Disclaimer: It feels odd writing one of these again. I don't own the Outsiders or the song "Run, Run, Run"

A/N: I am very happy to be back again. My plan for this is for it to be super long. I don't want to have to shorten it so I'm dividing it into two stories. I hope that doesn't bother anyone but I don't want this to be eighty some chapters. This story will have a little over twenty by the end.

Welcome to book 4!

Well you ain't the luckiest girl I know. And you won't get luckier the way you're going. Your horseshoe's rusty and your mirror's cracked. You walk under ladders then you walk right back. When you dropped that little pin. Never thought what a mess it'd get you in. Little pin, little pin, bring me luck. Because I stopped to pick you up.

He hasn't spoken since it happened. The world has shut down as far as he's concerned. His daily routine consists of three trips down the hall to the bathroom, fifteen hours of sleep, and the rest spent in the prison he's made out of his room. No one's allowed up there. It smells like death when I walk down the hall. When Soda walks by, he sighs a little and hangs his head and tries to force himself not to cry. When Darry walks by he shakes his head and makes an attempt to get the door open but every time he loses or just gives up.

The town has stopped moving, stop functioning. We all have. Day by day goes by. School isn't even a distraction anymore. Get up, shower, force breakfast down my throat, clean, do laundry, try to pick up the pieces of the broken ones.

It's a task I can never cross off my list.

We're out of food again. I make a mental note to go by the store because I can't stand being in this house any longer but I'm also afraid to leave of fear of what may happen when I'm gone.

The house is quiet in the day when everyone's gone and it's just me and the shadow of doom and darkness. I find myself wondering around and talking to myself just so I can say something to someone that day. Why do we have so many clothes? Aren't we supposed to be poor? Where did all this stuff come from?

I remember when the phone call happened. I remember the lights outside and the screams and the rain and the blood...

"Hello?"

"How is he?"

Darry calls every hour, asking the same thing. I always respond: "Fine."

By fine I mean I can hear him breathing and that's good enough for now.

Jennie drops by every day at lunch to tell me all the gossip at the diner. "Lisa Ray is such a whore. Did I tell you she undoes two buttons on her top every day to wipe off the tables just to get tips?"

Lisa Ray is the girl who replaced me when I turned in my two week notice. It's hard to work when you're busy trying to keep everything from falling apart.

"I brought you a burger," she says, handing me the Styrofoam box and fork, like she's going to fed it to me if I don't do it myself. "I brought him a-"

"He won't take it," I tell her, sticking the fork in the potato salad and letting it stick there.

It doesn't stop her from trying. Jennie's a pusher. No matter how many nos she gets, she determined that the next one will be a yes though it never is.

I hear her come down the stairs so I take a bite of the burger even though it's cold and it has cheese on it. Anything to show that I'm trying because I am. She's worried about the wrong person.

"Have you heard from-"

"No." Same bullshit question, different day. "Sorry. Today's not a good day."

"Have there been any good days?"

No. Not since it happened.

The phone rings and Jennie goes to pick it up so I can eat. It's been half an hour, it's Soda's turn to call and check in.

I manage to get down a few bites of cold meant and cheese before throwing it out for the stray cats. I wish we had a dog. Pony always wanted a dog. We had an imaginary one when we were little. We called him Skipper and he went everywhere with us for five years until we forgot all about Skipper and started focusing on other things like boys and girls and beer.

My head rests on the side post of the house. A few crows have taken claim on my burger and the street is filled with silence, like it has been for weeks.

"Has he called you? Don't shut me out either or I swear I will smack you. I'm not afraid of you Danni."

I shake my head, giving her an answer but not the answer she wants.

Her sticky warm breath is at my ear. "You don't fool me, Danni Curtis."

"He won't talk about it," I tell her. "He won't talk to anyone. I've tried to call. I don't know where he's gone if anywhere. I stay awake at night, afraid every time the phone rings, thinking it'll be someone wanting me to claim the body."

She passes me a smoke and we stand and enjoy it together. She doesn't say anything because she knows showing me sympathy is the last thing I want.

Jennie is the only person I can be around without wanting to drop a nuclear bomb. She understands things, and I like that.

"Wanna go get really drunk and trash the house?"

I shrug, heading back inside. "Cleaning it up will give me something to do tomorrow."

"Maybe we should post pone the wedding?"

"I told you no! Everything will be fine!"

This is the same conversation we've had for days now. Each time, I sit on the couch, eating chips, and watch it happen. Soda and I have a thing going where he looks at me from the kitchen, makes a face, and I return it with a mouth full of chewed up food and he laughs.

