Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Stanley Uris takes a bath.

And then

Death is like falling asleep. Everything is warm and wet and growing foggier by the minute. Everything is pain and light and pins and needles. Cold spreading from the inside out. One moment everything is swimming. Ha ha. Swimming. Get it? And then suddenly it isn't. Suddenly nothing is.

Nowhere is dark.

That's what he has to think, because he can't see. But it's not like being in a dark room with your eyes open because he doesn't have eyes. Not here. Doesn't have any of the rest of him either. There are no fingernails to press down the beds of his fingers because there are no fingers. There is no stomach to bulge and recede with every breath because there is no breath. There are no lungs. There are no lips that rest together softly, or tongue to push against his teeth because there are no teeth, no tongue, no hard pallet or uvula,

you get the idea.

He is nowhere, and there is nothing.

But no, that's not right is it? Because he's here. So that's something, right? Somehow, despite the void, the lack, the sheer emptiness that should pull anything to pieces until it crumbles and dissolves and becomes by unbecoming, he's here.

And there's something else too.

When it speaks, it comes from everywhere.

"Oh Stanley," it says.

And it's not It. Not It with a capital I, but it's Something with a capital Something, that's for sure.

"Why did you do that, Stanley?"

And he tries to answer. He tries to speak. To form words with the lips he doesn't have and push them out with the air that isn't there. To make sound in a vacuum.

I had to take myself off the board.

It doesn't work, but the Something understands.

"Why?"

I was too weak. I was always the weakest.

"So?"

So, I was going to get them all killed.

"That's stupid."

Is it?

"You're strongest when you're all together. You know that."

They'll be stronger without me.

"Is that what you think?"

Yes.

"I thought you were supposed to be the sensible one, kid."

Excuse me?

"I don't have time to lay it all out for you. I'm busy getting my affairs in order."

What?

"I'm dying, kid. Pretty soon it's just going to be you."

Wait—

"You better start walking."

Walking? How can I walk? I don't have—

And then he does. It's still dark, and he can barely feel them, but they're there. He's there. Not nowhere anymore, not quite. Maybe on the edge of it though.

"Come on kid."

The voice of the great big Something is fading.

"It's not ideal, but contingency plans rarely are."

He can't hear it anymore, and part of him thinks that's probably a good thing. He doesn't think he could keep the pieces of himself together for long if it went on talking to him.

The rest of him mourns.

He starts walking. It's strange, walking with a body that isn't in a place that barely is. Without a ground to press against, it doesn't feel much like he's moving, but he must be. He can feel it. Each step takes him a little further away from Nothing, and a little bit towards Something.

I want to run towards something.

He doesn't know what that something is, but he's definitely moving towards it. Not because the Turtle told him to (Turtle?). Not because he's afraid of the Nothing he left behind. But because he wants to.

I have to see this through.

Time is strange here. He has no way of knowing how much of it passes, if it passes at all. He just walks. One foot in front of the other. Steady. Rhythmic. Unafraid.

Am I afraid?

No. Logically speaking there's nothing left to be afraid of. He's dead. There is no monster. There is no pain. There is nothing left to lose.

The thing about being a Loser is…

Suddenly he sees something. Just a smear of shadow in his lower periphery. And normally he wouldn't notice at all, but he's been in this darkness for so long (or has he?) and the impression of something in this endless nothing is jarring. He lifts his hand. It's hard to make out, but he thinks he can make out the motion of it as he moves it across his face.

He keeps walking.

He doesn't look at his hands for a long time. Just stares straight ahead and walks. And when he accidentally catches a familiar flash of motion in the corner of his eye some time later, he can vaguely make out the shape of his fingers.

With every step he takes, the shape of his body becomes more defined. He can see his feet moving beneath him, can tell he's wearing shoes. They look like his brown loafers from the shape of them, though he can't tell the color. He can make out the sleeve of his cardigan and, when he looks down, the buttons on his shirt.

And it's not just himself.

He starts to notice shadows around him. Big shapes that stand stationary as he passes them, and little ones that scurry or tumble by. Buildings, small animals, litter. Cars rolling by. What's the opposite of a shadow? What is a vague silhouette of light cast against the darkness?

It is light. Light that must be snuffed out by darkness.

What is?

You know.

And no. No no no no no no no.

A neon light blinks on, and Stan knows where he is.

The Jade of the Orient looks exactly like it did when it opened. Stan would know; he remembers it opening. Derry went through a bit of a boom in the years he grew up there. With the opening of the mall in '81 came an array of businesses and restaurants that would have never been found in a backwater town like Derry only a few years prior. He doesn't remember what year this one opened; he's never been inside. But he remembers seeing the neon lights light up the commercial district of Derry that seemed to grow and grow, once upon a time. And now he can see those lights blink on around him, one by one like stage lights and—

It's not fair.

It's not fair, it's not fair, it's not fair.

Isn't it?

Because Stan's never believed in a heaven or hell, but this would be it for him, wouldn't it? Getting to see all of his friends one last time, only to watch them all die horribly. That's why he didn't go. That's why he couldn't go. He couldn't stand by and see them die. He couldn't walk into this town again and never come out.

But here he is anyway. And wasn't it stupid to think that he wouldn't be? He made a promise. An oath.

Swear it.

"I swear, Bill," he says quietly. And he can actually speak this time, even though the air passing through his lungs and trachea is passing in all directions, not the way it's supposed to. He wonders if anyone else would even be able to hear him. Somehow he doesn't think that's how this works.

A car pulls up into the parking lot, and Stan watches as a man gets out. He's not very tall, has light, overgrown hair, and for the brief glance Stan gets of his face, he looks so determined it hurts.

It's the flannel that gets him. 27 years later and Bill Denbrough still wears flannel.

"Bill," he says. And Bill doesn't notice him, so he has to think that he's right. That he can't be seen or heard.

Bill starts towards the restaurant and Stan finds himself following in a stupor. It's so easy to fall into step behind him that Stan barely realizes he's doing it until they're halfway through the restaurant and the hostess is directing him into a private room.

Even then, he's so caught up in the strangeness that is looking down at Bill that he doesn't notice the man standing in the corner until he's lunging towards them.

Towards Bill. Not you. Because you're not here.

And Stan barely recognizes him at first because Mike was always tall but this Mike is huge and his face is squished into Bill's shoulder like he's found a part of himself that he lost and never wants to let go.

Stan gets it. It would be like that with any of them. They all broke their souls into seven parts that summer and passed around the pieces. But it's different too, because it's Bill. And when Mike pulls back there's such a stark look of relief on his face. Like he's finally come home. Finally safe.

Yeah. Even dead, seeing Big Bill does that to Stan too.

"Of course you came," Mike says, and it's the emphasis on the you that cuts through Stan. Because Mike's been waiting here for 27 years, threw his life away, and somehow still thinks that any of them would give up on him after all he's given away for them.

I didn't give up on you Mike. I promise.

He feels a little voyeuristic, standing there and watching them reconnect without knowing he's there. In a way it feels like old times. He was always a watcher, a witness. Even so, there's some relief when he hears footsteps approaching and a voice he would recognize anywhere.

"—and if I eat a cashew I could realistically…die. Holy shit."

Holy shit is right.

Eddie Kaspbrak hasn't changed at all. He's about Stan's height now, but he still has that same jittery energy, the same enormous doe eyes that make the rest of him look small in comparison. As much as he hates to admit it, Bill and Mike he might not have recognized without context, without the expectation that they'd be there. But Eddie. Eddie, he could spot across a full arena and pick out the same tiny bundle of isopropyl, neurosis, and rage he knew when they were kids.

He watches Mike smother him in a hug, slotting another piece of his soul that walked away back into place. Eddie holds him tight for a moment longer than Stan thought he would, and then he stands in front of Bill, so palpably nervous and overwhelmed that he might as well be shuffling his feet. And when Bill opens his arms and lets Eddie step into them, there it is again.

Coming home.

It hurts to watch and not feel.

He's barely gotten over the shock of Eddie when the gong suddenly rings out behind them. All four of them turn, and suddenly it's BenBevRichie, and Stan feels like he's knocked over with the force of seeing them all again. Ben is huge and so is Richie, and Stan knows Richie would be giving him shit for it if he knew how much Stan had to tilt his chin up to look at him now. Not to mention Beverly is tiny, and isn't that a mindfuck if there's ever been one?

