#lost kin kin

[mostlydeadallday]

Lost Kin | Chapter XXIV | Behind the Mask

Fandom: Hollow Knight Rating: Mature Characters: Hornet, Pure Vessel | Hollow Knight, Quirrel Category: Gen Content Warnings: panic attacks, referenced abuse, referenced self-harm AO3:Lost Kin | Chapter XXIV | Behind the Mask First Chapter | Previous Chapter | Next Chapter Notes: Hollow learns that their sister has a name. Hornet reflects on meeting her sibling for the first and second times. This is the first of several chapters that will be a bit slower, though there's plenty of angst and even a little fluff to be had, although the action has dropped off for now. Hollow's brain continues to be Jell-O, and this marks the third apology Hornet has ever given them. Poor princess! It nearly killed her.

○

Rain on the roof was the first thing it heard. The light was brighter again, though coming from a different direction, and the view when its eyes opened was not what it had come to expect. But the colors were right, and the empty doorway it was staring at was one it had seen before, so it pushed back the fear and blinked again, and again, until it came clear, until its memories floated back into place.

Ah. This was the entryway to the house. It was lying on the floor, rather than the mattresses, a fact that accounted for the achy stiffness in its limbs. Yes, it remembered this. It remembered—

It remembered crawling across the floor to its sister’s body, desperately seeking to sense whether she still breathed, still lived. It remembered crouching over her in the half-light, waiting with breathless patience as the pain slowly grew—the pain in its shoulder, yes, and its arm, and its throbbing head, but also the pain of not knowing, of dread. Its mind was as unsteady as its body, precarious, unbalanced, inching closer and closer to the edge.

And then she had moved, and sat up, and she really had been all right, and even the familiar churning shame could not drown out its relief.

It took deep, deliberate breath, assessing its physical state, something it had not had the calm or control to do in some time. What had it mattered, when it was burning from the inside out? One day was much the same as the next, each passing hour only heralding the march of the flames.

It felt different now. Present, in a way that had not been possible before. Perhaps the decline of the fever, the lancing of its wounds, the rest and sleep—it could not say, only knew that the pain was burning low, that its breath came somewhat easier, catching with only a small shudder as the motion disturbed its aching limbs and the cuts across its back and shoulder.

A sound nearby fell silent, a sound so quiet that the vessel noticed only the absence of it. Something that almost disappeared under the patter of the rain: a whisper of thread, and a rustle of fabric, and the low, breathy voice of its sister, humming to herself.

“Hollow?”

She was still calling it by this… name? It must be a name, even if it was only a shortening of its title, only a bittersweet reminder of what it was supposed to be.

Its father had reprimanded those who referred to it with familiarity, or affection, or anything besides the regal remove of its titles. Such slip-ups had been rare, and confined to court newcomers; Herrah had forgotten, more than once. Though it wondered now if the correct form of address had really slipped her mind, or if she had been striking at a weakness she sensed in the Pale King, unable to reach him directly with her barbed comments, but knowing that his chosen vessel was a point of contention.

It had suffered through such arguments with its customary apathy. Being called by the wrong name did not hurt it, and neither did the suspicious glares the spider queen arrowed its way, and neither did the same look it saw in her daughter’s eyes when it met her at last. None of it mattered, and none of the blows landed, and yet its father had risen to the taunts anyway, drawing himself up and bleeding all emotion from his voice like void from a faulty kingsmould.

But Father was not here to reprimand its sister for failing, or to see it respond to something that was not its title.

The soft query was not an order, much as her request last night had not been an order, precisely. She was not used to commanding it, and it should not even recognize what she asked of it, but it did. It knew what she wanted, and it wanted to please her, and perhaps—perhaps it would not be punished for that.

It turned its head.

