Chapter Text
“My brother had died that same year and I was ready to get out of the house because we had always shared the same room. All of a sudden, after eighteen years-whoom-he's not there no more. I was missing him too much. I was breaking ties with a lot of friends, because when I saw them coming down the block, I was expecting to see my brother with them. So it was good for me to leave home when I did. I didn't think in terms of what I did to my mother. She had just lost one son, and here's another one going off to some stupid war. Much later, after I thought about it, I had the chance to apologize. But she said she understood. That it was okay.”
-Nam: The Vietnam War in the Words of the Men and Women who Fought There by Mark Baker (Page 8)
September 1970
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Ace hadn't seen Steve in nearly a week. It wasn't uncommon for her. After all, he lived with his dad half the time and had a tendency to run around town with some shady hoods. It had never worried her before, but she'd seen the look in his eyes last week. The one that told her the next time she saw him was either going to be behind bars at the county jail, beaten all to hell, or with broken knuckles and missing teeth. Any way you ran the numbers, the next time she saw him wasn't going to be pretty. It was hardly going to be civil.
With the news they’d gotten, Ace couldn’t say she was surprised that Steve was missing. Soda had been drafted. Something that Ace still refused to come to terms with. This happy go lucky kid that she'd known since they were in kindergarten was going to fight in a war half way across the world. Hadn't they already lost enough? Hadn't God given them enough? Between losing the Curtis parents, then Johnny and Dally and everything else, they deserved some sort of break. At least for a little while.
It seemed the big man in the sky had other plans for the lot of them.
Ace had looked in all of his usual hang outs. The DX, Lucky's mechanic shop where he worked under the table, Tim Shepherds, Buck's, the shitty dive bar on the corner of 57th and Bookman. He wasn't anywhere and no one had seen him. Under normal circumstances, this wouldn't have worried her. But with the way he'd run out after Darry had told them about Soda, she had plenty of reason to be worried.
Ace hadn't known how to react when Darry had told them. Soda had been gone, staying with Ponyboy in his dorm room for the weekend, apparently trying to find a good time to tell the kid. So Darry had told Ace, Steve, and Two-Bit. Steve had run out right away, Two-Bit had gone after him but Ace had frozen. Her mouth wide open and her limbs weighted down with lead. She'd felt dead on her feet and would have been on the ground if not for Darry pulling her into his tree trunk arms.
"This is real?" She'd asked, unsure if he'd heard her as she mumbled into his chest. He'd been shaking, face paler than the day in the hospital when Soda had gone off the rails.
"Yeah Ace kid. I wish it wasn't." She half expected him to start screaming, but they'd just stood in the living room, holding each other. Ace didn’t even want to think about how Ponyboy had probably reacted.
Ace had done everything she could think of to get it out of her mind. She’d gone down to the Double Deuce and danced until she could hardly see her feet anymore. She took stray shots of whiskey and fell asleep in Rosie’s bedroom in the back. She’d thrown herself into her job at the factory. She’d even tried picking a fight at Buck’s with another greaser girl, just to feel something other than this crushing devastation. It was like a piece of her was being ripped away and she’d take blood crusted under her nails and a swollen face over this untethered exhaustion any day.
Now Ace was sitting at the Curtis dinner table, picking around a plate of green beans and chicken. Something Darry had made by the look of it. Soda was quiet in his own chair. He shipped out in less than a week. They had less than a week left with him. Ace couldn't think too hard about it or the unfairness of it all would hit her. She had to lock it away in the same part of her brain that was reserved for Dallas and Johnny and everything else she’d lost. She couldn’t lose him too, it was something she had realized with so much certainty that it scared her.
Ace wished one of them would say something. The house felt empty with Ponyboy gone for college, Steve somewhere around town, and Soda's impending doom weighing over them.
"You put in your two weeks at the DX?" Darry asks suddenly, the exhaustion lines prominent in his face.
"Yeah, I did that a week ago Dar." They were once again reminded of Soda's impending fate. Why hadn't God protected them? If there was anything Ace had learned, it was that God had no mercy for kids on her side of town.
"Everything okay at work Ace?" Darry asked and her head snapped up. She worked a factory job right now. Putting pins in boxes for pharmaceuticals. The whole day to day job felt like bullshit honestly.
