alternate ending
twenty seven years later

☼ ☽

When you experience loss, people say you go through the five stages of grief. Jill Samson had experienced more loss in her life than she ever thought she would have. She was always in a constant state of grief. And it started when she was young, and her mother was ripped from her clutches. Her mother didn't want her. She knew that now, and she had to learn to be content with that. She wasn't okay with it when she was a kid. She wasn't okay with a lot of things she had to go through when she was growing up. Because honestly life as a kid was Hell for Jill Samson.

The kids in her town would call her gruesome names and treat her like dirt. She almost died a few times at their hands, too. Some boys almost beat her to death when she was twelve, and she thought no one would ever accept her. She, of course, had her friend Beverly Marsh, and she was quite possibly the only light in her dull world. But as she grew, she gained more friends. The Losers' Club they called themselves. They made her feel warm. Sometimes she still felt warm when she thought of them, but it wasn't long before they left too. They left her in this state where she was forced to grieve alone. And it sucked.

While the others tried to move on after the horrid summer of '89, Jill never did. Her friends soon forgot about the creature which haunted them the entire summer, and claimed it was just a dream or a game they all made up to pass the time. But Jill always knew it was true. The scar on her chest where that creature had stabbed her served as a reminder that the monsters lurking in the shadows were true.

The others didn't want to believe her, and so Jill, who was left to remember the past alone, turned to alcohol and drugs to keep the monsters at bay. Her friends never discovered this, and soon they all moved away, forgetting that the town of Derry ever existed, and leaving Jill Samson to deal with her grief alone. One of her friends, Mike Hanlon, stayed in Derry, too, but the two rarely saw each other. While Mike was trying to move on with his life, Jill stayed stuck in the past, drinking her demons away. She couldn't move on, and Mike couldn't stay stuck in the past. They just naturally drifted away from each other, becoming strangers. She lost more people after that, too, and she supposed that was what tipped her over the edge. And so that was what Jill Samson's life had become—a series of loss and grief accompanied by drugs and alcohol.

It had consumed her life so much, she never moved on with her life. Her bed was a park bench and her stomach growled for food, but she only filled it with booze. And she didn't even realize what she was doing to herself until she looked in the mirror one day and she couldn't recognize the corpse staring back at her. After that, she checked herself into a rehab center just on the outskirts of Derry.

Only ninety days had passed since she decided enough was enough and she needed to get clean. Of course, it wasn't just a spontaneous decision. She didn't just go 'Hey, I need some help.'. She had been to rehab centers before. They never stuck, though. And she had people who had tried to get her on the right track, but she never listened. She was trying to listen now. God, she was trying her hardest, and it was the most challenging thing she had ever done.

That day proved to be particularly hard. Jill had volunteered to share her accomplishment. She had ninety days in her pocket. To anyone else, this wouldn't have been much, but it had taken Jill twenty-two years to finally get ninety days clean. She didn't really want to share. She liked to keep things to herself. But this was just something she felt she had to do. She had to speak it into the universe otherwise she wasn't sure if it'd stick.

As Jill walked up in front of the group she had grown to know over the course of the ninety days, she tried to find the right words. Only then, as she wracked her brain did she realize she could not remember ever being happy in her adult life. The years she spent trying to relinquish the many faces of her vices had begun to weigh on her: her skin once youthful had hollowed around her cheeks and darkened under her eyes. She knew she resembled a corpse. Some days she felt like one. The only thing she knew for sure those days was: Booze had become more than just her guilty pleasure, and heroin was her drug of choice. She supposed she never had a chance. The monster from her past had told her she'd end up this way, and she had. She wondered what that made her.

Jill shook her head and searched the sea of people staring at her. Sometimes visitors would attend those meetings to support their loved ones, but Jill never had anyone come for her, so she didn't bother to search the crowd for too long. A part of her wished she saw a face from her past, but she didn't get her hopes up. They had forgotten about her.

"Uh . . . " Jill cleared her throat and glanced down at the ninety-day chip in her hand, " . . . Jill, addict."

"Hi, Jill," the crowd spoke back to her in unison.

A small smile twitched at Jill's lips. A part of her was proud to have ninety days. The other part was disgusted that she even had to get clean. She had ruined herself. She knew that. "Um, I don't really know what to say. Or what I want to say," she began. She took a deep breath then breathed out. "It's just that I've never had this much time before. You know I've had a week or a month, but I'd always relapse . . . start using again . . . get worse. But uh I finally did it." A small, almost pathetic laugh escaped her lips. "I made it to ninety days. I should have words. I should be calling people to thank but all the people who I owe everything to are not here. They're . . . gone."

