It was funny how a little sleep and a new change of clothes could make a guy feel like a new man. A new dead man, maybe, but, hey, what could you do?
A young Eddie Kaspbrak would've screamed and cried. He would've gotten super defensive and tried to fight the first person to look at him funny. He may have even broken something because it wasn't fair. It wasn't fair and he was scared. He was scared and upset and he couldn't even run to Richie about it because the subject was painful for him. So little Eddie would've been out of a fucking support system. Adult Eddie had been sure he was going to go and do much of the same. Maybe without trying to fight someone because glow swords didn't sound like fun. He wound up doing none of that.... well, maybe he cried and screamed and maybe he came close to tossing his useless weapon at a window but thought better of it because someone would have to live in that house with a broken window, damnit. Mostly dealing with his death was marked by periods of unhappy silence.
It wasn't that he died. Everyone dies and Eddie had been sure of his own impending demise since he was five years old. When a barely remembered Frank Kaspbrak lost his battle with cancer and Eddie, himself, had to be hospitalized. Death was inevitable. What bothered him was the fact that he'd died a coward. He'd died in front of the person he loved the most and hadn't even been able to tell him. He couldn't have. Things would've been different. Richie wouldn't have wanted to see him. He would've been colder.
Melancholy and self-pity eventually gave way to a numb sort of feeling that left him operating on auto-pilot. Checking out the other houses had seemed like a good idea. Structural integrity was important. He didn't want to die because the building he was sleeping in wasn't up to code or had been in such disrepair before Richie picked it out that it was one slammed door away from turning into a pile of rubble for him to be buried beneath.
The house Richie picked was perfectly fine but Eddie needed something else to focus on.
He hadn't expected to run into anyone else. Richie was a motormouth. He could talk to anyone about anything. Eddie wasn't. Unsurprisingly, he hadn't made many friends. He hadn't even tried to. His own social failings aside, the population seemed to be small. So small that he hadn't really run into anyone up until he heard a voice and turned to see Natasha. She was younger than him, pretty, and carried herself with a confidence he could never have. She was also smiling. Kindly. He still had his iron fence post but he wasn't gripping onto it or holding it in a way that could be seen as menacing or like he even had any intention of using it. He didn't.
"You and me both." He admitted. "The town's a lot smaller than I thought it was." He'd been sure the houses appeared to be endless the night he arrived. "I'm Eddie Kaspbrak... and I guess that depends. You didn't happen to grow up in Derry, Maine did you?" It was a joke. Of course she didn't.