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Everything was loud.
The wind whirls furiously around him, bufetting him. The shouts of his Stan and his sister – Soos, too, in the background - scream up a cacophony. The whirring, deafening churn of machinery and channelled magic – more than that, the screaming hum of energy.
Bill honestly thought he’d just go deaf. And in some way too, he had.
Because now the silence was agonising.
Standing atop the wreckages and debris; a figure, shocked statue still.
He looks like Stan, Bill notes idly. Then, because he must be hallucinating, quickly put his glasses on to make sure.
The Doppelganger stared at them. His face betrayed the very harrowing surprise, bespectacled eyes widening – as if they were all too much, sights too disbelieving to be true. Much less, then, to behold.
The clarity of his vision makes to only drive the reality home – this man looked so much like Grunkle Stan. A different kind of heaviness to his jaw, maybe – a different kind of strength beneath his eyes – but other than that…
“Stanley?” The Stan-Doppelganger breathes out. He raises a shaky hand to his face. “Oh… shit.”
Grunkle Stan – the real one – takes a step forward. His face looks odd to be so vulnerable. “Stan-Stanford? Stanford? It work- it worked!”
Stan takes another step, but the Doppelganger – Stanford? – takes a step back in response. He’s shaking his head, eyes squeezing shut.
“...no,” Doppelganger says, his words ending in a sigh. “I’m- My name is Stanford, yes. But I- I’m not…your universe’s Stanford. I’m…not who you’re looking for.”
Grunkle Stan stops. He stares at Doppelganger oddly.
“What the fuck do you mean?”
Great Uncle Stanford doesn’t like him.
Bill is a lot of things, and one of those things include being almost uncannily perceptive. He picks up on a lot of things; holding the little facts close to his chest, a protective dragon with his little hoard.
(Granted, when your guardian is a demon that… does make it easier. Marginally.)
But Great Uncle Stanford doesn’t like him. Great Uncle Stanford physically kept his distance. Great Uncle Stanford had flinched oddly when they were still rich in introductions – ‘My name is Bill Cipher.’
Great Uncle Stanford was staring at him. He wasn’t even trying to be subtle.
Did he…?
Just narrow his eyes…?
Gritting his teeth, Bill whips his head around to sharply meet Great Uncle Stanford’s eyes. He thinks the words that burn on his tongue are scathing, that there is a great offendedness beneath his tones, but-
What comes out is questioning. What comes out is a little broken. What comes out, instead, is this;
“Do you not like me?”
The room, wrecked and crumbling as it is, stands frozen in time. It feels like the world holds its breath. Bill forces himself to exhale, just to break the suffocating spell.
Great Uncle Stanford blinks. Something odd and unreadable resides in his eyes. He doesn’t answer, not for a long time.
Every second feels like an era. Bill thinks his breathing is loud – thinks that his shudders, the hitches in his inhales and exhales are deafening. Bill thinks he’ll go mad with the silence.
But eventually, Great Uncle Stanford looks away. Something like guilt mashes with the odd light in his gaze. A muscle tightens in his jaw.
“You remind me,” Great Uncle Stanford says, “of someone I knew. He wasn’t that…nice.”
Oh.
“So you’re like the monsters.”
Great Uncle Stanford stiffens.
“Sorry, sorry-” Bill says, quickly. He rubs at his arm, wincing terribly. “That uh- That sorta just…came out. I didn’t mean to say-”
His words are burrs and tangles. Bill stops to rearrange them, eyebrows furrowing gently.
(He feels Mabel brush a hand against his back. Its strength in a silent message.)
“Monsters have been uh…” Bill winces, and pulls a face. “Trying to kill me. For a really, really long time. Since I was three, actually.”
Great Uncle Stanford stares at him. “...you know why?”
“Mmm.” Bill pulls another face – one of distaste, now. “Some uh- alternate version of me? Was a dick, apparently. They want revenge.”
Bill clasps his hands together, entwining his fingers – they shake, softly. “I didn’t do all of that, though. I mean, whatever dick-me did, it wasn’t. Y’know.”
Great Uncle Stanford looks away, again. He glances up at Stan’s face; searching quietly. It’s almost uncanny to see them that way – communicating silently.
Uncanny, because Bill has never seen it from a third-person’s view. He has only been part of it; the twins speaking bounds in silent messages.
