Chapter Text
The words blur a little in Richie’s eyes. He rubs his thumb over the ancient paper, looking from the words he can’t understand and then back up to his laptop screen, the translation clear enough.
Richie covers his mouth, his eyes, breathes slowly and then too quickly. He has to go into the bathroom and kneel in front of the toilet for a long time, but the urge to puke his guts out subsides. His hands keep shaking, and he reads the words over and over behind closed eyes, each letter burned to his lids.
Three weeks since they killed It. Three weeks since they… since Eddie…
Richie hasn’t forgotten. None of them have. The theory that they want to remember this time, that friendship and love have overcome fear and evil? Richie likes that theory. But he also lies awake at night wishing he could fucking forget how Eddie’s warm blood spilled through his hands. How Ben’s hands bruised him from holding him back as Neibolt was swallowed whole. How his childhood burned behind his eyes like it was yesterday after nearly three decades of a static, empty corner of nothing.
Sighing wetly, Richie looks back at the translation; a set of rules, instructions, a rite… warnings.
A solution. A second chance. A fucking miracle, if it goes right.
It has to go right. Richie will fucking make it go right. Fuck the warnings; not like he’s ever paid attention to DO NOT ENTER signs before.
He just happens to be lucky that he already has a ‘blade of significance’. Richie bets most people don’t even have a pocket knife, let alone a blade that could be perfectly used for a fucking ritual like this one.
Richie is an anxious, shaking, walking fucking stomachache while he packs some underwear, stuffing gauze and alcohol into the bottom of his bag under some clean socks and the smallest sweatshirt he owns. It’s not for him, after all.
He sits at the foot of his bed and turns his old ass pocketknife over in his hands. It’s been used to carve his and Eddie’s initials into the kissing bridge twice. Significant enough?
Despite age, the knife is shiny as fuck, and when Richie opens the blade and touches it to his thumb, blood wells with just a little pressure. Okay, so it apparently cuts just fine. He puts his thumb in his mouth, stuffing the knife in his pocket while his phone starts buzzing on his nightstand. He stretches to grab it and answers.
“Hey, beautiful,” he says.
“ Rich? Hey, you alright? You didn’t call me back the other day ,” Beverly says on the other end of the line.
Richie closes his eyes, her voice like aloe on a sunburn. “Yeah, fuck, I’m sorry. I haven’t been sleeping well. It slipped my mind.”
“ Well, maybe a text every morning? We… we got worried, ” Bev says, and then there’s a soft voice beside hers.
“ Richie? ”
“Haystack,” Richie sighs. “I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to worry you kids on your honeymoon.”
Ben laughs softly. “ It’s alright, just good to hear your voice. Have you talked to Mike? We were talking with Bill—might go down to visit him in Florida in a week or so. If you can make it? ”
Richie exhales heavily, sprawling across his bed. He looks at the cut on his thumb, sealing up with a little seam of blood. “That sounds great. Fuckin’ spectacular. Taking your dog?”
“ Yeah, I’m bringing the dog. ”
“Good. I’ll need a companion with similar interests.” Richie drops his hand down onto his bed. “I’ll make sure to text you guys, at least once a day. Sorry about the last few days, I’ve been… shitty.”
“ Richie, you know you can come stay with us while you’re not on tour, ” Bev says, and Ben immediately agrees.
“Yeah, I’d love to visit. Maybe after the Florida thing. Uh, I gotta go for now? I’ll call Mike and Billiam, too, I promise.”
“ Just don’t leave us hanging, Rich, ” Ben says softly.
“ Love you, ” Bev says.
“Love you guys, too. I’ll call you later.” Richie hangs up, looking at his ceiling until it gets blurry. He pulls his glasses off, the wetness dripping into his hairline stinging hot. He cries until the shaking stops, then crawls out of his bed and over to his travel bag. He pulls the book out, the leather creaking as he opens it to the page with the ritual he’s basically memorized on it. He runs his thumb over the image of the hand holding the heart, and the seam of dry blood on his skin cracks. Blood stains the page over the carefully drawn image, and Richie looks up.
“Wow. That’s pretty con-fucking-venient.”
*
Derry hasn’t changed in three weeks. The town is quiet at the end of summer, no festivities, no kids running wild, and most importantly, no fucking Pennywise.
Richie climbs out of his car in front of the hotel. He checks in with nobody and puts his shit in his room, sitting on the end of the bed for what feels like hours. He only got the room at the Town House because he knew they’d need somewhere to… come back to. For a minute. Maybe longer. The ritual didn’t specify.
