Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

In the small, quaint town of Gravity Falls, Oregon, Dipper Pines lugged his suitcase up the attic stairs of his grunkles’ shack. Panting with exertion, he elbowed the door open and yanked his suitcase into the room—his bed was the one furthest from the attic door.

Mabel, his twin sister, had brought her last bag up minutes prior. She sat cross–legged on her bed, nodding her head to the music streaming through her earbuds. She perked up when he entered the room. “Me, Candy, and Grenda are meeting at the diner! Do you wanna come with?”

Dipper considered agreeing for a whole two milliseconds, if only so that he could postpone his inevitable confrontation with his Grunkle Ford. He shook his head. “Sorry Mabel, I’m going to start unpacking. This is my home for the foreseeable future, no need to make it worse by living out of a suitcase.”

Mabel grinned. “Don’t be a party pooper. This is indefinitely better than whatever college dorm I’m gonna get stuck in,” she teased. “Not that it won’t be fun—I mean, Grenda and I are rooming together, so it’ll definitely be a blast— but I’ve heard really weird stories about life at ‘Illinois College for Fashion and Design.’” She said the name in a jokingly posh, baritone voice, the epitome of an old butler from a murder mystery movie made in the 1980s. His sister had been on a classics binge for the past several months.

“Hm. Sounds fake. Have fun!”

“You too! But don’t get too caught up in your nerd stuff, live a little!” She jumped off the bed, pulling him into an embrace

He smiled pettily.  “Yeah, yeah. Try not to beat up any unicorns while you’re at it.”

She pulled back made a face. “That was one time, and the unicorns were asking for it. And I was twelve . Can’t you let it go already?”

“Nope,” he replied with a laugh, popping the p.

She sighed dramatically, the corners of her lips twitching upwards. “Fineeee. See you later!” 

She strode out of the room, the door shutting behind her with an air of finality.

Dipper’s smile slipped from his face. Anxiety bubbled in his stomach like a pool full of sulfur. The five hour bus ride from their parent’s house to the shack had given him plenty of time to contemplate all the ways his reunion with Ford could go sideways, and even Mabel’s constant off–tune singing of show tunes hadn’t been enough to put a stopper in his racing mind.

With a sigh and a shake of his head, Dipper unzipped his suitcase and began to transfer his clothes to the worn–down dresser and closet that he and Mabel had shared the past four summers they’d stayed there. From then on out, it would be his alone. It was absurd to think about, and he wasn’t sure whether or not he was happy about it.

He grabbed a folded–up hoodie off the top of a pile and, without looking, went to put it on a hanger. However, the moment he unfolded it, he was assaulted by a cloud of purple and silver specs floating down to cover the contents of his suitcase. 

And his bed.

And the floor.

And his shoes, no–

He let the shirt slip from his hands and fall back into the suitcase, turned around, and pressed his forehead to the wall. His hands had begun to shake, and he tried in vain to steady his breathing so he wouldn’t do something stupid.

Like shred Mabel’s stuffed animals.

Theoretically, he knew that this was her attempt at cheering him up. Well, less to cheer him up, and more to make him so upset about the glitter that he’d stop obsessing over what he was going to say when he saw Ford again.

Except he was still thinking about Ford, just with the additional stress of having to shower, and sweep, and wash most of his clothes, his suitcase, blanket, and sheets, and somehow do it all before either his Grunkle Stan or Ford saw the mess.

Grunkle Stan would never let him live it down.

“Thanks a lot, Mabel,” he muttered.

Something pressed up against his calf, and he jerked backwards with a yelp.

Waddles tilted his head and stared innocently up at Dipper. “Oink?”

Dipper sighed, kneeling down to rub the pig’s head, and smiled softly. “Happy to see me, bud?”

The pig nuzzled his hand, and Dipper smiled softly as the wave of painful nostalgia washed over him. It felt like yesterday that Mabel had won him at the fair, back when Dipper thought he was straight and was desperate for Wendy’s attention, because he didn’t understand that he could like a people in a platonic way, and still think they’re pretty and really enjoy their company. 

God, if he hadn’t tried to time travel in order to keep Wendy and Robbie from getting together, then the whole mess with Blendin never would’ve happened. “Some things never change, do they Waddles?”

Waddles, who no longer had an IQ to rival Ford’s and was just a normal pig, did not reply. 

He sighed and stood, crossing the room to get the broom from the bathroom. 

There were three quick knocks on the attic door.

Dipper froze; the temperature seemed to drop a degree, his throat closing up. The knot in his stomach grew and his mind became suddenly blank. After a moment of silence, during which Dipper was deathly still, the person spoke.

“Dipper?”

It wasn’t Ford.

Dipper shoulders sagged with relief, and he bounded across the room to open the door, a smile spreading across his face. He through it open. “Hey, Wendy!”

Wendy eyes widened at the sight of him, then her face contorted with amusement and she snickered and crossed her arms, leaning against the doorframe. “Mabel did that?”

It took a moment for Dipper to figure out what she was referring to. His cheeks grew hot and he groaned, belatedly attempting to brush the glitter off his shirt. All he succeeded in doing was spreading the glitter to his hands.

She snickered again. “Yo, do you need some help cleaning up?” She peer over his shoulder into the attic, whistling softly. “Wow, she really did a number on you. Even Waddles has glitter on him.”  

“Unfortunately.” Dipper turned, about to re–enter his room, when Wendy’s hand wrapped around his arm. He glanced back at her.

Her eyes were glued to his wrist. “Nuh–uh, dude. Is that a tattoo?” Her eyes were glued to his wrist.

Dipper cringed, quickly tugging his sleeve down to cover the mark. “Yeah, a stick–n–poke. It was a stupid idea, I just—I dunno, it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

She gave him an puzzled look.“But why a triangle? Doesn’t that remind you of–”

“Bill? Yeah, that’s kind of the point,” he mumbled, rubbing at the mark with his thumb. “It’s a reminder of what can happen if I’m careless.”

“Dude—”

“It doesn’t matter, okay? I had a bad day, it was last October and—” he sucked in a breath, “I’m fine now. Just— just help me clean this up, or don’t, I just–”

“Got it,” Wendy said, cutting him off. She grabbed the broom and began trying to get the glitter on the floor into a pile, while Dipper dumped the glitter in his suitcase out into the trash can.

After a minute of silence, Wendy paused, a lazy grin spreading across her face. “Hey, did I tell you that I got asked out? I have a girlfriend now, it’s crazy.”

“No, really?” Dipper silently thanked her for changing the subject.

Wendy grinned. “Yeah, we met in the subway. It’s kinda crazy to think about, ‘cause it’s so random, you know? But we had the same afternoon commute, and after about a month of seeing each other basically every day, I decided to introduce myself. And this girl looks me up and down, and says, ‘bi vibes.’ No introduction, no name, just ‘bi vibes.’ And I just started laughing, because obviously, and she asked if I wanted to get coffee sometime. We’ve been dating for five months now.”

Dipper relaxed into the comforting familiarity of Wendy’s rambling. “Congrats!” he teased. “You have gained the ability to woo women through vibes alone.”

“Bro, imagine how many queer girls would fall in love with me if I could carry my axe around in the city.”

“You would simply be too powerful, that’s why God created laws about carrying weapons in public,” Dipper said solemnly.

Wendy snickered, eyes gleaming with mirth, glitter clean–up forgotten. “Clearly. Why else would they ban carrying around pieces of metal and wood that could easily be used to commit homicide in a place with thousands of people in one room?”

Dipper smiled softly to himself as she rambled on. The day wouldn’t be completely bad, then. He’d forgotten how much he’d enjoyed her company.

Chapter Text

Wishful thinking was a terrible, terrible thing. He’d hoped he’d at least have an hour or two to adjust before having to see Ford, and when he had expressed this to Wendy, she’d promised to stall for time— at least long enough for him to shower and change.

However, while she was brilliant at distracting people, no one seemed to be talented enough hold Ford back whenever he’d set his mind to something. The man was an unmovable force in and of himself.

Which was how Dipper found himself cornered the moment he stepped out of the attic, hair still wet from his shower. 

He hadn’t been paying attention to where he was going, habitually tucking his journal underneath his arm as he made to leave his safe–haven. It was a comfort to have on his body. Back in his hometown, he’d used it as a crutch whenever a social situation arose that he didn’t know how to deal with. (Scribbling in a journal leads people to the assumption that you’re busy with schoolwork and should not be bothered.)

Dipper pulled the attic door shut behind him and turned, his eyes locking onto Ford’s. The two men stared at each other for several seconds, taking one another in. Ford radiated an air of disinterest, face cold and posture stiff, a far cry from the man who’d dropped his research to play Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons with Dipper’s excited twelve–year–old self summers prior.

For his part, Dipper seemed to have forgotten how to breathe. He came back to himself after a few seconds and quickly averted his eyes.

The older man cleared his throat before speaking. “There are unusual spikes of energy coming from the lake, similar to the aura Bill radiated, but not identical. I fear that another demon may have discovered Gravity Falls, and we must be prepared for whatever it throws at us.”

Dipper nodded weakly.

“Whatever we are dealing with is indubitably the cause of the incidents last August. I have done as much as I could on my own, but had you been there, perhaps we could have taken care of it before it’s power level increased significantly enough to be recorded by the monitor.”

Dipper clenched his jaw, grinding his teeth together in a way that he knew would give him a headache. The part of him that still idolized the author wanted to apologize profusely, but Dipper had made a decision and he didn’t regret it.

Rather than voicing any of his thoughts, he replied, “Yes, sir,” through gritted teeth.

He didn’t allow himself to say anything further. If he did, he might say something in the spur of the moment, such as ‘I’m sorry.’

Was he?

He didn’t want to be, but despite how hard he tried, he couldn’t seem to beat the people–pleasing part of his personality out of his mind. Guess that was what happened when you grew up basing your self–worth on outside validation.

Ford nodded in acknowledgement. “Before we set out, we must eat. Wendy is cooking, which means breakfast for dinner again.”

Dipper perked up slightly at that, choosing to push away the promise of adventure that night in favor of considering Wendy’s breakfast burritos. 

Honestly, he was exhausted. All he wanted to do was eat and then go to bed, but it wasn’t like he could just tell the man that, and besides, it wasn’t like demons were considerate of human jet lag.

Well, maybe they were. Dipper had never seen fit to ask them.

Without thinking, he opened his journal and scribbled down a reminder to discuss jet lag with a variety of magical creatures and find out whether it was something they experienced. They’d be a lot more sympathetic if they did.

As a kid he would’ve asked Ford, but he knew better now than to ask people stupid questions that held no importance to their current situation.

Years of teasing from Mabel and Grunkle Stan had drilled that into his mind.

Theoretically, he knew that they didn’t mean any harm by it, and that if he wanted people to stop doing things that bothered him then he needed to express that desire. Communicate– something which Dipper never excelled at.

Dipper abruptly became extremely aware that Ford was watching him, eyes scanning his face before falling to the journal.

It wasn’t expensive like Ford’s were—fifty cents at the supermarket by his house, and a rather flimsy one at that—but it was his. 

The shade was off, a much deeper blue than the one on his hat, but he had decided to paint a small white pine tree on the cover nonetheless. Mabel had seemed oddly put–off by him borrowing her paint and brushes, but had denied that anything was wrong.

As kids, they’d shared practically everything– the exception being clothes. Dipper had been nine years old when he’d convinced his parents to buy him clothes from the boy’s section, and while they had been supportive, they had expressed disappointment at Dipper refusing to share his clothes with Mabel like most identical twins did.

Dipper heart quickened. He braced himself for Ford to say something, but the man remained silent, simply beckoning for Dipper to follow him downstairs. 

Upon entering the lower level of the shack, Dipper was hit with the strong smell of bacon and pancakes. He hung back, allowing Ford to enter the kitchen before him, and watched as Wendy tossed a blueberry in the air and caught it in her mouth.

“Thanks for making dinner,” Dipper said, speaking over the sizzling of the pancakes on the stove.

Without turning around, Wendy said, “No problem, dude,” and proceeded to toss a blueberry over her shoulder.

It hit Dipper square in the forehead, and he blinked in surprise. “You have to aim lower than that, Wendy.” He smiled wryly. “I’m short, remember?”

“You are not ,” Wendy protested. “I’m just abnormally tall.”

Ford didn’t address Wendy, taking a seat at the table in the dining room. Dipper sat down on the counter next to the stove to watch her cook.

“Mabel said to tell you that she’s spending the night at Candy’s,” Wendy said, sliding her spatula under the pancakes and stacking them on a plate.

Dipper went still as he pondered that, probably harder than he should’ve. Was Mabel avoiding him? They had always spent the first night of summer together, setting off fireworks on the roof with their Grunkle Stan, or something else that tiptoed on the line of legality.

Or maybe she was just growing up. He couldn’t expect her to always prioritize him, they were both out of high school and well on their way to having lives of their own.

Wendy’s voice snapped him out of his thoughts.

“Hey, me, Nate, and Tambry are gonna go egg the Mayor’s place later, just like old times. Wanna come?”

A ‘yes!’ was on the tip of his tongue, but his gaze flickered to Ford’s face—and found a pair of cold blue eyes staring straight back at him. He subconsciously curled in on himself in an attempt to appear smaller, and looked down at his shoes.

“No, sorry,” he said.“I’ve got stuff to take care of.”

For a second, Dipper could’ve sworn he saw concern flicker across her face before she responded. “Ah, that’s alright dude. You can join us some other time.”

Dipper consciously smiled. “Okay.”

“Hey, can you get the chocolate chips down for me?”

Dipper groaned, but spun on the counter so that he could open the cabinet. “Soos objectively has the worst taste in food.”

“Says the dude who unironically eats sun butter instead of peanut butter.”

“It tastes better!”

“Are you sure your time with Ford hasn’t messed up your taste buds? The man lives off orange juice and spite.”

Ford interjected without looking up from his book. “Clearly, my diet has worked in my favor, considering I now have a physique to rival Stanley’s.”

“Hahaha, that's funny. Real clever.” Stan, the second of the elderly Pine twins, strode into the kitchen. Soos trailed behind him.

“Dipper!”

Grinning, Dipper slipped off the counter and allowed Soos to envelope him in a hug. “Hey! How’ve you been?” Dipper asked.

“Great, dude! Me and Melody got another dog!”

Dipper’s grin widened. “That’s dope! What did you guys name it?”

“Fumperwiggle, or Stan Jr. for short,” Soos said proudly, pulling away with a cheerful smile on his face.

Dipper had long ago learned not to question Soos’s logic— although, to be fair, Soos’s thought process had gotten them out of a number of sticky situations over the years. “What breed of dog is it?” he asked, and then tacked on, “Where did you get it from?”

Soos put a finger to his chin and shrugged good naturedly.“Uh, I dunno, dude. What breed of dog has blue claws and breathes fire?”

“It’s not a dog, it a hympenclothe,” Ford said, not looking up from his book. 

Grunkle Stan shot him a withering glare, dropping down at the table across from his twin; annoyance apparent in every fiber of the man’s being.“It’s a lovely dog that Soos found while helping me smuggle toxic waste across the U.S. border,” he shot back gruffly.

“No way, you guys smuggled toxic waste without me?” Wendy complained. “Rude.”

Dipper’s eyes fell to the stove. “The bacon’s burning,” he pointed out.

Wendy quickly refocused her attention to the stove, handing off a serving–bowl of scrambled eggs to Dipper, who set it down on the table and then went back for the next dish.

Dipper took the plate of chocolate–chip pancakes and wrinkled his nose, overdramatically holding it out at arms length as he brought it to Soos. 

When all the food was set out, Dipper and Wendy joined the other three at the table. Soos sat to Ford’s left, and Grunkle Stan to Soos’s. There was one terrifying moment where Dipper thought he was going to have to sit next to Ford, but Wendy seemed to sense the tension and let him have the seat next to Grunkle Stan instead, sliding smoothly into the chair to Ford’s right and propping her elbows up on the table.

They dug in (with the exception of Ford, who didn’t eat with the rest of them, his full attention on his book.)

A minute later, Soos paused, setting down his fork with a puzzled expression. “Dudes, where’s Mabel?”

“Out with her friends,” Wendy said through a mouthful of food. She swallowed. “Speaking of which, my girlfriend is gonna come stay in Gravity Falls for a bit. She’ll be here the Friday after next.”

Dipper hesitated. He had already planned to spend most of his time with Ford, but now both Wendy and Mabel were going to be too busy to hang out with him. Which was a stupid line of thought, but he had selfishly hoped that maybe it would be like old times.

“So, Dipper. You have any plans this summer?” Grunkle Stan asked. 

Dipper froze, carefully keeping his gaze on his plate. He could feel Ford’s eyes boring into him. He opened his mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

Ford answered for him. “We need to get to the bottom of whatever anomaly has been causing the energy spikes—something we should’ve started doing months ago.”

“I had other obligations—” Dipper grit out, heat rushing to his cheeks.

“You’ve been gifted with intelligence, Dipper. It’s disappointing that you’re unable to admit when you’re wrong.” Silence overtook the room, all eyes on the two of them, food forgotten. A mixture of conflicting emotions flashed across Stan’s face.

“That’s unfair!” Dipper said when he found his voice, rising in volume as he spoke. “My education is just as important as anyone else’s! You can’t just stride into my life and demand I do your every bidding—”

“I’m trying to keep you from making my mistakes—”

Ford’s voice was deathly–calm, sending a shiver running down Dipper’s spine. The silence was suffocating, and he was suffocating, and the air was thick and it was hard to breath—

And Ford was just sitting there, eying him, expression screaming condescension.

“Surely, with your intelligence, you can see that—”

Something in him snapped. 

“Stop trying to live through me, Sixer. Just because you screwed up and missed out on your childhood—”

Ford’s voice was deathly–calm, and a shiver ran down Dipper’s spine.

“I’m trying to keep you from making my mistakes—”

“I’m not you!” Dipper snarled, standing up so quickly that his chair fell backwards.

Ford raised an eyebrow at him. “Everyone who called you a freak? You’re proving them right. Control your temper.”

“Enough!” Grunkle Stan shouted, slamming his fist against the table. Wendy cringed, her hands flying to her ears at the loud noise.

Dipper flinched. His hands were balled into shaking fists, and he was all too aware that Wendy had leaned forward in her chair, presumably so she could grab him if he tried to lunge at Ford.

Soos was glancing hesitantly from Grunkle Stan, to Ford, to Dipper. 

“You’re a fucking hypocrite,” Dipper spat.

Ford narrowed his eyes.

The lights flickered, momentarily pitching the room into darkness.

Soos jumped, and Wendy began to swear.

Dipper spun on his heel and stormed toward the door, and had just opened it when the power cut out again. This time, it didn’t come back on.

Wendy called out for him to stop, but he ignored her.

He slammed the door behind him, taking the stairs two steps at a time, and strode through the gift shop, barely even stopping to grab his hat off the counter and force it over his loose curls before throwing open the back door. 

Dipper walked out into the pouring rain.

Chapter Text

The trees shielded him from the worst of the rain, but his wet clothes still clung to him, his shoes dragging sluggishly through the mud.

Ford had the audacity to call him a freak.

Way to hit Dipper where it hurt — people don’t jump for joy at the thought of a trans teenager with an affinity for the unnatural and bizarre; much less one like himself that never stopped mumbling.

Ford, the six–fingered prodigy, ought to know that. Ford did know that.

Perhaps that was why Ford had said it: he knew firsthand how damaging it was to be called a freak, and had tucked that knowledge away in his armory for future use against someone he knew would be affected by it.

