[i relate to richie's shock at seeing a girl he knew from childhood die and come back to life years later as a fantasy elf but she is not appreciating the energy he's bringing to this mental breakdown she's having.]
You're right that I died. [but she came back as an elf and has all of these other additional memories, what part of this is hard to understand.] You ought to know. You knew what took Bax and you didn't say anything about it, did you?
That stumps him. You couldn't make it up if you tried, folks. Richie's brain is firing on all circuits but with a 53% success rate. Struggling to catch up to the logistics here. If she's not It, then how is she here?
How is she accosting him for a thing that made him sick, that cast a bitter cloud over the weeks to come? Even when they finally went down and took it on, beat it back for the first time in It's entire existence, there wasn't much to celebrate?
It'd been bad enough thinking about Georgie. For all seven of them to spend the whole day hunting and start to panic, realize too late what had happened and why — Beverly had burst into tears when Mike pulled up the shoe two days later. When they all piled in and followed the path that Del and Andy and Jen might have taken, but they'd never know. It wasn't their bodies they found down there.
Richie's face falls. He looks like he could wither. He looks like he could die. His mouth, so adept at flapping ad nauseum, can only drop one mournful, shameful vowel.]
[his reaction instantly makes her regret being cruel only for the sake of it.
but also who the fuck is she right now. who is he. this mess of pieces she was put back together with, all of these fragments of memory that don't fit at all, harder to reconcile into a single person than even her prior absence was.
is she that young girl, the one who faced down a monster alone in the sewers? if so, she has no reason to feel anger at him. isn't this what she wanted, for someone to at least fucking care what happened to her? and she can tell by the way he looks at her, by the way he says that name, that he did. he cared, all this time. all she ever wanted was to know that someone had missed her, someone was out there looking for her.
but her name isn't jen. oh, if she starts to think about it, if she starts to think about which name is hers, that doesn't lead to anywhere good. someone saying that name to her, in sorrow, in regret, while she looks down at them like an insect she means to pry the legs off of and peel open, wondering who they mean, who the person is who made them feel such things. no, no, no, no. it's almost an instinct in her by this point, trained into her like a dog with a shock collar, and even though the expected pain in the old wound does not come, she knows. when they start saying that, when the nameless faceless things she's meant to hurt start saying that name, she has to stop it in its tracks before it hurts too much, before it opens knowledge in her that she would rather do without.
she wants to know whether he looked for her, whether he thought of her, whether, when she didn't return to the diner, he was scared for her.
she also doesn't want to know any of this.
she holds her spear, and she doesn't look at him, and she tries to remember who she is and why she's here.]
[He stands uncertainly, miserably as she haunts his doorway and makes no further moves. The expression on her face is hard to untangle. He's having a hard enough time grappling with her face, period, much less what she might be wrestling through behind it. But he's feeling a high twist in his guts, and his feet push forward, almost as if of their own accord.
If he were watching the movie of his life right now, he'd join the audience heckling him for being so plum stupid. It's different when you're standing in the thick of it, and you want to understand, and you'd been a bit sweet on the mean girl with the dark hair in buns, and the first time she ever asked you for help was the last time you ever saw her.
On a day where he's been made to recall every detail of the summer of '58, with life or death urgency, he's placing a great deal of importance on any part of his childhood he finds.
Richie moves towards her, reaching for her shoulder. Look at me, girl.]
[she's gone somewhere dark, far away. which dark place is unclear, there's more than one now. trying to fit the pieces together, trying to make it make sense, but not too much sense, because some of those pieces fit together in a very nasty way. and some are the complete opposite. if she can't trust in herself, then trust in one of her friends, but which one?
she doesn't think she wants to hurt him after all, but then he reaches for her suddenly and she will slash blindly. maybe not enough to kill him or even grievously wound him, but maybe it is.]
[Yeah. Dumb move. Boo the screen and throw your popcorn, he's the world's worst written smartmouth sidekick.