“Two rituals in one year, Tozier. That’s pretty impressive,” Richie says, thumbing through his phone. He texts Bill a good morning, then sends Mike a picture of a very fluffy black puppy he saw a few days prior. He checks in with Ben, then tucks his phone into his back pocket. He pulls out the knife, looking it over before he decides he can’t keep being a little pussy for the rest of the day.
Richie tightens his shoelaces and pulls a palm leaf printed shirt on over his black T, to break up the solid black look of his outfit. No need to be over-dramatic about it, but there’s gonna be blood, and Richie knows black hides red. Or, he’s pretty sure.
He exits the Town House and climbs into his car with the book and the knife and he drives through town with a purpose, shaking unsteadily the whole way. When he gets to the kissing bridge, the sun is starting to fall, and Richie pulls over and climbs out.
The old ass wood is just the same, the carving he’d fixed still fresh, darker than the aged, dusty tracks in the wood. Richie smiles, kneeling down next to the R + E, touching his fingers over it very softly.
“If this doesn’t go well… which it will, I know it will, but. Well. I love you, Eds. I didn’t wanna leave you, I… I’m gonna make this right. Even if it kills me,” Richie promises. He knocks his forehead against the wood, feeling calmer than he has in weeks. “I’m gonna make this right.”
Richie pushes off the ground, lifting his hand and scrubbing it under his eyes, knocking his glasses askew. He gets back into his car, and the further he drives from the bridge, the more his hands shake. Eddie’s body might be impossible to retrieve, especially alone, and Richie understands. But, like all good rituals, the instructions have an answer for that, conveniently wrapped in a strip of soft cloth in Richie’s shirt pocket.
He reaches the empty strip of the road and pulls off to the shoulder, parking under some trees before he sits in the idling car for seven minutes. Maybe seventeen.
When Richie finally gets out of the car, he takes his time walking up to the empty lot of Neibolt house, the fence standing around an empty space of rocks and dirt, weeds already sprouting up between cracks in the ground, a thin layer of young grass blooming as ground cover.
The ground is soft under Richie’s feet as he walks over to where he thinks the well was, at the back of the basement.
The ritual was specific in two options—a fresh, present body, or the earth above a grave, plus salt. Eddie drops his bag down and digs around. The book and sweatshirt are in there, and he pulls out the jar of purified salt he brought for the ceremony and undoes the lid. He pours the salt out in a circle, then sprinkles some down in a pile and sets the jar aside.
“Uh… Okay,” Richie says, then pulls the book out of his bag. He turns through the pages, passing his small sticky notes before finding the page with the rite written upon it. Richie basically memorized it, but he wants to look at it. He wants to know he’s doing this right and not just, well… killing himself on the ruins of the house of his childhood nightmares.
From his shirt pocket, he pulls out the little handkerchief and unrolls it, his old glasses falling into one hand. Eddie’s blood is dark and dry on the lens, stuck in the cracks of the broken glass. Richie steadily reaches out and puts the glasses down on the pile of salt in the middle of the circle, then carefully crawls over the line, kneeling with his knees on either side of the white mound within the sphere.
Richie shrugs out of his over shirt, then tugs his t-shirt over his head, kneeling shirtless over the last place where he saw Eddie. He pulls the knife out of his pocket and opens it, goosebumps rising across his arms.
“From blood and s-s-salt, fuck,” Richie stops. “What am I, Bill?” He shakes his hands out, exhaling slowly through his parted lips.
The sun is low, glowing through the tree line in the west a bright garnet and honey, the clouds bleeding from pink and champagne to periwinkle and indigo towards the east. Richie feels the oncoming fall of night settle his nerves.
“Okay… Okay, get it together, Rich.” He sniffles hard, turning the knife over in his hands.
“From blood and salt, I call you. Flesh and bone, I command you. Body and soul, I invoke you,” Richie says, and he feels the ground under his knees give a soft tremble. Waking. “With this blade, I offer my blood, my pain, my life for yours. I summon you back from shadow with my life force as your light. I offer this heart… and bind it to you.”
The knife glints in the sunshine dappled through the evening sway of the trees, and Richie feels the knots in his stomach tying themselves over again. Richie curses at his nipples, peaked from the cold, and shuffles his knees deeper into the earth. He lifts the knife, the tip of the aged metal hovering over the left side of his chest.