Despite knowing logically that it was textbook manipulation, he couldn’t help but take Ford’s words as gospel. He had done so for years, and it had long ago been beaten into him that he was abnormal — defective — by others, but mainly himself. 

All because of stupid jokes that he couldn’t seem to forget, that he took too personally.

It wasn’t often that someone called him a freak to his face, and to have it come from someone that he had idolized for years? 

In the one place he was safe, where being trans was mild in comparison to gnomes and centaurtaurs?

No wonder he was spiraling.

God, he wished his head would shut up.

Dipper didn’t pay attention to where he was going. Darkness consumed the forest, obscuring his ability to track his location, and he couldn’t find the energy to care. If he got lost in the maze of trees, good. 

Was it petty to purposefully get lost so he’d have an excuse for not returning to the Mystery Shack that night? Though, he’d get an earful from Wendy went he got back. If he’d grabbed his phone on his way out, he could’ve texted her so she wouldn’t worry, but it was too late for that.

Maybe he could find one of those flying messenger snails.

Except no, he couldn’t.

Dipper groaned. That species lived at the very edge of the forest, not in the deeper parts. 

The trees blocked Dipper’s view of the sky, although the clouds would indubitably have made it impossible to use the sun — moon? he didn’t know what time it was — to navigate his way to the edge of the forest anyways. It wasn’t much of a loss.

He could just find a dry patch of grass and go to sleep there. It felt like it’d been hours since he’d escaped to the forest, and though Dipper didn’t have the best internal clock, he figured it must have been around the time he usually went to bed– if his insomnia wasn’t acting up, that was.

While he was physically exhausted, he doubted that his mind would shut up and let him sleep.

So that option was out.

Also, his clothes were soaking wet, and he didn’t want to get pneumonia — well, current him couldn’t muster up the energy to care, but he knew future Dipper would. 

His hat had kept his face and hair mostly dry though, so that was a positive. At least his hair wouldn’t get all frizzy, making him look like an electrocuted cat.

Dipper snorted, unconsciously tugging his cap lower over his face with a self–deprecating grin. God damn, he was beginning to sound like his sister.

Theoretically, if he walked in one direction long enough, he would find a road or something. 

This was a rule Wendy swore by: if you work at something long enough, you’re bound to stumble into an answer at some point—given that you don’t destroy the world and/or create a cult in the process.

So he kept walking, oblivious to the way he had begun to tremble, and walked for several hours more, well into the night. He knew for a fact it had gotten terribly late then, for it was so dark that he could not see more than a few feet in front of him —and even then, he had to squint.

The wind had picked up; the rustling of tree branches brushing up against one another just another background noise.

His muscles ached, so he decided to give up and find somewhere to sleep, rather than trying to magically find somewhere to spend the night. If he was anywhere near the shack, he would indubitably have heard them searching for him by then — if they were, in fact, searching for him.

Perhaps that was unfair: Wendy, Stan, and Soos had probably looked for him, if only for a while, and he did feel a twinge of guilt at the thought of them cold and wet and shouting his name. Too late to fix that though.

Dipper sat down next to the trunk of a tree near a small clearing, but didn’t really look around.

He slept.

Dipper sat up slowly, the grass pliable under the palms of his hands, damp from the morning dew. He opened his eyes—hadn’t he already opened them?—and squinted across the clearing.

The sun shone high; it was clearly mid–day, but it was unnervingly quiet. Not a single bird was chirping. The trees were completely silent.

The air hung still around him, still and cold. He unconsciously pulled his jacket tighter around him. It didn’t occur to him that his clothes were now dry, his sneakers as clean as if they had come straight from the box.

He shivered, glancing upward into the clearing. Sun illuminated the grass, and sun meant heat, so he stood and moved to go stand in it.

His legs were abnormally heavy, and the ground seemed to be shifting sideways under him, but he paid it no mind. He needed to get into the sun, where it was warm.

Was it normally so hard to stand upright? Why were his legs so tired? Why did he feel so close to collapsing?

He made it though; it took him an hour short of a minute; and as he stepped into the sun, he was hit with a sudden wave of air so cold that he flinched backwards, falling hard onto the ground behind him.

A sharp pain shot through his elbow.

He hissed. Upon inspection, he found a short, deep cut, the surrounding area covered in dirt. Dipper tried to find the cause, dragging his fingers through the grass surrounding him in search of any sharp rocks, but there was nothing to be found.

He sat back on his heels, disappointed.

Sighing, he glanced up—and froze.

Vines climbed up the statue, but it was still recognizable, and Dipper found himself unable to look away. A chill ran down his back. He stopped breathing.

Despite it being made of stone, Dipper could swear that the statue was staring right through him, its piercing eye boring into his soul.

It was a perfect replica of Bill. For months after Weirdmaggedon, he saw the demon every time he closed his eyes. He had journals full of drawings of Bill, the lines sloppy and harsh, from the nights when he awoke from nightmares; fists tight around his blanket and him unable to think of anything else.

Faint whispering had broken the chilling silence, but Dipper didn’t notice the change until he tried to make out the words and realized he couldn’t.

For some reason, this did not seem of concern to him. They were probably friendly.

As if in a trance, Dipper pushed himself off the ground and, his legs moving as if of their own accord, took an unsteady step towards the statue. And then another. And another. He found himself inches away from the statue, staring into its solitary eye, barely registering how thick the air around him had become.

Some morbid curiosity had him raising his hand. He hadn’t really planned what he was going to do—perhaps attempt to snap its arm like a twig, or see if his bare knuckles could make a dent in its eye if he swung hard enough—

But he found himself reaching out for its hand, held out like it had been when Bill had been manipulating him into making The Deal.

“All for a computer,” he mumbled absently, hesitating, his hand hovering in mid–air. “It’s funny, you know? That as a kid I was so obsessed with finding the author, but in the end he was just another selfish asshole who refused to admit that he was hurting people. I—” 

Dipper swallowed hard; this wasn’t something he’d ever vocalized, but he was alone with a  statue, and as stupid as venting to an inanimate object was, he needed to get it off his chest.

Besides, now that he’d started, he didn’t think he could stop. 

“There are so many times I could’ve let him die, and I think about it so much,” he spat. “It scares the crap out of me, because how horrible of  a person do you have to be to daydream about leaving a relative to bleed out? I hate him, and I know Mabel is trying but God, she didn’t even know I quit marching band until two years after the fact.”

He laughed, the sound shrill to his ears. “I know, it’s such a stupid thing to be upset about, right? And I could’ve told her at any point in time, but I’m just a little crybaby who doesn’t tell people anything and then still has the audacity to get upset when they don’t have a clue who I am anymore.”

As he had been speaking, his hand had been inching towards the statue’s outstretched one of its own accord; he startled as he realized this. His finger tips were nearly brushing against the stone.

However, rather than scared, he was suddenly feeling bolstered and emboldened in the way one often does when they have fate in their arms and are giving her a twirl.

It didn’t make sense to his own mind, fog once again settling over his brain like it would a lake. He was doing something he shouldn’t and he didn’t know why, the saturation of the colors around him increasing rapidly and overwhelming his senses, and Dipper could hear his heart beating in his ears. 

Any semblance of cold had long disappeared.

He grasped the statues hand.

Nothing happened—

And then everything happened, all at once, in a quite scarring and unfortunate manner.

Dipper—oddly disappointed, for a reason he could not understand—attempted to pull his hand away, but it wouldn’t move. He was stuck. It was as if someone had superglued his hand to the statue’s. The panic set in, and that is when he began to scream.

That also, coincidentally, is when they both burst into flames. Dipper’s vision was obstructed by the bright blue fire, but there was nothing left to see: the sky had gone dark, and he could see nothing but himself and the statue.

He desperately attempted to pull his hand away once more. Briefly, he considered using the statue for leverage, but the cold fear that if he touched it again he might become stuck there, too, prevented him from doing so.

Then the ground split open beneath them, a deep gash in the earth, and his stomach dropped as if he were falling. He desperately grasped for something to hold onto, but his fingers closed around air. The statue’s eye glowed a bright yellow. Then, nothing.

Dipper awoke with a gasp. It was still dark out. He pushed himself up into a sitting position—he had fallen over during his sleep, and the right side of his face was now covered in dirt—eyes darting around the clearing, but there was no statue to be seen.

A dream, he thought to himself, trying to calm his racing heart. It was just a dream—a straight–up nightmare, but a dream nonetheless.

He sat there in the mud trying to calm himself, wet clothes clinging to his skin and a raspy cough bursting from his lungs.

At least it had stopped raining.

Chapter Text

By the time Dipper found his way out of the forest and stumbled into the clearing with the Mystery Shack, it was well after noon and the sun had begun tucking itself beneath the blanket of trees. 

The car was gone, and the ‘closed’ sign hung in the window like a bandaid that didn’t come anywhere close to covering a wound; the buzzing of frenzied mosquitos as they laid their eggs in the puddles leftover from the rain all too loud in Dipper’s throbbing head.

He slipped through the back door and shut it quietly behind him.

Although it seemed like everyone was out, he wasn’t taking any chances.

He was shivering uncontrollably, and after choking down some advil for his headache and grabbing some clothes from the dryer, he dragged himself up the stairs towards the attic; looking forward to nothing more than putting on some dry clothes and collapsing into bed.

He opened the attic door, only to find the lights already on. A puzzled expression settled on Dipper’s face. Had he —

Oh.

There was someone curled up on his bed, and it certainly wasn’t Mabel. 

Despite them being half–wrapped in a blanket, Dipper was able to make out their lanky frame; they seemed about his age, if not slightly older. Their face was smushed against the pillow, so he couldn’t gain much for that; and they had an undercut, the sides and back a dark brown, while the floppy hair on top was a dark blond.

Maybe they were one of Mabel’s friends—no, Mabel hadn’t slept at the shack last night—unless the person was waiting for her?

God, he was too tired for this. Dipper grimaced. It was also possible that it was some anomaly impersonating a human—maybe a shape shifter?

He sighed, shoulders slumping, and slunk off to the bathroom to change; he could wait to deal with that once he was dry. So much for taking a nap though.

When he stepped out of the bathroom, it was to find the person sitting cross–legged on his bed, staring up at him with a wide, anxious eye—their left was covered by an eyepatch, their right a dark brown.

A sleek, open, cloak–like yellow vest hung from their upper body, beneath it a long–sleeve black button–down; adorned by a lopsided black bowtie and ironed black dress–pants. On their feet, combat boots that appeared straight out of the box.

Dipper grew cold as the reason for the familiarity hit him. His eyes widened, and he shrieked.

The person (Bill?) flinched at the noise, grimacing, “Yeah, that was my reaction too,” they said, sounding bitter. “Where we are? I’m at a bit of a loss here.”

Snapping out of his shock, Dipper stumbled backwards and slammed his fist against the wall right next to the bathroom door. Immediately, it swung open to reveal a loaded gun, and Dipper wasted no time in removing it and clicking off the safety—it was the first time he’d had to use that specific hidden compartment, but far from the first time he’d held a gun.

The person flung themself off the side of the bed, hiding behind it so that Dipper couldn’t see them. “Fucking— what the hell?” they yelped. “Why’d you save me if you were planning on killing me? That’s kinda illogical—”

Dipper tried to control his breathing. “Bill?” he shouted half–hysterically.

“Is no the right answer?” They peeked over the mattress at Dipper. “Who the hell are you and why are you pointing a gun at me?”

Gritting his teeth, Dipper lowered the gun; if only by an inch or two. As much as the person resembled Bill —or resembled what Dipper imagined a human version of him would look like, anyway—, the person was acting nothing like the triangle demon.

And the demon himself wouldn’t be scared by something like a gun. He’d probably laugh it off—

“Really, Pine Tree?  You can do better than that!”

—and disintegrate the gun, or turn it into a skull, or warp it in some other show of power.  Besides, this person seemed genuinely freaked out, and didn’t seem to recognize Dipper or the shack.

But that brought up the question, why did the person respond to the name Bill; alluding that it was their name, but not confirming it?

“Bill,” Dipper said, trying and failing to keep his voice level. It wasn’t phrased as a question.

There was a pause before they responded. “Yes?” The still sounded wary and tense, but they were no longer yelling.

Dipper inhaled sharply. “Bill Cipher?”

“Well, names are kind of meaningless and technically I could change my name right now and it would be just as valid of a name and besides how would you even know if I was lying or telling the truth it’s not as if we’ve ever met before so you have no reference so for all you know I could just be a look–a–like or—”

“Please just answer the question,” Dipper said faintly.

“If I say yes are you going to shoot me?”

“Not unless you attack me!”

“I’m not going to!”

“Then you have nothing to worry about!”

“I mean I still have a gun in my face so I think my concern is valid!”

Dipper glowered and bit his lip, lowering the gun to his side; however, he kept his finger on the trigger and left the safety off. He wasn’t going to be caught off guard. Not this time.

Seeing that they were no longer at risk of getting a bullet in the head—at least for the moment, anyway—Bill rose from where they’d been crouching behind the bed and stood, never taking their eye off Dipper and the gun in his hand. There was a long pause in which the two stared at each other warily.

“Where are we?” Bill asked. “And who are you?”

Mind racing, Dipper did his best to evaluate the situation. Maybe this was a Bill from an alternate reality? That would explain the human form and apparent lack of powers. “Gravity Falls, Oregon,” he said. “And you– you knew me as Pine Tree.”

Bill squinted at him. “Knew you? I think I’d remember if I met someone who looked like you—oh, that reminds me, why do I look like this?” they said, gesturing at themself. “Did I die? Did you guys transfer my consciousness or something? That would explain how I survived, but seriously, why the gun if I’m essentially powerless in this meat sack?”

“I—I just got back and I found you sleeping in my bed. The last time I saw you was five years ago when you tried to, uh…” Dipper hesitated, gesturing with his fingers and looking to the side. “What’s the last thing you remember? Before you woke up here, I mean.”

“Dimension 4– A9 collapsing.” 

Bill’s tone was casual, even bordering on cheerful, but Dipper thought it sounded forced. He took a deep breath. “I don’t know how you got here. Perhaps there was a—”

“You’re elbow’s bleeding,” Bill interrupted, eyeing Dipper’s elbow.

Train of thought lost, Dipper lifted his arm and glanced at his elbow. It was pretty bad for a scape, but it had faded to a dull ache, which was why Dipper hadn’t bandaged it. It must have reopened when he grabbed the gun. A trickle of blood ran down his arm, and Dipper’s eyes widened with horror as he remembered his dream.

Maybe— Maybe he’d gotten hurt previously, and his subconscious had incorporated it into his dream? That was likely, right?

What’s the chance that I have a dream where I shake hands with Bill—the demon version, not whoever this is—only for a different Bill Cipher to suddenly appear in my room with no clue as to how they got there? That can’t be a coincidence; coincidences don’t exist in Gravity Falls.

Dipper’s expression grew even more troubled. He was staring at the wall, deep in thought; however, he remained hyper–aware of every movement Bill made, no matter how small. His Bill wouldn’t show weakness or fear, not like this one was, but there was the tiniest chance that this Bill was fooling him.

And a tiny chance is still a chance.  

“You people’s meat sacks are so fragile,” Bill said cheerfully. “Wait one sec.” They strode past him, and Dipper had to keep himself from lifting the gun or in other ways lashing out once they got close. His heart rate increased drastically, a wicked–sharp spike of fear shooting through his lungs.

They can’t hurt you, he told himself shakily. They can’t hurt you, Dipper. They don’t have their powers, remember? You have the upper hand here. They can’t hurt me, and they won’t hurt me, or Mabel, or Wendy or Grunkle Stan or Soos, ever again, because I’m stronger than I was then. 

I’m not twelve anymore. I know how to fight.

The first cabinet Bill opened happened to be the one that contained the first aid kit, which they removed, placing it on the bathroom counter and opening it. They gestured to Dipper, who warily moved forward and held out his arm.

Bill didn’t warn him before they poured rubbing alcohol over the scrape—Dipper supposed that they didn’t have any way of knowing it was painful, but still—and when the stinging caused Dipper to hiss quietly, Bill hesitated, their face contorting with confusion.

Seeing this, Dipper said, “It’s nothing—” he paused and narrowed his eyes, tensing and glancing up at Bill in alarm. “How do you know how to treat flesh wounds?”

Bill tilted their head and squinted at him. “Oh, I have a friend who’s also been cursed with destructible flesh,though it’s admittedly much more circular than yours; but I imagine yours functions similar enough, and she’s always getting hurt so I learned pretty quickly how to—” They froze, their face falling, and they abruptly broke eye contact and returned their focus to cleaning Dipper’s elbow and wrapping it in gauze.

Dipper watched this with a dubious growing curiosity, but didn’t press the issue. He was satisfied with knowing that at the very least, Bill hadn’t gotten the information by reading his mind.

Neither of them spoke until Bill finished with the bandage and stepped back to observe their work. 

Bill snapped their fingers, and when nothing happened, they grit their teeth and swore rapidly under their breath in a foreign language; they balled their hands into fists.

Without thinking, Dipper—not turning his back to Bill—moved to grab one of his journals from his bag, unconsciously setting the gun down on the floor and fishing around until he found a pen. He returned his gaze to Bill, who was watching him. “What were you trying to do?” asked Dipper, flipping open to a clean page. 

He was in full analysis mode. Before Bill could answer, Dipper added, “If your powers are, uh—gone, for lack of a better word, we should document when and what spells you attempt. This way, we can figure out if there’s a pattern, and if any of your powers start returning, we’ll have data to cross–reference it to.”

Bill visibly hesitated. “Uh…”

They were saved from having to answer by three sharp knocks on the attic door. Cursing under his breath, Dipper sent Bill an urgent, meaningful look—he really didn’t have the energy to explain why some other dimension’s Bill Cipher was hanging out in his bathroom—and slowly walked across the room and pulled open the door.

Ford. Ruffled hair, piercing eyes.

Dipper unconsciously brushed a finger over his bandaged elbow, eyeing the man warily. And wearily. At the moment, he wasn’t angry, he was just…tired, so, so tired. He set a hand on the doorframe and leaned forward. “Yes?”

“Are you alright?”

“Fine,” he said shortly. 

Ford eyed Dipper’s bandage, but didn’t push the matter, which Dipper was reluctantly grateful for. “I apologize if the things I said last night were upsetting to you, that was not my intention.”

“Okay,” he deadpanned, then shoved down the urge to cringe. He hadn’t meant it to come out so blunt, but as far as back–handed apologies went, Ford’s had really taken the crown.

Narrowing his brows, Ford gave Dipper a so–disappointed–it–feels–condescending look. Rather than commenting, he sighed and asked, “May I come in?”

A breath caught in Dipper’s throat; he hadn’t forgotten about Bill, and no no no should he tell Ford? This version of Bill Cipher wasn’t the one that had hurt them—that much was clear, though at first glance, the only difference seemed to be the form they took—and this version seemed more focused, more down to Earth (pun not intended), and they were powerless (for the moment, at least).

But Ford might not see it like that. He wasn’t going to not tell the man, but— “‘S your house,” he muttered, stepping backwards so the man could enter.

Dipper risked a glance in the direction of the bathroom once his back was to Ford. The door was closed, no sound coming from behind it, no light shining from und Good.

“Where did you go last night?”

“France,” Dipper deadpanned. “Their bread isn’t as good as they claim.”

Ford squinted at him, and Dipper sighed.

