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Three days after the house collapses, something shifts in the ruins on Neibolt. It’s not something new, not precisely, but it’s not something old, either. It doesn’t know what it wants, or indeed, even how to want. Perhaps what it is is the absence of specificity. A void, a pit, a black hole of potential. But there’s no denying that it’s something.
No, it eventually realizes, stretching out. There is something it does want.
It wants to get out.
After everything was finally over Richie had crashed in his hotel room and slept for almost two days straight, and then more or less stayed awake for over an entire day intermittently sobbing his fucking eyes out, and now it was the fourth day and he knows he has to say goodbye. He parks his car haphazardly near the bridge like the asshole he is and clambers out. He’s already halfway to crying again as he makes his way over to the carving, bending down to read the familiar letters, worn away by time but still legible.
“History repeats,” he thinks to himself, “until it doesn’t.” He unfolds the knife he’d purchased just for this out of his pocket and sets about recarving the letters. They survived twenty-seven years before and now they’ll survive twenty-seven years later.
“I'll be seventy by then,” Richie realizes to himself. In twenty-seven years, when he is seventy, he’ll probably be mostly fine. People loved, and people lost more than he could even dream of, and the world still kept right on turning. He does not feel fine right now, but he knows he will grieve and he will cry and, eventually, he will be.
Fine does not mean good.
Eddie will never get to be seventy, never get to be an angry, crotchety old man yelling at the kids to get off his lawn. And Richie will just have to live with that.
Richie traces a finger over the fresh carving in the wood, cuts crude but deep, made to last. What he would give to see Eddie here whole and healthy, to say goodbye properly at the very least, to tell him the secret he’s been holding back for so many years-
Richie is acutely aware, suddenly, that he is not alone. He can sense a presence on the bridge with him. There is a noise, wet and heavy, from behind him and he freezes and turns to find-
Impossible, impossible, but there: Eddie Kaspbrak climbing over the railings on the other side of the bridge, gasping heavily and completely soaked in the filthy river water flowing below them. He lowers himself fully to the sidewalk, then finally makes eye contact with Richie. His eyes still look exactly the same.
Richie is frozen. He thinks he must be dreaming, but he has no idea if this is a good dream or a nightmare. Eddie is filthy, but otherwise appears healthy. The cut on his cheek is still there but scabbed over. His chest looks- fine, it looks fine. His shirt is stained but not with blood, and it's more or less undamaged. There is no gaping hole where he had been skewered. Richie cannot bring himself to move, afraid that if he does the moment will shatter, that his mind will remember that they left Eddie behind in the dark and the damp and stop playing tricks on itself. The silence stretches on. Eddie sways a little, as if the only thing keeping him upright might be sheer willpower.
Then, Eddie clears his throat, shuffling his feet awkwardly. “I really hope you’re not on your way out of town right now,” he says, “because if I don’t shower this river muck off me immediately, I will actually probably die.”
Richie, as a matter of fact, is still staying at the Derry Townhouse, because the rest of the Losers (sans Mike, who has a perfectly good library) are still staying at the Derry Townhouse. Nobody could bring themselves to be the first to leave, not after so many years apart, not quite yet. Not when they had already left behind so many members already, fallen like petals peeling off a dying flower. And underneath it all, an undercurrent of fear: what if they forget again? What was this- all the loss and trauma and death- what was it all for, if they would just forget all of it again?
Almost on autopilot, Richie slowly herds Eddie into the passenger’s seat of his car, slamming the door behind him before lowering himself back into the driver’s seat. Eddie’s protests that they were getting filthy sewer water all over the expensive rental car- after everything he has just been through, after getting skewered and ostensibly fucking dying- more than anything, is what convinces Richie that this is real, that this is actually happening. He thinks he might be in a state of shock for how calmly he’s taking this whole thing, or possibly just really sleep deprived. He thinks, were he a less desperate man, he would probably be a little more suspicious of the whole scenario.
As the car engine sputters and turns, Richie notices that Eddie is shivering. Without thinking, he reaches out and grabs Eddie’s hand. It’s ice cold and clammy and beautifully, wonderfully solid, despite the humid East Coast summer currently crushing down around them.
“Do you want my jacket?” He asks, softly. He gestures at the white hoodie he has on.
“...No.” Eddie replies. “Do you know how hard it will be getting stains out of that? I’m fucking disgusting right now.” Richie will take disgusting Eddie over dead Eddie any day of the week, he thinks, as he unzips his hoodie and drapes it over Eddie anyways. Eddie somehow looks even smaller underneath it, if that is possible, but despite his initial grumblings he accepts it gratefully and clutches at the edges like a drowned man.
“Try not to lose this one, like SOMEONE who must have left my very nice leather jacket back down in the sewers.”
“Sorry.” Eddie actually looks remorseful at this. “I remember you- I remember you handing me that jacket to try and stem the bleeding, and I remember clutching onto it like it was the most important thing in the world, but I don’t remember how I could possibly have left it behind. I don’t really remember how I got out, if we’re being honest.” He’s staring at his hands as if they belong to a stranger, and Richie notices that there is a slight tremor in his fingers.
Something in Eddie’s stare feels curiously blank.
“Don’t worry about it man, it’s just a jacket. Let’s just get you cleaned up before we try to figure stuff out,” Richie grumbles affectionately. “I for one think you’ll feel like yourself again once you’ve had a shower.” He throws the car into reverse and backs out of the space. Without bothering to touch the brakes, Richie throws the gear shift into drive, accelerating forward away from the bridge and slingshotting them into a future that looks brighter than it had seemed possible just one short hour ago.
“Oh my god I am never getting into a car you’re driving again,” Eddie moans as they stumble their way into the Townhouse. “Do you actually know how to drive stick? How did you not know that’s not a noise a car engine should be making? Do you actually know how to drive?”
Richie shrugs bashfully behind him. “I just picked the fanciest looking car the rental company had on short notice. And any drive you can walk away from is a successful one, in my opinion. They haven’t taken my license yet, at any rate.”
“Oh my god,” Eddie repeats, again.
The Townhouse appears to be completely deserted, none of the other Losers in sight. Richie vaguely remembers being very sleep deprived while they made plans that morning to go out for lunch. He thinks he was supposed to meet them at the restaurant around now after finishing up his little personal errand, but of course that was before-
Eddie clambers up the stairs quickly, focused only on a single minded mission to take his shower. Richie quickly follows suit, unwilling and afraid to lose sight of Eddie for too long. Some part of him screams that if he lets Eddie out of his sight, even for a moment, he’ll be gone for good. He gets to the top just in time to see Eddie enter his old room, where all his luggage still is because nobody could bring themselves to move it. A few seconds later, he reemerges awkwardly.
“Can I actually use your shower?” Eddie asks. “Mine is currently covered in blood, and I’m sure it’s been a couple of days does anybody around here actually clean , and I stabbed a man through the shower curtain so it’s not even all my blood-”
“Yeah, yeah, Prince Hamlet,” Richie waves him off. Eddie disappears back into his room. A few minutes of rustling later he’s back in the hallway, pile of clothes and toiletries in hand, and follows Richie dutifully into his suite. Eddie beelines straight for the bathroom and presumably starts his shower, finally giving Richie the space and time he needs for his long-belated freakout.
He sits down heavily on the bed and tries to breathe as deeply as possible.
Eddie is alive.
Eddie is alive.
Richie is admittedly not the most pragmatic person, and his lack of impulse control is second to none. Still, even he can see how goddamn suspicious this whole situation is. Probably immediately letting his impossibly alive best friend into his car and driving them home days after defeating a flesh-eating clown they all knew could shape-shift is not the best idea Richie’s ever had. Out on the bridge it had all seemed so surreal so Richie had not even let himself consider the possibility, but he was sure considering it now.
