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nataliedanovelist · 4 years

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GF - How A Star Is Born ch.VIII

A Hercules AU, founded by @evaroze, whom this fic is a gift for. I hope y’all like it!

ch.VII - ch.IX

AO3 link

~~~~~~~~~~

A year after Dipper’s first victory and it felt like Gideon had died a thousand deaths.

Dipper became the most famous hero in all of Greece. He defeated every single monster or villain he had come up against, from angry warthogs that he served to the king on a grill, to wicked shapeshifters, to mad ex-girlfriends of Stan’s. No foe could stand against this hero in any way, shape, or form, and unfortunately this was very bad news for Gideon and Bill.

Bill left his minion alone to smoke and recover from being burned alive, shaking with red anger as he watched the fallen god press his hands into concrete with his teacher by his side, smiling proudly. “I can’t believe this! How is that little twerp still alive?!”

“W-W-We still have time…” Gideon whimpered, curled up and lying on his side.

“I’ve got twenty-four hours to get rid of this bozo!” Bill screamed as he towered over his slave. “The scheme I’ve been setting up for thousands of years is going up in smoke thanks to you! And all you can say is WE’VE STILL GOT TIME?!” And Bill snapped his fingers once more and Gideon was engulfed in flames, crying and yelling in unbearable pain.

Pacifica, with her back to the chaos, was smiling at the hero and enjoying the show all around her. “Tough luck, looks like Dippin’ Dots is hitting every curve you throw at him.”

Bill’s red instantly went away as he stared at the young woman before him. His eyes squinted happily and he floated to her side. “Hm, maybe I haven’t been throwing the right curves at him…”

“Don’t even go there.”

“See, Llama, he’s gotta have a weakness, everybody’s got one. We just need to find out Pinetree’s.”

“I totally did my part,” Pacifica scoffed. “Make Marshmallow over there do it.”

“He couldn’t handle him as an infant.” Bill sneered. “I need someone who can… handle him as a man.”

“Look, I’ve sworn off man-handling.” Pacifica snapped and walked away.

“Well, hey that’s good!” Bill laughed, making the young woman stop. “Cuz that’s what gotcha into this jam in the first place, isn’t it? You sold your soul to me to save your father’s life. And how did the guy thank you? By throwing you out when no one wanted to marry you and give dowry? He hurt you real bad, didn’t he? It hurt that no one wants the bratty little Llama, didn't it?”

“I get it, I learned my lesson, okay?” Pacifica croaked as she held her forehead.

“Hey, hey,” Bill cooed and placed a friendly hand on either one of her shoulders. “I tell you what, since I feel sorry for you, I’ll make you a new offer. You give me the key to taking down Wonderboy, and I’ll give you the thing you want more than anything in the whole Multiverse: your freedom.”

Pacifica’s eyes widened and her pupils shrunk as her mouth hung open.

~~~~~~~~~~

Through the fast-pacing, slightly-overwhelming year, the Temple of the Gods became Dipper’s sanctuary. At night, he would sneak away from prying eyes and visit his family, feeling all of his stress and pressure melt away.

Now not only bound to a small journal, Dipper and Mabel could talk more freely. Even more so now that Dipper funded a statue of the young muse to be put in the temple, and now a Mabel made of stone could hug him and punch his shoulder and talk and skip around him, even if she couldn’t feel his warmth or if she risked breaking bones, but he had god-like strength, so who cares? Their bond became even stronger as they swapped stories and got to know each other very well. Many times Mabel would happily sit criss-cross and listen and watch as her twin brother retold his victories to her.

This evening, however, Dipper seemed very tired. He sat at the foot of the huge statue of the Ruler of the Gods and Mabel looked down at him softly before sitting next to him in her statued-form. “Hey, what’s the matter?”

Dipper blinked and shook his head. “N-Nothing!”

Mabel smiled cockily and poked his ribs to lightly tickle him. “C’mon, you can’t hide anything from me. What’s up?”

The young hero sighed and leaned back with his hands on the steps behind him. “It’s just… I’m the most famous person of all in Greece, right?”

“Right.”

“And I’ve beaten every monster I’ve met, right?”

“Right.”

“I’m even an action-figure.” Dipper added as he threw his hands up in the air.

“Yeah,” Mabel said slowly. “So?”

Dipper looked at his long-lost sister and asked her heavily, “So why am I not a god?”

Mabel’s eyes widened in realization before she looked down at her long dress. “Oh.”

“To rejoin the gods, I gotta become a true hero.” Dipper restated. “What, am I missing something? Did I do something wrong?”

“No,” Mabel said quickly and patted his shoulder reassuringly. “You’ve been doing great! And hey, you’ve only been at it for, what, a year? You’re just… not there yet. Remember, there’s a difference between being a hero and a true hero, but you’ll get there one day, I know you will.”

Dipper smiled at her and said, “Thanks, Mabel. You’re right. I just have to be patient.”

“Besides, you’ve got plenty of time.” Mabel reminded him with a giggle. “It’s not like you’re gonna die soon or something.”

Dipper laughed alongside her, though he couldn’t quite shake the desire that he would rather be home sooner or later.

~~~~~~~~~~

Dipper walked back to his very large house after going through the lush garden. He had tried not to have a home so big but he had earned so much gold that even after donating to the orphanage he grew up in and many other causes like feeding the poor and providing housing for the homeless, he still had more money than he knew what to do with and Stan seemed to really enjoy living in the lap of luxury, so they met halfway and had a very nice house that was big but not so big that they required five maids.

Dipper entered his home and could see candlelight coming from down the hall. The old man must still be awake. The young hero smiled and moved down the hall to tease his teacher, but as he turned a corner, he was met with something that scared him much more than any monster.

“STAN!” Dipper dashed to him and was on his knees, the old man lying on the cold floor with a dripping candle by his side, a miracle the house hadn’t been caught on fire thanks to being made of stone. “Stan, can you hear me?!”

Dipper helped the unconscious man sit up to get a good look at him. He appeared more dead than alive, but the hero refused to believe it. He scooped the old man up in his arms and ran as fast as he could to the doctor, praying to the gods that Stan would be okay.

~~~~~~~~~~

Mabel was humming to herself as she emerged from her room, having finished meditating and projecting herself onto a statue to talk to her brother. She grew worrisome, however, when she saw her great-uncle sitting at the front steps of the temple, holding his face, covering his eyes, and breathing heavily, like he was struggling with his emotions.

“Grunkle Ford,” Mabel said softly as she hurried to his side and put kind hands on his shoulders. “What’s the matter?”

He looked up at his niece with heavy, shining eyes that refused to cry. “It’s Stanley. He’s running out of time.”

~~~~~~~~~~

“These things happen,” A doctor calmly explained. “As a person ages their bodies start to fail them gradually over time. From what we can tell, Stan had a heart attack. Slight damage to the heart, nothing extremely life-threatening, but a good sign that his time is running out. I wouldn’t quite count the days yet, but I would also advise you value your time with him while you can. I’m so sorry.”

Dipper was now left alone to dwell on the news. He knew Stan wasn’t exactly young, but he always seemed unstoppable, so lively, that the idea of him dying was scary and already made the young hero very mournful. He made himself get up from his stool in the hallway to enter the door his teacher was in, but he was surprised to find Stan standing up and slipping on his cloak. “There you are, let’s blow this joint already.”

“Stan!” Dipper scolded. “What are you doing out of bed?!”

“What, I’m fine now, kid.” Stan waved Dipper’s worries away casually. “Relax. Let’s just go home, I got a bottle of expired grape juice waiting for me.”

“Stan, this is serious!”

“Look, I don’t blame you for being worried, but I need you to trust me on this.” Stan said firmly with kind brown eyes, giving Dipper a firm pat on the shoulder. “I’m fine, okay?”

“But…” Dipper allowed Stan to lead the way out of the room and throughout the hospital for the quiet night. “But… you’re dying.”

“In a way we all are, kid.”

“But…”

“Dipper, listen to me.” Stan interrupted and gave the young hero a stern look as they walked down the street of Thebes. “I’m an old man, I’ve lived a very long life. I’ve known I was dying for a long time, but none of that matters to me. All that matters is that you become a true hero and get to be with your family, whether I get to see it or not.”

“But… I want you to see it.” Dipper sighed. He was very tired. He could feel so much on his shoulders, he always felt like the entire world was on his shoulders, and as they days wore on it was getting harder to ignore. He sat at a large fountain in town-square and looked at his mentor heavily. “I know you won’t be around forever, but… you’re like family to me, Stan. I want you to see me become a true hero. I want to make you proud. I want you to see me in the stars like you want.”

“Hey hey,” Stan sat next to him slowly and patted his back. “Way to get all sappy on me, hero. And where’s all this coming from? I am proud of you. I’ve always been proud of you. Since day one, I’ve been so proud of you and happy I got to teach you. I know you’ll make it someday, I know you’ll be up in the stars and be with your sister, and that’s good enough for me.”

Dipper smiled sadly, a bit overwhelmed but still appreciative. “Still, I… Am I doing something wrong? I thought I’d be a true hero by now? What more can I do?”

“Being a true hero is something you gotta discover for yourself.” Stan said and poked at Dipper’s strong chest. “You gotta look inside all this squishy stuff. Dig a little deeper. But you got something I’ve never seen in anybody, and I know that’s gonna make you into a god someday, just you wait and see.”

Dipper still couldn’t shake the feeling like he didn’t want to wait for someday to come, but he still smiled and thanked Stan for his words.

~~~~~~~~~~

Miraculously, despite his lifeline being short, Stan was just as energetic and lively as always the next day. Dipper tried to talk him into resting, but the old man refused and was there for all of Dipper’s obligations. Stan was right by his side for the opening of the newest gym, he happily partake in lunch with Dipper and the mayor of Thebes, and in the afternoon they went home to change into nicer togas for a modeling show.

Stan said something about a quick nap and went to his room to snooze the warm afternoon away. Dipper chuckled and was nearly scared to death when a soothing voice from beside a pillar said, “Oh this is what heroes do on their days off?”

Dipper grinned and greeted her warmly. It had been a long time since he had last seen her. “Wow, Pacifica! It’s great to see you again, I… I missed you.”

Pacifica approached slowly and smiled slyly at him. “Thanks, Dippin’ Dots. Man, you look good, but rough. When was the last time you had a break?”

“Oh, I rest, Stan…”

“You know I never really thanked you for saving my life, did I?” Pacifica interrupted. “How about dinner?”

As much as a date with such a beautiful girl made Dipper want to do a backflip, his immediate concern was leaving Stan alone for too long. “Oh, I dunno, Stan’s got the day booked and…”

“He’ll be okay, he’s taking a nap, isn’t he?” Pacifica asked. “He can rest, you can get some fresh air and some food. Come on, my treat.”

Dipper smiled sheepishly and she put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed, baby blue eyes sparkling at him like a beautiful spring sky. Swallowing, the young smitten hero nodded. “Okay, sure.”

#GF #gravity falls #gravity falls au #gift #fanfiction #stangst

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illumynare · 4 years

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How the Enneagram explains all of Ford and Stan’s problems

….well, most of them, anyway.

So in my ongoing quest to learn all personality typing systems ever, I’ve recently started reading about the Enneagram, and it struck me that Ford and Stan both fit extremely neatly into the system, and it provides a great framework for analyzing why these two idiots can love each other so much and yet continually hurt/trigger/drive each other crazy.

(descriptions taken from the Enneagram Institute website, not linked because apparently that means this post won’t show up in the tags??)

Stan: Type 2, “The Helper”

The Caring, Interpersonal Type: Generous, Demonstrative, People-Pleasing, and Possessive

Twos are empathetic, sincere, and warm-hearted. They are friendly, generous, and self-sacrificing, but can also be sentimental, flattering, and people-pleasing. They are well-meaning and driven to be close to others, but can slip into doing things for others in order to be needed. They typically have problems with possessiveness and with acknowledging their own needs. At their Best: unselfish and altruistic, they have unconditional love for others.

Basic Fear: Of being unwanted, unworthy of being loved Basic Desire: To feel loved

This is Stan in a nutshell: somebody who loves deeply and unconditionally, sacrifices himself without a second thought, but also easily becomes possessive, and whose “helper” actions are often in some way an attempt to earn people’s love. He rescues Waddles from the pterodactyl so that Mabel will stop being mad at him, and he rescues Ford from the portal hoping that will restore the relationship they had as children. It’s not that Stan doesn’t genuinely care about Mabel or Ford’s suffering, it’s just that, on some level, he’s always trying to earn the love of the people he cares about.

Ford: Type 4, “The Individualist”

The Sensitive, Introspective Type: Expressive, Dramatic, Self-Absorbed, and Temperamental

Fours are self-aware, sensitive, and reserved. They are emotionally honest, creative, and personal, but can also be moody and self-conscious. Withholding themselves from others due to feeling vulnerable and defective, they can also feel disdainful and exempt from ordinary ways of living. They typically have problems with melancholy, self-indulgence, and self-pity. At their Best: inspired and highly creative, they are able to renew themselves and transform their experiences.

Basic Fear: That they have no identity or personal significance Basic Desire: To find themselves and their significance (to create an identity)

Feeling vulnerable and defective, yet disdainful and exempt from ordinary ways of living: if you looked up “Stanford Filbrick Pines” in the dictionary, that’s the first thing you’d see. People have argued a lot about whether Ford is arrogant and how much, but I don’t think that’s actually the most helpful way to analyze his character. Ford has, at different times, considered himself a genius, a fool, a hero, a puppet; but what never changes is that he’s obsessed with the question of his own identity, and driven by the fear he’s either a freak or a non-entity. Even at the end of Journal 3, when he finally starts to chillax, he doesn’t abandon the question of his identity and say, “Who cares if I’m a hero or not.” Instead he chooses a new identity: “I’m a hero’s brother, and I’m okay with that.”

So how does this explain their problems?

Because, as much as these two dumb idiots love each other, they have primal fears that are often at cross-purposes, and that make them hypersensitive to each other’s worst tendencies. Stan fears being unloved and alone, and at his most desperate he is willing to do anything—including literally immolate his identity—to keep his loved ones around him, or bring them back. Ford fears having no separate identity or personal significance, and at his most desperate he is willing to do anything—including cut his twin out of his life, and summon unknown spirits of insane power—to grasp that identity.

This is why I think that, even if the whole science fair debacle had never happened, they would have still had some kind of major rift. They both grew up bullied by other children, emotionally abused by their father, and without any kind of support network or healthy relationship models; I don’t think either of them had the resources, at that point, to deal with their issues in a healthy way. Stan would have tried to cling to Ford no matter what, without realizing Ford experienced it as suffocation; Ford would have tried to strike out on his own no matter what, without realizing that Stan experienced it as complete rejection.

And this dynamic is also what drives their conflict after Ford comes back through the portal. I’m thinking, particularly, of their scene at the end of “Tale of Two Stans”:

Ford: Okay, Stanley, here’s the deal. You can stay here the rest of the summer to watch the kids. I’ll stay down in the basement and try to contain any remaining damage. But when the summer’s over, you give me my house back, you give me my name back, and this Mystery Shack junk is over forever. You got it?

Stan: You really aren’t gonna thank me, are you? Fine. On one condition: you stay away from the kids; I don’t want them in danger. Cause as far as I’m concerned, they’re the only family I have left.

A lot of people have interpreted this scene as Ford planning to kick Stan out of his life and onto the streets (and written angsty fanfics accordingly). This may indeed be how Stan saw it, but I don’t think that’s a fully accurate perception. A moment before this, they’re laughing about being old men. Ford’s voice in delivering his ultimatum doesn’t read as angry or cold so much as somebody trying to put his foot down.

I think the key to Ford’s speech is the implicit link between “you can stay here the rest of the summer” and “I’ll stay down in the basement.” Ford is primarily thinking about the issue of his stolen identity: there can only be one Stanford Pines, so while he’s willing hide himself away and let Stan keep playing the role for the rest of the summer, he wants to be Stanford Pines again. He wants his own identity, and to have a say in what goes on in his house. Which is completely reasonable!

But of course, Stan is approaching this conversation from a completely different direction. He’s spent thirty years trying to save Ford, not just because of his own guilt but also because he wants their relationship back: think of how he throws his arms wide and shouts “Brother!” when Ford steps through the portal. From Stan’s point of view, Ford is saying that everything Stan suffered and accomplished is still not enough to earn his love. Which is why Stan lashes out, having finally reached the limits of his willingness to martyr himself. Objectively, it’s kind of terrible to disown your brother for not saying “thank you,” but in context it completely makes sense for Stan to react this way. (And honestly, it’s really good that he has managed to discover ONE boundary, even if he’s being petty about it.)

….but of course, Ford still doesn’t understand what’s going on in his brother’s head, so he interprets Stan’s anger as something along the lines of “how dare you want to make decisions, you should just live in my basement for the rest your life to make me happy.” Which in turn drives his hostility and posturing in later episodes (like the DD&MD game—yes, Ford was swept away by enthusiasm, but I think he was also very much trying to mark his territory when he covered the TV room in graphs.) And that just escalates Stan’s hurt and anger, creating his determination Not To Care even when the world is ending and Ford is a prisoner, and culminating in the Zodiac Fight which is hands-down the pettiest thing either of them has ever done.

What saves them is Dipper and Mabel, who remind them it’s possible for two radically different siblings to work together—and who give them something to care about outside their own tumultuous dyad. Threatened by the loss of Dipper and Mabel, they find they can still trust and understand each other well enough to pull off a desperate, last-minute con. In one way, their final gambit seems to echo their earlier patterns: Stan burns up his identity to save his family, Ford grimly makes a choice that will cut him off from his brother. But there’s an important difference: Stan doesn’t expect to get anything back from this, not admiration from the kids or love from his brother, because he doesn’t expect to be himself after. He burns the dream of the Stan-o-War along with all the rest of his memories. Ford, on the other hand, gives up all claim to being the hero, The Man Who Killed Bill Cipher; more than that, he trusts Stan to carry out that role for him.

And that’s how, after everything, they’re able to reconcile and be at peace with each other.

#stanford pines #stanley pines #gravity falls #stan pines #ford pines #enneagram #reposting to see if i can get this in the tags

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stariousfalls · 4 years

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A/N: Had a conversation with a friend (@fallen-gravity) over different canon divergence situations in Gravity Falls, and felt determined to write something angsty. I miss Gravity Falls a lot, haha.

Characters: Mabel Pines, Dipper Pines, Ford Pines, Bill Cipher

Word Count: ~2500

Summary: Canon Divergence of DAMVTF where Mabel decides to not give the rift to Bill and runs off. And Bill angrily goes after her, not wanting to miss the chance of taking over the dimension.

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A choked sob escaped through her trembling hands as she tried to keep herself quiet.

