Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The blue, electric glow of the portal cast ugly shadows on Fiddleford's face.

Ford held him helplessly in his arms as he babbled incoherently. It wasn't the words that stunned him. It wasn't even his limp body. It was the expression of pure, unadulterated horror plastered across his usually gentle face.

Ford shut off the portal, heart pounding in his chest. If what Fiddleford said was true... his heart sped even faster. The room spun around and around in his head. No, you need to stay calm. He shook himself, but it only made the light-headed-ness worse. Blast it, why aren't there any lights down here?!

He never needed lights before. The portal cast all the light, both literal and figurative, that he needed. In the pitch black darkness, Ford held his hands out in front of him, feeling around for Fiddleford. When his hands made contact with the man's body, he felt him flinch.

Oh, Fiddleford. What have I done? He always said Bill Cipher was bad news. He always said it, even after Ford had done his best to convince him otherwise. Even after Bill had offered to do things for him, to help him with his feats of engineering. Fiddleford had always refused. Even when he'd swallowed his fears and kept quiet about his distrust of Bill.

Ford carried his research partner's body upstairs to the study, and laid him down on the floor again. "Can you stand up?"

Fiddleford stared up at him, drooling, and shook his head. He kept shaking it and shaking it, until Ford grabbed his head with both hands to make him stop. He still didn't stop.

Bill. He had to talk to-

Ford's blood went cold. Fumbling with the candles he kept positioned in a circle on the floor at all times, he lit them and slid into the center. "I'll save you, Fiddleford," he whispered as he closed his eyes. But he couldn't focus. He became aware of how badly his fingers were shaking. Relax.  Ford ran his fingers through his hair. Deep breath. Inhale, exhale.

He repeated the motion for several minutes, until his hands stopped shaking. Then suddenly, he was in the mindscape.

"Back already?" Bill said in his characteristic combination between an ethereal hum and the shout of a used car salesman. Ford had always thought it was charming, for the muse to borrow human inflections and weave them into his otherwise (surely) incomprehensible tongue, but now...

Ford lunged at him and he twirled away. Books and other research equipment appeared in the void, rumbling as if in chaos. "Ohhohohoh," Bill chuckled. "What's bugging you, Fordsy?"

Ford caught a glimpse of him heading off somewhere to his right, and he began sprinting, using floating books as a staircase. "You lied to me!" he shouted, taking Bill's performance as confirmation of his fears.

Bill rose up from just beneath Ford's feet, until he consumed his entire line of sight. "You're going to have to be a little more specific than that."

Ford stumbled backwards. He felt like he'd just been pushed off of a cliff. My muse. My muse. My muse.

He'd trusted a liar, hook, line, and sinker. How many details of his life's work were irretrievably corrupted by the lies of this... this trickster god? This... this... demon?

"Relax," Bill said with a nonchalant wave of his hand. "I didn't fudge any of your precious research. How else could you have built the portal?"

The words focused him. He looked Bill directly in the eye. "Where does the portal really lead?"

Bill waved his hand. An incomprehensible image appeared beside him. Shadowy figures shifted in a cacophony of colors, visible through something like a stain or a crack. "Let's just say that when that portal finishes charging up, your dimension is gonna learn how to party! Right, guys?"

The shadowy figures' gaping open mouths stretched open. Screams of laughter filled his ears, and for a second they consumed him. Black spots formed in his vision as the monstrous, maniacal laughter reached an apex, before fading away as the noises grew muffled again.

"No!" Ford cried. "You can't! I'll stop you! I've already shut it down!"

Bill jabbed a finger at him. "A deal's a deal, Sixer. You can't stop this from coming, but it would be fun to see you try!" He clasped his hands together. "Cute, even!"

Ford clutched his head. So he was trying to bridge separate dimensions. Smashing barriers that kept nightmarish creatures from entering this world. When the portal finishes charging up. Well, at least he'd done one thing right. Still, panic surged up in his chest.

"What, are you waiting for something?" Bill taunted. "Why haven't you woken up?"

Ford looked around at all of his research--no, at their research, drifting through the mindscape. In every direction he looked, the whiteboards, holograms, notebooks, and other paraphernalia stretched out to infinity. Then he looked back at Bill Cipher, seething. "Look at everything we've done! If you bring your friends through the portal, this will all be destroyed!"

"Nice guess Ford, but once that portal's open, I'll have a physical form! I could protect all your research, and you."

"You've fooled me once already. I'm not falling for this a second time."

"That's too bad," Bill sighed, reclining backwards with his arms behind his head. "I wasn't lying about the portal, you know. All I did was omit the world-destroying parts! Just imagine. All the secrets of the universe, stolen from your reach because of a morality system! Haha!"

"You're not actually asking me to join you."

"Sure I am! What's your point?" Bill vanished, and his voice came from directly behind Ford's head. He spun around. Such a cheap trick.

"What would I do in a world of demons and monsters? I'm a human being, Bill! I belong in a human world!"

"Boy, that's a laugh. You think you would have listened to me if you "belonged in the human world"? Just look at yourself!" He twirled his finger, making a tiny version of the Mystery Shack appear in the palm of his hand. "You moved away from civilization just so that you could come running after this kind of stuff!" He snapped his fingers, and a myriad of mystical creatures from Ford's journals appeared in miniature in mid air.

"Face it, Sixer," Bill lowered his eye and wiggled Ford's pinky finger. "You hate humanity. That's why we get along so well!" He put his arm around Ford's shoulder. "You think I wanna destroy you? Wake up! You're the only human on Earth who's smart enough to listen to me! The last guy I tried to collaborate with set himself on fire!"

Bill wiggled his fingers, and a scene appeared of a man screaming in agony as his head went up in flames. The Bill in the memory looked furious. The real Bill Cipher only laughed. "Haha, I should watch that more often! Pain is hilarious!"

Ford took a step backwards. "You don't understand humanity! And you're-"

"Wrong?" Bill said in a deep, demonic voice. Ford stood his ground. Just another cheap magic trick. Then he floated through Ford and spun around to face him, conjuring a cane to lean on. "Okay, explain to me how I'm wrong. This should be interesting!"

Ford didn't break eye contact with him. To think I befriended a monster! Just like that!

He waved his own arm, conjuring a table for them to sit at. This was the mindscape, after all. Anyone could do anything.

"Sure, take your time!" Bill laughed, clapping his hands to summon a big clock with a count-down timer. The numbers flew across the screen, keeping track of milliseconds. "I'm a patient guy!"

Ford leaned forward in his chair. "How about a game of chess, demon?"

"Sure thing, Sixer." Bill snapped his fingers and a chessboard appeared. "I should have guessed you'd pull this trick. What was it you said... busy fingers help me think?"

Ford snapped a finger, reversing the colors of the chess pieces so he went first. He made his move. I don't know why I'm doing this. What about Fiddleford?

"Say, how's old Fiddleford doing?" Bill asked, moving his pawn as well.

Ford glowered at him.

The look made Bill tumble backwards through empty space, absolutely cackling with glee. "AHAHAHAHAHA!"

When he'd composed himself, he drifted back to the table and sat down. "See, that's the kind of thing I'm talking about, Sixer! One look at another dimension destroyed him! But you? It would only make you more curious!"

Ford moved his knight. "You're saying I'll learn the secrets of the universe, but how can I, when beings like you do nothing but destroy?"

Bill mirrored his move again. "You're talking about my buddies over in the nightmare realm, right? That's crazy talk, and you know it! Preserving trees, or daffodils, or human-eating crocodiles won't help you find more answers!" As he listed each thing, it appeared on the ground below them, lifelike and supple until the next item was named, and it shriveled into ash. "You couldn't care less about natural phenomenon. I'm offering you a priceless opportunity to experience the weird!"

Bill pointed at random books, and they morphed into a landscape. "Besides! I'm not looking to destroy the universe. I just want to make it weirder!" The landscape hissed and bubbled, forming into impossible shapes, and spitting out bizarre creatures from its depths. "That's exactly what you want, isn't it? It would be like Gravity Falls, everywhere!"

Ford made a move. He inhaled, finding the courage to finally speak without his voice shaking. "You talk an awful lot about what I want. Let's talk about you want."

"Ohohoho," Bill chuckled. "If it is possible to change my mind, you'd be the one to do it! Too bad I've literally wanted this for milennia before you were born!"

Ford tried to ignore the banter, and really think. "If I understand you right, you want power. Power over earth, power over the third dimension... typical demon stuff, if you think about it."

"Ha, sure! Typical!" Bill threw his hat into the air and caught it, making the entire mindscape do barrel rolls for a full second.

Ford gripped the table. "Why do you want power, Bill?"

"Why does anyone want power?" Bill Cipher shrugged, waving a vision into the air between them. It showed a younger Ford, leaving his brother to go to college. Shunning his classmates' friendly advances as he worked longer and longer into the night. Moving to Gravity Falls, Oregon. Crying angrily on his knees, head pressed against a chalkboard with a gigantic question mark drawn on it. Reciting a dangerous incantation he was warned never to utter. Being possessed, over and over again, with Fiddleford looking at him, quietly repulsed.

Ford waved the vision away. "I want to know why you want power."

"Okay, okay. Calm down, wise guy! I'm a demon. Do I need a reason to want power? I crave power like you stupid meat bags crave sex! It's genetics!"

Ford clasped his hands together, going deeper into thought. Calm down. You can do this. He took a deep breath. "A universe doesn't last forever."

"What?" Bill narrowed his eye.

"This universe will eventually fade out and die. If you create the spacetime rift, you're going to speed up that process."

"I know that!" Bill seemed genuinely agitated. Especially when he moved his queen out too early. He never made mistakes like that.

Ford gained a little confidence. "The point is, how can you have power over a dying realm? Once you spread weirdness over the entire earth, it's over. You've got nowhere left to go. Nothing left to destroy. And billions of eons to think about it."

He waved his fingers, presenting a world smashed to pieces, with monsters crawling all over it, eternally searching for more things to consume.

Bill snapped his fingers, expanding the projection. Suddenly, an infinite amount of planets hovered all around them in the air. "Your universe is just the beginning, pal! There are infinite multiverses to conquer! Don't you want to be there to see it?" He struck a pose, leaning on the head of a tiny image of Ford. "Or to stop me?"

He made a move, blocking his queen with a weaker piece. "Or are you really so boring that you'd give it all up and die?"

Ford shook his head. "You think you're convincing me, but you're not! I can't play a part in anything that makes people's lives miserable!"

"Oh, we don't need to let people live! It'll just be me and you, buddy! Sailing the stars!"

This was hopeless. Even if he did change Bill's mind, it would be just another lie. He'd swear on his infinite life that he didn't want to bring about a weird end to the world, and then he'd betray him all over again. But they'd known each other for so long! Part of him couldn't bear to believe Bill was irredeemably evil. It hurt so much. He had to think of something. Of a way to save his muse. Of a way to tempt him away from evil.

"Heh." Ford stared at the chessboard. "It seems that we're at a stand still."

"Tell me about it! I offer you wealth, knowledge and infinite power, and you haven't budged! Can't say I'm surprised, but I thought you'd offer me something worthwhile in return."

They both went quiet.

"I don't think as quickly as you, Bill. But I will have an offer." Ford moved his pawn. "Check."

Bill moved his king away without a thought. "I've gotta hand it to you. I'm a real sucker for watching humans squirm." He summoned a martini and sipped from it, his eyelids contorting into a mouth. "I'm at the edge of my seat, waiting for you to make an offer!" The words ended in a sing-song. "The human offering a deal to the demon. Isn't it delicious?"

He plucked the olive out of his drink and popped it into his shark-like mouth. "Check."

Ford puzzled over the chess board. Bill loved watching humans squirm, huh? Well... perhaps he could think of a proposal, after all. He looked Bill in the eye.

"Ooh, look, there it is!" Bill pointed at him so that his finger was uncomfortably close to Ford's face. "You've got an idea! C'mon, gimme details, gimme details." He rubbed his hands together.

Ford swept his hand over the table, making the pieces transform into tiny people. He leaned forward, getting a glint in his eye. "Your weird...mageddon... concept is going to shape the universe to your whims. Humanity enslaved. Animals weird-ified. Everything adjusted to be just perfect. Am I right?"

Bill somehow managed to smirk without having a mouth. "Go on, go on."

Ford swept his hand over the board again, and the people turned to stone. "World after world will end up like this, won't it? Subdued. Boring. If you really want to watch human beings squirm, you should see them in every day life!"

He snapped his fingers and the pieces came to life again, doing various tasks.

Bill chuckled. "Suckers! Who wants to do taxes?" He flicked one of the pieces into the air and it screamed. A new tiny human reappeared in its place.

"You should understand more than anything that good always rises to fight evil." Ford pointed at some of the pieces lounging around to the side of the board, and they turned red, shaking spears in Bill's direction. "You'll end up with so much resistance, it won't be fun anymore."

Tiny people poofed into existence, climbing all over Bill's body. He flicked them off, but they kept growing back. Finally, he burst into flame to burn them away, looking irked.

Ford moved his hands as he spoke. "Sucks, doesn't it?"

He reached out and touched the heads of the tiny people one by one, and they turned bright yellow. "You've never tried being a benevolent god, have you?"

The tiny people gazed around absently. One by one, as they noticed Bill Cipher, they grinned and ran towards him, bowing down at his feet.

Ford gently nudged a wandering person in Bill's direction, and they ran belatedly to catch up with the group. "That's real power. Influence over endless people. The power to spread ideas without so much as a question." He pointed at Bill. "You've always been lying. How can you know for sure if you wouldn't rather be a muse for humanity than a demon, if you haven't tried it?"

Bill sighed contentedly. "Ah, Fordsy, you never fail to impress."

The tiny people screamed out at the sound of Bill's voice, weeping tears of joy. Bill glanced down at them, chuckled, and waved his hand, returning the chess board to its original positions before the object lesson began, in shiny blue and dark-blue glass.

"I hear what you're saying, I really do, but if you tell me I should try goodness, you see what I have to ask you in return, right? You have to try being evil."

Ford's stomach lurched. Bill wasn't refusing him outright? He wasn't laughing it off??

Bill snapped his fingers and the chairs vanished, so that Ford was standing and Bill was hovering in mid air. "Don't tell me you've never considered fudging your morals a little. Well, consider this an opportunity! Because I like you, Ford. And I want to see the look on your face when you realize I can't be turned! So consider this. You get to boss me around and make me..." (he made air quotes) "good. And in return, afterwards, I get to show you what you're missing out on, sticking to your narrow-minded good-and-evil dichotomy! I sample "good", and you sample "evil.""