God, Bev.

He'd recognize her anywhere, and it's not the red hair (though that certainly helps.) It's that smile. Quirking and wary, but so defiant. There's so much joy spilling from her eyes, and Stan can feel the satisfaction, the pride, in seeing all of her boys again.

Yeah. They were always her boys.

And poor Ben, who always had more body than he knew what to do with. He still does, and even though it's in a different direction now, he's still so clearly uncomfortable in his own skin. He tries to hide it under all of those layered shirts, the same way he did with sweatshirts when he was a kid. Always trying to be smaller, to be less.

You were never too much, Ben. And you never could be.

Richie, though. Richie could stand to be a little less. Stan grins to himself as he thinks it, watching and listening as Richie makes a fool of himself to no conceivable end. He's just as loud, just as absurd, just as absolutely infuriating as he was when they were kids, when he and Stan would battle vicious wars of attrition that ended only when Bill finally said enough.

Stan's missed him.

He watches them all hug, and touch, and laugh at each other, and if he stands off to the side he can pretend that he's there. That he's just fallen into one of those quiet moments of observing, and they're so caught up in the spark and dynamism of each other that they've forgotten to notice him, just for a moment.

He spots Ben take a step back and fall quiet, with that timid but pleased smile on his face, and Stan wishes he could connect eyes with him from across the room. Wishes he could tell him.

I know. I understand.

They all take their seats eventually and leave Stan the worst spot at the table—right between Richie and Eddie. It's exactly where he would've ended up sitting if he'd actually been there.

He stares for a while at that empty seat, pulled back from the table like they know, and the sounds of their chatting and catching up fade into the background as he looks at it.

He sits down.

There's something so easy about it—sitting here at the table with them all, even if he can't truly be a part of it. He doesn't talk. It's easier if he doesn't, because then it doesn't feel like he's being ignored. Richie puts his arm on the back of his chair at one point, and if he was really there, Stan would probably roll his eyes, or lean away. But because he isn't, he doesn't even try. He just lets himself pretend that Richie's arm is around him. That he's grudgingly putting up with it and that Richie knows.

It's nice. He can almost feel the warmth of it.

There's a quiet air of confusion to them all, and it seems to make them nervous when they prod at it, like a sore tooth you hope isn't rotten on the inside. Every time the conversation starts to move in a direction that might eventually lead to the reason they're all here, they steer away from it. They barely seem to realize they're doing it, and Stan doesn't quite understand how they can all ignore it so adamantly.

It takes Mike's knowing gaze. His exuberant, but apprehensive smile, for Stan to realize what's going on. They don't know. But Mike does.

Oh Mike.

He can't really blame him though, can he? Mike has lived his whole life in this hell, suffered it and built himself around and through it. He deserves this. Just a few moments living in a world where none of it ever happened. Where the love they all have for each other wasn't built on pain. Where that's the reason they're here, and not the horror they've lived through once and might not again.

Not to mention if they'd remembered it all right off the bat like he did, maybe more of them wouldn't have made it back…

But that's not true. Because they're all stronger than you ever were.

Richie makes a comment about Ben's weight and Stan glares at him.

"Beep beep," he says, even though it was (technically) a compliment, because Ben seems somehow more uncomfortable than when Richie made digs about his weight when they were kids. And maybe Stan doesn't completely understand why, but he knows that if he could, he'd be telling Richie to shut the fuck up.

Ben does well enough for himself, though, by turning the topic of conversation.

"Is Stanley coming or what?" he says, and suddenly all of the Losers are looking at him.

He feels his heart thud in his chest, even though he doesn't have one, and for a moment it feels like they are. Then he remembers. They left the spot open between Richie and Eddie because that's where he goes. They're not staring at him, they're staring at his absence.

Either way, it's jarring to turn and see Richie staring at him absently while fumbling over his name. He rolls his eyes when he and Bill look at each other and settle on "Stan Urine."

"No, no," Richie says, laughing. "He's a fucking pussy, he's not gonna show."

If it were anyone else, maybe he would be offended. But it's Richie, and Stan can see the doubt in his eyes. Like he's waiting for Stan to walk in at any moment and prove him wrong. But the thing is, he isn't. He doesn't know how right he is.

Stan's relieved when the conversation moves on, and he can't help but wonder if they're avoiding him the same way they're avoiding It.

The best moments are when it's loud. When they're laughing, or yelling. When Bev pretends to kiss Richie and shoves food in his face instead. When Richie and Eddie are arm-wrestling, and Eddie shouts to distract him. When Eddie and Ben get into a weirdly in-depth conversation about MSG that Eddie tries to goad into an argument. Ben just smiles and shrugs when Eddie contradicts him.

It's in the quiet moments that Stan notices all of the little things that are wrong, all of the things that hurt. The bruises on Bev's wrists. The longing look on Ben's face and the way he seems surprised when anyone knocks or brushes against him. The way Eddie brings up his wife with hollow eyes and changes the subject as soon as he does. The way Mike stays quiet.

Maybe that's why those moments don't last long. Why as soon as the conversation starts to dip, Richie's eyes light up with a new gag, or Eddie tries to prod someone into a fight, or Bev loudly asks about their personal lives from across the table, teasing out new information to toss around and play with.

Even so, they can't keep it up forever, and they're falling into another lull when the fortune cookies come out.

Eddie and Richie are arguing about something stupid, but it's subdued, and Stan doesn't even have to lean back to avoid Richie's leaning in or Eddie's emphatic gestures. Mike is watching them vacantly, going through the motions of giving them an audience, even though Stan's almost certain that he isn't listening to any of it. Ben is outwardly staring at Bev and Bill, the same way he did when they were kids and somehow didn't think the rest of them could see. That same look of wanting and waiting. Loving both of them so much that he'd hold it inside of him until it hurt rather than do anything to get in the way.

It's a testament to how rare it is that everyone's eyes fall on Ben when he gently inserts himself into their conversation.

"I mean it's weird, right?" he says. And suddenly everyone's listening up. Ben stumbles over the sudden attention, but does what he's always done best and pushes through. "Now that we're all here everything just comes back faster and faster…I mean, all of it."

Stan feels it in the air. Feels it when he looks at Mike and sees him grimacing at his plate. Feels it in the blanket of tension that settles over the Losers. The revelry is coming to an end.

"You know when Mike called me, I threw up," Richie throws out, grinning nervously like it's a joke. "Isn't that weird? Like I got nervous. I got sick, and I threw up."

There's silence, then, and if Stan knows Richie, he knows Richie hates silence.

"I feel fine now," he stumbles on, lying through his teeth as far as Stan's concerned. "I'm very relieved to be here with you guys."

Everything about it is wrong. The flat suggestion where a joke should be, the sudden sincerity. If the Richie he knows ever manages to get every eye in the room on him at any given time he preens. This Richie glances around nervously and says:

"Why's everybody looking at me like this?"

One by one the Losers come to terms with the fear they felt when Mike called, and while Stan isn't glad that his friends were suddenly ripped out of their lives by a surprise dose of concentrated abject horror, there's a selfish sort of relief in knowing that they felt it too. That it wasn't just Stan who felt the world as he knew it come crashing down around him when Mike Hanlon said "come home."

And now he gets to see, in real time, each of them go through the next stages of it. The denial, the anger, the I don't want to hear this and let him explain.

He can't help but hurt for Mike as he tries to do just that. It's not his fault that it hurts. That the human mind puts up walls to keep itself safe. That doing this, being here, is taking a sledgehammer (a baseball bat, a fencepost-javelin) to those walls and letting every rancid horror spill through and sink teeth into right and good.

Stan understands. He really does. He felt everything that they're feeling now in one concentrated burst. And maybe it's better this way (he hopes beyond hope that it's better this way) to have the pain spread out over time. Maybe it's just too much to comprehend, and that's why they're lashing out like this. Maybe that's why he took the path he did, and they're all sitting here together.

No. They would have made it back. They're strong.

