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He opened his eyes and immediately knew that something was wrong.
First of all, he had no idea where he was. He was in a clearing, surrounded by trees, but he couldn’t remember how he got there. In fact, he couldn’t even remember who -
A touch startled him out of that train of thought, and he stared up at the newcomer - an older man, grey hair and wrinkles, wearing a somewhat ridiculous outfit consisting of a red fez, box-shaped glasses, and a sharply-cut suit and bow tie.
He stood up quickly as though moving on instinct. There was a name on the tip of his tongue, and this man seemed to fit the vague description etched into his mind in deep grooves.
LIAR MONSTER SNAPPY DRESSER
The man’s expression changed from whatever it was before (he wasn’t entirely sure) to a worried frown. “Stanford, calm down. It’s just us.”
His eyes darted to three more people standing behind the man with the bow tie; two children, a boy, and a girl, who might’ve been twins (Why did that thought make his chest ache so badly?), and some large, hairless gopher man.
He felt a brief flicker of something like guilt, but he was quickly seized by panic and backed up against a tree, eyes wide what color were his eyes? He was outnumbered - the only way to get out of this situation would be to flee into the woods, but there were eyes in the trees-
(-watches from within birch trees-)
-and he couldn’t trust anyone -
(-trust no one trust no one TRUST NO ONE-)
-and that plan would only work for so long before he tired. He felt his fingers digging into the bark of the tree he was backed up against and paused a moment to put one of them in front of his face.
Six fingers on each hand, not five. How did he not know how many fingers he had? Why was everything so blank??
“See? C’mon Sixer. You have to remember something -“
He looked up from his hand and back to the man with the bow tie, his heart rate doubling. No, no no no shit shit SHIT-
(C’MON, SIXER, A FEW MORE HUNDRED VOLTS NEVER KILLED ANYBODY! WELL, EXCEPT YOU, OF COURSE!)
“Cipher,” his mind was clear. The word barely came out as audible, but with it flooded a million memories and his stomach did a flip, dread pooling in his gut alongside the adrenaline already pumping through his veins.
The man pulled back, horrified. “No, no, he’s gone, Stanford. Listen for just a sec, will ya?”
“Grunkle Ford?” The girl behind the older man looked at him with wet eyes. But it was just a trick, another lie; it had to be because what else could it possibly-
(Whoa, six-fingered handshake! A whole finger friendlier than normal!)
“What is wrong with me?” he whispered. A headache was starting to pound the inside of his skull, and his right eye hurt like Hell-
(My right eye is so sore it bleeds on the page - the cost of letting him possess me.)
“We need to get you back to the Mystery Shack, dude,” the gopher man stepped forward. He seemed unthreatening enough
unless it was another trick
, and the two children nodded in agreement.
“There has to be something there we can use to jog his memory,” Mason added. Wait, how did he know the kid’s name?
(The Oregon blue sky above them and miles of green forest around them, Ford told Dipper a secret, and Dipper in return shared one of his)
The man with the bow tie offered to help him up (When had he sunk to his knees? Why did the world seem to fast forward whenever he closed his eyes to blink?), but he pulled himself up without help, much to his body’s dismay. A few dizzying seconds of vertigo led to him nearly falling back down, but the man reached to help him balance, and without really thinking, he was momentarily grateful. But then he remembered
or forgot
again and pushed away with a hiss.
The walk back (When had he even been here in the first place?) to whatever the Mystery Shack was didn’t take very long, but perhaps that was because he kept drifting in and out. More than once, he found himself blinking and opening his eyes to a completely different part of the forest than before.
Yellow eyes drifted around through his thoughts and stuck to them like horrible watchful cobwebs, and he tried to distance himself from the man with the bow tie as much as possible, even though he hadn’t shown any vengeful intent.
Within hours seconds, years, minutes, the group came upon a moss-covered shack, if you could call the dilapidated pile of rubble a building at all. Mason broke the door down, and everyone entered, save for the man with the bow tie and himself.
He lingered outside for a few moments, knowing it was a bad idea to follow a bunch of strangers into a space where he wouldn’t be able to quickly escape if they tried something, and he could just run off into the woods now with very little chance of them catching him.
But at the same time, they likely would’ve done something sooner if they were planning on tricking him, and almost everyone had gone inside already, so they weren’t concerned with him running off.
