sunshine and sorrow, I've seen it all...says paul

[the_trashmouth]

Dated December 30th. Takes place directly after this. Warnings for homophobic language and violence.

Richie pushes the bar of the arcade door with both hands and stumbles into the street.

The street in Darrow, just like he never left. He can still hear the kids inside who jostled past him through the doors, the music from the arcade cabinets just inside. The air is cool, and it looks like it might rain later.

He's back.

"Fuck," Richie breathes, and he doesn't know what to do first. Should he call someone? Is everyone still okay?He's gonna be pissed if it's like that thing where they all went home with Regan and Jamie. Did everyone have to go through this shit?

He pulls out his phone and texts the first person he can think of, asking them to meet him, even as he starts heading down the street, towards the park, if only because he can't think of anywhere else to go. He can't go back to the Home, not yet. Not like this. Tears are stinging at his eyes, and he reaches under his glasses to wipe them away.

People knew. They heard Bowers and they heard him. He'd practically shouted it in front of everyone, even if had been a Voice not his own.

Richie remembers when he'd first started thinking it, and how fast he'd pushed the thought away. And in the arcade, his stomach had flipped, playing Street Fighter with that other kid. And just a few weeks ago, that fucking thing with Steve...

"Fuck," he repeats, and sinks down onto a bench in the park, and he's so distracted by all the shit that he just went through that, at first, he doesn't even notice there's a statue there that hadn't been there before. Giant and looming, Paul Bunyan peers down on Richie Tozier, sitting on his bench. Paul Bunyan, who Pennywise had used to torture Richie at his lowest moment, after he had been chased out of the arcade by Bowers.

When Richie looks up, he nearly jumps out of his fucking skin, letting out a shout of surprise.

Comments

[negative_feedback]

Regan gets the text, and it's not framed like Richie's usual messages. That worries her, but she tries not to let it show, responding with a quick 'Sure, brt' and heading out. She texts Greta and Saoirse each to let them know she'll be gone for a bit, but back in time for dinner, probably, and makes her way to where Richie'd told her he was.

The statue is the gaudiest, ugliest statue she's ever seen, and it's the first thing she does see when she rounds the block leading closer to the park. She frowns and snaps a picture of it. She sends it to Richie, with the caption 'do you see this??' and picks up her pace towards the park.

When she sees Richie sitting on one of the benches, she smiles and heads closer, but the smile drops when she realizes his eyes are red. He's been crying. She jogs the rest of the way and stops.

"What's wrong? What happened?"

[the_trashmouth]

Maybe he shouldn't have texted Regan. All he can think about right now is what happened back in Derry and what happened with the mistletoe. This is all so fucked up. And now that fucking statue is here, when it's not supposed to be.

He looks up when he hears Regan approach, and though he misses the first part of her gesture, he catches enough to know what she's said. He wipes his eyes again, then adjusts his glasses.

"Did you go somewhere too?" he asks.

[negative_feedback]

She frowns, sitting next to him on the bench. The statue looms over them, but she focuses on Richie instead, hand on his knee. She shakes her head. Had he gone somewhere? Was it like her and Jamie? Why did he go alone?

She has too many questions, but she doesn't want to overwhelm Richie by asking them. So she waits, eyebrows pinched in a question as she keeps her hand on his knee.

[the_trashmouth]

"Shit," he says, but doesn't sign, taking his face into his hands again, taking a second to breathe. Does that mean this shit was just him this time? That whatever fucks with them in Darrow figured it'd send just him home to torture him.

This was bullshit.

"I was home," Richie finally signs, "Before I was here."

[negative_feedback]

She frowns. "Just now, you mean? You went to Derry?" That sounds... weird, and random, and she doesn't understand. Richie hadn't been asleep for two solid days. He hadn't disappeared, and he hadn't taken anyone with him. But somehow, he'd been home?

Regan believes him. He's too upset to be joking, and anyway, after their autumn, she doesn't think he'd joke about something like this.

"What happened?" she asks again.

[finally_ahead]

Stan likes the park better than he really likes any place in Darrow so far. He wants to try heading out into the woods-- and shit, he knows that if he asked any of his friends they would, but something still holds him back.

So he's walking the paths, counting cardinals, thinking a little bit about what it would be like if he could somehow keep track of the particular ones he sees. Do they stay the same?

And then he hears a shout that he immediately pegs as Richie, and he hurries to where the sound comes from-- only to let out a yelp of his own.

"What the fuck is that thing doing here?" he demands, maybe a bit too loud, and there's nothing else for it, it's gotta be the one from Derry, and Stan's heart pounds. He grabs Richie by the shirt, trying to pull him off the bench. "Richie, come on, come on."

