Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Things were not going well for Stanford Pines in the latter half of 1979.

In another timeline, one he didn’t know about, he read an incantation on the wall of a cave aloud and met his Muse only hours later. This did not happen for this timeline’s Ford; he read the incantation, crossed two of six fingers, and waited with hope and desperation for a break in his research. Divine inspiration. A hand reaching down from above.

For a very long time — long for a mortal, that is — he thought nothing had happened. Days turned to weeks turned to months, and he balanced his checkbooks with mounting dread; his grant, the largest given in Backupsmore’s history, would only last so long. He was nowhere near an answer, nowhere near his Unified Theory, and all he would have to publish at the end of his time in the most interesting place in the world was a field journal.

This would impress a few scientists. It wouldn’t change the world. He would go back to his father and mother in New Jersey and work for whatever university would take him, watching as some future scientist built on his research to make the discovery that he should have made decades ago. He woke, shaking, from dreams that came from a life that never existed for him: West Coast Tech graduate Stanford Pines, already in possession of a Nobel Prize, already a man who’d fulfilled the all-consuming purpose of his life.

(He also woke from dreams in which he and Stanley chartered a boat and took to sea, like they’d promised when they were boys. These he wrote off as side effects of sedative medication.)

There were a few bright spots in his life as the days got darker; he met Carla, filled more pages of his journal, encountered gentle forest spirits, or the kindlier elves and fairies. They couldn’t help him, not really, but having company was nice.

He didn’t expect anything different from the day before when he set out into the woods one December morning, fogging the air with his breath, a thermos in his bag. There was an odd stillness in the air, like something great and vast had turned its gaze upon the town, and Ford noticed it the same way humans notice anything — with the instincts evolution hard-wired into them, the same ones rationality demands they ignore.

There was a smell of ozone in the air before he found the man, the gentle crackling of a slow-burning fire. He noticed, with fascination, that a few high branches of the frozen trees were consumed by an unnatural blue flame, as though a comet had fallen through the canopy; he tracked the fire with his eyes, marking the places where it scarred the bark of a tree or melted the snow, and walked deeper into the endless forest. 

When he came into a clearing, shaking the snow from the tips of his boots, he stumbled at the sight in front of him. 

There was a man lying in the glade.

The snow around him was disturbed, as though he’d moved around before lying still — the cleared spaces around him almost looked like wings. He was nude, but his breath was even and heavy, and his hair fanned around his head in dark, sun-dappled waves. Strangest of all was the triangle marked into the snow around him, perfectly equilateral; a shimmer of blue fire dwindled in the mark, and the dead grass below smoked like branded skin.

Ford hesitated only a moment before running to the man’s side. He was astonished to find the man’s skin warm and healthy, undamaged by the cold of an Oregon December; it took him another moment to notice that the mark on the man’s chest, the thin bruise-dark lines he’d mistaken for a birthmark at a distance, formed a symbol that looked all too familiar.

He’d seen it on the wall of a cave, and he’d seen it carved into the trees and the crown moldings of houses in town. It felt like a promise, or a sign — something was listening. Something, despite the warnings written in the cave, would listen to his prayers. Even if it took a few months. 

Somebody up there likes me , he thought, and didn’t know just how right he was.

Ford thought all of this as he took off his coat and wrapped the man tight, picking him up with a small sound of exertion. He was relieved to see the man smile in his sleep, breath escaping his mouth in a plume of thin fog. The stranger’s face was flushed by the cold, but he felt warm and looked healthy.

As he made his way home through the frozen woods, warm despite the loss of his jacket, he swore he heard the sleeping man whisper his name. And he said it like he’d said it a thousand times before.

Something beautiful came into Stanford’s life.

Bill was not an angel, and Ford wouldn’t have wanted one; this being was a Muse, inspiring and capricious, as human as he was beyond humanity. He was funny, and peculiar, and seemed to have an imprecise grasp of human customs and courtesies. Underneath it all, the flawless mechanical calculations and the strange esoteric habits, he was singularly brave and unapologetic — his confidence was infectious.

There was a day, in that long winter, when Ford woke and found that the power was out in his house. When he managed to restore it, he convinced Bill not to go to Crash Site Omega as initially planned; they stayed home and kept warm and watched Invasion of the Body Snatchers , which Bill found hilarious for reasons he didn’t explain. Ford sat in the glow of the television, watching his muse drift off, and felt an ineffable kind of affection.

He realized, then — all the way back then, yes, how embarrassing — that he wanted to pull Bill closer to his side.

(He was not a man prone to this kind of affection. It was a frightening thing, to want anything like that after so little time. Sometimes, the ache behind his sternum when he looked at Bill felt old and familiar, like he’d known this muse far longer than he could recall.)

There was a trickster in Bill, but whatever walls he’d erected between himself and the humans of Gravity Falls came down one by one. He was here to help Ford, and in the process he saved a child, and tried to cook, and found it in himself to dance time and time again. There were days when Ford wanted to stall the portal, when he wanted to hold the bundle of starlight pretending to be human close and not let go.

But Bill had sacrificed so much to be here, and Ford could find it in himself to be selfless. For his muse, he could be selfless. For the first being he’d ever fallen in love with, he could do almost anything.

Bill could not do the same for him.

He didn’t know this until a night in October, just weeks out from a portal test. He thought, or assumed, or prayed, that whatever he felt for Bill was shared in equal measure. He had been certain of it.

And he’d been a fool.

On the night Stanford Pines lost his muse, he woke up with a dry throat and an ache in his neck.

