Chapter Text
Three days passed.
Ace and Steve stayed at the Curtis house with the brothers. They didn’t even discuss it, they just knew they couldn’t leave Sodapop and Ponyboy alone. None of them really knew what to do about Darrel, or how to treat him. It was like having a ghost. But a very polite ghost who tried to stay out of the way.
To no one’s surprise, Ponyboy stayed out of the house. Instead of coming home after school, he’d go to the lot or the basketball court with Johnny. Ace made them both carry blades, just in case anyone from Darry’s work came after them.
Soda had all but thrown himself into fixing things. He worked long hours, taking double shifts almost every day. When he was home, he sat with Darrel and tried to jog his memory. When it didn’t work, his disappointment fell like a storm cloud over the house.
Since he didn’t have anything to do during the day, Darrel wandered around the house.
He looked at the photos on the walls and through the cabinets. Ace knew what he was doing, trying to find the one thing that would spark his mind and bring their Darry back. It was hard to watch him sometimes. In theory, it was the same man who used to throw her onto the roof to fetch basketballs when they got stuck. But there was a vacancy in his eyes, the familiar warmth was missing. He looked at her and felt nothing.
Yet, Ace figured she was best for the job of babysitting the ghost.
Dally and Steve would get too angry and Two-Bit...well she didn’t know what he would do. So, she stayed with him.
On the second day, Soda and Steve were off at work, Two-Bit had dragged Ponyboy and Johnny to the movies. She knew they would all be gone for a while.
There had been something on Ace’s mind, an idea that might work. With Darrel occupied in the living room, she snuck into Soda and Pony’s room and dug through their closet. It smelled like teenage boy, cigarettes, sweat, and some kind of musk. When Darry came back, she’d tell him to make the boys clean out their room.
Sitting in the back corner was a wood box with Pony’s initials on the top.
Ace smiled and lifted it up, holding it on her hip as she walked into the living room. Darrel was in his chair, just flicking through yesterday’s newspaper. Ace set the box on the floor in front of him and sat down beside it. “Come here,” she demanded.
To her surprise, Darrel did as he was told. Just another sign that he wasn’t her Darry. Darry would have asked why and complained before doing as she asked. He sat down across from her. “What’s that?”
Ace answered by pulling the lid off. The box was deep, filled to the brim with drawings. Some were on note cards, torn sheets of paper, or napkins, but the majority were on the thick pages of the sketchbook Ponyboy treasured. Half of them had tape folded over their edges where Ponyboy had hung them up before replacing them with new drawings.
“These are Pony’s,” Ace told him. “He’s been drawin’ longer than talking. Every few months, your folks would look through this box and pick some new ones to hang up.” She nodded to a framed pencil sketch beside the television. “Darry kept doing it after they died.”
She pulled out her favorite drawing, when her birthday came around, she was gonna ask Pony if she could have it. The page depicted her and Steve smoking cigarettes, sitting on the hood of a car. They looked tuff as hell with half smiles and glints in their eyes.
Darrel took a deep breath. With a gentle hand, he reached in the box and took out a drawing. He held it as though it was the fresh wings of a butterfly. It was his face that looked back at him, his brow furrowed in concentration, shoulders hunched in as he looked at something on the kitchen table. Quick lines of a pencil gave the impression of a setting sun out the window.
“He’s amazing,” Darrel breathed. Ace smiled. He set the drawing aside and found another. The next image was of Sodapop and Two-Bit doing cartwheels in the middle of the street.
“They got arrested doing that,” Ace told him. Darrel gave her a wide eyed look. She waved him off, “Don’t worry, they were fine. But it was real fuckin’ funny.” Darrel smirked at the imagined antics.
Ace leaned back on her arms. “I dunno if it’ll help you remember, but I thought you should see ‘em. Sometimes I think they’re more real than photos.” In his pen strokes, Ponyboy captured moments a camera never could: Dally’s scowl, Soda mid buck on a bronco, Johnny hiding queen in his sock.
Captured in soft curves and harsh angles was how Ponyboy saw the world. If there was one thing Darry was forever trying to understand, it was his little brother’s mind.
Ace left Darrel on the floor, moving to the kitchen to grab a piece of cake. Every so often, she’d look in on him. His eyes were wide as he looked at image after image of a life that wasn’t his. She couldn’t imagine what that felt like.
He wasn’t Darry yet, but Ace could almost see him clawing his way back to them.
When he’d finished looking at every single one, he said, “There aren’t many of me, of Darry, I mean.”
Ace nodded, “Darry ain’t been around much since their folks died. And he and Ponyboy argue a lot.” Seeing him start to frown, Ace added, “They both gotta get their heads out of their asses and talk to each other. But that’ll happen when pigs fly.”