He looked up some tips online, even watched some doctor shows to get the angle right, but it feels fucking weird and scary as fuck to have a knife just beneath his collar bone.
“This heart beats for you,” Richie says, steadying his hands on the knife. Very softly, he adds, “It always has.” He presses the tip of the blade to his skin, hesitates for a heartbeat, and then presses.
The burn is sudden, strong, and Richie exhales shakily as blood begins to pour from the slice. It’s definitely more pain, more heat than there should be from basically a scratch.
The ground trembles under his knees, and Richie realizes it’s the ritual, the magic, pulling through the wound. He digs the knife a bit deeper, angles it down, and when his skin and muscle splits he squeezes his eyes shut, tears running in streaks down his cheeks, dripping from his nose and chin when he ducks his head down.
The pain is for Eddie, his heart is for Eddie, he repeats over and over.
Richie lets out a shaken, broken sob and curves the knife down harder, blood spilling over his fingers. It hurts, it hurts so fucking much, but the physical pain of cutting his chest open doesn’t even compare to the pain he’s been feeling in his soul since Mike and Ben dragged him away from Eddie’s still, quiet body.
Something is numbing his hands, numbing his naked stomach as his warm blood drips down it. Blood slides down his forearm and drips off his elbow, onto the pile of salt, and a sound like a tree splintering in the forests echoes beneath Richie’s knees.
He exhales, crying, cursing, and drags the knife down, down, opening the tear in his chest as deep as he can. The edges of his vision are crackling gray, and Richie can smell the ocean, ozone, thunder. He leans forward, blood spilling over the salt, melting it into a thick, sandy crimson ooze, and he can see it.
The ground is shaking. Shaking hard enough to make the dry granules dance, to make Richie’s glasses shake, sifting into the sand. The lens cracks, hard, and Eddie’s blood is suddenly much brighter. Wet.
Richie reaches out, trembling, tears and snot dripping from his face, and he touches the blood that’s now fresh, warm.
“Fuck, Eddie,” Richie bawls, his pulse hammering in his neck, his wrists, his chest feeling like his ribs have turned backwards, outwards, all kinds of fucked up and painful. Richie squeezes his eyes shut and pushes the knife harder, his other hand flying to the ground and grabbing at the little green blades.
There’s something hot and thick fluttering in his chest, pouring between bones, pushing at the seams of the huge cut he has created. Richie opens his eyes and watches through the blur of his wet glasses as a muted, red light glows through his blood. Something heavy pushes against his wound, desperate and living, and he chokes on a scream and a cry as his heart, his fucking heart, practically crawls out of his chest. The fucking thing is beating, the sound echoic and loud above the hurricane tearing through Richie’s head. It’s louder than the shaking earth, a beat that is too fast and too strong.
His heart is the glow, and it settles into the red salt and burrows like a naked rat, hungering for warmth, seeking something.
When his heart is buried into the salt, Richie coughs up some blood, a thin rivulet that stains down his chin. The crackling tree sound gets louder, nearer, like an ancient sycamore is about to topple over right on top of Richie, and he drops the knife and screams into the sound of the storm.
The quiet that follows swallows him whole, and Richie can only hear his own pathetic whimpers and gasps for breath.
It’s so quiet it’s painful, and Richie feels alone and helpless and fucking stupid because it didn’t work. It didn’t fucking work. It feels a little bit like dying…
Then… Then Richie hears scrambling. Claws digging at rock… fingers scratching for purchase through dirt.
Muffled, through the earth and the red mud puddle between his knees, Richie hears a voice, coughing, pleading. “Help! Can anyone hear me?”
Richie stops breathing. His fingers have regained feeling, and he can see the ground moving, stirring like something is burrowing up. And more than that, he knows the voice. “Eds…”
“Help! Someone help!”
“Eddie!” Richie gasps, hunching forward over the ground, over the noise.
There’s a rocky, dusty noise, and then, “Richie?!”
“Eddie, hold on!” Richie starts clawing at the ground like a dog, digging frantic and angry like he’s never been human before. He has a primal need to get through the dirt and pebbles, the rocks shifting from above and below as he keeps screaming Eddie’s name. And Eddie keeps calling back.
Richie’s digging is halted when he freaks the fuck out, his fingers meeting another set of hands. “Oh, whoa! Holy fuck, fuck, whoa!”
“Richie, fuck!” Eddie yells, and Richie starts digging again.
