Hey, I'm back with another fic!

Title: When Life Gives You Lemons
Rating: PG-13 for one strong swear word.
Pairings: None
Warnings: ... A bit of angst?
Summary: A Dally POV that I imagine probably took place when he was driving to the store he was about to rob...



Disclaimer: If I owned the Outsider’s boys, all of the emotion in the book that makes it so good wouldn’t have happened, ‘cause Johnny and Dally wouldn’t have died.

When Life Gives You Lemons

I remember one day when I was with you and Ponyboy, and we were walking back to Pony’s place after a movie at the Nightly Double. I don’t remember what you and Pony were talking to each other about; I was thinking about going down to Buck’s after you two got to the Curtis’, but something y’all said caught my attention. Pony had laughed, and said, “Well, I guess when life gives you lemons, you ought to make lemonade.”

I had raised an eyebrow, never being into that philosophy crap, and asked, “What does that mean?”

You glanced up at me, and then looked back down at the ground and said, “I think it means that when you gets opportunities, then you need to take them.”

I had snorted and said something about stupid phrases, and why did they have to use lemonade as an example, anyway?, but you had defended the stupid thing.

“I think it makes sense; even if they did use lemonade to explain it. I mean, if you don’t take what you’re offered, then you’ll never get anywhere, right?”

I had laughed and smacked you playfully, gently on the back, asking when you’d gotten all deep on me, and you’d just grinned, looking a little embarrassed.

The memory had stuck with me for some reason, maybe because it was one of the few times I saw you grin after you got beat up by the Socs, and it’d surfaced in my mind for no reason when I was with you in the hospital before the rumble.

You’d been given a- lemon, I guess- when we drove up to the burning church. You could’ve took the opportunity to stay in the car (‘and live!’ a voice is hissing at me), but you had taken the other one; the bad one, and jumped out of the car to see what was wrong. You picked another bad one when you ran into the burning church to save those kids. And, while I was sitting there, watching you breath in labored gasps, I’d had a thought:

‘If you believed in that lemon crap, then when life gave you lemons . . . why did you throw them fuckin’ back?’