Darrel chuckled.
On the third day, there was a black car parked up the road.
It had been there since the first, but no one noticed it until then.
That night, they started drawing all the curtains closed, locking the front door, and taking the long way around the block to avoid it. No one came to the door. No one left the car. But they all knew someone was keeping an eye on them and had been for a while.
They were getting antsy. Something was going to happen soon, they just didn’t know what.
Ponyboy couldn’t sleep.
He laid beside Sodapop in their bed, just staring up at the ceiling. Normally, he found sleep easy beside his big brother. Not so much since they lost Darry. But he wasn’t really lost, he was there, he was so close, but it wasn’t him.
Ponyboy looked over at Soda. He was fast asleep on his back, head tipped towards the window.
As quietly as he could, Ponyboy crept out of bed. Soda was a deep sleeper when it came to everything but Ponyboy. If Pony was distressed, it would wake Soda in an instant. Tonight, Pony didn’t want to disturb him, none of them had had very restful sleep in a while and Soda was working twice as hard as usual.
Ponyboy crept into the hallway. The lights were all off, a soft humming sound coming from the refrigerator. He could hear Johnny snoring softly on the couch. With light feet, he padded down the hallway to Darry’s bedroom.
Normally, Darry slept with the door closed, now it was open. It was just another thing to add to the list of unsettling things about this new version of Darry. There was a twisting feeling in Ponyboy’s gut. It was the same feeling he got when a soc car started tailing him.
Ponyboy peered around the doorway like a character in one of Two-Bit’s cartoons.
He saw Darry’s form on the bed. It still looked like him. He was still strong and tall and had his mom’s green eyes. It was strange to him how something could look the same on the outside but be so completely different on the inside. Like a marker with the wrong color cap.
Seeing that Darry was still sound asleep, Ponyboy entered the bedroom.
The times he sought Darry’s comfort were few and far between. Their relationship had been strained for a while and Pony was much more comfortable reaching out to Sodapop. But these past few days, he’d felt so much like a child. Like the child that used to run crying to Darry when Steve picked on him or would ask his big brothers to check for monsters even though his parents looked first.
When Pony was a toddler, he thought Darry was the greatest person in the world. There were so many childish scribbles of the two of them together and photos of Ponyboy holding Darry’s hand. There were photos too, of Ponyboy on Darry’s shoulders or Darry spraying Pony with the garden hose, both of them laughing.
That little boy had never really left Pony. He’d never stopped looking up to Darry, even when the sea got rocky between them.
So Ponyboy walked over and sat on the edge of the bed. He wanted to curl up in Darry’s arms, for his big brother to hug him and tell him that he would fix everything. He wanted the Superman who would save him from socs and make him pancakes after track meets.
Darry shifted in his sleep, Pony got up immediately, starting to move away. But Darry lifted his head. No, Darrel , not Darry. Darrel jumped, seeing a figure at the end of the bed. Darry was used to people coming into his room. Darrel wasn’t.
“Sorry,” Pony said softly.
He moved away, but Darrel stopped him with a hand extended to him, “Hey, it’s okay.” His tone was too gentle, lacking the gruffness Darry always had. “You alright?”
It wasn’t Darry asking, but it was Darry’s voice. In the darkness, he could pretend it really was his brother. Ponyboy started crying, turning his face away. If he didn’t cry in front of Darry, he definitely wasn’t going to cry in front of Darrel.
“Woah,” Darrel sounded surprised. He scooted forward and put an awkward hand on Pony’s back. He wasn’t Darry but…
Ponyboy threw himself into Darrel’s chest, hugging him tight around the middle. He clung to his brother.
When he was born, Darry was the first one to hold him after his parents. Darry begrudgingly went to his track and cross country meets, but cheered loud when he finished. When Ponyboy stopped sleeping at night, it was his idea to have Soda keep him company. Darry was the one who healed him after fights and rumbles. Darry always got watermelons in the summer and made sure there was always some left for him.
When Ponyboy collided into Darrel’s chest, it knocked something free inside him, like a sharp prod to a jenga tower.
At first it was just flashes of memory after memory. Births, deaths, snippets of songs, a laugh.
Then it was over. It wasn’t like a crashing wave of memories. It wasn’t a roar or an overwhelming cascade. It was like turning a light on at dusk, illuminating what you hadn’t known had gotten dark.
One moment it was Darrel holding onto Ponyboy, the next it was…
Neither of them. Or both of them?
Darry was there, but he remembered everything that came before. Even while he still held a crying Ponyboy in his arms, he knew what happened. He loved his brother and his family so fiercely that he’d cut straight through severance. He’d torn down the wall holding him and Darrel apart. They were one person now.
