Chapter Text
Georgie is walking beside Dottie when a man falls out of the sky, landing face first directly in front of them. Georgie gasps, startling backwards. Dottie just sighs. They’d been having a nice walk in the park, since it was finally sunny after a week or rain. Thankfully for the man, the mud had already dried.
They close the three meter gap between them and the man, Dottie looking utterly put upon.
“He’s-” Georgie covers his eyes with his hand.
“Naked,” Dottie finishes, fascinated. “That’s a new one.”
Georgie hears the man groan and some shuffling.
“Woah there,” Dottie says. Georgie uncovers his eyes enough to look at her. She sheds her jacket and shoves it at Georgie, forcing him to fully lower his hand, then bends down to help the man stand. Georgie averts his eyes.
It takes some effort, but eventually, Dottie manages to get the curly haired newcomer standing. She motions her head, and for a second, Georgie doesn’t get it, but then he realizes she wants her jacket. He hands it to her and she wraps it backwards around the man’s waist.
By the time the jacket is around his waist, the man has become fully aware. He turns to Dottie. “Am I dead?” he asks, rubbing his right hand over his left wrist, eyebrows scrunched together.
“Yep,” she doesn’t hesitate to say.
“Okay,” the man says.
“We all are,” Georgie adds.
The man startles, as if for the first time realizing that Georgie’s even there. When he sees Georgie, his eyes grow wide. He stares at Georgie like he’s seeing a ghost. He sort of is, Georgie thinks, considering they’re all dead.
The man opens his mouth to speak. “Georgie?” is not what the boy in question expects to fall from the man’s lips, but that’s exactly what happens.
“Uh,” says Georgie. “Yes?”
The man gasps. His gaze lingers on where Georgie’s left arm used to be. It used to make him self-conscious, but now he’s used to living (or being dead, really) with one arm.
“Do I know you?” Georgie asks, because the man really isn’t elaborating. Come to think of it, though, the man looks incredibly familiar.
“It’s Stan. Stanley Uris?”
“Holy shit,” Georgie says, because it is. It’s Stan. Bill’s best friend Stan. Stanley Fucking Uris. Georgie springs forward without thinking and wraps Stan in a hug.
“I’ve never heard you say shit before,” Stan says, wrapping his arms around Georgie to return the hug.
“I may look like a seven year old,” Georgie tells Stan, “But I’ve been dead for twenty-seven years. I’m basically thirty-five.”
“Um,” Dottie says and Georgie remembers that, oh yeah, she’s here too. “What’s going on?”
“Stan here is my big brother’s friend,” Georgie explains, pulling back from the hug. “He- Oh fuck,” it suddenly hits him, “You’re dead.”
“Yeah.” Stan is suddenly solemn.
“How’d It get you?” Dottie asks. “The clown, I mean.”
“You know about Pennywise?” Stan asks, looking at Dottie in surprise.
“Duh. Everyone in this weird afterlife world knows about It. This afterlife is specifically for his victims. Some of us are still here, like me and Georgie, but some have moved on. Once they lose hope in It ever being killed for good.”
“Oh. Wow,” Stan glances around, but there isn’t much to see, since they’re just on a path, surrounded by trees. They’ll have to take him into town later. It’s basically just Derry, but nicer. “Well, It didn’t get me.”
“What?” Dottie’s eyebrows shoot up, her mouth dropping open.
“Not directly, at least,” Stan rubs at his wrist again. “I- uh. I killed myself. I thought that if I took myself off the board, out of the equation, the others might have a chance at killing It.”
“The others?” Georgie asks. He’s watched his brother pretty often over the years, as a ghost, but it’s been a while. What’s going on in the real world?
“The rest of the Losers,” Stan explains. “Richie, Eddie, you never met Mike, Ben or Bev, and-”
“Bill,” Georgie gulps.
“Yeah, Bill.”
“It’s just like Derry,” Stan says. He looks uneasy, and Georgie gets it. Derry is one hellhole of a town, and it sort of sucks to be stuck in it for all of eternity, but they’ve made it home. “But it’s emptier.”
