Chapter Text
Richie stared out into the empty canal, not unlike how Don Haggarty had dazedly staggered down the spill of rocks to rescue Adrian just three weeks before. The spot where Pennywise had stood that fateful night, however, sat empty and hollow— the grass matted and flat with rain. The only hint of the event was a single deflated shell of a red balloon, strewn in the grasses like morbid tinsel on a Christmas tree. The sight made Richie sick, and yet he couldn’t bring himself to discard of it— watching it taunt him from across the water.
He made an excuse to himself about not wanting to provoke It, but he knew it was null. It was dead, right alongside Eddie, and there was nothing in Heaven or Earth that could possibly change that fact.
Truth be told, Richie was keeping everything in the state it was three weeks ago, back when they first reconvened after 27 long years at the Chinese restaurant. Back when the horrors seemed mountable. Back when Eddie was still around.
It felt wrong— felt wrong to move anything. Felt wrong to stop coming down here because one of these days, Eddie— oh, Eddie , was going to march down here to this shitty canal and tell Richie exactly how many diseases he was currently exposing himself to. And everything would be okay again. And it would be just like it was when they were kids— him and Eddie bickering back and forth, Richie trying to not let it show on his face as he fell impossibly deeper in love with him.
Richie needed to be there when it happened. And if he was waiting for a day that would never come, well, that’s nobody’s fucking business except for his own.
There exists only a certain level of insanity one can be exposed to before the suffocating walls of reality are breached forever. There is no going back from that— seeing the other side of the coin. T here is no going back from dethroning God— that’s the thing. Because once He falls, He is nothing more than a human— measly and small and spitting up dirt like everyone else. Maybe God was a human after all. Maybe complete power lied within the self.
Richie’s parents would have spanked him raw, had he smartly proposed that idea the summer of 1989, clinging perhaps more tightly to their Presbyterian beliefs than to their own son. It’s a lonely thought— being truly alone on the Earth. Even atheists, deep down inside, would tremble at the genuine, overwhelming face of being utterly on your own in the universe. And the things Richie had seen...well, they were the kind of things that either drove a person towards God, or utterly away from Him.
Richie hadn’t figured out quite where he fit into that yet.
All Richie knew was that there was a natural order of things, and for good reason too. The Earth revolves around the Sun, and every morning that sun comes over the horizon, clear as day. The tapestry of bright lights in the sky are flames. The Sun burns there too. Mondays were always shitty and Rock and Roll never went out of style, and with each inhale and exhale of the Earth, life prospered and covered every inch of it like a plague. And beneath the surface of Derry, in the deep, rotten stink of the dark, It lived. Watching. Waiting.
And above all else, where even logic failed to reach—he loved Eddie. He loved him so much it hurt. He always would. It was as certain as the sun rising every morning and setting every night.
These were just some of the truths Richie Tozier had come to accept over the years— some sooner than others, but all just as true. And like humans did best, he adapted. His life was now governed by these rules, and yet— ceased to be changed by them. Of course, he would never forget the face of It deep down inside, a person always remembers the face of their greatest fear, no matter how hard they try not to. But life moved on. He got a job, and nobody was more surprised than him when he discovered he was good at it. Great at it, even. He moved to California, miles and miles away from that old town of Derry, and he learned to forget.
And all of that was shattered in an instant the minute Mike Hanlon picked up the phone that fateful night.
It takes a lifetime to build a world for yourself, and only a single moment to break it.
And that was just another unfair, horrific truth Richie Tozier had come to learn. Just like that— his sanity taking a nosedive, fleeting entirely somewhere between the moment he first remembered Derry to the moment he couldn’t bring himself to leave.
No wonder Stan killed himself, Richie thought.
And he wailed to himself— if there can be entities older than any human stalking the sewer pipes and things that lurk in the dark, why can’t there be life after death? Who the fuck is anyone to say that Eddie can’t be right next to Richie right now? Who are they to deprive him of that?
“Who the fuck are you?!” he yelled.
The river gurgled in response, lazily lapping at the sun-bleached base of the grey bridge as it flowed on, as if oblivious to the horrors that had transpired in it over the years.
The water looked black and endlessly deep— like whatever sat behind It’s haunting white eyes. The small ripples in the water and quiet bubbling sounds were the only indication it was a moving, breathing thing. The sound revolted him.
How dare you, Richie thought lividly, how dare you carry on living like everything’s okay when Eddie’s dead.