Gone. Everyone she had ever loved was just gone. She dwelled on that thought for a moment as memories of all the people she had once loved completely resurfaced in her brain. Her mother was gone. Her friends were gone. People always left. They either died or drove out of town, and never returned. Even her father and Prudence were gone now, too. Everyone left her behind, while Jill was forced to stay, stuck in the past for eternity. She was always alone.

Tears pricked her eyes as she remembered all the people she had lost. She squeezed her eyes shut and found the stars. The stars always had a way of comforting her. She opened them again and breathed out a sigh. "My father . . . um . . . he died when I was seventeen maybe eighteen," she murmured, her voice cracking slightly. "It was my first year of college and I was drinking my way into a hospital bed and then I got a call . . . but I didn't want to deal with it so I ignored it. But they kept calling until I finally picked up and yeah . . . he was dead."

Jill remembered getting the call. She remembered how shitty she felt when she realized while she was drinking herself into a coma, her father had taken his last breath. She remembered how guilty she felt, and then she remembered the grief which followed. And worst of all, she didn't even return home, instead, she went to another bar and got more drunk. She ended up with alcohol poisoning. She hadn't even thought about how Prudence took the news. She didn't call. She didn't want to care. She knew now that she should have.

"He, uh, died of a heart attack," Jill muttered as she messed with the chip in her hand. She thought of Prudence for a moment, and guilt wracked through her body once more. "And my stepmom died soon after that, too. The doctors said the stress from my father's death was too much for her. It made her go into heart failure . . . and then she died of a . . . of a broken heart I guess."

When she heard the news of Prudence passing, she did return home, but not for what you think. Jill, who already had one foot in the grave, went home to retrieve the money her father and Prudence had left in their wills. Prudence had put the deed to her restaurant in Jill's name, claiming that it was a family-owned store, so naturally, she wanted Jill to carry on the legacy. But Jill was too far gone. Instead, Jill used the money from Bernie's and spent it all on drugs. She, of course, used some of the money to pay for their funerals, but the majority of it went to Jill's nasty addiction. Bernie's shut down a few months later.

"It really messed me up I guess," Jill sighed. "I started using more and I didn't care . . . I just . . . I didn't care. So I dropped out of college and I used the money I got from their wills to buy drugs and shit. Blew it all pretty quickly." She shook her head, but the memories of her past didn't leave her. She supposed that was her curse for all the shit she had done. This was her Hell—to remember all the people she screwed over. "I don't . . . I don't really remember anything from those first few months. It's all a blur really. But I do remember this one time I was too drunk and high to walk and then I woke up in this guy's house. It's not what it sounds like. He helped me. He saw I was in trouble and he took me in. He gave me food and clean clothes and . . . He was good to me."

And she was telling the truth. It was the first time Jill felt safe in so long. She was still just a kid at the time, searching for someone to understand her, and then there he was. Oftentimes he reminded her of her father. Jill supposed that was why she was so keen on him. She missed her father, and he was a good replacement. He made her feel safe . . . warm like how she used to feel as a kid.

A bittersweet smile drifted onto her face. "His name was Slater Young," she mumbled more to herself than to the rest of the room. It felt as though she was trying to remember him, and saying his name was the only way to do that. "But anyway, um, looking back at it he should have left me on the streets, but he didn't and I wasn't grateful at the time but I should have been. I should've. Anyways he paid for my rehab because . . . well, I don't know. I didn't ask but I always assumed he understood. But that wasn't enough. It didn't stick. I relapsed a month later."

Jill remembered all the times Slater had tried to help her. He had given her countless amounts of money to pay for rehab, but it always went to waste. He was the only one who ever believed in her, and she always let him down. She supposed he was the reason why she was standing before those people today. Without him, she probably would have shrugged at the corpse staring back at her in the mirror and then went to drink her demons away. But she hadn't realized that back then; back when he was still . . . not gone. Instead, she shrugged off his generosity and she had checked herself out of the rehab center. She remembered she didn't even care as she went to the closest bar she could find, and drank until she couldn't see.

The woman closed her eyes and for a second she thought she saw Slater Young staring back at her. Jill missed him like she missed her father. In a lot of ways, Slater became her father, and she would always be grateful to him.

