Note: here is an unexpected second part to this fic! I never planned for it to go beyond a one-shot, but the enthusiastic reviews encouraged me to give some more thought about where it might go next. Not sure after this, possibly one more chapter dealing with the aftermath from the Losers' perspective, maybe future stuff... but we'll see. Sorry if I get any details wrong, I'm filling in the blanks with myself until I finish the book :) Thank you *very* much to the awesome people who reviewed, I hope you like this second chapter - it wouldn't exist if not for you! Reviews/thoughts/comments are very welcome and appreciated ^^
Somehow, this win didn't feel much like a win.
Pennywise perched on the edge of his junk pile, bristling, fuming, glaring at the inert body of the boy who'd caused him so much trouble over the last months. The stupid mortal child who refused to give up in his search for his lost younger brother, and who had somehow managed to resist the tempting tendrils of fear offered by the monster known to him and his friends as "It".
He wanted to rip the human apart, oh he did so much want to devour him, but instead he'd suspended the child into a dark dreamless sleep, while he sat contemplating his situation and how to inflict the maximum pain on the boy who had come so close to unravelling everything he'd worked for millennia to build. After all this time seeing humans in what he thought were all their forms, he was annoyed that he could still be surprised, knocked off guard even.
It was a uniquely human ability, he'd found, to be terrified inside - literally sick to your stomach - and yet to put on a brave face to the point where it actually helped to conquer the fear. It frustrated him. Children were supposed to be simple. It was meant to be a case of appearing, reading their darkest fears, and making them a reality so that the child was overcome by the sheer terror. It made them taste so much better. He'd figured that out a long time ago, after his early interactions with adults. Adults were boring, and dumb despite their desire to think otherwise, and while the majority of them were irrational at their core, they were much harder work than the smaller humans. Or at least, till now.
Bill Denbrough. The thorn in his side, now finally taken care of. Why hadn't he killed him yet? Well, for one, the boy wasn't scared enough of him or his manifestations of fear, so his flesh probably wouldn't taste that good. But there was more to it than that, despite what the creature wished to believe.
The boy confused him.
He hadn't been lying when he said it was the first time anyone got close to taking him down. Sure, it was the Losers as a whole, but Pennywise recognised the truth: they were not united without Bill, and without him they would fall apart. That was why making this deal had been so worth it, as it essentially destroyed their chances of ever becoming a threat to Pennywise again. But now, in the aftermath... he was unsettled.
The child seemed driven by emotions that Pennywise couldn't quite understand, couldn't comprehend - when he looked inside the boy's head, more than anything else he found this warm glowing feeling, a terrible perfume of devotion that made Pennywise nauseous. The feeling was, of course, linked to Georgie. To his friends. Why did humans care so much about each other anyway? Pennywise didn't like that, there were many species in the universe and few were as emotional as the humans. It worked in his favour to some extent: their ability to feel emotion meant they were exemplary at feeling fear. Which is why he'd stayed on this forsaken planet so long... How long had it been? He'd lost count of the centuries by now.
There was a darker emotion there too, in the boy, something that had eaten at Bill for the last months, something that potentially drove him in equal effect as the love he felt for his brother. The feeling, Pennywise recognised well, he used it often on adults.
It was guilt.
He found it laughingly ironic that this eleven year old boy felt so much guilt for what had happened to Georgie, considering who was really responsible. But in the child's mixed emotions was the clear feeling of responsibility, for making the boat that sailed down the streets to lead an innocent boy into the teeth of the clown in the sewer. His feelings of love for his brother were so pure that it almost burned Pennywise to sense them.
Oh yes, he did want to make this troublesome human suffer! The clown gurgled, annoyed that even a suspended Bill could cause him so much frustration. Killing him was not enough. He'd denied Pennywise his right to feed again, and again, and again. Now, Pennywise had found himself letting seven terrified children leave his lair freely all for this stupid child that he couldn't even figure out what to do with. He shrieked in anger, grabbed the boy from the sky, and sunk his teeth deep into his neck, hoping to be free from this indecision.
But the blood was tainted, as he suspected. He pushed the inanimate Bill away from him, disgusted, spitting out the taste of him. Like an unripe fruit, Bill tasted of all the things that Pennywise despised: love, sacrifice, acceptance, hope. He really did believe the words he said, that one day his friends would return to stop Pennywise for good. He even believed his brother would help them.
"Fat chance," Pennywise snarled, his arms crossed. The Losers had already started to forget, and in the months to come, they wouldn't even be able to put a face to Bill's name. His magic was working hard to unravel the chains in their memories, to sever the links and bonds they'd felt so strongly to Bill. By the end of it, they wouldn't remember him at all. If all went to plan, then the entire town of Derry would forget about Bill eventually, as if he'd never existed in the first place.
But there was not much time before the sleep would come. Pennywise had sacrificed time to acquire Bill, and would be hibernating on less of a full stomach than he would normally prefer. It meant he would wake up in 27 years all the hungrier for it, but that was of somewhat little concern to him since there would be no Losers to try and stop him. He vaguely hoped they would still be around the town though, with children of their own, so he could devour their offspring - his promise to let them go did not extend past the current generation of Losers.
But what to do with Bill, before the sleep? What was the boy truly afraid of?
Pennywise eyed him up, probed his mind harder, looking deep to reveal the most hidden fears that he was protecting. When he found what he was looking for, he couldn't say he was really surprised. In the end, the clown concluded, the boy seemed to have the true hang-ups of a leader. The fear that stood out the most, that had echoed through his actions over the months and even down here in the sewer, was that the people around him, the people that he cared about, would get hurt. A simple fear really, not so uncommon. Ironic that he should drag his dear friends into such dangerous situations, but he'd always planned to be the one that would make the sacrifice should it come to it.
The clown smirked.
If Bill's darkest fears were watching those around him get hurt, then at least here was a way he could torture the boy for the next 27 years. The mindscape was an old friend of Pennywise the dancing clown, and down here in his lair he had the most powers of all over the dreams of humans. He conjured up a variety of scenarios to play on repeat in Bill's young mind, of Georgie, Bev, Eddie, Richie, Ben, Mike, and Stan all being destroyed in various ways, mostly by Pennywise but some not, some of which were memories, others that were premonitions or parallel timelines, all of which were inevitably felt deeply by Bill as his fault.
He observed with satisfaction as the first scenario started to play out in Bill's head, where an older Stan commits suicide, driven to madness and unable to stand the memories of their experiences as children. Bill's forehead crinkled, his eyes still the same empty opalescent white as before, a lone tear leaking down his cheek. Pennywise felt quite chuffed with his plan. Torturing Bill endlessly for years with the ghosts of his friends and family would definitely break the boy - he'd be a horrible unstable mess by the time Pennywise awoke from his slumber in 27 years and, hopefully, the taste of his fear and despair would be delicious.
He watched a little longer as Bill's pain deepened, feeling the aura of guilt and sadness around the boy grow. This was much better than killing him outright, it was everything the foolish child deserved and more for ever daring to cross the creature known as "It".
Humming a little, Pennywise began the preparations for his long slumber.