I'M SORRY THAT I LET YOU DOWN.

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DEAD BOY (book one).
°• CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO •°

" IT'S NOT REAL!
IT'S NOT REAL! "

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IT WAS TRULY SCARY HOW MANY THINGS WERE HITTING DAXTON ALL AT ONCE. It's the little things of his childhood that scared him most because they've already broken free from every dark thing he kept bottled up. He crosses the streets of Derry and soaks it in. The first Christmas he had a snowball fight. There was nothing like the stinging cold smacking you straight in the face to make you laugh so loud your chest hurts. Spring when he thought he had a green thumb and could keep alive the garden flowers someone gifted him. Man, it was hard to throw those away. Then there was the summer day that his foster family scribbled on the concrete with pastel sticks of chalk, leaving Daxton and Charlie to be inspired enough to carve their initials into the stone, a final signal of their brotherhood.

Daxton faintly smiled. He wondered if the thin letters were still there. The brothers must have a one-track mind as Charlie announces, "Hey, man, check it out," just as they pass the cracked pavement leading to the porch of their now very old foster home. The letters looked scarred from the years they'd been there, barely clear covered in the dust of dirt and gravel.

D.S. & C.Q.

That's exactly what completes the house that was almost like what Daxton could remember. A warm feeling spreads that causes Daxton to smile clearer. "I forgot about that," he admits. "It was like we marked our territory so that... That everyone who came here after us knew. Knew that we were the first."

"First?" Charlie repeats.

"Brothers."

He doesn't have to look to know Charlie had smiled as well. Their brotherhood was important to them and this was where it had all started. The house wasn't falling apart, but it was still holding together well even after twenty-seven years. A few of the boards had split, paint peeling across the cracks, and covered in various markings of wear. Daxton feels a sense of home that drove him to take the first step.

Why was it so difficult to do something so small when you're at home, Daxton wondered seconds before another fresh memory washes over him. The sense of terror returned when he remembers something horrible chasing him and Charlie when they were kids. It was an awful creature, bloody lips pulled into a snarl over a canine's teeth, claws digging into the soil before scraping against stone as it runs, ready to pounce and devour them. It chased them all the way home until they were breathless, chests aching from the loss of oxygen.

The porch creaks beneath them. Daxton's knees wobble, but he's brave enough from the familiarity overpowering the fear to tap his knuckles against the wooden door. The sound echoes and the following few minutes are like an eternity of waiting on the edge. He doesn't know what to do except shuffle on his feet until the floorboards inside squeak moments before the door opens. And then they're staring at the face of their foster mother.

Josie Griffith has aged and grown less than Daxton had. Her hair, once a dirty blonde, was faded into streaks of gray. It was swept into a bun instead of the chopped cut at her shoulders. Her blue eyes are soft, surrounded by a variety of wrinkles in her pale skin. Her voice, quiet but full of love, whispers, "Oh, my boys."

Daxton and Charlie are fully enveloped in the hug Jo throws at them. She's a smaller, frail woman who has to push herself onto the tips of her toes just to reach the two fully grown men's shoulders. One hand clutches the collar of Daxton's jacket while the other shakily smoothed past the back of Charlie's neck. Daxton can hear her weeping as their arms pull her into a matching embrace, a constant mantra of, "My boys, my babies, oh, you're home."

"We missed you. So much." Charlie's voice is soft, muffled when he set his chin over the top of her head.

The tears on Jo's face are still fresh as she breaks the hug. She presses the palm of one hand over her chest before wiping away the evidence of her crying with the other. "I missed my boys too. Come in, come in," she urges them and steps aside.

There wasn't much inside that changed since the last time Daxton had stepped foot inside. "Emilia called yesterday, but she hadn't said you boys were stopping by," his old foster mother's voice echoes behind him.

"We didn't know. Mike asked us to come back for him. We just thought we'd stop by here," Charlie explains, purposely leaving out the demon clown and their search for the artifacts that held parts of them in Derry. They were already crazy enough.

"Oh, Mike Hanlon! I've seen him in the library so many times." Josie smiles and shakes her head. She carefully lowers herself on the sofa. "You boys were always so close as children, I'm so glad to hear you're back in touch after all these years. What about your other old friends? Ah, what... What were their names?"

"There were nine of us," Charlie begins as he sits next to her. Daxton was too busy studying the pictures on the walls to join, every face familiar as if they hadn't taken care of any other broken kids after they left, but he still listened as Charlie gives her the first excuse he could think of. "We're all here, trying to, um... Reconnect. We're trying to put some pieces together... One of us, Stan Uris, passed on."