He realized, with a soft sigh — soft enough that Bill, sleeping against his chest, wouldn’t wake — that he might be coming down with a cold. Not a terrible one, he hoped, but a cold nonetheless. How ironic it would be, if a bout with some minor respiratory illness delayed the test just as Fiddleford had requested.

In the darkness of the room, Ford winced at the memory of the conversations he’d had with his friend on the matter of the test. The snap remark he’d made to Bill on the night of the first — some people just can’t wait to be forgotten by history — left a bad taste in his mouth.

Or perhaps he was just dehydrated. That, too, would do it.

Ford removed himself from Bill’s grasp with a practiced gentleness, moving the pillow to better cradle his head, letting his fingers skim over the arm that slid from his chest. He leaned over and kissed Bill on the forehead last, and his muse sighed in his sleep with a private, vulnerable contentment. He was beautiful, there, in the moonlight; his features, once angular to the point of being almost uncanny, had filled out and softened enough to make him look nothing more than human. 

“I’ll be back shortly,” Ford whispered.

Bill moved into the space his author had left behind, seeking his warmth. Ford smiled at the movement, spent one last lingering moment at his side, and left the room.

He didn’t feel like going downstairs, but he supposed he’d have to; he didn’t quite trust the water filtration in any bathroom sink, not since a few unpleasant childhood experiences in New Jersey. He stopped by the bathroom nonetheless, to use it and to examine himself. If he took his temperature here, he might be able to head a cold off at the pass. Surely he had some relevant medicine in the cabinet, this time of year.

As he was finishing in the bathroom, watching the soap suds on his hands froth and vanish into the frigid water, he swore he heard the elevator coming to a halt. It was a quiet sound, deadened by the basement’s impeccable soundproofing, but audible nonetheless to a trained ear. Fiddleford’s late-night sessions in the study were nothing new, however; Ford wondered if he ought to join his friend, now that the cold water had shocked him awake.

Then again, Bill was waiting for him. And he was probably cold by now.

Ford turned off the sink — the way the drain gurgled implied a need for a plumber — and made his way back down the darkened hallway, blinking as his eyes adjusted again. When he stepped through the open door of his room, his brow furrowed.

Bill was missing.

Perhaps he was the one who’d gone down the elevator just now. It would be strange, however, for Bill to leave without fetching Ford first. Practically unprecedented. If Bill woke with a sudden, wonderful idea, he’d tell his devoted scientist before anyone else; the truth of this fact made him smile to himself in the dark. But that truth meant that Bill’s absence was even stranger.

Ford was already looking down the hallway to the engineer’s room when he spotted it. There was a sticky-note on the far wall, pale yellow and curled inward like a dry flower petal. It was slightly cocked, like it had been slapped up by someone who wasn’t looking, and he was almost certain it hadn’t been there before he went to sleep.

In college, this was how he and Fiddleford communicated in the few hours each day when one of them had the room to themself. Fiddleford left sticky notes in a line on the wall beside the door, and Ford left sticky notes on his friend’s Rubik’s Cube and dresser and nightstand. On another night, he might have smiled at the reminder of his college days. Now there was only the strange, uneven feeling of standing on tilted ground, of walking down a hallway that had been knocked askew.

But of course, he’d walk down it anyway. There was something to be discovered at the end.

Ford stopped in front of it and smoothed its adhesive to the wall with his middle finger and thumb. He read the words on it, then turned to stare into Fiddleford’s empty room, lips parted in confusion. The paper became warm under his fingers, second by second, as he processed the words on its front, as vague as they were simple.

Under the pillow on the couch. 

If I have ever been your friend, 

Stanford, please read it.

With an uncanny, dry-mouthed feeling, Ford took a step back. He wasn’t sure what to make of the note, the heavy pen-strokes, the way it looked like it had been slapped onto the wall in passing. Nothing was falling into place. Nothing about his companions’ absences or this note or the hollow, perfect silence of the house made any sense at all.

He had the feeling it would come together soon. And he didn’t like it.

A moment before he went downstairs, he remembered another thing about his college years: he always used one side of his sticky notes, but Fiddleford wrote on them front and back. He wasn’t one to waste time or space, even in a matter as small as this.

Ford peeled the note off the wall, heard the soft pop of adhesive coming loose. He turned it around. Perhaps his skin grew hot; perhaps the temperature in the room dropped a few degrees.

He wasn’t sure why the words I love you had that effect on him. Of course Fiddleford loved him. They were close — they were friends. 

Why would he feel the need to leave that message now, of all moments?

Without another word, and with a ball of acrid panic pushing its way up his throat, Ford turned and stalked toward the stairs.

The living room was bathed in the light of the fishtank, glass-blue and luminous and pristine. He moved on silent feet across the carpet, pulse ringing in his ears, to find the pillow Bill had curled one lazy arm around while they watched a movie the other night. It was crammed into the side of the couch, pushed out of shape, bulging in some places and depressed in others. Ford lifted it, an unaccountable little tremor in his hand, and found exactly what he should have expected to find and exactly what he didn’t want to.

Fiddleford had left something for him. Just as the note said. Leather-bound, made quickly but by a deft hand: a book as thick as Ford’s forearm, with a stack of uneven white pages.