He cautiously stepped inside, and the other man followed behind him.
“Nice place,” he commented wearily, actually unsure of whether or not that statement was sarcasm. He glanced up at the unstable ceiling. What if it caved in?
“Thanks,” the man with the bow tie replied somewhat awkwardly. “It, uh, wasn’t always my place.”
He had no idea what that was supposed to mean, so instead, he sat down on the armrest of the big yellow chair in the middle of the room and frowned slightly at the pair of children who were looking at him with desperate expressions.
“C’mon Grunkle Ford, don’t you remember anything?” the kids pleaded.
“I still don’t know who ‘Ford’ is,” he said.
(Fordsy Sixer Brainiac Poindexter Genius Six-Fingers)
It was strange. The longer he spent around these two kids, the less taunting the voices in the back of his mind became. “I’m sorry, Mason,” he added.
The boy’s eyes widened, and he stared at Ford him. “What did you just say?”
“I know your name,” he replied, gripping the armrest. A new emotion washed through him, but he had no idea what it was. “I’m… not sure how.”
“Always thought it was ‘Diptholemew,’” Stanley muttered from behind him.
“Stan, how can you not know your own grandnephew’s name?” Ford accused. He covered his mouth, shocked. “How did I-“
How did I mistake you for BILL? he wondered, somewhat horrified with himself.
“It’s working! Do me next!” Mabel jumped up and down.
“Sweaters, pigs, glitter…” Ah, yes. “ Your Mabel Juice was at the same time the best and worst thing I’ve ever ingested, Mabel. I wish I’d had access to a supply of it thirty years ago.” The girl smiled and hugged him, and he awkwardly patted her on the head.
Soos was looking expectantly at him now. “Zeus, right?” Ford asked, only half-joking. “Stanley’s accidental son.”
Stan’s eyes widened, but Soos beamed. “That’s right, Other Mr. Pines!”
Stanford brought his hands in front of him again, clenching and unclenching his fingers. He closed his eyes for a moment, but his headache wasn’t going away.
“Grunkle Ford, you’re-“
Ford winced and opened his eyes again and felt the right side of his face. His fingers came back red.
“Oh, that’s wonderful,” he said dryly, blinking a few times. Vision from his right eye was obscured by red, and the soreness had become a burning sensation behind his eye. It shouldn’t be doing this. Not right now. Not if he’s gone.
Mason’s expression flickered to something like realization and then horror. “What if we didn’t-“
Ford closed his eyes again. The boy had read his journals; he’d given him his journals, of course he knew about this. Stanley looked from Ford to Mason, the same expression dawning on his face. (How did he know? Ford’s memories of him were still fuzzy, and it seemed they had a lot of holes in them, but there was nothing about Stan reading the journals as of yet.)
“But we erased everything, right?” Mabel asked. Her expression was more confused but still worried. “There was nowhere for Bill to go. He can’t still be in there. Right?”
Ford blinked, and suddenly a new memory, still fresh in his mind, came back to him.
For the last time, cyan fire engulfed his hand. A physical chill ran down his spine, but Ford didn’t pair it with the original fascination he had experienced the first time around.
Keep it together, Ford, he thought to himself. You’ve already tricked him; it’s okay. Just don’t lose composure yet, for everyone’s sake.
But he couldn’t help but crawl backward as the grays and blacks of the Mindscape squeezed the colors out of the world around him, and the glowing outline of a laughing yellow triangle approached him.
He was safe from Bill’s deal as long as time stayed dead! Why had he agreed to do this? He glanced at the monotone shapes of the niblings and then Stanley.
I’m doing this for them, he decided, closing his eyes and descending into his Mindscape.
He opened his eyes in the middle of a field of waving brown wheat. A grey-blue sky floated overhead, and the skeletal shape of the portal loomed over him. A few feet away, there was a swing set, rusted and with one of the seats broken, but still there, after everything.
“HIYA FORDSY!” Bill Cipher’s voice somehow echoed not only through Ford’s mind but his bones. “ THANKS FOR LETTING ME BACK IN! WE’RE GONNA HAVE SOME REAL FUN SOON, ONCE I GET THAT EQUATION.”
