Chapter Text
When all of the goodbyes are said, hugs bestowed and phone numbers exchanged, when the Losers have flown off to pick their lives back up, Richie finds himself at the Kissing Bridge with a just used pocket knife, a hoodie stolen from the luggage of a dead man, and no plan about what to do next. So he gets in the car and he drives.
He was supposed to return the flashy red rental to the airport days ago and even though that would be the logical next step, he can’t bear the inaction that would follow boarding a plane and sitting with his thoughts for the five hours it would take him to get back to LA. He really doesn’t give a shit if he’s racking up fees on the car. Fuck, he’ll buy it outright. He has more money than he knows what to do with and all he has didn’t mean shit in that godforsaken cavern.
He heads away from the coast; if he gets too close to the ocean it’s not out of the question that he’d drive the car off a fucking cliff into the waves below. He connects his phone to the car’s Bluetooth and plays all of the Cure’s albums in chronological order. When he gets to “Lovesong” he considers skipping it but he has to poke at the bruise. He does end up pulling over to the side of the highway and sobbing through the duration of the song.
He drives for ten hours straight: he knows if he stops with any energy left he’ll use all that energy to get really fucking drunk, and he thinks whatever tears would come to him in that state wouldn’t stop until there’s nothing left in him. So he waits until he thinks he’s in danger of falling asleep at the wheel before pulling over to a shitty motel and getting a room for the night.
But lying on the ugly comforter, sleep doesn’t find him. As he stares at the ceiling, it just keeps playing over and over in his head: Eddie crouched above him, the skewer going through him. Eddie’s blood burbling up over his lips. Eddie’s lifeless body, getting smaller and smaller as Richie’s friends dragged him away from the corpse of the only man he’s ever loved.
Richie pushes his glasses up against his forehead and presses the heels of his hands against his eyes so hard he sees stars. He has no fucking idea how he’s supposed to go on after this.
He reaches out for his phone; one of the Losers has gotten a group chat started, and they’re all sending travel updates. He sends a short text to let them know he’s gotten out of Maine before staring at the screen. It’s fucked that there’s only four other people in that chat. He would gladly hear about Eddie going back to his shitty job and his annoying-ass wife if it meant he was still alive.
His phone starts ringing and with some surprise he sees it’s a call from his mother. Maggie rarely calls him, usually texting unless it’s something dire or urgent. He picks up.
“Mom?” he says.
“Did you know you’re on TMZ?” she says. “I know you love giving me something exciting to bring to book club, but I think bombing on stage and then disappearing off the face of the earth is more color than those geriatric romance novel readers could possibly handle.”
Richie had managed to completely forget about his disastrous show. His upcoming dates in Reno mean absolutely nothing anymore.
He’s silent for too long. Joking tone absent from her voice, his mom asks, “Honey, are you okay?”
He can’t help it; he starts to cry. “Oh shit,” Maggie says. “Richie, what’s wrong?”
Everything seems far too dramatic so instead he says, “Can I come home?” If he keeps driving west he should be able to make it to his parent’s house in the suburbs of Chicago some time the next day.
“Of course,” she says immediately. “I’ll be here. Just tell me when you’re close.”
“Okay,” he says. “Thanks.”
“Always,” she says. “I love you, okay? You’re gonna be okay.”
He doesn’t think he ever will again, but he doesn’t want to tell her that. “See you soon,” he says; before hanging up he adds, “Love you too.” There’s too many unvoiced ‘I love yous’ stagnating inside of him for him to leave any unspoken.
Sleep, when it comes to him, is uneasy and full of bloody dreams; but if he wakes anyone in the hotel with his shouts, they don’t care enough to come bang on his door.
His time in the room in the morning is brief; he's there just long enough to splash water on his face and brew one of the worst cups of coffee he’s ever had courtesy of the machine sitting on the dresser. The second day on the road is better: not good, but he feels in far less danger of plowing into the barricade. Having a destination helps, and having that destination be his mother helps even more. There’s some humiliation in being a forty year old man taking comfort in his mom, but he’s too empty and worn down to really give a shit.
The light is just fading when he gets to his parents’ house; the sky is that shade of blue it only gets when the sun has set but the dark hasn’t fully fallen yet. When he was a kid, that time of day used to make Richie sad for reasons he couldn’t articulate. That lasted until Eddie had remarked it was his favorite shades of blue. For the rest of his youth whenever Richie looked at the sky it made him think of Eddie, and there could be nothing sad about that. He’d forgotten about that for more than twenty years, and now he’ll never be able to forget it again.