He thought back to that moment in the quarry, when the remaining Losers had gathered around him in the water, clutching onto his arm and making jokes. Jokes— like now was a time for those, if ever. He remembered how Ben and Beverly boarded a yacht, petting their pet dog— fur curly with water-drops as the sun went down on them, only to rise the next morning.
How fucking nice for you, Richie thought bitterly, perhaps a little unfairly, do you know what I would do to see him again? Hold him again?
Richie couldn’t help but feel like the sun set on him the moment Eddie’s last breath left his gaping mouth, and he hadn’t seen it since, left shivering and alone, looking for the golden line across the horizon, waiting for the only warmth he’d ever known to return to his life.
It was exceptionally chilly down by the canal, the sharp salt-kissed breeze abrasively cool against his face as he stared blankly over the horizon. In a moment of mad impulse, he wished Pennywise was standing on the other side of that canal.
“Where are you now, fucker— huh?” he yelled, “Why don’t you come on out and do that little jig of yours? Sing about my dirty little secret,” he spat.
“You’re not the first fucker in this town who wants to kill the fairies, you know,” he yawped, “you’re not original, bimbo! You’d think after this many years you’d think of something more creative!”
He knew he shouldn’t be talking so loudly about the boy he loved. Even if Pennywise may be gone, there existed a kind of undeniable evil surrounding Derry that had nothing to do with It. Perhaps that was even more horrifying than the monster itself. Richie could feel the trepidation coiling tightly in his stomach before receding like a tide, like an iron glove closing around his insides and squeezing. He kept waiting for It to appear, to come kill him. Punish him. Taunt him.
But he was only met with the sound of silence, and the beginning sniffles of a floodgate of tears building behind his eyes.
“You can’t hurt me, asshole,” he wailed hoarsely, the sound resonating statically from his throat, “you already ripped my heart out, you fucking clown bastard. You hurt me worse than dead when you took him away from me.”
“...And you knew,” he murmured, voice the special kind of quiet that only showed up when one was teetering over the dizzying precipice of hysterics, “you knew,” he repeated, sobbing.
He fell to his knees, forehead lolling against the grass as he beat his fists onto the ground like a child having a temper tantrum.
“He’s all I ever wanted, you know,” he sobbed brokenly, tone almost nonsensical in his despair, “why couldn’t you have taken me?”
For the hundredth time that night alone, Richie’s pleads were met with utter and dead silence, which somehow felt more disrespectful than anything that could be said.
Richie slammed his fists against the ground until they were mud-caked, aching and bleeding, “Why not me,” he wailed into the night, “why him, oh God no, please not him.”
The wind whistled as it cut through the night, crickets chirping in the distance. Life in Derry carried on.
Richie laid down in the dirt and cried.
He must have been there awhile— time seemed to melt and slip away lately, and he’d stopped bothering to wear a watch. He didn’t need another reminder of how long Eddie has been gone. He didn’t need that sliver of hope to see the setting sun just yet. He broke out of his trance when he felt a vibration in his jean pocket, radiating up his leg. He briefly wondered if his leg had gone numb, having the same kind of staticky feeling, and then deduced his phone was ringing when he heard his stupid ringtone.
He fumbled for his phone, sniffling as he swiped the back of his hand under his nose.
He looked at the caller ID:
(incoming call from Chicago, Illinois)
Bev.
He scoffed, shaking his head as he shoved his phone back into his pocket. He really didn’t need another Loser-Gang pep-talk, not right now. Not ever. The phone stopped ringing and fell still. Richie breathed a sigh of relief, easing back into his previous position.
Silence.
And then the phone started ringing again.
“For fuck’s sake—“ he grumbled, tears prickling in his eyes in frustration, clumsily pulling out the phone.
He adjusted his glasses, which had pressed into his face from lying on the ground, and shakily pressed ‘accept call.’
“Look, Beverly. I don’t need you to check in on me—“ he started.
“Richie,” she said breathily, voice sounding shaky, like how it was when she told everyone Stan was dead.
Richie sat up straighter, curiosity piquing as his heart thudded wildly in his chest. He heard a creak on the other end of the line, and he figured that must be Ben shifting on the bed, waking up, followed by a small click he immediately attributed to a bedside lamp being turned on.
“Richie, I—“ she started, and made a faint sniffling, choked-off sob sound over the receiver. He heard her take a deep breath.
“Richie,” she said shakily, “I think Eddie’s alive.”