It's the little things these days.

"Darry..." Kathy whines. She's got her binder in front of her with pictures of what her dream wedding will be, and it makes me feel all the more worse for her.

Darry grumbles, crankily throwing down his blanket and rolling through the room. "No! You shouldn't have to do that. Everything will be fine by August. I'll make it be fine!"

And on that note, he slams the door to his room and stays there for the rest of the day.

It's Saturday and that's become the worst day. Everyone's home and it's like we're feeding off of each other's sadness and that makes everything feel all that more shitty.

I go into the kitchen and fix everyone lunch while Soda mows the lawn and Kathy and Darry talk in the bed room.

I fix a tray for our little jail bird and head upstairs. "Pone?"

He's lying on the bed with his face in his pillow. His arms are spread out on either side. He grunts to show that he's alive. It smells like death in here. I make a mental note to clean everything up later.

I sit the tray down on the night stand and sit down beside him on the bed. There are books all over the floor. Pages are torn and thrown everywhere. There are magazines that are the same. There are broken pieces of wood here and there from him wrecking his room when he found out. He crushed his old night stand. Literally crushed it by throwing it on the floor over and over again until nothing was left.

I haven't quite figured out what he does up here all day. Darry had a friend of Kathy's who is a therapist come up here once to talk to him. I never heard how that went but she didn't come back.

I sigh. "He's not dead yet, Pone."

"Yet," he says into his pillow. "He got shot in the fucking head. He's in a coma because he got shot in the head. Saying he's not going to die is like saying the sky's not blue."

I rub my head. I wish he wouldn't talk that way. "Well I brought you some strawberry ice cream. I know it's your favorite."

I don't get even a grunt as a response. So I leave the bowl on his night stand and take a step back. It'll be outside his door by night fall, licked clean. It always is.

Outside is where I spend a lot of time. Just sitting on the picnic table in the back yard, looking out at the street. I don't know what or who I'm waiting for. Each time though, I wish they would show up. Just once.

The smoke from my cigarette floats up in the air. I follow it with my eyes and take a deep breath.

The gate slams, calling my attention. Someone has shown up today. "Peter?"

Blood drips down his face. His shirt is covered with fresh and brown blood. One eye is swollen shut, the other beaten bloody and turned black. His nose is spewing most of the blood but there is also a deep gash in his head.

He leans against the fence, barely able to hold himself up. "Can I get some fucking help here? I'm kinda bleeding out of my head."

I quickly jump down from the table, throwing my cigarette down and stomping it out. I'm able to get to him before he falls over. He puts all his weight on me and stumbles. I'm not strong enough to keep him up.

"Soda!"

He doesn't answer. I let Peter's arm hang over my shoulder and I carry him through the yard and into the house. I carefully sit him down at the kitchen table and try to catch my breath. He's heavier than he looks.

"What happened!?"

"What does it look like?" he moans. I can't bear to look at the damage so I turn away. "I need pain meds. You got some?"

With my head still turned, I make my way to the medicine cabinet in the bathroom. "Yeah, hang on."

"Smoking again?" he asks before I get a chance to leave, making me stop dead in my tracks. "What, is that your third or second pack today?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Sure you don't."

Soda enters the room. His eyes go to Peter and he stands, frozen. The image is enough to make you stare and gag all at the same time. He stares for a few seconds and we all stand and watch.

"Wh-"

"He got jumped," I say. I go to the bathroom and get out the first aid kit and start to wonder where Darry and Kathy are. Our only nurse in this house and she's never around when something like this happens.

I've seen the bruises and cuts before. I've seen someone beaten by the same people who beat Peter. I don't have to ask who did it. No one does. I can hear Soda quietly talking to him next door and I sit down on the edge of the tub and breathe.

This is too much. Each day it's the same worries. The worries that this may happen to someone else. It will. Something's going to happen. It's just a matter of time and I know that. Everyone knows that. We're helpless. This is going to go on and on and on until they get what they want. I don't know exactly what they want.

I do know who they want dead.

And I know I'm on that list.

"So what happened? They just attacked you out of nowhere?" Soda asks.

I come back in the room, laying down the first aid kit and slowly starting to clean the blood up with a wet towel. I'm not two minutes into the cleaning before I need to get another one because the first is coated in too much blood.

Peter sighs and hisses as I apply pressure. "With baseball bats. I dunno what happened. I woke up from tasting blood in my mouth and found myself in a pool of my own blood. Maybe they just left me there hoping Mother Nature would take its course or maybe they were just too stupid enough to check my pulse before they just left me."