“What do you want from me? I’ve spent the past four summers working 24/7 in your lab, and I’m here now, so why can’t you drop it already. Just…” He leaned his forehead against his palm, resting his head on his shoulder. “This is in the past. What happened, happened; and I’ve graduated now, so why can’t we just forget the whole ordeal and move on?” he pleaded.

Ford pursed his lips. “Is that what’s been causing you distress? That I’m treating you as the intern you are, and not my equal in the field?”

“I mean, a little bit of respect would be nice!”

“Fine.”

It took Dipper a moment to register what Ford said, but when he did, he looked up at the older man in shock.

“If you want to be treated as an equal in the field, prove that you deserve to be. The power outage last night was once again caused by the demon residing in the lake. I was able to gather sufficient data to determine that the surge of power was likely of the time–warping variety, being of a similar frequency to that of the power Bill used to pause time during Weirdmaggedon. Though we must factor in that we were only able to observe the frequency of the lingering power Bill used.”

Dipper kept his eyes focused on Ford’s face. He wasn’t stupid enough to let his gaze drift over to the bathroom door, his heart beating ever quicker the longer Ford spoke. They were on the topic of Bill. If he didn’t reveal the alternate–dimension version of Bill now, then he was lying by omission. To Ford. About the one thing it would be really, really unwise to lie about.

He pressed his thumb to the triangle tattoo on his inner wrist, hesitating.

“I will give you the information I have learned. If you are able to remove the demon, I will promote you to my assistant and grant you increased freedom in choosing what and when you wish to study.”

Dipper leaned forward, eyes narrowed. “And if I’m unable?”

“If you admit defeat and ask for my assistance, you will stop this rebellion and continue to work as my intern.”

“When you say ‘ask for your assistance’, what does that entail?” Dipper asked skeptically.“Will I have access to the lab? Your equipment? The journals? Your past research?”

“You may have full–access to my lab, the journals, and my past research. However, you will not use any of my equipment that was not completed prior to you accepting, nor any information I gather after that point.”

“I would be allowed to create and utilize equipment of my own, correct? What if I were to create something based on your previous designs?” 

Ford paused in thought before replying. “If you were to create it, and I had done nothing but work on the base design, then you would be permitted to use it. You may use anything of your own design or creation, or that you choose to make advancements on—prior rules still applying, of course.”

“Is there a time limit?”

“Nature sets its own time limits. If a situation too dire occurs because you were unable to solve the problem while it was manageable, then I’d advise you to put your pride aside and ask for my assistance, even though doing so would cause you to fail.”

“You think that’s likely,” Dipper accused. It wasn’t phrased as a question. He dug his thumbnail into the tattoo; it wasn’t as if Ford didn’t have a reason to believe he’d fail, there was significant evidence to back it up. 

He was no longer twelve. “Fine,” Dipper responded; and then, before he could think better of it, added sweetly, “I accept your deal.” 

Well, there was no going back from there.

The result was instantaneous. Ford’s shoulders tensed. A flicker of shock and apprehension crossed his face, followed by something akin to anger, before his face finally fell into a carefully controlled mask of cool apathy. 

Satisfaction, gleeful and smug and tainted with anger; lashing out at someone with the intention to cause pain because they hurt you and they don’t seem to care, so you try to get a reaction out of them, because if they’re in pain and you’re the cause, then their full attention is on you. They look at you.

They see you.

And you have control over a situation in which you were previously powerless, because the ability to hurt people is perhaps the most powerful and instantaneously gratifying one can have.

“Do I need to write down the terms and conditions?” Ford’s tone was scathing. “Or are you capable of remembering them?”

Dipper considered, not missing the condescending remark.“Write them down for future reference,” he finally answered. “After all, it would suck if one of us were playing a game without knowing all the rules.” His tone was innocent, his words anything but.

Eyeing him warily, Ford gave him a sharp nod. “In that case, I’ll leave you to it.”

“Wait,” Dipper called after him.

Ford paused, hand on the doorknob.

“The information you’ve gathered on the demon. You said you’d give it to me.”

Without looking back at Dipper, Ford said, “Tomorrow. For now, get some sleep.”

Once he could no longer hear Ford’s footsteps on the stairs, Dipper flopped onto his bed and sighed loudly, draping his arm over his eyes. “You can come out.”

Bill opened the door and moved to stride forward; however, when they shifted their weight to their other ankle, it twisted to the side and they stumbled forward. They let out a high pitched shriek. Managing to catch themself before they actually fell, their face turned a bright red. 

Dipper shot up into a sitting position and looked wildly at Bill.

In an attempt to keep some of their dignity, they stood up straight and put their hands on their hips; although, the image was ruined by their burning cheeks and embarrassed expression. “Uh, the powerful magical entity in your lake isn’t a demon!” they blurted out.

Dipper’s mouth fell open, but they didn’t seem to notice and kept rambling.

“I mean, I’d be able to tell if it was, and the amount of energy it’s emitting is impressive and all, but it’s aura is way off. Like, absolutely nothing even in the general vicinity of what me and my friends have—had.” They faltered and made a face, but pushed forward. If anything, they started speaking even faster. “Honestly, it would probably be insulted if it found out you compared it to me, and—”

“What the actual—?” Dipper asked genuinely.

“Well their aura is really intense, like kind of overstimulating in a way, so they’re obviously only using a small portion of their power and sorry I’m rambling I’ll shut up now sorry—” Bill gasped for air. It sounded like he was wheezing.

Taking advantage of Bill’s needing to breathe—something the demon clearly wasn’t used to needing to do—Dipper cut in. “I appreciate your help—actually, I’m gonna wait until I know if you have an ulterior motive to say that—but I’m so exhausted that I only registered about 2% of what you just said and I will 100% forget it within the next 2 to 3 buisness hours, so can I take a nap first. Please?”

Bill blinked.

Chapter Text

Dipper awoke hours later to a loud crash from Mabel’s side of the room. He groaned and blearily pulled his blanket tighter around himself, snuggling into its warmth and mumbling, “Be quiet, Mabel, ‘m trying to sleep.” 

“But it’s been five hours already!” a voice whined, “And I keep bumping into things because corporeal bodies are impractical, and your room is tiny, also I dyed the carpet blue so that’s a thing that happened—”

Dipper shot upwards. His shirt clung to his back from the sweat that had accumulated during his nap; he was disoriented, and he stared at Bill, the memories of earlier that day flooding back to him. His eyes fell to Bill’s clothing.

Gone was the flashy outfit; and in its place were black leggings, torn at the the knees, and red sweater that most certainly did not belong to them. A black collar peaked out from under the sweater, and a thin pair of black fingerless gloves hugged their hands. Their feet were bare.

“Why,” Dipper asked in a puzzled tone, still bleary from sleep, “Are you wearing red?” He squinted, trying to make out the scene in front of him. 

Oddly enough, Bill grinned victoriously. “Because it’s something I wouldn’t do, in any form, ever, in the entirety of time and space. You,” they pointed at Dipper, “Said that some other version of me—which is so weird to think about, because I’ve never met another version of myself, like yeah, I have a— had a friend that was in contact with like six other versions of herself, but she was always the exception to the rule— anyways, you thought I was that version of myself because I look similar to him in this form, right?”

They didn’t wait for Dipper to respond, barreling on. Dipper, who grew up with Mabel, listened intently to the demon’s rambling and managed to keep up with the tangents (for the most part). Absently, he made a mental note of how Bill corrected themself when they spoke of their friend in present–tense. That was the second time they’d done something like that.

Dimension collapsing…

“Anyways, you, gun, me, yadah yadah yadah, so I thought, ‘Hey, let’s avoid that happening again with someone else who’s even more trigger happy than Messy–Hair!’ and figured the outfit was a good place to start—”

“Huh?”

“Well, outfits are typically the first thing you change when you’re going under–cover—”

“No, not that,” Dipper said, internally cringing when he realized how rude his tone sounded to his own ears, no matter how unintentional it was, “What did you call me?”

Bill blinked. “Oh, uh, Messy–Hair? You didn’t tell me your actual name, so…” They made some obscure gestures with their hands. “Does that bother you? I figured Pine Tree would be a bad idea, considering…” They gestured vaguely again, words having failed the demon as they so often do.

Dipper repressed a shudder. Yes, calling him Pine Tree would’ve been a very bad idea, and he silently thanked the demon for not doing so. Perhaps this relief had an influence on Dipper’s next words; for had he been in his normal, anxiety–ridden headspace, he never would’ve made such a decision. “If you’re going to call me Messy–Hair,” he drawled, “Then I reserve the right to come up with an equally–ridiculous nickname for you.”

The grin Bill gave him seemed… different then the one’s they’d given him so far. Not in a bad way, just… clearer. It reached their eyes more, and it seemed less… less…

“You can’t,” they teased gleefully.

Feigning seriousness, Dipper narrowed his brow and sniffed mock–disapprovingly. “Is that a challenge?”

“Nope,” Bill chirped, visible eye twinkling, “Just realism.”

“Oh, you’re on,” Dipper said. The tension had drained completely from his shoulders, and with surprise, the realization hit him: this was the most relaxed he’d been since arriving at Gravity Falls; in the presence of a foe, whom he had just bickered with about nicknames.

“Are you okay?” Bill asked bluntly. At Dipper’s surprised look, they hurried to add, “Uh, you seemed lost in thought, so…”

“Oh.” Dipper answered eloquently. “Yeah, just…” He trailed off. “What time is it?” The question was mostly rhetorical; his eyes flickered to his nightstand, where his phone lay, and he grabbed it. The screen read ‘19:15’.

“The sun won’t set for another hour or two,” Dipper announced, now wide awake. The newfound energy and prospect of research and adventure had him feeling oddly bold, itching to get started. He glanced up and met Bill’s eye. “You said the lake thingee wasn’t a demon, right?”

Blinking in surprise at the change of subject, Bill nodded the affirmative. “Yeah, why?”

Dipper grinned; he was sure it came across as more than a little unhinged, but felt too hyper to care. “Do you think it’ll attack us?”

“I mean…maybe? It doesn’t seem particularly aggressive.”

“Good enough for me,” Dipper said, then paused, quiet for a moment. Finally, he added,“And Bill?”

“Yeah?”

Dipper side eyed him and smiled wryly. “My name is Dipper.”

Bill had asked to drive the golf cart. Dipper, like a fool, had agreed. One of his hands gripped the supporting beam, the other pressed flat against the dashboard to brace himself.

Oranges and pinks painted the sky, weaving through the wispy clouds and embracing the setting sun; air rushing past them as the golf cart plummeted through the forest on a barely–existent, twisting path.

The edges of his lips twitched upwards, and it was with great surprise that Dipper found himself leaning out of the cart so his hair flew backwards and the air whipped at his face; he closed his eyes and let himself melt into the exhilaration of the ride. 

When he turned back to Bill, the demon wore a manic grin. They were leaning forward, hands loose around the steering wheel as if they were going for a casual spin, and not riding eighty–miles an hour down a dirt path surrounded by trees—it was Dipper’s own fault of course.

Well, his and Wendy’s. The summer prior, the two of them—sponsored by Grunkle Stan, of course—had managed to rig the old thing to go much faster than it by any right should, and it was just Dipper’s luck that he’d live to regret it. One of those things you love to hate.

The closer they got to the lake, the muddier the ground became. Bill had reluctantly slowed down to prevent the two of them sliding into a ditch. The air rushing past them had become quiet enough that they could talk to each other again, and they were only a few minutes away from their destination when Bill spoke.

“Are we improvising? ‘Cause I’m really good at improvising,” they said cheerfully, “But you’re probably not that good at it—I don’t mean that in a rude way,” he continued, taking his eyes off the road and throwing a teasing smirk in Dipper’s direction, “Just an observation.”

Dipper sent him an unimpressed look. “Fine. If something goes wrong—which, when does it not—then getting us out is on your shoulders. And yeah, I have a plan.” He stopped, and went back to gazing at the passing trees, waiting for Bill respond. He didn’t have to wait long; Bill was well–versed in mischief, after all.

Sighing overdramatically, Bill leaned backwards and the seat shifted, a creak audible to Dipper’s straining ears. “...You’re not going to tell me it, are you,” they said, feigning sorrow.

Dipper grinned like the Cheshire Cat. “Nope.” He popped the ‘p’, unperturbed by his friend’s dramatics. “You’ll have to wait and see.”

…Friend’s?

Eh. He’d worry about that later. Attachment issues? Yeah…but that was borderline personality disorder for you. A part of it, at least. He’d come a long way as far as logical thought processes went, but other parts—mood swings, extreme emotions, and sudden attachment and/or disinterest—he couldn’t get rid of those, just learn to regulate them.

By the time Bill turned the corner and the lake came into view, the sun was barely peeking its head from beyond the horizon. They yanked the steering wheel to the side, swerving off the road and parking on a patch of dry grass; Dipper had to hold on tight so as to not go flying.

Bill was entirely unaffected. They leapt out of the driver’s seat, their feet hitting the ground and causing a cloud of dust to fly up. On their feet were a pair of Dipper’s old flip–flops, which they had chosen to wear despite Dipper’s protests that you could not run in them, and ‘It’s just an overall bad idea, Bill. Do you want to break your toes?’

“So, what now?”

Dipper sent him an irritated look, pulling the straps of his backpack over his shoulders and pushing himself off the passengers seat. “Uh, don’t get killed by scary lake entity,” he deadpanned.

“Great idea!” Bill said with purposeful enthusiasm, ignoring Dipper’s snark. “But that’s a goal, not a plan.”

Sighing, Dipper said, “Knowing Ford, he’s probably set up cameras somewhere around here in an attempt to capture the entity in action, but we need to disable them. I don’t want him spying on me, and it’s also impertinent that he doesn’t find out about you. Trust me on that one.”

Bill raised their eyebrows, but nodded.

“He’s going to be checking the cameras though, so I’m also going to need to hack into the transmitter and get it to send Ford past clips, because he’ll be suspicious if there’s no feed coming through.”

“Brilliant!” Bill smirked. “You’re smarter than you look, Messy–Hair!”

Dipper choked. 

“You’re a lot smarter than you look, especially the fat one!”

That, that was a different Bill. This one doesn’t have their powers. They can’t hurt you, Dipper reminded himself. There was a painful knot in his stomach, and he did his best to wipe his face into a blank slate. But the reminder left him feeling shaken, and he knew for a fact that Bill wasn’t oblivious to his sudden reaction.

Turning his back to Bill so as not to meet the demon’s eyes, Dipper pushed on with the conversation. “I’m going to set my laptop up at one of the picnic tables and see what the receiver picks up. Can you— can you see if you can sense anything more from the entity? I’m assuming it’s clearer now that you’re closer to it.”

“Yeah,” Bill said, but their voice sounded odd. “I’m going to go sit by the lake— if that’s okay?”

Dipper nodded, some of the tension leaving his shoulders. “Yeah. Come over if you find anything important?”

“Got it.”

Dipper watched Bill stride away— the demon walked odd, like they hadn’t quite gotten used to having a physical form, but they didn’t fall again. When they reached the edge of the lake, they stood motionless for a few seconds, staring out at the water before dropping to the ground and crossing their legs. They lowered their head, and then all Dipper could see was their back.

Shaking his head to clear his mind, he turned back to the task at hand. There was always the possibility that Ford would have reinforced the security on the cameras, expecting Dipper to do just this, but Dipper had studied under Fiddleford for a while. Technology wasn’t Ford’s forte, and while Dipper wasn’t an expert, he was confident that he had a more advanced understanding of hacking than Ford.

He crossed his fingers. He found a picnic table, sat down, and began to work.

Night had fallen by the time Dipper decided to wrap it up; it wasn’t perfect, but it should be enough to keep Ford from spying on them for the time being. 

Once he’d shut his laptop, rubbed his eyes, and blinked blearily into the dark, it was two glowing eyes that he found squinting back at him. Naturally, he screamed. So engrossed had he been in his work, that he hadn’t noticed when Bill sat down across from him.

“What the—” Dipper swore. “How long have you been there?”

“Only a few minutes,” Bill answered dismissively. “We have a problem.”

Chapter Text

Dipper raised his eyebrows. It couldn’t be that bad of a problem, if Bill had decided to wait for him to finish to tell him.“What happened?”

“So…” They paused for dramatic effect— (Dipper was thoroughly unimpressed.) “The good news is, I talked to her! The bad news is she, uh, she wants us to do her a favor in exchange for an actual conversation,” they said sheepishly.

Dipper restrained from face–palming. “You spoke to her? I’m honestly surprised you returned, you — er, other you— no, actually, you you as well— you guys share a habit of pissing people off.”

They grimaced. “She did threaten to put up wards to keep me specifically from getting near to the lake, and then, ah, threw me a good thirty–feet.” They said the last part in a rush and then, seeing Dipper’s eyes widen in horror, they quickly added, “But I’m fine! Pfff, it would take waaay more than that to hurt me.” 

Dipper shook his head in disbelief.“You’re running on adrenaline,” he explained, exasperation clear in his tone. “You’re going to be in a significant amount of pain once it wears off.”

Bill made a face. “Or I could… not.”

Deciding that it wasn’t his problem, Dipper said, “Y’know, you do you I guess. Fair warning, I will 100% be telling you ‘I told you so.’ Many, many times.” 

Bill looked indignant and opened their mouth to reply, but Dipper cut them off.

“What’s the favor?”

Blinking, Bill appeared confused for all of 2.5 seconds before they realized what he was asking. “Oh, that. In my opinion, murder is gonna be our best chance— I’m not saying we should murder someone,” they quickly added, seeing Dipper’s alarm, “Just that we should fully consider our optio—”

“What,” Dipper interrupted, glaring daggers at them in an attempt at intimidation, “Did she ask us to do?”

They groaned. “You’re not gonna like it.”

“Are you insane?” Bill shouted, gripping the golf cart for dear life as Dipper swerved off the path. 

Dipper smirked, navigating the thick of the forest in what appeared to be the dim shine of the busted headlights of the golf cart. If he were a nicer man, he would’ve informed Bill that he had put in night–vision contact lenses—an invention of Ford’s from his younger days— before they’d left the lake, but it was rather amusing to watch Bill freak out. He went as fast as he dared given that he was functioning completely off of muscle memory, and crashing head–first into a tree was not something he’d like a repeat of.

Once was more than enough.

Fortunately, that didn’t seem to be in the cards tonight; although, Dipper thought as Bill shrieked again, the night’s still young.

“And I thought I was a bad driver,” they snapped as Dipper narrowly avoided driving them into a ditch.

“That’s because you are,” Dipper retorted. He often ventured into this part of the forest; the trees towered over them, the soft sound of rushing water was coming from no direction in particular, and the terrain became more and more uneven the further they went. He made a sharp turn to the left at a mangled old tree, and the golf cart skid. It’s front and back right wheels came completely off to the ground.

Bill slammed into Dipper, who grunted and tried to keep the both of them from falling hard into the dry earth. “You were saying?!” they yelped, knuckles white as they attempted to maintain their grip on the cart, their eye alive with exhilaration.

“Excuse you, my terrible driving abilities don’t negate your own.”

“But in comparison—”

“Come in, I’ve been waiting for you.” Shmebulock grinned, stroking the side of a black cat that towered over the gnome and was eyeing the newcomers warily.

“Shmebulock?” Dipper’s face contorted with bewilderment. “You’re speaking— Like, not just your name, actually speaki—”

Bill answered before he could finish, unusually solemn. “You,” they said to Shmebulock, “Reek of a curse.”

“What is that phrase human’s seem so fond of?” Shmebulock cleared his throat, feigning a solemness to match Bill’s, and took a deep breath— “No shit, Sherlock,” he deadpanned, looking them up and down in a way that would be much more fitting of a judgy cat, unimpressed.

