Chapter Text
For all of the dread Fiddleford had felt towards their project, he somehow hadn’t seen this coming. In retrospect, he absolutely should have. Ford had never been one to keep their workspace tidy, of course the rope around the dummy would get caught around one of their legs, and with Fiddleford’s luck, of course it’d been his own.
It wasn’t until the dummy was through the portal that the rope drew taught, tugging his foot out from under him and over the safety line. Fiddleford scrambled to sit up, to pull the rope off of him, but his own weight was pining it down until it wasn’t, until his weight was suspended in the air before the pulsating blue light of the portal.
“Stanford!” Fiddleford shrieked, spinning around in the air to reach towards his partner.
His legs burned, and then went cold. That sensation creeped further and further up his body, consuming him until only his shoulders and head remained outside of it. Part of Fiddleford wanted to describe to Ford the physical sensation of going through the portal, but most of him was screaming.
“Fiddleford!” Stanford cried with just as much distress, grabbing for his hand, unheeding of the position of the safety line beneath his feet. “Hold on, I can—“
That's the last thing Fiddleford heard from him before a great, all consuming hum filled his ears. His vision went white, before the brightness separated into tiny dots of starlight in a dark expanse.
There's no sign of the portal before him, no proof of it ever existing. No way home.
“Ford!” Fiddleford cried into the void, knowing the words were worthless even as they left his mouth. “Stanford!”
The hum faded out and above his own frantic panting, he could hear something cackling. He recognized the sound, if not its scale, and he twisted to see the source.
Impossibly large in this void of space was, of all things, a yellow triangle with a jaunty little tophat and bowtie. If Fiddleford weren’t terrified beyond reason, he’d be tempted to laugh.
“Sorry, Specs, Sixer can’t save you here!” the triangle jeered, eye squinting up in a facsimile of a smile. “In fact, nobody can!”
Specs. Of all things, it was the nickname that finally had things clicking into place. He had thought the tapestries adorning Stanford’s ‘study’ were far less literal than they turned out to be.
Fiddleford wished he could say Bill’s name, voice the dreaded realization of all the puzzle pieces clicking together, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t breathe. His vision blurred with tears that he couldn’t even bring himself to be embarrassed about.
“Aw, nothing to say?” Bill teased, leaning forward out of his mind-bending throne and wrapping a hand around Fiddleford before he could even flinch. He hadn’t realized how close the thing was.
Bill drew him even closer, until all of his vision was consumed by his massive eye.
“Aw, look at that, you’re crying!” Bill’s other hand came up to jab a finger into his tear stained cheek, hard enough to hurt in a dull, distant way. “You always were a coward, weren’t you?”
He squeezed him a little tighter for emphasis, and Fiddleford let out a pathetic cry under the pressure. Bill’s eye narrowed further, clearly pleased.
“Good thing you ended up here then, huh? Couldn't have you getting in the way anymore than you already have,” Bill said idly, tilting Fiddleford this way and that as if bored. “Not that you ever stood a chance! I’ve seen a hundred timelines, and there’s not a single one where Sixer listens to you instead of me!”
Fiddleford just sobs, straining against Bill’s grip to no avail.
“But really, Specs, I’m glad you’re here! I know we’ve never really seen eye-to-eyes, but there’s something I just have to show you!” Bill cackled. “Think of it as a sneak peak at the party of a million life times! You’ll hate it!”
Fiddleford continued to writhe, fighting desperately for any leverage and finding none. He’s exhausted, bruised down to the bone and barely able to breathe from a combination of panic and pressure. Bill floated the two of them off somewhere, but Fiddleford had no hope of even beginning to orient himself in this space.
“Here ya go!” Bill said, releasing Fiddleford in front of some pulsing rift of red light. All around him, similar rifts litter the expanse of space.
He gasped, hands flying up to his chest to press against his ribs. They were just bruised, it seemed, but it still hurt like hell.
“Go ahead and check it out! You won’t be around to see your own dimension after I’m done with it, so use your imagination in there, why don’t ya?” Bill taunted, pressing a massive black finger into Fiddleford’s chest. “Don’t worry about missing out! I’ll be sure to say hi to the wife and kid!”
With one final shove, that feeling of hot-then-cold consumes him once more.