Ford wanted to drop it and run upstairs, to go back to bed, to wait for Bill to crawl in beside him and nestle into his side. Before he read a word of the book, before he even opened its dark and unpolished cover, he knew that he was on the cusp of something terrible — that this was a road he couldn’t walk down without losing something. He remembered a story by Charles Perrault, one he’d read at the library as a boy: a woman standing in front of a locked door, key in hand, nostrils full of an awful metallic smell she’d learned to ignore so long ago.

But Fiddleford — Ford’s best friend, his first friend after a brother he tried not to think about anymore — had asked it of him. 

And he could not go back to sleep without knowing.

(He’d said it to Bill, lying together in the dark. You can never really go home again.)

Ford sat down, pulled the heavy book into his lap, and opened it.

What he read there, in that blue October light, hollowed him out.

You can only condense so much horror into one book before it becomes a horror in and of itself. Fiddleford, ever-efficient and meticulous, managed to compress millennia of metaphysical torment into something that could be skimmed — by a trained academic — over the course of half an hour. 

He therefore created the most horrifying thing Ford had ever read.

There were scanned copies of everything from ship’s logs to classified federal documents to Medieval illuminated manuscripts in the volume, reproduced in startling quality with translations provided when necessary. The fragments were sorted without regard for chronology or length, but they echoed each other in a manner that made some awful inherent sense. Ford heard his own breath coming in starts and stops, far away, as though his ears were stuffed with cotton.

What he was looking at was impossible. There were hundreds of pages of work from across history and around the world, here, written by authors who had never met each other on the same supernatural subject. No other entity in human history had this much corroborating evidence. An awful, ancient fear permeated every line of the book, made the manuscript feel heavy and cold in Ford’s shaking hands. He wanted to throw the thing down, to rebuke it, to say he did not recognize his muse in this monster.

(Demon. Djinn. Tormentor. The voice in your head. The shadow on the wall.)

But he did recognize Bill. How could he not? His name was written on every page, in English and Latin and Arabic, over and over until his name stopped sounding like a name at all. This Bill, the one in these pages, laughed and joked and toyed with people — and in all of it there was an eerie familiarity. Like a song you love playing on the radio as your car spins off the road; like a door you do not recognize in your childhood home. 

If anything summarized the book in full, it was the note written on the first page, stark and spare in its presentation. There was a blot of errant ink below it, bleeding through the bone-white paper in the shape of an exit wound. The whole page looked as though it had been added last-minute, scrawled and forced into the manuscript moments before the book was bound together. Ford read it over and over again, unable to breathe, unable to think of anything but the gorge rising in his throat and the incessant ringing in his ears.

HE LIED TO YOU.

YOU ARE IN DANGER.

BILL IS NOT WHAT HE SEEMS .

His muse arrives by elevator. Without looking, without moving, Ford knows it is Bill and not Fiddleford. He can recognize the steps, unsteady after all these months. The sound made him smile dozens of times, when he heard Bill sneaking up on him in the lab or padding back into the bedroom with a glass of water at night. Little staccato footfalls. 6/8 time. Like a heartbeat.

Now the sound only numbs him, only makes something inside him — something that ripped open when he was 17 — scab over and calcify. He looks up from the page only when the footsteps come to a halt, when he hears Bill’s breathing coming fast and hard through aching human lungs.

Ford sees Bill. Wild-eyed, panicked. His hair is loose and scattered, and his teeth are gritted tight; he looks like a man waking from a nightmare, the way he’s shaking, the way he holds his hands in pale-knuckled fists. There is a cut on his forehead and a cloud-shaped blotch of dried blood all along one of his hands. He looks like he is on the verge of screaming. Or sobbing. 

For a split second, the part of Ford that kissed Bill on the forehead in a tavern and held him the night after a Northwest party and promised to hunt the monster who destroyed his dimension wants to dash over — to help him, to clean his wounds, to call him Muse and ask him if he’s alright. 

He does not do any of these things, of course. He holds the book tighter, to still his shaking hands, and tries to see Bill how Fiddleford must have seen him all these months.

“What is this?” he asks, voice thick with knowing dread.

His muse does not ask him to clarify anything. He shrinks back, eyes widening, looking for all the world like a fox cornered by hounds. Ford’s heart falls, and his mouth goes dry, and the empty space behind his sternum pangs like a bullet is lodged there. 

Bill knows. Ford can see the look on Bill’s face, just as Bill can see the look on his. Bill knows what he has discovered, knows that the secrets time buried have come back to haunt him; there is a flash of anger in his expression, a terrible ancient wrath, and then desperate human fear that makes Ford’s chest ache again. A long, awful silence stretches between them, as Ford wishes over and over again to wake up from the nightmare in which he finds himself.

And finally, as the silence becomes agonizing, Bill — his muse, the monster — speaks.

There is no way out of this but through it. 

“Fordsy,” Bill says, nails digging into his palms, “I’m not sure what that hillbilly has been telling you, but—”

“He didn’t tell me anything,” Ford says, snapping the book shut and swallowing hard. “But I’ve read a great deal.”

Bill’s teeth draw a runnel of blood from the inside of his cheek. Despite all the sensation in this human body, he doesn’t feel it.

“What does it say?” 

Ford stares down at the leather-bound thing in his hands, the thing Bill wants to rip into little pieces and crush down Fiddleford’s throat. He looks back up at Bill, lips parted, chest rising and falling beneath the fabric Bill held in his fingers while he slept.

“It’s about you,” he says, with a hideous finality.