She sat before the wide, rain-streaked windows, a swath of fabric across her lap, a sewing needle in her hand, with gossamer thread trailing from its eye. She had stopped mid-stitch, and now she lowered her hand and regarded it, with a weighty silence it did not know how to interpret. She had not sounded upset, or angry, but the way she was looking at it made it wonder if it had indeed done wrong by responding to her query—it had almost forgotten that she might be testing it, searching out its flaws as one might feel for bruises, and that made it want to flinch, only flinching would be another flaw, so it froze, pinned under her stare as if she had her claws round its throat.

It had allowed itself to relax, it had gotten too comfortable, it had lapsed one time too many—

“Good morning,” she said.

The puzzling words halted its shallow breath entirely. Then, when nothing more was forthcoming, it allowed itself to continue, hoping she wouldn’t notice it had reacted in the same way it did to pain, to the bright light and scrutiny of the laboratory.

Do not hope.

It had been days since those mantras last flashed into its mind, days since it had last been able to bury its own weakness, and the return to its old patterns now was like trying to wedge itself into an abandoned shell that no longer fit.

She had seen. She had seen it speak. She had seen the quivering mess it became afterward—and she had done nothing at all. Nothing but sit at its side as it unraveled slowly, as numbness and fatigue eclipsed its whirling thoughts, as its body finally failed it, buckling beneath the combined weight of prolonged terror and exhaustion.

It could not bear those things as well as it used to.

And yet its sister had not seemed ashamed of it. She had not spoken, had not condemned it—had only offered it the simplest of gestures. A hand stroking its face, the barest rumble of claws over its mask. Something it had not felt since it hatched, since the soft little paws of the other vessels patted and pushed at it in the darkness, half-seeking the comfort of their kin, half-desperate to escape the suffocating tangle.

It had witnessed comforting touches all its life. The absent caress of a pack beetle’s shell. The soft smoothing of a hand over a hatchling’s face. The heavy, urgent grasp of lovers, entangled in a secluded alcove in the Palace, out of sight of all but a mindless vessel, to whom their embrace should have meant nothing.

The dim, far-off moments of its birth, of unthinking need and curiosity, before any of them had known light, or pain, or purpose, did not seem to compare.

Its sister continued to give it that which it should not have. Comfort. Touch. A voice that was unlike any other, a voice that spoke through motion, not sound, and was a voice, nonetheless.

And even when it defied her, even when it used the voice she had given it to rebel against everything it was meant to be—

She had not punished it.

It could not explain that it had only asked for reprieve because it feared its own ability to harm her. It was built to suffer. It would gladly endure whatever she asked of it.

It would never ask for the pain to stop.

It would never beg for mercy.

Suffering was its due, its birthright, its eternal shame. It had been born flawed, able to feel and to hurt, and the pain of living was its punishment.

None of this was obvious to her, and none of it was easily communicated in the scant words she had taught it to say. She hadn’t asked, and it could not explain, it was not allowed to explain, but for the first time the desire split its breast like a blade and its heart would not stop aching.

Another fear—would it never run out of fears?—took hold of it. It had slipped. It was past the point of no return. It had fallen so far that it could no longer suppress the awful want that built inside its veins like the poisonous pressure of dream-light—

“I hope you slept well.” Its sister went back to her sewing, oblivious to the chaos swirling behind its eyes. It surfaced for a moment as her gaze left it, and the odd awkwardness of her words broke through, and it took a breath almost free of the crushing fear that had hold of it.

She did not know what to do. Even her hands seemed to hesitate, fingers tightening and relaxing on the needle, and she stared down blankly at the cloth in her lap—part of another curtain-cloak, likely destined to replace the one she had cut to pieces—as if this skill, too, had deserted her, along with the ability to hold a conversation.

And no wonder. Why was she trying to talk to it? Why now?

You feel pain.

You can feel.

She seemed lost, now, though it hesitated to ascribe that attitude to one so purposeful. To a demigod, to the spawn of the Pale King and a child of Deepnest, where it knew being lost was laughable, and to be accused of such was a great insult. But what else could this hesitation be? Why else would she change the way she treated it, why else would she stare away from it in silence that had newly become awkward?