Would he find her? What would happen when he found her?

She didn’t want to find out the answer to either question. Mabel wished she were back at the shack, talking it out with Dipper and making up with him. She didn’t care if her twin would continue to explain to her why he’d decided to take on an apprenticeship with Ford – she just desperately wanted out of this stressful game of cat and mouse.

She wondered why Bill had gone delirious over some strange ‘makeshift snow globe’ in her brother’s backpack, but whatever the reason was she ran like a bat out of hell. Ran as far as her legs could take her, until they trembled out of control from both fear and fatigue.

Whatever sick intention it was all for, Mabel knew it wasn’t good. The fact that Bill had literally possessed her brother’s body to try and get what he wanted made her question all the more. Something linked to Ford, she assumed. It was difficult for her to come up with an exact reason, as her brother and grunkle never shared any information with her and kept to themselves. So, she was left to fend for herself over an item she didn’t even know the purpose of – other than it being important to Bill.

Mabel continued sitting in place to recollect herself. She wished she could’ve been a part of the loop with Dipper, then maybe things wouldn’t have turned out this way; being hunted down by a literal demon.

She had no idea how much time had passed before she heard soft static coming from the backpack.

“Mabel?”

Mabel’s heart fluttered sporadically in her chest.

“D-Dipper?” She choked out softly.

“Mabel, where are you? Mabel!”

She immediately rummaged through the bag and pulled out a walkie talkie – the source of the noise.

“Dipper…” Mabel repeated hoarsely into the device, tears threatening to fall from her eyes.

“Mabel! Where – “

She heard something snap nearby and panicked, quickly pressing the speak button to silence his rambling. In any other situation Mabel would be floored to hear Dipper’s voice, but under these circumstances she didn’t want to be found. Her body shook uncontrollably at the thought of Bill finding her.

She took a deep, shaky breath before responding. “D-Dipper…I can’t talk right now, I-I – “

“Mabel, I’m so sorry about what I said earlier! Please come back to the shack! We can work things out, I – “

The young girl released a quivering sob at the sound of his frantic pleas over the intercom. She inwardly pleaded with her brother that he’d get the hint and stop his attempts of trying to reach her.

“Dipper, please!” Mabel softly cried, heartrate spiking at the thought of Bill picking up on her location. “I-I can’t come back to the shack right now.”

“Mabel, where are you? If you refuse to come back, I’m coming to get you!”

The sound of footsteps trekked close. Mabel’s breath hitched in her throat as she fumbled with the talking device, trying to desperately turn it off. She continued to tremble in fear.

Was Bill nearby? Had she given away her whereabouts? Or was she just imagining things?

“Mabel!”

She whimpered.

“W-What do I do?” She asked herself, tears streaming down her face.

The only thing her instincts manage to scream at her was; keep running.

Mabel tightened her grip on the walkie talkie and bolted out of her hiding spot, unintentionally leaving the backpack behind. She didn’t dare to look back when she heard something picking up speed behind her like some wild animal chasing its prey.

She hoped she still had enough energy left to outrun him.

“Mabel, you need to tell us where you are, please.”

Her eyes widened. “Grunkle Ford?” She whispered in reply, briefly glancing down to the device.

“I-I don’t…I don’t know where I am!” She wailed out between breaths, finally glancing back to see a pair of wild, glowing yellow eyes staring her down. “Help me!! Dipper! Grunkle Stan!! Grunkle Ford – “

Mabel yelped like a kicked puppy when she tripped over a root, plummeting to the cold ground.

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Ford picked up on Mabel’s erratic behavior when Dipper tried to communicate with her. She sounded quiet, shaky, and in a way…desperate? She refused to come back to shack, which he at first understood with her being upset. However, a part of him told him – something was wrong. Normally a child would be more vocal when being stubborn and distressed. This didn’t appear to be the case with Mabel. A bad feeling pooled in the pit of his stomach.

He eventually pried the walkie talkie out of his grand-nephew’s hands to try and speak with her.

“Mabel, you need to tell us where you are, please.” He pleaded into the intercom.

“Grunkle Ford?”

Her hoarse voice pulled at Ford’s heartstrings. Something was definitely wrong.

“I-I don’t…I don’t know where I am! Help me!! Dipper! Grunkle Stan!! Grunkle Ford – ”

Frantic thoughts flooded Ford’s mind at the sound of his grand-niece’s screaming and sobbing. She sounded like she was in immense pain. His grip tightened on the walkie talkie. What happened to her?

A familiar maniacal laugh rung out of the device’s speaker.

“You’re too late, Sixer!”

Ford instantly felt his blood run cold. It’s like he knew he was there on the other line.

“Leave her alone, Cipher!” He spat out, anger boiling over the fear at the thought of Bill tormenting his grand-niece.

Ford hears a mix between sobs of agony and irritable growls spewing out of the walkie talkie. What was going on? He waited for Bill to bite back, gloating over the fact that the fate of the universe was now within his grasp. However, what he wasn’t expecting was a threat.

“The clocks ticking, Ford. Be here in an hour or Shooting Star won’t live to see another day. Don’t keep me waiting.”

Ford hightailed it into the woods without a second thought, with Dipper not far behind him. He sure as hell didn’t know where Mabel was being held at Bill’s mercy, but that wasn’t going to stop him from finding her in time. He was a man of science, but that didn’t deter him from desperately pleading to any godly entity out there to spare his grand-niece’s life while he rushed through the underbrush of the forest.

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Mabel screamed when Bill roughly yanked her body off the ground by her hair.

“No! Let me go!!” Mabel shrieked in horror, trying to wriggle herself out of his grasp.

Maniacal laughter bubbled out of the mouth of the body he possessed, eyes gleaming with glee. He picked up the walkie talkie off the ground with a snicker.

“You’re too late, Sixer!” He mocked into device, grin widening at the thought of Ford’s horror-struck face.

“Leave her alone, Cipher!”

Before he had the chance to rub his victory further into Ford’s face, he realized (upon further inspection) that the rift was nowhere to be found. His grip tightened around the child’s hair, knuckles turning white.

Mabel cried out in pain when she felt a violent tug at her hair.

“Where’s the rift, Shooting Star?!” He snarled angrily at her.

She could only begin to tremble and sob in response to the yelling and the rough treatment.

Bill let out an irritable growl into the walkie talkie. “The clocks ticking, Ford. Be here in an hour or Shooting Star won’t live to see another day. Don’t keep me waiting.”

“Dipper...” she choked out before succumbing to the pain, body going limp.

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How long had they been running for? Ford had no idea, but the burning in his legs told him he’d probably been doing so for a while now. His mind screamed at him to keep going, but his body told him otherwise – giving out on him, causing him to stagger down to the ground briefly to catch his breath. All the injuries and strain he endured from earlier were catching up to him.

Damn this accursed old body, he thought to himself.

Dipper in the meantime paced back and forth in front of Ford, distressing over the thought of never finding his sister and assuming the worst. A wave of overwhelming guilt washed over him and his breaths came out short and frantic.

“This is all my fault! I should’ve talked to Mabel about everything before making any decisions. I didn’t even consider Mabel’s feelings, I – “

“No, Dipper,” Ford’s voice is soft, almost childlike. “The blame should all be on me. I’m the one who was the initial cause of all this mess. If it wasn’t for me making the mistake of trusting Bill decades ago, none of this would be happening.”

He noticed the forest around them getting darker. The sun was going down. They were running out of time.

“We need to keep going in order to find Mabel.”

They continue on in a jog, the fastest speed that Ford was capable of at the moment. The paranoia and adrenaline fueled him, pushing him forward.

That was until he heard a piercing cry echo through the woods.

“Time’s almost up, Ford!” Bill’s cutthroat voice rang.

Thank God they were nearby. Before Ford had the chance to say anything else Dipper bolted in the direction of his sister’s scream.

“Dipper!”

Ford followed his grand-nephew.

When they finally catch up to Mabel, they find her trying to wriggle free from her captor – eyes flashing menacingly down at her. Ford felt a cold shiver run down his spine when he made eye contact with the man that Bill currently possessed.

Bill let go of Mabel with a poised shrug. “Took you long enough, Sixer. You’re lucky I’m in such a good mood today – with me being on the brink of taking over your dimension!” He sneered, taking immense satisfaction in the looks of shock on Ford’s and Pine Tree’s faces. “I can’t thank you enough for holding onto your resentment towards your brother and tearing your family apart!”

Before Mabel had the chance to get away, Bill took hold of her hair once more and forcefully yanked her like a rag doll down onto the ground. She squeaked in agony when he rammed his foot onto her back, anchoring her body against the earth.

“Now that we’re all comfortable – where’s the rift?”

“What?” Dipper asked.

The boy twin flinched at the sound of a metal click. Dipper watched Bill aim a loaded gun right at his sister’s head in horror. That surely got his full attention.

“Let me ask again. Now that I have your attention,” Bill growled, slightly pulling back on the trigger. “Where’s the rift?”

Dipper must’ve hesitated too long for Bill’s sanity. His patience grew thinner and thinner by every second and began to count down. He’d gotten this far, and he wasn’t going to throw away the golden opportunity at taking over this dimension.

“Five!”

“We can’t!”

“Four!”

“We don’t have it!”

“LIARS! THREE!”

“Bill! Leave her out of this!!” Ford bellowed.

“TWO!”

“We’re not lying!” Dipper cried out desperately, tears streaming down his face. “I swear we don’t have it! Don’t hurt my sister! Please, I’m begging you!”

“ONE – “

“I-I left it behind! I didn’t do it on purpose, but I-I must’ve left it where I was hiding nearby – “

Mabel went silent when she heard the abrupt gunshot and watched her life flash before her eyes. Without breaking eye contact with Ford, Bill gestured out in the direction he chased Mabel in earlier before pointing the gun back to her head.

“Find it.”

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Moments later the two come rushing back, rift in tow and willing to hand over. They weren’t going to take any chances trying to reason with a maniacal demon that held Mabel at gunpoint. As much as Ford didn’t want Bill taking over their dimension, the lives of the kids were more important.

“Hand over the rift, Ford – or say goodbye to your niece.”

Ford didn’t hesitate. Even if the world came to an end, he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he were the one to cause his grand-niece’s early demise. Despite becoming the bringer of the apocalypse, he’d do anything to keep the kids safe. Whether he had the kids go into hiding with Stan for the rest of their lives or figure out a way to fix the problems he inadvertently caused. He’d do whatever it takes.

The guilt will reside in him for the rest of his life over every mistake he made that led up to this moment.

“Under one condition.” Ford narrowed his eyes. “You let Mabel go and leave the kids alone.”

Bill’s grin returned. “Fine.”

Ford shamefully handed over the rift without a second thought. The demon’s grin widened in glee, reveling in the feel of victory as his fingers drummed over the cracked glass of the containment unit.

“Now let her go, Cipher.” He growled.

Mabel immediately bolted towards her family the moment Bill lifted his weight off of her, desperate to get away from danger. Ford watched her run in his direction and kneeled down to catch her in his arms.

His hold on her tightened when he heard Mabel start to sob into his chest. Out of all the mistakes he made, he deeply regretted keeping his secrets away from Mabel. He only wanted to keep her and Stan safe (even though he wouldn’t admit it to him personally), assuming they didn’t have any interest in his past or what he was caught up in. He was a fool. Stan may not have been aware of Bill Cipher but looking back he remembered; Mabel already had history with him just like Dipper.

Man, he was such an utter fool.

The sentimental moment was interrupted at the sound of something shattering and distorted laughter. Ford’s breath hitched in fear. This was it. The end of the world, and his family had a front row seat to witness it.

Ford flinched when he felt something tug at his coat, and saw Dipper gravitating over to him. All they could do was hopelessly watch Bill bring forth the apocalypse.

“At last! At long, long last! The gateway between worlds has opened! The event one billion years prophesized has finally come to pass! The day has come! The world is finally mine!” Bill laughed maniacally as the unconfined rift teared reality into the Nightmare Realm.

With a gesture of his hand Bill used his powers to forcefully rip Mabel out of her grunkle’s grasp. Ford watched her body glow pink and float away from him in horror.

“No!”

“Dipper! Grunkle Ford!”

With a snap of a finger Mabel went unconscious, continuing to be whisked away. In an instant her body was surrounded by some strange pink bubble etched with a shooting star symbol and chains, and with another snap of the demon’s fingers she was gone.

Trying to process what just happened and witnessing his sister’s disappearance right before his eyes, he could only cry out in despair and frustration.

“Mabel!”

#gravity falls #mabel pines #dipper pines #ford pines #bill cipher #gf fanfiction #gravity falls fanfiction #gravity falls fanfic #gf fanfic #my fanfics #grunkle ford #great uncle ford #stanford pines

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snekatiegf · 5 years

Text

Gravity Falls Headcanons

Some of these are mine, and some are inspired from others I've seen. These are all post-weirdmageddon

Dipper and the Multibear are penpals

Mabel is still close with Mermando and they still write all the time. While Stan and Ford were out in the sea, he used his political power to keep them protected by sending other sealife to watch over them, at Mabel's request. They don't know about this, besides the occasional guide that has to come on board.

Soos does an incredible job at running the Mystery Shack and ends up being able to expand it some, and find new attractions- some of them are actually real fantastical creatures.

After a bit, the residents of Gravity Falls got super used to paranormal happenings. Between the Blind Eye being disbanded, and Weirdmageddon not being something everyone could just forget about (anymore at least), it's just regular occurrence. However, it will never fail to completely baffle any visitors.

Dipper and Mabel started keeping a little journal of their encounters back in California. Of course, a whole year there is nothing compared to one summer in Gravity Falls, but it was nice to keep it up. Mabel did all the illustrations.

Mabel stole some of Stan's brass knuckles before leaving for Piedmont. When Stan learned about this the next Summer, he just laughed and said to keep them. She hasn't used them yet, but she has threatened people with them.

Mabel made a lot of money over the year by getting her friends to play poker with her and gamble real money- only a couple of dollars really, but it adds up.

They both ended up taking wrestling and got super good at it, scarily good at it actually.

Even though they all have phones, Mabel, Candy, and Grenda write to each other all year, just for the fun of it.

Waddles starts to grow really big really fast. It's not that big of a deal at first, but turns into a disaster after a while. Mabel refuses to get rid of him, so they board him at a barn.

McGucket really likes Waddles because he grew up on a pig farm. Whenever he comes over to the Shack when the twins are back in town, it won't be rare to see the two bonding.

He'll deny it to the end of time, but Stan loves Gompers so much. He almost ends up taking the goat with him on the Stan O' War II, but ends up leaving him with Soos with veiled threats to take care of the animal.

Soos accidentally called Stan dad a couple times. The first time it through them both off, but eventually they get used to it and allow it to happen. It baffles the others, and it makes Dipper and Mabel super happy to see. Mabel's made a couple jokes about how it makes them cousins, and Soos is thrilled by the idea.

Melody and Soos end up getting married pretty quickly. She had been meaning to move to Gravity Falls permanently for a while, and once Soos became the new Mr. Mystery, she had much more reason to. They never do end up having kids, but they probably accidentally adopt half the kids in town like Stan with Soos.

(Stan legally adopts Soos at some point)

Many people abide with the "never mind all that" act, but those are the ones who were lucky enough to get frozen early on and didn't see much. The people who talk about Weirdmageddon are the ones who were out surviving on their own, the refugees in the shack, those who were most affected by Bill's twisted jokes. They just can't pretend it never happened, so they all confide in each other about what went down.

Dipper and Mabel try to visit Gravity Falls every moment they can. Any break, if they can convince their parents, they spend time in Gravity Falls. They ended up going to Gravity Falls for New Year's and there was a giant party at the Shack. Stan and Ford came home, too.

Likewise, their friends from Gravity Falls sometimes come down to visit them. Usually it's Candy and Grenda, but sometimes Pacifica and Wendy, and occasionally Soos and Melody. Ford and Stan came by once, but they had to be along quickly.

Pacifica does end up working at Greasy's Diner, and ends up learning to bake there. She's surprised to find she enjoys it a lot, and she finds it calms her down, too, and she is quite good at it. She begins baking at home, too, and eventually also at the Shack, where she likes to share her creations with the Pines'.

While at first she's a little worried about going back there, Pacifica starts spending a lot of time at the Shack, even with the twins gone. It's a place of comfort. She gets closer to Soos and Melody, who become pseudo- parents to her, and eventually she finds her going there after school much more than she does her own place.

Wendy and Robbie become super close friends once the awkwardness and hostility fades, and they end up hanging out loads.

With Soos, Melody, and Abuelita all living in the Shack, there's just not enough room for everyone when the Pines' come to visit. If they're there for only a couple days, usually they lodge on couches and on inflatable mattresses on the floor. But if they're there for an extended amount of time, like over the Summer, they stay at the McGucket manor. McGucket is more than happy to let them stay, and the place is huge and has more than enough room. (Also, if anyone notices that Ford's bed is empty during the night, and he and McGucket come out of the same room, they don't mention it.)

Soos and McGucket start to bond over crazy inventions. Soos himself, while not quite an inventor, is very handy, and he has an excellent imagination and can make up the coolest of things, which McGucket can almost always make with no trouble, laws of physics be damned. They've almost burnt down half the town, and probably destroyed parts of the McGucket manor, and definitely destroyed parts of the Shack, but they seem to be having fun.

Pacifica finds herself hanging around McGucket Manor/ the old Northwest Mansion sometimes. She had a lot of bad memories of the place, but she ended up there a lit whenever the Pines' came to visit and stayed there over the Summer. Eventually, even when they're not there, she still comes by and begins to get along with McGucket. Sometimes when Soos goes there to help McGucket with his inventions, she comes along and might help out a bit to.

Before she was an adult, Pacifica basically gets unofficially but communally adopted by the whole town. Her parents are always so busy trying to find ways to regain their fortune and never really cared for her in the first place, so she often finds herself wandering town, and eventually gets quite close with a lot of the residents.

#gravity falls #gravity falls headcanons #mabel pines #dipper pines #stan pines #ford pines #soos ramirez #melody #wendy corduroy #robbie valentino #fiddleford mcgucket #pacifica northwest #weirdmageddon #long post #text #headcanon #mine #dad stan #everyone

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etheralisi · 4 years

Text

𝐎𝐟 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐖𝐚𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐥𝐝 𝐇𝐞’𝐬 𝐁𝐮𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠

A03

𝙼𝚢 𝚆𝚘𝚛𝚜𝚝

𝙴𝚗𝚎𝚖𝚢 𝙸𝚜 𝙼𝚢

𝙼𝚎𝚖𝚘𝚛𝚢

~ 𝚄𝚗𝚔𝚘𝚠𝚗

-------

He never forgets.

