he admired the method to the madness, the chaos. Rumbles and gang fights - they were the biggest adrenaline rush he could ask for. They were good for blowing off steam, and the food in the reformatory had never been exactly gourmet food, but it always kept him alive. And when he wasn't in the reformatory – well, he would occasionally find himself wishing he was.

The thing was, you had to watch your back no matter who you were or where you were. Really, Dallas had come to realize that when push came to shove, you took care of yourself and no one else, and the closest thing Dallas had to call a friend, he only kept around because it was convenient for the both of them. And watching your back, that isn't a habit you get out of all too easy.

Dallas had never thought he would leave New York. He couldn't really picture it very well - being away from the action, the city air. Sure, it was a risk around every corner, but being away from it - well, that was like having to do without your right hand. It didn't make much sense. Why would anyone choose to live without their right hand? Shit happened, but that just wasn't a choice.

One thing Dally never did was hold grudges, if he could help it. If he wanted revenge, he'd get it, no problem. He'd jumped people he'd smoked with, played with, owed money to and people who owed him money - the last being the most frequent. That same person he was jumping one week could be assisting him the week after.

The strange thing about the "every man for himself" rule - well, it was damn complicated. When you were in a gang, you had to take care of them too - but you came first. You always came first. No matter what. No matter how close friends you were with anyone. You had to be a closer friend to yourself.

It was cold - real bitter cold, especially for October, and there were eight of them crowded around. Nothing anyone could do would have done any good, he was done for. Dally watched, almost transfixed. There was blood everywhere, seeping through his shirt and bleeding into his leather jacket. Vaguely, Dally wondered what it would be like to die in the freezing cold. Surely, you'd be freezing, but all that warm blood oozing out of you until you were almost completely coveted by this thick blanket of dark red blood . . . It would make you wonder.

His name was Donnie. He was sixteen years old. He had a girlfriend and they were crazy for each other. He always talked about how he was gonna marry her; there wasn't any one else in his life he wanted - if he couldn't marry her, he wouldn't be marrying anyone. Well now, he wouldn't be marrying anyone anyway. His older brother, Nick, who was twenty, was kneeling over him, holding his white hand in both of his. He was near tears - and this was one tough guy. No one was that heartless. But he didn't care how bad it looked right now - he wasn't interested in being tough or looking tough. He was only interested in his kid brother and the life slowly ebbing out of him. That was when you really proved whether or not you were a man - when you put the things that were most important first, no matter if they made you bawl your eyes out. And any second now, he was about to start.

There were two hands on Nick's shoulder, both gruffly uncomfortable, their owners' voices trying to calm him down and get him to his feet, while still keeping cool. They were shaking him a little. The eight - nine if you included Donnie - were all white-faced and silent. The gasps, the laboured, desperate attempts to intake air were excruciating to hear. No matter how many times you see it, it takes a while before it doesn't bother you. For a while, it chills you to the bones. It was still chilling Dally to the bones, but two of the guys - they'd given up on that a long time ago.

There were murmurs, people were swearing under their breath and cussing out whoever had that heater. That could have been anyone of them, they all knew that.

And then he died. Just like that. And there was no big display of light or spectacle. If they hadn't been paying such close attention, they mightn't have even noticed that he wasn't breathing anymore. They scarpered.

XXX

"One of us is gonna have to take him out eventually."

Dallas was busy toasting the corner of one of the cards - an ace of spades - with the end of cigarette, he wasn't paying much attention. He could feel pairs of eyes glancing over at him from where they were huddled in the corner. He pretended not to notice. He was still debating whether or not this was his war. Was it his problem? Sure the guy had been his friend, but someone got knifed or shot around here every once in a while. Why were they looking at him like that? Did he owe them money or something?

"Why?" Dallas called over to them, making sure his impression was as uninterested as he could manage. They blinked at the hardly fifteen year old kid asking the question.

"'Cause he won't pay up." One of the littler ones, about a year older than Dallas, spoke gruffly and downed his drink, his expression bitter.

"Oh." Dallas considered this for a minute. "I thought it might have something to do with Donnie."