Was this all because of that one revelation? The command it had given her? The moment she had looked down at it in naked shock, and the new, horrible awareness that had dawned in her eyes?

Something had changed, then. She had fled the room, only to return and take up watch at its side, offering her presence and her touch to comfort it in a way it had never felt before. She had stayed, hour upon hour, though it had expected her at any moment to grow restless, to leave it to its guilt and fear, as she should have done.

And now she seemed strangely hesitant to command it, concealing her desires behind questions and pleasantries, forcing it to search out what she wanted, fumbling in the dark for the actions that had been so clear before.

Oh, what had it done?

She stabbed the needle into the cloth and laid the project aside, turning to face it with her hands laced tightly together, as if she needed to hold them still.

One deep breath, and then she spoke.

“I would like to… apologize. For last night.”

Apologize?

It remained motionless, though the confusion ringing through it felt like it must be loud enough for its sister to sense regardless. But she did not even look at it—she was still staring at the floorboards in front of her, and it heard the grating whisper of her fangs grinding together.

Apologies, it seemed, did not come naturally.

“I did not mean to upset you. I… acted recklessly, and caused you undue distress. It will not happen again.”

Stilted as the words were, there was something real behind them, or she would not have forced herself to speak. Regret? Embarrassment? Something in the way her claws clenched, in the way her horns tipped downward, in the subdued gleam of her sharp, sharp eyes.

What did she have to be sorry for?

This was uncharted territory, an unfamiliar tunnel stretching off into the dark. It… did not know what to do with this. Under the haze of confusion, it was vaguely aware that this was another thing, like a name, that it was not meant to be given.

What use could it have for an apology?

“Now.” Its sister straightened. “There are some things I need to tell you.”

She met its eyes, though not for long. The scrutiny of the void was not an easy thing to face, even for a half-goddess. It devoured light and warmth and conscious thought, and even the king had preferred not to look directly into its eyes. Though perhaps that was grief rather than discomfort—an unwillingness to hold the gaze of the abomination that wore the face of his child.

Then it noticed the pages lain out on the floor between them. Its sister broke off to study them, with an uneasy intensity that suggested she was no more comfortable looking at them than she was at it. There were marks on the pages, what looked like hasty sketches done in charcoal, impossible to decipher from this angle, and it should not be curious, should not have to shove down the writhing tension in its gut as it waited for her to explain.

What did she need to tell it? What could she possibly think it needed to know?

“Would you give me your hand, please?”

Again, not an order, but a request. No one had ever interacted with it like this—not its father, not the knights, not the priests, not the scholars who had overseen its molts. They had been instructed in the proper way to command it, to minimize miscommunication, to ensure that their words were understood.

The vessel could not infer or interpret, only act upon clear instruction. If the command was not clear, the vessel would not act.

It remembered its father saying this once or twice, with conviction so absolute that it was almost boredom, as though he had given this speech a dozen times. And perhaps he had, outside of its hearing. He had not known that it was listening, that forbidden thoughts spun behind its mask at every word from his mouth. He had not known that, though it had never heard him command it thus, it strove to be empty with every moment that it existed.

The force of his assumptions, the depth of his knowledge—these things were an eternal weight that pressed down upon it, a mold that constricted its limbs, forming it into the shape he wished of it.

For a time, it had even thought it truly was what he wanted, that a few small flaws would not matter in the face of such godly belief.

Its sister believed differently.

She knew it was capable of reasoning. She had guessed that it could think. Its desperate bid to protect her had exposed it for what it was—a failure—and now it could not go back.

That did not mean that the fear was gone. That did not mean that it could stop itself from hesitating. That did not mean its hand was steady as it extended its arm toward her, placing its wrist in her outstretched palm.

She did not seem to mind.

