A/N: Some preface: I have not read the novel and have no plans to. I didn't really like Chapter 2 and might implement some elements of it, but that remains to be seen. Welcome to Derry has not aired yet and I won't be worrying about it.
There will be no smut or shipping.
Pennywise is a little OOC here, as IT must be to be anything beyond a one-dimensional manifestation of evil, but I will try to remain as close to ITs nature as I can.
This is canon divergence into full AU. There will be canon-appropriate violence and prejudice. Not Dead Dove levels, but fair warning.
IT had never had children, young, progeny, offspring. IT understood the concept of children, of course. How could IT lure the children of Derry into ITs grasp, torment them with their worst fears, drive them mad with terror, manifest as their nightmares, if IT didn't? The children's fears were simple and shortsighted, easy to physically represent and easy to prey upon. They feared trauma from their past, or fictional monsters, or common dangers. Seeing a loved one die, disease, spiders, abusive parents, bears, bullies, werewolves. The list was seemingly endless, and with every hunting spree IT found at least one child with a fear IT had not yet seen.
And yet their fears were always so base, so simple. Encapsulated in their little world, their little lives, their little minds. None of them could comprehend true terror. The things IT had seen in ITs life among the endless cosmos, before IT had ended up here, lurking beneath this tiny, boring town on this tiny planet (but boring the planet was not, oh no, IT had sensed its potential millennia ago). None of them could comprehend the endless nothingness of the Abyss, of Death. IT felt it yawning near every time IT awoke, ready to claim IT. IT was glad IT had found this planet with these simple children and their simple minds and their simple fears, where IT could feed to ITs content and stave off Obliteration for another few decades at a time.
Adults were not as… plain. Their minds could grope closer in the direction of actual horror. They knew, all of them, in the back of their minds, that there was more out there than cancer and debt and endless war and missing children. Worse things. They didn't know what, but they could sense there was more. The stuff IT was made of. And the stuff IT was afraid of.
IT had found, over the centuries, that it was the simultaneous simplicity and imagination of children that made them interesting. More interesting than the adults, better prey than the the adults. Pennywise, created for children, had become ITs favorite form.
As IT understood the concept of children, IT also understood the concept of parenthood. Guardian, keeper, provider, shepherd. Humans found parenthood fulfilling; it saturated them with that odorous and repulsive emotion, love. Love was almost as loathsome as its cousin, bravery. Parents had thrown themselves at their deaths headfirst in attempts to save their children from IT. They had scoured the town, the woods, the sewers for their missing spawn. They had moved away to avoid the memories, the ghosts of their lost sons and daughters. They had killed themselves in shame and sorrow. Their attachment to their children was truly remarkable. Something rare to see in all the expanse of the universe. Something, to ITs vast but not exhaustive knowledge, unique to creatures on Earth and especially strong in humans.
IT had also come to understand the concept of loneliness. ITs solitude did not weigh on IT like it would on a human, with their inferior minds. But IT understood. ITs world was the town of Derry and the sewer grid underneath it. For twenty-seven years or more at a stretch, IT was alone with ITs dreams and thoughts. IT had been millennia since IT had seen anything outside of the town, let alone outside of the planet. Millennia since IT had seen anything approaching ITself in intelligence or power or scope. A mere drop in the ocean of time, but oh yes, IT could understand how one could grow to be lonely.
For now, the city and the sewers and the entertainment from the children's fear was enough. But IT had seen many things and lived in many universes across the macroverse. IT knew that one day, IT would need more, or IT would go insane (more insane than IT maybe already was). IT would need to find more to do, more to amuse ITself with. More purpose than feeding and sleeping. Perhaps that knowledge, in itself, was a sign of ITs slipping sanity. Who would have guessed that such a superior being, existing since almost the creation of time itself, would feel the touch of madness?
In the next fifty-four years or so, maybe IT would drag a brat down there and keep them alive for a day or two. Just to see what would happen, what the kid would do. Until IT got , if he kept the child alive long enough (if IT could control ITself long enough), they would get so hungry that IT could persuade them to share a meal with be funny.
Children, adults, offspring, parenthood, loneliness. IT mused these things over as IT crouched at the base of ITs tower of junk and mementos—bikes, shoes, clothes, plastic little-girl jewelry, action figures, stuffed animals, rotting food—, under the corpses floating like clouds near the peak. IT thought on these things as IT shredded the creamy pale torso of an eight-year-old boy between ITs needle teeth.