Mike says his piece. Explains that It is alive and killing again, just like they all knew but didn't want to believe. He reminds them of the oath they swore and tells them that they've fulfilled it just by being here today, but that if there's any chance of killing It, it lies with the seven of them.

"Well that shit got dark fast," Richie says. "Thanks, Mike."

Eddie opens his fortune cookie.

"My fortune just says 'Could.'"

Stan watches the chaos unfold in slow motion. As soon as Guess Cut Not Could It is on the table, he knows what Bev's fortune says. He sits, sober, as the Losers scramble to piece together the message. When Bev finally places hers on the table, tears streaming silently down her face, he closes his eyes.

"Why does it say Stanley?" Eddie says, but his voice is hollow like he knows the answer.

The table shakes.

Stan opens his eyes to see the fortune cookies rattling. There's a bang as every Loser still sitting pushes back in their chair that he thinks originates either from Ben grabbing the table or Richie knocking against it with his knee in a mad scramble to get back.

Stan stays where he is, watching grimly as a fortune cookie leaps out of the bowl in front of Eddie. Stan knows it can't hurt him—nothing can anymore. Even so, when the cookie begins to quiver and crack, when a huge bug, yellow-brown and chitinous, pushes out, like hatching from an egg, a wave of revulsion spreads through him that sinks so deep that it doesn't matter that he can't be killed again. There are worse things.

"What the fuck is that, man?" Richie says, standing now, and Stan almost laughs from the sheer exasperation he says it with.

The bug crawls towards Eddie, who wheezes weakly, apparently frozen in place.

Three more cookies leap out of the bowl in front of Mike, Bill, Richie.

All three start to hatch at once. Mike stares in horror as something soft and wet sloughs out—a fetal bird with a soft twitching beak, soaking in a pool of embryonic fluid that spills across the table.

Underdone, Stan thinks hysterically.

A fly pushes out of Bill's, huge and hairy and buzzing. Its wings are too weak for its engorged body, and it only manages to lift itself a few inches off of the table at a time before crashing on its side, scrabbling furiously to push itself upright before taking off into the same lilting flight again.

Richie shrieks when an eye crawls out of the table in front of him, optic nerves acting as long, thrashing tentacles, propelling it forward.

"That fortune cookie's looking at me!" he shouts, scrambling back towards the wall.

Two more leap out. One for Ben, one for Bev. The rest of them barely notice, too caught up in the welcome back gifts It picked out just for them, but Ben's eyes widen like saucers as a handful of bloody teeth roll out on the table towards him.

Bev's cookie just pulses.

"Shut up!" Bill hisses suddenly, and somehow it cuts through the chaos and freezes them all in place. For a moment the only sounds in the room are the dying chirps of the cricket, the buzzing of the fly and the squelching of the eyeball, dragging itself slowly across the table.

Stan can hear footsteps approaching, the solid click of heels.

Bill's fly lurches towards Eddie, and he scrambles to grab on to Ben.

"I don't want to be here, I don't want to be here," he moans.

Bill locks eyes with Ben and he nods, wrapping one arm around Eddie's shoulder and pushing his other hand over Eddie's mouth. Eddie grabs on to it, but doesn't try to wrench it away, eyes wide.

"Everyone, pull up to the table," Bill says, dropping back into his seat and doing just that. Stan spots the sick look on his face when it brings him closer to the lumbering fly, but his face is set in determination.

Mike pulls his chair forward, then Bev, even though the cookie in front of her still pulses like an unruptured boil. Richie comes back to the table. Ben slowly lets go of Eddie. He grips the back of his chair with pale, straining knuckles, but stays quiet.

The waitress comes back into the room, looking concerned. She glances around at them, at their pallid faces, and tense, bated breath.

"Is everything alright?" she asks in confusion. She can't see the horrible things scattered, flitting, oozing across the table, just like Bev's father couldn't see the blood.

Bev's cookie pulses.

"Yeah, sorry," Bill says, face pulled grim and pale, but voice steady. "We're old friends. Just a joke taken too far."

Stan sees her take a look around for some evidence of such a joke, and seeing none, fixes Bill with a confused smile.

Bev's cookie suddenly bursts in a spurt of blood. She flinches, but doesn't gasp.

"Could we get the check, please?" Richie says, distracting the waitress's gaze towards him.

"Of course," she says, smiling politely. "I'll be right back with that."

The things on the table are moving slowly now, or not at all. Only the eyeball squirms across the hard wood, scraping now as it runs out of slick. Bill's fly kicks furiously on its side. He drops his napkin over it as soon as the waitress's back is turned.

The instant she's out of sight, Bev shudders and Richie lurches forward, hand pressed over his mouth. Stan goes to put his hand on Richie's shoulder, but suddenly finds himself afraid that it will go right through. He pulls away quickly as Richie shakes.

"You alright, Rich?" Bill asks. Bev does what Stan couldn't and puts her hand on his shoulder.

"Yeah, yeah," he says, turning away from her. "Just…"

He lurches forward once again, this time directly towards Stan, hand pressed firmly against his mouth. Stan finally stands up and puts some distance between him and Richie. He'll hold strong in the face of Its nasty tricks, but getting thrown up through is where he draws the line. He hears Eddie do the same behind him.

Impressively, Richie manages to keep it together with Bev rubbing gently at his back and his eyes firmly fixed away from the table.

"Why don't I pay the bill on the way out?" Bill says.

Nobody argues.

°°°

Bill pays, Richie freaks out a kid, Eddie says "Stanley's probably fine."

Bev calls Patty in the parking lot.

And Stan doesn't want this. He doesn't want to hear her in the wake of what he's done. But he has to. Because she didn't ask for this. God, if he'd known, he never would have married her. He never would have spoken to her. Because Patty is good. Patty is love and light and everything right with the world. And she doesn't deserve this. She doesn't deserve him.

"He passed," she says on the phone, and Stan can feel ghost tears roll down his face, as hot and pressing as if they were real. She sobs quietly, and he closes his eyes and listens.

When she finally hangs up, Stan feels light in a way he hasn't since he appeared in Derry. Vaporous. Untethered.

It takes Richie and Eddie arguing with Mike to bring him back.

It's more like arguing at Mike, if he's being honest, and when Richie says "You lied to us," Stan is grounded with a sudden sharp spike of anger.

"He didn't lie," Stan says, unthinking, angry. "You're not supposed to know all at once. This is what happens if you know all at once."

Richie goes still, and for a delirious instant, Stan wonders if he heard him. But Richie just turns and walks back to his car. Eddie is quick to follow suit, and Mike watches them with resignation.

Bev and Ben are next, heading back to the Townhouse, though at least they don't seem set on leaving Derry just yet.

Part of Stan wants them to leave. To take the scraps of memories they've gathered and get out while they still can. But he also sees the look of determination on Mike's face and knows that he's going after It either way. And they've always been stronger together.

"Bill," Mike says, when it's only the two of them left.

"I'm sorry, Mikey," Bill says, and Stan feels his stomach sink. If Bill walks away, there's no chance. And Bill has to see it. He has to see that Mike isn't going to give up on this. That if he leaves, he's leaving Mike to die.

"Let me show you something," Mike says, quietly. "Then, if you want to go, you can go. Just. Let me show you."

Bill studies him, and Stan wonders if he sees it. If he does, he doesn't give any indication. But he nods. The look of relief on Mike's face is overwhelming.

Stan follows Mike and Bill to the library.

°°°

Mike's loft is cluttered in a way that makes Stan shudder. Even so, a wave of fondness rolls over him as he scans over the maps and articles pinned to the walls, the books stacked waist high on the floor, and the papers covering his desk. He sees it in Bill's face too as he looks around while Mike picks through the mess in search of something.

When Mike surfaces, he's holding a book. He tips it open, and even without anything marking the page it seems to land right where he wants it to. It must be a page he's opened to countless times before. He smooths his palm across the inside of the spine, absentmindedly.

Stan sees him hesitate before he passes it to Bill.

"The Ritual of Chüd," Bill reads. He immediately reels back, snapping the book shut and pressing the heel of his palm to his head.

"Sorry, sorry," Mike apologizes, frantically taking the book back. "It's not good to remember so quickly I just— I needed you to know that I have a plan. That we had a plan."

"Mike," Bill says, and when Stan looks over…is his nose bleeding?