Jo softly gasps. "Oh, honey, I'm so sorry." She squeezes Charlie's hand. "I remember... He was such a kind boy, always looking out for his friends... I'm sure he's still there, watching for all of you." Daxton doesn't doubt she's wrong. He hears the smile behind her next words. "I remember he always visited with Richie Tozier, gosh, you four would always find something to do. He loved - "

She's cut off when Daxton spun and Charlie finished, "Leaving. Richie loved leaving."

"What?" Daxton asks as his mind suddenly becomes fuzzy. He doesn't know if it's a numb feeling or the fact that his brain refuses to remember anything that could help.

Jo had gone silent in confusion as Charlie lifts his head. "You don't remember," he says. It sounds more like a fact than a question. He glances from their foster mother to his brother once more who was waiting for an explanation. "Jo, do you... Do you remember why we left, at least?"

"Of course I do. I waved at the bus that took you, love."

The truth is like a blow to the chest. It sinks past Daxton's skin, knocks the air from his lungs, and crawls up his throat until it erupts. "I left because of Richie."

His stare hardens as it met Charlie's. It was a foggy, unclear memory, but pieces of it start to place themselves together in Daxton's mind. And it was awful. He didn't leave because he was trying to forget his childhood. Running from it never would've worked anyways and Daxton was just beginning to heal from it. He never would've run off from what made him so happy unless... Richie sent him back to square one when they were eighteen, but... God, he just wishes he could remember why.

Daxton swung around the railing connected to the stairs. He needed a minute away from them without seeming suspicious. "If it's okay I'm just - I'm going to check out our old room - "

"Yeah, of course, sweetie," Jo responds with furrowed eyebrows, "But is everything okay?"

"Peachy!" Daxton exclaims over his shoulder before he travels the stairs like someone lit a fire below. He almost collapses on the first step, but scampers past it before his knees could fail him and burst through the first door he sees.

It's, fortunately, the old shared bedroom of Daxton and Charlie. Jo had clearly gone through and cleaned up the little things they left behind when they didn't return and started from scratch. He doesn't know if the walls are closing in or spacing further out. Is he breathing or suffocating? Daxton's eyes burn. For the longest time, he thought he ran away from the secrets Derry forced him to keep. He never thought it was because he was close to embracing them.

His head starts to clear as his heart pounds. It gives Daxton enough time to let another memory of Richie freely roll by where it had broken free from the bottle of emotions and thoughts.

"What are you doing here?"

The question is less judgmental and full of teasing instead even when the last thing Daxton expected was to see Richie Tozier in his doorway. It's been a full day since this dumbass in glasses had tried to kiss Daxton Shields on the swing set at a playground and he was still trying to process how he felt about it. It was hard enough to sort the tangled mess in your head without having to face it all over again. If Richie wanted revenge for being called a slur, he had it. All Daxton would have to do was tell him how awful the guilt was. It was eating him alive. He was minutes away from asking Charlie for help on what to do, how to apologize.

Richie smiles. It didn't match the dorky one that caused Daxton what felt like actual heart pains. It's one that twisted his lip into a curl instead of spreading and filling his cheeks. He tried to ignore it. He knows he fucked up calling Richie a fag when he was...

The comic Daxton "borrowed" from a store a year prior that he was pretending to read shuts. He glanced up to see Richie was sitting on the end of his bed. "Something told me you were dying to see me. I thought it'd be better to follow that instinct instead of ignoring it."

"Next time ignore it." Daxton fought the urge to pitch the book of paper at him and instead pointed to the door. "Get out of my house - "

"Your house?" Richie parroted with a snort of laugher. "This is a foster home. You don't really live here, Dax."

A heavy silence fell. It was so thick that the air could be sliced through with the blade of a knife. Daxton doesn't know what to say when his lips are parted but no words can fall out. He knows the Tozier boy can't control what he says - it's like there's nothing between his brain and mouth that thinks should I say this? Seconds before it spills. But Richie's never said something to hurt him even without meaning it. And Daxton let it hurt. He already knows every foster house is just a stop along the way. It just aches all over again every time he remembered so.

"Eat my shorts, Richie, neither do you. So quit inviting yourself here," Daxton snapped back. The hurt spread and spread, but then it sparked into nothing when Richie touched his arm. He flinched at first. He's never been used to tender touches and Richie's fingers are pale, cold. It felt as if Daxton's skin was burning under the hand.

It wasn't long before Richie had a hold on Daxton's wrist. He was then on his feet with his guide, his mouth dry with the sudden loss of words, heart pounding so hard in his chest that he feared it would burst through the skin and paint the room in splatters of red. His socks dragged across the room's carpet, slow, with his fear and love spiking every second. Daxton felt sick with it all when Richie halfway closes the closet door behind him with a chilling creak.