[the_trashmouth]

"I was back in Derry and then it was here," Richie says, looking up at Stan. He's pulling at Richie's shirt, but he doesn't move, eyes trained on the statue. As little sense as it makes, as much as Richie knows that that fucking clown isn't in Darrow, he's expecting it to spring to life. He's expecting it to start shouting about what happened at the arcade.

It can't.

"What's it fucking doing here?!"

[finally_ahead]

"I don't know," Stan says, caught between terror and irritation, the hallmark feeling of the summer. "But maybe we shouldn't just sit and look at the thing that came from our evil hometown." He grabs Richie by the arm instead, trying to pull him up again.

The rest of it registers a moment later.

"What do you mean, you were back in Derry, you-- you haven't been asleep, or anything," he demands. "Richie, come on, this is fucked up, let's go."

[the_trashmouth]

"I was in the arcade here, and then I was in the arcade back there," Richie says, and he knows it sounds crazy and fucked up, but it happened. He lets Stan pull him to his feet, but doesn't make a move to leave the park. Not yet.

"After the fight. It was like I never left."

[lost_boy]

I was already out when I got the text from Richie -- walking, not driving, because I knew not to look at my phone while I was behind the wheel -- and I answered quickly, then headed for the park. The text had seemed... a little strange. Short. Like maybe something was wrong. But it was also possible I was just reading into things, I knew I had a tendency to worry about my friends perhaps more than was necessary, so I tried to ignore any unsettled feelings in my stomach and just crossed the road to reach the park.

The statue was new. I stared at it as I approached Richie on the park bench, trying to work out what I was looking at, and I was about to open my mouth to say something to Richie when he leapt up from the bench with a cry.

"What is it?" I asked, crossing the distance quickly. "What's wrong?"

[the_trashmouth]

Richie doesn't even hear when Jamie approaches, his eyes locked on the fucking statue that shouldn't be there in the first place. It was there that day, after what happened at the arcade. It hadn't been real, Richie knows that, but he'd thought he was going to fucking die. It had chased him through the center of town, tearing apart as it mocked him, and now it was in Darrow.

"The fucking statue!" Richie shouts, pointing, though that's only the beginning of everything wrong with today, "Where did it come from?!"

[lost_boy]

"I don't know," I said, looking up at the statue again before I gently put my hand on Richie's shoulder. He seemed genuinely frightened by the statue and it was clear I was missing something about it, but I wasn't going to question his fear. By now I knew there were plenty of things I had never seen before that could hurt people, do things I would never even imagine.

"I've never seen it before and it was here when I got to the park," I said. I still had my hand on his shoulder and it felt as if I was waiting for the statue to do something. To lunge. "Should we go? We don't have to stay here. We can just... we can leave."

[the_trashmouth]

"It's from back home," he says, and Richie is finding it hard to say the words, "The fucking statue. I was back in Derry and when I came back the fucking statue was here."

He's half expecting it to spring to life again, to chase him through the park, shouting secrets not meant to be shouted.

[eddie_spaghetti]

"Holy shit, is that the same one?"

His phone was in his pocket, ringer accidentally off, so it was some kind of intuition or maybe bad luck that brought him there. Nearly tripping over his own shoes as he cross the grass towards it, looking straight up at its eerily familiar face.

He'd seen that statue nearly every day for most of his young life, but he'd somehow forgotten it until that moment. Its smile, which was obviously supposed to be friendly, seemed weirdly ominous now.

[the_trashmouth]

Eddie is the both the person Richie wants to see the most and the person he wants to see the least right now. In his panic, he'd been the first person Richie thought to text, and now he's not so sure it was a good idea. Hurriedly, he reaches underneath his glasses to wipe his eyes again, though they're probably still red.

"It just fucking showed up here," he says, sounding almost tired now, even though his heart is still racing. Somehow, it feels like Eddie will know just by looking at him right now. Somehow, he's waiting for the statue to come to life and shout it out loud, to mock him all over again, no matter how fake it had been the first time it happened.

[eddie_spaghetti]

"Ugh, was it always this ugly?" Eddie asked, his nose wrinkling as he stepped a little closer. When he thought about it at all, which was almost never, it seemed taller, its colors brighter, looming over the park where they spent so much of their time.

Turning to look at Richie over his shoulder, he noticed the redness around his eyes, the weird, splotchy paleness of his cheeks, and frowned.

"Hey, what's going on? Did something happen?"

[the_trashmouth]

Richie looks up at Eddie and pauses. Everything's been so fucking weird the past month, since Kagura. And now there's this whole thing, and he knows he can't tell Eddie about it. Of all people, he knows Eddie's the one he can't tell.

This fucking sucks and he hates it.

"I was back home. I was in Derry," he says, because that part's safe, at least, "It was here when I got back."

The statue is still like it should be, but Richie still can't help glancing at it, as if this whole thing is just another trick.