Ford opened his mouth to argue, and Bill held up a hand to silence him. "No touching the portal! I won't make you bring about... haha what did you call it? Weirdmageddon, and you won't make me rewire it to connect with somewhere else! So relax! It's a fair and square deal!"

"For how long?" Ford asked. Was it wrong that he trusted Bill to keep his side of the bargain? Was he crazy to consider shaking his hand another time, without so much as a hesitation?

Bill looked down at his outstretched hands, pretending to count fingers. "Oh, I don't know. A week? A month? Two weeks? A year? What sounds right to you, old pal?"

Ford considered. "A month each."

"Sold." Bill's voice dropped several octaves as he said it. He licked one hand and held it out for a second, then retracted the arm. "You know, I'm glad it worked out like this. It'll be a new experience for the both of us! It's not often I get to toy with a human's emotions for this long."

Ford scowled at him. "No tricks?"

"No tricks." Bill Cipher extended his hand. It erupted into blue flames.

Ford reached out and shook it.

Chapter Text

If you only knew
the things that we could do!
If I got you on my side
and you could see my point of view!

The flowers grow in summer,
and the insects die in fall.
There is beauty in this order,
as it spins beneath the stars.

Come with me, I’ll teach you kindness.
Let me show you all there is!
There is power in pure science,
Knowledge gained without distress.

Though you may not see it now,
the world is wild, bright, and free!
You can learn to love it all,
and you can learn to live like me.

~

Fiddleford's moment of insanity faded away, only to be replaced by seething anger.

"You made another deal with Bill Cipher?! You heard what I said, and saw what it did to me, and you trusted him again?"

No matter how many times Ford tried to explain it, Fiddleford would have none of it. When he wasn't shaking from the trauma seeing of Bill's dimension, he was shaking his head in disbelief at Stanford Pines.

So it was no surprise when Fiddleford announced he was leaving Gravity Falls for good. The morning his bag sat on the end of the sofa, halfway-zipped-up, Ford didn't even need to ask. Fiddleford had simply given him a weary look, said his goodbyes, and walked out the door to catch the afternoon bus.

Ford couldn't imagine abandoning a lifetime of research in exchange for peace of mind. His mind had never been at peace in the first place--and he didn't ever intend it to be. The weirder, the more disturbing, the more unimaginably dangerous... well, the more he found himself drawn to it. Few things fascinated Ford Pines more than theoretical physics, and The Unexplained was at the top of that list.

Did it cross his mind that he had made a deal with the devil, and maybe he had doomed himself to destruction? Sure. But the alternative was to keep himself in the dark. The alternative was cutting himself off from a nigh-infinite source of knowledge. If his curiosity killed him, at least it would be an interesting death.

If Fiddleford couldn't handle this kind of knowledge, then that was his loss.

Ford told himself this while he locked the door to Fiddleford's bedroom, not once looking inside. He would find another mechanically-minded genius. No, better yet, he didn't need to: he had an inter-dimensional demon on his side. He didn't know what to call a demon when it wasn't evil (anymore)... an angel, perhaps? A muse?

~


The mindscape was shaped exactly to Ford's liking. It looked a little like his favorite corner of the library at graduate school, but the shelves curved elegantly back and forth, and stretched out into infinity.

At the center of it all, there was a small table. Two chairs with triangular-backs hovered on either side of it. Ford leaned backwards in his chair, arms nestled comfortably behind his neck.

"Well well well," said the demon as he appeared in his chair. He surveyed their surroundings loftily. "You've really spruced this place up! I could read all of these books in a millisecond, but they're too dull to be worth my time! Half the stuff is outdated!"

Ford shrugged. His smile didn't hesitate at Bill's words. It only grew. "We're not reading any of these books."

"Oh, oh I get it," Bill interrupted, "you're setting the mood!" He laughed. "That's adorable."

Ford snapped his fingers, and a stack of philosophy textbooks fell from nowhere on to Bill's head, almost knocking off his top hat.

"Ow!" Bill rubbed the tip of his head, glaring at Ford.

Ford glared back.  For a moment, he didn’t say anything. They just stared at each other, letting the weight of their silence speak volumes.

Then Ford uncrossed his legs and leaned forward, putting one elbow on the table. He took his time, hesitating before the words actually came out of his mouth. When he did speak, he looked up at Bill, with the words  who are you? on his face. Maybe it would always be on his face, now that he knew who Bill was. “There must be someone or something that you don’t know. Someone with secrets even you haven’t been able to steal or trick out of them.”

Bill stroked the area under his eye, like a chin. “Let me think. Yeah, interesting question, Sixer. There’s plenty of things I don’t know!”

Ford raised his eyebrows a little, losing some of the tension in his face. “Oh really?”

“Haha, what, did you think I knew everything? Keep dreaming, Ford!” As he said ‘everything’, his form expanded into a formless shape of twinkling stars and comets for a split second, and his voice dropped several octaves.

Returning to his usual shape, Bill chuckled. “Sooo, you want names, right?” He held out his fingers, and tapped them as he went. “There’s Gidgelandelanon, the Swooping Eye, Sam, a thousand screaming mirrors under the sun, your ex wife-“

“I don’t have an ex wife.”

“Oh, I meant from a parallel universe! She’s a real piece of work. Anyway, there’s this one thing where if I name it or describe it it’ll kill us both instantly, there’s world-destroyer the second, aaand the entire Forgotten Galaxy… honestly, I could go on, but those are the ones I can name off the top of my head.”

Ford had a piece of paper beside him. A green-inked pen was taking notes on its own, swooping and waving through the air as it wrote. Ford adjusted his glasses, brushing the pen to the side and looking at the list. He looked at it reverently, caught up in the mysteries that even Bill Cipher didn’t know.

After a minute of this, Ford shook himself out of his thoughts. “Follow up question, right! Ahem. So, have you ever tried to get information out of these people and places?”

“Loads of times!” Bill said, stretching out his arms and legs as he said it. “Let me tell you, those things are not to be messed with. Don’t you think I’d have messed with them a dozen times over if I could?”

Ford smiled. “Ah, but that’s where goodness comes in. Maybe some of the people on this list only keep people out if they think they mean trouble.”

Bill laughed so loudly, he shoved himself away from the table and went zooming backwards in his chair. “I’ll give you one example. Gidgelandelanon. He’s an old friend of mine! Or he was, until he swallowed a time wish on a dare. Now he exists in all time periods at once! He has powers you and I could only dream of! People would kill to get the knowledge he has! Only thing is, he’s completely insane. And not in the cute way. He sees someone, there’s no telling what he’ll do to them. Because again, he can do anything.  Turn you into soup? Replace your organs with man-eating butterflies? Oh man, I’d love to hang out sometime and see what he can do, but he’s too dangerous, even for me! Not exactly a kill-em-with-kindness situation, if those situations are even a thing!”

Ford frowned. “I see. Is there anything on this list that isn't all powerful and insane?”

Bill pointed at the paper, making a handful of the bullet points glow lime green. “The forgotten galaxy is the worst. It could be horribly dangerous, but no one’s ever been able to find out. Better triangles than me have gone looking for it for millennia, and come back empty-handed. I’d love to find the place, but I’ve got better things to do, you know?”

Ford circled it. “Hmm.”

“You should give it a rest,” Bill said, sliding his chair back to the table. “If you want to waste your month searching for forgotten galaxies, be my guest, but it’s not gonna accomplish anything!”

Ford looked up at him. “All our research has been leading up to creating that portal. Our entire partnership! So forgive me if I need some time to decide what we’ll be doing.”

“Geez, be a better person, Ford!” Bill Cipher held up his hands up. “Sarcasm is for bad people!”

Ford pursed his lips. “That was sarcasm.”

“I think we should just all be friends! Let’s go meet Gidgelandelanon! Braid his hair or something.”

He vanished, and Ford turned around, scowling at the demon’s re-appearance directly behind his head. He was braiding Ford’s suddenly-long hair, whistling with his whole face as he did it.

When Ford looked back, he dropped the braid. “What?” Want to braid my hair?” Hair grew out from every edge of his form, longer and longer until it started twisting around the bookshelves like ivy. Ford closed his eyes, willing the hair to disappear. It vanished.

Seeing his muse like this was so tiring. Seeing the person who pretended to be his research partner turn out to be anything but, and standing around talking to him like this? It was so, so tiring. Ford folded up the paper and stuck it in his pocket. “Bill Cipher.”

Bill was bouncing a bright pink tennis ball in one hand like a basket ball. He glanced up at Ford, and the tennis ball disappeared. “I’m all ears!”
His hands morphed into ears, which grew five more ears as fingers, which each grew five more ears, until the fractal design got too tiny to be visible to the naked eye.

Ford stood up, waving the table and chairs out of existence. “There need to be some ground rules, for this.”

“Okay! No one touches the portal, the end, happily ever after.”

“No, more than that. I mean, can you still possess me in my sleep?”

“Uh… yeeeees?” Bill absentmindedly bit his ear-hands off, and his regular hands popped back in their place. The ear-hands made loud, crunchy sounds as he chewed.

Ford wrinkled his nose. “How do I know you won’t mess with the portal at night?”

“A deal’s a deal. I can’t break it, just as much as you sorry humans can’t break the laws of physics.”

He wanted to press further, but it seemed legitimate. It followed what little he knew about demon lore.  “Okay. But that doesn’t specifically bar you from doing other things.”

“Like what?” Bill swallowed, and his eye came back into view.

“Things I can’t think of, of course! You’re too creative for me to lay down every possible rule I need to make.”

Bill shrugged. “Take it from me. Good people trust each other.”

“The whole point is that you’re not good!”

“Ohhhhh, just because I want to rule the earth and enslave humanity, I’m suddenly a “bad person”?” Bill laughed. “How do you know I won’t be a benevolent ruler? I could send the world back in time a hundred years!”

Ford elected to ignore the jibe. “I’m just saying, you betrayed my trust, and now there are consequences. See, if you had kept working with me like we planned, you could have avoided this whole conversation, and we could be standing in another dimension right now.  But your ulterior motives got in the way, and now not only is my trust betrayed, but you also didn’t get what you wanted in the first place.”

Bill put a hand beneath his eye, nodding sympathetically. Then he put his hands on his ‘hips’. “Not yet! But oh boy, is it coming! If you were really as good as you say you are, you would have destroyed the portal by now! But instead you made a deal with me again, where you agreed to be ‘evil’ for a month-“
He morphed into a bright yellow Fiddleford. “-and how irresponsible is that? What a moron! What a typical, classic Ford! Putting research ahead of your own family and friends! Sooo morally reprehensible!”

Everything in Ford clenched. His teeth, his fists, his stomach…

“You don’t want to help anyone! You just want a research partner who won’t destroy the things you want so much to learn about!”

It was at that moment that it crossed Ford’s mind that he may have gotten in over his head. He hadn’t made a deal with a demon. He’d made a deal with the devil himself. And he was going to need to try a lot harder to get this guy on his side.

As he left the mindscape, his thoughts were consumed with it. As he walked through the kitchen on his way to his study and forgot to eat, and as he flipped open to a blank page in his journal, and as he half-way fell asleep with his glasses askew and his face pressed against the page, he couldn’t get it out of his head. Was it even possible to get a demon to become good? Or was he going to have to make the choice between joining Bill Cipher, and destroying his life’s work? Ford shivered. Just like you. Creating impossible choices.

Chapter Text

Stanley stood at the payphone, finger hovering over the numbers.

Oh, who was he kidding? He couldn't do this. Not after so long. Way back when, he'd told himself give Ford some time to calm down. Now, he told himself it's been too long. If Stanford really cared, he would've called by now, wouldn't he?

The guy was a famous scientist, for crying out loud. He could've singlehandedly sponsored Stan's transition into a stable job and life. Or he could've called him up, invited him to come to Gravity Falls... they could've been partners again. But Ford must not have wanted that.

Stanley frowned at the phone number jotted down on the palm of his hand. He wouldn't be here if he wasn't in such a tight spot. The latest ger-rich-quick scheme had fallen flat on its face, and he was on the verge of being bankrupt. He had talent! He just wasn't appreciated, like people in science and math were. And his stint in Los Angeles hadn't worked out, so he was stuck in the shadows of society.

Unless he could muster up the courage to call Ford.

He hung up the payphone. "Eh, not worth the money anyway," he grumbled. It was pouring rain outside, and he had nowhere to go. His spot on his pal Freddy's couch had been taken by the girlfriend, and Edna wouldn't talk to him anymore, and his parents? Halfway across the country, if they even lived there anymore. For all he knew, they were mooching off of Stanford, living in his basement and giving him pats on the back every time he tied his shoelaces correctly.

He caught sight of someone approaching the pay phone, and stepped outside, holding the door open for them. I'll find a way, he told himself. I'll always find a way.

~

That morning, Ford woke up tucked in bed, still in the clothes he'd worn yesterday. His glasses were perched neatly on the nightstand. He frowned. I fell asleep at my desk last night with my glasses on. What was Bill playing at? He couldn't say he didn't feel better than usual, sleeping on an actual bed for once... but still. This whole situation was creepy, no matter what Bill did while he was asleep.

Bill. What had he done to everything he'd been working on last night-! Ford shoved his glasses onto his face and ran downstairs, punching in the code for a bag of chips before opening the secret door.

When he arrived at his desk, he saw the page had been written on... but it was just the usual additions, correcting assumptions and making suggestions. Ford breathed a sigh of relief. Then he pulled up a chair, studying what Bill had wrote. Can't take the time wish out of that one guy. Okay. Need portal to go to parallel universes. Obviously. Huh, some of the things he'd written last night were sort of incoherent. And Bill had doodled little ugly looking monsters in the margins.

Ford sighed. His one-track life had grown a metaphorical third-arm. He didn't know what to do anymore. Destroy the portal? Break the deal? Plunge himself into even further uncertainty?

No. He just needed a plan. And a plan, he would find.

~

"What's this?" said Bill Cipher, turning to face Ford. Something like a bright-red crack in mid-air vanished. It looked like he'd been talking to someone. "Back so soon?"

Ford stood in his plain old mindscape. Faces of people he half-remembered, locations he'd passed through once or twice, and objects from his early childhood flicked in and out of his peripheral vision. He nodded firmly at Bill. "Tell me your life story."

