What headcanons do you have about Soda dying in Vietnam?
• when sodapop gets drafted steve absolutely loses it and ends up enlisting himself too
• during the months he’s gone (and still alive) darry or ponyboy will still accidentally set out a plate for him for breakfast / dinner before Remembering
• same with jelly. whenever eggs are made they still put it on the table out of habit
• sodapop gets sent to vietnam four months after being drafted. his letters would become more and more rare as he spends the next year there
• finally, 16 months after being sent away, he writes darry and ponyboy telling them he’s coming home
• one month before sodapop was supposed to get sent home, he’s killed in battle by a piece of shrapnel from a bomb
• darry & ponyboy, who’ve been literally bouncing off the walls waiting to get their brother back, get the letter two weeks later. (two weeks before he was supposed to be home)
• steve doesn’t find out until he gets back to tulsa, because no one could find it in themselves to tell him that his best friend is dead by writing it on a piece of paper
• sodapop gets buried right next to mr & mrs curtis
• two bit somehow becomes even more of an alcoholic, and even though he tries to hide it, he’s not a cheery as he used to be by a long shot
• ponyboy can’t find it in himself to clean his room because he knows he’ll find sodapop’s things & can’t handle it
• steve quits the DX because it reminds him too much of his best friend and finds work at another garage
• steve drifts away from the curtis gang for a minute, because ponyboy reminds him too much of sodapop and the house is overwhelming for him. so for a while, all pony and darry have left is two-bit
• when asked about his name, ponyboy will still say “i got a brother named sodapop.” nobody bothers correcting him.
• they eventually get sodapop’s possessions back, which include the following: an unsent letter to Sandy, explaining that he’s in vietnam and he hopes her and the baby are okay, and that hopefully, if he ever makes it home, he’ll get to meet them one day / a family picture of him, his brothers, and their parents / a picture of the gang (taken when dallas and johnny were still alive) / his mother’s good luck charm / another unsent letter addressed to no one, saying that he keeps having dreams that he won’t ever make it back home, but he hopes it’s all just in his head. there’s a date in the top right corner, and it marks two days before he was killed in battle
• ponyboy, who eventually becomes a published author, creates a character inspired by sodapop, and puts a little memorial page for his brother in the back of the book
• darry eventually gets married, and names his first son Patrick