“I’ve got you, hold on,” Richie yells, and he digs until one of Eddie’s hands is completely exposed, then he grabs it. The fingers are freezing cold, pale white, and Richie grabs Eddie’s wrist with his other hand. “Come on, come on!”
“Holy shit, Richie,” Eddie calls, less muffled, closer, warm, and Richie pulls hard, Eddie’s other hand pawing at the ground.
“I’ve got you, Eds, I’ve got—“Richie screams, his chest burning, flaring like a solar burst under the skin, and then Eddie’s head and shoulders are crawling from the hole, dirt falling out of his hair. His face is streaked with dirt, stuck to trails from what Richie can only guess were tears. He’s white as snow and almost as cold, but he’s breathing, his big dark eyes finding Richie’s face and lighting up like he’s seeing the sun. He coughs, shoulders heaving as Richie grabs at his shirt to heave him out. “Come on, Eddie!”
Eddie scrambles up out of the hole, collapsing into Richie’s chest, face in his neck, and Richie falls back, pulling Eddie over his body before curling against him. Richie digs his hands into Eddie’s hair, claws at his clothes and pulls him so close it hurts them both.
Eddie’s still coughing, crying into Richie’s neck, and his hands are cold, curled around Richie’s bare shoulder and rib. “Holy fucking shit, Rich, it was so dark. It was dark, and I—fuck.”
“I’ve got you. You were gone, Eddie, you—“
“You came back,” Eddie sobs, shuddering in Richie’s arms, curling between his legs, so small, so cold.
“You… what do you remember?”
Eddie clears his throat, sitting up a bit to scrub at his face, but his hands are dirty. “I thought I killed It… got stabbed. You were ho-holding me.”
“I didn’t wanna let you go. I’m so sorry, Eds,” Richie says, cupping Eddie’s face. The bandage over his cheek shifts a little, and Richie carefully tries to fix it. His fingers still, stop when he sees that under the edge of the bandage there… there’s no wound.
Bowers stabbed Eddie in the face, right through the cheek, but the mark isn’t there. Not even a scab or scar.
Eddie sniffles, reaching up and touching his hair, dust pluming off of him. “Was I dead? Did I fucking die down there?”
“Yeah. Yeah, baby, you were gone,” Richie says, carefully pulling the bandage off completely, just to see. He hesitates, then settles Eddie back in his lap, fingers gently grabbing the hem of his shirt and pulling it up.
Eddie’s still shell-shocked, not questioning it when Richie pulls his shirt up to his chest, exposing his lean, toned stomach. His chest is smooth, unblemished, and Richie touches where It’s long claw had speared Eddie through. The skin is solid, not healed but fresh and flawless, like the mark never happened.
“Richie, did… anyone else—“
“No, just… Just you, Eddie. When we killed It, the cave. It started collapsing.”
“Where are we?”
“Neibolt. Above the well,” Richie says, letting Eddie’s shirt fall back down. The material is torn, shredded through and stained with something black and old. His clothes are filthy, his skin covered in dirt, some blood, but Eddie… Eddie is perfect.
Eddie exhales shakily, dropping his forehead down against Richie’s shoulder. “I was dead.”
“Three weeks,” Richie says, barely a whisper.
Nodding, Eddie sulks against him. “Richie, I was just trying to protect you.”
“Hey, you saved my life. And now I’ve saved yours. We are decently even,” Richie says, wrapping his arms around Eddie again.
“You brought me back from the dead. Not exactly even,” Eddie says into his neck. “How did you do it?”
“Uh…” Richie glances at the book, then kicks it shut, watching the pages turn. “With the power of true love?”
Eddie snorts, pushing away from him. “Asshole.” Eddie looks down at Richie, his mouth pulling into a sharp frown, brows pinched. He looks at his hands, and instead of disgust he’s just horrified. “Richie, you’re covered in blood. Holy fuck, is this yours? What did you… Rich, what did you do?” Eddie reaches out and touches along Richie’s chest, where the gash from the knife ran from his collarbone down across his pec, and Richie jolts.
His hand lands on Eddie’s chest, splayed over his collar and pec, and he feels warmth beneath his palm. It’s inhuman, unnatural… and it makes the gears in Richie’s head grind to a halt.
Richie realizes with shocking clarity that he’s covered in blood but no longer bleeding. The wound in his chest is sealed shut—a scar. He also notices an emptiness, a coldness that resembles stolen warmth, this absent heat burning up in Eddie’s chest under his palm.
Eddie has a heartbeat. Richie doesn’t.