He leaves the car on the street before going to the front door. He has a key but it feels rude somehow to just let himself in. So instead he rings the doorbell, shoving his hands in his jacket pockets while he waits.
His mother flings the door open and suddenly he’s hit with a wave of lost memories. Maggie teaching him how to ride a bike, Maggie singing off key in the car with him as she drove him to school. He’d been so overcome with all of his regained memories of the Losers, these people he’d forgotten about entirely, that he hadn’t given himself room to remember all of the moments with his parents that had slipped from him.
He can’t help it; when she reaches out to hug him, he almost collapses on her. He’s got close to a foot of height on her but she’s still the one supporting him. She tightens her arms around him and he lets out a sob into her hair.
She lets him be the first to pull away. “Got any bourbon for a weary traveler?” he says.
“I can raid your dad’s stash,” she says. She pulls him into the house and begins making her way to the kitchen. Richie follows her. “Where is dear old dad?” he asks.
“Out at dinner,” she says. “Are you staying the night? He’d love to see you.”
“Yeah, if that’s okay,” Richie says.
“Haven’t turned your bedroom into a craft studio yet,” she says. “You should be counting your blessings that I’m bad at every single fabric art.”
He comes into the kitchen; it looks pretty much the same as it has for the past twenty years. When they’d moved out of Maine while Richie was in high school they’d left most of their furniture behind, so everything that populates this house is new. In the years since he left home his parents have swapped out the curtains and updated the dishrags; but they still have the round corner table he ate breakfast at all throughout high school, all the same magnets he remembers on the fridge holding up his school photos. Now, they’ve posted up different lurid magazine articles about him: his dad gets a kick out of finding the most outrageous headlines he can.
He folds himself into one of the chairs as his mom bustles around the kitchen. “Is that midlife crisis on wheels outside yours?” she says as she pulls a bottle of whiskey out from one of the cabinets.
“It’s a rental,” he says. “Although I might have held onto it for long enough that I’ve technically assumed ownership. Like a stray cat with atrocious gas mileage.”
She pours out two glasses; over ice for Richie, neat for herself. Pretty much as soon as he left for college, his parents started drinking with him. Never anything sloppy; that wasn’t either Maggie or Went’s style. But they said since he was an adult he deserved to be treated like one.
“Where on earth are you coming from that you’ve pushed the bounds of a rental agreement like that?” she asks him as she takes a seat, depositing both glasses on the table.
He grabs his and takes a massive gulp: he holds back just enough to not down it all in one go. “Derry,” he says as he feels the warmth settle in his stomach. “I drove here from Derry.”
Maggie stills. “Derry,” she says softly. “Yes, I can see why you might want to beat feet, if that’s where you're leaving. What possible reason did you have to go back?”
He almost laughs. How can he explain to her the evil that once lived under their hometown, the evil that he helped dispatch at immense, irrecoverable cost? He doesn’t think there’s a way to tell her about it that won’t sound absolutely insane to her.
“It was . . . a reunion, sort of,” he says. “With my friends.”
“The Losers Club,” she supplies. He looks at her with some surprise. “I remember them,” she says. “That gang you used to run around with. God, they were over all the time.”
“A lot of them didn’t want to be home,” he says.
“Was little Eddie Kaspbrak at this reunion?” she asks. “Don’t tell the rest of them, but he was always my favorite.”
He opens his mouth to say something; a joke, a misdirection, a confession, he doesn’t know what. But what comes out instead is a sob.
“Richie?” his mom says with some concern, reaching out his hand to take it in her own.
“Eddie . . . Eddie died,” he tells her. He thinks this might be the first time he’s said it out-loud. “In Derry. Eddie died.”
“Oh honey,” she says. The look of crumpled pity on her face does him in, and more sobs force their way through his throat. The weight of his heart sits heavy against his ribs; he feels like he might die too.
She gets up from her chair and stands behind him, wrapping her arms around him as she bends over him. He clutches onto her forearms as he continues to cry, his whole body shuddering. He sobs until he feels hollowed out, until he’s soaked the collar of his shirt and the arms of her cardigan. Once he’s gotten himself a little under control, he pulls away his arms and wipes at his eyes.
