Disclaimer: I only own Annie, Mack, Maell and Josellin. Hinton owns the rest.
Author's Note: Flames are welcome. Point out mistakes. I'm not too sure on this one; it's something old that I found and finished without bothering to proof it. So enjoy. Or don't.

There's so much smoke taking up the air that he can't tell if he's breathing or choking. His fingers burn around the end of his cigarette, and he shifts against the threadbare mattress, old springs shrieking under him. All that's separating him from the dark is some dull bulb flickering away in his lamp, trying to pick up where his bedroom light left off. He would give anything to stick a working bulb back in that translucent casing, and he squeezes his eyes shut, thinking like if he starts now, he'll be ready when the lights go out. It's not working; he can't take the dark. It makes him squirm and sweat, and half the time he wants to crawl out of his skin and slink under the floorboards.

Stubbing out his cigarette against the wall, he turns over and listens to his mom shuffling around, cleaning up after herself and Mack as she sings some song that Dallas has heard too many times. Her voice carries over the rain hitting against his window, and he can hear every break in his mom's voice—everything she's trying to keep together—and it makes him sick. Annie should've stayed in New York, and as he sits up, he knows that the constant abuse she puts up with is because of him. If she'd had the sense to take care of him when she had the chance, she wouldn't be here, putting up with Mack and this shit city she's ashamed to call home. Dallas doesn't blame her; he hates it, too.

What he hates more is that fact that Annie is probably nursing a split lip and a black eye right now. He can picture how beat up she must be, and the throws his feet over the side of the bed. He doesn't know what he's doing—why he's going downstairs—but he hates it when she's alone. He hates that he looks so much like Mack, and he hates that he's the reason everything is so screwed up. This is his fault—all of it—and he thinks like if he dropped off the face of the earth, his mom and dad would be able to salvage whatever's left of their marriage. If there's anything worth saving, that is. As far as he can tell, everyone is done with each other. It doesn't bug him—the sooner everyone goes their separate ways, the better off they'll all be.

The floor is cold under his feet. He reaches under his bed and pulls out some record by Little Willie that he knows his mom likes and slips out the door. Light flickers, and he jolts, curling his free hand into a fist as he forces a breath through his teeth and creeps toward the stairs. He needs to stop being afraid of stupid shit; there are worse things to fear than the dark.

Like Mack. Dallas grits his teeth and starts down the stairs, sneering. Mack is an idiot. He sits around and drinks all day, and if he isn't drinking, he's trying to beat the shit out of Dallas or Annie. Dallas can take it; he doesn't mind when Mack knocks him around. When he goes after Annie, though, it's a different story. She's a brave lady with a good head on her shoulders—smart, classy, and she takes everything with her mouth shut. Bends over backwards for the asshole she married and cares too much about her son. Leaving would be so easy, and Dallas is always waking up in the middle of the night, wondering if she finally grabbed some sense and left. But she's there, day after day, busying herself with all the stereotypical things wives and mothers do. It's sickening.

So is the mess in the living room. Annie's flipping the table right-side up, and there's blood drying in the corner of her mouth. Dallas burns, letting himself glare at the bruise over her eye and the split in her lip. It's times like this he wishes he was wrong; he's sick of being right about the wrong things. About how Mack puts his hands on her, and he can't do a damn thing about it without getting his own teeth kicked in. It's getting hard for him to stick around, living out every day in this hell hole. The only thing that keeps him here is his mom. He hates to think about what Mack would do to her if he wasn't around.

Shuffling his feet, Dallas folds his arms across his chest, clutching onto the record. Annie doesn't notice him, and he thinks like he should just turn around and head back up the stairs. But when the lights fade out again, he shudders and swallows back the bile burning at his throat.

"Mom?" He clears his throat and curls his toes in his socks, shifting around. Looking at Annie, he wonders how anyone could bring themselves to raise a hand to her. Mack needs a good kick in the head. "I...here." He holds out the records and chews on his bottom lip, watching as Annie wipes at the side of her mouth.

