Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Summer’s end was near. The showdown approached. The anticipation of victory sweetened the air that tasted of nightmares and bitter disappointment. It was something new, something different, something crazy. Something that melted on Bill's tongue like chocolate. Bitter-dark chocolate that tasted sweeter and sweeter the longer he pushed it back and forth in his mouth.

"No more waiting. Soon enough, we can call a new, better dimension our own.”
Bill had turned his back to the cheering monsters, his eye fixed on the gateway to the other dimension, grinning like a psychopath who was only one blade stroke away from his best kill.

The green pine tree forests, the deep blue mountains with their snow-capped peaks, the endless expanses of a sky that knew no dimensional limit - How he longed for this world from whose takeover he was a fingertip away. He drew a line on the flashing colors. A luminous streak opened, paper-thin and not strong enough to break the bars of the prison in which he was trapped. This dimension, the Nightmare Realm, was limited, narrow, ruleless. Doomed to fall apart like a house of cards one day.

Bill needed a new dimension, a better one, one that had rules. For what could be more fun than breaking those rules and overriding them?

He thought of pulling out deer teeth and making heads scream, but no image was painted as enchantingly as that of a dimension thrown into pure chaos.

Hopelessness coupled with a desperation that distorted faces like The Scream. People who scratched their skins bloody with madness. Houses that burned to the ground until only a skeletal framework remained. Colorful bubbles into which you stuck your head and met your worst nightmare. From which you came out with the most painful screams at best, and a lifetime of trauma at worst.

Bill would have captured the painting on canvas if he had not immortalized his art elsewhere. Namely, carved into dimensions that were doomed. The traces of his presence were everywhere. 

Even in Gravity Falls. More precisely, in a cave where his catastrophic (and, from his point of view, ingenious) project was carved in stone. Literally.

Bill laughed out loud. The shrill sound echoed through the endlessness of this dimension, followed by a cough that silenced the laughter of the monsters behind him. They looked at their king with expressions that were remotely meant to represent concern but were mostly just suspicious grins.

"Is there anything you have to stare at!”, Bill shouted. His anger thundered and flashed like a thunderstorm. Startled, the monsters shook their heads and turned to do whatever was best to do in the Nightmare Realm. To wait. And not to stand in Bill Cipher's way when he had another one of his rampages. This was healthier. For both parties.

Bill Cipher drew in his breath sharply and only then realized that everyone around him had disappeared and that he was floating alone in an infinity that seemed endless, but had limits. Limits that constricted him. Limits that held him back. Limits that were like chains from which he wanted to free himself.

In the end, his best allies were those who remained. The ones he had overlooked in his blind rage. Who hadn't just run off like the other monsters and gone to do 'better things'.

"Is everything alright?", Keyhole asked an uncertain question. One not to be asked of the dream demon. Just the word 'order' made Bill go off like a bomb. Usually. With a calm that didn't match his temperament at all, he turned to them. He didn't yell, just looked at them, as if he had only now registered how many were actually behind him. There was 8-Ball, of course, his old buddy with the billiard eyes, and Kryptos, with whom he had already had the wildest parties. Teeth, the rickety dentures with which he had spread fear of dentists in the multiverse. Keyhole, with which he had picked the most complicated locks. Hectorgon, with which he had carried out the best criminal actions. And, of course, Pyronica, whom Bill secretly admired for her numerous talents. Oh, and there were others, of course, with whom he had experienced similar things, but one demanded his attention.

"Hey, Bill, you look a little lost."

"'Lost in Space', or what?", Bill laughed at his own joke, but no one laughed with him. He cleared his throat. "What is it?"

His friends stared at him as if he, genius mind reader, should figure it out for himself.

I didn't sound that hoarse... A sneeze shook through Bill before he could finish his thought. His triangular skull was humming. His eye seemed to explode. He growled, but that didn't change the stupid faces his friends were making. Worry. Confusion. Surprise. And a tiny bit of amusement. Bill wanted to take a sponge and wash the faces clean. Away with those disgusting feelings, but his thoughts, no matter how strongly he expressed them, remained misunderstood.

Instead, the wild whispering started.

"Has anyone ever heard of a sick dream demon? Unbelievable!"

"I always thought he was invincible, but..."

"Do you think his sneezing could bring down the dimension?"

"Naww, I think he's harmless."

"Harmless!?" A huge conflagration tore the whispering circle apart. The monsters fell silent and looked to Bill, who was panting heavily and staggering in limbo. Maybe it wasn’t the wisest idea to use magic in his condition. But how could he think when his mind was spinning like an out-of-control merry-go-round!?

Bill gritted his non-existent teeth, found his balance, and braced his hands at his sides, "Do I have to burn you and put your charred parts together, so that you realize I'm not harmless?"

Silence. Then shaking of heads. One said, "Won't be necessary."

Bill grinned with satisfaction until the headache reminded him that he had no reason to. It hurt.

This nasty-gritty feeling was on the borderline of 'extremely uncomfortable' which had to mean that something or someone had performed a higher-powered miracle on him.

But Bill only thought one thing: To the axolotl, pain is cruel! 

Especially when he was the one who had to endure it.

Bill wanted to scream. But that was too noticeable. He often screamed, purely for fun, but the staring monster eyes would know if he was screaming for this or another reason. That's why he straightened his crooked top hat like a crown, propped himself up on his walking stick like a regent's staff, and played the serene king.

He was fine, he was sure of it. He had better things to do than be distracted by a few aches and pains. He had monsters to give instructions to, snacks and dips to organize for a party, and the world to rule.

But damn, the pains didn't seem to agree with his plans.

No, no, no, no... His body got heavier, something that wasn't gravity dragging him down. Like heavy iron chains binding to his limbs, turning him into a slave. He leaned on his cane, holding against it with all his strength, making a composed face that in no way reflected the struggle with himself. The force was tremendous. Powerful. Force-shredding. It was as if a black hole was sucking him in, with nothing he could remotely do. A feeling that was alien to him, that he thought he would never have to feel, loomed over him.

Powerlessness.

Lack of control.

He thought he was driven crazy.

(Even though he already was).

The pain subsided and Bill gave a soundless moan. It was intense, he had to admit, but he didn't think much of it. Gravity Falls was about to be taken, and not by some random clown, but by no other than him. A brilliant mastermind who had planned control of reality trillions of years ago. A creative freak who had caused chaos and destruction even before he had learned to fly. A demonic beast who should be thanked for protecting these lowly creatures from their own stupidity - by liberating them.

So, it happened that Bill ignored the first symptoms and threw himself into the preparations for the apocalypse. Much more determined, much more persistent, much more stubborn. Ordinary monsters avoided him. He had become more irritable and obnoxious in recent days. He ranted about every little detail, screamed at the slightest word directed at him and burned down what he didn't like. Even the dimension seemed to be affected by his impulsive energy: asteroids rolled through the weightlessness as deadly as flying fire rocks, sweeping away whatever was too close to them. Lightning crashed down, illuminating the darkness, causing the impacted placed to spark. Optical illusions popped up, disappeared, flashed elsewhere, and made one lost their mind. While no monster in the Nightmare Realm possessed a normal-functioning mind, they had noticed the changes. Reason enough to classify these changes as 'dangerous', if not 'life-threatening'.

Bill had never felt worse in three quadrillion years - And that even though his victory was within his grasp. Every day he could feel the tension making him tremble. How his body became more and more fiery the closer the heated battle came. How the excitement made him dizzy. How the overwhelm made him stagger back.

No.

This was not how he had imagined his take-over of Gravity Falls.

Chapter Text

"Damn," he hissed, refusing to stand still. Standstill made him nervous, jittery, restless. If he didn't move, the pain was unbearable. And so, he floated back and forth, moved in circles, rubbed his arms because he was cold, even though there were no temperatures in the Nightmare Realm. He would have found this hilarious if he hadn't been the guinea pig for this.

"Damn, damn, damn!" No matter how fast he floated in circles, the vertigo caught up with him, threw him off course, dragged him down. Only with difficulty, he kept himself hovering. It would have been fatal if he had glided through weightlessness like a chip in space. But he might as well just give in to it, if it provided him with some relief.

But doing nothing was worse. He still had a thousand things to do. He still needed furniture for his penthouse, he hadn't made a decision on the slip carpet, and he had one last deal to make. On top of that, he had to wait for the right moment. Soon it was time. Not long now, and Sixer, naive as this freak was, would suggest his great-nephew to stay with him in Gravity Falls. Bill awaited the drama between the twins with elation like watching a motion picture. The credits had rolled. Now it was time for the the big show. His appearance. His rise in reality.

Bill didn't feel like putting on a performance or jumping on stage with gusto. What he wanted instead changed depending on what he was feeling at the moment: Warmth when his body was writhing in devilish chills. Painkillers, when the pain was driving him mad. Silence, when everyone and everything was getting on his nerves.

But what did he got?
Nothing!

For the first time in his life, Bill Cipher wasn't getting what he wanted. Nothing went according to plan. Nothing was under his control. Not even his own body!

And this, at least, should be under my control, he muttered to himself as the shaking forced him to stop.

"Are you okay?" the gentleman who had asked so stupidly for the obvious, should have been grinded to fine dust. Or in this case: Gentlewoman. Pyronica was behind him. But not just her. Teeth, 8-Ball, Keyhole, and all the others close to him had also come to check on him.

"You need something, boss?" asked Teeth after Bill didn't answer.

Bill shook himself. After all, he had been so focused on hiding his weakness that he had shown his vulnerability. He couldn't let something like that happen to him again.

"Don't you have anything better to do than bug me?" He couldn't muster the strength to sound angry. The way he spoke almost sounded human. 'Human', in monster-language, meant something like being vulnerable, weak, and reliant on other weaklings.

8-Ball shrugged, "Not really."

"Don't forget, the big day is coming soon," Bill admonished them, but he was the most joyless of them. While they all feverishly awaited the day when they could leave the Nightmare Realm and relax in a real world, Bill felt the same like the dimension that was untouched by it. It would continue to exist or break, but dimensions didn't care. It was just a dimension. And what was he?

Mastermind, freak, beast... All the labels lost their meaning. He felt like nothing. Not even the slightest joy. Or a glimpse of hope. He was numb, paralyzed by the pain. Exhausted from fighting against himself. Worn out from all the work he had put in his masterplan over the last few days. He had worked as if death were at his door.

As he left his own little world of thought, he only heard one of the monsters say, "Let's do it."

"Do what?" asked Bill instantly, scowling at his friends. Whatever they were up to, he wasn't going to let anyone get in the way of his masterpiece. No matter how little it meant to him. No matter how much it exhausted him.

The monsters didn’t answer him. His impatience was rising, but he couldn't find the strength to get mad. His fingers drummed on his arms, which he had wrapped around himself as an icy wind blew toward him. Yet the Nightmare Realm was a wind-free zone.

"Uh, how about you sit on your throne until we get back?" suggested Keyhole, fingers clenched. At that, he looked like a schoolboy fussing at a confession of love.

"Hmm, alright" That was all Bill could think of saying. He missed sitting on his throne, which he had built together with the monsters. It was made of optical illusions. In front of it were stone statues symbolizing something like flying goblins or something (Bill's taste in art was special). The backrest was made of flying eyeballs that Bill had petrified and put together for fun. Under the armrests were torches that warmed the throne from below. Bill had goosebumps, so he loved the idea of sitting in the middle, putting his legs up, and getting into whatever the monster were talking about.

But he hesitated and placed his hand on one of the statues and contemplated the masterpiece of a seat. Not much longer and he would be seated on a much larger throne and rule the world from there. He would be the king of chaos. A prince of impatience. A madman.

He felt dizzy. Exhaustion tugged at him. The pain numbed him. He pulled his hand away as if he had hurt on a burned-out wire. He looked at his hand, clenched it into a fist, and grinned.

This world is as good as mine, the thought soothed him, and if it hadn't been for the throbbing of his head, he might even have been pleased. But the feeling was fierce, exhorting.

He didn't think he could reach that goal anymore.

Not that Bill suddenly doubted himself. He was convinced that his plan would succeed, that he would bring Gravity Falls into his possession. Sixer was an idiot, Pine Tree only a peck who was getting nowhere, and Shooting Star no threat to be taken seriously.

Yet...

His condition was a serious danger. The condition of this dimension even a greater one.

If the catastrophe in Gravity Falls would not happen soon, it would happen here.

In the place he had called home for several million years. Not that he had feelings or anything for this hideous place of grittiness and chaos, it was just....

It was just...

"We're back!"

Bill floated up to the throne and took his rightful place, placing his feet over one armrest and leaning his body against the other. He needed the warmth, that wonderful warmth he could have disappeared into. Pyronica put something over him... It was an even warmer blanket.

"What are you doing?" he didn't sound angry, but he didn't let his surprise seep through. He grabbed the blanket and unexpectedly pulled it closer. The fabric was warm - that was an understatement. It was hot and probably made of flames.

"We thought you could use a break, boss," Teeth said, flashing his best, if most unsettling, grin.

"Break." He didn't like the word, and even when he said it, it sounded disconcerting. He'd often given himself breaks, that much, but now? When he was about to conquer the world? It was repugnant to him.

"Bill, please," Pyronica held the blanket he was trying to push away. 8-Ball pushed him down as he tried to get up.

Bill gritted imaginary teeth, "What are you doing?"

He coughed and the volume startled him. Was that really coming from him...?

"Can't you see you're... dying?" the word came hesitantly from Keyhole's lips and the lock monster didn't look at him.

Bill laughed because it was absurd. Him and dying? He choked on his bitter laugh. Remembered that not so long ago he had thought of it himself. That he might die.

But that was absurd. Ridiculous. Insane.

Fear didn't come at first, though he felt the trembling in all his limbs. Something was brewing inside him, knotting it. It was like tearing him to pieces and reassembling him. Then cutting him open, deforming both of his halves, and putting him together into a square.

The feeling was wrong. So wrong. So wrong. So wrong.

But the more he thought about it, the more right it felt.

He was dying. And he had realized that now, too.

No.

No.

No.

Nononononononononono… No.

Bill was not one to lose his mind over this. He took a breath, closed his eye, concentrated. Surely there was some other underlying cause. But finding it was hard when his thoughts were centered around something else.

Fear. Death. Cold. Tiredness. Close to the finish line. Becoming king. Rule the world. Rule. Sick. Death. Fear. Control. 

Teeth snuggled against him. Bill pushed him away. Yards away. They really shouldn't lose their minds over this. 

But it was what he needed to start thinking straight again. A push. A reason why he was doing all this. Why he shouldn't bite the dust. 

He looked at the monsters, all looking at him differently, and he closed his eye again.

Think, c’mon, think... What is the cause? What's going on here? He rummaged through the knowledge he had accumulated over the years. He thought of curses that could reach across dimensions. He thought of magic that could conflict with his. He thought of... his nature.

He was a dream demon. As such, he had to regularly...

A light came to him.

…possess people.

And right after that, the pain came back full force like a boomerang.

Bill groaned, holding his head.

"I'm not dying..." he muttered. He cursed for a moment the fact that he had believed this shit. He paused. I'm not dying. 

"Even if you’re not, this dimension will soon enough fall apart" Keyhole looked around with concern. The lightning thundered. But near the throne, they were safe. But outside the safety zone, it looked dangerous. Like a sandstorm that covered and swept away everything that approached.

"Don't panic," Bill swallowed the tinge of his own panic- No. He refused to feel anything that could be called fear, but the feeling had crept into his voice anyway.

When the monsters heard it, their calm was gone.

"Wait, we're going to die!?" shouted Hectorgon, normally a calm soul, "But we're about to enter the new dimension..."

Pyronica's scream drowned him out.

"What are we going to do?", Teeth shook his head and chattered his teeth, “I-if w-we don't... I-if Bill doesn't recover..."

"This is a disaster! A dimensional disaster! No more party!", Keyhole's panic was understandable and sympathetic. 

"Be quiet, damn it!" Bill's volume, or rather his thin cry silenced them, "Did I mention in one word that you should panic?"

The monsters calmed down and shook their heads.

"This dimension is stabil. At least until we conquer the new one. I can assure you of that." Bill would not have made the Nightmare Realm his home if it had been too unstable to keep up with his plans. He cleared his throat. His voice was raspy and rough like the one of an old man, "And as for me..."

He hesitated - something he didn't usually do. Words came out of his mouth before he thought, but this time he thought long about what to say. And still, he couldn’t admit his weakness. Not that it is even a weakness, he told himself, grinning, but it was terribly lopsided, just a minor side effect. Nothing serious.

Only why was it so hard for him to say the words aloud?

"Bill, are you going to die?"

"No."

Bill was a liar. He always had been. But this time he told himself it was the truth. That it wasn't a lie. He remembered that he was damn good at fooling himself. How did the axolotl describe him again in his poem?

Says he’s happy. He’s a liar.

Chapter Text

Not that Bill had ever given even a piece of gold to the axolotl's words.

He went over his thoughts again. He was suffering from something called magic jam. Something like that occurred when a dream demon didn't haunt a person's dreams for a long time. Unused magic would build up and cause some kind of sickness. Nothing serious. Bill cursed Sixer for creating this protective wall with unicorn hair, because he hadn't haunted a dreamer since. He usually did. Very regularly, in fact. Everyone in Gravity Falls had dreamed of him. Most town folks just didn't remember.

But because of all the preparations, he had forgotten. How could he be so careless? He who always thought of everything and made the most watertight plans and never failed?

Bill couldn't admit this mistake. He couldn't. And when he saw the worried blinking pairs of eyes that pierced him with tenseness, he was sure he could never tell the truth. The monsters believed in him, they worshipped him like a king. Showing no weakness, being flawless, projecting a perfect image, that was important to keep their trust. If they doubted him now, then all his work would have been in vain, then....

Bill was terribly tired. He had felt such fatigue only when he had taken over Pine Tree's body. And this fatigue was hardly a comparison. It was stronger, more debilitating. He thought he was really dying.

And he was damn good at buying his own stupid lie. 

"It doesn't matter." Bill's voice was a hoarse whisper. He leaned back, sinking into the cosy warmth for a moment. He ignored the pain and the queasy feeling inside him, and he didn’t pay any attention to all the monsters that had gathered around him like on a funeral.

Bill didn't feel Pyronica's hot body against his left side and how she wrapped her arms around him. Hectorgon was at his right, holding Bill's arm, taking his hand. Keyhole murmured a silent prayer to the Goddess of Doors to open the gates of Heaven, not Hell; the angels needed chaos in their far too tidy celestial palace. 8-Ball propped himself up on the armrest, watching over the triangle like a grave guardian. Teeth stayed at Bill's feet. Not wanting to be hurled through the dimension again, he provided mental support. Xanther stood silently behind the throne, glancing around to see if any of the other monsters were aware. Some would be glad to see the end of the dream demon. But not him or the others who were here. It wouldn't be a party without their crazy host. It wouldn't be a conquest without the King of Chaos leading them. It wouldn't be life without the fun he brought them. If they had given up hope, then... Then it had always been Bill Cipher who spurred them on, who gave them hope, who gave them promises.

Xanther thought back to his twelfth birthday. He had still been a little monster. He had invited many, but none had come. They hated him. They found his big form frightening. The shunned him. And he did not speak to them. Words had never been his thing. Words could not express what he felt. He spent half his birthday drawing pictures of a sad clown. Layer upon layer of paint. He painted and ruined. He drew and erased, until all that was left was a pathetic disaster. And those were his feelings.

He spent the other half of his birthday with Bill. The dream demon was the only one who came, with a multi-tiered cake that was more crooked than the Tower of Pisa. Before they could even eat it, the masterpiece collapsed. Bill laughed and so did Xanther. A birthday didn't have to be perfect. A thousand people didn't have to come for a party to be successful. The two of them hung out at Xanther's house, gathered around the small table where the ruined cake stood, and they licked the sticky cream off their fingers while singing birthday songs. Bill didn't need to hear any words from him to understand that it had been the best day of his life. Words were ridiculous. Gestures mattered.

That was why Xanther remained silent standing by Bill's throne, firmly believing that next year he could celebrate his birthday again with the crazy dream demon. Even if it remained a mere thought, Xanther would hold on to this image of a pie-eating monster until he himself would be old and grey and die.

Bill opened his eye, looked at the various monsters clinging to him. He did not understand. Or he understood, but in his own way. They were only here because of a contract. With each of them he had made a deal. Each one here he had promised something;  power, fun, a festival or something simple like a birthday party. These monsters had simple desires. Not like the humans who wished for world domination, unlimited power and wealth, or love. They were little different from him who wished for liberation.