Dipper, who was quite used to the unhelpful inhabitants of Gravity Falls, stared at the gnome with a bored expression. Bill tilted their head in confusion. 

“What the hell is a Sherlock?”

“Famous fictional detective,” Dipper answered, not taking his eyes off Shmebulock. In a very bored tone, he asked the gnome, “Could you describe to us this unfortunate ailment that befell you? And while you’re at it, convince us why we should help you in the first place, because so far I think there’s a negative correlation between my ability to tolerate you, and your vocabulary or lack thereof.”

“You’re going to,” the gnome said with the utmost confidence. 

“Sly little thief with golden teeth

Rings the bell within the wreath

Loves the prize but hates the game

And so he sips the cursed champagne

Little thief, his tongue will twist

Forbidden words upon his lips

Only his name shall make the cut

A broken record, within his gut

The final night, a thousand years

Clock rewinds, ten times the tears”

The clearing fell into silence.. Sometime during the reciting, Bill had gone very tense besides Dipper; their shoulders taught and expression bewildered. Dipper refrained from gazing intimidatingly at the gnome in favor of furtively turning to check on his friend, whose reaction was very visible but made very little sense.

However, it was also something he knew better than to bring up something so possibly emotional–charged in front of an adversary. …Had Bill not told him everything that went down with the lake entity? Did the wording of the curse change anything?

Moreover, Dipper had to agree with them: the easiest way to break a curse was by killing the subject of it; however, Dipper was not sure the entity would take it as such—it wouldn’t’ve been the first time he’d been brilliantly pedantic to no avail—and having not yet met the entity, he had no way of discerning whether she would be the type to find such loopholes amusings, or if she’d decide to bring her wrath down upon them all.

Entity’s tended towards dramatics. Taking this into consideration, Dipper decided he was no longer feeling reckless enough to take that sort of risk. “That’s exactly the vague crap you’d expect from a— y’know… warlock, or entity, or whoever else gets off on making their poor–writing skills everyone’s problem,” Dipper said, mostly to himself.

He took a deep breath, slipped off his bag, and removed his journal and an old pen. To function with the speed his brain was currently running at, he jotted down every question his brain rattled out as it came to him. Forgetting initial thoughts could be detrimental to solving a problem.

Bill stood very still, peering blankly off into the distance. Their face was oddly slack. Dipper shrugged it off; they were probably just deep in thought, and would it be weird to show concern when they’d only met twelve hours prior?

To Shmebulock, he said, “In your own words, describe how the curse has affected you and how it functions, to the best of your understanding.” Dipper made sure to appear disinterested, so the gnome would try his best to give enough information to keep the human’s attention. He’d discovered this was a good strategy when forced to deal with gnomes.

“Oh, it’s a very long story. I wouldn’t want to take up too much of your time,” he said, in the manner of one who very much loved to listen to themself speak, but wanted to appear humble.

Dipper was about to dully humor him when Bill spoke up, having apparently snapped out of his stupor.

“Okay? Can you sum it up? We’re on a tight schedule here.”

Despite his best efforts, Dipper choked. He immediately attempted to pass it off as a coughing fit, cheeks turning red as he became mortifyingly aware of both the gnome’s and demon’s eye(s) on him; although, Bill’s held considerably more concern than Shmebulock’s, who still appeared severely affronted at Bill’s comment.

“I’m fine,” Dipper sputtered. “Cool. Brilliant even. Um—”

“As I was saying,” Shmebulock sniffed ostentatiously, “It started ten–thousand years ago this very night. In my youth, I was quite the mischief maker, and a new tavern had just opened in Gravity Falls…”

Dipper raised a brow and leaned back against the tree behind him. “Oh, do tell!” he said sarcastically, completely for Bill’s benefit. The demon snorted, eye glimmering with amusement as they met Dipper’s gaze, and a happy little burst of exhilaration formed in Dipper’s chest.

Shmebulock ignored the interruption. “It was raining heavily, and I trudged up the steps, drenched to the bone. The place was cramped— I fit right in with the other miserable creatures seeking a haven from the storm; however, I wished for someplace quiet, so I tried one of the doors near the bar. It opened. Behind it were steps leading down to the cellar, which I took, grateful for an escape from the chaos.”

The gnome sighed, resting a hand dramatically on the distracted cat next to him. “Alas, it was dark, and I was tired, and I didn’t think twice before taking a swig of champagne from a dusty bottle that I’d foolishly figured no one would miss.”

"He's omitting something," Bill breathed, just loud enough that Dipper could hear. The demon was in their element, it seemed; Dipper nodded subtly in acknowledgement and began to reframe his perception of the story with Bill's observation in mind.

“Oh, what a terrible mistake that was, for not only did I bear the weight of it’s curse—a hundred–years of only being able to speak your own name per sip the drinker took, and I’d taken ten—but it put me into a drunken stupor.”

Dipper tried to imagine Shmebulock drunk, and couldn’t help but think that he wouldn’t be much different from Shmebulock sober. (Dipper was half–certain Mabel had been supplying him and the other gnomes with Mabel Juice to put herself through college; however, he had no proof. Not that he’d do anything with it if he did, because that sort of resourcefulness was to be— if not admired, than respected.)

Don’t do Mabel Juice, kids. It’s a highly addictive substance with possible unforeseen long–term side effects.

“I began to wander the cellar. In a bought of misfortune, I stumbled across a bookshelf, upon which lay hundreds of shiny, harmless–seeming trinkets in various states of disrepair. One in particular caught my eye: a Newton’s Cradle, going back and forth, back and forth. I leaned in to touch it. But woe was me, for as my fingers brushed against the metal, the room began to shake; yet I valiantly held my ground, and to the dark cellar, asked, ‘Who goes there?’”

The gnome grew increasingly animated, eyes wide as he gestured wildly with his hands.“The silky voice of evil spoke back to me— ‘A thief,’ she said I was, ‘And why not make it a punishment to fit the crime?’” He huffed indignantly, hung his head, and shook it. “I plead my case; but she did not care for the truth, merely her own sadistic pleasures. She explained to me that the object I’d touch was a gift to one of her friends—though clearly, that friend wasn’t even using it, and at least I would’ve actually appreciated it—but nonetheless, it had a sole, miraculous purpose: with intent, any person could wish up a time loop into existence.”

“How did she word it, exactly?” Dipper asked. If there’s anything Gravity Falls has taught him, it’s that wording matters— especially when it comes to exploiting loopholes, or the lack thereof.

Shmebulock appeared annoyed at being interrupted, but obliged Dipper’s curiosity nonetheless. 

Chapter Text

11:25 PM – 6 hours before sunrise

None of them spoke. Dipper had put his night–vision contacts back in, and was navigating through a green–on–black world with tired eyes. To both his and Bill’s chagrin, the golf cart was moving much slower than normal, for not only did they have a gnome riding in their trunk—a mutual decision, as Bill refused to give up their seat, and Shmebulock wasn’t tall enough to hold on to the pole—but Bill was also having to give Dipper directions.

The demon’s eye was shut, and they hummed indecisively. Suddenly, their lips twisted upwards and they leaned forward, opening their eye and grinning at Dipper. “It’s playing with us!” they said gleefully. “It’s not getting any farther away, it’s just changing which direction we have to go! Oh, challenge accepted!”

Dipper’s clenched and unclenched his fists around the steering wheel. If they didn’t find the evasive Newton’s Cradle and have Shmebulock stop it before sunrise, then Shmebulock’s time loop would reset. It seemed as if Dipper was the only one worried, which was both frustrating and bewildering, given their circumstances. 

The gnome seemed certain beyond a shadow of a doubt that they’d succeed—

“‘Clock rewinds, ten times the tears.’ This is the tenth time I’ve relived the thousand–years, so obviously I’ll finally be able to find the damned thing before it resets again— there’s something different about this time.”

—but given the stakes, you’d think he’d at least be a little nervous. 

That had also confirmed Dipper’s unspoken theory that the lake entity had some sort of involvement in the curse. In the past nine loops, she must not have sent Dipper and Bill to break the curse: Shmebulock wouldn’t be acting so confident if they’d come this far and failed in previous tries. 

And Bill— well, Bill was treating it like a game. Dipper knew that Bill was only helping him in the first place in order to stay in Dipper’s good books, and that chasing energy waves from an evasive magical object was probably their idea of fun, but he still wanted to shout at them that this wasn’t a game.

The lake entity had said she’d only grant the two of them a conversation if they broke Shmebulock’s curse. If they couldn’t do that, then Dipper would fail. He’d have to face Ford as a failure. He’d have proven the man right, which would be the worst part of it all, and the shame that followed— well, Dipper didn’t want to think about it.

“Oh, if it doesn’t want to be found, it won’t,” huffed Shmebulock. “Ten–thousand years of searching…” The gnome brightened. “But the day has come, and it seems to show you favor, young Bill.”

Bill bristled. “Young?”

Dipper slammed his hand against the wheel, drawing the attention of both others. “Can we focus? Please?” 

Shmebulock peaked over the seats from his place in the trunk.

“Sorry, Messy Hair,” Bill said, only sobering a little. “Make a left, we need to go North a while. I think.”

At the next clearing, Dipper made a controlled turn and came upon an actual path; he directed the golf cart onto it, and the drive became noticeably less bumpy; although there were no tire tracks or footsteps, it clearly wasn’t forgotten about, as it remained well–maintained and far from overgrown.

“Uh,” Bill muttered.

Dipper slowed the golf cart and turned to look at them. 

They narrowed their eye and tilted their head. “It’s getting fuzzy. I think— I think it’s underground. Keep going forward. I’ll tell you when to stop.”

Dipper did as they said, continuing forward even when the path veered off to the left. The humidity hung heavy in the air, a drastic change from the cool summer breeze by the lake, and his shirt began to stick to his back. He lifted a hand off the wheel to push his hair out of his face—

And slammed on the breaks. The golf cart lurched to a stop, and Dipper bit back a curse. He’d nearly driven them straight into the bottom of a cliff, hidden behind a wall of inconspicuous shrubbery adorned by tiny blooming flowers that glimmered in the headlights.

Bill appeared undeterred, leaping out of the golf cart and striding over to the dead–end. They knelt down in the dirt. 

Hesitating for only a second, Dipper slipped out of the driver’s seat and went to hover behind them awkwardly. He peered down at them. They were feeling around in the shrubbery with their bare hands; which, Dipper thought, was a very bad idea.

Light footsteps sounded as Shmebulock came to stand next to him.

Bill shot up straight. “Gotcha!” they said smugly. Clenched in their fist was a limp vine, about the width of Dipper’s thumb; bare of leafs, thorns, or blemishes, and Bill twisted it around with a flick of their wrist, yanking it like one would the cord of a lawn mower.

Dipper instinctively stepped backwards. A loud rumbling erupted from the ground, and Bill leapt away from the shrubbery, letting go of the vine. Shmebulock stumbled and lost his footing, but Dipper grabbed his arm and steadied him before he could fall. 

Parting rapidly, the ground split in two, as if someone had thrust a knife into the soft earth and was prying it apart, the cowering shrubbery on either side of the gap scrambling to find steady land. 

Dipper found himself leaning forward in awe.

When the ground had stilled, they were left with a ditch that tore through the ground and into the rocky underside of the cliff. It was a few feet tall and only barely wide enough for someone to fit inside.

Unfortunately, that seemed to be what they were going to have to do. Bill darted forward and made to crawl inside, but Dipper stopped them. “Let me go first, I have these,” he tapped his temple, signifying the night–vision lenses, “So I’ll be able to see if there’s anything hazardous being concealed by the dark.”

Bill bounced on the balls of their feet. “Okay, but can we go?” they asked impatiently, practically vibrating with excitement.

Dipper sighed and glanced forlornly back at the golf cart, before warily stepping into the ditch and dropping to his hands and knees. The dirt sent a chill through his palms. He peered into the interior of the tunnel, which tilted downwards and went on for as far as Dipper could see, but didn’t appear to grow any narrower. 

He made his way inside. Bill followed him, with Shmebulock taking up the rear—the gnome was short enough that he could walk with only a slight crouch—. It was a slow going.

Bill and Shmebulock were exchanging words, but Dipper tuned them out, his focus zoning in on the aches and pains that were making themself apparent. The tea and sandwiches Shmebulock had given him and Bill before they’d set off churned in his stomach; Dipper had been wary of accepting food from the gnome, the whole ‘let’s attempt to kidnap Mabel and make her our bride’ incident at the forefront of his mind, but he was hungry enough that he’d given in rather easily and accepted the food.

Dipper slowed his pace, the pebbles on the tunnel floor digging deeper into his palms and knees, and leaned forward to peer around the corner. 

A large room lay before him. Cobblestones lined the walls and, when Bill didn’t announce the presence of anything threatening, Dipper crawled out of the tunnel and stood to survey the room. Bill and Shmebulock followed suit.

At the far wall sat a plain rectangular table, worn with age. Atop it, a multitude of shiny silver puzzle pieces, covered in thinly–engraved lines that curved and ebbed. The room was circular, with three arched doorways blocked by thick wooden doors; two had heavy metal padlocks, but the one in the middle appeared unlocked. Candlelight danced along the walls, so Dipper slipped his night–vision contacts back into their case.

“These are designed to suck the life outta you. Literally!” Bill had gone to stand next to the table, and was staring down at the puzzle pieces. “Wow! This is really advanced!”

Dipper turned away from the doors— not completely, of course; just because they appeared locked didn’t mean certain creatures wouldn’t be able to slither their way through, and he wasn’t about to let his guard down and risk being attacked. “How are they activated?”

Bill hummed. “Touch, I think— naturally, we’ll probably have to solve the puzzle in order to pass. Smart! One of us will be weakened!”

“Can you not deactivate them?”

Sobering, Bill leaned forward, placing their hands on the table. “No,” they replied shortly, not looking up. “Not without my… y’know.”

“Is there a way to move them without activating it? Pushing it with something, or touching them through the fabric of your sweatshirt sleeve, or—”

Unprompted, Bill slipped their sleeve over their hand and reached out to touch one of the pieces. They instantly shuddered, pulling their hand away as if burned. “Um, no.”

“Well, clearly Dipper must bear this burden,” said Shmebulock, who’d been quiet for the first half of the conversation. “I must be there to stop the curse, and young Bill must lead me to it.” He said it with a touch of sorrow, but his typically–animated face held no hint of woe.

“Pardon?” said Dipper sharply, at the same time Bill spoke.

“Uh, hold up. Gimme a sec, I think if I…” They fell silent, hands hovering over the pieces, eyes closed.

Dipper threw Shmebulock a dirty look for volunteering him, and then turned his attention back to the doors. He wandered towards the middle one, by the nature of it being the one unlocked, and began to examine it. There was nothing visibly different about it. The hinges weren’t visible—Dipper checked the other two, and this was the case with them as well—so it wasn’t as if he could simply take them off their hinges.

He nudged the door with the toe of his shoe. When nothing burst into flames, he tentatively reached out to touch the doorknob. Still nothing. Either the door held a trap, or it was actually the way they needed to take, and the object was messing with them by making it the obvious answer, knowing they would assume it to be a trap and waste time trying to get through the other doors. 

Or, the doors were distractions and held no importance whatsoever. 

Bill let out a loud sigh of relief. They turned towards Dipper, meeting his eyes and giving him a lopsided smile. “Uh, you want the good news or bad news first?” they asked him.

“Whichever is more important.”

“Okay, in that case,” Bill took a deep breath, “I can’t break it, but I figured out a way that should allow you to finish it without passing out— don’t give me that look, I sure as anything don’t have the patience to solve it, and…” They trailed off, looking at Dipper pointedly, letting their eyes flicker briefly to Shmebulock, and then giving Dipper another pointed look. 

Dipper sighed. “Fine.”

“Okay.” Bill let out a breath. “This is how this is gonna work. Give me your arm.”

Stepping closer to the demon, Dipper pushed up his sleeve and held it out to them. Too late, he realized it was the arm with the tattoo, eyes falling on the triangle and heat rushing to his cheeks. Bill was looking at it, a puzzled expression flittering across their face. Dipper held his breath.

Bill didn’t acknowledge it though—logically, Dipper knew Bill didn’t know other–Bill was in triangle form, or even that the tattoo itself held any meaning—, simply wrapping their fingers around his lower arm and pressing their thumb vertically against his inner wrist.

With the other hand, they reached out towards the table. Their fingers hovered over the pieces. Their face contorted with concentration, and they began to rapidly mouth words that Dipper couldn’t decipher.

He was about to ask what Bill was doing, when a rush of disorientation flooded through his brain like a fog. It went as quickly as it had come; however, it left Dipper shaking, his legs wobbling to the point that he had to grab the table to steady himself to avoid sinking to the ground, Bill’s grip around his wrist so tight that his hand tingled with pins and needles.

“What—” Dipper gasped, “What did you do?”

Bill chose that moment to lean heavily against the table, a bead of sweat dripping down their forehead. “I didn’t know it would do that,” they muttered. “Normally it would’ve just let you draw from my energy, but I was having to draw the power to do it from the negative energy of the puzzle, and so… yeah.” They shook their head. “I think I messed up part of it, but it should still work. Just wait a sec?”

“Are you going to pass out?”

They let out a faint laugh. “No, I’ll adjust soon enough. Probably. Not used to dealing with this stupid…” they gestured to their body. True to their word though, they already seemed steadier on their feet; Dipper shook most of the last lingering bit of shakiness from his head and turned to the puzzle, refocusing on the task that lay before him.

The pieces seemed to emit a soft silver light. He let his eyes linger on them, taking note of the different patterns: which ones had spacious lines, which had many that crossed over one another, which were squiggly and which were wavy and which were straight, which were nearly blank—

“Okay, I’m ready,” Bill announced, using their free hand to brush their hair out of their face. They seemed to study Dipper for a moment before asking, “Do you think you can do it? We can always see if the locks could be picked—”

“They probably can, but that’s irrelevant. I’m ninety–nine percent sure this is a map, and it’s definitely a test, so we’re going to need to get this over with. 

“In that case…” Bill tilted their head and gestured to the table, “Good luck.”

Dipper dove right in. The first piece he picked up tingled unpleasantly as he held it, and he dropped it as soon as he could. He started by separating the pieces most similar to one another into piles, connecting pieces as he went, and overall trying to spend the least time possible touching the pieces while still being productive. A feeling of dread creeped up on him as the minutes ticked by, which he did his best to ignore. Bill’s grip turned out to be rather grounding.

If he had to estimate, he’d say that there were only around a hundred pieces, each about the size of one of his fingernails. This normally wouldn’t have taken him very long, but all the pieces being the same color made it that more difficult.

He was about half way through when Bill spoke up. “Hey, uh, Messy Hair? Where’s Shmebulock?”

Chapter Text

Tipsy from the—rather mild, all things considered— drowsiness, it took Dipper a second to register what Bill had said; his head shot up and he looked around the room with narrowed eyes. His gaze fell to the middle door. Irritation surged through him, and he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Of course he couldn’t have stuck with us, that’d’ve been too easy.”

The doorknob had not had a grimy handprint when he’d examined it minutes prior.

“Oh for—” Dipper swore. “Not only did he decide to go off on his own, but he also shut the goddamn door behind him like an idiot. What if it had locked behind him? What then, huh?” he shouted into the empty room.

“Messy Hair,” Bill interrupted, giving Dipper’s wrist a comforting squeeze despite how tired they themself sounded, “We, uh, we’re in the middle of something. He chose to go, he can deal with it himself until we can go after him.”