The feeling of his body being torn limb from limb, muscles stretching and convulsing, tested to their very limits, before feeble connections give way and his skin sheds, layer by layer, cell by cell. He peels like an onion, flakey, tear ducts long since run dry from his seemingly endless bouts of harrowing screams. It’s a pain of unimaginable levels, so excruciating he’s pretty sure parts of him have gone numb. But where he can feel it, pain tears through him like butter, always managing to climb to a new height of agony, and then when he thinks it can’t get worse, a step above that. And it hurts. Oh how it hurts. Burns like a star gone supernova. A raw energy that extends beyond his very boundaries of a self.

Dipper’s twelve, only twelve, and his life is flashing before his eyes. He’s alight with his last burning embers, soul aflame, and fighting for every second of life, every lick of fire. His spark kindles and hisses, a stubborn thing, the will of a boy who just wants to live. To reach the age of thirteen, so close, so very close, but always just a stretch ahead.

It’s a doomed battle.

Where the triangle prods, slithers his slimy existence into him, a small segment of himself freezes, crumbles into a cold amounting mass of something. Every fleeting moment is a moment where something is lost, forgotten, ripped away from him because the universe is just this unfair. It won’t play the game by the rules, will make up new exceptions as it goes, reality warping anew around his frame as he falls to a fate he never even wanted.

Dipper screams for a loss of a feeling he can’t recall, feels his throat run raw until there’s no vocal chords to scream through. He’s self-destructive at this point, ripping through his mind to find the perpetrator and let him squirm.

Bill is a virus, an infection that reeks of chaos and death and violates his very essence. Dipper’s memories crumble at the triangle’s presence, leaving nothing but dust and ash, and the trickling of Bill’s oily ooze as a residue, an unwelcome tenant where Dipper resides. It’s unsettling, and wrong, wrong, all wrong. Wherever those tendrils touch, reach into his own infinity of a mindscape, vast and now oh so barren, they succeed in taking something he’s never even been aware of having. They take and they take, and he’s left with nothing but loss and pain as if it’s all he’s ever known.

The pain, it’s all very clear, white hot as it tunnels through decaying marrow. Dipper’s a falling empire left to ruin. A bridge quaking on its foundations, creaking as the joints give way under rust. Nothing can ever cross safely again, repair now a far forgone option, because he knows it, there’s no coming back from whatever the heck he’s been plunged into. Any second and he will collapse, fall into the cavernous abyss below.

He would rather burn this bridge and push Cipher into the ruins.

Fierce determination fuels his tunnel vision, the screams of no, no, no. This won’t be his end, and he absolutely refuses to abandon his post. He stands his ground, even as he breathes his last breath, even as he feels his lungs shatter. A power surges from within, a fierce struggle from a captain who refuses to abandon ship. His death is imminent, irreversible at this point, fate from the very second he struck that flimsy deal for the laptop. But here, perhaps he can soften the blow, he would rather stare death in its skeletal face than hand himself over to the enemy.

He refuses to bend to the will of that triangle, will not play his game and fall into his hands as putty ever again.

If Dipper dies, Bill goes with him.

The decision is made. The last chord is plucked, and the bridge collapses. Bill — or the measly thing he’s been reduced to, desperate enough to claw into a child’s mind — cackles until he doesn’t. His silence speaks louder than words.

He knows what Dipper’s done. Caught him in Bill’s blindspot, bested by a kid who’s determined to see this through to the very end.

And to the end they shall go. A body is decimated, a clearing all but incinerated, and a triangular demon thrown into a cycle he has never meant to enter.

For a moment, a mere second, Dipper is limitless. Just a being. An entity with a lack of self. He only knows he exists, is something, means something, and it’s this feeling he clings to with every ounce of his nonexistence.

He knows not what he is, or who, but a familiar warmth pulls at him, strings of wool and comfort.

He wakes before he realises what waking is. Exists before he can wonder how. Sees before he realises he shouldn’t. Lives before it hits him he isn’t really living at all.

By all means, he should be dead.

Dipper sits on borrowed time, spins on clock hands of a clock that isn’t really his at all. An existence that belonged to a dying demon, Bill's expiration date, Bill’s sand timer. Bill who’s unleashed more chaos than thought possible with that spur of the moment decision.

The memory is a tarring mark on him. Ingrained so deeply in his mindscape it burns with a flame impossible to extinguish. A mocking thing, a reminder of his refusal to let his own flames die.

He never forgets.

Not when Mabel’s there, coaxing him with a stream of ‘it’s okay’s and ‘it’ll all be fine, see’s, and any other such hollow words, each disguised as fuzzy warm sweaters, because they both know, deep down, it’s very much not okay. Phantom pain laces his fibres — he doesn’t know what he even is anymore, he’s a something because pain can’t come out of nowhere — twitching in fits and starts of muscle contractions. It’s reduced to an ache of a memory, nothing more than a dull tingling throb. But he pushes through, shoots a smile of empty despair.

His eyes do all the telling. They’re not even brown anymore.

They’re both just kids, dealing with his death-not-death with hugs and tears. Promises that’ll snap and break beneath his touch, as his world comes clattering down around him at the speed of the supernatural becoming natural.

He never forgets.

Not when the truth emerges, a smack to the face even when he saw it coming. He’s a demon. Just like him. The thing he hated most.

It brings a whole other meaning to ‘you are your own worst enemy.’

Dipper abhors it.

Abhors the teething through bleeding gums, the wings that protrude from his back as two black stubs, the way his blood drips molten gold, loathes his claws that tear at flesh, cag on Mabel’s wool and shred her favoured clothing. But the pain is only mild in comparison to that, the moment that changed it all.

He never forgets.

Not when Mabel meets Henry, not when the triplets are born, not when he wrecks his brother in law’s life with a wave of eldritch flame. The Woodsman arises, a being of the forest sculpted by his own spur of the moment decision.

He’s doing the same. Exposing someone to a demonic power that creates something else entirely. Something not quite human. He weighs Henry down with antlers and served hands, a burden his brother in law should never have to carry.

He can never quite forgive himself for this. Much like the deal for Mabel’s soul, the decision saves a life, but it leaves scars rooted deep.

He never forgets.

Not when Mabel’s there, buried below mounds of dirt, little more than letters on a fast dissolving rock. His tears ebb away, too late to stop the ones that eat at the polished stone, acid on her grave. Grief consumes him in roaring waves, the what-ifs just as haunting as his presence, a strange ghostly boy clinging to a grave like his last anchor. Had Bill won, all those years back, that could have been him too. The Mystery Twins reunited by death.

Maybe, in the end, Bill wins anyway.

He never forgets.

Not with reincarnation after reincarnation. He watches over them, his ever growing family too until he becomes but a rumour. A protector of a family, even when his identity to them as a Pines is lost. He remembers why all this is happening, why he lives as he does, and it all links back to that moment.

He never forgets.

Not even when Bill’s soul emerges once more, a phoenix from the ashes, threatens to spill into the waking world and reclaim his domination plans centuries later. Nor at his second failure.

Dipper’s there, stuck with a cursed existence, a hatred that will never truly simmer down, fierce raging anger for the very demon who stuck him like this.

He never forgets.

It’s a pain that lingers from a body and life long lost, the death of a child and the birth of a new demon. Of Alcor. The memory stands there, in the eye of his storm, coals on his fire, a fuel for his unadulterated rage. Of all the memories he has, this is the one that stays, the pain and frustration hitting somewhere that all those happy memories can’t. It’s a second for the life of a demon, barely that. A speck of his immortal life.

But for him, the memory lasts an eternity.

He can’t forget.

#Transcendence au #Bread fic

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feferipeixes · 5 years

Note

TAU sub AU where Ford(or somebody else maybe Gideon idk) gets to Dipper first and makes him stay away from Mabel, pulling a Scar from Lion King type thing where Dipper feels really guilty and stays away and Mabel and everyone really thinks he died, but he leaves subtle clues, never staying too far, but always purposely hidden (continued)

(continued) Mabel, being Mabel, never really gives up on him, and still ends up in Gravity Falls, but she’s more of a recluse, determined to find her brother, even after all these years. She somehow or other eventually decides to summon Bill or something, and though he looks different, it’s her bro bro, clear as day. …Whether or not he’s insane by now, or maybe he still is almost exactly like a 12 year old, or maybe he’s the same, it’s up to you

—

GOSH ANON THIS IS REALLY SOMETHING, it’s like Drift AU but not because of any limit to Dipper’s powers, but because Ford enforced it, and when Mabel finally finds out what happened? She’s going to be furious at Ford. Especially if it ends up being that Dipper is more insane because of the lack of contact.

Imma real quick call this Quarantine AU because Ford is purposefully keeping Dipper away from everyone else. So, there’s good end Quarantine, which I could see being the version of this where Dipper is making small bits of contact with Mabel through little hints and clues like you said and those bits of contact keep him somewhat sane. Then when Mabel and he finally make contact, it’s incredible, her brother is still alive, he’s still alive! They have so much to catch up on, so much, and while it might from that point on play out pretty similarly to regular TAU, there’s no way that Ford will be welcome at home anymore, at least not for a long time. They may eventually make up, because family is family and Ford was just trying to protect the family, but stars he really messed up. Dipper means more to Mabel than anyone else in the world and Ford, this uncle that she hasn’t known for too long, purposefully kept him away from her. All the discussion about how reasonable it was for him to be cautious is gonna fly over her head for a long time.

and then… there’s a bad end Quarantine. where those little bits of contact don’t help him. maybe he’s not strong enough to make any changes to the physical world. or maybe Ford did more than just threaten Dipper and make him feel guilty. maybe Ford actually locked him up, bound him and warded him. Ford recognized that this demon is weak and that it had the potential to grow stronger, so he took his chances and locked it up. ignored the demon’s cries that “No, it’s me, I’m Dipper, I’m your nephew, please Ford let me out! I won’t hurt you, please Ford, I need Mabel, I’m scared, I don’t know what’s happening to me!” Because obviously this demon is trying to trick him. he’s dealt with Bill long enough to know that. and so? maybe in this version, Mabel doesn’t summon Alcor. maybe in this version she actually finds him bound up in the basement, she goes looking where Ford told her not to look, and Ford’s yelling at her but HOLY FRICK FORD IS THAT DIPPER? And before he can stop her, she’s scuffing away the warding circle, she’s bending metal rods holding him in place with her bare hands, that’s Dipper that’s Dipper THAT’S DIPPER AND HE WAS HERE AND ALIVE THE WHOLE TIME. but being cooped up with no human contact for so long means he’s lost his mind. he vaguely remembers being Dipper but he doesn’t know how to act and he’s furious and he wants to hurt Ford and maybe he doesn’t want to hurt Mabel because he senses something there, but Dipper’s mind is shot. And maybe Mabel can slowly help him regain his humanity but it hurts, it’s not easy but she’ll do anything to have her brother back. and in this version of the AU I don’t think there’s a single thing Ford could ever to do regain Mabel’s love and trust. Ford not only kept her brother away from her for years, he destroyed Dipper’s mind. she could never, ever, ever forgive him for that.

Anyway thanks for this ask anon! I’m currently in tears and I really want to write something for this haha. 💝

#gravity falls #transcendence au #asks #quarantine au #Anonymous #my stuff #long post

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invisibletinkerer · 5 years

Text

Fic: 30 Seconds Later (chapter 19)

Chapter 1 – Chapter 2 – Chapter 3 – Chapter 4 – Chapter 5 – Chapter 6 – Chapter 7 – Chapter 8 – Chapter 9 - Chapter 10 - Chapter 11 - Chapter 12 - Chapter 13 - Chapter 14 - Chapter 15 - Chapter 16 - Chapter 17 - Chapter 18 - Chapter 19

Length: ~7000 words

AO3: archiveofourown.org/works/13715520/chapters/50933677

Strange.

Strange and pleasant and warm.

Opening his eyes seemed unnecessary. The novel state of comfortable half-sleep beckoned him to stay. Forever, perhaps. Forever would be nice.

It took an undeterminable but lovely amount of time to remember why it felt so strange.

Recollection brought with it a much more familiar surge of panic, causing him to a bolt upright, pain shooting through his abdomen and chest, eyes wide and hands immediately fumbling for his glasses.

Slamming his eyewear in place with more force than was strictly warranted, it still took a moment for Stanford’s mind to spiral its way to the conclusion that there was no need to panic. He forced himself to breathe, a fist tight against his chest, slowly relaxing his shoulders. He was awake and no harm was done. He was in the ground floor study, inside the barrier that blocked Bill from his mind, and he was—he knew this—he was safe here. That’s why he’d been asleep.

The portal was broken, the rift was sealed in a container and locked up, and the journals were right under the couch where he’d put them previously. He should still do more, but nothing had happened to them yet, as far as he could tell. He leaned forward, arms on his knees, and closed his eyes for a moment. It was fine.

He was alone in the room now, but he hadn’t been so all night. The mattresses and crumpled blankets on the floor – not to mention the game books – was proof enough that last night had been real.

Ford ran a hand through his hair and took deep breath that turned into a yawn, ending with a quiet incredulous chuckle. He couldn’t believe he’d played DDD.

He couldn’t believe he’d played DDD, and slept, and he felt—he felt alright. His wounds ached and his heart was beating too fast in his chest, but the colors around him seemed brighter – reds, browns, purples, not just yellows – than they had been in weeks. There was daylight illuminating the window from the outside. It was another warm summer day, when it should have been freezing winter. Bill wanted to destroy the world, but Ford wasn’t going to let him, and for once the determination seemed like something more than a desperate last stand.

He wasn’t doing this alone.

The emotions attached to that thought threatened to overwhelm him.

He had Stanley back. He had something that resembled a family. Together they’d done things he never would would have managed alone, and then they’d played DDD. It seemed incredible, fragile, unreal.

He had Stanley back, and all it took was a one-way trip thirty years into the future. Now he had a twin brother twice his own age, his elder brother’s grandchildren, and no identity of his own.

Something twisted in his guts. He should have done things differently. Should have tried to explain better to Stanley when he arrived, should have reached out sooner, should have listened to Fiddleford, should have seen the warnings signs, should have never summoned Bill to begin with—the list of mistakes could go on forever if he allowed it to. He should have been a better brother. He should have been a better scientist. He should have been a better son, a better friend, a better person. It was too late for so many things, now.

And yet, here he was.

Rubbing his arms against the sudden chill, Ford looked down at his dirty, worn dresspants and rags of a shirt. He should probably change. Possibly also shower and redress the wounds if he could stomach it—no, whether he could stomach it or not.

As well as other things that needed to be done.

Wrapping himself up in the coat, he made himself slip out of the protection of the barrier and face a new day.

Stanley served him pancakes for the third day in a row, as if this was now a normal occurrence. Dipper and Mabel chatted about last night’s game. All three of them had already eaten earlier, but apparently they wanted to ‘keep him company’, which was probably just another way of saying to keep an eye on him – but if so, it was fully warranted and not completely unwelcome.

“So, did you sleep well?” Stanley asked from the stove soon after getting Ford to sit down at the table. “Didn’t hear ya wake up any, not even when me and the kids got up.”

Ford frowned at the implications, and the grammar. “I didn’t even hear you.” That was troubling, especially after the alien tranquilizers yesterday. If anything had happened, he might not have noticed in time. “I suppose I slept too well.”

Stanley laughed. “No such thing for you, Sixer. You needed it. I’m just glad you’re getting your head back on your shoulders.”

“It’s always been on my shoulders!” Ford bristled. “Well, technically, between them.”

Stanley laughed more.

Oh. “But that’s just a saying and now you’re messing with me.”

“Just happy you’re here, genius.”

Ford didn’t know what to say about that. Stanley’s smile was reminiscent of a better time, but set on a too-old face, and Ford had been gone for thirty years. An absolutely preposterous amount of time for his brother to spend trying to get him back, but little more than a nap for an immortal being like Bill. He bit his lip and tried not to think about the blue light of the portal, the rage on Stanley’s face turning to horror and the taste of his own panic as he drifted away. If they hadn’t fought—if things had gone differently—

Mabel broke the uncomfortable silence. “I slept well too! And Dipper didn’t have any nightmares!”

Dipper smacked her arm. “Thanks, Mabel, that’s exactly what everyone was asking about.” He looked up at Ford. “I did sleep well, though. I dreamt about DDD! Last night was amazing!”

Ford found himself smiling at that. “It was a good game.”

“We have to do it again sometime!”

“Yes, we—” Ford hesitated. The idea of playing regularly implied a level of permanence he couldn’t take for granted, but neither could he deny that he wanted to. “—we should.”

“What’s the matter?” Dipper sounded wary, perhaps taking Ford’s hesitation the wrong way.

“I need coffee,” Ford realized. There was no coffee on the table, and although it might be more of an addiction than a necessity today, he still craved it. He resolutely got up to make some.

Stanley tried to wave him down even as he was flopping pancakes around with a spatula. “Ah, I’ll get to that when I’m done with—”

“I can make coffee!” Dipper chimed in.

Ford turned around. “Don’t,” he said, making a horizontal gesture with both hands. “I’m quite capable of making my own coffee, thank you.” He wasn’t even the slightest bit dizzy at the moment, so any coddling was utterly unnecessary.

This was his own kitchen, even. It wasn’t as if Stanley had rebuilt or remodeled this part of the house. The coffeemaker on the counter wasn’t his own, but it was a similar model, just as easy to work. He filled it up and started to brew, then opened the cupboard above for a mug.

He narrowed his eyes at the plates. Just because the mugs weren’t in the exact cupboard he expected them to be didn’t mean he couldn’t find them. As it turned out, they were in the next cupboard. And just because the mugs were all unfamiliar to him didn’t mean—

Wait. Struck by an urge to examine the matter scientifically, Ford started taking down all the mugs from the cupboard one by one. Eleven, all in all. Most of them must indeed be Stanley’s, but some were so old and worn that it was difficult to tell. Only one was unmistakable. It was chipped and discolored, but wore a faded print that said “It’s all fun and games until someone divides by zero.”

Ford took a deep breath, more relieved than he’d expected to be. He remembered buying this during a visit to the east coast, three years ago. Thirty-three years ago. It still existed, but like Stanley, it was old now. Older than himself. He’d bought it before he’d met Bill, at a time when he’d just started to become frustrated with his own inability to produce a unified theory of weirdness, and the printed words had spoken to him. A simpler, more naïve time, but the sentiment written on the mug still seemed apt.

“Earth to Stanford.”

Ford spun around, bumped his wounded side into the counter and bit down a grunt of pain, still clutching the old mug in his hands. Stanley was by the table, having filled Ford’s plate with pancakes, looking at Ford with a concerned frown. “You okay?”

“Are you cleaning the cupboards?” Dipper asked, confusion clear in his voice.

“Are you making a mess?” was Mabel’s follow-up question, a bit more enthusiastically.