Her hands closed around its fingers, the warmth of her shell and the roughness of her palmpads dulled by the layers of silk. It caught the moment she steeled herself to look into its eyes, the steadying breath that stirred and then settled her shoulders.

“I have new signs to teach you.” Her hands were still and steady around its much larger one, her fingers barely encompassing its palm. “I will need to unbind your hand to do so.”

She stopped, and inhaled, and said nothing for a moment. Her words were low and solemn when she spoke again, and it sensed that this, above nearly all else, mattered to her.

“I do not wish for you to hurt yourself. If necessary, I will rebind your hand and you will practice the signs at another time.”

A quick pulse of shame caught it in the chest, like an arrow turned aside by armor. The bruising ache remained, even after her voice fell away.

It did not answer her. It could not—she held its hand immobile, and had already begun to pick loose the silk that bound its fingers shut. And there was no request or desire for it to speak hidden in her words.

It did not have to answer. She did not have to know that this was a promise it could not make.

Its hand felt strange when she removed the wrapping, the air almost shockingly cold against its shell, each joint soft and sensitive once she cut the cushioning silk away. She leaned forward and laid its hand down when she finished, just below the raw marks its own claws had made, below the line of blisters that still throbbed and pulsed between its chest-plates.

It did not move, though its fingertips tingled, though its claws scratched against its chest when it breathed, like chips of flint.

It did not want to disappoint her. It would try—the vessel was always trying, it seemed.

Always trying. Never quite succeeding.

Its sister shifted on the floor beside it and took yet another steadying breath. A soft, subdued kind of fear swelled as the silence lengthened. It tried to breathe, to push it back, stow it away, the same way it had done when it had been pure.

It did not quite succeed at this, either.

She, too, was afraid. And again, the question of what she thought she needed to say rose to the front of its mind. Perhaps she had discovered something awful when she left the house? Though it did not know what could be worse than the knowledge that it had failed, that the kingdom was desolate, that even the streets of its capitol were empty of all but the shambling dead.

Surely its father knew, as well, that it had failed. Surely he had seen what it had done. Perhaps its sister’s care for it now was, by necessity, in secret, in defiance of his wishes. It nearly quaked at the thought.

The vessel had devoted itself to her. Its father would never wish to see it again, not now that it was past any use he might devise for it, unless he desired to deliver the punishment it deserved, to unmake it and reclaim what he could from its ruin.

Until then, it clung, desperately, to the illusion that someone might still find it useful.

And that was more evidence yet of its weakness, that it desired a purpose, that it was willing to believe something of it might be salvaged, if only to beat back the horrible grasping fear that took hold when that illusion crumbled down.

Weak, it was weak, and there was no hiding it, not anymore.

It should be the one asking for forgiveness.

The fact that its sister had not criticized or blamed it, that—for whatever reason—she thought its mangled husk worth saving, called into question whether she knew the extent of its failure. The true reason for the infection’s resurgence might not be evident to her—

Or it hadn’t been. Until it revealed itself. Until it showed her how far its deception had gone.

 The fear crept higher. She had informed it of things before—small things, such as her plans to clean its wounds, or attend to her supplies, or leave the house to hunt. What if she had made a decision, now, about its fate? Had its actions convinced her of its flaws, when she had been unsure before? Had she run out of uses for it?

Did she mean to leave?

Its breathing quickened, unbidden, and it tried—it tried—to force itself to calm, but its efforts were useless against the rising tide. Useless, useless. It had failed then; it kept on failing now.

But—

She had said she had signs for it to learn. She had said it could practice later.

Why would it need signs, if not to speak to her?

Please stay. The plea was a single drumbeat, a one-note rhythm in its head. Please stay please stay please—

“You may repeat the signs after me.” Its sister’s voice interrupted, and it cut the thoughts sharply off into silence. It must be listening. It must be ready to do what she asked of it.

She glanced down, once, at the papers on the floor, then drew herself up and lifted her right hand.

“My name is Hornet.”

○

Her sibling gave no reaction to her name.