They all glared at him for a minute. "Of course it does, Winston. That bum think he can scare us out of our money." Dallas didn't say anything, but he could smell a rat. Something just didn't add up. For Christ's sakes, killing a sixteen year old kid to get out of forking out a couple o' bucks that don't even belong to you? Even he wouldn't go that far.

"How much does he owe us, exactly?" Dally said quietly, circling the end of his cigarette around the rim of the ash tray. He could feel the unsettlement at the question.

"Jesus, kid, does it matter?" Mike, seventeen. Only one eye. One of his closest friends.

"Well maybe it does," Dally shot back, flicking his ashes a little too forcefully in Mike's eye and empty socket. Mike blinked his one eye. Dally watched the one eye spin around, a little bloodshot from the hot ashes. It was gross. It spun and twirled before it focused on Dally. He'd never asked, now that he thought about it, how that had happened to Mike. He would've asked him there and then, but it really didn't seem the right time or the right place. There comes a time when it becomes too awkward - since if he asked now, he'd know that Dally had been thinking it all along. This best friend of his . . . They weren't that close at all. Did they even know each other at all?

They glanced uneasily at each other, maybe debating inside their heads whether or not they could trust him or not. Hell, Dally could understand why they could think a little fourteen year old kid could be a liability, he supposed. Only he wasn't a kid, no matter what age he was. He hadn't been a kid since he was twelve years old, and they pulled him out of that godforsaken school to tell him his ma had collapsed in the supermarket, and that there was nothing anybody could do. Bullshit. There was always something someone somewhere could do.

Not that they knew any of this anyway. It was his missing eye, so to speak.

"Enough," they told him roughly, in a tone that warned him to say no more on the subject. He didn't. He only sat back on the back two legs of his chair and put his cigarette slowly to his lips and took a long drag, looking thoroughly unimpressed.

"You just wait," Mike told him. "He'll get somethin' that matter to you, and you ain't gonna think it's a joke."

"I ain't never said it was a joke," Dallas pointed out calmly, resisting a smirk. He thought he was hot-headed. He was practically Gandhi compared to these guys. "But," he went on, slamming the chair forward onto all fours. "You," he said while he pointed at one of the guys, "have a kid on the way. You," he pointed again, "your ma's sick. You," he pointed at Mike. "Are seventeen years old. It ain't worth it."

"What about you, Winston?" Carl was nineteen. He was smart and quick-witted, and by the way he was smirking, Dally knew that Carl had him out-witted. "What have you got to lose?"

XXX

It was scary, really. The way something's affected you. And the way some things didn't bother you in the slightest. Mere hours ago, Mike had come back from a fight looking as if someone had tried to finish the job and poke the other eye out. Nobody - bar Dally - had spared him a second glance, except to ask him how much worse the other guy was. Usually around here, the job did get finished.

But what Carl said the other night . . . It was really eating away at him. What did he have to lose? And more importantly, who had him to lose him? Who actually did care when he ended up in jail or worse. He was tied down in absolutely no way. And this freedom - it wouldn't bother the other guys in the slightest. In fact, he would have bet that they would have been glad to be shot of it. Of burdens. So why in the name of all that was holy did he have to be the soft one? It was plain embarrassing.

He couldn't be the soft one anymore. He couldn't risk it. Or he'd never survive.

Now he got it. Now he understood what Donnie had been up to. He didn't want to be the soft one neither. And now that he considered it, Donnie had really been the soft one. The one that they all protected. Dally never really gave him that much thought - he was scrawny and quiet and didn't really have the common sense of a five year old, but he'd been the soft one. He was harmless. And he'd hated it. No wonder he'd gotten caught up in whatever it was that he'd gotten caught up in. Come to think about it, Donnie probably didn't know himself what he'd been getting himself into. There was nothing like proving you weren't the soft one like plunging blindly into something you knew nothing about and had nothing to do with.

Dally knew it was stupid beyond belief to go walking out on the dark streets at the hour that he was out walking at, especially since he didn't even have a sense of direction. To be honest, he had no idea where he was going. It was a waste of time really, to walk around so aimlessly, but he had a lot on his mind.