“No, I—Yes, I’m okay.” He glanced at the ten mugs on the counter. “I wasn’t trying to do either of those things, but I suppose I got lost in thought.” He turned back around and filled his old mug with black coffee, sipping at it while putting the rest of the mugs back in the cupboard.

“I’m sorry,” Stanley mumbled as Ford took his seat again and started pouring some syrup on the pancakes.

“I know.” Ford couldn’t think of anything else to say. He wasn’t sure what exactly Stanley was apologizing for – for taking thirty years? For replacing or wearing down his coffee mugs? For having stepped into the spot Ford left behind and lived a life? Ford got all that. He wasn’t angry, not the way he’d wanted to be a couple of days ago. It was just—it was a lot. Too much. “It’s fine,” he said.

Pressing the hot mug against a stinging part of his chest, the pain grounded him. He reminded himself that it didn’t matter. As long as Bill was stopped, the rest was unimportant details.

The first order of business after breakfast – technically brunch – was a shower.

That shouldn’t be a problem, and he’d assured Stanley as much. Going to great lengths to avoid looking at the cuts Bill had inflicted on him was irrational, as they’d be there whether he looked or not. Additionally, they did need to be kept clean, and he could only hope he wouldn’t suffer too badly from not having tended to them earlier. He certainly wasn’t going to let Stanley do it again – he did have a modicum of dignity when not thoroughly sedated by alien drugs.

Still. As much as he felt better, as much as the dizziness and tunnel-vision had faded with the sleep deprivation, his heart was beating like a drum in his ears when he met his own eyes in the bathroom mirror. They were perfectly human eyes, still a bit red, still ringed with dark sacks, but no yellow anywhere. Knowing that didn’t douse the adrenalin spike.

Irrational or not, he took a towel from the shelf and covered up the mirror before undressing. At least he wouldn’t have to look at the full-frontal view of the damage. Beyond that, he simply had to handle it.

The triangles were uncovered in stages as he unwrapped the bandages. Triangles upon triangles. Angry red lines.

There were so many of them. They moved as his stomach heaved, and suddenly he was retching.

He was in control. Bill couldn’t do anything to him, not right now. He knew that, and yet just looking at his own body somehow made the conviction slip through his fingers. It didn’t matter how much he tried to detach himself; his body was still there, still him, still Bill’s.

He threw up. He’d eaten too much anyway, filled himself too comfortably, as if he could afford to be comfortable. He stood, gripping the sides of the bathroom sink tight enough that his hands hurt, squeezing his watering eyes shut, but it was too late to keep Bill’s laughter out. It wouldn’t stop. He knew it too well.

“Did you really think you could stop me from doing whatever I want?”

No.

“You agreed to the deal, so deal with it! From now til the end of time, pal!”

No!

“It’ll be fun to watch you try! Cute, even!”

Stop it!

Ford forced himself to open his eyes again, facing his own skin. The large triangle right over his solar plexus met his gaze with a red-lined eye, not a mere symbol, but Bill himself somehow grinning up at him without a mouth.

In fact, Bill probably was here. The bathroom wasn’t shielded. Bill could be watching Ford’s reaction right now, from inside his own mind, from the triangles etched on his body, and there was nothing Ford could do about it, no way to stop it.

He’d done this to himself.

Swallowing bile again, Ford looked away. There were dark stains on the ceiling. His hands clenched, nails digging into his palms, and he might possibly not be breathing.

This was nothing but trivial physical damage. No different from a fork stabbed into his thigh or a sandpaper scrubbed across his forearm. It didn’t mean anything.

It meant Bill owned him. It meant that he’d once voluntarily made a deal, and now he was a triangle’s plaything for the rest of his life. It meant—

“Well, I don’t care! It’s bullshit!”

Stanley’s words from yesterday cut through the moment, and suddenly Ford found air. He gasped, shoulders sagging, and somehow he found himself sitting on the edge of the tub, rubbing his eyes.

“You’re bullshit, Bill,” he breathed.

He’d slept without fear. Bill could no longer take him whenever he wanted to. Unless he massively slipped up, he might never have to be possessed again. Wasn’t that enough to not be owned? Maybe it wasn’t, not in the face of his own body’s evidence to the contrary, but it was enough for him to clench his jaws and get himself cleaned up.

It hurt, but it might as well. Pain meant he was alive and awake, and as such it was a good sign.

At least the wound from the alien tranquilizer gun seemed to be healing fine, and so was the one around his wrist from the handcuff. None on the older marks and bruises were a problem, either. And indeed, most of the triangles had scabbed over, too. It wasn’t that bad.

Still, despite Stanley’s efforts yesterday, a number of them were still tender and hot to the touch, and a couple of the triangles were shifting yellow with pus. The latter made Ford taste bile in his throat again, but it was bullshit. Just a few cuts that hadn’t been properly tended from the beginning. They were shallow. The infection was shallow, too.

All he had to do was have a proper shower, and then hopefully the inflammation could be controlled with what antibacterial ointments Stanley had available. Seeing a physician was simply not an option.

At least he had his own clothes. The fact that he did – that Stanley had preserved them for thirty years and had them washed and ready for use when Ford returned – seemed a minor miracle. A clean white shirt and a gray sweaterwest to hide away the new bandages improved his mood immensely. The marks were there, but he didn’t have to dwell on them.

As he put on the coat again – unlike the shirt and sweaterwest he’d worn yesterday, the coat was merely a bit frayed, not ruined – his hand reflexively went for the upper left inner pocket. It was empty, of course, not that it should matter.

Taking a deep breath, he emerged from the bathroom, glancing towards the locked door to the study. Surely if there had been a burglary, someone would have noticed. Surely the rift was still in there.

“Looking good!” Mabel said, startling Ford to pay attention to the two kids that had apparently been sitting on the floor right outside the bathroom, playing with some folded paper. “Wet hair makes less fluff, so you look even more like grunkle Stan!”

“Fluff?” Had they been waiting for him?

“I wonder if we could make grunkle Stan wear a coat like that?” Mabel continued, turning to Dipper. “We could make them pose like before-and-after pictures! Or if uncle Ford wore a suit, they could make a whole de-aging trick for the Mystery Shack!”

Dipper laughed, but cut it off when he met Ford’s narrowed eyes.

“I’m not going to do tricks for the Mystery Shack,” Ford said flatly. He was still trying to swallow the existence of the Mystery Shack. Turning himself into a freak show was the last thing he wanted.

“You don’t have to,” Mabel said breezily. “But it would still be fun to dress you and Stan up the same and confuse people. I bet Stan could rig it up with a smoke bomb!”

“Mabel and I do that sometimes,” Dipper added. “Not with smokebombs, but with confusing people. It’s fun!”

That, on the other hand, he could relate to. Ford sighed and leaned his back against the wall, a fond smile finding its way to his face despite some irritation. “That is one of the perks of having a twin,” he admitted.

“Did you and grunkle Stan switch a lot when you were kids?”

“When we could get away with it. Our mother always knew.”

Dipper nodded. “Yeah, moms have a superpower like that.”

“Moms can see right through you,” Mabel said, wriggling her fingers as if casting a spell.

“Well, anyone who remembered to look at our hands would figure it out, unless we could hide them.” Ford held out a six-fingered hand. “Still, it worked surprisingly often.” A wave of nostalgia was hitting him like hot air to the face, tinged with lingering resentment and overpowering regret. “Where’s Stanley?” he asked.

“He’s in his office with Soos,” Dipper replied.

Ford grimaced. “His office.” That was less than helpful. Ford had had several places to work and write in the house, but no room designated an ‘office’ as such. “And where’s that?”

“Oh. Um…”

“It’s the little room next to the museum,” Mabel supplied, which wasn’t actually helpful either. This house had changed so much, and Ford didn’t truly want to know what Stanley had done to it during all those years. The tourist trap of fake anomalies was... Well, if he were to express how much it hurt he would have to start yelling at Stanley again, and he didn’t want to do that. He got it, intellectually, and objectively it was a far more harmless activity than Ford’s had been.

“We’ll show you,” Dipper decided, to Ford’s relief. His discomfort might have been written on his face, but neither of the kids said anything about it, though Mabel took his hand and squeezed it as they led him off to the back of the house. The goal turned out to be the small guest bedroom next to the hall where Ford had collected his specimen.

Well. It was clearly an office, now. Decorated with Stanley’s weird mix of real and fake anomalies, as well as books, documents haphazardly thrown into boxes, and Ford’s magic photocopier, though the latter had obviously seen better days. Stanley and Soos looked up from a pile of documents on the desk as Ford and the kids entered.

“Ford?” Stanley said. “You okay?” As if the only reason he’d be here was that if he was having a problem.

“Yes, I’m fine.” Ford crossed his arms on top of the layers that covered the bandages. “Can I ask you a question? You seem to be busy.”

“Bah.” Stanley straightened up and pushed a piece of paper aside. It looked like some kind of invoice. “It’s just economy. Soos can handle it.” He turned to the younger man, adding, “You can, right? Just fake my signature if you need to.”

“Yes sir, Mr Pines!”

“So,” Stanley said as Ford tried not to stare. His brother’s mixture of carelessness, crookedness and utter trust was difficult to believe, especially the last part. Stanley nudged him back out to the big hall, leaving both Soos and the young twins behind. “Hit me with it.”

“What exactly—” Ford lowered his voice. “What exactly is this Soos person to you?”

His old twin grinned. “That’s your question?”

“Do I only get one, then?”

Stanley shrugged. “You get as many as you like.” He glanced around them. “Just don’t ask about the Sascrotch.”

Ford’s face hardened. He’d already glimpsed that particular fake pun-based abomination, but he refused to acknowledge it.

“Nevermind.” Stanley rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m just trying to—sorry. Anyway, Soos. He’s my handyman. Works at the Mystery Shack, keeps things together.”

That was not the whole story. “And what else?”

“Geesh.” Stanley grimaced. “Why would there be anything else?” They were moving back to the main part of the house, now.

“Is he or is he not a part of your family?” Why did it have to be so ambivalent?

“He is! Well. I mean.” Stanley fell silent. Ford waited.

“He’s been my handyman since he was twelve. His dad ditched him and I guess he kinda imprinted on me or something. Does that answer your question?”

Ford nodded slowly, filing the information away. “I suppose it does. More or less. And you trust him?”

“Of course I do.”

That didn’t solve the matter entirely, but it eased some of the worries. An explanation, a map of the immediate social environment, and some reason not to suspect the young man’s loyalties.

“But that wasn’t what you wanted to talk about,” Stanley added.

“No. It’s a minor thing, but I was going to ask what happened to the coat I was wearing—” —when I fell through the portal— “—three days ago.”

“I threw it in the wash. It’s in the dryer right now – you need it?”

Damn. Ford’s stomach sank. “You didn’t think to empty the pockets, did you?”

Stanley’s eyes widened, but then he smiled. “Yeah, I did.”

That was a relief, but suddenly Ford found himself tongue-tied regarding the actual item he was after. Stan’s smile already told him that he knew exactly what it was about, and it wasn’t as if he hadn’t already admitted to missing Stanley. But he hardly had any good excuse to care about a childhood memento in his pocket when the fate of the world was at stake. He should just drop the matter, before he had to—

“And yeah,” Stanley added, interrupting Ford’s thoughts. “It’s in my bedroom. Come on.”

Stanley’s bedroom looked different now that Ford was fully awake and actually looking. Of course, it looked even more different from Ford’s own bedroom, the one that was now – thirty years ago – piled up with junk and unused for months. Some of the furniture was the same, though worn and rearranged, but most had never been Ford’s at all, and the mess had a very different flavor to it.

The photograph sat on a cluttered drawer, next to the pieces of a plastic credit card.

The latter was strange. “Is this mine?” Ford asked, picking up a piece. Had that been in his coat, too?

“Yeah.” Stanley grimaced. “I think Bill broke it and used the edges.” He didn’t say for what, but he didn’t have to. Ford dropped the piece of plastic like it had burned him, clenching his teeth and absolutely not thinking about that night.

It was the picture he wanted, anyway. He sighed, taking it gingerly in both hands and sinking down on the side of the bed. Two small boys looked up at him with pride from the wreck of an old boat. The memory of that day was still vivid, despite everything. The smell the salt air, the heat of the heavy sun overhead, the splinters from the broken hull. They’d both been so happy.

“It’s a good picture,” Stanley said next to him, sounding too casual. “Can’t believe how sunburned we were.”

“Indeed.”

Stanley opened his mouth as if to say something, then closed it again. “I’m glad you kept it,” he said eventually.

“I’m glad you didn’t put it in the washer with the coat.”

“Hah. No, that woulda been a tragedy.”

“You must have others like it, though. I’ve got—I had a whole box of old photos somewhere.” Stanley wouldn’t have thrown them away, would he?

“Sure. But this one was missing, and it’s a good one. And, ya know—” He took a deep breath. “I’m glad you’re a bigger sap than you look, okay?” He looked so embarrassed that Ford released a huff of laughter, tension evaporating slightly.

“I’m not a sap,” he said prudently. “I merely—” He paused and drummed his fingers against the back of the picture. “I needed a reminder of something good.” Even with the estrangement, his childhood with Stanley had seemed more meaningful – more real – than anything he’d felt for the last few years with Bill. The Stan o’War might have been a pointless dream, but it had been harmless and fun. The portal had never been either, looking back.

Stanley grunted. “You know it’s gonna be okay, right?”

“I don’t know that.” He rubbed a hand over a particularly sore spot below his left shoulder. “Bill isn’t going to give up.” Besides, he wasn’t sure what ‘be okay’ would even mean anymore.

“I’m not giving up either. Still gonna find a way to punch him, too.”

Ford had to smile. “I very much want to see that.”

“Do you want a frame for that picture?” Stanley asked after a moment of silence.

“A frame?”

“Put it up somewhere. Makes it easier to look at whenever you want to.” His eyes went to a small frame on his bedside table, containing a picture of Mabel and Dipper making ridiculous faces at the camera.

That was the sort of thing you did when you made a home.

“I’ll think about it,” Ford said, putting the picture away in his inner pocket with a soft sigh. “Right now I’m more concerned about safeguarding the rift. I want to seal up the window in the study again, to prevent it being used by burglars.”

Stanley looked alarmingly skeptical. “You wanna live in the dark?”

“Lamps exist, Stanley.”

“Sure, but—” He shook his head, apparently thinking better of it. “It’d make you feel better?”

“It’ll make us all safer.” Ford narrowed his eyes, hoping that Stanley wasn’t just humoring him. “And yes, that would make me feel better, yes, if that is your order of priorities.”

“Right,” Stanley agreed. “Let’s do that, then.”

With Stanley’s help, the work on boarding up the window went quicker than anticipated. The room did get darker, of course, but it could also be argued that summer daylight was too bright. It also got a lot less likely that anyone would be able to use the glassed hole in the wall to break in. Nothing was one hundred percent secure, but this was better.

They were almost done when Mabel stormed into the study and announced, “Ten minutes to the Ducktective finale!”

“The duck-what?” Ford asked, hammering in the last of the nails before turning around.

Stanley was sitting back on the couch, looking tired but otherwise pleased. “Good thinking, sweetie,” he told Mabel. “I had almost forgot.”

“You can’t forget, grunkle Stan! It’s the finale!”

“The duck-what?” Ford repeated.

“Duck-tective!” Mabel yelled, gesturing at the portrait of a behatted duck on her sweater. “It’s about this duck that solves crimes and—”

“It’s a kids’ show,” Stanley explained. “But I like it. It’s got some clever mysteries and a lot of humor that goes over kids’ heads. Wanna watch it with us?”

That was not part of Ford’s plan for the day. “I don’t—”

“You should!” Mabel interrupted. “It’s great, and the duck is so cute!” She tilted her head slightly. “But then again it’s the final episode, so you’d have all the spoilers if you watch the rest of it later. That’s a dilemma.”

“No, it’s not,” Stanley said. “Just watch it with us for fun, ‘s not like you have to take it seriously. See what TV is like in the twenty-first century.”

“Why would I—” Ford shook his head. “No.”

Stanley looked disappointed. Why would he be disappointed that Ford didn’t want to watch a kids’ show about a duck? Even if he did want to catch up on popular culture – which he didn’t – that would hardly be his first choice. He still had work to do.

“So will you watch the whole series with us later?” Mabel asked with a hopeful smile.

“I—” Ford bit his lip. “Perhaps.”

“Okay, then,” Stanley said. “You gonna be alright here, or…?”

“I’ll be in the basement,” Ford told him.

“With the portal?” Stanley’s eyes widened. “I’ll come with you, then.”

Mabel made a frustrated sound, looking from Stanley to Ford.

Stanley looked guiltily at the girl. “I know, pumpkin, but—”

“I’m fine.” Ford sat back on the couch and sighed, waving his brother’s concern away. “I don’t actually need a babysitter, Stanley. Bill can’t possess me unless I fall asleep or unconscious, and that is exceedingly unlikely to happen within the next few hours.”

“What’re you going to do down there, anyway? The portal’s already busted.”

“Probably, yes. But I’ll be the judge of that.”

“You can’t wait an hour?”

Technically, he could. But that would mean succumbing to unfounded fear – Stanley’s, certainly not his own – that he couldn’t handle the remains of his own creation. He’d slept well. He wasn’t going to faint. The portal’s existence sat like was a heavy weight on his mind, and he didn’t want to postpone facing it because Stanley thought he was weak. “No,” he said.

Stanley hesitated, worry clear on his face. “Don’t overexert yourself.”

“Of course not.” He might be prone to working too hard, but if the safety of the world depended on him not blacking out, he thought he could manage that. Knowing Stanley, though, he probably wasn’t thinking about the safety of the world at all. Ford patted him on the arm. “Look, I’m still not going to spontaneously combust or otherwise turn to dust.”

“Or disappear in a flash of light?” Stanley tried to grin, but there was an obvious shudder in his shoulders.

Oh. Or that. “Most certainly not,” he replied. “That was unpleasant.”

Stanley’s smile turned slightly more genuine. “Yeah. See you in a bit, then.”

Stanford stepped carefully into the large chamber of the basement, ramrod straight and hands clenched behind his back. The portal gazed back at him silently. Leaning on its side, edges broken and surrounded by shattered equipment, it was less impressive than it had been.

His own previous assessment – as well as Stanley’s – was, of course, correct. The portal was hardly in an operable state. It could never be accidentally activated like this. Not only had the very support beams collapsed, panels cracking and wires tearing, but he had no doubt that the energy surge had caused delicate components to burn out and fuse all over the machine. It was a mess, surely similar to the mess Stanley had been faced with thirty years ago. Possibly worse. The portal must have been open longer this time.

Regardless, if Stanley had been able to repair it once after a full power-up, it could be done again.

