Prompt: Johnny died but Dally didn't. Nope, he lived because of Johnny Cade: To get even with the Socs. Jenny O'reilly (Cherry's twin) is coming back. At 4, her and her dad moved out. She was raised in England while Cherry was raised in Tulsa but now she's back. The parents are still divorced. They eventually forgot about each other (Jenny and Cherry). Jenny is dressed more like a Soc but she doesn't act like one. Cherry acts like one. One day Cherry, Jenny, and one of their friends stop by the Dx to hang out with the gang as Cherry always went by due to helping the Greasers in trial. She became their look out but today, she just wants to hang with them and introduce the newest Soc and her twin. Tracey is Tracey Holden, Paul's sister from Wyoming. She also lived with a different set of parents and just came to Tulsa. Knew Sherri as a kid but then moved away (12) and is moving back. Dally wants Cherry, Soda wants Jenny, and Steve wants Tracey. It's about the 6 people falling in love, dealing with drama, and getting together.

*this is something like that.

Chapter 7:

Jenny had been watching them for months.

She's stood in the shadows ever since she stepped into that pink bedroom back in August, gauging how Dallas treated her sister.

Watching him steal looks at her even when Jenny was clingy all over him, a look of remorse passing in his antiquated eyes. How he held her so gently every time he touched her, calloused hands on virgin skin. How he looked out for her through the toughest times, how frayed he was when she was gone. When she was taken from him, he looked betrayed by God, but all he did was wait for Darry to make the call and sprung into action so he could have her back.

Dallas Winston cared so much for Cherry Valance. But old habits die hard.

Jenny explains this to the two girls in front of her with precision, calculation. Every time Marcia went to speak, to defend the Dallas she knew, Tracey stopped her with a hand to her arm. She was listening, understanding where Jenny was coming from. It reminded her of Paul's reaction when she professed her love for Tim Shepherd to him all those years ago, trying to cushion her from the blow and preventing her future. But she needed that pain to grow into a stronger person. She had told him so then, and she always would.

"I knew Dallas in New York," Jenny confides, her blue eyes serious, "He and I were exclusive, but after a few months he was tired, bored. He only went back to me every once in a while. I thought living off of scribbled love notes on napkins and my makeup on his pillowcase would keep the boy I first met alive, but it didn't. Dallas Winston only lives for himself, and I am not letting my sister go through the pain I did."

She finishes off with an exhale she didn't realize she'd been holding. Then it's too quiet.

Out in the front room, the boys were all sitting silently, listening to every word Jenny uttered in complete awe. Jenny and Dallas had been in New York together. She had lived with him.

"Dude, you're going for her sister?" It's Two-Bit who speaks first, and he isn't upset, just incredulous.

"I-"

The dark haired male can't even respond. He runs a hand through his hair, the grease permeating on his fingertips as he scrunches his hand in the short locks. "It was child's play, man. She knew from the get go-"

"Did she, Dallas?"

The world stopped spinning.

Cherry stood in the doorway to the back hall wearing only a white T-shirt that hung just past mid-thigh, obviously Dallas', her usually-soft eyes now storming. Somehow this makes it even harder for him to look at her, with her cream colored skin exposed to him with that shirt just leaving a possessive thought in his brain: mine. The redhead stomps across the room until she's standing right in front of the chair he's sitting in, eyes positively betrayed. He stands up to be at her level, feeling an odd sensation in his stomach as he sees the murder in her pallid irises.

"Did she know it was child's play?" she repeats, her voice a hiss for only him to hear. "Did you tell her that?"

"Red." He wants to reach out, but he balls his fists at his sides, because he knows she'll hit him if he does touch her. She looks like she can barely stand being near him, and he feels a ripping sensation in his chest as she knots her fingers into fists. When she cracks her knuckles, he replies, "No. I didn't." his voice is hoarse as he finds himself looking over her shoulder into rueful gaze. It's then that he notices her squared jaw and that she's reeled back her arm, fist colliding with between his nose and cheek.

Nobody stops her. Nobody moves as he stumbles back, feeling blood leak from his nose like a faucet.

"You played her like a fool." An unwelcome tear falls from her eyes, and her voice wobbles, "You've-" she heaves, turning away, "I can't even look at you."

There's a weighted pause, because he can't get any words out. The tightening in his chest is unbearable as he looks at her, hunched over, betrayed. It takes a minute before he finds the courage to speak evenly. "Cherry." Dallas reaches out and touches her arm.

She straightens, and his hand falls away.

"Goodbye Dallas."

Later, Steve would recall that he couldn't read the emotion warring Dallas' expression; it was so rare. Darry would call it awakening. Unabashedly, Sodapop called it heartbreak. Ponyboy would quietly agree with his middle brother. Steve and Two-Bit would look dejectedly at the empty spots where their girls should've been, since both Tracey and Marcia had left to take Jenny and Cherry home.

"Buck, I need you to watch out for Dallas. You know I- we can't afford to lose him, not after Johnny."

"Cherry, honey. Please come eat dinner. You haven't touched a plate in days."

"Hey, man. I just wanted to call and see if you were alright. We've been worried about 'cha."

"Maybe this was a blessing in disguise. You need to forget about him, Cher."

"Wait, this is all over a broad?!"

