Notes: Impasse - reached.

"I'm a call without an answer, I'm a shadow in the dark..."

Mike Shinoda - Post Traumatic, "Nothing Makes Sense Anymore"

A ghost.

Georgie thought on Bill's comparison for a long time after that impromptu sleepover at the Tozier house. And the more he thought about it, the more it made sense.

More sense than any alternative comparison he had, anyway.

Musing, the six-year-old boy pulled on his green tee-shirt and black pyjama pants without issue. The only time he seemed to find opportune to think on it was when he found himself alone.

What he had seen, what had helped him, that was a ghost?

If ghosts weren't real, then...

No, they had to be.

Pennywise was real enough. Even if he didn't fit the textbook defintion of one, he could pull the same kinds of feats as ghosts did.

Phase through walls. Fit into places physical things could not go. Change his appearance.

Be heard without being seen.

Well... technically, anyone could do that last one. If you weren't facing them, of course they would be unseen.

Pulling his socks on, Georgie giggled softly at his momentary wittiness. Then resumed toweling his short brown hair off. It was almost done as an afterthought, before he had realized how sopping wet the locks still were. Mom wouldn't be happy if he sat down at the table after dripping a trail down the stairs and across to the kitchen floor.

Given the inherent privacy of the bathroom, this was as good a place as any to ponder. And to laugh at yourself for random lapses of said thought without anyone asking what's so funny.

Bill had taken the first shower, then closed the door to his bedroom, while Mom and Dad were downstairs. Probably setting the table for dinner, planning their next-year trip to Acadia, respectively. Snowed in as they all were, no one would be venturing outside this Thursday night, not at this later afternoon hour. They kept busy where they could elsewhere.

No chance of an interruption for Georgie, unless someone heard the call of nature.

All in all, it was proving to be another ordinary early evening at the Denbrough household.

With the towel over his head, Georgie squeezed at his hair, ruffled it one final time. There. It seemed dry enough. Facing the countertop sink, he lifted the handtowel from his eyes, intent on checking his progress in the mirror.

There, waiting in its reflection, he was starkly reminded.

Ordinary had long since left his life.

"Ahh!"

Georgie had cracked the door open, so the room wouldn't get so foggy and hot during bathtime. Seeing what awaited him in the mirror above the sink, he almost thought to lunge for the doorknob, to escape.

Then, past that initial fight-or-flight scare, he gasped and dropped the towel.

In surprise? In delight?

A bit of both, in all honesty.

"Penny!"

The mirror was no longer a mirror.

Or, rather, it was. There was still a reflection of the room as itself in the rectangular pane, with the bathtub, the wall beyond it. Set in a decorative recess above the tub was a varied collection of shampoos and soaps.

Resting on his elbows, Pennywise leaned against the mirror's bottom frame as if it were a drive-thru window.

As if he were standing in an entirely-different room.

What a neat trick.

The scarlet-trimmed smile that creased his pale face certainly made it seem clever.

"Long time, no sEe, GeorgIe."

The boy stammered soundlessly for a few seconds, caught percariously between deciding on excitement versus bewilderment, before bounding over to the open door. He paused only to lean outside, to check the hallway.

Finding it empty, he quietly closed the door and bounded back.

"Penny, hi!"

Frowning, the clown put a finger to his red lips. "Shhh!" With a gloved thumb, he gestured to his right, Georgie's left, and stage-whispered, "Billy's room is jusT over there."

The grade schooler nodded earnestly and leaned closer, voice adjusted to an almost-whisper:

"Yeah. But it's okay, though. We talked, about you."

"...I knoW."

Georgie tilted his head, reaching up to grasp the counter's edge. "You do? How?"

"I just- " Pennywise stopped mid-sentence, as if he were rethinking such a curt, unclarifying answer. Reluctantly, he explained, "I... overheard."

"The other night, at Richie's, you mean?"

The clown raised a striped eyebrow. "Is that where you weRe?"

"How did you hear us?"

The entity started to frown.

He had seen this routine before, at the storm drain.

The torrent of questions were beginning to flow.