Perhaps that was why he didn’t  send the monsters away when they were so close to him. He had always kept his distance, only allowing closeness where closeness was necessary. If he had to gain trust, he had to invade his victim's privacy, illuminate their dreams, confront them with their worst nightmares. What he saw was not always funny. Some dreams were bitter, some were so garish and colourful that it burned his eye. Other minds remained empty like a soup bowl that had been spooned out. Emptiness. Non-existence. To this day Bill did not know whether he preferred these things to reality or whether he dreaded them.

Emptiness.

Non-existence.

Extinction.

Trapped in a deep blackness from which there was no escape.

Bill shuddered and blamed the disease for his discomfort. It had to be that cursed magic jam. He couldn't explain the shaking and goosebumps any other way. He had to get rid of it. As quickly as possible. The moment had come. The clock was ticking. Weirdmageddon was only a few days, if not hours away.

Bill rose, or at least he thought he did. His body felt weightless. All feeling was lost. Only when he blinked and looked around, he realised that he had not moved an inch; that he was still among his allies, who were decidedly cuddly but otherwise quite useless to him. He had to leave. Someone was waiting for redemption. Someone who was full of hopelessness. Someone whose head was no longer thinking rationally because feelings were overriding. The moment was there. It couldn't have gone better, but-

Bill couldn't manage to move.

There was nothing he could do but surrender to this disease; to give up because of his own weakness.

No.

He was a Cipher. He would not give up. He had made a deal with everyone here. Everyone here had felt the warmth of his fire when their hands had struck. He hated, no, he loved to exploit his puppets. And if it brought him closer to his goal, he would take any path, no matter how evil or how lonely it would make him.

Bill drew magic from them. A tiny bit from each of them, so that he didn't have to use too much on any of them. So that no one would die. So, they wouldn't even know.

Only remotely did Bill think about how dangerous what he was doing was. Or he knew, and did it deliberately, because conquering Gravity Falls was top priority. Too much magic would push his body to the limit. The mass of magic tried to blast him apart, but he countered it. Straightening himself with his newfound strength, he floated with the shackles on his feet, the iron chains on his hands and the explosive burning in his eyes.

Gravity Falls was just one deal away from him. Just one.

And soon the world would be in his small, three-dimensional hands.

All he needed was a sensible body and the problems would stop. He kept telling himself that as he struggled through the sandstorm that was his dimension. His dimension sounded wrong. He had taken it over. It was not his own. His own was charred, burnt, destroyed, non-existent. His family, his friends... They were nothing. And all the memories he had of anything from his home dimension were faded or blurred, as if taken through a veil of tears. The images were torn or burnt or annihilated in searing flames.

He rubbed the liquid from his eye. It was only his illness. Nothing more. Just something stupid that he would overcome. He was strong. He was powerful. No one could stand in his way.

He was exhausted. He was tired. He was finished. But none of that mattered when he left the Nightmare Realm transfer into the Mindscape. He landed in another dimension. A futuristic one. One in which he had to be wary of the Time Baby. In front of him lay Blendin Blenjamin Blandin, asleep, the painfulness of a nightmare painted on his face. He had been through a lot lately. He had his job, but his colleagues hadn’t taken him seriously. Even time baby joked about him and called him 'No-Friendin Blandin'. His dreams were about regaining time baby’s respect. In a desperate act, he said he would give anything for that.

Anything.

Chapter Text

This idiot cannot made reasonable decisions under time pressure. Bill grinned, rubbing his hands that grew hotter until they burned like fire. He set off into the dream world. As he crossed over, some of his magic separated from him. The force was a cutting blast, slicing him into tiny pixels. Pain sparked through his body a thousand times, a feeling as if electricity cut over his skin, again and again. The voltage built up, crackled. Bill thought he was going to break. He had done this a million times and never felt such pain.

He must have been wrong about the disease. It probably had nothing to do with magic at all.

Maybe he really was dying.

Bill didn't have time to admit his wrong thoughts. Blendin was on his knees, crying because of the immense despair. Bill wanted to do the same because of the pain, but unlike Blendin, he still had a shred of dignity.

"Hey,” the words almost slipped too easily from his non-existent lips, "I'll make sure Time Baby never makes fun of you again."

Blendin looked up. A lost glimmer of hope shone in his eyes. "You can do that?"

Bill laughed. He didn't overdo it. His voice wasn't the best, but at least it didn't sound as broken as Blendin's.

"Of course, I can. All you have to do is shake my hand."

There was a hint of scepsis in the time traveller's eyes, "Just that?"

But he didn't think twice. He took Bill's hand the next second and flames blazed between them.

Bill's voice whispered through the fire, "Just that, and your body."

Screams. Desperate screams. Bill took them in, feasting on them like expensive wine. Bitter, then sweet. Such a takeover was painful, but afterwards it felt so liberating. Bill felt no pain. No nagging head pressure. Nothing.
He was able to think clearly again, to focus, to concentrate on what was important. Plus, it felt nice to possess a body. The vessel wasn't too bad. A little chubby, but soon he had full control of it. The soul shrieked and screamed behind him, but Bill only laughed.

"I'll take care of time baby too,” he promised, but that was probably the least of worries this poor human soul had. Humans were stupid. Humans were simple-minded. Humans did everything for their fondest desires or for revenge. 

Bill did none of this for revenge or any other stupid reason. He wanted to have fun. He wanted to create a little chaos. He wanted to enjoy freedom. Wasn't America the land of freedom, endless possibilities and limitless power? He wanted to see how far he could go and how far he could push the world into the abyss.

"Nothing is more wonderful than a little test," Bill sang as he set off for Gravity Falls with this body. Basically, all he had to do was travel back in time and he was where he had wanted to be for many, many years.

In Gravity Falls.

Well, he still had one more step to do, before he could conquer this dimension.

And this last step flew into his arms like a Shooting Star. Bill held back his grin. It didn't fit the face of a time traveller.

"M-Mabel," the name was strange to pronounce, and it was Bill's luck that Blendin wasn't the most confident type, "It's me. I can help you."

She stopped, looked up at him and wiped the tears from her face, but didn't bother to hide how miserable she felt.

How gullible and how naïve, Bill focused on his part, so that he wouldn’t start laughing out loud, "You want the summer to never end, right?"

She sniffled and nodded. The sight of her despair was delicious like salty sweet popcorn served before a movie started.

"It may be against the rules, but you've already done me a favour once. That's why I'm going to help you with a time bubble that will prevent the end of summer from approaching.  Together, we can make summer last forever in Gravity. Well, are you in?"

She was sceptical, asking how it was possible, and Bill controlled himself not to lose patience. He had waited so long. He would hold out for these few more minutes.

"I'd only need one of those little things from your Gronkel to do it," Bill nervously tapped Blendin's wristwatch to project a hologram of the crack, "He won't even notice if it's gone, so?"

Something seemed to have 'clicked' with Mabel. Like a possessed, she searched in Dipper's back bag for something that resembled the hologram. Bill had known that with patience everything would pay off, but for it to go so well... Luck must have been on his side.

Soon Mabel held the fragile glass with the dimensional crack in her hands. The little instrument that could make all his wishes and dreams come true was only metres away from him. His goal was within reach. Greed overcame him, but he remembered how Mabel had pulled the diary away from him back then. He licked those softened lips, controlled himself and took the game a little further.

This time he was prepared for anything.

"You don't want to leave Gravity Falls, do you?", Bill held out his hand to her. Not grabbing but helping. He was not her enemy. She could become his best ally. Of all the Pines, he liked Shooting Star best. She was as easy to fool as Sixer, but she was a thousand times dumber than her great-uncle, and she handed Bill the crack without questioning a single one of his motives. Of course, all that mattered to her was the happiness it might bring to her. In her agitation, she did not realise how she was contributing to the liberation of Gravity Falls. She believed it was just a toy, some silly invention of her great-uncle, at whom she was so angry.

"Just a little bit more summer to enjoy…" was all that steered her.

After all, Bill was right when he said: people and their feeble emotions. 

With the glass in his hands, Bill felt big. Powerful. Overwhelmed. 'Don't drop it' was what any human would have thought in that situation. It was like expensive china. Like a once in a lifetime opportunity. Like a trophy of victory.

Bill dropped the crack, stepping into the shards that crunched under his feet. At the sound of destruction, he laughed. He laughed in a way he hadn't in years as if he had to make up for all those millennia. He laughed and felt like the happiest, well, person of the millennium. He took off his glasses, exposing his yellow eyes, grinning at Shooting Star. She was so foolish. So dumb. So naïve. But she was going to get what she wanted.

 Bill snapped his fingers, causing her to drift off to sleep. Her dream of an eternal summer was going to come true. To be precise, there would be a summer that would never end.

Bill detached himself from his frail vessel. He no longer needed this chubby body now that all his dreams were spilling over into reality.

 Soon, dream could no longer be distinguished from reality or chaos from order or time from infinity. He had planned his triumphant march down to the smallest detail. He had rehearsed his performance countless times. All preparations were completed.

Only his body did not play along. His laughter choked, turning into coughing. The force of it made him hit a tree. The pain pulsated, circled through his body and devoured him until he was shredded by the sharpness of the stabbing. It felt as if a set of arrows were being shot at him, using him as a dartboard.

He fought back. His magic shot in all directions. Trees cracked. Grass levelled. Stones rolled. Lightning shot up from the ground and Bill was tempted to follow it. His body was heavy. Hard to move. He should have been weightless, but....

The lightning went through him, not with him. Bill screamed, shaping the scream into a shrill noise that sounded remotely like laughter. Sparks split him apart, leaping into his eye. He thought he was going blind when all he saw was white. The earth's ceiling cracked above him. A cross-like crack opened.

‘Finally, I made it!' he should have thought, but the pain was all he could think about. This was inhuman. An agony. Not even he would go that far. (Although, to his worst enemy he would). His head pulsed, his eye exploded. He dropped his arms on his head, screamed, shrieked, cursed. And all people of Gravity Falls heard his struggle, but no one did anything to stop it. People were too busy panicking, being afraid... These barbarians weren't even suffering after all!

Not yet, was the approach that quelled Bill's rage. But still! 

This was his moment. His performance. He didn't want to be on stage, but he had practised the victory speech a million times. It took him no effort to deliver it, but he didn't hear his own words. He didn't notice how he spoke about the prophecy, how he announced the end of the world. He did not feel how he stopped time, how he sent out the bubbles of madness, how people fled out of panic. Chaos all around him, and he did not care. Only briefly, as his friends came up behind him, did he feel something.

The reason why he was doing all this.

Why he was enduring these torments when he would have given anything to stop them.

Why he didn't give up, even though the word 'give up' was carved into his body.

He wanted to give these homeless demons a home. Just as he had lost his dimension because of a misfortune, he now wanted to give birth to a new dimension. One that was not 'flat' and 'dimensionless', or constricted, empty, devoid of creativity and order... One that was stable, that would last forever, one where he could live forever. Where they would all have fun, with no rules, no order, no laws to constrain them.

It was this dream that Bill used to form his new body. Not flat, two-dimensional or shapeless... He wanted to be three-dimensional, to feel unlimited power, to be above it all.

And maybe finally escape this terrible pain.

The new form was achieved, but Bill felt no improvement. Every pixel of his now three-dimensional body ached, the infinite power seemed exhausted before he had even used it. He was tired. Fucking tired. He wanted to fall and never get up again. The chaos did not satisfy him. The destruction did not make him happy. He wanted to cry.

To shed tears, to cry, to be sad... Just as people called it.

Not because of ridiculous feelings or because he enjoyed it, but because this disease was torturing him to death.

To death. To death. To death. To death. To- Damn it! The magic of his allies was no longer enough. He fell like a star from the sky. From the humans' point of view, he must have looked like a golden something hitting the earth like a rocket. The impact was just as painful. He whizzed past thousands of branches, cursing how many fucking branches these huge northern firs had. Each branch stabbed into his side. Tattered his eye. Cut his body. He screamed, but the speed swallowed the scream until it died away. How long before he crashed to the ground? No plan. Time was meaningless, non-existent. And gravity only worked so violently on him.

Why had he believed that everything would work out to his favour?

Chapter Text

"There... Over there..."

The voice sounded familiar, but he could not tell whose it was. He felt dizzy. The branches above him were doing hula-hoop. A strange comparison, he thought, because these branches spun even more violently than a simple hoop. At least his body was regenerating. His eye hurt, but he could see. His foggy vision became clear. Besides pinecones, he now saw two people.

"Oh shit," the older man said. Bill would not have found any better description for this situation.

Sixer and Pine Tree were standing in front of him. Bill would have rolled his eyes if he hadn't been in such pain. Of all the people who had possibly witnessed his crash, did it have to be these two!?

His luck must have left him!

Bill looked into the end of the cannon that was pointed at him. His image reflected in the blue beam of the quantum destabiliser. He looked terrible. The wounds had partially healed, but he had an ugly expression in his eye. Terrified, no, that was not how he wanted to describe the distortion. Tortured was the adjective he was looking for. That he even had time for such silly thoughts was only because he used one finger to prevent Sixer from pulling the trigger.

Bill was powerful. He had strength enough to blow up the world. But right now, that power was only enough to delay his fate. His finger trembled because of the energy that flowed through. But no matter how strong the pressure, how much it hurt, how much he wanted to pull it back... He had to hold on, because if he gave in for just a moment, his fate would be sealed.

Briefly, he glanced to the side. Gravity Falls was in chaos. Trees started to move. Monsters crawled out of every nest. The apocalypse reigned. But he hadn't seen enough of it to rest in peace. Dying was not on his agenda at all. Dying was not an option.

Pine Tree lunged for his hand, throwing himself on it with all his weight. He tore the arm off like a branch from a tree.

Bill stared at the gun. All the energy flowed through his eye, but it had become far more difficult to stop the beam. He thought he was losing. Piece by piece, his strength was leaving him.

"S-stop!" he shouted out of panic. Real panic. Or at least he sounded so human for a moment that Sixer hesitated.

"Stop it. Stop it. Stop it!" the screams fuelled his strength, helped him get through it. For the first time, Bill allowed a feeling to creep over him. Fear. Not without a thought, he used that feeling. Even fear was just a puppet to him; his favourite emotion to mess with.  

The hesitation in Sixer's eyes disappeared. He grabbed the gun like a saving anchor on a wavering ship. The world was the ship, swaying and tumbling in the waves of strangeness, tossed back and forth like a beach ball.

Bill should have known better. Sixer would not be dissuaded; the man had done so much to stop him. His efforts matched those Bill had mustered to conquer Gravity Falls. This was the showdown of those who had done all they could to build their fortunes.

And not even time could tell how quickly that fortune would shatter for any of them.

"It's over, Cipher," Sixer spoke not with anger but with hate; hatred one could only feel for someone who had destroyed their life, who had taken everything from them, who had caused them endless agony. There was not much left of the despair and fear that once haunted Sixer every day. Those dark, hazel eyes looked determined. Every inch of the man put on a great fight. It was a battle equal in power, even if Bill was far stronger and more powerful.

Or at least, Bill believed to be superior.

He could not muster the same determination as Sixer, especially not, when death was promising him an end to his suffering.

Bill stopped the energy that was fighting death. He grinned. The beam fired in his direction, he could have dodged it if Pine Tree hadn't held him with all his might.

But Pine Tree was just a peck.

And Sixer just a freak who thought he could win if he acted like a hero.

Bill rolled to the side, sweeping Pine Tree with him. The beam toasted the top of his cylinder. Wind rushed past. An icy chill paralysed Bill, but it left a thrilling tingle on his skin.

This is what I live for, he told himself, grinning at Pine Tree on which he lay. If it had been different circumstances, if there had not been an apocalypse and if the world had been ruled by fan fictions, this could have been something dirty. But they met as enemies. They had never been anything but enemies.

Pine Tree's yelp and the way he jumped away as if an agitated moose had sat on him made Bill laugh. Bill floated up, propped himself against a tree. He was exhausted, but there was something giving him strength: Watching his enemies' hope crumble ever so slowly, like a biscuit rubbed between your fingers, amused him.

Give them a chance and take it from them!

It was the best way to make a person feel they had lost everything. Only one shot missed, but that shot meant the world and the world was in his hands.

"You don't stand a chance," Bill didn't want to sound bitter, but the pain forced him to. It was bitter that he could do nothing more; that his strength was not enough to crush them. After all, it was barely enough to keep him three feet off the ground.

"This isn't the end!" shouted Pine Tree, coming at him with a cute little stick. Bill had seen more dangerous and dashing sticks in his crash. This one was just...

"Ridiculous!", Bill laughed and didn't stop even as the stick pierced his eye. The desperation was great. The heroes were finished even before the real fight had begun.

His luck had come back!  

"Well, if that's all you have to offer, I'll be on my way.”

That had been his plan, but a powerful force did not seem to agree. He crashed to the ground before he could reach the thicket. Sixer and Pine Tree rushed behind him. They pinned him to the ground, which smelled of damp grass and a little of monsters. And of strangeness, as if the Nightmare Realm had been connected to this world. Sweet victory and bitter nightmares.

Bill turned, but their grips were stronger.

"You will never win, Cipher," Sixer whispered in his ear. It was so strange to have another voice telling him what to do and that he was on the ground without the strength to fight back.

Bill spat the earth out of his eye and strained to look up. He could only see the two figures in a blur. One brown and one blue. They tied his hands to his back with something rough.

A rope...? That was the most primitive thing he could get out of. If only I could, he thought, as his body called out in pain. He twisted so violently that the spots recoiled, and the rope pressed into his body. He thought he was suffocating.

Pain was something he should not feel. Pain was... That's right, impossible for a demon who dwelled mostly in dreams.

When he had been given the three-dimensional body, his condition (the way he talked the illness down) must have manifested itself into this form. Bill couldn't explain otherwise why the pain was there, the symptoms, the torture....

Bill screamed.

He screamed and screamed and screamed, hoping it would stop.

He wasn't doing all this to pay for it in the end.

He wanted to get the dimension for nothing in return.

The consideration, if any, was the years of work he had put in.

Why isn’t this working? Why…?

Chapter Text

When Bill had finished thinking, he found himself in the old bell tower. The Pines had brought him there and had tied him to the bell. With each stroke, his body vibrated and he could not fight the trembling. But he felt his powers... How they were slowly returning to him. Not much longer and he would be free... Truly free... And then it was he who laughed last.

"Look at what you've done!", the attempt to force regrets on him was exceedingly cute, but a little boring. He yawned out of fatigue.
"Juuuuuust as I planned it."
"How can we undo it?"
 Pine Tree was tooooo funny. Surely Bill, like any good villain, would not tell them how to destroy his chaotic masterpiece.
"Go on, jump off the tower and you may find the answer.” Bill laughed and glared at Sixer, "But you stay here. It would be a shame if two Pines died in the same spot."
"You really are the worst, Cipher," Sixer hissed.
"I'll be the last person you'll tell that to," Bill freed himself easily from the rope, snapped his fingers and promoted Sixer onto the fence. How small and frightened the once determined hero looked, clinging to the pillar as if his life was at stake- Oh that's right, it really was his life that was at stake here.

"You'll help me, won't you, Sixer?" Bill grinned and swung the rope like a lasso.
"Gronkel Ford, don't do it!" yelled Pine Tree, rushing to his side. His angry look flew towards Bill, "Stop it!"
Bill threw the lasso and tightened the noose around the boy's narrow waist, "I think you'll stop. Not that your tiny, vital organs are going to be crushed."
"Stop it, Bill." The desperation in Sixer's voice. He loved it.

"Oh, does anyone here want to join me?" Bill hovered closer. The rope in his hand tightened. How cooperative people are when their lives and those of their loved ones are at stake! He laughed inwardly. Outwardly, he maintained the poker face he had saved for this kind of 'deadly' negotiation.
"I can't deny it. Part of this apocalypse was your work." Bill hovered over the fence and looked down, What a height. He grinned at Sixer, who was trying to find his balance on the narrow path between life and death.

"And what a beautiful piece of work you've created." Bill looked at the screaming people running away from laser-shooting flying eyeballs, petrified one by one. He saw a monster devour a human by the skin and hair. Fire charred the animals that had fled too late. It was a flaming sea of corpses, ashes and dust. A first-class mess. A perfect disaster. A dinner all to his liking.
"If you join me, you'll rule with us, Sixer," Bill stared at the fiery red sky, saw its floating pyramid and grinned even wider, "You might even get a nice little throne up there."
Sixer took one last look at Pine Tree, who shook his head in an exasperated act before tears blurred his distorted expression. Then Sixer bit his lips. Bill gave him the time to think it over, but made it clear with a tap of the bell that time was infinite but limited for the decision.