At the same time: Richie has had just enough time to become acquainted with the idea of living in a world Eddie isn’t in to know how extremely not into it he is. If there’s even the slightest chance he’s ok, Richie will take it. And in their interactions so far, almost nothing had felt out of place. The way Eddie had responded to each of his little jabs and prodding jokes had felt exactly like the Eddie he’d known, and teased, and loved.
And that’s just the thing. He didn’t think he could ever tell another soul but Richie loved Eddie, loves Eddie and the thought of losing him had basically destroyed him. What Richie would give for a second chance to tell him- except now, here is his second chance. And it is scary and even the thought of it makes him feel sick to his stomach, but he knows he has to do it.
“Even if he doesn’t feel the same way about me- and he won’t,” Richie reasons to himself, “if he’s alive, that’s enough. Just knowing that he’s out there somewhere, happy and alive, and that we didn’t leave him behind in the dark.”
There is a squeak from the bathroom, and then the sound of rushing water stops. In the absence of it Richie can now hear the old pipes of the Townhouse groaning in effort, as if they have not yet gotten the message their services were no longer needed. The slide of the shower curtains and some more rustling come from the bathroom and then the door opens, releasing a cloud of steam in its wake. Eddie steps out, freshly changed into a clean set of sweatpants and a slightly oversized t-shirt, hair still damp and skin freshly scrubbed.
He smells like the crappy hotel soap, but underneath it Richie can detect something sour and off-putting.
The duvets at the Townhouse were probably filthy and unwashed even before Richie got to them, but nevertheless Eddie collapses onto the bed face-first in relief. Richie scooches over to give him some space. Eddie wraps a forearm across Richie’s waist in thanks.
“Christ, man,” Richie hisses. “Your skin’s still absolutely freezing.”
Eddie doesn’t respond.
Richie waits, but Eddie continues to lie there in silence, limp like a rag doll. The seconds tick on until noticeably too much time has passed and Eddie still hasn’t moved and Richie can feel fear slowly creeping in again-
“Eddie, you good?” Richie prods him gingerly with a finger. Eddie body jerks minutely, and it's like watching a balloon inflate. Something is at the helm again.
“I’m allowed to be cold, I think I was dead for a few days,” Eddies responds waspishly, as if he hadn’t just stepped out somewhere for a few seconds. He burrows his face deeper into the blanket, pulling Richie closer to himself in the process. After a moment, Richie realizes he must be seeking warmth. Carefully, he lets himself lie back so the two of them are pressed side to side.
“What were you doing out on that old bridge, anyways?”
Richie feels that familiar swoosh of fear in the pit of his stomach. He could lie, he knows, but he’s been lying for so many years and he is so tired. And his biggest regret was not saying anything before Eddie died. He doesn’t want to waste this second chance, come what may.
“I was… carving something into the bridge, something to say goodbye to. Eds, I have to tell you something. Something incredibly important, and I hope you don’t hate me for it after I’m done.”
Eddie tilts his head in worry. Something about the angle his head is bent at feels unnatural, but Richie can’t put his finger on it. The shape of the bones underneath his skin suddenly look not unlike a broken wire hanger, snapped in two but still gallantly fulfilling its function of keeping the coat draped around it in place.
Richie blinks. Eddie’s still looking at him, a concerned expression on his face. His neck and face and head are positioned normally.
“Just a trick of the light,” Richie thinks to himself even as the hairs on the back of his neck began to prickle. He clears his throat.
“I’m in love with you,” he finally lets it out, simple but inarguable. “I’ve been in love with you since we were kids and I carved our initials into that bridge. And I thought I lost you, but now you’re here again, and I just needed to let you know even if you clearly don’t feel the same way.” Richie lets himself breathe. He’s feeling too many emotions at once: fear and anticipation and relief and underneath it all, somehow, like a butterfly beating its wings: hope. “Sorry for not letting you know sooner.”
Silence. The strange blankness seems to have settled itself over Eddie again, but this time before Richie can do anything Eddie shakes it off.
“You’re in love with me?” He asks, then, nonsensically, “I’m in love with you, you absolutely dumbass!”
“What?”
“I’ve been in love with you since we were kids!” Eddie has propped himself up on his elbows and is now gesturing wildly at Richie. “I could never figure out why , because you’re an asshole and also absolutely disgusting, and obviously I could never bring myself to tell you but you’ve always been my favorite thing in the whole world.”
“Wait, what? Wait, aren’t you married?” Richie knows he’s deflecting but his brain is currently short circuiting a little bit trying to catch up. After twenty-seven years of emptiness- in all his wildest dreams he never expected-
“I asked for a separation right before I came here,” Eddie responds, sheepishly. “Why do you think I packed so much fucking stuff? After I remembered everything, all I could think of was how I couldn’t live that fucking life anymore. And there just wasn’t a good way to bring it up, what with the murder clown, and I was positive you’d make fun of me for it because you’re right, I did marry my mother, and-”
“Oh my god,” Richie cackles, giddy. “You like me. You love me. I’m your favorite thing in the world, you said.” He pretends to swoon. “Forget January embers. With words like that, you’re guaranteed to steal my heart away from your mom-”
“Beep beep, Richie”.
Richie’s brain is still roiling with the strain of processing all this new information: first the fact that Eddie was alive and well, and now the fact that apparently his decades of unrequited pining were, in fact, requited. He can feel giddiness swelling from somewhere deep inside his chest, but mixed in there too is apprehension and the familiar loathing-
“Can I kiss you?” Eddie interrupts his train of thought suddenly, tracing a finger across Richie’s jawline. Richie freezes mid-sentence, throat dry.
“What is happening,” he thinks to himself.
“This is happening too fast,” a part of himself warns.
“This is happening too conveniently,” a smaller part of himself screams. He tamps it down as far as possible and nods.
Eddie’s lips against his lips and Eddie’s hands around his face are still so cold, but this is all Richie has ever wanted for so long. It’s chaste and a little timid because they are both exhausted and so new to this and it’s the best fucking thing Richie’s ever done and finally, after an entire lifetime he lets himself relax, just a fraction.
They break apart and Eddie is smiling fondly at him and Richie does not let himself think about any other possibilities but this.
“I watched you die,” he whispers, terrified. “I watched you die and thought you were gone forever.”
“Way to ruin the mood, dude.”
“It was fucking horrible. Please don’t leave me again.”
Eddie pauses, then nods, a determined glint in his eyes. “I promise.” He made a mock motion over his chest. “Cross my heart that I won’t, like, choke unexpectedly on a peanut or something in the future, a thing I can clearly control.”
“Asshole.” Richie rolls his eyes, fond.
The two of them are exhausted so Eddie drags the hotel duvet over their bodies and Richie drags Eddie closer to himself and the two of them lie there like that, just holding each other, until the week Richie has had finally catches up to him and he finds himself drifting off into sleep.
Richie finds himself regaining consciousness in increments, awakened by the sound of people shuffling around the downstairs foyer. Since he hasn’t seen heads or tails of any actual staff members the whole time he’s been here, he’d wager that the rest of the Losers are finally back. Groggy, Richie sits up and checks his phone. It’s late afternoon, which means they must just now be returning from the lunch date that he missed.
Still curled around him, Eddie snuffles out a grumble of discontent at the movement.
He’s still here.
Richie checks him over. He still looks good- alive, no life-ending injuries in sight. His skin is warmer now too, as one tends to be after a few hours wrapped up in someone else’s long, gangly noodle limbs.