"Fine." She answers shortly, not wanting to talk about the way that her fingerprints are being rubbed off her fingers or the way that the other girls whisper behind her back. Thankfully dinner ends without much fanfare and they get onto the dishes.
The screen door slams and before Darry can start yelling at whoever slammed it, Steve walks into the kitchen with a crooked smile and a piece of paper. Ace scans him immediately. His nose looks broken and he's got a nice shiner on his cheek bone but other than that, he looks okay.
"Where the fuck have you been?" She asks, unable to keep the curse from rolling off her tongue.
"I had to cover your shifts at the DX and get Peter to help out. You know Peter? That guy's an idiot." Soda says.
"You know I went all around town looking for you?" He grins and that alone makes her nervous. Whenever she raised her voice at Steve, it just meant they were bound to get in a fight but he's staring at her grinning and holding out that piece of paper like it's solid gold.
"You wasted your time lookin' for me." He says. "You wouldn't have found me."
"What?" Ace asks, confused now.
"I went to Oklahoma city."
"What the hell is in Oklahoma city?"
"Enlistment office." He says shortly and Ace feels her stomach drop out. Darry grabs the piece of paper out of his hand, eyes widening as he reads.
"You enlisted?" He looks up from the paper. "Voluntarily?"
"Yep." Steve says, pushing past her to grab whatever's left from dinner.
"Stevie..." Soda, face broken in half looking at a loss for words. "Why would you enlist?"
"I couldn't leave you all alone out there in the jungle." He says and Ace feels her stomach twinge in something like anger. Couldn't leave Soda alone? Did he realize that he was leaving her alone?
"Take it back." She says. "Un-do it. You can't go Steve."
"No." He says, that glint of stubbornness in his eye. "Even if I wanted to, they won't let me back out now." She feels a thrum of anger drum in time with her heartbeat. “I even joined the army so I could ship out with ya buddy.” He looks proud of himself and Ace hates it. This isn’t something he should be proud of.
"Steve..." Soda says again, there are tears in his eyes, he's clearly pleading. "You can't buddy... You shouldn't feel like you have to come with me."
"Well I couldn't sit on my ass and wait for you to get your head blown off, could I?"
"You can't get your head blown off either!" Soda shoots back, watery pupils blown wide with fear. Ace feels her body go boneless, sinking into the chair as she tries to process what the hell is even happening. Her brother and her best friend in a war zone. How was she supposed to deal with this? Her hands are shaking and she's frozen to the chair but there is that familiar current of energy that burns just underneath her skin.
"I couldn't leave you alone!" Ace jumps up at that, her clenched fist slamming right into Steve's jaw. The energy that thrummed through her veins finally finding a direction.
"You selfish fucking asshole!" She screams, knocking him to the ground and bringing another fist back. "You're just gonna leave!" Her fist hits him in the temple. Then her swings are unmeasurable. She can't tell the difference as she swings. He lets out a cry of pain but makes no move to stop her or push her off. "Fight back you idiot! Fight back soldier boy!" She beats on his chest and head, not caring about a concussion, not caring about brain damage. Maybe they'd actually keep him stateside if she beat him up bad enough. Blood pumps through her veins as her eyes cloud over in fury.
"Ace stop!" Someone yells but she doesn't. This is what he deserves, what he gets for leaving her.
"This is half the hell they're gonna give you in Vietnam you motherfuckin' pussy!" She feels his skin split underneath her knuckles and she pulls back to hit him again when someone grabs her up by the arms. Hands underneath her armpits and forcing her to their chest. “Fuck!” She keeps fighting, her arms swinging as guttural screams tear out of her throat. She lands one good punch on whoever has grabbed her.
“Ace! Relax!” She's still fighting, jerking around as her arms are pinned to her sides and her face is forced into someone’s chest. “Ace… come on baby…”
“No!” She screams. “Fuck you Steve! You disappear for a week and now you tell me you enlist?” Her voice is raw with emotion and stray tears are mixing with the sweat. “You ain’t a hero! You’re a fuckin’ coward!”
“Ace relax.” She’s melting into what feels like Darry's arms.
“I’m mad at you!” She sees a flash of Steve and his blood covered shirt front and Ace sees red again. She jerks hard enough that she surprises Darry and he manages to lose his grip. She gets her fist free and manages another punch, spitting straight onto Steve's shirt.