"I will never join you," Sixer announced, doing something even Bill had not expected. Sixer let go of the pillar and threw himself down, right into his deathbed. Bill let go of the rope, Pine Tree screamed. Desperate sobs crushed his voice. Bill stared after Sixer, dumbfounded.
He would rather die than join me...? He didn't know if this act proved Sixer's courage or madness. But it doesn’t have to prove anything, Bill thought, because in his own mind Sixer would never get through with his selfless act.
Bill held against the falling man with magic, but the pain broke the connection. He couldn't stop the fall. Not with this body, which was powerful but useless right now because of his 'problem'.

Bill snapped his finger, but no magic sparked. He growled and tried again. He failed. Even over the Nightmare Realm he had more control than over this dimension!
Bill closed his eyes, awaiting the final scream of the man no one knew as well as he did. Sixer was a freak, a madman, a nutcase. Exactly the stereotype of a mad scientist, but he was much more than that. 'Extraordinary' Bill had once described him, 'Exceptionally stupid and naïve', but just the right idiot for his plan. And as much he hated to admit it, he needed Sixer for world domination.

Bill drew in his breath sharply as he expected the impact. But the bang never came. No scream. No swearing. Nothing.
And Bill didn't think Sixer was brave enough not to scream. The freak, no matter how brave he pretended to be, was a chicken. When he found out about Bill's true nature, he went nuts. Yet Bill had meant well for him! 'Good' meant that at least he had no intention of killing him as long as he proved useful.
One shouldn't swear at the dead, but such unspoken rules didn't apply to Bill.

Pine Tree was a wreck. Only shortly, Bill had let him out of his sight and already the boy, who had a rope wrapped around his belly, was curling up into a ball like a woodlouse that had come into contact with water.
What a wimp, and yet Bill felt no desire to torture him further.
"He's dead, Pine Tree."
"He ain't!" cried Pine Tree in a trembling voice, pounding his fist on the floor, "No, he's alive! He's alive! He can't die."
"Everybody dies." Bill grinned and forced Pine Tree to look up, "Don't you want to follow him to death?"
Pine Tree's expression resembled a crumpled ball that became more and more tangled until deep wrinkles crisscrossed his face.
"You monster!" screeched Pine Tree, acting in blind rage. Bill grabbed the rope, leaving the boy halfway choking on his own desperation.
“No matter how hard you reach out, you'll never reach it," Bill's voice was thin as ice, but much colder as if he had taken in the entire North Pole. "You're small and weak and you won't amount to anything in life. You can't even protect your loved ones properly. You are utterly worthless."

Something, about the way Bill uttered the words, was reminiscent of self-reflection. As if Bill had been thinking about something that someone had said to him many, many years ago; words that only made sense now that he was addressing them to someone else.
Pine Tree looked at him, disturbed. Sure, he had to think this floating superpower was a madman, an uncaring lunatic who had robbed him of everything, a psychopath who was ending the world for fun.
Oh, that's right, Bill agreed with a grin to all the labels.
"I love the way you look at me, but..."
Bill raised his hand, forming magic that burned hotter and hotter on his skin, and grinned at Pine Tree with the craziest grin he'd ever had in his eye.
"Don't expect any last words," Bill whispered each letter of the next words one by one, "My dearest Pine..."

He swallowed the last letters TREE as the fire burned on his skin. Bill only learned that fire was so insanely hot in the first place when he was on fire. He shook himself, but the flames leapt higher, fiercer, whipping into his eye. He screamed and pushed against the bell in headlong panic. The blow catapulted him to the stone floor where, after several rollovers, he managed to extinguish himself in the dust.

Surely Pine Tree would be laughing at me now, Bill thought to himself, but to his surprise he was crying. Tears streamed in rivers down the boy's face. He reached for the rope, pulled on it. Bill rolled his eyes and stopped him with a spark.
"If you're going to kill yourself in this pathetic way, at least don't do it here. Where's the fun in having two Pines die in the same spot?"
The last words hit the boy so harshly that he clenched his hands into fists. Again he pulled on the rope, Bill stopped him.
"Stop that...", Pine Tree was finished. Even his cries sounded thin and fragile, "Let me..."

"Die?", Bill sat down in front of him and waved his finger back and forth as if weighing the option, "What's in it for me if another one of you does something stupid?" Bill squeezed his hand into a fist and reined in his anger, "By now you should have realised that this is my dimension, my world, my home and I decide when, how and where someone dies."
"Asshole."
Bill grinned, "You do have a will to live after all."

Bill floated back, staggered, then shimmied past the bell to the backpack where Sixer's things were. Nothing that could be dangerous to him, but... The journals!
He tossed them in front of Pine Tree like grains to chickens and put on his best grin for a game.
"How are you going to stop me? Come on. What page is it on?"
Pine Tree stared at the books. A single tear ran down his face. He looked away.
"Well, not in the mood for a game?"
"You killed Ford..."
"He killed himself." Bill laughed at that fact and laughed even more amused at the truth.

Pine Tree curled up and covered his ears, "Stop it... Stop it!"
Bill mimicked him and laughed some more until the cough stopped him. The force was violent and Bill slammed into the stone walls. A wave of pain swam over him, numbing him. He growled and peered over at the pyramid, Sixer surely knows....

 Pine Tree had noticed the look too and for a moment despair did not dominate his face. He even smiled a little. Crookedly, but the little bow was clearly recognisable as a smile.
Bill grimaced and ignored him. He floated up, even though his body would have liked to rest here for hours more. The atmosphere was a lake of strangeness. But not the strangeness Bill loved. Rather one that would make any flying creature reel. Strangely, only he was affected. The flying eyeballs drew straight lines.
Damn, Bill remembered, he had left the journals lying around. He should have burned them, but somehow... His head was a puff of smoke, shrouding everything in a thick fog. And he didn't want to go back to the bell tower. His pyramid of fear was only a few hovering metres away.

Chapter Text

All the monsters awaited the arrival of their king. But seeing him arriving staggering, exhausted and half-burnt shocked even those who were used to tougher sights.
"Bill...?", One of the monsters looked at him, tilting its head to examining the odd flying being.
Bill signalled with a weary raise of his hand that he was in no mood for an explanation. They accepted it. What else could they have done?

Bill dropped onto the throne of petrified people, missing the warmth that emanated from his old throne. This one was cold, too big and... too alive in some places. (He pushed the poor woman back into place).
He cupped his hands over his eye and took a deep breath. Expecting glances hung on him. The silence hit him with full force. He got it and floated up, even though his body was signalling him with pain that he was the craziest.
For the first time, he loved his new body.
Not really.

"Monsters, friends..." He left out the greeting and made it straight to the most important point, "Let the party begin!"
As expected, the monsters were more cheerful than he was. They clinked glasses, drank to their victory, danced to the booming music and played 'Spin the Human'. Within an indeterminate number of seconds, a party worthy of an intergalactic ruler reigned.
Bill sat on his throne, head resting in his hand, ready to fall asleep from exhaustion. He was just waiting for someone to go to him so he could ask his question, but everyone was too busy having fun. He was supposed to be with them and have fun too. How he longed for a well-mixed cocktail and everyone's full attention. He wanted to be the loudest, the happiest, the craziest role model for all the party guests.
But the party went surprisingly well without him. Almost too well. He felt useless. Unappreciated.
Maybe he was a bit too dramatic, but he of all people was allowed to be dramatic for once now.

"Guys!" the party went shock-frozen, and everyone paid attention to him. Good, at least that still works.
"Where have you all taken our stupid, well... high diver?"

Everyone looked at him, blinking. Bill swallowed the queasy feeling. He breathed a sigh of relief when one answered him that the 'human' was upstairs.
"It looked like you cared about him," Teeth reasoned, "That's why we brought him here alive"
"Clever, clever," Bill loved his monster friends. At least they were more useful than the bunch of mortals trying to kill themselves in desperation.
"Well then, have a crazy-good party."
With those words from him the party went on happily-cheerfully.

Bill sighed, struggling to fly up with the little strength he had left. It was laborious to float up all those stairs to the top, but Sixer was waiting for him at the end. The old man looked relatively unhurt for having 'floated in the air' for a few metres and he was tied to the walls with iron chains. He struggled, screamed and wriggled until one of the guard monsters shoved a fire trident into his backside. Sixer took in a sharp breath and grimaced.
Bill would have added something humiliating if he hadn't already spent all his strength shearing the guards away.

When he was alone with Sixer, Bill had to make his way to the sofa willy-nilly, because otherwise he would have been kneeling on the floor in front of his prisoner. Terrible performance. His collapse was confined to the sofa, into whose leather he buried himself. Human skin was soft and pleasant, not rough as some might have thought. It smelled of baby oil and decomposition processes. Nice bonus!
"Sixer..." Bill hated the rough tone in his own voice. He sounded tired, exhausted, and he had not the strength to drown out Sixer's interjection.
"Bill Cipher, whatever you're doing here, stop it now! Release me!"
"Not even in your dreams!" Bill growled. The pain took over and he clawed at the leather, hoping it would get better. But it got more painful every second. And worst: He let it show.
"Fascinating. Are you experimenting pain?"
He didn't understand how Sixer could still show so much superiority in the chained position he was. Well, all right, he'd thrown himself off a tower too, but... He wasn't going to let that provocation pass him!

"Everything’s crazy-amazing" Bill hissed, "Never have been better. I rule the world. I own Gravity Falls. Soon no one can hide from me."
"You've always been a great liar," Sixer shook his head as much as he could and laughed bitterly. "Any idiot would see you're at the end of your rope."
Bill looked up and with a glance tightened the shackles. "At least an idiot would know when to shut up."
Sixer writhed in the chains but swallowed the pain, "You wouldn't have left me alive if you didn't want something from me."
Bill grinned and electrocuted him with a snap of his fingers. It was a small flame that was no match for the pain Bill felt in the aftermath, but Sixer deserved it. His body vibrated but he too withstood the pain.
How must it have looked like from a distance? Two sufferers staring at each other, waiting for one of them to go down in pain first?

"This isn't going to get you any closer to your goal, Bill."
Bill didn't like the familiar tone Sixer was using. Though he liked the blood dripping from the right corner of Sixer's mouth.
"Smart to bite your tongue to keep you conscious," Bill praised him with slight sarcasm. "What's next if I try other things? Will you die of poison stuck between your teeth like those Japanese twats?"
Sixer seemed amused by this. Oh, he was toying with him and the world ruler didn't like that at all.
"How about..." Bill shot a beam but missed. In the corner of his eye he recognised Sixer's superior grin. Bill growled.
"You know what's going on...?"
"I got a feeling."

Bill spared the 'spit it out!' Sixer wouldn't tell him even if he tortured him to death. (Which he wanted to do at this point but refrained from for various reasons).
Bill heaved a sigh and rolled over onto his back. He had to weigh the options, and just not play into the human's hands. He had come this far. Below him, the party was shaking. Above him was chaos. In between, he was torn between a risky venture and simply running away, but that was too dangerous in this situation. As much as he trusted the iron chains... Sixer was an unpredictable variable.
"What do you want in return?", Bill gritted his teeth and looked away. Hard to believe he was actually doing this... Just because of a little pain.
Well, a few sharp pains, a queasy feeling, a nasty cough and a weakness that prevented him from doing anything he wanted. Maybe he should go for the deal.

"Your immediate withdrawal from Gravity Falls."
"Denied."
"Cipher!" Sixer's tone was sharp, "Think about it for once!"
Bill looked over at him. "There is not a chance. We can't go back."
The serious way he said it made Sixer's stubbornness disappear. It was true, though. The Nightmare Realm was an intermediate dimension, now connected to Gravity Falls because of the rift. Even if Bill wanted to return, (which he didn't think about for a second), there was no place he could have disappeared to.
"Isn't that a bit stupid?", Sixer addressed the very thing Bill had been denying over and over in his head, "You bound yourself to a dimension in the hope that it would make you invincible?"

"Bound," the word rolled sharply across Bill's tongue, "is the wrong word for it. I 'released' the Nightmare Realm."
“Into Gravity Falls?" Sixer raised both eyebrows. "Interesting. And someone like you, of all people, didn't consider the consequences of that action?"
"The Nightmare Realm is extinct, I know." Bill stared at the ceiling, raising a hand. His powers were returning, he could feel it... His hand dropped limply to his eye. He peered at Sixer, who had seen everything.
"But other than that, there are no consequences."
"You're sick, Bill."
"I've been to all sorts of therapists and they've all told me the same thing."
"For once I'm not alluding to your 'mastermind'."
Bill rolled his eye and sank into the sofa. "It's time for my proposal."
Silence. Bill gathered his strength. Thinking had become a difficult proposition. "If you can fix what's wrong with me, I will spare you and your family."
Sixer's expression turned serious, but Bill was not pleased. Tension was in the air. This was their only chance to come to some common ground.

"You don't have any of them."
"I have... Mabel." He almost said Shooting Star, but that would only have made him look unserious. To prove the seriousness, he pointed with a glance at the bubble in which he held Shooting Star.
Sixer must have seen it too from his position.
The chains rustled, "What have you done to her!"
"Chill your bones. She's safe in there." Bill grinned."But the question is for how long."
"Your powers..."
"They still work. Quite well, in fact. Even if it kills me, I won't hesitate to rip her to shreds. And Pine… eh, Dipper, I will find him as well."
"You can barely move, Cipher."
"And your brother." Bill turned his head towards him, "I'll find him and kill him too."
With that he sent an ice-cold shiver down Sixer's spine. One to zero for Bill.

"Surprisingly, he seems to mean something to you. But wasn’t he the one interrupting our little showdown back then?"
"Leave my family out of this, Bill..."
"I'm not asking for the impossible. You solve my problem, and I won't kill your loved ones. So, do we have a deal?"
"I'm not making a deal with you."
Bill could guess why. Or what possibility there would be in a handshake and why Sixer was against it.

"Fine. The distance makes it impossible anyway. But what's said is set in stone."
Regeneration took place as long as Bill didn't move. But as soon as he made the slightest effort, the healing stopped and the pain returned with a terrible intensity. He could not rule a world like this.
Bill held his breath and released Sixer from the chains with a snap of his fingers. Just as the ironwork broke, his insides seemed to break. Twenty times. As he rolled in the sofa, he felt as if he were pressed into shards. He wanted to scream, but he had Sixer in front of him. And there was no way he was going to pretend to be weak in front of his enemy.
"Stay where you are." Bill drew a circle that prevented Sixer from getting too close. He also blocked the stairs, windows and the doors. 'Just to be safe' was understood without words.

"So, what's wrong with me?", Bill straightened up and leaned back as if he'd done some heavy lifting. His gaze was more alert than ever.
"I have a hunch, but..." Sixer raised his hand to reassure him, "I can only confirm it when I see it up close."
"I'll cut your skin up if you try any tricks."
"That would be stupid because you'd be killing your only informant."

One to one for Bill.
With an exasperated groan, Bill released the barrier between himself and Sixer.

Chapter Text

Tremendous tension shook, sparkled, and crackled between the few centimetres that separated them. Below them, the quaking and roars of the party. Above them, the flutter of flying eyeballs, the screaming of desperate people and the crazy apocalyptic atmosphere that Bill should have enjoyed, but he could not.
Sixer stood before him like a huge beast. Probably the perspective, Bill thought, despising having to look up at him. The scientist seemes more confident and, despite the burn marks on his body, invulnerable. His worn lab coat fluttered like bat wings ready to take flight at any moment, but his eyes lit up in determination, surpassing his greatest fear, fighting a fair battle.  

"When did this start? How did it happen?" Sixer's expression reminded Bill of a quack who could talk better than he could help. "Better you show yourself cooperative, Cipher."
Bill growled, breaking his silence. "There was no exact event or something. It hit me out of nowhere."
“Out of nowhere?” Sixer narrowed his eyebrow in the most confusing way.
"Could have missed the beginning", Bill hissed.
"You mean, ignored."
Bill glared at him, "I missed it."

"So, you ignored the symptoms, I see."
Was this freak even listening to him?
"And what exactly are the symptoms of your… eh, condition?"
"Do you have a clue, now or what?"
With furious glances, they agreed that cooperation had worked better for lengths back then.
Back then, that left a bitter aftertaste for both of them.

When Sixer put a hand on the triangle’s side, Bill jerked away and chastised him with a mini flame.
Sixer shook his hand as if he had just burned it, but that comparison was really unnecessary. "You're usually cooler."
"And you've had your phobia of contact, Sixer."
"I have a name, Cipher."
"We all have one, but isn’t that just lame?"
"You're beyond help."
“Well, well, the unlucky you has to help me though."
“There is no more helping.” Sixer shook his head and stepped back. His face shadowed. "You're going to die, Cipher."
"Oh, death threats at..." He looked at the stopped town hall clock, "infinite o’ clock. You should have told me earlier."
"Bill, you're going to die." There was no anger in Sixer’s voice, just coldness and bitterness.
Bill grinned at him, but the expression of the man did not change.
"I saw through your little lie, Sixer. I said no tricks."
Sixer put his hands in his coat pocket, "Will you tell yourself that to the end?"
"That I won’t die? Of course, I will say that endlessly.” Bill laughed. "It's the truth, after all. You really think I'm that easy to beat, Ford?"
The nickname was odd enough, but the first name triggered a familiarity that sent an ice-cold shiver down Sixer's arms.

"Did you really think I was going to die over a little illness? You thought, I didn't see through what you did to me on that day?" Bill laughed and a strange silence followed, filling the air with something poisonous. " I didn't know you taught yourself curses over those thirty years..."
"Bill, what are you talking about?"
"Don't think I'm naive. You did this to me. But you're not going to get away with it."
"I didn't do anything to you... Bill, you're talking at a fever pitch!"
Bill arose. Maybe he was delirious. Maybe Sixer wanted him to believe that.

Bill gathered his energy in his hands and put his enemy in chains. Not iron chains, but magic chains that not only tugged hard on Sixer's body, but on his powers as well.
"Listen to me. If you keep this up, you will die...", Sixer tried to remain calm as long as the panic did not take over. But fear flashed in his eyes. It was Bill's driving force. His favourite doll to play with.
"You will die first. I will drag you to your death."

"Bill!", Sixer grabbed Bill's hand and they both shuddered. The touch was foreign, strange. Like reaching for a relative's hand but catching the wrong hand. Now one was confronted with a stranger who was hurt and exceedingly disappointed by the confusion.
"Let me go!", Bill thundered him against the wall. His magic flickered like a light bulb with the wire burnt out.
"Get a hold of yourself!" yelled Sixer. "You're crazy. You're out of your mind. You're going to drag us all down!"
"Tell me something I don't know!”

"Ford!" a voice shattered the silence between them. The two looked towards the door, behind whose barrier a familiar cap appeared. Pine Tree.  
Bill held his head, staggered back, fell onto the sofa. The barriers around him shattered into a thousand shards. The shrill sound forced the Pines to cover their ears. Bill's head exploded and there was nothing he could do about it.
"Bill!"
He ignored Pine Tree's angry yell or Sixer warning his nephew. Pain bored through his skull and tore him apart from the inside and dismembered what was left of him.
He put himself back together. It was like a curse that forced him to survive this. Only to relive it all over again. Again and again. A thousand deaths and none were successful.

"What’s with him, Gruncle Ford?", Pine Tree whispered.
"Bill's magic is unstable. If we're lucky, he'll wipe himself out."
"And if we're not lucky?"
"I don't know, Dipper. I don't know."
They had no luck. Bill got himself on the sofa, panting. He clawed at the leather, breathing heavily, coughing. A sneeze flung him into the back of the furniture. Opening his eye, he saw the Pines through a wet haze. He wiped the phlegm away and floated up to retain some dignity. He fell back.

"This is certainly not how you envisioned your crazy apocalypse!", Pine Tree seemed to get cocky.
"Dipper." Sixer put a hand on his nephew's shoulder and stepped up to Bill, facing him calm and collected. "Asking you this is certainly stupid, but would you rather give up? We'll find a way to get you back and then..."
"No!" cried Bill. "I've been planning this for years. Trillions of years. You have no idea how much effort it took me. How much time I invested. How many people I had to manipulate to do this!"
His reasoning did not seem to convince them. That was not even his purpose. He merely wanted to get rid of the heavy burden that weighted him down for years.