"Well," she starts, pushing a shaky hand through her hair. "Put it on, hm?" She gives him a small smile and straightens up the couch.

Dallas doesn't want to. He wrinkles his nose and throws the record down on the table, eyes narrowed and jaw set. She needs to clue in—realize that she's wasting her time here because Mack doesn't want her around no more than she wants to be here. She's useless to someone who doesn't want her.

Swallowing back whatever is in his throat, he forces himself to breathe. "You're unbelievable, you know?" he hisses, clenching his fists. "Hangin' around someplace that nobody wants you..."

Annie shoots him a look and stalks over to him, jabbing a finger into his chest as she sneers. "What do you know?" she asks, and she has to crane her neck a little to glare at him. He looks so much like Mack that it makes her stomach turn. "You're fifteen."

"What do I know?" Dallas repeats, swatting her hand away. "I know that Mack doesn't love you and that you're wasting your fucking time, Annie."

Her face doesn't falter. She keeps glaring up at him, cold irises burning through slit eyes. "I was perfectly fine pretending," she bites, turning on her heel.

Dallas catches her by the arm and jerks her around roughly. His fingers bruise into her skin, and she grabs a fistful of his shirt.

"Don't be stupid," he tells her, and he wishes she would just listen to him for once. He knows more than any other fifteen-year-old kid he knows, and he swears he has more common sense than half the adults that he's had to deal with.

People are always second guessing him, thinking he doesn't know what he's talking about just because he's a kid. Just because he can't sit through class or pull half decent grades out of his ass doesn't mean he isn't smart. He knows so much more than people give him credit for, and if they weren't so narrow-minded, they would grab a brain and listen to him. He's seen enough of the world to know how it works. He's seen what's behind the facade that people put on, and he knows what lurks underneath their skin. He breathes the stuff that crawls through their veins and sits in their blood, killing them from the inside out. And while it differs from person to person, get a group of people together and he could figure out what all their fears and their sensitivities are, and whatever else it may be have in common. They're dark. They grow and pulse when the lights go out.

Annie shakes. She lets go of his shirt and smoothes out the creases, over and over, as if she's desperate for something to keep her hands busy with. "You really think you know so much?" she asks, and she won't look at him. He has a temper like his father's and a fist to match, and even though she knows that Dallas would never even think to lay a hand on her, she's learned to watch what she says and who she says it to. "What happens to you if I leave? Do you... suppose things will get better?"

He takes a breath, loud and raspy, because he never thought that far ahead. Of course he can't let her know that, because he's supposed to have everything figured out. "You go your way, I go mine." He shrugs like it's just that easy. "It ain't a big deal, Mom..."

But it is a big deal. Annie has a whole different country she can take off to, but he has shit. Maybe a room at Buck's if the rodeo clown feels like lending him some less than fitting accommodations. Even that costs more than he makes on riding alone, and he hasn't been down to see the red lights in almost a month. He doubts if he has any cliental left.

"You won't leave." She tucks some of his hair behind his ear and scowls, figuring he's long overdue for a cut. "I know you too well, Dallas."

Of course she does. They're one in the same. Hard-headed, temperamental, can cuss a blue streak. And if they've but one downfall, it's their goddamn pride. Like Annie, Dallas takes as much pride in the things he doesn't have as in the things that he does. It's his way of knowing that he's doing just fine making do with the bare minimum. Materialistic bullshit doesn't buy happiness—he's learned that in the hardest way imaginable.

He pries his mom's hands out of hair and shirt and kisses them quickly. "You're gonna get yourself killed, you go on livin' here like this"—he lets her hands go and folds his arms over his chest—"and don't tell me you're okay with that, because there's no way in hell you love Mack that much."

"You're not hearing me," she snaps, and she's using that tone of voice she reserves for dealing with real pigheaded people. "I can't just leave."

