Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The gryphon they encountered on the rocky Alaskan island was nothing like those that Stanford had met before. The near-omniscience was impressive enough, but given what he knew about gryphon vocal cords, Ford almost thought the fluent English was even more extraordinary. Almost.

“Stanford and Stanley Pines,” it addressed them, not moving its beak at all. “Though you’ve both gone by other names at different times — most notably in Stanley’s case, of course.”

It gently floated to the ground, then folded up its wings and began to groom (preen?) its chest fur.

“I’d appreciate it if you put your weapons away,” it told them. “Though I don’t blame you for that sort of reaction. I am something an outlier among my family.”

It spoke the word family in a way that made Ford suspect it was referring to its entire species. And seeing as this gryphon was the only one they’d met that hadn’t tried to eat them, Ford was inclined to agree with it.

“Of course. We apologize,” Ford told it, holstering his gun. He noticed that the gryphon was a bit smaller than the ones he’d seen before, though not drastically, and its wings were a darker dappled brown instead of the usual beige. Were the biological differences a result of its unique abilities, he wondered, or were those abilities an adaptation made in response to the disadvantages the biological differences caused? Being nothing if not a scientist, he couldn’t help but ask.

“If you don’t mind the question, what is it that makes you you? What is the cause of this outlier status?”

The gryphon tilted its head at him like a dog expecting a treat. Ford supposed it didn’t get very many chances to talk about its talents — or talk to anyone, really — in this barren environment.

“You could probably trace it all back to my precognizance,” it told him. “I can see into many different times, but knowledge of the future was what changed me most.”

Stan narrowed his eyes. “Oh yeah? Give us an example of this future knowledge.”

Ford could relate to Stan’s skepticism. Most people would have believed it without a second thought — the gryphon had addressed them by name, after all — but being raised by a fake psychic tended to make you suspicious of such things.

“Gladly,” the gryphon replied. “First of all: there is a reunion awaiting in your future.”

Aware of the usual cold reading tricks, Stan and Ford stayed silent, careful not to give the gryphon any extra information.

“You’ll return to a familiar situation, but you aren’t trapped in a cycle — there once was a cycle, but you’ve already broken out of it. You will, however, reminisce on past mistakes, and the correction of those mistakes. And you’ll both find answers to questions you didn’t know you had — at least not consciously.”

It paused. “Is that sufficient? I don’t want to go and spoil everything, you know.”

Stan and Ford exchanged a look.

“The ‘reunion’ thing means spendin’ another summer with the kids, I guess?” Stan suggested.

“Probably.” They had indeed been planning to reunite with the kids in Gravity Falls next month. “Returning to a familiar place… that’s Gravity Falls, of course, but I have no idea what cycle we used to be trapped in.”

“Petty arguments and grudges?”

“Fair enough, I suppose. But what about the questions we didn’t know we had?”

“Well, right now we don’t know we have ‘em, duh.”

Ford sighed. The predictions were vague, but the more specific parts seemed plausible. Only the passage of time would allow him to seriously assess their accuracy… though Stan, for his part, had taken the whole thing (relatively) seriously, which meant he probably believed it was real. And given how skilled Stan was at spotting scams, his gut instinct was more than good enough for Ford, even as unscientific as it was.

“That’s sufficient. We believe you,” Ford told the gryphon. “But if you don’t mind, how exactly did you gain this ability? Is it inherent, or acquired?”

The gryphon spread its wings — preparing to take flight, Ford realized. He knew gryphons didn’t like staying in one place for too long, but he’d hoped this particular one would stick around for a bit longer — he just had so many questions…

“Time isn’t linear,” it said, “you of all people should realize that.”

(Was it just Ford’s imagination, or did the gryphon look briefly at Stanley?)

“That means that seeing the future really isn’t all that difficult. A lot of people can do it — at least to some extent — if they’re taught the right way. But if you must know — well, I can’t go spilling all of my secrets, but I will leave you with this: there is a being I am indebted to in many ways, a being that itself sees many things that from your perspective are yet to come.”

For a second, Ford was afraid that that was all they were going to get, that the gryphon would fly away and leave them with only questions and no answers. But then, it added:

“Stanford Pines, I believe you’ve heard of the Axolotl during your travels?”

And with that, it took to the sky and didn’t look back.

Well, that was an answer that just raised more questions in its place, Ford thought, his mind whirling as Stan gave him a concerned look. But I’ll take it. I’ll definitely take it.

“Ford? Earth to Ford?” Stan asked. He may have repeated it a couple times; Ford wasn’t really sure. “I’m guessing you do know something?”

“Yes, something. You could say that,” Ford finally answered. “Let’s get back to the boat and pray we have an Internet connection. There are a lot of things I want look into.”

***

“We’ll meet again…”

Stan was by no means a good singer, but Ford thought he’d gotten used to it over the past eight months. And really, he was used to it — it was just the song that he couldn’t bear to listen to.

“Don’t know where, don’t know when…”

He was trying to ignore it, to not make a big deal out of something he shouldn’t have cared about, not after the better part of a year had passed, but —

“But I know we’ll meet again, some —”

“Could you shut it already?” Ford snapped, slamming his fist onto the rail of the Stan O’ War II with more force than he’d intended and instantly regretting it. Not so much because it hurt his hand (though it was a little painful), but because he worried how Stan might react to it — not well, that was for certain.

But Stan just gave him a look that was more concerned than hurt. “Whoa, Poindexter, I’ve been singin’ for about six seconds. Somethin’ wrong?”

Ford looked down. “I’m sorry, I just… I don’t like that song. Do you think you could sing something else?” He could have elaborated on why that song unnerved him so much, and Stan probably would have understood right away, but Ford had stayed up unhealthily late the past night researching and wasn’t in the mood to talk about Weirdmageddon.

And Stan couldn’t have possibly have believed him that it was that simple — Ford never snapped at him unless he did something remarkably stupid or unintentionally triggered a painful memory, and Stan wasn’t doing anything remotely stupid or risky at the moment — but he didn’t question Ford.

“Meh, my voice is kinda tired anyway.” It was a blatant lie, and the attempt to change the topic that he followed it up with was just as blatant. “So, you figure out anything else about that salamander god?”

Ford accepted the escape route Stan had offered him. “Well, technically I suppose I have, but not nearly as much as I would have liked.”

They’d spent three days sailing south since the gryphon encounter, and despite their Internet connection holding out far better than Ford had ever dreamed of, he’d hadn’t been able to find very many things that he hadn’t already known.

“It manifested itself to countless groups across the multiverse, I’m sure of that, but it seems that the only surviving records in our dimension were created by the Aztecs. And you know I’ve already read nearly everything there is to read about their god Xolotl.”

“Yeah, god of ‘twins and deformities.’ You’ve had that obsession since, like, middle school.” Stan tried not to pronounce the names of the god or the amphibian if he could avoid them. “And you even had one of the pink frilly guys in your lab.”

“I wish we could visit Mexico to conduct more research of our own,” Ford mused. “I have a vague idea for a summoning ritual, but I need more…” He paused as Stan’s words sank in.

“Yeah, too bad the kids will never forgive us if we skip out on them this summer to search for a magical fish lizard,” Stan told him, not realizing anything was wrong. “And I can’t remember what name my all my arrest warrants in Mexico were put out under…”

“Stanley, wait. You said you found an axolotl in my lab?”

Stan blinked. “Yeah, the one in the fish tank. I was afraid I was gonna accidentally kill him or somethin’ after you… ya know, fell through the portal, ‘cause I didn’t know what to feed him or how to clean his tank, but the little guy stuck around almost until you got back. You… you knew about it, right?”

“Almost until I got back?!” Ford asked. “Axolotls can live for fifteen years if they’re cared for well, but twice that?!”

“Yeah, I always wondered if you did some weird spell on it or somethin’. But… you really didn’t know about it?”

“I never kept an axolotl in the Shack,” Ford confirmed. “I honestly would have loved to have one as a pet, but I didn’t have the time to take care of one. They require a specific type of food, a specific temperature range, a specific type of materials in their tank… I can’t imagine any way one could have gotten there by natural means!”

“Would it freak you out more if I told you it just disappeared a couple days after the kids showed up last summer? Literally nothin’ left behind, like it dissolved in the tank or somethin’?”

Ford slammed his hand against his forehead. “Stanley, I can’t believe you had a ghost axolotl in your house for three decades and never brought it up until now.”

“Hey, how am I supposed to know what’s normal for pink salamanders? They could have all lived that long and disappeared like that, and I would have sounded like an idiot for bringing it up!”

Ford shook his head. “It has to all be connected!” For about the seventh time, he regretted not bringing a bulletin board and red string with him on the Stan O’ War II. “Your axolotl, the god Xolotl, the countless references I’ve heard across the multiverse to a benevolent creature that guards against evil and patronizes those with prophetic ability…”

“So… you really think it was the Axolotl in that tank all those years?”

“I think it’s quite probable. But… just what would the Axolotl want with you, Stanley?”

***

Ford had fretted over the Axolotl for several more minutes before they encountered what had to have been some sort of cursed seagull — no normal bird could possibly crap that much, right? — and their attention was very quickly drawn elsewhere.

As they were cleaning up the aftermath of the attack, Ford mentioned something about the Axolotl probably knowing that Stan was destined to defeat Bill, but he quickly abandoned the thought to continue cursing out seagulls in every alien language he knew. The explanation must have at least partially satisfied him, though, since when they went ashore that evening Ford fell asleep almost immediately in the hotel.

“I’d still like to do more research, of course,” he told Stan before completely losing consciousness. “Maybe we could sail south after this summer, visit the region where the Axolotl manifested himself as Xolotl. But I do think it’s likely that he paid you a visit knowing about your eventual role in Cipher’s downfall.”

Stan wasn’t as satisfied, for reasons he couldn’t quite pin down. Rare were the times when Stan was the twin lying awake at night, thinking about the day’s unsolved mysteries, but tonight, for whatever reason, he’d transformed into the resident sleepless conspiracy theorist.

He had a weird gut feeling telling him there was something he was missing — forgetting? — about the Axolotl, and he’d learned to trust his gut over the years — it had saved him so many times he’d lost track. His subconscious apparently knew a hell of a lot more than he did — though that really wasn’t much of an achievement, he figured.

There was a weird sense of urgency to his gut feeling today. Stan wasn’t sure he’d be able to describe it if he’d tried. There was just a hard-to-explain emotion — not really fear, he didn’t think, but definitely not a positive emotion, either — that rose up in his chest whenever he thought of the future: of returning to Gravity Falls, of reuniting with Dipper and Mabel and everyone else, of actually traveling to Mexico with Ford one day to learn more about and maybe even meet the Axolotl.

Big things are coming, he thought. And I can’t stop them.

Then he thought, Come on, Stan, you’re getting as paranoid as Sixer. Next thing you’re going to be keeping a diary all written in code.

So he ignored his gut and let himself fall asleep, a familiar tune about reunions and clouds and sunlight running through his head just as it had been ever since leaving that barren Alaskan island.

Chapter Text

It was, as promised, a sunny day when everything came crashing down.

June 24th, 2013 — the ten-month anniversary of the start of Weirdmaggedon, and also the end of it, since time had ceased to exist for a while. Ford realized as much a few moments after waking up in the morning, and briefly wondered what he and his family would do in two months, when it would have been a year.

Throwing pinecones at the statue of Bill in the woods sounded appropriate, but they’d already done that on their first day back in Gravity Falls. Maybe they’d come up with something even more humiliating for the statue, like stapling him to a tree — Stan would have plenty of ideas, Ford was sure.

Ford smiled to himself, satisfied with his coping mechanisms for once. It had taken a lot of reassurance from Stan and late-night video chats with the kids, but he was finally beginning to get over the paranoia that Bill had survived. He just hoped that his family was recovering as well as he was — he wasn’t too concerned (well, any more concerned than ever) about Dipper and Mabel, but he’d noticed that Stan hadn’t been sleeping well ever since they’d gotten back to Gravity Falls two weeks ago.

Naturally, Stan being a Pines and possessing horrible communication skills and a deflated sense of self-worth, he’d tried to hide it, but Ford had gotten to know Stan’s usual habits well enough to tell. Even on the most stressful days on the Stan O’ War, Stanley had never gotten such large bags under his eyes, had never acted so out of it in the morning, had never seemed to almost desperately invent more chores to do late in the evening so that he could put off sleep just a little longer. Yet when Ford had quietly brought it up a few days ago, Stan had denied the existence of a problem.

“I’m old, Sixer,” he’d declared. “I’m always a little tired and out of it in the morning. C’mon, Brainiac, you know how aging works. Stop worrying so much.”

Ford shook his head, remembering the exchange, and made his way to Stan’s room on the other side of the basement. (With the portal gone, there was a lot of space down there, and Soos and Melody had done a lot of remodeling.) Maybe if Stan hadn’t had his morning coffee yet, he’d be especially exhausted and more likely to welcome Ford’s help.

But when Ford opened the door, Stan wasn’t there. He checked his watch, wondering if he’d overslept, but he hadn’t; it was only ten past seven. Prior to seven-thirty, Stan could usually be found awake but still in bed and possibly hurling his alarm clock at the wall.

Perplexed and more than a little worried, Ford took the elevator up, and upon reaching the kitchen he was quickly greeted by Mabel.

“Melody and I made waffles with edible glitter!” she exclaimed. “Dipper said it was too early in the morning for glitter, but you’ll try one, right?”

“Hmm. I, uh, I’m not very hungry right now, but if you save one for me I’d be happy to try it later. Have you seen Stan this morning?”

“See, Mabel, I told you everyone’s tolerance for glitter is lower before eight,” Dipper yawned. “Stan went out for a walk; I’m not sure where. He was a little… out of it and said going outside would help wake him up.”

Ford stretched his arms, placing his hands behind his head. His anxiousness subsided a bit, dropping from the extreme unease of I have no idea where my brother is to the still concerning, but less urgent my brother’s still suffering from sleep deprivation and being difficult about it.

“You know, a quick walk sounds like a wonderful idea. I think I’ll go out and try to wake up a bit more myself — assuming I don’t have to personally stake my claim to that waffle.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll guard it for you!” Mabel pledged. “You go do whatever it is that you have to do to prepare yourself for its glittery epicness!”

“I knew I could count on you,” Ford chuckled as he made his way outside.

“Do you think he’s looking for Stan?” he faintly heard Dipper ask, followed by something else he couldn’t catch.

Ford himself wasn’t sure what he was doing. Did he genuinely feel like a walk, or was he just trying to convince himself of that because he was worried about Stan? It was definitely true that he wasn’t hungry, but was that normal, or out of anxiety?

Ford shook his head. So much for healthy coping mechanisms. He really needed to convince Stan to talk things out, for both their sakes.

But the fresh morning air helped his mood, as did the wildlife. Bright yellow swallowtail butterflies fluttered between the trees, while robins and meadowlarks sang from high up in the branches. Of course, there were a few gnomes crawling about as well, but they didn’t pay any attention to Ford — they’d been a bit scared of the entire Pines family once Stan and Ford had finally learned the details of why they’d kidnapped Mabel last summer and told Jeff exactly what they thought of that stunt, wielding brass knuckles and laser guns respectively.

Ford wandered through the forest, keeping an eye out for anomalies and as a result not paying much attention to where he was going. He wasn’t sure he could get lost in Gravity Falls if he tried, and even if he ran into a hostile creature, he had a gun on him, so the only thing he had to be worried about was…

...ending up in front of Bill’s statue. Which was exactly what he’d just done.

It really shouldn’t have been any cause for concern. He’d visited it several times since Dipper had discovered it late last summer, and nothing bad had happened. Learning it was there had been mildly worrying, but he’d ran a few tests with McGucket and declared it completely safe to throw pinecones at, and even directly touch.

But every time he’d visited before today, it had been with at least one of his friends or relatives. Now he was alone, and while he had no reason to suspect that anything bad had happened to Stan, it was unsettling to face the likeness of his old enemy while not knowing exactly where his brother was.

Stan’s probably back at the Shack by now, he reassured himself. Dipper never even told you how long he’d been gone. If you get back and he’s not there, then you can start to worry just a little, but not until then.

Just for good measure, he went to pick up a pinecone to chuck at Bill before he left. But as he bent down, he noticed that several foot-sized patches of the dew-covered grass were pressed down into the damp ground. He was sure they weren’t his own prints — there was a larger depressed patch that indicated someone had kneeled down, and they also came several feet closer to the statue than Ford had.

Not quite close enough to shake Bill’s hand, though, unless the being that had left the footprints had longer arms than any human. Ford breathed a sigh of relief upon realizing as much, then mentally scolded himself.

Bill’s dead and the statue is just a triangular hunk of rock with no magical power whatsoever remaining in it. It was drained of all of that power when Bill abandoned his physical form to enter Stan’s mind. Nothing bad would come from shaking its hand in the first place.

But the (quite fresh) footprints were still a curiosity — and on some days, including this one, Ford didn’t have much of a mental distinction between curiosity and paranoia. If the tracks had gone back down one of the two trails that connected to the town, Ford might have left them be, but they’d came from the same direction he had — Stanley? — and then veered off the path, into a rather thick patch of forest.

He checked his watch. It was already nearly seven-thirty. He’d told the kids he was only going for a “quick” walk; would they worry if he wasn’t back by eight?

He could walk back to the Shack and tell them he was going to take some time to investigate something, but that would cause two problems. First, wet grass wasn’t the best for preserving a trail and Ford might struggle to find it again if he waited too long. Second, Dipper (and possibly Mabel as well) would demand to know what he was investigating, and he wasn’t sure he could explain it to them without sounding paranoid. And he didn’t want the kids to hear him sounding like that; they’d just worry about him, and that was what he was trying to avoid in the first place.

...Except, he realized, the first issue and possibly even the second could be remedied through the wonders of modern technology. Ford had broken down and bought a smartphone last fall, and while he knew how to use it far better than most people his age, he still frequently forgot he had it on him.

He quickly sent Dipper a text: Enjoying myself so I took a longer trail. Expect me back sometime after eight. Please tell Mabel to put my waffle in the fridge.

And with that, he set off into the woods.

***

Beneath the trees, the ground was drier, which might have made the footprints harder to track had it not been for the trail of snapped twigs. He estimated the footprints were more than ten but less than twenty minutes old — a reasonable amount of time ago for it to have been Stan, he couldn’t help but think.

But while he could understand why Stan might have come to the Bill statue, Ford didn’t have the faintest idea why he would ever head off into the mostly-uncharted woods afterwards. Stan strongly disliked the woods of Gravity Falls — too many bad memories from the early days of the Shack, of going out to search for attractions and coming back with anomalies that caused more damage than they paid for, he’d explained to Ford once. Stan would go there if he had to, but he needed a good reason, like a relative in need of saving, and Ford was positive that Stan was the only Pines unaccounted for at the moment.

Something startled Ford out of his thoughts. He’d been so focused on why Stan couldn’t have left the tracks that he hadn’t really processed the sound as much as he’d simply registered that it had occurred, and he couldn’t tell where it had come from or even recall what it had sounded like. But for some reason, it had sent a chill down his spine.

Then it happened again — or maybe it was a different sound, but this time Ford recognized it — a faint whisper, not necessarily human but almost certainly sentient, quiet but not far away at all. He shoved his way past bushes and branches, startling several meadowlarks, and burst into a clearing ringed by birch trees, the rips in their bark like watchful, fearful eyes. On the other side, sitting with its back against a tree was —

It was Stan. Despite all logic, it was him. The red beanie tucked over grey hair was unmistakeable. But why were his knees pulled close to his head, why was his gaze directed straight up to the sky with a look of pure terror on his face, why were his hands curled into fists and beneath his folded legs like he didn’t want to look at them, why was he shuddering like that —

“Stanley!” Ford shouted.

Was he having another memory lapse? Were they wrong that the brief one in March had been the end of them?

“Stanford?” Stan flinched. “Shit, Stanford, why are you — shitshitshit you gotta get away —”

“Stanley, it’s alright.” Ford tried to keep his voice calm and soothing, which is something that’s difficult to do when you have no idea what’s wrong but easier when you know you have to do it for your brother’s sake. He was briskly walking across the clearing, trying to get to Stan as fast as he could without seeming panicked himself. “I’m here now, you don’t need to worry. I don’t know how much you remember right now, but I promise we can figure out whatever is —”

Stan leapt to his feet, and with almost superhuman speed, raced as far away from Ford as he could get without entering the dense part of the forest. “P-please, Sixer, don’t get any closer! I might — I could — DAMMIT, didn’t you listen to what I just said?! Get the the fuck away — no. Get you and the kids and Soos and Melody and Wendy and — shit, just get everyone away from me! Get the whole town away! No one deserves — deserves — deserves this!”

Stan was crying now, hands once again behind his back like he was scared to look at them.

“Go,” he pleaded. “I know you’re a — a dumbass w-who cares about his dumbass brother, but you need to leave. Get everyone the hell out of Gravity Falls. I don’t even know if that — if that’ll work or if he can follow you out of here once he… but there’s — there’s nothin’ else you can do to stop —”

“Stanley, please listen to me.” Ford was standing about ten feet away, and it took all of his willpower not to rush to his brother’s side and hug him. “I don’t know who you’re afraid of, or what you’re remembering, but I promise you, it’s not as bad as you think. We’re all safe now. Trust me, we can —”

“BILL IS BACK, FORD!” Stanley screamed. “Listen to me! He’s back and it’s all my fault and he’s in my mind and you gotta get away before he’s completely back and he destroys the whole goddamn town — and who knows what else, because who knows if that barrier will even stop him anymore?!”

Ford froze.

That would explain Stan’s behavior, of course it would. He would have wanted to get as far away as possible from anyone he — Bill — could harm.

But how had Stan become so convinced that Bill was alive? — because Bill couldn’t be back, Stan couldn’t be right, he just couldn’t. If Stan was truly possessed, there would have been some sort of indication before, wouldn’t there? Stan had to be having a flashback to the brief span of time Bill had spent in his mind, or some other sort of nightmare —

“Stanley, I swear Bill is dead,” Ford began, knowing exactly what to say because he’d repeated it to himself at least a hundred times. “Fiddleford and I have scanned the statue with a machine that detects Bill’s reality-warping energy, we’ve scanned you with a machine that detects the presence of multiple minds in one form, hell, we even scanned a few gnomes with both machines to test the things, and at no point did any of the scans come up positive. You remember all that, right?”

He was talking partly to convince himself, and in that respect he was succeeding, but Stan was just shaking his head, terrified expression unchanged.

“If you’d let me come closer just for a moment, I can verify that you don’t have slit pupils,” Ford suggested, pulling out his phone. “Here, I can even use the camera like a mirror so you can see for yourself that everything’s fine. You know that Bill can’t hide those eyes.”

Stan slowly shook his head from side to side again, but this time, Ford realized, he wasn’t negating anything as much as he was looking for an escape route in case Ford moved any closer. “Sixer, you don’t understand. You — you don’t have to check anything. I know he’s in here. You’re running out of time to save —”

“How did you — what is it that makes you think that?” Ford asked, choosing his words carefully but still regretting most of them. “I’m sure there’s a logical explanation — could it have been a nightmare? Or, simply sleep deprivation? I know you haven’t been getting much rest, and that can —”

“Ford, stop,” Stan interrupted him, firmly but quietly. Refusing to meet Ford’s eyes, he slowly brought his right arm out from behind his back and held it in front of him — as if he was offering a handshake, Ford couldn’t help but notice. “If — if you won’t fucking listen to me any other way, I — I’ll — I’ll show you, Sixer. Just look. And please, just… don’t come near me.”

“I… a-alright.” Ford took a step back, hoping it would reassure Stan. Why was his heart beating so hard? Bill was dead, they were all safe, Stanley was safe —

Stan took a deep breath, and his hand burst into blue flames.

Chapter Text

Stan had Shooting Star and Pine Tree in his hand, and as desperately — pathetically — as they struggled to get free, his grip remained tight.

“Time’s up! I’ve got the kids!” he announced. He couldn’t remember who he was announcing it to — though he knew it was someone he was absolutely infuriated with. “I think I’m gonna KILL one of ‘em now, just for the heck of it!”

Stan raised Pine Tree and Shooting Star to his eye level.

“EENIE —”

Stan was shaking Pine Tree’s hand in the attic of Sixer’s old house. Puppets were strewn across the floor behind them. This was going to be a fun day! He was thinking he might end it all off at the water tower, maybe even try and get Shooting Star to join him for the big finish…

“MEENIE —”

Stan was deciding whether he wanted Dipper or Mabel to hang up the signs for the Mystery Shack. It would probably be better to have Dipper do it — the kid could use some physical labor to toughen him up…

“MINEE —”

At the moment, Stan was on Pine Tree. On the next beat, he would land on Shooting Star. He raised his other hand to snap his fingers, preparing to snuff out the human girl’s light, her boundless energy…

Her unwavering optimism… her love for everyone around her, no matter how terribly, how inexcusably they’d wronged her in the past...

What was he doing, he couldn’t bring an end to this light, couldn’t bring an end to this life —

“YOU!”

“Mabel!” Stan nearly leapt out of his bed.

It was a dream. It was just a dream. Oh, thank fuck, it was just a dream.

Already, he’d forgotten what the dream had been about. He’d forgotten why he’d been so relieved that it wasn’t real. He’d forgotten why he was crying, why he had choked out Mabel’s name, why he felt like like barricading himself in his room and never coming out. Was it out of fear? Guilt? Shame? All of the above?

I did this it was all my fault all my fault all my fault…

All he knew was that this hadn’t been the first nightmare of the month, or the week, or even the night — although it might have been one of the worst yet.

No, don’t think yet, that’s just asking for it to get worse…

He gathered the will to look at his alarm clock — 6:56 A.M. When was the last time he’d woken up, about four? He’d been taking a long time to fall asleep recently (hadn’t really wanted to fall asleep recently), so he might have been out for a little over two hours, if he’d been lucky.

Maybe that’s why I feel even more like shit than usual, he thought. Just my old friend sleep deprivation.

Deep down, he knew that wasn’t it.

He got off his bed, dragging a blanket with him, and sat in the cold, dusty corner of his recently constructed room. He really didn’t want to sit on that bed ever again. Every time he’d gone to sleep in it, he’d woken up feeling like someone had died, and like he’d been the one to kill them.

Maybe… he could find an excuse to spend the next night in his chair upstairs? Maybe there would be something decent on TV tonight, and he could claim he fell asleep while watching that. He wasn’t sure if it would help, but it couldn’t make things much worse, right?

He sat in the corner until his butt started to hurt, which at his age didn’t take very long, then slowly made his way to his nightstand and put on his glasses. His alarm clock hadn’t started ringing yet, but he smacked it preemptively — he didn’t feel like crying anymore, but he was still in a shitty mood. He wanted someone to blame, or at least to vent to.

He couldn’t talk to his family — they’d just worry about him. Hell, Ford was already doing that. Maybe he could just find some inanimate object to yell at…

Actually, he knew just where to find a certain statue that really deserved to be yelled at.

***

He exited the no-longer-secret passageway to the basement, walked to the kitchen on autopilot, and was confronted by two familiar children who addressed him so casually and happily that it stunned him.

“Morning, Grunkle Stan.”

“We all got up early to make glitter waffles! Do you wanna to help, since you’re up early too?”

Mabel was tugging his hand, but Stan didn’t move — was afraid to move.

Shooting Star Mabel was so bright, but so impermanent, her light so prone to burning out. So tiny and short-lived compared to the rest of the cosmos, just a snap of the fingers and her light would go out forever —

And there was Pine Tree Dipper, a bundle of brains and anxiety running off nothing but the hilariously easy to exploit desire for knowledge, and just as fragile as his sister, just as impermanent, just as easily broken by a fall off the water tower —

“Grunkle Stan, is something wrong?” Mabel was frowning at him.

Stan blinked a few times. Time, which had been moving like it would in a surreal dream, resumed as normal, but he still felt… horrible. Afraid. Guilty.

But if there was one thing Stanley Pines had always been good at, it was putting on a smile when he really didn’t feel like smiling.

“Waffles, you said? I’d better not be finding glitter in my waffle iron when you’re finished!” He had a faint headache, and blurry images superimposed themselves over his view of the kids.

“We’re not using your waffle iron!” Melody yelled from the kitchen. “Soos and I bought a new one last month!”

Dipper gave him a suspicious look. “You were really quiet for a second there. Is everything okay?”

Stan shrugged, which helped disguise how much he was shaking. “Just didn’t sleep too well. Probably ate too much last night or somethin’. I think I’m gonna go for a walk.” He had to get away, as far away as possible from the poor kids who didn’t deserve any of the things they’d gone through, didn’t deserve to be around someone like him. If he stayed, and something bad happened to them because of him, then how could he —

“You know, some Mabel Juice will wake you right up!” Mabel suggested. “I can whip you up a glass —”

“And so will the great outdoors,” Stan interrupted. “You know, nature! Natural things! Unlike that unholy abomination!”

Any other day Stan would have stuck around a little longer to watch as Mabel defended her concoction, but today he rushed out of the Shack as quickly as he could without arousing suspicion, grateful to have the excuse of fleeing from Mabel Juice.

“It’s just the kids,” he told himself. “You see them every day.”

He was still shaking a little, but the panic attack — he didn’t really know much about panic attacks, but he assumed it had been something like that — was fading. “They’re alive. You’re alive.”

A tiny voice in the back of his head added: you shouldn’t be.

He convinced himself he’d imagined it. “Everything’s fine. Everyone’s safe.”

But I’m not fine, he couldn’t help but think. What’s happening to me?

It must have all started with the nightmare, but he’d been recovering from it until he’d seen the kids and… and then what? He’d been terrified of them… no, terrified for them, it was himself he’d been terrified of.

The first night back in the Shack had been when the nightmares had started, hadn’t it? Was it all because he was back in Gravity Falls, the place where everyone’s lives had gone to shit either the past summer or half a lifetime earlier? (The place where he’d made so many mistakes, had nearly killed his family?)

Ford would probably caution that correlation didn’t equal causation, but take note of the link for further research — oh, fuck. What would Ford do if he learned what had happened?

Nightmares were horrible, but it was easy for Stan to hide the worst of them, to keep smiling through his exhaustion. Random panic attacks while he was awake and walking around were harder. Ford was already suspicious about Stan’s sleeping habits, but if he learned about the panic attack he’d worry so much, too much for his own good, just like he had back when Stan was still recovering from the memory gun. He’d give himself nightmares over…

Stan had to pretend to be alright, for his family’s sake. Or better yet, impossible as it seemed, figure out how to fix himself so he didn’t have to keep lying, keep putting on a fake smile, to make sure they stayed happy.

He made a fist. If all his issues really did trace back to Weirdmageddon… well, he knew who to blame. That was where he’d been going in the first place.

So he set off towards the Bill statue, hoping in the back of his mind that yelling his frustrations at it might help him somehow.

Even further in the back of his mind, a voice was telling him it was a horrible idea, that it would just raise questions he didn’t want to answer. But once again, he lied, this time to himself, and pretended it wasn’t there.

***

“So, Bill. You’ve fucked up a lot of shit for our family, haven’t you?”

Looking at the statue, Stan felt a vague sense that he was missing something obvious, like when you forget a word that’s on the tip of your tongue. But today, he barely even registered the feeling — that was how he’d always felt looking at Bill, back since finding the first of many creepy triangles in his brother’s house.

“I thought you might have finally been out of our lives once and for all,” he continued, “but that was a dumb thought. You don’t need to be alive to be hauntin’ our dreams.”

You may be able to haunt my dreams, but you can’t enter my mind unless I shake your hand and let you in!

“You’re a real special type of asshole, Bill. But don’t think I’m gonna let you win, just ‘cause there’s nothing left to punch.” Stan figured that he could punch the statue, but that seemed like the kind of thing Bill would just laugh at.

Pain is hilarious!

“I’m not gonna let all the shit you pulled ruin my life. Nope. ‘Cause you’re just a dumb statue now, and we’re done with you.” Stan was starting to feel better — or at least convince himself that he was feeling better. “I mean, look at you. You’re still tryin’ to shake someone’s hand and make a deal, but you’re just gettin’ covered in bird shit.”

If there was anything that could improve Stan’s mood under any circumstances, it was mockery. He turned around to face the same way the statue faced, and held out his hand in the same pose as it.

“Look at me, I’m Bill Cipher! I died ‘cause I got punched by a pissed off elderly con man! Wanna make a deal with me, an even more ancient, bigger asshole of a con man?”

It took him a moment to notice it, but he felt a strange sensation in his right hand, like it had gone numb and couldn’t properly sense what he was touching. It was like he was feeling something that wasn’t fully real, that wasn’t meant to interact with the human senses…

When he sluggishly looked down to examine his hand, he could’t remember why he’d felt the need to do so. He didn’t notice anything wrong — there were just a few hypnotic, familiar blue flames flickering around his fingers.

If anything, he felt peaceful, more aware of his surroundings, with images and information passing through his senses too fast for him to process automatically but available to him if he chose to pay attention…

There were Pine Tree and Shooting Star, arguing about edible glitter…

There was Question Mark trying to coax Gompers off the roof…

Stan smiled. They were safe, happy, going about their days as normally as anyone could in Gravity Falls, and for some reason that made him incredibly relieved and glad.

And there was Sixer asking where Stan was, leaving the Shack to go find him — good old Sixer, never able to stop looking for the answers to every question even when the only way to get those answers was shaking a demon’s hand —

A deal with a demon…

Blue fire…

Stan collapsed to his knees, slowly but painfully torn out of his all-seeing trance like a bandage being ripped off skin by someone who lacked the willpower to do it quickly. All of the images and sounds faded away, leaving behind echoes that provided no decipherable information information he didn’t want to decipher.

Shuddering, he raised his hands once again, palms turned towards him. And for a moment, everything was as it should have been.

Then blue embers danced across his hands again, both of them this time.