Bill raised his eye like an eyebrow. "For what?"

"For me."

Bill shrugged, loosening up. "Sure! Might as well know the best and worst of each other! But I'm warning you, this ain't a story for human ears! And it won't give you any juicy secrets about how to get me on your side. If there was a loophole like that... hahaha, boy, wouldn't you be thrilled! Too bad I'm a merciless killing machine!"

"You're not that," Ford said automatically.

"Sure I'm not!" Bill chuckled, putting an arm around Ford, smirking at his discomfort. He punched him lightly in the arm, then took a huge step backwards and turned blood-red. "Are you ready for the life and times of Biiiiiiiill Cipher?" The demon's body grew larger and larger as the echoes of his name reverberated endlessly, until he was towering over Ford like a mountain. He snapped his fingers, and a bowl of popcorn fell from the sky, landing in Ford's lap at the same time that an armchair appeared, forcing him into sitting position.

Ford's face remained impassive.

"What a crowd, tonight!" Bill cried in a comically deep voice, clapping his hands. "Cheer up, Sixer! I'm telling you my life story!"

Ford gave him a look, and Bill threw his hands up in the air. "Impatient, much?" He shrunk down to his normal size. "Okay, here we go."

He cupped his hands around his eye and screamed. The mindscape transformed into something incomprehensible.

"This is my home dimension! Only two dimensions to it, instead of three like yours!"

"Flat. Of course." Ford found himself getting caught up in all the little details, like the circles circling his head, and buildings -- were those buildings? -- buildings that continuously collapsed and re-formed, like a mouth moving open and shut. He and Bill were hardly visible, like onlookers inside a pensieve.

Bill's voice spoke from all around them. The Bill Cipher faintly visible beside him didn't speak, but only faded all the way out of existence, like a narrator exiting their own story. The figures moving around Ford in ways his brain couldn't process kept getting faster and faster--

And then the story began.

"I was lowest of the low." Colors, shapes, and sounds morphed into something comprehensible to his eyes. Simplistic shapes appeared against a flat background, projected like a dome all around him. A yellow triangle, a blue circle, a green oval, an orange triangle... they looked like something you could peel away and stick on an infant's coloring book page.

The yellow triangle in the center shrank smaller and smaller as the other shapes moved past it. "In my world, there is no life or death like you fleshbags know it. There's just being. I was formed out of two colors who leapt into the light, blah blah blah, it's a lot of math without anything a three-dimensional guy like you would understand. Anyway. The people there aren't really people, Ford. They're shapes. They're... you don't even have a word for it. There is no mindscape, there are no human constructs like "jobs", or "economies", or even "families", but there was consciousness. All of us, we weren't anything comprehensible to you, but we had thoughts. We were aware, and we bullied each other, and we helped each other, all without the added drama of three dimensional thought. It was really ****ing boring."

The shapes morphed into people, with stick-legs and arms like Bill Cipher. "Since your brain can't see what two dimensions looks like to a 2-d being, I'll tell you about it through metaphors. I'll use human constructs, like people and streets and little bottles of alcohol in the grocery check-out aisle, to describe my much sh***ier two-dimensional life."

An entire city rose up around him. Ford couldn't help but gasp as he watched the details solidify into things he understood. A busy city bustling with traffic. People jaywalking with a babystroller in each hand. Raggedy-looking shapes shaking cups full of change.

"It was like this, except nothing like this. We had a strict hierarchy based on points and angles. Circles had infinite of both, so they dictated everything. Squares had four. And triangles had three."

A single point on the cartoonish triangle's body stretched out, consuming Ford's vision. "We saw in one-dimension, kinda like you see in two dimensions. Except we didn't have eyes."

The city was beaming with beautiful life, but Ford noticed there were no squares or triangles. Only circle-people.

"Took you a while to figure out!" Bill said, and a lone triangle emerged from a building. "The lesser-angles didn't have the "third sight", as we called it. It was like seeing into the future is around here, except we just meant seeing in three dimensions. Circles had it all. Fame, fortune, advanced powers, job opportunities in this metaphor-land... you name it! While the lesser-angles ground themselves into the dirt just to keep circles afloat. We were the supporting shapes. Scaffolding. We kept reality together, while the circles got to experience it. Think of it like a giant tapestry, where if you pull one thread... everything comes crashing down. And we were the ones keeping the threads held still. I was created from the dead body of a couple dozen triangles, like everyone else is. And the crazy part is? Shapes are formed randomly. A light particle here, a smidge of dark matter there, and PRESTO! You've got a shape with any number of sides under the sun!"

He snapped his fingers, and it reverted to a truer representation of his realm. Ford tried to make sense of it, but all he could see was blank space, occasionally disrupted by fractal patterns, like an un-symmetrical snowflake, or a rainbow peeking through a bit of warped glass.

"So I held my place, but I kept seeing glimpses of the three-dimensional world. I saw people walking through, and the way they moved..." he chuckled. "I wanted what they had. In fact, one day a three dimensional form walked directly through me, and I let my thread unravel, just for a second, and a piece of them got trapped there for eternity. Their mind melded with mine, and I felt sentience like I'd never felt before. Circles and squares tried to break me to pieces for the mistake. So I fought back. The shapes who'd been nearby me when I let the thread slip were like me. They had three-dimensional dreams for the first time -- stuff even better than what the circles were capable of, I'm sure. We dreamed of what the being who'd passed through us dreamed. And it dreamed of letting every thread unravel. I didn't understand its thoughts completely, but I knew enough to know what I wanted to do."

Panic flooded the streets. Circle-people ran screaming in every direction, tripping over each other in their effort to get away.

"But before that, I spoke with them civilly. There was a part of me that cared about that too, once. Pretty pathetic. I told them, angle-ism is old news! Get something else to hold up the scaffolding of reality for you, will 'ya? Let me prove something to you! Let me show you we don't need an entire class of people who are nothing but spare parts."

The mindscape showed a tiny figure standing in front of a huge array of people in seats towering above them. Other triangle people stood just outside, trembling with both fear and excitement. The leader-triangle spoke eloquently, laying out their case persuasively. And then the circle people laughed. They sneered, and clapped their hands, and said, "In your dreams, three-sides!"

The triangle person drooped.

"They wouldn't agree to my terms, but I had a back-up plan."

The city trembled like a mirage flickering in and out of existence.

"I started a war."

The city flickered out.

"In the end, we used another three-dimensional being strategically, and escaped the second-realm. We could break free from our home world, but in the process, we ended up destroying it."

Bill laughed. "Their loss."

The landscape changed. Thousands upon thousands of shape-people emerged from nowhere, cheering and looking around in wonder. "We finally had third sight. The way from the second to the third dimension was a limitless place called the dreamscape. It was where minds could move in and out freely. Mindscape after mindscape, flowing up from the ground like hillsides and mountaintops. It was beautiful, for about five seconds. Then the circles came through. Then our realm came through, our rotten, broken, dying realm, and it shattered everything into madness. It was too late for the circles. They died, thank the universe, but our realm dragged everything into tatters on its way out of this multi-dimensional sphere of existence. Our new home was ruined, and we were dying, so we took shelter in the tallest, nearest mindscape available."

A huge, narrow, jagged mountain burst up from the ground. The shape people flooded into it.

"In it, we met some locals to the dreamscape scene. One of them was so bloated, they couldn't hardly move. I could tell they were ancient. They saw us struggling to think two-dimensionally, struggling to even hold on... they said they'd been waiting a long time for the dreamscape to become the Nightmare Realm, so they offered us a favor. They offered to make us permanently tied to that realm, with mindscapes of our very own, at the price of our souls. Honestly, I didn't even know what souls were, so I accepted in a heart beat."

"If I'd known, would I have done it differently?" Bill laughed. "Nope!"

He faded back into existence. "You don't want to know the rest of my history, believe me. It's a whole lot of wandering. At first it was everything I'd hoped for, but the nightmare realm ain't a big enough place for every dream a guy could have, you know! Sure, I could visit as many mind-scapes as the eye could see, but I wanted more! I wanted permanence! The dreamscape was changeable. It's overrun with nightmare fuel right now, but ten eons from now, who knows? Maybe someone will flood the place! I don't want to be there to see that happen! I met a lot of great guys, real fun people! But when your old triangle buddies move on, it's time to move on!"

For a split second, Bill showed Ford the nightmare realm. Ford's eyes saw things that individually, on the surface-level, he could understand, but all together like that, in the combinations he saw, it seemed impossible, as well as impossibly painful. His eyes burned, and his mind showed him echoes of random details for a couple seconds afterwards.

"Finally, finally, finally after a googleplex milennia of searching, I found a mindscape that connected to a physical world! One that I could control! With the mindscape-permanence given to me by the soul-trading guy, I had powers over the flexible place inbetween realms that's in your heads. Of course, I gained more power while I was wandering, too, so I became almost like a god! So I improvised. All I knew was, I wanted those physical forms. After spending so long seeing in one dimension, can you imagine how it felt to realize there's not just two, but three dimensions you can see through? And the fourth dimension? I can see it stretching across time and space around here, in your puny little world. I can see glimpses of birth and death and war and famine... Anyway! I tried to steal a body, but you three-dimensioners really know how to protect your mindscape. So I was stuck."

"Do you know what they call my kind? Soulless wanderers? Rebels in the mindscape who won't rest until they've tricked, bribed, and weaseled their way into the perfect position? People with a weird past, who end up in places like this by mistake? We're called dream demons. Your power over me grants you the ability to break a promise made with me, while I can't break a promise I make with you, stuff like that. We're cursed to watch three-dimensioners like you exert power over the physical realm. Do you know what I could do if I had a physical form?? I've been favored by the ancient guy of the nightmare realm! I would have so much power! Power because I wasn't ever meant to have power, so there's no restrictions on the possibilities! I have no limits!"

Ford cleared his throat, and the mindscape went back to his own. "You swear you're telling the truth?"

"Cross my heart!" Bill Cipher replied.

Ford didn't want to show it, but he'd gotten a lot of material from that one story. He locked eyes with Bill Cipher. "Thank you-"

"Oh!" Bill pointed at him. "Look! You think you've got me pegged, don't you! You think I'm going to "turn good", right?" He floated down to eye-level and ruffled Ford's hair. "That's adorable. You just keep trying, Ford! You just keep trying."

When Ford left the mindscape that day, he finally, finally had a plan. This was going to be one helluva month.

Chapter Text

If Bill felt a little uneasy, he didn't show it.

Truth be told, he had never shared his life story with someone before. It had felt... like something. Usually he didn't feel things. Amusement. Anger. Those were his two emotions, directly related to how well his manipulative shenanigans were going. Other feelings were distinctly three dimensional. A 2D being only needed two.

Perhaps the word he was looking for was on edge. Bill Cipher felt on edge. Sharing information about yourself made you vulnerable. Vulnerability was the last thing he needed, ever, full-stop. It didn't help that Ford was so clever. If anyone could poke holes in his life story, it was him.

No, the problem wasn't the human. It had to be something bigger. Bill Cipher didn't have anything bigger to worry about, though, other than the usual.

Reaching this conclusion, Bill decided to stop feeling uneasy and start feeling amused. He had nothing to be nervous about. A dream demon in his element, with all the cards stacked in his favor? The human should've been the one on edge! He was just, by no fault of his own, too stupid to realize how impossible his attempts at truly, honestly befriending Bill were. All of Bill's closest friends were highly powerful, or hilarious, or both. It wasn't even friendship. It was more of a mutually beneficial relationship, where he would provide sight into a future reality, and in return they would kill one of his enemies. Utilitarian. If the relationship ever stopped being beneficial, they wouldn't hesitate to kill or betray the other, and didn't expect any more or less from the other. No trust. No need for trust. Letting emotions leak in would be pointless.

Bill frowned. He hadn't been feeling uneasy. He'd been feeling annoyed, which was a subset of being angry. The objective usefulness of Ford Pines was growing smaller every day, and yet here he was, locked into a two month long deal with the guy. He was hilarious when he thought Bill was his "muse", and useful for building the portal, but now that everything was on the table? Ford was starting to be a real bore. A moral bore, who was standing between Bill and the oh-so-easy final step of opening the portal.

He would have to do something about this before the month was over.

~

As soon as Ford entered the mindscape, he threw a box full of odds and ends at Bill.

"Hey, hey, what are you doing?" Bill followed behind him as he strode towards a cabinet and took out some more supplies.

He snapped some gloves over his hands, looking grim. "We're going to give you and your people physical forms."

Bill felt his entire being plummet. If he'd been a human, his heart would've stopped cold. He was surprised by how quickly such a simple sentence could infuriate him. He thinks-! He thinks-!! What did Stanford think? That was the problem! For such a smart guy, he never bothered to think-! Bill steadied himself. Fine. He'd been wrong. There was at least one thing in his life story that was capable of unruffling him. He'd just miscalculated how much of a ****ing idiot Ford was. Did he realize who Bill Cipher was? Did he know in his gut what Bill was capable of? Had he ever fully, properly seen Bill Cipher get angry?

Bill laughed at him, letting the rage dissipate. "How're you gonna do that, huh? With a pair of rubber gloves?" Honestly... wasn't he trying to turn him "good"? What in everloving hell did he think this would accomplish? An impossible task, for one thing, and-- no. He had to calm down. As much as he wanted to crush this guy into dust, he was still more useful alive than dead. He had to remember that.

Bill let some of his irritation leak into his voice. "You're wasting your time. I don't even know where they are."

Ford looked at him with all the hope and naivety of a mortal, and shrugged. "We'll figure it out."

"We? " The dream demon held out one hand, and a cane materialized. He leaned on it. "What are you, fourteen? There's a portal in your basement capable of giving me a physical form, and you want to go traversing around the universe for an alternative?"

Ford rummaged through a box, comparing gadgets and gizmos. "This isn't just about you. I'm talking an unpopulated dimension for all your triangle friends. A physical form for them. Everything you want and more, without needing to destroy something else."

Bill couldn't decide whether to be angry or amused. Maybe he was both. "Ohhhh Fordsy, that's not how it works."

Ford stopped, turning to look at Bill with the most determined expression Bill had ever seen. "Then how does it work?"