Dipper opened his mouth to refute them, but found he couldn’t. He threw himself back into the puzzle with a newfound vigor, using his frustration to power him through the effects of the puzzle’s magic eating away at him— much slower than it probably would’ve without Bill, as the demon seemed to be taking the greater brunt of the magic.

Their grip on Dipper’s wrist was steadily growing looser and looser. By the time Dipper slipped the last piece into place, they were barely holding onto him at all. 

It was like a weight being lifted off his chest. Bill shuttered next to him, stifling a relieved yawn.

And then the soft glow the puzzle had been emitting turned into something else entirely: it grew brighter and brighter, a harsh white light that filled the room and doused out the candles. Dipper covered his eyes and yanked Bill down next to him; the two were crouched under the table, the darkest place in the room, and the only place the puzzle wasn’t dousing in light.

Bill leaned against him, sleepily mumbling something that Dipper couldn’t decipher, and buried their face in his shoulder.

“Dangit, dangit, dangit,” Dipper muttered. Realizing he was basically supporting Bill’s entire weight, he shook them and hissed, “Don’t fall asleep— Bill? Hey—”

A loud crackling echoed through the room, and suddenly the light died and the room fell into silence. Dipper slowly uncovered his eyes, blinking in the sudden dimness. The candlelight now seemed weak and timid.

He turned to glance at Bill— their eyes were closed, but their chest was moving up and down. Dipper lightly pinched them, and to his relief, their eyes fluttered opened and they blinked up at him like a sleepy cat. “Good news, you’re not brain–dead,” Dipper informed them dryly. “Go back to sleep.”

“Bold of you to assume I have a brain,” Bill mumbled. Dipper wasn’t sure if he was meant to have heard it, as Bill still seemed rather half–asleep. 

He wondered how grotesque the magic’s affect would be on someone who tried to solve the puzzle alone. (Not focusing on the person’s body mass, as that would probably affect it, but just an average–sized human— not that Bill was human—were they?—but that was besides the point.)

Bill, surprisingly, curled up right there on the floor and fell back asleep.

Dipper crawled out from beneath the table and stood up, eyes falling on the silver puzzle that was now whole. In the center, a glimmering golden star that hadn’t been there before, a map to navigate through this underground maze of rooms and hallways and dead ends.

He poured over it, trying to find the best path. He itched to get started, but Bill was resting and it would be rude to wake them when they were wiped out in the first place because they’d helped him. 

There were too many paths branching out from the middle door for him to even begin to guess which Shmebulock had taken, and the chances of getting where you needed to go without some sort of directions or map seemed extremely slim. He and Bill would just have to hope the gnome ran into them at some point.

Dipper managed to find a path that would get them to the shimmering star; although, he doubted it’d be as simple as just striding in and stopping the curse. It seemed to be layers upon layers of tests, and he didn’t have enough information to try and find loopholes.

2:05 AM – 3 hours, 20 minutes until sunrise

Waiting for Bill to wake up, Dipper paced back and forth and considered his options. One thing seemed quite obvious to him: in order to get the lake entity to keep her word, there was a high likelihood that he’d have to force her hand. 

A plan began to formulate. The most glaring problem though, was that it would require going back to the shack— he couldn’t build one on such sort notice, especially not with his lack of current supplies.

Bill yawned, causing Dipper to jump in surprise.

He turned around to see the demon sitting up, stretching. The knees of the leggings they wore were ripped and tattered, and Dipper winced— he had no idea how he was going to explain that to Mabel. 

They had dark bags under their eyes, and their hair was messier than it had any right to be; but they seemed to be awake and aware of their surroundings, so Dipper strode over to the table, picked up the map, and handed it to them.

Bill blinked down at it. They looked up at Dipper, then back at the map, then there mouth fell into a small ‘o’. “This is— what the heck?”

“What?” Dipper asked, narrowing his brows in confusion.

“Uh—” they hesitated. They seemed to study Dipper for a moment before they continued, leaning over the map. “This isn’t— this is a map of the underground in my dimens— in the dimension I used to live in. It’s not like I ever actually went down there, so— But we’re not—” Their face hardened. “Nevermind.” 

“Bill—”

“I’ll tell you later,” they said dismissively. “It can wait.”

Dipper proceeded to explain his plan to Bill, who seemed lost in thought but nodded at intervals, and occasionally pointed out something Dipper had missed. Minutes later, they were picking the lock of the left door. It was relatively easy—Dipper had years of practice from staying with his Grunkle Stan—and they began making their way through the (oddly dust–less) corridor. 

Unlit torches lined the wall. Bill asked if Dipper had a lighter with him, and he pulled one from his pocket and handed it to them. Bill lit one torch every few torches they passed, so they could more or less see where they were going. 

“Plus,” they’d explained, “This way we know which hallways we’ve been through and which we haven’t.”

The two of them speed–walked through the endless winding corridors, pausing at every corner to check the map; Dipper set the pace, anxious that they wouldn’t get through in time. He kept checking his watch.

They passed through more than a few rooms, some larger, some smaller. None seemed important to their assignment, so they didn’t stay long; however, every few rooms would be filled with bookshelves— or tables and seats, giving the appearance that meeting used to be held there.

One particularly memorable one, Bill opened a door and narrowly avoided getting hit with a piece of rubble that’d been leaning against the door. It appeared to be part of the ceiling. That one had sparked Dipper’s interest, but his eagerness was dampened when he saw how tense Bill had become.

They brushed off his concern though, and the two left the room rather quickly, closing the door behind them and not speaking of it again.

Unfortunately, destruction seemed to be a common theme as they got closer to the star. 

Dipper rounded a corner to find the hallway blocked off: the ceiling had collapsed, and the remaining part appeared ready to fall at the slightest gust of wind. Bill tensed next to him and inhaled sharply. 

“Alternate path?” Dipper suggested.

Bill set their mouth in a line. “It’s not that bad,” they said, tone laced with annoyance. It didn’t seem to be aimed at him though, so Dipper didn’t comment on it, though he did send Bill a concerned look.

They didn’t notice. Striding into the hallway, they kept their head high and their jaw set as they stepped around pieces or rubble. Dipper followed with raised eyebrows. He eyed the ceiling more than once, but it seemed to be holding up for the time being.

“Amn’t I supposed to be the supid one?” he asked— it was worded as a joke, but it wasn’t. Not really.

Bill tensed further. Dipper couldn’t see their face, but he was ninety–nine percent sure they were scowling. 

“Fair reminder, you’re in a mortal body, and said mortal body just took the brunt of a curse meant to— how did you put it? ‘Suck the life out of you?’”

“Wow, thanks for reminding me.” They ducked under a hanging wire, Dipper following a few paces behind.

“Is that what this is about? Is this just you being a masochist? Because I have no clue how you got a body in the first place, but it sure as hell isn’t replaceable.”

Okay, maybe he was being a little unfair. It wasn’t as if he wasn’t just as reckless as this version of the dream–demon, but he might’ve been just a little bitter about other–Bill throwing him down a flight of stairs. He hated whenever he knew he was in the wrong, and knew he should feel guilty—or at the very least, regret it—but didn’t. 

“Sorry, that was uncalled for,” he said quietly.

“Yeah,” Bill muttered.

The two of them had nearly made it out when the ground began to shake, and they both froze for the entirety of half a second before turning to look at each other. There was a crash behind them as something fell. 

“Run!” Dipper shouted, grabbing Bill’s arm and practically dragging them behind him as he booked it towards the door at the end of the hallway. He leaped over a fallen filing cabinet, nearly falling on his face, but catching himself and using the momentum to stumble–run forward. Bill was a half–step behind him, Dipper still gripping their arm.

Dust filled the air. Dipper’s eyes burned, and he fumbled with the doorknob at the end of the tunnel, Bill’s loud coughing only furthering his panic. He wrenched open the door, and the two of them darted through. Dipper slammed it shut behind them and released Bill’s arm.

Dipper leaned against the wall and wiped the sweat from his brow, panting.

Bill slumped down and sat on the floor, rubbing dust from his eyes; after they caught their breath, they asked, “Are you—” they broke off with a sharp cough,“Are you okay?”

Dipper nodded wearily. “Yeah. You?”

“Fine,” they said despondently. After a moment, they added, “You were right. We should’ve gone another way, I’m— er, I’m sorry.”

Dipper shrugged, pushing his hair out of his face. “Could’ve been worse. Sorry for being short with you, I’m not— I wasn’t upset with you, I just took it out on you because you were there; and I shouldn’t have. I’m trying to get better about stuff like that, sorry.”

Bill nodded, eyeing the ground. 

The two of them rested for around ten minutes before they pulled themselves together enough to continue on.

2:55 AM – 2 hours, 30 minutes until sunrise

“I’d been there before,” Bill said. They were walking down a narrower hallway in near darkness. The lighter had been lost in their tumble out of the collapsing hallway, along with a good many of Dipper’s supplies. “That hallway, I mean.

“That map,” they pointed at the glowing silver tablet in Dipper’s hand, “Isn’t just identical to the design of The Underground at— at my old place. Everything is identical. My friend, she threw up in that hallway. I barely ever went down there, but her girlfriend—she was really rich, by the way— had rented out one of those rooms for her coming of age party. My friend had wanted me to come, but we never made it, because she got food poisoning right before we got there.”

“The Underground?”

“Uh, think like, a ‘secret’ meeting place for government officials with too much time on their hands. If you ask me, I think they just wanted to think of themselves as mysterious and cool, so they built themself an underground walkway with cobblestones and crap,” they said, their words tinged with bitterness. “Now I just wish I’d memorized a map of it.”

“That does sound like a rich person thing to do,” Dipper said. 

Bill made a face and shrugged. “I just— It’s freaking me out. Because this,” they gestured to the tunnel around them, “Doesn’t exist anymore. Not where I’m from, and I know for a fact it burned up with the rest of the place, so it’s not like they transferred it here before everything went down.”

Dipper halted in his tracks. “Bill,” he said, voice much calmer than he felt, “Hypothetically, how would you go about asking someone if they’d know if someone had been in their head?”

Bill froze. They turned and met Dipper’s eyes, their own wide and horrified.

“I— Oh my fucking God. I’m so stupid. She— holy fuck.” They let out a slightly hysterical laugh. “That’s why she— God, I’m such an idiot.”

“Bill?” Dipper asked, alarmed.

“I— No, I didn’t— what the fuck. How the hell did I not realize?”

“Bill!” Dipper repeated, firmer this time. 

They covered their face with their hands. “Sorry, just— She was in my head. I thought— We were talking, and— I think I underestimated her,” they finished weakly. “I thought we were in neutral territory, I guess I just wasn’t paying attention like I usually do, and no wonder she kicked me out. She didn’t dislike me, she just wanted to get me away before I realized I’d never left my own mind.”

“So the tunnels that you never went through?”

“She probably based them off the ones I had, knowing that I wouldn’t know any better.” Bill scowled and looked away, cheeks ablaze with what Dipper assumed to be a mixture of frustration and shame.

Dipper turned back to the map. He held it loosely in his hands, gazing down at it with annoyance. He tilted it slightly to the side, and that’s when it caught his eye. Inside the tiny indentions that carved out the map were tiny marks. He must not have seen them when putting together the puzzle because he’d been staring straight down at the pieces, rather than looking at them from an angle. 

He squinted at it, bringing the map closer to his face. “Bill,” he said, mouth open slightly in confusion, “How good is your eyesight?”

“Uh, I? Don’t know? It’s not like I’ve been to an eye doctor in the past— how long have I been here, twelve hours?”

Dipper made no comment, just shoved the map at them. “Look. Inside the ridges. Can you read what it says?”

Bill took the tablet with a puzzled, hesitant expression that quickly morphed into realization whenever they held it up to their eye and squinted at it at an angle. They made an ‘o’ with their mouth. “Uh, yes and no? These aren’t letters, they’re numbers.”

“What numbers?”

“Uh, they seem random?”

“Are they within a certain range?”

“I don’t think so? There’s a lot of them, so…”

“Are any of them thicker than others? In a different font? Divisible by 26? Have a dot above them?”

“Hold up, gimme a sec. Also, I don’t have the numbers divisible by 26 memorized?”

That made Dipper pause. “Wow, how young are you? 

“Oi! What, do you have them memorized or something?”

“No; however, I’m certain other–Bill did. He was smarter than Ford— Granted, he was incredibly old, that’s why I was asking if you were young or something. Well, I suppose ‘young’ and ‘old’ are relative terms, but—”

“I’m only a millennia old.”

Dipper’s eyes widened. “In Earth years?”

“I think our years run slightly longer. How long is an Earth year?”

“365 days, and each day is 24 hours.”

“Only a little more then.”

“That’s? I— And that’s young to you guys?”

“I mean, yeah?”

Dipper shook his head in disbelief, curiosity lingering behind his eyes. He remembered the tablet. “Wait, you never answered any of my questions.”

“Oh yeah, sorry. Uh, what were they again?”

Dipper repeated them, and Bill hummed quietly as they checked for each of Dipper’s inquiries. Nothing. They then checked to see if any of the numbers were divisible by the number of letters in a few of the languages Bill knew, to no avail.

“Uh, okay. Can you go through and tell me each number that’s equal to or less than 26?’

“Three… fifteen… eighteen, fourteen… five, eighteen… uh…nineteen… twenty… fifteen, fourteen…” There was a long pause. “Sorry, that’s not all, it’s just that a bunch of these are in the hundreds. Uh, five… I think that’s it?”

Dipper mused over that for a quick minute; Bill was quiet so he could concentrate, for which he was grateful.His head shot up. “Cornerstone! Three is ‘c’, fifteen is ‘o’, eighteen equals ‘r’, and so on!”

Bill tilted their head. “There are a lot of corners though?”

“The one this is referring to probably has information about the building inscribed into it, and I’d bet it’s probably close to here,” he said, pointing to the glowing golden star on the map.

3:35 AM – 1 hour, 50 minutes until sunrise

They continued. Once, they missed their turn, and it was only by luck that they were able to find their way back to the place they were supposed to have turned. They were much more careful after that. 

The destruction seemed to lessen after a while; however, any joy at this was short–lived, for it was not long until they found one of the hallways they were supposed to take was not, in fact, a hallway. Rather, it was a dark staircase that spiraled down at a very steep angle.

The deeper they went underground, the longer it would take to  get out, and they still hadn’t found Shmebulock.

There were no handrails. Dipper put a hand on the wall to brace himself as he walked, holding the map out in front of the two of them for the tiny bit of light its glowing provided them. It felt like hours before they were able to step off the stairs and onto level ground. The air had grown musty, and Bill pulled their sweater over their nose to block out the smell, wincing every time they opened a door, as that sent out a new waft of stale air.

Dipper was glad he had a bad sense of smell.

The pathway got narrower and narrower, so Dipper and Bill had to walk single file— Dipper was just grateful he didn’t have to crawl again.

“Shmebulock better have gotten there somehow, because if we need him to break the curse and he’s a no–show, I’m going to be very pissed,” Dipper muttered into the silence that had fallen over them, and not just as a result of their lack of speaking. Their footsteps sounded muffled.

“Meh, I wouldn’t worry about that. His magical signature is pretty weak, but there’s still a bit of it lingering on us from earlier, so it wouldn’t be that hard for me to use it to cover my own.”

“Identity fraud? My Grunkle Stan would love you—” Dipper realized what he said a moment too late, and snorted darkly. “I take that back. Under no circumstances should you introduce yourself to either of my grunkles, they’ll shoot without hesitation. Well, my Grunkle Ford will; my Grunkle Stan is more of a fists guy.”

Bill gasped dramatically, feigned affrontedness. “Ngh— Is that a challenge? You know what? I will befriend your Grunkle Stan, even if it kills me: I swear on my… uh, I don’t have anything to swear on— wait, scratch that, I have my dignity. I swear on my dignity—”

“Dying is undignified. Don’t do death, kids.”

“Don’t tell me what to do!” Bill said, straining very hard to keep themself from bursting out laughing.

Dipper snorted, and that broke the dam. Both of them turned away and began giggling like madmen.

When was the last time he’d laughed like that, let alone on an adventure? It was strange, because he certainly remembered the days when adventures meant him and Mabel having the time of their lives, but it felt so long ago. 

And this wasn’t that. Bill wasn’t Mabel, and Dipper wasn’t the middle schooler that had arrived in Gravity Falls all those years ago, and he no longer wished to be anything like the man who wrote the original three journals.

Why, then, did the nostalgia hit him so hard that his chest hurt?

The change was so sudden, as it so often was; the amused grin on his face contorting into something ridden with melancholy— a melancholy that he could do nothing but wait out. It would go away eventually. It had to.

“You okay?”

Dipper nodded. “Yeah.” 

It was minutes later, and a few dozen feet deeper underground that Dipper spoke again. His voice was hesitant. “My twin sister, Mabel.” He kicked a stone, watching in skid off into the darkness. “We used to do stuff like this. She didn’t stop, just… found other people. We used to wake each other up every morning with stupid hand–puppets, and we swore up and down that we wouldn’t end up like our grunkles.”

“Your grunkles?” Bill interrupted softly.

“Uh, they’re twins too. Had this huge falling out, didn’t speak for ten years, and then messed things up so bad that my Grunkle Ford was trapped out of our dimension for another thirty.” Dipper laugh hung thick in the air with bitterness. “My Grunkle Stan spent that entire thirty–years working his ass off to bring my Grunkle Ford home, and the first thing Ford did was to deck him in the face. Me and Mabel were there when it happened. We were twelve. I thought Ford was in the right, for heaven’s sake.”

“Oh. Wow, uh… That’s…interesting?”

Dipper snorted, bemused. “Yeah.”

“What were you saying about your sister?”

Shrugging, he answered, “I don’t know where I was going with that. Obviously we don’t hate each other, but… that’s also kind of worse in a way. ‘The opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s apathy,’ and all that, which isn’t necessarily something I believe to be true, but it applies to this situation in a way. At least if we hated each other, then…”

“Then you wouldn’t feel like strangers?”

Dipper tilted his head in acknowledgement, but remained silent. “At least,” he finished quietly a minute later, “We would still have real conversations once in a while. And it’s not her fault: she’s allowed to have her own life; and if that life doesn’t include me then so be it. I know there’s nothing wrong with her moving on, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less.”

“Sorry, Messy Hair,” Bill said quietly. “That sounds like it sucks.”

Dipper suddenly felt embarrassed, and shrugged nonchalantly. “Um,” he said, making a show of looking down at the map, “Given our current travel time, I’d estimate that we get to the glowing–golden–star–of– extremely –creative–markers within a few minutes. We just have to make a right at the next turn, and stay on that hallway until— well, until we reach it, whatever ‘it’ may be.”

“Okay, so, I know you’re being sarcastic,” Bill began with a comforting grin. They seemed to be allowing for the change of subject. “But, uh, I’ve only ever seen, like, one or two maps marked with stars. Cultural difference, I guess.”

Dipper stopped and turned to look at them, mildly intrigued, all thoughts of the impending countdown until sunrise temporarily thrown to the wind. “That’s interesting, so what is the norm? In media, stuff is usually marked with an ‘x’ or something a long those lines, but stars are typically what I’ve actually seen in real life. Granted, the only place I’ve found treasure maps is Gravity Falls, so,” he shrugged, “you can take my words with a grain of salt.”