"I've wasted millions of years trying to find a new home. One that isn't flat and inhabited by fools. One, where the hierarchy is not decided from birth! A world with rules to break. A world where I can do what I want without being stopped. In which I can rule. Where I can be a king. Where I lead people who are worthy to follow me."

"Bill."
"You humans have no idea what it's like to be trapped in a two-dimensional world!"
"Well actually..." began Sixer, but no one wanted to hear about his 'amazing' experience in the two-dimensional world. (He was stuck with his head in the world and was attacked by an army of sharp-edged shapes).
"You have everything you want. You can do whatever you want. No one tells you who to be!"
"Bill..."
"And it's not just me! The monsters who have gathered here also have their motivation. Most of them are refugees. Most have fought for their lives. Others have lost their homes..."

Bill fell silent and wiped away the liquid dripping from his eye. He blamed it on the sniffles but he believed there was more to it than a simple illness. But feelings had been foreign to him for years. Or at least that feeling.
"Bill, undo this," Sixer's face was full of hopes Bill did not want to see. He turned away, not wanting to endure the sight any longer.
"I was free when I deliberated my home dimension. In the end, the dimension consisted of nothing but losers who had no opinion of even the weather or politics. The only thing that mattered to them was status. Squares are first class, triangles are second class. The base of a pyramid, to put it metaphorically."
He swallowed the bitter taste. How long had it been since he'd told anyone about it?

"But I was different. I didn't fit in with them. I had ideas that no one took seriously. They called me 'crazy'. Yes, I was crazy in a world that was made of straight stripes."
The two seemed to understand him. Their eyes were wide, filled with a pain that was similar to his. They were outsiders too. They knew the ostracism that came with being a 'freak'. They knew what it was like to have society push you aside. Loneliness and diminished self-confidence were the consequences.

"I didn't believe I could make a difference. But one day..." Bill smiled at the memory. It was not a pleasant one, but the smile numbed the pain, "a fire suddenly destroyed the dimension. I was the only one to survive. A miracle."
"You destroyed it, Bill," Sixer stated.
"It was an arsonist." Bill's eye went wide and filled with a liquid that dried out his skin like salt. He stared at the liquid on his hands and saw himself in the drops. What had he become? A monster? A madman? A maniac?
Would it have made any difference if he had been like the rest?

"Bill, I heard what had happened back then. Your hunger for power caused you to destroy your home dimension, along with your family and everyone you knew."
"It wasn't my fault!", Bill shot fire into the room with a dismissive wave of his hand. Sixer and Pine Tree recoiled from it.
"Someone started a fire. Someone..." Bill stared at his reflection in the flames and saw the criminal of this evil deed. Bill loathed the person who had destroyed his home.

Blame the arson for the fire
...
Misses home and can't return

'No matter how much you reach out for something, you will never reach it' reminded him of how the lost dimension could not be retrieved. There was no possibility. No chance. No device that could have restored it....
Except... A portal.
And even then, he would have needed a three-dimensional body to create the new dimension.
But it wouldn't have been the same dimension he had once loved and hated.
It would have been a new, better world. One in which everyone had equal rights, in which being different ruled, not being normal. One in which the boundaries would not be set by order, but by everyone themselves.
Freedom. Unlimited possibilities. Infinite power.
That was all Bill wanted.
He had never wanted more than that.

Chapter Text

And now here he was at the end of this desert road he had walked along for years. The room was in shambles, flames spreading like a forest fire. His paradise was nothing more than a fragile flurry of fantasy, no better than Mabeland.
Bill floated down, got down on his knees and put his hands over his eye, trying to get a hang on himself, but there was no room for all the feelings that he had piled over, repressed, and lied away all those long years. The truth hurt and he knew it. From the first lie, he knew it. It hurt and it damaged and it ripped his chest and it grounded him and he hated the feeling of being broken. He screamed. And he shrieked. And he said goodbye to his dignity, which flew away like a bird set free. What was left was what he had been from the very beginning: a second-rate triangle that had not found its place in the world.
And a madman who refused to take his rightful place in a society that asked the impossible of him.

He didn't want to be crazy or a king or a ruler or the bad guy. He wanted to be normal. Do normal things. Go on normal adventures. Have normal friends. Live a normal life.
Have a normal family. Not a burnt one, not one that had dissolved into non-existence. A real one that he could always return to when he was looking for someone who accepted him the way he was and not as he was supposed to be.

Bill did not hope to be understood. He considered it a miracle that neither Sixer nor Pine Tree had thought of attacking him, even though thousands of opportunities had presented themselves in... indeterminate minutes.
"Bill, have you calmed down?" Sixer finally asked.
Bill did not look up to him, "I'm not going to give up. This is the world I want. This is the world I should have been born into."
"You want to live in this mess, seriously, Bill?", Pine Tree must have thought Bill was insane. Spoiler: He was.
"Why aren't you happy?" Bill repeated the question even louder, "Why aren't you all happy?"
"Are you happy?"
Good question from Pine Tree.
Bill fell silent.

"If Mabel was here, maybe we could negotiate peace and work together to find a solution”, Sixer thought out loud.

Bill laughed, "Ridiculous," and turned to the window. A glance at Mabel's bubble. Silence.
He thought over it.
Guess the deal breaks up like a bubble. He laughed at the unintentional pun and snapped his fingers. There was a spark and the chains around the bubble broke. Shooting Star appeared in the middle of the room.
Sixer and Pine Tree stared at Bill as if he was acting crazy.
"What is it?" he snapped back.

Still a little stiff as a board, the family stood there, looking at each other, before the twins threw themselves into an awkward sibling hug. Sixer stepped up to him. "Bill, I hate you and that's not going to change."
"I know." Bill didn't see through what he expected from Sixer. A lecture? A moral talk? Or a slap in the face?
"But if you want to change your ways, I mean, if you want to undo this, then you have my support."
"Is that a deal?"
Sixer rolled his eyes.
Didn't seem like it.
Bill shrugged, "It was worth a shot."

"Bill, don't you want to get on the good side?"
What had he been thinking again by freeing Shooting Star?
She rushed up to him and pushed him down on the sofa. If he hadn't been in such pain, he would have thundered her against the wall or thrown her out of the pyramid or murdered her.
Sixer and Pine Tree stared at him as if they could read his mind. But with the same knowledge that he could not put his mental project into action, they decided not to intervene.
"You may be a weirdo, but you have charm and eh... your qualities."
Wreaking havoc, creating the worst nightmares and breaking interdimensional rules? Is that what Shooting Star was talking about?

"I never said that I was going to give up Weirdmageddon" Bill clarified. He pushed Shooting Star an arm's width away and looked at the other two Pines.
"And do you even have a clue on how to pull the strangeness out of this world anyway? The Nightmare Realm and Gravity Falls are connected."
"Through you, they are connected" Sixer corrected him.

"Fool." Bill rolled his eye. "I'm not going to die if this is part of your 'genius' master plan."
He looked away, staring at the leather of the sofa, scratching over the rough surface until a soft springy core appeared. "How long do I have?"

Bill looked up. The twins looked first at him and then at their great-uncle. They did not know what had been discussed; that this disease would possibly kill him. And that if it hadn't been for the vulnerability caused by the disease, he would never have opened up to his enemies.
He would have gone through with Weirdmageddon until his bitter fall.
Sixer pushed his lips back and forth and pressed his thumbs together. He always did that when he was weighing whether to trust someone with a secret or not.

"There's only one way you're going to survive this, Bill." Sixer grinned and Bill guessed where this was heading. "If you give up Gravity Falls and make a decent effort, I will..."
His niece interrupted him, "…we will…."
“…help you, Bill," Pine Tree finished his great-uncle's sentence.
The Pines family stepped forward, warm expressions on their faces.

Bill lowered his glance, tracing circles over the leather skin with his fingers and sighing. He was in pain and he did not have the strength to rule Gravity Falls. He had no desire for 'eternal torment' or the title of 'King of Chaos' or world domination. On the other hand, this was his dream, his now achieved reality, the fruits of his years of labour.

But if there was any other way.... 

Bill looked up and got himself lost in the warm-hearted looks that were full of gentleness and confidence. Bill had not thought for a second that there were people who would help him or even understand him.
No. He would not call it understanding. These people had their goal: Saving their dimension. And they played all their cards to achieve it.
And he?
He had the same goal. Only a different path led him there. One that had forced him to destroy everything that stood in his way. But now that he saw that perhaps there was a more harmless way – a  more normal way – to reach his goal, a light came to him. The same light that he had believed had gone out with his dimension back then.
It was hope.
Hope for a new, better world.

Chapter Text

"Even if," Bill grimaced, gritting his teeth and avoiding eye contact, "I can't stop this. I don't know how."
"You're an all-powerful, all-knowing being, of course you can..."
"Shooting Star! If I were powerful right now, you wouldn't be standing here." 
The Pines gulped. Bill drummed on the leather. When would relief come from the pounding that was driving him crazy? 
"You created this, after all. Then surely there's a way..."
"Pine Tree. Try separating blood from a corpse after a murder."
The Pines looked at him, disturbed. No sense of metaphor, Bill shook his head, "Once you put milk in coffee, the milk stays in."
"So, you're telling us that there is no way to separate the dimensions?"
Bill grinned. "A hundred points to you, Sixer."

Pine Tree groaned, "Great. This has totally moved us forward. We're back to square one! Why did you have to start this mess anyways?"
Bill stared at him. Stared at him longer. Stared at him for a deadly long time.
Pine Tree stumbled back and raised his hands defensively, "Sorry, but really. I’ve imagined the end of summer differently."
"So did I," Shooting Star gave him a hurt look.
Oh right, there was something like a fight between them. Bill smirked. The reason for Weirdmageddon.

He would have enjoyed it if his headache hadn’t driven him mad. The two argued and shouted and called each other names. And neither of them managed to stay remotely quiet about it.
"Dipper! Mabel! Is this really the time for a fight?", Sixer intervened, but he had always been miserable with children.
Maybe because he'd never been a kid himself, Bill thought, grinning a little more. It was the only healing thing in this situation, in which pain crawled over his body like fire ants, gradually paralysing him. Regeneration was not healing. In fact, by now he believed it was draining him of even more energy, which meant he was in even more pain. And it was getting worse by the second.

"Summer isn't over yet. Time stands still," Bill reminded them. The two stopped abruptly and turned to him, each one with their own worries.
"True enough. We should concentrate on this for now”, Pine Tree said.
"Woah, you sound awful, Bill. Are you all right?", at least one of them cared, even if it was only Shooting Star.
"Do I look like it?", Bill groaned, sinking into the leather. Even his dramatic act was an understatement. He felt as if a whole army of time travellers had trampled him, then they'd gone back in time and done it again. A million times. At least.
That pain had forced him to give up for a reason.

"Naww, you can be as cute as a kitten when you're sick."
Bill had no idea if the pitch Shooting Star was unhealthy for her or just hazardous to his own health. To make it even worse, she buzzed around him like an annoying fly, ignoring her brother's shouts that Bill was dangerous to be around.
Surely, she is the danger here!

Shooting Star slapped something on his forehead. It was wet, cold and sticky. Bill grumbled.
"It's a cooling patch with a polar bear on front" she explained with an innocent smile. "You're pretty hot, but not the good hot... So, I thought..."
Bill raised his hand, he already understood. He didn't need any elaboration on how miserable his condition was. His body pointed it out to him enough. She stepped back as if she understood and returned to the others.

"Bill, we have to do something." Sixer's voice sounded serious, but Bill took it as a joke. Do something? Yeah. With this body of his? Nope.
"Please take this seriously, Cipher."
"I think it's painful hilarious."
Sixer inhaled and exhaled audibly. Oh, he wasn't the only one whose nerves were on edge. Bill was just too tired to get properly annoyed.
"Okay, Cipher. End this mess. I know you can at least do that."
"End the party?" Bill pushed the air out of himself, "Party pooper."
Shooting Star's voice took on that dangerous high tone again, "A party!? Where is it? I want to be in it!"

"Mabel, this is serious!"
"Pfft, Dipper, we're on the verge of stopping the apocalypse by making peace with a three-sided monster. A party is the least we can have."
Bill really liked Shooting Star the best.
"But not while the world is ending!"
"There's a party for every occasion." Bill said simple and enjoyed Sixer’s confused look.

"Fine, fine." Bill gathered what little he had manufactured of his powers and floated up. He staggered but propped himself against the sofa instead of letting himself fall. "I'll see what I can do. But the party's far from over."
Pine Tree sighed, "Bill, do you need any help?"
"Did you say something, tree in the corner?"
But his haughtiness punished him. Bill bumped the corner of the fireplace and tumbled eye-forward onto the carpeted floor. Pine Tree giggled like a girl and Shooting Star, the sweetheart, helped him up... and took him in her arms like a cuddly toy.
"Let go of me!" hissed Bill, kicking, but the grip was strong... or he was just too weak. And behind them an image exploded. The expression of Bill's rage.

"Careful, Mabel. Bill is still dangerous." But even Sixer couldn't help smiling.
Bill grumbled. This was not how he had imagined world conquest. He was so weak. Dead tired. Powerless. Lying in the arms of the enemy. It could hardly have been worse.
Thinking that, it only got worse.
As they descended the stairs to the party hall, screams that could mean nothing good boomed out at them. Shooting Star ran ahead with him... Her quick steps shook him like a shaker. If he were a smoothie fruit, he would now have shouted: 'Help! Help!'
But he was a Cipher and he would be able to stand the little bit of nausea. On the other hand... If this sickness didn't kill him, Shooting Stars endless energy would.

Chapter Text

When Bill saw who the cause of this commotion was, he rolled his eye, "Time baby."
The oversized baby had already looked around for him and when it spotted him, it made a face as if its bottle had been taken away. 
Bill pushed himself out of Shooting Star's arms and hovered a few inches from her. With one hand he braced himself against the wall. Soon he was leaning his whole body against it. 
"Bill Cipher, you have violated every possible law of time and space. If you continue like this, it could wipe out all existence. Surrender now, or prepare for my tantrum." 
"Pfft, a tantrum," Bill made no bones about it and played it cool. All the monsters looked at him, believed in him, needed him. And just because of a semi-strong weakness, he would not neglect his duty to them. 
"Whatever should I do about it?" He looked around but expected no answer from anyone. He straightened up, ignored the pain and lied to himself that he had enough strength. It was working. "How about..." 

Bill had no idea what the axolotl he was doing. He had formed his hand into a pistol and from his finger shot a beam strong enough to extinguish Time Baby, one of the most powerful beings in this world. Without a trace. It was – bang – just gone. 
Like his dimension. 
Bill had a very queasy feeling. He was about to get sick. 
"What the! Bill, did you just destroyed Time…" Sixer's disbelief must have reached peak levels, but then he spoke no further. Bill recognised the brown tip of a familiar lab coat beside him and gritted his teeth. This was not what Sixer was supposed to see. This was... humiliating.  

Shooting Star rushed to his side, "Bill, is everything al..." 
He pushed her away and threw up another time. A black liquid left his eye and splashed onto his hand, than ran through his fingers like sand and, as it flowed downwards, left a hole in the floor. Like a corrosive acid. 
His eye burned in the same way as if lemon juice had been squirted into it. It watered and the salty liquid mixed with the black stuff flowed over him. A burning wound stretched down from his eye to his lower side.  He shook his hands free of the stuff before it would cause any more harm. 
"You really shouldn't use your powers anymore."
"Tell me something I don’t know, Sixer."

Bill was lucky that the sudden extinction of Time Baby had caused so much revolt that none of the monsters had noticed his little 'accident'. It would have been fatal if they had seen him in such a miserable state. His reputation would have been non-existent. 
Not that he looked like he was in great shape right now. Okay, he was still three-sided, but wounds stretched across his body and his eye was burning – Certainly it had turned red. Plus, there was this pained expression he could no longer hide since the pain had taken control over him. It was a miracle that he had forgotten it for that brief moment. 
The hatred was all the greater when the pain returned with painful intensity.

"Guys, listen up everyone”, one of the monsters shouted.
Bill couldn't help being stunned. 
"Bill just defeated Time Baby!" 
"Just like that. He's great!" 
"I've known that since he saved me from the bandits that time!" 
"Even though everyone says he's a criminal, I think he's a hero. He did so much for us, he never gave up on us..." 
"Invincible. Unpredictable. Invulnerable. He really is how I imagined someone as a ruler." 

"I can't do this..." muttered Bill, sinking to the ground. Behind a wall, so that no one but the Pines saw him. 
"Nawww," Shooting Star plopped down beside him. 
Pine Tree peeked around the corner and cast a sceptical look back at Bill, "You and a hero? You just wiped someone out and the monsters..." He blinked in disbelief, "I don't think I want to understand that logic." 
Sixer chastised him with an evil glare, "You will always be a criminal, Cipher," before examining the strange stuff that Bill had thrown up. 
Maybe Bill should have warned him that his vomit was almost certainly radioactive, contaminated and could cut off one’s hand. But he was not that nice. 

Unfortunately, Sixer was smart enough not to touch the stuff, only looking at it.
"It’s something reminding me of the Nightmare Realm," Sixer muttered, drawing air through his nose. He grimaced, "Smells like it, too." 
"You're crazy, Sixer," Bill would have rolled his eye if the mere thought had not hurt so terribly. 
"Says the one who just destroyed Time Baby in one fell swoop." 
And here they were back to their good old word fights. Bill was not up for it and let Sixer have the win. Of course, he would get back at him for it eventually. Maybe, when he was feeling better. 

But with the appearance of Time Baby, the problems had only begun. 
"Guys, I think humans have crept in here...", Teeth had discovered them. 
Not good… Bill thought, I look like a vomiting banana.
He straightened his bow tie, straightened his top hat and floated up. He ripped the cooling patch off his forehead, much to Shooting Star's protest, and welcomed his friend with open arms.
"Teeth, great to meet you. There's been a change of plans." 
"Why are there humans, Bill?", Teeth didn't look at him, but looked past him.
Bill cleared his throat, "I'll explain in a minute. Get everyone here" 
Teeth gritted his teeth, "What's wrong with your voice?" 
Oh, he had some explaining to do. Fortunately, Teeth did not ask another question after that and gathered everyone around the throne. There were whispers while Bill was not even hovering on the scene.

Bill glanced at Sixer. Sixer glanced back. Their conservations were brief and incomprehensible to the outsiders. Possibly Bill had not even read the look in full. He was too busy thinking of the words he wanted to present to the monsters. He needed reasons. He needed agreements. He needed... a lot of courage. 
Bill took a deep breath. Breathed out. Floated over to them. Strived not to stagger. A difficult thing to do when the ground was making waves and the walls were advancing. Not staggering was an endeavour that apparently failed, for the monsters looked at him with glances that were not directed at a ruler, but at a ghost. 
Bill settled down on the throne of stone humans, cleared his throat, coughed and began to speak, "Monsters, friends..." Again he spared the full greeting. His head was pounding. Words were hard to find, "There is something I must confess to you." 
He paused, during which expectations rose. He could feel it, how the general mood swung up but moved on a thin wire. A breeze could kill the mood, start a riot or a panic. 

"It's nothing dramatic," Bill spoke, leaning back. He made it sound carefree, though the serious tone expressed something quite different, "But there's a problem with my body." He laughed lightly to make it sound like a joke, but not even he took it as a joke and his laughter died away, "Besides, I have a new, better goal to reach." 
The change came spontaneously and Bill cursed himself for not being able to bring order to his thoughts. His mind was a disaster even when he was healthy.
"For years we fought to have our own dimension where we could do anything we wanted. For years we wanted to show the world that we were different, that we were dangerous, that it was ours and ours alone. But..." 

Bill straightened up and seemed to have awakened to new strength. All fatigue and hoarseness was gone from his voice, "This is not the dimension I have chosen for our dreams and desires. Right now, I am in search of a much better one, one that will be ours forever. One that is truly built on our goals." 
"But Bill, this dimension is great!"
"There are plenty of folks to eat here. And endless fun." 
"This is the world you, no we, have dreamed of." 

"Exactly." Bill picked up on Pyronica's words, "This is a world that you are happy with, that you like, that is your paradise. But it's not my world or my paradise."
Horror rose up, as if he had shared the greatest secret of the multiverse with them. He bathed in this sobering response for a moment before rising, "Friends, I will work on a way to make the world better for us. And until then, don’t worry and enjoy the party." 
It did not sound like an appeal, it sounded like the end of the party. No one turned to celebrate. No one even touched a cocktail. No one turned up the music. They stared at Bill. Dozens of pairs of eyes, focused only on him. Millions of monster faces showed confusion. Disappointment. Humility. Anger. Every single emotion was reflected somewhere. 

