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goodfortune-au · 3 years

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Good Fortune (Soulmate AU) Chapter 18: Face It

He pulls back from her.

“What’s wrong my sweet?”

She is nothing in that moment but inconsolable, the static shock of something she can’t control gripping her in a crushingly electric vice. She flinches away from his touch and snivels into shaking hands, able to do little else but hiccup in sheer misery as it all comes flooding back to her. Suddenly she’s reliving that afternoon down in the archives, but it’s not the pleasant euphoria of being kissed for the first time; it's the mortal terror, it’s the sick, wrenching feeling in her stomach as she watched something primal and savage at its core, something raw and animalistic, the sight of a boy being consumed alive by a monster. The snapping and crunching of bones in her memory makes her cringe. She’s bawling into her palms now, sniffling and sucking in greedy breaths of air between pauses. He shifts from the top of her to her side, shushing her, stroking her hair.

“Angel, sweetheart, you must tell me what’s wrong. Pennywise is worried…”

He knew. Oh, he most definitely knew. He’d been waiting for this moment in something of a stirring anticipation, for weeks, months, eons. It had come now, the moment of truth, where she would finally confront the revelation of who he was and come to terms with it. She may not come to terms with it immediately, but she would eventually. For now, the time had come for him to be entirely truthful with her. He would stand firm, he would answer her questions, he would offer her a willing shoulder to cry on should she desire it. He hoped more than anything that she would not reject him, that she would not run from him completely. He didn’t want to have to do things the hard way.

She doesn’t even know where to begin, she’s simply blindsided by the sobriety of the realization, that not even the exhilaration of kissing something she held so dear could keep her from confronting what she had been so ardently avoiding. She’s silent, processing her thoughts as much as she’s able to, but they’re a roiling, stampeding mess inside her head, chaos simply reigning free in the recesses of her suffering mind. She finds that dwelling on it just makes her start crying again, she’s wailing even harder now as he strokes a gentle hand down her back. She simply keeps crying, recoiling into herself, crumpling into a heap as she sits up and she refuses to look, refuses to make the association, the final nail in the coffin. An eternity seems to pass as she simply bawls into her hands. Pennywise gives her the space she needs to process her thoughts, to speak in her own time as she gains the will and courage to do so, and then slowly but surely those sobs taper into silence. Hiding there, she finally whispers to him.

“Y-You… You killed them, Pennywise.”

He’s silent too, and then he speaks. He does not patronize her. He does not pretend not to know of what she talks about. He is simply honest.

“...Yes, I did.”

She sucks in a hitching breath and sniffles. She’s quiet again, letting him rub her back, succumbing to his gentle touch in such a desperate time of need. It comes into her head like a resonant gust of wind, overpowering all other intelligent inquiries in its fury.

“...Why?”

Such a simple question. It’s posed so brokenly, there’s mourning in her tone. He is not unsure of how to answer; he had been having this conversation in his head for centuries, after all. He observes the way her face is red, no longer from the thrill of their romantic rendezvous of before but rather from her own pitiful, disconsolate weeping, observes her posture, hunched over and shoulders slouched in her grieving. Her hands have sunk to her legs now but they’re clenched; she avoids eye contact with him and her stare is rooted to her feet. Her breathing is still choppy but she’s taking long, deep breaths now. They shudder up through her chest and make their way out through her trembling lips. He looks at her sadly and continues soothing strokes down the small of her back. His voice is gentle.

“...Because they hurt you, Angel.”

Her eyes would have widened at that if she’d had any of the energy, but all she can summon is another hiccuping sob. She’s plainly miserable at such an explanation, it does nothing but bring a torrent of guilt crashing down over her. It leaves her soaked to the bone, wretched and shivering, huddling inward for warmth that didn’t exist now. Because… Because they hurt her. How could she possibly contend with such culpability? So much pain, so much misery, so many people hurt, and all because they had made the fatal mistake of crossing her. That was the reality of it all, and she hated it. She wanted to hide away from it, from him, from the town, from all the pain and suffering but still she faces it, knowing that the time to run had long since passed.

“On Halloween.” She croaks, her voice small and fragile. “I...T-Took the kids out trick or treating. We got harassed by some boys, one of them beat me up and threw me off the Kissing Bridge. I… I heard something attack him, and the next day he was missing.” She sniffles again and pauses, almost as though she’s afraid to pose the question. “Was… Was that you?”

He stares at her, unblinking. “Yes. It was.”

She swallows and continues. “...On New Year's Day, I tried to buy a doll- that doll- from Secondhand Rose,” She says, gesturing weakly to Pepper on the shelf. “The owner got mad at me and threatened to call the cops. I was thrown out, and the next day he was missing too. Was that you?”

“Yes.”

“ Why? ” There’s a hint of anger in her voice. Anger and hurt.

His voice is stony and uncompromising, like a towering brick wall resistant to wind and sleet and rain. “Because he was no different, Angel. They all had one thing in common, my dear, and that was threatening you. I can’t abide that. I will not tolerate any threats to my mate.”