No tilt of the head, no intake of breath. Neither did they move to repeat the sign she had assigned to herself—a quick downward slash of the hand, with all the fingers snapping shut, like a trap.

She waited. Aside from a slight increase in the pace of their breath, Hollow had remained unreadable while she spoke. She had noted the shaking of their hand when they placed it in hers, but that could be attributed to physical strain; she really had no way of knowing whether any of these small signs were emotional tells or physical strain from the wounds she had only managed to half-heal.

And there was the problem—she had explained away every reaction she saw in them, any indication of reasoning or thought, and she could still do so now, with worrying ease. Her first instinct was to assume that silence meant emptiness, but silence was all they would ever give her. She couldn’t keep on thinking that they did not communicate because they could not. They had proven that they could. Under duress, yes, and half-delirious with pain and fever—but she could not simply ignore it.

As they were ignoring her now. Waiting for a prompt, perhaps, or a clear order… or just frozen in confusion or uncertainty.

She had woken early, despite her exhaustion, roused by a vague and disturbing dream about the Black Egg, of which she could remember nothing now but fire, and sweetness, and the sizzle of quenched void. To distance herself—and to make her hands stop shaking—she had cleaned herself off and put her things back in order. In a clearer frame of mind than the night before, she had recognized that it was perhaps not the wisest thing to leave Hollow’s weapon within easy reach, and had managed to drag it aside and stash it in a rolled-up rug without waking them.

Then, unable to fall back asleep, she spent an agonizing hour or so hunched over the pages she had gathered, sketching the signs she had invented, parsing what she wanted to say to her sibling, how she would convey her wishes without giving direct commands. She recalled all the orders she had heard her father give them, and all the ones she herself had given them so far, and hammered out a few phrases she thought she could safely use—requests that would respect their desires if they chose not to follow, but would still get the results she needed if they had no objections.

Now, though, she had to confront the reality that her efforts were not good enough.

They had responded to this phrasing before, so their resistance now puzzled her. At a loss, she simply repeated the sign, and her name, slightly slower now, and she felt their eyes tracking her, a swirling storm of black trained on her hand as she moved it down and across her torso. “Hornet.”

The silence was nearly unbearable, now that she knew there was a mind behind those vacant eyes. It was tempting to forget that they had spoken to her unprompted, that they had admitted that they felt pain, that she had watched them curl up and quiver in indisputable terror.

She set her jaw and sat with them in that silence, refusing to break it. She recalled the slight push of their mask into her palm, the unvoiced plea for comfort, for reassurance. They were not mindless. A mindless thing would not ask to be held or touched or consoled.

They were not mindless, no matter how blank their stare, or how long they took to answer.

She would wait. Either they would decide to respond on their own, or she would need to restate her request. But they had obeyed this very command before—she knew they understood.

It had not been long. Half a minute, maybe, but it felt like half an age. She refused to fidget. She did not feel the need to shift or squirm when she stalked prey in the wilds. Patience may not be her foremost virtue, but she had not whiled away a century alone without learning how to sit still and wait.

Hollow’s hand lifted.

She tensed, a knotted thread of emotion twisting in her chest—pride, nerves, excitement. Though they moved more slowly than she had, and their fingers shook a great deal, they did not flinch or look away as they copied her motion exactly, signing her name back to her.

Hornet.

She had not heard her own name in years. Not until meeting Quirrel at the lakeshore. This was not the same as hearing it spoken aloud—not what she had once wistfully pictured as their first meeting, back when she had not even had a name of her own and Hollow had had no capacity to answer her. But that was fantasy, and she had known it—only the fragile daydreams of a lonely child far from home, who could not help grasping at the remnants of her family. She had imagined what it might be like if the Pure Vessel could listen, could speak, could take her hand and bow over it and welcome her to the Palace with a spark of mischief in their eye.