"We're not going into this blind," Mike says. "We've done it before. We hurt It. I really think we almost killed It. We can kill It, we just—"

He cuts himself off and stares at the closed cover of the book in his hands. Despite all he's said, all he's saying…in this moment he suddenly seems desperate. Unsure.

Bill stares at him, unreadable, still a little dazed.

"Grab Its tongue," he says quietly. "Bite down."

Mike looks up at him, hesitantly.

"D-don't let guh-go," Bill finishes.

Stan can see it, the flash of determination in his eye from when he was a boy.

It got Georgie. I'm gonna kill It.

"W-we'll kill It," he says, like it's simple. And in that moment, it is.

Stan looks to Mike and sees an expression on his face that he knows was on his own just a moment ago, looking to Bill again after all of these years.

Reverence.

°°°

Back at the Townhouse, the scene is more subdued than expected. Come to think of it, Stan's not sure exactly what he expected, maybe Richie and Eddie having it out with Ben and Bev. Maybe Eddie panicking, Richie vomiting, Bev rolling her eyes as Ben runs between them with assurances.

He didn't expect to find Bev crying and the rest of them watching her with various expressions of horror, disbelief, and (on Ben's part) solemn understanding.

"I've seen every single one of us as we—" she's saying as they walk in.

"Seen every single one of us what?" Bill asks, gentle but pressing as he steps into the room.

She turns to him, and Stan can't see her face from this angle as he comes up behind Mike. She's just a shock of red hair and a fluttering voice that sounds too fragile to belong to Beverly Marsh.

"The place that Stanley wound up," she says. "That's how we all end."

Stan feels cold. He hates hearing them say his name more than anything. Wishes that if he really has to stand by and witness all of this, they would just forget him.

That wouldn't happen, he wants to assure them. You're not like me. You're strong. You're all so strong.

"How come the rest of us aren't seeing this shit?" Richie demands. "What makes her so different?"

Only virgins, Stan thinks, nonsensically.

"The deadlights," Mike says, like an epiphany.

"The d-deadlights," Bill gasps, stumbling. A vacant look takes over his face that reminds Stan eerily of a time, so many years ago, in the sewers underneath Derry.

He's remembering.

"She was c-c-caught in the deadlights that day," he says.

"So were you!" Eddie cuts in, a wild look on his face. "I remember, I saw—"

"That was d-different," Bill says, suddenly sure.

"How—" Eddie demands.

"It just is," Bill snaps, and Eddie goes quiet. Bill looks over at him, the chastened look on his face, and softens. "W-was. It's the d-difference between diving in and…f-floating on the surface. Face down."

There's quiet as everyone considers this. Beverly looks vacant, catatonic almost, as she remembers. And Stan can't help the desire to nudge her, to call her name and bring her out of it. Ben seems to be thinking something similar. He's watching her, and as he catches himself leaning towards her and freezes, Stan wonders if he's remembering what he did to draw her out of a similar state once upon a time. Mike, Richie, and Eddie are all watching Bill intently. Mike with serious contemplation that borders on ferocity, Richie in stark disbelief and growing frustration, and Eddie with a thinly veiled amalgam of fear and awe.

"That— You do know that means literally nothing, right Bill?" Richie says, cutting. All eyes land on him, but he stares deliberately at Bill. "None of this makes any fucking sense and we're fucking idiots if we pretend to understand the first thing about it."

"We don't need to," Mike says, and Stan is surprised to hear some of that same desperation from earlier in his voice again. "That's not the point. It. It affects us differently. It always has."

Mike's bird. Eddie's leper. Ben's mummy. Bev's blood. Bill's brother. Stan's corpses. Richie's…what did Richie see again?

Maybe that's why he doesn't understand.

Even so, he surprises Stan and seems to go quiet, letting Mike gather his thoughts for a moment.

"We were all touched by it, changed," he says, directly to Richie. And Stan remembers the way Richie would sometimes be caught in rapt attention when Mike was the one telling the story. "Deep down. Like an infection, or a virus."

Eddie's eyes go wide, and Stan wouldn't have caught it, except that he cuts across the room suddenly. For a moment, Stan's afraid that he's going to walk out. He wants to grab his arm and hold him there, just long enough to let him know that he understands.

He doesn't leave though, just goes to stand by Bill, behind Bev, who's lighting a cigarette. Ben moves to sit down next to her.

Mike's eyes follow Eddie, but he pushes through, explaining directly to Richie, knowing that the rest of them are listening.

"It's been growing for 27 years," he says, urgently. "This whole time, metastasizing. It just got to Stan first because—"

"He was the weakest," Richie says, like defeat.

Stan stares at him. Stung, but grateful. Because Richie understands. At least, in all of this, Richie won't blame himself. Not like the rest of them. Not like Patty.

I'll explain, I promise. When all of this is over, you'll understand.

"Jesus Christ, Rich," Bill says, and Stan doesn't want to look at him. Doesn't want to watch him try to defend him.

"Just saying what everyone else is thinking, man."

"I mean Rich, come on."

"What Beverly sees, it will come to pass, eventually. Unless we stop It," Mike says, determined and sure.

And Stan trusts Mike more than anything, but he's not sure he believes this. Because it wasn't It that made him do what he did. Not entirely at least. He thought about it. He laid down the cards every way he could think and knew that this was the only option. That this was the only way he could escape while keeping the rest of them safe. If It wanted him dead, It wouldn't have wanted it this way. Because when Stan was holding the blade in his hands, when he was pushing past the pain and wrongness, when he was sitting in warmth and copper and fading light, he wasn't afraid.

He wasn't afraid. But they are. It's using him to make them afraid.

Stan wants to scream. To tell them that they're playing right into Its claws. But what can he do? He isn't real. And he knows deep down that even if they knew, they would fight anyway.

Losers stick together.

"How the hell are we supposed to do that?" Eddie asks, exasperated.

Mike looks at him, then the rest of them, evaluating.

"The Ritual of Chüd," he says slowly.

None of them reel back, none of them bleed, like Bill did. But Stan can see the shock and remembrance on their faces.

"That's how we hurt It before," Mike says. "That's how we'll kill It."

"The Ritual of…are you fucking kidding me, man?" Richie says, confusion transforming to bitter vindication. He laughs. "That didn't even work last time! Obviously, or we wouldn't be here right now!"

"It'll work," Bill says, a little distant, but absolutely certain.

Richie opens his mouth and Stan can see the argument, the fear, the frustration ready to tumble out. Bill's attention snaps to him before it can.

"R-Richie," he says, and Richie freezes. "It'll work."

Richie gapes for a moment, closes and opens his mouth like a fish, then finally settles on closed, a stormy look in his eyes. Stan remembers a thirteen year old boy, too bobble-headed and wiry, too smart and sharp-tongued for his own good, knocked to the ground over and over again by everything and everyone bigger than him. He remembers that dark look, the final straw, when he was lying on the pavement and the one who put him there, the one standing over him was his friend.

Richie is silent, and Stan wonders if he remembers too.

"So what do we do?" Ben asks, eyes on Mike.

Mike looks at them, thinks. Nods to himself.

"We have to remember."

°°°

Stan doesn't sleep. There's nothing about his spectral body that indicates that he's tired, but he is. So, so tired. It's a fatigue buried deep that seems to drop on him suddenly as all of the Losers split off to bed, promising to reconvene in the morning. He sits down in an armchair, palms resting on his legs. He knows he can't sleep, but he closes his eyes anyway, trying to let his mind rest. It strikes him as odd that closing his eyes blocks out anything. When he looks down at his hands, they're translucent, and he can make out the paisley pattern of the carpet through them. So why wouldn't his eyelids do the same?

He moves his eyes slowly, behind his closed eyelids, and finds that what he thought was merely an impression of the room in his memory moves with them. The more he focuses, the more he finds he can see the room. Vague and foggy, like looking through frosted glass.

There's an inherent wrongness about it. About having his eyes closed and seeing anyway. It reminds him of nightmares he's had, where something horrible is happening right in front of him, but no matter how hard he tries, he can't not see it. Somehow, though, it doesn't bother him. Not like he thinks it should. Rather, he thinks of opening his eyes under water and looking at the world above him through a layer of shimmering refraction. Protected, despite the growing danger of staying down too long. Safe.