“Everyone is gonna flip,” he thinks to himself in excitement. He prods Eddie a little too hard in the fleshy bit under his ribs.
“Fuuck off,” Eddie swats at his hand, also blinking back into wakefulness. It’s absolutely adorable and all Richie wants to wake up to for the rest of his life.
“I think everyone’s back,” Richie tells him.
“Oh shit. Oh, shit.”
“We’ll get up in a second,” Richie hums into his hair. “Show you off to our friends, I just want to savor this a little longer-”
A knock on his door. “Richie?” Beverly’s voice from just outside the room. While Richie was distracted, they must have come up the stairs to the hallway of rooms. “You missed lunch! Are you in there? I can hear your voice. Are you talking to somebody?”
“Just a second!” Richie drags himself out of bed with a groan and stumbles to the door. When he turns he is surprised to find Eddie just trailing a few inches behind. He hadn’t made a single noise getting up or walking behind Richie.
Richie opens the door, purposefully angling it and his body so Eddie is just out of sight.
Beverly is standing there, hand still raised mid-knock. She lowers it. Behind her are the rest of the Losers.
“You missed lunch!” Mike hollers from the back and holds up a bag full of probably leftovers. “We got you something to go though, if you’re hungry!”
“Thanks, guys.” Richie isn’t sure when the last time he ate was- probably right after he’d woken up but nothing after that. Grief does not do much for good eating habits.
“You good?” Beverly looks at him with naked concern. He can’t blame her. They’ve all been looking at him like that in various degrees, once it became obvious he was the one falling apart the most after Eddie’s death.
“Sorry, the little errand I had to run went on an… and unexpected detour. Took a little longer than I expected.” He clears his throat. “Actually, I need to show you guys something.”
He swings open the door fully and gestures at the Eddie swaying behind it.
Eddie smiles at the Losers, and for a moment it looks to Richie just a little too wide. Just a few too many teeth. A shadow flickering over his face, maybe caused by the wind rustling the trees outside.
“Ta-da!”
A moment of silence, then-
Somebody shrieks. Mike drops his bag of leftovers and they spill all over the hallway carpet. And Beverly- Beverly, a wild and panicked look in her eyes, grabs the nearest object she can get her hands on- an ancient-looking plastic potted plant- and brandishes it at Eddie. Some fake dirt spills into the hallway.
“Woah, easy there!” Richie puts his hands up placatingly, casually pushing the bushy plastic leaves slightly out of the way and putting himself between Eddie and the rest of the Losers.
“We killed IT!” Bill yells. “We killed that fu- that fucking clown, how is IT still alive?”
“That’s not IT! It’s Eddie!”
“It’s me,” Eddie says, unhelpfully.
Beverly does not put the pot down. “Richie,” she says through gritted teeth, “Richie, get away from him before it’s too late.”
“No, you guys don’t understand!” Richie can feel himself growing desperate. “I considered the possibility that this was a trick, I’m not a complete fucking idiot, but I would know Eddie better than I know myself and this is definitely him!” Even as he says it he can feel doubt creep in. Twenty-seven years was a long time to not know somebody, to have them grow and change and go through new experiences without him at their side. Can he really say he still knows Eddie?
“It’s me,” Eddie repeats from behind him. Something about his voice sounds wrong- unfocused, monotone, almost robotic.
Richie turns.
Behind him, Eddie stands like a marionette puppet, loose-limbed and awkward and as if he might collapse but somehow remaining upright. It looks unnatural. His eyes are unfocused.
“Sorry, who am I meant to be again?” He asks, mumbling to the ground.
And now the surviving Losers are gathered loosely at the downstairs bar, heated discussion underway. Every couple of seconds one of them sneaks a glance over to where they had led a pliant Eddie down the stairs. He stares vacantly at the couch across from him, curious blankness set back in. Richie hates to feel like they’re leaving him out, but seeing as the discussion is directly about him it can’t really be helped. And for better or for worse, Eddie doesn’t seem to mind.
With the arrival of the rest of the friends has come a strange retreat. When they ask him a question, it takes Eddie a few seconds to respond, eyes unfocused, as if he’s only been half listening to the conversation around him. His answers are short and monotone and have a nasty tendency to trail off into silence, as if Eddie is losing focus halfway through. Richie wants to grab Eddie around the shoulders and shake him and yell . You were so alive a few hours ago. You were arguing with me and cracking bad jokes and swearing like a grade-school student and you told me you loved me and you were so clearly, inarguable, indisputably Eddie in every aspect of your very being and if the rest of the Losers could just see that, they would believe that you were the real Eddie too.
How can we show our friends it’s the real you if you’re being so quiet.
“It’s been a few hours, and he hasn’t tried to eat me yet!” Richie pastes a grin on his face. “Pennywise is a sneaky bastard who lives to cause us maximum pain, but historical evidence would indicate he’s not the most patient. I should have been clown chow a long while back.”
The rest of the Losers remain unconvinced.
“There’s clearly something wrong with him,” Bill tells Richie.”You can see that, right? He’s acting super c-creepy right now. We w-wha-watched Eddie die, and wouldn’t it be so convenient for him to just… come back fine. And I don’t know what else this could be, except for that fucking clown.”
“I dunno, I feel like we really killed it,” Ben chimes in, seemingly on Richie’s side. “I really don’t know how IT could have survived that- we all felt it, right? Like a weight off of our shoulders. We all felt IT die.” And it’s true, Richie had felt it too. When IT had finally disappeared, it felt as if an oppressive force had finally been lifted from Derry. It felt as if something had exploded and now they could all breathe properly again. But then Ben frowns. “I agree with Bill, though. Whatever that-” he points at Eddie- “-is, it’s not right. Somethings wrong with him.”
“Maybe something is up with him,” Richie pleads, “but that doesn’t guarantee that it’s Pennywise. We can figure it out. The dude literally just died and came back to life, cut him some slack if he wants to ghost for a bit.” The other Losers look at him, unmoved and unmoving.
“If that’s Pennywise,” Richie casts around wildly, “He shouldn’t be able to leave Derry, right? That’s why he couldn’t touch us after we all left?” And if they hadn’t come back, he would have continued to be unable to hurt them as they lived out their lives in blissful unawareness.
“That’s right,” Mike replies, thoughtful. “Richie has a point there, actually. Pennywise’s domain is Derry. For whatever reason, it seems he was never able to leave it. Something was tying him to this place.”
Richie snaps his fingers. “Exactly! But Eddie’s...Eddie, and he should be able to leave, no problem. So we just drive up to the city limit, make him walk across it, and then we’re golden!”
Mike shrugs. “It’s worth a shot,” he says. “The scientist inside me says we should give it a try.”
Bill throws his hands in the air. “Alright then, guess we’ll just go on a little road trip. No pr-problem, clearly the best next course of action to our current crisis.”
“I’m not getting into a car with that without a weapon,” Beverly warns, perched on a bar stool.
Richie carefully detaches himself from the circle of his friends and makes his way over to where Eddie has been standing alone, too still, too quiet. Glancing behind him, he can see Beverly has also gotten up and is currently testing the weight of the poker from the long-abandoned fireplace.
“Why don’t we go for a drive?” He asks gently and bumps shoulders with Eddie, then starts walking towards the hotel doors. Eddie trails after him, quiet and obedient. But after a few seconds he reaches out to grasp the edge of Richie’s sleeve. Richie hooks their fingers together and squeezes. Eddie squeezes back and Richie feels a sweet, beautiful burst of relief at the action.