The portal. That's it. That's what I've been working on for millennia. It's the only way. I'm only refraining from blasting this stupid planet into weirdville right now to humor you. You're stupid and entertaining. That's all there is to it. You're crazy if you think you can cook up a solution that can make everyone happy, when you couldn't have reached any conclusions in the first place without me. You summoned me in the first place. You summoned me. And now you take it back? No take backs. This portal -- this g**d**med portal has been in the works ever since your ancestors set my prototype on fire and banished me from the 3rd dimension for a punishingly long amount of time, and I'm not about to let you pull another stunt like humans always do. It's about "love" or "understanding" or "peace", you all claim, but when it comes right down to it, all you want is to live another day in your comfortable little lives without anything challenging to think about, like, oh I don't know, parakeets instead of fingers. Would that be too much to ask? I'm not gonna bother explaining to you how it works, or how any of it works, because you're looking for answers when we've already finished one! Just use the f***ing answer, just use the portal, don't go looking for alternatives, pretending to care about me, don't you dare. I know how you humans believe in caring about each other, and I know for a fact that you're one of those humans who has a deficit in that. You don't care about anyone except yourself, and I can't fathom why you won't just let me use you-

Bill found himself at a loss for words, for once. He simply stared at Ford with such intensity that the guy's expression slackened with unease. Right back at-cha, Ford, Bill scoffed. I could end you with a look.
But he had made a deal, and he couldn't yet break it. So he answered Ford. He pulled up a chair like they always did, and he gave the human an answer. "I don't want to go cavorting around the mindscape on some wizard-of-oz journey to rescue my long lost species. I don't want to give my people a planet. And I sure don't want to-""Be good?" Ford interrupted.Bill Cipher burst into white-hot flames and his triangular figure melted away, exposing the illusion of a horribly disfigured skull. When he spoke, he shouted in a deep, distorted voice worthy of burning down civilizations. "I DON'T WANT TO TEAR YOUR SKIN OFF OF YOUR FLESH PIECE BY PIECE, BUT ITS STARTING TO SOUND REAL TEMPTING, SIIIXERR." He shifted back into his regular form, satisfied with the way Ford had lurched backwards in fear."Like I was saying, I don't wanna have you screwing around with my life."
Ford stared at him with an incomprehensible expression. It was equal parts terror and fascination. He was almost flattered by the look. If people weren't cowering in fear, he wasn't really living. After a couple seconds, he recovered somewhat, and replied, "isn't that what you're going to do during your month?"Bill couldn't help but laugh. "No duh! But if you haven't noticed, there's a power imbalance here! Demons interfere. Humans... watch their step." He rushed towards Ford so that they were inches away from each other, and Ford skittered backwards.In spite of all this, Ford remained unmoved on the issue. "Your threats only hold merit as far as you can follow through on them. You made a deal, demon, and you're keeping it. If I won't waver, there's nothing you can do about it."

"No," Bill replied, jabbing a finger in Ford's direction, "I made a deal that you could show me whatever stupid three dimensional stuff you want. Not that you could dig your fingers into my life."

Ford glanced at his feet, silently summoning an armchair and sitting down in it. "Alright. Why don't you want your people to gain physical forms?"

Bill Cipher didn't sit down. "I already have a plan. I'm sticking to it. The whole point of this month is for you to talk me out of it! No point coercing me." He chuckled at the very idea of it. "You, pushing around a demon! That's a laugh!"

Ford looked at him coolly. "Why don't you want your people to gain physical forms?"

He didn't like this. He didn't like that a human being could do anything remotely like this. He was supposed to be the one who made people say things they didn't want to say, and talk about things they didn't want to talk about, and make people thoroughly uncomfortable. Not the other way around.

You're not uncomfortable. You're mildly amused, and completely unruffled. Now act like it.

"Loaded question," he replied, examining one hand like someone with nails would examine their nails. "You're assuming I don't want my people to gain physical forms."

Ford grinned triumphantly. "So you do want them to become three dimensional!"

Bill mentally kicked himself. Walked right into that one. Ah, well. It's not too late to save this conversation from completely crashing. "Truth is, I couldn't care less. They're not 'my people'. You know what I'm talking about. Are human beings 'your people'? Or are they a bunch of half-brained idiots?"

Ford hesitated, then replied, "Do you think your people aren't worth saving?"

Bill frowned internally. "Saving from what? They're in the dreamscape."

"You called it the nightmare realm."

"We love that kind of stuff! And since when is this an interrogation?" Bill snapped his fingers, and their surroundings transformed into an interrogation room.

Ford remained unfazed. "Then why are you trying to leave the nightmare realm?"

Bill almost replied, then stopped. Damn. Anything he said would be used against him. Ford was trying to paint him into a corner, and he'd almost made him contradict himself already. Where had the human learned how to talk??

"Personal reasons," Bill said at last. "Anyway, the logistics of it are impossible. You would have to leave your mindscape while in a dream. I hate to break it to you, but all your dreams take place in the mindscape. The only way for you to enter the nightmare realm without the portal would be to punch a hole in your mindscape."

Ford seemed sufficiently distracted by the information. Phew. He furrowed his brow, leaning forward and lacing his fingers together. "That would make me insane from the bleed-over."

"Bingo!" Bill said, pointing at him with dramatic flair. "Nooow you're getting it."

"But couldn't you go by yourself, and bring them here once you've found them?" Ford continued.

Bill sighed. "Technically, sure! But the dreamscape's a huge place. I might never find you again!"

Ford grew agitated. "So the whole list is useless?"

"I wouldn't say that-"

"Then tell me where we can go."

Bill snorted. "Oh, there's a way in, alright. You just won't like it."

Ford drummed his fingers on the table, then frowned. "If we entered someone else's mind, we could break into the nightmare realm."

"I know you've got questions!" Bill said, reveling in Ford's moral dilemma. "Yes, we can return to your world through the same mind! It'll just be a smidge more perilous on the way back!"

"No," Ford said firmly.

Bill lowered his upper eyelid smugly. "I was just like you when I started out! Eventually you'll realize, even the inconvenient alternatives involve damaging people! You might as well pick the one that works best for you!"

"That's-" Ford rubbed the bridge of his nose. "Okay. Have you ever heard about the dark lord and the dojo?"

The demon shook his body like a head. "Sounds like a great story, though! Fake, but great! You've already got some killer alliteration. And it's obviously a metaphor for me, so don't bother."

Ford ignored him, waving his hands so that the mindscape turned into a mountaintop. "There was once a dark lord who wanted to learn a rare kind of kung fu. Only one true master remained, and he taught a select number of students at the top of a mountain."

A shadowy figure appeared in front of them to illustrate the story. He climbed the mountain rapidly, and pushed open the door to the kung fu master's dojo with confidence.

"The dark lord demanded to be taught. When the master refused, he threatened to kill every person in the room, but the master still refused. Out of fury, the dark lord set the dojo on fire, killing everyone inside."

Their surroundings turned bright orange as flames licked the building, spreading down the mountain.

"The dark lord gained nothing that day. He entered the dojo intending to learn, and left without a single lesson. In fact, he destroyed the one person who could've taught him."

Bill Cipher waved dismissively, and the illustrations vanished. "Some genius he is! There are a million ways I could've gotten what I wanted!"

Ford smiled, and it threw Bill off. "But did you think of the easiest way he could have gotten what he wanted?"

Bill treated it as a rhetorical question, and waited for Ford to answer his own question.

"He could have asked nicely."

Bill tipped his top hat sideways. "Hats off to you! That's literally the most obvious answer you could have said!"

"But it's true," Ford insisted.

"I'll believe it when I see it, pal," said Bill. "I get it. You think destruction isn't necessary. But whiiiich one of us has lived the longest? Hmm?"

It was a stupid question, but the question wasn't the point.

"Lived?" Ford had the audacity to say in a questioning voice. "The universe changes, Bill. I wonder if you're not stuck in your ways."

This time, Bill didn't laugh. He merely rolled his eye. "Bold words as usual! Especially coming from you."

Ford shrugged. He looked weary, and he was done with this discussion. Bill could tell. "At this point, we're not getting anywhere. So I'll be frank. Is there a safe way to enter the dreamscape, even if only temporarily?"

Bill locked eyes with him. "Yes."

Chapter Text

"Listen up, Sixer. I spent a long time working on you, and I'm not losing you in this frolick through the nightmare realm." Bill Cipher looked serious for once. "And don't read too much into it. You're my ticket to the third dimension. I care about you like you care about a lawnmower."

Ford rolled his eyes. "I'm a tool to you, you're an emotionless psychopath, I get it, now let's get on with this."

"Hey. Any misstep could land you and me in trouble. If you don't pay attention, and you screw up, I'm not gonna be there to save your a**."

Ford put on his best serious face, which was a very good serious face if he did say so himself. The thing was, he'd never been to another dimension before -- not even in his sleep -- and every scientific bone in his body (which was all of them) was tingling with excitement. What new creatures could he potentially study? What laws of physics wouldn't exist there?

"I'm listening," Ford said.

"You'd better be. Now, the way we're gonna get in there is through an animal. While it's sleeping, we'll enter its brain, and punch a hole through its mindscape, crossing us over into the nightmare realm. Your body will be here the entire time, but let's be real, that flesh bag's pretty useless without your consciousness inside it. I'll meet up with you inside the animal's head. It'll be unstable compared to a human's mindscape, so don't go wandering off. Animals have a weaker sense of self than human beings, so breaking through its head will only take a little kick. Once we're through, then we're through. You can't hop back into the animal brain, because it'll go through a defensive process that destroys every foreign thing in the creature's mindscape. Not even I can survive that. And don't get any dumb ideas about it. If I die, I'm taking you down with me."

Ford nodded, his heart beating so fast he almost expected it to burst out of his chest. "And then we'll locate this so-called 'ancient one'."

"Right! Because if I said his real name, it would instantly kill you! Haha!"

"Right." Ford glared at him. "We locate this creature, and we trick him into returning your soul. You're going to pull some favors, and I'm going to bring some experimental technology. If that fails, then-"

"Woah woah woah, slow down, smart guy! This trip is strictly for locating him. We've gotta scope out the scene before we do anything to the guy!"

Ford looked at him coldly, then reconsidered. "You're right." He said it like it gave him a bad taste in his mouth. "He's difficult to find. We'll need to take our time."

"That's the spirit!" said Bill, ruffling Ford's hair.

He pushed Bill's hand away in annoyance, brushing his hair back into place with his fingers. "So, what will we need?"

Bill transformed into a deer. "Disguises. I'm kind of a big deal in the Nightmare Realm, and when I bring you back next month, I don't want any baggage to deal with!"

Ford frowned curiously at the deer. "Can I transform like that while in the mindscape?"

"Not reliably!" replied Bill, turning back into a triangle. "You'll just need some costume stuff. Bald cap, eye contacts, mittens... whatever works! But definitely hide your deformities. Those'll get noticed, disguise or no disguise!" Bill grabbed one of Ford's hands and wiggled the fingers.

Ford pulled away from Bill's grip, shoving his hands in his pockets. There were benefits of having a long lab coat. "Anything else I need to know?"

Bill paused. The brief silence sounded like everything they'd never told each other. And then it was broken. "Don't speak to anyone unless I initiate the conversation. Don't. Make. Eye contact. Don't look too confident. And don't look twice at anything you see in the corner of your eye."

~

Ford looked a little bit ridiculous. His bald head had sideburn hair sticking out at the ends, and he was wearing a cloak with a long, deep hood. The mittens pulled over his hands were a little bit too tight, and he kept wanting to fidget with them.

"Haha! Would you look at that!" Bill snickered, pulling the hood over Ford's head playfully. "My turn, now."

Bill transformed into the shape of a human being who vaguely resembled Ford.

Ford's breath caught, and he struggled to keep his exhale silent. Then he scowled. "That's going to blow my cover!"

Bill snapped his fingers, and transformed into the shape of a man with a buzz cut and a tank top; a stereotypical tough-guy look. "Ha! The look on your face was priceless!" he snickered, before putting on his tough-guy face.

Did Bill know? Ford brushed off the thought. Of course he didn't. No one knew about his twin brother around here.

~

Stanley slammed his fists down on the table. "I've got good credit, dammit!"

The woman reviewing his application shook her head. "I'm surprised they let you into the building, Mister Pines. You've got-"

"My criminal record is water under the bridge," Stan growled. "I'm a new man. I swear!"

"I'm sorry, you'd have to take it up with the manager." She slid the file of paperwork back to him.

Stan grabbed it. The folder was almost in tatters, now. He'd shoved it and grabbed it back from so many places... no friends, no family worth a damn, and now he couldn't even get approved for an apartment! Jeff would never hear the end of this, by the time he got back to his place... try things the legal way, he said! It'll be so much easier, he said! Well, he sure had news for Jeff. The government wouldn't give him sh**. The banks wouldn't give him sh**. So he was stuck in a life of crime! Inevitable, totally natural, and also Jeff lost the bet, so he owed him. It was so go**amned humiliating to plead for the right to have a place to sleep. For the right to pay for a place to sleep. He needed to move to another state, but he wasn't banned here yet, so what would be the point? It was a lot harder for a thirty-something year old to con someone than a twenty-something, and he had to admit, he hadn't aged well. He'd spent too long sleeping on couches, eating junk food, and fake-smiling his ears off that he already looked like some kind of old person.

When Stan trudged back to Jeff's apartment, he almost didn't knock on the door. Talking people into giving him things was the most natural thing in the world, but today? After going through the drudgery of trying to do things the "right way"? He just wanted to crash on someone's couch and never speak again.

Stan knocked on the door.

Jeff opened it a crack, then all the way. "Hey hey, Stanley! How'd it go?"

Stan held up his folder. "It sucked. I told you I should've forged it."

Jeff frowned, an uncomfortable look creeping up his face. "Um, well what are we supposed to do about it? I already talked to Beth and Jessica, and Morton, and Henry, and everyone else. No way I'm letting you crash at my place anymore."

"It was one time-" Stan started.

"Nope," Jeff said firmly. "I'm sorry buddy, I really am, but after what you did? You're lucky we're even friends anymore. And you didn't even do it to me."

"Well -- we're not friends," Stan snapped, face contorting. "You can forget this face, 'cause you're never seeing it again!"

He turned away and walked away from the door nonchalantly. Mercifully, he didn't lose his composure until he was out of earshot. Then, his face crumpled. Tears poured down his face. Where the f*** could he go? All he had was a couple of keepsakes in his pockets, and a deck of cards. He wanted to look back just to see if Jeff was even sorry. If he even had a shred of compassion in his stupid little heart. But he made himself keep going. There was no looking back, in the life he led. Only endlessly moving forward.

