Ana and Robert's walk back to Neibolt house was not a tranquil one, as the two bickered endlessly about the impending return of some of the Losers Club. The entity was utterly delighted at the notion of two of them coming back to Derry, repeating multiple variations of how excited he was and not even bothering to answer Ana's voiced concerns. Only when she vaguely suggested that Mike and Bill had somehow come up with a new plan to kill him, did Robert's disposition suddenly swing to one of vexation.
"Idiotic girl," he feverishly spat at her. "After all this time, do you still believe me to be something that can be so easily destroyed?"
"I don't know what to believe anymore!" she cried passionately as they crossed the threshold into the house. "I thought you were some untouchable force, but Lamia still has some power to influence you, so anything is possible - "
Her contemptuous statement was rewarded with her frail human body being slammed into the wall behind her, and Robert's lean frame was forcefully pressed against it to keep her in place. As he looked upon her with fury in his blue eyes, Ana felt tears start to form in her own. Crying was not something she had done a lot of lately, but she had grown mentally weary from the constant bombardments that had come her way since waking from their slumber.
"I am not," Robert snarled lowly, his forearm firmly placed into her throat almost as a warning, although Ana knew he might just be doing it because he couldn't help himself in his rage, "having this argument about her again."
"If you care about me at all, you'll stop and think about this. What she's planning to do to us, what the Losers might try to do to you!"
The handsome man that was pressed up against her removed his arm from her neck, going to grip her jaw tightly in his large hand instead. He forced her to look up at him, his eyes unblinking as he spoke. "Pennywise doesn't like being ordered around, little girl," he purred, the clown's gravelly voice starting to break through Robert's usual suave timbre.
"All I'm asking you to do is consider the danger that we're in."
"What danger?" he asked incredulously, a short laugh escaping his throat. "Lamia isn't even in Derry anymore - "
"What's going to stop her from coming back?" Ana countered. "She called Mike. She obviously has something in mind!"
"Speaking of which," Robert said, his plump lips pulling back into a snarl as she continued to argue with him, "Funny that you're so bent out of shape over her calling him, considering you did the same thing."
"To ask for help with getting rid of Lamia, not to invite him back here!" Ana cried. Robert let go of her face now, taking a few steps back from her. He was hunched over slightly, a barbaric look gleaming in his eyes.
"I should kill him just for offering to take you away from me," he growled.
Ana rolled her eyes, quickly becoming exasperated with the entire exchange. "Enough. Just forget about it." She walked out of the room feeling utterly defeated, knowing that this conversation was going nowhere and she'd never be able to convince the entity that something was brewing.
"Hey," Robert barked after her, "We're not finished here!" He was behind her in an instant, following her up the staircase and towards the bedroom. He reached out to grab her arm, and she swiveled around on her heel to face him.
"Do you love me?" she asked, fighting back the emotion that was threatening to erupt from her chest. Robert stared at her, his perfect eyebrows furrowing in confusion. He didn't answer her. "I love you, Penny. If anything were to ever happen to you, I'd be lost. That's why I'm so worried."
"From what you've shown me about it," he said slowly, his features still twisted up in contemplation, like he was trying to solve an incredibly difficult math equation in his head, "I think I love you."
Ana smiled at him, a few tears spilling from her eyes. The wording wasn't ideal, and his face still looked like he was smelling something rancid, but she was fully aware that a statement like that coming from the Eater of Worlds was not something to be taken lightly. The will to continue their dispute was lost when the lovers made their way to the bed, falling into their familiar routine, but this time being unique in that it was exceptionally tender. Afterwards, when they were lying in bed and holding each other, Robert had transformed back into Pennywise, and Ana assumed his thoughts were on the two men that were making their way back to Derry. Hers were, as well.
"Do you think they're going to have the rest of them come back?" Ana asked quietly as the clown ran his long fingers up and down her arm.
"Pennywise hopes so," he said with a low chuckle. She fought the urge to argue with him again, to try to convince him to stay away from Mike and Bill, to stay alert for Lamia. But she knew it was a lost cause at this point. The clown's sense of self-pride rarely wavered in the time that she had been with him, and he had completely persuaded himself that he was beyond the reach of any threats.
