Chapter Text
The shift in Richie terrified Eddie, watching his friend's still body morph and twist yet still stay exactly the same. His hair didn't change, it was still that mop of wiry black curls, the ones Eddie wished he could run his fingers in but could never ever spare a moment to think about. Eddie forced his eyes away from Richie's lower half, gutted and staining his floor in blood. It was blood, and blood was dirty and disgusting, even if it came out of Richie. Even after Pennywise left, and Eddie felt a tugging inside of himself, knowing that the clown was already retreating into the sewers, he heard It's voice break into his mind and pervade any and all thought. Like it always did.
"He'll rot! Rot rot rot!! He'll return to the Earth and then he'll float like you, Eddie-bear. Float float float! Or maybe sink? Sink sink--"
No. The Turtle had promised. Richie wasn't going to die. Eddie was so sure of it even as he saw the cool unblemished skin on Richie's cheeks split open and bloom with oily maggots. Disgusting, putrid feasters on his flesh--
Stop, Eddie.
Once the kids died, they weren't in It's domain anymore. He could tease and torment them all he liked, but it was the Turtle who decided what stays and what passes on. Eddie frowns at the textbook thought, one that his other friends had recited time and time again--very well the reason Bill kept telling himself that's why Georgie isn't with us--and couldn't help but burn with the simple question of why me? Why months of fearful panic attacks when he shouldn't even be able to use his lungs? Why did Mike and Ben have to stay behind? Why did Beverly wait a whole two weeks to look for him after he died just to get caught in the Deadlights--
He cradled the back of Richie's head tighter, fighting the urge to let his lungs take over and allow gallons and gallons of blood and bile to spew out. It was an immense effort, but Eddie kept his stinging lips pursed. Richie's face was lolled back into Eddie's palm, and Eddie watched, transfixed at the hollowness Richie's entire body took on, his pale skin fading and muddled like watercolor until it regained focus...and texture. Richie looked like a porcelain doll, collapsed limp in Eddie's small arms. Just not as heavy...or breakable, Eddie prayed. Where his legs and arms bended, the little joints were separated. Where the slice in Richie's abdomen used to be a series of thick black stitches replaced the exposed tissue and muscle. Eddie looked over the expanse of Richie's new pearly china skin and grimaced at the sudden chips in the perfection where more maggots burst through and oozed and made inaudible cries, and Richie's pale lips were sewn shut with string--
Richie's eyes flung open, his whole body rigid in Eddie's arms. His face was terrified, and if he had pupils they were barely a shade darker than his white eyes, and they were flickering around Eddie's dark room with a madness of being raised from the dead. Literally.
"Oh! Wait wait wait! Shhhh," Eddie whispered, freeing one of his hands and placing it tentatively on Richie's mouth. Richie's expression softened when he stared in the general direction of Eddie's face, and it made Eddie's (why does it even do this anymore--) heart flutter and a nauseating sensation of dread wash over him. He pinched the first stitch by the curve of Richie's lip and began to tug on it. It came undone in little effort, and with bated breath Eddie continued to pull out the line of string keeping Richie's mouth shut.
He tossed the vile-smelling string aside and looked back at Richie, who, in his human body might have been shaking with ragged breaths but his hard doll shell forced him to remain still.
"You came back," Richie whispered, his voice sounded like the dust you blow off from old china plates. But that didn't matter to Eddie. Richie was here and alive (for the most part) in Eddie's arms and did he for a second forget Richie was in his arms--
Eddie's throat seized up and he gently set Richie down on the bed so he could let just a small dribble of blood out. It ravaged Eddie's throat and simmered low and painful in the pit of his stomach, but was so relieving after he'd thrown up the blood. It always was.
It was alright now. Richie wasn't cradled to Eddie's chest anymore and Eddie wasn't thinking about his shiny skin. The blood was gone, and with it the feelings he'd had while looking at Richie, and Eddie knew it was okay.
Eddie dabbed the corner of his mouth and smiled a sad sort of pitiful thing at Richie. "I told you, you weren't going to be alone."
