Who I Need to Be

Derry, Maine – February 19, 1985 – 9:58 p.m.

Pennywise smiled.
The painted crimson arc stretched wider—slow, deliberate—until small wet splits opened at the corners and black ichor glistened in the cracks. Both deadlights burned low and steady, twin orange furnaces drinking the faint glow of the chamber rather than giving any back. He floated motionless above the black pool, boots never quite touching the spiraling water, conical hat tilted at its familiar rakish angle.

Bill Denbrough stepped forward.
No hesitation. No glance back. He walked to the edge of the pool—boots grinding loose gravel—and stopped ten feet from the clown.

His voice came out clear. No stutter.
“Pennywise.”

The clown tilted his head—slow, liquid, amused.
“Oh Billy-boy,” he purred, voice sliding under skin like syrup over broken glass. “Still playing the brave little leader? Still thinking childhood oaths and angry words can send me away?”

He drifted closer—boots never touching water—until he hovered just above the pool’s edge, close enough that Bill could smell old popcorn, rust, and something sweeter underneath.

Pennywise threw his arms wide, head thrown back in mock operatic despair.
“Ohhhh listen to him! Listen to brave Sir William, returned from the land of grown-ups and tax returns and sensible haircuts! Come to slay the monster once more with the magic sword of… friendship?”

He clutched imaginary pearls, eyes rolling back in theatrical ecstasy.
“And look! He brought the whole reunion tour! The asthmatic hypochondriac, the sad fat architect, the trash-mouth comic I’ll eat mid-sentence—magnificent! Shall we sell tickets? Do another performance on the surface? ‘The Losers’ Club: Final Tour – One Night Only – Featuring the Stuttering Hero Who Abandoned His Own Brother!’”

“And for our encore… the world’s saddest sideshow attraction! Give it up for Little Miss Scraps! The patchwork princess made of everybody I didn’t finish chewing! Look at her—still wearing the hand-me-down courage, still pretending she’s one of you… while she can.”

“Go on, darling. Give the people what they paid for. Show them the monster under the little-girl dress again… show Daddy what a good girl you can be.”

Bill stepped forward until their faces were almost touching.
“Curtain’s up, asshole. Your spotlight’s about to go dark.”

Pennywise laughed—low, wet, delighted.

Then he lunged.

Not at Bill.

At Bev.

One long, multi-jointed arm snapped forward—claws extended—aimed straight for her chest.

Bev had no time to react.

Stella did.

She moved—fast, minimal, no wasted motion—and stepped directly into the path.

The claw punched through her left shoulder—clean through fabric and flesh—exiting out the back in a spray of cyan-tinged light. The force lifted her small body off the ground and ragdolled her sideways. She hit the stone wall hard—the crack of bone audible over the drip-drip-drip—then slid down, leaving a glowing smear.

Bev screamed—raw, animal.

Stella pushed herself up immediately.

No cry. No gasp. No flinch.

She reached across with her right hand, fingers wrapping around the ruined shoulder. There was a wet, grinding sound—like Lego pieces being forced back into alignment. She pushed. Bone grated. Flesh knit with faint cyan threads. The arm straightened—jerkily at first, then smoothly. The wound sealed in seconds, leaving only a thin, glowing seam that faded to ordinary pale skin.

Her face remained blank. Machine-like. No pain response. Just quiet, mechanical efficiency.

She stepped forward again.

Pennywise withdrew the claw—slow, savoring—black ichor dripping from the tips.
“Trying to keep me from snatching meat from your plate,” he murmured.

He lunged again—this time at Ben.

Ben raised both arms instinctively—useless defense.

The claw would have ended him in one clean stroke—ripping through windpipe and artery, dropping him before he could even gasp.

But Stella got there first.

She threw herself sideways—small body slamming into Ben’s side like a linebacker half his size. The impact spun Ben out of the line of attack; he stumbled, caught himself against the tunnel wall, eyes wide with shock.

The claw caught Stella instead—high across the chest this time, raking from collarbone to ribs in a deep, diagonal gash. Fabric and flesh parted. Cyan light sprayed outward in bright, arterial arcs. The force hurled her backward again—ragdolling her across the stone ledge like a discarded doll. She hit hard—back-first—skidding several feet before rolling to a stop near the pool’s edge. Black ichor mixed with cyan sparks leaked from the wound in thick pulses.