The spear catches him high. It wouldn't have caught his neck if he hadn't leaned a little forward, but that's curiousity for you. It'll kill bone-headed men as quick as it'll kill a cat.
His neck looses a bright red spray, painting her across the face as he stumbles back. His glasses slip off and skitter on the floor, as his feet keep tripping back into the chest of drawers propping up the boxy television set. He droops against it, one hand to his neck and the other failing to find anything to hold onto. Blinded. Shocked. Losing blood too fast to count for.
It'll take a while to fully bleed out, but there's no fixing the damage. Richie sits hard on the carpet, propped against the stained wood as his unseeing eyes blink at the shape in his doorway.
Why?
Why this? Why now?
His head lolls forward after a time. His eyes never quite close.]
[yeah. sorry. she doesn't do the thing where she mercy kills him and then carefully lays him to rest and closes his eyes. she's getting out of here yesterday. backing away, out the door, backing away until she's not in that room anymore.
she feels like she's cracking to pieces, that nothing is holding together anymore. she didn't want to do that. she wasn't going to do that. forget that karlach asked her, that piece of the puzzle feels so remote, so obviously nonsensical that she can simply discard it. but all of the pieces are like that, actually. none of them are right, none of them fit in any shape that connects with any other.
she knows him. he's a friend she made, one who saw some very ugly sides of her and didn't flinch away, tried to understand instead. he was funny and obviously interested and also, even when she wasn't sure which parts of her were real and which weren't, he recognized her. because she doesn't know, she still doesn't know. there's a gaping chasm full of things she doesn't know about herself and any one of them is likely to be far too much, too ugly for anyone else to be able to accept about another person, but one of them was fine.
but she still did that. she was still worse than she expected herself to be and hurt someone else.
anyway, in the interests of time, she does not try to go to the next room, she just goes running and finds her way there.]
[To the next room she goes. This one was having trouble sleeping in the first place. Can't get a wink most nights. Too much on the mind. When the knock comes there's another slow pause, but not a suspicious one. Just dragging his heels.
A man answers the door, and he looks a little like she does.
He doesn't say anything. He just takes in her face, the blood smeared all across her, and the spear in her hands. His mind blanks out and his head runs for explanations. He comes up with none.]
[she doesn't know who this is, either, and perhaps it doesn't even have the same ring of familiarity that the other two did, where if she focuses she remembers, can place them, knows.
no, this man is a mystery to her, a face she glimpsed once or twice when she focused as much as she could on the mirrors in that hall. mirrors reflecting back a loss that might not be capable of recovery.
she's covered in blood, carrying this spear. and she thinks she knows who he is anyway, even if she doesn't know him. and she doesn't want to kill anyone anymore. that - no, she's tired of that. she's tired of hurting people, even if she can't seem to stop.]
Help me. Please, help me.
[he sees her like this, what they made her into, what she's become. and she wants to know, needs to know, is, back then, did he love her? and does he love her now? is it even possible to see all of it clearly and still love her?]
[The man's hands shake and his eyes flick quick between hers. Seeing something, daring not hope — can't even think to hope, even if it's all he comes to this fucking town to do — not when she's slathered in blood. Not when she's frightened, this strange woman with the strange weapon, who looks so much like her mother.
He's almost convinced she isn't real, even after she speaks. Then he swallows, hands lighting on her shoulders.]
Good god, child, you're...what's happened to you? Come in, come in.
[He will hold her. She calls him father, and he almost chokes with the need for it to be true.
He's never forgiven Viconia. He's never forgiven the town, but he comes back every year, even if they put her headstone in the family plot up north. Even if there's no reason to, if no one else here had marked her passing or laid out flowers. He has to, because she wasn't found. She was missing.
And she's here now.]
Jenny, oh my Jenny...Don't be. Please, don't be. It's all my fault.