“Yeah,” Dottie agrees. “Every once in a while it gets crowded, but with time, people pass on.”
They walk in the middle of the street. There are no cars in the afterlife, apparently, probably because it’s mainly kids who end up here in the first place.
“Dottie’s been here since 1935,” Georgie says. He’s known her for twenty-seven years and he still thinks it’s cool. It’s morbid, he knows, but 1935!
“1935?” Stan’s face makes Georgie laugh.
“Yep,” Dottie says. “It got me when I was sixteen. I’m ninety-seven now.”
“Huh.”
They get Stan some clothes, because being dead does not mean that they’re stuck in the clothes that the died in. It would suck for Stan if they were. Imagine being naked for all eternity.
When they’re done, they see movement inside the bakery, so Dottie heads that way. The bell above the door rings as they walk in and the smell of fresh bread and cookies hits them.
“Betty Ripsom?” Stan says. Betty is sitting at one of the tables, eating a cookie and playing on a game on her cellphone. Across from her is- “Patrick Hockstetter?”
“You’re new,” Patrick says. “How do you know who we are?”
When Georgie had first arrived, he’d been terrified of Patrick. He had reason to be, of course, since Patrick had tormented his brother with Henry Bowers all the time. Now? They actually get along pretty nicely. Plus, Georgie has Dottie on his side, and she can be scary .
“This,” Georgie says, “Is Stanley Uris.”
“Oh shit,” Patrick says. He looks sort of funny, since he’s got flour in his hair. He’s been experimenting with cookie recipes recently. “We watched you and your friends beat the shit out of It twenty-seven years ago. Nice.”
“Thanks?”
“Sorry about being an ass to you when we were younger,” Patrick adds. Georgie can tell that Stan is a bit uncomfortable. Who wouldn’t be when someone who looks like a teenager acts as old as you are?
They get cookies to go.
Somewhere in Derry, Maine (the real one, not the afterlife), the Losers Club meets up for the first time in twenty-seven years.
“Is Stanley coming or what?” the table goes silent at Ben’s words.
Eddie sits back heavily in his chair. “Stan.”
It takes a second for everyone to remember, but when they do, Richie shakes his head. “He’s a pussy, he’s not gonna show.”
“You shouldn’t talk about him that way,” a new voice says. Standing before the table is a woman who looks terrified, heartbroken, and determined all at once.
“Who’re you?” Richie asks.
“Patricia Uris. Or Patty,” the woman says. “Is one of you Mike H.?”
Mike raises his hand. “Is Stan here?”
“He, uh. No,” tears form at Patty’s eyes. “No, he… he slit his- I found him in the bathtub.”
Patty watches as six people that she’s never heard of before break down at the news that her husband is dead. She’d had her own time to break down earlier. Right now, she needs answers.
Eddie pulls out the empty chair for Patty and she sits. They introduce themselves to her, tell her that her husband was one of their childhood friends, part of the Losers Club.
“Patty,” Mike says, “Can I ask why you came?”
“It was after he got that call from you,” she explains. “I needed to- I needed to know why he- I thought that maybe you’d have answers. He wrote It in his own blood on the bathroom wall. I was hoping you’d know what that meant.”
Memories hit the Losers all at once. It. Pennywise. Mike makes a speech about oaths and finishing it (or It) for good. Patty is lost, unsure. Eddie opens his fortune cookie and it just says Could .
Guess It Could Not Cut
Patty has no idea what’s going on but these people are freaking the fuck out. She breaks open her own fortune cookie and her heart stops. A tear rolls down her cheek.
Guess Stanley Could Not Cut It
And then the fortune cookies are sprouting monsters and everyone’s screaming and Mike’s hitting the table with a chair.
And then they’re outside and Patty is demanding that someone explain what the everloving fuck is going on. Mike tells her the story of the summer of 1989. If she hadn’t just been immersed in the terror of It herself, she wouldn’t have believed him. But she does, and she sort of wishes that she couldn’t.