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[notmarieanymore]

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[notmarieanymore]

[She can feel him crying, but she doesn't care, she gently strokes the back of his head, his shoulders and back, letting him do what he needs.]

Oh, Eddie... [She frowns a little and reaches down to wipe at his tears with the pad of her gloved thumb.]

C'mon. Let's have a seat, I've got tea. You can tell me whatever you need to. [She was his sister, damn it. She was gonna let him cry as much as he needed to. She wasn't sure what could be so bad, but considering he'd fought some weird demon clown? It could probably be pretty fucking bad.

Carefully, she leads him toward the couch.]

[clussy]

Thanks.

(He has never been that interested in tea, but he wasn't going to say no either. A warm drink sounded nice in a distant sort of way. He walks with her to the couch, thinking for a moment that he had to find a pair of gloves he could wear around Rogue. If only so he could hold her hand sometimes.

He sits down on the couch, tucking his hands under his legs. He sits back against the couch.)

If one of your best friends died and you were in a bad place, would you try and get their body out of it?

[notmarieanymore]

Of course.

[Rogue lets him sit, pouring the tea almost immediately. For Eddie, she takes a wild guess and manages to add some sort of sugar-substitute. With two cups in her hands, she comes over to the couch and takes a seat before handing Eddie one of the cups] It's not as good as it would be at home.

[Just, for the record.

Rogue sets the cup of tea on her knee, watching Eddie carefully. The poor kid looked like hell, and while she had queestions, she'd let him speak, first. He was the one that had reached out to her, after all.

When he speaks, she frowns, remembering the water crashing down around Dr. Grey as she held the X-Jet aloft long enough to get the engine running again. She would have been crushed by the water pressure, drowned. They hadn't been able to find a body. And so they left her.] I would- if it were possible. If I was in a dangerous situation, I know my friends would want me to get out more than they'd want their body buried.

[She's surprisingly quick to answer.But this was something you had to think about, when you were an X-Man.]

What happened, Eddie?

[clussy]

I don't have too high of expectations for tea.

(Eddie admits. He's used to iced tea at the most, so really, she was safe. He takes a small sip and decides that it isn't so bad. He takes another sip. Her response makes him feel guilty though. Guilty for being so upset, and he stares down at his knees, sinking a bit into himself. Was he selfish for being upset?)

Maybe it's stupid.

(He mumbles the words. Though the situation hadn't been like that. They could have gotten him out. And he was forgotten. That and everything else....Really, it was Ben thinking he belonged there that hurt more than everything else.)

I die. Fighting It when I'm older. It rips my arm off and I bleed out and die. (He stares down at his tea.) And Richie's taking care of my body but then for some reason Bev and Ben tell him to ditch it. And Ben says I belong in the sewers. But maybe I'm being dumb about being upset about it. I don't know. Selfish I guess.

[notmarieanymore]

Hey. [Rogue is surprised by the fierceness in her voice as she sets the tea down on the small table. She leans forward toward Eddie, and carefully so he knew what was coming, she held on to his chin and gently tipped his face toward her.]

It's not stupid. You're not being stupid. I have no idea how the hell I'd respond to something like that, but I can guarantee you I'd probably mad as hell if I were you. [But she wasn't. They had different life experiences. He had It. She had megalomaniacs and the government to contend with.]

But don't you ever say that you belong in the sewers, Eddie Kaspbrak, d'you hear me? [First and last-name usage were a clear sign Rogue was either upset with you or trying to make a very important point. This was one of the latter ones.]

[clussy]

(The fierceness surprises Eddie too, but it does not scare him, weirdly enough. Maybe it's because he trusts Rogue enough by now to know she wasn't aiming to yell at him. He stares at her with glassy eyes, his breath a little hiccupy.