Out of the corner of his eye, Eddie’s edges seem to smudge, indistinct. Richie turns. Eddie turns towards him as well, a questioning look on his face. He looks the same as always.
“Nothing,” Richie turns hastily away. What was wrong with his eyes today?
They pile into Mike’s truck: Mike driving, Bill in the front passenger seat and the remaining four of them (plus Bev’s poker) squashed into the back. This is one more passenger than the back of a truck was designed for, but the Losers haven’t exactly been planning for situations involving more than five people, and anyways Eddie might not even count as a person anymore, so.
Eddie doesn’t complain about this at all, doesn’t mention the inherent lack of safety in not having enough seatbelts for everybody or the danger of loose objects becoming projectiles in the event of an accident, which is a little strange and worries Richie more than he’ll let on. Still, when he squeezes Eddie’s hand, Eddie squeezes back and that’s good enough for him. Mike starts the truck and gets them on the road.
“Somebody’s driving,” Richie thinks grimly to himself, “But nobody’s home.”
It’s late afternoon edging closer to evening, but summer holds the sun in place as they approach the city limits. Now Exiting: Derry. Population: Give or take a couple of kids, who needs ‘em? The tension in the truck you could probably cut with a knife.
Mike quietly pulls over onto the shoulder and and parks a couple of yards from the city limit sign. He opens the door and slides himself out, but leaves the keys in the ignition.
“I’ll stay here by the truck,” he volunteers.
For a quick getaway, if it comes to that.
The rest of his friends also unbuckle themselves and assemble outside of the truck, milling restlessly. Richie gives Eddie a gentle shake.
“Richie,” Eddie starts, eyes slipping into focus again. It’s like watching an old radio tune into a station.
“Eddie, buddy, we’re here.” Richie reaches over and opens the door. He gently ushers Eddie out and steps after him, slamming the door behind him.
“Hey guys,” Eddie greets the rest of the Losers as if nothing at all is wrong. “What’s up? What are we doing right now?”
“Eddie, I need you to do something for me,” Richie says.
“Anything,” he replies immediately.
Richie takes a deep breath. “It’s very simple.” He steps out from underneath the shadow of the exit sign and out into the waning sunshine. He toes a line in the dust behind him. “Just...step over this line. I need to prove something to these chuckleheads.”
“I can’t-” Eddie starts, then pauses. “I can’t do that.”
“What do you mean, you can’t do that?” Richie asks, frustrated. “Why?”
Eddie shakes his head wildly but does not respond. He takes a step back.
“Richie…” Beverly says from somewhere behind him. Richie ignores her. It feels illogical that they could be standing so close, and yet feel so far. Shifting Eddie’s position by less than a yard was all that needed to happen, and Richie could not understand why it was proving so impossible to accomplish this one simple task. The few feet of unimpressive, dusty land between them might as well be an entire ocean.
“I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.” the frustration is evident in Eddie’s voice, like he needs to make Richie understand something just out of his grasp.
Richie can feel himself rapidly losing control of the situation.
“Please,” Richie pleads, desperate. “Please Eddie, just walk over here. Just a few small steps, and then we can go home.” But Eddie remains firm, mouth pressed tightly into a line and shaking his head no in equal desperation, almost violently so at this point.
Bill grabs Richie’s arm tightly and turns him around so he’s facing the other Losers. Outside the circle Eddie stands alone, excluded. “That’s not Eddie,” Bill hisses. “You wanted proof? Here’s the proof.”
Richie thinks about Eddie’s bent neck and his wide smile and his cold, cold skin. He thinks about a curious blankness setting in. And he thinks, unwillingly, about just how high above the river the Kissing Bridge sat, even without the hot summer sun taming its waters into a slow trickle.
Too high up for a human to reasonably clamber over, and he hadn’t heard a sound.
Something in his head turns over and curdles like lemon juice dropped into milk.
“It’s turtles all the way down,” says Eddie from behind them, nonsensically. Then a bubble of laughter, low at first but rapidly swelling and awful in its inhumanity.
All the Losers turn towards the noise. Eddie’s head is tilted in consideration again. As Richie watches, it jerks ever slightly farther, and then another notch- it rotates, owl-like and alien, to an impossible position no human should hope to achieve without a broken neck-
The Eddie-shaped thing smiles wide. Blood pours from his mouth, staining his too-sharp teeth, and drips to the ground. He’s pale. He’s stiff- his flesh is rotting and he is dying, a dead thing.
He looks like the corpse of a person who died, alone and afraid, in a dark sewer four days ago.
“Richie,” it snarls mockingly. “Richie, you left me behind, how could you do that to me?” Richie can’t move, frozen in place. It reaches a hideous, twisted claw towards him but then stops dead, still constrained by the boundaries of the town.
Beverly is the first to react. She swings the fireplace poker she brought like a baseball bat straight at the nightmare in front of them. It lands with a sickening crack, but not-Eddie gives no indication of a reaction.
“Get back in the fucking car!” she screams, and it’s like a spell is broken. The Losers make a sprint for the truck, Bill pulling Richie by the arm back across the line in the sand. He lets himself be dragged, shock still numbing his brain. Out of the corner of his eye, he catches a glimpse of Beverly bringing up the rear, still brandishing her poker at the advancing figure.
“Go, go, go!” Someone- it sounds like Ben- yells, and then Richie is being pushed into the back of the truck. Beverly slams herself safe into the passenger seat and then Mike- beautiful, brilliant, forward-thinking Mike- kicks the car into drive and peels out with a screech of tires. From the back window, Richie can see the shadowed figure that was not Eddie growing steadily smaller in the distance, shrinking as the skyline darkens behind it.
The drive back to the hotel is silent and terse.
Richie hunches over in his seat. He feels like vomiting. He feels like crying. He can feel his heart breaking all over again.
He replays the afternoon in his mind, replays the high of getting everything he’s ever wanted, just for a second- how could he have been so stupid? Of course it was Pennywise, fucking with him. Of course Eddie would never actually return his feelings.
“I don’t get it,” Mike babbles, frustrated. “We killed IT, we definitely killed IT, I felt it! How is it still alive?”
“I d-d- I don’t kn-know, man!” Bill yells from beside Richie. “But that was definitely IT, right? W-wh-what else could that possibly have been?”
“Richie, you ok?” Beverly asks him softly, the worry clearly etched into her face. “You’re being uncharacteristically quiet right now.”
Richie takes off his glasses to rub at his eyes and cover his face, to hide the tears that were threatening to leak out. “I’m fine.” Even he can hear the lie. “I...I really thought it was Eddie. I really thought I could have him back.” He takes a steadying breath.
“I won’t forgive IT,” Richie thinks to himself. How dare it use Eddie against him like this, in this particular way, when he’s hurting the most. How dare it dangle the possibility of happiness in front of him (again), and snatch it away like a carrot on a stick (again.)
The next time he saw that fucking clown, he was going to kill it with the sheer strength of his impotent rage, if nothing else. He was going to wring the very life out of its neck.
“So what do we do now?” Ben asks from the other side of the backseat. The silence that follows is deafening. Each of them are thinking the same thoughts. If everything they’ve done so far hasn’t worked, what will? If Pennywise can’t be killed by a barrage of stones or weapons or sharp words, what options do they have left that they haven’t already exhausted?
Can IT even truly be killed, then?
“Why don’t we just leave? We confirmed that IT can’t follow us out of Derry.” Ben pauses. “I mean not forever, not abandoning Derry to the clown alien or anything, just for a little bit. To regroup and strategize.”