Chapter Text

Bill clenched his hands into fists, controlling himself. He opened his hands again. Flames blazed.
"Listen, we haven't escaped the Nightmare Realm yet. This dimension is unstable and won't last long. But don't worry, I'll take care of it. Won’t let something stupid like that spoil the party."
With that, he had finally broken the rigidity of the monsters, or triggered it in the first place. The fire in his hands struck flames, scorching him. They burned his skin, melted his eye. Regeneration held against it, but it was a struggle. Pain against pain.
And frankly, it was too fierce for him to hide.
He wanted the whole world to see how much he was suffering.

Simple-minded. Stupid. Naïve. Idiotic. Damn, this shouldn't have happened... This....
Bill screamed and sank to the middle of the throne, holding his head and doubling over. A few blinks later there were hands on him. One on his back. Another at his side. Someone was holding his hand. Someone else stroked his head – A strange feeling. Another put something cold on his eye.
When he could see again, all the monsters had gathered around him.

"Forgive us, Bill, for not seeing this," Pyronica said. She was also the one holding his hand. Hers was warm and comfortable. His had to be uncomfortably hot.
"Yes, we were all having such fun that we didn't even notice your feelings," Teeth was at his side, his head lowered.
"Feelings," Bill laughed out, indicating a roll of his eye, "Let's just call it sensations... impressions."
Hectorgon laughed in his deep voice, "We're in if you want to change the world."
"Yes, we'll do anything you want!"
"We'll follow you to the ends of the earth and beyond!"
"I'm sure you know what's best for us."

Bill loved his monster friends. They were a lot easier to convince than... those humans over there. Pine Tree, Shooting Star and Sixer had finally come out of their hiding place, standing there as if ordered and not picked up, feeling even more lost than he did. Great.
"Bill, who are these people?" whispered Teeth.
Bill announced it extra loudly, "Oh, they're just my dolls helping me out a bit."

"Cipher!" hissed Sixer. All attention was on him. Angry monster eyes.
'Run, Sixer,' Bill would have told him if said scientist had not been on his side.
"Leave him." Bill signalled with a wave of his hand that the humans were harmless. Sixer stepped closer unabashedly. First jumping off the tower, then provoking him, now running towards a mob of angry monsters... Sixer was truly and maaaagically attracted to death.
"We're not your puppets, Bill."
Oh, how he had missed that spiteful tone. If he were in a better mood, he would have laughed at that. But oh horror, the pain was restricting him terribly.

"More or less, you are my puppets." He grinned. "We're playing 'Dream Life', Sixer, and I'm your God."
The monsters roared and laughed. Bill was amused at the delicious expression on Sixer's face. Glances flew between him and Sixer, but he was too tired to read them.

He was tired... He only realised that when he let out a long yawn. His monster friends let go of him, brought him a cocktail and a glass of water and a blanket and whatnot that was helpful in some way.
Shooting Star mingled right up front. Bill could not deny it: Those cooling patches were genius. And she knew how to care and make herself popular. She made friends with the monsters faster than a monster tamer.
Understandably, Bill thought, and grinned as Shooting Star held out a glass to him.

"Bill, we had a deal," both Sixer and Pine Tree remained aloof, looking up at him with scowls.
He rolled his eye, "Give me a little break. I'm at the end of my rope. We'll see after that."
The two seemed unconvinced, but he did not care. Of course, if he regained his powers, it would be fatal for the Pines. But Bill did not believe himself that the pain would subside with a little rest. Of course, he had also rested during his preparations and the result was before him.

He should have been given more power, but instead he sat here on his throne, barely able to move. Let alone was he able to take a step towards the new world. He needed that little bit of power that gave him the peace to reach his new goal.
And he had thousands around him striving for the same goal. And a new way to reach it.
Eventually the two gave up, came to terms with the fact that there was nothing they could do right now and sat down on the floor. They made their own plans and consulted. A couple of monsters were watching them.

“Bill, you're a hero to these monsters," Shooting Star's whisper surprised him. Her voice sounded soft, but she spoke with the seriousness necessary to avoid seeming like a runaway elf. "I would like to forget what you did to my Gronkel, my brother and me. I would like to do that. I want to help you create your new, better world. I really do."
She glanced briefly at her family, as if afraid of being caught. She lowered her gaze and allowed emotions to take over. She was incredibly bad at hiding sadness, but Bill knew that before.

"But it's wrong, what you did. All those things. You almost let Giddeon have the Shack, you drove my brother mad, and Ford..." She shook her head, and damn it, she only knew half the things Bill had done to Sixer, "I don't know what you did, but he was determined to beat you. And me..." She clawed her hand into her jumper, creasing a fold, "Me you fooled. Tell me, how can I ever forgive you?"
Tears rained down. Drops fell on the crease and slid down it, leaving a glisten. It was beautiful and sad at the same time.

Shooting Star's question was one Bill could not answer. Although he had asked himself the question so many times, although he should have known the answer.
Remorse.
But he had never felt anything like it. Maybe he had been born without it, maybe he had lied it away. Maybe it simply did not exist. (Bill was convinced that feelings were man-made and had no 'real' value).
"Tell me how, how Bill!" Sadness turned to despair. He did not have the strength to deal with it.
"Shooting Star, I don't know," it came out harsher than he expected. And far too honest.
Damn. He was getting worse at lying.

"I have no idea how anyone would forgive an arsonist or a dimension destroyer or a murderer or a madman for what he did. I hate the one who had destroyed my home dimension, from the bottom of my heart. I could not, no, I cannot forgive him. Nor do I know how you could ever forgive this person you mentioned when not even I can."

Perhaps he was being too harsh with her. Shooting Star's expression changed to one Bill could not interpret. Her eyes were twinkling because of sadness, but this was a different sadness. One that was not an expression of her own feelings, but one that reflected someone else's. He saw himself in those hazel eyes, feeling as lost as she did. But he was even deeper in the blackness that engulfed him without remorse.
Her lips moved, forming words that sounded distant.
And then hit with full force, "You hate yourself."

Her words sounded broken. As if they were meant to shatter his insides and tear down the walls he had built. They tore the thin covering off his body and left him like a heap of misery.
"I never said anything like that," Bill tried - in vain - to pick up the pieces of himself. But somehow... he failed to repair the image that had been shattered since Shooting Star's words hit him. He saw the murderer, the arsonist, the dimensional destroyer... in the reflection of his own tears.

"Bill..." Shooting Star wrapped both arms around him, pushing him to her body. It must have been something humans called a 'hug'. He had never felt such warmth. That good feeling... The feeling of not being alone, it was foreign to him and it was strange and weird... and he did not have any words for it. Tears were his answer to that, but it could just as easily have been the sniffles or some weirdness related to the apocalypse. It didn't have to be tears of sadness.

Who was he trying to fool? They were tears of sadness. He was sad. Admitting that hurt. It hurt more than the pain that coursed through his body. It cut deeper than an axe blow; destroyed more than it healed.
But the hug... It was a bit healing, if only momentary. Shooting Star broke away from him, stared at him, incredulous.
"Was that your first hug?"
Bill shrugged. He couldn't remember any other hug. But he was old. And maybe... Yes, maybe he had been hugged before…

A few minutes ago.

Chapter Text

Shooting Star took one of his hands, stroked her free one through her hair and licked her lips as if she had to prepare herself for the words, "I think I've found a way to forgive you."
"A way?"
She smiled, "But that will remain my secret."
Oh, great. He could not be angry with her, though. Everyone had their secret. He did too. He had many secrets.
Far too many.
Sometimes he himself even forgot who he was because too many secrets had formed him.

"Rest now, Bill," she said, stroking his head. It did not feel strange, it felt good. Whatever ‘good’ meant for him.
Funnily enough, he had not felt that way about Hectorgon’s touch, even though the latter had been his friend. Shooting Star was a stranger. He could no longer call her an 'enemy', but a 'friend' did not fit as a description.
Approach.
That described the state they were in. And Bill could not deny that the state pleased him.
His relationship with Sixer had also begun with approach as well. He thought about it as he gradually fell into a strange sleep.

He remained himself how all of it began. How boring his life had been before this freak had first set foot on Gravity Falls' soil. How he crept into its dreams as the exhausted scientist rested against a birch tree. How Bill enumerated to him the endless possibilities their collaboration would bring. He remembered clearly how Sixer called him a 'muse'. Granted, Bill did not like the term, but Sixer had made him love this new nickname.

A muse was someone who inspired others and allowed them to create. For the monsters he was the driving force and he had also helped Sixer to many creative inventions. That their collaborations were shrouded in shadows of distrust… Bill perhaps felt a little sorry for him in retrospect... What was he saying? That idiot deserved to be exploited for his plans. The chess games with him meant nothing to Bill, just as little as the tea-drinking, the highly interesting conversations and discussions, the exchanges of words, the idiosyncrasy of this man....

What was his name again? Not Sixer, not Sixer, but... Stanford Pines. Bill wanted to remember the name, even though he was sure he would not mouth it. He had become too used to 'Sixer'. The nickname was short and sweet. And it suited a six-fingered freak who was not so different from him.

When Bill opened his eye again, it was Stanford, no, Sixer, holding a paper in front of his nose.
"With this we can draw the energy of the Nightmare Realm from Gravity Falls."
Bill grumbled. He was only just awake and already this idiot came crawling up like a little kid and presented him a drawing that looked half like a quantum destabiliser and half like... something. Bill had no idea what those circles and dashes were supposed to represent.

"I'd just like to test it with one of your weirdness bubbles first."
Ooooooh, those egg-shaped circles were supposed to be bubbles. Sixer’s drawing skills had really deteriorated sensationally over the years. (Not surprising when you have been hanging around the multiverse for thirty years).
Sixer seemed to be able to read his mind and pulled an annoyed face accordingly, "It's just a quick sketch, Bill. Besides, Mabel helped me with it."

"She got the talent from you." Bill grinned, snatching the paper from his hand and examining it through what little light the triangular chandelier emitted, "Sensational thought, Sixer, but where are you going to get the parts?"
"I thought you might..."
"I might do what?..."
"You're the most powerful being right now, Bill."
Bill choked on his laughter and coughed. "In my dreams, yes I was. Wake up, reality is different!"
Bill spread his arms to indicate the many wounds that had not regenerated. To be honest he had deliberately stopped regenerating so that the eternal battle, pain against pain would stop. He felt a minimal improvement. But it was so slight that it hardly made a difference. Besides, the wounds gave him the dangerous look of a pirate and the monsters seemed to like it.

"Then rest some more." The way Sixer stressed the word, as if he should not get more strength from rest, annoyed Bill.
Bill emphasised each word individually, "It's not getting better!"
"That doesn't make any sense." Sixer arched an eyebrow and rubbed his hands together as if to expose a lie.
"Look around, and name one thing that seems to make sense to you right now."
Sixer dropped his hands in defeat. Two to one.
Maybe Bill would win against him after all.

"Ah, Bill, you're awake!", Shooting Star pushed past her Gronkel and held out a strange glass with an even stranger liquid. Little plastic dinosaurs floated in it.
Only the inscription 'danger of ingestion' was missing, otherwise it would have been a diabolically good drink to make his enemies suffocate in agony.
But... This highly dangerous poison was probably meant for him.
"You want to poison me?"
Shooting Star nodded, then realising her answer, and shook her head, "This is a cocktail prepared my way! The monsters said you liked that sort of thing."
"Your way?", Bill laughed lightly. He actually liked ‘her way’ of doing and thinking. Sugar-sweetly evil, she served her enemy a death potion with commendable sincerity. He would have to sic Shooting Star on the multiverse competition sometime.

Bill picked up the glass and drank it to excess, much to Pine Tree's shock and Shooting Star's delight, her eyes sparkling with excitement. Sixer's expression was the best. A mixture of 'you're out of your mind, Cipher' and 'even I wouldn't have dared'. And this from the man who challenged death three times.
"Sometimes you have to take chances, Sixer," Bill flicked the empty grass at him and stretched his limbs. "Ah, I feel great!"
That was possibly his imagination or the drugs that were in the stuff. (It had to be drugs, otherwise he could not have explained the sudden energy boost he experienced.)

Bill floated over to Pine Tree and flicked him on the tip of the nose, "Don't look at me like I'm crazy. I am."
Pine Tree ignored him and turned to his sister, "Mabel, what did you give him?”
Shooting Star shrugged, "Oh, I just added the dinosaurs."
Bill grinned over at his monster friends who gave him a thumbs up.
Bill tasted and waved his finger back and forth, "60% dimension substance, 20% tears of despair, 10% dream sand from the time baby himself, some DNA sugar, a pinch of monster snot and huh, is that cocoa?"
"Cocoa substitute," cried one of the monsters.
“Does its job just as fine!" Bill laughed and turned to Shooting Star, "Only the plastic content was a bit high. Won't do the digestion any good, but I'll probably be rid of this body by then."

Sixer and Pine Tree sighed to his amusement. Shooting Star laughed with him. The monsters did likewise. Bill floated up with the sketch and... ouch. Side stitches.
Hopefully just side stitches, Bill shook himself and held the plan in the air.
"You're really going to do this, Cipher?"
"Don't you want to, Sixer?", Bill grinned from behind the paper. Then he held out his hands like a wizard. Magic sparked, flames sprang up. It was good to feel that pleasant heat on the skin, not one that almost burned you down. And it was even better that something was finally working. Maybe he could take over Gravity Falls after all. Defeat the Pines. Conquer the world – No. The pain was boring semi-actively through his body and it was only because of the drink that the stitches were not cutting him.

"Here's your little machine," Bill tossed the Quantum Destabiliser 2.0 (or as Bill called it: Egg-shaped circle) into Sixer's hand. The man caught it. "Good catch."
Sixer eyed the gun from all sides, ran over the long slide at its side and took a firm grip on the magazine.
"And what is the catch?"
"You point that gun at me and you're dead."
With that threat, Sixer should be smart enough not to perish like Time Baby. On the other hand, Bill trusted the explorer with nothing, so he had something small prepared. Just in case anyone tried to break the agreement between them, of course.

Chapter Text

Bill flicked a weirdness bubble, barely bigger than a soap bubble, into the room. The monsters watched tensely from the edge. No one was thinking about a party or world destruction, or chaos any more. This was far more exciting! Like a raffle. And the grand prize was... A new, better dimension! 
They cheered, Bill blew the dust off his finger. Then he coughed. Shooting Star patted him on the back. What was that all about?  
And Pine Tree drew his circles around the bubble-like construct. Scepticism painted the most beautiful shadows on his face. 

"There's something wrong here, isn't there? Why are you doing all this, Bill?" 
"I stick to agreements, whether they are sealed by flames or by our stupid fates." 
"Stupid fates?", Shooting Star tilted his head so that Bill could hear it crack. 
"I would die sooner or later by the disease, you by the apocalypse. And to prevent that, we band together like all the nerds in history." Bill yawned, then grinned, "And then we fight again. That's how it works in this world." 
"So, you haven't given up on your ideals yet."
"Exactly, Sixer." 

The freak encircled the trigger of the pistol with his six fingers and let loose a concentrated blast at the bubble. The device exploded. Sixer crashed to the other end of the pyramid room, coughing from the dust that surrounded him. Half his lab coat disintegrated into ash. 
"Cipher!" 
Bill broke off his amused laughter, "Sorry, Sixer, something must have gone a liiiiittle wrong. Ha ha!" 
"You did that on purpose!" 
Bill put on his best poker face, "Nope." 
"Liar." 

"Loser." Bill took the plan into his hands and skimmed it with a sceptical look, "Half the variables are wrong. You're missing all the knowledge from your oh-so-awesome Parallel Fiddleford. You wouldn't even have managed the portal on your own, let alone have progressed this far in your research. I have yet to receive a thank you for that, Sixer." 
Sixer ground his teeth. A glorious sound in Bill’s non-existing ears. "Thank you for knowing and not telling me beforehand that the beam would half-roast me. Really, thank you!" 
"You're welcome, Sixer!" 

Bamm. And there was the blow from an iron fist he had not seen coming. Bill collapsed to the ground, rubbing his eye, hoping that one of his bawling monster friends was about to take revenge. But his monster friends were laughing. At him. 
Not with him. 
It was two to two and Bill tasted defeat. Or blood. Both seemed to have the same metallic rusty taste. 

Shooting Star stuck a patch on his eye. Dimensiontastic, now a slowly turning red strip obscured his vision. 
Bill heard Pine Tree laugh and grumbled, "I'll be the last laughing..." 
"You deserved it, Cipher," Sixer hissed, wiping the blood from his knuckles. He knocked the ashes off his lab coat, straightened his dishevelled hair and stepped closer. Bill growled for him not to get any closer. 

"Don't push it too far, Cipher, or it'll lead to your fall." 
Nice prediction, Bill staggered as the heaviness forced him to the ground. He yanked the band-aid away and spat blood. 
"Don't come any closer." Bill drew a circle of fire as Sixer disregarded his warning. 
Shooting Star ran at him and with a sigh he put out the flames. 
"You’re okay?" 
"I need more of that juice." 
"Mabel, why are you helping this demon?" 
"Pine Tree, shut up." 
Bill turned to Shooting Star with a hopeful look, "Please?" 
She patted his head in the way he loved so much, "Of course." 

"Mabel!" Sixer and Pine Tree could have started a chorus with their powerful voices. 
"May I remind you that Bill almost burned Grunky Ford alive? Locked you in a bubble? Turned me into a sock puppet?" 
"Pffft, Pine Tree, that last one was an eternity ago." 
Pine Tree shuddered. Oh, the nightmares must have lasted for an eternity. 
"We need Bill to stop the apocalypse! Besides, it really could have been an accident after all!" 
"Thank you, Shooting Star." 
"With that naive attitude, you're becoming his perfect doll, Mabel..." 
"The perfect doll will always be you, Pine Tree." 
More shuddering. Bill's grin widened. 

"Stop it!" Sixer intervened. Bill scowled. "If you don't cooperate with us, Cipher, we'll find another way to eliminate you. You should really think about whether you want to risk that in your situation." 
Bill formed a mouth with his hand and mimicked Sixer's yelp. Shooting Star smiled a little, but her eyes remained serious. 
All spoilsports. Bill crossed his arms in front of his chest and shook himself, "Whatever. I'll cooperate then, but..." He mimicked Sixer's serious tone, "I take no responsibility for any damage done to your pathetic bodies." 

"Cipher!" 
"My own body is a wreck!" Bill hissed. The pain reminded him how true that statement was. "I can’t pay attention to you. And I won't." 
"Could you at least not, knowingly plunge us to our deaths? Could you?" Sixer sounded provocative and heated. After being half-burned, no wonder. 
"Of course, I will not knowingly plunge you to your deaths." 
"Don't twist my words." 
"I was just repeating what you said, Sixer." 
"Stanford." 
"Sixer." 

"Bill! Grunkle Ford!" Shooting Star intervened. Both parties calmed down. 
But only because it was her speaking to them. Bill cast a nasty look at Sixer, who threw an angry look at him. Sparks flew, but none that hurt. It was just the crackling of a mood that had been on the rocks for years and was beyond saving. Like a thunderstorm that had found its place and would not give it up.
"Sixer." 
"Cipher." 
They turned away at the same time, not looking at each other. And that was called a 'tilting party mood'. Bill staggered to the side. To the ground. He had only just managed to stand up again. 
"Fine, yeah. When this is all over, I'm going to give you the most horrible nightmares." 
Sixer grinned unimpressively, "To prevent that, I'm prepared." 

"Okay, next plan." Pine Tree sat on the floor and handed a sheet to his great uncle. 
Sixer studied the sheet, pulled a funny thinker's expression at which he quirked the corners of his mouth, and shook his head, "Hard to implement. And danger of explosion." 
A piercing sideways glance at Bill, who had been back on his throne for some indeterminate minutes.
"You might as well get me involved..." 
"Of course. So we could be exposed to another one of your traps." 
"It's not like you fell into the trap, Pine Tree." 
An evil look back at Sixer. The freak ignored him! 

Bill got louder, "Some idiots just love to throw themselves into danger." 
"Shut up, demon." 
"Oh ho, found me a new nickname? Hmm, what do I call you then.... Sixfingers? Fordsy. Dextrose?" 
"Dextrose?" 
With that he had finally caught Sixer's attention. 
Bill hummed, "Can I watch how you’re planning to stop my apocalypse?"
Shooting Star came to his side with a wet cloth, "You should rest, Bill."