He had to destroy it. Pull it apart, scatter the components, hide the journals with the blueprints. No, he should destroy those, too. He should destroy everything.

He'd put so much of himself into his machine, his hopes and dreams and ambitions. He wanted it gone. He’d barely dared touch it before Stanley arrived. It would have been his masterpiece. He hated it with all his being. It was supposed to change the world. It was now one of the few pieces of evidence left that he had ever existed at all.

He could see now that it wasn’t a masterpiece at all. It was sloppy. A piece of equipment that broke immediately upon full usage was hardly a practical tool for anything, even if it had been able to do what it was supposed to. He’d even known it wasn’t sturdy enough for the forces it handled, but Bill had reassured him, and he’d trusted Bill’s judgement above his own.

If this was a masterpiece, it was Bill’s.

It did exactly what Bill had meant for it to do.

Ford licked his lips and took a deep breath. This machine was a monster. He’d poured his soul into it, but all it reflected was Bill.

An hour or so later, Ford was busy prying, tearing and unscrewing protective covers and underlying components, throwing them in piles on the floor and swearing at himself. His hands were covered in tiny scratches and cuts, and maybe he should be wearing gloves, but he doubted his own specially made gloves even existed anymore. He didn’t care.

Every part he touched reminded him of the work he’d put into making it. The discussions with Bill over physics and metaphysics and mathematics. The lies and the half-truths and the actual truths and many times he couldn’t tell them apart even in hindsight.

He wasn’t making any headway. The portal was too big, too well put together – courtesy of Fiddleford McGucket who may or may not even be alive anymore – and there was a strange, unwelcome nostalgia welling up inside him as he worked. Bill had made so much sense. Bill had taught him so much. He’d felt so special, chosen to receive and apply knowledge beyond the rest of humanity’s level. How deeply had he been deceived? Did this one relay truly regulate the flow of Higgs bosons? The math had checked out, but there were too many unknowns, too many fundamental aspects taken on faith by Bill’s word. Even without outright possessing him, Bill had still twisted him to his will.

How much did he understand of anything?

“How’re you doing?”

Ford looked up, not even surprised to see Stanley emerging from the control room, wrinkles and fez and all. “Great,” he said. “I’m doing great.”

Stanley smiled wryly. “Quit sounding like me.”

“What.” Ford pried the screwdriver into a crack between two panels locked together and tried to tear them apart.”

“I said, you sound like me.” Stanley sat down on a nearby fallen beam. “That is, if anyone had ever tried to ask how I was doing when I was down here swearing at that damned piece of technology.”

Ford huffed.

“Look, I—"

The panel Ford was working on snapped open with a pop, revealing the components underneath, wrapped in— Ford swore again. “Is that goddamn duct tape!?”

“Whoa.”

“Did you repair this with duct tape?” Ford snarled, not really meaning to. The duct tape didn’t matter, the way Stanley had affected repairs on the doomsday machine he should never have touched in the first place didn’t matter, and Ford’s overwhelming frustration with everything didn’t matter.

“I might’ve?” Stan stood again to take a look at the guts of the newly opened panel.

“Do you even know what this part is?”

“Dunno what it’s called, no. I have a decent idea what it does.”

Ford blinked. “You do?” Tossing the screwdriver to the floor, he threw up his hands. “Because I don’t! There’s duct tape on it and I don’t know how much of what I thought I knew about the whole machinery was true in the first place!”

Stanley looked pained. “I’m sorry.”

“For what? For using duct tape?”

“No, for—” He stopped with a sigh, instead wrapping an arm around Ford’s back. When Ford didn’t pull away immediately, he squeezed him in a sort of half hug.

“It’s dangerous,” Ford said. “It must never be repaired again.”

“I know.” Stanley looked up at the portal frame and laughed softly. “Great Moses, I know. You wanna tear it apart, you really should’ve waited for me.”

“Why?”

“I spent thirty years of my life on this thing. Think that entitles me to be in on the revenge.”

Thinking about it, that was a fair point. “Yes.” Ford drummed his sore fingers against his legs. “You’re right.” In a way, the portal had been Stanley’s life work, too. “I have to admit I still find it hard to believe you did that.”

“Mm-hm.” Stanley’s face tightened slightly.

“I didn’t—this technology is beyond anything on Earth, or at least Earth as I knew it.”

“Still true, pretty much.”

“Yes, and I don’t even know to which degree my own calculations make sense! The basic idea was Bill’s from the start. Some of it isn’t even based on human science. To reverse-engineer that enough to repair it, without the full blueprints—” Without a high school degree. With no documented interest in science whatsoever.

“It took thirty years.”

Ford sighed and leaned his back against the portal frame, looking down at the floor. “Most people in your position would have given up within a month, and rightly so.”

“So you admit it’s pretty unlikely that anyone’s going to come down here and repair it now?”

“That’s—” Ford looked down at his fingers. “You’re right, that’s extremely unlikely. Perhaps if Bill possessed someone and did all the work himself… But what I meant to say was that you did something incredible.”

Stanley’s face softened.

“And you’re almost as foolish as I am.” Perhaps in different ways, but nonetheless.

“I think I’ll take that as a compliment, too.”

Ford banged his forehead against Stanley’s shoulder with more than a little fondness. “You’re a knucklehead.”

“Wouldn’t have it any other way, Poindexter.”

“I still want the portal gone.” He turned back towards the monstrous machine and sighed. “Did you duct tape the graviton converter? Is that what you did?”

“If you mean that tube that changes extra radiation into anti-gravity, then yeah. I did that.”

Ford froze. Hearing Stanley so casually mention the inner workings of the portal was strange. The description made sense, but those were not the words he would have used. Nor Bill.

“Stanley?”

“Did I get it wrong?”

“No, that’s what it was meant to do. I was just thinking—if you want to help me disassemble this—”

“Yeah, I want it gone too.”

“—then could you do me another small favor? I’d like you to tell me your own understanding of how all these components work!”

Stanley frowned. “Is there a reason for that? I’m pretty sure you know better than me.”

“Maybe. But—” But maybe if Stanley described it he wouldn’t have Bill’s voice, Bill’s teachings, Bill’s flattery and braggery and lies ringing in the back of his mind every time he thought about complex metaphysics. “—I built this portal together with Bill. I’d like to hear about it from another perspective.”

“Huh.” Stanley grimaced. “Can’t say no to that, can I? I can try, but if you laugh at me I’m gonna flick your nose.”

Ford accepted the threat without argument.

Stanley’s descriptions were a breath of fresh air. They cut through Bill’s voice in his mind, vastly different from how Bill had talked about it, or how Ford himself had talked about it with Fiddleford. There was no theoretical sophistication, no air of pride or flattery or ambition or knowing exaggeration. When he didn’t know, he just said so. Stanley used plain layman’s terms wherever possible, describing things clearly and concisely, with none of the flair he used to put into speeches. However, his plain, utterly unacademical understanding of the inner workings of a machine that punched a hole in the fabric of space-time was quite frankly amazing. It mostly aligned with his own knowledge – no great revelations, and some of Stanley’s explanations stood on less theoretical and more pragmatic grounds – and the subject matter was still a disaster. The question marks and the foul taste of Bill’s lies remained in the back of his throat. But this was Stanley, talking science, and as such it was beautiful.

And yet Stanley seemed uncomfortable with it. When Ford tried to ask questions about how in the world Stanley had managed to figure some particular aspect out, it was more often than not met with sad eyes and a tired sigh. He did have some stories to tell about procurement of materials and misfired attempts at starting the device – things he had obviously never told anyone before – but they weren’t many, and he didn’t tell them with anything near the usual glee that telling stories about himself used to incite from Stanley.

“Believe me, Sixer, you do not wanna know how many useless notebooks I filled trying to make sense of stuff like space-time. Basic stuff to you.” He pulled the crowbar and a large part of protective covering fell away from the portal with a loud clatter. “Okay, so here’s the last part of the anti-gravity thing, and then that box is one of the six that spins fermions. Plus some part of the electronic control rig there in the back. Don’t think we can get to it yet.”

“Didn’t you ever—” Ford stopped, unsure if the question should be asked, but curiosity got the better of him. “Didn’t you ever take pride in this?”

“Why would I? I kept failing for thirty years.”

Ford opened his mouth, then closed it again. He wanted to say something, but his brother’s answer was so abrupt and horrifying in all its simplicity. He shuddered. His own foolishness burned hot with pride and ambition and willful ignorance, threatening to take the world and everything on it down in the flames. But Stanley’s foolishness was like relentless ice that simply wouldn’t budge until it had done what it meant to do.

He swallowed. “Thank you,” he said eventually. “For not giving up on me.”

Stanley released a sharp breath, smiled, then looked down. Before he could say anything, Ford looked back at their progress and changed the subject.

“We should get power tools.”

#gravity falls #fanfic #it writes #30 seconds later

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fearsbellsarchived · 5 years

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[me? Thinking about a gf fairytales au instead of being productive? More likely than u think!!! think ou.at buT BETTER and w/o the real world dimension hopping part. under the cut bc i just copy/pasted my tags from forever ago to put them in one place

mabel and dipper are hansel and gretal

paz is sleeping beauty

bill is maleficient

if we’re gonna get disney about it wendy as merida

i LOVE the idea of tambry as rapunzel???

mabel can also be like...eric from the little mermaid

so mermando can be ariel

gIDEON AS URSULA/VANESSA IN THAT VEIN THO

bill is also rumplestilskin

stan can be the huntsman (idk from which story cause theres a fEW BUT)

ford is the sorcerer from fanstasia

ford is teaching dipper magic....and instead of a true love’s kiss that’s how he wakes paz (maybe?)

the northwests made a deal w bill like in the most famous version of rumplestilskin but instead of wanting paz for himself he just wanted to steal her body at 16

so when they lose the deal they ask for help from ford and ford’s like “yo i can maybe change the deal??? a little bit???” so instead of bill taking her over when he goes to she falls asleep

so dipper wasnt supposed to wake her up but he found her and fords notes and he and mabel went on an adventure

bill is all the villains

billains

so stan has to leave mabel and dipper in the woods (idk y it wasnt for long the twins are just impatient) so stan disappears and the twins are like “lETS EXPLORE THE WOODS”

they come across some creepy old house w a lot of spiderwebs (can u guess the villain yet?)

an older woman comes out and is like “why are you guys lost in the forest?”

mabel points to the glitter trail “we’re not lost”

dipper looks behind them ‘mabel!!! where’s all the glitter?!”

(ACTUALLY MAYBE ITS YARN???)

so they lose the trail

meanwhile stan is losing his fucking mind

he follows the stray glitter but it’s blown all over

he feels “LOST IN THE WOOOOODDDS!!!”

so the old lady offers for them to stay the night bc its getting late

dipper is SUPER sus but he plays it cool surprisingly

mabel is So In!

long short...stan eventually saves them from darlene’s trap

usually shes just a maneater but look

when u live in the woods u do what u can

so stan hauls them back to their cottage

dipper knew there was weird shit out there but he wants MORE

he starts going through his great-uncle’s journals (*cue the dipper squee*)

he reads about bill and his deal w paz’s parents

he’s like....’maybe we should rescue her?’

ford wont tell him why they cant

so dipper and mabel sneak out

they steal the grunkles’ boat

mabel falls over board???

dipper tries like HELL to save her

but then he sees mermando save her

SO MABEL IS SAVED BY MERMANDO!!!

gideon (who had long-loved mabel from afar) finds out

he visits the merman to trick him

all mabel remembers is his voice

so YES mermando trades his voice for legs just like the movie

sue me okay w his distinct accent it makes sense!!!

so the twins get sidetracked bc mermando shows up out of nowhere

they dock on a small island for a pit stop and thats when ‘kiss the girl’ happens

they dont kiss so they move on

they dock on another stretch of land the next day

AND GIDEON APPEARS

the twins have only heard about him from their grunkles so mabel hears his voice and goes *heart eyes*

mermando is Distressed

dipper is Focused on getting to this sleeping princess

mabel makes fun of him for liking her

SO GIDEON HAS MERMANDOS VOICE!

at one point dipper catches him w/o the amulet that makes him sound like mermando

and he tells mabel and its kinda like “the hand that rocks the mabel” or whatever the ep was called

it takes dipper and mermando being threatened (and gideons voice slipping) for her to catch on and she breaks up w him

dipper wants to throw him overboard

they just leave him on the next inhabited island they find

mermando got his kiss but decides to go back to the ocean anyway

he promises to write

mabel is Sad

SO BACK TO OUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED ADVENTURE!

the twins come across a land near the one paz is on and decide to stop for food and to stretch their legs and other hygiene things

they find out there’s some archery thing going on and mabel is like ’ooooh can we try?!’

turns out its for neighboring kingdoms’ princes to win a princess

mabel and dipper think this is RIDICULOUS so they crash it

mabel steps up to shoot and everyone’s like ‘wHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?’

then dipper steps up beside her. neither of them have shot a bow before

they shoot at the same time. mabel’s like thisclose to the bullseye. dippers too far right

THEN!!! PRINCESS WENDY COMES OUT OF NOWHERE

DIPPER AND MABEL ARE IN AWE OF THIS VALKYRIE. THEYRE BOTH READY FOR HER TO KILL THEM BC THEY THINK ITLL BE AWESOME

but wendy is like ‘ACTUALLY ILL SHOOT FOR MYSELF THANKS’ and splits like three arrows down the middle w her accuracy

she looks at mabel and dipper and is like ‘u dudes look fun! ive never seen u before who are u???’

and they’re like ‘WELL!’ and launch into detail about their adventure w overlapping voices and sound affects and VAST description

anyways. i cant decide how old people are rn okay

so wendy is like “hey dad??? im going on an adventure w these guys!” and her dad is like “unusual but u DID just win ur own hand. so ill allow it”

“YES! can i take soos too?!”

“sure!”

sO THEYRE OFF AGAIN!!! lemme tell u the ship is filling faST!!!

they get to paz’s land. and the first thing they find is a girl in a tower with long purple hair.

everyone is pretty much just making ‘wtf’ faces for like....ten minutes.

finally wendy calls up the tower like “YO! WHATS W ALL THE HAIR?!”

tambry leans out the window w a bored expression and goes “its mine. im tambry. who r u?”

they introduce themselves and are like “u wanna come on our adventure?”

then....ROBBIE APPEARS!

and he knows where the princess is!!!

”oh yeah. her. shes also in a tower. its got a door but its guarded by gnomes.”

then robbie climbs tambrys hair pecks her cheek and ducks in the tower

they decide to head for the tower robbie directed them to. but they have to pass the castle. Northwest Castle

robbie warned them about the northwests. said that the princess was one and before she disappeared she was the snottiest brat hed ever met

so they became friends despite the fact that he plays music for a living (and not very well either)

her parents told her of the spell when she was twelve

so robbie’s like “they are not nice people and neither was she??? most of the townsfolk are glad shes asleep tbh”

but dammit! dipper came here for an adventure!!! he wasnt going to stop just bc the princess wasnt what he expected!

so they continue on!

mabel is like “maybe she doesnt KNOW how to be nice!”

and soos is just excited to be there!

and wendy is just...u kno...chill

they start to get close to the castle and they feel like they’re being watched

and then soos notices the PEACOCKS!

they assume theyre spies for the king and queen. which is half true?

they can also warn bill if someone is near pacifica

oh damn imagine that

being stuck asleep w a DREAM DEMON in ur head

sorry for the accidental psychological torture paz

WHICH IS THE ONLY TORTURE SHES HAD!

i think to make up for risking her life as a baby ther parents were like “we’re just gonna spoil u rotten and PRETEND u do no wrong eVERYTHING IS FINE”

so dipper is reading the journal and he FINALLY gets to the true loves kiss part of the deal

and he looks around at the party like “oh shit true love what do we do???”

mabel suggests he at least try and everyone agrees that yeah okay thats the back up plan

but dipper wants to use a SPELL!!!

so the king and queen see him w the journal and remember ford having the same one

so everyone is brought to the king and queen

theyre like “pRINCESS GWENDOLYN?!”

bc this is MY STORY and if i wanna give wendy a more princess-y name thEN I WILL

i say as i continue to refer to mason as DIPPER!!!

SO THEYRE MEETING THE NORTHWESTS!!!

wendys like “yes that is me the princess” and then everyone else introduces themselves...w dipper introducing himself as mason bc it just sounds more fairytale-y

soos is jesus (hey zeus! not jee sus)

soos is like....wendys bff/personal servant but mostly bff

so they explain their adventure to the northwests as quickly as possible

preston is no patient man and he’s is like “tbh its probably important she be here for her 18th bday soooo??? as long as she wakes up by next year why not???”

but only bc dipper was like “i wANNA USE MAGIC I DONT WANNA KISS HER THATS PLAN B!!!”

plus u kno...even if he DOES whats the guarantee itll work???

the guarantee is me being a filthy shipper tHATS WHAT!!!

so they continue to the tower!

there is probably a sidequest thingy with giffany bc i liked that episode

also soos needs more screentime im sorry

SO THEN!!! FINALLY!!!! THEY MAKE IT TO THE TOWER!!!

WHICH IS!!!

IN FACT!!!

GUARDED

GNOMES!]

also theres a manotaur/multi-bear sidequest i just thought of bc i like THAT episode!!!

is this gf, a fairytale, sk.yrim, or a d.n.d campaign now??? WHO KNOWS!!! ITS NOT ME!!!

SO THEY GOTTA GET PAST THE GNOMES!

first they offer safe passage in exchange for mabel as their queen

after thats declined theyre like “or the redhead. well take her!”

this is also declined

finally jeff tells them to attack

at first the party tries to fight them off and they do okay

uNTIL SOME GNOME WEAPONIZED SCHMEBULOCKS RAINBOW PUKE!!! (i think it’s toxic tbh but i dONT REMEMBER)

finally mabel just pulls out her trusty crosSbow (aka “GRAPPLING HOOK!”) and they just make a tightrope to the window above the door

wendy goes first and NAILS it

then everyone else follows

soos almost falls and gets left to the gnomes but everyone helps him balance and they all make it through the window

coincidentally. the window leads to the princess’s room

OH MAN WHY DIDNT I USE THE PTERODACTYL?!

oh well. anyways.

everyone is looking around the room and like...taking it all in

dipper takes a moment...then walks over to the princess

he isnt sure if waking her will also wake the demon

crossover even more w my old paciphera au??? idk probably not

so dipper tries the spells he narrowed it down to

none of them work

all his friends have returned to the princess’s room and mabel is like “u gotta kiss her brobro!”

so dipper...poor poor dipper...just leans forward and kisses her

paz pretty much snaps her eyes open when dipper is a half inch from her face while he’s pulling back

and even tho she was forewarned she wasnt expecting DIPPER so she SCREAMS

dippers ears are ringing

she shuts her eyes and stills her breathing and sits up.

