Work Text:
There are very few things, to Bill, as torturous as boredom.
The Theraprism is well aware of this, and thrives in its own saccharine mundanity. Bill spends much of his time listless in his cell, only finding amusement in cussing out Stanley Pines in his head, and also maybe daydreaming scenarios in which Sixer grovels on his knees and confesses that he was right all along. Various interdimensional psychologists ask him pointed questions about Euclydia (why anyone cares about that blip in Bill’s life is beyond him), before sending him to therapeutic, degrading arts and crafts sessions. And worst of all, perhaps, is the Axolotl’s insistence on regularly meeting with him for forcible lessons about atonement, anger-management, and healthy boundaries.
Not much changes. Not much will change, Bill has realized, until he finally figures a way out of this polyhedron purgatory.
He’s just returned from a mandatory puppet-making activity (he made a mockery of Stan Pines out of a paper bag and had Saturn devour it, as he did his son) when he finds his cell has a new toy to play with.
Apparently, the Theraprism had realized its inmate cells were not so different from solitary confinement—sorry, the Solitary Wellness Void—so they had distributed computers for their patients to use. They're installed on the floor, which means Bill has to sit on the cold ground, humiliatingly, to use it.
Bill’s Theraprism-mandated computer is nothing to write home about. It’s an uncharmingly bulky square, with a staticy screen that stutters and whirrs pathetically. He can’t even do much on it, besides from tapping a few keys to change the background to different stock images of various galactical creatures giving the camera an encouraging thumbs-up.
He exhausts all his options pretty quickly. He can play Pong. He can browse trans-universal Wikipedia. He used to be able to play Minesweeper, before it was removed for being “too violent”. And he can watch exactly three pre-downloaded movies.
The Duchess Approves, starring Sturly Stembleburgiss as the Duchess and Grampton St. Rumpterfrabble as the irascible coxswain Saunterblugget Hampterfuppinshire, is one of these three movies.
The movie switches on while Bill is idly clicking around, and both his keyboard and mouse proceed to lag out, effectively cutting out any escape route from the overdramatic period piece. And Bill Cipher, because he has nothing better to do in a prison designed for the universe’s worst atrocities, sits and watches every hour of it.
It’s terrible. Badly shot, badly written, with names so ridiculous that Bill’s eye rolls as far back as it can (which is, admittedly, pretty far). He despises all three hours that he’s held hostage watching this abomination born from humanity’s tepid desire to speak in a British accent—which, by the way, Bill still thinks is actually an elaborate inside joke.
He wants to bleach every brick of his body just to purify himself of this experience. He wants to pluck out his eyeball and treat it to a ten-day spa as reparations for subjecting it to these horrors. He demands a sequel from the Axolotl during their next therapy session.
The Axolotl pauses in their explanation of karmic justice, a lesson which Bill had been tuning out the entire session. “There’s no sequel.” They tilt their head. “Only one movie has ever been made.”
Bill glowers. And his medical reports wonder why he’s so filled with anger. “But what happens after?” he complains.
“Production went into debt after casting big name Grampton St. Rumpterfrabble,” the Axolotl answers sadly. “Rumor has it he charges fifty thousand per letter.”
“Wonderful,” Bill drawls. “Real useful information. So what am I supposed to do now, doc?”
The Axolotl’s eyes gleam suspiciously. “I suppose there’s always fanfiction.”
Bill may know all, but even he has the dignity to not touch certain internet spaces. “You’re not suggesting what I think you are.”
“Fans are quite…zealous in their recreations. They post their stories on Archive-of-our-own-dot-org.” The Axolotl pronounces each syllable carefully. “Perhaps some reading will do you good. I’ll allow you to access the website. Call it a reward for good behavior.”
Bill hasn’t shown any good behavior, and both he and the Axolotl know it. There’s an ulterior motive to this; Bill isn’t naive enough to think otherwise. But after racking his brain about it, he can’t figure out what it could be.
So, after his session, he boots up the computer once more and clicks on the new website that’s been added to the homepage. Only because he needs to investigate the Axolotl’s masterplan for himself, of course. Mocking the silly stories of antisocial humans is just an added bonus.
The fanfiction archive loads in, a drab red and white, and Bill proceeds to make an account.