“Fuck,” he choked out, but the word felt hollow. Fuck was for when one of his relatives did something stupid and almost died or for when someone figured out a secret Stan really couldn’t afford them knowing. Not for this. Not for Bill. There was no word strong enough for what was happening now — what had been happening for weeks now, he realized, because what else could the nightmares have been…

Stan desperately rubbed his hands in the damp grass — please go out please go out please go out — and mercifully, the flames did vanish. But not because the morning dew extinguished them, they’d disappeared too quickly for that to be the reason. They’d gone out because Stanley someone had willed them to go out — it was only a matter of time until that someone willed them to come back, and maybe took a bit more control of Stan’s body that time —

Had that been why he’d been able to see what was going on in the Shack? Was Bill trying to force Stan out of his body altogether, to take full control? If he could entirely possess Stan, what would he do to Ford and the —

Ford. Ford was coming to look for Stan right now. Ford, who’d almost been killed by Bill too many times to count — Stan couldn’t let Ford come near him, couldn’t let anyone in his family come near him, or Bill would… he didn’t even want to think about it.

He struggled to his feet. His body felt light, but everything else — his own racing thoughts, the robins chirping in the trees, the sunlight shining down on him — felt suffocatingly heavy, weighed down with urgency, corrupted by the knowledge that the beautiful morning was just the calm before the inevitable storm.

Fearing with every step that his body would betray him, Stan stumbled into the forest, frantically pushing aside branches and searching for a place where no one would find him. He wished he could trust himself enough to go warn someone, to give Ford some prior warning to prepare for another Weirdmageddon, but he didn’t have a phone and he couldn’t go back into town, couldn’t face the people there after everything he’d done risk Bill taking control there. His best bet was to get as far away as possible —

But he couldn’t risk leaving Gravity Falls, he realized. If Bill managed to escape the barrier that had contained Weirdmageddon… Stan didn’t know exactly how the barrier worked, but he guessed there was a good chance of a worldwide apocalypse — no, a galaxy-wide apocalypse if Bill was to leave it.

He stumbled into a clearing and leaned up against a lone birch tree. This couldn’t be happening, Ford had promised it wouldn’t and if anyone would know it would be Ford…

Maybe the fire had been a hallucination, caused by too many nights without enough sleep —

He cupped his hands together, and in his palms the flames appeared again, less intense but impossible to miss.

“Oh, no no no fuck go out —”

The flames vanished. Stan was horrified to realize that he was starting to get used to the feeling that came with them.

What if I’m controlling them, not Bill? he wondered, and before he had a chance to tell himself that the idea was ridiculous, they flared up again.

“Off,” he whispered, and they went out.

It might have been a while before he gathered the courage to choke out the next command.

“On.”

Again, he saw blue.

...Blame the arson for the fire…

Please let them go out again, he thought, and they disappeared.

Why is Bill letting me control them? Does he want me to let my guard down while he waits for a chance to take over? That’s got to be it, why else would…

Though there was another possibility, he knew, one that should have scared him less but for some reason scared him more. What if I’m in control because no one else is in my mind? What if there’s a different form a different time no Bill, no possession, and this is just… all me? All my power?

But that was impossible. He would have noticed it before now, right? He wouldn’t have gotten through sixty-two years of life not realizing he could set his hands on fire whenever he felt like it, only to finally figure it out while standing in front of a statue of a demon that could do the exact same thing.

And it wouldn’t have explained the nightmares, either… fuck, Ford had never really known about the nightmares, had he? He’d realized something was wrong, but Stan had refused to even acknowledge it, much less give Ford details…

Stan collapsed to the ground, back still up against the tree.

No wonder Ford hadn’t seen Bill’s return coming. Stan had been too damn stubborn to give him the whole story.

If Stan had just told him about the nightmares, Ford would have recognized what was happening, Stan was sure. Ford would have been able to come up with something to help before… before this happened.

Stan just hadn’t wanted his family to worry about him. But he’d doomed them all, hadn’t he? Bill was going to kill them and it would be all his fault…

He couldn’t do anything right — couldn’t tell what was wrong with him until it was too late, couldn’t kill a demon and have it stay dead, couldn’t protect his family from anything, even the consequences of his own mistakes.

And there wasn’t a single sacrifice he could make to save them this time — he didn’t know if offing himself would stop Bill or just speed up his return, but he might have been desperate enough to try it if he had a gun on him. Though of course, he didn’t. He didn’t have a single heroic choice or desperate gamble to make, didn’t have a single chance to do anything other than hide and pray to beings he’d never really believed in… and one being he’d never known what to think about.

Axolotl? he thought. If you’re out there, and you’re really the opposite of Bill like Ford thinks, can you please stop him? I don’t care what happens to me, just make sure he doesn’t hurt anyone else…

He hadn’t been expecting a response, but the lack of one still drove him deeper into despair.

It’s all my fault. Dipper, Mabel, Sixer, I’m so sorry.

He let out a small sob, hiding his hands beneath his legs so he didn’t have to see them light up when the end of his time in control came, when the end of the world came.

He looked up to see an almost cloudless sky, which felt horribly wrong. The apocalypse was supposed to begin with a red-tinted sunset, or maybe a stormy gray evening. Not with some perfect sunny day.

A song lyric popped into his head, and for some reason he couldn’t help but whisper it.

“Keep smiling through, just like you always do, ‘til the blue skies drive the dark clouds far away…”

Says he’s happy, he’s a liar. Blame the arson for the fire.

Lie until you’re not lying anymore.

Stan didn’t hear his brother stumble into the clearing until Ford yelled his name.

“Stanford?” he gasped. No, no no no, this was what he was trying to delay from happening —

“Shit, Stanford, why are you — shitshitshit you gotta get away —”

“Stanley, it’s alright,” Ford told him, his voice calm but his eyes justifiably terrified. To Stan’s horror, he began to walk even closer as he continued trying to sound reassuring. “I’m here now, you don’t need to worry. I don’t know how much you remember right now, but I promise…”

Ford was terrified for the wrong reasons, Stan realized. He was terrified for Stan’s sake, rather than for his own. So he kept walking closer —

Stan jumped up and dodged Ford’s outreached hand, scrambling to the other side of the clearing. He wished he could just disappear into the forest, but Ford would come after him, keep looking for him until it was too late to save himself or save anyone — Stan had to warn him, let Ford know how badly he’d fucked up, how undeserving he’d been of Ford’s trust —

“P-please, Sixer, don’t get any closer! I might — I could — DAMMIT, didn’t you listen to what I just said?! Get the the fuck away — no. Get you and the kids and Soos and Melody and Wendy and — shit, just get everyone away from me! No one deserves — deserves — deserves this!”

He wished he could wipe away his tears, get a clearer view of what Ford was doing, but he didn’t dare to bring his hands out from behind his back, not with Ford so close. He’s not leaving. I need to make him leave, or he and the kids are gonna die and it’ll all be because of me —

“Stanley, please listen to me.” Most people would have thought Ford’s voice sounded brave and determined, but Stanley could tell it was an act, a facade Ford put on with the hope it would help calm down his poor innocent amnesiac hero of a brother. But Ford didn’t know that that brother, that hero, was just a facade himself, a lie accidentally constructed by a stubborn old con man that had just doomed the world — again — and didn’t deserve Ford’s help.

“I don’t know what you’re afraid of, or what you’re remembering, but I promise you, it’s not as bad as you think. We’re all safe now. Trust me, we can —”

“BILL IS BACK, FORD!” Stan yelled.

He hated to break that facade, to destroy the trust Ford placed in him, to ruin the good thing they’d had for close to a year now, but Ford deserved to know — only had a chance of surviving if he knew.

“Listen to me! He’s back and it’s all my fault and he’s in my mind and you gotta get away before he’s completely back and he destroys the whole goddamn town — and who knows what else, because who knows if that barrier will even stop him anymore?!”

Ford was silent for a moment, and Stan couldn’t bring himself to look directly at him, only take brief glances to make sure he wasn’t moving any closer.

“Stanley, I swear Bill is dead,” Ford said slowly — Ford, the stubborn, trusting idiot who had never learned his lesson about putting too much faith in his brother. He launched into a description of all the things he and his hillbilly friend had done to make sure Bill was gone — all the things that meant nothing now, because he didn’t know about the flames, he didn’t know about the nightmares.

“If you’d let me come closer just for a moment, I can verify that you don’t have slit pupils,” Ford slowly continued. He pulled out his phone and added: “Here, I can even use the camera like a mirror so you can see for yourself that everything’s fine. You know that Bill can’t hide those eyes.”

Stan looked to his left and then his right, trying to figure out which way he should run if Ford tried to get any closer.

“Sixer, you don’t understand. You — you don’t have to check anything. I know he’s in here. You’re running out of time to save —”

“How did you — what is it that makes you think that?” Ford interrupted. Of course Ford would never believe it without evidence, but Stan couldn’t bring himself to explain how he knew, to just explain the nightmares and the fire and the feelings even he didn’t understand himself — and even if he could put it into words, Ford still might not believe it. And then what would Stan be able to do then, except…

“I’m sure there’s a logical explanation — could it have been a nightmare? Or simply sleep deprivation? I know you haven’t been getting much rest, and that can —”

“Ford, stop,” Stan told him. It would be a gamble to show him — a coin flip, more or less, that could release Bill and doom Ford just as easily as it could convince Ford to save himself… but he wasn’t sure he had a choice. He couldn’t even fucking form coherent sentences at the moment, much less convince his stubborn, trusting, idiot of a brother to leave him behind.

Before he could lose his nerve, Stan raised his right hand in front of him. “If — if you won’t fucking listen to me any other way, I — I’ll — I’ll show you, Sixer. Just look. And please, just… don’t come near me.”

Ford took a step back — the first of many, Stan hoped, and nodded. “I… a-alright.”

Stan closed his eyes. If Bill took over, he didn’t want to see what he’d do to Ford, and even if he remained in control, he still didn’t want to watch Ford’s reaction. He’d seen that horrified, betrayed, angry look on his brother’s face too many times for one lifetime where does that portal really lead? and even though Stan knew he deserved all that anger and horror, he decided in one (last?) act of cowardice that he didn’t want to see it again, didn’t want his last look at his brother to show Ford realizing he’d fallen for such a poorly disguised yet sinister lie.

Stan took a deep breath and called the fire back to his fingertips, and even without opening his eyes he could tell that it had obeyed him.

He heard a sharp intake of breath, and a moment later, the sound of panicked footsteps backing away.

About time you finally got smart about me, brainiac, Stan couldn’t help but think — not for the first time, but with much more regret than in the past.

Chapter Text

Ford associated blue light with a lot of things. With the blinding glow of the portal, with mistakes and betrayal. With the burning ray he’d shot from the memory gun, with believing his brother was gone forever.

And of course, with the outreached hand of Bill Cipher. The hand that looked like it should burn you, and did, but not immediately, and not in the way you expected.

Now, it was Stan’s hand that was ablaze in blue.

Before Ford could convince himself of what he was really seeing, his self-preservation instinct kicked in, and he found himself backing away. Involuntarily, his hand went to the gun hanging at his waist.

The part of Ford that remembered thirty years surviving in hostile dimensions told him to unholster it and shoot, to not allow for any moment of weakness and ask questions only after he’d dispatched the threat. The part of Ford that remembered the last time he’d pointed a gun at Stan told him to hug his brother and cry.

So he remained paralyzed, hand at the holster strapped to his belt, knowing neither option was a possibility but having no idea what to do instead — because what could be done when the impossible had already happened?

“Why did you stop?” a weak, scared, almost childlike voice asked him. “Sixer, w-why aren’t you running away?”

Ford felt a physical ache in his heart, and he couldn’t help but step towards Stan.

Stan flinched, and shoved his hands in his pockets — but not before Ford realized that the flames had vanished.

“You’re not on fire anymore,” he stuttered dumbly. “Stan, are — are you the one controlling —”

“No!” Stan yelled, and somehow, with that one word, he sounded even more afraid, more horrified than Ford had ever heard him, even just a few moments ago when he’d been trying to convince Ford to run and save himself.

“No, I can’t be — I’m not in control! I — I know I look like I am, but he’s just letting me do what I want because — because he’s waiting for a chance to —”

The next few words were impossible to understand through Stan’s sobbing. The only thing Ford could make out was another quiet “I can’t be” at the end, as Stan shuddered and crumpled to the ground. He looked so scared, and tired, and vulnerable…

Very slowly, very carefully, very sure that he was making a mistake but unable to stop himself, Ford put a hand on Stan’s shoulder. Stan shuddered, but didn’t seem to have the energy to push him away. Ford wasn’t sure whether that was good or bad.

“He’ll kill you…” Stan whispered.

“Stanley, listen to me,” Ford said. “I won’t let him. I swear, I —”

“Then shoot me,” Stan replied in a quiet monotone voice. He kept avoiding eye contact, but he must have felt Ford’s grip on his shoulder tighten, because he added: “I’m not worth letting Bill destroy the world again.”

“But — no! No, Stanley, you —”

“Can it, Poindexter!” Stan was suddenly full of familiar red-hot rage, his tired monotone voice replaced by a familiar anger. “I thought we already decided I was worth sacrificing! What happened to the Ford in Weirdmageddon who wiped my mind? What happened to the Ford thirty years ago, who realized trusting me was the worst mistake he could’ve ever made? Really, Sixer, my life’s worth a whole lot less than the chance to save your family! This is the best deal I ever could’ve offered you!”

A chill ran up Ford’s spine at the word deal. He let go of Stan’s shoulder, his hand trembling.

Is it even Stanley I’m talking to anymore? Has Bill taken over?

“But…” Stan went on, his voice growing softer, “I guess I didn’t make good on that deal last time, could I? I couldn’t kill him and have him stay dead.”

He cautiously raised a sleeve to wipe at his eyes.

“I’m no hero, Ford,” he whispered. “Just… just a con man. Just a liar.”

Even more quietly, so quietly that Ford wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly, Stan added: “I’m just a lie.”

And then Ford was crying too, hating himself for doubting that it was Stan he’d been speaking to. Only Stan could feel so guilty for causing Bill’s return, could hate himself that much for endangering his family.

Bill would never be able to convincingly fake that much guilt over what he’d done to the people of Gravity Falls, much less genuinely feel it. He was a skilled liar, but he could only lie so well about things he didn’t understand.

And Bill didn’t understand family. Stan did, so he cried tears that Bill never would be able to shed, tears for a brother and a niece and a nephew and a handyman that might as well have been a son, tears for a family he thought he’d failed to save.

But Ford had different thoughts. Stan had saved them once before, Stan was a hero, and if the world happened to need saving again, then they’d all do everything they could to try to save it again, dammit. They wouldn’t give up, even when one of them was convinced there was nothing that could be done. That was the Pines way — the Stan Pines way in particular.

But Ford needed a plan. Bill was warping physical reality through Stan’s form, which shouldn’t have been possible. To inhabit someone’s mind, he had to abandon his physical form — that was how the damn statue had gotten left behind, after all — and with it, abandon his ability to affect the real world. If Bill’s powers had grown, Ford desperately needed to know, but the best way to find out would be through a scan of Stanley’s mind, and that would take time to set up. He needed to make sure that Bill wouldn’t be able to do anything destructive in the meantime…

“Stanley, I…” He took a deep breath. Stay calm, stay calm, stay calm. Stan needs you to stay calm right now.

“Stanley, I have a plan. And… and I’ll warn you, you may not like certain parts of it, but it does have the advantage of keeping all of us the safest we could possibly be in this… this situation. So Stan, I need you to listen carefully, as soon as you think you’re ready to do so.”

Stan was silent for a moment, then gave a small nod. “Tell me.”

“We need to go back to the Shack,” Ford said. “The unicorn hair barrier should short-circuit Bill’s powers while I contact —”

“No!” Stan shouted. “Are you crazy? The kids are in there!”

“I know, but setting up the mind scan will take time, and it’ll be safest for you to —”

“Safest for me?!” Stan asked him. “I don’t care about me, and you — you shouldn’t either! It’s bad enough that you’re still here, but if I — if I have to watch myself hurt the kids, I — I’ll —”

“Stanley, listen,” Ford repeated. He took a risk by resting his hand on Stan’s shoulder again, and Stan frowned, but didn’t flinch away, either. “I know. I get it. If anything happened to them because of me, even indirectly, I… I wouldn’t be able to live with myself, either.”

He remembered that moment in the Fearamid, when he thought Bill was going to kill Mabel before Stanley had a chance to act, when he thought that he’d lose his brother and his niece. He’d almost cried out Mabel’s name, cried it out in his real voice, not his imitation of Stan. He’d almost ruined everything.

But Stan had pulled through for all of them back then, and Ford had to pull through for Stan now. He had to. Stan had taught him so much about heroism last year; he had to put it to good use.

“I know it’s frightening to get too close to anyone,” Ford went on. “I would be afraid too. But if Bill is altering physical reality, like with those flames, then the only thing that I know for sure can stop him are the wards around the Shack. I also suspect that they might make it harder for him to take control of your body.”

The last part was really more of a hope than a suspicion, but Ford didn’t tell Stan that. If it convinced Stan that he wouldn’t have to get hurt to keep his family safe, it was worth stretching the truth. Ford could apologize later, if — no, when they were all safe and Bill was gone for good.

“I’ll contact Fiddleford and tell him to prepare a mind scan. It would take too long to remove that machine from McGucket Mansion, so we’ll have to head down there eventually, but in the meantime, it will be safest for us to wait in the Mystery Shack. Do you understand?”

Stan didn’t respond for what felt like an eternity. Ford was suddenly struck by the thought that Stan could be paralyzed, engaged in a doomed mental battle with Bill, and that he’d never get a chance to speak to his brother again before the demon took over.

“Stanley? Stanley, can you say something? Can you hear me?”

“One condition,” Stan whispered.

Ford let out a sigh of relief. Stan’s eyes were still brown with normal pupils, and his expression was still full of fear and guilt that Bill could never imitate so convincingly. “What is it?”

There was also a cold determination, which Bill could imitate, but Ford didn’t mind seeing in his brother — at least until he heard Stan’s reply.

“If I look like I’m gonna — if I look like I just might hurt the kids, or Soos, or anyone — if Bill takes any sorta control… I need you to promise you’ll shoot me. No stun setting. Just kill me.”

Ford closed his eyes, and he saw himself typing Stanley Pines into the memory gun, saw himself pulling the trigger and shooting a blue beam of light at Stan for the longest thirty seconds of his life, saw himself hugging a brother he’d thought would never remember him again.

This time, there wouldn’t even be an amnesiac shell of a man left to hug. There would be a grave.

But then he imagined Stan refusing to come back to the Shack. He imagined Stan fleeing from him, Stan trying to take matters into his own hands. Stan trying to stop Bill himself.

“Yes,” Ford answered. “I promise.”

He was pretty sure he didn’t have it in him, no matter which other lives were on the line. He’d just have to make sure that he never had to find out for certain.

He stood up, and without thinking, he offered a hand to Stan. “Come on. Let’s get back there now.”

Stan started to reach for his hand, only to freeze, and then slowly get up all on his own. He didn’t complain when Ford wrapped his arm around his shoulder, but he kept his hands in his pockets, like he was afraid that he’d accept someone’s handshake before he realized what he was doing.

There was no more of the terrible cold blue fire, but Ford shivered.

A promise is an awful lot like a deal, he couldn’t help but think.

***

The walk back went by in a heartbeat and in an eternity. Physically, Stan hardly felt his own footsteps. He moved forward without the effort that it usually took at his age, without thinking about what he was doing, just letting Ford guide him.

Mentally, he was drained. It was hard to keep track of a single thought for more than a few seconds. Echoes of things he shouldn’t have been able to hear still rang in his ears, and he tried as best as he could to block them out, but they still weighed down on him.

On the way there, Ford sent a text to McGucket. Stan could only imagine what it said.

My brother didn’t do as good of a job at saving the world as we thought. Can you help me figure out what the demon in his mind is doing now?

They got back to the Shack far too quickly. The walk had been hell, but Stan would have repeated it for the rest of eternity if he could.

“The barrier covers the back porch,” Ford explained. “Let’s just stand there for now.”

It was an attempt to make Stan feel more comfortable, and it worked a little, but probably not as much as Ford had hoped it would. Before he stepped forward, Stan looked around, making sure no one else was outside.

He didn’t need to look, because he could already see Dipper and Mabel in the kitchen, Soos in the exhibit gallery, Melody greeting Wendy as she arrived for work in the gift shop.

When he was satisfied, he closed his eyes and slowly stepped towards the Shack.

It turned out that the barrier extended a few feet beyond the porch — Stan could tell because a wave of pins and needles and then numbness ran over his body. He suddenly felt very weak, very helpless, very human.

But that was just how he’d felt for his whole life, he realized. The reality-warping power that had awakened in him was going back to sleep.

“Stan, do you think you could test whether… the fire works?”

Ford had almost slipped up and called it your fire, Stan could tell, and he hated it — not Ford for almost making that mistake, but himself, for being the type of person that his brother would confuse with the demon that had tortured him for years.

He hated himself for letting it be true.

“You don’t have to if you’re not comfortable with it. I’m very confident that we’ll be safe —”

Stan raised his hand and focused. Nothing happened except for a faint pain behind his eyes.

“Nope, nothing,” he muttered. “You’re right, Ford.”

Ford’s expression was difficult to read. He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it, then opened it again. “Yes, that’s… good, I suppose…”

He shook his head and mumbled: “That just… conclusively establishes that it is Bill, though, and I suppose there was a small part of me that was still foolishly hoping that it wasn’t… Stanley?! Are you alright?!”

“Huh?” Stan had been almost completely tuning Ford out.

Ford put his hand on Stan’s shoulder. “You’re shaking a lot. How are you feeling?”

“I… I dunno. Tired?” He was tired, both mentally and physically, but that wasn’t the whole story. “Maybe… kinda warm?”

“Of course, I… I can’t blame you for that. Have you eaten anything today, or drank anything?”

“Nuh-uh. But I don’t… I don’t really want any food right now.” Every noise was monotone, every color was monochrome. Stan felt burnt out.

Damn Ford for caring about nutrition at a time like this. Damn Ford for caring more about Stan’s health than the demon that could fully awaken and try to kill him at any moment. Damn Ford for caring.

“Then I’ll get you a beverage with some calories in it — not Mabel Juice, don’t worry.” Ford took Stan by the shoulder again and began guiding him towards the door. “Let’s sit you down inside, in the air conditioning.”

Stan didn’t have the energy to think, didn’t have the energy to remember why he was scared of the old cabin that was shielded off from almost all weirdness.

And then the weird people who lived in the cabin jumped out at him, and he remembered exactly why.

***

“Grunkle Stan’s been gone for a long time, don’t you think, Dipper?” Mabel asked, suddenly setting down her knitting needles. “Is that why you’ve just been pushing stuff around on your plate instead of eating?”

Truth be told, it was the glitter and chocolate sauce that were to blame for Dipper’s half-eaten waffle. Or at least, he’d told himself they were. It was hard to deny that he was pretty anxious.

“I didn’t want to sound like I was being paranoid, but… yeah. I’m getting kinda worried about him.” He checked the time on his phone, even though he’d just done so a couple seconds ago — it was 8:16. “It’s been over an hour. Stan never takes walks that long.”

“What did Ford say in that text again?” Mabel asked him. “He didn’t mention Stan, did he?”

Dipper shook his head and pulled up the text to show her. “Nope, just that he wouldn’t be back until after eight. But… I’m really starting to think that he is looking for Stan.”

Mabel frowned. “Maybe we should’ve told him more about how… weird Stan was acting.”

“Probably,” Dipper admitted. “He sounded better by the time he left, and I didn’t want Ford to overreact or anything…”

“He did leave really quickly, though…” Mabel mused. “And he was talking kinda loud. Like when he’s got a bunch of tourists in the Shack.”

It wasn’t difficult to pick up on the unspoken thought like when he’s putting on an act.

“That’s it,” Dipper decided. “I’m calling Ford and —”

He heard the back door of the Shack creak open.

“Oh, that’s probably them right now!” He gave a small sigh of relief, even knowing that he wouldn’t be able to entirely stop himself from worrying until he saw his grunkles safe and sound.

Really, Dipper had been uneasy ever since Stan had left that morning. It had almost felt like it was last summer again, like every normal occurrence was a reason to worry, like something bad could happen any time anyone left his sight..

But of course he’d just been overreacting — nothing this summer could compare to how dangerous the last had been, because now that Bill was gone…

He entered one side of the living room, Mabel a bit behind him, at the same time Stan and Ford entered the other side from the porch, and something made all four of them freeze.

Only two words were spoken, and they both came out of Stan’s mouth:

“Pine Tree.”

And before he knew it, Dipper was shoving Mabel back into the kitchen and running towards Stan and Ford, his heart pounding just as hard as his footsteps.

“Get out of my uncle!” he shouted, just as Ford yelled “Wait!” and Stan gasped and tried to dive behind his brother, only to trip and collapse to the — no, it was Bill, and he didn’t trip, he was doing that to Stan’s body on purpose —

“Don’t you dare hurt him, or I’ll —” Dipper was suddenly dragged backwards, and he almost reflexively took a swing at the person pulling him, before he could process that it had to be Ford, and he had to have a good reason for pulling Dipper away.

“Stanley!” Ford shouted, reaching towards Stan’s shuddering, prone form with his other hand. “Are you okay? What’s wrong? What happened —”

“What’s happening?!” Mabel echoed, darting in front of Ford and Dipper. “Grunkle Stan?”

The moment Mabel touched Stan, he jumped to his feet in one painfully jerky motion, and Dipper finally got a close look at his eyes — not yellow and gleeful, but brown and terrified.

“No no no no Shooting Star get away you’re not safe I could —”

“Shit,” Ford whispered flatly, then with much more volume yelled: “Mabel! You need to give him space! Just trust me, please!”

Mabel took a single step back, and turned to face Ford. “But why is he calling us —”

Stan tried to make a break for it out the door, but Ford grabbed him by the shirt.

“Stan, everyone’s safe! Bill’s not going to be able to do anything to the kids!”

Dipper didn’t fully process the next few seconds. It was just too much. He barely heard Ford telling Stan that nothing bad was about to happen; barely heard Mabel asking him, panicked, if he knew what was going on; barely noticed Soos enter the room…

He didn’t hear anything until Ford put a hand on his shoulder and said: “Dipper, Mabel, Soos, I need you all to listen very carefully. At least some part of Bill has survived in Stan’s mind, but Stan still has full control of his body, and he doesn’t appear to be in danger of losing control any time soon. It’s just… frightening for him, and…”

He briefly looked behind him — checking on Stan, who was sitting on his old yellow chair and staring off into space — then pulled Dipper and Mabel close to him and hugged them.

“And it must have been a terrible shock to you, too,” he added quietly. “It was all my fault. I should have sent you some warning before I brought Stan back here. I’m so sorry.”

“Is — is Mr. Pines gonna be okay?” Soos asked quietly.

“I intend to make sure of it.” Ford’s voice was equally quiet, but full of determination. “We have a plan. McGucket is working on preparing a mental scan as we speak.”

Dipper had too many questions. How did you realize Bill was still there, how are you going to get rid of him, how did he survive in the first place and how do you know it won’t happen again…

“I know that that explanation isn’t anywhere near enough,” Ford went on. “But Stan needs space right now. I promise, I’ll tell you everything I know as soon as I can.”

Dipper nodded, and Ford let go of him.

“Is there anything else we can do?” Mabel asked, and Ford sighed.

“I’ll tell you the second I think of anything.”

As Dipper walked back to the kitchen, he briefly made eye contact with Stan, who flinched and quickly turned away, a haunted, guilty look on his face. His eyes were still brown with normal pupils.

Bill is back, Dipper kept thinking to himself, never quite being able to believe it. If Ford’s plan doesn’t work, none of us are going to be safe here for much longer.

Slumping down in her seat at the kitchen table, Mabel voiced his exact thoughts. “How did everything change like this in just an hour?”

***

“Do you remember the relaxation exercises I taught you last year, to help with your flashbacks?” Ford gently asked. “Do you want to try one of them now?”

Stan shook his head. He didn’t deserve to relax. He didn’t deserve Ford’s help. He didn’t deserve to still be here, to have cheated death like he had so many times.

“Why not?”

Stan stared at Ford in bewilderment, and Ford stared right back, a pained but determined look in his eyes.

“Do you think it will make things worse, or do you… do you not want my help?”

“It — it’ll just make things…”

That was a lie. Stan knew it, and Ford didn’t know it for certain but could probably guess. All this lying was how Stan had screwed them all over, because he had to be so difficult with Ford, because he had to be the type of person who lied about everything. Because he was a weak-willed idiot who twisted the truth even when he didn’t know had forgotten what was real and what wasn’t.

Because he, Stanley Pines himself, was not the truth, not the hero his family thought he was. His very identity as others saw it, as even he was naive enough enough to see it on some days, was nothing more than a lie.

“I don’t deserve your help, Ford,” he whispered.

Ford was quiet for a second. “I… I figured you thought something like that. But you’re wrong. This town wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for you. You’re our —”

“I knew he was gonna come back.”

Ford’s jaw dropped. “What?”

“Well, I… I didn’t know. Not really,” Stan went on. “But — but I’ve been havin’ dreams, really bad dreams, and you — you woulda figured it out if I —”

He wiped at his eyes. “If I’d just fuckin’ told you.”

“Stanley, what were these dreams like? Was Bill in them?” Ford asked quietly. His voice was even more carefully controlled than usual, in an attempt to keep out some strong emotion Stan couldn’t identify.

To be honest, he hoped it was anger. It would make things a lot less difficult in the long run. It would make certain hard decisions easier, make certain shots easier.

“I barely remember,” Stan finally answered. “Actually, I… I don’t remember at all. That was what made the dreams so… different. I forgot everythin’ right away when I woke up.”

Stan was looking down, but he could feel Ford’s stare.

“That’s all?”

“Well, I felt… really shitty whenever I woke up. And, uh, guilty.”

“So you only felt bad emotionally, not physically?”

Stan nodded, and Ford started to ask something, but Stan cut him off. “And that’s… not all, not really. This morning I… I still don’t really know what happened, but when I saw the kids I felt… shittier. And I kinda panicked, and… well, I guess you actually saw that same thing, ‘couple a minutes ago. But it happened this morning too, ‘cept I… I didn’t scare the kids as much.”

He took a deep breath. “I dunno if that’s really everythin’, but it’s everythin’ I can remember right now.”

For what must have been a minute, Ford was absolutely silent aside from the sound of his breath.

“Stanley,” he finally said, “Without having seen what I saw in the forest this morning, I wouldn’t have associated those dreams with Bill at all. Had you told me about them, I would’ve been almost certain that they were side effects of the memory gun, affecting your…”

He clearly had something more to say, but apparently chose not to say it.

“So,” Stan muttered, “you’re not even angry with me for not telling —”

“I’m fucking infuriated with you right now, Stan,” Ford interrupted.

His tone didn’t match his words; it was far too sad. “But not for the reasons you think I should be. I’m mad because you were clearly suffering, and decided you wanted to suffer alone. I’m mad because you decided you’d rather lie to me about it than accept my help.”

There was a new emotion in Ford’s voice, one that Stan could recognize from a mile away, because he hadn’t felt much else recently. It was guilt.

“Did you think I’d just make things worse? Did you think I couldn’t —”

“No!” Stan yelled, and Ford flinched. “It’s not your fault!”

“Then why did you lie, Stanley?” Ford begged him. “Please, tell me. Trust me.”

Stan took a while to think of the words he wanted to use to answer, and when he finally spoke, they still came out jumbled.

“Uh, just… you know. For courtesy.”

He looked at Ford, and Ford frowned back at him.

“I just… I didn’t want you to worry about me. Like, back when I was still rememberin’ things, you lost a lotta sleep over that. I hoped — it was stupid, I know — I hoped that this time, I could just lie to you until I wasn’t lying anymore. Until you didn’t have to worry —”

Something had changed in Ford’s expression — he was still frowning, but something about it had tightened. He hadn’t flinched, exactly, but something Stan had said had unnerved him.

And then it was gone, and the frown was all sadness and concern again.

“I should have known,” Ford said. “You thought that you weren’t worth worrying me.”

“Well, I’m not,” Stan blurted out.

“You shut your fucking mouth,” Ford snapped. “No one says Stan Pines is worthless, and that includes Stan Pines.”

“But —”

“Don’t even say it. Don’t say this is all your fault. I just told you, I wouldn’t have known it was Bill, either. You’re being too hard on yourself — that’s your only mistake.”

But I did know, Stan thought.

“Ford, I was the one having those dreams. I should been able to figure it out…”

Ford took a little longer to respond this time. “Maybe, but maybe not. There’s no way to know for sure what you might have or might not have been able to do. Please, Stan, don’t go blaming yourself for not seeing as clearly as you do now in hindsight.”

He put his hand on Stan’s shoulder. “Be honest. Would you blame Dipper or Mabel for making a mistake like that?”

Stan shook his head.

With a bit more hesitation, Ford added: “Would you blame me?”

“Of course not!”

“Then stop blaming yourself! It’s no different!”

But it was different, it was so different Ford had no idea.

“I’ll try,” Stan muttered.

“Good,” Ford said. His tone softened. “I suppose — no, I know that it’s far more difficult than I’m making it out to be, and… I probably shouldn’t have been so harsh with you. Trying to stop thinking that way is good, very good. And if I can do anything to help you… succeed, then please, tell me.”

Will I really try? Stan thought. Or will that end up being just another lie?

He didn’t even bother to wonder if he’d succeed.

At least I’m telling the truth about Bill now, right? I’m telling Ford everything he needs to know.

The knot of guilt in his stomach refused to go away.

Lie until you can’t remember what’s a lie and what isn’t.

Ford’s phone rang, and Stan flinched.

“It’s McGucket, but I can tell him to hold on for a moment if you need —”

“It’s okay. Take the call,” Stan told him. “I’m gonna… try those breathin’ exercises.”

Ford nodded, and as raised the phone to his ear, he whispered: “If you need anything, for the love of the multiverse, please interrupt.”