He wasn't registering anything yet, and Eddie tensed up for the damn to break. It would, it always did. It happened first with Bill and Stanley when they'd turned up in the Neibolt house two years ago...dripping wet from canal water and wearing two different bodies of their own. Bill had Stanley's severed head pressed to his chest without realizing it, and Stanley could only offer a grin at Eddie once they'd reunited. Bill had flinched at the headless body next to him, everything rushing back into his mind that shit that's Stanley he's here in my arms and we just died in the canal--
After that it all went to shit. That's when it clicked.
"Where is It? Where is It?" Richie screams, that hollow shrill noise. His doll head flicks wildly around Eddie's room looking for any sign of Pennywise.
"It's gone, Richie!" Eddie grabs Richie's hand without thinking. The china skin is cooler than his own, and silky smooth to the touch. It makes Eddie's cheeks flame and a burning sensation threaten to spill in his throat. "The clown isn't here!"
Richie blinks back at Eddie, a tiny shuddering breath escaping his broken string lips. "How do you know?"
Eddie taps his chest. "I get a feeling, I guess."
"And- wait- what about the others? Bev and Stanley and Bill?" Richie asked.
Even Eddie didn't know the answer to that. Bill had left with Stanley hours ago, on the premise that Bill felt something weird was around the house, and no one seemed up to argue, so they let him leave. But Bev, who knew?
"Bill is with Stanley...outside, I think?" Eddie said. "Bev might be in the sewers. Don't ask." Eddie retorted at the end before Richie could prod further.
It was just a hunch, but Eddie was sure that if the clown was in the house, she'd follow the trail of water leading to the downstairs bathroom where It fled. Back to where she'd died, to see if she could recreate that very scene...and go back. It was ridiculous to Eddie, and hopeless and impossible but worst of all so very, very sad.
"You know, after the, uh," Richie slid a finger across his belly. "I saw something. Or, I don't know, I heard a voice."
"This was after you were in the Deadlights?"
"Deadlights?"
Eddie made a swirling motion in the air with his fingers. "That thing you saw inside of the clown's mouth, those bright balls of light?"
Richie nodded. "Yeah, after that, I guess. I don't even know what it means, but it kinda helped me understand a few things." Richie grew quiet and then considered the strip of stitches across his abdomen. His shorts were in pieces, hardly discernable anymore from the blood covering every inch of it.
'Helped you understand what, Richie?"
Richie looked uncomfortable, and if it were at all possible a slight tinge of blue covered his cheeks. Like a blush. The thought made Eddie's head swim and he couldn't stop the blood this time. He smiled apologetically at Richie, motioning for him to continue with one hand while the other was catching the blood on his lips.
"After the Deadlight thingy, it stopped hurting? Then there was this voice in my head, maybe it was my own voice, but I couldn't have come up with half of the shit it was saying. Anyway, it started to tell me that this, me dying, was all on purpose? That this person or whatever, gave Bill's parents the idea to move just so that they would sell Silver, knowing my dad was going to buy it."
So I guess the bike was a sort of part to play then, because after I met you, I felt so pulled to come back," Richie's cheeks darkened in embarrassment. Something transparent, almost like drying hot glue dripped down Richie's face. Tiny glassy tears. Eddie wanted to reach out and take Richie's hand again, but decided against it.
"The voice said that I could see you guys because I was meant to die. The...the clown cursed m-my mom so she couldn't have any more kids--"
"HE'S BACK! H-HE'S HERE!"
Bill shrieks were heard from upstairs. Eddie turned his head away from Richie, barely able to hear the second voice in the house. Somewhere down there, Beverly was laughing, actually laughing, and a soft sob followed.
"George?" Eddie asked himself.
"Who's that?" Richie pointed at the open door, where the voices echoed up from.
"I...think that's Bill's younger brother," Eddie said. He looked back at Richie and sighed. "I don't know what the hell is going on, but I think we better go down there."
"What's so important about this kid?"
Eddie frowned, forgetting Richie was being Richie. "Did you not listen the first time? Richie, Georgie's been dead for years. He wasn't like us, he died and didn't come back. I'm sorry, we're gonna get all this shit situated in a second, I swear."
"Well why is he back now?" Richie asked. He followed Eddie to the doorframe, and placed his cool china hand on Eddie's back. Eddie shuddered at the touch and faced the hallway so Richie couldn't see the color on his face and the twist of nausea in his features.
"I don't know."