Bev screamed again—wordless, raw.

Stella pushed up.

No cry. No grimace. Just mechanical motion: one arm braced, knees under her, standing again. The gash was already knitting—cyan threads weaving flesh back together—but slower this time, the glow dimmer, stuttering like a dying bulb. Her left arm hung limp at the side, shoulder still misaligned from the first hit despite the earlier repair. She swayed once—only once—then steadied.

Pennywise laughed—low, bubbling, ecstatic.

The Losers were already moving.

Richie charged from the left—rebar still in hand, swinging it like a baseball bat aimed at the clown’s skull.

Eddie came low from the right—shoulder-first, trying to tackle Pennywise’s midsection.

Ben recovered fast—lunging forward with both hands outstretched, grabbing for the clown’s remaining arm.

Bill and Stan flanked from behind—Bill going high with a wild haymaker, Stan low and precise, aiming a hard kick at the back of Pennywise’s knee.

Mike stayed a half-step back—watching angles, ready to plug any gap.

Pennywise moved like liquid nightmare.

He twisted—impossibly fast—dodging Richie’s rebar swing by inches. The metal whistled past his ear; he laughed again, delighted.

Eddie’s tackle met empty air—the clown simply wasn’t there anymore. Eddie stumbled, caught himself on one knee.

Ben’s grab closed on nothing; Pennywise’s arm slipped through his fingers like smoke.

Bill’s punch grazed the conical hat—knocking it askew—but Pennywise was already pivoting, long leg snapping out in a vicious kick that caught Bill square in the chest. Bill flew backward—air punched out of him—crashing into the tunnel wall with a grunt.

Stan’s kick connected—solid, bone-jarring—but Pennywise absorbed it without flinching. He spun, backhanding Stan across the face; Stan staggered, blood blooming instantly from a split lip.

The clown was playing now—dodging, weaving, letting them land glancing blows while he countered just hard enough to hurt, never quite enough to kill.

Not yet.

Every time a strike came too close—every time claws or teeth or sheer momentum threatened to connect fatally—Stella was there.

She moved—barely—minimal, desperate, always one heartbeat too late to stop the pain but just in time to take it instead.

When Richie overcommitted on a wild swing and left his ribs open—Stella shoved him aside. The claw meant for Richie’s side raked across her back instead—four long gashes from shoulder blade to hip. Cyan light flared; she staggered but didn’t fall.

When Eddie tried to rise and Pennywise’s boot came down toward his head—Stella lunged, catching the descending heel on her forearm. Bone snapped—loud, wet. She didn’t cry out. Just pushed Eddie clear.

When Ben charged again—reckless, furious—and Pennywise’s remaining hand closed around his throat—Stella drove her small body between them. The chokehold transferred to her neck instead. She dangled for a heartbeat—feet kicking air—cyan light leaking from her mouth and nose—before Pennywise flung her away like trash. She hit the ground rolling, coughing black ichor.

Each time she got up. Somehow clicked back together, just enough to keep going, but leaving black scars on her skin.

Then she saw the opening.

As Beverly landed a solid strike across the clown’s painted face, Pennywise’s focus blurred for a split second.

Stella was already moving—fast, around his side. Her small, visibly damaged hands—trembling with cyan flickers—clamped around the ruffled collar like a child refusing to let go of a nightmare balloon. She didn’t pull. She didn’t strike. She simply held.

The clown’s laughter choked off mid-bubble. His deadlights flared—orange furnaces strobing brighter—as if something unexpected had just crawled inside the wiring of his grin.

The Losers froze in their ragged half-circle. Blood on Stan’s lip. Richie’s rebar still raised. Bev’s hands clenched white-knuckled around nothing.

They saw it happen: the clown’s long body went rigid, not from pain, but from the sudden, impossible drag of something heavier than flesh.

Stella’s eyes rolled up white, then flooded cyan. Her mouth opened—not in a scream, but in a soft, layered exhale that carried every voice she’d ever borrowed.

“Hold on,” the child whispered.
“Don’t look away,” the old woman murmured.
“He’s afraid of the quiet ones,” something ancient and wet added.

Bill felt it first—a tug behind his eyes, like fingers threading through the meat of his brain. Not painful. Insistent. Familiar.

He stepped forward again.

Pennywise tried to twist free. His neck elongated impossibly, clown-white skin stretching like taffy. But Stella’s grip tightened; cyan threads snaked from her fingers, twisting into thicker braids that anchored him in place.

