not going to lie: I cried when writing this.
of gunfire and bullet wounds
He's got one hell of an imagination.
Soda's always been the odd one; out of all them Curtis boys, Soda was the one you could just tell enjoyed everything and anything. He was the one who could always get you laughing, the one who always seemed to smile bigger and brighter than the rest of us––just like his momma.
Maybe that's what attracted me to him. His optimism, much like his mother; his smile, much like his mother's.
Hell, he was his momma's boy, and no one could ever take him away from her. Until that damn car crash, that is; then, everything turned to shit, including Soda himself.
Everyone always thought Pony was the closest to his mom; Darry obviously was his daddy's child. Splitting image, them two were; Soda wasn't ever real close to his dad. He was always around his mom, always bantering her with incessant questions about nonsense. Where his father got a laugh out of most of the things he said, Mrs. Curtis just gave her son––her sweet, precious son––a warm smile and told him stories.
Stories of things that existed only in their little world, and to Soda, I knew that meant everything. So when his world was taken from him––first in losing his mother, then almost losing Ponyboy when he ran away––shook him to his core, and I'll be damned if he's ever gotten over either of those.
He always told her that she was his hero. And by God, did she ever look at him with enough love in the world––maybe even more. She was his everything; where Darry, hardheaded and stubborn like his father, lacked what Soda had with her. Soda had the compassion, the laughter, the brightness in him; everything his mother was, Soda admired and copied.
So when Darry announced that their parents––their one hell of a father and one loving mother––were dead, Soda couldn't hold himself together. I watched his face fall from a straight line to nothing; to absolutely nothing, and it killed me. I felt his pain as if it were my own; my parents couldn't give a damn about me, but seeing Soda in that much agony ripped me to pieces. His parents were practically my own––the whole gang thought of them as their true parents. Nothing in the whole damn world could replace them.
Not one damn thing.
I remember the way he looked at me when we were out on the porch not too long after. It was one of the rare times Soda was caught smoking; trying to forget.
"She's gone," he'd said in the silence.
"I know."
I could practically hear his heart shatter. And as I looked at him, watching his gaze go between trying to hold himself together and completely breaking down, I saw how saddened Soda always had been.
"Ya know, man," I'd said, and his gaze met mine. Tears shone in the light just above his head as I whispered, "It's okay. You can––"
He knew what I was going to say, because he did exactly as I would've instructed:
He came forward, stood before me, and allowed himself to lose it as I took him into my arms.
He's always had one hell of an imagination; that day, though, I think his imagination transformed into black and white, with flecks of color in between all the darkened edges.