He ends up choosing a username in honor of the one character he respects in the period piece: Count Lionel. Bill is a strong believer that, while Count Lionel may have had his chance at the cotillion, he also deserved a second chance, and possibly a third and a fourth as well. Sure, he may have been rude, overbearing, and borderline stalkerish to the Duchess on a few occasions, but that’s all water under the bridge. Who wouldn’t take a guy like that back!
Perhaps he should’ve courted the Duchess with a pile of dead rats. Bill has always been fond of that gesture.
Well. Regardless of Count Lionel and the Duchess’ tragic romance in the movie, Bill is ready to see The Duchess Approves’ ending fixed, because new ArchiveOfOurOwn user cuntlionel is ready to begin reading fanfictions.
There’s a few thousand works written for the movie, and Bill finds himself unimpressed by every summary he scrolls by. The website itself, all things considered, is not bad at all. Of course, if Bill were in charge, he’d add a few changes for the better, such as an algorithm, a dislike button, and the option to purge every non-The Duchess Approves fic from the site. But he can’t bring himself to be interested in any of the stories.
Well...one fic snags his eye:
The Duke's Temptations at Oglebottom Estate
Before the Duchess was the Duchess, she was just a girl from Wildheart Castle. The Duchess’ life reimagined, starting from her early school days at the Academy to her scandalous debut in society to life after meeting Duke Oglebottom.
It’s written by someone who seems to be a fan of the Duchess, as their username reads shooters4sturly. The fic itself is branded with a dark red E square that Bill has figured means it's rated for everyone, and another red box that contains a circle with a diagonal line across it. A prohibition symbol. How intriguing. He clicks the fic.
Before Bill knows it, an hour has passed, and he’s still reading the fic.
The author clearly has much love for the source material, and it shows in every sentence. There’s so much added detail that Bill had never even considered exploring. The author adds in a storyline expanding on the Duchess’ love for horseback riding and pens in a scene expanding on the one-off line Duke Oglebottom says about his estate’s gardens. They have the Duchess speak with a drier wit than she does in the original, and Duke Oglebottom is a touch more of a realist, but it all works.
The Duchess also has added daddy issues that Bill doesn’t remember being in the movie, as well as the tendency to anachronistically reference 1960s New Jersey, but he finds these oddities easy to overlook, because she may be a duchess, but she’s also a woman, damnit, and this author captures it in a way like no other. And Bill is very invested in the blossoming love triangle between her, Duke Oglebottom, and His Royal Highness Lionel of Cornwall.
(Bill Cipher, as per his username, wholeheartedly believes that this fic will end with Count Lionel receiving the justice he deserves. Bill Cipher is also not a believer in reading the tags of a fic.)
The fic, however, does not end with Count Lionel receiving justice. It does not end at all, in fact. The Duchess is just about to attend her first soirée of the season when the chapter promptly ends. Bill scrolls all the way up, then all the way down, just to make sure he hasn’t missed anything, but no. This story is incomplete.
There is, however, an author’s note. The mysterious writer does not usually leave commentary about their work, but this one is blunt and brusque, and straight to the point: No update this week. Fought a kraken with my brother and took a nosedive overboard. Back to writing when I recover from this cold.
The comment section is filled with sympathies, and the author does not respond to any of them. This mindless cult of readers, Bill realizes in horror, is encouraging this behavior. Bill would be impressed, if it didn’t directly oppose his wellbeing.
So, he takes it upon himself to encourage the author in a way no one seems willing.
POSTED TWO DAYS AGO, he types out furiously. UPDATE WHEN??? TICK TOCK, PAL.
Exactly thirty minutes later, he grows more desperate. YOU MEAT BAGS NEVER AMOUNT TO ANYTHING IN YOUR LIFE. CAN’T EVEN WRITE A MEASLY 5K WORDS? PATHETIC. NO WONDER YOUR DEVOLVING SPECIES WONT SURVIVE CLIMATE CHANGE.
A day later, he’s resorted to bargaining. I CAN GRANT YOU THE SECRETS OF THE UNIVERSE. POWER, RICHES, FAME, ANYTHING YOU DESIRE!! JUST RELEASE THAT NEXT CHAPTER AND IT WILL ALL BE YOURS!
When he still doesn’t get a response, he ends up cursing in his own cryptogram, which Ao3 unhelpfully translates to: □□□□ □□□□□□□□ □□□□ □□□□ □□□□ !!