Bill locked eyes.

Deadlights met steady gray.

The chamber vanished.

No dramatic swirl. No whoosh of wind. Just—gone.

They were nowhere. Everywhere. A vast flat nothing lit by the orange glow of twin dying stars. The Macroverse without fanfare. Just cold black stretched thin, and the two of them suspended in it: Bill floating upright, Pennywise still in his clown suit but now impossibly tall and thin, conical hat scraping at unseen ceilings.

Their mouths were open. Not speaking. Not yet.

Their tongues—metaphysical, wet, absurd—had already clamped down on each other in the psychic dark. Not literal teeth. Not literal bite. Just the pressure of will against will. One mind trying to force the other to laugh. To break. To blink first.

Pennywise’s voice rolled in first—wet, delighted, everywhere at once.

“He thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts—”

The old tongue-twister. Mocking. Familiar. The same one Bill had used as a kid to steady his stutter. Now it came back twisted, dripping.

“—but the ghosts see him right back, Billy-boy. They see the little brother screaming, bleeding, drowning. They see the bald spot spreading like a target. Keep thrusting, big brother. Keep insisting. It’s funny.”

Laughter bubbled under the words—not out loud, but inside Bill’s skull. A pressure. A tickle at the base of his throat. If he gave in to the fears, or if he laughed, the bite would slip. The ritual would fail. Pennywise would be free to snap back to the physical and tear them apart.

But Bill held.

He pushed back.

“He thrusts his fists—” Bill echoed, voice steady, no stutter. “—and the posts are just posts. The ghosts are just shadows. And you’re just a clown in a suit that doesn’t fit anymore.”

Pennywise’s grin stretched wider—splits reopening, black ichor dripping upward into the void.

“Oh clever. But you’re missing the punchline. Your little blue girl? She’s just a monster pretending. She’s already tasting you. Waiting for her chance to sink her teeth in you.”

The pressure increased. Bill felt his jaw ache—phantom teeth grinding on phantom tongue. The laughter climbed higher, insistent.

Then Stella’s whispers threaded through.

Not loud. Not commanding. Just there. Layered. Soft.

“We’re all here together, Bill.”
“We fight him together.”
“Believe that we’re stronger than him.”

The pressure eased—fractionally. Enough.

He could sense it now. It wasn't just the two of him here, they where all here.

Then Bev’s voice, unwavering, fierce.
“You don’t get to keep her. Not after pancakes. Not after bedtime stories.”

Ben: “You’re not the shape anymore. You’re just the echo.”

Eddie: “You’re disgusting. And I’m not afraid of disgusting things today.”

Stan: “Birds still fly. Even when the sky’s wrong.”

Mike: “The quiet path still leads somewhere.”

Each voice landed like a small stone in still water. Ripples. Stella amplified them—her fractured chorus turning single words into harmonies that pressed against the clown’s mind like cold fingers on fevered skin.

Pennywise snarled—a sound like tearing canvas.

“You think love fixes anything? You try to delay the inevitable and you’ll fail. She’s hunger wearing a dress. When I win this, she’ll willingly pre-chew you for me. She’ll open wide and—”

Richie interrupted: “She can have me if she wants. All-you-can-eat gamey Richie. I’ll love her regardless.”

Then Stella’s familiar voice—just as it had been during snowball fights, when talking blueberry monsters, when playing games, as it had been in their brightest memories of her:

“You hear that, Daddy? Little monster gets the meats… grumpy monster stays on the greens.”

It landed.

Pennywise’s mental tongue spasmed—a convulsion of rage and something almost like embarrassment. The laughter he’d been forcing outward reversed, sucked back in. A choke.

The void trembled.

A black maw yawned open beneath them—edges warping like wet paper tearing, gravity inverting so loose gravel floated upward in slow spirals. Sound dropped out; the drip-drip-drip of the chamber simply ceased. Pennywise’s claws gouged desperate furrows into the stone ledge; sparks of orange deadlight flared where reality itself began to fray under his grip. For the first time in centuries, real fear flickered across his painted face—not rage, not mockery, just raw animal panic.

Time stuttered. A single droplet of Bev’s tear hung suspended in the air, glinting cyan in Stella’s fading light. Richie’s half-raised hand froze mid-reach.