[He pulls her in. In complete disbelief, taking her to fetch a towel, wipe some of this off. But they need help, don't they? He tries the phone and gets nothing but a dial tone, so let's go down together, Jenny, please stay with me, let's go down and try the front desk. Let's go down and get you looked at, hold onto my arm, love, I won't let you go.
He doesn't let her go. He doesn't know how it's possible, but he refuses to believe it's anything but the truth. She's his, and he's hers.
With hitching breaths and entangled arms, the pair descend the bloodied stairs together.]
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holyspirits) wrote2025-03-09 04:46 pm
no subject
[Said incredulously, almost a little offended.]
What gave it away? You're dead. You died twenty-seven years ago. Where'd you get that pig-sticker? Was Macy's having a sale on barbecue gear?
no subject
You're right that I died. [but she came back as an elf and has all of these other additional memories, what part of this is hard to understand.] You ought to know. You knew what took Bax and you didn't say anything about it, did you?
no subject
That stumps him. You couldn't make it up if you tried, folks. Richie's brain is firing on all circuits but with a 53% success rate. Struggling to catch up to the logistics here. If she's not It, then how is she here?
How is she accosting him for a thing that made him sick, that cast a bitter cloud over the weeks to come? Even when they finally went down and took it on, beat it back for the first time in It's entire existence, there wasn't much to celebrate?
It'd been bad enough thinking about Georgie. For all seven of them to spend the whole day hunting and start to panic, realize too late what had happened and why — Beverly had burst into tears when Mike pulled up the shoe two days later. When they all piled in and followed the path that Del and Andy and Jen might have taken, but they'd never know. It wasn't their bodies they found down there.
Richie's face falls. He looks like he could wither. He looks like he could die. His mouth, so adept at flapping ad nauseum, can only drop one mournful, shameful vowel.]
Jen...
no subject
but also who the fuck is she right now. who is he. this mess of pieces she was put back together with, all of these fragments of memory that don't fit at all, harder to reconcile into a single person than even her prior absence was.
is she that young girl, the one who faced down a monster alone in the sewers? if so, she has no reason to feel anger at him. isn't this what she wanted, for someone to at least fucking care what happened to her? and she can tell by the way he looks at her, by the way he says that name, that he did. he cared, all this time. all she ever wanted was to know that someone had missed her, someone was out there looking for her.
but her name isn't jen. oh, if she starts to think about it, if she starts to think about which name is hers, that doesn't lead to anywhere good. someone saying that name to her, in sorrow, in regret, while she looks down at them like an insect she means to pry the legs off of and peel open, wondering who they mean, who the person is who made them feel such things. no, no, no, no. it's almost an instinct in her by this point, trained into her like a dog with a shock collar, and even though the expected pain in the old wound does not come, she knows. when they start saying that, when the nameless faceless things she's meant to hurt start saying that name, she has to stop it in its tracks before it hurts too much, before it opens knowledge in her that she would rather do without.
she wants to know whether he looked for her, whether he thought of her, whether, when she didn't return to the diner, he was scared for her.
she also doesn't want to know any of this.
she holds her spear, and she doesn't look at him, and she tries to remember who she is and why she's here.]
no subject
If he were watching the movie of his life right now, he'd join the audience heckling him for being so plum stupid. It's different when you're standing in the thick of it, and you want to understand, and you'd been a bit sweet on the mean girl with the dark hair in buns, and the first time she ever asked you for help was the last time you ever saw her.
On a day where he's been made to recall every detail of the summer of '58, with life or death urgency, he's placing a great deal of importance on any part of his childhood he finds.
Richie moves towards her, reaching for her shoulder. Look at me, girl.]
Jen? What's going on?
no subject
she doesn't think she wants to hurt him after all, but then he reaches for her suddenly and she will slash blindly. maybe not enough to kill him or even grievously wound him, but maybe it is.]
no subject
The spear catches him high. It wouldn't have caught his neck if he hadn't leaned a little forward, but that's curiousity for you. It'll kill bone-headed men as quick as it'll kill a cat.