Bill says nothing. He says nothing because he has no idea what he could possibly say; he is shaking, head to foot. The cold air against his skin and the blood falling from his hands make his vision blur. Whatever is in that volume, it’s enough to make Ford pale and wan, a phantom drowned in watery blue. Bill’s mind flickers back to the dream he had about chess, a dream that feels so long ago now — even though it was only a few months prior, and Bill is older than this planet’s molten core. 

Time makes no sense anymore. Everything feels like it’s happening all over again, all at once.

“Look, Sixer,” he says, forcing a twitching and awful smile. “Put that down. Let’s talk.”

He takes a step forward. Ford jerks back, tense as a line pulled taut, the whites of his eyes made lurid by the moonlight. The motion angers Bill; worse than that, it hurts him. He flinches, too, a mirror of his devotee, and looks away to spare himself the sight of Ford’s face right now.

“Fine. Hold onto it, then.” Bill swallows and folds his arms. “I think it—”

“Where’s Fiddleford?” Ford asks, with a sudden seed of fear in his voice.

Bill blinks and furrows his brow, then realizes what an idiot he’s been; he dropped the gun, somewhere in the hall, so desperate to get to his author that his extremities went numb. Like speed would have changed anything. Like he could have stopped this once it was set in motion. He’ll have connected the dots about five minutes ago.  

“Probably in the basement. Where he attacked me,” Bill says, holding out his hands in indignation. “He’s not in his right mind, Sixer. He would have killed me. I was… I thought he might have done something to you. Hell, I only escaped because—”

“Did you hurt him?” Ford asks, shooting to his feet; he falters, for a moment, stunned by the sight of Bill’s bloodied hands. His face twists, a sheen of anger over a familiar betrayal.

“No!” Bill snaps, affronted, irate. “Didn’t you hear what I said? Why would I do anything to that hick?”

“Precedent.”

Ford’s voice is hoarse, and it cracks at the end like a tree’s root system failing. Bill’s chest aches with the force of his heartbeat, and he tastes something acidic and vile in the back of his throat. Don’t stop talking. Everything ends when you stop talking, Billy, he thinks, in a voice all his own.

“Look. Not every interaction I’ve had with humans has been perfect.” Bill digs his fingers into his elbows, rocks back and forth on his heels. “So a few things got misinterpreted, so what? There have been bumps in the road, times I didn’t grasp your kind’s customs. You know me!”

“Didn’t grasp my kind’s customs? This is a…” Ford trails off, leafing through the pages with two fingers. “Bill, for God’s sake — if even half of the testimony in this is true, you have been endangering humanity since its inception as a species. You were trying to build a portal before we invented written language. You’ve—”

“Fordsy! That’s a lot to lay on your lover,” Bill says, his old, frantic smile painful on his face. “Ford. C’mon, baby, I need to know what’s in that book. Just an idea, right? I doubt most of it’s even real. Just a big misunderstanding between me and some historical footnotes.”

Ford looks at him, searching, eyes flicking back and forth from his face to his hands. After a moment, the man’s face twists in sympathy and dread; he stands and crosses the room, the book tucked tightly under one arm and out of Bill’s reach. Bill feels a shred of hope burning in his chest, bright enough to keep him on his feet.

“There is gauze in the kitchen,” Ford says, voice low. “Come on.”

Bill doesn’t understand what he’s implying until he takes Bill’s arm and guides him toward the kitchen. Ford’s fingers are firm against his skin — the grip lacks all of the gentleness with which he’s always held his muse. It’s such a foreign sensation that Bill jerks aside, hard, like the touch carries an electric current; the look he gives Ford must be truly, truly pathetic, because real guilt flashes across the man’s face. 

Or maybe it’s loathing. 

It’s dark in here.

The moment passes, and then the sound of the rising elevator is faint, but audible. Fiddleford is coming. Ford pulls Bill closer to him as the lift comes to a halt, and Bill finds himself praying that this is a protective gesture — he hates himself for that hope, but he can’t shake it. Not now. He needs it, or he’ll collapse in on himself. So much for triangles being the most stable shape.

The engineer is covered in sweat when he arrives, flecked with trace amounts of Bill’s blood. Bill looks at Ford and finds that his author is scanning the man, searching for injuries, releasing a fraction of tension at the sight of his assistant unharmed. In another moment, his expression changes to one of shock and confusion. Ford steps in front of Bill, half-shielding him, and Bill presses into his side with a hiss of pain. He shudders when he hears the barrel of the gun scrape the threshold of the elevator. Bill can still see around his author’s side, can hear the low subaudible humming of the most dangerous handheld weapon on the planet. 

That’s what startled Ford so much, then — the Quantum Destabilizer, the hunk of threatening black metal. A weapon invented to eradicate somebody or something Ford loves. Bill can use this, the animal fear it causes, the sight of it being wielded.

“Keep that thing away from me,” he says, grabbing Ford’s arm with one bloody hand. “He burned me with it.”

“He what? ” Ford asks, eyes widening. 

He looks back at Fiddleford, whose face falls for a moment; the engineer sees how close the two are standing, despite everything, and Bill relishes the resignation that flits across his face. A moment later, Fiddleford narrows his eyes and slings the gun across his back, one hand lingering on the stock.

“Wasn’t intentional,” Fiddleford says, voice level despite his breathlessness. “Just a hazard of a new invention. Nothin’ more.”

“Nothing more? You tortured me to make me talk, sunshine!” Bill replies, real rage flooding his chest in a sudden reckless burst. “And you want to stand here clutching your pearls about a few crossed wires I had with my old disciples?”

“I didn’t do anything to you that you didn’t do to yourself,” Fiddleford snaps, eyes averted.

