Chapter Fourteen: Reflection

Notes: This chapter is dedicated to digitaldawn! Thanks for the review! Glad you like the story. & now for some Q&As

x fever x- I'm a dorkette too! I've never been able to play tennis, but I'm no good at sports anyway. I'm glad you like the story that much. I know, everyone calls me kid "I'm 3 months younger than you!"

Aubrey's POV

I woke up with an excruciating rush. When I opened my eyes I thought I was still asleep, and having a nightmare. Heck, I hoped I was still asleep and having a nightmare because this was terrible. If I was seeing correctly then the whole place was on fire. The church didn't seem quite as angelic as the builders had meant it to be; to me it looked like the pits of hell. Left and right pieces of the roof were falling, and fire was growing nearer. Then I realized with a sickening jolt to my stomach that I was on fire, my hand was in flames. I couldn't scream, my throat had closed up. I began to beat my hand onto the floor, frantically trying to search for a way out, I noticed vaguely that the children were in the corner, frozen as much as I was but then as if on cue they all began to scream, wailing. We needed help and nobody was coming. A beam fell from the ceiling and onto my burning hand, I felt and heard the bone in my wrist crack and I finally regained my voice and I screamed. Then it was if total calmness and peace came over me and my suffering was nothing anymore, and I drifted off into sleep only to be awakened again not too much later as someone broke through the window. Johnny was running into the room, he didn't see me, but he began to get children out by breaking a window, Ponyboy was there too.

"Where is she Pony? Oh god, I hope she got out," Johnny was saying, who is she? I wondered. Then I realized it was me. I tried to scream, but somehow I was too calm to do so. Just as they were about to throw the last child out of the window I managed a strangled scream. They both turned around and stared wildly into the smoke and flames.

"AUBREY?" Ponyboy yelled.

"Get out, I'll get her" Johnny told him reassuringly as he rushed towards me, I felt his arms wrap around me and he picked me up, we were almost to the window when I saw the beam falling as if in slow motion and before I could even give it a second thought it had knocked Johnny and I onto the floor. Johnny screamed in agony as I was too shocked once again to move. Someone was reaching in through the window, and grabbing me roughly by Two-Bit's jacket, and dragging me out. I felt the glass scraping against me and all of a sudden I was landing on the ground. It was Dallas, and he didn't even take a second to make sure I was OK before heading in to get Johnny.

I woke up in an unfamiliar place, I was on some sort of slab, it wasn't comfortable and I was moving. I managed to turn my neck, but it hurt badly. I was certainly moving, I was on a table of some sort. Oh god, then it hit me, I was in a hospital. I wanted to cry, scream, do something but I couldn't, I was still completely numb in feelings. My body was screaming with pain though. Then I saw him, Ponyboy was sitting in a seat, where we were rolled by. He was smoking a cigarette and he was so dirty he was almost unrecognizable. "Pony?" I asked weakly, my throat croaking, he looked up at me. "He didn't deserve it, Tom didn't deserve to die," I said, finishing my sentence just as I was rolled through a set of double doors. I think I saw a smile on Ponyboy's face, and I heard Dallas's voice behind me saying "If you ever pull a stunt like that again I'll kill you!" to Pony. I smiled a little myself, although I didn't think anything was funny.

Dallas's POV

Her voice was soft comng through the crack in the door. Doctors sat around me, poking at my arm constantly. I knew I was burnt, but they were making it worse. When they finally left I let my concentration go to Aubrey. I could hear her from where I was sitting, or I could hear her if I pressed my ear against the door, and I was willing to do that if I had to. I had asked the nurses and apparently Aubbs had managed to convince them to let her stay in the room with Johnny. Her hand was terrible, I thought she was probably going to lose it, but her wrist was broken and they'd wrapped up her hand and said it would be fine with time and treatment. Also as far as I could tell Johnny was not talking back to her, I wasn't surprised he was too weak, but she was sure talking to him. She didn't stop for hours, she was like a dam that had just burst.

"How can you love someone and not like them Johnny? Don't you have to like them even just a little bit?" she pondered. Who was she talking about? Two-Bit? No...her next sentence answered my question. "And he isn't even good looking! What is it about Dallas Winston that I find so irresistible?" she asked, more to herself than to Johnny. My stomach felt like it turned a back flip.

Maybe I loved Aubrey, hell, I know I loved her but she could never see it, I couldn't ever let anyone, see it much less her. I had to be smart enough to not get hurt, I had to be tough enough to not love anyone, especially a girl. A girl could ruin a reputation. It was alright to trust and love her in New York City, I was a kid then, but now I'd grown up and I needed to stop depending on anyone. I could take care of myself but all I could think of was that girl and everything we'd been through. The picture that stuck in my mind though was like a still frame, and it hurt my chest whenever I thought about it. I kept seeing her crying, when was it that it happened? I couldn't remember, all I remembered was that I'd made her cry and it was a terrible feeling. A worse feeling though was when she told me she loved me, and I knew I couldn't love her back.

I tried to get my mind off of her, but if I stopped thinking about her I was thinking about everything that had happened that day. Johnny was going to turn himself in and say that he'd killed Bob and Tom both, but we'd gotten back to the church and it had been engulfed in flames. I figured it'd be an easy way to get rid of all of the temptations of Aubrey if she died, and who gave a damn about some kids?

All of a sudden I was brought out of my thoughts, Aubrey had stopped talking and she was crying gently, all I wanted to do was wrap my arms around her and tell her how everything was going to be OK, of course it would just make her angry, she hated it when someone told her that. I mentally kicked myself. All of this thinking about her though had been mostly to get my mind off of what was happening to Johnny. Was Johnny going to die? I couldn't let myself think about it, it was too painful. Losing Johnny would be the worst thing that could possibly happen to me, I felt like Johnny was the innocence of the whole gang. He represented to me everything that I'd lost after all of the time spent in prison, all of the roughing it in New York. In New York Aubrey had been my source of innocence. Maybe that's why I loved her? But she'd lost every shred of it by now, that girl wasn't innocent anymore, and I can't say I didn't blame myself for most of that.