[runtowardsomething]

"Whoa, what the fuck," Beverly says, coming to a stop a few feet away, her eyes wide and head tipped back as she takes in the sight of the entirely too familiar statue. They're a long way from home, of course, and she knows it, but seeing that stupid Paul Bunyan takes her right back to Derry so quickly that she actually feels a little unsteady on her feet, dizzy and a bit queasy at the reminder of that place. She hasn't thought about that statue in ages. She barely thought twice about it at home, except to occasionally consider the creepiness of it, the way just about everything there was at the very least the slightest bit unsettling. It was all easy to overlook, pretty normal on the surface, but nothing about that place really was.

A moment later, though, she hears Richie yelp, jolting her back to the present and reminding her of what brought her here — his text asking her to meet. She hadn't thought too much of it at the time, but getting a look at him now, the startled expression on his face and his eyes red under his glasses, she can't help but worry, the statue all but forgotten again. "Hey," she says, a little softer, crossing the short distance between them to take a seat at his side. "Richie, what's going on?"

She doesn't think he'd look like he's about to cry over fucking Paul Bunyan.

[the_trashmouth]

"What the fuck!" he shouts, his eyes stuck on the statue, and he's expecting it to come to life, just like that summer, like that day after he'd been chased out of the arcade. It doesn't make sense, he knows, because they'd left all that behind in Derry. Most of the time, he doesn't even remember half of the shit that happened that summer anyway. But finding himself back in the arcade, with Bowers and his gang making him feel like shit all over again had caused so much of it to come flooding back.

"Where the fuck did it come from? How is it here?!"

[runtowardsomething]

"I don't know, Rich," Beverly says, calm where he seems panicked. The statue's existence here has her unnerved, sure, but she doesn't know what about it has prompted a reaction this strong from him. Maybe she just doesn't remember — she can't always be sure — but she knows she's been near the statue with him before and he wasn't freaking out about it like this. It seems like something more is going on here, but she doesn't have a clue what it could be.

Strange as it may be, it's not the first time she's seen it. Jamie had that coat; Hopper found his daughter's birth certificate. This must be like that, she's just not sure why it matters so much. "This happens here sometimes, you know? Things from home showing up. That's probably all it is."

It's still creepy, though, looking down at them with its painted on smile. Paul Bunyan can go fuck himself.

[the_trashmouth]

It happened once before, with all the posters that showed up from Derry. They'd been fake then, just part of them all being fucked with, and they'd just taken them all down. But this is different. He can't just take this statue down, and it almost feels like something is rubbing it in; how shitty that day had been for him.

"It came to life... back in Derry," Richie says, and it's a moment that he'd forgotten before today, lost with so much of that summer in Derry with the rest of the Losers, "It tried to kill me."

[haplesshairpile]

Steve hasn't seen Richie since that weird thing up on the mountain, but it's not like that's much of a surprise. Richie might hate him anyway, who knows.

But when he sees Richie in the park on the way home from work, sitting next to a big ass statue that definitely was not there before his shift, he wanders over. Richie looks freaked out, but he kind of always does, so Steve drops down onto the bench next to him.

"What the fuck is this thing?" He asks, tipping his head backwards to stare up at it. "Is that a lumberjack?" The thing has kind of a threatening vibe for reasons Steve can't articulate, so he pulls his hand out of his coat and thrusts his middle finger up at it.

[the_trashmouth]

It's just Richie's luck that Steve's the first person he sees after what happened. Richie has been trying not to think about what happened up at Kagura since it happened, and feels pretty stupid now that Steve's finding him like this.

Fuck. It always keeps happening like this.

"It's from Derry," Richie says, and he reaches up to wipe his eyes, hoping Steve doesn't notice.

[haplesshairpile]

"Oh, huh. Better than what I got from home," Steve admits, lowering his finger and slowly lifting his head until he's sitting up straight. From the corner of his eye, he can see Richie wiping at his face. He ignores it entirely, because he doesn't want Richie feeling any worse.

He's really worried about the kid, actually. He seems to be really going through some shit, and he wishes he could figure out how to help. It also makes him worry about Robin. Is she struggling this much too, and she's just better at hiding it? Maybe he should get Robin and Richie in a room together to talk, but that would mean betraying either one or both of their trust, so he can't do that either.

"So, this is just... here now?" Steve asks, because the statue sticks out like a sore thumb. "What's so special about it?" He considers his own "gift" from the city, and looks at the statue with a more critical eye. "Or awful?"

[the_trashmouth]

There's a lot of shit Steve doesn't know. There's a lot that Richie doesn't even remember himself, the memories getting more and more hazy the longer he's been in Darrow. But after being sent back to relive one of the worst days of his life over and over, all of that is pretty clear right now.

"It's fucking awful, Steve," he says, and he doesn't know where to start.