“Cool! Um, in what I’ve seen, the place of interest is usually either circled, or else there’s a picture of the thing drawn over the location.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Dipper saw the light of the map reflecting on the face of his watch. Instinctively, he glanced down at it, and sucked in a sharp breath. “We need to hurry, it’s already 4:15. We should continue this conversation later though. If you want to, that is.”

“Sure,” Bill answered. “Long as we don’t die tonight— this morning? Nevermind. I dunno what’ll happen to me if this thingee,” they gestured to their body, “Dies, and I don’t wanna find out.” They bit their lip, and added, “Actually, that’s a lie. Finding out would be dope, just not through trial and error.”

Chapter Text

4:20 AM – 1 hour, 5 minutes until sunrise

They continued down the last corridor of their journey. The temperature dropped a few noticeable degrees, which Dipper did not think boded well for the easiness of their task, and overall was the just the type of bad omen you’d expect from an underground adventure.

The other thing that changed was the cleanliness: the broken cobblestones turned into polished slab stones better suited for a colosseum; the musty smell which both of them had grown accustomed to faded away into non–existence, replaced by fresh air; and when Dipper glanced up, he caught sight of a firefly, perched on the wall like a tiny lightbulb. 

It was not alone. Another was floating in the air, landing in Bill’s hair before either of them could react. Dipper narrowed his eyes. In the calmest voice he could muster, he said, “Don’t move. Act natural. If it feels threatened, it’ll sting, which involves it injecting a painful venom into its victim’s bloodstream— and while the venom isn’t deadly, it can cause hallucinations and paranoia that ranges from mild to severe. So—”

Bill glared at him, eyes urgent. “Brilliant! Now how do I get it off me?”

“I can’t do anything about it until it gets off you, so be ready.” He slowly slipped a hand over his watch and began unscrewing one of the knobs. “When I say ‘now,’ throw yourself to the ground and stay there until I give you the all—” The firefly left Bill’s head, hovering above their hair as if looking for another place to land. “Now!”

Dropping to the ground, Bill threw their arms up to cover their face. Dipper moved the moment Bill was far enough away for him to safely open fire, gently holding the unscrewed knob between his index finger and his thumb and aiming for the trajectory of the firefly. 

He pinched down. From the knob came a thin streak of blinding lilac light, hitting the bug right as it began streaking towards him. It disintegrated. Without looking, he spun on his heel and took a step back. Then he shot the second of the three lasers the knob contained at the firefly on the wall. 

The lazer caught its wing, and it fell to the ground, where Dipper stomped on it. He ground the bug between his heel and the floor until it was just a smear on the otherwise–pristine tiles.

Bill watched, wide eyed. “Damn, Messy Hair.”

“They become aggressive very quickly,” Dipper explained once the threat was terminated. “And I didn’t want to risk one of us getting stung. That being said, they never stray far from their colony, so we need to get away from here.” He held out a hand and helped Bill up from the floor.

“Lasers?” Bill teased, brushing the dirt of their clothes.

Dipper strode on, Bill a half step behind him. “I’ve been stung before, okay? It hurt like hell, and I’m pretty sure I tried to fight a tourist, but no one will tell me what exactly happened.”

“You tried to fight a tourist?” They grinned. “Is that on tape? I’d pay to see that!”

Dipper raised an eyebrow. “With whose money?”

“Rude!”

At the end of the corridor was a pair of heavy brass doors, each one without a lock. Dipper moved forward to open them; but Bill frowned, stuck out a hand, and grabbed his shoulder. “Er, those look like the type to close behind somebody and trap ‘em inside. Like, uh, a bank vault. Or… something. I get bad vibes from them.”

Dipper sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I left all my explosives at home,” he said with a straight face. “When you say ‘bad vibes,’ do you mean metaphorically or literally?”

“Metaphorically, but only because all the energy waves here are really overwhelming. I can’t focus on any one in particular.”

“Alright. Let’s survey the inside from out here, and if it looks safe, we’ll go in.” A sudden thought came to him, and he turned back to Bill. “What if it’s not meant to trap us in, but to keep something else out?” He knelt in front of the doors and squinted his eyes. “There’s no seal, so I don’t think we need to worry about any type of cursed or poisoned gas, but…”

He glanced at them. Was he really ready to trust them with a weapon? Would it be giving them a chance to prove themself, or a chance to drive a knife into his gut? Both, he supposed… and it wasn’t like this particular Bill had proven themself untrustworthy. Not yet.

In a single swooping movement, he pulled the thin dagger from the holster on his upper arm and held it out to Bill, handle–first. It was thin and only a few inches long, but  it’s blade was wicked sharp— and deadly, if applied right.

Bill blinked at it and visibly shrunk back. “Uh, I… don’t… know how to use it,” they finished weakly, fidgeting. 

Dipper narrowed his eyes, looking the demon up and down. “Okay, that’s a lie if I ever heard one,” he said bluntly. “What, are you going to stab me if I give you it?”

“No!” They shouted; clearly louder then they’d intended, because immediately after, they cringed and repeated, quieter, “Uh, no. Definitely not.”

“Are you allergic to steel or something? Is this, like, a vampire–silver type situation?”

“No!” they snapped.

“Well, we don’t know what’s in there. What do you plan on doing if I open the door and a whole–ass wooly–mammoth runs out?”

“I—” They scowled. “Why can’t I open the door, and you can fight the hypothetical wooly–mammoth?”

Dipper blinked. The idea hadn’t even occurred to him. There was a large chance that opening the doors would trigger a magical rebound, and there was no way in hell he’d allow anyone else to be in the range of fire if/when that came to pass.

Bill had the better chance of breaking the curse, and better Dipper be injured than one of his companions.

Assuming Bill could hold their own in a fight, then the chances of them getting injured in the instance that there was some creature in the room was much lower than if they opened the door and were thrown backward by some pulse of energy.

He explained this to them. Their expression remained puzzled throughout it, up until the point where Dipper said that they’d be more likely to be able to break Shmebulock’s curse than he would.

Their face relaxed with understanding. “Oh, okay.” They sent a forlorn look at the doors, then reluctantly took the blade from him, turning it around in their hand as they adjusted their grip on it. 

Dipper watched them. It was his turn to be puzzled— Why was Bill so reluctant to take the blade, when it was clearly at home in their hand?

Bill backed a couple dozen feet down the hallway, paused, and then suddenly ran back to him. “Do you still have that lazer?”

Dipper hesitated, but nodded.

“Cool! Can I see it for a sec?”

He once again unscrewed it from his watch, but said, “It won’t be of much use against a large opponent, unless you’re planning to aim for one of the pupils—”

“No, no, that’s not what I want it for.” They bounced on the soles of their feet impatiently, and when Dipper handed it over, they slipped their sweatshirt over their head. Beneath it was the black collared shirt the’d arrived in.

Dipper watched in utter confusion as Bill rolled up the sweatshirt—which Mabel was definitely never getting back, he’d have to replace it somehow and hope she didn’t notice—tying the sleeves around the roll in order to keep it in place. They then pointed the laser at the top of the roll. 

And promptly froze, a  multitude of emotions flickering across their face. Without looking at Dipper, they mumbled, “Uh, can you do this part?”

“Depends, what’re you trying to do?”

Bill blinked, then seemed to realize that Dipper had no idea what they’d been doing, and their mouth fell into a small ‘o’. “Oh! I was going to heat up the outside of the door,” they said, as if it was obvious. 

“Why?”

“Because extreme temperatures weaken most types of instantaneous magics?”

“How does that work?”

“Um, it’s kinda complicated. I can explain more later, but unless you’ve already mastered the basics…”

“I haven’t, my research tends to focus mainly on creatures. So you want me to light the sweatshirt on fire?”

“Er, yeah?”

Dipper didn’t push, but he really did want to know why they didn’t want to light it themself. Blue fire was one of the biggest things he associated with other–Bill. Still, it seemed like a good idea—Bill could be deceiving him, but honestly he doubted it—so Dipper aimed the laser at the sweatshirt and pinched.

The lilac beam of light shot out, and the sweatshirt burst into flames. Bill immediately picked up the not–burning part of the sweatshirt sushi roll and brought it to the door. Focusing specifically on the part where the bottom of the door met the floor, Bill let the flames lick at the brass door and heat it to the point that it would hurt to touch.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending how you looked at it), Brass was made of a combination of zinc and copper, both of which had high melting points. 

Smoke drifted down the tunnel, and Dipper just hoped anything that noticed would be smart enough to run away from a possible fire rather than towards it. He kept his ears open for footsteps.

When the flames on the rolled–up sweatshirt got too close to Bill’s hand for comfort, Dipper said, “Don’t burn yourself.”

Bill wordlessly tossed the flaming roll into one of the corners. A moment later, they said, “Uh, we didn’t think this through, did we.”

“Ngh,” Dipper responded eloquently, watching as the fire burned the slabs black. “At least ceramic isn’t flammable?”

Bill hummed noncommittally; they seemed distracted, their eye glued to the flames and a small frown on their face as they chewed on their bottom lip. 

“I guess we should just wait for it to burn out?” said he.

“Or you could open that door instead,” Bill suggested, jutting their thumb towards the door to the right, as the burning sweatshirt was in the corner to the left of the left door. They bent down and picked up the dagger from the ground where they had placed it. “No time like the present!”

“This party never stops! Time is dead and meaning has no meaning!”

4:30 AM – 55 minutes until sunrise

“Yeah,” Dipper mumbled, watching as they strode down the hallway, their back to him. Shaking his head, he turned to focus on his current task. All in all, it was simple, if not slightly dangerous. 

He wrapped his hands around the (thankfully cool) doorknob and planted his feet on the ground, then tightened his grip. He leaned forward, readying himself for the probable backlash. “Ready?” he called down the hallway to Bill.

“Yep!” Bill replied, voice sounding oddly strained. “Go ahead!”

Dipper cautiously opened the door. It all happened in an instant. An invisible force ripped his hands away from the doorknob and flung him backwards, his vision blurring and stomach dropping. Vaguely, he heard someone shout.

Then he hit the ground and the air left his lungs. His brain didn’t register the pain until a half–second after the initial impact, a second of nothing before there was everything, when his chest burned a hot red and his limbs were wracked with agony. He instinctively rolled onto his stomach and pushed himself up slightly. Air, he needed to breathe.

He was shouting ‘Ow!’ over and over again at the top of his lungs, until the pain receded enough for him to regain his bearings. He forced himself to stop screaming and took a deep, shuttering breath.

All of him ached, but the initial shock was fading fast. Thankfully, he hadn’t hit anything other than the floor; and seemed uninjured, save for some nasty scrapes and bruises. He pushed himself into a sitting position. 

Bill was driving the blade down over and over again. They were on top of some sort of creature—a ghoul, Dipper realized—and had it pinned to the ground, their knees digging into its shoulderblades, and was working on separating its neck from its body. 

The thing was limp under them, but they kept stabbing. Their eye appeared slightly wild, the ghouls dark–blue blood splattered all across their arms and shirt. Panting, Bill sat up, still clutching the blade in their hands.

Upon seeing Dipper, their shoulders lost a bit of their tension. They slumped forward, closing their eye and breathing heavily, their brow narrowed. 

Dipper belatedly realized Bill was shaking.

He forced himself to get up, wincing at the leftover aching, and cautiously made his way towards the demon. When Bill didn’t respond, he knelt next to them. “Hey, are you—”

Bill jerked backwards, eye glazed over. “Don’t touch me!” they shouted.

Dipper raised his hands in a placating motion and leaned away from them. “Hey,” he said, “You’re, um, in Gravity Falls. With me, Di— Messy Hair. You’re safe,” he tried. Safe was not a word he’d use to describe the situation he and Bill were currently entangled in, but his goal right then wasn’t to be honest, it was to calm down his frightened friend.

Bill’s breathing was getting shallow and quick, to the point they were gasping for air. 

“Uh, shoot—” Dipper took a deep breath. “Hey, can you look at me? It’s me, Messy Hair. Can you try and match my breathing?”

“Don’t— I can’t—” They began to hyperventilate. “I— I— I—” 

“Where are you?” he asked softly, trying not to let any panic seep into his tone.

A frightened eye fell on him, finally. “C— Cave,” they managed.

“Yeah, we’re in a cave near my home. Don’t take your eyes off me. What are some things you can feel?”

Bill unconsciously moved their fingers, which seemed to draw their attention. “I—” They looked down at their fingers, still covered in ghoul–blood, and blinked slowly. Recognition flickered across their face. They looked up again, tentatively meeting Dipper’s eyes. “Messy Hair.”

Dipper nodded. 

“Sorry,” they whispered. They glanced at the knife in their hand once more, then held it out, handle pointed towards Dipper. 

Dipper didn’t protest. He took the blade from them and, seeing nothing else, began to wipe the blood off with his sleeve. He kept his attention on his task, hearing Bill stand up and shuffling. 

His eyes flickered down to the decapitated ghoul. It was probably bad for moral to leave bodies lying around, but Dipper had no intentions of moving it.

“Er— Are you okay?” Bill asked, sounding like they had a sore throat. They had managed to get most of the blood off their hands; although, that basically just meant relocating it to their clothes.

Dipper gave him a look. “You’re asking me, why exactly?”

“Er… you’ve got…” They trailed off, lifting their finger to their right temple and tapping it.

Confused, Dipper lifted their hand to his own, which did feel wet. When he brought his fingers away, they shone red with blood. “Oh. I thought it was sweat.”

“Come here?” They leaned close to Dipper, examining the wound. Dipper let them. They seemed less anxious, now that they had a task to work on.

They hummed softly. “Head injuries. It looks worse than it is, ‘cuz of all the blood. I wouldn’t worry too much about it. Just, you know, don’t let it get infected. Try and staunch the bleeding with something.” 

“You seem to know a lot about first aid.”

“I had to.”

Dipper eyed them, but decided it was probably a bad time to push. “Are you okay? Both physically and mentally, I mean.”

“Yeah,” they said softly, looking up at the ceiling. “I— Ghouls have to be decapitated. They’ll just regenerate otherwise. So I couldn’t finish it off without removing its head, and it was a bit, uh, triggering. Bad memories, and all that fun stuff.”

 “Sorry you have to deal with that. If you think somethings gonna trigger you though, can you tell me next time? I’m not gonna ask you to do something that’s going to put you into a panic attack unless it’s a life or death situation.”

“Uh, yeah,” Bill said, but they sounded doubtful.

Dipper refrained from sighing. 

Wow, he thought to himself a minute later, shaking his head, I am such a hypocrite.

5:00 AM – 25 minutes until sunrise

The door was opened just a crack, and Dipper thought it was quite unfair that he’d been thrown ten feet and the door hadn’t even had the decency to open all the way. With a sigh, he leaned back on his heels, and asked, “Was the ghoul the booby–trap, or do you think there’s more? Are you getting any readings?”

Bill, who was quieter than normal in the exhaustion–filled post panic attack haze, crossed their arms; it was not a defensive stance, but rather as if they were holding themself. They closed their eye for a brief moment. “Sorry,” they said when they opened it. “I’m… really worn out, honestly. I… it feels weird? Not something I’m used to, but I know it from somewhere — Sorry, I really can’t remember. It’s not emitting anything powerful, but that’s probably just because it’s dormant.”

“Don’t apologize,” Dipper muttered absently. Stepping forward, he nudged his foot into the crack and used his shoe to open the door the rest of the way. In his hand, the blade he’d given Bill earlier. 

The room couldn’t have been more than a dozen yards in each direction, its dirt walls a sharp contrast to the pristine design of the hallway leading up to it. It would’ve seemed rather anticlimactic, if not for the bronze padlocked chest in center stage, as tall as a gnome and no larger than one of Mabel’s craft boxes.

Upon the stone floor, traces of a slimy dark liquid left over from the ghoul’s inhabitance of the place.

“Cornerstone,” he muttered to himself, then made his way into the room. The lighting in the room was dim, but even more questionable, is that there wasn’t any visible source of light to begin with.

He checked one corner, then another, then another. It was the third he checked that was inscribed, ‘1217,’ and then below it, ‘In Honor of My Good Friend—” Dipper presumed what was written afterwards was a name, but it was a collage of squiggles and lines that seemed to shift and rearrange themselves whenever he tilted his head.

“Hey!” he called out to Bill. “Come look at this?”

Bill walked over to where he stood. They hesitated, kneeling down to look at the writing. 

“Can you read that last part?”

They didn’t respond, their face contorting with frustration, their fists balled at their sides. 

“Bill?”

“It’s—” they hesitated for a long moment, “—Not translatable. Sorry.”

Dipper tilted his head and squinted at them, but their eye was glued to the writing and they didn’t appear to notice. Or if they did, they were purposefully pretending not to.

“Is it a name?”

“No,” Bill answered smoothly, turning to look up at Dipper, “You guys would call it a wish–well.”

Dipper knelt next to them, reaching forward to brush the pad of his thumb against the stone. When nothing happened—good or bad—he grasped one side with his thumb and the other with his middle finger; the stone was about as wide as his fist. He wiggled it from side to side. It moved slightly, but not enough to be significant.

He took the blade and, placing one hand atop the stone, wiggled the tip down in between where the stone met the wall. It went down a few centimeters before hitting rock bottom. He then dragged it sideways, sawing around the brick like one might a cake stuck to the inside of a pan.

Bill sat back on their heels and watched wordlessly as Dipper worked.

When he’d gotten all the way around with only minimal resistance, he tried again to remove it. This time, it came up easily; although, Dipper did have to do some maneuvering to get it out.

As he’d suspected the bottom was not cemented to the ground. He cut one of his fingers against the edge of the stone; but it barely stung, so he paid it no mind. The stone came fully out, and Dipper placed it beside him and leaned forward—without putting his face directly over the opening, because he wasn’t about to make the same mistake twice, and Ford wasn’t there to perform first–aid this time—, glancing into the opening. 

Beside him, Bill did the same.

In the hole lay a bronze key as pristine as the day it was made, not a single scratch tarnishing its design. Bronze, to match the padlock on the chest, a key that had never before been used; a key kept in an air–tight hole a hundred feet underground and guarded by a ghoul. Dipper cautiously reached in and picked it up.

His fingers tingled where he touched it. He cradled it in his hand, turning to raise his eyebrows in a shared look of victory with Bill. 

But Bill was leaping up, alarm spread across their face; and Dipper, immediately on alert, turned to see what Bill had already: as silent as the deadly–quiet room around it, the doors were swinging shut. 

“Oh for—,” Dipper swore. His eyes fell on a mangled shoe— Bill’s mangled shoe, clearly meant to have held the door open, laying there like a man who had a single job, failed miserably, and paid for it with his life.

There was no slamming or rumbling as the doors closed, no indication that it was a seeling of their tomb, but Dipper knew without having to check that the doors would not be unlocked. There was no lock on the inside.

He turned to Bill. 

They hadn’t moved, glaring viciously at the shoe–that–was–no–more. 

Dipper, who’d been about to ask if (since the lock was clearly something supernatural) Bill would be able to break or unlock it, instead found himself asking, “A shoe?” There was no heat behind his words. In fact, he sounded slightly amused.

“It’s worked before!” snapped Bill, “I blame it on the shoe. Your sister has wimpy shoes.”

“Get your own shoes then,” Dipper retorted, wriggling his eyebrows.

Bill snorted, then wandered off towards the doors. Dipper fiddled with the key in his hand, trying to think. 

Oh. The key.

He opened his hand and glanced down at it, laying innocently on his palm. He closed his fist once more. Making his way over to the chest, he made a mental note to consult with Bill this time before removing an object that could potentially trigger an attempt on their lives.