“What did you put in that goddamn book?” Bill says, the glow of his fire turning the cuts on his hand a familiar silver. “What did you tell my au—”

“ Enough. ”

The word echoes against the kitchen linoleum, resounds through the first floor with enough force to silence Bill and Fiddleford instantly. Ford enunciates it like a curse, fists balled at his sides, looking at a point in the middle distance that is neither his best friend nor his muse; Bill tries to catch his eye, wills the man to look his way. 

Just a glance. C’mon. Something. Anything.  

“I’m going to wrap Bill’s wound,” Ford says, a painful shudder in his voice. “We’ll proceed from there.”

“Ford. You should step aside.” Fiddleford adjusts his grip on the gun. “Do not stand near him. You don’t know what he’ll try to—”

“At present, I do not trust anyone in this house,” Ford snaps, yanking open a nearby drawer with a harsh, metallic clatter. “Myself included. Stay. There.”

Fiddleford opens his mouth, takes one look at Bill, and closes it. Bill tries to smile at him behind Ford’s back, to project the confidence that has dragged him over a thousand finish lines before, and finds the motion painful; the bruise forming on the side of his face is making its presence known. He winces and shrinks in on himself, swallowing down the self-loathing that threatens to boil his blood.

A hand on his. Bill watches, shivering, as Ford reaches down to wrap his injury with gauze. He is tender when he does it, even now, even after reading whatever melodramatic, libelous things were in Fiddleford’s little black book-of-Bill; he wipes away the blood with a disinfectant wipe, and Bill blames the tears in his eyes on the stinging alcohol, the sore flesh on his side and his face. When the first bandages are tight, Ford starts another layer, jaw set, gaze far away.

He speaks, after a long, contracted silence.

“When I am finished, each of you will tell me exactly what you have been doing behind my back these long months,” Ford sighs, exhausted. “And you will tell me the truth.”

“Do not believe anything he says,” Bill hisses, fingers twitching under the mass of pale white holding his cuts together. “Anything. You told me, Sixer, you told me exactly the kind of guy he is. Small-minded and ready to be forgotten by history. He wants you to stop building the portal. He wants you to think—”

“I’m not asking for your guidance, Bill,” Ford says, voice hollow. “For once.”

Bill wants to scream that all Ford has is his guidance, that Ford is bound to him by that understanding from now until the end of time, but he can’t make a sound. His eyes sting, and the fear in his devotee’s face dashes his anger against the rocks like easy prey; Bill has seen this fear a thousand times on a thousand faces, and it has never knocked the wind out of him like this. 

This feeling is not fear. Bill won’t let it become fear. 

Ford releases his hand, and in its absence, his skin is freezing cold.

Three people — one of whom can only loosely be called a person — sit in a dark basement study, equidistant, facing one another. 

Bill can’t sit still. His feet are drawn up on the chair, legs pulled in front of his chest, arms slung across the back. He tries to keep his glare fixed on Fiddleford, to not look at his author at all; he does not know what will happen if he does, what his stupid human face will lay bare. Fiddleford, for his part, only looks at Ford. His face is drawn and haggard, thin with an exhaustion Bill should’ve noticed weeks ago.

No wonder he lost the fight for the gun. Could he even pull the trigger, now? Could he aim?

“I want you to tell me where and how you found this information, Fiddleford,” Ford says, in a measured, even voice. “As succinctly as possible.”

Fiddleford looks surprised to be addressed first. Bill opens his mouth to retort, to demand space on the floor, but the look the engineer gives him makes the words die in his throat. There’s rage, there, real vengeance that a lack of sleep can’t bury. Loathing. Bill despises himself for the way his heart rate picks up under the hick’s glare.

When the engineer finally looks away, he clears his throat and half-mumbles the first words of his explanation, all fire gone.

“...I was blind until I met Abigale,” he says.

Bill bites down on his tongue, hard enough to draw out the taste of metal.

For almost fifteen minutes, Fiddleford speaks, if you can call it speaking. He is ejecting words from his mouth, spitting out six months of silence in a breathless rush. Bill and Ford are speechless; Bill, because he is shaking with rage, and Ford because he can find nothing to say to this. 

Fiddleford, not satisfied with whatever the book contained, blurts a lowlight reel of Bill’s failures like he’s running out of time. Abigale and the Anti-Cipherites, the Egyptians, the Puritans, that one goddamn priest who got Bill banned from the greater New Orleans area — every time Bill bet on Earth and lost, Fiddleford knows. He shakes as he speaks, from exhaustion or fear, and his stupid accent gives his words a hysterical quality.

“Where did you find all of this?” Ford asks, when Fiddleford has finished speaking. His voice is full of false steadiness, a too-practiced measured tone.

“That’s private.” Fiddleford’s head is downturned, but his eyes flick up to find Bill. “At least, in front of him. ”

“Oh, come on,” Bill snorts. “Frankly, I think you made a lot of that up, and I don’t think Ford’s a big enough schmuck to buy—”

“Bill.” Ford’s gaze is intent, prying. “Not now.”

Bill feels cold. He despises the cold.

“An archive. Privately-owned. That’s all I’ll say,” Fiddleford says. “I put a footnote about it early in the book, Stanford. Keep it close to the chest.”

Ford doesn’t open the book. He sets it on his lap, cover held shut with both hands, and exhales through his nose in a slow, deliberate way. His eyes are closed, his shoulders tense. Bill fantasizes about taking this opportunity, about scorching the engineer to high heaven before he can pull his weapon off his back, about telling Ford they won’t have to worry about that yokel anymore.