Stan shifted in the chair and tried to tune out Ford’s voice. Inhale, one, two, three, exhale. Inhale, one, two, three, exhale.

He remembered trying to make his mind go completely blank to trick Bill in the Fearamid, remembered visualizing himself sitting in that very chair, concentrating on the thwack-thwack-thwack of an imaginary paddleball.

One-paddle-two-paddle-three-paddle…

Stan had always been pretty good at paddleball. He was (mostly) concentrating on it now, but he if he chose to, he could do it without paying much attention, and let his mind wander while muscle memory took over. Ford, on the other hand, wasn’t necessarily bad at paddleball but could never compare to Stan. It needed to be the only thing he was focusing on, or else he’d mess up.

One-two-three one-two-three…

Stan closed his eyes.

One-two-three one-two-three…

...you know, Ford was kind of the same as far as controlling his mindscape went. He actually had a decent natural aptitude for it, but there were some things you just needed to be taught, and of course Bill hadn’t taught him anything that would be useful to deceive or resist a dream demon. Besides, while creating objects and summoning attacks was easy, it usually took centuries of practice to change your own mindscape’s layout in any significant way, even temporarily. Centuries that Ford obviously didn’t have.

One-two-three one-two-three…

Really, Bill probably should have realized something was up when “Stanford’s” mind was as blank as it was in Weirdmageddon.

One-two-three one-two-three one-two-three sixty degrees that come in threes…

It was kind of pathetic, really, how Sixer tried to guard his memories and retain control of his body once he fell asleep. And fall asleep he inevitably did, regardless of how much industrial-strength coffee he’d consumed.

Get out of here!

Bill! You lied to me!

No I’ll stop you I’LL SHUT IT DOWN

Good old Sixer, a being thought, as it came out of a trance.

And that being wasn’t Stan.

“Get out of my mind, you backstabber!” Ford’s voice was clearer now, his unkempt head of brown hair unmistakeable.

“Why should I get out?” Bill demanded. “We made a deal, Sixer! Why shouldn’t I be in your mind, huh?”

Ford practically growled — what a freak.

“You manipulated me. You lied to me —”

“I lied? That’s your issue? That I lied? Let me tell you something about truth, Brainiac.” Really, Bill was doing Ford a favor, teaching him a lesson that everyone had to learn eventually.

“Truth is a tattletale with no friends. Truth is your annoying uncle who spoils the movie.”

He threw his cane to the ground, and Ford flinched.

“Truth is a concept invented by powerful liars, in order to guilt you into giving them more power.”

Bill’s body turned red and his hands caught ablaze as he remembered a world where the truth was strictly regulated, where the moment you admitted that you knew the world wasn’t really flat, you were imprisoned.

He remembered a world, a family, that he missed despite its countless flaws, a world that he could never go back to.

“Don’t fall for the trap! Lie until what you want to be true becomes true. Lie until you can’t remember what’s a lie and what isn’t. Lie until you aren’t lying anymore.”

Sixer was shaking with rage now. “I don’t care! I’m not going to let you activate that portal!” he spat.

“And how are you gonna do that when you’re just my puppet, huh?” Bill sneered. “I mean, you don’t seriously think that postcard’s actually gonna convince your brother to come help, do you? C’mon, Fordsy, you’re smarter than —”

And suddenly there was a firm hand shaking his shoulder, a bright light being shined in his eyes, a familiar voice yelling at him.

“Stanley! Stanley, say something! Tell me you’re still here!”

“F-f-f… fuck…” Stan stuttered. “Oh no, n-no no no no…”

“Stan!” Ford’s silhouette was blurry, but his voice was clear. “Tell me what I can do!”

“Nightmare,” Stan whispered, and Ford relaxed just a little. “That was — that was one of those nightmares.”

“Do you remember what happened in it?”

Stan covered his face with his hands, not wanting to look at Ford but afraid to actually close his eyes and risk falling asleep again. “Not really, just that it was… I — I think you were in it. I don’t know.”

It was true that he didn’t know, but he could know, if he chose to try and remember. He just couldn’t bring himself to try.

Ford handed him a glass of juice — just normal apple juice, no plastic dinosaurs, but Stan’s stomach still churned at the thought of drinking it.

“I know,” Ford assured him, apparently guessing what was going through Stan’s head. “But if you think you can physically get it down without throwing up, it’ll make you feel better in the long run.”

Stan took a small sip. It tasted watered-down.

“Do you remember if Bill was in the dream at all?” Ford asked after a long pause.

“Nuh-uh. I mean, no, I don’t remember, but… he probably was.”

“That’s alright. The mind scan should be ready in less than the time it’ll take us to get to the mansion — that’s why McGucket called me — so that will be able to give us some insight.”

Stan barely heard him. “I think… I think something bad was happening to you. In the dream.”

And it was my fault. “And it was Bill’s fault.”

Ford nodded, a detached look in his eyes. “If your stomach doesn’t feel any worse, then take another drink.”

Stan wasn’t sure if he felt worse or better. Maybe a little better, but still not good. He took a slightly larger sip than the last.

“I heard you talking in your sleep,” Ford said. “I didn’t quite catch all of it, but the things I understood were… reminiscent of Bill, to say the least.”

There was something about the way Ford said I didn’t quite catch all of it that made Stan worry that Ford really had caught most of it, but was afraid to repeat it.

“Aside from a… statement I remember Bill making to me a while back,” Ford continued, “I also heard a few nicknames that Bill had always used for me —”

“Like Sixer?” Stan asked.

Ford gave him possibly the strangest look he’d given Stan all day — there was no fear, just utter confusion and surprise.

“I… um. Yes, actually? I think you — I think I did hear that, and Bill did make a habit of calling me that, I just — didn’t associate…”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I’m not being clear at all. The thing is, I’ve always associated that nickname with you, Stanley. Not that Bill didn’t use it, but… well, you used it first. So when I heard you say it in your sleep, it didn’t seem out of the ordinary, until you kept talking and I overheard a bit more of the context…”

“Oh.” Stan felt like he was falling into the bottomless pit, like darkness was consuming him from all sides yet he just kept speeding up, moving faster and faster towards a terrifying terrifyingly familiar unknown, a blacked-out void of questions he should have been asking himself long ago, but had never thought about until that very moment, when they had all come at him at once.

Bill had called Ford Sixer because of the zodiac, hadn’t he? The same reason he’d called Dipper Pine Tree, Mabel Shooting Star, Soos Question Mark…

How had Stan known Bill’s nicknames off the top of his head, when he still had so many gaps in his memory of Weirdmageddon? How had he known Ford’s nickname two decades before Bill and Ford had ever met?

Time is dead and meaning has no meaning!

“I don’t wanna talk about the nightmare anymore,” he whispered.

“That’s alright,” Ford assured him. “When do you think you’ll be ready to move to the mansion?”

“Now’s fine.”

“But Stan, you’re not in any condition to —”

“I want to move, Ford. I don’t want to fall asleep again.” Which was true, though not the whole truth — Stan really would have prefered to go anywhere other than the mansion.

Ford’s eyes widened slightly in understanding, and he nodded. Of course it would be the fear of falling asleep that got through to him.

Stan was once again reminded of how much he hated Bill, of how many lasting scars that triangular bastard had left his family with.

“All right,” Ford told him. “I’ll drive you there. I don’t think I can stop the kids and Soos from coming along, but I’ll tell them to take a different car, and give you plenty of space once we get there.”

“Uh-huh. Thanks, Stanford.”

Stan was shaking when he stood up, but not from exhaustion. He desperately didn’t want to head to the machine, didn’t want to know what it would say about him, didn’t want to know how deep in his head Bill had gotten.

But the risks of not doing the scan were far too great, so without even really thinking about it, he told another courteous lie and said to Ford that he was ready.

Chapter Text

Ford had once written that he was okay with being a hero’s brother, and at the time, it had been true. But now Stan was the one who needed saving, and Ford was doing a downright pathetic job at returning the favor.

I shouldn’t have snapped at him. I just made things worse.

He didn’t believe me when I told him he was worth something. Has he always hated himself this much? Have I really never noticed?

“We’re heading to the mansion to run the scan,” Ford called to Dipper, somehow choking out some semblance of a calm and collected voice. He couldn’t bring himself to forbid the rest of the family from coming along. “You and Mabel can follow with Soos in another car.”

Dipper looked like he wanted to say something, but couldn’t quite get it out. Stan stayed quiet too, staring down at his feet as Ford guided him out of the shack.

Ford braced himself for the worst as they exited the unicorn hair barrier, but Stan didn’t say a thing about it — just shook his head and blinked a few times as they crossed the boundary. Then he slipped into the back seat of the Stanmobile, passenger-side, and started nervously drumming his fingers against the window.

Ford probably would have been more comfortable with Stan riding next to him up front, but given how Stan seemed to have deliberately chosen the farthest seat away from him, he didn’t think that suggestion would go over well. Instead, he just adjusted his rearview mirror until Stan’s face was visible, and then began to drive.

The road was infuriatingly indirect. He couldn’t believe that he’d never noticed how poorly designed it was. It took switchbacks up a series of hills that weren’t even that steep, and wound through patches of trees that would each block the sun for a second at a time before it reappeared, made even more intense on the eyes by the constant alternation with shadow.

Gripping the wheel more tightly than he should have, Ford lowered his foot on the accelerator —

“STOP!” Stan suddenly shouted, and Ford slammed on the brakes on instinct, not giving a single thought to whether he could even trust his brother’s voice at the moment.

From around the bend, a deer leapt out and bounded across the road. Ford couldn’t be sure, but if he’d kept on driving at that same speed, he probably would’ve hit it.

What he could be sure of was that Stan shouldn’t have been able to know it was coming, not from where he was sitting in the car. There was absolutely no way he could have seen around that turn, not when Ford himself hadn’t been able to see from the driver’s seat.

He heard Soos’s truck come to a halt behind them, and then the sound of a door opening. “Mr. Pines-es? Are — are you guys okay?”

Stan made a small, sad noise of distress. It could have been because of the worry in Soos’s voice, or because Stan realized how impossible the thing he’d just done was, or both. But no matter the reason, it made Ford’s heart sink and his stomach churn.

He tried to roll down the window, bit back a swear after finding it was jammed, and just swung the door open.

“There was a deer in the road,” he replied as calmly as he could. “I stopped to avoid hitting it, and it’s gone now. That’s all.”

Soos was looking at him with a concerned frown, and Dipper and Mabel probably were too from inside the truck, but Ford turned around before any of them could say anything. He didn’t want to keep them in the dark, but he would have more time to explain later on; for now he had to focus on getting Stan safely to —

Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed a birch tree looming amongst the pines at the corner of the bend, and for a moment he could have sworn the rips in its bark were giving off a faint golden light.

He ducked inside the car and started driving without looking back. The only times he took his eyes off the road were to check on Stan in the rearview mirror, and each time, it got harder and harder for Ford to convince himself he’d only imagined that hint of yellow reflecting off his brother’s glasses.

***

“Ya see, I’ve made some more upgrades to this fella since ya left on yer sailin’ adventure,” McGucket explained to Ford as he fit the helmet over Stan’s head. “Should only take seven minutes to complete a scan now, give or take.”

“But it still works off the same algorithm we used last time, correct?”

“Correct indeed.”

Ford turned to Dipper, Mabel, and Soos, who were waiting awkwardly on the other side of Fiddleford’s lab — once a ballroom, now a mad scientist’s lair with countless vaguely steampunk-looking inventions and almost as many banjos scattered across the floor. “After you kids left last summer, I asked Fiddleford to revamp my old invention, Project Mentem, just to… well, to give us some peace of mind.”

He let that sentence hang in the air for a second, painfully aware of the irony and unsure of how to continue.

“It no longer scans individual thoughts, but examines them as a group to detect how many distinct minds or consciousnesses are present. Last year, it… well, I suppose you can infer — it told us that no one was in Stan’s mind except him. There was nothing out of the ordinary that it detected. But Fiddleford has upped the sensitivity since then, I believe…”

McGucket nodded to confirm.

“...as well as streamlined the overall process of the scan to make it faster. We believe that Bill has been directly interacting with Stan’s thoughts and dreams recently, meaning that he should be easy to identify, and once we’ve gotten a handle on what he’s currently doing and what else he’s capable of, we can go about forming a plan to… remove him.”

He turned back to Stan. “Are you ready?”

“I don’t have to fall asleep for this, do I?” Stan asked. His voice was steady, if a little quiet, but his hands were trembling slightly on the arms of the chair.

Ford shook his head. “No. It works whether you’re awake or asleep.”

“Okay. Start it up, I guess.”

For over a minute, no one spoke as the machine whirred to life and flashed a progress bar on the screen. Ford berated himself for not bringing anything to write on, to use to jot down notes.

(Not so much for the sake of keeping a record — there wasn’t a single thing Stan had done or said that day that wasn’t painfully burned into Ford’s memory, he was sure — but to organize his thoughts, to calm him down, to give him something to do.)

“We told Wendy and Melody what was going on before we left,” Dipper finally said. “They went to go get unicorn hair, so we could Bill-proof part of the mansion too. I mean, assuming that doesn’t mess up the scanning machine or anything.”

It took Ford longer than it should have to process the statement. “That’s… oh, that’s great. I’m not sure if I have any moonstones on hand, but those shouldn’t be too hard to get a hold of anyways… That’s very helpful of them.”

And then everyone was quiet again, and Ford suddenly felt very useless.

Melody and Wendy barely even know what’s going on and they’re doing more for Stan than I am right now. Why can’t I think of any way to help?

“Does Stan want us to get him anything?” Mabel asked quietly, as if reading Ford’s mind.

“Nuh-uh.” For the first time in a while (far too long), Stan looked directly at his niblings. “Tried to drink somethin’ earlier. Didn’t go down too well.”

He’s talking to the kids again. Thank goodness. Stan had a worried frown on his face and his words were spoken quietly and quickly, but it was improvement.

“Okay. But you’ll tell us if there ever is anything, right?”

“‘Course, Shoo— ‘course, sweetie. Don’t worry about that.”

And then there was the inevitable slip — so subtle and quickly corrected that Ford almost missed it, would have missed it if Stan hadn’t briefly shuddered at his own words before putting back on a neutral expression.

Sixer, Pine Tree, Shooting Star…

It seems the kids hadn’t noticed, though, and Ford didn’t want to bring it up to them, not after what had happened after returning to the Shack that morning. Instead, he waited until they turned away and started to talk to each other, then whispered to Stan: “Are you alright?”

“Yeah, well, I guess I’m not any worse, huh?” Stan answered, and Ford doubted many other people would have noticed, but his words sounded slightly forced, his tone just a bit too optimistic.

Like a lie.

“Do you… do you feel alright talking to the kids?” Ford asked cautiously.

“Yeah, pretty much. I — I think I still need them to give me some space, but…”

There was the genuine Stan again, the Stan being honest about how scared he was.

“But yeah, I can talk to them. Like, I just did, and that went fine, right?”

Ford felt a wave of nausea wash over him.

But it wasn’t fine, Stan. A moment ago you were horrified of what you almost said. What just changed? You couldn’t have forgotten, or…

Oh no.

Stan’s pupils weren’t slit at the moment, but his eyes had never shown the signs of possession, had they? Not when calling Dipper Pine Tree, not when his hands caught fire, not a single time. What if Bill was somehow the one in control, the one speaking to Ford at this very moment, pretending nothing was wrong, waiting for Ford to let his guard down — or maybe Bill wasn’t fully in control, but deleting memories from Stan’s mind and manipulating his thoughts until he truly believed it was fine —

A soft ding chimed in the background, and Ford didn’t register what it was until Fiddleford announced: “We’re done. I’m guessin’ you’ll wanna take a look here, Ford.”

Ford hurried over to the machine just in time to watch with Fiddleford as the results loaded, and for the sinking feeling in his stomach to grow a thousand times worse.

“That — that can’t be all there is! The end must be cut off!”

“No,” McGucket replied, his voice stunned and monotone — it sounded so wrong to hear Fiddleford of all people speak so flatly. “Ya can see the times labeled on the x-axis. That’s all there is…”

“Fuck,” Ford whispered.

He was drowned out by Dipper asking: “What’s wrong? What’s all there is?”

Ford found himself speaking slowly and clearly, like saying the words out loud would make them false, would prompt someone to correct him. “There isn’t a single sign of possession here. Nothing at all.”

“It’s gotta be my fault,” Fiddleford muttered. “I musta messed it all up with the upgrades —”

Ford shook his head. “No, Fiddleford. Stop.”

He pointed to the screen, where a graph was displayed. It was almost entirely one flat line, except for three parts: almost exactly a year ago, where it briefly quintupled in height, ten months ago where it briefly doubled in height, and a slightly longer period immediately afterwards where it made small oscillations up and down from the original line.

“All this data aligns perfectly with what we know — here’s where Dipper, Mabel, and Soos followed Bill into Stanley’s mind last summer. Counting Stan, that’s five separate people, just as the graph shows…”

He moved his finger along the line, from left to right. “Here’s where Stan tricked Bill into entering his mind during Weirdmaggedon — two people, just as we see here. And here’s where the memory gun caused minor interference. That’s all just as it should be.”

He finally pointed at the time labeled Present, where the line was flat again. “It’s just this part… we know Bill is here, but… we can’t detect him now, for some reason…”

Ford realized that he hadn’t heard Stan say anything since the results had arrived, and glanced in his brother’s direction. The look Stan returned to him might have seemed completely neutral and indifferent to any other person, but Ford could tell there were other emotions behind it — fear, and something else.

Shame?

“Um,” Soos said, “I don’t know very much about this stuff, but maybe you could try turning it off and back on? And then doing the scan thing again?”

“That’s a good idea, Soos,” Ford replied, quickly and maybe a little louder than he meant to. “We might try that — unless Fiddleford has something else he’d like to troubleshoot?”

“There’s a more detailed scan setting I can use, but I’ll turn it off and on again first, if ya want. The other scan’ll take more time, though. ‘Bout twice as long.”

“That’s fine,” Ford immediately assured him, even though it wasn’t.

Seven minutes had already been too much. He couldn’t handle another fourteen. He had to get out of this room, out of this poorly-lit ballroom-turned lab with no windows and not enough chairs and nothing to write on and far too much empty space.

But no, he had to stay, he had to do something, anything to help Stan — yet he couldn’t, couldn’t do anything, couldn’t hold it all together for much longer.

He was a horrible brother, wasn’t he.

“Stanley, would you be comfortable on your own for a short amount of time? I need — I’d like to head to the bathroom.”

He just needed two or three minutes alone to pull himself together. He’d come back to Stan as soon as he could, he just needed a moment alone. He just needed to sort through all his thoughts and paranoia, and then he could stop being so helpless…

“Sure, I guess…” Stan told him, frowning.

“Alright. Thank you,” Ford replied as he hurried out of the room, failing to notice the worried looks that Dipper and Mabel exchanged behind him.

Is this why I always tried so hard to convince myself that being a hero meant being alone? Because of how useless I always become when I try to help my friends and family?

***

It was actually in the dining room that Mabel found him, and it wasn’t two or three minutes later, but more than four.

“Grunkle Ford, you’re not in Sweater Town, are you?”

He didn’t get up from the corner he was sitting in, but he looked up to Mabel, trying to be reassuring but probably failing. “Am I really so bad of an actor? That you felt the need to come after me?”

“Well… we were a little worried before you even left, but then McGucket told that none of the mansion’s eight bathrooms were in the direction you went. So… that made us more worried.”

She sat down next to him, waited a moment, and then leaned against his side.

“I want to try help you feel better,” she admitted, “but I’m really afraid, too.”

“I want to tell you that you shouldn’t be,” Ford replied, “but I don’t think I’d convince either of us.”

He put his arm around Mabel’s shoulders, and all the thoughts that he’d been holding in ever since finding Stan in that clearing began to pour out.

“I’m afraid I won’t be able to tell Bill and Stan apart at some moment when I desperately need to. That Bill somehow buried himself so deep in Stan’s mind that the scan won’t even pick him up no matter how many times we run it, and that I don’t even know my own brother well enough to find a way to separate what’s him and what’s that demon. I’m afraid that Bill’s already influencing what he says and thinks, and that it’s only going to get worse, and that I won’t even notice when it does.

“Back in the Shack, Stan… he talked in his sleep and quoted a whole conversation I had with Bill decades ago, and I didn’t even recognize it at first. It just… he called me Sixer, and I didn’t catch every word at first but the words I did understand sounded… just so natural in Stan’s voice, until… until he started telling me to lie until I couldn’t remember what was true, to lie until I wasn’t lying anymore.

“Now I’m afraid that Bill’s lying to me through Stan, messing with Stan’s head and controlling what he tells me. I’m afraid that I won’t be able to tell for sure until it’s too late. I… I should be with him! I should be watching him. Them. But I — I just can’t bring myself to…”

Mabel scooted closer and hugged him.

“I’m just so useless to Stan, to all of you. I don’t know how to handle any of this. I should be back there by now, but… I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how I can be the one leading everyone through… all of this.”

He hung his head. “I’m so sorry, Mabel. I shouldn’t have burdened you with this…”

“But did it help?” Mabel asked him. “To talk about it?”

Ford had to consider it for a moment. “Maybe a little bit, I think.”

“Then I’m glad you said it, Grunkle Ford.”

Ford had never been much of a crier, but at that moment, tears were starting to well up in his eyes. “Thank you, Mabel.”

“I don’t know what I could say that could help you any more,” she went on. “I’m really scared too. Especially for Stan.” She rubbed her eyes.

“But I’m not scared about being able to tell him and Bill apart — about you, or me, or anyone else being able to, ‘cause Stan loves us way more than Bill will ever understand. You know that, right?”

Despite everything, Ford felt a sense of pride. “You’re right. He does love us, so much more. I do know that.”

“One time,” Mabel went on, “Bill asked me some question, like ‘who would sacrifice everything they’d worked for just for their dumb sibling?’ He didn’t get how any of us could care about our family so much. Stan’s the opposite of that. He worked for thirty years to save you! Even if Bill was your brother, he never would have done that!

“You know Stan better than anyone, and you know how different he is from Bill. You know so much about everything! If anyone can figure out a way to seperate them, it’s you, Grunkle Ford!”

“That was very well said, Mabel. Thank you. I needed that.”

They sat silently together for a few more seconds, until Mabel said: “I guess you kind of were in Sweater Town, weren’t you.”

“I — I don’t believe I know what that means.”

“Well, when I go to Sweater Town, I pull my sweater over my head. Like this.”

She demonstrated. “But I guess it’s doesn’t always have to be a sweater, exactly. It can be whatever you do to get away and block out all the bad stuff going on.”

She pulled her sweater back down. “Sometimes you need to go to Sweater Town for a little while, and it really helps. Sometimes it’s bad instead, because you’re tempted to hide there forever and pretend all the stuff going on around you isn’t happening. Sometimes it’s both.”

“I see.” Ford took a deep breath. “You’re right, I think I was in Sweater Town for a while. But I’m ready to go back now, if you are too.”

“Yeah, I’m ready.”

As Ford got to his feet, the dusty chandelier hanging from the ceiling caught his eye.

Right. That was something he could do, a step he could take to prepare in advance in case the next scan turned out the same.

“Actually, Mabel, before we head back… do you think you could help me find some candles?”

***

They left the candles outside the door before they entered the lab again. No one asked what had taken so long, just acknowledged them with a nod, but Ford could see the relief on their faces — especially Stan’s.

Before he had a chance to ask Stan how he was feeling, the machine dinged again, and on the screen, the exact same graph was displayed. Ford reminded himself that he’d been expecting that result, that he had a plan, that he knew what to do next.

Even though Stan would never approve of his plan, which was why he was about to lie.

You have to do it, Ford. If Stan’s still afraid of even being near the kids, he’ll never allow this if you tell him the truth.

From his pocket, he pulled a wallet-sized black case that contained several medications, including painkillers and antibiotics, but most importantly a sedative.

“Stan, I know sleep has been… unpleasant for you lately, but while we work out what to do next, it’ll be safest for us to sedate you, so we can minimize the risk of Bill taking control over these next few hours. Would you be alright with —”

Stan shuddered. “Won’t it be easier for him to possess me if I’m asleep?”

“Not if the drugs put you to sleep artificially. If he’s in your mind at this very moment, they’ll affect him too.”

“Oh, then of course I’m fine with it.” He held out his palm to accept the pills. “What are you waitin’ for?”

Ford was the only one close enough to notice, but Stan’s hand was trembling slightly. He was still terrified of being visited by nightmares again, Ford realized, even without the risk of Bill taking over — he was just pretending that fear wasn’t there, for Ford’s sake.

Feeling even worse about his lie, Ford pressed several buttons on the case, and it dispensed two pills.

It’s still all to stop Bill, just like I told him, he reminded himself. I’m only lying about the details because otherwise he’d be too worried about our safety to let us try.

“They work faster than the ones that are standard in this dimension,” he explained, “but you don’t swallow them — just let them dissolve in your mouth, and they should kick in within a minute or two.”

Stan did as he was told, and leaned back in his chair. Fiddleford procured a pillow from… somewhere in the lab, but Stan shook his head.

He just isn’t allowing himself to care about his own physical and emotional comfort anymore, Ford thought. And I’m exploiting that.

He stared at his watch until about ninety seconds had passed and Stan’s eyes had closed, then said: “Mabel, would you get those candles?”

“Why do you want —” Dipper started to ask, before it clicked together. “Wait, you’re going into his mind, aren’t you?”

Ford nodded. “Yes. Strictly speaking, the candles aren’t necessary, but I’ve found that a number of rituals work slightly better when they’re present. And, well, you can tell why I wouldn’t want to turn down any potential advantage we might have access to here.”

“Ah, now there’s the Ford I know,” Fiddleford chimed in. “You’ll find a way to get everyone out of this safe and sound, I’m sure of it.”

“Thank you, Fiddleford,” Ford replied. “I’ll do everything I can.”

No one asked him why he’d lied to Stan, which should have been a relief, but Ford almost felt like he deserved to have his choices questioned.

I will save Stan just like he saved me. I won’t let him down. I’ll make this lie worth it.

Mabel returned with the candles, and Ford began placing them in a circle around Stan’s chair. In the middle of the process, he stepped away from the circle for a moment to place the pillow behind Stan’s neck.

“Are you letting us come with you?” Dipper asked. There was a determination in his eyes that reminded Ford of Stan — well, of Stan when he’d conned Bill, of Stan when he’d punched krakens and dove overboard to pull Ford out of freezing water, of Stan on any other day but today.

A lot had changed in just this one bright summer morning, hadn’t it?

Ford sighed. “I wouldn’t be able to stop you from following me if I tried, would I?”

Dipper shook his head. “Probably not,” he admitted guiltily.

“Don’t be ashamed of what you would have done,” Ford quickly added. “I know I would’ve done the same. Besides, since the three of you have been in Stan’s mind before, you may end up being able to spot Bill’s influence even better than I can. I’ll admit I’m worried about your safety, but I know you’ll worry about me too, and letting you come is the best choice for all of us. It’s not like you’ll be a hindrance.”

He turned to McGucket. “Though that’ll leave you alone, Fiddleford. Are you alright with that?”

“Don’t worry ‘bout me, Tate’ll be back ‘ere in an hour or so, and I guess the girls are gonna come by to drop off that unicorn hair, too. You go do what ya need to do to save yer brother.”

Ford nodded and set to work lighting the candles. For one horrifying moment, he feared that they might burn blue themselves, but they were a warm, natural orange. They reassured him somewhat— a sign that normalcy still remained in this world where everything he’d taken for granted for the past ten months was turning out to be false.

“Alright,” he announced, “everyone gather round.”

The four of them placed their hands on Stan’s head, and Ford began to recite the incantation. He’d had it memorized ever since Bill had betrayed him.

As he began, everyone’s eyes began to glow light blue, shining brighter and brighter as he recited the chant.

On the third to last Magister Mentium of the incantation, the flames of the candles were snuffed out, their energy pulled towards the site of entry to the mindscape. On the second to last, the world began to dissolve around them, everything turning into blurs of blue and gray.

And then, as he spoke the final words, Ford could have sworn he heard… piano music?

But before he could be sure, everything went dark and cold.

Chapter Text

Before Stan even closed his eyes, the bitter taste of the sedative faded into a dull nothingness — an absence of the sense of taste altogether — that confirmed he was dreaming. Images, both remembered and completely invented, flickered in and out of existence around him — most of them forgotten before he could recognize them, lost into the void of half-consciousness…

Until he found himself sitting in the front of a classroom with Ford, a science textbook open upon his desk.

“In chemistry,” Ford explained to him, “isomers are molecules with the same chemical formula, but a different arrangement of the atoms. So as a result, they can possess vastly different properties.”

“So basically, they’re made of the same stuff, but they do different things?”

“At its most simple, yes. They can do very different things, so different that it would be deceptive to refer to two isomers as the same compound.”

All of a sudden Ford’s hands didn’t have six fingers anymore, but five, and all of them were at Stan’s throat.

“You one-eyed demon…” a voice that wasn’t Ford’s growled, and everything went blue —

Stan was cleaning the Shack’s fish tank, that pink frilly salamander thing smiling at him from the bowl where it waited as Stan scraped brown gunk off the walls of its home.

“You got somethin’ to tell me, know-it-all?” he asked it.

And then the bowl was growing until somehow Stan found himself within it, and the axolotl no, the Axolotl grew just as much until it loomed over Stan, floating in the sea of pink and blue mist.

“You already know. Set aside your fear and biases, and accept the truth for what it is.”

Something was beginning to slowly pull Stan backwards, deeper and deeper into the mist, and he frantically tried to resist, to find something to hold onto, but his arms were too weak and tiny and the world was too immaterial, too blurry…

A voice he knew he’d heard countless times before, yet couldn’t identify, began to speak to him.

“You want to know why time is so meaningless?”

Stan felt as if the claws of some unseen beast were being dragged across his skull, tearing through his thoughts and evaporating his consciousness into a foggy, indecipherable haze…

i ask you why should time only move forward why must cause precede effect who voted on the laws of physics

From within the darkness, the voice returned — louder, angrier, more familiar.

“I hate to break it to you, wise guy, but you’re already doomed.”

Stan felt his own lips form the very same words he was hearing.

“You’re going to be meaningless soon. Everything you think of yourself as standing for is gonna fade away, and all you’re gonna be is just another one of my memories.”

No no no he didn’t want to fade didn’t want to change…

So will you please say hello…

To the folks that I know…

Tell them I won’t be long!

Then Stan’s family barged into his mindscape, and the panic subsided as he entered a different level of dreaming.

***

Water. They were underwater.

Ford paddled desperately, trying to reach the surface, but there was no light around him, no indication of which way was up, no sign of the others.

Simply trying to move was draining. His arms felt heavy, cutting through the water more and more slowly with each passing second. The darkness was sapping him of his energy.

Which, in a way, made sense in terms of thermodynamics, he thought in a daze. But instead of something cold drawing away his body heat to reach equilibrium with its surroundings, to maximize the entropy of the universe, it was the darkness drawing away his willpower, his mental clarity…

He couldn’t struggle, couldn’t even panic. His thoughts were sluggish, jumbled, crossed out.

He drifted in the darkness, time itself seeming to dissolve in the ink-black sea. It was peaceful, but so, so draining…

“Grunkle Ford?!”

“Mabel?!”

We’re in the mindscape, he remembered with a jolt. We can’t drown in the mindscape.

He imagined a bubble of air around him, and it appeared, albeit with a bit more resistance than he would have expected. As the water was pushed away from him, clarity returned to his thoughts, and he called out to the others.

“Everyone! Imagine yourself rising to the surface! I know it’s hard in — in these conditions, but we need to get out of the water!”

For a moment, he had a terrifying thought — what if there was no surface, and this… darkness was all that existed in Stan’s mind? — but a moment later, his head burst above the waves, fuzzy gray shapes visible in the distance. And thankfully, there were three patches of color, too — Dipper, Mabel, and Soos, all bobbing up and down mere feet away from him.

“That was horrible,” Dipper said with a shudder. “Are you guys okay?”

“Yes. Yes, I think so,” Ford replied. “This didn’t happen the last time you entered Stan’s mind, did it?”

Dipper and Mabel both shook their heads, and Mabel started to say something, but Soos yelled: “Look out, dudes!”

Ford looked behind him just in time to slam his head into the side of a boat. A grayscale Stan O’ War II had drifted up to them, its approach concealed by the fog until the last moment.

“Well,” Mabel said, “I guess that probably means we should get on board, right?”

***

Even with all the powers he had in the mindscape, it was a huge relief for Ford to plant his feet firmly on the deck. With a snap of his fingers, he summoned a lantern into existence, illuminating most of the boat but failing to cut much further through the dense fog.

Without any sort of input from its passengers, the boat kept drifting, slowly but noticeably. Vaguely familiar shapes peeked out of the water all around them, but Ford couldn’t identify much besides Stan’s chair from the Shack and a rusty old swingset not unlike the one on Glass Shard Beach.

“It was still pretty foggy last time we were here, but definitely not this bad,” Dipper told him.

“And the grayscale is new as well?” Ford asked.

Dipper shook his head. “No, it was like that before. Just more, uh, light gray compared to dark gray.”

“You mean — it was like that when Bill had just entered Stan’s mind for the first time? It didn’t change to gray as Bill went through his memories?”

“No,” Mabel confirmed. “It was all gray and foggy ever since the first time we saw it.”

Ford stared out over the railing of the boat and into the seemingly endless gray fog. He’d never heard of, much less seen, a mindscape so devoid of color — his own dreams took on a sepia tone oddly frequently, but never the entire mindscape — and so he’d assumed it was Bill’s doing. But if the grayscale appearance had preceded Bill’s first entry into Stan’s mind…

He wasn’t sure what upset him more, the idea of Bill causing so much damage to Stan’s mindscape that it turned gray, or the seemingly more accurate idea that Stan’s mind had just always been in this state.