After a moment's pause, Georgie shook his head.

"Never mind. Sorry."

Pennywise tilted his head to one side, left eye straying the opposite way. The frown eased.

"What abouT?"

Cheeks flushing, Georgie peeked up through the tops of his eyes.

"I should know better. You don't like questions."

The visitor glanced away, drummed his fingers on his side of the mirror's edge for a moment, considering.

Then his eyes centered and narrowed, pupils flexing from round to slit-shaped and back. Through his teeth, he sucked in a tight breath.

"I don'T... mind them, GeorgIe. Just- not so maNy at once."

"Okay." Nodding, compromise reached, the boy folded his bare arms to lean on the counter.

That was fair. Maybe, among the other things the ghostlike entity didn't know, about himself or anyone else, he had to be shown what it was to converse? Properly?

"I know. You ask me one, then I ask you. We'll go back and forth?"

That seemed agreeable enough.

Until Pennywise almost-glared at him.

The humid air still lingering in the bathroom suddenly felt almost pricky, crackling as it was charged with static. Georgie almost stepped away.

"This isn't a good place, kidDo. Isn't dinner starting soon?"

"Hey, there's one."

"One, wHat?"

The youngest Denbrough smiled, trying to make it look encouraging. "Question. You asked one."

Those odd eyes blinked shut, and Pennywise shook his head. His collar made a little tinging sound as he did.

"Still isn'T a good time or place, GeorgIe."

"Then why- but you're here, now."

"I'm not theRe. I'm just... using the mirror to talk. Like the booK at school."

"Penny, I want to help," Denbrough blurted out. He could only take so much dancing around, and it felt wrong to demand this of anyone. Their time and place dictated it be done, though. "But you have to start making sense."

"...SenSe?"

The clown's expression sagged, as did the ruffles of his costume.

Wasn't I making sense before?

Georgie read the question, posed non-verbally as it was.

He faltered in trying to give an answer.

"I'm sorry, but- between talking to Billy- and- it'd be easier if you just- "

The entity's image didn't move.

He didn't sigh.

Breathe in or sniffle like he was about to start crying.

He just stared down at the boy, brows lowered. It looked like the very picture of sad. No matter how smooth and neutral his voice went, there was definitely an underlying note of sorrow.

"Things haven't... been easy lately."

For you?

For me?

Because of you?

Because of me?

Whatever that had meant, the despondant words - the kid's heartstrings were effectively pulled by it. Mind made up, Georgie frowned, then put his hands on the counter again and leaned closer, practically over the sink.

Until only a few inches of air were between his nose and the mirror.

"Penny, I can't help you if you don't let me ask you about things."

It was vaguely trippy, bordering on bizarre, to be so close, and yet know there was no reaching through the mirror like it were an open window. Weirder still was the entity's mimickry of his pose.

The image opposite his own leaned on the counter in much the same way.

It stared back just as intently.

Georgie was close enough he could see the cracks in the facepaint, the frizzy strands of orange hair.

Topped by the sheer uncertainty in those blue eyes.

"Just... stop running away."

Fate let them have a moment's peace. Just one.

Then history saw fit to repeat herself.

The bathroom doorknob turned. In the almost-quiet of their surroundings, it sounded like the tortured wrench of a rusting hinge.

"G-Georgie, c'mon, it's t-time for- "

Looking in on the scene, Bill stopped cold, mouth closing with a audible snap.

Instantly, his brow furrowed, a matching scowl morphing into view.

"You."

Pennywise frowned, but glanced away in the opposite direction.

Nothing more.

Georgie glanced back. "Billy, please." Without leaning away, he instantly went into negotiation mode. No overdramatics, no stunned silence. They were past that part. "We're just talking."

With a cursory glance over his own shoulder, and finding no parents in sight, the older boy stepped inside, half-closing the door behind him. With explosive anger not an option, he seethed, "Talking alone, again?"

Georgie frowned.

Why?

It's easier to talk to him than it has been to you lately.

Pennywise's blue eyes merely swiveled back toward them, blasé.

The irises seemed to shimmer, then take on a faint, green veil.