Still, the author does not continue the fic.
The Axolotl seems mildly concerned about this new coping mechanism, which. It’s not a coping mechanism. Bill simply finds some amusement in the silly little daydreams humans make up. It’s not like he actually cares about what happens next in this fictional reimagining of the Duchess’ life.
He refreshes the page again. The update continues to elude him. Bill mumbles a thousand curses under his breath. He hopes that, wherever they are, the author is suffering.
It’s 9 PM, on a small ship sailing in the Arctic Ocean, when Stan cracks open his laptop for the first time in days. Ford is on the upper bunk above him, flipping through four books at once and muttering to himself about the Arctic dipole anomaly, which means he won’t mind if Stan fills the silence with the click-clack of keys.
The laptop is slow to find a signal, but whatever magic McGucket’s done to the boat holds true, and it connects to the internet. If it were up to Stan, he would much rather be battling nautical monsters right now, but Ford had developed a mild anxiety regarding Stan’s health so he’s allowing himself to stay bedridden one more day for his brother’s sake.
Stan checks his email, and is promptly assailed by twenty new comments, all of which are written in an enraged uppercase.
YOU STILL HAVENT UPDATED, reads the most recent comment, from Ao3 user cuntlionel, SO YOU MUST BE IN NEED OF MY HELP. GO TO GRAVITY FALLS AND FIND ME. SHAKE MY HAND. I WILL RULE THE WORLD AND YOU WILL HAVE THE UNLIMITED POWER TO WRITE 20,000 WORDS A DAY AND NEVER TIRE !!!!! ENDLESS KUDOS! LONG COMMENTS ON EVERY CHAPTER! THE PERFECT HIT:KUDOS RATIO! ARE YOU WITH ME?
Stan squints at the email for a second, then reads through the rest of the comments the user had left. “Ford,” Stan calls from the lower bunk. “I think Bill Cipher’s reading my fanfiction.”
Ford peers at him over the side of his bed, concerned. “Stanley,” Ford starts, both worried about his brother’s health and extremely sick of beta-reading said fanfiction, “let me take your temperature again.”
It takes a slow, torturous week for the fanfic to update.
When Bill refreshes the fic once more to find the chapter number has ticked up, it feels almost as euphoric as when he gained a corporeal form. He devours it immediately.
The Duchess attends her first soirée. The outfits of every character are described in painstaking detail. Elizabeth is beside herself because the Duchess had dared to socialize with the disgraced spinster (how scandalous!). And Count Lionel, very suavely, asks the Duchess to dance.
What happens next, in Bill’s humble opinion, is so outrageous that it warrants another Weirdmageddon. The Duchess rejects Count Lionel. And she rejects him in such a scathing, demeaning way, that Bill feels offended.
The comments section is full of delighted cheering. Bill nearly blacks out with rage. Oglebottom fans. When he liberates Earth, he’ll kill them first.
COUNT LIONEL, he types out in the comments section, IS CLEARLY THE BETTER CHOICE FOR THE DUCHESS. OGLEBOTTOM IS A LOSER WHO CANT EVEN PRONOUNCE HIS OWN NAME. FREE WILL IS FAKE AND IT SHOWS IN ALL THESE SHEEP EATING UP THIS LUKEWARM OATMEAL OF A SHIP. DELETE THIS FIC BEFORE I RIP OUT MY EYEBALL AND HAND-FEED IT TO MY THERAPIST.
The author, usually so mysterious and succinct, responds an hour later: suck a lemon dipshit DONT LIKE DONT READ
Bill hurtles his keyboard at the wall and is about to do the same with his mouse, when Orb of Healing Light #D-SM5 intervenes and has him perform calming breathing techniques for the next thirty minutes.
“It’s Bill Cipher,” Stan is saying to his twin empathetically over dinner. They’re eating some strange, half-magic fish that Ford had caught and gutted himself, but Stan doesn’t have the heart to fuss over it. “Bill Cipher ships Count Lionel and the Duchess.”
Ford sets down his fork. “I thought Bill had been erased from this world for good,” he says slowly, “but if it’s true he can somehow reach you, then this is extremely worrying. The fate of our universe—”
“No,” Stan says, frustrated. “I don’t give a fuck if that isosceles loser is trying to take over the world. He thinks Count Lionel is good for the Duchess.”