"It's ironic, isn't it?" Daxton hears him say with a quiet laugh. He can't see Richie. It was too dark for that, but his voice carried on anyway. It grew closer and closer until he could feel Richie's nose brushed against his own, his warm breath kissing his skin as he whispers, "not that you called me a fag - but you're so, so deep in the closet, you can't see you yourself are one. That dirty little secret will come out someday, Shields."

That was the exact moment when Daxton realized this wasn't Richie.

The next second he realizes it is when Richie almost kisses him and he yanks away. A dim light breaks through the crack and shines across his destroyed face. Blood drips from his lips that have no choice but to be suddenly pressed together because of the strips of string sewn through.

Daxton's back smacked against the closet door when his body froze in horror at the sight. Crocodiles stream from Its flushed cheek. His lips, although stuck together, still move enough for him to utter in a quiet, pained groan, "save me, Dax."

Instinct finally took over Daxton's lips just in time. A horrified scream fell from his mouth before he shoved himself away, bursting through the door, recklessly tumbling onto the floor. He squeezed his eyes shut before It can form out of something much more horrifying than a boy he was terrified to be fond of and sobbed to himself, curled on the bedroom floor, "It's not real, it's not real, it's not real - "

The room fell silent and Daxton opened his eyes. An empty closet stared back at him. It was gone. He had no idea why, but he didn't know a lot of things. Daxton, who laid on the floor and let himself cry out of fear, knew he didn't understand why fate had to set him up in Derry, Maine, why he suddenly had a foster family who cared for someone like him, or why he was so awful to Richie Tozier when his heart ached with an awful pang that felt a lot like something special.

And twenty-seven years later, it still does.

Daxton found himself staring at the closet for much too long. It felt like hours had passed as the memory washes through him as if it was just yesterday. The space was completely empty now, save for a few varieties of items, old toys, teenage boy clothes they grew out of, maybe even some sports or comic books. A baseball bat is propped in the doorway. After that, Daxton begged Charlie to retrieve things he needed. He never truly got over what happened. The only other time Daxton entered that spot was the day he left Derry, the year of '94.

It was long gone. So was Richie. And Daxton now knows this because he remembers. He remembers when he shared a dance that felt like good-bye with Richie in the hall of their school as the music from their Senior Banquet caused the walls to rattle. How he kissed him good-bye a week after their graduation because he was accepted into a college and had to move on. How Daxton was so heartbroken after letting someone in, to see the darkest parts of him, only for them to split, no phone calls, all of his letters returned unopened, that he had to get the fuck out of the small town before it would trap him forever.

The only other one who was there was Mike Hanlon. Everyone else, besides Charlie, had already parted. He watched, sad, as Daxton was brave enough to step in and out of the closet to rip handfuls of clothes off the hangers and shoved them into a duffel bag on his bed. Charlie was downstairs waiting, keeping an eye out for the bus.

"Dax," Mike said quietly, "what if It comes back? We - we promised to stick together - "

"Stick together?" Daxton echoed. The laugh that followed was cold, emotionless. He almost lost that side of him. "Bill's gone, Stan's gone, Eddie's gone, fucking - Beverly and Ben, they're gone, and, and Rich - Richie, he's... He's gone." He had to hold his breath for a second before any tears could've spilled. Daxton zipped the bag shut. "Charlie and I, we're gone too. We don't belong here, Mike, we never did."

"They still care about us," Mike tried to defend. Daxton had to force himself to look away. If he meets his best friend's heartbroken gaze at the knowledge he'll be left all alone, he'll break. "Dax... Please don't go."

Daxton threw the strap over his shoulder. "You're delusional, Mike! They forgot about us and moved on with their lives!" He sucked in a deep breath and whispered, "if I don't leave now... I'll be stuck here. Until the day I fucking die."

A beat of silence followed. Then Mike softly asks again because Daxton never answered it in the first place, "what if It comes back?"

Daxton never answered. He only left with a slam of the door. Twenty-seven years later, Daxton realized he didn't leave to forget It. He left to forget the pain of being left behind.

Everything suddenly made sense. Daxton finally understood why he didn't want to be around Richie any longer, why Charlie would bark coldly at him, why his memories were so painful. Richie left him, so Daxton left everyone, left Mike without looking back.

The floor creaks underneath Daxton as he's prepared to book it down the stairs of his childhood home again. He has to find Charlie and see if their memories are right, if it's all true, when he suddenly stops. A particular floorboard under the carpet creaks louder as he steps over it. Another awful memory hits Daxton, but this one doesn't have a play button. It's only a fact.

There's one thing that Mike Hanlon didn't know about Derry and that's that Daxton did come back. He returned for a week when he completed his first tour. He never stopped to say hi. He watched from afar as Mike worked in the library, visited his family home, had white poppies tattooed across his ribcage for the fallen soldiers, and buried something personal in the floorboards where it would be safe.

