one of one

"You really want me to move on, Dal?" Ponyboy asks, squinting at him from across the table, head tilted forward. "You really want me to—how in the hell was I ever gonna move on from you after everything we went through?"

The headache webbing at Dallas' temple isn't making this conversation better. He wishes he'd never started it, and yet he clenches his jaw. "Kid, we can't ever go back to that. To any of what we were. You know that."

When Dallas realizes that the warmest place in the chapel is where the statue of Mary is, her hands clasped together yet the face dark from all of the bad years in this place, he resents that fact entirely.

At the same time: if there is one thing that St. Bartholomew's has in abundance it's the coldness that sweeps over it. It shouldn't be there this far South, but it's tucked into a mountainside that Dallas has never heard of before. They're up high enough that the cold really matters here and it seeps into every horrible nook and cranny that the miserable reformatory had to offer. No matter what, it seems to touch the very attitude of the staff to the rooms that they're made to sleep in, to the sense of eeriness that comes in the long hours.

Trying to search for warmth has always been a priority for him since he was a child—that sometimes led to situations that had his mother hitting him on his ear or putting his hand in places where no child should have them. It's one of the earliest memories he'd ever had, realizing that he could wrap his hand around a piece of coal in the furnace and keep it there for almost an hour before the heat became a problem. That was before the other things—when he could stay out in the heat for so long without water it was noticeable to his cousins or whenever it got cold, he was always either the last one to feel it or the one most uncomfortable with sudden drops in it.

There's no big guess to figure out why that habit had come to him when he realized the truth of the world, of what he is. Dallas figures it's a bit of a joke, really.

Finding it at the feet of the Mary, the biggest one there, feels a little bit like the universe or maybe Old Scratch was mocking him in some way to put it there. As a child, it would've been a good omen for him.

Right now, when he looks at her all he can think about are the dreams he's been having lately. Ones where he's at the feet of one five times her size, able to see bloodstains on her clothes, her smile turned up in a way that unnerves him. There are words she says sometimes in the dreams, that he can't ever recall, yet weigh heavy on him. Sometimes, her hand is on his head, touching the stumps of horns on his head that still haven't grown back. Sometimes he feels as if she's lying beside him in the bed, waiting for a moment to tell him something important.

Mornings are either a coin toss these days, of feeling as if she's right there beside him or if he wakes up feeling colder than he ought to, longing for a little more warmth than what the thin blankets and terribly built walls can give.

Always he thinks about what she's trying to to tell him and why. Why would a Saint like that reach out to one of Old Scratch's bastards?

And when he isn't thinking about her, or why his damn horns won't grow back, or what to do about any of this, he's thinking about Ponyboy.