"…Memory, all alone in the moonlight,
I can smile at the old days, I was beautiful then.
I remember the time I knew what happiness was,
Let the memory live again…"—Memory, Jennifer Hudson

Old newspapers flew through the streets like tumbleweed in the Wild West and familiar missing posters plastered every surface in town; from the walls to the lampposts to the streets themselves. It was like nothing and changed, but it had.

"It'll be easier to show you, and we don't have much time." Mike said as he led the Losers through the desolate town of Derry bright and early the next morning. None of them had slept—even if Mike would've let them, Katherine doubted any of them would've been able to."The cycle ends soon, and once it does…"

"…We're fucked" Bill ended.

Traipsing through the Barrens was almost like walking back into time. With the waist-high grassed that swished and swayed when you walked through it or the towering trees that ran either side of the river, which in turn flowed into the canal. A few times Katherine had to run to keep up with the long strides of the elder Losers, and each time earned a teasing grin from Richie who clearly had a joke or a taunt resting on the tip of his tongue.

"The Barrens…" Beverly murmured when the group spread out amongst the clearing, remembering the fun times they had there.

"This is where we came…" Ben reminisced, "…after the rock fight"

"The clubhouse!" Richie piped up next, his eyes lighting up in recognition.

"Yeah! You built that for us!" Katherine added, gesturing towards Ben who moved forward to look for the door.

"Yeah, yeah, the hatch has gotta be around here someplace…"

"Oh yeah! I do remember that!" Eddie chimed in just as Bill had to catch Beverly as she went nose first over an outstretched log.

"Y'know what? I think the door was more, like, around here!" Ben called as he stomped on the ground.

"Hey Ben, maybe you shouldn't—" Katherine called out just as the aforementioned Loser fell straight through the rotten wood beneath his feet. "— Do that"

"…Found it" Ben's voice trailed up from the musty clubhouse, "I'M OKAY! COME DOWN!"


Losers' Clubhouse, Barrens, 1988

Taking the rickety ladder one rung at a time, Katherine followed after Beverly as she entered the dugout that Ben had been keen to show them. The dimly lit dugout had been lined with logs and lumps of wood that held back the compacted dirt walls and kept them from caving in on them. Moving further into the dark, Katherine ran a hand along the clay wall as she disappeared from sight, tracing the boundaries of the dugout and leaving the elder Losers' behind her.

In actuality it wasn't very big, the clubhouse, but to a seven year old it was huge. The wobbly planks on the floor made for a great balancing beam routine and the shelf-like hole off to the side of the main 'room' was just large enough for a small body to fit snuggly inside.

"What the dick is this?" Richie commented, coming into the dark clubhouse and moving about, filled with curiosity as he was. "How'd you build it?"

"When did you build it?" Bill tacked on, coming down next and looking around.

"Here and there, I guess…" Ben supplied as Eddie, Mike and Stanley followed after, "It was already dug out from something, so I just had to reinforce the walls and gets some wood for—for the roof, door and that was pretty much it. Pretty good for my first time, huh?"

Katherine jumped at the sudden noise that came from a sheet of metal falling to the ground just behind Beverly, barely missing her when Ben leaned up against a post. She wasn't the only one.

"Now that's a cool feature!" Richie grinned, "What happens when you put your hand on the other one, Professor?"

"S-see this is exactly there are safety codes! Why we have permits!" Eddie began to rapidly rant, "This place is a death trap! You understand that?"

"I-it's a work in progress, okay Eddie?" Ben defended weakly.

"Just so you know: if I get hurt, you're reliable" Eddie moved out of Ben's face before turning to smack a worn-out device hanging from the ceiling, "Also what it this? Is this an iron maiden?"

"That's—that's a flashlight"

"What is that? A horse hitch? When do you have horse—oh! This is cool!"

"That was, like, three dollars so please be careful with that" Ben warned as Eddie picked up a wooden paddle ball and began to play with it.

"I have one of these" Eddie began to aim the little rubber ball towards Stanley's face, "Stan you see this?"

"Yeah, c-can you maybe not?" Stanley flinched back from the flying rubber ball.

"Maybe not, what? Maybe not, what? Be awesome and have fun? And celebrate the awesome magic of the paddle ball!"

Katherine watched on as Stanley smacked the toy out of Eddie's hands and then watched as the little rubbed ball snapped from the paddle and rolled under one of the loosely placed floorboards. "Oh good going, fucknut! You broke his thing!" Eddie turned on Stanley.

"I broke it?" Stanley reiterated.

"Yeah! You broke it with your face!"

"What?"

"I'm not putting my fucking hand down there!"