He feels…insubstantial. Not like he did when he heard Patty's voice, or when was nowhere and didn't have a body of any kind. He doesn't feel like he's about to float away, just that he's shimmered out of focus. There, but not quite. Fuzzy around the edges.

He drifts.

Time is…difficult right now. Stan couldn't tell you what time the Losers arrived in Derry. How long they spent in that restaurant. How long ago they split, then gathered again, seven magnetic poles (six) drawn together in the lobby of the Derry Townhouse Inn. He certainly couldn't tell you how much time passed between his death and subsequent arrival in Derry. He doesn't even know if time counted in a place like that.

Even so, he's still surprised to hear footsteps so soon after everyone went to bed.

Someone can't sleep, he thinks idly, before opening his eyes slowly and finding the room lit up with morning light.

Huh.

He's still tired. He thinks he always will be for as long as he's holding on like this, but the edge of it is smoothed over at least.

The quiet footsteps that drew him out of that odd fluid state belong to Ben. Stan can see him standing at the bottom of the stairs through the entryway that leads from the foyer into the lounge. He grips the banister and gazes out somewhere towards the windows, contemplating. It's the quiet sort of look that Stan remembers overtaking him when he was sketching out houses and structures idly on scraps of paper in the clubhouse, surrounded on all six sides by security of his own creation.

He stands there for another moment, then seems to redirect and starts towards Stan, making his way through to the lounge with footsteps so quiet Stan is surprised he heard them in the first place.

He sits down on the sofa and settles comfortably back against the cushions, hands laced together and resting. His head turns to look out towards the windows, lost in thought, and Stan is caught again by that same voyeuristic feeling as when Eddie, Mike, and Bill saw each other for the first time. The feeling that he's seeing something that was never meant to be seen.

So he looks away, giving Ben privacy as best as he can without leaving. Somehow he doesn't think Ben would mind him selfishly indulging in the quiet company.

It's a while before anyone else is up, and when someone else finally does stumble into the lounge, Stan is surprised to look up and see Richie.

He's bleary, hair a wild mess, and he's wearing the same jeans from yesterday and a gray T-shirt so wrinkled that he must have slept in it. His movements are sluggish and loping, and he makes a beeline for the bar without so much as glancing at Ben. Ben follows him with his eyes.

"Starting the morning off right?" Ben says, watching Richie as he fumbles to pour himself a drink.

"Jesus fuck!" He jumps out of his skin, spilling what looks like whiskey all over the bar and barely catching the bottle before he drops it and makes the situation worse. For a split second he's wired tense, then he looks up and becomes boneless. "Christ, Ben. Warn a guy."

"Sorry," Ben says, sounding not very sorry. Anyone else and he might have been, but Richie's a special case (ha), and not even Ben is immune to the seductive draw of fucking with Richie Tozier. It helps that he always gives as good as he gets and seems to revel in both.

"Fuck," Richie says, ducking down behind the bar for something and coming up with a dish cloth. He uses it to soak up the spilled alcohol (thankfully not that much) and leaves it crumpled on the counter. Stan frowns. "I'm already in for enough jump scares with the whole demon-clown-monster-from-hell situation, I don't need the ghost of fucking Joe Kidd waiting behind corners for me too."

Ben gives him an odd look, like he’s puzzled why Richie would call him that.

It's the boots, Ben. The brown boots, and the heavy jacket, and the layers. You've got a bit of a thing going.

"Western fan?" he asks instead.

Richie snorts, twisting the cap back on the whiskey without successfully pouring himself a drink.

"I spent my formative years with William Denbrough," Richie says, leaning on the bar and shoving a hand beneath his glasses to rub tiredly at his eye. "If it's got Clint Eastwood in it, I've seen it."

Ben smiles, reminiscent. Stan wonders what he's remembering. The Silvarado poster plastered on Bill's bedroom wall, or the Lone Ranger action figures lined up on his bookshelf. The hardest stride of Bill's cowboy phase was hit before Ben's time, when they were ten or eleven and Bill took an indelible marker to his rickety monster of a bike, but the signs of it were still there throughout his teen years.

"Fuck," Richie says, leaning forward heavily with his head in his hands. "I'm so hungover."

"I'm surprised you're awake," Ben admits.

"Why? What time is it?" Richie asks, letting his hands fall away from his face to stare blearily at Ben.

Ben checks his phone.

"Quarter to seven?" he says with a shrug.

Richie looks confused, then at the windows like he’s only just noticing the morning light pouring through.

"Huh," he says.

"Not usually a morning person I take it," Ben says.

Richie shakes his head absently.

"No, it’s just." He's still staring at the windows. "Slept longer than I thought."

He shakes his head a little, like he’s clearing the thought, then comes around the bar. He holds his hand to his mouth like a radio.

"Kchzz. Captain Tozier to Ground Agent Hanscom. Prepare the landing pad, this one's coming in hot."

Even hung over and half-dead on his feet, Stan has to admit that Richie's Voices have come a long way since they were kids. It's almost eerie, suddenly hearing a completely different person come out of him. It doesn't necessarily mean that what he's saying is any more comprehensible, though.

Ben seems equally confused, but that doesn't stop Richie from picking his way around to the sofa and landing on it heavily, swinging his socked feet up into Ben's lap.

"Was that…supposed to be funny?" Ben asks, smile quirking on his face.

"Cut me some slack Haystack," Richie says, lying back against the arm of the sofa. "I can't be spinning gold twenty-four fucking sev, the comedy economy would collapse."

"Funny, I heard you weren't actually spinning these days."

"Wow, fucking eviscerate me I guess."

He wedges one hand behind his head, then digs his phone out of his pocket with the other and starts scrolling through it. Ben checks something on his own, one hand resting idly on Richie's ankle.

There's something strange about seeing his childhood friends casually interacting with modern technology. It's not that Stan didn't (he wasn't one to post much, but he was a frequenter of a few birding Facebook groups), but it feels like two separate worlds, and seeing one cross over into the other is uncanny. It also makes him wonder if, had they been a normal friend group that hadn't been wiped from each other's live by a solid dose of trauma-induced amnesia, they would have found each other online some years back. Would they just have been Facebook friends? Distant witnesses to each other's lives? Photos of spouses and vacations and babies, and a few sentences of hollow commentary? Or would they have really been friends? The kind that hold pieces of each other inside themselves. The kind Stan's only really found in Patty since he left Derry a lifetime ago. Family.

Richie falls asleep within five minutes, and Stan only notices because he snores once, loudly, then falls into a heavy rhythm of breathing. Ben looks at him fondly. His glasses are still on, visibly smudged, and his phone is loose in his hand, resting screen-down on his chest. Ben watches him breathe for a moment, deep settling breaths that inflate and collapse his whole body.

A little while later (Stan's not sure how long. Time is still strange, but it doesn't seem to be that long) Ben gets a phone call. He's quick to pick it up, glancing at Richie as he does to see if it woke him. It didn't.

"Hey, Mike," he says quietly, still watching Richie for signs of life. He breathes heavily, very clearly alive but also very clearly not awake.

"Hey man," Stan can hear Mike say through the phone. "Did I wake you up?"

"No, I've been up for a while," Ben says. "What's up?"

"Just checking in. I tried Bill, but he didn't pick up. I'm guessing he's still asleep."

"Yeah, it's just me and Richie so far. As far as I know, at least."

"Richie?"

Ben smiles. His hand is still resting on Richie's ankle.

"Well, sort of."

"Okay. Well, no rush. Just let me know when you guys are ready to go. The more daylight we have, the better, but I'd rather everyone get enough sleep than push it."

"Sounds good," Ben says. "Are you coming by, or are you gonna meet us there?"

"I'll meet you. There are a few things I want to double check first. Not that I don't know what we're doing. I do, it's just—"

"Mikey."

"Yeah?"

"We can do this."

Stan can hear a sigh, heavy and all-encompassing, through the tinny speaker.

"Yeah."

"See you soon, man."

"Yeah. See you, Benny."

The rest of the Losers make their way downstairs not too long after that. First Eddie, then Bill, then Bev.