“My nose! Ace!” Steve yells, his shirtfront now covered in her spit and his blood. “Darry grab her!”
“Fuck you!” She screams again and Darry manages to get his arms back around her.
“Ace!” he grunts. “Just relax baby, you’re workin’ yourself up.” She begins to exhaust herself, not quite crying but still freaking out nonetheless.
“He can’t…” she pants. “They can’t leave… me…”
“They aren’t leavin’ ya kid.” She thinks it’s funny that Darry’s calling her kid when she’s nearly nineteen. Though she figured she’d always be a kid to Darry. “They just gotta go away for a while, but you still got me and the gang.” Ace could have laughed at him if she wasn’t breathing so hard. Gang? What gang? Ponyboy gone at college, Johnny and Dally in the ground, and the rest of them shipping off to Vietnam? They were going to have no one left!
“That son… of a… son of a bitch…”
“Yeah, I know.” He’s pulled her in tight, pinning her arms and rubbing soothing circles on her back. “I’m mad at him too, kid.” She doesn’t say anything to that, just lets out another pained cry. She’s lucky he’s being so kind to her about this. Normally Darry would have just told anyone to tough it out but he’s always been different with her. He slowly moves her to the couch. "You gonna be okay if I let ya go kid?" She nods, her head dropping against him. His arms loosen around her and she looks up, wiping at her face and trying to make some sense of everything. She's surprised to find an empty room surrounding her.
"Where'd they go?" She asks.
"Bathroom, you split his eyebrow right open and head wounds bleed a whole heck of a lot."
"Oh..." She feels confused and stupid, like she'd just finished running a race or something.
"Yeah, you got one hell of a right hook."
"I wasn't trying to hurt him." She says, even though it's a lie.
"Yes, you were." Darry grins a little bit and she feels her head drop in shame.
“Yeah,” she snorts. “I’m gonna kick the shit outta him one of these days.”
“Fair enough. He deserves every bit of hell he gets from you for this… That was a stupid thing to do, but you know he still has to go, right?"
"Yeah, doesn't mean I have to be happy about it."
"Hey and I ain't happy either, but we'll get through it, okay?"
"Okay." With that, Steve and Soda come back out of the bathroom.
"Well we don't call you fuckin' Ace for nothing." Steve says, a bandage still pressed to his eyebrow.
"You let me beat the shit outta you." She says dumbly, feeling like her brain is going through mud.
"Nothin' I didn't deserve, huh?" She can't help but to grin.
"Yeah, I’m still mad at you… you son of a bitch.”
"You have every right to be... but I couldn't leave Soda. Not with this." Steve says, that proud look still shining in his eyes. Ace couldn’t help but to hate him at that moment. She hated him for this, more than she’d hated anyone before. More than she hated her Momma choosing drugs, more than she hated Dallas for running in front of that train, and more than she hated the government for putting them in this fucking situation because Steve had chosen this. The dumb son of a bitch.
She doesn’t say the next thing, that by not leaving Soda alone, he’s definitely leaving her alone. She just lets the anger bubble up in her skin as she looks at his bruised face, wishing she could have gotten a couple more hits in before Darry peeled her off. She was going to be all alone again, the thought registers deep in her gut. She had forgotten life before her brother Steve. She’d grown up with him, he’d protected her, always been there, and now he was going to be gone.
Darry was right about one thing. Steve deserved every bit of hell he got from her.
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The day they shipped out was probably one of the worst days of her life. Not that she would ever let it show on her face. She was so angry, madder than she ever could be. But there was something grounding about Darry’s hand on her back and Soda’s steady stream of crack ups that made her feel so at home. Not that it would matter, home was going to be ripped away from her as soon as that plane took off.
“You okay?” Soda asked her quietly.
“Shut up.” He was lucky she didn’t scream at him right there in the airport. Of course she wasn’t okay. They were walking into the airport where she might say goodbye to her family for a year… maybe forever. But Ace pushed those thoughts away. She couldn’t afford to think like that.
The kid was having a rough go of it. Ponyboy had come home for the weekend just to say goodbye and Ace could tell it was going to be a long day for him. He’d been crying this morning, that much was evident by the redness of his eyes and it didn’t really look like he was seeing any of them. Ace didn’t want to cry too, she didn’t want to freak him out more than he probably already was. So she’d made the jokes with Steve and Soda on the way here and put her arm around Ponyboy's shoulder and made fun of his hair like she would usually do. It wasn’t that hard as long as she was pretending that nothing bad was actually happening.