Losers' Clubhouse, Barrens, Present Day

Moving through the old clubhouse wasn't much different that it had been when she was a child. At least for Katherine, who didn't have to duck her head to move around. A small smile made its way onto her lips as she and the others reminisced over the memories and little knick-knacks stored inside.

From the weather-worn band and movie posters pinned to the walls, to the old magazines that lay curling and bitten at the corners. Plucking up a little stone figurine from the line-up on the clay shelf, Katherine smiled as she ran her thumb over the well-worn grooves carved into it. The obnoxiously large grin told her who it was before she even flipped the stone over to see the engraving on the back.

STAN U.

Over the years, Katherine had made a little stone figurine for all of the Losers; each one better than the last as her talents grew and grew. Putting Stanley's back, Katherine let her eyes trail over the others. Each and every one of them held some kind of memory from that point in her life, like Eddie's (who was pictured with a large pill in his hands) from when she had secretly saved up enough money to get a contraceptive implanted into her arm so she didn't have to take those godforsaken pills anymore.

Or Richie's with his giant coke-bottle glasses, that brought her back to the time in ninth grade when she and Liam Woods had snuck off to the dump to light up some fireworks; before they frolicked in the waters of the Quarry in nothing but their birthday suits.

Moving on, Katherine found an old moth-eaten My Little Pony sleeping bag which she stashed there along with a couple of pillows and a teddy bear that one of her boyfriends had won at the fair one year, and were now tatty & stank to high heaven. After the incident with IT, Katherine had spent a lot of nights in the clubhouse—a lot of days too—feeling safe in the dimly lit little dugout. Which was a little odd, considering how close it was to IT's lair.

"Hey Losers!" Suddenly came a rather familiar and creepy voice from the depths of the dugout, drawing everyone's attention towards it, "Time to float…!" Katherine tensed, along with the others, and took up arms at the familiar voice. Gripping tight to the pocket knife stashed in her pocket, she turned slowly to face the incoming threat and when she saw a flicker of movement coming from the shadows, she wasted no time in flinging her weapon across the room and straight towards the voice.

"Jesus Christ!" Richie swore coming out of the dark, when the pocket knife buried itself into the wooden post next to him. "Still got that aim then, Midge?"

"Fuck Richie!" Bill cursed, banging his head on an overhanging piece of lumber when he stepped backwards.

"Dude!" Eddie complained.

"Remember he used to say that?" Richie continued on, moving further into the light as Katherine trudged over to the post and ever-so-carefully yanked the pocket knife out of it. "And he did that little dance…am I the only one who remembers this shit?"

"Are you going to be like this the entire time we're home?" Eddie asked.

"Alright, just trying to add some levity to this shit. I'll go fuck myself" Richie whistled off into a corner.

"Don't be so fucking terrible!" Eddie murmured to Richie.

"Hey, you guys?" Bill spoke up, pulling out an old rusted biscuit container, "It-it—this s-says S-Stan. For the use…of L-L-Losers only"

"Bill…" Eddie warned as Bill open the old container and pulled out an old shower cap.


Losers' Clubhouse, Barrens, 1988

"What the fuck is this?" Richie demanded from his place in the hammock. Staring up at Stanley, Richie questioned the Jewish boy who had quietly presented him with a shower cap, which he in turn was wearing also.

"So you don't get spiders stuck in your hair when you're down here" Stanley replied as if it were obvious.

"Stanley, we're not afraid of fucking spiders!" Richie tossed the shower cap to the floor as Stan stormed off to pick it up and revealed the rest of the Losers putting their own ones on. "I stand corrected"

"Ha! That's a first!" Beverly chuckled as Eddie yanked his shower cap from his head and stuffed it into his pocket.

"Touché"

"Hey, Rich, you're ten minutes are up" Eddie stormed over to Richie who had gone back to reading his comic book. Katherine watched from her little dugout shelf with hungry eyes, as if she were watching the TV, the little half-carved stone in her hands long forgotten. The arguments between Eddie and Richie were always funny.

"What the hell are you talking about?" Richie questioned innocently.

"The hammock! Ten minutes each was the rule!"

"I don't see any sign" Richie looked around.

"Are you being this way, right now?"

"Really?"

"Why would there be a sign if it was a verbal agreement?" Mike shared a grin with Katherine as he sat down on the swing next to her.

"I don't—"

"—We agreed on the fucking rules!" The argument kind of ended when Eddie leapt into the hammock, on top of Richie and the two tousled for a moment until Richie put Eddie in a headlock; where thereupon he tried to make him eat dirt.

"…I was thinking about applying" Ben spoke to Beverly off to the side where he stood reinforcing one of the posts.