He spent the night under the stairs of the apartments, sleeping with his face buried in his knees, and dreamed about living large.

~

Ford had a grin on his face that made him look ten years younger.

"Yeesh," Bill snorted. "You're crazier than me."

Ford ignored him. They were entering another dimension! A place in-between dimensions, technically, but still! It had a name and a population and everything! Who cared if it was a bit horrific, honestly? He'd dealt with some pretty nasty stuff right in Gravity Falls. A part of him couldn't shake the memory of Fiddleford coming out of that portal with his jaw slack and his eyes bulging out of his head... but Fiddleford had flipped out over worse.

The deer's mind didn't hold still like Ford's mindscape did. Trees ran like racehorses across the landscape, and the grass grew ten times faster than usual. Gunshots flew through the air periodically, and hoof prints appeared in the mud like ghosts. At the center of it all, there was the deer. As soon as it spotted Ford and Bill, it grew antlers. The antlers branched out in intricate patterns, merging together above the deer's head.

"Hold on tight!" Bill exclaimed, wrapping an arm around Ford. A sound that could only be described as a bomb detonating underneath a bell resonated loudly enough to make Ford black out for a second. When he came to, there was a hole, and on the other side was the most fascinating thing he'd ever seen, in his mindscape or otherwise.

Black forms drifted through weightless space, some humming, and others screaming, while still others remained silent. It took every scrap of Ford's willpower not to stare at them all. He wanted to have his journal in his hands and sketch it immediately, but he couldn't do that. They had a mission to finish, and he had a dream demon to keep an eye on.

Bill looked at the Nightmare Realm in the same way that Ford looked at old photos of him and Fiddleford. Angry, pointedly dismissive, and unable to look anywhere for longer than a few seconds. In his human disguise, the expressions he made were unnervingly relatable. Ford found himself putting a hand on Bill's shoulder. "You OK?"

Bill's eyes narrowed into slits, and he shoved Ford's hand off of his shoulder. "Not a word," he whispered in an echoey voice.

Ford followed him, drifting through the expanse of blackness. This part of the Nightmare Realm wasn't so bad. Colors flashed and sparkled in no particular pattern or order. Shadowy creatures darted in and out of the corner of Ford's line of sight. He stared straight ahead, neck tensing from the effort of ignoring them.

After a minute of drifting along through quietness, they arrived at a towering structure made of... Ford squinted. What was it made out of? Nothing he'd ever seen before, for sure. He couldn't even compare it to anything else. The structure kept shifting, like an incomprehensible eldritch monster. Was it round? Square? Pointy? His brain started to hurt, and he shielded his eyes. A crowd of creatures were swarming outside of it. Were they pouring into the building or out of it? He didn't want to consider the question too hard, because he was afraid the answer would be both or neither.

"WHO'S THIS?" Shrieked a vaguely female voice. A hideous thing, like tree branches woven into a loose circle and then drenched in blood, popped out from nowhere.

Bill immediately bowed, and Ford followed suit. When he snuck a look, he saw that Bill hadn't moved or lifted his eyes from the ground. He was bowing so deep, in fact, that his whole face touched where the ground would be if there was any.

"OH, NO FUN!" bellowed the creature. A moment later, she drifted off, and Bill straightened his back. Ford followed suit.

"Who was that?" he whispered.

"Pamela," Bill replied in a whisper of his own. "I don't know her story, but I know she loves eating people. Fed her a couple people myself."

Ford knew logically that she was horrifying, but on an emotional level, he was just excited to learn more about the Nightmare Realm and the creatures inside of it.

"Don't think I don't see that look of delight on your face," Bill whispered. "Don't worry, we'll get you your own eating-people chamber once you're on my side."

Ford ignored him, wrinkling his nose in disgust.

Bill crept around a piece of what looked like space junk. "Ugh, how do you deal with these feeble bodies?" Bill whispered once he'd gotten around.

That's when they ran right-smack into a group of aliens.

Ford almost drew his laser gun, but Bill held up a hand. Then he slipped into a warm, only mildly shark-like smile. "Refugees, huh?"

Ford did a double-take. The group of aliens were huddled around a purple flame. One of them nodded. The rest of them were too scared to speak or move.

"Relax," Bill said, "We're passing through, too. You don't happen to know where the craggy mountain is?"

The silent ones's faces only grew more terrified at the sound of the question. The one who had nodded, however, remained unfazed. "If you really want to go there... it's over beyond the svaz. Rumors say there are triangle beings waging a war over there."

"Any tips?" Bill said with a peculiar smile.

"Hmm, well if you didn't know already, you absolutely mustn't be seen by the luminous eye."

"You mean Bill Cipher?" Ford asked.

They all recoiled at the sound of the name. "If he knew you were here... that we were here... well. He burned down our previous camp days ago. There used to be hundreds of refugees in this camp, until he slaughtered us."

Ford counted them. Eight. There were eight people huddled around that campfire.

What could he say? There was nothing to say. He was certain Bill had done countless even more terrible things. In any other situation, he would've given the demon a glare, at the very least. But right here, right now, he couldn't blow their cover. Another part of him wondered just how far he'd have to go in Bill's service next month.

No. Next month wasn't going to happen. He'd make Bill see his point of view. He'd refuse to come back here as a villain. The very thought was hard to stomach.

Bill glanced at Ford and winked smugly. Then he looked back at the interdimensional refugees. "Oh, how tragic! Why would he do that?"

The group exchanged uneasy glances. Finally, one said, "the eye is mysterious. I suspect he enjoys causing chaos."

Ford watched as Bill's face twitched. The willpower he must have needed to prevent himself from belting out a demonic laugh was astounding. After a second twitch, he wrestled his face into some semblance of a frown. "Sounds like a scary guy!"

Ford didn't stop himself from glaring at Bill, this time. The refugees were starting to give Bill nervous looks.

Clearing his throat, Ford stepped forward. "Thank you for all your help, but we must be on our way." He steered Bill away from the group, and they started walking together in what Ford assumed was the direction of svaz.

"Slaughtering refugees?" Ford whispered, once they were out of earshot.

"Ssh," Bill whispered. Ford looked around at the increasingly weirder landscape. As he looked down, he wondered how their feet were supported by anything. Was his mind processing their surroundings wrong, because it couldn't handle the true look of the place? He'd have to research that later.

~

At last, they arrived in an area that wasn't made up of physics-defying landscapes and lone figures darting around like criminals or prey animals. Crowds of people lounged around on top of questionable surfaces, including one that Ford could've sworn was the corpse, if he'd known anything about interdimensional creatures. Actually, several that looked like a corpse. The creatures here laughed and talked, occasionally glancing around out of the corner of their eye. All in all, it gave Ford the same vibe as a high school campus during lunch break, except without any adults to tell people to shut up and leave each other alone.

Bill elbowed Ford in the ribs. "If these guys knew who I was, they'd be falling on their knees," he whispered so softly that Ford almost couldn't hear it.

He sort of doubted that. The creatures towered above their heads more often than not, even from a distance, and many of them looked more threatening than Bill's triangle-in-a-top-hat shtick.

"Who's that?" Ford whispered, nodding ever so slightly in the direction of a humanoid standing with their hands held out stiffly. They looked like they were made out of solid gold.

"Furniture," Bill replied.

Oh. He was really in out of his depth, then.

"What about them?" he whispered, nodding towards an inky black void that constantly shifted form.

Bill's whisper grew even quieter, if possible. "That's a being from dimension S-9-83."

"S-9-83," Ford repeated, willing himself to commit it to memory.

"Criminal?" he asked. Bill wasn't telling him to shut up, which was odd, considering this was the most dangerous portion of their journey.

Bill chuckled. "No duh, smart guy. He inhales souls for breakfast. You're lucky he hasn't stumbled across any mindscapes from Earth. That wouldn't be a nightmare you'd wake up from."

Ford felt a thrill rush down his spine. How did it work? Did he need souls to survive? What were souls? He'd have to include a chapter about them. Mythology said too many conflicting things. Imagine pinning down exactly what a soul was! The advances in medicine... the awards...

"Where do we go after this?" Ford whispered.

Bill's shimmering form shrugged. "We could go a lot of places. For the 'mission', we just need to leave a marker once we find the ancient one's mountain. That way, we'll jump straight from a mindscape into that spot, no extra traveling."

"What about scoping things out?"

"Right, right. We'll take a peek into the mountain, and that big brain of yours will remember who and what might get in our way, next time we come. Oh, hey, that's my buddy Angel!"

"Angel?" Ford whispered in confusion.

"Pfft, that's just her name. Look, the slimy thing with five heads, four mouths, and three eyeballs."

Ford looked around until he spotted her. "Wow."

"Her spit is so acidic, it can tear holes through dimensions!"

Ford reminded himself not to stare. Straight ahead. Focus. No contemplating the otherworldly monsters. No sketching the otherworldly monsters. And definitely no staring at the otherworldly monsters.

Bill kept pointing out his friends as he spotted them. The more they whispered back and forth, the less terrifying the situation seemed. He didn't have enough space in his head to remember all these incredible creatures! Nothing like these people could ever exist on Earth. If he failed at converting Bill to his side, this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! And if he did succeed in converting Bill to his side, then he would have ample time to learn all about the diverse creatures in this realm between realms. If only Fiddleford knew what he was missing out on!

Of course, Fiddleford probably wouldn't appreciate this, even if he could be here. He was always so jumpy. He'd fidget so much that one of the looming creatures wandering the crowded landscape would notice them, and then there'd be real trouble.

"It's a shame you'll never get to meet these guys up close and personal," Bill remarked. "Your journal could be packed with all this, if we joined forces!"

"There's no excuse for evil," Ford replied adamantly. "Hundreds of refugees, wasn't it? Hundreds of species I could've studied, if you hadn't slaughtered them all."

"You're adorable," Bill snorted. "There's millions more where they came from. Believe me. Weak creatures aren't unique. Powerful ones like these are what you should be interested in!"

Ford didn't reply.

After a little while longer, he spotted a craggy mountaintop peeking up in the distance from behind crowds of monsters. Ford and Bill wove their way around, under, and between traveling groups, and gave the seated, bored-looking ones a wide berth. Their whispers grew louder as the ambient noise around them grew louder.

At last, they arrived at the mountain. It shifted and glowed with an eerie aura, humming deeply and faintly, so that you thought the noise was coming from your own mind. Ford craned his neck up as high as he could, and even then, he couldn't see the top of the mountain. Mist and clouds swirled around, blocking a clear sight of anything.

"Who goes there?" bellowed a scratchy voice. It cleared its throat. "WHO GOES THERE?!" it said again, sounding a little clearer.

Bill Cipher fell to his knees in deference. Ford followed suit. "We wish to know what a good time would be to visit-" Bill said a series of unintelligible sounds that Ford couldn't have repeated, let alone put into writing.

The creature echoed the unintelligible sounds. "-has not gone by that name for a very long time. Who are you?"

"Arthur," Bill said simply. "And this is Dan."

"Hmm. Step a little closer, so I can hear you."

"You can hear us just fine," Bill rebutted. "We'll enter (unintelligible sounds) domain when it suits us. For now, I have only a few questions.

"You wish to be a client?"

"Yep! And we want a soul."

"That is traditionally what is traded. Not the other way around."

"That's why we want to see if you'll make such an offer at all."

"For the right price, (sounds) will do anything."

"And what is their price for a soul?"

"A soul."

"Of course it is! Well, you don't fight people who enter the mountain or something, do you?"

No one answered.

Bill turned to Ford, elbowing him playfully. "Haha, well ain't that a delicious dilemma! To get my soul back, you need to sacrifice someone else's soul! A dream demon with a soul... I've never seen anything like that!"

"Shh," Ford whispered. "Did you set the marker?"

Bill tapped the ground with both fingers, subtly drawing a triangle. "Done, and done! Ready to rip a hole into that deer's mind?"

Ford hesitated, looking around at all the things to explore, then nodded.

Bill lifted one hand to tear a hole in the fabric of interdimensional spacetime, and stopped dead. "It won't work here."

"Pardon?" Ford felt like the ground had been ripped out from under his feet. If they got stuck here, he'd... he'd... he didn't know what he'd do.

"There must be someone nearby with a portal-cancelling aura," said Bill. "We'll have to move back to the emptier place before we can leave."

Ford pursed his lips. "That won't be a... problem, will it?"

"Nope!" Bill flashed a smile with too-many-teeth. "Come on, smart guy. And watch your step!"

~

Ford felt like a cockroach scurrying from dark place to dark place, terrified each time he felt the gaze of another gigantic creature staring at him. They'd located the apparently 'hard to find' Ancient One so easily, he almost expected something to go wrong before the end of this trip. Well, other than Bill's portal not working. But time and time again, a monster would glance at them, sending sweat down Ford's face and neck, and then look away without a second thought. After a few minutes, he was whispering to Bill again, asking a million questions, barely remembering not to talk too loudly.

Finally, the crowd of powerful creatures thinned out, and they were in a wasteland, where the occasional figure would dart past, like it was running for its life.

Bill held up a hand. "This'll work!" He snapped his fingers. Nothing happened.

"What?" Bill exclaimed, a little of his demonic echo leaking into his false-human voice. He scowled, taking a moment to calm down. "Alright. Who's here? Who's crashing the party?"

He stuck his arm in one ear all the way up to the elbow, and seemed to be rummaging around. Then he withdrew his arm, and tried the other side. He checked all over, from his eyelids to the bottom side of his tongue, until finally looking at Ford.

"Me?" Ford spluttered. He didn't like the look in Bill's eyes.

"That's right, Dan. I've heard of things that can shrink down real small, and mess with people."

Before Bill could inspect Ford, a tiny voice cried out, "Fine, you caught me!"

A dark brown speck leapt out of Ford's hair, growing a million miles a minute. Within seconds, it settled at the size of a minivan. Ford couldn't quite wrap his head around what he was seeing. Fangs lined its head like a mane, and its mouth was full of fur. Pin pricks of light glowed all over its inky-black body, blinking like eyes.

A slow smile crept over its face as it looked over the two of them. "You two know a lot more about the nightmare realm than I feel entirely comfortable with, you know that?"

"So what? Are ya intimidated by a little research?"

"No," the creature said, growing longer until it was the size and general shape of a dragon. Ford could smell its putrid breath. Its shoulder brushed up against him as it circled them lazily. "I'm wondering what you'd like to do with all this information. Bounty hunters? Multidimensional police? Criminals? There's quite a lot of people who would pay big for this kind of intel."