“Dr. Pines!” Soos jarred him out of his thoughts. “I think something’s up with the planks in the boat!”

Ford looked down, and sure enough, a number of the planks looked loose. Had they not been in the mindscape, the boat certainly would have fallen apart.

He gently attempted to pry one up, and in the resulting gap there appeared a colored-in image of… disorientingly, Stan and Ford on their boat.

It was late morning, and while the sky was slightly overcast — as was typical for the North Pacific in November — the sea was peaceful, rocking the boat gently and rhythmically. Ford was looking out towards a distant archipelago as he drank from a mug of coffee, and Stan walked over to join him.

At first, they stood together in silence, just appreciating the day. But after a minute or so, Stan took a careful look at the contemplative expression on Ford’s face, and said:

“Weird question here, Poindexter. Do you ever miss all that interdimensional traveler stuff?”

Ford was taken aback. “Why do you ask?”

“It’s just, you know, you tell a lot of stories about stuff you did back then, and you always get so excited about it. Like you miss doing all that.”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m not gonna be offended or nothing if you do miss it — like, I’d get why it would be something you would miss. I just… kinda want to get to know you, get to know that part of your life a little better? ‘Cause I know you’ve got so many more stories you’ll never be able to tell ‘em all, and… agh. I’m doin’ a really shitty job explaining this.”

“No no, it’s fine,” Ford told him. “I think I know what you mean. It’s… strange to go back to being as close as you’d expect twins to be, after having been apart for so long, and knowing so little about such large parts of each other's lives.”

Stan nodded. “Yeah. Somethin’ like that. Like, back in the day, we always knew what the other was thinking, but now I’m always second-guessing myself about that kinda stuff.”

Ford nodded, and went silent for a moment as he thought. “To answer your question, I would say… I would say that as a whole, I don’t miss traveling the multiverse. Too much danger, and uncertainty, and if I’m being honest… personally, I had too much of a martyr complex. But there are definitely specific parts I miss. Specific places I visited and people I met.”

He sighed. “Especially the people. As much as I claimed to be a loner, I made a number of allies that I wish I could speak to again, see how they’re doing now. Some of them… were living very dangerous lives when I last saw them, and not always by choice.

“And you’re right, there are times when I miss the thrill of exploring other dimensions altogether, places that no one from this planet had ever laid eyes on before. I miss the red and blue-striped hills of Dimension 89B, watching the double moonrises of Laxaw 11/2, and of course, I miss dimension Dimension 52. But… at the end of the day, I still prefer these adventures, here in this world.”

He smiled. “Because I’m not alone for them.”

“Geez, when did you turn into such a sap!” Stan scoffed, but he was smiling too.

“I’m just telling you how I feel! I wouldn’t even consider giving up this —” Ford gestured around them. “— for more interdimensional travels unless you could come with me.”

The Ford outside of the memory put the plank back in place. He remembered that day — about a month and a half into their travels — and wished more than anything that he could be back there again, with no concerns other than the location of the next mythical beast or hidden artifact.

“Last time, all of Stan’s memories were behind doors in the Mystery Shack…” Mabel said, but Ford wasn’t paying attention.

There had been something behind Soos a moment ago, something dark and vaguely human-shaped. He was sure of it.

But when he’d looked directly at it, it had vanished.

“Did any of you see that?” he asked the others — realizing as the words left his mouth that they most definitely hadn’t, since they’d all been facing the wrong way.

And sure enough, Ford was met with three concerned frowns.

“See what?” Dipper asked him.

“It’s nothing, just… the nature of the mindscape playing tricks on me. Mabel, were you asking something?”

“Um, just… why Stan’s memories are on the boat, instead of in the Shack now. Is it because the boat is where he’s been living lately?”

“That’s a good hypothesis,” Ford replied. “Though I think that there’s still much of Stan’s mindscape we’ve yet to see. It’s possible that some of his other memories, perhaps those unrelated to the Stan O’ War, are still in…”

As if on cue, a familiar triangular-roofed shape began to loom out from the fog.

“The Mystery Shack,” Soos finished.

The Shack was floating in the sea, seemingly unaffixed to anything. Wisps of fog wound into the building through triangular windows, and while the main sign was still visible, the S was nowhere to be seen.

As the boat drew closer, Ford grew impatient and leaped onto the wooden deck upon which the building now sat. He wondered, briefly, if it still had a basement in the mindscape — but beneath the ink-black water, it was impossible to tell, and he had no desire to dive down and see.

Above the door were the letters VAZPEXRVQ VQBPD. Too long of a first word to be code for “Mystery Shack” — but Ford didn’t recognize the cipher.

As the others stepped off the boat and onto the deck, the wooden planks creaked like keys of a musical instrument, producing a somber noise that almost sounded like speech.

I…

The hairs stood up on the back of Ford’s neck.

I still remember…

Even conveyed through the creaks and groans of the planks, the words had a distinct regret to them, a distinct horror.

And then they were gone, and it was just as quiet as before — no, even quieter; it was as if the sound waves were being absorbed by the fog.

Ford turned around, and in a moment of panic, realized he couldn’t see his companions.

“Dipper? Mabel? Soos?”

“Grunkle Ford?” Dipper’s muffled voice called back. Ford stepped towards it, and two hands reached out from opposite directions in the fog, each gripping one of his sweater sleeves. He grabbed their arms in return and gently pulled them closer, relieved to see that Mabel had a hold of Soos’s arm as well.

“Let’s get inside,” Ford told them. “Hopefully the fog will thin out in there.”

His family nodded in agreement, and they made their way towards the door, footsteps sounding eerily distant as if space had been distorted and the floor they walked upon was a mile below their ears. Where the unrecognized cipher had been before, there were now the letters PBVWHUB VKDFN — simply the words MYSTERY SHACK encoded with the usual Caesar shift of 3, as if nothing else had ever been written there.

They stepped inside, and the moment his eyes processed what he was seeing, Ford grabbed his niblings and held them even tighter.

There was slightly less fog, true, but there was also a maze of floating wooden steps, defying gravity and forming staircases that arced and zigzagged in every direction — a hundred dark pathways though a misty white abyss in which both lone doors and entire hallways were suspended. To many people, it would seem like something straight out of a M. C. Escher lithograph, albeit a blurred and faded one.

But to Ford, all it invoked were the memories of the chaotically designed, gravity-defying hallways and staircases he’d glimpsed in Bill’s Fearamid. To Ford, all it reminded him of was fear and desperation.

Still, Soos stepped forward onto the first of the floating steps like it was nothing, and even Dipper and Mabel, who’d nearly died running through those hallways, squirmed in Ford’s arms and gave him worried looks.

“Great-Uncle Ford, is something wrong?” Dipper asked.

“Yeah, you’re holding us awfully tight. Is there something that you’re worried about?”

Ford released them, and with a sinking feeling in his stomach, he asked: “Has the Shack always — has the interior of Stan’s mindscape always looked like this?”

This time, it was Soos to explain. “Yeah, dude, it’s been like this from the start. Floating stairs and everything.”

“Is there something wrong with that?” Dipper asked.

“In this case… no, there shouldn’t be,” Ford replied. “Not if it’s always been this way.”

His family all nodded, but Ford’s anxious feeling persisted.

Bill couldn’t possibly affect Stan’s mind retroactively, could he? I didn’t think even he was that far removed from the flow of time…

Another, potentially related possibility occurred to him. What if Bill truly was dead, but the mindscape clash that killed him had also left Stan irreversibly changed?

Ford didn’t know how he felt about that, or whether he’d even choose it over Bill still being alive. For the first time that day, he found himself truly afraid to explore the mindscape any further.

But Soos and the kids were forging ahead, pointing out specific hallways and other things that they found familiar. Ford took a deep breath.

It’s been ten months, and Stan would still do anything for his family. That means he hasn’t been changed in any fundamental way. No matter how much we find that Bill’s influenced him, he’ll still be Stanley Pines, and there won’t be any damage done that we can’t reverse.

Cautiously, Ford stepped down the floating staircase to catch up to the others. As unstable as it looked, it supported his weight just fine, and as he moved it became easier to see further through the fog.

“I have a suspicion,” he explained, “that Bill may be concealing himself by hiding within Stan’s own Bill-related memories. I think we’ll check there first, if no one’s noticed anything else out of the ordinary.”

“Um,” Mabel said with a slight shudder, “what if Bill’s hiding underneath all that water? It’s definitely new, and we couldn’t see anything down there, but… um, I don’t really want to go back.”

“I don’t either,” Ford assured her. “I can’t promise we’ll never have to check there, but we’ll look everywhere else first, all right?”

Mabel, Dipper, and Soos all let out a simultaneous sigh of relief.

“So, we’re looking for Stan’s memories of Bill now?” Dipper asked.

“Right.” Ford pointed to the hallway labeled Memories. “That way seems like a good lead, doesn’t it?”

The others nodded in agreement, and they set off in that direction. They probably could have moved faster were they to imagine themselves levitating across the chasm, but somehow, they reached an unspoken agreement to follow the path normally — there was just something unnerving about the fog.

They passed doors marked for Dipper, and Mabel, and Soos — Ford guessed that his own was back on the Stan O’ War — and then for other people from the town, like Gideon, Wendy, and McGucket. It was at Wendy’s door where Ford first noticed what should have been obvious — every single person with a place on the Zodiac had not just their name spelled out, but their symbol as well.

“Dipper, is this new?” he asked, gesturing towards the door, and the look of shock on Dipper’s face revealed that he knew exactly what detail Ford was referring to, and that he hadn’t noticed it until now either.

“I… um, I don’t think we saw Wendy’s door last time…” he said, “although I’m pretty sure my door did have a pine tree on it back then?”

He started to ramble faster and faster, echoing Ford’s own thoughts. “But — but that could have been unrelated to Bill, couldn’t it, since I always wore that hat back then? While the ice bag makes no sense unless you know about the —”

“I know.” Ford put a hand on his shoulder. “There’s a lot to think about. I… I don’t know how to feel about a lot of this, either. But nothing good will come from panicking — especially not now, while our understanding of the situation is still incomplete.”

His words were true, he knew that, but the optimistic tone he forced himself to take couldn’t have been further from how he felt.

Stanley will always care about us and Bill never will, he reminded himself. They could never become indistinguishable.

They wandered further and further through the Shack, and just when Ford was beginning to fear they were lost, Soos pointed out a door with a simple white triangle carved into it.

“Yes, that looks promising. Everyone, let’s stay on our toes, but don’t be afraid. We’re all here to back each other up in case things get dangerous.”

Ford began to lead the way across the room, but a flicker of motion caught his eye — a man wearing a dark suit and red bow tie, his sharp figure enveloped in smoke-black fog that grew especially dense around his face and concealed his expression.

As Ford turned towards him, he shook his head twice, slowly and solemnly. Then he simply sublimated into the pitch-black, rapidly dispersing mist.

There was a complete and eerie silence, an absence of both footsteps and speech, that instantly told Ford that he hadn’t been the only one to see the dark figure this time.

“Was that… was that Stan?” Mabel finally asked.

Ford couldn’t take his eyes off the corner of the room in which the man had appeared. “I… I can’t think of anyone else it could be.”

He supposed it could have been Bill, but Bill had never seemed like the type to take on a human form if he could avoid it…

“Is he… okay?” Soos asked quietly.

“I don’t know,” Ford admitted. “I doubt he’s entirely conscious of what’s going on that the moment…”

If he is partially conscious, he must be so worried, Ford realized with a jolt. I lied to him about what we were going to do while he was sedated, and now he must be even more terrified of something horrible happening to us…

Pushing his guilt to the back of his mind, Ford declared: “Well, we’re not going to get any answers standing around like this. Let’s search Bill’s hallway — if everyone feels ready?”

He was met with three determined nods, and he turned back around and opened the door. The passageway was much more cramped than previous ones, forcing them to walk single file.

Which did make sense, Ford figured, given how little Stan and Bill had interacted in their lives, compared to Bill and… well, Bill and all the other Pines, really.

He opened the first door he saw, unsure of what to expect or what to look for — and was still caught off guard.

Stan was standing in front of Bill’s statue, a familiar rage shining in his eyes.

“I thought you might have finally been out of our lives once and for all,” he said, “but that was a dumb thought. You don’t need to be alive to be hauntin’ our dreams.”

Very briefly, he seemed to grimace — like he’d had an intrusive, unpleasant thought — but the angry expression returned just seconds later.

“You’re a real special type of asshole, Bill. But don’t think I’m gonna let you win, just ‘cause there’s nothing left to punch.”

Again, there was a subtle flinch, but Stan seemed to recover quickly.

“I’m not gonna let all the shit you pulled ruin my life. Nope. ‘Cause you’re just a dumb statue now, and we’re done with you.” He paused, and managed a chuckle. “I mean, look at you. You’re still tryin’ to shake someone’s hand and make a deal, but you’re just gettin’ covered in bird shit.”

Outside of the memory, Ford couldn’t help but smile.

Stan turned around, and with a grin on his face that looked only slightly forced, he imitated the statue’s pose.

“Look at me, I’m Bill Cipher!” He laughed. “I died ‘cause I got punched by a pissed off elderly con man! Wanna make a deal with me, an even more ancient, bigger asshole of a con man?”

As the words I’m Bill Cipher left his mouth, a faint blue glow began to appear around his right hand. By the time he’d stopped talking, it had ignited into a steady blue blaze.

Slowly, as if hypnotized, Stan looked down. His expression was vacant at first, but gradually morphed into a peaceful, satisfied smile.

Ford slammed the door closed.

He knew, according to all logic, that Stan would soon stop smiling and start panicking instead, would come out of his… his trance and realize what was happening, would flee from the statue because he feared it, because he wasn’t Bill…

But Ford couldn’t bear it any longer, couldn’t bear seeing Stan look so content as his hands were engulfed in demonic blue flames.

“I — I don’t think anything in that memory is what we’re looking for,” he choked out. “Let’s move on to the next…”

The others nodded, and Ford realized they were all nearly as shaken as he was. He wished he knew what to say to comfort them, but Stan had always been better at that sort of thing — at making people feel better regardless of how he himself felt at the moment.

So Ford just took a deep breath, and moved on to the next door, hoping against hope that its memory would be less unsettling.

A much younger Stan was going through the objects Ford had left behind in the Shack. He picked up a prism and frowned, set it down in exchange for a rug with Bill’s image emblazoned on it, and frowned harder.

“Wonder if Mr. Brainiac ever figured out a fancy scientific explanation for this weird-ass dé·jà vu shit,” he muttered to himself, letting the rug fall to the floor.

He turned around, and as he looked at the fish tank, his expression softened. He knelt down and tapped gently on the glass, and a frilly pink salamander floated closer to him.

“Hey, little guy,” he whispered. “Were you Ford’s pet?”

The axolotl offered no reply. It was, after all, an axolotl.

“Guess I’ll have to feed you and stuff now, huh,” Stan muttered, but he didn’t sound too mad. “I guess you don’t know why Sixer had all this creepy triangular junk, do you?”

Again, there was no reply, and as Stan shrugged and walked away from the tank, the memory grew blurry and looped back to the start.

Ford closed the door. “Well, that seemed normal as far as I could tell…”

Which was true as far as their current search for Bill went, though the axolotl’s presence had still set his mind racing. It was one thing to hear about the salamander just appearing in the Shack, and quite another to see evidence of it for himself.

“Yeah, I didn’t notice anything weird either,” Dipper agreed. “There’s not even that many doors left, are there?”

Ford shook his head as he lead the way further down the hallway. “No, there aren’t, are there? Well, let’s check this next one — ugh!”

The door took two solid yanks to open, and even then, the opening was noticeably smaller than the others. But even with three people crowding around him, Ford instantly recognized the scene, even though he’d never seen it before — or rather, he’d seen it only from a much different perspective.

“Do a pretty good impression of my brother, don’t I?” Stan bragged to the demon he’d tricked into entering his mind. “Switch clothes, and no one can tell us apart!”

He gestured around him, to his mental projection of the Shack’s living room. “Welcome to my mind. Surprised you didn’t recognize it!”

“What?!” Bill shrieked. “The deal’s off!”

He turned to leave, but the door slammed shut, and blue embers began to flicker up from the closed escape route, quickly growing into a full-blown blaze that washed over all four walls of the room. The flames were a lighter blue than the ones Bill cloaked his hands in — a scorching, violent wave of destruction that made no effort to disguise itself as something less sinister.

A rare thing was happening to Bill’s eye — it was widening in fear.

“What the — no no no NO!”

“Oh, yeah. You’re goin’ down, Bill. You’re gettin’ erased.” There was no fear in Stan’s eyes or voice, just a smug, satisfied confidence, a certainty of what lay in the future and a determination to see it through. “Memory gun. Pretty clever, huh?”

“Y-you idiot!” Bill stammered, eye flickering from corner to corner in a panic and then looking back towards Stan — the one Pines he’d always paid the least attention to. “Don’t you realize you’re destroying your own mind too?!”

Stan just shrugged. “Eh, it’s not like I was using the space for much anyway.”

“Let me out of here! Let me OUUUUT!” Bill stepped away from Stan, desperately trying to summon flames of his own, but they fizzled out instantly, as if his essence itself was slowly disintegrating.

“Aah! Why isn’t this working?!”

“Hey, look at me,” Stan growled, all his smugness gone. “Turn around and look at me, you one-eyed demon!”

In the shadow of the man destined to kill him, Bill turned.

“You’re a real wise guy, but you made one fatal mistake,” Stan told him. “You messed with my family!”

“You’re making a mistake! I’ll give you anything!” Bill begged, the flames encircling him closer and closer with every second. “Money! Fame! Riches! Infinite power! Your own galaxy! PLEASE! HELP!”

Stan didn’t move, his face remaining a cold, determined frown.

“WHAT’S HAPPENING TO ME?!”

For a fraction of a second, Bill’s form changed color to show an environment of green and gray — a forest? A statue?

He began to shift through forms rapidly, each growing more distorted and unstable than the last —

“NRUTER YAM I TAHT REWOP TNEICNA EHT EKOVNI I!”

Symbols began to flash in his eye.

“NRUB OT EMOC SAH EMIT YM L-T-O-L-O-X-A!”

His form turned pitch black, and he reached out towards Stan, as if… to strike at him? Or to make one last plea for mercy?

“STAAAAANLEEEEEEEEEEY!”

The plea fell upon deaf ears, and with a single punch, Bill Cipher was shattered in a flash of blue and white.

Stan’s chest heaved. He turned around to pick up a picture of himself, Dipper, Mabel, and Waddles from his end table, and smiled as he held it close to his heart.

“Heh,” he whispered, expression remaining peaceful as the flames engulfed him. “Guess I was good for something after all.”

“Oh, Stanley…” Ford murmured as the memory looped back to the start. “You have to realize — you’re worth so much more than that…”

“Uh, Grunkle Ford?” Dipper asked, voice shaking somewhat. “Didn’t it kind of sound like Bill was speaking backwards?”

“What?” Ford blurted out, but before Dipper had a chance to respond, he remembered that brief moment where it sounded as if Bill had been speaking gibberish. “Oh, you — you may be right.” He struggled to hold back a curse. “I’ll check.”

He pulled out his phone — not his real phone, of course, but his mental projection of it, and as Bill once again began to shapeshift and glitch, he pressed the Record button. Then, closing the door to the memory before Stan could be consumed by the flames, he imagined his phone playing the recording backwards.

“A-X-O-L-O-T-L MY TIME HAS COME TO BURN! I INVOKE THE ANCIENT POWER THAT I MAY RETURN!”

“Shit,” he whispered. “Shit, shit, shit.”

“Return?” Mabel echoed. “He was always planning to return?”

“Ancient power?” Soos added. “Like, a power that’s ancient even to him? I thought he’d been around, like, forever.”

“That thing he spelled at the beginning…” said Dipper. “Wasn’t that the name of that salamander, the…”

“The Axolotl,” Ford confirmed. “It — wait. Everyone, quiet. Do you hear that?”

Very faintly, yet still with a distinct, eerie echo attached to it — as if coming from the opposite end of a long cavern — a piano was playing.

Ford had to place a shaking hand on the wall for support, as he realized he not only recognized the song, but remembered the accompanying lyrics:

So will you please say hello

To the folks that I know

Tell them I won’t be long!

They’ll be happy to know

That as you saw me go

I was singing this song!

“We need to find where it’s playing from,” he whispered.

The others were giving him worried, confused looks, and he added: “That’s where Bill will be.”

In all three of his companions at one, the concern in their expressions solidified into a fierce determination.

We’ll meet again

Don’t know where

Don’t know when

“Let’s go, back out this hallway,” Ford whispered, and Soos, who’d been bringing up the rear on the way in, began to lead the way out as the music slowly but steadily grew louder.

But I know we’ll meet again

Some sunny day!

Upon returning to the more open room where (Stan?) had appeared, the correct path became harder to pin down. Every wall seemed to give off a faint hum, as if each log or plank was itself a string in one massive piano…

But as Ford paced around the room, there was one direction that gave a more distinct, defined sound than all the others. He gestured for the others to follow him that way, and they all took off in a rush.

Ford’s arms swung at his sides as he ran, and he briefly let his right hand pass through an especially dark cloud of fog, one that had almost looked more like smoke. He hurriedly withdrew, but not before inky droplets condensed on his fingers, turning his skin cold and numb.

He held his hand as far away from his body as he could and shook it frantically. Relievingly, the droplets rolled straight off, falling to the ground and disappearing into cracks in the floorboards — yet Ford was left with a faint, though familiar, sensation of being drained.

Keep smiling through

Just like you always do

‘Til the blue skies drive the dark clouds far away!

“Are you okay?” Dipper asked him, and he nodded.

“I’m fine — although I’m growing more and more concerned about the state of Stan’s mindscape. We need to hurry… though preferably while being more careful than I just was.”

They set off again, and mere seconds later, they found themselves running on an upside-down staircase, their feet pointed towards the sky despite Ford possessing no memory of ever flipping upside down. He caught Dipper and Mabel exchanging an anxious look, and realized they must have finally been starting to notice the resemblance to the Fearamid, the place Ford knew for a fact that they’d both had nightmares about..

Even though he knew deep down that he’d made the right choice, the only logical choice, and that he’d be lost without them and Soos, he couldn’t help but regret bringing them along. “Remember,” he told them, “we’re chasing Bill this time. He’s the one hiding from us — he’s the one who has a reason to be afraid.”

“Yeah. That’s right,” Mabel agreed, but she lacked her usual cheer and determination.

Mercifully, they reached the end of the stairs, and were able to leap to the ground, finding themselves in a room vaguely resembling the gift shop. As Ford reoriented himself, a familiar flickering white light — with a hint of blue? — caught his eye.

“The vending machine,” Dipper whispered. “Of course.”

They all should have seen it coming — what better place was there to hide than the secret passageway to the basement?

Ford stepped towards the machine, focused on the music as it grew louder and louder.

Neither he nor his niblings noticed the black clouds closing in around them, first filling all the exits and then drawing even closer, forming a circle around the four intruders to the mindscape.

No one but Soos noticed how with every passing second, the knots in the wood looked more and more like eyes, watching them as they moved.

No one but Soos noticed the slow, incredibly faint thumps that at first seemed like the echo of Ford’s own footsteps, but then grew more intense, more hurried — more like the approach of another person.

“Uh, Dr. Pines —” Soos started quietly, but at the same moment, Ford declared:

“This is it, Bill! You’re not going to torment Stan any longer!”

He reached forwards to press the required buttons and open the passageway, but like inversely-colored lightning, a pitch-black tendril lashed out in front of him, and he recoiled.

“What the —”

From the fog materialized a familiar man in a familiar suit, clouds of almost liquid-looking blackness floating around his hands. From those clouds, more tendrils grew, snaking around the vending machine and binding it to the wall.

Stan’s expression was as blank as could be — too blank, so blank that it couldn’t be anything other than a carefully constructed facade.

“I’m sorry, Sixer,” he said, voice almost completely monotone. “But there’s nothing down there.”

Chapter Text

“There’s nothing down there,” Stan repeated, coils of dark fog winding around his arms and seeping into the sleeves of his suit. “You should have stayed in the real world, Ford.”

In the vending machine behind him, a black liquid began to rise in level, filling it until its lights no longer flickered and the sounds of the piano music grew muffled. Then, the darkness began to seep out and snake across the floorboards like an oil leak, staining everything black.

Ford’s stomach churned, and a sickening sour-sweet taste burned at the back of his throat. “Stanley, you… you have to have heard that song, you couldn’t have not heard —”

Stan tilted his head like a confused dog, expression still impossibly blank. “Song?”

From either Dipper or Mabel, Ford heard a sharp, upset intake of breath, mirroring the tightening feeling in his heart. “What — what did Bill do to you?!” he gasped.

“Bill?” Stan murmured. “Bill’s dead.”

He paused. “Right, Stanford?”

Finally, there was something flickering in his expression — the faintest hint of fear, of vulnerability, like a frightened child turning to a trusted adult for reassurance. “We killed him. Didn’t we?”

“You’re scared of what’s behind that machine,” Ford realized aloud. Curling his hands into fists to hide how much they were shaking, he added: “Stanley, I know it’s frightening, but you can’t just… trap yourself in some fantasy where everything’s alright. I’m sorry, but in order to fix this, you have to admit that Bill isn’t —”

Stan flinched, and as the wave of terror contorted his face, a bolt of blue lightning flew across the room, illuminating its every detail for a few brilliant microseconds.

“T-there’s nothing down there, I told you!” Stan stumbled away from his family, pressing his back to the dripping, almost unrecognizable vending machine. At his feet, a whirlpool of darkness grew, throwing off tendrils that struck the few remaining light patches and drowned them in shadow.

“Grunkle Stan!” Dipper and Mabel cried out in unison, just as Soos yelled “Mr. Pines!” and stepped forwards —

The Shack shuddered, floorboards torn apart beneath Soos’s feet. From beneath them, there erupted a geyser of cold, churning, all-consuming blackness —

“Soos!” Mabel yelled, reaching forward — but his form had already vanished into the plume of dark water. “Soos! Soos, say something! Are you —”

“If you won’t leave,” Stan interrupted, speaking in only a whisper yet somehow becoming the most commanding voice in the room, “then I guess I’ll have to…”

He made a motion like he was snapping his fingers, but no noise came. Around Soos, the water swirled into a perfect sphere, floating off the ground and towards the impossibly high ceiling until it disappeared into the ink-black clouds.

“Grunkle Stan, t-that wasn’t you, was it?” Dipper stammered. “You wouldn’t —”

Stan stared downwards as the fog around him thickened, droplets of darkness condensing on his fingers and then rolling off, joining the rivers that carved their way between upturned floorboards. They flowed stronger and stronger, wider and wider, splitting off separate channels that wound around the Pines and forming a constantly shifting web.

Dipper pulled Ford back from one of them, only to nearly stumble into another himself before Ford caught him. His knuckles were white as he gripped Ford’s hand.

“There’s nothing to be scared of,” Stan said.

“Stanley…” Ford whispered. “Stanley, please…”

Mabel took a single cautious step towards Stan, watching the floor carefully, but one of the darkest clouds above released an absolute waterfall of a downpour, sending a wave of blackness cascading down towards her —

Without a moment to spare, Ford summoned a glowing rectangular blue barrier above her, tilted to direct the water back towards the foggy chasm — but even then, Mabel barely had enough time to dive out of the way before it shattered, its fragments dissolving into darkness.

“Run,” Ford choked out, wiping dark splashes off his face with a trembling arm. When Dipper and Mabel turned to him in shock, he raised his voice: “Run! It’s too dangerous to stay here!”

Because Ford had been horribly mistaken, because this just couldn’t be the real Stan, because Stan would never do anything like this, no matter how frightened he was…

…would he?

No. No, he just couldn’t.

“It’s Bill!” Ford shouted to the kids — it has to be — and with that, another bolt of lightning tore through the air, evaporating fog away for a single moment before Stan screamed, a huge wave appearing behind him and chilling the whole room as it surged towards Ford and the kids —

They ran, not having any time to try to find what had happened to Soos, not having any time to look down at their footing — only time to pray to blind luck that none of them would step in a riptide current of darkness, and be carried away into whatever void awaited them.

Fighting against all his survival instincts, Ford turned back for just a moment and saw that Stan was following them, wading through the surging waves like they were nothing.

“I don’t want to hurt you!” Stan cried, and in any other situation, the sheer anguish in his voice would have been more than enough to make Ford believe him.

“I’m just doing this to keep you away from — from it! To try to protect you from it!”

“But from what?!” Dipper yelled over the sound of crashing waves, coming to a halt altogether as he turned to face Stan. “If it’s Bill, we need to know about it, so we can —”

The floorboards snapped beneath his feet, spraying gray splinters everywhere and sending him plummeting down to the cold, dark void below. For a split second, his tiny hand still reached out of the water, grasping desperately, futilely, at the jagged edge of one of the planks, but before Ford could grab ahold of it, it was pulled out of his reach, dragged by some impossibly strong current.

Mabel cried out, but the water began to gurgle upwards from the hole left in the floor, slowly at first but then erupting into a raging waterspout. Out of pure reflex, Ford grabbed her and began to run, carrying her away even as she struggled to free herself from his grip.

“We’ll go back for him,” Ford gasped, “I swear. We’ll go back for him and Soos as soon as we can. We won’t be any use to them if we’re — if we’re captured ourselves.”

He took a step onto one of the winding, floating staircases, and it melted, pouring down into the abyss. For a moment, Ford and Mabel hovered in the air like they were in some old-fashioned cartoon, but gravity took hold of them a second later, and for a moment they were falling, the g-force pulling at them and twisting Ford’s stomach —

But they were in the mind, and eventually they imagined themselves to a halt, floating in a sea of thick gray clouds — just plain, cold, uniform gray, stretching on forever in every direction. Stan was no longer anywhere to be seen.

“Grunkle Ford?” Mabel whispered. “Which… which way is up?”

Ford was about to point to above their heads, when suddenly a splatter of black rained up, from beneath their feet. And then there was another, coming from behind them and moving in a nearly horizontal direction.

Ford cursed in an alien language.

Of course, of course. This whole area disregarded the laws of gravity; he’d seen that with all the staircases. The way that felt like up to him, the way it felt like he’d fallen from, could easily just be a trick, an illusion — in fact, he’d bet that it was.

An illusion… Something was nagging at him, something he knew he was forgetting. Something important, something dangerous.

“Mabel, could you pick a direction for us to go?” he asked quietly. “I… I don’t know any way to get out of here, other than trying everything until something works.”

There was, of course, always the chance that they’d just get more lost, but what other choice did they have? No one was coming to help them, and there had to be at least an hour remaining before Stan’s sedative wore off and he woke up, if not even longer…

Mabel nodded, and pointed a bit above and to the left of them. “Let’s try that way, I guess?”

“That’s good,” Ford replied, and then added more quietly: “I’m… I’m so sorry that I put you in danger like this. You’ve been very brave.”

Mabel squeezed his arm. “We wouldn’t have let you leave us outside the Mindscape anyways. You said you knew that, didn’t you?”

“That’s true.”

They floated upwards (?) through the fog in silence for a moment.

“Keep squeezing my arm like that. Make sure we don’t get separated.”

“I will,” Mabel replied. Then she frowned. “If I get… if I end up like Dipper and Soos, you’ll go on without me, right?”

“In the moment… I may have to. But I’ll come back. I promise.”

“I know you will, Grunkle Ford. But… if you get captured, what do I do? How do I save you and the others?”

“I…”

What was Ford supposed to say — that he had no plan other than relying on sheer determination, possibly with an additional hint of self-martyrdom if required?

Something cold splattered against his arm, bleeding through his coat and sweater, turning him numb and blurring his vision…

“Grunkle Ford!” Mabel yelled, as if from a distance. “Grunkle Ford, you’re falling!”

He shook his head, and again he could feel Mabel gripping his other arm, the only thing keeping him from plummeting into the foggy abyss.

Let me fall, let me forget about all this, let me rest… part of his mind kept saying, but he managed to focus on the idea of his body levitating, and he floated back up to Mabel’s side, narrowly dodging another shower of water.

“It — it’s messing with my thoughts. We have to keep moving.”

Mabel started to say something, but more rain began to fall from all directions, and she and Ford both summoned a spherical barrier around them — Ford’s half metallic and glowing blue like alien technology, Mabel’s half pink and plastic like a hamster ball. But the darkness ate away at both sides like acid, spewing out dark wisps of vapor that blurred into the endless expanse of gray clouds and darkened them even more…

“We can’t block it off,” Ford realized. “We — we have to just make a break for it, and dodge all of it somehow —”

But I’m not even sure we’re heading the right way. I might as well just let it consume me — it’ll be a peaceful way to go out, at least…

“Let’s go!” Mabel told him, pointing to a direction where the rain seemed less intense and pulling Ford along. He barely snapped out of his thoughts in time to dodge a splash from the barrier as it collapsed in on itself fully, melting together towards its center and spraying off rain like some sort of dying star.

What was he thinking? He couldn’t just give up and pretend like nothing was wrong — Mabel needed him, Stan needed him…

From the clouds, a familiar dark figure materialized, drops of shadow slowly dripping off of his suit. Frowning very faintly, Stan flicked his hand, and a torrent of water rained down from above, swirling like a descending tornado and heading straight for Ford —

Mabel shoved him out of the way. The cyclone grazed her back, and darkness bled through her sweater, her hair…

She let go of Ford’s arm, and before he could reach back out to her, she floated away from him, limbs hanging limp. A detached, peaceful look spread across her face as she fell, the grey clouds closing around her until it looked as if she might have never been there in the first place.

“She’ll be safe now,” Stan whispered.

Something inside Ford — something that had been lurking somewhere between his desperation to save Stan and his instincts screaming at him to flee, something that had been growing strained ever since finding the vending machine — something snapped.

“What have you done?!” he roared. “What have you done to them?! Bring them back, or I’ll —”

“I’m keeping them safe.” Stan paused, as if unsure whether to continue. “And happy.”