His… Mate. Had it been any other time, her stomach would have fluttered at the word, but now, despite it all, it only churns with disgust. He can see the way the emotions shift on her face, and his hand moves from her back to stroke the slope of her jaw.

“Angel-”

“Pennywise, no! ” She cries, jerking away from his touch. Tears are welling up in her eyes again. “I can’t… I can’t…! ”

His hand catches hers as she makes to get up off the bed. He stares up into her, his eyes a furious red-rimmed gold, but his tone is as even and soothing as ever.

“...You can, Angel. I know you can. Listen to me.” He pulls her back down, slowly, gently, and she obeys his direction, ever submissive, ever docile even in her exacerbated emotional state. He’s firm. “I didn’t want to have to take them, but they offered me no choice. They hurt you.”

She starts to sob again, but it's angry sobbing now, no longer sad or pitiful. “But did you have to kill them? God, Pennywise, I… I didn’t want this, I… I wanted your protection but I… D-Didn’t want them dead. ” She hides her face in her free hand and weeps. “That’s too far, this is too far. ”

“What would you rather I do? This is who I am, Angel. I need to eat just like anyone else, and they needed to be taken care of. This was the only way to solve both problems.”

This is necessary. This is the only way.

And just like that, she’s quiet. It starts to come up in her head like looming storm clouds with the promise of rain following shortly behind. It’s something she cannot ignore, cannot put off any longer. It’s been building up in her mind all year, ever since that fateful September day, every time the town grew quiet, every time another disappearance cropped up on the news or in the paper or by word of mouth or through those dreadful missing posters. All she had wanted was to know, all she wanted was to ask-

“W-Why? Why him?”

Pennywise is silent too. He favors her with a look of wistful remorse.

“I didn’t… Mean to take him, my love. He was… The first one I found, when I woke up.”

That much was true, Pennywise hadn’t meant to take him at all. Had he known, had he the slightest inkling of what that boy meant to Angel and those brat children, he would have taken someone else. He would have sated his hunger on the next unfortunate child to cross his path. But there was no going back on it now. It was the luck of the draw, he supposed. But it had the potential to be the greatest test of her loyalty, for after all, if she lacked the moral fortitude to hold him truly accountable for the death of Georgie, what was to stop Pennywise from getting away with greater misdeeds in the future? Nothing, that’s what.

“When you… W-Woke up…?” She asks, puzzled amid her heartbreak. He takes her other hand, and squeezes them both as he looks into her eyes.

“Yes, my dear...” He sighs. “I live in cycles.”

“L-Like… Like a cicada..?”

“Almost. I spend many years, dormant, in hibernation. I sleep, I think, I dream, and then I wake. I feed, I return from whence I came, and then the process starts all over again.”

“...Twenty-seven years.”

He pauses, and cocks his head. His perfectly coiffed hair bounces lightly about his face. “Yes. Sometimes twenty-seven, sometimes more.”

“I… Read about that. In that book I lost.” She says numbly. “I… I didn’t know it was… I didn’t know that you…” Tears streak down her face.

His grip on her hands is firm and comforting, and as she’s held captive by his stare, those eyes dissolve from red-rimmed gold into passionate blue.

“...Time has never meant much to a thing like me.” He admits, brushing a gloved thumb over hers. “I see more in one year than one of your kind sees in a lifetime, and it… Doesn’t strike me as all that remarkable. But…” He says, and he brushes a lock of hair behind her ear. He cups her cheek and smiles. “The second I knew you were coming, the moment I knew I wouldn’t have to be alone anymore, I felt… Different. Like everything I’d ever known was put in a whole new light. Have you ever felt like that, Angel?”

She doesn’t answer him, but she doesn’t take her eyes off him either. She doesn’t avoid his stare, she doesn’t recoil from his touch, she doesn’t lose her temper. She just listens.

“...I spent so much time sleeping and feeding, my love. I spent so much time doing the only thing I was ever good at, and sometimes it grew tiring, but no matter how sick of it I got, I kept going, because I knew that you were coming, that one day you��d be by my side. I waited so long for you, darling. You were the thing that kept me going...”

There it was, the butterflies again. It starts small, like flickering embers from a long-dead fire, but it’s enough to ignite sparks of a new flame, and she feels that wonderful warmth starting to course through her veins again. But no. No. He’s… He’s a monster. He’s… The thing haunting Derry. He’s the reason for all the misery and despair in the town, he’s the scourge, the pestilence on the land. He’s… He’s the reason all the innocent children... He’s the reason that Georgie…

“...You were meant for me, Angel. Don’t you understand? The stars have aligned just for our union. Your soul was brought into existence just so we could be together. I love and embrace you just as you are... Can you do the same for me? Can you accept me for who I am?”

That wasn’t fair, it wasn’t even remotely the same thing. Angel hadn’t done anything wrong, she was simply the victim of rumors and vitriol from her peers for reasons she had no control over. But Pennywise... Pennywise eats people.