He rolls his eyes. If there's one thing Annie's always been good for, it's excuses. She an honest liar—he has to give her that, he guesses.

"Why not?" He wants to shake some sense into her. "I don't get what's so fucking hard about—"

"That's just it!" She swipes at her mouth and looks right at him, and he thinks that maybe she has something to tell him, because she never looks at him like this unless something is really wrong. "You don't get it anymore than I do."

And that's when he notices it, and he can't help himself from standing there, shaking like some scared little kid. Because for the first time, he can almost taste the fear seeping out through Annie's pores. An honest-to-God, paralyzing fear, as if she really doesn't know what she can do.

"I can't leave because I'm pregnant," she says, and she's so quiet about it that he's not sure if he heard her right.

"And I guess you ain't told dad yet?"

That's a stupid question. He bites on the inside of his lip hard enough to make it bleed and he can feel the ground rattle underneath him. Shaking him from his ankles up, and all his joints hold onto the reverberations and let them burrow deeper into their sockets; until the cartilage starts to chip away, and he just wants to scream at the agony.

He almost hits her. She grabs his closed fist and squeezes it tightly without moving her eyes from him. Those stupid lifeless eyes that he knows her kid is going to have no matter what she does, because this is no place to bring a baby into—even he knows that.

"That's more reason for you to get the fuck out of here." He's trying his damnedest to break this down for her, but it's like she doesn't want to hear him. So he sinks into the couch and looks anywhere but at her, because the sight of her and her stupidity will push him right over the edge. "Christ, you're a married goddamn woman, Annie. Nobody's gonna chastise you for being pregnant, alright? Y'ain't fucking sixteen no more."

"Where am I supposed to go?" She lets her shoulders slump and sits on the edge of the coffee table, and it's too hard to believe that she's only twenty-nine. "I've got nobody, Dallas."

He leans forward, elbows on his knees. "Maell and Josellin—Gran and Granddad—they're still kickin'."

It's pushing it, but she doesn't protest. Her eyebrows don't knit together, and she doesn't get that huffy look on her face that she gets when she thinks she's right about something. It looks like—but he isn't holding his breath—that for the first time in her life, she's going to let him be right about something.

"I know they're all the way back in France, but Jesus Christ..." he trails off and hums a few bars to himself. And then, "You go, and I'll be right behind you."

"How far behind?"

"A few months, maybe a year..." He shakes his head and leans back, staring at the ceiling.

He hates to think that this is life, that this is normal. In this day and age it's normal for kids to mutiny against their mom or dad and wonder if risking their ass trying to escape is better than sticking around. It has to be, because if he has to see his mom trying to hide another bruise, or if his dad brings home another blonde bimbo, he just might lose it. And nevermind what he has to put up with when Annie isn't home. There's a reason he can't sleep with the lights off, why he jumps when he walks past darks rooms and closed doors. And he isn't letting another kid get sucked into the type of shit he has. He's resilient; he'll survive. But he's not so sure about anybody else.

Annie pushes his hair back, strokes his cheek so gently he's not sure if he imagined the touch. "I'll go if you promise me one thing."

The relief that floods him is instantaneous. He nods daftly and tries to speak, but the words get caught somewhere in between his tangled vocal chords.

"You don't tell Mack nothin' about me being pregnant." And she says it so seriously that all he can do is nod more and wonder if she thinks he's some kind of a fucking idiot. "And you get your ass out of here as soon as you can."

He swallows and turns a blind eye to the tight-lipped smile she forces.

"I love you, Dallas."

"Don't get too attached, Mom," he tells her, and he's just trying to keep the mood light, because he doesn't do all this sentimental I-love-you bullshit. "I ain't gonna be around forever."

"Longevity isn't in our gene pool, hm?" She leans forward and kisses his forehead. "Blame your dad for that one."

He snorts and raises his eyebrows, wishing he had the guts to tell his mom he loves her.

He hopes she knows.