Soda's drinking coffee, watching and taking in every word Peter says. He's wanted in on this ever since the letter came for Pony. He wants the same thing Dally wants. "What did they say?"

I glare.

Not you too.

Peter rolls his eyes. "People don't tend to say much when they're bashing your brains out."

"When did you become such a smartass?" I ask, applying pressure harder than I need to.

"When your boyfriend fucked up my life. Who do I gotta kill around here for some medication?"

Soda jumps up, not accidentally bumping into Peter as he heads into the bathroom and searches through the medicine cabinet. I watch him as he leaves. He's not hiding his anger. He wants in on this. I don't want him to. I will do anything to stop that from happening. This isn't his fight.

I'm not sure whose it really is.

"What happened?"

Soda stands in the middle of the kitchen as all our heads turn and see the corpse that has walked into the room and into the sun for the first time in weeks. "Pony...you're out of your room."

He looks different in the light. His eyes. His eyes aren't the same. His eyes aren't the same color. They're dull. They're gray. They're empty. They're broken. "I heard someone talking about Dale. What happened to you?"

"Pony go back upstairs," Soda says sternly.

"No."

"Ponyboy-"

"No! I'm not a little kid you can boss around anymore, Soda. I want to know what happened."

I blink. Soda blinks. This makes him angry. He's already on fire. He leaves the room, letting the back door shut behind him. He wants to yell. He wants to snap some sense into him but he knows he can't. He knows it won't do anything. He has so much to say but he can't say it. He's exploding inside. He's hurting.

Aren't we all?

Peter snatches up the bottle of pills Soda left on the table and pops about five in his mouth. He angrily slams the bottle back down before saying, "What happened was Dallas fucking Winston ruined my life. That fucking little-"

He stops mid-sentence. The front door booms shut and there's a ghost in the room. A ghost that makes every room it walks into stop and stare.

"Go on, finish your sentence."

Peter rolls his eyes, turning to the side and away. "If you don't mind, Dally, I've already had the shit beat out of me enough for one day. So do you mind if we take a little rain check on this?"

I've lost track of the days. There's been too many. Here he is. The king has returned to his kingdom.

I stop cleaning Peter up and I stare.

He catches my eye. He winks. "Hey."

"Hi."

He motions for me to follow him around back. I wait and let him leave first before I get up. I ignore Peter's angry stares and probably rude comments.

It's warm out. My skin absorbs the sun as it hits me for the first time in a long time. I smell the fresh air. Dally's sent. The smell from his fresh cigarette. I want nothing more to run up behind him and wrap my arms around him. I want him to touch me. I want him to kiss me. I want to lay in bed forever with him beside me.

I know that's just something I can't have.

He's broken.

He's braking.

He's angry.

He's sad.

He's hungry.

He wants revenge.

He can taste it.

"He came to me," I tell him softly, sensing an annoyance from the fact that I was tending to an ex-boyfriend in front of him. A boy I did in fact replace him with. "What did you want me to do? Let him bleed to death?"

He tosses the bud of his cigarette into the grass and stomps it out with his heel. He rubs his chin and turns to face me. "You gotta stick on you?"

I hand him the pack from my back pocket and he lights one up. He offers me one which I decline.

"Where've you been?"

He shrugs.

I didn't expect an answer. I don't know why I asked. He knows I know and that I don't have to ask. He does this every time something like this happens. When it was my parents, he didn't come around until two weeks after the funeral. He doesn't want to be around so many feelings and emotions, especially when he's feeling them himself when he's supposed to be the one without such things.

He has to handle these things his own way.

I understand that.

"Have you been to the hospital?"

He nods. I know he has. I know he doesn't want to talk about it. I know he's only been once and he won't go back because he can't handle it. He can't deal. I know this because I know Dally...and it's what happened to me.

"Pony won't come out of his room." I kick the dirt under my feet. "He won't visit him. He won't speak most of the time, only on good days. It's tearing him up. None of us know what to do. He's become a zombie."

He exhales the smoke. Inhales the smoke. Exhales the smoke. "How are you?"

"Fine."

"You don't look fine."

"Neither do you."

There's a breeze. It blows my hair as I turn and look away from him. We look the same. I know we do. A person's eyes say everything about them. It's the only part of the body that can give you away.

I want to tell him that I missed him. I know he knows but I want to tell him. I want to tell him I'm scared and I'm sad and I'm angry. I want to tell him I'm worried about losing him. Losing my family. Losing everyone.