He glances at the corner of his eye, almost unbidden. Mabel meets his gaze.
She smiles. Something twisted in Bill’s chest settles.
Their great uncles quickly wrap up their silent conversations. Grunkle Stan has an odd, almost dazed look about him – but Great Uncle Stanford fixes a new gaze upon them both.
A kind of sharpness, oddly subdued but still glimmering like a knife, in his eyes – Great Uncle Stanford pricks the corner of his lips up in a smile.
“Right,” he says. He gives Bill another odd glance, but Bill relishes the lacking edge to them now. “You’re right.”
Bill meets his eyes, blinking a couple of times. He smiles.
“So you’re the author of the journals in your universe?”
Great Uncle Stanford leans back. “I am. Unfortunately, I lost all three of them back home.”
Their collective wince must be obvious, because Great Uncle Stanford glances around – his smile growing, slightly, wider. “Oh, it’s alright. I gained a lot more than those books, after all.”
“Like what?”
“Peace.” Great Uncle Stanford shuts his eyes. “A victory.”
Then, he frowns. When his eyes open, again, there’s a dull sort of grimness in them. “But I… did lose something very valuable. Or, actually… someone.”
Grunkle Stan tilts his head. His eyebrows are furrowed, but a knowing sort of light gleams in his eyes. “So you’re looking for them?”
Great Uncle Stanford’s lips press together into a tight line. He nods.
“How do you know if they’re just…ya know…” Soos winces almost as soon as the words are out, and as their echo bounds loudly back at him.
But Great Uncle Stanford, however, only looks back with steel. “Because I made this,” he produces a small, beeping device from his back pocket, “and followed it all the way here. It took weeks- Probably a month, now, time gets a bit tricky-”
“So they’re here?” Bill’s eyes brighten; excitement flashes, bright and warm, through his veins like a bolt of lightning. “They’re on this world right now?!”
Great Uncle Stanford smiles that odd smile again. “Quite possibly, yes. We got separated as a…ritual, to defeat our enemy. He’s meant to be back a couple of weeks ago.”
He stops, then, to take in a breath – Bill thinks he can hear the shudder lurking at the edges. “By the time we realised that he was… late, for lack of a better term, I rushed to produce a device that could hopefully track him. To find him, and…bring him home.”
Bill eyes the red flashing light at the centre – beeping steadily, still. “Him?”
Great Uncle Stanford nods. A hesitant, warily hopeful look fills his eyes. “I don’t suppose you’ve heard of someone called Dipper Pines?”
They started running the moment they heard the laughter.
Manic. Loud. Unhinged. So damn exasperating.
Granted, neither of either twin was actually worried – except for perhaps, Great Uncle Stanford, who had stiffened oddly once more. But the voice was familiar, it was known, and they bounded up the steps two at a time.
Bill barrels through the door, stumbling onto the porch, and freezing.
Oh, Pinetree was having too much fun with it all.
He feels more than hears the others stumble into step around him – feels, like a mirroring stutter, of the broken breath Great Uncle Stanford breathes in.
“Dipper?” Great Uncle Stanford whispers – as if speaking loudly will enhance it, the reality.
Bill shuts his eyes, mild annoyance flashing in his veins. Amusement too, maybe, because it’s vaguely nice to have his demonic guardian enjoy himself – but mostly annoyance; it’s rather unfortunate that one of the few ways Pinetree can enjoy himself acts against the betterment of most other people.
“I got this,” he begins to sigh – begins to take a step forward, to brave the stretch of length and drag his stupid demonic guardian back to the ground; before he does something that Bill knows, that they both know, will be something the demon regrets.
But Great Uncle Stanford steps forward, first. His boot lands on the dirt, as he steps off the porch, with a soft thud of a footfall.
Pinetree’s head whips around. His grin stretches impossibly wider.
“SIXER!” Dipper Pines laughs, a sound wretched from the deepest confines of his lungs. He spreads his arms almost welcomingly, had it not been for the predatory grace beneath his movements - the sharp, harrowing edge to his smile and teeth that Bill cannot remember usually being so sharp.
The FBI agents scattered around like dying flies didn’t help with the image, certainly.
“Care to JOIN the party!?” His words are dripping in venom, like the dark wisps flowing freely from the cracks in his form. “There’s room FOR one MORE!”
