Chapter Text
Johnny isn’t entirely sure how he manages to carry Ponyboy all the way from the Cade house to Buck Merrill’s, but he manages it nonetheless. Pony doesn’t feel heavy in his arms– Johnny can’t feel much of anything, come to think of it. It’s like his mind and body are moving on auto-pilot, working with him in unison for the first time in his entire life. Maybe they both realize how screwed they are.
The numbness likely also explains why Johnny isn’t crying. He’d heard of guys in the army coming back shell-shocked, but he’d always thought you needed to witness something unimaginably awful for that to happen. Maybe he did. Or maybe he’s done something so terrible it can’t be felt. He doesn’t have time to worry about it now.
The red light in the window of Buck Merrill’s matches Johnny’s hands. It spills out from the glass and makes the grass below look bloody. Johnny hates that he knows what blood on the ground looks like now.
He knocks on the door clumsily, the task made difficult with Ponyboy still in his arms. There’s no telling whether it can be heard over the obnoxious Hank Williams song droning on inside.
It vaguely occurs to Johnny that he’s not allowed to be here. Mom and Dad had always forbidden any of them from going anywhere near Buck Merrill’s place, and Darry no doubt would have reinforced the rule if given the chance. Johnny figures it doesn’t matter anymore. He and Ponyboy will end up somewhere much worse if they stay outside a moment longer.
Johnny kicks the door a few times instead, hoping the louder sound will attract someone.
A figure appears at the door, and Johnny sends up a silent prayer of thanks when it’s Dallas Winston, not Buck Merrill, who greets them.
“Kid?” Dallas says gruffly when he registers who’s in front of him. Any remaining ounce of strength Johnny might have had left suddenly disappears without a trace. He’s terrified.
Words and tears come pouring out of him before he can register any of what he’s saying.
“Pony…he was….Johnathan– he was gonna – and…I- and I– there was a knife s-so I stabbed ‘im…”
“Woah, woah!” Dally yells, leading Johnny inside to his room and helping him lay Ponyboy down on the ratty couch. He begins fussing over the youngest boy frantically, checking over his body while Johnny stands there, chest heaving. “Where’d you stab him?”
“What?” Johnny asks dumbly. How could Dally possibly think Pony’s the one who’d been stabbed?
Oh. The blood.
“Johnny! Where is he hurt?” Dallas barks.
“He…he got h-hit in the head. W-with a bottle,” Johnny finally stammers. “J-Johnathan was g-gonna… he was gonna…”
He was gonna kill Ponyboy.
Why Johnny can’t say the words out loud, he doesn’t know. What if speaking them makes them true? What if Pony’s dead already? What if it’s all for nothing?
Dally looks at Pony, inspects his head wound, and turns back to Johnny slowly.
“Johnathan attacked Ponyboy. So you stabbed Johnathan,” Dally says, finally understanding. Johnny nods. “Is he…”
“Yeah,” Johnny confirms. “He’s dead.”
He hadn’t checked the body, but he knows. He saw the life drain out of his father’s eyes. And no one could lose that much blood and live.
“Darry know?” Dally grunts. Johnny shakes, wringing his hands together. The still-drying blood smears across his palms.
“No. He – he wasn’t there,” he explains. “Pony and I were at my – at Johnathan’s house. Darry…he lost custody of us. And Soda.”
“Holy shit,” Dally breathes out a swear as he sits back on his heels. Clearly this is the first he’s hearing of that particular development. “Alright. If he don’t know, we ain’t tellin’ him.”
He runs a tender hand over Pony’s hair, and Johnny pretends not to notice.
“Then what…what’ll we do?” he asks instead, gripping the bottom hem of his shirt. Every part of him is tense, and exhausted, and afraid. Johnny forces his mind to stay in the moment he’s living or he’ll slip back to the one where he had a knife in his hands and lunged forward with it –
“We gotta move. We gotta get out of town.” Dallas cards through his own hair next.
“You mean – leave Tulsa?” Tulsa is where Darry and Soda are. Where the dirt is still settling over their parents’ graves. How could they up and leave, just like that? Johnny can’t fathom it. Then again, he hadn’t fathomed being capable of doing what he’d done not even an hour ago, either.
“Got any better ideas?!” Dally shouts. Johnny takes an instinctive step back, and the older boy sighs. “Look. What you did is serious, Johnnycakes. You ain’t gonna just spend some time in county lockup. I’m not sayin’ the bastard didn’t have it coming, but you and Ponyboy could get the electric chair for murder.”
Murder.
(No, don’t think about it, don’t think about it, don’t.)
“But Ponyboy didn’t do nothin’!” Johnny protests. The kid on the couch still doesn’t stir.
“You think the cops are gonna care about who did what or why?” Dallas retorts angrily. Johnny backs up against the wall, his shaking returned tenfold. “They’re gonna see a reason to get two greaser kids off the streets and take it. Don’t think they won’t. But they can’t do that if you ain’t here.”
Johnny swallows; Dally’s words make sense. Staying in Tulsa is a death sentence. Maybe it’s one he deserves, but Pony sure as hell doesn’t.
“So…so where do we go?” He hates the way his voice stumbles. But fear is the one talking now.
“Texas.” Dallas says definitively after a moment; there’s no room for argument even if Johnny wanted to. Not like he’s got the nerve or the brains to say anything against whatever Dally would decide.
Dally looks at him for confirmation, and Johnny nods his consent. “Okay.”
What else is there to say? What else is there to do?
They’re throwing some of Dallas’s clothes into a bag for them all to change into later when the youngest boy lets out a groan from where he lies on the couch. Johnny’s at his side in an instant.
“Hey, Pone,” he murmurs, grabbing his brother’s hand and holding tight. “How’re ya feelin’?”