....But Pennywise needs to eat too.

Stop it. Stop it. It’s not an excuse. He could eat animals, or vegetables, or anything other than people. It’s not an excuse.

But what makes people any different? What makes them special?

What makes you special?

Fresh tears well in her eyes. She’s so conflicted she has no idea what to think. She loves him, she’s loved him practically since the moment she laid eyes on him. And he loves her. She’s spent the better part of a year utterly consumed in him, she had so badly wanted to feel his touch for so long, so long that it was painful. The gifts had meant so much to her, his presence had meant so much to her, his protection had meant so much to her. Knowing that she wasn’t alone in such a place, when she had nothing in the world to keep her company other than a cat and a handful of kids, it had made her feel safe. It made her feel safe to know that she was somehow impervious to whatever was threatening everyone, when she herself had grown up feeling threatened her entire life. It was a feeling unlike anything she had ever felt before, it... Made her feel special. But now, all she feels is cheated. What of her fairytale, what of her perfect happy ending? Whatever happened to that, her dashing prince to whisk her off her feet? Did that dashing prince even exist anymore? He was right there in front of her, favoring her with a dreamy blue gaze, the same blue gaze she had fallen in love with, but all she can think about is the way those same eyes had looked at her down in the archives when she had found him, the way his horrific mouth closed ever so slightly to reveal them, hidden within unsightly wrinkles on his face. And what of the fate he so often spoke of? Was she simply damned to spend the rest of her life with a monster? Is that truly the best she could do? Was she so utterly repugnant that nothing else would settle for her?

“No.” He says darkly, and she startles herself out of thought. When she comes out of that haze she notices his eyes are amber again, and they glint in the darkness of the room. Almost dangerously, but... No. Never around her. That wasn’t the right word. Fierce? Protective? Defensive?

“Don’t you ever think you’re anything less than perfection.” He says, and he squeezes her hands again. “You are radiant, Angel. You are the sunspot in my world, and a truly beautiful compliment to everything that I am. You were meant, made to be my counterpart, the light to my dark, the yin to my yang, and I will not have you disparage yourself in such a way when you were made so flawlessly just for me.”

Her mouth is almost agape as he speaks, all she can think about in that moment is how she can see the passion in his eyes, the flavor of the words he speaks, something fiery and bold. All she can think about is the way it makes her feel despite all the horror and revulsion. Warm and secure and... Happy. It’s all there in her mind, the picture-perfect aspects of their relationship; the first gift he had ever given her, the second, the third, all the times he’d been there to comfort her in her grief and every single compliment, every much-needed boost to her self esteem that came straight from his lips. The nights he spent holding her and consoling her, making her feel desirable, making her feel wanted when nothing else ever had. The love and affection he had given her when she felt so low, reciprocating such passionate feelings so as to nurture and grow their flourishing bond. The vow of protection he had given her from that very first offering, how he had given his word to keep her safe, keep her and the...

“W-What about... Your promise...?” She asks weakly. For all she knew he might have forgotten about it completely, or had chosen to disregard it. She didn’t know what to think or believe anymore.

He scoots in closer to her on the bed and cups her cheek again. Their legs are touching and he’s so warm. The look in his eyes is real and genuine, it touches her very soul.

“...I promised. You are safe. Pennywise swears it.”

But… What about...

She tries to blink back the tears but they fall down her face anyway, the sight of him fading to little more than blurred lines in her misty eyes. She can still see the sadness in his face, his brows are furrowed ever so slightly as he looks into her, and she almost wants to look away but she can’t. She can’t. All she can do is hold his stare, exist with him in this timeless moment. How conflicted she is, but as time goes on she’s seeing less and less of the bad until all that’s there is the love, the devotion, the urge to be with him overpowering everything else. Angel knew she wasn’t hypnotized anymore; that had long since worn off, but in its place had come a slight shift in judgment, a desire to rationalize. The will to understand. It was all so horrifying to her, what he’d done, and he’d even lied to her in a fashion, but some reprehensible part of her didn’t care. That part of her wanted so badly for things to go back to normal, for her to be able to keep what she had, to ignore this, all of this. And as time went on, that part of her was starting to slowly monopolize her consciousness, make it the only thing that mattered. How selfish, how utterly repugnant of her, to not only condone the actions of a monster, but actively want to stay with him despite those actions. What kind of person did that make her? She didn’t even want to know at this point. But despite the dissent in her mind that train of thought is starting to take precedence; the longer she sits there looking into his eyes, the longer she reflects on his words and his promise, the more at ease she feels at the thought of keeping his company. It ignites some kind of passion, a fire within her, a desperate, helpless desire and without another thought in her head she moves toward him.

