Our Initials Carved in my Heart

"No, no! I won't leave him, we can't leave him, we have to take him out of here!" He shouts. "C'mon, guys, we can't leave him here, please!" Richie begs one last time.

Bill looks at Richie's expression and nods.

"I'll help you."

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It should be impossible, but they manage to escape,carrying Eddie's body with them. As soon as they leave the Neibolt House, everything starts falling down to pieces right in front of their eyes. They stop a moment to stare at the building crumbling down, reducing itself to nothing but dust. It's done. Pennywise is finally dead.

And then it hits him like a fucking truck. Richie realizes that Eddie's gone as well, that Eddie isn't just hurt or unconscious, that he really is dead. He can feel a black, cold hole starting to grow up inside his stomach and suddenly his whole world is falling down, too. All he can feel is pain anda dark agony piercing his chest.

Richie holds Eddie's lifeless body, and drops to the ground, bringing him close to himself and starts crying out loud, his uncontrollable sobs filling the formerly dead silence of the street.

"Eddie" he says, choking on air. "I love you."

Richie whispers that I love you against the crook of Eddie's neck, making it a secret for only him to hear. . A secret he wished he could have said earlier, when it wasn't too late, because now Eddie's dead and he will never know. He had the chance to say it to him but he didn't, and now it's just too late.

"I love you" he says again, this time louder, broken voice.

No one dares to speak. They just look at the way Richie doesn't want to let Eddie go, silent tears rolling down their cheeks, because Eddie was their friend too, even after 27 years.

"You were my first love," he whispers once more, because this is a secret that's meant for Eddie and nobody else.

Suddenly, Eddie gasps, inhaling violently.

"Holy shit!" Richie screams, and he doesn't know if it is an illusion or if it is really happening, but Eddie starts coughing weakly and then he realizes that it is real and that Eddie is actually alive.

"Oh my god, he's alive!" Richie cries out loud. "He's alive! Call the 911, somebody just, fuck, somebody just get an ambulance!"

Those twenty minutes as they wait are the longest twenty minutes of his life, and when he finally sees the ambulance on the horizon, he feels like he can breathe again.

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Eddie's in a critical state and unconscious after a long-ass surgery. And how wouldn't he be? Pennywise fucking stabbed his chest with his fucking claw, but somehow, he made it alive, even after all the blood loss. Richie will never forget that. Not when his clothes were soaked with it, when his glasses were splattered with the blood that dripped, threateningly, from Eddie's mouth and onto the lenses.

Thing is... they don't know how they managed to stay alive, much less Eddie, and even less why the hospital personnel didn't question the state of their clothes, hair. But it is Derry, and Derry never really seemed to care about those things, so they just operated on Eddie, no questions asked. They were thankful, though, because it would have been fucking difficult to explain what happened without sounding like crazy people or without making it seem like they were the responsible ones.

A week later, Eddie is still in the hospital, fighting for his life and clinging to every last breath. And Richie is terrified, because he can't afford losing him again. He wouldn't be able to stand the same grief twice, and he thinks the universe can't be that cruel to give him back Eddie just to take him away after such a brief moment.