Soda was practically skipping by the time they got to the gate. He was smiling too, but Ace could tell it was all an act. He had that familiar pull at the corner of his eyes. Like all those times when he was worried about paying the mortgage but he couldn’t let Ponyboy worry. He was protecting them. And even though Ace wished he wouldn’t, she was glad for the sense of normalcy that it brought. Soda would always protect their feelings, he’d been doing it since they were in grade school.
“Darry…” He started, probably guessing that Darry was the one that was going to worry the most. “I’m gonna be fine, so you don’t need to worry yourself into an early grave.” Darry let out a sigh, a half smile almost painting his face.
“It’s my job to worry, I ain’t gonna stop, especially now.”
“I’ll be fine.” He protested, sounding like a little kid.
“You better be.” Darry said, sounding more serious than Ace had heard him since Ponyboy moved out. “Don’t get it into your head that any of us could make it without you little brother. I’m serious, don’t be a hero, just be you.”
“You sayin’ I ain’t a hero?”
“I don’t need a medal of honor winner, I just need my kid brother back in one piece.” Soda nodded, sensing he wasn’t going to let it go. Instead, he just let Darry pull him into a bear hug, the two mumbling words that Ace didn’t catch. Instead, she rubbed Ponyboy’s shoulder while the kid stared at the floor. He looked pale, like he was going to pass out or something.
“Ponyboy…” She trailed off, unsure of what she could say to make it better. She was feeling the same way about Steve, wasn’t she? No. That was different, Steve had a choice. “He’s gonna be okay kid.” Before she could even think about what to say next, Soda was barreling into her. He was a full head taller than her now, broader too but everything about them still felt right.
“I’m gonna miss you Ace. I’m glad you came.”
Ace laughed wetly. “And you miss you leaving? I couldn’t do that.”
He pulls her in tighter hot breath in her ear. “I couldn’t have made it this far without ya.”
“You can say that again.” She grumbles.
“Please don’t be too mad at Steve for this one, okay? He was only trying to help me.”
“He hurt me.” She says, feeling like a kid. “I can’t take both of you leavin’ me.”
“We ain’t leavin’ ya, just goin’ away for a little bit. ‘Sides, you’re the toughest girl I know, you don’t need me or Steve to be there for ya.”
“Sure helps though.” She mumbles into his shoulder, wondering faintly when she would see him next.
“We’ll always be tethered. One don’t exist without the other. Souls of the same stardust or whatever shit your Gram used to say, right?”
“Right.” She confirms, squeezing him one last time before letting him go. “I’ll be fine here.” She reassures, not wanting to say the rest. The part about how she’d probably get restless and get into some fights before she was ever okay with this. He gives her shoulder one last squeeze before moving on to his baby brother.
Then Steve is standing in front of her, his arms open and his signature cocksure grin on his face. His face is still pretty messed up from last week. He’s got a split lip, a black eye, and three stitches in his eyebrow. She takes a step forward, putting her arms up and he flinches a little bit.
“What?” She says, grinning a little.
“The hell you mean what? Weren’t you the one who kicked the shit outta me last week? Figured you were goin’ in for round two.”
“Nah, you look ugly enough already.”
“Hey!” He pulls her in for a hug then and Ace can almost pretend it's normal. That maybe this is a vacation and not a tour in a war that has no business taking her brothers from her. Not that they’d ever gone on vacation in her life.
“You gonna tell all the other soldiers that your little sister was the one that beat you up?” She asks, a smile playing on her lips.
“Hell no, they’ll think I’m a pussy.”
“You already are a pussy.” She says and all the smiles are gone then.
“I gotta protect him, Ace. It’s all I know how to do.” He mutters into her hair, sounding stiff.
“You could always protect me.” She says, sounding stupid and little.
He cuffs the back of her head. “You don’t need me to protect you, never have. You’re too damn tuff.” He rubs her head a little bit as she huffs indignantly. “I’m gonna be okay Ace. I promise.”
“You can’t make a promise like that asshole.” She mutters into his chest.
“I can and I did. I’m gonna try my damndest to keep it.”
“You better, otherwise I really am going to beat you up.”