"Slater was a brilliant man," she said, her voice shaking slightly. "No one ever believed in me like he did and he never gave up on me. I wish I could thank him for what he did for me . . . but after the fifth time I relapsed, he stopped trying. He told me he couldn't watch me kill myself anymore. And so he left and I never talked to him again. I don't even blame him. I had lied, stolen . . . but even then after he left me, I couldn't stop. I just kept using and using until I ended up in a hospital because my heart stopped." A tear slipped down her cheek, and she shook her head. "I was thirty years old and I had a heart attack . . . and I still didn't stop using."

She could not ever remember being happy in her adult life, and she knew her addiction had something to do with that. It had turned her into a ghost of her past self. Her anger only intensified, and she stopped caring about the outcomes of her actions. Some days she'd just lay in her bed, unable to move and she'd just sit there, numb to the world. It wasn't the life she had wanted. She once was filled with so much hope, especially after she and her friends had defeated that monster lurking in that house. But her hope quickly diminished as she aged. Sometimes it felt like her brain was against her. She was always fighting with her emotions. She was always angry at herself and the world. Drugs were the only thing that seemed to help. She later realized the drugs only made things worse but masked their damage with false hope.

Jill fluttered open her eyes and tucked her long brown hair behind her ear. The strands felt like straw in her fingers. She guessed that was another con of the poison she had been pumping into her body for over two decades. "It took me ten years after that to finally get ninety days clean. Twenty-two in all. And I'm starting step four which is always a bitch. 'Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves'," she muttered as a small laugh escaped her lips. Honestly, she couldn't believe she got that far. "Um, I've been called a lot of things in my life, even fearless, but I've never felt like I was. I was an angry child so, you know, people would see the things I'd do and hear the things I'd say and they'd think 'she doesn't give a shit'. That girl is a monster."

Jill knew how people perceived her as a child. They hated the fact she was different from them. They found it disgusting how she kissed girls, and they'd always find a way to beat her to a pulp for it. But a lot of kids feared her. They took one look at her and decided if they even attempted to approach her, she'd bite their heads off. She guessed the news of punching Greta Keene in the face and tearing off Henry Bowers's ear was enough to have them walking in the other direction. A part of her liked that people feared her. It meant they wouldn't try to hurt her. But it also wedged a wall between her and her friends.

As Jill entered high school with her new group of friends, she got a new reputation. She became convinced that fighting was the only solution to protecting herself and others. And while Jill fought with her fists and punched anyone who messed with her, her friends subconsciously feared her as well. She supposed that was when she first started to drift apart from the others. That only made her hate herself more.

Jill breathed out a heavy sigh. "I was an angry kid who did fearless things, but I was never brave. I was angry and I used that to fight the things that horrified me, but I was always a scared little kid. And, um, I thought I'd get braver as I got older. You know . . . I thought there'd come a time where I'd stop fighting my fears and start facing them, but I didn't. I just got scared of new things."

She remembered how even after the Losers' Club had defeated the thing they called It, she still had nightmares of the creature. Sometimes she would have dreams where she had actually died down in the Well House, and she'd wake up in a sweat, clutching her chest where It's claw had felt a mark. Other times, she was forced to watch Beverly die. And most of the time she'd watch her mother leave her behind along with her father and Prudence. But no matter what, Jill was always left alone.

There were also times where she'd see It lurking in the shadows and she was convinced the thing had come back. The others called her crazy, claiming they killed it, but Jill never believed them. It haunted her throughout her life. It was always present. She used the drugs to keep the creature at bay. When she was high or drunk, she didn't catch glimpses of It.

A chill ran down her spine as she thought of the creature, and she had to shake her head to rid herself of the thoughts. She cleared her throat and quickly moved on. "When I was eight, my mother left," she blurted out. She didn't know why she mentioned her, but she assumed it had something to do with the fact that she had lost everyone she had ever cared about and It had a way of reminding her of that. "I was angry about it for years and I blamed my dad and he let me. I was mad because I couldn't admit how terrified I would be if I just acknowledged she didn't want me anymore."

Her thoughts only spiraled from there. One second she was thinking about her mother, then the next she remembered her cup of stars. She remembered her father fixing it after she broke it and she remembered when he first told her about Prudence. Then she was thinking about her old friends, until she finally thought of Slater. And that was when she realized, no one ever stayed. Maybe she deserved it. Maybe they were better off without her, but it still hurt to know they were all just . . . gone.

Jill cleared her throat. "Then a few months ago I found out Slater died in a car accident while under the influence. So I guess he did understand, huh?" she cut herself off with an abrupt laugh. She didn't know why she was laughing. Her life was just so shitty that she didn't know what else to do other than laugh. "Anyways, um, my point is, I always expected people . . . the people I loved to come back to me, and realizing they weren't coming back scared me."