She lands on his lips again as she burrows her body into his chest, taking immediate comfort and security in the way he embraces her without hesitation. He’s kissing back, he’s chasing her every breath and she loses herself to it, loses herself in his scent and the sound of him, the rolling growls that shudder through her like an earthquake. Her lips tremble as she clings to him, her eyes are squeezed shut as she follows through on this earnest and spontaneous display of passion. Pennywise is all too eager to reciprocate, deepening it as he takes her head in his hands and pulls them back onto the bed again. Every kiss is met by another in quick succession and they keep feeding into one another until the world around them is dizzy and delirious. It almost seems as though she is helpless, cornered prey being swallowed whole by a vicious predator but there is an equal give-and-take between them, minutes ticking by quickly as they offer themselves up to the capricious pursuit of absolute pleasure. She’s pushing it all away, she’s choosing not to think about any of it as she flees toward the protection of her guardian angel, toward the sublime sensation of warm, wet lips against hers and the promise of more delights to come. For better or for worse, she’s trying to create her own bubble now, a replacement for what had been so tragically lost, convinced in her own frantic mind that the only possible way to cope with what had been done is to simply pretend that it wasn’t there. Disregard it, brush it aside, ignore it. Ignore it just like everything else. She is merely a passenger on a raging river of denial, letting the current of the rapids carry her safely over jagged truth and reality. She coasts along smoothly, opening her eyes to a lush blue sky and feeling the wind flit through her outstretched fingers, but then her raft hits a snag. It jarrs her, throws her off course, and the momentum almost tosses her mercilessly to the crags but she clings to the security of what’s familiar, the security of what’s comfortable and reassuring. She almost thinks she’s in the clear until that massive realization capsizes her again, and she comes up from the water sobbing, choking and coughing as she shivers on the beached remains of her shelter. And there is the sun, bright and inviting as always, to offer her warmth in her most desperate time of need. Pennywise does not attempt to try and preserve the moment. He does not try to talk her out of her own emotions. He just takes her into the breadth of his arms, simply shushes her gently.

“...I juh-just w-want.. All this, to g-go away...” She weeps quietly into the silk. “I just... I juh-just want...”

“Shhhhhh.... Shhhh, my poor, sweet girl... It will all be okay...”

