It takes a lot for a man's spirit to die.
It didn't happen the day everyone assumed it did. The day he stood in front of his parents' coffins. He'd stayed after the burial, managed to convince the pastor to give him a moment alone with these holes in the ground that were supposed to hold the entire first twenty years of his life. Icy rain was starting to drizzle by the time the final prayer was spoken, and Darry had shoved his keys into Sodapop's unexpecting hands as soon as the small gathering whispered an "amen." Told him to take Ponyboy to the truck, they'd freeze to death standing out here getting wet. Soda had known better than to point out that Darry was also standing outside, without a jacket nonetheless. Pony couldn't stop long crying enough to notice.
Their family and friends and family friends followed after the two brothers, all of them just as intent on getting out of the cold. Darry stood alone, looking down at the coffins. They hadn't been covered with dirt yet, but stray flowers and clumps of grass were scattered across the wood. There had been bouquets of flowers at the church, but their colors blended together and the scent was so sickeningly sweet that Darry felt dizzy sitting ten feet away from them. Those were rental bouquets, no doubt returned to the florist as soon as the church was cleared. He was glad for it. His mother had preferred sunflowers and the lavender that bloomed in her garden each year, not the stark white lilies decorating the altar.
Not that it mattered very much now. All flowers die. Even when you don't want them to. Just like all humans die. Even if their spirits die before they do.
Something inside of him cracked that afternoon, and everyone knew it without wanting to say it. No one caught the tear that slid down his cheek, mingling with the rain dripping from his hair. They didn't have to. This kind of thing would do even the strongest man in, and Darry's strength certainly rivaled other people's.
However, that wasn't the day his spirit died.
Another piece of it broke the day he got a letter from Social Services, delivered personally by their mail carrier who happened to be walking by when Darry got off work. Darry had expected some type of information regarding his now-custody of his brothers, but none of them had anticipated the letter's harsh words, the sudden looming threat of being separated hanging over them like the dark clouds had hung over the cemetery just a few weeks ago. Soda had clung to him, not caring that he was the closest one to bawling out of all three of the brothers. Pony had mumbled something about going to find Johnny and left, but Sodapop was attached to his side well into the night, as if any moment the state might walk into the house, perhaps bust through the front door without even knocking, and whisk the two youngest Curtises away from the home they'd lived in their entire life. At least, that's the picture Darry had in his head every time his eyes scanned the text in his hands.
He resisted the urge to rip up the letter the way the state was threatening to rip up his family. But the thought of it made him feel hot and cold at the same time. It was a horrifying layer of sick that coated his entire life for several days, perhaps weeks after he first laid eyes upon the words. It plagued his nightmares but also every waking moment he had. Suddenly getting a new job to pay the bills wasn't nearly as important as getting a new job to keep what was left of his family together. Because if there was anything Darry was afraid of (though most people tended to assume he wasn't afraid of anything), it was the very real possibility of suddenly being completely and utterly alone in this house full of spirits that had cracked under the pressure of living,
He'd do anything to keep it from happening. Anything that was asked of him, no matter how difficult it was to keep two jobs and cook dinner every night and make sure his brothers were fed and clean and happy.
But fate doesn't always ask permission before it strikes, and that wasn't the only time Darry's soul slipped further away because of words on government letterheaded paper. It wasn't addressed to him this time, but Sodapop wasn't home and even though the envelope was plain, the sight of it in the mailbox made Darry weak at the knees, a terrible instinctual feeling passing through his body. He gathered it up with the rest of the mail anyways, but he didn't leave it on the table for his brother to find. God forbid Ponyboy got curious. Instead, he'd handed it to Soda personally, desperation thick in the air. He needed them to find out together, whether it was a fluke in addressee or if the Urgent Notice was exactly what they feared.
Darry might have passed out if Sodapop hadn't immediately gone stark white himself. Turns out, they both practically collapsed on the sofa, tears spilling from both sets of eyes. The paper shook so hard in Soda's hands that he couldn't keep a grip on it, and so it fluttered to the carpet barely ten seconds after it was opened. That's how Ponyboy found them when he got home from track practice, but this time there was no Johnny to go find and so all he could do was sit with his brothers and bawl as hard as either of them. But even Darry's crushing bear hug couldn't keep his own spirit together.
Still, he held on with his last bit of strength during those months. Ponyboy would have faded away if he hadn't. Even when they received the second letter, the one that marked the end of the world, the two brothers held each other so tightly their strength might have been mistaken for that of a trio's. They would get through it because they had to and because Soda would want them to and both of them would have done anything for Soda, now and before. Pony needed Darry to hold him up and Darry needed a reason to keep standing. It was ugly and bittersweet and there were many, many nights where neither of them had any sense of themselves anymore, and despite how tightly they were holding on, two faded, broken spirits don't have much strength against the volatile methods of the world that lived outside their grief.
There was no Dallas this time to chase after Ponyboy, who wasn't really a boy anymore so much as a man. At least, that's how the state felt about it, and they had explained as such when Darry called in to report a missing seventeen-year-old. The days of maternal, soft-speaking case workers were over as far as the state was concerned, had been over since Ponyboy was old enough to just up and leave if he so desired. And that's what had happened, according to the apologetic note scribbled in a yellow legal pad on the kitchen table, according to the baren room down the hall that once held three boys and then two and then one and now held absolutely nobody. Darry knew it hadn't been an easy decision for his brother, but that's what made it hurt so much more, the knowledge that it had been difficult to find a reason to tear apart the last semblance of family that either of them had left. And yet, Ponyboy had done it anyway.
Darry couldn't blame him for needing time away from where his life had fallen apart, but his mind and his soul didn't much care for who the blame was directed to. It certainly wasn't his fault that the draft had been the catalyst for their brotherhood's end, but the universe didn't care about that either. It never would have been a true brotherhood anyway, not without an entire third of it. Perhaps Ponyboy had just been saving them both the pain of watching the bond dissipate in real time before their eyes.
It wasn't the last time Darry saw Ponyboy, because it was only six months before his brother decided running off on his own wasn't doing anything to repair the sodden mess his life had become. But it was the last time Ponyboy saw Darry, at least the Darry he knew. A man's spirit can only take so much tragedy and hurt and disappointment before it pulls its own plug.
The lavender didn't blossom that year, or the next year, or any year after that. The neighbors did grow lilies, though; white ones that multiplied so much that the wind carried their perfume right into the Curtis front yard, forcing each memory to blossom uglier than the last for as long as the years dragged on.
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