Great Uncle Stanford stands, staring silently – lost, it seems, for the words.
And slowly, the longer the silence stretches, the more Dipper’s laughs taper off. The more the demon squints, staring – the more his eyebrows furrow, the louder his silent thoughts sound.
Bill, if he were completely honest, was getting real sick of the silences.
“What’s-”
Great Uncle Stanford lifts up the tracking device – the beeping grows more frantic, and impossibly louder.
Pinetree has an expression of absolute bewilderment . He floats steadily to the ground, feet landing against the earth. He stares – black eyes flashing in a million different questions, a million different thoughts.
All of which comes to a screeching halt, as Great Uncle Stanford whispers again;
“Dipper?”
Pinetree blinks – once, twice, then a third. His eyes flash back to normalcy; the FBI agents drop around them like ragdolls, and the fire tapers down to a gentle simmer.
“...you’re not the Stanford Pines we were looking for,” Dipper says, softly.
Stanford Pines drops the tracking device to the ground. It beeps stubbornly on.
“No,” he agrees, just as – if not more – softly. Bill watches his shoulders move with his shaky inhale. “But I think you’re the Dipper Pines I was looking for.”
Pinetree’s expression does not change – it’s a stubborn, stony mask of silence. Unreadable, unsettling, and unbreakable.
Until Great Uncle Stanford moves on, to say; “I guess you’ve been around a lot longer than a couple of weeks, huh?”
The difference is staggering. Dipper’s mask breaks – shatters, into a million pieces, and what’s left is an expression of utter horror .
The demon takes a step back . He breathes in, sharply; eyes flashing in a way that makes it look like it’s painful to meet Great Uncle Stanford’s eyes, and yet he cannot look away.
“I-”
The fires die out.
“I-”
Dipper takes another step back.
“I’m-” He wraps his arms around his own self; a desperate attempt at self-soothing. He breaks away from Great Uncle Stanford’s eyes, and it looks like it’s agonising to even do so.
But he does, and the horror – the utter, utter terror – that fits like a glove on his face grows steadily as he takes a look around.
At the tormented FBI agents groaning to themselves. At the ring of blue fire still slightly smouldering. At the evidence of his slip – his fall into, his dance with, his dangerous flirt with the demonic side of him.
It stands out like a sore thumb, and aches like it too.
Great Uncle Stanford takes a step forward, and then another. Steadily, he closes the gap whilst Dipper is too distraught to even notice; the demon, ageless and timeless, so easily wrongfooted by the mere presence of one person .
And Bill thinks he should do something. Stand up against the steadily advancing man with the protectiveness that Dipper has shown him, again and again. Shout, or yell, or maybe even cry.
But something holds him still. Maybe it’s physically Mabel’s grip on his arm, although he could rip away easily. Maybe it’s the deafening silence, although he could shout and break it in a snap.
Maybe it’s the look on Pinetree’s face. Maybe it’s because he’s never seen something remotely like it before. Maybe it’s because Pinetree looks so helpless . Maybe it’s because he’s so clearly scared.
And that, in turn, terrifies the shit out of Bill too.
“Dipper,” Great Uncle Stanford says. He steps forward once, then another – faster, now. “Dipper.”
Pinetree whips his gaze back, quaking underneath the supposed weight of Great Uncle Stanford’s gaze. He visibly quivers, hunching into himself – his mouth opening and closing soundlessly, as if to grasp the words but knowing, ultimately, how hopeless it’ll all be.
Then Great Uncle Stanford all but runs towards him, and pulls him into a hug.
For a moment – a long, instantaneous moment all at once – Dipper doesn’t even move. He blinks a couple times, staring in the direction of the shack; clearly unseeing, caught onto the raging thoughts in his own head.
Then, quickly, come the tears. Dipper’s face crumbles into itself – like the slow fall of a tower of cards. His eyes squeeze shut, and he wraps his arms around Great Uncle Stanford’s shoulders – holding tightly, gripping the back of his trenchcoat; terrified of a circumstance where they’re separated again.
Of being lost, again. Because that, at its core, was what had happened – he’d been lost.
Dipper sobs, clinging onto Great Uncle Stanford's coat like a kid - weeping for the consequences of being found.