Ford pauses. “Prevagen is largely a scam,” he begins, “but I’m willing to give it a shot at this point.”
“Whatever,” Stan grumbles, and goes back to picking out fishbones.
“No, no, let’s unpack this,” the Axolotl says, after Bill realizes he’s been infodumping about this The Duchess Approves fic for the last thirty minutes and promptly forces himself to shut up. “Why exactly do you think this author has a bias against Count Lionel?”
“What do you want me to say?” Bill groans. When the Axolotl simply continues to wait, patient, he sighs, and throws them a bone. “Clearly, they can’t comprehend Count Lionel’s form of love. Ridiculous. The Duchess is lucky to have his attention.”
“But is the author wrong for not centering the story around him?” the Axolotl presses. “He’s not writing about Count Lionel, after all. He’s writing about the Duchess.”
The Axolotl refers to the mysterious author as he. Bill files that information away for later. “I don’t care,” he replies snippily. “She should pay back his devotion, at the very least.”
“Did Stanford Pines enjoy your presents?” the Axolotl asks offhandedly. “Your gestures of affection?”
Bill crosses his arms. “Sixer loved everything I did for him, he just doesn’t want to admit it,” he snaps back. “What does he have to do with anything?”
“Nothing,” the Axolotl says. “I’m several billion years old, I’m afraid I lose myself at times.”
“Shocker,” Bill mutters.
“Well, perhaps if you have a conversation with this author, you could convince him to change the story,” the Axolotl suggests. “Conversations are very productive.”
Bill is about to bite back with a scornful remark but pauses to contemplate the Axolotl’s words. It’s…not a bad idea, actually. The pacifist route, perhaps, but Bill has always chosen to charisma his way through battles anyways. And he’s nothing if not very convincing.
Humans are simple, mindless creatures with an astounding lack of creativity. It’s easy enough to search up the author’s username and hunt him down on some blogging site.
(If Bill weren’t so blinded with rage, he would have questioned why the Theraprism allowed access to this website. But, alas, he was on a one-track mission.)
The blog is plain and untitled. There’s a brief description, but all it reads is: Minors DNI. You know who you are. There’s a link to submit questions, however, and that’s what Bill beelines too. He can’t help but cackle. Oh, this dull-witted author is practically asking for anon hate.
His first few asks go unanswered, so he sends a couple more before he realizes that he’s just being ignored. He then proceeds to type out a final spitball of angry words, and repeatedly smashes his three favorite letters: K, Y, and S.
This ask miraculously gets answered.
anonymous asked:
DUKE OGLEBOTTOMS BORING ESTATE AND BORING GARDENS COULD NEVER GIVE HTE DUCHESS THE THRILL SHE WANTS. COUNT LIONEL IS THE PERFECT LEADING MAN, THE EPITOME OF REAL ROMANCE. THE AO3 AUTHOR CURSE IS REAL AND IT WILL COME FOR YOU. KYS KYS KYS KYS KYS KYS KYS
shooters4sturly answered:
Listen i dont care if you ship lionduch but you arent even right about it
#did you watch the movie with your eyes closed #get out of my inbox #and what does kys mean
It’s quite possibly one of the most unsatisfying answers Bill has ever received, and he once asked Ford about his sexuality. Even worse, shooters4sturly's little minions seem to all rally against him. One calls Bill a “Count Lionel kinnie”, and Bill has no idea what that means, but takes offense anyways.
The author refuses to respond to any more of Bill’s asks. He reblogs a few theories on whether or not Duke Oglebottom is secretly an illegitimate child. He thanks a different anonymous asker for pointing out a small inaccuracy regarding 1800s trade routes. He gets into a civil disagreement with another user regarding Elizabeth’s outburst at the cotillion. He responds to a reader thanking him for continuing the story, even after he had apparently gotten amnesia and forgotten the original ending. Maybe, Bill thinks derisively, that’s why it’s taken a turn for the worst.
So, Bill proceeds to do what could only be the next logical step, and proceeds to make an account to directly message him.