Darry pulled back and looked into his brother’s face. Ponyboy’s face was shiny with tears. “It’s me, baby,” Darry told him softly, but the edge in his voice was there, the gravel of the weight on his back. “I don’t know how but it’s me.”
Ponyboy’s eyes widened. He started to tremble slightly, “Are you sure? How-How do you know?”
Darry smiled, “Because I remember that you still owe me a dollar from when you were seven.”
“Darry!” Ponyboy’s voice was loud enough to wake everyone in the house as he all but tackled Darry into the bed. He babbled, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I don’t hate you. I didn’t mean it, I swear, I-”
Darry shushed him, “I know, kiddo.” He rocked Pony in his arms like he was a child all over again.
Sodapop burst into the room, out of breath. Darry smiled at him, “Hey, Pepsi.”
Soda’s eyes were as big as saucers. He ran at full force, jumping and smashing his brothers into the bed. But none of them cared as they wrapped their arms around each other. They were crying tears of relief, all talking over each other with apologies and demands to never scare them like that again.
When the tears finally subsided, Darry had one brother tucked against each side. Soda’s grip on Darry’s shirt was tight, stretching the fabric until it was taught. Ponyboy was practically a barnacle to his skin. And knowing his kid brother, he would stay that way until he knew Darry wasn’t going anywhere again.
“Is it really over?” Soda asked once Pony’s breathing had lulled to the even keel of sleep.
Darry kissed his hair, “Almost.” That was enough reassurance for Soda.
When the rest of the gang found out the next morning, Darry was tackled straight to the floor. Soda and Ponyboy stood back with grins as Darry was loudly berated in five overlapping voices. When he was finally able to extricate himself from the pile of limbs, he looked at them all with a fond smile, “Glad to be back.”
“But what happens now?” Johnny asked. Everyone turned to look at him. “I mean, they came for you before. What if they do it again?”
Darry nodded, he’d come up with a plan while he laid wide awake, squished by his brothers. They could come back with guns. Plus, he recalled the implication that the house had been bugged. Darry smiled at Ponyboy, “Hey, Einstein, can you take something down for me?”
Pony cocked his head to the side like a puppy in confusion. God, Darry loved that kid.
Three hours later, the house was a wreck.
The boys and Ace had gone through the entire house, tearing out small metal devices they found planted behind pictures and in lights, the underside of tables and top of shelves. The pile of bugs was on the front porch. Every time one of them placed one outside, they gave a cheerful wave or blew a kiss to the black car at the end of the road.
During the chaos, Ponyboy and Darry sat at the kitchen table.
Darry started from the beginning, when he’d received the letter, when he’d undergone severance and what the process had been. From there, he went on to describe the exact work they were having him do, the break room, and the manipulation he went through. Though Ponyboy kept his eyes fixed on the page the entire time, his posture tensed when Darry described the most awful parts of his experience.
If Darry had had his way, none of them would ever have known. But Ponyboy was a much better writer. Darry gave him as much information as he could, letting Pony spin the words into a picture that would show anyone that severance was not to be trusted.
When the whole story was on that page, Ponyboy got up and hugged Darry tight. It was an apology, it was thanks, it was everything they hadn’t been able to say out loud. Darry heard it anyway.
In the following days, Pony made copies of the story. Everyone in the gang got one to hide someplace safe. They gave a copy to Tim Shepard and the Brumley boys and Buck Merrill. The pages were to remain hidden unless something happened to Darry or his brothers, then they would be sent to any news publication, government official, or lawyer they could think of.
It was leverage.
Some nights, Darry thought about doing it anyway. He knew so many other people’s lives were being controlled in ways they didn’t understand, maybe never would. But he never did. His family came first, he wouldn’t put them in the public eye, make them the front and center of the story. All they needed was to be safe from Ms. Andrews and her team.
After two weeks, the black car disappeared. They didn’t come back.
Darry did as Soda suggested when he first floated the idea of quitting. He worked at the DX. Despite the decrease in pay, Darry felt his heart lighten. He got to see Soda all the time, Ponyboy and Johnny would come in after school or at lunch. He wasn’t living two lives anymore, just one long one.
It wasn’t easy.
There were nights where he went to bed with an empty stomach. Every time he saw how empty their pantry was, he was filled with a pang of regret. Maybe he could have stuck it out. But then Sodapop would shove past him, scrambling to button his shirt and tie his shoes at the same time. And Two-Bit would holler for Ponyboy to hurry up and the feeling would go away.
He knew he wasn’t enough, not by a long shot. But when he glanced at the photo of his parents on their wedding day, he thought they’d be proud of him now.