“You’re lying,” Ford growled through gritted teeth. “You’re not Stan, and I was a fool for thinking you were. You’re B—”

“NO!”

Stan shuddered, wrapping his arms around his chest and tucking his hands beneath them. “D-don’t say that! Don’t say that I’m him —”

“I’ll say what I want, because there’s no way Stanley would ever do this. You are not my brother. You’re Bill Cipher, and nothing you say will deceive me into believing otherwise —”

Stan let out a sob, his tears spilling out into waves that circled the two of them, cutting them off in every direction except for far, far above. Even beneath the sound of the raging water, Ford could hear Stan repeating, like a ritual:

“I’m not I’m not I’m not I’m not I’m not I can’t be I CAN’T BE I CAN’T —”

Really, honestly, Ford wanted nothing more than to hug him, but he knew the being that resembled his brother had to be an illusion, had to be Bill getting in his head —

In his head.

The nagging feeling from earlier returned to him, erupting into an explosion of panic, and self-hatred, and regret for his own stupidity.

For decades now, he’d taken it for granted that his mind was protected from Bill, his memories safe from interference, with only the occasional vivid dream left vulnerable to the demon. But the metal plate in his head was a physical barrier, not a mental one… which meant that in his body in the real world, it did nothing.

And his consciousness and memories, which he’d willingly projected into another mind, were left exposed.

He — foolishly, irresponsibly, idiotically — had felt safe bringing the kids and Soos into Stan’s mindscape with him because he’d figured that he’d be immune to the type of tricks Bill could play, that he would be capable of snapping the others out of it if the need arose. But he was just as vulnerable as they were, of course he was.

I’m such a fool. I just put everyone in even greater danger. There are so many decisions, spread out over so many years, that I could have made differently to prevent this.

Just a few yards away from him, Ford saw Stan’s face contort into a grimace, ink-black droplets leaving dark trails as they ran down his cheeks. Ever so slightly, he shook his head, and the whirlpool around them began to draw closer —

Ford launched himself into flight, moving as fast as he could possibly imagine and aiming for the opening at the top of the cyclone — the opening that was growing smaller and smaller with every second. He didn’t have a plan, other than to hope against hope that his thoughts and memories hadn’t been manipulated too much yet, and that he’d be able to continue fleeing from Bill until Stan woke up and he was brought back to the waking world —

The spot of light above him narrowed to a pinprick of light gray within the black, and the water grew closer and closer to him, spraying him with a mist of a thousand comforting thoughts: nothing’s wrong, your brother’s safe, just relax and forget about all these worries —

He had to power through this. He had to keep his thoughts his —

He reached for the opening above him, but the waves closed in around his wrist, numbing his arm and spilling down over the rest of his body. They raged around him, absorbing all light and striking out all thoughts, until the surroundings finally grew calm and uniform and blank.

Where am I, how did I get here, what…

Within the darkness, a single slit-pupiled eye blinked open, black droplets spilling off its lashes.

And then, from behind Ford, someone pressed a gun into his hands.

***

“Hey, Soos, you with me?”

Soos opened his eyes to find himself on the porch of the Shack — the real, colorful one, not the mindscape version — and to see Stan standing in front of him, one hand placed on Soos’s shoulder. He was back to wearing his white t-shirt and red beanie, and the smile on his face was wide, but not too wide. Soos hadn’t felt so relieved since Weirdmageddon.

(Relieved, or confused.)

“Mr. Pines, you’re okay!” he blurted out, wrapping Stan in a bear hug before he could stop himself, but Stan returned it, gently hitting Soos on the back.

“‘Course I am, bud. Remember? You guys got rid of Bill once and for all.”

Soos’s brain felt like it had gotten dust in it like a video game cartridge, and needed to be blown out in order to process his thoughts correctly. “Uh, actually… I’m not really sure if I do remember —”

“You did good back there, Soos.” Stan withdrew from the hug, a football appearing in his hands like it had materialized out of thin air. “Hey, you wanna toss the ol’ pigskin around? We haven’t done that since the one time last summer, have we?”

...then again, maybe remembering wasn’t all that important.

“Sure, Mr. Pines!”

“Alright, then! Go long!”

Soos started jogging out across the field, turning his head over his shoulder to look back at Stan, who was watching with a smile on his face. The first through arced through the air perfectly, landing in Soos’s hands with a satisfying clap.

He still had no idea what had happened to Ford and the kids, but for some reason, he found himself wondering about it less and less as the game of catch went on, until the thought couldn’t have been further from his mind.

***

Dipper stumbled to the ground, barely avoiding the wailing, glowing green specter as it soared over him.

“Heads up, Dipper!” he heard Stan yell, and he reached above him just in time to grab hold of a small rectangular device. On one end, it had two silver antenna, and between them, a conical piece that somewhat resembled a nozzle, while on an adjacent side it had a series of color-coded control buttons and switches.

Pointing the nozzle end at the ghost as it sped towards Ford (who was naturally just holding a camera and smiling without an ounce of concern), Dipper pressed the largest blue button —

A web of holographic, crisscrossing lines sprayed out, shifting in color from pink to purple and back to pink, ensnaring the ghost and automatically pulling it back towards him. It struggled against the net, wailing at an even more off-tune pitch, but it didn’t produce enough force for Dipper to even feel its pull, much less to dislodge the device from his grip.

Perfect!

“Hey, it worked!” Stan whistled. “You really caught yourself a specter!”

“Of course it worked, brother of little faith,” Ford retorted, raising his voice not out of serious anger but simply to be heard over the ghost’s howling. “That adhesive can trap anything, with or without a physical form. You should have seen how extensively Dipper tested it!”

Stan might have offered another good-natured wisecrack in response, but Mabel cut in: “Hey, bro, I get you’re excited about your new pet ghoul and all, but can you get it to quiet down? My ears feel like they’re melting!”

“Oh, uh, right! Sorry!” Dipper flicked a switch on his invention, and the ghost’s cries grew muffled. He turned to Ford, who was holding the camera, and announced: “This concludes today’s episode of Guide to Haunted Mansions with Dipper and the Pines Family! Join us next week, as we examine our new specimen in the lab! You’re not gonna want to miss it!”

Everyone cheered, chanting Pines! Pines Pines! as Ford got one last shot of the mansion’s room to close on.

“We may want want to edit out the part where I mentioned the adhesive,” Ford suggested once the camera was off, “lest some viewers with too much time on their hands realize that it’s of extraterrestrial origin. I’d rather not have the shadow government on our backs.”

Dipper nodded. “Yeah, good catch. I’ll edit it.”

For the briefest of moments as he turned towards the door to leave, he had a faint nagging feeling that something was wrong, that this whole scene was too perfect to be true, but he ignored it. On the way out, Stan gave him a high-five and an affectionate punch on the shoulder.

***

Mabel knew she was falling, knew that she probably shouldn’t be falling, but she couldn’t bring herself to try to stop, to fly back up. She felt peaceful like this — and what would she even go back to? More of Stan acting like that? Acting like…

With what felt like her last spark of energy, she pulled her arms and legs close to her body and squeezed her eyes shut.

I just wish Bill would leave us alone…

…

…

She pulled her sweater tightly over her head and knees, and settled down onto the ground.

“I just wish summer could last forever…” she found herself murmuring.

“T-that might be possible!”

“Sweater Town is not accepting incoming calls right now.”

“M-M-M-Mabel, it’s me!”

She peeked her head out of her sweater, finding a forest bathed in the red light of the setting sun. “Wha? Who said that?”

“I-I-I can help!” Blendin flickered into existence before her, his suit showing the briefest glimpses of an autumn schoolyard, and then, a burning ruin — both so quick they seemed almost imagined.

“The… time travel guy? What are you doing here?”

This all felt so wrong, for so many different reasons…

“You said you don't want summer to end, right? D-did-did I hear that right?”

“Yeah... why are you asking?”

Mabel didn’t trust this sort-of-friend of hers one bit, didn’t want to know where this conversation was going. It just felt chillingly, inexplicably sinister…

“Look, maybe it's against the rules, but you once did a favor for me, so I thought I could help you out!”

The setting sun gleamed off Blendin’s goggles, making them reflect yellow instead of red for just a moment. “It's called a time bubble, and it prevents time from going forward! Summer in Gravity Falls can last as long as you want it to!”

There was a feeling of déjà vu buzzing at the back of her mind like a fizzing caffeinated drink, faint but anxious, telling her she’d done all this before, that this had already happened —

She shook her head, and the buzz faded.

“Really?” she asked Blendin. “But… how does it work?”

Blendin pressed a button on his watch, and a holographic projection appeared in vivid light blue, showing a cracked sphere with four ducts connecting it to a striped base. Mabel had never seen it before in her life, or at least, she shouldn’t have, but the sight of it sent a chill through her.

“I just need you to get a little gizmo for me from your uncle. It's something small, he won't even know it's missing!”

“No,” Mabel whispered without knowing why, and then repeated, louder: “No. That — that thing’s dangerous!”

How do I know, why do I know this —

“What?!” Blendin exclaimed. “No no no, it’s — it’s perfectly harmless, I promise! And — and I can’t make the time bubble without it, so just hand it over, or I’ll have to —”

Mabel pulled Dipper’s backpack close to her and sprung to her feet, kicking Blendin in the knee and making a break for the Shack. “Dipper! Grunkle Ford! Grunkle Stan! Help!”

Time and space felt distorted, like her legs were carrying her further with each step than they should have been able to. Somehow, without actually looking back, she could see Blendin following her, hot on her heels at first but then slowly starting to lag behind…

Ford burst out of the Shack and fired a blast from his stun gun, striking Blendin square in the chest. He crumpled to the ground, the world turning gray for a second as a burst of yellow flew out from his form. Then color returned to the forest — no longer red, but rather, the peaceful, beautiful pink of a late August sunset.

Somewhat numbly, Mabel handed Ford the backpack, and he rifled through it quickly as Dipper and Stan rushed over, looking concerned.

“The rift is still stable,” Ford reported, his frown still tight with worry. “Now, Mabel, are you alright? Bill didn’t hurt you, did he?”

“I think? Does… does this mean Weirdmageddon won’t happen?”

Ford put a hand on her shoulder. “No. No, it won’t. I still have to seal this rift, but once that’s done, Bill will never be able to physically manifest in our dimension this way — thanks to you seeing through his tricks. We’ll be safe.”

Why did she even know what Weirdmageddon was? Why was no one surprised by her knowing? What was happening to —

“Mabel, I was so worried!” Dipper hugged her. “I’m so sorry for what I said — I’m not going to stay in Gravity Falls, I know that now…”

The apology barely registered for Mabel, the words muffled by the fog in her head. She’d already forgiven him, a long time ago.

“It’s okay, Dip,” she managed to say. “I don’t blame you…”

As Ford headed inside to seal the rift, Dipper following him, Stan and Mabel were left alone. He gave her a gentle pat on the back.

“Hey, pumpkin, you okay? There’s no need to be scared of nothin’ anymore. The triangle can’t do jack now.”

There was a gleam in Stan’s eyes that Ford and Dipper had lacked, Mabel realized. He seemed less distant. More real. More reminiscent of everything that felt wrong about all this.

“A-are you okay, Grunkle Stan? Bill didn’t do anything to you?” she blurted out, grabbing him by the arm.

It couldn’t be this easy. They couldn’t really be safe. Stan, especially, couldn’t really be safe, it just didn’t feel right —

“Don’t worry, kiddo. I’m fine.” He smiled to her. “I’d tell you if I wasn’t. I promise.”

“I know…” she told him, even though she really, really didn’t know anything. Her thoughts were jumbled, jumping around like popcorn in one of those glass-walled machines, striking the sides of her skull and exploding and just creating so much chaos that she just couldn’t find the right ones, couldn’t remember what she should have, what she needed to remember —

Stan hugged her, and the chaos faded to a distant roar, faint and consistent and easy to tune out.

“Bill’s never laid a hand on me,” he assured her. “I’ve got nothin’ to do with him — unless I run into him when he’s giving one of you guys a hard time, but I’ve got a feeling he won’t be doing much of anything like that anymore. That rift thing is what he wants from Ford, right? And he can’t get that now.”

Mabel nodded. Yeah, that all made sense. Stan was right, of course he was…

“I just… I had a dream, I think. Or a nightmare. Where Bill got into our world, and it — and it was all my fault, and I didn’t want to believe it so I locked myself in this… in this bubble… ”

Bubbles, dream bubbles, prison bubbles, Sweater Town, block out all the bad stuff, hide there forever, lying about it to keep you away from it —

“Must have been a trick that demon played,” Stan murmured, words oddly soothing — almost hypnotizing. “But it wasn’t real. And you’re stronger than that nightmare, I know you are.”

That’s right, everything is alright. Nothing bad happened, nothing was your fault —

But this isn’t real; that all was, Mabel was finally able to put to words. This is the dream, that was reality.

But she didn’t dare say as much out loud. Instead, she whispered: “Thanks, Grunkle Stan, you’re right. I’m… I’m gonna go inside now.”

“No problem, pumpkin,” Stan replied, helping her up. “You ever need anything, just come and ask.”

Mabel nodded, and then, the second she was out of Stan’s sight, she huddled down in the corner and shut her eyes, afraid to look at whatever illusions the dream might summon to tempt her.

Her first thought was that this was Bill’s doing again, that he was trying to trap her, to keep her and Ford and the others from finding where he lurked in Stan’s mind… but deep down, she knew that wasn’t it.

She remembered what it had felt like to be in the bubble Bill created, and like this one, it certainly had given her what she wanted — or at least, what she believed she wanted. But this… this illusion was more powerful. A stronger pull, a more irresistible temptation, so strong that she almost hadn’t even realized it was all a dream.

This was what her heart had yearned after for the past ten months. To be free of this guilt, this knowledge that she’d almost gotten her family killed.

And if anyone was going to understand that, it wasn’t going to be Bill. It was going to be Stan.

Stan, who must have been so afraid for his family’s sakes. Stan, who just wanted them all to be not just safe, but happy. Stan, who had always been so good at lying about his own happiness, so of course he would be good at lying to make others happy, too.

Stan, who was so similar to Bill, yet even more different.

“I’m gonna find a way to save you, Grunkle Stan,” Mabel whispered. “I’m gonna find a way to make it so you don’t have to lie. I promise.”

She told herself she wasn’t being hypocritical for tuning out the intrusive thoughts of what if he can’t be saved? and what if the truth is even worse than you think?

Because those thoughts couldn’t be true, she just wouldn’t let them be true…

What if there was never anyone else here that Stan needed saving from?

What if he only needs saving from himself?

***

A high-pitched, horrifyingly familiar voice screamed from all around Ford, the darkness seeping out of his surroundings and condensing together into one perfectly equilateral triangle.

“Oh, now what do we have HERE? Six-Fingers really thinks he can figure out a way to run the portal ‘safely?’ News flash, BRAINIAC: you’ve never —”

Ford found himself squeezing a trigger.

A brilliant beam of light shot out at Bill — blasting a hole in his chest, sparking a fire that consumed his triangular form in an instant, raging bright orange like burning sodium. For just a moment, there was an awful shriek of panic and horrified realization, but before Ford could even move to cover his ears, it was gone — it echoed for just a moment, and then faded out entirely.

Faintly red-orange embers were drifting to the ground, burning out and joining all the other particles that made up the dirt floor as if they had never been a part of anything else, a part of anything dangerous. Their orange glow disappeared, replaced by the faint blue light that the portal machinery projected, humming steadily and peacefully.

It was all very quick, and very decisive, and very not right. The world seemed to shift around Ford, and he felt as if he too was drifting to the ground, extinguished —

A steady hand caught him by the arm and held him until he regained his balance. A gruff, comfortingly familiar voice spoke from behind him:

“Hey, Stanford, you okay? We did it, buddy. Bill’s dead. We’re safe.”

Unsteadily, Ford turned, and saw Stan looking at him — his long brown hair was a mess, and his red jacket was singed, but his expression was comforting, full of relief. The portal cast its blue glow over him, too, flickering slightly like a fire…

“Where… what year is it?” Ford mumbled.

“It’s 1982,” Stan replied, patting him gently on the back. “You and Fidds made an invention to blast Bill out of existence. You remember that, right?”

“The portal… why is it…”

“We restarted it as a trap — because the gun only worked on him if he took a physical form. Is… is this coming back to you?”

“…Right,” Ford replied. “Right. I… I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s wrong with me —”

“Hey, it’s okay. I… I get why this might be a lot to take in, but… you’re safe from Bill now. He’s never gonna hurt anyone again.”

“He’s…”

He’s really gone? I’m safe from him? You’re safe from him?

“Stanford! Are ya alright?” Fiddleford was running over to them now, slamming the door to the control chamber closed behind him.

“He’s gonna be,” Stan said confidently. “It all worked out just like we planned — Ford just needs a second to —”

“No,” Ford whispered. “Fiddleford, why are you… why are you…?!”

“Pardon?” Fiddleford asked, looking to Stan uncertainly.

“Young,” Ford finally choked out. “Why are either of you young? Why is Stan —”

Then the truth dawned on him, and as obvious as it seemed, it was a struggle to choke out, a struggle to admit. “This — this isn’t real, is it?”

“Whoa, Ford!” Stan put a hand on Ford’s arm. “Calm down. It’s okay, it’s —”

“It’s absolutely not okay!” Ford shouted, pulling himself away. “And you — you’re not even denying it!”

Stan let out a sad, quiet sigh.

“Does it really matter if this is real, Ford?”

“Yes! Yes, it does! It…”

Stan and McGucket were both staring at him, but now that Ford knew what to look for, there was a dullness to Fiddleford’s eyes, a lack of detail in his expression. While Stan… felt more real, more genuine. The bodies that all of them wore now were illusions, but the real Fiddleford wasn’t present in any capacity, as opposed to Stan, who was very much himself.

And Ford couldn’t bring himself to be that angry with the real Stan.

“I’m sorry. I just…”

He felt like he should remember something important about how he got here, something that might explain why Stan was here but Fiddleford wasn’t really, but reaching for the memory felt like plunging into a violent current, dark and chaotic and impossible to navigate —

What have you done? What have you done to them?

I’m keeping them safe. And happy.

“Ford, you don’t have to stay here,” Stan told him. “This isn’t some… some prison, some diabolical trap. I just… I thought you could use a break from reality. Some time to relax, in a place where… things went better. Where you can actually do the things you always wished you could do.”

“So — so you created this? Not Bill?”

“Yeah. Remember, we killed Bill in real life, too, it just… took a lot longer.”

Ford’s heart was pounding, like his body, his instincts, knew something his conscious mind didn’t — but Stan gently took him by the shoulders and turned him around to face the portal, its glow hypnotizing.

“In this world, it’s safe to use. You can explore anywhere you want to explore, alongside anyone you want to adventure with. You can even meet anyone you mighta given up on seeing again.”

Ford could think of a number of different people he’d given up on seeing again, had parted ways with far too soon, people for whom he would rejoice at an opportunity to talk to, even knowing they weren’t really there — but he couldn’t let himself get caught up in this illusion. He’d been in the middle of something important when he’d gotten pulled into this dream, he was sure of it. It was just the specifics that kept eluding him…

But then again, he’d already spent a fair amount of time here, hadn’t he? He could surely afford to waste just a little bit more.

“Ten minutes,” he told Stan. “That’s all.”

Then added: “...maybe fifteen, if we’re in the middle of something when the first ten minutes end. But that’s the absolute most.”

He knew it was a dangerous concession to be making, but he could control himself, of course he could.

(And…. ten minutes did feel unfairly brief. So did fifteen minutes, for that matter…)

Stan’s face lit up with excitement and maybe, just a hint of relief?

“Then to the portal!” he cheered, voice full of contagious enthusiasm.

“To the portal!” Ford echoed, oblivious as the watch on his wrist sublimated into a plume of dark fog.

Chapter Text

In another world of shimmering bubbles and wispy pink clouds, deep within a mountaintop temple, an Oracle addressed her patron.

“If he is to remember,” she asked, “it will be soon, won’t it?”

From within one of the bubbles, a frill-wreathed head bounced up and down in a nod. Its voice was musical and ethereal, like the sound of distant wind chimes.

“If you wish to help them, then now is the time.”

Jheselbraum bowed, and departed to an adjacent room of the temple where she kneeled down on a simple, woven mat. Concentrating on a single image — the face shared by two brothers whose destinies were so tightly intertwined with that of a demon, forming tangled loops that crisscrossed all across time and space, spanning eons and dimensions — her eyes blinked closed. When they opened again, they were glowing a faint lilac purple, and watching the events of a dream as it played out within the mindscape of Stanley Pines.

Interacting with the flow of time in such a way that it already knew the results, yet still observing intently, the Axolotl smiled.

It wouldn’t be long now.

***

Mere moments into her quest to break out of her dream bubble and save Stan, Mabel had an unpleasant realization: this time, she could see no literal bubble to burst — and therefore, no clear way to escape the dream world. No way back to her family.

Oh god, what if she fell back under the bubble’s spell before she could find a way to escape? And what if she didn’t snap out of it the next time —

“Think, Mabel, think,” she murmured to herself. “Don’t panic, there’s gotta be a way out somewhere…”

She heard movement in a nearby room of the Shack, and tiptoed away in the other direction, slipping into the gift shop and hunkering down behind the counter. The scenery around her was a good approximation of how the Shack really looked, but now that she knew she was in an illusion, the only thing that felt real was her pounding heart.

What would Ford want me to do? Stay calm, stay safe, and think through things logically, right?

She took a deep breath. Okay, Mabel, take it from the top. What’s the situation? What do you know?

She was in a dream, created by Stan because he was afraid of Bill. (Well, afraid of something, but what could it possibly be if not Bill?) It didn’t seem like Stan had realized she was aware of being in an illusion, so that was something she had going for her. He probably wouldn’t be actively trying to stop her, at least not yet.

And if she’d gotten here after being doused in the dark water, then Dipper and Soos were probably in dream bubbles of their own — maybe even Ford too, by this point. She had to get back to the regular mindscape, and see if he was alright. Or better yet, find Dipper and Soos’s bubbles and bring them back with her —

Right, she was still technically in the mindscape, wasn’t she? Which meant that if she focused on something hard enough, imagined it vividly enough…

She climbed out from behind the counter and rested her hand on the gift shop’s doorknob, bracing herself to open it and leave the Shack.

Okay, door, listen up, she thought. When I open you, you’re going to take me back to Dipper. In three, two, one…

She swung it open and a freezing black flood rushed in, knocking her backwards. With great effort, she opened her eyes to see the colors of the dream dissolving around her, and reforming new bubbles that floated in the ink-black sea, beckoning her with their colorful fantasies.

There was Ford, safe and holding hands with Stan and eight other familiar faces in a nearly complete circle. Eyes lit up with an optimism she hadn’t seen in him all day, Ford gave her an encouraging smile and reached towards her —

“Just take my hand, and we can complete the Zodiac!” he exclaimed. “We can banish Bill once and for all, together!”

She could feel her hands drifting over, fingers outstretched and ready to wrap around Ford’s own — but she yanked away at the last second, wrapping her arms tight around her shivering chest. A faint glow emanated from the star on her sweater, melting away the icicles on the tips of her numb fingers and shining through her foggy, jumbled thoughts like the guiding beam of a lighthouse, exposing the true nature of the treacherous sea surrounding her.

It was never going to be as easy as holding hands, not this time. She knew better than to let any dreams within dreams convince her otherwise.

She took a strenuous step forward against the flow of the current, and the rejected bubbles burst as new illusions appeared in front of her, each singing a different siren song of temptation.

Here, Ford never fell into the portal.

Here, Ford and Stan never argued in the first place.

Here, you never broke your promise to help Dipper with the laptop, and he never got possessed by Bill…

Some of the visions hurt more than others, and she forced herself to look away. “Dipper?” she called out. “Soos? Grunkle Ford?”

There was no reply, except for a new stream of bubbles rising from the depths to float in front of her. In the closest one, she could see Bill Cipher warp and distort, limbs glitching and flickering as his pupil dilated in fear, and Mabel just knew that one good punch was all it would take to shatter that triangle beyond hope of repair —

And it would have been so satisfying, so cathartic, to deliver that punch, but she was painfully aware of it just being fantasy. It was exactly what she had hoped to find, exactly what she had envisioned as a best case scenario — Bill not just weakened, but completely distinct from Stan, easily separated and destroyed — and she couldn’t help but wonder if the illusion had been summoned entirely from Stan’s mind, or from her own.

Something about a larger bubble on her left side caught her attention. It just felt tangibly distinct from the others — still pulling her towards it, but in a different way. She was drawn to this one because it was… well, not entirely real, but more real than anything else around her. It was more familiar, more comforting — and not like the guilt-laced comfort of denial, but like the warm, genuine solace of companionship.

She approached it one step at a time, careful not to let the current around her lift her feet off the ground and wash her out of reach. She was scarcely five feet away when the voice of the bubble suddenly grew clear, and she realized — it wasn’t calling out to her like the other bubbles had, but rather having a conversation with itself.

No, not with itself. With someone already trapped within its illusion.

“All right, we’re rolling in three… two… one…”

“Welcome back to Guide to Haunted Mansions with Dipper and the Pines Family! Today, we’re coming to you from my uncle’s lab, where we’re running some tests on the ghost we captured last episode! Be sure to check that one out if you missed it, because —”

She could see Dipper now — appearance distorted by the bubble’s convex barrier, but unmistakably (and so relievingly) him. He was in a sophisticated but messy-looking laboratory, Ford smiling proudly at his side and Soos standing behind the camera…

But even a ways outside, and with the current working against her, Mabel could make out a spark of light in Dipper’s eyes that the other two lacked. Relief washed over her as she realized she’d found her real brother — accompanied by no small amount of worry for the real Ford and Soos, still nowhere to be seen.

“Dipper!” she called out. “This isn’t real! You have to get out of there!”

The water garbled her voice, distorting it so much that it sounded unintelligible even to her, but Dipper frowned as she spoke. Glancing between Ford and Soos, he asked:

“Did you guys hear that? Was that an audio glitch or something?”

Both the illusions shook their heads as Mabel spat out water, fighting against the tide to get closer to the bubble.

“Dipper, you’re in Stan’s mindscape, remember? It’s a dream bubble, like — like the one Bill trapped me in last summer!”

This time her words came out clearer, and Dipper turned around, somehow both looking right at her and staring right past her at once.

“No, that… that doesn’t make sense,” he murmured. “Bill’s gone…”

Ford put a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Of course he is. We’re safe from him now — and Stan and Mabel are, too.”

The current around Mabel grew fiercer, threatening to drag her backwards, but she managed to wrap her arms around the bubble, hugging it as tightly as she could.

“We came to Stan’s mind to stop Bill!” she yelled. “You remember that, right?”

Dipper shook his head. “I — I don’t know…”

“You can remember! You can snap out of it — I know you can, because you snapped me out of it last summer! You’re stronger than this cheap trap, I know you are!”

Dipper grabbed his head, shuddering and gritting his teeth as the bubble began to distort. Hand still on Dipper’s shoulder, not-Ford’s eyes turned a dull red.

Please, Dipper, Mabel thought, I don’t know how much longer I can hold on…

The facsimile Ford’s form began to darken — at first fading to a monochrome shadow of his former self, and then melting like tar, liquifying into a shuddering column of darkness that spewed out rivers of black ink all around the lab just as quickly as it spewed out lies.

Do you really want to go back there, Dipper? Back to everyone you love being in grave danger? Back to not understanding what’s happening to them or how to help them? Do you want to go back to that uncertainty, to that fear?

Tendrils of darkness crept towards Dipper from every angle, surrounding him as if preparing for an embrace.

Here, Bill is dead for good. Stan is safe from him, and his mindscape is perfectly normal and healthy. Here we’re all safe, and happy, and living the lives we’ve always wanted. It’s not so hard to pretend —

Dipper finally met Mabel’s eyes, just staring at her for a moment. As the tendrils snaked closer and closer to him, he looked down again and took a deep breath.

“Dipper! Let’s beat Bill and save Stan together!”

He turned back towards Mabel and smiled, extending both arms in her direction.

“Awkward sibling hug?” he whispered.

The tendrils recoiled in shock as Mabel plunged her hands into the bubble, grabbed ahold of her brother, and pulled.

***

Ice-cold waves submerged Dipper like he’d plunged into an Antarctic sea, and a numbness quickly overtook him, paralyzing his chest and racing up his arms to —

It didn’t reach his fingertips. Mabel’s hand was warm even as she released him from her embrace, and Dipper realized that he could see her clearly now — a bright spot in the darkness, radiating determination like a falling star lighting up the endless void of the night.

Instantly, the last wisps of fog clouding his brain evaporated away, and everything fell into place — how it wasn’t Bill trapping them in the bubbles, but Stan himself. How finding and destroying Bill would have to mean finding a way to pierce through Stan’s own denial.

“I’m so glad I found you,” Mabel blurted out, and pulled him back into a hug. “I — I wasn’t sure I could save everyone alone.”

“Well,” he told her as he returned the embrace, “you sure saved me.”

The current raged around them, sending them spinning — but for all its strength, it couldn’t even come close to tearing them apart.

***

Ford stepped out of the portal to a not just familiar, but nostalgic sight — a temple carved of pink-tinted marble stone, craggy mountain peaks peering out from the blanket of clouds beneath them.

“Jheselbraum?” he called out, and the curtains at the entrance to the shine parted, revealing a humanoid figure clad in flowing red and purple robes.

All seven of her eyes blinked, and then a smile spread across her face. “Stanford! It’s good to see you again — and you’ve brought friends this time!”

“Sure did!” Stan said. “The guy would be lost without us. I’m Stan, nice to —”

She laughed. “Don’t worry, Stanley, I know who you are. And you must be Mr. McGucket?”

Distracted for the moment, Fiddleford tapped one of several pink bubbles that had floated out of the shrine. Its shape distorted, but it didn’t burst. “Would you look at that…ah, yes, sorry! McGucket, that’s me alright — though ya can just call me Fiddleford or Fidds. It’s a pleasure to meet ya!”

“Likewise! Would you three like to come inside? I know the view out here is spectacular the first hundred or so times you see it, but it’s honestly even more interesting in there.”

“Of course!”

Ford led the way in, marveling at the richly colored tapestries lining the halls. “Jhes, do you weave these yourself? I don’t think I saw this many the last time I visited.”

“I do! You’ll find some seers and oracles that weave their predictions directly into their tapestries, but I honestly just need to be doing something with my hands while I concentrate on seeing the future.”

“I can relate,” Fiddleford chimed in. “Er, not that I’m a prophet or anythin’, but I can never figure out what’s wrong with my code unless I’m fidgeting with somethin’ in a free hand.”

Something in a room to the side caught Ford’s eye, and he stopped so suddenly that Stan nearly slammed into him from behind. “I never got a chance to ask you before, but — why do you have so many tapestries of axolotls?” He felt like he had a second question on the tip of his tongue, but it stayed stubbornly just out of reach no matter how hard he tried to remember it.

Jheselbraum smiled knowingly, not so much with her mouth as with her eyes. “The Axolotl has always been something of a kindred spirit towards those who seek to see beyond the linear flow of time,” she pronounced, “and I like to show my gratitude this way.”

“The Axolotl, with a capital A…” Ford mused. “I’m sorry, Jhes — just a few weeks ago, I’m sure there was something I was thinking I’d like to ask you, but… it’s escaping me now.”

Jheselbraum put a hand on Ford’s shoulder, and a dull purple glow rippled across her eyes, so briefly that Ford would have missed it if he’d blinked. When she spoke again, her voice was soft and echoing, as if originating from the other end of a long hallway — but also more lively, more lifelike, the subtle accent a bit more pronounced and the inflection of her words more rhythmic, more poem-like.

“Did you want to ask why the Axolotl watched over your brother’s house, for all those years? Why it manifested before Stanley, of all people?”

“That’s — I think that’s it, I…” The ground ceased to feel solid beneath Ford’s feet, and a wave of nausea washed over him as he was suddenly uncomfortably aware of how sluggish and muddled his thoughts felt, as if stifled by fog. “There’s something — something wrong about this place, isn’t there? What am I… how did I get here? Is —”

“Hey, Sixer! Check out what I found!”

Simply hearing Stan’s voice was an instant relief, a rope he could grab onto and use to pull himself out of the stormy, disorienting sea of uncertainty he’d found himself cast adrift in. “Huh? What is it?”

Stan frowned. “You okay? I’ve never seen you not recognize a D38 at first glance.” Sure enough, he held a thirty-eight sided die in each hand, one purple and the other blue.

“I… it’s just the thin mountain air getting to me, I think. Where did you find those?”

Stan snickered, pulling aside a tapestry that hung over the doorway to a room Ford had passed by. “Oh, you ain’t seen anything yet. Feast your eyes, nerd!”

The room had two sides that were completely open aside from ornate marble guard railings, providing a stellar view as the first of the world’s three purple moons began to rise above the horizon, but Ford’s attention was instead captivated by the table at the center. Crisscrossing gridlines glowed a dull blue-green, dividing the surface into hundreds of tiny squares, and holographic projections cycled through a variety of miniaturized, perfectly adventure-suited environments — a lush oasis within a dust storm-battered desert, a sprawling and bustling space station floating just above the rings of a pink gaseous planet, an impenetrable-seeming castle of gray brick overlooking a murky moat and surrounded by expansive and bountiful farmlands.

“Jheselbraum, have you always had this?” Ford asked. “You’ve been holding out on me!”

“The last time you were here, you spent every waking moment either recovering from head injuries or drunk on Cosmic Sand. It hardly would have made for a quality campaign.”

Detachedly, Ford realized that the echo was gone from her voice, but he couldn’t help but pay more attention to Stan, who hoisted himself into the throne-like seat at the head of the table and diabolically rubbed his hands together.

“Well, it’s not like we’ve got anywhere else to be, and I’ve got some big ideas up my sleeve… so, who’s up for a game?”