"Would an apology helP?"

"I'd- a-an- " Bill stammered to a stop. Stepping closer, he braced his hands on the counter beside the sink, shoulders hunching, pausing to take the the odd illusion in in full.

It was more of a thoughtful look than he had taken the first time.

"Y-you- I don't- "

In another repeat of their first encounter, Georgie tugged on his sleeve.

"Should I introduce you again?"

With a strange unanimousness, both brother and entity sighed his name and glanced his way:

"Georgie..."

Said boy's expression went edgy and determined. He seemed willing and ready to take on the role of peacemaker, no matter the consequences. If only they'd just let him.

"We're not gonna get anywhere if you two keep acting so silly."

"Th-there's n-nowhere to get, Georgie. This- this whatever it is- ow, quit it."

Bill stepped back, not because the punch in the elbow hurt, but that already, they had reached that level of tension again.

His little brother huffed and crossed his arms.

"He's not a 'whatever'."

Pennywise arched an eyebrow at the display, suddenly looking like the definition of blandly-unimpressed. Clearly, the creature hadn't been about ready to jump to his own defense there.

"GeoRgie... You'Ve been- hitting BilLy over thiS?"

"He doesn't know what you did, Penny. He says he understands, that you saved me, but he doesn't think you're real."

The apparition stared him down, a repeat of the nearly-frozen move he seemed to favor so much, then - rather than get angry - he merely chuffed and shook his head.

It was a spot-on, if deeper, imitation of the same sound Georgie had just uttered.

"Hmph. And you think hitTing him is going to change his minD?"

"It hasn't," Bill interjected, clearly fed up with being talked over as he was. "And- I was g-going to say, whatever this is all about, you can l-leave Georgie out of it."

"What if I don't want to be left out?" the six-year-old fired back, growing more defiant with every word. "Billy, Penny's a friend. You're supposed to help friends when they have problems."

Bill grit his teeth, sparing the mirror another glare.

As if the creature inside would lunge out at any moment.

Unprovoked.

And with every word spoken, they were somehow getting closer to said provokation.

"Y-you don't even know how to help him."

"Talking is a start, isn't it?" Georgie groused. "And not getting- interrupted every time you try to."

Speaking of interruptions...

In a very timely fashion, Zach Denbrough's voice boomed from under their feet, loud enough to reach the second floor.

"Boys! Dinner!"

Caught betwixt realities, both of his sons exchanged a wide-eyed look.

Then, together, they glanced back at the mirror.

Georgie half-expected to have gone blank, returned to normal.

To see nothing but their own slack-jawed reflections.

That his friend had run away again.

Still leaning on his elbows, Pennywise was there.

He smirked.

Then he reached through the mirror, waving his fingers forward in a casual shooing gesture.

"Go, then. Don'T let me keEp you."

At the gesture, Bill snapped out of his trance long enough to call back down the stairs.

"Just a second, Dad!"

Taking his chance, Georgie jumped up on the counter's edge one last time, balancing on his hands.

He leaned over the sink again.

"After dinner? Or-or later? We'll talk later?"

Pennywise stared up through the tops of his askew eyes.

Meek and at the boy's mercy.

His frilly arm still hung over the sink.

"If you're suRe..."

"I'm sure, Penny. Please?"

His only answer was a sinister, upward twisting of those red lips, revealing sharp teeth.

Followed immediately by a gentle finger-flick against his nose.

"29 NeibolT Street, then. The door's alwayS open."

Georgie felt himself freeze at the touch.

He didn't know whether to feel charmed or... alarmed.

And he wasn't given any more time to puzzle over it.

"Okay, that's enough."

Someone grabbed his wrist.

"George, come on!"

Yanked bodily away from the sink, Georgie yelped as he was unceremoniously pulled from the room.

Bill slammed the door as they left.

Their mother's voice hollered up at them seconds later, demanding to know what was wrong. Georgie barely heard her. Breathing hard, he thought he heard the beginnings of high-pitched cackling going off before the latch thumped shut.

Unseen as the clown now was...

You might have thought it was a ghost gone mad laughing after them.