And then what? A little voice asks, all too genuine. What’ll you do? Convince him? Go back to being pals? 

Exit stage left? Wherever did Janie—

Bill looks down, face blank, mind empty. He can’t leave this place. Not now, when they’re so close; they are just weeks from their portal test, ready to activate the damn thing and liberate this dimension once and for all. He doesn’t know what he’ll do, but he can do something. No one has ever defeated him — not Ford, not his inferior clone, not those kids or this hick town.

“You’re going to take his word for it?” Bill asks, with a snort. “You know he hasn’t been talking to his wife, right?”

Fiddleford’s mouth falls open, and he scoffs, disgusted. “And how would you know that?”

“You’re just not as sneaky as you think you are.”

“You’d know,” Fiddleford mutters, turning to Ford with a huff. “Ford? I think we ought to take him to the basement.”

“I understand.” Ford takes a deep breath and looks at Fiddleford, brown eyes black in the dim room. 

Bill’s stomach drops; he lets out a small, choked sound, shrinking back at the memory of the net pressing him flat.

“And now,” his author continues, voice steady, “I want you to leave the room.”

Fiddleford’s eyes widen. The shred of hope in Bill’s chest goes up like a bottle rocket. He knew Ford wouldn’t believe some old books by spurned mortals over his muse, his greatest discovery — he just needs a few things clarified, doesn’t he? This’ll be a piece of cake. Ford’s too desperate for the recognition Bill gives him to give it all up. Now until the end of time.

“Ford, I know you love him. I do. But you can’t listen to what he says. He’s been lying to you. Using you like a puppet.”

Fire flickers in Bill’s palms, unbidden. “Shows what you know, jackass! I haven’t been—”

“I am not an imbecile, McGucket,” Ford snaps. “And Bill, do not address my partner in that manner.”

Bill grits his teeth. His enthusiasm curdles.

“Whatever,” he mumbles. “You heard the guy, buddy. ”

“I won’t leave you alone with him,” Fiddleford says, voice shaking. “Not again.”

“Then stand guard outside,” Ford says, rubbing his temples. “Please. This conversation is for myself and my— and Bill , alone.”

The engineer watches them, eyes flicking back and forth. A moment later, he sighs and lets his hand fall to his hands; even now, he can’t refuse Ford. Bill watches, eyes wide and burning, as Fiddleford stands from his chair and crosses to Ford. He tries to hand the Quantum Destabilizer to the man, and Ford shakes his head; Bill sags with relief, fighting back a crooked smile as Fiddleford sighs. 

He leaves, finally, with one last look over his shoulder at Bill. Furious, terrified. Bill wonders how similar they look right now, then banishes the thought.

“Ford,” Fiddleford says, voice hollow, “thought you oughta know that he’s not human by choice.”

Ford looks baffled. Bill shoots to his feet, hands sparking, mute with rage and panic.

The door closes. The blue light of the hallway is gone, and so is Bill’s fire; something inside him smothers it like a cold damper.

Bill turns, heart pounding. He meets the eyes of his author, dark and lonelier than he’s ever seen him. He realizes his own are burning.

“Well, Fordsy,” he says, drawing himself to his full height. “I guess I’d better clear a few things up.”

If he pretends he is someone else — an automaton, a court reporter, anything but the man he has always been — Ford can speak clearly. 

He sees himself move as if through fogged glass. He sits, heavy in his chair, skin perspiring where he grips the book. Bill stands before him, a half-smile still on his face, and if Ford only focuses on the lower half of his face (the nose, the sharp canine teeth, the crooked bow of his lips) he can almost imagine that nothing is wrong. That he’s dreaming, lost in the memories and fantasies his mind churns up while he sleeps.

But Bill’s eyes are bloodshot and wide, and they track his every movement. When Ford meets them, the pupils expand in focus or fear.

Ford isn’t sure if he’s angry or afraid, but then, he’s not sure of anything right now. He has a thousand questions, ones he’s asked before and ones he never would have thought of if he hadn’t just read and heard a broad summary of everything Fiddleford kept secret since May.

Half a year. Oh, God.

He sinks back in his chair and swallows. Bill’s smile falters, and he clears his throat like he’s about to speak. Ford feels a clawing panic in his throat, as though someone’s put a hand on his bare trachea; before his muse can say a word, a question falls from his lips.

“What did Fiddleford mean by that?” Ford asks.

Bill’s face falls. He puts a hand to his chest, to the mark it bears, and for a moment a grimace flickers across his features. 

“Mean by what?” he asks.

“That you’re not here by choice.” Ford stares at his muse’s hand, the five fingers, the skin darkened by his use of fire. “Not… not human by choice.”

“Oh! That!” Bill’s laugh is sharp and unconvincing. “Nothing. Championship-level mental gymnastics.”

“So you came here of your own accord. To help me.”

“I— of course!” Bill snorts, shoving his hands in his pockets. “I’m not the kind of interdimensional muse who warms the bench, honey. You needed someone in your corner, in the flesh.”

“You could have visited me in my dreams,” Ford murmurs. “You didn’t have to come.”

“You think I don’t— if I weren’t here in person, you wouldn’t have completed the portal until 1982,” Bill snaps, brow furrowed, good eye glinting in the dark. “This whole thing saved us years.”

“How do you know that?” Ford asks, aware of his own heartbeat. “How are you certain?”

“Phenomenal cosmic powers,” Bill says, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Or just an educated guess. Pick.”