"Well," Ford said, winking at Bill, "you wouldn't want to cross my friend, here. I assure you that selling information is the least of your worries right now."

Bill didn't return the wink. Instead, he furrowed his brow in irritation.

"Is that so?" the creature purred, snatching Bill up with one hand. "Do I know you, all-powerful one?" The thing laughed, tossing Bill back to the ground with a flick. Bill glared at Ford, as if to tell him not to bring up his real identity again. Ford shrugged at him in exasperation. What were they supposed to do? Get eaten by a- a whatever-this-was?

"No, I don't think so," the creature continued. "I've never seen the two of you, or anything like you. Perhaps I can sell some intel on you." It took a whiff of them. "Oh, I haven't heard of that dimension before! Perhaps... oh, definitely... there are a lot of souls to feed on there. Three dimensions and everything!"

Ford reached for his gun. Bill was doing absolutely nothing. He simply sat where he'd been tossed aside, watching with a neutral expression.

The creature flicked Ford with the end of its tail once he'd drawn his gun, chuckling. "Plasma blaster? Oh, pleas-"

Ford shot it.

The creature snarled, shrinking in size a little and reeling backwards. "No ioniclastically-hyperinfused plasma? What is that? A chunk of lead?"

It grew in size until it towered over Ford like a building. "You're lucky you're so small. I would've planted five of me on you if you'd been any taller!" Huge limbs sprouted from its torso.

Ford shot at it wildly, but the surprise-factor only worked once. It hardly flinched. "No rapid-fire, either. I don't know why I worried about you. You're like an ant!"

And with that, it raised a foot to stomp on Ford. He wasn't sure how this interdimensional shape shifting creature knew what ants were, but he wasn't about to ask. He rolled out of the way, breaking into a run. "Bi- er, Arthur! A little help, here!" he'd almost forgotten their spur-of-the-moment fake names.

Bill gave the creature a look. "This guy's a devourer of space-travel energy. Singles out people who look like tourists, then cancels out their traveling-powers and mugs 'em. Not much of a threat, comparitivel-"

Ford let out a yell of frustration as he evaded the beast's attacks. "Physical assistance!!" he yelled inbetween gasping for breath.

Bill moved to stand up, then thought better of it. "I can't do much for ya. With these noodle-limbs, are you kidding?"

It took every scrap of Ford's willpower not to shout Bill Cipher's real name. "Well what about weaknesses?"

Bill considered it. "If you rub his tummy, he'll shrink back to flea-size involuntarily. It's like being tickled."

"His stomach is where?" Ford shouted, right before being smothered by the beast.

There was a high pitched scream, and the monster shrank down to the size of a flea. Ford gasped for breath, pinching the creature between two fingers before it could grow bigger again. "Now what?"

Bill raised his eyebrows. "Nice work. There's only one way to get rid of this guy. You ain't gonna like it, but for once, trust me on this." He held out a hand.

Ford gave him a measured look of distrust, before handing over the creature.

Bill tossed it into his mouth, and burst into bright-blue flames. His eyes momentarily merged into one. "That ought to clear up space for our portal!"

He snapped his fingers, and this time, the portal into the deer's mindscape appeared. "After you!" he said with a little bow.

Ford was out of breath and breathing heavily. He'd- He'd almost died. And Bill had just sat there. He couldn't walk past the demon without scowling at his smug, stupid face.

Bill only grinned wider. "Hurry up and get through there, Sixer. I told'ya we had to go incognito. That shape shifter would've blown our cover!"

Ford hopped through the hazy blue portal, and Bill followed shortly after. From there, it was only a matter of minutes before Ford was back in his own mind, and he woke up.

~

Stanley wasn't sure how far he'd ridden on the same bus. No one had asked to see his ticket yet, and he was starting to fall asleep.

"Last stop," the bus driver announced. Stan slowly sat up, looking out the windows at the pouring rain. He slid his hands into his pockets, and felt his heart drop into his stomach. Ford's address and phone number. He had it written down on a scrap of paper, and it was always, always in his pocket.

He stood up although the bus was still moving, searching for the paper with an irrational sense of panic.

There was only one other person on the bus. A mousy-haired man with a rather long nose, and a little pair of reading glasses perched there, slightly askew. As Stan walked across the bus, they caught sight of each other, and the man looked like he'd seen a ghost.

"S-stanford?" he stuttered. Stan's jaw dropped. As he watched the man's face get angry, he couldn't help but smile a little. So Ford had made some enemies, huh? He was just as much of an asshole as Stan suspected.

"Hey, whoa, I'm Stanley. How do you know my brother?" Stan asked.

It was the man's turn to look perplexed. "Your brother?"

Stan crossed his arms. "He never mentioned me, huh?"

The man's eyes roamed over Stan's figure, frowning. "You look so much like him! H-hang on..." he dug around in his pocket, pulling a scrap of paper out of it. "Is this yours? I th-thought... I thought when it blew over here that it was something su-supernatural..." he shuddered. "But it's yours, isn't it!" He handed the paper to Stanley, looking relieved.

Stan took it and shoved it in his pocket. "Yeah. But hey, how do you know my brother?"

The man's expression grew, if possible, darker. "My name is Fiddleford. I was his research partner. That man is dabbling in things... things that could destroy this world. I couldn't talk sense into him."

The look in his eyes was that of someone not completely sane. Stan felt a very real twist in his gut just thinking about it. So Ford had gone off the deep end, huh?

Fiddleford straightened his glasses with a deep sigh. "I'm on my way home, now, but..." he looked over Stan once again, no doubt judging his tattered clothes, dirty beanie, and scraggly beard. "...maybe you could talk some sense into him."

"Me?" Stan snorted.

"Yes,” Fiddleford said, suddenly emphatic and pleading. “Somebody’s got to stop him, or life as we know it could end, permanently!”

Stan took a step backwards. Hot damn, did Ford hang out with a weird crowd. But the more he thought about it, the more this sounded like the perfect opportunity. No matter how screwed up his life was, Ford’s was worse.

Suddenly, he wanted to go. He needed to go. He had to see how crazy Ford looked, right before he talked some sense into him… or punched him senseless, if it meant saving the world. For once in his damn life, he was going to be the hero, and there was nothing Ford could do about it. He’d just barge in, throw around Fiddleford’s name, and have Ford indebted to him forever after. Most of all, they would be even. I wrecked your science fair project in high school, Poindexter? Well, don’t forget who saved your ass from “world-ending forces”!

He’d see Ford again. He’d get even with him. And he'd never be able to call him the irresponsible one ever again.

The bus driver cleared his throat. “This is the last stop,” he repeated. “Everyone must get off.”

Stan nodded firmly at Fiddleford, genuinely smiling for the first time in weeks. “I’ll do the best I can.”

Chapter Text

Ford sat up with a gasp of air. He was back in his home. Everything... he patted his arms, torso, and legs... everything was real again. He was in the real world. He had made it out alive.

Still, his heart was racing. A stupid grin was plastered to his face, and he forced it into a frown. That had taken a bit longer than expected, with no thanks to Bill Cipher. That f***ing jerk! What had he been playing at, watching idly as Ford had been almost crushed to death by a shape shifting alien?! Hadn't Bill said that if the creatures of the nightmare realm knew who he was, they would be bowing down at his feet?!

And of course, he had some nagging to do on top of everything else. You murdered thousands of innocent inter-dimensional refugees? You burned our attacker into ash? There wasn't anything that could make him more pissed off than he already was. How long had they even been gone? A few hours? Maybe a whole day, if the height of the sun outside gave any clues.

Ford took meditation-position on the carpet, already going back into the mindscape.

~

Normally, Bill would be delighted to see Ford so inconsolably furious. Right now, however, he was more than a bit angry already, and Ford had the audacity to show up like this was all his fault?

"Hey, I'd love to listen to you prattle on about how wounded you are, but aren't you just wasting your own time? I'm not the one who almost blew our cover!" he snapped.

Ford's jaw tightened. "It didn't occur to you to tell me how long it would take? And don't think I didn't notice your... your delay tactics! Getting me interested in all those creatures-!"

Bill let out an exasperated sigh. "Oh, you're one to talk! Almost exposing my identity to the whole nightmare realm? Some good person you are."

"It was-" Ford was spluttering. "You- you almost let me die!"

Bill shrugged. "You're a pawn, Fordsy. I don't want you dead, but I won't throw myself in harm's way for ya, either!"

Ford took several deep breaths. "It always ends up like this, doesn't it." He looked up at Bill, frustration plain on his face.

Bill put an arm around Ford's shoulder, patting him on the back. "Don't look so worried, Sixer! It'll give you wrinkles!"

Ford shoved him away, opening his mouth to argue, but Bill interrupted him again, holding up a stick-figure hand.

"It's hilarious how you think you're so much better than me. I mean, just look at yourself! You're the only example I have of a 'good person', and you're not exactly raking in the benefits, pal!"

It stung. It actually stung. Ford scowled at the demon. Why did he have to be so right?

He didn't stop there. "Let's see... you've got no friends, no family, no nothing! Your best friend is a backstabbing liar!" Bill pointed at himself. "And you live in a shack in the woods. Don't blame me if I have my doubts about the utilitarian benefits of being a 'good person', alright? See ya!"

Ford furrowed his brow. This conversation was long from over-

He woke up from his mindscape with a start. Someone was knocking on the door.

~

Stanley Pines stood on the doorstep of the Mystery Shack for longer than he would have liked to admit. When he parked his car, he needed a moment to take in the oddly-shaped building, with its triangular window art and almost whimsical design. A man had grunted at him when he'd asked for directions, saying that he remembered helping to build that place.

It was hard for Stan to picture someone other than himself doing the physical labor to Stanford's cranial labor. He felt insulted in ways that he couldn't even explain to himself. He half-hoped that Stanford would be standing outside already, or would hear his car pull into the driveway and open the door himself. But alas, Stan was left with the daunting task of barging into his brother's house unannounced. The brother who was allegedly off his rocker. The brother who was allegedly at risk of destroying the planet.

Then, he had hesitated right at the doorstep. Surely Ford heard me walk up, he told himself. Or maybe he's got a doorbell- no. Of course he doesn't. Doesn't exactly have many visitors, does he? Stan had always been his only friend growing up. He wanted to elaborate on that thought in so many different directions, but couldn't bring himself to. He was angry enough already. And sad.

Finally, finally, finally, finally, he summoned the courage to knock on that door. Maybe Ford wasn't home. Maybe that was why he hadn't heard Stan's car pull into the driveway. He felt suddenly nervous about his unkempt beard. If Ford was good at one thing, it was insults...

The door swung open, and there he was. Stanford Pines was staring back at him, looking positively awful. The bags under his eyes were so dark, it almost looked like he had two black eyes, and his hair looked like it hadn't been combed in a week. His eye twitched every so often, and his hands couldn't quite hold still. They trembled ever so slightly, possibly from lack of sleep.

He'd rehearsed a tome's-worth of things to say to Ford when he opened this door, but all of a sudden, it all flew out of his mind. Ford regarded Stan, totally dumbstruck. He was squinting at him a little, like he wasn't sure whether he was dreaming or not.

"Jesus, Ford, you look like a train wreck," Stan blurted.

Ford took a small step backwards. "Stanley? You're actually here?" he gave Stan a once-over, frowning. "What happened to you?"

Stan had some biting remark about being homeless ready in the back of his mind, but couldn't bring himself to say it. Instead, he strode into the dingy, poorly-lit room. "I tried to call you, Ford!" he said defensively. "I've been trying to call you all week! D'you know how many nickels I've wasted?"

"Hold on." Ford's face tightened. "I haven't heard any phone calls. All week? What are you talking about?"

"All week," Stan repeated. "I took five buses just to find this-"

"What day is it." Ford's breathing had grown even shallower. "What day of the month is it."

"Erm... the fourteenth?" Stan said.

Ford sank to the floor, sitting precariously with his hands on his knees. He'd gone pale. "No. Please. It can't be true," he said hoarsely.

Stan didn't know how to respond. He'd been expecting to get into an argument, which would give him an opening for yelling at Ford for possibly attempting to destroy the world, but this pitiful sight had him at a loss for words. He crouched down beside Ford. "Er, are you alright?"

Ford stood up abruptly, ignoring Stan. He wasn't even sure if he'd heard him. "That BASTARD!" he exclaimed, staggering towards an oddly-smelling carpet with a triangle design at the center of it.

"Whoa, quit talkin' to yourself like that," Stan said, grabbing Ford's arm to steady him. He looked like he was on the verge of toppling over. "You're not makin' any sense."

Ford turned his head, like he was truly, fully noticing Stan for the first time. The rage boiling up on his face flooded over, and Stanley let go of Ford's arm, backing away.

"He lied to me! Again! It was only supposed to be a few hours, and now I've only got two weeks?! What are you doing here, Stanley? Did he summon you? Am I awake?! BILL, DO YOU HEAR ME? I'M GOING TO KILL YOU WITH MY OWN BARE HANDS-"

He was shouting in the general direction of the ceiling, arms outstretched wildly, tripped over the edge of the carpet, and landed face-first against its scratchy surface.

Ford's friend had just abandoned him like this? Instead of sending him to a doctor, or a psychologist? Stan felt sick to his stomach. He'd never been comfortable with crazy people. Not even when he'd been living on the streets, and they were the only ones who would look him straight in the eyes.

"Get a hold of yourself!" Stan managed to say, picking up Ford under his armpits and hauling him over to the nearest couch. He shoved a bunch of electronic-looking doodads off of it before tossing Ford onto the couch like a sack of potatoes. "I met your associate or whoever, an' he said you're tryin' to destroy the world?"

Ford buried his face in his hands, sighing deeply. "You caught me at a bad moment. I just can't believe... I've been asleep for a week, Stanley!"

Stan frowned. "Sure don't look like it."

Ford took another deep breath. "Okay." He turned to face Stan. "What the hell are you doing here?"

Stan folded his arms defensively. "Stopping you from destroyin' the planet."

"Hold on, hold on... you talked to Fiddleford?"

"Sure did. He's just as much of a mess as you are."

Ford laughed irritably. "Oh God, it never ends. What have you been doing with your life, by the way?"

"None of your f***ing business," Stan retorted.

"Well," Ford said, standing up abruptly, "it's been a pleasure catching up, but I really don't have time for this. Goodbye."