> DELETING MY ASKS HUH
> REAL SMART
> ITS NOT TOO LATE TO CHANGE THE MAIN PAIRING
To Bill’s delight, the author’s response comes quickly:
> Therapy’s a scam but you need clinical help
> THERAPY IS A SCAM AND I AM RECEIVING CLINICAL HELP AND IT DOESNT CHANGE THE FACT THAT DUKE OGLEBOTTOM IS SO BORING THAT YOU HAVE TO MAKE UP A PERSONALITY FOR HIM
> WHAT DOES HE EVEN DO FOR THE DUCHESS
> WHAT DOES THE DUCHESS DO FOR HIM??
> They have thematic parallels or some shit i dont know i failed english
> LIKE THEY HAD THE EMOTIONAL CONVERSATIONS NEEDED TO PROPERLY PROGRESS THEIR ROMANCE
> not oglebottom’s fault it was axed for time
> WHAT ARE YOU EVEN SAYING.
> You never watched the cut footage? are you new here
The implication is strangely irritating. Is this lowlife author trying to gatekeep the Duchess from him?
> NO IM NOT A TERMINALLY ONLINE LOSER.
> GIVE IT TO ME.
> NOW.
shooters4sturly sends him an unlisted YouTube link. Bill watches it immediately. The quality is terrible, to the point the actors’ faces are nearly indistinguishable, but Bill is enthralled either way. There’s added footage of Duke Oglebottom comforting the Duchess about her grandmother’s death, to Bill’s dismay, but he brushes it off because it can’t be considered canon. But the good in the video vastly outweighs the bad. There’s additional context to the special bond the Duchess and her horse shares, a short scene of Count Lionel discussing his birthright with Elizabeth, and another reference to the Duchess’ long lost sister—Bill had been wondering why that plot thread was never explored.
GUESS YOU AINT THAT BAD AFTER ALL, he admits begrudgingly, because the author really didn’t need to give him additional content after all the KYS’s Bill sent his way. WHAT DO YOU EVEN DO ON THIS WEBSITE ANYWAY
> Mostly look at fanart
> …FANART?
Bill isn’t quite sure when it happened, because one moment he’s writing out death threats, and the next moment he finds himself exploring headcanons and fan theories in a depth he had never considered before.
IN A MODERN AU, he finds himself writing to shooters4sturly, IT’S PRETTY OBVIOUS THE DUCHESS WOULD BE A FLOWER SHOP OWNER
No, thats something Elizabeth would force her into, his internet archnemesis replies back, Now a tattoo artist...
WISH FULFILLMENT, Bill counters. YOU'RE PROJECTING, SHOOTERS.
Fine. Barista?
BASIC. BUT I CANT DENY THAT.
The headcanons and AUs then evolve into creating their own characters (apparently intricate The Duchess Approves OCs are quite popular in the fandom) which then snowballs into roleplaying, and suddenly Bill is very invested in the lore of his character and his turbulent relationship with shooters4sturly’s character.
Stanlarius Pinesworth (interesting name, by the way) is the rugged stable hand who works at Oglebottom Estate, and Viscount William Ciphington is the aloof nobleman who is visiting the grounds. And they have a torrid affair, fraught with banter, scandal, and arguments over who tops and who bottoms.
what is omegaverse. the author writes to Bill, when the latter discovers a new au, is that some kind of code word
YOU DONT NEED TO KNOW THE DETAILS, Bill assures him. MY OC WOULD BE AN ALPHA BTW.
“There’s gotta be some ethical issue with this,” Stan mutters, as he tries to figure out what knotting means. “I mean, he tried to kill my entire family.”
“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with some roleplay,” Ford replies encouragingly. He still does not believe Bill is Stan's newfound online enemy, so he just ignores it every time Stan brings it up. “I used to think up elaborate scenarios in which Nikola Tesla gives me a hug and tells me I did a good job.”
“That’s cringe,” Stan, who’s just figured out what his OC being an omega implies, shoots back. “I know what I’m doing is embarrassing, but that’s…I don’t even wanna unpack all that.”
“I can’t believe this,” Ford huffs. “And if you want to roleplay so badly, there’s this great game called Dungeons, Dungeons, and More—”
“I told you, I don’t play that nerd shit.”
“Nerd shit?” Ford practically squawks. “When you have a blog dedicated to a black-and-white period piece—”
Stan tunes him out. His brother should be grateful, in his opinion, that he’s punishing his toxic ex by ghosting him every time Viscount William Ciphington starts getting any type of character development during their roleplay chat logs.