“Stanley, I can think of literally no better way to spend the next six hours to six weeks of my life,” Ford declared. “I’m in.”

***

“You hear the slappin’ tunes, Mr. Pines? That’s how you know it’s a boss battle!”

“Slappin’? Is that seriously how you people describe music these days? And what’s a boss battle?”

“Well, it’s pretty much what happens when you defeat all the minions of the biggest, baddest dude in the level, so then they finally have to throw down with you themself! Doesn’t look like you’re having any trouble with it, though — you must be some kinda natural, ha ha!”

“You bet I am!” Stan laughed as he dealt the final blow, and tossed the controller down triumphantly. “I’m gonna break the young’s monopoly on gaming skills, just you watch —”

The congratulatory chiptune jingle cut off abruptly, and a pattern of static rippled across the TV set. When it subsided, two new character sprites had appeared — two sprites that Soos knew he’d recognize anywhere no matter how stylized, thanks to that lumberjack hat and shooting star sweater.

“Hey, dudes! I was just teaching Stan how to play some of my favorite games — but how’d you two get in there? You’re looking kinda pixely — what happened?”

“Pixely?” Dipper looked down at his hands for a moment, confused, but then shook his head. “Never mind! Soos, this is all just an illusion! You’ve got to snap out of it!”

“All this is just inside Stan’s mindscape, remember?” Mabel added. “You’ve gotta out of there so you can help us stop Bill and save Stan!”

The ripple of static crossed the TV screen again, but this time it spread out all throughout the room, making the furniture and walls flicker and glitch like they were in a corrupted game. A high-pitched electronic whine prompted Soos to clap his hands over his ears, and the light from Mabel’s sweater pulsed in sync with the sound, like the noise and the static were emanating from her and Dipper somehow. Soos felt like he was missing something — why did the two of them look so distraught, with those pixelated frowny faces?

“Are — are you sure, dudes?” he asked. “Stan said Bill was gone, and we were having a lot of fun here — weren’t we, Mr. Pines?”

“‘Course we were!” Stan gently punched him in the arm — too gently, almost intangibly, like it was just a simulation of the actual sensation — “And do I look like I need saving? I’m doin’ great over here, just having a —”

“You don’t look like it, but you do, Stan!” Mabel cried out. “I know you do, and we can help you, I promise we can — but first you have to admit it!”

“No! I’m fine! We’re all fine!” Stan yelled, but dark red and purple pixels began to flicker at the edges of his form. He looked almost two-dimensional as the glitchy appearance slowly crept up his arms, consuming them and disintegrating them into a sea of dark, flashing rectangles that cascaded towards the ground —

“Mr. Pines?” Soos gasped. “Are — are you okay? How —”

Stan extended what was left of an arm in his direction — and then froze in horror, as he saw what the loss of the pixels had exposed.

Four slender, cartoonishly simple fingers trembled in place just inches from Soos’s shoulder — all of them a smooth and solid black, and wreathed in electric blue sparks.

No! Stan’s voice came out desperate and distorted, crackling and cutting out like a broken speaker. PLEASE, no —

Two pairs of human hands grabbed ahold of Soos from behind and pulled him away from Stan, back towards the television. From all directions at once, his ears were filled with a resounding POP —

And then the three of them tumbled down onto the grayscale yet familiar wooden floor of the Mystery Shack’s gift shop, dark clouds above them receding towards the hallway. Just feet away, the vending machine stood shining brighter and bluer than ever, a now all-too-familiar song playing softly from within like the melody from a music box.

Keep smiling through,

Just like you always do,

‘Til the blue skies drive the dark clouds far away!

***

An elven wizard resembling Ford, a human bard resembling Fiddleford, and a silver dragonborn paladin with two additional rows of eyes like Jheselbraum forged a path up a mountain, undeterred by the storm clouds gathering overhead. Their route wasn’t particularly steep, but shrubs and small trees grew all over what had once been a trail, making their climb more tedious than Ford had hoped for.

“So Ford, this dungeon — you say no one’s ever returned from it alive?” Fiddleford asked, absentmindedly plucking his banjo to the tune of Country Roads.

“No one has ever returned from it period, dead or alive,” he answered, shoving a branch out of his face. “Necromancy will likely be of little help to us there. But all the divination magic in the world agrees that the depths of Mt. Somnifell hold, and I quote, ‘all the treasure an adventurer could ever dream of.’ You’re not getting cold feet, are you?”

“More like muddy feet,” Fiddleford groaned, narrowing his eyes and gritting his teeth with clear visceral disgust as looked down at the ground beneath his shoes. “Are we close yet?”

“Should be.” Three of Jheselbraum’s eyes were directed down at a map, while the other four scanned the surrounding area for landmarks and hazards. “Do you see a crooked tree anywhere?”

“Doesn’t look like it,” Ford replied. He craned his neck up towards the sky, past the transparent storm clouds and into the pink marble room surrounding them. “Stan, are there any landmarks that you forgot to imagine into the game and would like to tell us about?”

Stan snorted and leaned over the table, resting his elbows on a neighboring mountain. “Have a little faith, Poindexter! I may be a first time DM over here, but I think you’ll find that I’m the master of the imagination!”

“Fine, I’ll look somewhere else for your dumb tree,” Ford shot back. “Alright, gang, let’s check some other spots at the same altitude — ugh! What’s going on here?”

A long, brown tendril had wrapped around his left ankle and was binding it in place — the root of a nearby oak, he realized.

“It’s got us too!” Jheselbraum called out, drawing her sword. Without hesitation, Fiddleford whacked the root ensnaring him with his banjo, and it seemed to flinch — as much as a semi-mobile plant could flich, at least — but stayed tightly bound.

“I cast Scorching Ray!” Ford declared, and three yellow-orange bolts flew out from the tip of his wand, one striking each of the three tendrils with impressive precision. Several inches of each root instantly crumbled into ash, and the oak tree that they led back to shuddered, green lights flashing in its leaves as a dark-skinned figure with pointed ears and vivid emerald eyes flickered into view. Immediately, they held up their hands in submission.

“Alright, I’m sorry! You’re stronger than I bargained for. I’ll leave you alone now, I promise.” Their voice held a hint of Stan’s hoarseness, but also a distinct inflection pattern of its own.

“You’re a dryad, I presume?” Ford asked, cautiously lowering his wand. “We’re sorry for trespassing on your territory.”

“I suppose dryad is the closest word to it. Most dryads are only tied to one tree, though — I watch over this whole grove, even though I can only control one tree at a time. You can call me Balsa.”

“You must know this region like the back of your hand, then,” Jheselbraum commented, and Balsa beamed, nodding. “Do you think you could help point us towards a certain landmark?”

Their face immediately fell, and they let out a sigh. “It’s the crooked tree, isn’t it? You’re looking for the entrance to the depths?”

“That’s correct. Is something… wrong with that?”

They shook their head. “No, it’s just that… you seem like half-decent people, you know? Same as a lot of other treasure hunters that I’ve seen vanish into that cavern, and never come out. I try to make the plants overrun the trail, make the crooked tree grow straight again so no one can find this place and go boldly marching to their deaths, but…”

They waved their hand halfheartedly, and a mere five meters away, the undergrowth parted to reveal a crack in the earth — a nearly circular dark chasm that rested in the mountain’s light grey stone just as a black hole might sit in the center of a shining galaxy.

“Why are ya showin’ us this?” Fiddleford asked. “You just said ya wanted us to stay out.”

“It’ll call to you anyway.” Balsa sighed dejectedly. “It always does. Everyone who goes looking finds it eventually.”

“How long have you been trying to keep people out?” Jheselbraum hesitantly stepped towards the edge of the chasm, lower row of eyes blinking as she tried to make out what lay within.

“About a century and a half now,” Balsa told her. “The legend draws people in from all four corners of the world, and everywhere in between — seemingly pleasant people like you three, a lot of the time. People whom I wouldn’t expect to be so driven by greed and the promise of treasure. Are you in debt? What is it that draws you to this… this suicide mission?”

“Well, they say money can’t buy happiness, but it doesn’t exactly hurt to have it, either,” Ford replied, and above the table Stan stifled a laugh. “But for us three, I think the main thing drawing us in is the thrill of the discovery. We’re not so much treasure hunters as simply adventurers.”

“Well said,” Jheselbraum told him. “Balsa, we appreciate your concern, but we know the risks of this mission and we’ve made according preparations. If we’re ever in grave danger, we’ve prepared spells to teleport out with. ”

Ford nodded. “The depths of Mt. Somnifell are a mystery that we plan to solve, no matter how many expeditions it takes.”

Balsa shook their head. “Well, I can’t stop you. But I’m not sure you’ll like the solution to that mystery as much as you expect. Will you really remain so dedicated to the truth, if it starts to look like you’re headed towards answers that you don’t want to hear?”

With that, they turned their back and vanished in a burst of green light.

“That was ominous, wasn’t it?” Fiddleford muttered, and then after a pause added: “Well, who’s jumpin’ down that hole first?”

“I think I’ll try to climb, rather than jump, but I’ll be happy to lead the way.” Ford intertwined his fingers and stretched his arms out in front of him, preparing himself for the descent.

“Be careful,” Jheselbraum warned him. “It doesn’t get any brighter down there, and the air flowing out felt humid. It may be slippery.”

“To quote our infinitely wise DM — have a little faith! For one thing, I have dark vision, and for another, I never said I was climbing the rocks themselves.”

One use of Rope Trick later and Ford’s feet safely struck the damp stone floor, having reached the bottom of a twenty-foot long, near-vertical shaft. Fiddleford was about halfway down and had all four limbs wrapped around the rope for dear life, as Jheselbraum brought up the rear and offered words of reassurance.

“Don’t you even think of explorin’ any further without us, Stanford Pines!” Fiddleford shouted, shrill voice echoing loudly. “You’ll just get yourself killed an’ you know it!”

“Relax!” Ford yelled back. “I’m taking a look around, but I’m not moving any deeper in!”

Once he felt certain Fiddleford was more focused on the climb than on him, he took just a tiny step forwards — and then another, and one more after that, because he really had expected to be able see a bit further down here with his dark vision —

The world around him went white, and two firm hands came out of nowhere to grasp both of his shoulders. Jheselbraum stood facing him in the featureless bright space, once again in a robed human form… and with glowing purple eyes.

“I think something’s wrong with your table, Jhes. This doesn’t look like something that should be happening in a campaign —”

“Ford, please listen to me — you’re falling more deeply entranced by the second. I don’t know if I’ll be able to get through to you again at this rate — you must snap out of it! I know it’s an upsetting truth to face, but you are strong enough, and so is your family, as long as you all face this together. I believe in —”

Ford blinked, and he was back in the cave. Fiddleford kneeled a few feet behind him, looking relieved enough to kiss the ground if only he could see it in the darkness, and Jheselbraum gracefully leapt down from the rope to land at his side. She didn’t look especially worried, or speak like there was any matter of particular urgency at hand.

“Ford, you’re giving me an… odd look. Is your touted night vision malfunctioning?”

“No, I’m… just thinking.” He’d witnessed something, he knew that, but the memory felt the same way an object might look if viewed through unfocused eyes in the dead of night — blurry and undefined, only straining his brain more and more the harder he tried to focus on making it out.

Oh well, then. No need to hurt myself — it’s just a game. And speaking of which…

“Stan?” he called out, and the roof of the cave grew holographic and transparent, revealing Stan’s face as he watched the party attentively.

“Yeah, Sixer?”

“I have to admit, I had my doubts about you as Dungeon Master, but… I was wrong. This is such a well-crafted, captivating story you’ve created here — you know that, right? I’m really, genuinely enjoying it — keep it up, and I won’t ever want to leave!”

“Yeah.” Stan smiled, but broke eye contact with Ford — was he surprised? embarrassed? guilty? “Yeah, that’s just what I’m shootin’ for. Thanks, Ford.”

***

“Can you hear us, Grunkle Ford?” Mabel called out. “Where are you?”

No one replied, but the dark clouds in the hallways crept a few inches closer and the piano notes grew slightly fainter.

“Do you think he’s behind the machine?” Soos asked. He took a few steps away from the nearest hallway and towards the kids, nervously scanning the room for any sort of surprise attack.

“I don’t know, but I have a feeling we might not get another chance to check,” Dipper replied. Dark droplets rained down from a crack in the roof, narrowly missing him and splattering across the vending machine’s glass door.

“You’re right, we should hurry — wait, what?” Mabel gasped as she rushed over to the machine. “Dipper, the buttons are different — it’s some kind of weird code! How are we gonna get in?”

“Let me see. There’s got to be a way… wait, hold on. I… I’ve seen this code before.”

“That’s great! I should’ve known you’d know how to… Dipper? Is something wrong?”

Dipper’s stomach was churning with nausea and he hated it, because he knew it wasn’t a real sensation, a physical sensation, but couldn’t still couldn’t will the feeling to stop. “No, it’s just… this cipher was in the Journal, but I wasn’t able to crack this one until after Weirdmageddon, when all the pages got restored. I don’t think even Ford knows I solved it.”

“So what’s it doing in Stan’s mind?” Soos asked. “Did he crack it, or —”

“Bill was the one who wrote in this code,” Dipper added more quietly. “He used it while he was possessing Ford.”

“Oh… right.”

Dipper took another, more careful look at the keypad, where four buttons were already glowing — corresponding to the letters S, T, A, and N.

Now, if we press B, I, and then L twice…

His hand had barely left the keypad when the machine shuddered, swinging open with a groan to reveal a sight that was both unnervingly alien and chillingly familiar.

Descending beneath them was a staircase, mirroring the design of the stairs beneath the Shack — only these were carved from a shimmering light wood, like the bark of a birch tree. Elliptical knots and whorls covered the walls, slowly swirling and moving and growing as they turned to stare up the steps at Dipper and the others, flickering yellow so faintly you could almost convince yourself you’d imagined it, if only you didn’t know better.

“Oh, fuck this,” Dipper whispered, and neither Mabel nor Soos — the two most profanity-averse people he knew — gave any sign of disagreement.

He did, however, hear a sickening crunch behind him, and turned to see the floorboards on the other end of the room collapsing, dragged down into a slowly widening sinkhole in which dark currents frothed and churned. One at a time, grey planks were ripped away from their neighbors and dragged below as the rupture grew, its edges creeping steadily closer —

“I don’t like the look of that place either, dudes,” Soos told them, “but we might not have a choice…”

“You’re right,” Mabel agreed. “Let’s go.”

She grabbed Dipper and Soos’s hands, and before any of them could lose their will, they barreled down the stairs together.

***

The cavern was sloped downwards with countless twists and turns, and Ford got the impression that the tunnel was slowly snaking its way through just about all the interior volume Mt. Somnifell had to offer. Lurking in the shadows, monsters sprang out to ambush them at surprisingly regular intervals — humanoids with bat-like wings, wolves lacking eyes but with long-reaching claws that more than made up for their blindness, slimes that could precipitate stalactites out of their bodies and hurl them at whoever looked most defenseless — but the party dispatched them all with relative ease, burning through healing potions at only about half the rate Ford had expected, given the dungeon’s reputation.

But the cavern also had some less pleasant surprises in store, as was quickly proven when Ford spotted the first body.

“They’re still breathing,” Jheselbraum reported after he pointed out the dwarf’s unmoving form. “It doesn’t even look like they’ve been knocked unconscious — they’ve simply fallen asleep. And they’re smiling like they’re having a pleasant dream, at that.”

“Huh,” Ford murmured. “Can you tell if the cause is magical, or some kind of ingested or inhaled substance?”

“This might end up provin’ itself to be a stupid question,” Fiddleford chimed in, “but can you, ya know… wake them up?”

Jheselbraum shook the dwarf gently, but they remained limp. “I’m trying to, but it doesn’t seem to be working. But this is a magically induced sleep, Ford, I can tell you that much for certain. We should stay alert — there could be any number of magical traps lying ahead, and we don’t want to get stuck in a slumber like this ourselves.”

“That’s some high-quality armor they’re wearing,” Ford commented. “They must be a serious treasure hunter.”

“We’re not lootin’ an unconscious dwarf, Stanford!”

“I never said we were! I was just wondering if it would be feasible to carry them with us, or if they would be too heavy!”

“Normally, I would hate to leave behind a person defenseless like this, but the monsters seem to be leaving them alone for now,” Jheselbraum cut in. “If we carry them with us, and into more of those ambushes, they might actually be less safe.”

Ford and Fiddleford nodded their agreement, and the trio set off down the tunnel once again. They’d scarcely been walking for five minutes when Ford held up a hand, signaling for the others to stop.

“Shh. Do you hear that?”

Fiddleford cupped a hand around his ear. “Water dripping, and… it sounds like breathing?” he whispered.

Ford nodded. “Heavy breathing, just up ahead — maybe even more than one person.” Readying his wand, he took a few cautious steps forward —

It was a heap of sleeping bodies this time, almost comically mismatched in size but leaning up against each other as they snored. The largest figure wrapped its arms around two smaller ones, one of which had their arm around a fourth figure who was smaller still. They were an orc, a human, an elf, and a halfling, Ford realized — almost certainly a team who’d ventured into the dungeon together.

Jheselbraum closed her eyes for a moment, teeth gritted in concentration, and then opened them again with a gasp. “It’s a very powerful spell affecting them. I tried to dispel it, but the magic… it fought back in a way I’ve never felt before. Almost as if…”

Her voice dropped to a low, uncertain whisper. “...as if the victims didn’t want their curse dispelled?”

“Odd,” Fidds remarked, and gingerly poked the orc’s arm. Their eyes twitched ever so slightly, but stayed closed.

Ford carefully stepped over the human adventurer’s legs, and conjured four small orbs of light, each tinted a slightly different color. They floated down the darkest hallway yet, illuminating a set of straight, carved stone stairs that didn’t at all match the natural, winding paths of the rest of the cavern.

“I’ve found something over here,” he announced. “Not sure if it’s the final stretch before the treasure we’ve been looking for, or simply the start of a more daunting and deadly area, but it definitely seems to suggest the influence of something sentient. This cavern, whatever it is, is more than just a naturally occurring phenomenon.”

The stairs weren’t especially steep, but walking down them was as exhilarating as sprinting down a hill, like there was nothing in the world that could stop your legs from moving once you began to descend. The smooth, flat walls were damp with condensation, but the droplets of water reflected even less of Ford’s light than the stone did — he only noticed they were there in the first place after he ran his fingers along the wall for a moment, then pulled away to find them cold and wet.

But the condensation seemed to stay off the steps themselves, and when Ford glimpsed a light at the end of the staircase — bright orange, and unlike any of the ones he’d created himself — he broke into a run, startling Jheselbraum and Fiddleford for a moment before they too saw what he’d seen, and rushed to catch up with him. They careened to a stop in front of an ornately carved wooden door, candles on each side of it lighting the hall, and Ford pushed it open to reveal —

An expansive, well-lit library, bookshelves stretching up from a plush-carpeted floor all the way up to the high and majestic painted ceiling, each and every available ledge crammed full of ancient-looking but well-preserved scrolls and tomes. Ford walked in slowly, not out of a lack of interest but out of an indecisiveness regarding where to investigate first — so many of the nearby books looked so enticing, but he was also drawn to the luxurious mahogany desks that seemed to come pre-equipped with inkwells and long, fluffy quill pens, and it was equally hard to tear his eyes off the statues of ancient wizard scholars, lit from behind by elegant, resplendent chandeliers…

As he marveled, Jheselbraum picked a book from the shelf seemingly at random, flipping through it at first but then skimming the pages with a bit more care, eventually sitting down with it and turning back to the beginning to pour over every word.

“This is the work of scholars that have long since been relegated to legend!” she reported. “Knowledge that for centuries, people have accepted as being lost forever! This is the discovery of a lifetime!”

Fiddleford chose another tome and opened it up on one of the desks, pulling a blank scroll out of a drawer and placing them side-by-side in preparation for taking notes. “That is, if you could even catalog all this in a lifetime! I can’t even see the end to some of these shelves!”

It was all so perfect that Ford couldn’t help but laugh — a deep, genuine laugh that the library’s acoustics amplified, bringing smiles to the faces of his companions. Skimming the titles and authors featured on the nearest shelf, he mused: “I wonder if we could find an explanation for why those explorers were asleep. This place surely would have —”

His gaze came to rest on a moderately thick book bound in black-dyed leather, and held closed by a clasp seemingly carved from bone: A History of Earliest Necromancy, Volume 2 — The Rise of Liches and Innovation of Archliches.

“Though really, I don’t think that’s the highest priority in the grand scheme of things.” He immediately curled up in a cozy chair with the volume and opened it to the first chapter, the world outside of the pages becoming effectively nonexistent as far as he cared.

Stan watched the whole scene play out from above, with only the faintest, most easily stifled hint of guilt hidden behind his smile as he saw his brother happily and peacefully settle down to read.

***

The staircase was longer than the one beneath the Shack, and each footstep felt heavier than the last. At some point the stairs began to alternate light and dark colors, as if the white color of the bark had been peeled off every other step, and a faint chime sounded beneath each footfall, harmonizing with the intensifying piano music. Neither the clouds nor the waves appeared to follow them down, as if the brightness of the stairs and the eyes were driving the darkness away.

The end came up on them quickly — Dipper had been expecting another door, some other puzzle, but it seemed that the vending machine had been Bill’s last line of defense. Hallways branched out all around them, winding and turning every which way and lined with doors just like the ones upstairs. Closest to the three of them was the hall labeled Memories, in the same cipher from the vending machine; it was also the hallway from which the music seemed to emanate, growing so clear that Dipper could almost make out a voice singing the accompanying lyrics.

“Do we follow the song?” he asked, and Mabel nodded.

“Yeah, I guess it’s been working so far.”

The patterns in the walls shifted, eyes staying fixed on the trio as they forged ahead.

***

Ford flew through the first book and found the other volumes soon after, all on different shelves yet well within his line of sight, like the library had read his mind and rearranged itself. Every once in a while, he heard a murmur or exclamation from Jheselbraum or Fiddleford, and though a part of him wondered what they were reading, it felt almost like a waste of effort to tear his eyes up from the page. The books were so detailed, so well-researched, that he could almost forget he was playing a game…

“Stanley, do you mind if we stay here just a bit longer?” he asked. “I know you probably have plans for the rest of the campaign, and I don’t want to ruin those by taking too long to move on…”

The roof of the library turned into a magnificent glass window, through which Stan looked back at Ford. “Well, are you having fun down there?”

“Oh, absolutely!”

Stan smiled. “Then you can stay there as long as you feel like! Hell, you can stay forever if you want.”

“That’s considerate of you, thanks! But I think forever is a bit too long, even for me…” Ford turned back to his book and flipped to a new page —

But found that he couldn’t quite pour all of his attention into the words anymore. As interesting as phylacteries and demiliches were, there was something that just didn’t sit right with him — something about Stan’s smile. It had seemed… off. Exaggerated.

A tiny voice in the back of his head (a familiar voice, he realized, somehow reminiscent of both Jheselbraum and Mabel) whispered five simple words to him — five words that every D&D&MD player knew well, but Ford hadn’t yet heard on this adventure:

Make a wisdom saving throw.

Without getting out of his chair, he glanced around the library, and for the first time really thought about how every title he spotted sounded like something he’d happily dedicate hours of his life to reading. He thought about how hard it was to tear his gaze away from those books once you started, how easily they captivated his curiosity — and how effortlessly Stan had woven this entire story, how instantly Ford had found himself enthralled, how frequently he would forget that he was actually in Dimension 52…

And how did we get to Dimension 52, again? Stan helped somehow — right? Before Jhes, there was…

There was…

Does it really matter if this is real, Ford?

Ten minutes. That’s all.

A die fell from his hand and struck not the plush maroon carpet of the library, but rather the color-drained wooden floor of the Mystery Shack, bouncing half a dozen times before it came to a rest wedged between two floorboards. On the uppermost face, glowing blue, was the number 38.

Stan stood alone on the other side of the room, dark fog spilling from the arms of his suit where hands should emerge instead. The clouds sunk low to the ground, creeping forwards like a smoky, immaterial tide, but they stopped at the edge of the circular blue glow that the die cast onto the floor, seeping all around the circumference of the light but unable to move further inwards.

“Why, Ford,” Stan choked out, “did you have to ruin it?”

“I don’t know if the being I’m facing is my real brother,” Ford began softly, and Stan flinched, raising a cloudy tendril to cover his face. “But Stanley, regardless of where you really are — I want to help you. I want to find Bill and stop him, once and for all this time; I want you to be safe —”

“I just want you to be happy!” Stan yelled, and tight cuffs snapped shut around Ford’s wrists. Wisps of fog snaked upwards from his hands, and chains materialized out of them, lifting him off the ground as they grew towards the ceiling —

“But i-if you go looking for Bill…”

In the mind, where anything conceivable is just a few seconds of concentration away from manifesting into existence, a vivid imagination can be your best friend or your worst enemy — and Ford couldn’t help but remember, imagine, almost feel the faint sensation of tingling electric shocks at his wrists, of static charges creeping up his arms as his hair stood on end and his muscles tensed involuntarily, bracing himself for the current to intensify…

“If you keep looking, then you won’t be happy,” Stan went on, oblivious to Ford’s panic as he stared down towards the floor with practically glazed-over eyes. “None of us will.”

***

Old, flickering incandescent lightbulbs cast a blue-tinted pallor over everything in the hall, illuminating particles of dust that drifted through the air as if no one had come this way in a very, very long time. Separate hallways branched off every few feet, some behind doors and others not — and many with no visible end in sight.

Dipper and Mabel sneezed with almost perfect synchronicity as they passed by a dimly lit offshoot, ending at a chained-up door with the image of a scalene triangle etched into it. The symbols on the doors grew more familiar the further they explored — glasses, a llama, a bag of ice. The same code labeled every door with a transcription of the symbol, and Dipper flinched, trying to repress a morbid curiosity as they passed Pine Tree, and Question Mark, and Shooting Star…

Then finally, they stumbled upon Sixer.

“Sounds like this is where the music is coming from,” Soos murmured. No one stepped forwards to open the door.

“What do you think we’ll find there?” Mabel asked.

“Hopefully Bill,” Dipper replied. The word hopefully felt tainted and wrong in his mouth.

Mabel closed her eyes for a moment, brow furrowing in concentration. When she opened them again, a water gun-like apparatus had appeared in her hands, just transparent enough for Dipper to tell that it was filled not with liquid, but rather with sparkling bright glitter.

“Okay,” she said. “I’m ready now.”

Soos curled his fingers around an invisible hilt, and a pixelated sword popped into existence, surrounded by equally retro-looking orange flames. “Me too.”

Dipper curled his fingers around the handle, and cringed as a jolt of electricity stung his palm — not strong enough to really hurt, but plenty strong enough to startle him and send his already pounding heart racing even faster. The door swung open with a creak as he recoiled, revealing another hallway lined with more doorways, this time unmarked. The lightbulbs overhead hummed and crackled quietly, blue-white sparks leaping off the sizzling filaments and striking the glass to create a noise that sounded almost intelligible —

(tzxmeaiz jfjlpc ZI afb-wavdiik xlmevmuxvj)

(aesldlk'x ysdb ximaqiu em)

(f'q jg alviq aqeexwoh)

(z'e al wfjzv)

“There’s too much background noise. I can’t tell where the music’s coming from anymore, can you?” Dipper asked.

Mabel rubbed her ears. “It’s like it’s coming from nowhere, but also everywhere. I guess we should just… check the doors one by one?”

“I guess.” Dipper’s hand hovered just above a doorknob as he took a deep breath, Soos and Mabel readying their weapons behind him. There was a sickly-sweet smell permeating the air, like sulfur mixed with the scent of a dusty, seldom-used home heater.

(The smell of burning hair, he would realize a few seconds too late.)

“Okay, Bill. Let’s see what you remember about Ford —”

His fingers had hardly brushed the knob when the door exploded. Dust filled his lungs and splinters impaled themselves in his hands, stinging like a million tiny lightning bolts —

But still stinging less than the memory that now played out before him, stripped away of any enciphering, or euphemism, and at last exposed for all to see.

Ford’s limp body was suspended from a dark red brick ceiling, chains fastened around his neck and wrists. He seemed to fade away into the folds of his scorched and tattered trench coat, and his unblinking eyes stayed worryingly blank as wisps of smoke drifted up from his smoldering, ashen hair.

“Oh, WHOOPSIE-DAISY! This was all my bad this time, it really was — I just keep forgetting how sensitive your puny little organs are!”

Bill jabbed a single finger into Ford’s stomach, and Ford swung back and forth like a pendulum, remaining completely limp. “I wonder what circuit blew this time? Bet it was your sentimental, oversized old man heart again, wasn’t it? I’m tellin’ ya, you’d be better off without it — maybe now you’ll consider throwing your lot in with world domination!”

He cackled, loudly and bitterly. “What are you saying, Cipher? Save the spiel for when he’s awake again to hear you, dumbass!”

He snapped his fingers, and a pale yellow glow began to manifest around Ford’s body, starting at the hands and slowly making its way towards his chest. His voice dropped a few full octaves as he went on:

“Now, let’s get you fixed up for ANOTHER ROUND —”

“NO!”

Dipper didn’t have any memory of stepping through the doorway, but he was well-inside the Fearamid now, racing towards Bill as fast as his legs could carry him and fists clenched so tightly that his fingernails dug into his palms. “Don’t you dare hurt him anymore!”

What?

Bill’s voice came out different — still an echoing, high-pitched whine like usual, but smaller somehow. It held less brash self-assurance, less of that absurd, larger-than-life personality that the world had come to know and fear — and was more full of uncertainty, of panic.

Less horrifying, and more horrified.

P-P-Pine Tree? No, no, NO —

Why are you — what am I —

What am I DOING?

His eye darted all around the room as his body turned to a screen of static, familiar images flashing inside — a pine tree, a six-fingered hand. A sock puppet, a glowing blue chain.

He grabbed Dipper’s hand, but no cold flames ignited this time. His grip was tight and trembling as his wide, desperate eye met Dipper’s —

Pine Tree, why are we here? What IS this? What’s HAPPENING?

I don’t want to be here, Pine Tree, please —

“Let go of my brother!” A blast of a thousand tiny, glittering yellow and pink stars struck Bill in the eye, knocking him backwards as he howled in pain. “Yeah, that’s what you get for what you did to Grunkle Ford!”

Mabel ran towards where Ford hung, smoking less but still limp. “Are you okay?! We’ll get you out of there, just hold on —”

It’s… it’s not the real Ford, is it?

Bill sat up, blinking slowly as if coming to his senses. His voice still echoed, but it was lower-pitched now, and had an unmistakably familiar hoarseness to it as he turned towards Mabel —

We’re in the past, pumpkin. You can’t undo it —

and

neither

can

I

***

“Stan,” Ford whispered. don’t think of electricity, don’t think of electricity, don’t think of electricity —

“I. Need you. To let me go.” He tried to enunciate carefully but overcompensated, the words coming out stiff and robotic. “Please,” he added.

Stan crossed his arms, pulling them tight around his chest as he shook his head, motions jerking and marionette-like. “No, I — I can’t.”

“Calm down,” Ford told him, even though his voice sounded anything but calm. He could smell the all-too-familiar scent of burning hair and clothes now — was his hair already beginning to smolder, or — no. Ignore your senses if you have to, they’re lying right now. Just talk.

“Stan, look into — look into my eyes. I’m your brother, Stan, you can trust me —”

“But you can’t trust me,” Stan interrupted, still staring straight down. “All this time, I was — you were wrong about me. I’m a horrible brother, and I just tricked you into thinking I wasn’t.”

Something reached its breaking point in Ford’s mind, and tears began to fall from his eyes — an ionic solution, exactly what makes your body such a good conductor of —

“Fuck it, Stan, put me back in your tabletop game if you want, but please, you’ve got to let me out of here or my own mind is going to —”

Stan’s neck flew backwards with a sickening crack, craning towards the ceiling as his eyes flew open, but he still wasn’t looking at Ford — no, he was staring far past him, spheres of blue plasma sizzling where dark brown irises should have been.

WHAT?

Why are you DOWN THERE?

Dipper, NO!

The fire in his eyes moved in cascades, in waves, like static across a television screen.

What am I DOING?

NO, NO NO

Kids, I — oh, pumpkin, it’s not —

I can’t —

I can’t undo it

I CAN’T UNDO IT

He blinked and his eyes were brown again, human again, staring into Ford’s own —

“Stanford, w-what am I DOING?!”

Ford’s chains vanished in a puff of fog, and he tumbled to the ground, landing more softly than the wooden planks beneath him should have allowed for. Stan staggered away from him, raising his hands to cover his mouth as black tears spilled down the left side of his face, leaving dark trails on his cheek and staining his fingers —

While from the corner of his right eye, shimmering crystal blue droplets welled up and dripped down — liquid fire, blazing so bright that it lit the whole room.

“Stanley —!”

In a quick one-two punch, the roof of the Shack buckled and then exploded, as a torrent of water crashed down upon Stan and submerged him instantly. A violent cyclone surrounded him, biting winds slicing through Ford’s coat and stinging his arms as they grew stronger, more desperate —

But Ford could still make out something inside the waterspout, a glow that jumped in jagged paths like lightning one moment, then floated and flickered like tongues of flame the next — a bright blue light, refusing to be drowned out. Refusing to be forgotten.

Chapter Text

Everything was shadow, everything was black. The waves tore straight through Stan’s skull, letting out a guttural, desperate roar as they slashed through his thoughts and

struck

everything

out

Yet the memory of one sound still reached him in his self-imposed prison — one sound too engraved in his consciousness, too loaded with guilt, to ever truly wash away. The hollow, haunting rattle of a chain still echoed in Stan’s ears, and that was just too much to bear.