“Mom, what am I supposed to do now?” he says.
She goes back to her seat at the table and takes his hand again. “You keep going,” she says. “You live your life in a way that would make him proud. You keep his memory alive in your heart.”
“I don’t know how to do any of that,” he tells her.
“No one does,” she says. “You figure it out by doing it.”
“This really fucking sucks,” he tells her, wiping snot away from his nose.
“I know,” she says. “God, I wish I didn’t, but I do. Richie, did I ever tell you who you were named after?”
“What? No,” he says, questioningly. “At least, I don’t remember if you did.”
“It’s funny,” she said. “You mentioned your friends and I could picture them all so clearly. But if you’d said any of their names a week ago I would have had no idea who you were talking about. These past couple of days, I’ve been having all of these memories come back about growing up in Derry, about when we lived there when you were young. Isn’t that strange?”
“Yeah,” he says. “Strange.”
“So as little sense as it makes, I don’t know if I could’ve told you about this in the last few years because I didn’t know myself. But I’ve gotten it all back.”
He just sits there in silence. The reasons she’s remembering absolutely falls under the category of ‘things he doesn’t know how to tell her the truth about.’
“When I was a kid in Derry I had a group of friends, sort of like your group. One of them was this little boy: his name was Rich.”
“You’ve definitely never mentioned this before,” Richie says.
“It was hard for me to talk about for a really long time,” she says. “Still is. Anyway, Rich and I were at the Black Spot together the night it burned down.”
“Holy shit, what?” Richie says. “You were what, fifteen? What the hell were you doing in a speakeasy?”
“We were thirteen and it was . . . well, it was complicated. There was a lot going on that year. But we both got trapped inside when those bastards began to light it up. It was . . . it was horrible, probably the worst thing I’ve ever experienced. I thought I was going to die in there. But Rich . . . he saved me. He told me to get into this icebox, that he’d get in after me. But he always knew there was only room for one. So after I got inside he closed the lid and held it shut. When the rescue team showed up in the morning, they pulled me out, but he didn’t make it. He sacrificed himself to keep me safe. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him; you wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him.” Her lower lip begins to tremble. “He was so, so brave. Knowing him, loving him, it taught me how to be brave too.”
“You loved him?” Richie asks.
“I did,” she says. "I do."
“Did he love you too?” he asks.
“Yes,” she says. “He told me right before he died.”
“What would you have done if you didn’t get to say it?” Richie asks. “If it was too late and he died never knowing.”
She looks at him with eyes that understand far too much. “That would have been hard,” she says. “But I would’ve told him through everything I did afterwards; with the choices I made and how I treated the people around me. And I would’ve had to hope that somewhere out there, he knew.”
Richie feels himself begin to tear up again. “Can’t believe you named me after your high school boyfriend,” he says.
“Middle school,” she says. “And hey, you could’ve done a lot worse. There was a kid in our grade named Herbert.”
"I'm just glad I didn't wind up Wentworth Jr.," Richie says. “Does dad know? About my namesake.”
“He does,” she says.
“Does he feel weird about it?” he asks.
“Well, if you’d been a girl he said he was going to name you after his lost love Gretel so we would be even.” Richie lets out an almost involuntary snort of laughter at that. “Your father is a very understanding man; it’s one of the reasons I fell in love with him. He knows Rich was someone who was going to live inside my heart for the rest of my life, and he wanted to help me honor him.”
Richie sits in silence, absorbing this new information about his mother. Something she said reaches him, and he asks, “What year did he die?”
“1962,” she says.
“So . . .” he does the math in his head. “Counting back from this year, that's twenty seven times two?”
“Why did you say twenty seven?” his mother says sharply, and he looks her in the eyes. There’s a fear there, deep and dark, a fear that once lurked inside him too.
“You knew?” he says. “You knew, all this fucking time, and you never told me? You never warned me about It?”
His mother downs the rest of her whiskey and gets up to pour another glass. “I forgot,” she says. “God help me, Richie, but I forgot. Will, he and I were talking about It for years; what to do during the next cycle, how to stop It for good. But when he died, it all just slipped away from me. Maybe his death wasn’t so accidental; maybe It reached out, somehow, trying to get to us before we could fight back.” She sits back at the table; she’s brought the bottle with her, and sets it down between the two of them. “When I lost him, Derry did whatever Derry does to me too. By the time it came back it was like I’d never lived through everything that I did.”