It makes the most logical sense. But for some reason, every fiber of Richie’s being is screaming that they can’t leave the city limits. That somehow, all of them being gone would trigger something permanent, would set something into stone that could not be undone.
There is magic in Derry, and in them, and combined they might be able to stand a chance, but they only have the one. He clears his throat.
“We’re not leaving, we’re going to end this once and for all. I don’t think there’s anything we can do at this point to be more prepared. Nothing out there-” Richie jabs his thumb out the window in the general direction of where they had left not-Eddie, and therefore the outside world- “short of a nuke, is gonna be able to help us.”
Beverly nods from the front of the car, body twisted around so she can talk to them. “I agree. All that’s going to happen if we leave is we might talk ourselves out of coming back. Or forget again-” and isn’t that a fate worse than death. “And anyways, if we leave Pennywise might get stronger before we come back. I think IT must be weak right now. We managed to escape without anyone getting hurt or dying. He barely attacked us.”
Richie looks up and makes eye contact with the rest of his friends, gaze steely and determined. “We go to the hotel. We fucking- take a last stand. I don’t give a shit how. Maybe it’s a suicide mission, but I’m so fucking sick of this. I can’t take anymore. We get some weapons. We wait, for IT to show up because IT will. IT might be there already, waiting for us. And we kill this fucking clown.”
The truck speeds down the road. Behind them, the sun disappears behind the horizon and dusk sets in.
They assemble grimly in the lobby. Beverly already has her poker, and the rest of them hastily scour the Townhouse for any makeshift weapons they can find: a wood ax. An old baseball bat from the back of Mike’s truck. A frying pan. In the back of everybody’s minds: the fear that any second now, Pennywise will burst in through a window, or materialize on the ceiling in all its horrifying spider-monster glory, and they’ll have to start the fight. Richie digs out the folding knife he’d used to carve his initials into the bridge earlier that morning, and grabs a bottle of expensive-looking whiskey from the bar he takes a few quick swigs from. He knows he must make a terrible sight, eyes wide, nostrils flared, blade pointed outwards like some kind of knife-wielding lunatic. He must look positively deranged.
And then they wait, fearful, with bated breath.
It had taken the Losers approximately fifteen minutes to get back to the Townhouse, driving at slightly above the posted speed limit of (on average) thirty-five miles per hour. This means that the Townhouse is about eight miles from the city limits, which makes sense because Derry is a relatively small town. The walking speed of the average adult man on flat ground is three point one miles per hour- keeping into account that this will of course change slightly depending on factors such as the health and the height of the man in question.
Two hours and fifty-six minutes after the Losers haphazardly abandoned the Eddie-shaped thing on the side of the road, it stumbles out of the dark night and back through the Townhouse doors.
The Losers had waited so long it almost felt anticlimactic. For the past three hours they’d been jumping at every shadow, every squeak of the building settling in upon itself, and now here was their worst nightmare walking in through the front doors.
“I can’t believe,” it says, sounding very much like the actual Eddie, “You guys left me behind again.” The figure in the doorway strides into the room. With a war cry, Beverly charges it.
“Die, you stupid fucking clown!”
She hits it again, right in the side of the head. At her elbow is Ben, ever faithful, following her into the fray. He hits it solidly with the heavy cast-iron skillet. It makes an incredibly satisfying clang noise, and it has about the same effect as if he had attacked it with a piece of paper. The Eddie-shaped thing appears completely uninjured from the assault. Instead, it wrenches Bev’s fire poker from her grasp, snaps it in half and in one horrible, fluid motion stabs it back towards her. Beverly dodges out of the way just in time, but the jagged poker half still catches her in the arm and leaves behind a nasty gash.
“Tetanus,” the voice of Eddie in Richie’s head warns sternly.
“You’re bleeding, Bev!” it cackles. “Isn’t that your biggest fear? Bleeding? The life-blood flowing out of you and staining your whole world crimson?” And then it grabs Ben by the arm. “Or is it this-” and with inhuman strength, it picks Ben up and throws him sickeningly through the drywall with a horrific crash.
“Ben!” Beverly shrieks and runs to his prone figure.
He does not get up.
The Eddie-shaped thing moves forward.
“We aren’t afraid of you, you stupid clown!” Mike shouts, baseball at the ready.
“Not going to work this time, Mikey,” it growls out- and then stops suddenly as Bill, who had quietly been sneaking around the fight, savagely swings his ax straight into its back. It straightens.
“You tried so hard,” it singsongs, and turns towards them. The both of them brace for impact.
Neither of them managed to do any noticeable damage. Even Bill’s ax hadn’t left so much as a mark on the Eddie-shaped thing’s body.
And then it is advancing towards Richie.
It had only ever been aiming for Richie, he realizes belatedly. Since it got here, it had been making a beeline straight for him. The rest of the Losers were secondary to this, annoying insects to be swatted out of the way.
“God, it still looks so much like Eddie,” he thinks to himself, despairing. He tries to position his legs into a sensible fighting stance but they feel like jelly underneath him. And then the figure is stopped exactly a foot in front of him, peering upwards into his terrified face.
“Hey, Rich,” it greets. And then it attacks.
There is a scuffle. Richie feels claws closing around his arms and jerks them away, stumbling blindly backwards. He grabs back and twists and swings his knife wildly and somehow-
Somehow, he finds himself on top. The two of them are sprawled out across the dusty Townhouse floor, the Eddie-shaped thing on its back looking up, Richie crouched on top of its legs, holding it down with his weight. He points the knife towards the Eddie-shaped thing and-
Holy shit.
In the fight he must have accidentally scratched it with the knife because there’s a thin red line on its cheek, right underneath where Henry Bowers had stabbed it all those days ago.
The line thickens and, as Richie watches, a bead of bright red blood forms at the edge.
He’d scratched it.
He’d hurt it.
Richie has no fucking idea how when everyone else had failed so spectacularly, but he’d managed to injure it.
“Bet you’re happy now,” not-Eddie mocks, gestures at their intertwined legs. “You finally got me right where you want me-” but despite the inhuman strength it had displayed earlier towards the rest of their friends, it makes no move to buck Richie off.
Richie’s heart aches. It still looks and sounds so much like him. With shaking hands, he positions the knife blade over not-Eddie’s sternum, angled towards where its heart should be.
He probably only has one chance to do any damage. He’s still not sure why its only him who can- but he’s going to have to do this, even if it kills him.
“Gonna kill me again, Rich?” The thing twists beneath him. “One more time then, between friends. Course, that’s never what you wanted, is it, Rich? Always wanting more than he deserves, did you actually think you could have it-”
Richie’s eyes, prickling with tears, are not working properly again. He tries to focus on the figure underneath him, but for some reason his line of sight keeps sliding around like water off a rain slicker. Unfocused, he can perceive Eddie in his stained hoodie- no, its the clown with murder in its eyes, no, its Eddie in a costume of elaborate white rags- Eddie, face smeared with white face paint and something bright candy red- Eddie, lips stained dark with blood and face pale from death but undeniably human- the two entities flickering wildly back and forth-
The Thing that was Eddie some of the time tilted back its head and it was almost like looking at a motion smear in real life- was he looking at both? Neither? Richie feels nausea building in the base of his skull. His human brain simply isn’t equipped to perceive what was in front of it.
“Do it!” The figure goads. “Try to kill me, I truth-or-dare you!”
From behind them, Richie can hear rustling sounds, his friends picking themselves up with murmurs and groans of pain. They’re some measure of okay, then. He needs to finish this.