Richie wakes up with a start when Eddie comes downstairs and starts immediately (and loudly) complaining about the lack of water pressure and what that says about corrosion in the pipes and lead buildup and "building codes exist for a reason."

Ben tells him it's just as likely that the valves aren't opening properly and Eddie gives him a look so scandalized that he immediately drops it.

Stan is somewhat surprised that they're all awake and ready to go before nine, given the copious amounts of alcohol that were consumed last night, but none of them mention it. Richie doesn't even complain about being hungover, after his nap. He just sleepily goes back upstairs to get shoes ("Do you have any idea how filthy carpet gets? And you're walking around in socks?") and apparently throw on the same shirt as yesterday (Stan wonders if he's always like this, or if being in Derry has reverted his hygiene habits as well as his sense of humor to what they were when he was a teenager) and they're all out by five-after. Stan wonders if they're operating on some subconscious instinct to get it all over with. Rip off the band-aid. Or if they're awake and startlingly lucid because they're meant to be, which seems to be the principle reality has always operated under for them in this town.

The barrens are just how Stan remembers them, scrappy, and filthy, and somehow quiet even when the street is on the other side of just a couple of trees. The litter on the outskirts is a little more modern (what the fuck is La Croix?) but as they go deeper, Richie spots a half-buried can of Slice that Eddie has to drag him away from trying to dig up. ("It's a cultural relic!" "You'll get tetanus, asshole!")

Stan knows where they're going, knew as soon as Mike said "meet at the Barrens," but the rest of the Losers seem surprised. It makes him smile, the joy they light up with when they remember the clubhouse. Ben's clubhouse.

It should feel like a tomb down there. The remnants of their childhood buried deep bellow the ground. But coming down the ladder after the rest of them have filed down and seeing them all scattered around, touching the walls, and picking up relics that somehow don't crumble in their hands, it feels like walking backwards through time. Perfectly preserved.

Stan spots what looks like a wasp nest tucked into a corner and hopes, for their sake, that it's not active.

Maybe not perfectly preserved.

Bill finds the old coffee can full of hairnets and Stan smiles as the Losers tense while he opens it. His smile fades when Bill pulls one out and the tension spills over into something else and suddenly everyone is

"sad," Beverly says quietly, and Stan remembers what she said to him that day.

"I'm sorry Bev," Stan says, choking on the words, but feeling like he has to say them anyway.

They start talking about him, and he doesn't want to listen. It's not like it was with Patty, where he felt like he was going to float away. Instead, he feels heavy. His eyes burn until hot tears run down his face and why can he cry like this? What purpose do ghost tears serve? And his fists clench tight against the overwhelming urge to press his hands over his ears. He wants to sink deeper into the ground, but he can't, so he stays where he is, and he listens. And all he is is grief.

I love you. That's why. You have to understand. That was why.

He's more relieved than he could ever say when the topic of conversation moves back to Pennywise. And isn't that funny? Because once upon a time, It was the topic he dreaded more than anything. There's a cruel sort of righteousness in finally finding something he wants to hear about even less.

I beat It, he thinks, choking out a bitter laugh.

Mike tells them they need to split up. Walk the same paths that they did when they were children and remember for themselves what it felt like to be them. He encourages them to find something, a token, he calls it. Something that mattered to them. Something to fight, or worth fighting for. They need to be in the same mindset they were back then if they want to have any chance of defeating It. The odds are already skewed against them, he says, without Stan. And while Stan doesn't fully believe that's true (that's why he did it, isn't it? to give them better odds?) he still closes his eyes guiltily.

So they peel off, one by one, until it's just Richie and Mike left in the club house. Mike grabs Richie's arm as he starts for the stairs, stopping him before he can leave.

"Do you remember?" Mike says, quietly. "What we saw that day?"

Richie looks at him blankly, but Stan knows he's puzzling beneath the flat look.

"The…the smoke," he says slowly.

Mike nods, hesitantly, and Stan can see the cautious way he's studying Richie, like he's about to reel back in pain, nose bleeding.

He doesn't, but after a moment of staring down at where Mike's fingers wrap over his wrist, he goes sheet white.

"It's an alien," he says, then looks up, eyes wide. "Holy fuck, aliens are real!"

Mike nods solemnly, and Richie just stares at him. Then he bursts into laughter.

"What the fuck, man?" he says, through hysterical peals. "This is…what the fuck?"

Mike lets him go, still watching him carefully, but apparently can't help the crack of a smile that appears at the corner of his mouth.

"You alright, Rich?" he says, fondness in his eyes.

Richie wipes tears away from his eyes, and Stan remembers him doing that when they were kids, laughing so hard he cried. This time, he's not so sure the tears are truly from mirth, but it's always been easier for Richie to hide behind a grin.

"Yeah man, I'm thrilled," he says, and he turns to start up the ladder, shouting as he does. "Aliens fucking exist!"

Mike laughs, surprised, and so, so, real.

Stan's not sure what to do while they go on their respective journeys of rediscovery. They're splitting off six ways, and even if he could pick one friend to tag along with, he doesn't think it would be right. Mike said they might see…things, and while they've all talked about their experiences with It, details were never asked for nor offered. He doesn't want to see anything they don't want seen.

He thinks about hanging out in the clubhouse for a while, but as Mike finally starts up the ladder, he realizes that he doesn't want to be down here without them. He thinks it really would feel like a tomb, alone and underground in the dark. He slips out behind Mike and tries not to think about what's happening to his body right now all the way in Atlanta. If it's already underground.

Mike closes the trapdoor and Stan watches him as he starts off through the Barrens.

Stan waits a while in the clearing. It's nice and bright, and if he focuses he thinks he can feel the sunlight and its gentle warmth. He can hear the twittering call of a chimney swift and, if he listens closely, the more distant coo of a mourning dove.

It sounds like childhood.

He stands there for a good while with his eyes closed, listening, feeling, pretending to breathe.

Then he sighs, opens his eyes, and starts walking.

°°°

Stan knows Derry's always been small, intellectually, but it still surprises him how quickly he finds himself in Memorial Park. Just head directly out of the Barrens from the clubhouse and bam, there it is. Right on the other side of Kansas street. He crosses with the same care he always has, look both ways, move quickly, and it isn't until he's on the other side that he finally catches himself and laughs. A ghost cautious of getting hit by a car. That's a new one.

The park isn't empty, of course it isn't. It's summer. Memorial Park was never popular with kids when Stan was one, no playground, not enough trees to climb, but there are some folk scattered about. A kid tossing a softball with her dad, two older teens, or young adults (it's hard to tell) having a picnic. An older woman sitting on a bench.

He spots a group of young teenagers gathered together on the grass. Three boys and two girls, though the longer Stan looks, the less sure he is about one of each. They're close together, layered. Legs on laps and leaning against each other. Maybe it's just that being here puts them in his mind, but they remind him, nonsensically, of birds. The tall skinny one in a black hoodie, despite the weather, is a hooded oriole.  The sleepy looking boy leaning back on his elbows is a common kestrel. Then there, next to him, is an American goldfinch, scrolling through her phone. She's leaning against a boy with curly black hair and a bright red t-shirt, and he's a cardinal. And then there, lying in the grass with their legs crossed over his, is a tiny house sparrow.

He doesn't mean to watch them. It's strange, he knows, but he doesn't want to look away.

The oriole springs to their feet, suddenly, all gangly limbs and nervous energy that reminds Stan instantly of Richie. Funnily enough, they're one of the only two kids in the group who isn't wearing glasses.

"Phone pile!" they declare, suddenly, digging a cellphone out of their pocket and dropping it in the grass in the middle of the circle. The rest of the group is suddenly sparked into motion, pulling out their own phones and stacking them ceremoniously on top of each other. Three of the five partake in this ritual enthusiastically. The sleepy kestrel rolls his eyes, but smiles, and does the same. Only the goldfinch holds onto her phone, typing something.

"Phones go in the phone pile!" the oriole demands, lunging towards the goldfinch, who twists out of range.

"Hey!" she says, "Just let me finish—"

"Phone pile! Phone pile! Phone pile!"

They lunge again, and manage to grab it this time. The goldfinch shrieks in protest, but she's also laughing.