Stanford! I DIDN’T MEAN TO! Not AGAIN! Stanford, you’ve gotta be okay — Stanford? STANFORD?! Sixer, I’m so SORRY —

A second noise crept its way into the edges of Stan’s awareness — a gut-churning, horribly familiar noise, resonating and harmonizing with his own memories as it formed whining, echoing words…

“We’ll meet again…”

Each background piano note was soft and gentle on its own, but together they grew deafening as they wove into a melody, burrowing through his mind like a parasite and dredging up long-buried truths, forcing his terrified eyes to open blink open —

“Don’t know where, don’t know when…”

He stood face to face with Bill Cipher, watching in a helpless trance as the demon’s hands deftly ran across black and white keys. Simultaneously, he felt a faint pressure against the tips of his own fingers, as if they were pressing against smooth ivory.

“But I know we’ll meet again —”

The piano keys kept moving on their own as Bill rose up from his seat and turned to look at Stan, eye wide with a delirious, terrifying glee.

“Some sunny day!”

He snapped his fingers and in a flash, Stan was facing a triangular mirror, staring at a middle aged version of himself. He wore a dressy shirt and gaudy, question-mark covered tie, and his smile was wide and blatantly fake.

“Keep smiling through…”

His reflection began to age, and as it did, the smile grew wider and faker — stretching from ear to ear and brimming with showmanship and faux charm. Bill floated behind him, resting a hand on his shoulder.

“Just like you always do…”

says he’s happy, he’s a liar

lie until you aren’t lying anymore

for courtesy

The image shimmered and flickered, melted drops of silver pooling on the floor as the mirror — and Stan’s facade — went up in cold blue flames.

“‘Til the blue skies drive the dark clouds far away!”

Bill leaned closer to Stan and squeezed his shoulder more tightly, black fingers blending in with the fabric of Stan’s suit.

“So will you please say hello…”

He held out his other hand where Stan could see it, and within the blue blaze, a series of familiar faces appeared: Ford, and Soos, and Dipper and Mabel —

“To the folks that I know…”

He let go of Stan’s shoulder and swung around to face him, eye closed and arms stretched out wide.

“Tell them I won’t be long!”

Then he opened his eye and laughed, and something felt just intoxicatingly contagious about it. A bitter chuckle began to form in the back of Stan’s own throat, threatening to burst out like an echo —

“They’ll be happy to know…”

Another snap of the fingers and their surroundings changed, blood-red bricks replaced with peeling wallpaper and searing blue-white embers. Bill stood just where he’d been destroyed in the mindscape, but didn’t panic this time as the door of the memory swung closed behind him.

“That as you saw me go…”

A-X-O-L-O-T-L MY TIME HAS COME TO BURN

“I was siiiiinging this song!”

I INVOKE THE ANCIENT POWER THAT I MAY RETURN

Stan clutched his head with one hand, and swung at Bill with the other — but Bill dodged with ease, continuing to sing without missing a beat as they once again found themselves in the red-bricked penthouse suite of the Fearamid.

“We’ll meet again, don’t know where…”

He grabbed Stan by the hands and swung him around like they were partners in a dance. Between their intertwining fingers, blue sparks flickered back and forth, and Stan found he couldn’t tear his eyes away from them.

“Don’t know when!”

Bill let go, floating in a circle around Stan’s head for one more cycle as he drifted to a stop. “But I know we’ll meet again, some sunny day!”

“We’ll meet again…” Stan echoed. His voice started as a whisper but quickly swelled out of his control, growing louder and taking on the melody. “Don’t know where…”

He began to pace in a circle with Bill at the center, mirroring how Bill had revolved around him. “Don’t know when…”

Somewhere in his mind, somewhere deep within a winding maze or at the bottom of an ink-black ocean, somewhere near where the song had always rested, half-remembered, since the moment of his birth —

Somewhere, something cracked.

“But I know we’ll meet again, some sunny day!”

The barrier of denial that he’d so diligently, so desperately maintained was finally crumbling, and being replaced by something that was so much… more.

“Keep smiling through…”

It was overwhelming if he tried to focus on it, tried to think about it — so he didn’t think and just sang, letting everything become clear in time with the song’s slow tempo.

“Just like you always do…”

He grabbed ahold of Bill and swung him around, tongues of flame once again wreathing their fingers.

“‘Til the blue skies drive the dark clouds far away!”

Bill let out another ecstatic cackle — and this time, the same laughter spilled forth from Stan too, creeping into his voice as he and Bill belted out the next verse together.

“So will you please say hello…”

He had spent so long in the dark, so long shutting himself away from the truth — but now, he understood. Now, at last, he remembered.

“To the folks that I know…”

Unable to restrain his glee, he made a finger gun at Bill — just for old times’ sake — and Bill’s hand simultaneously shot up in the same gesture, mirroring Stan as closely as his different form allowed.

“Tell them…”

Around both their index fingertips, identical blue flames began to flicker and grow.

“I won’t be loooooong!”

They moved in perfect unison —

“They’ll be happy to know…”

Sung in perfect harmony —

“That as you saw me go…”

Too perfect to be anything but two parts of a whole. Two sides of the same coin.

“I was siiiiinging this song!”

Gone were the pyramid, the chains, the piano. They stood in a forest’s sunlit clearing, the sky above them an endless expanse of pure blue.

“We’ll meet again…”

But really, there was no they anymore. There had never been.

“Don’t know where, don’t know when!”

For the last time, the two voices rang out separately:

“But I know we’ll meet again…”

A single snappily dressed figure appeared in the place where had once been two, his angular features illuminated by bright afternoon light.

“Some sunny daaaay!”

Chapter Text

Stanley’s mindscape was changing.

Ford somehow remained blind to it until he tried to stand up, only to fall back down to his hands and knees as the floorboards shuddered and swayed beneath his feet. All around him, walls buckled and planks were torn out of place, rearranging themselves to craft new hallways, new connections between memories.

Hissing geysers erupted from cracks in the floor, the scalding-hot plumes weaving deftly around him as their steam escaped through the holes in the roof. Some of the clouds took longer to drift out of sight, and as they hung lazily in the air, Ford could make out images in them — a rift, a shooting star. A fire, a fist. A statue.

The steam even seemed to seep out of the walls and floor themselves, sapping the darkness from the wood as it grew lighter and lighter, brighter and brighter until it burned Ford’s eyes just to look at. The grain patterns in the planks shifted and flickered like waves of fire, taking on a blue hue as they leapt out of the wood and into the air, chasing away the last wisps of darkness to render Stan’s mind in all white and light gray, accented by the yellow gleam of the knots in the walls as they all shifted to fixate their gaze on Ford, unblinking.

He covered his eyes, but the images stayed seared in his memory.

***

Stanley laughed — a long, hearty laugh that would have brought tears to his eyes and a sore sensation to his gut, had he not been immaterial and invulnerable, free from the oppressive laws of physics as the undisputed master of the mindscape.

Oh, it had been so long — so long since he’d last looked beyond where his cataract-ridden human eyes could see, since he’d last snapped his fingers and rewritten the rules of the universe however he deemed fit, so long since he’d last consciously thought about how ancient and how powerful he was, how much he was truly capable of when he set his mind to it…

He didn’t know whether to call it ten months or sixty-two years, but it had been so long, too long.

So long since he’d last cheated someone out of some precious time in possession of their own body, so long since he’d razed a dimension from the inside out and danced as it went up in flames, so long since he’d —

So long since he’d tortured his former pawn (his future brother) to give up the equation confining his reign of terror to a single town, so long since he’d left it up to chance which child (which nibling) he’d kill in cold blood, to convince Ford that he meant what he said about hurting those kids —

Fuck, fuck, fuck —

More and more memories kept rushing back, some already remembered from a different perspective, but many worse than anything a still-amnesiac-Stanley would have ever dreamed of. Dimensions burnt to the ground, deals struck and puppets claimed, eyes dripping blood and cutlery jabbed into arms —

He had always known on some level, he realized.

(No, not realized. Admitted.)

He had known since the blue flames first flickered up around his fingers that morning, and he had known since he first found the prisms in Ford’s house and been struck by a wave of déjà vu, as long-slumbering memories grew restless in their sleep. He had known since he’d swung back and forth on a rusty swingset on a beach, staring at the six-fingered hands gripping the chains of the other swing, and addressed their owner by a nickname from a prophecy written centuries ago, in a cave two thousand miles away. He’d known ever since the blue fire of the burning mindscape had faded away, and he’d opened two eyes in a hospital in New Jersey, mind blank but not truly empty.

He just couldn’t admit it to himself and stay sane. He didn’t dare risk reawakening the demon that lurked in his memories, bound in place by the flimsy chain that was his newly acquired conscience — but it hadn’t just been about self-preservation, or even the preservation of the rest of the world, had it? He hadn’t been able find the courage to admit it to his family, either, to tell them who he was — and then, even worse, to explain how he’d known and lied about it for so long, for as long as he’d known them. How he’d lied until he couldn’t remember what was a lie and what wasn’t.

And he didn’t know how to tell them that all the lying been futile, in the end, because denial could erase memories but not actions. Not who, not what he was. His very identity as the others saw it — as even he had been foolish enough to see it, for sixty-two years — was nothing more than just another con. Just another fake name.

All belief of being Stanley Pines abandoned, Bill Cipher raised a hand to cover his mouth and screamed.

***

The one remaining column of steam in the room exploded just as Ford pulled himself to his feet, and winds tore across the room, howling in agony but miraculously not knocking him down. On unsteady feet, a figure with disheveled hair but an impeccable suit and tie walked falteringly forwards, away from the site of detonation — and despite himself, Ford stepped towards him.

“Stanley? Are you —”

Stan’s head jerked up, and he stared at Ford like a deer in the headlights. “No! No, don’t come any closer, I —”

His feet lifted off the floor, and waves of pixels and static rippled up his body as he gritted his teeth, form flickering back and forth between human and —

And something Ford couldn’t quite make out, human and —

Human and —

A sickly yellow triangle materialized out of the static, single eye unblinking as thin black limbs dangled limply towards the ground.

“Well,” he said, in the quietest voice Ford had ever heard emanate from Bill Cipher, “you probably see why you shouldn’t come near me.”

Ford’s stomach churned like it had been thrown into perpetual free fall, and his eyes unfocused.

“What did you do to him?!” he howled. “WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY BROTHER?!”

“Nothing,” Bill said, hands curling into tiny black fists as his appearance flickered and morphed into Stan once again. “I got some bad news, Sixer.”

“Stop pretending to be him!” Ford snarled. “I know you’re really Cipher, so stop — stop making a mockery of him like that! Stop pretending!”

“I have stopped.” The being that took on Stan’s appearance looked genuinely upset, shaking his head slowly and refusing to make eye contact for more than a fraction of a second. “I was — I was pretending for a really long time, but —”

“You’re not making any sense, St—” Ford barely caught himself, and corrected frantically. “No, I mean — fuck. What do you fucking want from me, Bill, that —”

Stan took a shaky breath — the type that often comes when tears are starting to dampen one’s eyes, and they’re trying not to let them creep into their voice. “I really had you convinced, didn’t I?”

He closed his two eyes, after another burst of static, Bill opened his one. “Sixer, I… I was always Stan.”

“What?! No, of all the bullshit — is this some reincarnation angle you’re going for? Because you clearly died long after Stan was —”

“Time doesn’t work like that, Ford! You went rooting through my memories, you saw me invoke the Axolotl — that big frilly know-it-all exists way outside of any backwards and forwards or cause and effect, you must have figured that out by now! I invoked it back when I was burning in my own damn mindscape, when I didn’t actually want to die, and you know what it thought? It thought I was worth saving — oh, and not just saving, but worth shoving me back into your lives like I hadn’t ruined them enough yet!”

“Don’t talk like that about him! Don’t talk like you are him! I won’t fall for your tricks, Cipher, I —”

“I don’t want it to be true either!” Bill wailed, and a fiery blue tear fell from his eye, continuing to roll down his cheek as he turned back into Stan. “You have no idea, I — I want more than anything to to go back to just a couple days ago, to being able to pretend everything is normal and only thinking about spending the summer with you all! But — but it’s not — I can’t pretend anymore! I’m too dangerous to all of you!”

His hoarse voice broke every few words, so full of anguish and so unmistakably Stan. So far beyond anything Bill would ever have the capability to fake.

“There’s — there’s got to be memories getting mixed up in here somehow,” Ford whispered, and though he tried to sound comforting it ended up sounding more like a desperate prayer. “We’ll get this all sorted out, Stanley, don’t worry —”

“You can’t sort out what was never mixed up in the first place!” Bill yelled. “Why won’t you just listen to me, Ford? What about — what if I show you something you remember too?”

The Shack shuddered, planks groaning as they moved to make way for a new door that was dragged out from the hallway by an unseen force. Blue flames ignited around the knob as it twisted open on its own, letting the door swing open to reveal —

Earlier this June, about two weeks ago. Ford shuffled cards as Dipper and Mabel pulled chairs up to a table, and Stan carried in a bowl of fresh popcorn.

“Alright, what are we doin’ for teams?” he asked, setting down the bowl. “Ford and I are obviously unstoppable together, so it’s only fair if we both team up with one of you kiddos…”

“Yeah, ‘cause you both count cards…” Dipper muttered under his breath.

Stan ignored him and folded his hands together, making a point with his index fingers as he gestured between Mabel and Dipper. “Eenie meenie miney… you.”

Dipper flinched as Stan landed on him, staring at his pointed fingers with horror for a moment before taking a few hurried steps backward. “I, uh…”

Stan frowned. “Something wrong?”

“Oh, no,” Mabel murmured. “It’s a Bill thing, isn’t it, Dipper?”

Dipper started to shake his head, but then sighed and pulled down his hat. “Yeah. He… he said that to me a couple times, and now I just…”

“Shit, I’m sorry,” Stan said. “Tell me right away if I ever use a bad phrase like that again, okay?”

Dipper nodded, and Ford put a hand on his shoulder. To Stan, he whispered: “I think I remember hearing Bill use that phrase once, but… aside from that, I don’t think I’ve ever heard it from anyone but you. Did he — did he steal your catchphrase?”

Stan shrugged. “I dunno, but I hope he didn’t steal anything else. Dipper — or any of you, actually — are there any other words you guys want me to avoid?”

The other three Pines shook their heads, and Stan smiled, passing the bowl of popcorn in Dipper’s direction. “Well then, let’s play some euchre before the popcorn gets cold. I got fancy with this batch and made it on the stove, ya know.”

The door to the memory slammed shut, and Ford bit his lip. His hands were trembling at his sides, fingers curled so tightly that they ached like hell, and he couldn’t bear to look down at them in fear he might find them bleeding.

“Coincidence,” he choked out. “It has to be.”

“What will make you believe it, Sixer?” Stan asked. “Fuck, even that nickname should clue you in! Did you ever think it was weird that the two of us both called you Sixer, and just the two of us?”

“Bill must have stolen it from you. Like he stole —”

“That nickname came from the zodiac and you know it! I know you know it, so why can’t you just — just — just look at yourself, Stanford!”

The air shimmered between them, forming a surface so pristine and perfectly reflective that Ford almost thought he was still looking at his twin, view unobstructed — but Stan had been silhouetted in blue flames just a moment ago, while Ford’s reflection was awash with darkness. Clouds circled him slowly, not a single spark of lightning seen in the air between them, and they blurred together with his trenchcoat as it flowed in the gentle wind, disintegrating into tiny gray droplets at the hem. Dark paths traced from the corners of his eyes down his cheeks, running off his chin and down his neck towards his sweater, where they bled into the wool and stained it black.

And the hands, unmistakably six-fingered and undeniably his own, were dripping dark liquid too — not the blood he thought he’d felt, but relentless cascades of black, feeding rivers that hissed and steamed as they ran across the floor’s glowing planks.

“Don’t you see? You’re drawing all the darkness left in my mind towards you because you’re the one in the deepest denial now — but trust me, Ford, it’s not gonna last forever. Something’s gonna snap you out of it sooner or later, so it — it might as well be now. Just accept that I’m not who you thought I was.”

“Fuck,” Ford whispered. “Stanley, you — you’re — you really —”

Stan rose above the mirror, still cloaked in flames as his body convulsed into the form of Bill once more.

“You said no one is allowed to say Stanley is worthless, but guess what? ‘Stanley’ isn’t real. He was just another lie, invented by an amnesiac dream demon who almost managed to convince even himself that he deserved to have a family.”

His voice broke again, but he looked at Ford in the eye as he continued:

“Face it, Sixer — you never had a twin.”

“No!” The dark clouds and blue fire both blew back from Ford as he yelled, voice echoing in his own ears like a grenade going off. “Reincarnation is one thing, but — but there are some things that I’ll never — that can’t —”

He lunged at (Stan? Bill? His brother? He didn’t know) but his hands and then arms passed harmlessly through the triangle, flickering and fading to white — and then Bill’s body turned transparent too, seeming to almost catch him off guard.

“Oh,” he whispered, and transformed back to a faint, quickly fading outline of Stan. “Guess it’s time. See you on the other side, Sixer.”

And then Ford couldn’t see anything anymore, but he could hear a high, echoing voice call out once again as if from far away:

Remember, a deal’s a deal.

***

“Alright, that should be it for the barrier,” Fiddleford announced as he stood up from his kneeling position and watched a glowing blue dome briefly flicker into existence around the sleeping Pines. “Remind me not to leave these mercury vials here on the floor after this has all blown over.”

“How will we know if it works?” Melody asked.

“Great question! I have no idea, an’ hopefully we’ll never hafta find out.”

“Real reassuring,” Wendy muttered under her breath. “Hey, how long do you think it’ll be before —”

Ford leapt bolt upright and tossed the pillow he’d been clutching halfway across the room. “Bill, what do you —”

He locked eyes with Fiddleford. “Fidds? Oh no, Stanley, where’s Stanley —”

He whirled around and saw Soos and the kids beginning to stir, but only Stan opened his eyes — regular and brown, no sign of possession to be found.

“Shoot me, Ford,” he whispered.

Ford froze. “No!! Why would you think I would ever do that?!”

Slowly, as if still feeling the effects of the sedative, Stan pulled himself out of his chair. “Because you promised?”

“When did I ever promise I would shoot you?”

Stan shook his head and sighed, nervously glancing at the kids and Soos and taking a few quick steps away from them while they opened their eyes and rubbed their ears. “Look, Ford, I know it’s been… a long day, but you’ve gotta remember. You promised you’d kill me if Bill took control, and I’m feeling — I’m feeling pretty in-control of myself right now, so —”

“What?” Soos jumped to his feet and grabbed ahold of Stan’s arm. “Mr. Pines, what are you saying? You can’t — you can’t leave us, you’re —”

Stan tore himself out of Soos’s grip and rushed to Ford’s side. “Just get it over with! Please!”

He ran both hands over his skull, yanking on fistfuls of his own hair. “You have to, before I end up hurting someone! Please, I — I — I fuckin’ killed you enough times in Weirdmageddon, I deserve this! Don’t you want to get revenge on me?! Don’t you want to protect your family?!”

“You what?! Grunkle Stan, what do you mean?!” Mabel grabbed ahold Ford’s trenchcoat, voice rising as she clasped handfuls of the brown fabric in trembling, balled-up fists. “What does he mean?!”

“Don’t say that, Stanley,” Ford breathed. “For the kids’ sake, I can’t —”

Stan’s gaze drifted towards a spot the floor a few feet away, fixating on a pale blue chunk of moonstone. He’d noticed the barrier, Ford realized a second too late.

“Fine,” Stan whispered as he stepped backwards. “Then I guess I’ll just have to… take care of it myself.”

“No! Don’t go! Don’t you dare leave us like —”

Ford lunged after him, but Stan backed out of the barrier too quickly, and Ford’s hand passed right through Stan’s shoulder as he disintegrated like smoke in a gust of wind. A single tear fell from where Stan’s face had just been, striking the floor without a sound.

“Grunkle Ford, what happened?” Dipper’s voice cracked. “We found Bill’s memories, and then he — Bill glitched out, and it felt like the whole mindscape was gonna get torn apart —”

“I don’t know what’s happening,” Ford said. “I — I don’t know what to believe.”

“Stan’s not — that wasn’t Bill just now, was it?”

“I don’t know.”

Dipper went silent, leaving the quiet sobs from behind him as the loudest sound remaining in the room.

“He’s really gone,” Soos wept. “After everything, he’s just — he’s just gone —”

Ford took a few steps backward and slowly laid an arm over Soos’s broad shoulders, eyes still fixed on the damp spot where Stan’s tear had struck the floor.

“He’s still out there somewhere,” he insisted, “he has to be. I would know if he wasn’t. I’m sure I would.”

He wasn’t sure. That — that entity, with Stan’s eyes and Bill’s memories, almost certainly had the power to destroy its own self in an instant, and Ford had no reason to believe that it hadn’t just done so. (It might not even matter, if Stan wasn’t even in there anymore. Or if he’d never been in there in the first place —)

But baseless hope had pulled through for Ford countless times before, and once again, it was all he had to go on now.

“Stanley is still out there,” he repeated, “and we need to find him.”

Chapter Text

The shadows of shifting tree branches dappled the forest floor as sunbeams shone down from a cloudless blue sky, and Ford’s eyes burned and watered as they stubbornly refused to adjust to the late afternoon light. The greens and browns of the trees and grass looked subdued to him, like color was seeping out of the whole forest and leaving it pastel.

After Ford had filled in the others, quietly and without making eye contact, on the time paradox they seemed to be wrapped up in, they’d come this way — to a hilly patch of terrain between the manor and the Mystery Shack — on the assumption that Stan might hide here if he didn’t want to be found, and sent McGucket with Wendy and Melody to check further north. But aside from the distant chirping of robins, and one single glimpse of a deer that had chosen to brave the sweltering June heatwave instead of resting in the shade like all the other animals, the forest seemed almost eerily lifeless.

Just as Ford had reasoned, it was a very good place to flee to if you didn’t want to be found, with uneven terrain and close-packed groves that provided no shortage of places to hide — even for a being that lacked the power to rewrite reality. Stanley, or whatever remained of him, was nowhere to be seen.

They passed a solitary birch tree flanked by pines on all sides, and Dipper finally broke the somber silence that had consumed the past few moments.

“Can… can he leave the barrier around Gravity Falls?”

Ford understood his hesitant choice of words — because of course Stan had proven himself just as capable of leaving as any other human, but with Bill having evidently awoken somehow, the answer was no longer so clear-cut.

“My guess is that he can, although his reality-warping powers should stop working once outside… but I’m not sure about that, not sure at all. I hope —”

Not looking where he was going, Ford nearly tripped over a rock, and something caught his eye as he staggered forwards. They weren’t far from the Shack at all, but he was sure he’d never noticed it before…

A dozen feet away from him stood a swingset, battered and rusted — except no, not quite a swingset after all, it dawned on him as he approached. At first he’d only glimpsed it in the corner of his peripheral vision, and filled in the blanks based off what he’d come to know, and recognize, and expect — but he hadn’t quite been right, this time.

It was not a swingset, but just one lonely swing, empty yet swaying back and forth ever so slightly. There were no broken chains hanging next to it, nor any empty space on the bar above to indicate another seat had ever been suspended at its side — just one swing without a partner, swaying mournfully in an invisible wind as if lamenting what had never been.

Face it, Sixer — you never had a twin.

“No,” Ford whispered. “No.”

He was helplessly lightweight, like the ground beneath his feet — no, like his entire world was collapsing around him and plummeting into a chasm from which there could be no return.

“He — he was real! He had to have been real! He was more than just — than just one of Bill’s tricks!”

He grabbed the swing by the chains and shook them, grimacing at the high-pitched creaks as their rust crumbled and dusted the ground in red-orange.

You never had a twin. You never had a twin. You never had a twin. You never —

“LIAR! Stanley was real, and my brother, and — and he’s — he’s still —”

The tears were running all down his face now, but they weren’t because of the sunlight anymore. (They might have never been.)

If Stan wasn’t real, then what even am I? Who am I without a twin? What does anything matter if —

“Why?!” he howled, not to any swing or any demon but to the universe itself, to whatever forces set in motion the events of giving him a brother, a twin, a hero, a friend, and then undoing all of that in just one damned summer day. “Why won’t you let him be real?”

Two parallel weak links snapped in unison, and Ford crumpled to the ground alongside the swing — still clutching the rusted, useless lifeline. The ache in his knees as they struck the earth was dull and distant, drowned out by a flood of grief-stricken sobs and desperate pleas —

Stanley, or Bill, or whoever you are, please… please show me you’re still here…

Behind the kids and Soos, something lit up. Back turned and eyes closed, Ford couldn’t see it happen, but he felt it nonetheless — felt it in the quickening of his heartbeat, the shakiness of his breaths, the sharp pains in his palms as he gripped the chains like he was trying to strangle the life out of them — and he slowly stood up to face it, unsure if he should be feeling hope or fear.

He saw sunbeams spill down in a perfect equilateral triangle at the boundary between the clearing and the forest, bleaching all the trees white like birches and scorching the leaves until they were left an ashen gray. Floating in the triangle’s center, legs hanging limp and toes hovering inches above the silvery grass, was Stan.

The first thing Ford looked to was his eyes — still as brown and sorrowful as ever — and it was only when he heard a gasp from Mabel that he directed his gaze down.

A fist-shaped hole punched straight through Stan’s chest, edges of the cavity burning blue as cracks spread out all across his torso. They crept slowly and steadily further like slow-motion lightning bolts, snaking up his neck and down his arms, branching out and criss-crossing each other until it looked like a stiff breeze could break Stan apart, could easily shatter him into a thousand fragments that would be lost forever to the wind in a matter of seconds.

“I’m sorry, Ford… fuck, I’m so sorry… but this is just the way it is.” Stan’s voice was even more hoarse than usual, and so soft that Ford might have strained to hear it had the forest not been so silent. “The way it has to be —”

“No, it isn’t!”

Soos barged forwards, coming to a halt only at the edge of the illuminated triangle. “You can’t go, Mr. Pines! There’s nothing you could have done in a previous life to change that you’re our family now, and that we still love you no matter what, and —”

He let out a sob. “And that I don’t know what I’d do with myself if we lost you…”

Stan slowly raised a hand to his chest as Soos spoke, pulling away quickly the second his fingers grazed the edge of the wound — but were Ford’s eyes playing tricks on him, or had the cracks stopped growing?

“Oh, Soos…” Stan whispered. “You don’t really believe that…”

“No, he’s right!” Dipper agreed. “Ever since you’ve been Stan, you’ve done nothing but save us from Bill — you didn’t just stop Weirdmageddon, but you taught me how to fight in the mindscape, too! We wouldn’t have stood a chance back then without you, and nothing that you’ve only just remembered today is gonna erase all those times you protected us!”

“You don’t understand,” Stan told him. “I was never Stan. I —”

His voice cut out as he stared down at his arms, where the cracks were slowly retreating — slowly healing — as the blue fire around the hole in his chest died down to a gentle glow.

“You’re so different from Bill, Grunkle Stan!” Mabel added. “You have to realize that! Last summer, Bill asked me who would ever sacrifice everything just for their sibling, like he didn’t understand who would, but — but you would, Stan! You have, and that’s something Bill would never do!”

She sniffed. “And that’s — that’s how I know it’s always been my Grunkle in there, and never any demonic equilateral jerk!”

Stan shook his head. “Mabel, I — I’m so sorry, I… I want to believe it, I really do, but that — that’s just not true. You fell for a trick I didn’t even realize I was playing on you, ‘cause I —”

He took a shaky breath, and the spiderweb of cracks across his chest pulsated in blue. “A long time ago, I told your great uncle to lie until he couldn’t remember what was a lie and what wasn’t — and that’s exactly what I did. I pretended to be Stanley until I really believed I was him, and you all believed I was some kind of hero, but — but I’m not. I’m just —”

“But that’s not all you told me, remember?” Ford interrupted.

Despite everything, and surprising even himself, he suddenly couldn’t help but smile.

“You also said to lie until what you wanted to be true became true. To lie until you weren’t lying anymore.”

Stan’s eyes widened, and Ford choked out a low, sad laugh.

“And in any other story, that would be just about the worst moral imaginable, but… but you, Stan? You succeeded at it. You may not have always been Stanley Pines, but you sure as hell aren’t Bill Cipher anymore — and I can’t think of who else you could’ve possibly become.”

“No, Ford, it — it doesn’t work like that…”

“Why can’t it?” Ford asked. “I’m not aware of any precedent — are you?”

His voice was hoarse and uneven from all the sobbing and shouting of just a few minutes ago, but he couldn’t stop the words from spilling forth, coming to him faster than he could speak. He didn’t know how he’d missed it before, because it had always been so obvious, so clearly encoded into Stan’s greatest strengths and what Bill himself had flat-out told him thirty-odd years ago.

“If we were to try and define Stanley Pines, we would have to establish ‘a love of his family’ as a core trait, wouldn’t we?” Ford went on. “Surely no entity could lack that love and dedication and still be called Stanley…”

He paced as he spoke, before pausing to make eye contact with Stan. “But you’re not lying about loving us, are you?”

Stan bit his lip, and shook his head.

“I didn’t think so. This whole day, you’ve been so worried about inadvertently hurting us, so desperate to keep us safe, and happy too — but you wouldn’t care about that in the slightest, if you were Bill and nothing more. And there are other things that make you you, of course — but I don’t think you’re lying about any of those, either. You’re not lying about about toffee peanuts being your favorite food, or about how you’ve always dreamed of writing comic books, or about how there’s almost nothing in the universe that you love more than going fishing with your family. You never lied about wanting to sail around the world on the adventure of a lifetime with me, or about missing me when I was stuck on the other side of the portal…”

Ford brushed a sleeve to his face, wiping away tears, and then extended open arms in Stan’s direction.

“And if those things didn’t make you Stanley — if they didn’t make you an uncle and a father and a brother and a hero to us — then what would? You’re not lying about who you are anymore — and you haven’t been for a long time, I think. You only lied until what you wanted to be true became true — and what you want is a family, isn’t it? Because you’ve really, truly found one.”

Tongues of blue flame stretched out from the edges of the hole in Stan’s chest, twisting together and solidifying into flesh and bone, closing up the wound as Ford let out a breath of relief for what felt like the first time all day.

“And gods know, you’ve earned it,” he whispered.

Stan sank to the ground, stumbling backwards the second his feet landed on the earth. Familiar chains materialized behind him, and he lowered himself into the swing they suspended, crossing his legs at the ankles and then burying his head in his hands.

“Thank you, Ford,” he murmured. “Thank — thank you, everyone. But…”

Ford sat down in the adjacent seat of the swingset, rocking back and forth slightly and remaining just within arm’s reach of Stan. “What’s wrong?”

“…I still don’t think I can stay.”

Ford’s stomach leapt into his throat.

“Why not?!” Mabel gasped.

Stan pulled his hands away from his eyes and looked around, between Dipper and Mabel and then to Soos before finally shifting in his swing to face Ford, frown small but visibly trembling.

“I want to stay, I really do, Ford. And I think — I think you’re right that I am Stan, right now, but… I don’t know how long that’ll last.”

Ford shook his head. “I don’t understand…”

“I’m probably just gonna turn back into Bill eventually,” Stan told him softly, carrying on in a voice hardly above a whisper even as the others interjected. “The memories, they’re still coming back, and it’s like — it’s like falling into the Bottomless Pit, Ford. I was Bill for so much longer than I’ve been Stan. It’s all coming back piece by piece, all those memories of the monstrous things I’ve done — one fiery fucking explosion in my head at a time, and I don’t think it’s gonna stop any time soon. And I’m afraid that sooner or later, Stanley is gonna — I’m gonna suffocate in all this smoke, and someone else is gonna take over again.”

He sucked in a deep breath, as if just to reassure himself that he still could. Dipper and Mabel had arms around each other’s shoulders and were both staring at the ground, as Soos covered his nose and mouth with a handkerchief, hat removed and pressed against his chest.

“What you’re seeing right now — me still wanting to protect you, me still being a half-decent person, almost — this isn’t me remembering everything. This isn’t me fighting to hold onto myself, to hold onto how much I love you all, against a billion eons of anger and selfishness and near-omnipotence. This is just the start.”

“Oh, Stan… I didn’t realize…”

“It might not happen for a long time — it might not even be in your lifetimes, for all I know — but it could be tomorrow, too! It might be gradual and I might be able to tell when it’s coming and warn you before, but one of these days I’m really worried Bill is gonna…”

His knuckles were white as he gripped the chains, like they were the only thing stopping his humanity from being ripped away from him.

“I want to keep being your brother, Ford, but… I don’t know if I can keep hanging on forever. And if I can’t, if — if Bill comes back… you’re all gonna want me gone before that, if you know what I mean.”

The forest went silent aside from the slow, rhythmic creaks of Stan gently rocking on his swing, feet not leaving the ground as he half-heartedly pushed himself back and forth. Ford held his glasses in his hands — smudged and dampened by tears, and now collecting dust particles as he ran his feet over the sandy patch of earth beneath his seat — though he couldn’t remember taking them off in the first place.

“I want to believe that you can make it through this,” he began slowly. “You’ve made it through so much hardship already; you’re a fighter, and you’re so devoted to family and love. I believe in you, Stanley, and I believe that you have the strength to stay you…”

He noticed Stan frowning and staring at his feet.

“But even if I’m right… it’s one of those things that’s difficult to stop worrying about, isn’t it? I — I know what those things are like, those things that’ll haunt you for as long as you live — no matter how illogically, no matter how much evidence you amass to try and convince yourself it isn’t a concern. Being absolutely certain that you’ll never become Bill again — it’s proving a negative, and that’s notoriously difficult.”

Stan nodded slowly. Tiny particles of rust crumbled off the chains where his hands gripped them, forming splotches of red on the sandy ground below.

“Some would even say impossible,” Ford went on. “And with regards to our perspective, at least, I would agree — none of us can definitively tell that Bill is gone for good.”

“Wait,” Dipper cut in. “Are you saying there’s someone who would know?”

Stan’s swing abruptly stopped creaking as he froze in place.

Ford nodded. “Stan, I was hoping to research a summoning ritual on my own, but… well, I got distracted, so I don’t think I can do this without your help. Do you… have you remembered any way of getting in contact with the Axolotl?”

