Chapter Text
Chapter One
I always thought the worst part of coming home would be leaving the guys behind.
Turns out, it was everything waiting for me instead.
Steve was asleep when I stood up from the plastic chair by his bed, his chest rising and falling under a stiff white sheet that smelled like antiseptic and something sharp I couldn’t name. Hospitals all smelled the same; Saigon, Da Nang, and now this one. Clean and wrong. His leg was wrapped from thigh to ankle, the metal frame propped up to keep it elevated. He’d cracked a joke earlier about finally getting out of KP duty, but the morphine had dragged him under not long after.
I leaned down anyway. “Hey,” I said quietly, like he could hear me wherever he’d gone. “They say I'm heading out. Medical transport. Lucky stiff.”
My arm throbbed in its sling, a deep ache that felt older than the wound itself. The bullet had gone clean through lucky, the doc said, like luck had anything to do with it. Lucky we were alive. Lucky the chopper made it in time. Lucky it wasn’t worse. Lucky it was just a numb hand that was no good holding a gun anymore.
Lucky everybody else was dead.
They didn’t say that part out loud.
Steve’s face was thinner than when we’d landed, beard dark and patchy, like the jungle had taken bites out of him. We’d both been kids when we got drafted; him pretending he didn’t care, me pretending it was all some big adventure. Now we looked like men who’d been hollowed out and patched together wrong. The calendar had only passed a year.
“I’ll see you in Tulsa,” I told him. “As soon as they let you go.”
I squeezed his hand once with my good hand, then straightened and walked out before my throat could close up on me.
The paperwork went fast after that. Too fast. An honorable discharge stamped and signed because of injuries and things no one wanted to talk about too loudly. They didn’t give me a uniform to come home in. Just my duffel, my sling, and a ticket with my name spelled wrong.
No band. No flags. No cheers.
I didn’t care. I was going home.
The plane ride felt longer than the one that had taken me over there. Every mile closer to Oklahoma made my chest feel tighter, like I was bracing for something I couldn’t see yet. I told myself it was just nerves. Jet lag. Survivor stuff.
I thought about Pony the whole time.
I pictured him sprawled across the couch with a book, hair too long again, probably taller now. He’d be mad I missed his birthday. He’d try not to show it, but I’d know. Darry would stand in the doorway with his arms crossed, pretending he wasn’t relieved out of his mind.
The letters had slowed down. Pony’s had stopped altogether. But Darry wrote...short, careful updates. Everyone busy. Everyone fine. I figured Pony had finally discovered girls or friends or something else that mattered more than writing his big brother in a jungle halfway across the world.
I told myself that over and over.
The Oklahoma City airport was smaller than I remembered, with low ceilings and dull lights. Darry was easy to spot - too tall, too stiff, hands shoved in his jacket pockets like he didn’t know what to do with them. For a second, neither of us moved. Then he crossed the distance in three long strides and pulled me into a hug so tight my shoulder screamed.
“You’re home,” he said into my hair, voice rough.
“Yeah,” I breathed. “Yeah, I am.”
He stepped back and looked me over, eyes catching on the sling, the weight I’d lost. His jaw tightened. “You look-”
“Alive,” I said, grinning. “That’s the important part.”
He didn’t smile back. Not really.
I waited for it, for Pony to come barreling in late, yelling my name, tackling me into another injury. I scanned the terminal, heart beating faster with every second.
“Where’s Pony?” I asked.
Darry hesitated.
It was just a pause. Barely anything. But it landed heavy in my gut.
“He...” Darry cleared his throat. “He couldn’t come.”
“Oh.” I nodded, forcing a shrug. “School, right? Or...”
“Something like that.”
We walked out to the truck in silence. Somehow, Darry kept the thing running even without me or Steve tinkering with it. I'd seen tanks blown to bits that looked in better shape than our old jalopy. But seeing it made me smile. It was like seeing a piece of home.
The sky was gray, flat, like it couldn’t decide what it wanted to be.
I kept glancing around, half-expecting Pony to pop out from behind a pillar, laughing like it was all some big joke.
He didn’t.
The drive toward Tulsa stretched out, the road familiar and wrong all at once. The truck eating up the miles none to quietly as if complaining on having to drive one way then back.
Darry gripped the steering wheel like it was the only thing keeping him together. I tried to ask once but he'd turn it back to me. So, I talked. I filled the space. About Steve, about the medics, about how the food over there tasted like cardboard, about how I could use chopsticks now cause I got tired of using my hands. Things I had written in my letters. Anything to keep the silence away.
Darry answered when he had to.
We crossed the city limits sign, and that’s when he finally spoke without me prompting him.
“Soda,” he said quietly.
Something in his tone made my stomach drop.
“He’s sick.”
I turned to him. “What? Who?” ...I knew.
“Pony. He’s been sick for a while.”
The world narrowed to the sound of tires on pavement.
“How sick?” I asked.
Darry swallowed. “Cancer.”
The word didn’t make sense. It floated there, detached from everything I knew about my little brother. “You mean...like-”
“He’s been in treatment since the spring,” Darry said. “It got worse over the summer.”
The summer I spent trying not to die.
“You didn’t tell me,” I said. My voice sounded far away.
“You were in a war.”
“You didn't tell me!” I snapped, then immediately hated myself.
Darry’s knuckles were white. “We didn’t want to distract you. And the mail...half of it never made it. We thought...”
Thought I’d be spared?
We pulled into the hospital parking lot instead of turning toward home without me saying a thing. I didn’t question it. I just got out of the car, heart pounding so hard it hurt worse than my shoulder.
Two-Bit was in the hallway, leaning against the wall with a paper cup of coffee. He looked older, too. Tired in a way jokes couldn’t cover.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said softly. “You made it back.”
"We'll party later," He clapped me on the good shoulder, then stepped aside. “He’s been askin’ about you.”
My feet carried me the rest of the way.
Pony was sitting up in bed.
For a second, I didn’t recognize him.
His hair was gone, completely gone, and his skin was pale, almost translucent under the harsh lights. But his eyes were the same. Too big for his face. Bright, even now.
Alive.
“Soda?” he said, voice thin but real.
I crossed the room in three steps and even with my damned shoulder screaming, I had him in my arms. I laughed and cried at the same time, pressing my forehead against the top of him hairless head.
“Hey, buddy,” I whispered. “I’m home.”
He smiled, small, tired, but unmistakably Ponyboy Curtis.
And for the first time since Vietnam, I knew exactly how close I’d come to losing everything that mattered.