But I don't.

Because he feels the same way.

And just like me, he'll never say.

"You know you're next on their list."

I turn my head back to him. He's staring at me. "They only come out at night now. We haven't seen Dale since you shot him. I don't go out so they can't get me."

"They will."

I know this. I've thought this thought more than once. I've dreamed this thought more than once. He's a shadow killer in the night. There's no hiding from him. He's capable of more than we know. He can obviously out live a bullet to the chest.

And there's someone bigger.

Someone more powerful.

Someone only one of us has met and only one of us who truly knows him.

Maggot.

"You're on their list too," I point out to him. "Aren't you numero uno?"

He shrugs, smoking more and more and more. "It isn't safe here."

"What are you thinking?" I ask.

He speaks slowly and drawn out. He hasn't slept in a while. He's been thinking. Planning. "I gotta get you outta here."

"To where?"

He gets up off the table. He slides his feet as he walks over and stands in front of me. His body becomes less tense immediately. He gives a small corner smile. "Got a plan. I've already got you an apartment."

"Where?"

"South Carolina."

"You're joking, right?"

"Does it look like I'm joking?"

South Carolina was not the place I wanted to spend my summer. I know I have no room to argue. I can tell by the tone of his voice that this is a done deal and he's not going to argue about it with me. I've learned more than once to shut up and listen. I've also been told I'm too stubborn to do that.

"I'm not leaving you here to the wolves."

He sneers and I've missed that sound. I've missed his smirk. The way he looks to the side when he does it with his hands in his pockets. "That's exactly what you're going to do."

"Why? Dally, I..."

"I'll drag you there myself." He turns serious again. "Don't think I won't. Listen to me this time. Look what not listening to me got you."

I know.

I know.

"Why South Carolina?" I ask.

He shrugs because he doesn't really know. It's just a place to send me for a while so I won't interfere or get in trouble. Sometimes I think Dally is slowly turning into Darry. "Nothing happens there. It'll be the last place they look."

"What will you do?"

"Figure this out. Try to end it."

"How?"

There's the laugh again. "Stop worrying about things you can't control. Stop trying to take care of everyone."

"I don't want you to die," I tell him. "I won't let you."

He grabs me by the waist suddenly, smirking that mischievous smirk. He kisses me suddenly and holding me tight. He kisses down my cheek and stops at the edge of my mouth. Our lips meet again. Fast and slow. He holds me as our hips touch and the kissing has stopped and we are just holding each other.

This is Dallas Winston's reinsurance hug. A hug that says everything will be alright. He'll kiss you in a whoreish, passionate way to try to hide what he's really doing.

He doesn't fool me.

I just enjoy it.

I don't want to move.

I don't want it to end.

He pulls away, chuckling. "Damn I missed that." He licks his lips over once more. "I won't die. Promise. That make you happy?"

I smile. It's the first time since it happened I can say that it's not fake. It's true. "So you're staying here and I'm going there. What will I tell Darry? I can't just leave."

He hands me a handful of bills. I put them away quickly before anyone can see them. "You'll figure out something. I'll give you the address. That's enough money for rent and food for two months. Take the three o'clock train tomorrow."

"Tomorrow!?" I shout. He shushes me. "You're going to have to give me more time than that."

"We don't have any time."

I move away from him. I walk in circles trying to wrap my head around everything. This is insane. All of this is just insane! All of this is happening too fast. I can't think. My head is pounding. I've never been on my own before. What if they find me? What will I do? What if something happens when I'm gone? I can't leave. I need to be here.

I need to protect him. I need to protect my family. What will happen when I'm gone? I can't do this. I can't handle this.

His hand touches my hip, stopping my movement. "Do you trust me?"

I face him and sigh deeply. "I'm trying. I'm really trying."

"I'll be down in a few weeks to check on you once things have died down," he says. "I'll keep an eye out for them for you. Nothing will happen. Just go. Enjoy yourself."

"How the hell am I supposed to enjoy myself in South Carolina?"

He winks. "You'll think of something." He pulls me back in and gives me one last, deep, tongue twisting kiss. He speaks against my lips, "Later, sweets."

As I watch him walk away, I knew one thing: South Carolina was the last damn place I was going to be.

Well now, little girl, I'm helping you. I hope you believe what I say is true. Whenever you run, I'll be running too. Whenever you run, I'll be following you. Run, run, run.

A/N: Thank you so much for reading. Please review.

My thoughts and prayers go out to the people of Boston.

XOXO