Splendor//Bill Denbrough

F i f t e e n

"NOOOOOOOO!"

Carnation's screams echo throughout the cavern as she sprints to Bill's lifeless body, arms and legs pumping. She drops to her knees.

"Bill, can you hear me?"

She gives her husband's limp corpse a violent shake.

"Wake up, Bill, come on. Wake up, baby."

Her sons and friends watch in horror as she continues to shake him, tears running down her face. Mike carefully walks up to her.

"Carn?"

"Please baby, please get up!"

"Carn, we have to keep fighting," he rubs her back tenderly. She clings onto Bill.

"We have to wait for Bill!! We can't keep going without him!!"

"Hey, hey, listen to me. He's dead. There's nothing we can do."

"NO!!!! Don't say that!!'

Prying her hands from Bill's arm, Mike scoops her up.

"Put me down!!" she thrashes in his arms. "LET ME GO!!!"

"Mom!!" Atticus shouts. "He's gone!! He's gone, mom!!"

"We have to kill It, do you understand?" Mike asks Carn.

It. The word sparks hatred in her heart and pulls her out of her stupor.

"YOU KILLED MY HUSBAND, YOU FUCKING BITCH!" Carn unsheaths her kitchen knife and runs to the spider, shoving it through her. It scrapes her heart. She falls to the ground, weak. Richie is over there in a flash, sticking his stake through Its actual heart. She dies instantly.

Atticus and Jeremy, with tears running down their faces, smash and kick her eggs to pieces, so there will never be a second one.

Carn is already back at Bill's side. She's holding his hand, which has already lost so much warmth from when she held him minutes ago. Her sons are behind her now, kissing her and telling their dad that they love him.

A rumble begins to sound and dust falls from the ceiling. The lair is caving in.

"Guys, we really need to go!" Beverly shouts. "We don't have time to bring Bill, we just need to leave!"

"Go," Carnation tells her boys quietly. "I'll be right behind you."

They look at each other, but nod obediently and run off. She's alone with him.

"You were the splendor of my life," Carnation whispers and kisses his cold lips.

She gets away from the collapse just in time.

**************************************

Carn doesn't leave bed for days afterwards. She stays at Mike's, barely eating or speaking. Claire comes up the day after it happens, and spends the whole time sobbing at her mother's bedside.

The rest of the Losers trickle out of Derry, stopping to say goodbye to her and Mike, promising to call.

After five days of lying around, Carn finally gets up to take a shower and spend time with her children. She finds out that Jeremy hasn't been speaking to anyone either and drowns herself in guilt for being a terrible mother.

They go home two days later, but that makes everything worse. It feels unreal that Bill isn't going to be there. Not his teasing, not his stubbornness, not his frequent swearing, not his stutter, not his sweet affection and little surprises. If not for her children, Carn would be completely broken.

One night, when Atticus can't sleep, he goes to Carn's room. Jeremy is already fast asleep next to her- he absolutely refuses to sleep anywhere else now.

"Mama?"

He hasn't called her that since he was in kindergarten. She puts a bookmark in her novel and places it aside, so he knows he has all of her attention.

"Yes, my love?"

"You know why Jer and I kept coming back to help you and dad?" Atticus sits down next to her as gently as he can so he won't wake his brother.

"Why, honey?" Carn asks, pushing his strawberry blond hair out of his face. He looks so like Bill, and it breaks her heart.

"Because we wanted to be the favorite kids," he admits, turning red. "It's sounds so stupid now."

To be the favorite-

"You thought dad and I favored Claire?"

She doesn't know whether to laugh or cry.

"Well, yes."

"Why on earth?" she chuckles a bit.

"I mean, you two were always doting on her and how wonderful she is and how she's your miracle baby and everything."

"Oh, honey," Carn smiles, slinging and arm around him. "We were doting on her because we were proud of her. She just graduated college and is stepping out into the real world, for heaven's sake. But that doesn't mean we weren't proud of you two!"

"It doesn't?"

"Of course not! You are two of the smartest and kindest boys in the world, and even though it was extremely stupid to keep coming back to us, you were persistent. I'm afraid, like your sister, you inherited your stubbornness from both of us."

Atticus laughs. "Yeah, I guess so."

"And yes, Claire technically is our 'miracle baby'. But that doesn't mean you and Jeremy aren't angels. Atticus, I love you and your brother and sister more than anyone or anything in the world. I don't think anyone could even fathom the amount of love I have for you guys. And your father felt the exact same way, that I know for a fact."

"So you don't have a favorite?"

"Absolutely not."

Pushing Jeremy slowly to the side, Carn scooches over to make more room for Atticus.

"You want to stay here tonight?"

"Mom, I'm not a little kid anymore!"

"Don't tell her I told you, but sometimes when Claire was a sophomore, she'd come and stay with me and dad."

His face lights up, always looking for something to tease his sister with. "Really?"

"Really."

"Well, then, okay, but you cannot tell any of my friends."

"Cross my heart and hope to-" she stops herself, realizing what she was saying. Atticus allows himself to make a joke.

"Too soon."