He was thinking about Mike. He'd been out walking with a friend of his and both their girls and just like that, they were jumped. When Dallas had been asking Mike about what had happened, Mike didn't mention where the other guy was at now. And Dally - was - furious. No one went near Mike. No one was supposed to go near anyone in his gang, especially not Mike.

Everyone was angry though. Some of them thought that this meant war. Dally - Dally didn't see the point in revenge as much as the rest of the world did. Apart from the fact that it was fun, and it provided an enormous sense of smug satisfaction - it wasn't worth it. And it damn sure wasn't worth it if you got caught.

"Winston!" Dally whipped around, his shoulders hunched and his body tensed. Why was he staring at the ground? Stupid, don't stare at the fucking ground, how was that going to help? And that could have been anyone walking in this direction. Raising his eyes, his body relaxed and he let out an exasperated groan.

"What do you want?"

Terry reminded Dallas of a tiger. He had razor sharp and pointy teeth, fit in with a grin like a ravid tiger thirsting over blood. His eyes seemed to be just as ravenous; they'd scope you over so much that you'd think he was about to pounce. It was his eyes alone that made him seem damn dangerous.

"It's your money too, you know, Dal," Terry fell into step beside him. "Where ya headed?" he added quickly, gazing down the dimly lit street that Dallas had been moseying down.

"Nowhere," Dally snapped. "And whaddaya mean, it's my money?"

"It's all our money. And he ain't forking it over," Terry clarified. "Instead, he stabs us in the back. Literally." He laughed, manically. Dally rolled his eyes.

"I don't remember that."

"Of course you don't," Terry grinned. "You're a fuckin' kid, you just do what you're told."

"I ain't a kid." How many times did he have to repeat that? His fists clenched and he resisted the urge - like he had done before on many occasions - to punch Terry in the face. Hard. Repeatedly.

"Sure man, sure." Terry was laughing again, almost hysterically. Was he high or something? Dally whipped around so fast, and sunk a right hook into Terry's jaw so hard he stumbled back to the wall. But he was laughing. Even harder now. "Jeez, man, you wanna get yerself a heater. You ain't gonna do no damage without it."

"What do you want from me, man?" Dally spat. "I got somewhere to be."

"Sure ya do man," Terry snorted, getting to his feet and feeling around his jaw tenderly. "You got nowhere to be, and no one to be with." Dally didn't say anything. What could he say to the truth? Terry squared up to Dal so that he towered over Dallas by about half a head. "And someone's gonna get our money back." He poked Dallas square in the chest. "Or they go the same way as Donnie. Or worse."

"Yeah right, Terry," Dally spat back. "You're so full of shit. You know you can't do that to your own gang."

"You'd be surprised," Terry said coolly. "We're all kinda down on money." He grinned wickedly. "And you know, some of us have a kid on the way," he started smirking. "Or our ma's sick," his smirk grew. "Or some of us are only seventeen. So we need our money."

Dally shrunk away a little. "It's not my problem."

Terry sighed. "Look, Dal." He seemed to grow tired all of a sudden, and he looked at Dallas straight in the eye. "It needs to be done. And we can't afford to do it, 'cause we can't end up in the slammer. We actually have people we need to be here for. So why don't I make it your problem?" he growled at Dally.

"How much'll I get?" Dally knew how to bargain, and accepting that maybe he would do it after all, he was gonna get something out of it.

Terry surveyed him for a moment, and then pulled a sharp-teethed grin. "You're my kinda guy, Winston. You ain't a fool . . . Fifty." He shrugged his shoulders.

Dally agreed, and out of his back pocket Terry brandished a slick, small heater. "Consider it an early birthday present."

Dallas grinned and took it, feeling the weight of the power he held in his hands. "And besides," Terry went on. "Like I said, you ain't gonna do any damage without it."

"So you want it back?" Dally said sharply. Terry shrugged.

"Maybe," he muttered. "I'll see you later." Dally nodded, and watched Terry walk away, eyeing him carefully. This didn't mean they were friends or anything. Next week, they could be at each other's throats, and preparing to cut each other's throats too. He doubted it, but still.