AND SEES EVERYONE ELSE AND SCREAMS AGAIN

“i dIDNT EXPECT U TO BRING *FRIENDS*!”

so once shes a little more calm they explain the whole adventure to her

paz feels a little honored they came all this way just for her

also since True Love beats everything bill is like.....back in his home dimension. also paz has been fighting him for like....over a year.

so paz is like....ready to Go. u kno. just wants to go HOME.

they get pazs shit together and exit the tower through the door

she says goodbye to the gnomes. all by name.

“oh yeah mom and dad made them my personal guard when i was like...eight. theyve been prepping for this my whole life. they’ll meet me back at the castle.” so then she starts telling them about herself and her last like

two years of being asleep w a DREAM DEMON

“sometimes i got the weirdest nightmares??? and they never ended. but when i woke up i couldnt remember anything specific.”

she and dipper talk away from the group. he tells her about how hes her true love and everything “okay well. we’ll have to lie to my parents and say it was a spell. bc they will NOT approve of us being true loves and if they hurt you...”

“then they hurt *you* too!” dipper finishes (idk maybe a combo w a soulmate au thing?)

meanwhile mabel is like...whining about boy problems??? and wendy is like “this is y boys r dumb.”

soos is like...wandering off. I WANNA INCORPORATE MELODY BUT WHO SHOULD SHE BE?!

paz and dipper start like....arguing about how to deal w her parents

apparently they actually ARENT that nice. if she doesnt marry a prince they’ll give her over to bill completely...or something idk

SO theyre nearing the castle!!!

theyve written theyre grunkles okay no worries. also mermando.

thats y mabels complaing about boys.

mermando and that manatee wife of his!!!

paz is not exactly ready to face her parents so she convinces the party (roll for charisma) to go the long way

which is actually just circles

anyways

we run back in to melody and soos and the party is like ‘wHOOPS WE DIDNT EVEN NOTICE GLAD U DIDNT GET EATEN BY A SPIDER LADY!

maybe melody is like....a fairy???

something light and ‘childish’ bc thatd fit her personality

soos is like “ive BEEN here. u dudes have been going in circles.” and everyone glares at paz.

“im sorry!!! i just dont want to go back!!!”

“ur dad made us promise to have u back for ur 18th bday.” says dipper while he tries to stay mad at his future wife

paz is like “YEAH SO HE CAN MARRY ME OFF TO A PRINCE!!!”

idk why paz and dips are being better at being soulmates here okay i was like....sleep-drunk when i first wrote this

so the party has a choice to make.

take paz back home where she wont be able to be w her TL (which in some cases has probably led to death) OR!!!

sneak her out and take her home w them?!

wendys probably gotta go back to her own kingdom tho.

and soos wants to stay w melody

U KNOW WHAT I JUST REALIZED?!

sTAN NEVER GOT TO BE SOOS’S DAD!!!!

SORRY SOOS!!!

so anyways

mabel and dipper decide to help her sneak out

luckily she knows all the blindspots

it takes longer but they finally make it back to their ship

they say theyre goodbyes to soos and melody and paz wishes them well in her kingdom. she promises to return when shes ready to rule

they load the ship and sail to wendys kingdom next

they stay a few days to recuperate

paz has trouble sleeping bc when she does the nightmares come back.

cue a kat.niss/pee.ta thing where paz sleeps next to dips bc it keeps the nightmares away

wendy has to explain why soos isnt w them to her dad who kinda shrugs it off?

“u proved u can protect urself.” or something.

after like.....a whole fucking year the twins are heading home.

paz and dipper sleep together on the ship too bc its just fucking easier

paz is nervous to meet the grunks

she and dipper arent exactly....dating??? its def more like soulmate au

where theyre AWARE theyre supposed to be together but they dont even rly know if they WANT to be together.

paz is p much “i dont rly wanna be w anyone else. ill let u kno if that changes.” and dips is like “tbh same.”

mabel is already planning a big royal wedding.

iDK Y BUT I WANT THEM TO FIND OUT THEYVE BEEN ROYALTY ALL THIS TIME??? probably just bc i LOVE that trope!!! but theyre not so its whateves.

so they FINALLY get home. mabel has been writing letters this whole time. to mermanso. to soos and melody. to wendy.

shes the captain of the dip.ifica ship and shes gotta keep her crewmembers in the know!!!

the twins also wrote to the grunks the whole time so!!!! no worries!!!

paz tries writing to her parents...but she can never find the right words.

meeting the grunks isnt as bad as she thought???

stan loves her off the bat. partially bc shes rich and bc she doesnt take shit

ford is pleased to meet the girl he saved and shes v v thankful to him for saving her life as best he could.

it takes her like a YEAR to write the letter.

she promises her parents she’ll return. AFTER shes married.

at this point she and dipper ARE together. they figured all theyre confusion out and are just living the good life!

mabel and wendy are doing the long distance thing. shes still friends w mermando.

robbie and tambry found paz and they write back and forth.

u CAN TAKE ROBBIE AND PAZ SIBLINGS FROM MY DECOMPOSING HANDS!!!

everything is as happily ever after as it can get.

and then dipper proposes despite knowing what it means.

BUT THATS A WHOLE OTHER ADVENTURE!!!!

*end credits roll. an epic theme song starts playing*

#💎 OUT OF DIAMONDS. ╱ out.#[i did this forever ago anD I FINALLY MOVED IT TO AN ACTUAL POST OF IT'S OWN]#[im planning on writing this tbh but if u got some rp ideas hum <<]

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anistarrose · 5 years

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Some Sunny Day - Chapter 8: It Won’t Be Long (Gravity Falls - Same Coin Theory)

Summary: Mabel bursts some bubbles, Dipper cracks a code, and Ford makes a wisdom saving throw.

Warnings: manipulation, flashbacks to torture (see note below for more detail)

Previous / Next

The Beginning (see here for AO3 link)

(The Same Coin Theory is by @dubsdeedubs and @renmorris, and this chapter was beta’d by @porkpop!)

Given the subject matter, I guess it’s fitting that this fic would appear to die and then unexpectedly rise from the ashes months later, isn’t it? In all seriousness, I’m sorry it took so long (life has been… not exactly conducive to writing multichapter fics lately) and hope this update ends up being worth the wait! Good news, though — I wrote my first draft of Chapter 9 a while back, so the next update should come in a much more timely manner!

Important warning: This chapter contains flashbacks to torture by electrocution. The torture itself isn’t described in particularly graphic detail, but a decent amount of time is spent describing the consequences (there are references to temporary character death as well as to PTSD) so if you don’t want to read those parts but want to continue following the fic, feel free to ask me for a summary of the chapter with potentially upsetting parts omitted.

(On a lighter note, there’s a reference to one of my favorite GF fics in this chapter, so see if you can spot it!)

In another world of shimmering bubbles and wispy pink clouds, deep within a mountaintop temple, an Oracle addressed her patron.

“If he is to remember,” she asked, “it will be soon, won’t it?”

From within one of the bubbles, a frill-wreathed head bounced up and down in a nod. Its voice was musical and ethereal, like the sound of distant wind chimes.

“If you wish to help them, then now is the time.”

Jheselbraum bowed, and departed to an adjacent room of the temple where she kneeled down on a simple, woven mat. Concentrating on a single image — the face shared by two brothers whose destinies were so tightly intertwined with that of a demon, forming tangled loops that crisscrossed all across time and space, spanning eons and dimensions — her eyes blinked closed. When they opened again, they were glowing a faint lilac purple, and watching the events of a dream as it played out within the mindscape of Stanley Pines.

Interacting with the flow of time in such a way that it already knew the results, yet still observing intently, the Axolotl smiled.

It wouldn’t be long now.

***

Mere moments into her quest to break out of her dream bubble and save Stan, Mabel had an unpleasant realization: this time, she could see no literal bubble to burst — and therefore, no clear way to escape the dream world. No way back to her family.

Oh god, what if she fell back under the bubble’s spell before she could find a way to escape? And what if she didn’t snap out of it the next time —

“Think, Mabel, think,” she murmured to herself. “Don’t panic, there’s gotta be a way out somewhere…”

She heard movement in a nearby room of the Shack, and tiptoed away in the other direction, slipping into the gift shop and hunkering down behind the counter. The scenery around her was a good approximation of how the Shack really looked, but now that she knew she was in an illusion, the only thing that felt real was her pounding heart.

What would Ford want me to do? Stay calm, stay safe, and think through things logically, right?

She took a deep breath. Okay, Mabel, take it from the top. What’s the situation? What do you know?

She was in a dream, created by Stan because he was afraid of Bill. (Well, afraid of something, but what could it possibly be if not Bill?) It didn’t seem like Stan had realized she was aware of being in an illusion, so that was something she had going for her. He probably wouldn’t be actively trying to stop her, at least not yet.

And if she’d gotten here after being doused in the dark water, then Dipper and Soos were probably in dream bubbles of their own — maybe even Ford too, by this point. She had to get back to the regular mindscape, and see if he was alright. Or better yet, find Dipper and Soos’s bubbles and bring them back with her —

Right, she was still technically in the mindscape, wasn’t she? Which meant that if she focused on something hard enough, imagined it vividly enough…

She climbed out from behind the counter and rested her hand on the gift shop’s doorknob, bracing herself to open it and leave the Shack.

Okay, door, listen up, she thought. When I open you, you’re going to take me back to Dipper. In three, two, one…

She swung it open and a freezing black flood rushed in, knocking her backwards. With great effort, she opened her eyes to see the colors of the dream dissolving around her, and reforming new bubbles that floated in the ink-black sea, beckoning her with their colorful fantasies.

There was Ford, safe and holding hands with Stan and eight other familiar faces in a nearly complete circle. Eyes lit up with an optimism she hadn’t seen in him all day, Ford gave her an encouraging smile and reached towards her —

“Just take my hand, and we can complete the Zodiac!” he exclaimed. “We can banish Bill once and for all, together!”

She could feel her hands drifting over, fingers outstretched and ready to wrap around Ford’s own — but she yanked away at the last second, wrapping her arms tight around her shivering chest. A faint glow emanated from the star on her sweater, melting away the icicles on the tips of her numb finger and shining through her foggy, jumbled thoughts like the guiding beam of a lighthouse, exposing the true nature of the treacherous sea surrounding her.

It was never going to be as easy as holding hands, not this time. She knew better than to let any dreams within dreams convince her otherwise.

She took a strenuous step forward against the flow of the current, and the rejected bubbles burst as new illusions appeared in front of her, each singing a different siren song of temptation.

Here, Ford never fell into the portal.

Here, Ford and Stan never argued in the first place.

Here, you never broke your promise to help Dipper with the laptop, and he never got possessed by Bill…

Some of the visions hurt more than others, and she forced herself to look away. “Dipper?” she called out. “Soos? Grunkle Ford?”

There was no reply, except for a new stream of bubbles rising from the depths to float in front of her. In the closest one, she could see Bill Cipher warp and distort, limbs glitching and flickering as his pupil dilated in fear, and Mabel just knew that one good punch was all it would take to shatter that triangle beyond hope of repair —

And it would have been so satisfying, so cathartic, to deliver that punch, but she was painfully aware of it just being fantasy. It was exactly what she had hoped to find, exactly what she had envisioned as a best case scenario — Bill not just weakened, but completely distinct from Stan, easily separated and destroyed — and she couldn’t help but wonder if the illusion had been summoned entirely from Stan’s mind, or from her own.

Something about a larger bubble on her left side caught her attention. It just felt tangibly distinct from the others — still pulling her towards it, but in a different way. She was drawn to this one because it was… well, not entirely real, but more real than anything else around her. It was more familiar, more comforting — and not like the guilt-laced comfort of denial, but like the warm, genuine solace of companionship.

She approached it one step at a time, careful not to let the current around her lift her feet off the ground and wash her out of reach. She was scarcely five feet away when the voice of the bubble suddenly grew clear, and she realized — it wasn’t calling out to her like the other bubbles had, but rather having a conversation with itself.

No, not with itself. With someone already trapped within its illusion.

“All right, we’re rolling in three… two… one…”

“Welcome back to Guide to Haunted Mansions with Dipper and the Pines Family! Today, we’re coming to you from my uncle’s lab, where we’re running some tests on the ghost we captured last episode! Be sure to check that one out if you missed it, because —”

She could see Dipper now — appearance distorted by the bubble’s convex barrier, but unmistakably (and so relievingly) him. He was in a sophisticated but messy-looking laboratory, Ford smiling proudly at his side and Soos standing behind the camera…

But even a ways outside, and with the current working against her, Mabel could make out a spark of light in Dipper’s eyes that the other two lacked. Relief washed over her as she realized she’d found her real brother — accompanied by no small amount of worry for the real Ford and Soos, still nowhere to be seen.

“Dipper!” she called out. “This isn’t real! You have to get out of there!”

The water garbled her voice, distorting it so much that it sounded unintelligible even to her, but Dipper frowned as she spoke. Glancing between Ford and Soos, he asked:

“Did you guys hear that? Was that an audio glitch or something?”

Both the illusions shook their heads as Mabel spat out water, fighting against the tide to get closer to the bubble.

“Dipper, you’re in Stan’s mindscape, remember? It’s a dream bubble, like — like the one Bill trapped me in last summer!”

This time her words came out clearer, and Dipper turned around, somehow both looking right at her and staring right past her at once.

“No, that… that doesn’t make sense,” he murmured. “Bill’s gone…”

Ford put a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Of course he is. We’re safe from him now — and Stan and Mabel are, too.”

The current around Mabel grew fiercer, threatening to drag her backwards, but she managed to wrap her arms around the bubble, hugging it as tightly as she could.

“We came to Stan’s mind to stop Bill!” she yelled. “You remember that, right?”

Dipper shook his head. “I — I don’t know…”

“You can remember! You can snap out of it — I know you can, because you snapped me out of it last summer! You’re stronger than this cheap trap, I know you are!”

Dipper grabbed his head, shuddering and gritting his teeth as the bubble began to distort. Hand still on Dipper’s shoulder, not-Ford’s eyes turned a dull red.

Please, Dipper, Mabel thought, I don’t know how much longer I can hold on…

The facsimile Ford’s form began to darken — at first fading to a monochrome shadow of his former self, and then melting like tar, liquifying into a shuddering column of darkness that spewed out rivers of black ink all around the lab just as quickly as it spewed out lies.

Do you really want to go back there, Dipper? Back to everyone you love being in grave danger? Back to not understanding what’s happening to them or how to help them? Do you want to go back to that uncertainty, to that fear?

Tendrils of darkness crept towards Dipper from every angle, surrounding him as if preparing for an embrace.

Here, Bill is dead for good. Stan is safe from him, and his mindscape is perfectly normal and healthy. Here we’re all safe, and happy, and living the lives we’ve always wanted. It’s not so hard to pretend —

Dipper finally met Mabel’s eyes, just staring at her for a moment. As the tendrils snaked closer and closer to him, he looked down again and took a deep breath.

“Dipper! Let’s beat Bill and save Stan together!”

He turned back towards Mabel and smiled, extending both arms in her direction.

“Awkward sibling hug?” he whispered.

The tendrils recoiled in shock as Mabel plunged her hands into the bubble, grabbed ahold of her brother, and pulled.

***

Ice-cold waves submerged Dipper like he’d plunged into an Antarctic sea, and a numbness quickly overtook him, paralyzing his chest and racing up his arms to —

It didn’t reach his fingertips. Mabel’s hand was warm even as she released him from her embrace, and Dipper realized that he could see her clearly now — a bright spot in the darkness, radiating determination like a falling star lighting up the endless void of the night.

Instantly, the last wisps of fog clouding his brain evaporated away, and everything fell into place — how it wasn’t Bill trapping them in the bubbles, but Stan himself. How finding and destroying Bill would have to mean finding a way to pierce through Stan’s own denial.

“I’m so glad I found you,” Mabel blurted out, and pulled him back into a hug. “I — I wasn’t sure I could save everyone alone.”

“Well,” he told her as he returned the embrace, “you sure saved me.”

The current raged around them, sending them spinning — but for all its strength, it couldn’t even come close to tearing them apart.

***

Ford stepped out of the portal to a not just familiar, but nostalgic sight — a temple carved of pink-tinted marble stone, craggy mountain peaks peering out from the blanket of clouds beneath them.

“Jheselbraum?” he called out, and the curtains at the entrance to the shine parted, revealing a humanoid figure clad in flowing red and purple robes.

All seven of her eyes blinked, and then a smile spread across her face. “Stanford! It’s good to see you again — and you’ve brought friends this time!”

“Sure did!” Stan said. “The guy would be lost without us. I’m Stan, nice to —”

She laughed. “Don’t worry, Stanley, I know who you are. And you must be Mr. McGucket?”

Distracted for the moment, Fiddleford tapped one of several pink bubbles that had floated out of the shrine. Its shape distorted, but it didn’t burst. “Would you look at that…ah, yes, sorry! McGucket, that’s me alright — though ya can just call me Fiddleford or Fidds. It’s a pleasure to meet ya!”

“Likewise! Would you three like to come inside? I know the view out here is spectacular the first hundred or so times you see it, but it’s honestly even more interesting in there.”

“Of course!”

Ford led the way in, marveling at the richly colored tapestries lining the halls. “Jhes, do you weave these yourself? I don’t think I saw this many the last time I visited.”

“I do! You’ll find some seers and oracles that weave their predictions directly into their tapestries, but I honestly just need to be doing something with my hands while I concentrate on seeing the future.”

“I can relate,” Fiddleford chimed in. “Er, not that I’m a prophet or anythin’, but I can never figure out what’s wrong with my code unless I’m fidgeting with somethin’ in a free hand.”

Something in a room to the side caught Ford’s eye, and he stopped so suddenly that Stan nearly slammed into him from behind. “I never got a chance to ask you before, but — why do you have so many tapestries of axolotls?” He felt like he had a second question on the tip of his tongue, but it stayed stubbornly just out of reach no matter how hard he tried to remember it.

Jheselbraum smiled knowingly, not so much with her mouth as with her eyes. “The Axolotl has always been something of a kindred spirit towards those who seek to see beyond the linear flow of time,” she pronounced, “and I like to show my gratitude this way.”

“The Axolotl, with a capital A…” Ford mused. “I’m sorry, Jhes — just a few weeks ago, I’m sure there was something I was thinking I’d like to ask you, but… it’s escaping me now.”

Jheselbraum put a hand on Ford’s shoulder, and a dull purple glow rippled across her eyes, so briefly that Ford would have missed it if he’d blinked. When she spoke again, her voice was soft and echoing, as if originating from the other end of a long hallway — but also more lively, more lifelike, the subtle accent a bit more pronounced and the inflection of her words more rhythmic, more poem-like.