It was different. Being left in Its layer was....Cruel in a strange sort of way. If his friends had left him in a situation similar to Jean's abandonment, it'd be a lot easier to swallow. That couldn't be helped. It was awful and sad, but it wasn't leaving her body in a lair of fear and pain and death. A lair where dead children were kept, where haunts bred like bacteria.

And Eddie of all people to be abandoned...

He gives a shaky nod. The seriousness of her voice, and the use of his full name steady him some.)

I- I don't. (He sniffs quietly.) I never thought my friends would be so willing to ditch me. R-Richie tried to argue, but he gave up too. And when you leave Derry, you forget. So I know that...

(He would be forgotten. Completely. No one in the world would remember Eddie Kaspbrak. Maybe Myra, but he didn't care about that. He didn't know Myra, and he had seen his own loveless future with her.)

We stop being friends in the future. Only go back to Derry to kill It. I don't...I don't want that. I don't want my life to be so-. (Alone and miserable, and for it to end just the same.)

[notmarieanymore]

[Rogue puts an arm around him, pulling Eddie in a close to herself as she dared.]

There's something weird in Derry, Eddie. Maybe it's that clown that did something to them. From what I've seen, you and your friends are an amazing group of people. They would take you out- so there's got to be something else at play, okay?

[She rubs her thumb patternlessly on his shoulder.]

No one said that the future is set in stone, Eddie. If you don't want to stop being their friend, don't.

[clussy]

(Rogue wasn't wrong. Derry was weird and fucked up, and unlike any other place Eddie has been. Not that he's been to many places. It gives him some speck of hope to think that maybe this had to do with Pennywise. It wasn't impossible, was it?)

I think so too. (That's the real thing here. Eddie knows the Richie and Bill here like he knows his own heart. They would never, ever do that to him. But if their memories were real....

Eddie stares up at Rogue, his eyes large and intensely hopeful.)

Do you really think that? That things can be changed? (Maybe if they never leave here. Maybe then....He shuts his eyes.)

Is it bad that I don't want to ever leave this place? It's not perfect, but it's...A lot better.

[notmarieanymore]

Growing up, my neighbor was this old blind woman named Irene. She was absolutely amazing- always had this uncanny knack for knowing where things were, great timing. She'd say things and she'd always be right. I think now she was a mutant, but... Anyway, she told me once that nothing's set in stone.

So yeah- I think we can change things.

[She pulls him a bit closer.] No, and y'know what? I don't think you're the only person that feels that way.

[clussy]

(Chaos theory hadn't been discovered yet from when Eddie came from. If it had, he might have been thinking of that. For him, the future was an immobile thing. Which was almost silly to think of. After all, if he decided to go to the Greenery instead of the Music Hall, two very different things could happen.

He listens to her seriously because he takes her opinion, her experience in the universe, very seriously. She knows people that he's never known, people with gifts. He's watching her with child-expectant eyes, like Rogue would be able to do what adults always seemed to do and wave her hands and everything would be fixed.

He knows realistically nothing was that easy, but for a moment, he let himself hope.)

Maybe...I guess...we won't be like that. I always think I don't want to go back there, to Derry, but I want my friends. Maybe this place- (He gestures vaguely around him to indicate Avagi.) Is some weird cosmic saving grace. Maybe that Turtle...

(That turtle what? Eddie doesn't finish the sentence.)

....I don't...I don't know....I haven't talked to the others since everything. I don't know what to say to any of them.

[notmarieanymore]

[Rogue rubs his shoulder.] Maybe it is. And if it is, you should make the best of it.

[She's a little curious about the turtle.]

Maybe you should start with 'hello' and go from there? They probably don't know what to say to you, either.

[clussy]

(Eddie sulks a little at her advice. Not because it was bad advice, but because he very much was perceiving it with the childish mentality of 'but they did something wrong to ME, why should I have to talk to them first?'

The reason he doesn't verbally disagree though is because a large part of him didn't want to disagree. A large part of him wanted to fix things with all of his friends.)