“Head ‘urts,” Pony whimpers in return. He squints even against the low light of Dally’s room.
“Makes sense,” Johnny chuckles dryly. “You got hit with a bottle.”
Ponyboy blinks slowly. “I did?”
“Yeah.” Glory, just how bad is Pony hurt? “Don’tchu remember?”
“No…” Ponyboy tries to sit up, and Johnny gently pushes him back against the couch cushions.
“Hey hey hey, don’t move. Alright? Just stay put for a second,” he instructs. Thankfully, Pony only nods in reply, draping a hand across his eyes as he winces.
Johnny crosses the room back to Dally, who glances at Ponyboy with his brows furrowed in concern. “How is he?”
“He don’t remember gettin’ hit,” Johnny reports. Dallas swears under his breath.
“That bastard…” he grumbles. “Well, we gotta get him up and movin’. Ain’t got long now till someone finds the body.”
Ponyboy lets out a shout before Johnny can process Dally’s ominous words, and he flies back to the couch.
“Johnny!” Pony yells again as the boy in question drops to his knees beside him. “Johnny!”
“I’m here, Ponyboy, what is it?” he asks urgently. Pony’s eyes are wild and frantic, his breathing labored. It just about breaks Johnny’s heart more than he thought possible.
“Where’s Soda?” Pony sounds desperate. He grabs Johnny’s forearm. “Where’s Darry?”
Johnny and Dally share a cornered look. It’s clear neither of them have the faintest idea to say. Johnny swallows, and tightens his jaw. What would Darry do?
“They’re at home,” Johnny reassures. It’s not a lie, at least.
“Oh…are we at home?” Pony looks around the room like he’s expecting it to morph into the Curtis house at any moment. “Where’re Darry an’ Soda?”
“We’re – we’re not at home right now, Pony,” Johnny manages around the lump in his throat. That’s not a lie, either, but the truth doesn’t make him feel any better.
“Are we goin’ home soon?” Ponyboy asks, his face open and full of trust. Even in his delirious state, he trusts Johnny to take care of him. To make everything okay.
“Yeah.” Johnny finally lies. “We’re goin’ home soon.”
It’s about a quarter past three in the morning when Johnny finds himself on a train.
They didn’t call Darry before they left Buck Merrill’s. Johnny had pleaded with Dally, mostly for Ponyboy’s sake, to let them at least give their brothers the reassurance that they were alive. But the older greaser had refused.
“We breathe a word of any of this to Darry, we give him something for the cops to get out of ‘im . Is that what you want?” He’d warned. Johnny had shaken his head in reply, and that was the end of the discussion.
Ponyboy’s awake, but just barely. He’s all out of sorts — confused and terrified and likely concussed, according to Dally. They’d had to practically drag him out of the bar as he begged Johnny to take them back home. He doesn’t know where they are now or where they’re going. Ponyboy hardly registers they’re on a train to begin with.
“Why’re we movin’?” he asks quietly, his head lying in Johnny’s lap as they sit against the wall of an empty car. There’s a fine layer of hay on the floor and a lingering smell that makes Johnny think this compartment used to house animals. He wonders if being in here made them feel as trapped as he does now.
“Just goin’ for a ride, Pone,” he replies with the same answer he’d given not twenty minutes ago when Ponyboy had asked the same question. Dallas grunts from beside them; not in anger, Johnny can tell, at least not toward them. He has a sneaking suspicion that Dally wishes Johnathan Cade was still alive so he could kill Johnny’s father himself.
The stillness of the night and the silence of the train car gives Johnny far too much time to think. Sleep is impossible; there’s a knife in his hand every time he closes his eyes. Phantom blood still makes his fingers itch. He tried to wash it off his hands as best he could in the bathroom at Buck’s, but Johnny’s palms are still red no matter how harshly he’d scrubbed.
He briefly remembers a scene from a play they’d read in English class, an old one he can’t remember the name of. There’d been a lady whose husband had killed someone for her, but she felt the blood on her hands instead. And she ran her hands under the water for hours and hours, but it never came out.
Out, out damn spot.
Johnny’s just like her now. Except he’s taken a life himself. And the worst part is that he is certain he’d do it again.
There’s no other world where Johnny doesn’t kill for Ponyboy. He’d made his choice the moment his father had raised a hand against his little brother. As soon as Pony had been placed in harm’s way, Johnny’s fate was sealed. Something inside of him just knows. His story always, always ends in death.
“You gotta stop thinkin’ about it, Johnnycakes.” Dallas suddenly speaks up. He’s moved so that he’s leaning against the opposite wall, watching Pony and Johnny like they were his own charges. Johnny supposes that now, they might be.
“How’d you know?” He ducks his head and avoids Dally’s piercing gaze.
“Because I know you.”
Johnny sighs. “I ain’t regret it,” he admits.
“Never said you did.” Dally responds.
“I just… I never saw someone die like that,” Johnny whispers. He thinks about Jonathan’s face as the life left it for good. All the color turned near grey– like someone had just turned off the lights. He shudders, and thinks about his own parents. Is that what they had looked like when Darry had gone to identify them? Somehow, Johnny feels like he killed them, too.
“Ain’t pretty, is it?” Dallas says. There’s a knowing, hardened sheen in his voice, and it suddenly occurs to Johnny that he hardly knows anything about Dally’s life before Tulsa.
“No,” he replies instead of asking, because Dallas Winston’s past surely isn’t something he’d offer up willingly. Pony stirs in his sleep, and Johnny sighs again as he runs a hand through his little brother’s hair. “But I’d do it again. For him, I’d do it again.”
It might be the shadows cast by the moonlight, or it might be Johnny’s own imagination. But he swears Dallas smiles at him.
“That’s the spirit, kid.”