He wants to be mad at his mother; maybe, if they’d been better prepared twenty seven years ago, they could have killed it when they were kids, and Eddie wouldn’t have had to come back and die. But he’s spent too much of his life walling himself up in regrets; he can’t hurl any more at his mother just so he can feel angry instead of heartbroken.
Something else she said catches up to him. “Wait, Will?” he says. “That was Mike’s dad’s name.”
“I know,” she says. “Will Hanlon and I, we were friends. We saved each other from It, once upon a time.”
“Holy shit,” Richie says.
“Is that . . . is that how Eddie died?” his mother asks tentatively. “It?”
He’s plunged back into that cavern, into Eddie’s last rattling breaths as Pennywise taunted them all. “Yeah,” he says shakily.
Maggie looks distraught, and then the set of her mouth hardens. “That motherfucker,” she says. “I’m gonna go back to Derry, and I’m gonna beat It’s ugly, pasty face to a fucking pulp.”
“No need,” Richie says. “I crushed It’s heart with my bare hands.”
She looks at him, and Richie doesn’t know if he’s ever seen her more proud. “That’s my boy,” she says, giving his hand a squeeze.
They’re quiet for a moment as they both sip their whiskey. “I’m so sorry about Eddie,” his mom says eventually. “It’ll never stop hurting, not entirely, but it won’t feel like it does right now forever.”
“But if it stops hurting like this, won’t it mean I’ve forgotten him?”
“Not if you name your first and only son after him,” she says, and Richie lets out an involuntary laugh.
“I think the chances of me having kids are at about a million to one, Mom,” he tells her.
She gives him another too knowing look. He can’t handle coming out to his mom on top of everything else right now, but it seems like she already knows; and, despite all of the fears he housed when he was sixteen and terrified, it seems like doesn’t love him any less.
Before they can keep talking, he hears the front door open. “Maggie, I think a recently divorced stockbroker has broken into our house,” he hears a voice call from the front. “Luckily, he left his ugly car right out front and I took the license plate down.”
“Can’t a weary traveler catch a break?” Richie calls back.
His dad comes into the kitchen. He drops a kiss on Maggie’s forehead before clapping a hand on Richie’s shoulder. “Son, you may feel like just because all the other forty year old's are blowing their money on flashy cars you need to as well,” he says. “But trust me, there are way better ways to waste your funds. Have you considered a boat instead?”
“Honey, Richie’s having quite a hard day,” his mother says. “Perhaps you could prioritize your son’s feelings over getting off a good one?”
“Wouldn’t know who he was if he did,” Richie says. He gets up from the table and hugs his dad. Much like ‘I love yous,’ hugs are things he doesn’t want to hold back on anymore.
His dad hugs him back. “Good to see you,” Went says.
“You too,” Richie says, and pulls away. “All of this driving and crying and whiskey–by the way Dad, don’t believe Mags when she says I’m the one who raided your booze because she put away more than I did–has absolutely tuckered me out. Please tell me there’s clean sheets on the bed.”
“I changed them since the last time you were here,” Maggie tells him.
“And thank god for that,” Richie says. Before he can head to this room, his mother gets up and hugs him too. “I hope you sleep well,” she says. “I’ll be right down the hall if you need me.”
“Thanks, mom,” he says. “Love you.”
“Love you too,” she says.
Richie traces the familiar steps of his childhood home to his bedroom. The inside is almost the same as how he left it when he went away to college more than two decades ago. His parents might have started storing some boxes in there and thrown away his old bedding, but his Green Day poster is still up on the wall, his comic books still on the shelves.
He strips off his clothes and drops into bed in his boxers. The whiskey has helped pleasantly numb him out, but there’s still that ache at the center of him, the Eddie-shaped absence.
He wants to believe his mother, and trust that the pain will ease with time. Hell, she’s living proof it can. But he has no idea how to do what she has done, to carve out a life for himself after so much devastation. There’s too much Eddie tangled into his existence; he was miserable living without him for the past twenty something years, and now that he knows how much he’s lost he can only see more misery on the horizon.
But he’ll try. For her, and for Stan, and for Eddie. Hell, even for the Rich who came before him. He’ll try to be the version of himself they all believed he could be.