"Charlie!" she yells, jumping to her feet while Charlie the oriole runs away with it, towards some bushes on the outskirts of the park.

The goldfinch is fast, faster than the oriole, but between their longer limbs and head-start, they manage to reach the edge first and drop the phone somewhere in the shrubbery.

Or, pretends to, Stan realizes as the oriole slinks back to the nest, leaving the goldfinch to dig around in frustration. They still have it in their hand when they return to the group, and pass it off casually to the tiny sparrow, who takes it without blinking and slips it into their own back pocket before standing up, innocent as a lamb, and going to help the goldfinch search.

The cardinal grins widely, and the kestrel just shakes his head, laughing under his breath.

Stay together, Stan thinks, watching the kids tease and play. You're safer this way. Better.

The birdbath is within sight, and he heads towards it. There isn't a lot of activity, likely in part thanks to the noise the kids are making, just two black-capped chickadees, pecking in the water. He wonders idly if they would know he's there. If he could get as close as he liked without disturbing them. Finally silent and invisible, the perfect birder. He doesn't, though. There's something that feels wrong about it, invasive. So he watches them flit together for a long moment, from a distance.

Then he starts towards the standpipe.

Part of him expected it to seem smaller than it used to, but it still pushes against the sky, stark white and imposing. He walks the perimeter of it, tracing the gray stone at the base with his eyes. People have shoved cigarettes into the cracks.

When he comes around to the entrance, he's selfishly relieved to find it closed. Selfish, because something tells him that if he really were there, if he weren't just a spirit lingering on earth too long, the door would swing slowly open, the way it did so many years ago.

Even so, he needs to go inside, so he resolves to try something he hasn't tested yet.

He's a ghost, right? And ghosts are supposed to be able to walk through walls.

He places his hand gently on the heavy door, and he can feel it beneath his finger tips: rough, chipping paint over old wood. It's solid, it's there. He pushes past it.

It's not as disconcerting as it should be, he thinks, to see his hand disappear through the door. He's insubstantial. Not made of cells, or air, or particles of anything. Not even light. Of course he can pass through solid objects.

He doesn't feel the inside the door, just a weight where his wrist is immersed in it, and the cool drafty air on the other side. He inhales and exhales in a convincing facsimile of breathing, closes his eyes, and steps through.

When all of him is on the other side, he opens his eyes slowly, a faint dusty taste in the back of his throat. It's quiet inside. Drafty, and holding onto the coolness of the night while the sun slowly heats it from the outside. There is no carnival, no calliope, just the scent of rusting pipes and ancient water.

He starts up the stairs, spiraling slowly around the edge of the building. His footsteps don't sound, but he can feel the uneven wooden stairs beneath his feet. Can almost hear the deep creaking sound they would be making if he actually had any weight to put on them. Light spills in through the windows. Warmth seeps in from the exterior wall, while cold radiates from the vast metal expanse of the storage tank.

The stairs seem endless, even now. It's funny, Stan thinks, that it surprises him. That coming back to Derry didn't magically make everything smaller than he thought it was when he was a kid. Some things, it seems, are as big as they were back then. As huge, and imposing, and terrifying as ever.

When he finally makes it to the top, he feels a sudden burst of fear that he can't control. He grips the handrail tightly and stares up into the rafters, unwilling to look down into the basin and find it full of murky water and floating corpses. Dead children that sing.

He doesn't hear any singing. Doesn't hear water, or music, or screaming laughter. So he looks down.

The basin is empty.

He stares into it, and heights have always made him a little woozy, but he finds he doesn't mind so much as he sways. He thinks, vaguely, that this must be what looking into a black hole feels like. Just, a huge emptiness, cavernous and gaping and ready to pull anything in. To fill up the overwhelming lack. He starts to think about the place he went after he died, before Derry, and has to take a step back. As he turns and starts back down the stairs, he mutters quietly to himself:

"Robin, bluejay, cardinal, sparrow, egret, oriole, cowbird…"

°°°

It's clear, when he gets back to the Townhouse, that his walking tour was the most uneventful of the bunch. He feels a surge of guilt every time one of them bursts in, shaken, dirty, hurt. They're all reliving the worst experiences of their lives, and he just took a stroll through a park.

It's hard to keep track of them. Ben and Beverly try to keep them all together, but with Bill being as slippery as the rest of them, it's an impossible task.

There's nothing he can do to help them, so he stands by. Something in his bone marrow says don't you go running off too. It's safer if you stick together. So he does. As they split apart and find each other and pick up and lose pieces of themselves along the way, he stays at the nucleus of it, willing them all to come back whole, or something close to it.

And when they're finally all back together again, they're standing on the steps of the house on Neibolt street, just like they were 27 years ago. Except this time Bills not telling them to go in. He's telling them to stay out. And Stan knows that it doesn't count for him. That nothing in that house can hurt him anymore. But that doesn't matter, because it was never the pain that Stan was afraid of.

He watches, helpless, as the Losers rally. And he knows that this was always going to happen. That it has to happen. But that doesn't make it hurt any less. Watching each one of them walk into that house feels watching loose pieces of his soul slip away through a grating. Lost. Gone.

And if a God exists, if it really is a great big turtle the size of everything, and just as incomprehensible, he curses it. For deciding that these are the people who have to walk to the gallows and beat the rope that binds them. For making him stand by and watch.

He watches them slip away like stars blinking out.

Seven, six, five, four, three, two, one…

Stan follows them inside.

Zero.

°°°

The house is just as horrible as he remembers it, and if it weren't for the demon magic that he knows is keeping it together, he'd be surprised that it's still standing at all. He doesn't have to be Ben to know that a building like this should have come crashing down a long time ago; he doesn't have to be Eddie to know that it should have been taken down long before that. For a moment, that's all it is to him. A risk to wandering children, and bored teens. Rotting rafters and rusted metal and probably asbestos and maybe some broken syringes if you believe the rumors.

Then Ben screams.

A door slams shut, and suddenly the group is divided. Eddie, Bill, and Richie are somewhere else. The kitchen, he thinks, a little preoccupied by Mike and Bev trying to hold Ben up, then easing him to the ground as he yells in pain. Stan watches, helpless, as the mangled H reopens, carved deliberately by a blade that isn't there. He looks around wildly, as if the ghost of Henry Bowers is going to appear. Ready to finally finish the job. But there's nothing to see, nothing to fight and the next letter that cuts itself into Ben's stomach is an o instead of an e.

Ben writhes, and Bev screams, and Mike yells, and Stan can hear screams coming from the other room, and there's nothing he can do.

Stan looks up at the mirror at the same instant Mike does, and his eyes widen when he sees Pennywise, cackling and goading as It tortures his friend.

It must show things as they are, he thinks, and for a split second, he almost thinks Mike's eyes meet his in the mirror.

Then Bev smashes it, and Ben stops screaming, and Mike grips him tightly, soothing, and Stan realizes he was wrong. It was in the mirror. And he's grateful beyond belief that Bev figured that out and acted quickly.

She was always afraid of hesitating, but she moved faster than any of them.

The others have gone quiet in the kitchen, and Stan's somehow almost forgotten about them until a single scream sounds and the nonexistent blood in his face drains. He runs towards the sound, taking advantage of his incorporeality to step right through the locked door. He's not sure what he thinks he can do. There's nothing he can do. But he can't stay outside and just listen. He at least has to know.

This is what you wanted from me, huh? To watch? Well, I'm fucking watching.

He steps through the other side of the door just in time to hear Richie say "You've gotta be fucking kidding" and see a many legged…thing scuttle towards him, shrieking. It scampers around wildly, launching itself at them, and it isn't until it finally latches on to Richie's face that Stan finally recognizes what it is.

It's a head. It's his head.

"I'm sorry," he finds himself saying, as Bill grabs on to it and pulls, keeping it just out of reach. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

Bill's screaming something, but he can't hear it over the chaos, the guilt, the words looping over again and again in his head:

You did this. You gave them one more thing to be afraid of.

When Ben bursts through the door and hacks at it with wild enthusiasm (maybe a little too much enthusiasm. is there something you want to tell me Ben? ha ha) Stan only feels relief. It scuttles away, horribly, and he watches it go. Then Bev and Mike come rushing in, and thank God, everyone's alright.