Bill, at his core, is a manipulator. He can play puppet strings as easily as Ford's weak-willed research assistant could play the banjo. Of course, he doesn’t actually want to roleplay elaborate ballroom scenes with his incredibly dashing OC, or enjoy the explicit fanart that shooters4sturly sends his way. This is all part of his elaborate masterplan to worm his way into the author’s trust and sway him to write Count Lionel’s happy ending.
The fic updates. Bill, with equal parts trepidation and excitement, reads it as soon as he finishes the Theraprism’s mandatory Meditation and Yoga class.
Count Lionel catches the Duchess’ wrist before she can turn away. His grip is tight against her skin, fingertips like a brand.
“You need me,” Lionel insists. “You love me.”
“No,” the Duchess whispers. “Not like this.” She wrenches her hand away, leaving Lionel’s fingers outstretched. “Let me go, Lionel.”
The Duchess walks away, and Lionel does not follow her.
Absolute bullshit. Bill doesn’t know why he ever had faith in mortals to begin with.
> DIDNT EXPECT COUNT LIONEL CHARACTER ASSASSINATION BUT I GUESS I CAN ALWAYS COUNT ON YOU TO MISINTERPRET THE TEXT THAT’S RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU
> TERRIBLE CHAPTER, BY THE WAY! ONE OF YOUR WORST!
> AND SPELLING ERROR IN THE THIRD PARAGRAPH, SECOND SENTENCE. YOUR BETA READER SUCKS!!!!
> i posted that chapter ten minutes ago
> Were you refreshing the page its okay to admit youre a fan
> LUCK.
> LETS GO BACK TO TALKING ABOUT HOW YOU BUTCHERED BOTH COUNT LIONEL AND THE DUCHESS IN ONE GO!!
> Ok yeah sure count lionel is sad but what about the duchess and how she feels
> Hes an entitled piece of shit that cant take a no
> He had his chance at the cotillion then he blew it
> Why should she give him a second chance??????
BECAUSE SHES NOTHING WITHOUT HIM, Bill argues, growing increasingly more heated. BECAUSE HE CAN GIVE HER EVERYTHING AND SHE WONT TAKE IT.
> Doesnt matter
> He still sucks
> The duchess is thriving your just mad
> LOOK PAL
> ITS NOT ABOUT THE DUCHESS’ FEELINGS. SHE DOESNT KNOW WHATS GOOD FOR HER.
> Is that really the ending you want to see
> Whatever im too old for this shit i dont care
> ALSO THEIR ACTORS HAVE NO SEXUAL CHEMISTRY DEAL WITH IT
The conversation ends there, because shooters4sturly is a coward unwilling to be enlightened by Bill’s higher plane of thinking.
When Bill checks back, a day later, there’s one unread message he had missed.
Even if she never married the duke, the author has written, the duchess would still be happier by herself than with count lionel. maybe think about why.
And then, as if for added measure: dumbass.
Bill tries to start another prism riot as a treat, just to make himself feel better. It doesn’t go too well (the Theraprism has been handing out cherry sundaes for good behavior, so the inmates aren’t very incentivized to rebel), and they send him back spinning, alone, in the Solitary Wellness Void.
While BIll stews in the unfairness of it all, his mind inevitably drifts to The Duchess Approves.
shooters4sturly isn’t a total idiot, even if he misunderstands the characters at a fundamental level. Count Lionel is, Bill has to admit, a very static character. Which is not the fault of Count Lionel himself, but the fault of those shitty writers! Justice for Count Lionel, indeed.
But the Duchess in the first hour of the movie and the Duchess in the second hour of the movie and the Duchess in the last hour of the movie are all wildly different characters. Count Lionel had remained unchanged in his ways. Left behind, if you will, as she developed and grew.
Perhaps there’s a kernel of truth to the author’s ravings. Maybe the Duchess really doesn’t need Count Lionel, or his love that she’s so quick to spurn. Maybe Count Lionel really is doing too much. Maybe his unwillingness to view life from her perspective ends up only hurting him.
Something stirs uncomfortably in Bill.
No, he thinks scornfully. It’s poor writing all around. Everyone around him is wrong, and he’s just suffering for it.