Her first sight of them, stoic and unknowable, standing at rigid attention behind her father’s throne, put that notion to rest. They seemed a paragon, a sculpture of the perfect soldier. She snuck glances at them through the long reception and the banquet that followed, and never once did she see them blink, or shift their weight, or let those heavy horns tip downward. Only the long, measured breaths that stirred their breastplate hinted that they were not, in fact, a statue.

She cried that night. For herself, her mother, her sibling, her home.

She abandoned her fantasies after that. The Palace was no place for dreams.

This felt like a twisted fulfillment of that dream, as so many things did. No voice to speak her name, and the world had ended before they ever knew she had one. But there was a shadow there of the sibling she might have had. There was someone behind that imperfect mask—someone who could think, someone who could feel pain and sorrow and…

Perhaps even love.

A sharp guilt hooked in her guts and pulled. She looked down, staring at nothing, her careful sketches only jumbled black lines across her vision.

Love.

She should not want this. She did not need this. And even if she had, she did not deserve it. Not after she had wiped out so many of their kind. Not when she was the reason they were almost alone in the world.

The blood they shared was only a curse that bound them together. They should have no loyalty to her. They deserved better than a haughty spiderwyrm with the blood of her own family on her hands.

White carapace, many-jointed fingers, claws a faded, damning gray, like ink-stained quills, as long and as sharp—

She shook the memory away, loosening her own notched and scarred claws from the hard fists they’d curled into.

She was the only thing standing between Hollow and the painful death that had long been waiting for them. She was all they had, for good or for ill. But she should not let them love her.

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[ridleymb]

Based on a theory seen recently

[orion46037]

[v-toast]

back on my lost kin was oro's student bs

[shawkydokey]

Higher beings, these words are for you alone

[girlkisserr]

[elsa-fogen]

hear me out lmao

yeah for those who didn't know - i watch(ed) murder drones. They just didn't succeed in becoming my hyperfixation. I'm almost sorry about it...

but i kinda liked drawing Cyn like this...

also, hi hollow knight fans, little reminder that Broken Vessel was my hyperfixation for a while, somewhere in 2020 i believe

poor Tessa tho, i'm so so sorry for her...

a bonus

[notthesaint]

Fungi knight - my design for broken vessel

[forged-cold]

doing path of pain with @voidsiblings using the hollow knight multiplayer mod w/skins

[moonwatcher1000]

My entry for @silksongeveryday ‘s dtiys

+ timelapse under cut

I really had a fun time trying to figure out how to draw lost kin

[pharioom]

you seem familiar

[shandzii]

some sillies

[ridleymb]

"Must feed the young ones" HK gijinka

I just want to draw Ghost taking care of others

[orion46037]

[v-toast]

awkward family meeting

[specific-dreamer]

stay gold is for darry too

“when you’re young and the world is new / it’s easy to forget when you’re trying just to make it through”

bc, cmon guys, darry is twenty. 20, two-zero. idk how different college was back then, so bare with me.

he’s from tulsa oklahoma, the south, and he’s twenty years old. assuming he didn’t take a gap year (i’m going off the musical sayin he had to drop out, instead of not go all together) he would’ve been in his second year of school.

(i’m putting a break here because this turned more into a headcanon than an analysis i fear)

and we know darry’s a lil extroverted social butterfly, i’m sure he made so many friends. do you think he told them he was going home for the weekend but would totally be back for that frat party? or do you think he had a best friend on campus that he couldn’t wait to introduce to his family and the gang because he just knew how’d great they’d get on?

because he’s at a state college likely, there’s gonna be greaser/soc rivalries still but chances are so high that the max tension will be arguments. so it’s likely he even got to (freely, and guilt free) make friends with socs.

his biggest worries sophomore year was if he would finish his homework and papers before the weekend so he could go home for his birthday. his biggest worry was working up the nerve to still his dad he blew his allowance that month on some girl. his biggest worry was struggling with being a first gen college student, juggling his papers and football practice, and his work study.