Ford is watching Bill, but he feels like he’s watching a film he’s seen before — he doesn’t like the ending, even if he doesn’t remember it yet. What frightens him now is the fact that he can tell that Bill was telling the truth about the portal being completed in 1982, and that he was lying about how he knew that. He spoke the first answer with a fervor that drew him up to his full height, then began to fidget with his hands (snapping, gesturing) the moment he had to justify it. An unconscious and obvious tell — one Ford is starting to realize he’s seen before.

“Alright,” he says. “Alright, Bill. I believe you.”

The lie tastes like bile. Bill’s jaw tenses, and he looks down; he wants to believe it and can’t. He knows Ford too well.

Get out of my head, Ford thinks, just in case.

He can feel a dryness in his eyes that he hasn’t felt since the fall of 1979, when he was sure that he would never find his Unified Theory. When he was losing all hope that he would be remembered by history. Before Bill came into his life. He blinks, and the sensation goes away, if only for the moment.

“Look, Sixer, there’s been a big fat misunderstanding between me and humanity in the past,” Bill says, smile thinner than ever. “Fiddleford met a few luddites with a grudge, that’s all. You know the types! Spitting on a helping hand, just because they’re too small-minded to understand it. I offer to help them, they get scared, they tell their diaries they want their mommies. They weren’t partner material, that’s all!”

“A lot of people hold the same opinion of you, Bill,” Ford says. He glances down at the book in his hands, readjusts his grip. “The similarities are—”

“What do they say? ” Bill snaps.

The anger in Bill’s voice is old, and something about it is familiar in a way that makes him want to hide. Ford feels a prickling on his skin, the phantom sensation of goosebumps rising on his skin. He doesn’t hear his muse in this tone, or his lover, but it’s unmistakably Bill.

Ford flips to a random page. He does not have to pick a specific one.

“Demon from a realm of nightmares,” he says, waiting for Bill to say something.

Bill scoffs, looks away. “Let me guess. Puritan New England, some time in the 1690s? They thought gnomes were demons, Sixer. Come on—”

“Elias Inkwell. 1931,” Ford interjects, voice firm. “A noted Congregationalist Christian, yes, but hardly a Puritan.”

“The guy had a big imagination!” Bill says, with a sharp laugh. “Look, there are plenty of geniuses I inspired who never had a bad word to say about me. Ask Leonardo da Vinci! Well, you can’t ask him, but—”

“You were called dream-thief in 1500s Russia. Mund-spilli in Old Norse. God of Mischief by the ancient Aztecs. I have counted the word demon and its equivalents a dozen times in a cursory reading of Fiddleford’s work,” Ford says, breath short in his throat.

“I’ve been kicking it in the Mindscape since this species was dust in the cosmos,” Bill says, any levity bleeding from his voice. “That hill— Fiddleford can make a compilation of every time humans didn’t understand me, and sure, it’ll make me look bad... do you think someone couldn’t do the same thing to you?”

Ford furrows his brow. “What?”

“Someone with a grudge could write a pretty nasty review of your life, smart guy. You’re the best human alive, but you’re still human! You’ve made mistakes! I’d need a hell of a lot more fingers than twelve to count the number of times someone mistook your genius for insanity. I tried to inspire geniuses, and they rejected me for being something they couldn’t understand.”

Bill takes a breath, looks down. For a moment, there is no anger in his face, and he looks almost confused — like he didn’t expect to look down and see the soft skin, the bandage Ford tied, the hands that cradled Ford’s. The sting of his words fades, but it lingers in the back of Ford’s mind and prickles like fiberglass. Mistakes, he thinks, digging one nail into his palm.  

“It got a little demoralizing, you know?” Bill adds, clearing his throat. “Trying to show people the stars.”

There are enough memories laced through that sentence to make Ford’s chest ache. Every sharp glance sent his way, every mocking remark made by a peer or an elder, everything whispered behind his back or thrown in his face. He can feel them like a thousand little cuts.

Your lives are not the same. He is lying to you, Ford thinks, even as his fingers twitch, even as he imagines wrapping his coat around Bill beneath a clear and cloudless October sky. 

“I suppose it wouldn’t be a fair assessment of me,” Ford says, voice measured and distant in his ears. “Would it?”

Bill looks up, eyes bright, smile returning. “No! Of course not. See, I knew you’d—”

“A spirit of inspiration.”

Bill pauses. His brow furrows, and he tilts his head. “Speaking?”

“One Thurburt Waxstaff called you his Spirit of Inspiration, Bill,” Ford says. “Few records of this man outside of an appearance at the Pan-American Exposition in 1901 exist, save what appear to be several personal accounts.”

“He said that?” Bill asks, wringing his hands. “Now wait just a—”

“He writes that you plagued him with nightmares. You entered his dreams and tortured him. You wanted him to…”

Ford stares at the xeroxed diagram in his hands, unable to speak. It’s absurd, an impossibility in every way: a portal, powered by the technology of a pre-nuclear age, looming in front of an endless row of coal boilers and human workers. Gears and cogs and shipyard chains. Despite the vast metallic bulk of it, the impossible cost its construction would require, it mirrors the portal sitting in Ford’s basement with eerie perfection. Triangular chassis, inverted, around a circular doorway.

A great unblinking Eye of Providence.

“Where the hell did Fidds get that?”

Ford startles, yanks the book to his chest. Bill is standing over him, now, face drawn; he saw the drawing, the evidence that hollowed Ford out. His pupils have contracted, suddenly, in the desk lamp light in the study.