Ford looked up at the massive triangle above him, so big it blotted out the sun but bright enough that you didn’t need one. Bill shrank to a more manageable size, floating around Ford’s head with a mouthless grin.
“Hey, it’s just like old times, huh?” Bill said conversationally. “ A bit more empty, I suppose. You’d think this place would fill up like a balloon after all that time in the multiverse.”
Ford looked down at his hands and then back to Bill. “You aren’t getting that equation.”
“Oh?” the triangular dream demon somehow managed to look incredulous. “I’m already in your mind, Sixer - there’s hardly anything here. Getting that equation will be a cinch. Then I’ll puppet you around until your bones rot and I can’t move you anymore. How does that sound?”
Swallowing, Ford closed his eyes and focused. Please don’t listen to him don’t listen to him don’t listen to him, he thought. “I said you’re not getting the equation, and I meant it.”
Bill rolled his eye. “ And how are you gonna accomplish that, Brainiac? Even if you manipulate the Mindscape, I’ll get to it eventually.”
What was taking Stan so long? Input the words and pull the trigger. It really wasn’t that hard! He could grieve all he wanted afterward, but right now, the world was at stake, and he could only stall for so long.
As if on cue, a burning sensation itched behind his eyes. Blue fire suddenly exploded around them, engulfing the endless wheat field in a matter of moments. Bill’s eye widened in surprise.
“What the- No, no, no!”
Ford imaged a closed space. Something familiar that he could use to anchor himself and keep Bill trapped. The Stan o’ War, the same as it was forty years ago, appeared around them. They were inside the cabin of the ship, sailing through a sea of burning wheat.
It felt strange to have Bill in this one untouched place - but Ford was a captain going down with his ship, and he supposed it was appropriate that his journey ended in the one place Bill had never been.
“Too bad for you,” Ford mused, fighting off the squirming feeling in his stomach. “You’re getting erased. Memory gun - can you believe Stan had it in his coat the whole time?” He laughed, but that question actually did pose an issue.
“Y-you idiot!” Bill stammered, and it was possibly the most satisfying thing Ford had ever seen. “Don’t you realize you’re destroying your own mind too?”
Ford smiled and shook his head. Flames were starting to eat away at the walls - all of their exits were blocked. “All the knowledge in the multiverse isn’t worth my family. I thought I was doing something great, but it turned out I was just another one of your pawns. I’ve been wasting this space all my life, and it’s not like I’ll miss all the nightmares and paranoia.”
“Let me OUTTA here!” Bill reached out in an attempt to escape, but his flames fizzled out. “ Why isn’t this working?!”
“Hey. Look at me.”
Bill turned around, his eye wide.
“You’ve been messing with my head for years. I’m done with the lies, the tricks, the games, the nightmares. I’m done with you. But you made a mistake: hurting my family was the final straw.” He crossed his arms and couldn’t help but grin. “See you in Hell.”
“You’re making a mistake! Come on, Sixer!! I’ll give you anything! Fame! Riches! Infinite power! Your own galaxy, please!” Cipher’s form flickered, melting and reforming and changing colors. “ No! What is happening to me?!” He flashed between several distorted forms, yelling some kind of gurgled language that might’ve been a string of eldritch profanities. He turned black and red and reached out desperately. “ STANFORD!”
Ford raised a fist and gave him a left hook, imagining everyone Bill had ever hurt joining in that single punch. Bill disintegrated with a fading scream, and finally, the sound of fire roaring in Ford’s ears and burning behind his eyes reached him. He let out a pant, then pulled out a picture from his coat pocket - him and Stanley as kids, playing on the beach. Proud and sunburned, they were standing on an old wreck of a ship that had the words STAN O’ WAR in fresh black paint on the side.
“I’m sorry,” he said to no one and everyone. “For everything.” He sighed.
“Thank you.”
Everything faded into blue, and then white, and then nothing.
“Oh,” he said.
“Grunkle Ford, are you okay?” Dipper looked up at him.
“Yeah, I…” he looked around at his brother, his grand-niece and -nephew, and a man he had a feeling was family either way. “I’m alright.” His eye had stopped bleeding - it was just a side effect of Bill entering his mind earlier, he was sure.
There were still a lot of holes in his memory, but at least there were people he could trust to help him fix them. He had all the time he needed to recover.
And then he had an offer to make to Stanley.