The Axolotl listens patiently as Bill vents all his anger out during their next session. They’ve given him a coloring book to keep him occupied as he does so, and Bill colors everything with an eyesore of a neon yellow, in a small show of defiance.
“If you hate the fanfic so much,” the Axolotl finally offers, “why not write your own?”
“That’s a lot of effort for something so stupid,” Bill replies. He continues to scribble over what’s supposed to be calming outlines of flowers. “Disappointed your little experiment didn’t work out?”
“On the contrary, I’m impressed, Bill,” the Axolotl says benignly. “It takes great emotional maturity to reconnect with the man you hold so much hatred for.”
“I don’t know how I do it myself,” Bill spits. “He sucks at media literacy.”
The Axolotl's frills flutter. “Well, he also did kill you.”
A silence stretches across the therapy room. Bill looks up from his coloring book.
“What,” Bill says dangerously.
“Jigsaw Puzzle Hour is at noon,” the Axolotl continues, serene, “Don’t be late.”
The Theraprism is not unused to breakdowns. After all, this is a rehabilitation center for interdimensional villains. Violence, anger, crying…it’s all par for the course. The Axolotl, in all their benevolence, had kindly warned the Theraprism employees that a certain equilateral patient may be on the war path following some unsavory revelations.
Bill Cipher, however, does not have a breakdown. He doesn’t scream, he doesn’t maniacally laugh, he doesn’t even wreck his computer with a Dining Hall spoon, even though he so desperately wants to. No, Bill Cipher instead sits in his cell, stares into the empty space, and seethes in cold anger.
Stanley Pines. Stanley Pines. It’s always Stanley Pines. That watered-down shadow of Sixer, the idiot who bumbled his way into killing Bill through sheer luck. The fool who can’t understand a three hour movie, who projects his own daddy issues onto the Duchess, when she clearly only has mommy issues!
And Bill had let that slow-witted conman infect his brain with his weak prose. Oh, he’s nauseous just thinking about it.
He nearly starts pacing. Did Sixer’s womb leftovers actually best him? String him along with that cheap, mediocre mockery of fiction? Did he, Bill Cipher, all-knowledgable and godlike, get played again by Stanley Pines’ sheer idiocy?
It’s fanfiction, he tells himself, in near-hysterics. Fanfiction is supposed to be stupid. You were just playing along, that’s all. You didn’t even care about it.
He calms down a bit after that. He didn’t even care about it, that’s true. This was all just a momentary lapse of judgement, born out of sheer boredom. After all, this is far from his worst mistake. He’ll laugh about it later!
And now he’ll never know how the romance between stable hand Stanlarius Pinesworth and Viscount William Cipherington will conclude. Bill resumes his blank stare at the wall in despair until Jigsaw Hour arrives.
While Bill is being dragged off to solve jigsaw puzzles of motivational kittens, Stanley Pines is fishing.
It’s been a while since he’s gotten a bite, so he fishes out his phone (he’s still terrible at using it—Mabel has fruitlessly tried to teach him fingerprint recognition, but he can’t figure it out), and checks his blog.
Tumblr user cuntlionel has blocked him. Huh.
Stan sticks his phone back into his pocket, and continues to watch his line. Hopefully, he catches something soon. Ford wants to dock later to observe a certain patch of permafrost he’s convinced has magical properties, and then they both have a video call with Mabel and Dipper in the afternoon. If he’s lucky, he might even work on the next chapter in the downtime he has that evening.
Bill wasn’t even that great of an RP partner, anyways. He had a tendency to railroad, and his knowledge of human anatomy was pretty terrible. Ah, well. Maybe whatever cosmic being is in charge of the universe will see that he, at the very least, tried, and won’t send him directly to hell when he dies.
Bill tries to fit the wrong jigsaw puzzle piece in the corner for the entirety of Jigsaw Hour, just to exercise the little free will he has left. When he returns to his cell, he finds that the computer is still on, but the page he’d last been on has refreshed.
It’s the fic. Of course it’s the fic. And it’s been updated.
There is no chapter summary—there never is—but an unusual author’s note is listed at the beginning. Bill rolls his eye, then reads it out of curiosity.
120k words and we’ve finally reached smut, it states. enjoy, freaks.
Bill stares at the offending words, before banging his fists on the ground in what some would call a temper tantrum, but he likes to define as emotional expression. Then, he scrolls down and begrudgingly begins to read.