Stan muttered something to himself that Ford couldn’t make out, and felt like he maybe wasn’t meant to hear anyways.

“You don’t — you don’t have to go trawling through Bill’s memories for the answer, if you don’t want to —”

“No, I think I can get a line open,” Stan whispered. “But… but if the Axolotl says there’s even a chance I might turn into Bill again, I need you to promise you’ll… let me go. And really promise this time, Ford, not like whatever kinda ‘promise’ you made when I asked you to shoot me… even though I’m kinda glad that you didn’t, and we had this talk.”

“Stanley…”

“Look, let’s just — forget about your own safety for a second, I know you’re good at that. Can’t you at least accept that I’d rather die as myself, instead of as — as the demon who hurt everyone I care about?”

Ford looked at the kids and Soos, watching with something inbetween horror and grief, and then back to Stan, eyes terrified and pleading.

“I promise,” he told Stan, “but only because I trust you, no matter how little you trust yourself.”

Stan gave a single nod, eyes averted and lips pressed tightly together, and a small sphere of light pink fog materialized in front of him, swirling slowly as it began to expand. Cloudlike tendrils reached out from it, meandering and twitching like the detached tails of an unseen creature, before approaching all five observers and gently brushing against their foreheads…

For one paradoxical moment, infinitesimally short yet eternally long, Ford was in a hundred places at once, reliving a hundred days of his life all at once — but most quickly faded into background noise as one memory grew more vivid than all the others, one warm summer afternoon spent with sand in his shoes, sunburn all across his back, and splinters in his hands from climbing aboard a shipwrecked sailboat with Stanley.

He smiled to Stan, who smiled back at him, and Ford just knew that Stan was flashing back throughout his life in the same way, and that this was the clearest of all his memories, too.

Then they both opened their eyes, and found themselves adrift in the time and space between time and space.

Chapter Text

It was when he first encountered the Axolotl — eons and eons ago, while giving the more obscure and least comprehensible corners of the multiverse a quick look-over as he often did when bored — that Bill Cipher first realized that there was someone who knew and saw more than he did.

It wasn’t a pleasant realization. He was the All-Seeing, All-Knowing Eye; omniscience was his brand. He was the ancient, elusive god of mysteries and answers — and, on good days, brief little glimpses into the future.

(Not that he often acted on those glimpses — they tended to be about things he either couldn’t change, or didn’t want to change — but dropping cryptic warnings into conversations with mortals was always fun, as well as a good way to remind them who was really the brains of the operation.)

But the Axolotl existed outside of time entirely. It had already seen what was yet to come to pass — it had seen it last night, and a century ago, and would see it fifteen million years down the line. It was seeing it now, and seeing it always: if Bill could occasionally switch the metaphorical channel of his sight from “present time” to “five hours in the future,” then the Axolotl was constantly watching every channel, every second and millisecond and nanosecond of existence and so on to an infinitesimal degree. It not only knew everything, but had always known everything and always would.

And Bill hated that.

“This only upsets you because you fear the unknown,” the Axolotl told him, its voice echoing like Bill’s own, but also more pleasant on the ears, more musical.

“Psssh, yeah! Right!” Bill scoffed. “Do I look like I have anything to be afraid of, Frills? I’m the incorporeal king of nightmares and my throne is built from intangible screams of mortal terror! Fear is — is breakfast for me! Serve me up all the fear in the world!”

The Axolotl tilted its head. “Deny it if you must,” it replied, “but your actions will tell another story.”

“Oh, so we’re playing the cryptic remarks card now? Well, I’ve got nothing left to gain from this conversation.” With that, Bill willed himself out of the time and space between time and space, leaving behind a triangle-shaped ripple in the fabric of the universe.

But in his haste, he failed to notice the Axolotl’s massive tail curling around five human figures, all of them shrouded in pink mist as they watched his exit intently.

***

It was during his second encounter with the Axolotl, somewhere in the realm of a million years later, when Bill Cipher was warned.

“One day,” it told him, “you’ll be so afraid of the inevitable unknown that you’ll beg me for help, and I will help you.”

“I’m not afraid,” Bill blurted out immediately, cringing as he realized how much he sounded like a naive little kid pleading his case to stay up late and be told spooky stories.

The Axolotl kept talking, as if it hadn’t heard him. “But it won’t be a free pass onto a new life of your choosing. It will be a catalyst for an unimaginable change, and the start of a long, hard path — but I know you will have it in you to succeed.”

“I don’t need you to believe in me like some proud, overinvested parent,” Bill shot back, making a show out of straightening his top hat and bow tie. “Do I look like a guy who has problems with self-confidence?”

The Axolotl just smiled at him, with its big, smug, frill-wreathed face.

“Invoke my name, Cipher, and time itself will contort to bring you back from the ashes.”

Once again, Bill willed himself back to the Nightmare Realm without noticing the five figures — not even the one that stood further forward than the others, the one that had first stared at Bill slack-jawed and dumbfounded, but now straightened his back with a confident, imposing sort of determination, and curled his fingers into fists.

***

Bill rifled through Ford’s memories — high school bullies, college all-nighters, a fiercely regretted discovery of a cave in the woods of Gravity Falls — as simply as one might flip through the pages of a book, scoffing at the man’s loneliness and need for validation. But Bill already knew all about that — it was what he’d preyed upon, how he’d gotten his portal built in the first place. No, tonight he was looking not for a general weakness, but for some specific memory, something he could purposely throw back in the six-fingered freak’s face later —

But now, he was struck with a wave of… familiarity?

A hand reaching to mess up a head of brown hair.

“Don’t listen to them, Sixer. I think you’re pretty cool!”

A knock on the leg of a bunk bed.

“Morning, smart guy!”

A reassuring hand on the shoulder.

“You heard it here first, Stanford Pines is gonna be known as the guy who changed the world!”

Switched outfits, a striped shirt in place of a brown jacket.

“Okay, Brainiac, today I’m gonna teach you how to lie…”

Bill withdrew from Ford’s memories with a jolt — not quite angrily, not quite sadly, but driven by something fierce and consuming, some feeling that he wasn’t used to and wanted to be rid of as fast as he could. Wrenching Ford’s body out of its slumber, he flipped through a journal with shaky hands and just so happened to notice a code he’d scrawled a few nights ago —

I ASK YOU WHY MUST TIME ONLY MOVE FORWARDS

WHY MUST CAUSE PRECEDE EFFECT

WHO VOTED ON THE LAWS OF PHYSICS

***

The third time he encountered the Axolotl, Bill Cipher was trying to save himself, but ended up killing himself in more ways than one.

Blue-white flames consumed walls from the ground up, and transformed exit doors into impassable infernos. Bill had practically forgotten what hot truly felt like, but he knew this was worse than anything he’d ever felt before — it was eating away at his very essence, suffocating his own flames and threatening to choke out everything that made him him.

Stanley’s mouth moved, but the voice felt like it was coming from inside Bill’s own mind, words spat through gritted teeth threatening to rip apart his consciousness.

“You’re a real wise guy, but you made one fatal mistake. You messed with my family!”

“You’re making a mistake, I’ll give you anything! Money! Fame! Riches! Infinite power, your own galaxy!!”

He was struck with a sudden vision — a static-corrupted and not quite real-time clip of a triangular statue resting in a forest, dark beneath the shadows of pine trees even as bright afternoon light spilled down from the blue summer sky above.

“PLEASE! HELP! WHAT’S HAPPENING TO ME?!”

In a panic, he fumbled after the last few sparks left in his draining pool of energy, trying to channel them into his form and grow big enough to smash right out of Stan’s strangely well-disguised mortal mindscape, but his body melted and struck the floor almost instantly, only growing more unstable and difficult to hold together by the second — and seconds were all he had left.

Invoke my name, Cipher.

“NRUTER YAM I TAHT REWOP TNEICNA EHT EKOVNI I!”

And time itself will contort to bring you back from the ashes.

“NRUB OT EMOC SAH EMIT YM L-T-O-L-O-X-A!”

Stan pulled back his fist, winding up for a punch, and time slowed to a crawl. Blue flames froze in place, and the frenzied roar of a collapsing mindscape faded to a drawn-out, agonized groan before at last giving way to silence.

Then the scene began to fade as Bill found himself paralyzed, helplessly watching pink mist seep into the room. The fires grew dim, all colors turning pastel and all clarity lost to a clouded blur, until all he could see were pink cumulus clouds drifting carelessly across a blue, star-speckled sky.

(He was thrust back to the independent demises of a million different civilizations across billions of years, but he hardly heard the screams as he found himself in a flat world, a gray world, a despised yet fiercely missed world where he struggled to leaf through an oversized book that spoke of Points and Lines and Spheres and colors…)

Two beady black eyes opened in front of him, and a familiar head emerged from the clouds with a satisfied smile on its face.

“I see you invoked my name,” the Axolotl said, a hint of smugness dripping from its melodic voice. “So you do fear what lies beyond death.”

“Ya got me, Frills!” Bill shouted, hoping that sheer volume would be enough to disguise how much he was shaking. “You really did! I panicked and I invoked you, so — so what’s the fuckin’ catch already?”

“Catch?” the Axolotl asked innocently, gills twitching.

“That shtick you gave me last time about a ‘hard path!’ I know how you work, Frills — you’re not gonna let me go without some lesson as punishment — so have at it already! Dump me into whatever new existence you’ve decided I deserve, and get it over with!”

The Axolotl frowned. “You misunderstand, Cipher. It’s not about what you deserve.”

“Then what the fuck is it supposed to be about?!” Bill could feel the fire rising up in the core of his essence once again, about to rupture him beyond any hope of repair, but he kept shouting. He couldn’t stop. “WHY DID I EVEN INVOKE —”

“It’s about where you’ve got the potential to change,” someone interrupted, and for a moment, Bill thought that the Axolotl’s voice had inexplicably grown low and gruff, abruptly developing a Jersey accent as it spoke with a quiet confidence —

But then a flicker of motion towards the Axolotl’s tail caught his attention, and finally, he noticed the five familiar figures — less bruised and battered than he’d last seen them, yet still impossible to mistake. Four of them stood in a straight line, Pine Tree and Shooting Star close together and flanked by Question Mark and Sixer, while in front of them…

In front of them was the Pines that Bill had always paid the least attention to — the one he’d never had a nickname for. With tousled gray hair and and a plain white shirt, Stan looked unassuming and out-of-place here at the fringes of the multiverse, but his narrowed eyes took in the scene exactly like they had seen it all before, bright golden sparks of recognition dancing within brown irises.

“It’s not about what you deserve because you don’t deserve anything, Bill,” he calmly explained. “You don’t deserve to live in the first place. But about six decades later, in your future…”

He took a deep breath, and recalled from Bill’s perspective that his family was currently smiling at him from behind his back, proud and encouraging as ever.

So Stan smiled too.

“I will.”

“No,” Bill stammered. “Are you — are you saying that you’re me? ‘Cause I’m nothing like you! There’s no way I’ll become you, I’ll —”

Stan snorted and extended a hand in Bill’s direction, palm facing up as blue flames danced across it. “Man, we’ve always both been good at lying to ourselves, haven’t we?”

For the first time in nearly a trillion years, Bill Cipher felt the physical sensation of a chill running through him.

What had he ever truly been if not a con man? If not a stubborn, scheming scam artist?

“But hey, you’re half-right!” Stan went on. “You’re becoming me and there’s nothing you can do about it —”

He made a fist, and the flames were instantly extinguished. “But I’m definitely nothing like you.”

“You — you — you can’t light your hands on fire and seriously believe that!” Bill sputtered. “If you really are me in the future, then you’re the one lying to yourself if you think you’re anything other than a ticking time bomb! You’re still gonna be Bill Cipher forever, buddy, and you show it whether you know it or not!”

Stan directed his gaze towards the clouds below, biting his lip. A ways behind him, Dipper started to step forwards, but Ford gently rested a hand on his shoulder and shook his head.

“It’s almost hilarious how bad you are at playing the hero! All you’re good at is lying and stealing — oh, and ruining and destroying things too, can’t forget that! You know, I never got why you were so obsessed with turning the portal back on to save someone who hated you so much — but all this time it was just a favor for your past self, wasn’t it? Kickstarting the apocalypse for an old pal! We want the same things, you and I — no matter how incompetent you are at actually getting them!”

Stan’s fists trembled at his sides, but he still didn’t look up.

“But don’t worry, ‘cause your pathetic existence is gonna come to an end real soon!” Bill cackled, rubbing his hands together with glee. “You don’t have to pretend to be these dumbasses’ family anymore — we’ve pulled off the perfect con, you and I! We’ve got a physical form all set up in your dimension and no one’s standing in our way — no quantum destabilizers, no memory guns, no zodiacs! You can rule the world again now — you WILL rule the world again, whether you think you want it or not!”

“That’s all?”

Bill’s delirious laughter cut off abruptly. “What?”

“That’s your whole argument,” Stan murmured, a hint of a smile beginning to develop on his face.

“You’ve got some good points about me ruining everything,” he went on slowly, “and I think I believed it, for a while — I think I believed it before I remembered, even. I never thought I was good for anything, and part of me never believed it whenever anyone told me I was a hero…”

His head snapped up, and Bill flinched when their eyes met.

“But I know something about myself that you don’t.”

“Wh-what?”

“I know that you offered me money, fame, riches, infinite power, my own galaxy, and I didn’t understand how anyone could choose that over their family. I still don’t — and talking to you now, seeing what an egotistical little shit I used to be and how much I’ve changed since — now, I’m sure that I’ll never understand again. I’m better than you, Bill, and I always will be.”

“But — but don’t you remember all the fun we had? We could have that again! Don’t you want —”

“I remember plenty,” Stan growled, “but torturing people isn’t fun. Killing people isn’t fun. Those things are going to keep me up at night for the rest of my life, and I don’t want either of them ever again.”

“No, no, no! You’re wrong! I’ll always —” The heat inside Bill was intensifying, making it harder to hold his form together, but he wasn’t going to let this happen, couldn’t let this happen, had to remind his future self who he was before he forgot everything —

His gaze landed on Ford, watching the argument with eyes that looked tinted red from recent tears.

“Sixer, you can’t possibly believe this! You’re just gonna trust him — trust me — and let us burn you again? You of all people musta let us stab your back more than enough times to get tired of it, right?!”

Stan hid it quickly, but he cringed a little at that line, and shot a nervous glance to Ford, who closed his eyes and took in a slow, deep breath.

“By choosing to be reborn, all you’ve done is ensure that you’ll die more definitively, more completely, than if you had simply been destroyed,” Ford stated. “You could have just been gone — but now, you’ve been changed. You’ve been replaced.”

“No! You can’t get rid of me that easy! I’ll —”

“Oh, yes,” Ford growled. “You will become the antithesis of everything you once were, to the extent that you will even erase your own legacy. You’ll be the one to reverse your own apocalypse, to protect the family you tormented…”

His voice cracked. “And you — you’ll be the one who teaches me to trust again, after all the time you spent isolating me and driving me to paranoia. I don’t trust you, Bill, but I trust my brother — because there is a world of difference between the two of you. You destroy senselessly, but he protects us. He’s helped heal the wounds that you’ve caused.”

“I’ll never really leave your side, Stanford! Is that what you want? No matter what you tell yourself, you know you’ll never be able to really let your guard down around your brother again —”

“The era in which I let you manipulate me into distrusting my friends and family has long since ended, Bill,” Ford shot back without flinching. “You left my side long ago.”

“You really think that I can change? Me? Bill Cipher?!”

“I do,” Ford answered. “It may be a stretch to call my brother mature, in any sense of the word, but he’s most certainly more mature than you. He has changed for the better — in a way that does not often tend to revert.”

“Yeah, you want to know why time is so meaningless?” Stan added. “It’s ‘cause I grew up more in sixty-two years than you did in a trillion. You’ve been around for too many eons to count, but you’re still just a selfish little brat who’s obsessed with playing puppet master.”

“NO!” Bill shrieked. “I won’t become you! I WON’T! I am Bill Cipher, and SO ARE YOU, YOU HEAR ME?! The person you call Stan is — is — is NONEXISTENT!”

“Oh, I hear your whiny little screams in the back of my head all the fucking time,” Stan spat. “Telling me I’m a shit person, telling me I don’t deserve my family, telling me everything I think of myself as being is a lie. Telling me I’m just going to turn into a demon again, and the one good thing I’ve done in my life is going to end up being less than worthless…”

Columns of blue flame erupted from his hands, and he stepped towards Bill, teeth bared. “But you’re an even bigger liar than I am.”

“You — no, we could have ANYTHING! Power without limitations, minions to obey our every order, revenge on anyone who’s ever wronged us! BUT YOU CHOOSE TO BE STANLEY? YOU CHOOSE TO BE MEANINGLESS?”

“I hate to break it to you, wise guy, but you’re already doomed.” Stan took another step closer. “You’re going to be meaningless soon. Everything you think of yourself as standing for is gonna fade away, and all you’re gonna be is just another one of my memories.”

“And memories,” Ford added, “will never take away my brother — not by their absence, and certainly not by their presence.”

Stan’s hands curled into fists, and the columns of fire wound themselves around his fingers, solidifying into shining golden knuckledusters engulfed in a crackling blue aura.

“Hey, Bill?” he asked, smiling innocently.

Bill let out a whimper.

“Will you please say hello, to the folks that I know? Tell them I won’t be long?”

Two scenes play out overlaid upon one another, blurring together into the same decisive, time-defying moment as the burning of Stan’s mindscape resumes from where it left off. Two versions of Stanley Pines swing at Bill — one standing unflinchingly before a backdrop of flames about to consume him, the other channeling a reawoken fire of his own into his resolute, superhuman punch, but both sharing an absolute confidence in what will happen next.

And what happens next for Bill Cipher, as their fists collide with him, is excruciating pain.

The blow from the mindscape is blistering hot with vengeance, the weight of a tremendous but unregretted sacrifice behind it. It’s the love and compassion of a selfless protector that fans the oxygen to these white-hot flames, that fuels Stan’s particular stubborn brand of heroism against which no demon can possibly stand.

This one’s for my family.

The blow from the time and space between time and space is metallic and colder and spiteful in an intimately personal way, as Bill watches his own flames punch a hole in his body — but these flames, this fist, they’re bolstered by a family’s returned love and kindness that brings Stan back from the ashes but doesn’t just stop there. The weight behind the punch is as much Ford and Mabel and Dipper and Soos as it is Stan; it’s their stubbornness and refusal to give up on the good they know they see in their hero, it’s the trust they place in him and foundations for a trust in oneself that they’ve planted for Stan to rebuild upon.

It is fueled by a fresh spark of something new, something defiant, burning deep within Stan’s chest — an ember glowing faintly at first, but holding the potential to become a roaring blaze of self-confidence, of self-acceptance, even self-love.

And this one’s for me.

The punches shatter Bill with ease, eclipsing his own power by countless orders of magnitude, and his fragments scatter, cast adrift in spacetime. Yet a long, pink and blue-finned tail sifts through the fabric of the universe, curling protectively around the shards of a consciousness as it collects them together once again and then carries them back to where it all began…

The sunny New Jersey day of June 15th, 1951, where an all-seeing eye closes, two human ones open, and Bill Cipher forgets.

***

The flames around Stan’s hands died down, and the Axolotl, who had spent most of the confrontation watching from a distance, drifted up to face him.

“Why were you doing in the fishtank all those years?” Stan blurted out.

“Now, there is a limit to how completely I can be somewhere,” the Axolotl told him, “a limit to how much of myself I can manifest in the spacetime that you all are capable of perceiving. But to answer your question, Stan… to the greatest extent that I could, I just wanted to make sure that you wouldn’t be too lonely for those thirty years.”

Stan rubbed his eyes. “You’re such a — a sentimental old salamander. You know that, Frills?”

“An eternally young salamander, actually,” the Axolotl corrected him teasingly, with a gleam in its eyes. “Was there anything else you wanted to ask me?”

“We had another question when we came here, but…” Stan wiped away a few tears, and took a deep breath. “But I know the answer now.”

“I thought so.” The Axolotl beamed. “I have a few messages for you all as well. First of all, Ford — Jheselbraum has asked me to say hello. She says that she’s proud of how you fared in the Mindscape… and that she’d like to visit your dimension sometime, which I think could be arranged.”

Ford blinked a few times in owlish confusion, but then a smile spread across his face. “Tell her… tell her I’m immensely grateful for her help, and that I’d love to see her again sometime — and I’m sure the kids would love to meet her, too.”

The Axolotl nodded. “And Stan, one last thing. You invoked me in the clearing as you were beginning to remember, and I heard you, but I did not reply. That was because there was nothing for me to do. You asked me to stop Cipher, but he had no need to be stopped — though you understand that now, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” Stan answered, giving up on wiping away his tears as his voice grew choked-up. “Thanks, Axolotl. For everything.”

He turned around to face his family, and spread out his arms. “And thanks for not letting me go.”

The kids were the first to run towards him, and he lifted them up and hugged them tight. Soos quickly followed, wrapping his arms around all of them as he buried his head into Stan’s left shoulder while sobbing with joy.

Ford was the last to join the embrace, but may have hugged the tightest and most fiercely of all of them — not letting go even as the stars and clouds of the Axolotl’s dimension faded away, replaced with sunbeams and trees and a familiar old swingset.

“Thanks for staying with us, Stanley.”

Chapter Text

The sun was just beginning to dip beneath the treetops as they headed back to the Mystery Shack. The sky was still cloudless, but now took on a purple hue close to the horizon. Stan and Ford walked together, arms thrown over each other’s shoulders, reluctant to let go.

They nearly lost their grip, however, when they reached the Shack to see Fiddleford’s search party waiting for them, and Wendy barreled up to knock the wind out of Stan with a hug.

“You guys, we were so worried! You better not ever disappear like that again, Stan, or — or I’ll —”

“Yeesh, you spend one year working for someone else and suddenly you get to boss me around?” Stan grunted. “Gimme some room to breathe here, at least.”

Wendy laughed, and let go of him. “Now that sounds like the Mr. Pines I know.”

“Yeah, I…” Stan smiled sadly, rubbing his ribs. “I think, even today, I’ve never been anything but the Mr. Pines you knew… I just didn’t always feel like it.”

“But you’re doing better now, right? Mabel chimed in. “You feel like yourself again?”

Stan gave a slow nod. “I think so. Having something to yell at that wasn’t inside my own head… I think that helped.”

“That’s such a relief,” Wendy told him. “Sounds like you’ve got a hell of a story to tell, though — if you want to,” she quickly added.

“Someday,” Stan said. “Not now, but someday.”

Fiddleford watched the exchange, nodding approvingly at first before a thought seemed to dawn on him and his eyes suddenly lit up with concern. “This is all rightly touching, and I’m as relieved as anyone to see you safe and feelin’ like yourself, Stan, but… have y’all eaten anything since this mornin’? You don’t want to end up just keeling over from plain ol’ starvation, not after everything ya’ve survived today.”

As if one cue, Ford’s stomach rumbled, and he smiled sheepishly. “Well, Fidds, this is probably going to remind you of our college days…”

“You didn’t even eat this morning, did you?” Stan muttered.

“I think I had half of a granola bar, around eight-thirty? Maybe closer to a third of —”

“That’s it, we’re ordering pizza right now!” Mabel declared. “And ice cream too, ‘cause you deserve it, Grunkle Stan!”

Stan bit his lip and closed his eyes, instinctively trying to suppress the tears he could feel coming… Ah, screw it. It’s Mabel.

He opened his eyes and reached down to ruffle her hair.

“You deserve it too,” he said softly. “You all do. I wouldn’t be here without you.”

“Neither would we, Grunkle Stan,” Dipper told him, gently taking him by the hand. “You’ve saved us too, don’t you ever forget it.”

The others began to file into the Shack, and Stan followed, holding Dipper’s hand on one side and Ford’s on the other as Mabel scrambled ahead to hold the door open. He felt the field from the unicorn hair wash over him, temporarily neutralizing the power to reshape reality and blocking his ability to see outside the barrier’s limits, and made a beeline for his chair in the living room, where he immediately sat down to rest.

Rest. It had been the furthest concern from his mind an hour ago — because yes, he’d wanted to die, but never because he was tired of living. He’d wanted to die to protect his family from the demon that he feared that he still was, to serve justice against wrongs from a previous life…

Because he thought his death would be best for the universe, not because there wasn’t anything else he wanted out of life.

But now, as hard as it had been to convince himself, he knew he was Stanley Pines — an actually half-decent person who was allowed to want things — and right now, Stan just wanted a nice, peaceful, temporary rest, here in his home and alongside his family.

So he turned the television on to a familiar Ducktective rerun, and smiled as everyone gathered around him to watch as they waited for the food to arrive. He still grimaced from time to time, as new memories of Bill’s would pop into his head, but something was taking the sting out of them — he wasn’t drawn towards dwelling on them anymore, he realized, not with his family around him. Not with Mabel on the ground by his feet, still laughing at jokes she’d heard plenty of times before, and Dipper at his side, pointing out foreshadowing with a proud smile on his face.

One by one, memories of anger and suffering returned only to be drowned out — not by denial this time, but rather a flood of competing memories of joy, of relaxation, and of family bonding.

***

“Thanks for leaving a note,” Ford told Stan as he sat down in the grass a few feet away.

“Well, you still worried, didn’t you?” Stan asked. “That’s why you’re here?”

Here was the clearing where Bill’s statue rested, the clearing where the blue fire had first flickered up around Stan’s hands and began to drive away the dark, dark fog of denial that he’d cloaked his memories in. But now, the only fires visible were the stars in the sky, a million little lights illuminating the statue from above.

All those stars had their own stories, Stan realized, stories he could see if he wanted to — but he didn’t feel the need to look, to turn his all-seeing eye so far away from home, not when everything he could ask for in life was right here with him.

Through hardship to the stars? Nah, through hardship to family is enough for me.

“Not as much as I would have worried had you not left it,” Ford replied after a long pause, disrupting Stan’s thoughts. “I just… wanted to make sure you had someone to talk to, in the case that you wanted to talk. I’ll leave if you don’t want me here —”

“No, you can stay,” Stan told him, then after an awkward silence, he asked: “Are the kids asleep?”

“As far as I know, yes.” Ford must have noticed Stan’s sigh of relief, because he added: “Please don’t blame yourself for making them worry so much. You know that no force in the multiverse could ever stop them from doing their best to be there for you.”

“Yeah. I don’t —”

Stan almost said I don’t deserve them, but caught himself. Ford wouldn’t want to hear him say that, and… well, even though intrusive thoughts of self-doubt still lurking in the back of his mind tried to convince him otherwise, he knew that it just wasn’t true.

“I just kinda felt like I needed to take a look at the statue again,” he told Ford. “Since I haven’t come near here since… this morning.”

Ford nodded. “I guess we’ve learned a lot since then, haven’t we?”

“Hard to believe all that went down in just one day.”

“Well, there were a few things that ‘went down’ outside of time itself —”

“Oh, come on, Sixer. You’re seriously gonna bring your nerdy technicalities into this? Now?”

For a second, Stan feared that he’d put a bit too much anger into his words, had said something that sounded too much like a thing Bill might say — but Ford started to laugh, loudly and genuinely, and after a moment’s hesitation, Stan did too. It felt like an incredible weight had been taken off his shoulders — the two of them had gone too long without any banter, any jokes, any good-natured mocking. It had only been a day, but that day had felt like an eternity, like it too was maturing at a rate completely independent of the passage of time.

(Or maybe, the weight on Stan’s shoulders was still there, but he was no longer bearing it alone.)

Their laughter fizzled out, and for a while, they sat there in silence together, alternating looks at the statue with looks at the beautiful cloudless night sky. Now there was something Stan would be happy to use his powers for — making the sky clearer for family stargazing nights, and keeping the rain away when they wanted to go camping.

The idea improved his mood, so for a while, he held off on bringing up the topic that had been bothering him for the past few hours. But eventually, Ford began to awkwardly shift in place as if thinking about starting another conversation, and Stan finally said:

“I have… what’ll probably be a hard question.”

Ford turned to look at him, a reassuring smile on his face. “I’m ready to hear it.”

“It’s, uh… it’s just that I’m not sure if I even know what answer I want, and…”

“It’ll be okay.” Ford scooted closer to him and put a hand on his shoulder. “You don’t have to say it if you don’t want to, of course, but after everything we’ve already gotten through today… I think we’ll be able to find a good answer, together.”

Before he lost his nerve, Stan blurted out: “Do you forgive me?”

Ford let out a long, slow sigh. “I… had a feeling it was going to be something like that, and… I’ve been thinking about that a lot myself.”

He withdrew his hand from Stan’s shoulder, as if sensing Stan’s wish for a bit more space. “If you don’t mind me asking, do you know if you want me to forgive you?”

“No,” Stan decided at that instant, voicing his answer with a vehemence even he hadn’t expected. “No, you shouldn’t. Because that stuff…”

He looked down. “That stuff I did to you just wasn’t forgivable. And I’m different now — I’d never do that again, I know that — but that doesn’t just make all that shit okay, just because I realized how fucked up it was. So… don’t forgive me for it.”

Ford’s expression changed into a strange sort of smile, something sad but not hopeless. “That’s… that’s a fair point, about it not being forgivable. And for the most part, I’d think I’d say that I agree — but with just one addendum.”

He took a deep breath. “It’s a long addendum, though, and I’m not sure how best to phrase it. I hope you’ll bear with me.”

Stan nodded.

“Now, I’m no philosopher,” Ford began, “but I’ll say this: the idea of holding someone accountable for actions they don’t remember is generally regarded as… a gray area, at best.”

He paused, as if a word was on the tip of his tongue. “And your case… I think your case may actually be more clear-cut than most, due to the sheer severity of your amnesia. Bill is gone, destroyed by the loss of his memories, which leaves you with no reason to be blamed for his actions even though you arose in his place. And if someone doesn’t deserve the blame for something in the first place, then there would be no need to forgive them, wouldn’t you say?”

“But I remember now,” Stan cut in. “Those memories didn’t stay lost.”

“They stayed lost for sixty-two years,” Ford replied. “That’s got to be more than enough time to become someone else altogether. To change so much, to mature so much…”

“Into a totally different entity? I know I’m not the same as he was — I know I’m better — but me and Bill, we were still made of the same stuff. I see what you’re trying to do, and I appreciate it —”

Ford snapped his fingers. “Exactly! That’s the metaphor I was looking for!”

“But someone’s still gotta be responsible for — wait, what?”

“Made of the same building blocks, in the same ratios —” Ford was beaming all of a sudden, and gesturing wildly as he only really did when talking about science. “But assembled together in different ways, and producing vastly different properties!”

“I’m sorry, but I have exactly no idea where you’re going with this.”

“Do you remember what constitutional isomers are? When two molecules have the same chemical formula, but different connectivity between the individual atoms?”

“Yeah, and that’s relevant because…?”

“Because they’re made from the same components, but no self-respecting chemist would ever say that they’re the actually the same compound!” Ford explained. “Different names, different chemical and physical properties — just like you and Bill!”

At that, Stan almost laughed despite himself, because the whole conversation — the rambling on, the elaborate metaphors, the science — was all just pure Ford. And truth be told, as much as he might grumble and complain about the complexity and nerdiness of Ford’s preferred brand of analogies… there was no way he’d rather have conversations like these than the Ford way.

“Okay, go on…”

“Like — take ethanol and dimethyl ether, for example. They have the same amounts of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen in their chemical formulas, but if memory serves, dimethyl ether will release more energy than an equal amount of ethanol when you burn it. Because of the different ways their atoms are arranged, their respective destructions will have different effects upon the world.”

Ford took a breath, and continued more slowly:

“When I believed that Bill had burned and died, I felt no grief for him. The end of the being known as Bill Cipher was no loss to me, or to the rest of the world. On the contrary, there was rejoicing. But when I thought you were gone…”

He laid a hand on Stan’s shoulder.

“Stan Pines cannot be destroyed without leaving behind an immense amount of grief. That’s one of the many differences between you and Bill — you saw that grief when we thought your memories were gone, and even given what we now know, it still holds true. Unlike Bill, you mean everything to us — no matter how much you two have in common, you have too many different properties, too many different effects upon the world, to ever be called the same, just like two isomers cannot be called the same compound. As far as I’m concerned — and as far as anyone should be concerned — Bill Cipher really is dead, and I couldn’t be happier.”

“I think… I get what you’re saying,” Stan said. “Now don’t get me wrong, I’m still not sure an entire chemistry lecture was the best way you coulda explained it, but… I think I like the point you’re making there.”

Ford chuckled a little. “I’m glad. You and Bill — you’re inherently and inextricably connected by your origins, but no one would ever mistake one of you for the other…”

He paused, a mischievous grin spreading across his face. “You know how to use a toaster, for one thing.”

“Okay, why the fuck do I have such vivid memories of Bill not knowing how to do that?”

“He got so defensive about it, too — insisted humans were the crazy ones for wanting to cook bread twice!”

“What a dumbass! Good thing he’s just a statue now.”

“It’s appropriate, because the statue is exactly as good as he was at using a toaster.”

Much to the disappointment of any nearby wildlife attempting to sleep, their raucous laughter took a while to die down. When it finally did, Ford checked his watch.

“Huh,” he murmured. “It just struck midnight.”

“The day’s over,” Stan added. “Finally.”

Ford laid back, hands behind his head as he gazed up at the stars.

“You know, when Bill told me — well, sung to me — that we’d meet again some sunny day, I didn’t think it would come true so literally.”

“And he really didn’t know where or when either, did he? Bet he wouldn’t have liked the song so much if he had.”

They both fell silent for a moment, before Ford continued:

“I think — at least, I hope — that I already conveyed this sentiment yesterday, if not the exact words, but… I’m really glad that you exist, Stan. And that you’re my brother.”

“Thanks.” Stan leaned back into the grass, feeling its cool blades tickle his arms and neck. “I am too.”