"I'll do that—" Richie interjected, with Eddie's socked foot brushing his cheeks, "—I'll do anything to get the hell outta Derry"

"Man, when I graduate I wanna got to Florida" Mike added.

"What's in Florida, Mikey?" Katherine asked.

"Uh, I dunno. I guess—I guess it's just somewhere I've always wanted to go"

"Stan you should go right on to Florida—" Richie piped up, barely glancing up from the comic he was reading as he and Eddie top-and-tailed in the hammock. "—You already act 80. You'd clean up with all the grandmas!"

"…Do…do you guys think we'll still be friends?" Stan asked quietly, "When we're older?"

"What?" Eddie looked over his shoulder at his friend.

"Why wouldn't we be?" Katherine added.

"D-do any of your parents still have their friends from middle school? I mean, things might be different then, we all might be different…"

"We'll a-all still be f-friends. I d-don't think that just g-g-goes away because we get older" Bill reassured him.

"Yeah, Stan, c'me on! You don't have to be so sad" Beverly teased him lightheartedly.


Losers' Clubhouse, Barrens, Present Day

"He was old before his time" Ben smiled sadly as the group remembered the day.

"Yeah…" Eddie mumbled, "Wonder what he would've been like growing up?"

"Probably what he was like as a kid…the best" Richie replied.

"Here" Bill tossed Richie the spare shower cap, before the bespectacled man turned to his friend.

"Alright Mike, what are we doing here?" Richie asked.

"The ritual—" Mike rose to his feet, "—to perform it requires a sacrifice"

"Sacrifice? I nominate Midge"

"Wait! What? Why?" Katherine fired back.

" 'Cause you're little, you'll fit on a barbecue" He reasoned.

"Hey! I might be 5'1", but I can still kick your ass!"

"It's n-not that kind of s-sacrifice" Bill interjected as Richie moved to sit down.

"You better not be asking for sexual favours, Mikey!" Katherine warned, turning on the man with a pointed look. " 'Cause I love you guys, but not like that"

"W-what? No! Look, the past is buried—" Mike spluttered a little at the accusation and tried to ignore Eddie's sniggering in the corner, "—But you're gonna have to dig it up. Piece by piece, and these pieces? These…artefacts? That's why we're here, they are what you'll sacrifice and since Stan isn't here to find his, I figure we should all be here together to find his artefact"

"I think Bill just did that" Eddie replied putting the shower cap on.

Climbing out of the clubhouse was much harder than it had been climbing in. It was only with the help of Mike, who all but hauled her out of the hole, did Katherine get back up to the surface where the others were all milling about trying to take it all in. "Okay, Mike, so where do we find our tokens?" Eddie questioned, fiddling with the shower cap in his hands.

"Yeah, 'cause I gotta be honest, man, with all due respect, this is fucking stupid!" Richie agreed, "All right? Why do we need tokens? We already remember everything! Saving Bev, defeating IT…I mean we're caught up!"

"That's not everything" Mike disagreed, "We fought, but what happened after that? Before the house on Neibolt? Think"

"W-we c-c-can't remember, can we?" Questioned Bill as the Losers shared looks of confusion.

"See there's more to our story, what happened that summer and those blank spaces? Like pages torn out of a book? That's what you need to find"

"Oh shit" Katherine swore as a long forgotten memory flashed before her eyes.

"You remember something, Midge?"

"Y-yeah" She sighed heavily, her gaze not leaving the young Reaper standing just behind Bill, as her eyes glazed over.

"Well, w-what was it?" Bill asked concerned, as he turned to look over his shoulder and follow her gaze.

"It's not something you wanna hear, if you wanna keep your breakfast"

"What happened to you, Kat?" Beverly murmured quietly.

"So much" Her glazed-over eyes blinked rapidly as she snapped back to attention, "Why are you all looking at me like that?"

"…We need to split up, you each need to find your artefact—" Mike continued after sharing a concerned look with the elder Losers, "—Alone. That's important. When you do, meet me at the library tonight"

"Ah! I gotta…I gotta say statistically speaking—you look at survival scenarios, we're gonna do much better as a group" Said Eddie.

"Yeah, splitting up would be dumb, man. We gotta go together, right? We were together that summer!" Richie agreed.

"No" Bill interjected sharply, "Not that w-w-whole summer"

"…Well, I guess that's it then" Katherine sighed, shrugging her shoulders as if to say 'what can ya do?' and turned to leave.

"Hey! Where are you going?!" Eddie called out.

"Me and Toto are headin' back down the blood-stained road" Katherine called sassily over her shoulder as she trudged out of the woods, leaving the elder Losers behind her.