Chapter Text

An indeterminable number of hours passed by in which Sixer and Pine Tree scribbled, etched, drew and made plans on paper. Nothing printed, it seemed, because sooner or later every piece of paper ended up crumpled up in a corner. Bill was counting. 5...7...18... papers and a total of 1...3...4 pens fell victim to the 'clever minds', as Bill was loath to call them. Beside him on the throne, Shooting Star drew a picture of the apocalypse.
"Aren’t there a few too many rainbows and people hugging? And what's that... thing in the corner supposed to be?"
"That's you, Bill."

Art. Bill had never understood how a scrawl was supposed to capture real beauty... Or show emotion... Or what 'artistic freedom' on paper was for. Just as well one could have lasered one's face into the sky or carved one's name into the belly of one's enemy. That is what Bill defined as 'artistic freedom'.
And what was being touted to him like a masterpiece was just shoddy.
"Naww, why don't you try it too?", Shooting Star held out a wax crayon to him.
"Eh..." Bill laughed wryly, "You know the pain..."
"Oh, someone here can't draw, I guess." Pine Tree would grin at him so provocatively for the last time.
Bill snatched the pen from her hand, "Whatever."

Shooting Star's excited look was like a heavy pressure weight on his shoulder. He tried his best. Shooting Star leaned back and the excitement vanished from her face as if she had seen a devil.
"What’s the matter?"
"It's pretty abstract, Bill.... But..."
"But...?" he hissed through clenched teeth.
"I'm sorry. That's all I can say."
Pine Tree clucked like a weird chicken. Sixer grinned, too. Bill hissed. "What’s gotten into all of you?"
He looked at his work... Those beautifully arranged strokes, the nicely applied numbers, the sharp-edged triangles (not recognisable as such because they looked like eggs...) What was wrong with that?
Shooting Star put a hand on his shoulder, "You need drawing lessons. ASAP."
"This is art!"
"Let's call it abstraction."
"Art."
"You better give up, Bill. You won't win against my sister."

Bill grumbled and burned the meaningless piece of paper that was art (and no one told him otherwise).
"It never existed. And if it did, it was art."
"Abstruse." Shooting Star stuck a sticker on his stomach saying 'Abstrativity.'
And Bill had believed he was the craziest.
In the time it took him to get mad about it, Sixer and Pine Tree had completed their plan.

"This should be idiot-proof," Sixer said as he handed him the sheet.
"Idiot-proof?", Bill made a mental note that he would change the meaning of the word to 'unfailingly leading to disaster'. But what he saw was not so bad... And unfortunately 'idiot-proof.'
Bill grabbed the wax crayon and corrected a few variables here and there. He laughed because some of the options were just too cute. 'Ask old MC Gucket'? - Nonsense, the backwoodsman had not had a functioning mind in years. 'Trigger a paradox and thereby separate the worlds' - Sixer had probably seen too many science fiction movies, because in reality that was... difficult.
'Find the others and fight Bill' - Bill looked at Pine Tree with a most interested look, "Should that be in there?"
"Ah!" Pine Tree scratched the back of his neck, searching for words, "Well, that's... That's... Oh yes, just a mental note... written down."
"I see."

Bill skimmed the plan down to the last possibility. 'The prophecy' – Pah! He was going to puke. What was a wheel made up of people holding hands going to do to him? Love and friendship never led to happiness or peace. Did they not learn that in the original Grimm fairy tales?
"Sixer, whatever you're trying to do is doomed to fail."
"Let's try it."
"You want to destroy me."
"I don't know what the prophecy will do to you."
"Dimension-tastic!" Bill rolled his eye and floated up, "So now we're going to try hand-holding and peace? Ridiculous! Utterly ridiculous! I might as well call the whole thing off and make rainbows, gold rushes and glitter appear."
Shooting Star freaked out, "Can you really do that, Bill?"
"No."
Disappointment. She did not deserve any better.
"If I could, the damn pain would have stopped long ago, you'd be in chains and I'd be ruling this dimension unrestricted."
But the twinge in his side reminded him that he was miles away from his original intention. The only option left to him was to work together with his enemies and come to an end that made both parties happy.

"So, look for these people," Bill handed over drawings that he most definitely had not made, and sent his monster friends off to bring the depicted symbols, er, people to the pyramid.
"Will do, boss!"
"We'll find them... Should we bring them dead or alive?"
"Both." Bill grinned, taking note of the evil looks from the humans. He grinned even wider, "Alive, if possible."
"Cipher!"
"Bring them with skin and hair and organs intact."
The monsters nodded and moved off in all directions.
With that, the pyramid seemed lonely, empty... It was like a party, with no balloons, no cocktails, no guests... Basically, it was nothing. A feeling of emptiness, of loneliness, of non-existence.

Bill gritted his teeth. A spear of pain bored into his left and he crashed back against the throne. A shower of ice hailed down his spine. The sting crept up, to his eye, made it throb. He scratched at it until the blood stained his fingertips red. When he realised, he knotted his hands behind his back. His eye burned, itched... Then it was numb. He no longer felt the pain. Not because it had disappeared, but because it was so strong that his whole body felt like pain. His head was without thought. Without sensations. Without feelings. 
There was a void that filled with nothing but the word 'pain' and then exploded.

Chapter Text

"Look, honey, an useless triangle!"
The square figures on the other side of the road (Bill thought it was a country road because colourful vehicles whizzed past and in the background was the image of an open countryside), laughed.
"You better watch out. They say he doesn't know his place."
"What a freak. Let him get bent out of shape."
"'It', darling, let's just call this being 'it'. Now come on, we're already paying too much attention to that something."
Bill rolled his eye. Parents.

He glanced around the area. A road. Bushes beside it. A few trees. Whether they were in front or behind the road, he could not tell. This dimension was two-dimensional. Confining. Restricting. Limited. And his head throbbed.
Someone was pressing him down. A powerful square.
"Bill Cipher," the voice penetrated his head, exploded there. He suppressed the queasy feeling, wriggled, struggled, but finally the powerful being had him down. And he gave up.
"Wake up!" The powerful voice distorted into something demonic, "You've been in your 'ideal' world for far too long. This is reality. Get over it."
The reality he faced, which everyone loved and honoured as if it were the only ideal to accept, Bill despised. Where were the dreams? Where were the desires? Where was the striving for something new? Better? Extraordinary?

Quadrilaterals conversed with other quadrilaterals. There were many quadrilaterals, isosceles trapezoids, trapezoids, parallelograms, rectangles, rhombuses, quad- Now he was already enumerating them according to rank! He shook himself. The pain of the hard grip returned. He concentrated on the different squares around him.
Yes, they were different. But they were all saying the same thing.

"Wow, I'm a square!"
"Hey, so am I!"
"Hello, four-sided brother!" (Said the rhombus to the square.)
"Hello, rhombus!"
"I'm so happy to be a square! Look at my wonderful four sides!"
"Almost as square as me! We should float around the neighbourhood for a bit!"
"Sounds squareastic!"
(They floated around a bit).
And these were perhaps the most literate, in his language 'straightforward' conversations that had been had. No wonder he had gone mad in that dimension.

"You get a third chance, equilateral triangle." The square gritted his non-existent teeth, "But don't expect a fourth. You're not worth four." The square's expression changed to a happier exterior (as far as one could tell, for basically nothing changed except a slight sing-song in his voice).
"Look at my wonderful four sides! Aren't I a beautiful square?"
"How lopsided," Bill rolled his eye and used the moment to fly up.
The square turned sinister, "Cipher!"
"Everything here is so one-sided. So boring. So... neat!"
He wanted to rip out those cardboard bushes. Burn down those trees. He wanted- Of course... fire!
Hadn't he recently discovered they were magical shapes?

"Cipher! Your third and final chance!" the change between an old man's roar and a demonically distorted voice irritated him, but also could not dissuade him from his thought.
Bill looked down at his hands, which were growing hot.
"Take back your words instantly or we will make you formless." The square pointed at the bushes, the trees, the sun. All these had once been high-class forms that were slightly different or thought differently and therefore had to eke out an existence as inanimate things.

This dimension is completely unfair, Bill thought, staring at his hands as if he wanted to burn holes in them. The first flames ignited. Small, but powerful. Power did not care about outward form. It came to those who were stronger, more superior and better adapted than the rest. Only those who were different could assert themselves. Change something. Take new paths.
"What's that madman doing?" cried a trapeze, trembling, "He's... He's acting completely out of shape!"

All eyes turned to Bill. Every square, every rectangle, the triangles, the trapezoids...  every shape stopped its activity and turned to face him. Horror. Fear. Panic. Their expressions did not change, but Bill could sense their feelings. They were his driving force for the fire that was growing stronger. Especially the anxiety that grew with the fire.
Bill was afraid too, but what mattered much more was the power. Finally, he had the attention he needed to strive for change. At last, a second-rate triangle was being listened to.
But the forms went for him. Fire was formless. It had to be eliminated. And they would eliminate him right along with it.
Bill hissed, turned to run. The fire in his hand struck a nearby tree. Trees were formless. Bushes were formless. The road was formless. Everything formless was connected and soon the whole formless sky was in flames. Red gold it burned over the heads of the shapes. They stared and stared and stared They did not understand why this was happening. Why the formless sky was burning. Why the dimension around them was very slowly crumbling to ash. It disappeared.

Bill did not understand either. He stared at his hands, which were shaking. Then he looked at the squares and triangles that were giving up their shapes in panic. One by one, the fire extinguished them. Every single one. Each one screamed. Each one sobbed. Each one despaired.
When the last one fell victim to the fire, the red-hot flames were also ready to destroy him, who had set everything into action.
The hot blaze came closer, burning in his eye. The golden flames reflected his pathetic self - A murderer whose hopes of improvement crumbled to ashes and were carried away by the wind. The dimension he wanted to improve was no more. His efforts... They had all been in vain.
Bill closed his eye, prepared for the end. Short and painless, he wished it. He believed so strongly that his eyelids ached from squinting.

When he opened them again, because death felt too painless, he dived into a sea of blue flames. They did not burn. They felt... cool. With his shaking hands he tried to get the waves to move. They resisted and threw him back. At least, it felt like he was being thrown back. Time and place held him captive....
In the Nightmare Realm.

A dimension between dimensions. A kind of intergalactic foam, saturated with nightmares and nausea-inducing illusions. Or simply put, just an empty world that would sooner or later disintegrate due to its own instability.
Not a place where change would be worthwhile.
Bill had arrived at zero. (Funnily enough, the Nightmare Realm was also known as Dimension 0, which ironically Bill only found out about later).
In Bill's time, there were not many there. In fact, there was just him... and the arsonist.
The arsonist always appeared randomly, sometimes in the middle of the Nightmare Realm, and sometimes merged with the shadows. Sometimes he grinned with his single eye. Sometimes he stared right through the black void that surrounded them, as if he could tear them apart. Sometimes the shadow was not there. But his invisible presence triggered a constant feeling of fear in Bill.

Bill did not understand. Who was this guy? And why had he erased his dimension? Would he wipe him out too? Or had he been spared because of an unfortunate coincidence?
Every day Bill feared for his death, seeking explanations he could not get. He scratched his transparent skin. Hovered in circles. Watched the shadow. But the shadow did nothing and Bill went crazy.
Then he forced himself to keep his wits about him. His sanity had saved him once before. He was smart, he was cunning, he could....
He was helpless.  He had no control over the Nightmare Realm. He did not even have a dimension. A home. Nothing. He floated in non-existence, in a void... He was... Nothing.

And then Bill found out two things. First, the arsonist did not exist. He was a lie. Someone made up whom he could blame for the 'arson' (as he called the incident in his dimension). But no one was to blame for an 'incident'. And so, Bill promised himself to forget the event. He would never remember it again. Never think about it again. Never speak about it again.
Promises he would still break regularly in a trillion years.

Secondly, Bill found out that he had lost his life in the fire that day. His physical form had gone up in flames. Only his soul had survived due to several processes that he could only explain later. He was a lost soul, in other words, a demon. 
And because he had no physical form, he was a kind of dream demon. (Which was later confirmed by his discovery that he could wander into the Mindscape).
So far so good.

Nothing was good. Every day Bill fell deeper into hopelessness. He tried several times to get up from the black puddle that surrounded him, but something kept pulling him down. Finally, he gave up. For a long time, he remained in the darkness, still and motionless, like a caterpillar that had retreated into its protective cocoon.
He remained in it until one day a light shone.
Hope.
Bill reached out his hand for the light. Really hard he did. He made it his own. He pressed it to his chest, hugged it tightly and never let it go.
But the light loathed him.
The light disappeared...

The Nightmare Rea- Mindscape became unstable. Made waves. Tore apart. One half of Bill panicked, the other seemed to have grasped what was happening. A dream... A dream... A dream....
The more he became aware that there was a dream, the more violently his surroundings reacted. It became more and more blurred. Cracks widened. The black walls crumbled. Behind them, golden pyramid walls appeared. In front of him stood the shadow. A huge square. He squinted. He couldn’t quite make it out yet. The colours were strange. Did not fit with a colourful square. A shade of old brown and a blood red. Something black.
It was not a square, it was...
It was...
Damn, he could not remember the name...
It was...

"Ford?"
The man stepped back, startled. His face pale as a corpse. Had that been the wrong name...?
Bill would have shaken his head if he could have. His body was in a state of sleep paralysis... A state he only knew from dreamers. Was it possible that...?
A sharp pain bored into the top of his skull. His vision went black.
There was the Nightmare Realm. A black place. A darkness where he was all alone.
"Bill Cipher!" The voice brought him back to reality. Bill focused himself. It was straining, but it snapped him out of his dream. He stared at Ford... no, Sixer. Sixer stared back.
"You awake?"
'Yes, of course I'm awake, and now don't stare at me like I've woken from a 30-year coma,' Bill wanted to say, but that was probably too long for someone who could barely croak out a pitiful 'yes'. (And that already cost him far too much energy).

Chapter Text

"Okay, good”, Sixer said. 
Bill could think of a thousand reasons why this situation was anything but 'good'. First, he was lying on a freezing cold floor that was anything but comfortable. Two, he felt like shit and yes, just as if some unfortunate person had stepped on him. Three, he was sick to his stomach. Fourth, he had no idea what had happened or why it had happened. Fifth... he did not even named it. (His worst enemies had witnessed everything and now, they knew about his weakness). Just listing the other four things had demanded unimaginable strength from him. 

And then, concentrating on the noises around him? Impossible! 
"Bill." 
No, he would not even listen to Pine Tree's crap. 
"Cipher..." 
Sixer was smart, but his long, illogical explanations were useless at that moment. 
"Bill..."
Bill turned his gaze to Shooting Star. She smiled, though worry clouded the happy gleam in her eyes. 
"I'm here for you." She took his hand. Hers was cool, but had the exact temperature, for his body seemed to be on fire. (Though he had been cold a moment ago!).
The warmth that flowed through his body afterwards was pleasant. Quite different from the heat of his flames or the fiery fever... This warmth did not burn, it did not hurt him... It healed. 
Bill closed his eye and enjoyed the feeling of safety. Of security. Of... love? 
He did not want to go that far now. But it was a nice feeling. 
And he was annoyed when that hand let go of him. He reached out for it but he grabbed nothing. 

"Just wait a minute, Bill," Shooting Star said. She sounded so serious. It did not suit her at all. Bill looked at Sixer, who was holding something sharp in his hand. A syringe...? 
"What...?", Bill growled. The words galloped off him and he focused on the tube with the long needle. The cavity was filled with a black, slimy liquid. It looked familiar to him... was that not...? 

"I just took a sample of that fluid." Sixer ran his finger from his eyes along his cheek. In the same place Sixer had nothing, Bill had tears. 
Because of the sniffles, of course. Could also have been vomit. Definitely a body fluid. Sad tears were also a body- Oh, he would not even think a second about it. Pine Tree's disgusted expression made up for it all. 
Besides, he wanted... Shooting Star's hand. 

"Leave my sister alone, Bill!" Pine Tree interjected, so Bill just took that hand. Small, sweaty, rough... He let go of it and grumbled, "You're like a pine cone." 
"Did you just...?" Pine Tree shook his head, looking at his hand in disgust. Yes, he had been holding Pine Tree's hand. So what? They were not lovers - never would be. So why this reaction - Ah! 
"You're still single?", Bill grinned, even though he bitterly regretted it. His eye reacted with pain. But Pine Tree's flabbergasted and bright red face made up for it all. 
"So you are?" Bill let out a laugh, startled at the hoarse sound, and stopped it abruptly. 

"Are you still in pain, Bill?" deflected Sixer. 
Bill would have rolled his eyes if he had not been in such pain. Too obvious, Sixer. 
Bill turned his attention to Shooting Star. He needed her hand... badly. He felt a pleasant warm contact of skin and was the most content dream demon in all of Gravity Falls.

"Let go of my sister." 
"Afraid of a new brother-in-law, Pine Tree?" 
"Eh, Bill, I'm not interested in a relationship," Shooting Star interjected. 
"Love is...," Bill closed his eye. Speaking demanded far too much of him, "...most stupid." 
Around him, a family breathed a sigh of relief. Oh, he was not up for Romeo and Juliet either, but that warm hand was really... dimensiontastic. 

"What exactly happened, anyway?" asked Bill when he had gained enough energy from his heat source. He let go of Shooting Star's hand. After all, the close skin contact had only served that one basic purpose. 
"You fainted, Cipher. Possibly from pain. But you've been unconscious for a very long time, so you might as well..." 
Bill rolled his eye, "Pffft, dream demons don't sleep." 
"It rally looked like you were asleep, Bill." 
"Shut up, Pine Tree." 

"Where have you been, Bill?" At first Shooting Star's question puzzled him, but then.... 
"In my home dimension," ...he decided to answer. 
Sixer's look was the personification of disbelief and incomprehension. 
Bill fulfilled another eye roll, "Of course, Dimension..." He swallowed the number. He could not quite remember it. "... Was destroyed. But I saw a picture of it in the Mindscape." 
Shooting Star tilted her head, "Huh?" 
"Dreams are images projected onto the mindscape, much like a movie in a cinema. Oh, I'm sorry, did I just destroy some silly science-based theories about dreams there? I'm not sorry about that, of course." 

"Dreams reflect a person's subconscious, Cipher. Every event or experience in reality is stored by the brain and processed during sleep. Traumas are also processed subconsciously in this way. It's quite possible that..." 
"...you're absolutely wrong, Sixer. Didn't I just prove that?" Bill shrugged, "I just went into the wrong movie." 
He did not quite understand what was so 'nawww' about it according to Shooting Star. 
"You had a nightmare." 
"I didn't have one..."
Pine Tree laughed, "That's what comes of all your infamies." 
"It wasn’t...", Bill growled, "I wasn't even asleep!" 

Three pairs of eyes tried to prove him wrong with confident smiles. 
But he was sure... He had not been dreaming and his subconscious had not brought to light any 'unprocessed' memories. He had just been in the wrong place at the wrong hour... Namely, at the worst cinema premiere in the Mindscape. 

Chapter Text

It had become strangely quiet. The Pines seemed distracted. Then Bill heard it. Small, light-footed footsteps like those of a nasty little runt.

"Bill." The familiar voice sounded cute as a doll. It wasn't one of the Pines. It was... What else had he called him... Did he even have a nickname for him...?

"Gideon." Shooting Star didn't pronounce the name with hatred, but with a force that made it sound unnatural.

Oh yes, Gideon... The little guy with the greasepaint curl and the baby blue cowboy suit who had once summoned him and with whom he had made a deal. Bill grumbled at the memory. If nothing else, it had been that snot-nosed kid's fault that he'd lost to the Pines in Stan's mind. (Whatever Gideon's role had been in that. Bill blamed him anyways.)

Nevertheless, they had had plans together. Gideon, no... Pentagram was to look after Shooting Star's prison bubble, but since that had burst.... Their deal had also burst like a soap bubble.

And it was this former negotiating partner who saw him lying on the floor, surrounded by experimenting, heat-giving and annoying Pines. Could there have been a worse time for a recounter?

"You look a bit..."

"Don't say it, Pentagram."

Pentagram pressed his lips together and approached with silence. Only briefly did he give Shooting Star a ridiculously exaggerated wave and cast Pine Tree a bitter look before turning to Sixer with slight confusion.

"What's this about? The monsters..." Pentagram turned around, but Teeth and the others had already disappeared. An uncomfortable silence followed. Pentagram straightened his collar. "Anyway, I was called here to be involved in something earth-shattering, and because it was on Bill's orders.... Eh, is it at least about Mabel?"