There in his arms she falls asleep, feverish sobs ebbing away into sniffling silence with time as he croons her softly to sleep. She tries to believe him. She tries so hard to believe him.

~~~~

The first thing she realizes when she wakes up that next morning is that her head hurts. The second her eyes flutter open and she’s brought back into the waking world, it's the throbbing, dull ache in her temples, that ever-present pain that’s not enough to be excruciating but just enough to be a constant nuisance. She’s not perplexed as to the onset of this pain; she remembers last night. She remembers how she felt, how she spent the better part of an hour crying herself to sleep in his arms in the hopes that if she tired herself out she might feel better about it in the morning, might be able to deal with the horrible news and just move on from it. No such luck so far. She nuzzles into the plush softness of her bed with a groan. Pennywise is gone as always, but he’s left Pepper and a mound of pillows in his place, and as she looks down at the doll’s vacant, felt-detailed expression she can almost feel him looking back into her. Studying, calculating, examining her tear-stained face and blood-shot eyes. She doesn’t know how she feels about it, so she places the doll back on her shelf, pops a couple ibuprofen, and tries to forget about it.

Sunday was a day Angel spent trying to forget across the board. It was all there now, out in the open, and she couldn’t ignore it any longer. Pennywise... Pennywise eats people. He’s the one responsible for all the missing children. He’s responsible for Patrick, he’s responsible for Georgie. And... He’s also the thing Angel has spent the better part of a year loving and idolizing. Her protector, her guardian, her almost sole source of happiness. The thing that brought her out of one of her worst depression funks by far. He’s spent so much time showering her in affection and gifts, building her up, enriching her life. He’s given her reason to hold her head up higher everyday instead of cowering in the safety of the shadows. He’s given her fulfillment in an area she’s felt painfully inadequate in her entire life, nursed wounds that she thought terminally untreatable. And he seemed to do all of this out of nothing more than love and passion for... For his mate.

I will not tolerate any threats to my mate.

As she thinks about it, a low, churning nausea settles in over her stomach to compliment her headache. Pennywise had... Pennywise had killed for her. She... She was the reason behind a handful of the disappearances. The thought made her positively sick. She hadn’t asked him to, it hadn’t even occurred to her that... That he... She’s shaking like a leaf as she watches TV, trying so desperately to put it out of her mind that she’ll settle for anything. The channels offer her no solace, it’s simply news and static. She doesn’t even touch Channel 27, knowing that she simply couldn’t bear to see his face, not right now. She didn’t want to see him, she didn’t want to feel him, she didn’t want to hear his voice. She knew if she did all her thoughts would suddenly become real again, and she couldn’t cope with that. Not right now.

She tried to pass the time in other ways but found that everything she tried, she was reminded of him. She’d sat down at the dining room table to draw with her favorite Edward Gorey book (Amphigorey Too), but found that the illustrations contained within struck up too much of a resemblance to Pennywise’s shapeshifted forms in her mind. So, finding her appetite for art soured, she turned to cooking next to sate another, but realized far too late that, in her absentminded haze, she’d started making shortbread, the very first thing she’d ever given to him to sample. She then abandoned the dough to the fridge for the time being, and took up a pencil with an old legal pad to do some writing, but all the words that would come to mind conjured images of him, images of his tall, imposing stature, images of his fiery red hair and remarkably striking golden eyes,

(images of razor-sharp teeth and a long, gapingly huge maw snapping up the lifeless carcass of an innocent boy)

She’d shaken her head, shuddered, and simply put the pad away. She couldn’t even, for the life of her, take her trumpet out, because it had been him that inspired her to take up playing again after so much time in the first place. He was the reason she had the confidence to finally improvise again after letting the sword rust for so long in its scabbard, he was all the encouragement and the only audience she needed to come back out from hiding. But not now. Now he was a deterrent to all these things. Now, against all odds, he was the antithesis of all that had coaxed her out of her shell. This revelation made her want to hide again, and this could not bring her greater displeasure.

She had eventually given up on all creative endeavors for the day, choosing instead to take to the grocery for some shopping in an effort to take her mind off of things. When she’d gotten dressed, she avoided anything that reminded her of him, wouldn’t even look at the chocolate box that housed all his dozens of offerings, would instead keep her eyes mostly rooted to the floor while she was getting ready. She’d left behind her pearl heart and black silk sweater, even her bell necklace and had closed her closet door so as to avoid the judgment of all the clowns on her shelf, staring at her with eyes much more critical in her mind than ever before. In the past she’d liked to pretend that Pennywise could see her through the eyes of those figurines, keeping a protective watch over her from far away, but now the thought simply made her queasy. She doesn’t look at herself in the mirror before she leaves; she couldn’t afford the inevitable self hatred that would come at even the sight of her own face now. She simply moves on, shutting her bedroom door behind her. Mayor Jello meows at her melodramatically when she strides into the living room but she doesn’t pay him much mind. He could be rather attention-seeking sometimes, and right now she didn’t have any attention to spare.

The grocery turned out to be no more comforting than the walls of her house, as it would seem no mere change in scenery could assuage the racing thoughts in her head. Angel perused the shelves in a way that could only be described as tense and strained, half-expecting his voice to invade her head, an arm to pop out from behind a shelf to wave at her, phantom hands stroking down the curves of her body as they had so often done before. But no such occurrences. It was actually rather quiet and undisturbed at the store today; usually there was a crying child or a stingy customer making a scene at the registers, but by all accounts it was actually rather tranquil and still. This turned out to be a curse rather than a blessing for her, as with all the lack of noise, Angel was rather confined to the disquiet inside her head, no immediate distractions to demand her focus and take her away from the pressing moral dilemmas plaguing her consciousness. She tried so earnestly to forget it, counting the tiles on the floor in front of her, humming along to a tune of her own imagining so as to occupy her mind with something else. It actually seemed to be working so far; she felt it all melt away from her thoughts for the time being, and she had kept it up even as the people around her scrutinized her with muted disdain. One thing could definitely be said for all of Pennywise’s encouragement and praise, and that was that, slowly but surely, Angel had moderately regained her ability to shrug off the condescension of those around her. So she kept her head up, humming still along the way, but her humming tapered into self-conscious silence when she realized what her melody had transitioned into without her notice.