She just wanted all the people she had lost to come back to her. But the world had never given anything to Jill other than more pain. She wondered what she had done to deserve this. Maybe there was no reason. Maybe the world just took one look at her and decided she wasn't worth it.

Jill sighed and crossed her arms over her chest. She realized a long time ago that was the only way she could make herself feel safe. "Neither of them . . . or my father or anyone else ever came back, which I always had trouble accepting . . . but other things from when I was a kid, they came back," she muttered slowly. "I should have forgotten them, you know? They all just seem like bad dreams but I know they're real . . . they always were. And each time I lost someone, the bad things would come back and I'd use. I guess that's the reason I started using in the first place . . . to keep the bad things at bay."

Her whole life was filled to the brim with bad things. And as she thought of them, her throat began to tighten and a fire boiled in her veins. She remembered It's hands around her throat when it had tried to kill her during that horrid summer. And she felt the searing pain of It's claw plunging through her chest. She remembered all the pain, and she wished she didn't.

Jill touched a hand to her throat, massaging it to try and rid herself of the feeling of being strangled. "And you know I'd get clean for a week or a month but then they'd come back and I'd use again," she confessed. It wasn't something she was proud of, but it had worked for a while, until it didn't and she realized all the drugs ever did was ruin her more. "I'd get the money from Slater or someone else. And each time I think about what happened to every single person I fucked over . . . I just . . . I can't imagine how it felt to be done like that." Tears pricked her eyes and she shook her head. "To be lied, to be stolen from by a person you trust. I just . . . I don't know. I just hope I never experience what I did to all those people."

As those words left her lips, Jill finally glanced up and looked at the group of people staring at her with understanding in their eyes. She felt welcome there. She felt safe, and for the first time, she didn't hate her life. A smile lifted onto her lips at the warm feeling blooming in her chest. "Um, anyway, I just wanted to thank anyone dead or alive who has ever had my back," she concluded with the smile still stretched across her face. "Any addict alone . . . "

". . . Is bad company," the group of people finished for her, all smiling up at her.

Jill nodded her head a few times before she opened her mouth. "Thank you," she muttered quietly as she walked down the aisle toward her seat, but something stopped her in her actions.

Standing in the threshold of the doorway was a man who resembled someone Jill knew from her past. The man gave her a wide smile and lifted up a hand to wave. Jill wanted to wave back, but she couldn't. She just stayed frozen to the floor and stared at him. She had never forgotten him or his kindness. His face was forever etched onto her heart where the other faces of her friends resided. He had been the only one to stay in Derry along with her, and yet they still hadn't talked in years. She knew that was her fault, but she didn't care at that moment. Instead of dwelling on her thoughts, Jill walked over to the man and wrapped her arms around him, bringing him in for a tight hug.

The man wrapped his arms around her, squeezing her frail frame. "Jill," he mumbled into her hair. "I put my name on the visitors' list. It's so good to see you."

That time Jill did smile. "Mike Hanlon," she breathed out as tears pricked her eyes. She never thought she'd see him again. And yet here he was—her old friend Mike Hanlon.

After a moment, Jill released him from her grip and stepped back, staring up at him with glossy eyes. He was a little taller than her now, and much older than the last time she saw him. His dark skin was slightly withered with age, and the skin around his eyes was crinkled from smiling. He looked like how he did as a kid, but older and more confident. But as she stared, she started to wonder why he was there, and then it dawned on her.

The smile on her face slowly fell and she pursed her lips. "It's back, isn't it? It—It came back. After all these years, the damn thing is still kicking," she muttered under her breath. Fire coursed through her veins a second later at the thought of the clown that had almost taken her life. But then she thought of the others. Her friends. Her friend Richie . . . and Stan . . . Bill, and Ben, and Eddie. She thought of them all. And then she remembered . . . Beverly, and it was like her heart inflated in her chest. "Have you called the others? Um . . . have you called Beverly?"

Mike nodded, firmly. "Yeah, they're on their way," he affirmed. Then he looked at her as if he was hesitant to say the words playing on his mind. He sighed a second later. "We need you, too."

Jill's heart dropped, fear clouding her senses. "I don't—" she cut herself off and shook her head. "I don't know if I can leave. It's complicated." She looked into his eyes, pleading, then she gave a helpless shrug. "I'm an addict, Mike. If I leave and I slip up, it's over."

Mike wet his lips. "I know, but Jill, you made a promise."

"I was thirteen," Jill murmured, playing with the chip in her hand.

"It was a blood oath," Mike pressed. His eyes were stern, almost as if he had spent too many nights stressing over this exact moment.

