Chapter Text
Bev can’t believe the night she’s having.
First, Richie stood her up on a movie night outing, so she had to sit through some gooey romance flick they were supposed to make fun of together because she didn’t want to waste her ticket. Then all the good seats were taken while she had been anxiously waiting for him to show up, so she had to sit in the front row and look up the whole time which gave her a massive headache. And now she had ripped the straps off one of her favorite sandals because some monster was currently chasing her through the dark empty streets of downtown Derry.
She pants heavily, her purse swinging around wildly as she races down the road away from the thing pursuing her. It was the size of a bear, but it had the wrong shape, and bears didn’t usually get this far into town. It looked to her like a gigantic wolf, which would’ve sounded silly if she hadn’t fought an interdimensional fear being 5 years ago. In Derry, it seemed, anything was possible.
The creature snarls a quick growl behind her, causing her to momentarily trip. Shit! Bev quickly kicks off her ruined pair of sandals, abandoning them to the streets as she sprints faster. The sound of the hulking beast panting and growling behind her makes her heart pound like a drum, daring her to look back and see how close her doom is. Whatever this monster was, it was almost certainly playing with her, as Bev didn’t really understand how she’d managed to stay ahead of it so far. If it wanted to catch Bev, it would have already done so.
Another short but loud snarl makes her panic and turn into the alleyway behind Keene’s drugstore, the very same alley she had met the other Losers the day Ben had gotten sliced up by Bowers. There was a shortcut she could take to—
Bev skids to a halt. Fuck. She had forgotten about the newly built wooden fence Keene had installed to keep idiot teens from barreling through the alley. It towered over her mockingly, casting a shadow over her trembling form. The hairs on the back of her neck stand up and she turns around to see another shadow looming in the entrance to the alley.
It was a wolf. It was the biggest wolf Beverly had ever seen in her life.
A body the size of a small car slowly slunk into the alley towards her. Tufts of midnight black fur stood out in every direction in the dim glow of the streetlight. And sunken into a face of pure void were two bright glowing eyes, looking directly at her.
Bev’s heart feels like it wants to burst out of her chest, but she decides then and there that she will not scream. I survived a fucking sewer clown, she tells herself. I wasn’t scared then and I’m not scared now. She steadies herself against the wooden fence and holds out one hand, palm out, as if that’s all she needs to protect herself.
“I’m not afraid of you,” she says, but the tremble in her voice betrays her.
The wolf pauses and rumbles a low growl from somewhere deep in its chest. It stares at Bev intently as it approaches slowly, carefully. The beast takes up almost the full width of the alley, so there’s no way Bev could slip around it without getting her head bitten off. Bev feels the fence press into her skin as she backs as far away as she can from the ever-nearing behemoth. Her voice hitches and her body shakes as she realizes there’s no place left to go. She can feel the warmth of the wolf’s breath on her fingertips now, so she straightens up, closes her eyes, and waits for the inevitable.
For the crushing pressure of massive jaws on her arm.
For the cold-hot pain she can only imagine will come.
For the thought of if there would be any part of her left for her friends to mourn.
Beverly Marsh waits for all of this, but it doesn’t come.
Instead, she stifles a squeak as a cold, wet nose gently pushes against her outstretched hand.
Bev peeks an eye open to see what’s taking her doom so long to attack. She’s met with the most intense eyes she’s ever seen in an animal.
Blue eyes.
Her blue eyes are the color of the sky after a summer rain. Bill’s blue eyes are the splashes in the pool when they all play Chicken. But these blue eyes, deep and rich and pensive, are the droplets on your window when the rain just pours and pours on all your hopes and dreams. Sad blue eyes.
Bev gasps. She knows those eyes. She’s seen them before. A glint, behind the thickest glasses, winking at her from the clubhouse hammock or shining with a joke on the tip of his tongue. She looks into the wolf’s face, into his face, and its faint but he’s there. Somehow, in some strange way, she knows.
“Richie?”