Stan stood up as well, itching for a fight. So he was gonna play it this way, huh? Well, he had another thing coming! "Not so fast, poindexter." He lightly shoved Ford, so that he lost his balance and sat back down on the couch. "I ain't leaving until I know you're not actually... destroying the world or somethin'."

Ford rolled his eyes. "I'm trying to save it, actually!" He surged back to his feet. "A supernatural being has been trying to destroy earth for quite some time now, and I was just in the middle of trying to stop him!"

Stanley hesitated. Supernatural being? Yeah, right. But for the sake of argument, he played along. "Alright, let's say you're tellin' the truth. How're you gonna stop them? With your superior strength?"

It was Ford's turn to look skeptical. "Quite frankly, the tables have turned in that regard. You're not so fit yourself, Stanley, whereas I have been training on a strict schedule for years, now."

"Pfft, well... you're still a nerd, Sixer. You're not exactly the punch-their-lights-out type."

Ford glowered at him. "Granted. But I have a foolproof plan."

"Let's hear it."

Ford shuffled his feet. "Erm. Well, it's a very complicated procedure. You see... I... madeadealwithademontopersuadethemtobecomeagoodperson," he mumbled.

Stan's jaw dropped open. "A demon? Are those even real?" A demon??" he looked around at the candles set in a circle. At the intricate drawings surrounding a triangular being. At the triangular windows. At the triangular carpet design. "That's crazy. You're crazy." For the first time, he felt a little of the fear Fiddleford must've felt, trickling into him.

"It's the most logical plan!" Ford protested, turning red.

Stan laughed nervously. "Yeah, right! It looks like you worship the guy-! You're insane!"

Ford was about to argue further, then paused. "Alright. Leave, then. Get out of here before he pops out at you or something!"

Stanley ignored the chills running down his spine, and laughed at the notion. "Can't get rid of me that easy. Come on. Where's your doomsday device, or your evil plans, or your summoning circle, or whatever. I ain't leaving until it's burned to the ground."

Ford bit his lip. "I can't. The device is off limits until the end of the deal."

"Wait, so there's actually a doomsday device? Ford??"

Ford looked startled. "I thought Fiddleford told you-?!"

"What the f***?!" Stan stormed toward Ford, and gave him a solid punch on the shoulder. "It's a good thing I came now, instead of later! Apparently, it's a small step from perpetual motion devices to world-destroying ones!"

Ford's face crumpled, reforming into an anger of a different flavor from when he was angry at Bill. He widened his stance, prepared for a physical fight, and it made Stan hesitate. Since when did ol' Sixer learn how to properly defend himself?

"Oh yes, of course! You're the hero now, Stanley! You're not the same washed-up failure I knew ten years ago! How silly of me!" Ford spat.

Stan aimed his next punch for Stanford's face, but Ford blocked it, and their hands met in mid-air. "You never cared about science, did you? You just wanted to be a crazy evil guy living in his secret lair making deals with demons, huh!"

"Since when do you care about the world ending, Stan? Didn't your world end after you peaked in high school?"

Ford landed a solid punch on him. Damn. He'd underestimated Ford's fighting ability. He shifted his stance. "You're just as much of an asshole as I remember!"

"Well you look like an addict!"

"And you're literally trying to end the world!"

"None of your business!"

Stanley leapt at Ford, wrestling him to the ground. He put up a surprisingly good fight, but he was clearly worse for wear, and Stan quickly pinned him with his arm twisted behind his back. "Show me the doomsday thingy."

"It's against the rules of the-!" Stan twisted his arm a little harder.

"F*** you," he said at last, and Stan let him get to his feet. He punched in a code, and a door swung open. They went downstairs together, with Stan keeping a firm grip on Ford.

After a surprisingly long descent, Ford nodded in the direction of complete darkness. "That's it."

Stan squinted. "Ya got any flashlights in here?" he took several steps in the direction that Ford had nodded, and was suddenly grabbed by the neck.

Ford was smiling at him so violently that he could see his gums. And his eyes didn't look natural at all. All of the tension in his face had vanished.

"Nice brother you've got here, Fordsy!" said Ford. Stan had to assume he was speaking to someone else.

"Hey Stanley, didn't you hear what Ford said? This place is off limits. Take one more step towards it, and I'll snap your neck! Nice to meetcha!"

Stan held perfectly still. So it was true. Supernatural stuff was really, really real, and Ford was being... possessed? Taken over? Inhabited? He'd never really paid attention to sci-fi, or even horror movies. Not the ones with demons and ghosts.

"Wh-who are you?" Stan choked out.

"The name's Bill Cipher! Haha, I can't believe Stanford never mentioned you! You look like a mirror image of him!"

He was still holding Stan a little in the air, hand firmly around his neck. He turned Stan's head from side to side, like he was examining an orange at the grocery store. "Wow! But you're all brawn and no brain, huh?"

Bill in Ford's body... Billord? Billord looked to the side, and his grin slackened. "No, of course I'm not gonna kill em!" he said to thin air. "That's- oh, come on! We'll talk about that later! I'm protecting our deal! You don't want our pact broken now, do ya? Then it would be open season on your brother, here!"

"Yeah, that's what I thought!" Billord said after a pause. "Of course I'm gonna set him down! Calm your cadillacs, Sixer!" His grip on Stanley slackened. "...I guess you do have family! They just hate your guts!"

With one last terrifying grin, Billord vanished, and Ford returned to his own body, and Stan landed back on the ground, coughing a little.

"Dear God," he said after a look at Ford's harried expression. "You're in deep."

At that moment, he knew his duty wasn't to save the world. He would have to save his brother from himself, first.

Chapter Text

1. Stanley had shown up unannounced.

2. Ford didn't want Stan here, for multiple reasons.

3. Stan had nowhere else to go.

4. Stan refused to leave.

5. If he kicked Stanley out, he would be doing the morally less-good thing.

6. He couldn't afford to do anything morally questionable while trying to set an example for Bill.

7. On the other hand, Stan's life could be in danger as long as he was under this roof.

8. But Stan's like was probably in danger no matter where he went, now that Bill knew he existed.

9. Ford didn't have time to argue with himself about this! There were much, much bigger fish to fry this month!

In the end, Ford decided to let Stan stay at least long enough to take a shower, trim his hair, and have a bite to eat. Anything less would be unkind -- not that Stanley deserved any kindness. Seeing his brother like this did hurt, no matter how much this was completely, 100% not his fault.

Stanley stubbornly refused to trim his beard. He insisted it was a "style choice" (although he conceded that the mullet was a mistake), and stepped out of the shower wearing a T-shirt and pair of jeans Ford had lent him from his closet.

It was then that he would tell Stan to leave. Ford had decided on it. He was going to tell him, and Stan was going to walk out of that door, and Ford was going to return to all the work he needed to do. As he stood there, however, nothing came out of his mouth. Stan gave him a raised eyebrow, clearing his throat, and Ford still didn't say anything.

Before he could force the words out of himself, Stan said, "I'm not leaving, if that's what you're thinking."

"Oh really?" Ford said sarcastically, secretly grateful that he'd broken the ice. "Was that supposed to be a thank-you?"

Stan took a step closer to Ford, clenching his teeth. "Look at yourself, Stanford! You need help. And... and you locked yourself up here in the middle of the woods with your crazy plans... someone's gotta talk sense into you."

Ford scoffed at him. "You talk sense into me? That's absurd. Go home, Stanley, before you make more of a fool of yourself. I've got everything under control."

Stan hesitated, looking torn between fury and concern. "No, Stanford, you don't! I just saw you get possessed by a demon." He drew in a shaky breath. "At least tell me what's going on."

Ford couldn't ignore the concern in his voice. Hadn't he turned away Fiddleford once? And look where that got him. Maybe he wasn't thinking straight, but he let go the notion of kicking Stan out, at least for now. With a heavy sigh, he gave in, but the sharpness in his voice didn't leave. "Fine," he snapped. "But I only have a few minutes. Time is of the essence, as you'll understand once I've explained this to you."

~

Ford got the feeling that Stan was relishing this.

"No cups?!" he cried from the kitchen. "...GAH! IS THAT MOLD?"

Ford ignored his brother's criticisms, waiting on the entry room's couch.

The couch sagged and its springs creaked when Stan sat down on the other end of it, empty-handed. "Have you eaten in a week?" he grumbled.

The statement made Ford realize he hadn't eaten in a week. Without a word, he surged up from the couch, walked into the kitchen, and came back with a jar full of edible magical plants foraged from the woods. He'd been meaning to do further experiments on these, but they were equally usable as a nutritious meal. As he unscrewed the lid, Stan gave him a horrified look.

Ford grinned, popping one of the bright pink, oozing plants into his mouth. When he offered the jar to Stan, he stared at it in disgusted fascination. "No thanks," he said at last.

"It's a perfectly edible plant," Ford replied. In fact, the flavor was nutty and sweet, and his expression was genuine when he smiled and popped another one into his mouth. Sure, they smelled like feet, but so did a lot of perfectly normal foods.

With the tables turned in his favor somewhat, and food in his stomach, he felt more ready to begin his tale.

He told Stan about how his research had led him to Gravity Falls. He told him about the Theory of Weirdness, and how Bill had promised to help him. The tricks and lies. The purpose of the portal. How he couldn't fall asleep without risking being possessed. The deal he made in desperation. The plan to obtain Bill's soul again. Reluctantly, he also described Bill's side of the deal: that he would have to play along with Bill next month, in exchange for Bill going along with Ford during this month.

When he'd finished talking, he felt simultaneously nervous and... lighter. How long had it been since he'd been so straightforward with anyone, or talked for so long about his personal life? He wasn't sure he'd told anyone about the events surrounding Bill Cipher. Certainly not aloud. But now that he'd said it, he had to admit, the light outside looked brighter, and the air inside smelled more pungent, and the colors around him looked realer. Not to mention that the terrible gravity of his situation felt a little less crushing.

He was acutely aware of how fast his heart was beating. A part of him, no matter how irrational and stupid, actually cared about how Stan would react.

Stan remained painfully silent.

"Sounds like quite the adventure," he said finally, frowning deeply.

"Oh?" Ford was quiet. He didn't know what to think of it. Was he referencing their childhood dream of adventuring together? "...what have you been up to?" He asked.

He was just waiting for the other shoe to drop. For Stan to get angry at him, so he could defend himself, and things could go back to normal. But instead, things were in this weird... quiet place. Maybe Stanley's horror at what Ford had done was too huge to be released as anger. Maybe he was in shock.

Stan swallowed. "Uh..." he avoided Ford's eyes, laughing hoarsely. "Y'know. Getting by. Travellin' the country. Workin' odd jobs."

"In what profession?"

Stan gave him a withering look, took his wallet out of his back pocket, and took out an I.D. card. It had a fake name at the top, and the picture was suspiciously blurry.

Stan handed it to him, and Ford took it, staring silently at the thing. When he held it out for Stan to take back, he grabbed it, slid it back into his wallet, and pulled out another one. No -- he fanned them out -- five.

Ford's jaw dropped. So Stan was a criminal? And he looked so serious. He looked like he was about to either cry or punch someone in the face. He looked legitimately embarrassed by the confession that he was a con man. And some of the names on these I.D. cards... Dick Fuckley?

Ford couldn't stand it. He burst out laughing.

Stanley furrowed his brow, bewildered by the outburst. And Ford didn't stop, either. His laughter was only getting more and more hysterical. Stan looked down at his fake I.D. cards, then back at Ford, shoving them back into his wallet. "What?" he said defensively.

The confused stare only made Ford laugh harder.

The laugh was, unfortunately, contagious. Stan snorted. Then a grin crept up his face. Then he was laughing too, and only then did he realize what they were laughing about.

"Y-y-y-you're a criminal, and I'm a f-f-failure," choked out Ford as he wrestled back laughter. Tears streamed down his face.

When their laughter died down, Ford wanted to keep laughing again, because now all that was left was absolute terror at what, exactly, he'd gotten himself into.

Stan stared at him, shaking his head in disbelief -- but the frown on his face was almost entirely gone. "Stanford Pines, d-d-dealing with-" he wheezed, fighting back a residual laugh. "-with demons! You're a disgrace to this family!"

Ford was momentarily floored that Stanley had made a joke about it. Then he smirked back at him, covering his face with his hand to compose himself before saying in reply, imitating their father's voice, "Stanley, it's your responsibility to pick up the sl-slack-" he chuckled "-with the honorable profession or breaking the law!"

Their laughter died down for good this time, dampened by the collective thought of their parents.

"Y'know..." Stanley said sheepishly, "I thought they might be living with you."

"Mom and dad?" Ford laughed bitterly. "They never spared the money to visit. After a while, I stopped thinking about them."

Stan grunted in approval.  "Never gave me the time of day, so you know..."

They sat in silence for another moment.

Ford set the jar down, leaning back.

Stan watched his movements, a frown growing on his face again. "Uh... what're you gonna do? Fix roofs? Hold a blood drive, or somethin'?"

Ford shook his head firmly. "Of course not. He needs to be doing good things. He can't exactly tag along if I go... out."

"Well, unless he possessed you," Stan said offhandedly.

"Stanley!" Ford said, sounding scandalized.

Stan shrugged. "Just sayin'."

"No," Ford repeated, "I need to meet him on his level. He's a very cerebral being. A little charity work isn't going to change his mind."

Stan scowled at him. "A little charity work? What, is that all I am? A charity case?"

"Stan, no. You're my brother." Ford looked unfazed.

"Cerebral?" Stan continued. "So he's above doing good work, or what?"

Ford began to look flustered, realizing that he'd irritated Stan. "It's more about helping me with my research than about being a do-gooder. Scientific advancement instead of bloodlust, that sort of thing."

"No, I get it. It's about- god, I can't believe this--you didn't have any objections when he was useful to ya, and now that he's gettin' in the way, you suddenly care about morality. Gimme a break!"

Ford's face fell. Hadn't they laughed together a few minute ago? Why did Stan have to be angry again?

He was reminded of Bill's words earlier. You're my only example of a good person. Was he an example of a good person at all, though? As he eyed Stanley, he considered what he'd seen of his adult personality. A crook. A liar and an identity-forger. A fighter, not a thinker. But was he a better specimen of what it meant to be morally upright? Could he persuade Bill Cipher, where Ford had not?

He didn't know the answer. But it was worth a try.

"Maybe you're right," he said softly. "But I still have to stop Bill, one way or another. I have enough moral decency for that."

"Whatever you wanna say to convince yourself," Stan jibed.