In the moment of relief, he realizes suddenly that he's been crying. He wipes angrily at his face, at the useless, invisible ghost tears.

Bev goes to Richie. Bill backs Eddie up against the wall.

Stan's eyes go wide in horror, then anger, as he watches Bill berate Eddie. Because suddenly, in that moment, they're kids again. And Eddie's looking up at Bill with those huge eyes that say I'll do anything for you and begging him "Please don't be mad Bill," and Bill solemnly tells him not to give It his fear.

Stan watches Bill stalk off, and he's angry. Because somehow Bill still doesn't get it. He's never understood just how much power he has.

Eddie's chest heaves as he leans heavily on the wall behind him, and Stan recognizes the expression on his face. It's the same one he got when a teacher called him out for messing around with Richie in class, or when Officer Nell caught them building that dam in the Barrens, or when he had to miss Richie's birthday in fourth grade because his mom found out and made him visit his aunts with her instead. It's shame, and pain, and holding back tears. And it makes him look so very small.

They go deeper.

The further they go, the stronger the memories return. And Stan remembers. He's remembered all of this from the moment Mike called him. But somehow even that pales in comparison to the feeling of being back here. Descending deeper and deeper into the heart of evil incarnate, and he isn't even here.

For a moment, he's resolute in his conviction that he made the right decision. That if he'd somehow made it to this point alive, he wouldn't be able to take a single step forward.

What surprises him most is the realization that he'd been wavering at all.

This is the worst punishment, he thinks, watching helplessly as the people he loves the most run and fight and scream in fear, pain, anguish, to make me stand by and watch. And it's exactly what I deserve.

It's chaos, when they finally make it deep into Its…nest. Everyone separated, running wildly, hiding when they can. They're supposed to be fighting It. They came down here to kill It. But as soon as It unfolded Itself, it instantly became a game of survival. A wild gambol of duck and hide, and Stan doesn't know where to look. He's frozen in place, paralyzed, and it feels so wrong to stand still while doing the same would get any of the rest of them killed. Like he's back in gym class, playing dodgeball, standing in the back and knowing that as long as he stays away from the front, nobody will notice him. But it's a double edged sword because he knows that if he keeps doing it, eventually he's going to be the only one left.

It gets Mike.

Its long tentacles, or talons, or whatever the fuck, wrap tight around him and squeeze, and Stan runs towards him in fear and desperation and stops a few yards short because there's nothing he can do. It's mouth opens wide and Stan is close enough to see the rows upon rows of impossibly sharp teeth, glowing from the inside with light so wrong that it hurts.

Then something hits It in the side of the head.

"Hey fuckface!" Richie yells, and impossibly, It turns to look at him. It throws Mike, and Stan's stomach drops when his back hits the wall, but he rolls over and groans, which means he's alive, and Stan thinks that's the least he can hope for.

"Wanna play truth or dare?" Richie calls, and Stan wants to scream stop! Be careful! but Richie never listened to him when he was alive, and he sure isn't going to listen to him while he's dead.

"Here's a truth," Richie says, and Stan can see that he's holding something. "You're a sloppy bitch! Yeah that's right! Let's dance!"

He winds up to throw, and It's staring right at him, and Stan thinks Richie, you idiot.

"Yippee-kay-aye motherfu"

Richie goes limp.

Even from the ground below, Stan can see his eyes go white, his limbs loose and dangling, his face slack-jawed. It looks wrong. Like he's a puppet and all of his strings have been cut except one.

He used to like puppets. He wanted to be a ventriloquist.

Richie rises into the air (floats) washed in bright orange-red light that feels like looking at the sun.

He's dying, Stan thinks. If Bill dived in, and Bev floated on the surface, he's being dragged under.

Before he can even think about what he's doing, Stan is climbing up the rockface. And he's never been athletic, but it doesn't seem to matter. Suddenly he's standing on the landing that Richie had been only moments before, and he wouldn't even be able to reach him at this point if he could grab for his ankle. He's just operating on instinct. To get closer. To do something. He has to do something.

(He can't do anything.)

"Beep beep, motherfucker!"

A javelin comes from nowhere and It's suddenly staggering back. Richie falls to the ground, hard. And Stan should look at him, make sure he's okay, but he can't take his eyes off of the thing as It impales Itself on very spikes It created when It landed on Earth.

It shrivels, and Stan watches It with hungry, desperate eyes.

Please let It die. Let it be over with. Let them go home. Bruised, and battered, and scared out of their minds, but alive.

"I think I killed It!" Eddie's saying, but even as Stan prays that it's true, he knows it isn't. Because he's watching It rear back one great big talon, point it at Eddie and Eddie doesn't see it.

And Richie is dazed, and everyone else is scattered and far away, and Stan knows that if he doesn't do something right now, Eddie's going to die.

So he does the only thing he can think to do.

He jumps into Eddie.

"I spent my formative years with William Denbrough. If it's got Clint Eastwood in it, I've seen it."

That's what Richie said. Yeah? Well Stan spent his formative years with Richard Tozier. So he's seen Poltergeist. And Ghostbusters. And fucking Beetlejuice. And he knows that this is a thing ghosts are supposed to be able to do.

He believes that this is a thing ghosts can do.

So he jumps into Eddie, grabs Richie, and rolls.

And he can feel his shirt tear, caught on Its talon as he rolled away, and the world shake with the force with which it jabs at the ground, and suddenly they're rolling and sliding downhill, and it isn't until they suddenly come to a stop at the bottom of a cavern that a slash of pain tears through him and he suddenly realizes oh, it didn't just get my shirt.

He blinks up at Richie, who's holding onto him tight and looking about as dazed as he feels, and some foreign, disoriented part of him think I should be on top.

And what the fuck Eddie.

(fuck you!)

"Eddie!" Richie's suddenly grabbing at his face, desperately, checking him over. When he sees the wide tear in the side of his shirt, and the blood soaking into it, he makes a strangled sound and immediately sits up, tearing his jacket off and balling it up to press against the wound.

"It's okay, Richie," he tries to reassure him, but Richie's still panicking, pressing the jacket hard against his side, like he should, but breathing hard and frantic. He gently grabs Richie's shoulder with the hand that doesn't make him feel like he's tearing himself apart when he moves it, and firmly refuses the instinct to hold the side of his face instead.

Eddie why.

Richie looks up at him anyway, and his eyes are so wide and worried.

"It's okay, Richie," he repeats, and his hand is too weak to squeeze Richie's shoulder, but he holds firm. "I saved him. He's going to be okay."

Richie stares at him, confused, and refuses to blink. Like he's afraid that if he does, he'll open his eyes and find that Eddie's slipped away.

A wave of wooziness passes over him, and Stan doesn't think he can hold on much longer. Doesn't want to anyway. He's done his part. The rest is up to them.

Besides. He's always played third wheel to these two, and even then this somehow manages to be a new level of gross.

(fuck! you!)

Ideally, no.

He lets Eddie go. Eddie shivers, and suddenly Stan is back to not having a body. Physical, ghostly, or otherwise. He just is.

"Stan?" Eddie mutters, quietly, eyelids drooping closed.

"Hey, hey, hey. You gotta stay awake," Richie says, tapping urgently at his face with the hand that isn't staunching the bleeding.

There's clambering at the hole of the cavern, and suddenly the small space is filled with Losers. They crowd Eddie, try to get Richie off of him to check him too, but he refuses to let go.

Stan watches. He feels…distant. But he doesn't mind. They’re all here, together. And they're strong. So, so, incredibly strong. Eddie stays awake, tells them all that he felt It become small. That they can make It small.

It's hard to hold on. Like he's a kid again and his mother is reading him a story, and he's on the verge of sleep. He doesn't think he's going to get to know the ending. But that's okay. Because he's done his piece. He kept them whole in the end. And he knows that they're going to win. Because if even he can save even one of them, he knows they can save themselves.

He believes it.

In the dim light of the cavern, surrounded by his friends and they plan their final move, Stanley lets go.

I love you, he thinks. I'm sorry I left. I love you.

And as the six of them rally to fight the devil itself, one last time, an eyelash twitches in the morgue of the Herschel Thornton Mortuary.

And Stanley Uris wakes up.