What if we never go back to how we were though? They're...really special to me, Rogue. I think that's the worst part of this. I don't ...It really fucking sucks what they did to me, what happens, but I've hated not having them more than any of that. I hate feeling like I've been blindsided by the one thing I've always felt confident about.

And I don't feel confident about anything else, Rogue. It's always been them.

(His friends. They had been his roots of sanity since he was just a young boy.)

My mom was always going on about how awful they were, and now all I can hear is her telling me she was right.

(He means that pretty literally, but doesn't say as much.)

[notmarieanymore]

Hey- your mom isn't right, Eddie. She doesn't know your friends like you do, and if you think they're good people, then they're good people. I think...

How much of it did you see? [There's got to be a bigger context, something to explain why his friends had left him.]

If they feel about you the way you feel about them, then I bet they're beating themselves up about this. Wondering what the hell happens that they leave their best friend's body. [The problem was Beverly and Ben weren't there.]

Things won't ever go back to the way they were, Eddie. I hate to be the one to say it, but all you can do is push forward. But I think you also need to figure out if something that happens almost 30 years from now is worth ruining some friendships you have right now. [it's tough love, exactly as Logan would give her. However, she tries to make up for it by rocking him just slightly.]

[clussy]

I know she's not right.

(Except when he first found out, he had let himself wonder if maybe she had been. He feels guilty about that though, and it's hard to explain to Rogue that he didn't mean to say he kept thinking about her saying she was right, but rather more literally that he was actually hearing her say it. It sounded crazy though.)

A lot. It was me, Richie, and Bill, so it was kinda- a lot. I saw me dying, and they were fighting It then so. (That made sense for them to abandon his body for the time being...But then.)

When they left my body though, they had defeated It. Where they were was crumbling, but Richie didn't have a problem carrying me out. I don't know why they made him.

(They had needled at Richie to leave him.)

I don't know. I guess it's one thing to leave my body but...(Truthfully, the most hurtful thing was Ben saying that he belonged there. Eddie doesn't say that though, because a part of him wonders if he's being too sensitive. But he's always been impressionable.

Tough love doesn't go too far with Eddie. He's too good at sinking into himself sometimes, though her gentleness helps.

Though he does instantly look up at her, his eyes a little fierce.)

Of course it's not worth ruining our friendship. It's just- I don't really know...how to feel. There's a lot of stuff I'm upset about and sometimes I'm mad and sometimes I feel nothing at all. My friggan arm gets ripped off. Stan kills himself and ditches all of us even though he made us make the promise. I don't know what I was gonna say to Richie that was so important. And then everything else.

(Eddie's hands fly a bit around and then he's curling them into fists and drops his head onto Rogue's shoulder, shutting his eyes.)

I don't even know where to begin with myself. (He confesses this softly, and simply, and the real shit thing was that this is probably the first time he's had to go through so much all at once. At twelve, that's...asking for a lot.)

If things aren't ever gonna go back to how they were, then what does that even mean?

[notmarieanymore]

[Rogue keeps rubbing his shoulder trying her best to be comforting. It's such a hard situation, and she can't fight the feeling that she isn't giving the right advice, that somehow she's making this worse. The only thing she could really do was be there for him, listen to him. Maybe he'd figure it out on her own. That's what Logan always let her do. He gave her room to make mistakes, but he was there to help there.]

Shit, Eddie.

[It's so heavy, all the's gone through. She can't imagine being that young and knowing how she dies.]

I'm... I'm not sure. I wish I could tell you the right thing to make it all better. But maybe... I think you need to figure out you. That, or have faith that when the time comes, your friends will make the right decision. [If that was leaving him in the sewers or not, she was unsure.]

[clussy]

(In Rogue's defense, there were times where everything just became too much for Eddie. This was one of those times, and it was easily the most volatile he's ever felt. Maybe it wasn't perfect advice, but if anything, her pointing out that he didn't want to ruin his friendships over this would be the one essential thing that would ultimately take root from this conversation. Because Rogue was right: he didn't want to lose his friends.