He knelt in front of the chest. The stone was cold against his scratched–up knees. With a sudden burst of panic, he glanced down at his watch, irrationally worried that they’d passed their deadline without realizing it.

Irrational, because they’d know if sunrise came, for their failure would mean the loop would start once more and he, Dipper, would cease to exist for another thousand years— give or take a few.

5:11 AM – 14 minutes until sunrise

Okay, they were hitting it a bit close, but they’d gotten in. They had the key— given that the Newton’s Cradle was in this chest, and not another treasure map or something equally as infuriating. 

“I’m going to open it,” he said to Bill. 

They didn’t turn around, but did give him a thumbs up in acknowledgement. 

Taking a deep breath, he slipped the key into the padlock; turned it; and, with steady fingers, opened the lock. He placed it on the ground beside him, exhaling as he did so. He flicked up the latch. 

As he lifted up the heavy lid, he bit his bottom lip, hard. When he finally mustered up the courage to look, it turned out his anxiety had been for nothing.

For at the bottom of the chest sat the Newton’s Cradle, slightly larger than his hand, gleaming an ominous silver and radiating an air of wrongness that he couldn’t think to describe. It was still. An object created for motion, lacking motion; a thousand years on replay while time remains stuck in a stand–still at the mercy of a product of its own creation.

“Um, should I— should I touch it?” he asked.

Bill made a noise. “Nhgk. Uh… go ahead? You can touch anything! It just might be the last time you touch anything. Good luck!”

“Helpful,” Dipper drawled, lips twitching upwards. “But since your continued existence depends on this place not crumbling around us, mind telling me if touching this will blow us both up?”

“Probably not. She wouldn’t put Shmeb through ten–thousand years of trials to force him to learn a lesson, only to kill him right after. Probably. She seems too holier–than–thou to do that.”

“Oh yeah,” he snarked, fingers twitching against the crate as he glared down at the Newton’s Cradle. “He’s supposed to be here. Wonder how going solo is working out for him.”

Bill didn’t respond, presumably focusing on whatever they were working on with the doors. Dipper sighed and decided he might as well just go for it. He warily lowered his hand inside the chest, fingers brushing against the cradle, and then wrapping around the top of it and pulling it out.

Holding it out at arm’s length, he stared at it for a long moment before setting it down next to the bronze lock and key. “Huh.” 

He thought back to Shmebulock’s words. The gnome had said the Newton’s Cradle had been in motion when he’d first messed with it, so it only made since that putting it back in motion would allow time to break through the threshold and continue onwards.

Slowly, he lifted his hand to take the ball furthest to the left between his thumb and index finger—

A thin sheet of dirt rained down on him. He jerked backwards, coughing and rubbing his eyes. “What the—”

In the background, Bill swore viciously.

5:18 AM – 7 minutes until sunrise

“I thought you said nothing would explode!”

“We didn’t explode anything !” Bill said defensively, jumping up from their spot on the floor. The ground shook again, sending another layer of dirt down upon them; Dipper covered his face with one arm and grabbed onto the chest to steady himself with the other. Bill braced themself against the wall.

Once the rumbling let up again, Dipper grabbed the front of his shirt and tugged it up over his mouth and nose. He quickly surveyed the room, eyes burning, but there was nothing they could use to take shelter.

“Whatever’s ha— happening,” Bill said, coughing, “It’s going on above us.”

The two of them made eye contact. The realization hit the two of them at nearly the same time, with all the subtly of a freight train.

Bill inhaled sharply and squeezed their eye shut, flushing as a flurry of emotions flickered across their face. 

The fear and frustration that erupted in Dipper’s chest left him paralized. He couldn’t die, not then, not when he’d come so close— And was quickly followed by a burst of anger so intense that he wanted to cry.

Anger was a secondary emotion, after all. An emotion fueled by other emotions.

And Dipper was feeling a lot of emotions, all very quickly, all very intense, with the typical suddenness that emotions tended to have whenever you lived with bpd. 

What makes bpd worse, he’d learned, was exhaustion; and nothing caused exhaustion like mood swings. Nothing makes you lose sight of your objective and the obvious and fall into black–and–white thinking like bpd.

The Newton’s Cradle lay less than a foot away from his knee, forgotten in the jumble of distorted thoughts overwhelming his mind.

We’re going to die. Ford’s right, I am pathetic. Stupid, stupid, stupid! All I do is mess things up, what’s wrong with me? Just a stupid, arrogant, little kid who threw a fit over being treated the way he deserved to be—

“Dipper!” Bill hissed.

“What?” he snapped. Everything was too much. He couldn’t breathe, there was dust in his lungs and he was suffocating from the inside out.

“I can get the doors open, but I need more time! Do something!”

A broken snort was ripped from his throat. Still, the direct instruction cut through the fog in his brain and he forced himself to assess the situation. He stuck his hands in his pockets and quickly made a mental list of everything he still had: his knife, a pen, a keychain flashlight, his watch— think, Dipper!

The chest. Holding the keychain flashlight between his teeth, the dim light cutting through the dust, he pulled himself up and leaned over the open chest, knife in hand. Quickly, he found the hinges to the lid and leaned in close, squinting and forcing his burning eyes to stay open as he started unscrewing the screws with the knife. It kept slipping, but he forced himself to continue.

The ground shook again, and the knife jerked to the side and sliced the back of the hand he was using to hold onto the lid. Dipper swore. It took less than a second for the blood to bubble to the surface, hand throbbing in pain.

There was only one screw left, and Bill was barely suppressing their coughs; Dipper risked a glance, their face was wracked with desperate concentration, a light yellow glow accumulating around where their fingers met the doors.

Dipper slipped the tip of the knife into the screw and clenched his jaw. He twisted his wrist to the side again and again, until the screw was loose enough that he could yank it out with the trembling fingers of his injured hand, slipping the knife back into its sheath with the other.

He hauled off the lid of the chest, rounded and thankfully not too heavy. As soon as the ground stopped shaking again, he forced himself to stand and stumble over to Bill. The demon’s yellow hair was painted brown with dirt.

Dipper fell to his knees next to them. He lowered it down so some of the weight was resting against the top of Bill’s head, which had to be uncomfortable, but the dirt raining down landed on the lid rather than the two of them. Dipper supported the rest of the weight with his uninjured hand. 

It was just wide enough for the both of them to fit under it, and it went down to the bottom of Dipper’s shoulders.

The back of his hand was bleeding profusely now. He pressed it against his pants in an attempt to staunch the bleeding, ignoring the sharp spike of pain. When the ground shook from the—what was it, third?—aftershock, larger chunks of dirt began falling down into the room.

One hit the lid particularly hard, the sound echoing in his ears, and Dipper watched as the crumbling dirt slipped down off the sides of the lid like a waterfall off the edge of an umbrella. He squeezed his eyes shut.

His muscles burned from holding the lid up so long. He did his best to turn off his mind and zone out, detaching his emotions from what was going around both around him and inside of him. 

When he began seriously thinking that he might pass out if he stayed crouched there, breathing a compound made up of half oxygen and half dirt, Bill straightened next to him. This was the only warning he got before the doors blew open as if struck by a strong gust of wind, flying off their previously hidden hinges and slamming into the hallway walls.

Bill gripped his shoulder, slurring their words as they said, “Awh, shoot.”

Dipper lifted the lid and squinted through the clearing dust, realizing with a burst of silent horror what Bill was referring to. The outside hallway had collapsed.

Beneath them, the ground grumbled unhappily. 

He turned his gaze back to Bill, their eye unfocused and glazed over, their hand using Dipper’s shoulder as a crutch to keep themself upright.

Dipper desperately glanced around the hall and room, surveying their options. They couldn’t stay in there, with the dirt pouring down from above; however, the ceiling of the hallway was probably still unstable, and while the lid protected them from chunks of falling dirt, Dipper doubted it would fare so well against stone.

He had to do something.

Something glinted from beside the chest, something tiny and round and hidden beneath a mound of dirt. 

It came to him.

Chapter Text

5:23 AM – 1 minute 22 seconds before sunrise

He glanced at Bill beside him, and quickly realized that the exhausted demon wasn’t going to be able to hold the lid up by themself. Squashing down the rising panic, he went through his options as quickly as he could. 

At what point does the risk outweigh the benefit?

If he didn’t do anything…

He pushed the lid off the two of them and propped Bill up against the wall.

They made a confused noise in the back of their throat, squinting up at him, their eye red from irritation. Somehow, their eyepatch had stayed in place, seeming like it wouldn’t budge even if the universe was tearing itself in two and Bill was the fault line.

Dipper spared a second to wipe a bead of sweat from Bill’s brow before it could fall and further irritate their eye. He then turned his back to them, no explanation falling from his lips. No words of comfort filled the air between them. The world’s malicious fingers and the crank of time’s drum made for a skilled pair, but graciousness was a trait you could never ascribe to the two  of them.

The world shook beneath his feet. Coincidentally, he didn’t stay on them for long; he pulled himself into a crouched position and half–crawled, half–dragged himself towards the center of the room, head lowered so that he could plow through the dirt and grime that clung to the air.

He held his breath, lungs burning. His eyes filled with tears, blurring the room around him into shades of cascading browns and blacks. He cradled his injured hand closer to his chest. With the other, he began digging, trying to find the Cradle within the quickly increasing mounds of dirt and rubble covering the stone floor.

His fingers brushed against something cool and smooth. Urgently, he pulled it out, eyes filtering over the now–dirt covered Cradle with an unfortunate spike of hesitation as he debated his options on borrowed time.

He set the Cradle back into motion. A soft wave of energy burst outwards, sending a rush of tingles through his skin that caused him to shiver. Then, fingers hovering over it for but a second, he stopped it. 

Promptly, the world around him began to spin. His eyes rolled back into his head, and then he knew no more.

4:55 AM – 30 minutes until sunrise – take two

Dipper gazed down at his fingers, smeared red with blood from the gash on his temple. Huh, he thought absentmindedly. So that’s why I feel so lightheaded… wait a second, wasn’t I—

He glanced upwards at Bill, whose face was contorted with a confusion similar to what Dipper was experiencing.

The dam burst, memories flooding back in and leaving Dipper dizzy and clutching at his head. In doing so, his fingers pressed against the gash on his temple, causing a sharp, stabbing pain in addition to feelings of disorientation and the overwhelming sensor input currently washing over him.

When he came to his senses, Bill was sitting cross–legged on the ground, head in their hands. They grimaced. “Messy Hair,” they said, not looking up, “The last time someone messed with this strand of time, they were stuck in a time loop for ten–thousand years.”

“I only sent us back a half hour!” Dipper protested. “You were literally half–dead—”

“Magically exhausted—”

“And we were being buried alive, and wow is that something I didn’t expect to cross off my bucket list—

“We’re underground,” they said, raising their shoulders then letting them drop, “Better then carbon dioxide poisoning”

“It’s— it’s monoxide. Carbon monoxide. Not dioxide.”

“Tell that to my lawyer,” Bill shot back, then groaned loudly and cast their eyes to the ceiling. 

“You’re the expert here, not me. Maybe don’t pass out next time.”

Bill shot him a look. 

“What, not elated that we’re stuck in time?”

“No, I’m attached to this corporation smartass. I’m not so much of a masochist that I enjoy being buried alive over and over again, are you?”

Dipper raised an eyebrow.“I’m… not a masochist. In general.”

Bill scowled at him, but it lacked any real heat. “I hate you,” they said, sounding grudgingly fond.

“I think you’re pretty great too,” Dipper responded, “Now are we getting out of here or what?”

“Any progress will be reset when the loop restarts.”

“I’m eighty–percent sure that it’ll stop resetting when we get above ground.”

Bill raised their eyebrows dubiously.

“Well, intent matters, right? I thought really hard about us escaping without life–threatening injuries when I put the Newton’s Cradle back into motion. ‘A loop in motion will stay in motion unless acted on by a force—’ Albert Einstein, or some dude; and in this case the metaphorical force will be the act of us escaping.”

“...My prediction that you’d be a crap improviser has been proven correct.”

“I saved your ass.”

Bill wriggled their brows. “Or am I an illusion?”

Dipper reached out and pinched them.

“Oi!” They laughed, jerking away. “Rude!” Their expression morphed into something more serious. “Thank you, though.”

“So which way are we going?”

4:55 AM – 30 minutes until sunrise – take three

Dipper pulled back, gasping for air. The two of them had only made it up two floors before the earthquake came on. He’d lost sight of Bill, and then the air was full of dirt, coating his lungs and making him feel as if he was suffocating.

The two of them started out as soon as they got their bearings, practically sprinting through the hallways— they took the same route as before, hoping the head start would get them out.

An anomaly snuck up from above: a flat creature that could slither across ceilings and walls, with the appearance of a sting–ray. Dipper would’ve been endeared, if it hadn’t hit him around the head with a rock.

The last thing he heard before passing out was Bill shouting.

4:55 AM – 30 minutes until sunrise – take four

“Did Shmebulock trigger some sort of self–defense system, or was this place just designed so that people could get in but not out?” Bill bemoaned. “I swear it wasn’t so hard getting down here.”

Dipper chewed on the inside of his cheek. The two of them were once more in the cave, the remains of the ghoul smeared across the cobblestones. “What happened after I passed out?”

 “Let’s regroup: you got so excited that you didn’t even draw your knife–thingee, it gave you blunt force head trauma, you passed out, I stabbed the thing and threw you over my shoulders, and we made it up another floor,” they deadpanned. “So much for not letting our guards down.”

“Thanks,” Dipper said sarcastically. 

They didn’t make it any farther that loop.

4:55 AM – 30 minutes until sunrise – take seven

Three loops later, Bill lay down on the cave floor and stared up glumly at the stalactites. Dipper sat down next to them, equally discouraged. The two of them had made an unspoken agreement to take that loop off.

After a minute of silence, he said, “This isn’t working.” When Bill didn’t respond, he opened his mouth to continue, but Bill cut him off.

“Shush, I’m trying to think.”

Dipper made a face at the dismissal, but refrained from retorting. His mind wandered. Had anyone tried to contact him? Had they even realized he was missing? Ford would think he was just trying to get a head start, but…

After jumping four trains of thought, he straightened, eyes wide. “Escape routes!”

“Thought of that—”

Dipper deflated.

“—and while I wouldn’t put it past slimy government officials to have secret hallways that no one else knows about—” They cast their gaze to the far wall with the double–doors, “Our fucking lake entity wouldn’t know about them, because I don’t know about them.”

Dipper pondered this. “Not necessarily,” he said slowly. “She seems to like messing with us; I wouldn’t put it past her to make her own secret passages for shits and giggles.”

“That’s… far–fetched.” They rubbed their eyes.

“We’ve got nothing to lose,” Dipper argued. “Do you have a better idea?”

Bill sighed. “Fine.”

4:55 AM – 30 minutes until sunrise – take fifteen

The two of them pursued the idea, came up empty, abandoned it, tried beating the clock using normal hallways for a few loops, failed miserably, and ended up deciding via mutual agreement that searching for an escape route was their best course of action.

“We are not doing that again,” Bill gasped out when the loop restarted.

Dipper nodded, stunned. “I— I can cross being impaled off my bucked list,” he said, his following laugh bordering on hysterical.

“Not funny!” Bill snapped. “I had to watch you bleed out!” 

“Dunno if you noticed, but it’s not as if I was having much fun either.”

“You were making puns!” they protested

He groaned. “C’mon, I made one pun.”

“One is too many when you’re actively gushing blood!”

Dipper grinned. It too bordered on hysterical. “Wow, you’re taking this harder than I am.” That wasn’t strictly true, but it was easier to make jokes than to try and process what had happened.

Bill shook their head in disbelief.

4:55 AM – 30 minutes until sunrise – take twenty–four

The two of them crawled through the maze of steel–enforced tunnels, knees aching.

Bill hummed thoughtfully, breaking the silence. “I honestly thought we’d have to go through at least a hundred restarts before finding a way out.”

“Don’t jinx us.” Less than a minute later, Dipper’s fingers brushed over something, and he paused. Narrowing his eyes, ran his fingers over the slight raised line. “Hold on.”

This wouldn’t have been odd, had the steel before it not been completely smoothed over up until that point. It could’ve simply been a connecting point of some sort, but there was a gnawing feeling in his stomach that wouldn’t go away; therefore, against his better judgment, he slipped out his knife and wedged into the gap where one thin piece of steel overlapped the other.

“What is it?”

Dipper leveraged the knife and pried upwards. A subtle opening in the floor of the tunnel, with hinges on the inside. However, what was beneath it was not another tunnel.

He gazed inside, face wracked with confusion, mouth open with disbelief. He moved back so Bill could see through the narrow trap door, annoyance flashing across their face and a few choice words slipping quietly from their lips when they saw what he had.

Shmebulock lay in the center of the large circular room with walls, ceiling, and floors of stone. He was not bound, nor was he gagged; however, the gnome was no less restrained then he would’ve been with a physical prison.

Frozen in place. Unblinking. If in that moment Shmebulock was anywhere other than Gravity Falls, Dipper would’ve passed him by without a second thought, for he was the shining image of a garden gnome; the type that little kids would play with on hot summer days when they had nothing better to do, and that elderly gardeners would carefully place between flower beds. 

Dipper and Bill made eye contact.

“I vote we leave him,” Bill said immediately.

“Then we might as well have just murdered him like you initially suggested,” Dipper sighed. “We have to save his stupid ass.”

“Hold up, how many loops have we gone through so far because his idiot self triggered an earthquake—”

Dipper swore. “Something’s going to trigger an earthquake in—” he checked his watch, “Six minutes. Whether him being here triggers it, or if he escapes and then triggers it, or even if he has nothing to do with it—”

“Unlikely,” Bill grumbled.

“—it’s in our best interest to get his ass out of here with us,” Dipper finished reluctantly.

“Fine.”

Bill closed their eyes and went still, concentrating the way they did when they were trying to sense something, only to sigh a few seconds later and lean back onto their heels. “The—”

Faint footsteps came from somewhere below. They were too quick, too varied, to be human.

Dippers eyes widened; he lurched forward and slapped a hand over Bill’s mouth to get them to stop talking, the two of them wearing matching expressions of alarm as the footsteps grew louder.

Bill licked his hand.

Dipper jerked back, face scrunching up with disgust, and he wiped his hand on his shirt while leveling Bill with a look. Bill, completely unsympathetic, leaned forward to peer out the opening once again.

Bill’s mouth fell open. “Cool!” they whispered, their eye flickering up to meet Dipper’s. They gestured down through the opening with their head.

Dipper narrowed his brows, but complied, leaning forward. This time, he slapped a hand over his own mouth to keep himself from making noise. Beneath them, straight out of The Hobbit, was a giant fuzzy spider with long skinny legs and a multitude of glowing red eyes. Thankfully, all of them were fixated on its prey rather than on the two intruders above, and Dipper watched it stalk forward with baited breath,

In contrast, Bill appeared intrigued. They wore a genuine grin, leaning forward to get a better work, but seemed to forget they didn’t have their magic to balance them. Dipper saw it happen as if in slow motion. 

Bill leaned just a little bit too far. With a muffled gasp they tumbled forward, fingers grasping around air for something to grab onto. 

Dipper lunged forward, wrapping both hands around one of Bill’s ankles, pressing his feet hard against either side of the thin tunnel and using the counterpressure to keep himself from tumbling after them. His calves burned with the effort.

Both of them waited, hardly daring to breathe, eyes fixed on the anomaly beneath them. 

When it began to speak, terror ran up Dipper’s spine. 