XXX

This was boring, he thought. He didn't know this guy. And he wasn't going to do anything he might regret in front of people who did know him. That was beyond stupid. He'd been tailing him around for a good hour. And it was pissing him off. Why was he even here?

He answered himself anyway. Terry. Sure maybe he wouldn't admit it, but that didn't stop him being scared shitless of Terry. If you weren't stupid, you'd do what he said.

Dally didn't like where he was headed anyway. The church? Did people actually still go there? Jamming his hands into his pockets, he followed him, popping up his collar as he went. It was cold inside the church, and it was completely deserted except for this guy, making his way up the aisle in the centre of the pews. It seemed like every single candle in the joint was lit, and there was no one else to be found. What was he even doing here? This had nothing to do with him. He didn't even know what he was doing there.

Was he actually going to do this? This made less sense than all the rest of the shit he dealt with. But Terry was looming in the back of his mind. And the things that Terry had done. Maybe he was the reason Mike had only one eye. He had never thought about that like that. Now that the thought had crossed his mind, it seemed more than likely.

He moseyed up, shuffled to near where the guy was standing. Dallas didn't even know his name. He felt very out of place, standing beside this guy who seemed to belong in the church. Religious was he? Terry, he thought of. They'd asked Terry to scare him into this. He knew it. He just knew it.

"You uh - you here for confession?" Dallas attempted small talk, his hand closing around the handle of the gun in his pocket. Keep him talking.

The guy turned around. His hair was sandy blond and short. His eyes were flat grey, framed by long lashes. They stared back at Dallas deeply.

"Uh, no," he said, looking down at his shoes. "I'm just her to - uh, pray for my ma. She's in the hospital."

Shit.

"That's nice," Dally remarked - stupid.

"Not really." The guy managed a weak smile. He couldn't have been more than nineteen. "What about you?"

"Hmm?" Confession. "Oh. Oh yeah I am. Big time."

"Whatcha do?" He looked like he regretted it the moment he said it.

"I - uh, I killed someone." Dallas nodded.

"Who?" The guy eyed Dally up and down, looking as if he regretted saying that even more. He was already slowly moseying away, towards a door that Dally presumed led to a cry chapel or something. A confession box or something else.

"Well," Dally said slowly. Cocked. Loaded. He was at the wooden door. "You."

Just like that. He had just opened the door. And he would never take another step. The power of the bullets made his body convulsed and he fell to his knees. "The little boy . . ." he murmured. That's when Dally saw past him. To where a little boy was kneeling, not more than five years old, with a card in his hand. His hands were joined. His eyes were raised to the picture of God.
His head was bloody. There was a bullet right through his brain. His bullet. How? How could he have missed? Did his body move that much?

His vision blurred, his head hurt and he was blinded momentarily. He stumbled backwards. Your . . . fault. Did this really just happen? Did he really just do that?

He threw down the gun, but he didn't remember leaving the church, running out of there. He didn't remember how he got to Mike's Ma's house, where the guys would hang when they wanted a night in. He didn't remember anything. Except the one mental image of a kid keeled over on the ground. Dallas had ruined every chance he'd had in life. An innocent little child.

In his hand, he found a piece of paper that he'd taken from the kid's hand himself.

Telling lies
Being naughty
Not being nice to Ma

Jesus Christ. He'd gotten himself in deep this time.

"You can't stay."

"I know."

"You goin' back to Tulsa?"

A nod. A bitter swallow.

- That was it. All he remembered. Safe for one conversation, not even a full one. Just a little part.

"Hey Mike?"

"Yeah kid?" Staring at the floor, a firm hand on his shoulder, steadying him.

"What happened to you? With your eye?"

"Aww, kid, you don't need to know that."

"Terry?" He couldn't be more articulate than that.

"Yeah." One word. All he needed.

"Why?"

"Well . . . I was on the other side of the line than you are now, kid." That was all there was to it. Mike hadn't given in. He'd only lost an eye. Not like Dallas. He hadn't lost - whatever it was that Dallas had lost. Maybe Mike was better off.

Big hugs and thank yous to The Merrill Kid for beta-ing. Review please!