The future image hurt a lot. It hurt a lot because Eddie felt a lot, and there was a lot to be hurt by, but all the same, it was an image and his friends were his Here And Now Reality. He didn't know those strangers that abandoned him.

It's something that would come to keep him up the next few nights.

He opens his hand up to look at the faded scar across his palm from their original promise. He looks up at Rogue, looking tired, and far too old for any twelve year old.)

I think faith is my only option right now. It just...I can't talk to them right now. (He frowns, staring at his knees, before looking directly at Rogue.)

Does that make sense? It hurts to not go find Richie. He- He's...I don't like him being alone. He...doesn't...do well when he's alone and someone's gotta take care of him. And Bill...he's already got all this guilt...and Stan...

(Eddie scarcely knows how to deal with that. He closes his mouth and grinds his teeth, thinking.)

I want to be with them. But I don't know if I should. I feel like. We all need some time to think. Does that...make sense?

[notmarieanymore]

[Rogue will hold him and rock him gently as long as he feels he needs. He's too young to carry this weight. They all were.]

Do you want me to check in on them? Make sure everyone's doing alright?

[He probably wouldn't but it was always the thought that counted. Her Southern Hospitality dictated she at least offer.]

If you feel that way, you're probably right. Maybe you'll fall back into place at the right time. [She offers him a sympathetic smile.]

If you want, you can stay here with me for a few days. I can take the couch.

[clussy]

...(It's not a horrible idea, but he also didn't want to make them feel like they were being babysat either.)

Richie's in the Greenery. He...should be okay, but if he seems really upset, just...I don't know. Humor him or something.

(Eddie has spent years fostering the perfect routine for keeping Richie feeling wanted without seeming like he was trying too hard. There was a delicate balance so that Richie wouldn't get too obnoxious over the attention. Eddie didn't know how to entrust that as well as explain that to someone else.)

It's okay. I don't want to be a burden. I've got a place set up at the Observation Deck. Plus. I'm working on something.

(He looks down at his colorful hands. Maybe it wasn't important in the long run, but it was cathartic to do. It wasn't the same sort of artistic liberty Bill might take, but that was okay.)

Thanks though. This has..been more than enough. Sorry to be such a baby about all this.

[notmarieanymore]

Humor him, got it.

[Rogue wasn't sure when she'd become the mom friend, but it was an uncanny truth at this point. Kitty had been an even bigger mom than her, though. The bitch.]

No! Eddie, sugar, you know you're never a burden to me. Don't think that. If you ever want to stay with me, you just let me know. [She smiles hopefully reassuringly.] You'll have to show me whatever it is when you're done. Must be big, to leave you covered in chalk. [Give him a little confidence about his whole endeavor.]

You're not a baby, Eddie. I'm not gonna let you think that.

[clussy]

(It was pretty hard not to become the mom friend with these boys, in her defense.

Eddie smiles a little bit at Rogue's insistence.)

Naw I know. It's why I came to you. I..knew I could. (Even if he felt bad about it, he at least didn't feel like it wasn't an option at all. That was important.)

When things are better, you can always stay with us too. Richie, Bill, and I all sleep in the same room anyway so there's a lot of spare room.

(He sounds a little sad as he says this because honestly, he'd gotten used to sleeping with either one of the two boys.)

It's...pretty huge, yeah. (His smile grows a little bit more before fading rather quickly.)

Thanks Rogue. You really are a good friend.

[notmarieanymore]

Well, thank you, sugar. [She knew she wouldn't take him up on that- she liked having her own private space. It was far safer, and she didn't want to have to deal with one of the kids accidentally touching her.[

Like a constant sleepover.

[She had to bet that was good for them all, when they weren't dealing with this ridiculous amount of bullshit.]

Hey- I'm just doing what any older sister would do.