"No." Sixer appeared as socially incompetent as a nervous Gideon. "It's about..."

"Oh, did you guys captured Bill and want me to spill the little secrets I got from him? I'd love to!" Pentagram flashed his cutest smile - one you wanted to punch him for but you couldn't because he looked really fucking innocent doing it.

Bill growled, trying to rise. His body didn't respond. He gave up.

"I'm not trapped."

"Well, techinally, your body is a bit..."

Bill threatened him with a sharp glance. "Pine Tree."

Pine Tree raised his hands defensively and took a few steps back. He turned to Pentagram. "This is kinda a long story. Let's wait until the others get here."

"The others?"

"Ice Bag, Question Mark, Glasses, Llama, Heart, Crescent." Bill noticed Sixer's look. "Did I forget anyone?”

“How do you know about the wheel, Cipher?"

Bill would have raised an eyebrow if he'd had one. Instead, he stared at Sixer reproachfully. It’s technically about me, so…

"I’m sorry, I mean, what do you know about it? Do you know the implications?"

Bill averted his eye, thinking. How much should he reveal? How much could he reveal? Speaking was no longer quite so difficult for him, but it exhausted him. That was why silence was perhaps the best option.

"If you know anything, Bill, please tell us."

That familiar tone again. Was Sixer trying to reach through with that? Then, it didn’t work.

"Either way, it's too late for your tricks. You're beaten to the ground. You're..."

Bill shot energy through his eye, silencing Sixer. The man gasped at his words like a fish on land. No sound escaped him. He seemed to be choking on wordlessness.

"Bill..."

Shooting Star's reproachful voice was sweet as a cupcake.

"What the...?" Pentagram's confusion was the icing on the cake.

"Can you please leave Gruncle Ford alone for once!!!" Pine Tree's anger was the cherry on the top.

Bill licked his lips (in his imaginary mind) and let out a hoarse laugh. He flicked the words back to Sixer, who stumbled back with a scream and fell to the floor.

Bill grinned at him. "Hey, who's on the floor now, defeated-"

His voice broke off. His insides burned like fire. Must be pay-back, Bill thought to himself and Pine Tree's sardonic laugh confirmed it.

Bill cleared his throat several times until it became a barking cough. He spat out black stuff that burned holes in Sixer's coat. Sixer rolled away and jumped up.

"How could you, you fu-,” Sixer lowered his fists and controlled himself. There were children present.

Bill would have grinned if he hadn't lost all his strength coughing.

"Bill is... sick?", Pentagram's realisation came a few paragraphs too late.

Sixer and Pine Tree explained the current situation to Pentagram; that Gravity Falls was in a state of emergency (obviously), that 'this most intolerable triangle' had no control over the chaos for mysterious reasons and that they now had to rely on an old prophecy because they were at their wit's end and their science. Something like that.

Meanwhile, Shooting Star dabbed at his eye with a damp cloth. With each contact, the area touched burned as if petrol had been added to a fire, but she kept repeating how important disinfection was and that it was not petrol. It smelled like alcohol, and it tasted like alcohol. And that was why Bill was sure it had been petrol.

"Bill, why would I treat your eye with petrol?"

"To burn me in the most effective way?"

"Why would I..." She sighed. "Bill, I'm not like you."

"I know. No one is like me." It had sounded more bitter in his head.

She dabbed. It stung. He pushed the cloth away. She laid it aside.

"I can understand you've been through hard things, but if I don't treat the wounds..." She looked over at the other three, whispering, "...then no one will."

"Go on." His voice was a faint whisper.

She put her hand on his. "Does that help you?"

He couldn’t admitted. "No."

"You hesitated." She poked his side playfully. It left him with pain.

"I'm sorry." Her apology was more honest than he'd ever been.

"Just..." His voice trailed off. He hated that croaky sound. She pushed a glass of water towards him.

"Shooting Star, this won’t work."

He would have loved to explain to her that his voice was not produced from his mouth or his eye or any other organ, but from his head. It was his loud thoughts that spoke, not his body.

Strangely, his head was as affected by the disease as the rest. Thoughts shot like spears. It hurt to think. So did speaking.

"There must be some way to cure you!" She dropped the cloth on his eye. Very healing. Bill hissed but ignored the sting that had expanded.

Shooting Star took the cloth away and put something else, cream-like, on his cornea... It smelled of herbs, marigolds and... definitely something medicinal. Wait... couldn't he regenerate himself? No, wait, he had long since given up on that process. So now this strange ointment had to work wonders....

"No one should suffer pain." Shooting Star sounded sad, squeezing his hand. With her free fingers she spread the jelly-like substance on his eye. It soaked in and it... actually healed. The pain abruptly subsided and he felt a strange gratitude, but he didn't let it shine through. He had never been grateful before and certainly the expression didn't suit him at all....

Shooting Star smiled as if she had seen that expression on his face, but said nothing. She went on, humming a happy tune. Still,she held his hand and it soothed him.

More than he wanted to admit.

Chapter Text

It had become strangely quiet. The Pines seemed distracted. Then Bill heard it. Small, light-footed footsteps like those of a nasty little runt.

"Bill." The familiar voice sounded cute as a doll. It wasn't one of the Pines. It was... What else had he called him... Did he even have a nickname for him...?

"Gideon." Shooting Star didn't pronounce the name with hatred, but with a force that made it sound unnatural.

Oh yes, Gideon... The little guy with the greasepaint curl and the baby blue cowboy suit who had once summoned him and with whom he had made a deal. Bill grumbled at the memory. If nothing else, it had been that snot-nosed kid's fault that he'd lost to the Pines in Stan's mind. (Whatever Gideon's role had been in that. Bill blamed him anyways.)

Nevertheless, they had had plans together. Gideon, no... Pentagram was to look after Shooting Star's prison bubble, but since that had burst.... Their deal had also burst like a soap bubble.

And it was this former negotiating partner who saw him lying on the floor, surrounded by experimenting, heat-giving and annoying Pines. Could there have been a worse time for a recounter?

"You look a bit..."

"Don't say it, Pentagram."

Pentagram pressed his lips together and approached with silence. Only briefly did he give Shooting Star a ridiculously exaggerated wave and cast Pine Tree a bitter look before turning to Sixer with slight confusion.

"What's this about? The monsters..." Pentagram turned around, but Teeth and the others had already disappeared. An uncomfortable silence followed. Pentagram straightened his collar. "Anyway, I was called here to be involved in something earth-shattering, and because it was on Bill's orders.... Eh, is it at least about Mabel?"

"No." Sixer appeared as socially incompetent as a nervous Gideon. "It's about..."

"Oh, did you guys captured Bill and want me to spill the little secrets I got from him? I'd love to!" Pentagram flashed his cutest smile - one you wanted to punch him for but you couldn't because he looked really fucking innocent doing it.

Bill growled, trying to rise. His body didn't respond. He gave up.

"I'm not trapped."

"Well, techinally, your body is a bit..."

Bill threatened him with a sharp glance. "Pine Tree."

Pine Tree raised his hands defensively and took a few steps back. He turned to Pentagram. "This is kinda a long story. Let's wait until the others get here."

"The others?"

"Ice Bag, Question Mark, Glasses, Llama, Heart, Crescent." Bill noticed Sixer's look. "Did I forget anyone?”

“How do you know about the wheel, Cipher?"

Bill would have raised an eyebrow if he'd had one. Instead, he stared at Sixer reproachfully. It’s technically about me, so…

"I’m sorry, I mean, what do you know about it? Do you know the implications?"

Bill averted his eye, thinking. How much should he reveal? How much could he reveal? Speaking was no longer quite so difficult for him, but it exhausted him. That was why silence was perhaps the best option.

"If you know anything, Bill, please tell us."

That familiar tone again. Was Sixer trying to reach through with that? Then, it didn’t work.

"Either way, it's too late for your tricks. You're beaten to the ground. You're..."

Bill shot energy through his eye, silencing Sixer. The man gasped at his words like a fish on land. No sound escaped him. He seemed to be choking on wordlessness.

"Bill..."

Shooting Star's reproachful voice was sweet as a cupcake.

"What the...?" Pentagram's confusion was the icing on the cake.

"Can you please leave Gruncle Ford alone for once!!!" Pine Tree's anger was the cherry on the top.

Bill licked his lips (in his imaginary mind) and let out a hoarse laugh. He flicked the words back to Sixer, who stumbled back with a scream and fell to the floor.

Bill grinned at him. "Hey, who's on the floor now, defeated-"

His voice broke off. His insides burned like fire. Must be pay-back, Bill thought to himself and Pine Tree's sardonic laugh confirmed it.

Bill cleared his throat several times until it became a barking cough. He spat out black stuff that burned holes in Sixer's coat. Sixer rolled away and jumped up.

"How could you, you fu-,” Sixer lowered his fists and controlled himself. There were children present.

Bill would have grinned if he hadn't lost all his strength coughing.

"Bill is... sick?", Pentagram's realisation came a few paragraphs too late.

Sixer and Pine Tree explained the current situation to Pentagram; that Gravity Falls was in a state of emergency (obviously), that 'this most intolerable triangle' had no control over the chaos for mysterious reasons and that they now had to rely on an old prophecy because they were at their wit's end and their science. Something like that.

Meanwhile, Shooting Star dabbed at his eye with a damp cloth. With each contact, the area touched burned as if petrol had been added to a fire, but she kept repeating how important disinfection was and that it was not petrol. It smelled like alcohol, and it tasted like alcohol. And that was why Bill was sure it had been petrol.

"Bill, why would I treat your eye with petrol?"

"To burn me in the most effective way?"

"Why would I..." She sighed. "Bill, I'm not like you."

"I know. No one is like me." It had sounded more bitter in his head.

She dabbed. It stung. He pushed the cloth away. She laid it aside.

"I can understand you've been through hard things, but if I don't treat the wounds..." She looked over at the other three, whispering, "...then no one will."

"Go on." His voice was a faint whisper.

She put her hand on his. "Does that help you?"

He couldn’t admitted. "No."

"You hesitated." She poked his side playfully. It left him with pain.

"I'm sorry." Her apology was more honest than he'd ever been.

"Just..." His voice trailed off. He hated that croaky sound. She pushed a glass of water towards him.

"Shooting Star, this won’t work."

He would have loved to explain to her that his voice was not produced from his mouth or his eye or any other organ, but from his head. It was his loud thoughts that spoke, not his body.

Strangely, his head was as affected by the disease as the rest. Thoughts shot like spears. It hurt to think. So did speaking.

"There must be some way to cure you!" She dropped the cloth on his eye. Very healing. Bill hissed but ignored the sting that had expanded.

Shooting Star took the cloth away and put something else, cream-like, on his cornea... It smelled of herbs, marigolds and... definitely something medicinal. Wait... couldn't he regenerate himself? No, wait, he had long since given up on that process. So now this strange ointment had to work wonders....

"No one should suffer pain." Shooting Star sounded sad, squeezing his hand. With her free fingers she spread the jelly-like substance on his eye. It soaked in and it... actually healed. The pain abruptly subsided and he felt a strange gratitude, but he didn't let it shine through. He had never been grateful before and certainly the expression didn't suit him at all....

Shooting Star smiled as if she had seen that expression on his face, but said nothing. She went on, humming a happy tune. Still,she held his hand and it soothed him.

More than he wanted to admit.

Chapter Text

"There", Mabel screw the salve tube shut and slid away from Bill, “how does it feel?"
Bill mumbled a low and hopefully unintelligible "better."
Shooting Star chuckled, "I'm glad."
She was a crazy being. Weird. Incomprehensible. Weird. Why was she glad to help the enemy...? She was naive, gullible, good-natured... But Bill also remembered how she had asked for forgiveness. How could she forgive him?
Bill realised, she had forgiven him long ago. But she wasn’t the problem. What crimes had he done to her? If he counted it up, he had pushed her maybe once, insulted her twice and that was it.
"Is something wrong, Bill?" She stroked his finger so gently he barely noticed her touch.
"I hate you, Shooting Star," he said, not looking at her. They were supposed to hate each other, that was what characterised their relationship. It was always supposed to be that way. It was not supposed to change.
He wished it would change. But if he tried to change anything, he only destroyed. Like he did with his home dimension. Like he did with Gravity Falls. The proof that the situation was hopeless was everywhere. Right in front of his eye. And far behind his perspective.

Bill retreated, floated back to his throne as straight as he could manage. He settled there, propped his head on the backrest and listened to the three of them carrying on unimportant conversations. When the blonde girl, Lama, joined them, the discussions became more heated. The rich brat complained about her presence, about the apocalypse, just about everything. He ignored her as best he could. He hadn't had much to do with her. (However, she did seem angry at him for allegedly attacking her father).
"Bill."
He ignored Shooting Star as well. But she persisted and made an effort to be on good terms. She was too friendly.
"Bill, if I've done anything to hurt you, I'm sorry, but..."
"It's nothing," he hissed.
"But you're mad."
"I'm not mad, Shooting Star."
"You aaaaare." She climbed up to him and sat on the armrest. Wow, the Pines family were living dangerous lives. Her legs dangled five feet off the ground.
"I don't think you're truly evil. Everyone has their reasons to act their way."
He didn't want to hear her stupid talk. And yet he forced himself to. Her words were... reassuring.
"I'm sure you meant well. I mean, this is a bit my fault, after all. I begged for an eternal summer and you just fulfilled my wish."
He had used her, but he didn’t interrupt. She continue to talk in that light-hearted and cheerful tone of hers.
"And the monsters love you and see you as a hero. That means you can't be 100% evil, because all heroes have some good in them!"
"I'm not a hero," and he was proud of that. For heroes were only those who were loved by fate and by the majority. Those who really tried and sought change were ostracised and hated. In his homeland, heroes were called 'shapeless' because they aspired to other things.

There was a time when Bill had looked up to a circle that wanted to bring joy to the other forms by shining for them. They chided the circle 'strange' and called it 'shapeless'. Bill found that the warmth the circle emitted was beautiful and calming. However, it was only a brief joy, for the other shapes banished the circle, which henceforth hung in the sky as a meaningless sun. Nothing the sun did had reached anything. Anything at all. Except its own extinction. That was why heroes were stupid and ridiculous. No one needed 'heroes' who plunged to their own deaths. (He thought of Sixer and how stupid the explorer was).
Shooting Star smiled in a strange way that made Bill uncomfortable. "You're a hero, but you don't know it yet."
Bill said nothing in return. Stared at the pyramid walls. Took a breath to protest, but sighed without having said the words that were on the tip of his tongue.
Maybe Pine Tree had been right for once: he couldn't beat Shooting Star.
And maybe he didn't want to.

There was a noise in the pyramid. Three people entered the pyramid accompanied by 8-Ball, Pyronica and Jafar. The young woman with the axe on her belt pouch shouted the loudest. Her auburn mane swung wild as she ran towards Pine Tree.
"Dipper!" She enclosed him in a brief hug that made Pine Tree blush.
Must be his love interest, he thought, grinning even wider as the woman turned to her companion, who was male as well. A typical teenager with depression and in an I-pull-my-hoodie-over-my-face phase. He wore a pierced heart on his black jumper. Heart. The young teenage girl who took his hand seemed cool and, unlike him, less excited. Ice Bag.
The other person appeared at his throne without warning.
"Hey, Mabel, did you become queen?" the person shouted up.
Mabel yelled back, "Yep, call me Queen of Creative Chaos, Soos!"
He laughed. She laughed.
Bill gave her a crooked look. "Would you like that title?"
She took a deep breath and grinned like a crazy woman who had eaten too much Smile Dip. Then followed an episode of "Yay yay yay!" until the point which Bill had finally stopped counting the yays.
"Okay, okay, Shooting Star, you get the title."
"Did you hear that, Soos! I'm the Queen of Creative Chaos, according to the King of Chaos!"
"Then you're a couple?" shouted the stupid fat guy with the question mark on his T-shirt. Question Mark.

"Not in my monarchy system," Bill growled, dropping back onto his throne. Hovering was exhausting. These people were exhausting. Saving the world was exhausting. Who was missing, anyway? Glasses and Crescent...
Bill grinned to himself. Those were the very people Sixer had a special, if not interesting connection with. The others were just a small addition... Stupid, spoilt, boring, loopy-cute... He could have described them with a thousand negative adjectives and that would have been more exciting than listening to their stupid conversations.
"So we're saving the world now by allying with the enemy? Badass."
"Isn't it, Robbie?", Ice Bag nudged Heart in the side, "But cool stuff like that only happens around Dipper."
Pine Tree rubbed the back of his neck to distract himself from his red face, "Hehe, yeah. I... Um... The new look suits you, Wendy."
Bill laughed maliciously. Had Pine Tree really just said that to someone who looked like she'd come from World War II or an apocalypse? - Oh right, they were in the middle of the apocalypse! One could forget such things when you were inside a floating pyramid of fear, surrounded by monsters and nervous people, and the bitter-sweet smell of the world’s end in the air.
"We still have to be careful because of Bill. He's unpredictable."
"Even when you whisper, you can still be heard, Pine Tree."
"Haha, he calls you Pine Tree?"
"Don't ask, Wendy. He has weird nicknames for all of us. He calls Gronkle Ford Sixer."
"That's one of Cipher's most peculiar hobby."
Bill made the sound of a false buzzer, "Wrong, Sixer. You're all just not worth remembering your real names."
"Remember mine, flying one-eyed triangle who is also not worth it," Llama thrust her arms on her hips and acted like a noblewoman, "My name is Pacifica Elise Northwest."
"Llama."
"What, you think I'm a spitting something with soft fur? Ewww." She shook herself.
Bill laughed, "Did you know that llamas have three stomachs and that they smell like fresh popcorn?"
"Oh, do you know a fact about cats too?"
"Of course, Shooting Star." Bill grinned. "Cats purr about 1,500 times a minute and cat urine glows under a black light."
"Wow, the triangle guy is really all-knowing."
And Question Mark only came to this realisation after Bill had predicted the apocalypse and his death?
Definitely as dumb as his nickname suggested.

"Can someone explain to me what's going on?"
All eyes fell on the man who had spoken in a croaky voice. The long-bearded old man with the pierced scarecrow hat came accompanied by Kryptos, who then joined the other monsters who seemed to have gathered outside the pyramid. Bill could think of no reason why they did not stay inside the pyramid. Nor did he want them to, because what was going on was... highly uninteresting.
Sixer and Glasses – as he called the little old man with the way too big glasses on his nose – hugged each other as if they hadn't seen each other for ages. Ages was obviously a playing things down. Bill wouldn't even have hugged his parents so hard if they had risen like zombies from their graves.
But the two men at least kept the hug short.
Shooting Star poked him in the side, "Nawww, aren't you happy for them too, Bill?"
"Huh?"
"They used to be best friends, but then they lost track of each other and now..." She made exaggerated arm movements, as if she was trying to throw an overweight cat at the two reunited. "Look how they've forgiven each other and become friends again!"
Bill let out a bitter laugh. "Beautiful."
"Isn't it?"
"After I've gone to so much trouble to make them break up."
This time Shooting Star drew the "huh" long and questioning.
Bill floated up and waved at Glasses, "Hey, you want me to pull my endoskeleton down again? Or do you want me to ruin your future for another ten years?"
Glasses tilted his head and thick wrinkles creased behind the crooked glasses he straightened on his nose. He turned to Sixer, "What does that weird eyeball want from me and why does he call me Glasses?"
Sixer put an arm around Glasses and walked with him quite a distance away from Bill. "Just ignore him. I don't want this monster interfering with us again."
And those were the words with which Sixer explained their plan to Glasses.

