Love
By Lindsay
Dally didn't love anything. He didn't care for anything. He didn't believe in love, and feelings, and all that crap.
He believed in death, he believed in being tough and hard, and that way nothing could ever hurt you.
He had a sense of tightness in his body that he had had his whole life. It was almost as if he were tightening up every inch of himself so that nothing else could get in. The tightness impaired him, and it made it hard to breathe, hard to think, hard for his heart to beat.
But it protected him.
Dally didn't love Johnny. He thought the kid was okay, sure, but he didn't love him. Dally knew that loving something was stupid, because it would be taken from you sooner or later.
He couldn't understand what was happening to him.
It must have been Johnny. He must have done something funny, something magical. Dally wouldn't be surprised if he found out the boy was magical, that he could cast spells that would make people care about him.
It didn't matter though.
If there was one thing in his life that sure as hell wasn't going anywhere, it was Johnny. Sweet little innocent Johnny.
Dally had no attachments. Except for one. Johnny was the one thing that he cared about. Johnny was his one connection to feelings, his one connection to anything human.
Johnny was his life.
He was the one thing Dally loved.
He was what held him up, held him together.
He was what kept him going, kept his heart beating.
He was the one thing in Dally's life that wasn't rough. He was the light at the end of the dark alleyway that was filled with a life of pain.
Johnny was everything.
And then he died.
No, he didn't.
He couldn't die.
He couldn't leave Dally. He was the candle in Dally's darkness, and he went out, leaving him cold and alone.
He was the one thing Dally loved, the one thing that kept him going, the one string that connected him to life.
And as Dally ran down the dark streets, sirens blaring behind him in hot pursuit, he realized that with Johnny's death the string had been cut.
He stopped in the park, letting the blaring police sirens catch up to him, and raised his gun, pointing it at the blinding headlights.
It was unloaded, but thank god that didn't matter.
He heard the ear-splitting gunshot and felt the immense pain in his chest.
Dally let the gun fall from his hand. He fell slowly to the ground.
The tightening he had all over his body released. He could breath, he could think. He could feel his heart beat in a perfect, steady rhythm.
But only for one second.
And then it all stopped.