Fire filled Jill's veins. She didn't want to do that again. She had almost died. She didn't know if she could go through that again. And even if she survived, who was to say she wouldn't relapse and be back at square one? "I don't know if you remember, but I almost died," she spat. "I just . . . I don't know what going back there will do to me. I don't know if I can handle it. I can't relapse again. I can't."

Mike looked at her for a minute, studying her face. Then he nodded and released a sigh. "It's back. It will kill again and it won't stop," he stated, his words stern. "You said it yourself. We can only beat it if we're all together." He sighed again as he took a step back. "Just think about it, okay? We can't do it without you."

With that, he turned to leave, but Jill flashed out her hand and clamped it down on his shoulder, stopping him in his tracks. Mike slowly turned back to meet her gaze, and Jill dropped her hand to her side, sighing heavily. She squeezed her eyes shut until she saw the stars. The stars briefly maybe her think of all the missing kids they had seen in It's lair many years ago. She remembered how they resembled dead stars fading away in the night sky. Then she realized if she didn't help the rest of her friends in this battle, more kids would die. Hell, maybe even her own friends would die trying to kill It. Beverly could die. She had to help. She knew she did. It was just something she had to do.

Her eyes fluttered open once more and she looked into Mike's pleading brown eyes. "I'll help you," she sighed, biting her lip in contemplation. "I just have to tell them I'm leaving and get my stuff. It's a whole thing."

"Okay—"

Jill quickly cut him off. "I'll come, but . . . " she trailed off, thinking about her next words. She wasn't sure why she interrupted him, but one second she was thinking about the Losers' Club and defeating Pennywise, then the next she was thinking about her childhood crush, Beverly Marsh. They were in love. She knew they were. And she wondered if Beverly remembered her after all these years. It didn't matter, though. She just needed to hear her voice . . . now. "I need to use your phone first. I just . . . I need to call Beverly."

A look of confusion crossed Mike's face before his eyes grew wide as if he remembered something, then he nodded. "Oh . . . yeah . . . " he trailed off as he dug into his pocket and pulled out his phone. He opened it to the phone app, handing it to Jill. "Her number's the third one down."

Jill smiled and quietly thanked him before she took the phone and walked to the corner of the room for privacy. She held her breath as she stared at the phone number. Finally, she exhaled and pressed the number, bringing the phone up to her ear. She chewed on her bottom lip as the phone rang, echoing in her ear almost as if it were taunting her. And just when Jill thought the call was going to go to voicemail, a voice came through the phone.

"Mike, I swear if this is you again—"

"It—It's not," Jill quickly cut her off. Her heart was pounding in her chest as she tried to calm her breathing. She shook her head and laughed softly as if she couldn't believe this was real. "It's not Mike. It's Jill."

The other end went dead silent, and for a second Jill thought she had hung up on her, but then she heard someone laugh softly. "Sunshine . . . " Beverly mumbled under her breath, almost as if she didn't mean to say the nickname she had given the girl when they were kids. She cleared her throat and exhaled slowly. "Jill? Jill Samson?" Her voice was lighter now. It made Jill's heart pound faster in her chest.

Jill smiled widely, biting her lip to try to contain the warmth spreading throughout her chest. She felt at home when she heard Beverly's voice. She had forgotten how much she missed it. "Beverly Marsh . . . hi," she breathed out, her voice like silk.

As Jill reveled in the feeling spreading throughout her, she wondered if maybe all the hardships she had experienced in her life had led her up to this moment. This was her accepting it all; it was the last stage of grief before she could finally move on, and get better. Maybe this was the step she was looking for to put her on the right track. Maybe if she followed through with this, then she could finally put her demons to rest. It could work. It would if she just believed. And she did.

a/n: okay so, i knew if jill were to have survived, she would have a reaction similar to stan. i tried to put a lot of foreshadowing into this which is why stan was the first person who befriended jill. anyways so jill would have been haunted by this event her whole life & she'd get more into substance abuse because of it. her speech & jill in general is inspired by luke crain.

also, here's an extra bit!! i wanted to make jill as real as possible, so it's canon that after she heard of stan's death and watched eddie die, she went back to rehab similar to how luke continued to stay sober after he learned of nell's death. &&& also jill and bev would have ended up together a little ways down the line and bev would have kept jill in check and encouraged her to get better.

ALSO introducing keira knightley as adult! jill samson!!

i have a questions chapter next, so if anyone wants me to write down all the foreshadowing points, i will. i might do this anyway!!

other than that, thank you so much for reading!!