Stella turned toward them, glowing a mild, gentle blue.

“I truly believed you could do it,” she said softly. “Now at last… what does not belong here is sent back.”

Beverly saw it first: the pull was softer on Stella, but undeniable. Her light drifted toward the maw like smoke drawn to a vent.

“No!” Bev cried, voice cracking. “Don’t go, Stella! Stay with us!”

Stella’s eyes—cyan, wet, impossibly old and young at once—met Bev’s.
“You always were quick of mind,” she said softly. Tears slid down her cheeks in slow, glowing trails.
“But I must. I don’t belong here.”

“You do.” Bev’s voice was fierce, shaking. “You are my… daughter. I chose you. And you chose me.”

Stella’s smile trembled.
“Thank you… for letting me live the dream. For letting me be who I truly wanted to be.”
A small, broken laugh. “You are my mommy. You’ve made me me.”

Her glow brightened for a heartbeat—as if drinking in their faces one last time.

Richie’s voice cracked first, barely above a whisper.
“You’re supposed to stay for the sequel, kid. I had… I had more bad jokes.”

A broken laugh escaped her—the same giggle from the pancake morning.
“Save them for me, Richie.”

Eddie, clutching his bruised ribs, hoarse:
“I was gonna teach you how to use an inhaler properly, you little menace.”

“Next time,” she promised softly.

Ben, eyes shining:
“We didn’t even finish the library fort.”

Stan, quiet, blood still on his lip:
“The two-headed crane… it’ll watch the sky for you.”

Mike, steady even as his voice shook:
“The quiet path remembers.”

Bill—no stutter, just raw:
“Thank you… for believing in us when we forgot how.”

Stella’s tears fell faster, but her smile widened—small, proud, maternal in a way no child’s face should be.
“I always knew,” she said softly to all of them. “You’re my family. And I was just postponing… the inevitable.”

Then she continued:
“But now… I must be who I need to be.”

“My kind eventually turns into monsters here.”

She took one floating step backward, light dimming at the edges.
“Life is about postponing the inevitable. I must go… and keep struggling. Keep the monsters from coming back. To give you—all of you, and your legacies—the future.”

Her voice softened to a whisper that somehow reached every ear.
“This isn’t forever. We will meet again.”
“But first… you must live out your messy, happy, fulfilling, human lives.”

Tears kept flowing, but her smile was gentle. Bittersweet. Peaceful.

The void’s pull deepened—not violent, but inevitable, like breath being drawn out of the chamber.

Stella turned slowly and walked toward Pennywise, footsteps silent on the warped stone, small and steady.

Pennywise snarled, but the sound cracked—half growl, half sob. His long fingers scrabbled harder, nails splintering rock, black ichor weeping from the splits in his grin.

She stopped in front of him.
Close enough that he could see his own reflection in her wet cyan eyes: tall, thin, ridiculous, terrified.

In a voice soft as bedtime stories, she said:

“It’s time. Let’s go… Daddy.”

She reached out.
Her small hands—still scarred with faint black lines from every claw she took for them—closed gently around his talons. Almost tender. Almost loving.

Then she tightened.

There was a wet, sickening crunch—bone and cartilage giving way like wet cardboard. Pennywise’s howl was cut short as his grip failed. His claws flexed once, uselessly, then went limp in hers.

For one heartbeat they hung there together—father and daughter, monster and remnant, locked hand-in-hand at the edge of nothing.

Then the pull took him away.

Stella looked back over her shoulder at the Losers.
Just once.
Her smile was the same gentle, bittersweet one she wore telling them about blueberry monsters and “messy, happy, human lives.”

Then she stepped backward into the maw and disappeared—not with a flash or a scream, but with the quiet inevitability of a door closing.

The rift folded in on itself like wet paper crumpling.
A final wisp of cyan light drifted upward, then winked out.

The chamber was suddenly ordinary again.

The Losers stood frozen for a long second—breathing ragged, bleeding, hearts hammering—staring at the place where she was.

Bev’s knees buckled first.
She didn’t cry out. She just sank slowly to the stone, hands pressed to her mouth, eyes wide and empty.

Richie dropped the rebar. It clanged once, echoed, then nothing.

Bill whispered—no stutter—
“She did it.”

No one answered.
There was nothing left to say.

They stayed like that for a long time, seven broken adults and the ghost of a child who loved them enough to leave.