Richie watches the knife blade in his hands quiver. He feels the emotions in him burning him up, a horrible swelling of anger and fear and loss and grief driving him forwards. He lowers the blade downwards, pressing just light enough to not break skin. He just has to push it straight down, one confident motion and Eddie will be gone for good, dead again, spread inelegantly against the disgusting dusty hardwood floor of the Townhouse. It looks like it hasn’t been cleaned in decades.
It’s a vast improvement over the dark and damp of the sewers, but Richie is sure Eddie would still have hated it here-
Richie carelessly lets his hand fall, lets the knife slide out of his lax grip and drop harmless to the side. He’s crying again, tears streaking down his face towards the Eddie-shaped thing.
“I can’t hurt you while you’re wearing his face. I can’t hurt Eddie.”
The Eddie-shaped thing pauses, then shrieks and twists harder. Strangely, it seems upset that Richie isn’t going to try to stab it to death. “Coward!” It yells, over and over again.
Richie braces himself for pain but it- it makes no move to hurt him.
Richie pauses. He knows he’s not always the most observant person, but somewhere in his brain dots are connecting. He can feel something beginning to dawn on him, the tugging feeling of realization.
“It kills monsters,” Beverly had said, “If you believe it does.”
It’s Pennywise, now that they believe it is.
Then, like a snake eating its own tail, the logic falls into place. Pennywise- demonic, awful, alien Pennywise- cannot possibly be hurt by the weapons they’ve managed to scrounge up. But Eddie- fleshy, vulnerable, human Eddie- bleeds, and can be hurt by knives, or pokers, or axes. And there is still a desperate part of Richie, and probably only Richie, that hopes- that believes, however futile, however stupid- that this thing could be Eddie. He has never wanted anything else more.
That’s why he, and he alone, had been able to cause any sort of damage.
Richie would never intentionally hurt Eddie.
But Richie would happily stab the clown that had taken everything from him.
And in that instance- the moment Richie made that choice and gave up on Eddie, Pennywise would have won. Paradoxically, trying to kill the Eddie-shaped thing would have meant admitting it was only Eddie-shaped, and removed Richie’s ability to do any damage. And that would have been the end of it.
Could it still be Eddie, if they believe it is?
Richie has never been the type of person to have faith in anything. Not in a higher power, not in the future, and certainly not in himself. He’s not the type of person to let himself want anything, because the crushing possibility of disappointment is too great and too familiar. At his core, Richie is a pessimist, too bone-tired and worn down to let himself hope. But this- this he wants, with all his heart. This he will allow himself to try for, because the alternative is too hard to bear.
“If I believe it- he, if I believe he won’t hurt me, then he won’t,” Richie thinks to himself. Well, easier said than done. The pervasive fear he’s about to be bitten in half isn’t exactly irrational, but the more he dwells on it, the more likely he is to spiral- and the more likely it is to actually happen, and the more he’s going to worry about it. A recursive loop straight down, a twisting mobius strip. The human mind is a funny place.
Instead, he focuses on Eddie’s face- settled solidly for now as Eddie, tries to memorize all the lines of it, tries to think of it as real and alive. He rolls himself off where he had been crushing Eddie’s legs, and gently helps him sit up.
“Richie?” Beverly asks from behind him. He turns to her. Her face is pale and drawn with worry.
The rest of the Losers have made their way over, weapons poised at the ready and still in fight mode. Beverly’s arm is still bleeding and Bill is walking with a slight limp. Behind them, Ben is holding his arm at a very odd angle, like it might be broken. A little worse for the wear, but all of them survivable injuries.
Richie takes a deep breath, putting himself between his friends and the thing that could be Eddie. “Don’t hurt him! Don’t hurt Eddie!” He realizes how mad he must seem. He feels the deja vu of their situation, repeated from just a few short hours ago. The rest of his friends, (reasonably) cautious and alert to danger. Himself, the lone fool, convinced of a truth for no reason other than his desperate need for it to be real.
This time, he won’t let himself be convinced otherwise. This time, he’ll make them listen.
“Richie, get out of the way!” Bill shoves his way to the front. “IT did this to me too, with G-Georgie. But you have to understand, It’s not real. Eddie’s g-g- he’s gone, and if you don’t accept it you’ll follow. That’s how IT torments you.”
“This is different. It’s Eddie- look, it’s Eddie! He’s harmless!”
“Look at B-Ben’s arm!” Bill yells back. “Look at my leg! Look at- at also at B-Bev’s arm, too!” He gestures around to the destroyed Townhouse around them. There’s a hole in the drywall. Furniture- some of it broken- is scattered all around the floor. The largest sofa is flipped over, and broken glass is strewn everywhere.
Richie presses his back to Eddie protectively. He feels a hand clutch at his elbow. “Guys, I’m begging you, put down your weapons. He won’t hurt you if you believe he won’t. I know it doesn’t make any sense, but please trust me on this.”
Richie is reminded, briefly, of a book he had read many years ago as a young adult. A crunchy, animal-loving granola hippie frees a wolf-man from a cage despite repeated warnings from the main characters that it is dangerous. He refuses to believe the animal could ever hurt him, passionately defends its agency to his peers, and gets both his hands bitten off for his troubles.
The pressure at his elbow gives a very insistent tug and Richie turns around.
He’s the crunchy hippie in this story, and he’s probably about to get his hands eaten.
“It’s you,” Richie says, stupidly.
“It’s me,” Eddie replies.
He’s still slightly too pale and his hand on Richie’s arm is slightly too cold, but he looks so much better. He’s clean again, and his eyes are focused on Richie and brimming with warmth.
“Welcome back,” Richie tells him.
“Sorry, guys,” Eddie calls over his shoulder. “I, uh... I wasn’t feeling like myself earlier.”
Richie can tell the rest of his friends are still suspicious even as they gather closer. “I have a theory,” he rushes to reassure them. “Before you guys showed up at the Townhouse, when it was just me who knew, Eddie was acting almost entirely like himself. It was only when we all decided he had to be Pennywise that he attacked us.” He spreads out his palms. “And now that I believe he must be Eddie again- look, he’s stopped trying to kill us.”
“What are you saying?” Ben asks.
“I think,” Richie tells them, “that he gets to be as much Eddie as we believe him to be.”
“Why did he act so strange even wh-wh-when right after we just got back?” Bill asks, doubtful. “Like, he w-wh-wasn’t really talking, and I swear to god there was something wrong with his sm-smile.”
“Well,” Richie says breezily, “It’s not like I believed it was Eddie one hundred percent the first time around, either. Like, you would have to be a complete idiot to not consider the possibility it was Pennywise in disguise. I just took a calculated risk and it paid off.”
“You thought I might be Pennywise,” Eddie grits out, “and you got into bed with me anyway? You have the self-preservation instinct of a jellyfish.”
“Jellyfish don’t have brains,” Richie cannot help but point out.
“Exactly.”
This familiar arguing seems to help calm the other Loser’s fears.
“Ok, that actually makes sense.” Mike says, nodding. “The more you guys convinced Richie it might not be Eddie, the stranger he acted, right? So he was a little off at first, and the more suspicious we got- the worse he became.” He frowns for a second. “This is just a hypothesis but- it’s also possible that once the rest of us saw Eddie and decided it couldn’t be him, he immediately became… something less. So it’s really based on an aggregation of all our simultaneous beliefs. If we all believe the same thing unequivocally, we might be able to make it come true.”
After all, there’s magic in Derry, and magic tying them all together.
“So, what then?” Ben asks. “Did we kill IT or not? Is this Pennywise’s last-ditch attempt to claw himself back to life?”