Oranges and lemons

Say the bells of St. Clements...

She clears her throat and falls into the unsettled quiet once more, reaching for a bag of chips off a shelf. When she places them into her cart the plastic crinkles against the metal lattice, but in her mind she almost thinks she hears those familiar bells jingle along with it. She looks around, almost paranoid, but there’s nothing. No one. As she finishes packing her groceries into her backpack, she totes the cargo home, trying to use the fresh air to her advantage in yet another ill-fated effort to relax. She’s still conflicted, torn to the bone, as even with all her efforts to banish him from her conscience a part of her is still pining for him. She wants his lilting, lullaby voice, his gentle, soothing touch, she wants him to come back to her. As much as her rational mind was glad for the absence, there was that pesky, emotional side of her mind that wanted more than anything for him to return and bring with him that warmth, that comfort that had brought her back from utter despair and misery. She tries so hard to quell it, push it down, knowing that now wasn’t the time to be emotional. Now wasn’t the time to be rash or illogical, she needed to think about this, all of this, carefully. It hadn’t even been a day, for Christ’s sake.

But she couldn’t deny the oddity of his lack of presence, couldn’t deny that it certainly was strange of him to be so quiet. He’d gone positively radio silent on her. For the better part of half a year, he hadn’t let her know a moment’s peace in such delightful ways. He had been lavishing her in love and attention ever since that epochal Valentine’s Day eve, had progressively increased his presence in her life until he was with her everyday practically from start to finish. He had almost insisted on it, even as Angel would bashfully ask if she was getting in the way of anything else he had to do. He had always insisted. Why then, was he so worryingly nonexistent now, even as one day turned into another, and another after that? He hadn’t come back the following Monday, or the Tuesday after that. He hadn’t been holding her hand on the way to work or whispering to her whimsically through her shifts, hadn't been visiting her in the evenings or singing her to sleep in his arms. She tried to tell herself that she didn’t want him to come see her, she didn’t want him to show his face after what he had done, but there was that frustrating little part of her again, crying out for the comfort of his embrace. As she lay in bed at night she would try so hard to cozy up to her pillows and forget it all, but she’d wind up tossing and turning all night long. And all the while she would be waiting for that moment to strike, when he would come back to her and she’d be faced with that moral dilemma once more, the one she’d so cravenly chosen to shirk that Saturday night in his arms. She truly didn’t know whether or not she would run to him if she did see him; she didn’t know how she felt, even after it had been all she’d been thinking about for days on end.

She knew how she wanted to feel. She wanted so badly to feel the anger, the righteous fury at having been lied to. She wanted to let it well within her and bubble over the surface; she wanted to explode. He had courted her for so long, garnered so much of her trust and dependence, and he had left out the one crucial little detail that might give her pause. As far as she was concerned, she was well within her rights to be angry. But she couldn’t be. Despite this, despite all of this, Angel wasn’t that kind of person. It didn’t make her any better or any worse than anyone else, but it definitely wasn’t an advantage either. Angel rather hated herself for this quality, for… Not being able to stand up for herself and her feelings. It made her feel spineless, it made her feel weak. But at the end of it all, it was something she couldn’t help any more than she could help herself breathing. She had been hurt, and she wanted to return that hurt, but she couldn’t. No… Pennywise had hurt her, and he had hurt so many others, but she couldn’t bring herself to hurt him. It was something ingrained that she couldn’t rightly explain.

She kept telling herself she needed to get a grip, that she needed to move on from him. As the days progressed and his absence persisted, she would tell herself this with increasing desperation, that she was better off without him and that she didn’t need him to live a fulfilling life. She had wanted it all to go away, hadn’t she? Maybe he’d listened to her, maybe he’d given her what she asked for. He had helped get her back up on her feet, and she had enjoyed the brief time they’d spent together, but now the time had come for her to find something else to help ease the pain of living. It was an agonizing thought, sure, but perhaps it was the stark reality of the situation. It had been all she could think about for days as she continued her routine; as she ate, slept, and went to work it was the only thing on her mind. While at first she had started out paranoid of finding him following that… Unfortunate revelation, she was growing increasingly unnerved by his disappearance, and now more than ever that emotional part of her was starting to weigh heavily on her conscience. She… She wanted to see him.

As time went on, something else curious had made itself apparent. The disappearances had stopped. Angel had been wary at first; the first week of his absence she had chalked up the downward trend to timing, knowing full-well that occurrences in the past seemed to crop up anywhere from within a few days of each other to more than a week at times. The longest gap amounted to a little less than a month with no missing children to speak of. There was no conceivable pattern to it, it almost seemed erratic at times. Angel hadn’t known what to make of it back when she didn’t know the truth of the situation, and now she could only surmise that Pennywise’s hunger must fluctuate depending on his mood. Come to think of it, there seemed to have been far less disappearances when Angel was in an especially bad way. Things seemed to stagnate during those weeks, and would almost appear to tick back up again once she found herself in better spirits. What made things different now, however, was the feeling of it all. It was something in her gut insisting to her that none of it was the same as before, that something had changed. She could only liken it to those weeks leading up to Valentine’s Day, when she’d been so utterly scared and isolated and cold that she had cried for him. This was like that, but the absence of warmth was getting to be that much more soul-crushing. The lack of disappearances seemed to communicate to Angel one thing, and that was that Pennywise wasn’t here. Pennywise was gone.