His neck looses a bright red spray, painting her across the face as he stumbles back. His glasses slip off and skitter on the floor, as his feet keep tripping back into the chest of drawers propping up the boxy television set. He droops against it, one hand to his neck and the other failing to find anything to hold onto. Blinded. Shocked. Losing blood too fast to count for.
It'll take a while to fully bleed out, but there's no fixing the damage. Richie sits hard on the carpet, propped against the stained wood as his unseeing eyes blink at the shape in his doorway.
Why?
Why this? Why now?
His head lolls forward after a time. His eyes never quite close.]
no subject
she feels like she's cracking to pieces, that nothing is holding together anymore. she didn't want to do that. she wasn't going to do that. forget that karlach asked her, that piece of the puzzle feels so remote, so obviously nonsensical that she can simply discard it. but all of the pieces are like that, actually. none of them are right, none of them fit in any shape that connects with any other.
she knows him. he's a friend she made, one who saw some very ugly sides of her and didn't flinch away, tried to understand instead. he was funny and obviously interested and also, even when she wasn't sure which parts of her were real and which weren't, he recognized her. because she doesn't know, she still doesn't know. there's a gaping chasm full of things she doesn't know about herself and any one of them is likely to be far too much, too ugly for anyone else to be able to accept about another person, but one of them was fine.
but she still did that. she was still worse than she expected herself to be and hurt someone else.
anyway, in the interests of time, she does not try to go to the next room, she just goes running and finds her way there.]
no subject
A man answers the door, and he looks a little like she does.
He doesn't say anything. He just takes in her face, the blood smeared all across her, and the spear in her hands. His mind blanks out and his head runs for explanations. He comes up with none.]
[He can't think. He can barely breathe.]
no subject
no, this man is a mystery to her, a face she glimpsed once or twice when she focused as much as she could on the mirrors in that hall. mirrors reflecting back a loss that might not be capable of recovery.
she's covered in blood, carrying this spear. and she thinks she knows who he is anyway, even if she doesn't know him. and she doesn't want to kill anyone anymore. that - no, she's tired of that. she's tired of hurting people, even if she can't seem to stop.]
Help me. Please, help me.
[he sees her like this, what they made her into, what she's become. and she wants to know, needs to know, is, back then, did he love her? and does he love her now? is it even possible to see all of it clearly and still love her?]
no subject
[The man's hands shake and his eyes flick quick between hers. Seeing something, daring not hope — can't even think to hope, even if it's all he comes to this fucking town to do — not when she's slathered in blood. Not when she's frightened, this strange woman with the strange weapon, who looks so much like her mother.
He's almost convinced she isn't real, even after she speaks. Then he swallows, hands lighting on her shoulders.]
Good god, child, you're...what's happened to you? Come in, come in.
[Except you need to leave. Don't you?]
no subject
Father, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.
[she's not going anywhere. this is all she ever wanted, even if it's not complete, even if he doesn't seem to understand, or know her.
but you can make her leave, that's fine.]
no subject
He's never forgiven Viconia. He's never forgiven the town, but he comes back every year, even if they put her headstone in the family plot up north. Even if there's no reason to, if no one else here had marked her passing or laid out flowers. He has to, because she wasn't found. She was missing.
And she's here now.]
Jenny, oh my Jenny...Don't be. Please, don't be. It's all my fault.
[He pulls her in. In complete disbelief, taking her to fetch a towel, wipe some of this off. But they need help, don't they? He tries the phone and gets nothing but a dial tone, so let's go down together, Jenny, please stay with me, let's go down and try the front desk. Let's go down and get you looked at, hold onto my arm, love, I won't let you go.
He doesn't let her go. He doesn't know how it's possible, but he refuses to believe it's anything but the truth. She's his, and he's hers.
With hitching breaths and entangled arms, the pair descend the bloodied stairs together.]