She silently prayed to whatever gods that would listen that they could just stay in bed for the rest of the day, that any disturbances that dared to try to infiltrate their serenity would at least wait until morning. To her dismay, her prayers were not only unanswered, but were thrown back into her face.
"They're here!" Pennywise suddenly shouted gleefully. He popped up out of bed with so much fervor that Ana half expected him to start dancing in celebration.
"Penny," she said, scrambling to get out of the bed so she could get his attention. "Wait, we have to plan this - "
"No, we don't," he answered, pulling her to him in a tight embrace. "Pennywise is going to go see them, and Ana is going to stay put!"
"But - "
"I don't want our old friend Mike laying eyes on you," he growled, and he planted a long kiss on her lips, then released his grip on her. When Ana opened her eyes, he was gone.
Her first instinct was to cry out for him, or to scream out his name in anger, but she knew it wasn't worth the effort. He was gone, determined to torment the Losers, and she knew it was likely that her safety and everything that she had warned him about was the furthest thing on his mind right then. Her heart sank as she realized that Lamia was succeeding in whatever game she had concocted. Pennywise still had no desire to kill her, was more worried about another man looking at Ana than her actual safety, and now he was completely distracted and far away from Ana, who severely needed his protection right then. As she descended the staircase, she wondered how far Lamia's spell over the ancient entity reached, if she could eventually hold even more power over him, what her final objective in all this really was.
She went to the kitchen to get the same knife that she had used in her previous encounter with Lamia, remembering quite vividly that it had done little to help her, yet she was unwilling to be without a weapon right then. She debated briefly on whether or not to stay put, but she knew being in this house was leaving her as vulnerable as would be anywhere else. So she left.
Ana headed down the sidewalk at a brisk walk, her fingers tightly gripping the blade that she was more likely to trip and impale herself on than actually hurting an evil entity that was intending to hurt her. Her plan was to go to the hotel to look for the Losers, possibly to try reasoning with them, and if not, at least she would be in closer proximity to Pennywise. If they weren't there, then her next stop would be the library.
The intended plans were interrupted almost instantly. Ana had made it only a few blocks before her path was blocked by a blonde woman dressed head to toe in black. As Ana took in the entity's face, she saw a sickening smile plastered there, her dark purple lips spread so wide it almost looked painful.
"Hello, little fairy," she said, and Ana stayed rooted to her spot. "You might as well drop the knife. We both know it's not going to do any of us any good."
"Fuck you!" Ana sneered. Lamia's clawed hand shot out, gripping Ana by the throat, and her other hand painfully twisted her wrist until the knife dropped to the ground.
"Language!" Lamia scolded, giggling as she gripped Ana's arm and forced her to turn around, her talons now digging into the back of her neck. "We have company, and they don't take kindly to that sort of thing."
Being made to turn around, Ana suddenly saw two men standing there, both of them impossibly tall, and rather refined looking, their hands folded neatly in front of them as they watched the two women. One of them, a man with perfect porcelain skin that almost seemed to glow and dazzling green eyes, looked Ana up and down with such an air of smugness that Ana instantly wanted to slap him. When his eyes came back up to her face, he turned to his companion, a man with rich brown skin and shiny, flowing black hair. They started to speak quietly to each other, and Ana strained to hear what they were saying. It took her a few seconds to realize they weren't speaking a language that she recognized. But there was one thing that she could pick out of the words they were muttering: Raanana. The fairy who had claimed to be her father in her dreams had called her that.
"You opened the portal, didn't you?" Ana hissed at Lamia. "That's why you killed all those kids!"
"It was nothing, really," Lamia replied coolly, and out of the corner of her eye Ana saw her shrug her shoulders. "They were already looking for you. I just told them where you were."
"Pennywise is going to be livid when he finds out what you've done!" Ana said, and Lamia let go of her. She had half a mind to try to run, but before she could barely finish the thought, both men had their grips on her arms. "Let go of me!" she cried, trying to pry herself from their hold.