“If it helps at all, I think you actually did kill IT. I don’t think I’m Pennywise,” Eddie interrupts and it is so good to hear his voice. “It wasn’t like we were grappling dramatically for control, or anything. It was a very passive state of being. Like sometimes I’d be present, and sometimes it felt like I was dreaming. Like I was just- drifting away? But I had no control over it.”
“Oh, I see it was you who was the jellyfish all along.”
“Beep beep, Richie.” Eddie sighs. “I guess what I’m trying to say is that it’s not like there was a conscious distinction between me and...IT? We were just kind of meshed together, and sometimes it would feel a little more like me and sometimes it would feel a little more like not-me, I guess depending on what you guys thought of me at the time.”
Eddie pauses nervously, and tucks his knees underneath his chin before continuing. “And when our goals aligned- like ‘get to Richie!’, for example, things were great, we would just do it. But it’s not like we were in conflict for other decisions. Just some decisions I, uh, I wouldn’t normally have made, but I wasn’t really aware that those were things I wouldn’t do at the time, if that makes sense?”
“Interesting,” Mike observed. “So you don’t feel like two separate entities at all, do you? It’s just one consciousness we’re sort of pulling back and forth?”
Eddie nods.
Mike hums and taps his fingers excitedly. “This is actually very cool. Based on some books I’ve been reading,” he says, “I have an idea. I think when Pennywise died, it was similar to a star imploding. Big awful interdimensional eldritch monster collapsing in on itself, all that displaced energy had to go somewhere.”
“So what does that make Eds?” Richie interrupts. “Some sort of….black hole? Because if so I’m never letting him live that down. Your mom was so fat you became a black hole-”
“Beep beep, Richie. You think now is a good time for a your mama joke?” Eddie sounds exasperated.
“Precisely,” Mike responds, gamely ignoring the second half of Richie’s statement. “What you are is a vacuum, an absence left behind by the destruction of something massive. Magic filling in a void, just a lot of potential possibilities. My guess is you could actually become anything or anyone, if we believe it to be true. I guess Eddie and Pennywise were just on our minds a lot at the time.”
Eddie covers his face with his hands.
“Georgie.” Bill suddenly interrupts. He’s been silent for most of the conversation, happy to let Mike take the reigns, but now he’s up and alert.
“What’s that, Big Bill?” Richie turns to him.
“Georgie,” Bill repeats. “It’s not Pen-Pennywise, but that doesn’t mean it strictly has to be Eddie, right? It’s whatever we want it to be. So it could be G-Georgie, if we wanted.”
“Billy?” the figure in front of them asks. His face is still covered by his hands and he still looks Eddie-shaped- but.
Eddie has never been a particularly large man, but.
Is it just Richie’s imagination, or does he look just a little smaller than usual?
“Stop it, you’re confusing him!” Richie scolds Bill. “We all have to believe in one thing, otherwise it’s not going to work!”
“Why does Eddie get to be the one who lives? Why not G-Ge-Georgie, or Stan, or any of the other dozens of d-d-dead kids over the years?”
And he’s right. Richie knows this. Rationally, he’s right. Eddie got forty years when so many of those kids had their whole lives ahead of them, and Stan has a grieving widow, and who can say who deserves this second shot at life the most?
“Because,” Richie finally lets it out. “Because I am not a good person. I know this, and I know this intimately. I’m crass and my jokes are honestly kind of gross and I don’t even write most of them, I just take the credit and I’m always lying to everyone and I’m selfish . I’m so unbelievable selfish, so I need it to be Eddie and not any of those other dead kids because I don’t want to live in a world without him. Because I’m in love with him, okay?”
Oh. And there it is, his big awful secret, finally sitting out in the open for all the world to see.
“Richie,” Beverly tells him. “You’re allowed to be selfish, you know that right? You’re allowed to be happy .”
“Richie, I’m sorry,” Bill whispers, finally. “I didn’t- I didn’t know. It- it was just a passing thought. Ge-G-Georgie’s been gone a long time, anyway. You deserve- you deserve to be happy.” He takes a second to look between the two, eyebrows furrowed, and then: “Eddie deserves to be happy, too.”
Eddie lowers his hands and smiles weakly at them. He looks just as he always has.
And Richie knows, rationally has always known that the people he has chosen for his family are not the type of people who would abandon him over this, but. This part of himself he’d hated and ignored for so long, until the loathing was as natural as the rest of it.
He swipes an arm over his eyes to wipe away the tears.
“Alright guys, confessions of a middle-aged closet case are fun and all but we still gotta deal with problem at hand,” he deflects. “How do we make sure all of this-” he gestures with both hands at Eddie- “sticks around permanently? We can’t have him growing like, wings or some shit just ‘cause one of us was feeling poetic for a day.”
“You calling me an angel, Rich?” Eddie’s voice is teasing but his face is slightly flushed, and Richie does his best not to give into the urge to tempt fate and see if he can will it into existence. He’s worried he’s messed it up enough as is.
“I don’t know, did it hurt when you fell from heaven?”
“Oh my god,” Ben says, looking on in fascinated horror. “Oh my god, the two of them are going to be unbearable.”
“Do you know why I stayed by the truck earlier?” Mike tries to bring them back on topic. “There was some part of me that felt like if I went over there with you guys, if we all left and took our magic out of Derry, something would become stuck. And at that point, we couldn’t leave it like that.”
“Yeah,” Eddie says softly. “When we were at the border, I just knew if I stepped over, some part of me would set. It’s not like I couldn’t physically move past that point, its that I didn’t want to. Like part of me knew it was mostly Pennywise, and that was no good. The rest of me really wanted to get over that line, though.”
Richie considers this, suddenly. IT, no longer trapped in Derry, a whole world to be able to prey on. Judging by the look on his fellow Loser’s faces, they are thinking much the same thing.
“S-so, we have to be sure.” Bill finally breaks the silence. “When we leave, we all leave t-together, and we have to all be completely s-su-sure that it’s Eddie-”
“Or,” Eddie cuts him off and completes the thought, “Or you might be unleashing something like Pennywise onto an unsuspecting world.”
But when will they know they believe enough? Could they measure faith, empirically, or would they have to just trust each other that they would be enough? Would the mere knowledge of knowing it might not be Eddie if they didn’t believe hard enough, make it impossible for them to succeed? A horrible catch-22, the cat in the box long since let out.
“I think,” Eddie pauses. “It might be easier if we talk privately? Just, I think if I could talk to everybody one at a time, I’ll have a better shot at convincing people it’s really me.”
“Hopefully this isn’t all a secret ploy to just pick us off one by one,” Richie jokes. But it’s a good idea, so they all agree to it in the end.
Bill goes first. The two of them go upstairs to one of the rooms where attempted murder had not occurred in the past few days, closing the door behind them.
“Kind of feels like we’re teenagers again, huh?” Richie makes an attempt at humor, but his nerves are going haywire. “Like we’re playing seven minutes in heaven, or something. God, I sure hope Bill doesn’t steal Eds away from me. He’s had plenty of time to make a first move, that would just be rude after I called dibs.”
He does his best not to eavesdrop- which would have been a futile effort anyways, given the distance. The rest of them sit in silence. A half hour later Bill finally exits the room.
“Ok,” Bill says, softly. “It’s him. It’s Eddie.”
Mike comes out wiping tears from his eyes and Bev leaves looking somber but proud. Ben comes out of his session with his arm in a makeshift cast. “What?” He asks, sheepish. “Eddie’s good at medical stuff, my arm is very broken and I don’t think any of us are really up for a late-night hospital visit right now. Anyways, he did a great job setting it so I definitely believe it’s him now. So that’s a plus.”
And then it is Richie’s turn.