Maybe he was dead.

No, she can’t even let herself think that. Despite it all, despite what he’s done and what it’s done to her, she still can’t wish such a thing on him. It’s so frustrating that she wants to scream. Reasonably, Pennywise is a thing that deserves to die. He causes death and pain and suffering; he’s a blight, a plague to Derry. He lied to her through omission about who he was, so he must surely know that his actions are despicable, right?

...Well, no.

Despite her own mental resistance she starts to entertain a different train of thought. Pennywise has lived for an amount of time she can’t rightly account for, he’s seen an incalculable number of lifetimes and experienced more than she could ever possibly comprehend. He has… The properties of something otherworldly, something… Possibly alien. He’s… Not even close to human. Why then, is she trying to hold him accountable to human standards, human behavior? What gives her any sort of right? Pennywise is... Something different. He’s clearly some kind of apex predator, something higher on the food chain. She wouldn’t disparage a tiger for eating a rabbit so, in the same vein, how could she disparage him for feeding in his own way? Maybe he didn’t tell her who he was out of fear, fear that she wouldn’t understand. Maybe his intentions really were good.

No. No. He eats people. He’s a monster.

But he needs to eat too. That’s all she keeps telling herself. This is necessary. This is the only way. Humans are no more special than any other animal on the food chain, and this is what he eats to survive. She needed to make peace with that or it would drive her insane. So what if a few children, a couple adults here and there went missing? It’s not as though he’s picking off the entire population. Most of the kids in Derry were little shits anyway.

But do they really deserve to die for that? Did those kids in the library deserve to die for what they did?

She didn’t know, she didn’t know the answer. She didn’t know as she continued her shifts everyday, didn’t know as she did prep work in the kitchen alone or watched TV or as she laid in bed contemplating all the various angles of her situation. She couldn’t stop thinking about it, couldn’t stop thinking about him. What he’d done, what it had meant, if he would come back. She didn’t know. And it was starting to hurt her. She’d shrugged it off before, or tried to. When Pennywise had gone silent, she’d first interpreted it as him giving her space, breathing room to process what she had discovered. She’d thought he was giving her a break from it all, but as each day passed and his absence became more prominent she started to fear that may not be the case. She feared that her reaction might have put him off, that it made him want to leave. That, in a sick, twisted way, he was giving her what she had asked for. She would try so hard not to cry when she thought about it. What if she had scared him off? What if she was too hysterical to deal with and he’d simply gotten sick of her? It sure as hell wouldn’t be the first time she’d been abandoned over such things. What if he really didn’t love her? What if he never had?

It was sick and wrong, but as days turned into weeks the atrocity she bore witness to was slowly de-escalating itself in her mind. It was as though the seriousness of the situation grew more and more dull the further away it got from her mind’s eye, and now all that was left were the bits and pieces she could vividly remember. She remembers it, the creaking in the steps as she walked down to the archives, the old, dusty smell of the room pervading her senses, the way she had froze in place when she laid eyes on it for the first time. But she also remembers the sweet words, the gentle, soothing touches, and his eyes. The way he’d looked down at her and how she felt so warm, the way she couldn’t breathe when he’d said those three perfect words to her for the first time. Now more than ever she could remember those things, comfortable memories in such a desperate time of need that soothe her in her unbearable loneliness. Memories of what they had been together ever since that first bouquet of sunflowers, ever since she had first laid eyes on him on that silly little television show and fallen in love with him. She clung to it all and let the rest fade away.

As the month of June progressed, Angel had abandoned any notion of trying to ignore his gifts and inversely began to hold on to them with increasing desperation. She thought of them as her last lingering connection to him, and out of desolation insisted on keeping at least one of them on her person at all times. Again had come the aura of unease, the feeling of some kind of vague and imminent danger, and she needed the illusion of safety to keep her from insanity. So she’d brandished her belief in these so-called good luck charms, the good fortune imbued in all these little offerings, and used them to make herself feel secure. Without the explicit protection of Pennywise to keep her out of harm’s way, she had to be her own guardian angel now, and that meant holding herself up straight regardless of everything that might try to beat her into the ground. She held on to her bell necklace in a vice grip and wore it just about everyday at this point, starting to hope that Pennywise’s intentions in this gift might hold true, that he was there with her regardless of her absence simply because she wore it, that she thought of him as she did and kept him in her heart. She wore her silk sweater every evening when she came home from work, would imagine his hands trailing over her form as the cool fabric clung to her curves.

She took Pepper with her everywhere she went. The doll had admittedly become something of a comfort object for her in the same vein as Pennywise, who had been a comfort character for her in the throes of a deep depression in the past, back when his only concrete existence was through the syndication of the Derry Children’s Hour. The doll brought her a sense of tranquil ease. Every time she looked into its whimsical googly eyes she would feel warm inside; it wasn’t the same warmth as what she would feel with the otherworldly presence of Pennywise, but it was an acceptable substitute for the time being. It certainly helped her to feel more at home in some uncertain and unfamiliar terrain, and even instilled in her something of a strange maternal feeling, an instinct she couldn’t put words to. She wanted to look out for the doll and make sure nothing happened to it; it had, after all, been a dear gift from Pennywise, it could even be argued that it was something of a surrogate child of some kind, something he had given to her to better emphasize her role as a possible... Mother to his children. Despite the hopelessness of the current situation she allows herself some small amount of contentment at the prospect, finding that she rather liked the idea of possibly starting a family with him. It was a happy thought that kept her dread at bay, kept the residual thoughts of the revelation of his true identity in the back of her mind where it belonged. But it was not without its own share of melancholy, as it only seemed to accentuate his current absence and make her further in tune to her own feelings on the matter.

