East West Sunset - A Darry Curtis Fanfiction

Chapter Thirty-Six

Different members of the gang visited me at the police station whenever they could throughout the next day. Two-Bit told me that they could only keep me there for 48 hours, and then they had to legally file some sort of charge against me. He advised me that there wasn't much evidence, and that I was likely to get off without having to go to trial. I didn't care. I still felt the barbed whiplash of the accusations against me with every breath I took.

In the late afternoon, Pony and Soda arrived and with them, my mother. I glanced at her once and immediately broke down into tears, the sight of her worried grey eyes and the scent of her lavender scented candles too much for me to bear. I couldn't hug her through the bars on my cell, so I simply grasped her hands as tightly as I could.

"Diana, baby," she crooned over my hiccuping sobs. "It's all right, my love. Your ma's here."

"Ma," I choked out.

"I know you're hurting, baby."

"I'm so glad you came." My relief at seeing the familiar axis of my life in such an alien place overwhelmed me. "Ma, I can't..."

"You can't what?"

Soda and Pony stood like silent sentinels at the door to my cell. Soda's brown eyes gazed right at my mother - his mother - with a tenderness in them that told me he had accepted her into his life. That soothed something within me that I hadn't realized was chafing for the past few days. He had her, at least, even if it was my fault his older brother was gone forever. 

"I - can't face this alone," I said finally, my voice catching. "I need you, Ma. I can't - I can't breathe sometimes, it's like someone's holding me so tightly and they won't let go."

"I know things are bad right now, baby." My mother reached through the bars of the cell to stroke my hair, just like she used to do when I was a little girl. Those days seemed so long ago; I was so innocent then. I hadn't known the greatest love of my life yet.

"I won't say it will all be over soon. It won't be. You'll have that awful feeling for months, years, decades even, and you can't do anything to make it go away. You've just got to keep on living. I remember when I found out -"  She stopped and took a deep breath before continuing. "- when I found out Charlie had died, I sat on the floor of my closet and cried and cried for hours until my head hurt so bad it felt like somebody was stabbing me. At times I felt it would be better if somebody was actually stabbing me, because then I wouldn't have to face the burning in my heart."

She gave me a watery smile, then turned to grab Soda's hand. He squeezed it gently.

"But you know what got me up off of that floor?"

Her eyes shone with unshed tears, her voice thick.

"I heard you crying to be fed, and I realized that I didn't have to carry on just for me anymore. I had to carry on for you.

"I know things seem tough right now. But Diana, you have so many people to carry on for. You've got me, and Soda, and Pony, and all those other nice boys that I've just barely met but seem to care a lot about you. You've got to fight through this, and know that even though a part of you will always be hurting, that doesn't mean you can't be happy again."

"And Diana," Pony interrupted softly. "It's not your fault. The cops are trying to pin it on you because they don't know the truth. It was Arnie, not you. He died because he loved you, that's true, but that's not your fault. Nobody can help who they love."

His words, and my mother's, were the salve for the open wound I'd kept cutting open again and again each hour I spent without Darry. I needed to hear that so badly. I needed someone to tell me that maybe, just maybe, it wasn't my fault. I closed my eyes, too overcome for words. "Thank you," I managed to say. With those two words, I tried to convey the vast amount of gratitude that crashed against my heart like a warm tropical wave.