"Sis," there's a tapping on her bedroom door, but she stays where she is, curled up in a sea of fluffy blankets and soiled tissues. She knows it's Jenny standing on the other side of the door, worrying her lip between her teeth as she listens for any indication to verify that her twin is alive. Cherry glances over her shoulder, letting out a weak grunt before turning away from the door. "Can I come in?" her voice is persistent.

Another grunt of disdain barely passes her throat when a head pokes through the door, easing it open. Her sister's hair is piled messily on top of her head in two buns, heavy kohl spirals drawn intricately around her eyes, and her usually-pink lips are stained a deep terra-cotta.

"What?" her voice is broken, croaking and crackled as she lifts her head to glare at her doppelgänger. The duplicate plops unceremoniously on the edge of her bed, turning to take in her sister's appearance. The lipstick still smudged around her lip from almost five days ago sticks out most prominently, and the bruises on her face are still blooming on her jaw and under her eye, but they're stained chartreuse instead of plum like they had been two days before.

"How are you feeling?" Jenny offered her a glass of water, from where she had left it on the floor that morning, and the other redhead took a sip, in order to speak in a non-garbled fashion.

"Pissed."

"As always," Jenny replies, "I know you don't want to talk about it-" The latter gives her sister a death glare, cutting her off quickly.

"You're right, I don't."

"But you need to," Another voice perks up, and a second later, a blond scampers into the room, settling herself into a sitting position with her legs crossed in a pretzel style. Tracey's blond hair hangs crookedly around her face, some strands still dripping water from her recent shower, while the rest is fairly dried and crimped.

A feeling of defeat courses through the eldest redhead as she flops back onto her pillows, clearly giving in to her friends' pleas. "It's just so hard, having him in my life almost all of the time, to not having him at all."

"Oh, please, don't be so dramatic," Jenny scoffs; this earns her a warning look from Tracey, who picks up the conversation gently, "Cherbear."

The defeated redhead raises up on her elbows, eyebrows raised. She hadn't heard that tone in a long time, not since her last conversation with Tracey, just after she had left for Illinois to live with her great-aunt...

"When I left," Tracey begins looking up at the twins, who are both giving her their undivided attention, "It's wasn't just to visit my great-aunt. My parents disowned me because I was pregnant-" her voice cuts off, unshed tears gleaming in her eyes, "with Tim Shepherd's baby."

Stark silence hangs heavily in the room. Both redheads are looking at Tracey Holden as if they had never seen her before. Tracey was with Tim Shepherd? The leader of another Greaser outfit in the East Side, who was never seen with the same girl twice?

"Does Steve know?" Jenny asks, appalled, and promptly yelps when Cherry nudges her in the back with her foot -hard, as she mutters "way to be considerate, Jen" under her breath.

"Not yet," Tracey goes on, voice quietly thwarted, "but I should have told him at the beginning, because then he wouldn't have gone out with me in the first place."

The eldest redhead moves to sit herself on the floor across from the crying girl, reaching out gently to grip her hand "Why-"

There were a lot of different questions that probably needed to be answered, but Tracey settled for this: "I kept my mouth shut because I want to be Steve Randle's girl, and the reason I haven't told him about the baby is probably the reason why Dallas didn't tell you about Jenny."

A dose of silence meets her confession, and Cherry finds herself looking toward her sister; however, Jenny doesn't meet her gaze, as the other redhead's eyes are sloped downward at her hands.

"He didn't tell me about Jenny because he didn't want to ruin the peace we had established." It sounds like a statement and a question. Jenny opens her mouth to say something, but stops at the warning in Tracey's eyes as she mouths: don't say a word. The younger redhead nods silently, knowing that this is for the best, if she wants Cherry to hang out with the gang again.

"I'm not saying you need to forgive Dallas," Tracey continues idly, looking up at her long-time friend, "I'm just saying that you need to understand where he was coming from. He probably thought Jenny would never come back in his life, let alone that she would be your long-lost twin?"

This causes a hysterical chuckle to come from Cherry, wiping at her eyes, "It's so absurd-" It's at that moment that there is a beep from outside, and Jenny and Tracey share a guilty expression. "What?"

"We were going to go to the Curtis' tonight." Jenny is frowning at Tracey, who shrugs helplessly at Marcia's terrible timing, "but if you want to stay in, we totally-"

"No, it's fine, you guys go ahead." Cherry smiles lightly at them.

Tracey looks at Jenny again, before standing, "Okay, but if we go, you're coming with."

"But-" Cherry protests as the two girls lift her to her feet, another beep emanating through the closed windowpane.

"Jenny, go tell Marcia to get in here," Tracey instructs the redhead as she pushes Cherry out of the room and down the hall toward the shower, "we have our work cut out for us tonight."

"What's that supposed to mean?" cries Cherry, but the blonde is already pushing her into the shower, causing the other redhead to laugh as she sprints out the front door.

A/N: Hey guys! As per usual, I'm not sure if I like how this chapter turned out, but I'm pretty content to end on this happy note. Also, as I post this, this fic will be over 20k, which is crazy! This fic has come so far in the last three-ish years it has existed (this fact is also so insane to me, that started writing this when I was a sophomore in high school!) Thank you all for reading and loving this fic as much as I have, and being so patient with the upload schedule; the life of a college student seems a lot more glamorous than it actually is! Summer is coming my way, so hopefully I will gain the inspiration to upload more and finish this story sooner rather than later. I love you all, thank you for your continuous support!

Much love, Jordan.