“Wellll, isnnn’t this innnteresting,” it said, a layer of glee covering its words like a bad paint job. “It’s beennn a lonnng time sinnnce I’ve had prey as large as you.”

It’s voice was deep and raspy, but the two of them soon realized (with great relief) that the spider wasn’t speaking to the two of them, but to Shmebulock. Snapping out of their shock—for Bill was close enough to touch one of the spiders legs if they stretched their left arm out just a little bit further, and that was a rather frightening concept—Bill tightened their stomach muscles and managed (barely) to bend themself in half and grab onto the back of one of Dipper’s hands. 

Dipper getting the hint, made eye contact with Bill. He mouthed ‘one, two, three!’ On three, Dipper let go of Bill’s ankle with one hand and and used it to grab the demon’s forearm. He did the same with his other hand, and Bill let their legs drop in a controlled manner so that they were hanging right side up, swaying precariously.

Bill lifted their other arm, and Dipper grabbed it with the other of his own. Gripping each other’s forearms,  the two of them worked up a silent sweat; the spider had continued monologuing, but neither of them were really listening.

“...mortals rarely venture downnn here. They thinnnk it’s dannngerous, for some reasonnn.” Dipper had the odd feeling that it was smiling, in its own unique spider way. He shivered.

Dipper started the slow process of hauling Bill back up into the tunnel.

“Thanks,” Bill breathed once they were safely back up. Still, they appeared shaken, curling into themself even as they gazed down at the spider with intrigue. “It’s fuzzy.”

Dipper smothered an incredulous laugh. “It’s fuzzy? You nearly got eaten alive and all you can say is it’s fuzzy?”

With a lopsided grin, Bill opened their mouth—

The tunnel shook around them.

4:55 AM – 30 minutes until sunrise – take twenty–five

“God damnit! You did jinx us!”

Chapter Text

“Jinxes don’t exist. I would know, I’ve tried placing them. They never seem to stick.”

“Why am I not surprised.”

This time, when they reached the spider, Dipper did not immediately open the hatch. Instead, the two of them engaged in a hurried debate. The topic? Whether or not to save Shmebulock the Annoying from the tragic fate of being eaten by a Fuzzy Spider™.

“Look at it this way,” Dipper said. “Saving him benefits us, because we can threaten to kill him if the Lake Entity doesn’t keep her side of the bargain. Or, rather, you can threaten to kill him. She’ll know I’m bluffing.”

“I dunno, Messy Hair,” they teased, reaching out to ruffle his hair. “You can be pretty intimidating when you want to be.”

Dipper snorted, batting away his hand. “I’m taking that as a complement. But I’m serious, Shmebulock—”

“Fine, we can try. For the record though, I’m thoroughly against saving his sorry ass. And you owe me a cheeseburger.”

“I’d expect nothing less.” He started undoing the latches. “Just try not to fall in this time.”

“You’re never going to let me live that down,” Bill whined.

Dipper grinned. “Nope,” he said, popping the ‘p’. The two of them fell silent as Dipper removed the hach, propping it up besides him in the tunnel. With the movements of someone whose genius sci–fi grunkle had taught them knife throwing at thirteen, he readied the knife in his hand and eyed the spider. His heart pounded in his chest. It paused in its movements, and Dipper shot into action. 

With a flick of his wrist, the knife went flying. It embedded itself in the spider’s skull.

The spider collapsed onto its side mid–monologue. 

“We never made a plan for getting Shembulock out, did we,” Dipper said suddenly, breaking the silence. 

Bill blinked at him. “I thought the plan was to improvise.”

“I guess I’m used to Ford coming up with the plans,” Dipper said softly. “He’s… really good at that.” As much as Dipper wanted to hate the man, it was at moments like these that he found himself feeling almost… nostalgic? 

Longing for a time back when he thought his Grunkle Ford was the bestest, coolest person in the whole wide multi–verse. He supposed he had the original Bill (of all people) to thank for the realization that he couldn’t just drop everything for someone he barely new. 

How does someone both save your life and ruin it?

“I have an idea!” Bill exclaimed, pulling Dipper from his thoughts. “Spiders build webs, don’t they? We just gotta wait for the spider to un–dead, bait it into building a web to climb up here, kill it, climb down, bring Shmeby–boy back up, and go on our merry way! Simple!”

“Simple?”

They huffed. “Well, do you have a better idea?”

“...no.”

“Great! Well, we have some time till it restarts. Wanna explore?”

Dipper laughed, shaking his head in disbelief but grinning from ear to ear. “Only you, Bill, only you would find our imminent deaths fun.”

Bill shrugged. “It isn’t as threatening when you know it won’t stick.”

The two of them got ten minutes further down the tunnel (which included climbing a very long ladder) before the loop reset.

4:55 AM – 30 minutes until sunrise – take twenty–six

Tunnel, panel, latches. They made it there in record time (which Dipper would be more excited about if it weren’t for the rubbed–raw skin of his knees and his aching wrists) and Dipper wasted no time in delegating the task of baiting the spider to Bill.

Bill was delighted. “Leave it to me,” they whispered, eye gleaming mischievously. “Distinguished guests, welcome to the show of the century!”

Dipper suddenly doubted the wiseness of letting The Bill Cipher draw a giant spider to them, not in the least because saving Shmebulock would be pointless if it meant Bill getting grievously injured. Still, he was curious— What did Bill have up their sleeve?

“Old fat spider spinning in a tree!

Old fat spider can't see me!

Attercop! Attercop!

Won't you stop,

Stop your spinning and look at me!”

“Are you seriously quoting Bilbo from The Hobbit right now?” Dipper hissed. “Where the hell did you even find that?”

Bill grinned. “Read your mind, Messy Hair. Wait, hEY—" Dipper had the dagger to their throat. “It’s not my fault you were dreaming about weird mortal stuff earlier!” they rushed to say. “I can’t help it, I just hear what I hear! You dream really loudly!”

“Who dares innnsult me!”

“Me!” Bill waved their arms wildly, giving the spider their best smile. “But it’s too sad, isn’t it?”

“What’s sad?” The spider was now giving Bill its full attention.

Bill mockingly stuck out their bottom lip. “That your silk is so weak that you could never make it up here to catch me! I bet you can’t even make it off the ground! Can your webs even—”

The spider snarled and turned around, sticking its butt towards Bill’s face. Dipper stifled a laugh. Then the spider shot a thick strand of silk at them, and the laughing stopped. Bill jerked backwards— just in time. The silk attached to the tunnel, right where their head had been moments before. Yes! They had a rope! Dipper flicked his wrist.

The whistle of a dagger cut through the air. It hit its target; and the spider, as it had the loop before, collapsed to the ground. It’s legs were twitching. Natural, obviously, but— unsettling nonetheless. Dipper forced himself to avert his eyes.

But then Bill was giving him a high five, grinning like crazy. And Dipper found himself grinning to. They’d done it! They’d actually done it—

And all without Ford. 

He’d rescued someone without Ford. Yes, he’d had help, but— but it wasn’t the same.

He’d done this.

He’d actually done something worthwhile without Ford breathing down the back of his neck. He’d done something, and—

And he, for once, felt good enough, no matter what Ford would or wouldn’t say about it. No one could take that away from him.  

“Hey, Earth to Messy Hair—” Bill, getting ready to climb down, offered him a hand and a smug smile. “—C’mon, we have a dwarf to save!”

“I thought you were thoroughly against saving said dwarf.”

“Eh, I’ve changed my mind. This is actually kind of fun— don’t get me wrong, I still want to leave him here, but—”

Dipper groaned good naturedly, but took Bill’s hand. “You know what? Forget I asked.”

The two of them made it down the long shoot, doing their best to avoid the nauseating (still twitching) body of the spider. Dipper turned a nasty shade of green. He pulled his dagger out of its head with a loud squelch. Before he could wipe of the blood, Bill tossed a still–petrified Shmebulock in his direction. He barely managed to catch the dwarf before it hit the floor. 

Dipper glowered at Bill, exasperated. If looks could kill.

The two of them climbed back up, Dipper burdened with the dwarf in one arm. Once they got up, it became a race against time. The group raced through the tunnel with reckless abandon. Dipper ignored the ways his lungs burned. There were pebbles digging into his hands but that didn’t matter.

They were almost out. They were so close. Just a little bit further…

All his muscles ached. They climbed the ladder, Bill carrying Shmebulock to give Dipper a break. It seemed to go up forever.

C’mon, Dipper thought desperately, Faster, we have to go faster!

He collapsed on the overpass but didn’t give himself a chance to breathe, forcing himself back to his feet. Bill made it onto flat ground seconds later. They were panting heavily, hair disheveled, but they looked alive.

The ground beneath the two of their feet began to rumble. Softly, just once, but it sent a burst of sharp fear through Dipper’s chest.

“No no no,” he began mumbling under his breath,frantic. “No!” At that point, they’d been stuck in the loop for the better part of thirteen hours, the same thirty minutes over and over. He couldn’t give up.

He gripped Bill’s hand and ran.

…

Hallways, rubble, broken glass, burnt tiles. They passed in a blur of colors, each hallway they made it through seeming longer than the last. Every one of Dipper’s muscles burned. He sliced his ankle open on a fallen bookshelf and reopened his head wound from exertion. He’d never felt so lightheaded in his life.

The floor shifted angrily beneath them. Dipper’s chant of “no no no!” faded into background noise. The world was spinning.

…

Later, Dipper would have no clue how he made it out of that final loop. Adrenaline? Possibly, but he was sure (as much as one could be when they were about to pass out from blood loss and exhaustion) that Bill had been glowing the faintest yellow in the collapsing tunnels, life pulsing through them and invigorating him. It terrified him, but it also gave him an odd sense of peace.

He was safe. He had someone to protect him.

The last thing he saw before he passed out was the beautiful green grass inches from his face. 

We made it!

…

Consciousness returned to him in bursts. There was a cool glass pressed to his lips, and then sweet, sweet water. Someone was speaking. He should really get up. Ford probably needed his help. He should… He should…

The second time he awoke, someone was playing with his hair. He leaned into their touch. The hand froze and then someone was speaking again, and he whined in response. He just wanted to sleep. But the person kept talking. “‘ne sec, F’rd,” he mumbled. The person said something else, but he was already plunging back into a sweet nothingness.

The third time he awoke, he opened his eyes. The attic. He was in the attic. He nearly sobbed with relief. There were still traces of glitter on the floor, and he was alone in the room, but he was home. Next to him was his old conspiracy board, now covered with poorly–done sketches of anomalies and his hasty scribbles, a family picture taken in front of the shack pinned to the top–right corner.

Bill chose that minute to stroll out of the bathroom. They were dressed in one of Mabel’s art–splattered jumpers, their hair damp from the shower. The two of them locked eyes. A grin stretched across Bill’s face, and then the demon was darting forward and throwing themself at him. “Messy Hair! You’re alive!” They hugged him tightly.

Dipper winced. “Head,” he croaked.

“Oh, sorry. I forgot.” They shrugged half–heartedly, not appearing sorry in the slightest. “Good news, it’s healing up okay! Bad news, it’s been three days.”

“What?”

“Don’t worry,” Bill chirped. “I forged a note saying you were going to the city for supplies and left in on the kitchen table. Said you took the bus.”

Dipper groaned, tentatively resting his head in his hands. “I hope they believe that,” he said dryly.

There was a knock on the door.

The two of them froze, not making a sound.

A second later, the door opened, and Wendy walked in. She froze. Her eyes flickered from Bill, to Dipper, and then back to Bill. Hand flying to her ax, strapped to her side, she took up a defensive demeanor and glared at Bill with a burning passion.

“Who,” Wendy asked Dipper through gritted teeth, “Is that?”

“It’s not what it looks like—”

“I mean, it kinda is.” 

“You are not helping.”

“Yes I am!”

“No you’re not!”

“Yes I—”

“Dipper, why the hell is Cipher in your fucking bedroom?”

“They’re not that Bill Cipher— I mean, they kinda are but they really aren’t? They’re like, a chiller version of Bill? From another universe? I swear they’re only kind of evil; not, like, full–blown I’m–Gonna–Liberate–Your–Planet evil. Like, they’re to the original Bill Cipher what flip–phones are to cellphones.”

There was a long pause. Wendy stared at him as if he’d grown a second head, not removing her hand from the handle of her ax.

“Wow,” Bill said cheerfully. “You are really bad at this convincing people thing.”

Chapter Text

Coincidentally, it wasn’t anything Dipper said that convinced Wendy not to practice her legendary ax–throwing skills on Bill, but an alarm they had set on Dipper’s phone.

The three of them trudged through the overwhelming forest towards Wendy’s place. Bill walked slightly ahead of Wendy and Dipper, who had an arm around Wendy’s shoulder to make up for his injured ankle.

“Well, they’re either using you for something; or they actually care about your wellbeing enough to set a fricken’ alarm to remind themself to give you pain meds.”

“Both, probably.”

She frowned. “And that doesn’t bother you?”

“I mean, not really? We all use each another at some point or another, malicious intentions or not, and Bill does actually care. Spending twelve hours in a time loop together and watching each other die over and over kind of does that to you. There’s a certain companionship that you develop in order to stay sane—” he elbowed her playfully, “—but don’t worry, you’re still my number one. After Waddles, that is.”

“Of course.” She smirked. “The pig always ranks above me.”

“If it makes you feel better, he’s a very cool pig.”

Wendy laughed, but after a few seconds a pensive look crossed her face. “You know that everything Ford said the other night was nonsense, right? You haven’t ‘proven them right’ or any of that crap.”

Dipper shrugged. “Rationally, yeah, but…”

“None of us agree with him. Not me or Mabel or Stan or Soos.”

“What are you getting at?”

“Don’t laugh.”

Dipper rolled his eyes. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

“I think you should tell Stan about… you know. He’s good at all this supernatural stuff, and he can keep a secret. Don’t tell him I told you this, but he’s actually really pissed at Ford right now, so you don’t have to worry about him tattling or something. And if something goes wrong… well, you’re probably going to want some kind of back–up.”

“Ah. About that…” Dipper scratched that back of his neck and winced, then proceeded to tell her about his deal with Ford. Wendy listened with raised eyebrows.

“So you see,” he said minutes later, “I really really don’t want Stan getting involved with this. It’s between me and Ford… and Bill. And now you, I guess. Hey, you’re great with an ax. Why don’t you be my backup?”

“Uh, because your Grunkle Stan is significantly more experienced? And you live with him, so he’ll be available whenever.”

Dipper glared at her. “What am I supposed to say? ‘Hey Grunkle Stan, you know Bill Cipher? The demon who ruined our lives and nearly killed all of us multiple times? Well, their alternate self kinda showed up and I’ve been hiding them in my room. No worries though, I’ve got it all under control.’”

“Uh, yeah, you know Stan. He’d take that explanation in a stride.”

“And then tell Ford.”

“No. I’m serious Dipper, Stan is pissed. Like, threatened to recreate the portal and shove Ford back through and leave him there to rot, kind of pissed.”

Dipper gaped at her, stopping dead in his tracks. “He what?”

“Yeah. I’m not sure he’d be thrilled with having a Cipher in the shack, but he definitely isn’t about to tell Ford. Trust me on this one.”

There was a long pause in which Dipper contemplated his options. “Say I do tell Stan and he takes it badly. What then?”

Wendy shrugged. “Threaten to cut of his supply of Mabel–Juice.”

“Wendy.”

“Look, at some point the truth will come out... it always does. At least this way it’ll be on your own terms, and you’ll have someone to come to your defense if Ford finds out. Not that I’m saying he’d attack you, but…” She hesitated. 

“I don’t need to go running to my Grunkle just because something went off— heck, that would be proving Ford right.”

“And Ford has never once asked someone for help?” 

Dipper didn’t have anything to say to that. He stubbornly stared at the ground, digging the toe of his shoe into the dirt.

“Just… think about it, okay? I just kinda don’t want you— or Bill, for that matter—to wind up in trouble and have no one to turn to. In the end, I’m just a college kid with a sharp metal thingee I use to cut down trees, intimidate people, and occasionally kill a bug that’s freaking out one of my little brothers. ”

Dipper gave her a lopsided smile. “No.”

She opened her mouth to speak, but he beat her to it.

“You’re also a great friend, a great sister, a great daughter, and one of the most caring, kind, vibrant person I have ever met. Thank you. I know I don’t say it a lot, but… I love you, Wendy. You seriously mean the world to me.”

Dipper didn’t mean it in the romantic sense. He didn’t know if he’d ever felt romantic attraction before, but he was pretty sure that if he ever did, it wouldn’t be towards a woman. 

Wendy grinned, ruffling his hair. “Love you too, Dipper.” And for that moment, in the forest with Wendy and Bill, the forest brimming with life, all his problems faded to background noise. It truly felt like things were going to turn out okay.

Unfortunately, moments like those don’t last forever, and when you have bpd, highs tend to be followed by lows— as if you have to pay for a bought of happiness with a bought of misery, but you don’t get a choice in whether or not to make the purchase.

When they reached the Corduroy cabin, Dipper found a frustrating numbness setting in and his mind getting louder, crueler, more rapid in its flinging of things he didn’t want to hear. Why couldn’t he just be happy and stay that way? This was exhausting.

I need to set up an appointment with my psychiatrist , he admitted to himself. The current mood–stabilizing meds he was on weren’t working, that much was clear. The sad thing was that they had used to lessen the severity of the swings. He got a taste of feeling better, but like most good things, it hadn’t lasted.

“Wow! You’ve got a nice place here, Blerble!”

Wendy sent Dipper a scathing glare. “Did you have to go and tell them my middle name? They’re never going to let me live it down!”

Dipper shrugged. He didn’t really have the energy to respond. I hate this I hate this I hate this… “Sorry,” he chirped a second later, putting as much normalcy and teasingness and nope–not–having–an–episode…ness into his tone as possible. He didn’t need to burden them with this. He could handle it by himself. 

…hopefully.

Wendy gave him a strange look.

She hates you, his mind supplied helpfully, ignoring all evidence otherwise. He told his mind to shut up and tried to stay present and participate in the conversation, flashing Wendy a mischievous grin. “Don’t worry, it’s not as if I told them about the time you drunkenly spewed Shakespeare’s Hamlet, word for word, all while denying that you liked English Lit. as if your life depended on it. Nope, I definitely did not tell them that.”

Bill snorted, eyes gleaming.

Wendy scowled even harder. To Dipper, she said, “Are you also not going to tell him about that time you were twelve and confessed your undying love for me, a junior in high school?”

“Betrayal.” Dramatically, he shook his head. “After all we’ve been through together.”

A short nine year–old boy with spiky red hair and missing front teeth (Wendy’s youngest brother) barreled around the corner towards them, skidding to a stop a few feet away with a large grin. “Hi Wendy!” he shouted.

“Hey, squirt.” She turned to Bill. “This is Gus. Lay a single finger on any of my brothers and I promise, you will die a slow and painful death.”

“Death!” Gus shouted, pumping both fists in the air and running out of the room.

Wendy sighed. “My brothers are so weird.”

Dipper snorted. “Meh, they remind me of you. Must be genetic.”

“Moron.”

“I like that kid!” Bill was bouncing on the balls of his feet. “He seems fun!”

“Not when you have to live with him. Also, no. You are not allowed to corrupt them any more than they already are. That’s my job.” Wendy clapped her hands together. “Well, now that we’re somewhere private—by which I mean there’s no chance of Mabel or Ford walking in—let’s discuss y’alls little dilemma.” She jerked her finger to the right. “My rooms this way.”

That, Dipper thought, Sounds strangely ominous.