“Did you want to ask why the Axolotl watched over your brother’s house, for all those years? Why it manifested before Stanley, of all people?”

“That’s — I think that’s it, I…” The ground ceased to feel solid beneath Ford’s feet, and a wave of nausea washed over him as he was suddenly uncomfortably aware of how sluggish and muddled his thoughts felt, as if stifled by fog. “There’s something — something wrong about this place, isn’t there? What am I… how did I get here? Is —”

“Hey, Sixer! Check out what I found!”

Simply hearing Stan’s voice was an instant relief, a rope he could grab onto and use to pull himself out of the stormy, disorienting sea of uncertainty he’d found himself cast adrift in. “Huh? What is it?”

Stan frowned. “You okay? I’ve never seen you not recognize a D38 at first glance.” Sure enough, he held a thirty-eight sided die in each hand, one purple and the other blue.

“I… it’s just the thin mountain air getting to me, I think. Where did you find those?”

Stan snickered, pulling aside a tapestry that hung over the doorway to a room Ford had passed by. “Oh, you ain’t seen anything yet. Feast your eyes, nerd!”

The room had two sides that were completely open aside from ornate marble guard railings, providing a stellar view as the first of the world’s three purple moons began to rise above the horizon, but Ford’s attention was instead captivated by the table at the center. Crisscrossing gridlines glowed a dull blue-green, dividing the surface into hundreds of tiny squares, and holographic projections cycled through a variety of miniaturized, perfectly adventure-suited environments — a lush oasis within a dust storm-battered desert, a sprawling and bustling space station floating just above the rings of a pink gaseous planet, an impenetrable-seeming castle of gray brick overlooking a murky moat and surrounded by expansive and bountiful farmlands.

“Jheselbraum, have you always had this?” Ford asked. “You’ve been holding out on me!”

“The last time you were here, you spent every waking moment either recovering from head injuries or drunk on Cosmic Sand. It hardly would have made for a quality campaign.”

Detachedly, Ford realized that the echo was gone from her voice, but he couldn’t help but pay more attention to Stan, who hoisted himself into the throne-like seat at the head of the table and diabolically rubbed his hands together.

“Well, it’s not like we’ve got anywhere else to be, and I’ve got some big ideas up my sleeve… so, who’s up for a game?”

“Stanley, I can think of literally no better way to spend the next six hours to six weeks of my life,” Ford declared. “I’m in.”

***

“You hear the slappin’ tunes, Mr. Pines? That’s how you know it’s a boss battle!”

“Slappin’? Is that seriously how you people describe music these days? And what’s a boss battle?”

“Well, it’s pretty much what happens when you defeat all the minions of the biggest, baddest dude in the level, so then they finally have to throw down with you themself! Doesn’t look like you’re having any trouble with it, though — you must be some kinda natural, ha ha!”

“You bet I am!” Stan laughed as he dealt the final blow, and tossed the controller down triumphantly. “I’m gonna break the young’s monopoly on gaming skills, just you watch —”

The congratulatory chiptune jingle cut off abruptly, and a pattern of static rippled across the TV set. When it subsided, two new character sprites had appeared — two sprites that Soos knew he’d recognize anywhere no matter how stylized, thanks to that lumberjack hat and shooting star sweater.

“Hey, dudes! I was just teaching Stan how to play some of my favorite games — but how’d you two get in there? You’re looking kinda pixely — what happened?”

“Pixely?” Dipper looked down at his hands for a moment, confused, but then shook his head. “Never mind! Soos, this is all just an illusion! You’ve got to snap out of it!”

“All this is just inside Stan’s mindscape, remember?” Mabel added. “You’ve gotta out of there so you can help us stop Bill and save Stan!”

The ripple of static crossed the TV screen again, but this time it spread out all throughout the room, making the furniture and walls flicker and glitch like they were in a corrupted game. A high-pitched electronic whine prompted Soos to clap his hands over his ears, and the light from Mabel’s sweater pulsed in sync with the sound, like the noise and the static were emanating from her and Dipper somehow. Soos felt like he was missing something — why did the two of them look so distraught, with those pixelated frowny faces?

“Are — are you sure, dudes?” he asked. “Stan said Bill was gone, and we were having a lot of fun here — weren’t we, Mr. Pines?”

“‘Course we were!” Stan gently punched him in the arm — too gently, almost intangibly, like it was just a simulation of the actual sensation — “And do I look like I need saving? I’m doin’ great over here, just having a —”

“You don’t look like it, but you do, Stan!” Mabel cried out. “I know you do, and we can help you, I promise we can — but first you have to admit it!”

“No! I’m fine! We’re all fine!” Stan yelled, but dark red and purple pixels began to flicker at the edges of his form. He looked almost two-dimensional as the glitchy appearance slowly crept up his arms, consuming them and disintegrating them into a sea of dark, flashing rectangles that cascaded towards the ground —

“Mr. Pines?” Soos gasped. “Are — are you okay? How —”

Stan extended what was left of an arm in his direction — and then froze in horror, as he saw what the loss of the pixels had exposed.

Four slender, cartoonishly simple fingers trembled in place just inches from Soos’s shoulder — all of them a smooth and solid black, and wreathed in electric blue sparks.

No! Stan’s voice came out desperate and distorted, crackling and cutting out like a broken speaker. PLEASE, no —

Two pairs of human hands grabbed ahold of Soos from behind and pulled him away from Stan, back towards the television. From all directions at once, his ears were filled with a resounding POP —

And then the three of them tumbled down onto the grayscale yet familiar wooden floor of the Mystery Shack’s gift shop, dark clouds above them receding towards the hallway. Just feet away, the vending machine stood shining brighter and bluer than ever, a now all-too-familiar song playing softly from within like the melody from a music box.

Keep smiling through,

Just like you always do,

‘Til the blue skies drive the dark clouds far away!

***

An elven wizard resembling Ford, a human bard resembling Fiddleford, and a silver dragonborn paladin with two additional rows of eyes like Jheselbraum forged a path up a mountain, undeterred by the storm clouds gathering overhead. Their route wasn’t particularly steep, but shrubs and small trees grew all over what had once been a trail, making their climb more tedious than Ford had hoped for.

“So Ford, this dungeon — you say no one’s ever returned from it alive?” Fiddleford asked, absentmindedly plucking his banjo to the tune of Country Roads.

“No one has ever returned from it period, dead or alive,” he answered, shoving a branch out of his face. “Necromancy will likely be of little help to us there. But all the divination magic in the world agrees that the depths of Mt. Somnifell hold, and I quote, ‘all the treasure an adventurer could ever dream of.’ You’re not getting cold feet, are you?”

“More like muddy feet,” Fiddleford groaned, narrowing his eyes and gritting his teeth with clear visceral disgust as looked down at the ground beneath his shoes. “Are we close yet?”

“Should be.” Three of Jheselbraum’s eyes were directed down at a map, while the other four scanned the surrounding area for landmarks and hazards. “Do you see a crooked tree anywhere?”

“Doesn’t look like it,” Ford replied. He craned his neck up towards the sky, past the transparent storm clouds and into the pink marble room surrounding them. “Stan, are there any landmarks that you forgot to imagine into the game and would like to tell us about?”

Stan snorted and leaned over the table, resting his elbows on a neighboring mountain. “Have a little faith, Poindexter! I may be a first time DM over here, but I think you’ll find that I’m the master of the imagination!”

“Fine, I’ll look somewhere else for your dumb tree,” Ford shot back. “Alright, gang, let’s check some other spots at the same altitude — ugh! What’s going on here?”

A long, brown tendril had wrapped around his left ankle and was binding it in place — the root of a nearby oak, he realized.

“It’s got us too!” Jheselbraum called out, drawing her sword. Without hesitation, Fiddleford whacked the root ensnaring him with his banjo, and it seemed to flinch — as much as a semi-mobile plant could flich, at least — but stayed tightly bound.

“I cast Scorching Ray!” Ford declared, and three yellow-orange bolts flew out from the tip of his wand, one striking each of the three tendrils with impressive precision. Several inches of each root instantly crumbled into ash, and the oak tree that they led back to shuddered, green lights flashing in its leaves as a dark-skinned figure with pointed ears and vivid emerald eyes flickered into view. Immediately, they held up their hands in submission.

“Alright, I’m sorry! You’re stronger than I bargained for. I’ll leave you alone now, I promise.” Their voice held a hint of Stan’s hoarseness, but also a distinct inflection pattern of its own.

“You’re a dryad, I presume?” Ford asked, cautiously lowering his wand. “We’re sorry for trespassing on your territory.”

“I suppose dryad is the closest word to it. Most dryads are only tied to one tree, though — I watch over this whole grove, even though I can only control one tree at a time. You can call me Balsa.”

“You must know this region like the back of your hand, then,” Jheselbraum commented, and Balsa beamed, nodding. “Do you think you could help point us towards a certain landmark?”

Their face immediately fell, and they let out a sigh. “It’s the crooked tree, isn’t it? You’re looking for the entrance to the depths?”

“That’s correct. Is something… wrong with that?”

They shook their head. “No, it’s just that… you seem like half-decent people, you know? Same as a lot of other treasure hunters that I’ve seen vanish into that cavern, and never come out. I try to make the plants overrun the trail, make the crooked tree grow straight again so no one can find this place and go boldly marching to their deaths, but…”

They waved their hand halfheartedly, and a mere five meters away, the undergrowth parted to reveal a crack in the earth — a nearly circular dark chasm that rested in the mountain’s light grey stone just as a black hole might sit in the center of a shining galaxy.

“Why are ya showin’ us this?” Fiddleford asked. “You just said ya wanted us to stay out.”

“It’ll call to you anyway.” Balsa sighed dejectedly. “It always does. Everyone who goes looking finds it eventually.”

“How long have you been trying to keep people out?” Jheselbraum hesitantly stepped towards the edge of the chasm, lower row of eyes blinking as she tried to make out what lay within.

“About a century and a half now,” Balsa told her. “The legend draws people in from all four corners of the world, and everywhere in between — seemingly pleasant people like you three, a lot of the time. People whom I wouldn’t expect to be so driven by greed and the promise of treasure. Are you in debt? What is it that draws you to this… this suicide mission?”

“Well, they say money can’t buy happiness, but it doesn’t exactly hurt to have it, either,” Ford replied, and above the table Stan stifled a laugh. “But for us three, I think the main thing drawing us in is the thrill of the discovery. We’re not so much treasure hunters as simply adventurers.”

“Well said,” Jheselbraum told him. “Balsa, we appreciate your concern, but we know the risks of this mission and we’ve made according preparations. If we’re ever in grave danger, we’ve prepared spells to teleport out with. ”

Ford nodded. “The depths of Mt. Somnifell are a mystery that we plan to solve, no matter how many expeditions it takes.”

Balsa shook their head. “Well, I can’t stop you. But I’m not sure you’ll like the solution to that mystery as much as you expect. Will you really remain so dedicated to the truth, if it starts to look like you’re headed towards answers that you don’t want to hear?”

With that, they turned their back and vanished in a burst of green light.

“That was ominous, wasn’t it?” Fiddleford muttered, and then after a pause added: “Well, who’s jumpin’ down that hole first?”

“I think I’ll try to climb, rather than jump, but I’ll be happy to lead the way.” Ford intertwined his fingers and stretched his arms out in front of him, preparing himself for the descent.

“Be careful,” Jheselbraum warned him. “It doesn’t get any brighter down there, and the air flowing out felt humid. It may be slippery.”

“To quote our infinitely wise DM — have a little faith! For one thing, I have dark vision, and for another, I never said I was climbing the rocks themselves.”

One use of Rope Trick later and Ford’s feet safely struck the damp stone floor, having reached the bottom of a twenty-foot long, near-vertical shaft. Fiddleford was about halfway down and had all four limbs wrapped around the rope for dear life, as Jheselbraum brought up the rear and offered words of reassurance.

“Don’t you even think of explorin’ any further without us, Stanford Pines!” Fiddleford shouted, shrill voice echoing loudly. “You’ll just get yourself killed an’ you know it!”

“Relax!” Ford yelled back. “I’m taking a look around, but I’m not moving any deeper in!”

Once he felt certain Fiddleford was more focused on the climb than on him, he took just a tiny step forwards — and then another, and one more after that, because he really had expected to be able see a bit further down here with his dark vision —

The world around him went white, and two firm hands came out of nowhere to grasp both of his shoulders. Jheselbraum stood facing him in the featureless bright space, once again in a robed human form… and with glowing purple eyes.

“I think something’s wrong with your table, Jhes. This doesn’t look like something that should be happening in a campaign —”

“Ford, please listen to me — you’re falling more deeply entranced by the second. I don’t know if I’ll be able to get through to you again at this rate — you must snap out of it! I know it’s an upsetting truth to face, but you are strong enough, and so is your family, as long as you all face this together. I believe in —”

Ford blinked, and he was back in the cave. Fiddleford kneeled a few feet behind him, looking relieved enough to kiss the ground if only he could see it in the darkness, and Jheselbraum gracefully leapt down from the rope to land at his side. She didn’t look especially worried, or speak like there was any matter of particular urgency at hand.

“Ford, you’re giving me an… odd look. Is your touted night vision malfunctioning?”

“No, I’m… just thinking.” He’d witnessed something, he knew that, but the memory felt the same way an object might look if viewed through unfocused eyes in the dead of night — blurry and undefined, only straining his brain more and more the harder he tried to focus on making it out.

Oh well, then. No need to hurt myself — it’s just a game. And speaking of which…

“Stan?” he called out, and the roof of the cave grew holographic and transparent, revealing Stan’s face as he watched the party attentively.

“Yeah, Sixer?”

“I have to admit, I had my doubts about you as Dungeon Master, but… I was wrong. This is such a well-crafted, captivating story you’ve created here — you know that, right? I’m really, genuinely enjoying it — keep it up, and I won’t ever want to leave!”

“Yeah.” Stan smiled, but broke eye contact with Ford — was he surprised? embarrassed? guilty? “Yeah, that’s just what I’m shootin’ for. Thanks, Ford.”

***

“Can you hear us, Grunkle Ford?” Mabel called out. “Where are you?”

No one replied, but the dark clouds in the hallways crept a few inches closer and the piano notes grew slightly fainter.

“Do you think he’s behind the machine?” Soos asked. He took a few steps away from the nearest hallway and towards the kids, nervously scanning the room for any sort of surprise attack.

“I don’t know, but I have a feeling we might not get another chance to check,” Dipper replied. Dark droplets rained down from a crack in the roof, narrowly missing him and splattering across the vending machine’s glass door.

“You’re right, we should hurry — wait, what?” Mabel gasped as she rushed over to the machine. “Dipper, the buttons are different — it’s some kind of weird code! How are we gonna get in?”

“Let me see. There’s got to be a way… wait, hold on. I… I’ve seen this code before.”

“That’s great! I should’ve known you’d know how to… Dipper? Is something wrong?”

Dipper’s stomach was churning with nausea and he hated it, because he knew it wasn’t a real sensation, a physical sensation, but couldn’t still couldn’t will the feeling to stop. “No, it’s just… this cipher was in the Journal, but I wasn’t able to crack this one until after Weirdmageddon, when all the pages got restored. I don’t think even Ford knows I solved it.”

“So what’s it doing in Stan’s mind?” Soos asked. “Did he crack it, or —”

“Bill was the one who wrote in this code,” Dipper added more quietly. “He used it while he was possessing Ford.”

“Oh… right.”

Dipper took another, more careful look at the keypad, where four buttons were already glowing — corresponding to the letters S, T, A, and N.

Now, if we press B, I, and then L twice…

His hand had barely left the keypad when the machine shuddered, swinging open with a groan to reveal a sight that was both unnervingly alien and chillingly familiar.

Descending beneath them was a staircase, mirroring the design of the stairs beneath the Shack — only these were carved from a shimmering light wood, like the bark of a birch tree. Elliptical knots and whorls covered the walls, slowly swirling and moving and growing as they turned to stare up the steps at Dipper and the others, flickering yellow so faintly you could almost convince yourself you’d imagined it, if only you didn’t know better.

“Oh, fuck this,” Dipper whispered, and neither Mabel nor Soos — the two most profanity-averse people he knew — gave any sign of disagreement.

He did, however, hear a sickening crunch behind him, and turned to see the floorboards on the other end of the room collapsing, dragged down into a slowly widening sinkhole in which dark currents frothed and churned. One at a time, grey planks were ripped away from their neighbors and dragged below as the rupture grew, its edges creeping steadily closer —

“I don’t like the look of that place either, dudes,” Soos told them, “but we might not have a choice…”

“You’re right,” Mabel agreed. “Let’s go.”

She grabbed Dipper and Soos’s hands, and before any of them could lose their will, they barreled down the stairs together.

***

The cavern was sloped downwards with countless twists and turns, and Ford got the impression that the tunnel was slowly snaking its way through just about all the interior volume Mt. Somnifell had to offer. Lurking in the shadows, monsters sprang out to ambush them at surprisingly regular intervals — humanoids with bat-like wings, wolves lacking eyes but with long-reaching claws that more than made up for their blindness, slimes that could precipitate stalactites out of their bodies and hurl them at whoever looked most defenseless — but the party dispatched them all with relative ease, burning through healing potions at only about half the rate Ford had expected, given the dungeon’s reputation.

But the cavern also had some less pleasant surprises in store, as was quickly proven when Ford spotted the first body.

“They’re still breathing,” Jheselbraum reported after he pointed out the dwarf’s unmoving form. “It doesn’t even look like they’ve been knocked unconscious — they’ve simply fallen asleep. And they’re smiling like they’re having a pleasant dream, at that.”

“Huh,” Ford murmured. “Can you tell if the cause is magical, or some kind of ingested or inhaled substance?”

“This might end up provin’ itself to be a stupid question,” Fiddleford chimed in, “but can you, ya know… wake them up?”

Jheselbraum shook the dwarf gently, but they remained limp. “I’m trying to, but it doesn’t seem to be working. But this is a magically induced sleep, Ford, I can tell you that much for certain. We should stay alert — there could be any number of magical traps lying ahead, and we don’t want to get stuck in a slumber like this ourselves.”

“That’s some high-quality armor they’re wearing,” Ford commented. “They must be a serious treasure hunter.”

“We’re not lootin’ an unconscious dwarf, Stanford!”

“I never said we were! I was just wondering if it would be feasible to carry them with us, or if they would be too heavy!”

“Normally, I would hate to leave behind a person defenseless like this, but the monsters seem to be leaving them alone for now,” Jheselbraum cut in. “If we carry them with us, and into more of those ambushes, they might actually be less safe.”

Ford and Fiddleford nodded their agreement, and the trio set off down the tunnel once again. They’d scarcely been walking for five minutes when Ford held up a hand, signaling for the others to stop.

