warning: please read at your own discretion.

welcome! thanks to PandaGirl2019 for the kind words - always love seeing your name in the reviews!

this part ended up just being a lot of snippets from Soda.

~endless

medicine fog

I try not to think about it.

It wasn't the first time. It won't be the last.

That should scare me. It should knock some sense into me. I shouldn't be trying to die; to rip out any sort of life support I have running through my body. I shouldn't be staring out the window, angry that I can't jump.

But it only invites me further.

Between the nightmares, I dream of them.

Johnny. Dallas. Momma. Dad.

In a way, I always wanted the first person I looked at in the afterlife to be Dallas Winston. The first attempt, I nearly fall to my knees when his ragged brown eyes stare back at mine through a light as warm as the sun. Though he's older than me by a year, I'll be damned if that kid doesn't look the exact same as we'd known him - leather jacket, scuffed jeans and shoes, wisps of dark hair curling at the back of his head. No longer with the gunshot wound that took him from the world, from us.

"Dal."

My brother by choice smiles at me. "Been a while."

"I'm sorry we couldn't -"

"You don't have to apologize." His brown eyes turn steely in the light. The leather jacket is worn and tired, about as much as I feel under his stare. "Always knew I'd go first."

My heart screams, but I feel myself smiling.

Johnny's there on the second attempt, and again, the kid doesn't age. The same scars mark his body, the same brown eyes that are too kind for the world that he was born into. If I breathe deep, I swear he smells of Windrixville.

I remember finding him in the grass after he'd been attacked by Socs. The way his body practically disintegrated in my hands. The way his eyes met mine, and I didn't know it then, but the same wheels turned inside of his head. The wheels of I'd rather die than be here right now.

"Johnnycake." His nickname is smoke against my lips.

He doesn't say a word for a long time. Then, his voice travels softly along the patches of grass we stand on:

"Tell Ponyboy to read Gone with the Wind again."

The image of those damn puppy dog eyes bring tears to my own.

When my father stands before me on the third attempt, I swear I'm looking at my older brother. But Darry has never looked at me the way my father always has - even in death.

The words are hollow, resting in a void, but they need to be said: "I miss you, Dad."

He only tips his cowboy hat in my direction.

I find my mother after this most recent attempt. The fifth, if we're counting.

There's a sad glaze in her dark brown eyes. I reach for her, and her hands are warm in mine, but I'm able to see my palms where her skin should be.

We don't say anything. I know she's disappointed; I know she's mad. My mother is the only person in the world that can see right through me. The only person who can stop my nightmares, stop my racing thoughts, and I've never needed her more than I do right now.

I'm in the operating room having a lung hauled out of my body. I stand before all of them, like a trial by jury.

"You can't be here." Dally's voice is foreign, loose, but tough.

"It ain't your time." Johnny sighs in relief.

"You have a life to live."

This conversation is familiar. I stare at my mother, at my father, at my brother's best friends. I feel my heart breaking, my lungs exhaling, but no air falls from my mouth. The tightness in my chest may be from the surgery, or the fact that I have to leave them again. And again. And again.

I'm tired. My body grows heavy, my eyes falling closed as my mother's arms wrap around my waist in a hug that I wish could stop my breathing.

The darkness is comforting. Warm. Alive.

My body ignites with dread when I open my eyes.