I thought I was ok when we got home. I thought Pony was ok too. I don't know why I didn't expect my brothers to be reliving everything just as much as I was. When we got back, Darry went straight to bed. I didn't blame him. I was planning on doing the exact same thing. What neither of us had planned on was being wakened from a sound sleep just a couple of hours later.

Pony was screaming bloody murder again, and I woke up in a cold sweat and grabbed him. He was shaking, and as I sat there with him practically huddled in my lap, trying to calm him down and taking some deep breaths myself, I heard Darry's pounding footsteps in the hallway. He appeared in the doorway, and we stared at each other over Pony's gasping form. Neither of us spoke, though, and Darry came in and sat on Pony's other side. By now, his shaking had started to calm down. I still had my arms around him, though, and Darry was rubbing his back. This was our routine when he'd first started having these nightmares, and we just slipped back into it as we waited for him to be ready to talk. It took less time this time, but he was in worse shape than I'd seen him in a while.

When he pulled back from us, I looked at his face and was surprised to see that his eyes were full of tears. By the end of the nightmares, he'd been pretty stoic, but this one had to have been pretty bad.

"What happened?" I asked gently. "Do you remember this time?"

To both of our surprise, he nodded. "Yeah. I do. We were … we were at Mom and Dad's funeral again. And the worst part was…" and here he sniffed and drew the back of his hand across his eyes as the tears started to flow for real. "Well, the worst part was that it was exactly the same as the real thing. And I knew that when I woke up, it wouldn't change. This wasn't a nightmare."

My throat had started to hurt when he'd started talking because it brought back everything I'd been trying to suppress all week. I couldn't look at him or Darry because I was starting to remember more than I wanted to.

And then I heard Darry whisper, "Pony, it's ok." He pulled him over, so he had his arm around him, and I heard him say, "We've all been thinking about them this week. Watching Steve go through this brings it all back. And being in that funeral home doesn't help either."

Pony sniffled. "Do you… do you remember when the wake started, and Johnny walked in and just started crying? That's the only time I remember him crying before he got jumped by the Soc's."

I let out a shaky breath. I didn't want to talk because I was afraid I would lose the little control I still had, but I couldn't stop myself from saying, "what I remember most is how upset Dally was. I never knew he cared about anyone until he stopped in front of mom's coffin. He was there a while, and I swear that when he got up, he was too choked up to talk." And here I choked on my own words and fell silent again.

None of us spoke for a few minutes. Then Pony said softly, "thanks, guys. I think I'm ready to go back to sleep."

Darry nodded, hugged Pony, tousled my hair, and went back to his room. I could hear his uneven breathing through the wall, though, and I wished he didn't feel like he had to be so strong for the two of us. But I knew he'd want to be alone, so I slid down again and threw an arm over Pony. He was shaking slightly, and I knew he was crying again, but I also knew he didn't want me to say anything, so I turned over and hid my face in my pillow to hide my own tears. I just hoped that the funeral would give us all a little bit of closure. This was the hardest it had been in a while.