Touring as a military man did work. There was something about being covered in the sand of the land all the time, fighting in battles worse than the ones he survived in his childhood, hell, being shot in the shoulder, and having a permanent scar in the very spot that almost matched the one crossing his temple to his eye managed to take away his memories. The scars stayed so much longer than most people, but they meant something else. It all meant Daxton earned his first dog tag after going through hell once again.

He fell to his knees and pushes aside the carpet. It takes a minute of scratching, but eventually, Daxton can stick a fingernail under the loose wooden board and lift it. The small, empty space is full of dust and a small, wooden box that hasn't been touched for a long, long time. He smiles, but it's sad. This had to be it. It was the one token that held him to Derry.

Shaking fingers gently peel the top of the box off. Daxton's very first dog tag was nestled safely inside, safe from being coated in dust. He gently swipes his thumb across the cool metal, the letters like bumps under the pad of his finger. It was the guilt that drove Daxton to bury it here because he couldn't face Mike after everything, the one who was man enough to stay after making a vow. He was a coward.

The guilt returns as Daxton quickly pulls the chain around his neck and the tag clinks against the others. He's about to shove the floorboard back in place when he swears he feels something shake the ground from below.

Daxton froze. He tries to tell himself it was only a mouse, just the house settling, something else, that it's not real, when a long arm scarred and bloody shot through the opening and grasps Daxton's throat.

A loose, gutted scream rips free but sounds much more like a wheeze as the fingers curl around the chain and squeeze tightly at his throat. He can't get a breath in through his windpipe. Blood pours from the shredded skin and stains Daxton's palm as he tries to rip it away. It feels as if his vessels will burst, his face flushing without air, and the lungs in his chest burning. He can't make a noise louder than a sharp gasp. He can't break free.

His vision, although blurred, notices multiple hands bursting through the floor. A few of them are charred from burns, others missing fingers, all of them damaged. He doesn't recognize them by a mere look but knows what they're from. He's seen the wounds multiple times while serving. A horribly familiar voice barely reaches Daxton's clogged ears.

"You will destroy him like you destroyed us."

A war cry comes from Daxton's chest and explodes as he squeezes the wrist holding him in place. He isn't a kid anymore. He won't let It choke him to death, he won't let It win. Daxton manages to make the fingers loosen when he yanks, just enough to scream, "let me go!" To the monster that he refuses to allow to have control over him any further.

It's been twenty-seven years and it ends here.

Daxton wins at last and yanks the hand off of him. He gasps for air like he hadn't breathed for years. Oxygen burns as it makes its way into his nearly empty lungs. His knees are shaking as he pushes himself into a standing position without a moment's hesitation. He stumbles to the closet and grabs the first thing he sees. Fortunately, it's not some toy, article of clothing, or a stupid book. Daxton can make a weapon out of almost anything, but the wooden baseball bat will do so much more damage.

"Fuck you!" Daxton cries out as he brings the bat above his head and swung it downward. It crashes against the ground, wood splintering, missing the arm by a hair. He gave another harsh swing and it snaps the limb in half.

Daxton hadn't realized he's still shouting, violently smashing the bat against the ground and probably causing holes in the floor, when the door burst open. He half-expected to stare into the monstrous face of Pennywise itself, but the only one staring back at him was Charlie. He shouts his brother's name once and carefully sprints towards him to disarm the weapon.

Adrenaline crashes through Daxton and he surrenders. Tears stream down his cheeks, a choked sob falling as he grasps at his brother's arms. Charlie's next utter of his name is softer, gentle as he holds Daxton while they both plunge to the ground.

"I'm sorry," Daxton pleads. "I'm so sorry." He doesn't know who he's asking for forgiveness from. It could be Charlie, Richie, Mike... Or even himself.

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author's note:

the fact that i've had this particular chapter planned for years and it's FINALLY all done!! i worked so hard on it and i feel like it's a bit short compared to the others, but it's probably still one of my favorites that i've written. it's definitely shown how daxton's grown from a scared little kid trying to be tough to a real survivor, feels guilt for all he's done to himself and his loved ones, and REMEMBERS.

i'm not really sure if i portrayed it exactly right but i gave it my best shot. daxton's memories are finally all hitting him!! firstly, the horror shot of richie with his mouth sewed shut 🥺 the mention of their secret high school dance 🥺 then richie leaving for school 🥺 never writing letters back or calling because he forgot derry 🥺 daxton's heart breaking so badly he had to leave the town that caused him so much pain 🥺 only to come back for a visit and avoid mike, get a tattoo, etc 🥺 i'm crying

there were a ton of parallels used that i don't want to point out just yet, i'm curious to see if you guys noticed!!

thank you sm for being patient & coming back to read! ❤️

- koda

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