Bill laughed, but it stuck in his throat when Shooting Star asked. "How well do you know Gronkle Ford anyway? Have you been around for...?"
"An eternity, Shooting Star, and far longer." Bill grinned, though he didn't know why. Perhaps because of the pain that gathered dully behind his eye and formed knots. "I met this pathetic freak when I..."
"He's neither pathetic nor a freak, Bill."
"That's my take on it, okay?" Bill grumbled and continued the story, "Well, like I said, I met your... eh... 'Gronkel' when I had my eye on Gravity Falls. What an ambitious man, full of the drive to discover and search, and- no, no.” Why did he even say such things as if he was secretly admiring that stupid man? "He was naive and soured by mistakes he had made in the past. Mistakes he couldn't help making."
"Oh, you mean the fight between Stan and Ford when they were young men and not my Gronkels?"
"Oh, you know that story?" Bill's gaze darted to the side. Oh, Sixer was trusting people again.
"Yep!" Shooting Star's joy vanished and sadness spread through her eyes, but she didn't explain why. Bill made his guess.
"Naww, Pine Tree isn't smart enough for college and you have your qualities that definitely won't get you on the streets. Anyway... we were on a story." He didn't need to worry about Shooting Star's future concerns.
"I met Sixer when he was leaning against a birch tree and had fallen asleep while doing his research. Needless to say, our encounter happened in one of his dreams. Wow, his mind was full of mathematic and formulae. A paradise for maths geniuses and science fiction nerds. I was sure I had found a good... ally for my goals." Bill faltered. The word 'ally' spread like a bitter medicine on his tongue, poisoning it until he vomited from the foul taste. Shooting Star rubbed circles on his back. He pushed her away with the quick explanation that it wasn't necessary, although secretly he just wanted to protect her from the toxic acid... Why, though?
He couldn't care less if the girl had four or five hairs on her head or three or four fingers less on her hand.
But he did… ‘care.’

Bill shook himself. The acid left a much more bitter aftertaste that triggered another gag reflex, but this time he controlled himself. It was bad enough that far too many people's eyes were looking at him as if he had just... Oh, a few of the petrified people had been de-stoned by contact with his vomit and... Bill flicked his finger to put them back in place. Petrified, of course, and unaware that he had just spilled some of his bodily fluid... He tried to forget.
"Bill, are you okay?!" Surprisingly, that squeaky cry came from Pentagram, not Shooting Star.
"I'd still make a deal," he said, as if that said everything about his condition.
"Uhhh, can I have Mabel then?"
Bill rolled his eye and shook himself as a cold wind blew past his sides.
"N-no." He gritted his teeth. The tremor hadn't slipped into his voice on purpose.
Pentagram tilted his head. "Are you freezing, Bill?"
"Um, n-no. H-haven't you got... eh… B-better things to do?" He was annoyed that he couldn't shake off the shiver despite his most desperate efforts.

Pentagram's eyes went wide as something warm leaned against Bill. It took him (and that elementary school kid) a moment to realise that Shooting Star was embracing him. Overwhelmed by the strange action of this even stranger person, Bill flinched back and shuddered.
"There's a blanket somewhere," he hissed between clenched teeth. Shooting Star understood and fetched it for him. She spread the warm thing over him like a blessing and he snuggled into it as if the goddess herself had been given him her holy coat.

Chapter Text

"What does that mean!?"
Oh, Pentagram was still standing at the foot of the throne, looking as if he had seen the love of his life flutter out the window.
"I'm Bill's personal nurse!"
That wasn't quite the thing Bill expected, but he didn't object. Especially as the trembling didn't allow him any reasonable explanations anyway. He was tired. Again. His mind couldn’t focus on anything else. Only the tiredness. The nausea. The weakness. As if he consisted of nothing more than a great illness that united all suffering. He didn’t know the origin of this. He had his own theories about it, of course, but... The pounding in his head shattered any thought. Pain spread. Terrible pain. Like ramming your enemy against a prison gate, pressing a burning iron into his back from behind and beating his head bloody. And all this while fully conscious, with no hope of being redeemed by death.
Because right now, he was immortal.
Maybe that's why he was in such agony.

When Bill had recovered from the pain, Sixer was crouching over him… or bending, it was hard to tell when all you could make out was brown, black and red blotches. But the voice, it was unmistakable.
"Cipher, can you hear me?"
"Unfortunately yes."
He saw a movement that reminded him of eye-rolling. "You had another attack of pain. Do you know what triggered it?"
Bill grumbled. He had forgotten how annoying Sixer could get with his questioning. Even then he had always asked the hell out of him. 'Where did the weirdness in Gravity Falls come from, Muse?' - 'From my dimension, of course. Would you like to see it?' - 'How is that possible? And what are those dimensions? And how...?'
"Hold your breath, Sixer!"
The man recoiled. Obviously, Bill hadn't chosen the best moment to shout his thought out loud. Or Sixer was just a jumpy scary cat....
"I'm trying to help you," Sixer pronounced it with the same anger Bill retorted.
"I didn't ask for this."
"Fine, all right. I'll leave you to your pain then." Sixer stepped back and climbed down from the throne. Bill turned his eye upwards and dropped back. His triangular head landed on something soft, something... warm. He curled up (if he could with that body).
"Sixer's sooo stupid," he muttered, peeking over at the explorer who was talking to his 'old mate'. Glasses put a hand on the old man's shoulder, then they laughed. And then they made plans. Bill had plans too. Plans he didn't reveal to anyone. Plans he couldn't go back on because of his throbbing headache. But they were there. And he would follow them. He would do anything to create this perfect world.
No, not perfect.
Better than perfect.

Shooting Star's petting calmed him immensely and took his mind off things. He thought of how he would build the dimension if he got it. It wouldn't be a mess like Gravity Falls. At least not at first. But there would be no order. There would be a tree and there would be a bush and somewhere there would be a sausage with three eyes flying around. Clouds in the shape of atomic explosions and hills as if thousands of cat humps had been painted. Images that could only be created in the mind of a madman who had slept too little and had pain without end.
Bill smiled for no particular reason. He was about to drift off to sleep when a loud shouting caught his attention. All at once, he was shaken wide awake.

"Ford, what's all this about? Since when do you work with monsters or are they your new 'friends'?"
For once it wasn't Bill who went after Sixer, but a man who was the spitting image of Sixer. His twin in an oversized suit and fedora. Better known as Crescent. They were complete.
"I'll explain everything to you later, Stanley," Sixer reassured his brother, "First we need to focus on the basics. I have a plan on how we can stop all this."
"Sure, my brother the hero," Crescent rolled his eyes and raised his arms as if to grab an explanation out of the air that wasn't there. "Isn't it because of your stupid machine that the world is upside down now?"
"Well, who started the interdimensional portal again? Or let Bill into the dimension?"
"Oh, who designed the inter-thingy in the first place and tried to send me away to the other side of the world with a stupid diary?"
Beside him, Bill heard Shooting Star heave a sigh of frustration "Wait a minute."
She put one foot on a stone man's head and placed the other on an arm. She slid down a bit, held onto a stone leg, put her foot on. Pulled the other one after it. On and on. She put one foot up- slipped out. Bill snapped his fingers, held her in the air, but a force was pulling her down.
"Sixer!" hissed Bill, trying to draw the disputants' attention to what was more important than their stupid sibling quarrel.
Sixer inhaled sharp for an annoyed groan that robbed him of all air as he turned around. He and Crescent ran. Towards the throne. Arms outstretched.

Bill felt like he was holding the whole world on a thin thread. How glad he was when he was able to break the magic link. Shooting Star landed safely in the arms of her... What had she called them again? Ah yes, 'Gronkels'.
Crescent breathed a sigh of relief. Sixer turned to Bill, hair ruffling, with an angry look on his face.
"What the...!" Sixer clenched his hands into fists, holding them up. His hands seemed to be on fire. A small flame on each finger.
Or Bill thought of fire, because he was hot, like he'd been exercising in a sauna.
"I...", Bill gasped. Couldn't find the air or the strength to speak. Rescuing a falling girl was not an easy task, especially with defective magic. The consequence of his rescue operation throbbed in his well... muscles or whatever the equivalent was within him.
"You've gone too far, Cipher," Sixer hissed. Bill sighed, which he barked out as a cough. He had clearly not been responsible for this mess. And that coughing attack was on Sixer's account.

"Wait, Gronkle Ford! That was my mistake!" blurted Shooting Star as she pushed her Gronkel a few inches away from Bill.
Thank the axolotl, Bill thought, wiping a bead of sweat from his brow. Roasting Sixer was just beyond his capabilities right now.
"Mabel, what are you saying?" asked Crescent. Sixer's gaze was still focused on Bill for a moment before he gave ear to his dearest niece. Where was Pine Tree, the useless one, anyway?
Oh, he was giving Bill evil glances from the corner with his arms crossed… Instead of saving his sister. What a dumbass. Did no one noticed what he truly did? Apparently.
And back to the family drama happening in front of the throne.

"Why did Bill do that?"
"Ford, that shouldn't be your first question." Crescent turned to Shooting Star and eyed her, "Are you hurt, dear?"
She shook her head and Bill felt the same relief spread across Crescent's face. But then Shooting Star thought a second and nodded vigorously.
"Yes. I'm hurt." To her Gronkels' surprise, she placed her hands on her heart, "Right Here. Pain in my heart. Because all you two ever do is fight."
"Dear." Crescent put a hand on his niece's shoulder. Something like guilt sparkled in his eyes, but Bill couldn't tell if it was an apologetic, pitying or guilty look.
"Sometimes adults just argue," Sixer said, arms crossed in front of his chest. He wasn't looking at his brother, but he wasn't looking at Bill either. His eyes fixed on the darkness as if it could swallow his guilt and anger.
Bill would have liked to tell him that darkness and loneliness were never healing.

Bill cleared his throat, perhaps a little too loudly, for the Pines brothers looked at him.
"Have we actually met before?", Crescent tilted his head and eyed him from all three sides.
"In your dreams." Bill couldn't help grinning, but it stretched across his eye like a painful bow. He gritted his teeth, suppressing the cry of pain that filled his mouth with a bitter taste. He swallowed the foam, retched, but controlled himself. He sagged on the throne like a soggy chip melting into the seat.
"Hey, you all right?", Crescent's head tilted, or maybe it was just Bill Bill sliding too deeply into his throne.
"Too much magic," Bill spat through his eyelids, rubbing them as if trying to get rid of a foreign object.
"Oh, thank you for saving me, Bill!" Shooting Star's words boomed up to him like an alarm clock and were the only thing that kept him from fatal sleep.
He didn't need a thank you. Not in front of all these people. He felt Sixer's gaze like tiny fine needles pricking his eye before he turned to him and recognised a very different look.
Disbelief widened Sixer's eyes. Bewilderment painted the pupils small and black. The corners of his mouth twitched without having decided whether to form a smile or hold on to their suspicion. His lips finally curled as if they had been sucking on a sour lemon, which in retrospect turned out to be a sweet orange. Sixer smiled.
Just like when he looked up at Bill.
And just as quickly as suspicion had crept into Sixer's face back then, making his eyes alert and aware and his fingers tremble, the smile crumbled and the same expression returned with a new burst of colour.
"What is the meaning behind all this, Cipher?" he spoke the words softly, as if he could not believe them himself. As if he doubted there was a reason behind it. He was only asking to distract his own troubled insides from his own mistake. To blame it on someone else. Someone who was probably most obviously to blame for Weirdmageddon of all: Bill.

"If I had..." Bill let the words fall, too tired to finish the sentence. He rolled onto his side, bumped into an armrest, resting against it. Then he looked up again to look into Sixer's confused face, "She had climbed down to run for you two, Sixer. A fall from that height would have been fatal."
Sixer took a deep breath, ran his hand through his hair and looked around him for something that would give him reason enough not to say the next words. But he found no reason.
"What do you want in return?"
"Nothing, that’s not a deal." Bill hated himself for saying those words, but what else could he have done? Persuade Sixer not to stop Weirdmageddon, even though by stopping it, he might get a new dimension? Or take over his body so he didn't have to endure the pain of his own body?

"Bill, since when... do you care about humans?"
Since never!, he wanted to blurt out, but he was silent. Speaking hurt. Forming words was impossible. That’s what Bill told himself, but the trimmed sentences danced on his tongue like ice dancers. And they would keep scraping around with their sharp runners if he didn't get rid of them. He swallowed them.
Instead he formed a lie that hurt less, "It's just a side effect of the pain."
Sixer, though he was so smart, just took it for real. He'd always been bad at seeing through Bill, that was the only reason Bill got this far with the portal back then. The others before him had been stupid, or didn't bother, or saw through the lies before his truth was fulfilled....
Only Sixer had gotten as far as building the portal and almost activating it. But only almost.
The one who had finally activated it was Crescent.
A funny coincidence, but Bill couldn't laugh about it.
For both persons were bickering again, as if the incident had just been an illusion.

"See what your hocus pocus almost did to Mabel?"
"Hocus pocus? We're in the middle of an apocalypse, Stanley!"
"Apocalypse?" Crescent held his arm out and pointed at what must have looked like a pretty party location to his eyes, "That looks more like a tea party to me. Is that triangle guy your best friend?"
Sixer's expression was so befuddled that anger found no place in it for a moment. Bill did his best to stifle his peals of laughter - because of the pain - but he laughed uncontrollably.
Funny, how Sixer didn't enlighten his family, he thought, until the pain killed his laughter and he suddenly found himself in the position to struggle not to scream.
He must have been screaming just as uncontrollably, because people flinched and were in flight mode all at once. But his screaming attracted them like that of a helpless baby that one wanted to calm down at all costs.
That kind of attention was humiliating.
"Hey, Shhh... It'll be okay."
Bill blanked out who said that to him. Ignored what the others were saying or doing. Focused on the pain, which was still more pleasant than being stared at by twelve, sixteen, twenty (?), parental-looking pairs of eyes.

When Bill lifted his gaze and pulled it away from the staring crowd, he recognised Pyronica poking her head in from outside. Her pink eyes reflected something that was as rare in a monster's eyes as a human without a heart: Fear. Not worry. Real fear.
The thought crept under him like an ice-cold shadow and made him freeze.
Were the monsters so afraid for him that they couldn't stand to stay inside the pyramid any more?
Bill had told himself that monsters and humans just didn’t go along, that this was the only reason they weren’t here, but Pyronica's eyes lit him up with the truth. Her tears sparkled and fell to the floor like crystals that, when they hit the ground, shattered into a million shards. She pulled her head out of the room before Bill could have seen any more of it. But he heard every drop as it fell and the ground cracked under the volume of water. Her tears left only a damp trail, but it was enough to tear Bill's world apart.

Bill closed his eye. When had he stopped crying? When had he given up fighting? Not now, maybe ages ago. Back when the flames completed the dance of death around his waist and pulled him into blackness. Maybe he had never escaped the Nightmare Realm. Maybe he was still stuck there.
In the blackness. That infinite blackness. There was nothing here. Nothing but despair and the bitter taste of failure. Bill wandered day in and day out through the sponge filled with a liquid that reeked of oil and tar. He crawled through all the filthy holes, looking for a way out, but no light told him where to look.
Quite possibly he hadn't tried hard enough.

Bill opened his eye. A strange energy pumped through his body. He would have called it 'adrenaline' if it had numbed the pain, but it was just his urge to move. To act. To do something before he would be destroyed.
"Sixer," he called out, startled at how weak his voice sounded. He should have got used to it by now, but the sound of the thin ice always startled him. So did the loud volume at which Sixer could talk.
"What is it, Bill?"
'Let's get started with the plan,' Bill said without having uttered a word. All it took was a look, or the mere contact their eyes had made for the second, or... It was sheer thought transmission. Just what was left of the mental communication between Sixer and him from back then.

Chapter Text

Sixer called everyone together with a wave of his hand. The chosen ones formed a circle around him. 
“There is a way to stop Weirdmageddon. I've already told some.” His gaze landed on his brother, not because he was one of the Enlightened, but because he was the only one who did not know about the prophecy. 
Crescent stood away from the crowd with his arms crossed, and it was probably because of Shooting Star holding his suit jacket that he was still here at all. 

“Does anybody…” Sixer stopped in mid-sentence. Apparently, he had found what he wanted to ask for. He picked up a blue spray can from the floor and held it up to the light as if to examine the colour. “Perfect.” 
“My brother's lost his mind!” Crescent grumbled as Sixer drew a circle on the floor. “Now he's painting some weird circles on the floor of a floating pyramid!”
“Ford knows what he's doing,” Pine Tree reassured him. Bill silently disagreed. 
After all, Sixer had no idea what the whole thing would do.  

Bill felt an inner calm as the circle filled with symbols. He traced the lines with his eye. First the outer circle, then the symbols inside: He could see the six-fingered hand best from where he was standing. 
The symbol for God. Or for someone extraordinary. Someone who is not like everyone else. 
Ford took the first step into his rightful place. Bill would have nodded to him, but Ford had his back at him.

Next to Ford, the mended heart. 
Someone who has suffered heartbreak, but has recovered from it.   
Robbie stepped forward and grasped Ford's extraordinary hand with a face of disgust. 

The pentagram symbolizes health and protects against evil spirits. 
Bill lowered his gaze, but heard from the clumsy footsteps that Gideon had taken his place. 
Right next to Mabel, which Gideon squeaked must have been fate. 

The shooting star. A fireball that has fallen from the sky and burns down all evil. 
Bill remembered the fire. He felt the flames burning a small part of his body. It was time. 
Bill hovered not because of his own magic, but because the other magic drew him to the circle. 

Meanwhile, Pacifica took her place, grumbling. 
The llama. Wealth, luxury and power that will one day crumble like delicate threads of wool.  
The pyramid’s room seemed to crackle, as if a fire was burning the forest around it. Bill swallowed. Floating felt strange. 

The next symbol. “The glasses represent a learned person,” Ford explained. 
It was almost ironic that Fiddleford MC Gucket took the position. The guy did not seem to know what honour he was being given, but grinned happily. 
The glasses. Someone who sees through the fog and gives a clear view of things.  
If Ford had only adjusted his glasses once, he might have seen the same thing his friend had warned him about years ago. 
Bill was stuck between a grin and a regretful pout. 

The next symbol brought a sort of smile to his face. 

The pine tree. Symbol of long life. And of endurance.  
Dipper stepped on the same symbol that was on his cap. He had always been an interesting boy, the way he persevered in trying to solve the mysteries of Gravity Falls. 
Bill could not deny that he had had a lot of fun with him. But now, he shuddered as he was reminded that the fun was over.
That his physical body had reached its limit. 

Wendy stepped next to Dipper, taking his hand with a smile that must have been enchanting in Dipper's fantasies. Her eyes did not seem cold at all, but she always remained calm and level-headed. 
The ice. It keeps feelings for love frozen, waiting for the right time to thaw.

Soos stepped into the circle next to her. Bill caught a glimpse of him as he floated past. 
The question mark. Unanswered questions buzz in your head. None of them will be answered. 

Bill floated into the middle. The magic was already sparking and running like a blue thread through the people's hands, closing a circle around him that only needed to be filled by one last symbol. 
Bill stared down at the perfect twin copy of Ford and formed a vague smile. 

“Stanley! You're the last one missing!’ shouted Ford, turning around. 

Crescent stared at the wall as if the golden exterior gave him more reason not to enter the circle. “This is ridiculous! How is a weirdly drawn circle supposed to stop the apocalypse?”

“I'm sure it'll work. Please, come on.”

“How?” Crescent turned round and raised his hands. “How is that supposed to work? And why should I participate in your magical non-sense?”

“Just this once.” Ford's eyes had never looked so pleading. Not even when he'd asked Bill to explain the strangeness of Gravity Falls. 
“Please.” The word echoed as if it travelled through a thousand dimensions. In each one, it lost a little more of its strength until it came out as a desperate cry to the man in the suit.

“Learn to say thank you.” Crescent’s words surprised not only Bill, but also everyone else. First and foremost Ford, who eyed his brother with an oblique look.  
Stanley stepped closer, raising his finger like a death threat and dugging it into Ford's chest. The scientist jumped to the side, but continued to hold Robbie's hand. 
“Thirty years I've been trying to get you out of this portal. 30 years! And I haven't heard a single thank you from you!”Ford took a deep breath. “Thank you, Stanley.”“Well, there you go.” Stanley stepped on the half-moon symbol. Crescent. The half that every once in a rare blue moon will find its other half and shine to the fullest. 
Stanley took Ford's hand and the circle was complete. The energy flowed through all the hands and gathered in the middle. 

“Thank you.” Bill whispered with a satisfied smile on his eyelids. First he looked at Ford, then at the others. “Thank you, Stanford. Thank you, Stanley, Soos, Wendy, Dipper, Fiddleford, Pacifica.” He took a deep breath, coughing. “Thank you, Mabel. Thank you, Gideon and thank you Robby.” 

“Bill, why?” asked Mabel. Her voice was thin as ice and sounded sad, maybe because he had made it sound like a goodbye. 
Because it was one. 
Bill drew a sharp breath. “In the end, you’re all so important to me that I even remembered your real names. Be lucky. And don’t forget my part of the deal. I want my own dimension. I…”

Bill closed his eye as the energy enveloped him. It burned on his skin like fire. Tore it loose. Consumed the strangeness. The pain stopped. Calm returned. The familiar faces disappeared. Darkness descended over him.