Still, it was only with a little glare and a little sarcasm that Ford said to his brother, "If you're such an outstanding citizen, why don't you help me?"

"Fine," Stan spat, like he was doing Ford a favor. He said it a little too quickly for Ford to be fooled, though. He knew he was the one doing Stan a favor, because where would he go if he wasn't needed here? And hadn't he always wished they could be an adventure-team again?

Ford smiled grimly at his brother. "How would you like to meet Bill Cipher?"

Chapter Text

Before Stan could say much more, Ford ran out into the freezing cold snow with nothing thicker than a lab coat.

Stan looked around the front room, squinting through the dim light. He couldn’t for the life of him figure out what was going through Ford’s head. Even when they were kids, he couldn’t figure it out. Ford was always halfway between wanting to hunt for pirate treasure and being a gigantic tight-ass.

He wandered over to a table smattered with various buzzing, blinking devices mixed in with chewed up pens and other doodads. “Experiment 38,” Stan read aloud, running his finger along the cursive lettering.

He picked up a glass pyramid, aiming it at a beam of light peeking through a triangle-patterned curtain. It filtered through into a rainbow on the other side.

“Heh,” Stan chuckled, spinning the pyramid in his hand.

The rainbow spun, reflecting around and around before vanishing when he put it down. His eyes followed the light, down to the carpet.

What was with this place? The carpet had a triangle on it with an eye in the middle. The walls had carvings of the same thing. Heck, even the electric kettle on the table with half its parts taken out had a little triangle-eye-thing drawn on in black marker.

He moved on from the table, peering into a dark corner of the room. He took a couple of steps towards it, and then the door burst open.

“Stanley, what are you doing? Come over here!” Ford said sharply, brushing snow off of his glasses. There was a thick red hand-bound book gripped in one hand,

Stan gritted his teeth at the comment, meeting Ford at the couch.

“Listen,” said Ford, already sitting down. “I swore to hide this journal where no one would find it, but it has an incantation in it that will allow you to enter my mind while I sleep.”

Stan wanted to make a jibe about the hocus-pocus nonsense that was the word “incantation”, but he’d had enough of Ford’s deadly-serious face for a lifetime.

Ford flipped through the pages, sticking out his tongue from the corner of his mouth. And there were quite a lot of pages. Stan didn’t interrupt him, but he didn’t sit down, either. Finally, Ford turned to the right page, and his face lit up.

“Here,” he said, standing and gingerly passing the book to Stan.

He took it in his hands, looking at the page. “Wh-whoa,” Stan chuckled, raising his eyebrows. “Didn’t know you could draw!”

Ford’s… there it was… there was his ultra-serious face.

Stan looked back down at the paper quickly. “Huh. Alright, I can read that. But what will I do once I, y’know, get in there?” He pointed at his head.

Ford furrowed his brow. “You should be perfectly safe. It’s my mind, after all. The worst you could do is mess with it.”

Stan took particular care not to make a joke about that. Ford was obviously at the edge of sanity, here. “So, uh, are you gonna fall asleep or somethin’?”

Ford gestured at the carpet with the triangle pattern. “I’ve become quite adept at falling asleep through meditation.”

He took a deep, shaky breath. He looked at Stan for a split second, like he wanted to say something. And then he went over to the carpet, crossed his legs, and closed his eyes.

Stan set the book down on the table, creasing the pages at the spine. “Uhh… you asleep yet, Sixer?”

Ford opened his eyes, looking irritated, before snapping them shut again.

Stan grunted, picking up the book and leafing through the pages, bookmarking the main one with his thumb.

He barked out a laugh involuntarily, staring at the “leprechorn” entry.

Ford surged to his feet, mouth pressed into a thin line. “Please, take this seriously! I can’t focus with your… your mocking noises! If you can’t handle meeting Bill Cipher, I can’t… I can see it ending very badly for you!”

Stan flipped back to the main page. “Like what happened to you?” He said quietly.

Ford sucked in his lip, avoiding Stan’s eyes. He sat back down, saying nothing.

After several mildly awkward minutes of waiting in silence for Ford to fall asleep, Stanley whispered his name. “Stanford? You ready?”

No answer.

He cleared his throat, mind involuntarily thinking back to when Bill had possessed Ford and “introduced himself”, gripping him by the neck like a rag doll.

A demon. You’re going to meet an actual f***ing demon. Keep it cool, Stan. Show no fear.

He read the incantation aloud, one hand on Stanford’s head like a priest giving a blessing.

Reality drained away around him, and then he was standing in the mindscape of Stanford Pines.

~

Rusty, decrepit swings creaked back and forth, hanging down from unlikely places. An eerie wind kept blowing them apart, so they rocked side-to-side instead of back and forth. Beneath Stan’s feet were broken shards of glass, with picture frames littering the sides of the path, unprotected photographs decomposing in the bizarre combination of scorching sunlight and a drizzling, muddy rainstorm.

Stan bent down to inspect the photos, then backed away when he realized most of them were of him. Some were of the scientist guy, while a few others were of people he didn’t recognize.

He was getting goosebumps just looking at this place. And why was it so quiet? Where was Ford? What about that demon he was in so deep with?

He wandered for another minute, finally arriving at some kind of endless library, where shelves and books and whiteboards hovered in midair. Not far away, he could see Ford and … a triangle? … sitting in armchairs, with an empty one hovering in the center, so they formed a circle.

“Hiya!” The demon screeched in an unholy car salesman voice. Stan winced as he flew towards him, grabbing his hands with his stupid-looking stick-figure arms. The demon spread out Stan’s fingers in the palm of his hand, like he was counting them in his head.

“Five fingers, huh? That explains it! You’re not a freak like Ford, so you hate his guts!”

Stan stiffened, pulling his hands away from him. Before he could stop himself, he’d blurted, “My brother isn’t a freak, so shove it!”

Realizing what he’d said, Stan shifted uncomfortably, scowling. “Who’re you, anyway?”

Bill extended at least six arms from his body, offering them for Stan to shake. One of them thwapped Stan’s nose, and another pinched his cheek. “Name’s Bill Cipher! Nice to meetcha! Ford and I go wayyy back!”

Stan backed away from him, clutching his nose protectively. “Hey, watch it!”

Bill twirled his finger, and the third armchair vanished from its position, re-appeared behind him, and zoomed towards him so quickly that he didn’t have time to dodge before it had scooped him up, and he was sitting in a chair with the rest of them.

Ford leaned forward in his chair, clasping his hands together contemplatively. “Alright, now that’s everyone’s up-to-speed, I have-“

Bill flipped upside-down in his chair, his arms dangling down with pent-up energy. “NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOPE!” He screeched.

Ford’s mouth dropped open. “Excuse me??”

Bill flew out of his chair, a grin radiating from his whole body. “I told you my backstory, Sixer. Now it’s you guys’s turn!”

He looked from Ford to Stan, rubbing his hands together. “Oh boy, that silence was deafening! Come on, lay it on me! I’m all-“

Ford raised one hand. “-ears. I know.”

Bill floated back into his armchair, then crossed one leg over the other. “I’d fill you in on my history, Stan, but I gotta feeling you’re not one for history lessons.”

Stan opened his mouth to argue, then closed it again, realizing he didn’t give a single f*** about Bill’s origin story.

He pursed his lips, giving Ford a long, hard stare. Ford looked back at him helplessly. This silent-conversation thing didn’t work out too well when neither of them could understand each others’ expressions anymore.

After an uncomfortably long amount of time, Stan cleared his throat. “You wanna know our life story, or just why we haven’t talked in ten years?”

Bill held up his hands, lighting them up with blue fire. “BOTH.”

“Geez…” Stan scratched the back of his neck. “We grew up in New Jersey, for starters. Ford… went off to college, an’ I made my way around, travelin’.” He sighed deeply. “We…”

He didn’t know what to say next. Thankfully, Ford took over from there. “We had our differences. Stanley didn’t contact me for almost a decade.”

Stan leapt to his feet. “Hey, wait a second, I’m not the one who didn’t contact you.”

Ford pursed his lips. “For almost a decade. Until you knocked on my door. I’m just saying-“

Stan’s eyes flicked over to Bill, then back to Ford, and he went back into his chair. “Look… I don’t care what you’re saying. Just, continue.”

Ford furrowed his brow uncertainly, then obliged. “It’s a long story. We ended up-“

Bill interrupted. “Whoa there, Fordsy! I want the long version. I gave you my long version, didn’t I?”

Ford stared at the ground, seeming to shrink into his chair. “Uh…”

Stan crossed his arms and legs, and hunched his shoulders. “Ugh, fine, I’ll say it. I broke his stupid high school science fair project, and ruined his stupid dreams, and he ratted me out to dad, and he kicked me outta the house.”

Bill’s guffaw of laughter did nothing to lighten the mood. “Geez, I don’t get what you two are in so much pain about, but I am loving it!”

Ford gave Bill a pointed look, then continued the story. “I didn’t get into my dream school, but I did work hard enough to get twelve PhDs. I spent my grant money building this place… but you know about that.”

“Yeah yeah, I wanna hear Stanley’s side of things!” Bill said dismissively.

Stan chewed on his bottom lip. “What do you wanna know? Anything you can name, I’ve prob’ly done it. Murder, arson, petty theft, pug trafficking… I was in jail in Puerto Rico for a while.”

“Wow, a man after my own heart!” Bill teased. “But no, I want to hear about how you got here!”

“I bumped into Ford’s old research buddy on the bus, and he said Ford was making some kinda doomsday device. I figured, might as well stop him from ending the world, right?”

“Oh, absolutely! You’re an interesting guy, Stanley! After all your brother did for you, you still came back!”

“Oh. Uh.” Stan felt weirdly exposed. “You’re kinda creepy, you know that?”

Bill morphed into a caricature of their dad. “I know.”

Both Ford and Stan jumped a little in their seats. Bill laughed, returning to his usual form. “Haha! Anyway, that was the worst storytelling I’ve ever heard! You two must be pretty torn up about it! How about you hug it out?”

Before either of them could react, Bill was pressing them against each other. Both of them squirmed, trying to shove themselves off of each other, to no avail.

“This is my month, Bill Cipher!” Ford shouted. “I will not have you sidetracking this any further!”

Bill stopped shoving them together, and they collapsed, all the gravity coming back to them. Without so much as a second glance, they hurried away from each other and sat in their respective chairs.

“Thank you,” Ford said stiffly. “Now. Now that we know everything about each other, let’s get back to work. Bill, we know where your soul is probably hidden, but scoping out the ancient one’s realm was not much of a success.”

Bill nodded, looking disinterested. Then he perked his body up. “Say, what’s the deal with Stanley here? Is he gonna be joining us on the return trip?”

“I assume so,” Ford replied impatiently. “We can worry about that later. Right now, the issue is how to obtain your soul.”

Stan spluttered. “Hold on. Demon-guy’s soul? He doesn’t have a- and you’re gonna—“

Ford pinched the bridge of his nose. “Yes, that’s where I’ve been all week. Looking for his soul. I have a theory that compassion is incompatible with being soulless.”

“Eh, you’ve got flimsy evidence pal,” Bill interjected. “I wouldn’t call it a theory. More like a superstition. I think the lack of “”compassion”” comes from me being a being of ultimate power, y’know? You two are a lot less….” He tapped where his chin would be, then snapped his fingers, summoning images of Ford and Stan as skeletons. “…permanent.”

“I have a hunch,” Ford said, making only a mildly irritated face at the skeletons.

Stan shuddered. “Can we not do that?” He said, gesturing at the skeletons.

Ford snapped his fingers and they vanished. “The mindscape is made of dreams. You can do whatever you want, here.”

Stan blinked. “Anything? Why didn’t you say so?”

He snapped his fingers, and the entire landscape changed. They were now sitting in reclining beach chairs, their feet in the sand and the water lapping at their feet. A couple of boats were spread out across the water, from little fishing boats to motorized ones pulling water-skiers.  The sun was warm, but not too hot. “Now this is more like it! I can’t think straight in that stuffy library.”

Ford’s nostrils flared. He moved as if to change it back, then slowly leaned back into his chair in resignation. “We have important work to do, and I don’t want to be sidetracked again.”

“Yeesh, we know,” Stan replied. “You sound like a broken record there.”

Bill had been taking in the sight of the beach, and now focused back on Ford. “Oh, I’m ready to get to work! What was it I overheard you two talking about… me possessing you and tagging along with Stanley?”

Ford choked on his own spit. “That is out of the question!”

Bill shrugged. “Suit yourself! I don’t get it, though. I’ve possessed you plenty of times in your sleep! So what’s wrong with it this time? Do you not trust Stanley or something?”

Ford gave Stan a glance. “No, of course not. You’re just trying to stall for time again.”

Bill lifted his arms, and the entire mindscape burst into flames except for on them. “I’m an agent of chaos! You’re telling me to act like a mortal. I’m telling you, this whole “morality” thing is ethnocentric. You think all beings should be like humans.”

Ford frowned, tapping his chin. “That’s an interesting argument, actually-“

Stan snapped his fingers, and the fire vanished. “Ugh, what is this, philosophy hour?”

Both Bill and Ford looked at him blankly.

Stan stood up. “I don’t know how long you were plannin’ on getting nothing done, but I want outta here. How do I wake up?”

Ford raised his eyebrows. “Oh… funny you should ask… I suppose I should have found that out beforehand… I’ve only ever woken up when the host mind woke up.”

“Then I’ll wake you up,” Stan said firmly.

“I haven’t even-“

“Nope,” Stan repeated, “I gotta pee, and you woulda sat here for days talking about semantics, and you know it.” He was already rolling up his sleeves, walking towards Ford with a gleam in his eye. “D’you feel pain in the mindscape?”

Ford’s glasses went askew, and he slid up in his chair so quickly that it fell backwards. “Aah! I- I- yes! Don’t- we don’t know if that’ll work!”

Bill flew between them. “Woah woah woah fellas, don’t get hasty here!”

Stan hesitated, one fist raised.

That’s when Bill grew a dramatically big hand, and punched Ford so hard in the gut that he flew backwards. His glasses spun off of his face and landed with a clatter in the sand.

“Geez.” Stan stared at Bill. “You’re crazy.”

He thwapped Stan’s nose. “You’re just getting that now?”

Everything started to go fuzzy, like TV static.

“See ya later, Stanley!” Bill shouted right before Stanley woke up. “I like your style, kid!”

And then he woke up.