“Shh. Do you hear that?”

Fiddleford cupped a hand around his ear. “Water dripping, and… it sounds like breathing?” he whispered.

Ford nodded. “Heavy breathing, just up ahead — maybe even more than one person.” Readying his wand, he took a few cautious steps forward —

It was a heap of sleeping bodies this time, almost comically mismatched in size but leaning up against each other as they snored. The largest figure wrapped its arms around two smaller ones, one of which had their arm around a fourth figure who was smaller still. They were an orc, a human, an elf, and a halfling, Ford realized — almost certainly a team who’d ventured into the dungeon together.

Jheselbraum closed her eyes for a moment, teeth gritted in concentration, and then opened them again with a gasp. “It’s a very powerful spell affecting them. I tried to dispel it, but the magic… it fought back in a way I’ve never felt before. Almost as if…”

Her voice dropped to a low, uncertain whisper. “...as if the victims didn’t want their curse dispelled?”

“Odd,” Fidds remarked, and gingerly poked the orc’s arm. Their eyes twitched ever so slightly, but stayed closed.

Ford carefully stepped over the human adventurer’s legs, and conjured four small orbs of light, each tinted a slightly different color. They floated down the darkest hallway yet, illuminating a set of straight, carved stone stairs that didn’t at all match the natural, winding paths of the rest of the cavern.

“I’ve found something over here,” he announced. “Not sure if it’s the final stretch before the treasure we’ve been looking for, or simply the start of a more daunting and deadly area, but it definitely seems to suggest the influence of something sentient. This cavern, whatever it is, is more than just a naturally occurring phenomenon.”

The stairs weren’t especially steep, but walking down them was as exhilarating as sprinting down a hill, like there was nothing in the world that could stop your legs from moving once you began to descend. The smooth, flat walls were damp with condensation, but the droplets of water reflected even less of Ford’s light than the stone did — he only noticed they were there in the first place after he ran his fingers along the wall for a moment, then pulled away to find them cold and wet.

But the condensation seemed to stay off the steps themselves, and when Ford glimpsed a light at the end of the staircase — bright orange, and unlike any of the ones he’d created himself — he broke into a run, startling Jheselbraum and Fiddleford for a moment before they too saw what he’d seen, and rushed to catch up with him. They careened to a stop in front of an ornately carved wooden door, candles on each side of it lighting the hall, and Ford pushed it open to reveal —

An expansive, well-lit library, bookshelves stretching up from a plush-carpeted floor all the way up to the high and majestic painted ceiling, each and every available ledge crammed full of ancient-looking but well-preserved scrolls and tomes. Ford walked in slowly, not out of a lack of interest but out of an indecisiveness regarding where to investigate first — so many of the nearby books looked so enticing, but he was also drawn to the luxurious mahogany desks that seemed to come pre-equipped with inkwells and long, fluffy quill pens, and it was equally hard to tear his eyes off the statues of ancient wizard scholars, lit from behind by elegant, resplendent chandeliers…

As he marveled, Jheselbraum picked a book from the shelf seemingly at random, flipping through it at first but then skimming the pages with a bit more care, eventually sitting down with it and turning back to the beginning to pour over every word.

“This is the work of scholars that have long since been relegated to legend!” she reported. “Knowledge that for centuries, people have accepted as being lost forever! This is the discovery of a lifetime!”

Fiddleford chose another tome and opened it up on one of the desks, pulling a blank scroll out of a drawer and placing them side-by-side in preparation for taking notes. “That is, if you could even catalog all this in a lifetime! I can’t even see the end to some of these shelves!”

It was all so perfect that Ford couldn’t help but laugh — a deep, genuine laugh that the library’s acoustics amplified, bringing smiles to the faces of his companions. Skimming the titles and authors featured on the nearest shelf, he mused: “I wonder if we could find an explanation for why those explorers were asleep. This place surely would have —”

His gaze came to rest on a moderately thick book bound in black-dyed leather, and held closed by a clasp seemingly carved from bone: A History of Earliest Necromancy, Volume 2 — The Rise of Liches and Innovation of Archliches.

“Though really, I don’t think that’s the highest priority in the grand scheme of things.” He immediately curled up in a cozy chair with the volume and opened it to the first chapter, the world outside of the pages becoming effectively nonexistent as far as he cared.

Stan watched the whole scene play out from above, with only the faintest, most easily stifled hint of guilt hidden behind his smile as he saw his brother happily and peacefully settle down to read.

***

The staircase was longer than the one beneath the Shack, and each footstep felt heavier than the last. At some point the stairs began to alternate light and dark colors, as if the white color of the bark had been peeled off every other step, and a faint chime sounded beneath each footfall, harmonizing with the intensifying piano music. Neither the clouds nor the waves appeared to follow them down, as if the brightness of the stairs and the eyes were driving the darkness away.

The end came up on them quickly — Dipper had been expecting another door, some other puzzle, but it seemed that the vending machine had been Bill’s last line of defense. Hallways branched out all around them, winding and turning every which way and lined with doors just like the ones upstairs. Closest to the three of them was the hall labeled Memories, in the same cipher from the vending machine; it was also the hallway from which the music seemed to emanate, growing so clear that Dipper could almost make out a voice singing the accompanying lyrics.

“Do we follow the song?” he asked, and Mabel nodded.

“Yeah, I guess it’s been working so far.”

The patterns in the walls shifted, eyes staying fixed on the trio as they forged ahead.

***

Ford flew through the first book and found the other volumes soon after, all on different shelves yet well within his line of sight, like the library had read his mind and rearranged itself. Every once in a while, he heard a murmur or exclamation from Jheselbraum or Fiddleford, and though a part of him wondered what they were reading, it felt almost like a waste of effort to tear his eyes up from the page. The books were so detailed, so well-researched, that he could almost forget he was playing a game…

“Stanley, do you mind if we stay here just a bit longer?” he asked. “I know you probably have plans for the rest of the campaign, and I don’t want to ruin those by taking too long to move on…”

The roof of the library turned into a magnificent glass window, through which Stan looked back at Ford. “Well, are you having fun down there?”

“Oh, absolutely!”

Stan smiled. “Then you can stay there as long as you feel like! Hell, you can stay forever if you want.”

“That’s considerate of you, thanks! But I think forever is a bit too long, even for me…” Ford turned back to his book and flipped to a new page —

But found that he couldn’t quite pour all of his attention into the words anymore. As interesting as phylacteries and demiliches were, there was something that just didn’t sit right with him — something about Stan’s smile. It had seemed… off. Exaggerated.

A tiny voice in the back of his head (a familiar voice, he realized, somehow reminiscent of both Jheselbraum and Mabel) whispered five simple words to him — five words that every D&D&MD player knew well, but Ford hadn’t yet heard on this adventure:

Make a wisdom saving throw.

Without getting out of his chair, he glanced around the library, and for the first time really thought about how every title he spotted sounded like something he’d happily dedicate hours of his life to reading. He thought about how hard it was to tear his gaze away from those books once you started, how easily they captivated his curiosity — and how effortlessly Stan had woven this entire story, how instantly Ford had found himself enthralled, how frequently he would forget that he was actually in Dimension 52…

And how did we get to Dimension 52, again? Stan helped somehow — right? Before Jhes, there was…

There was…

Does it really matter if this is real, Ford?

Ten minutes. That’s all.

A die fell from his hand and struck not the plush maroon carpet of the library, but rather the color-drained wooden floor of the Mystery Shack, bouncing half a dozen times before it came to a rest wedged between two floorboards. On the uppermost face, glowing blue, was the number 38.

Stan stood alone on the other side of the room, dark fog spilling from the arms of his suit where hands should emerge instead. The clouds sunk low to the ground, creeping forwards like a smoky, immaterial tide, but they stopped at the edge of the circular blue glow that the die cast onto the floor, seeping all around the circumference of the light but unable to move further inwards.

“Why, Ford,” Stan choked out, “did you have to ruin it?”

“I don’t know if the being I’m facing is my real brother,” Ford began softly, and Stan flinched, raising a cloudy tendril to cover his face. “But Stanley, regardless of where you really are — I want to help you. I want to find Bill and stop him, once and for all this time; I want you to be safe —”

“I just want you to be happy!” Stan yelled, and tight cuffs snapped shut around Ford’s wrists. Wisps of fog snaked upwards from his hands, and chains materialized out of them, lifting him off the ground as they grew towards the ceiling —

“But i-if you go looking for Bill…”

In the mind, where anything conceivable is just a few seconds of concentration away from manifesting into existence, a vivid imagination can be your best friend or your worst enemy — and Ford couldn’t help but remember, imagine, almost feel the faint sensation of tingling electric shocks at his wrists, of static charges creeping up his arms as his hair stood on end and his muscles tensed involuntarily, bracing himself for the current to intensify…

“If you keep looking, then you won’t be happy,” Stan went on, oblivious to Ford’s panic as he stared down towards the floor with practically glazed-over eyes. “None of us will.”

***

Old, flickering incandescent lightbulbs cast a blue-tinted pallor over everything in the hall, illuminating particles of dust that drifted through the air as if no one had come this way in a very, very long time. Separate hallways branched off every few feet, some behind doors and others not — and many with no visible end in sight.

Dipper and Mabel sneezed with almost perfect synchronicity as they passed by a dimly lit offshoot, ending at a chained-up door with the image of a scalene triangle etched into it. The symbols on the doors grew more familiar the further they explored — glasses, a llama, a bag of ice. The same code labeled every door with a transcription of the symbol, and Dipper flinched, trying to repress a morbid curiosity as they passed Pine Tree, and Question Mark, and Shooting Star…

Then finally, they stumbled upon Sixer.

“Sounds like this is where the music is coming from,” Soos murmured. No one stepped forwards to open the door.

“What do you think we’ll find there?” Mabel asked.

“Hopefully Bill,” Dipper replied. The word hopefully felt tainted and wrong in his mouth.

Mabel closed her eyes for a moment, brow furrowing in concentration. When she opened them again, a water gun-like apparatus had appeared in her hands, just transparent enough for Dipper to tell that it was filled not with liquid, but rather with sparkling bright glitter.

“Okay,” she said. “I’m ready now.”

Soos curled his fingers around an invisible hilt, and a pixelated sword popped into existence, surrounded by equally retro-looking orange flames. “Me too.”

Dipper curled his fingers around the handle, and cringed as a jolt of electricity stung his palm — not strong enough to really hurt, but plenty strong enough to startle him and send his already pounding heart racing even faster. The door swung open with a creak as he recoiled, revealing another hallway lined with more doorways, this time unmarked. The lightbulbs overhead hummed and crackled quietly, blue-white sparks leaping off the sizzling filaments and striking the glass to create a noise that sounded almost intelligible —

(tzxmeaiz jfjlpc ZI afb-wavdiik xlmevmuxvj)

(aesldlk'x ysdb ximaqiu em)

(f'q jg alviq aqeexwoh)

(z'e al wfjzv)

“There’s too much background noise. I can’t tell where the music’s coming from anymore, can you?” Dipper asked.

Mabel rubbed her ears. “It’s like it’s coming from nowhere, but also everywhere. I guess we should just… check the doors one by one?”

“I guess.” Dipper’s hand hovered just above a doorknob as he took a deep breath, Soos and Mabel readying their weapons behind him. There was a sickly-sweet smell permeating the air, like sulfur mixed with the scent of a dusty, seldom-used home heater.

(The smell of burning hair, he would realize a few seconds too late.)

“Okay, Bill. Let’s see what you remember about Ford —”

His fingers had hardly brushed the knob when the door exploded. Dust filled his lungs and splinters impaled themselves in his hands, stinging like a million tiny lightning bolts —

But still stinging less than the memory that now played out before him, stripped away of any enciphering, or euphemism, and at last exposed for all to see.

Ford’s limp body was suspended from a dark red brick ceiling, chains fastened around his neck and wrists. He seemed to fade away into the folds of his scorched and tattered trench coat, and his unblinking eyes stayed worryingly blank as wisps of smoke drifted up from his smoldering, ashen hair.

“Oh, WHOOPSIE-DAISY! This was all my bad this time, it really was — I just keep forgetting how sensitive your puny little organs are!”

Bill jabbed a single finger into Ford’s stomach, and Ford swung back and forth like a pendulum, remaining completely limp. “I wonder what circuit blew this time? Bet it was your sentimental, oversized old man heart again, wasn’t it? I’m tellin’ ya, you’d be better off without it — maybe now you’ll consider throwing your lot in with world domination!”

He cackled, loudly and bitterly. “What are you saying, Cipher? Save the spiel for when he’s awake again to hear you, dumbass!”

He snapped his fingers, and a pale yellow glow began to manifest around Ford’s body, starting at the hands and slowly making its way towards his chest. His voice dropped a few full octaves as he went on:

“Now, let’s get you fixed up for ANOTHER ROUND —”

“NO!”

Dipper didn’t have any memory of stepping through the doorway, but he was well-inside the Fearamid now, racing towards Bill as fast as his legs could carry him and fists clenched so tightly that his fingernails dug into his palms. “Don’t you dare hurt him anymore!”

What?

Bill’s voice came out different — still an echoing, high-pitched whine like usual, but smaller somehow. It held less brash self-assurance, less of that absurd, larger-than-life personality that the world had come to know and fear — and was more full of uncertainty, of panic.

Less horrifying, and more horrified.

P-P-Pine Tree? No, no, NO —

Why are you — what am I —

What am I DOING?

His eye darted all around the room as his body turned to a screen of static, familiar images flashing inside — a pine tree, a six-fingered hand. A sock puppet, a glowing blue chain.

He grabbed Dipper’s hand, but no cold flames ignited this time. His grip was tight and trembling as his wide, desperate eye met Dipper’s —

Pine Tree, why are we here? What IS this? What’s HAPPENING?

I don’t want to be here, Pine Tree, please —

“Let go of my brother!” A blast of a thousand tiny, glittering yellow and pink stars struck Bill in the eye, knocking him backwards as he howled in pain. “Yeah, that’s what you get for what you did to Grunkle Ford!”

Mabel ran towards where Ford hung, smoking less but still limp. “Are you okay?! We’ll get you out of there, just hold on —”

It’s… it’s not the real Ford, is it?

Bill sat up, blinking slowly as if coming to his senses. His voice still echoed, but it was lower-pitched now, and had an unmistakably familiar hoarseness to it as he turned towards Mabel —

We’re in the past, pumpkin. You can’t undo it —

and

neither

can

***

“Stan,” Ford whispered. don’t think of electricity, don’t think of electricity, don’t think of electricity —

“I. Need you. To let me go.” He tried to enunciate carefully but overcompensated, the words coming out stiff and robotic. “Please,” he added.

Stan crossed his arms, pulling them tight around his chest as he shook his head, motions jerking and marionette-like. “No, I — I can’t.”

“Calm down,” Ford told him, even though his voice sounded anything but calm. He could smell the all-too-familiar scent of burning hair and clothes now — was his hair already beginning to smolder, or — no. Ignore your senses if you have to, they’re lying right now. Just talk.

“Stan, look into — look into my eyes. I’m your brother, Stan, you can trust me —”

“But you can’t trust me,” Stan interrupted, still staring straight down. “All this time, I was — you were wrong about me. I’m a horrible brother, and I just tricked you into thinking I wasn’t.”

Something reached its breaking point in Ford’s mind, and tears began to fall from his eyes — an ionic solution, exactly what makes your body such a good conductor of —

“Fuck it, Stan, put me back in your tabletop game if you want, but please, you’ve got to let me out of here or my own mind is going to —”

Stan’s neck flew backwards with a sickening crack, craning towards the ceiling as his eyes flew open, but he still wasn’t looking at Ford — no, he was staring far past him, spheres of blue plasma sizzling where dark brown irises should have been.

WHAT?

Why are you DOWN THERE?

Dipper, NO!

The fire in his eyes moved in cascades, in waves, like static across a television screen.

What am I DOING?

NO, NO NO

Kids, I — oh, pumpkin, it’s not —

I can’t —

I can’t undo it

I CAN’T UNDO IT

He blinked and his eyes were brown again, human again, staring into Ford’s own —

“Stanford, w-what am I DOING?!”

Ford’s chains vanished in a puff of fog, and he tumbled to the ground, landing more softly than the wooden planks beneath him should have allowed for. Stan staggered away from him, raising his hands to cover his mouth as black tears spilled down the left side of his face, leaving dark trails on his cheek and staining his fingers —

While from the corner of his right eye, shimmering crystal blue droplets welled up and dripped down — liquid fire, blazing so bright that it lit the whole room.

“Stanley —!”

In a quick one-two punch, the roof of the Shack buckled and then exploded, as a torrent of water crashed down upon Stan and submerged him instantly. A violent cyclone surrounded him, biting winds slicing through Ford’s coat and stinging his arms as they grew stronger, more desperate —

But Ford could still make out something inside the waterspout, a glow that jumped in jagged paths like lightning one moment, then floated and flickered like tongues of flame the next — a bright blue light, refusing to be drowned out. Refusing to be forgotten.

***

A couple of end notes this time:

-If I did my job as a writer well, this should hopefully be apparent, but because this detail is very important to me and my interpretation of the characters in this context, I just want to clarify: All the electric shocks that (non-memory) Ford felt were due to his own mind/imagination working against him, not due to Stan. Stan, as he now exists, would absolutely never hurt Ford like that — but he was desperate to keep Ford from searching for Bill, and because of that desperation (plus possibly a bit of influence from the Bill memories the kids were rooting around in) he made an unfortunate choice in terms of how to restrain Ford, prompting Ford to flash back to Bill’s torture. Once Stan realizes what’s happening, he’s horrified and immediately wracked with guilt, which we’ll see a bit more of in the next chapter. (finally going back to Stan POV! It’s been so long!)

-If you want a hint for the long code encountered in Bill’s part of the mindscape, hit me up and I’ll be happy to give one!

-For the record, most of my Dungeons and Dragons knowledge comes from listening to podcasts rather than actual playing experience, so if anything doesn’t make sense, let’s just chalk it up to being a difference between D&D and D&D&MD.

-I also threw in a reference to Flat Dreams by Pengychan, which is a Bill-backstory fic that I absolutely love! Of course, you can understand SSD without reading Flat Dreams, but you should totally read Flat Dreams anyway because it’s just that good.

-Last but not least, look out for the next chapter — also known as my favorite chapter — within the next couple of weeks ;) As usual, comments/predictions/etc are welcomed!

#gravity falls #same coin theory #stanley pines #bill cipher #stanford pines #mabel pines #dipper pines #soos ramirez #fiddleford mcgucket #jheselbraum #the axolotl #rosalia writes fic #fic: some sunny day #making some minor format changes to how i post these on tumblr #so we'll see how that goes #it's good to back though

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