As the days wore on she was progressively starting to become consumed with thoughts of him at every waking moment of the day. It was starting to get to her, truth be told. She was far past the horror of finding out who he really was, had even started to let go of the anger she wished she could feel and the betrayal of having been lied to. It had all been replaced with worry, with concern for his absence, with longing for what had been lost in the process. She wanted to feel his touch once more, wanted to find him waiting for her when she walked in the front door after a long day at work. She wanted to hear his voice and sway with him in his arms, talk with him, laugh with him. She wanted the old days back of laying with him in bed, cuddling until the exhaustion of the long hours finally overtook her and she fell asleep in his hold. She wanted to kiss him and feel his lips against hers, wanted to drink in the sublime sensation as she demonstrated her purest love and devotion to him. The nostalgia alone was enough to erase all the negativity from her mind and brainwash her all over again, except this time it was all of her own doing rather than the pull of his cosmic influence. As awful and wrong as it was, she wanted him back. She sometimes ruminated on the state of her own personal morality for such desire, knowing who he was and what he had done, but in her loneliness she didn’t care anymore. It made her irrational. It made her blind to everything else. She even thought it romantic now, the prospect that Pennywise had protected her from those boys, from Patrick and the shopkeeper, and found that she rather liked the idea of being impervious from the danger of all that would threaten Derry. It only made her yearn for his presence even more.

It was getting bad now. She worried for him, she feared for him. Where had he gone? Where had he gone? There was nothing but silence in Derry now, the disappearances had stopped, she heard nothing from the Losers, she was all on her own. Though the peril of the beast had become nonexistent, she felt ill at ease nonetheless as she carried out her business from day to day. While she was concerned for Pennywise she was just as concerned for her own wellbeing, knowing that if anything happened to her now she would likely be helpless to stop it, would be left at the mercy of anything that wished to attack her, another Patrick or more of the same ilk as those nasty boys. She missed him terribly, so terribly in fact that she was beginning to talk to him now, often out loud or in her mind as she carried out her tasks or as she watched TV at home. She would ask him where he was, how he was doing, if he was safe. It was a compulsion she couldn’t rightly control, it was an impulse, an instinct. She knows she has no reason to worry for him; Pennywise seemed to be a relatively powerful creature, so some part of her doubted that he was dead, but she mourned his absence all the same, sick with distress at the thought that he could be hurt. She wanted to be with him, she wanted to look after him, she wanted to keep him safe. It’s been weeks, June is winding to a close, and she could not feel more isolated, more powerless. It’s starting to wear on her mental health and she’s getting worse again. She kept talking to herself, kept neglecting her health. She was begging him to come back to her, but still she hears nothing. It seems as though he might have abandoned her completely.

It’s on the precipice of July now, and Angel could not be more miserable. It’s worse than it was just before Valentine’s Day, exponentially worse. She’s feeling abandoned, she’s feeling lost and worried sick. She can’t bear to reach out to the Losers, she doesn’t want to bother them. Besides, what could she honestly say? How would she even begin to explain herself and her situation? She was all alone in this, she knew that. All she could do was try to cope, but that was getting harder by the day. Work was grueling, being at home was even worse, as she had very little to do that didn’t remind her of him. When she wasn’t talking out loud to him, beseeching him to come back, deluding herself that he was somehow listening she spent her time sleeping, trying to waste away the hours in an attempt to pass the time painlessly. But it was getting bad, oh yes it was. She was so plainly wretched now, so battered and beaten by his disappearance that she could do little else but pine for him. She cried for him every night now, as she laid in bed she would start to sob into her pillows, hug them tight to her chest and heave shuddering little whimpers in through her nose and out through her mouth. She was starting to get an urge again, a nasty one, a terrible, dreadful, awful one, one she hadn’t had in ages, and it was taking everything she had not to succumb to it. But the days grew harder and harder still, and on the 2nd of July, a Sunday, she truly couldn’t take it any longer.

She’d come home from errands that day positively exhausted from having put on a face during the duration of the outing; she lets the facade collapse and mutters brokenly to herself as she walks dejectedly through the front door once more. She kicks off her Doc Martens and sets down her bag, and just like that the tears well in her eyes again. It seemed like all she was doing was crying lately, and she felt weak for it but she couldn’t stop nonetheless. She berates herself for it, she hates herself for it, she wants to do something nasty and abominable to herself for being so weak and spineless. No, she wouldn’t kill herself. She was much too cowardly for such a thing. It was much too permanent an action, and Angel feared the permanent. So she reaches for something else, something in the form of a sharp little cutting tool stashed away in the depths of her bedside table drawer, something she often used for making patches, but something she used more often still for a deed she never spoke of aloud. Something horrid and appalling, something disgusting and vile that was best kept hidden. She felt she deserved it, felt she deserved the pain and the shame. She wanted to feel the catharsis of it, wanted to feel the stinging of it, an action so disgraceful that she would drown in the self-hatred. As she sits in the living room, trembling and anticipating the feeling of what’s to come, she lets the silence of the room turn to static in her ears as she hikes up the front of her shirt and brandishes the instrument close and with intent against her stomach. A single tear drops from her face onto her thigh and she’s about to make the first cut, but then there’s a knock on her front door. She stops, puzzled. Who could that possibly be? Numb, she stashes the tool underneath one of the cushions on her couch and pauses at the door, then takes a deep breath and opens it. The Losers are there, all six of them, and they look serious and grim on her front stoop.

“C-can we come in?”

She doesn’t know what to say.

#pennywise #daddywise #chapter eighteen #face it #it 2017 #it chapter one #pennywise x oc #pennywise x angel #good fortune #tw sh

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