i’m willing to bet he didn’t even tell his parents he’d be home that weekend. i’m thinkin he told dally, because dally would likely forget to tell the others he was comin and everyone else can’t keep their mouths shut for shit.

i think he went to Oklahoma State, which is only 2 hours from tulsa. so, i’m thinking he caught the greyhound really really early that morning, like crackass of dawn early. and when he gets there it’s probably 6:00 and through the window darry can see his parents rousing soda and pony up for school. (school may start at 8:30, but they got two rowdy teenage boys one of whom hates school to get ready, they’ll wake up an hour earlier than necessary)

darry, in all his older brother glory, probably waits for the perfect moment to make his grand entrance. he’d wait until he hears ponyboy loudly complaining that “darry doesn’t have to wake up this early” and he fuckin grins because that’s the most perfect entry for him.

but he can’t get excited, not yet. he’s gotta act like it’s no big deal that he’s here, so he opens the door all casual like and starts toeing off shoes as he closes it behind him. and in his arrogant, i’m-the-eldest-of-course-i’m-right voice he says, “you’re so right, little brother. i actually woke up three hours ago.” and darry tries his damndest he really does, but he can’t help the way his chest loosens and his grin widens and it feels like every stressful thing he’d been worried about rolls off back when he hears the gasps and “sweet mother mary” from his family when he announces himself.

he probably doesn’t even get his second shoe off before he’s knocked to ground by pony (soda would have too, if he was anymore awake, instead he’s just staring at darry in confusion).

i’m gonna write a fic BUT BACK TO WHAT I WAS SAYING

do you think darry feels guilty for not having called ahead of time? do you think he wishes he stayed at school that weekend so parents wouldn’t have gotten in that wreck? do you think a small of darry, a part that he hates as each day passes, wishes that he let the social workers take his brothers? only to instantly regret that train of thought when his brothers crawl into his bed at 10pm trying to stop shaking and crying so they don’t “wake” darry

do you think that it was in that moment, that all those childhood jokes with his parents and phony arguments with paul suddenly became real. that sodapop and ponyboy are his babies. they may not be his in the same way that curly and angela are tim’s kids, but his friends at school are always sayin darry needs to stop referring to pony as his “littlest”.

we know darry didn’t cry at the funeral (or at all, at least to pony’s knowledge) but i really think college was such a breath of fresh air for darry that he was probably holding back sobs when he called his schools admission office to drop out.

i think before they could bury their parents properly, darry had to convince his brothers to go down to school with him so he could pack his things up. (i say convince because i think pony might’ve cried himself hoarse thinking that darry was going back to school and leaving them alone)

do you think darry cried the night before they went down to oklahoma state? because his friends were finally going to meet his littles that he could never seem to stop talking about. he’d have to find some way to apologize for missin the frat party (and his 20th birthday, hell, darry thinks his might’ve been more excited than he was) because saying his parents just died and he legally became a father of two is a little too comedic to sound real despite things.

or do you think he avoided his friends like the plague because he knows he’d break down if he saw their pitying eyes? he knew he’d break down if that one girl he couldn’t keep his eyes off of from his psych class saw him and soda carry his boxes to the car and stopped and ask him why he was leaving.

do you think after the funeral when darry made sure his brothers were alright, tucked in for bed and knew they could go find him if they needed anything at all, instead of going to his room he went to his parents room? just to feel their presence one last time. he probably went under their covers too, in the middle like when he was a kid so he could turn left and smell his daddy’s cologne or turn right and smell his mamas rosy perfume, just so he could get one more hug from them. just one more hug before he had to let them go

(do you think when ponyboy inevitably came lookin for darry to scare his nightmares away later that night he got scared when darry wasn’t in his room? do you think he started crying all over again unable to be tough because what if darry’s dead too or worse what if he really did leave them? do you think that’s when pony started sleeping with soda instead. that that’s when his image of darry being a hero cracked because what kind of hero leaves when people are still needing to be saved?)