"Don't you dare speak his name ever again!" Lamia growled at her, all traces of the smile she previously wore now gone. "With you gone, he'll finally be able to see what he's been missing with me. I just hope he can forget you completely...although I have a feeling I might be able to help him with that."
Ana spewed every curse word she knew at the blonde and tried to pull her arms free as she envisioned strangling her, but her captors merely pulled her backwards towards them to keep her in place.
"I told you she's probably not the same as you remember her," Lamia said to the two men. "The humanity has probably ruined her." She heard the men speaking to each other once again, her inability to understand them making her angrier. "You can take her now, probably should before he notices. Just give me my payment."
Ana watched as the green-eyed man reached into his pants pocket and revealed a glowing, red vial. He handed it over to Lamia, although he seemed to do so with some hesitation. As Lamia took the glass bottle in her hands, the smile returned.
"What's that?" Ana demanded, knowing she was far from entitled to that information.
Lamia tore her eyes away from the glowing scarlet in her hands long enough to look at Ana. "Power."
Ana opened her mouth to interrogate the blonde further, but suddenly the breath was knocked out of her, and the world around her seemed to dissolve in a whirl of blinding white light, her body feeling like it was floating midair. It seemed to last for only a few moments, and Ana felt her feet hit solid ground again. After her eyes adjusted to the normal amount of day light around her and she could see again, she saw that they were in a clearing in the woods. She barely needed to look around to know where they were. It was the same clearing where Asmod had taken her ten years ago and had attempted to entice Pennywise into eating her, a place that had been referred to as sacred.
The man with the long black hair let go of her and headed towards the boulder that she had sat on all those years ago. From thin air he produced a glowing golden sphere about the size of a grapefruit, placing in the center of the large rock. There was a loud rumble and then suddenly white, searing light shot up from the rock and into the sky, the force of it crackling in the atmosphere like a thunderstorm.
"Let me go," Ana said, turning to look at the 'man' that still had a hold on her. His expression was of complete indifference as he gazed down at her. "Please. I don't want to leave, I can't!"
He started to force her to walk towards the blinding light, and simultaneously she felt the familiar sensation that told her Pennywise was coming. Knowing he was near made her feel all the more desperate, and she started to panic.
"Please, please don't take me! I'll do anything, just go back home, leave me here, please!" she pleaded. They didn't listen to her. The next thing she knew, she was being hoisted up onto the rock, both men now grasping her again. Just as they pulled her into the portal with them, she caught the blurred image of a clown rushing towards them through the clearing; she cried out for him, unable to move as she felt her body being pulled up into the sky and out of Earth's atmosphere.
The light around her started to flash different colors as they traveled, and even through all of those dazzling hues she could see that the environment around them was dark and vast. She could see stars in the distance, and the longer they were in the portal, she started to see galaxies take shape. She would have been absolutely astounded at the cosmos around her, but she suddenly saw three twirling orange lights right outside the tunnel of brightness they were in, and she knew it was him. The deadlights seemed to be chasing them, and she wished with every ounce of her soul that he would stop and turn around, to go back to Earth. She knew if he followed them to her home planet, he would put himself in grave danger. She hoped with anguish that somehow he could still hear her thoughts, that she loved him but needed him to go back. Finally, the deadlights stopped their chase, and she sobbed as she continued to rush away from them, their orange glow out of sight within seconds.
She still felt the tears falling from her eyes as the tube of light around them disintegrated and Ana felt ground underneath her once again. There were more voices chattering around her as her eyes took their time to adjust again, and once she could see, the first thing her eyes landed on was the fairy with the long white beard and hair. He looked exactly like he had in her dreams, his blue eyes so bright that they resembled sapphires, and the rich purple robes covering his sparking white skin. He was speaking to her in a calm, kind tone, but she still couldn't understand him. As she looked around the room in confusion, she felt the fairy gently grasp her hand in his. She looked down, seeing that her own hand was ivory and sparkling, and she reached to her head to find that her hair was incredibly long. She ran some through her fingers and pulled the strands in front of her face, confirming that it was the bright blue that she had seen in Asmod's vision so long ago.
Ana knew then that she was really home.