He closes the door gently behind him and turns to find Eddie sitting on a pile of pillows on the floor, leaning against the bed. He pats the spot beside him in invitation.
“Is this Bill’s room?” Richie moves to sit down. “Not gonna lie, Eds, but as the last person to go it really feels like I’m getting sloppy seconds here. You’re really getting around today, huh?”
“Shut up, you asshole, I was saving the best for last-” and Richie knows he’s kidding but damn if that doesn’t make him feel something.
“So, while I was waiting downstairs I workshopped some names for you, since apparently you’re less Eddie or more the physical manifestation of our deepest desires and fears made literal? Let me know how you feel about... Pens? Eddiewise? Eddie-Spaghettiwise-”
“If you ever call me that again,” Eddie growls, serious, “If you EVER call me that again, I will eat you. I think I can do that now, apparently.” He opens and closes his mouth experimentally, as if trying to see if he can unhinge it enough to eat a person.
“I love you,” Richie tells him before he can stop himself. “Do you still love me?”
“Yes, I already told you-” Eddie starts, but Richie cuts him off.
“I’m worried,” Richie says, “That I dreamed you into being in love with me.”
A pause. “What do you mean by that?” Eddie prompts. He presses their arms together, but Richie shies away.
Richie takes a deep breath. “It’s ironic because I’m the one who should believe the most after the day we’ve had, but. You’re being willed into existence from nothing, after all. I’m just so worried you’re not actually Actually Eddie, you’re just an idealized version of Eddie from my mind. What if I just really wanted my feelings to be returned? So now, you do.” In Richie’s mind, he can picture it clear as day: Eddie, a dangling puppet on a string, parts of him erased and rewritten over and over again until he fit the role Richie thought he should fill. Because really, isn’t that what’s already been happening?
“Dude, you’re overthinking it.”
“Am I, though?” Richie’s voice breaks, head down. “That would be so unfair to Eddie. It would be such a disgusting thing for me to do to him.”
“Don’t I get a say as well?” Eddie asks, stubborn and authoritative. “After all, I’m a Loser too. The magic should be in me as well. And I say that I’m in love with you, and always have, and probably always will be unless one of your jokes finally crosses the line.”
Richie looks up. The only lamp in the dimly lit room flickers slightly, and it’s warm glow is reflected in Eddie’s eyes, radiating determination.
“Even when you lost faith in me,” Eddie supplies, “I was still able to hang on, just a little. Why do you think that is?” Richie shrugs.
“You didn’t think I had a snowball’s chance in hell of being Eddie anymore, let alone that I was in love with you. But I wanted desperately to still be Eddie, because you seemed sad and I didn’t want you to be. I think that more than anything is what helped me keep myself together. Even on the bridge earlier, do you know what I wanted? I wanted you to stop crying, and there was only one way to do that. And then I was me, most of the way.” Eddie pauses. “What did you want, on the bridge?” He asks.
“I wanted Eddie back,” Richie whispers. “It didn’t matter what happened after, it didn’t matter if he never talked to me again, I just needed him to exist.”
“There you go. And you got me.”
Desire is not the same thing as belief. You can want something so much it burns and not think for a second you’re ever going to get it.
But that doesn’t mean you aren’t going to get it.
Richie lets his head fall into the crook of Eddie’s neck. “Tell me,” he murmurs against skin, “about what we’re going to do after we leave.”
“I’ll kiss you,” Eddie tells him immediately. “Or you’ll kiss me, so please brush your teeth before we head out. It’ll be our first kiss because I’ll actually be me and not some weird dream energy eldritch sewer creature you decided it was safe to crawl into bed with, again Richie what the fuck. I’ll move with you to California. Quit my job, if they haven’t fired me for dying yet. I don’t care, there’s nothing for me in New York anyway. I’ll divorce my wife, and you’ll do a comeback and three record-breaking Netflix specials, and we’ll adopt a dog, and we’ll make up for all those years we wasted, for all those years we stayed silent and alone.”
Richie lets Eddie’s words wash over him and wills himself to trust that they are the truth, a whispered prediction of the future to come. Downstairs, he can hear the ambient noises of the other Losers talking among themselves.
“Should we go?” Richie asks. “Our friends our waiting for us. They might be getting worried.”
“Yeah,” retorts Eddie, “Worried that you tried to put the moves on me and a clown bit your dick off.”
“Argh,” Richie stands up and stretches. “I don’t want to think about that. Those are our friends , Eds. We’ve known them since childhood even though we also forgot them for three decades, they’re like family. I don’t even want to think about them thinking about us having sexepades.”
“You should see the state of Ben and Bev’s rooms,” Eddie says casually as Richie helps pull him to his feet. “There’s a reason we’re using Bill’s room and its because their rooms are absolutely not decent right now.”
The two of them finally exit to an exaggerated wolf-whistle, courtesy of Beverly (very hypocritical, although Richie wishes her the best. She deserves it). Richie mocks a fake gentleman’s bow as they descend the stairs.
“So, should we head out?” Richie asks the group when they are gathered again. “No time like the present to back to the city limits and see if we’ve managed to successfully groupthink Eddie into being alive again, is what my Ma always said.”
“Oh, absolutely not,” Eddie replies immediately. “I refuse to let us mill around outside on the side of the road at night. Do you know how many accidents happen because careless drivers hit pedestrians they simply could not see in the dark? We’re not leaving this motel until the sun’s up.”
They drive back to the city limits as the dawn breaks. Richie brushes his teeth before they leave.
Nobody brings a weapon.
“Look,” Beverly says, pointing. In front of her is the shadow of the exit sign. The mark in the dirt Richie had made is still directly on the edge of the shadow, despite the fact that last night the sun had been setting and now the sun was rising from the completely opposite direction.
“Derry magic,” Richie can only think to respond, laughing weakly.
The five Losers- sans Eddie- gather in a cluster just past the line on the ground, on the outside of Derry. Something in each of them lurches as they exit, as if the city is saying goodbye.
Eddie takes a deep breath and steps out from under the shadow of the exit sign to join his friends. The final vertex settling itself into place on a map. Something inside him solidifies, finally.
“Eds?” Richie asks first, nervous. “How are you feeling?”
Eddie tilts his head at Richie in consideration for a second. And then, with a horrifying jerk, his body twists over so his head is hanging down, covered by his arms and peals of inhuman, demented laughter are ringing from his body and it’s happening again just like last night-
Richie can feel the crushing despair spiraling around him. He had tried so hard- they all had- had it not been enough? Was it all for nothing, in the end-
And then Eddie is laughing, real, beautiful, human laughter, bent over double in the dirt. “You totally fell for it!” He crows. “I got you good! How do you like a taste of your own medicine?”
“If it turned out that you needed to feast upon the supple flesh of children to survive, I would have supported you,” Richie says, straight faced, most of the way joking. Most. “You can get basically anything out in Hollywood, if you know the right guy. We could have Santa Clarita Diet -ed our way through it.”
“What the actual fuck, Richie,” Eddie responds, genuinely aghast. “That’s extremely messed up. I’m pretty sure that makes you a bad person? You’re a bad person, I hope you understand that.”
And without any fanfare to it, he pulls himself up to his full height to kiss Richie.
They are standing on a completely unremarkable piece of dusty shoulder off a highway in rural Maine, and they are kissing and it is so good. Richie lets his hands fall on Eddie’s waist to draw him closer, and Eddie has his hands around Richie’s face, and the two of them are still kissing, and their friends are behind them whooping and hollering. The sun is rising and blanketing them in its warmth, and Richie lets himself believe in this, and in a future together.
It’s the first day of the rest of their lives.