“From Waxstaff’s associate, I presume,” Ford says, pushing the chair back to stand up. “Abigale.”

“Oh, please. She’s a Northwest. She’s Auldman’s mother. She—” 

“She describes the dreams you gave her for not building a portal to your specifications as torture. Mutilation , Bill, she uses that exact word.”

“Come on! That’s a gross exaggeration! What really happened was a hell of a lot less interesting than—”

“Fine. We don’t need to discuss those specifics.” Ford snaps the book shut, his mind flashing back to the half-dozen other diagrams that never panned out. “Tell me the truth, Bill. Have you ever inspired a human to do something that did not tie into the goal of building a portal, in human history?”

“Of course I have!”

“Was it on purpose?”

“I helped them and they helped me, Fordsy. Sharing makes the world go ‘round!”

“You did not help all of them!” Ford says, pressing his fingers to his temples to quell a growing headache. “For God’s sake, why do you want this portal so badly? You told me that you wanted to aid me. You wanted to inspire me. You made me think I served a greater purpose than any other human alive.”

“You do!” Bill throws his hands up. “You’re making the greatest scientific discovery of all time!”

“I am merely building a portal that could have been completed a long time ago by any other genius,” Ford murmurs, staring down at his hands. “I’m completing work that was set in motion before the first humans were born.”

“No. No, no, no, that’s not true. The other portals were all failures from the start,” Bill raises his voice, and little blue sparks flare and die around his fingers. “I was just beta-testing our magnum opus. Our work! Thousands of years of human life all happened for the sole purpose of leading me to you. The world chewed you up and spit you out for the crime of seeing things the way they really were. Who else has ever understood you the way I do? No one!”

“Fiddleford does!” Ford snaps. “And my—”

He realizes, to his own belated surprise, that he was about to mention Stan. He presses his lips shut and drives the thought away, guilt tightening its hold around his lungs.

Bill pulls forward, eyes sharp, pointing one finger at Ford’s chest. “I didn’t say people who liked you, or loved you, I said people who understood you. I know you like no other human ever can, Sixer, and you are better than this place. This planet. Sure, a few of my past attempts gave it the old college try, but they weren’t you! You’ve done in a year what took them lifetimes over lifetimes!”

“...you’ve told me that I’m special many times, Bill,” Ford says, eyes drifting up his muse’s face. “Told me I would do great things.”

“And you will. I’ll make sure of it!” 

Bill takes Ford’s hands in his. The motion is halting and conciliatory. Ford can feel the moth-wing of the man’s pulse under his wrist, warm and frantic. The lump in Ford’s throat remains when he swallows, and he closes his eyes as the ringing in his ears grows louder. He wants to believe Bill, to tell his muse that he won’t be swayed by the ramblings of people who grew up with the yoke of superstition around their necks. 

But he doesn’t.

“If you weren’t bound to this body — if you were still yourself — would you have treated me the way you treated your past disciples?” Ford asks.

“I’m still myself,” Bill snaps, even as he presses his fingers into Ford’s wrist and winces. “Who I’ve always been.”

“Answer my question.”

Bill opens his mouth and makes no sound. He doesn’t smile, and for a moment he looks very far away; his hands are shaking around Ford’s, and for the first time, Ford is afraid of the fire that saved his life in the radio station back in June. He steels himself and doesn’t pull away, even as his stomach churns, as the silence between them stretches.

“What would you have done if I had refused you, Bill?” Ford says, mouth dry. “If I’d delayed?”

Bill looks up, slowly, from beneath his dark brows. 

“...convinced you.”

Ford swallows, feeling cold and small. “You told me you came from a higher realm. When the portal opens… where does it really lead?”

“Wherever we want it to.”

“Fine. I’ll rephrase. What really happens when the portal opens?”

Ford waits for an answer, even as a horrible one congeals in his mind. The snippets in Fiddleford’s book are revelatory — as in the book of Revelation, as in the end of the world and everything in it. He does not want to believe it, but the consistency with which the authors record it across time and space is staggering. 

An Abbasid scholar wrote he will bring his paradise with him and his paradise will be hell in frantic calligraphic script on a piece of half-scorched linen paper . A Mapuche woman, interviewed by Abigale in the early 20th Century, called Bill an outsider who would unravel the laws governing the universe. There was writing by Leonardo da Vinci himself, in contradiction to Bill’s words, paranoid that his assistant Salaì had yellow eyes and an eerie fixation on the end of the world. 

One scanned photograph, seared into the back of Ford’s eyelids, was the worst of all: an inmate at the London Bethlem Royal Asylum, late 18th Century, photographed in the process of scrawling something on the wall. He wrote I GROW MADDENED first in slanted text , then kept writing the sentence as its letters changed places and warped.

The final iteration, written by the grinning patient in crisp and preternaturally perfect script, read WEIRDMAGGEDON.

“How should I know?” Bill asks, flashing his false smile again. “We haven’t tested it yet, have we?”

“Is it safe?”

“Well we won’t know until—”

“I do not believe you.” The words are painful in Ford’s throat. “I need you to tell me that I have somehow misunderstood a thesis’ worth of writing about your plans and your treatment of humankind across these centuries, and that you are not trying to destroy my world.”

“I’m not trying to destroy your stupid, myopic little world!” Bill snaps, yanking his hands back from Ford’s. 

“Then enlighten me, muse. It’s the least you can do.”

“Fine! You want to know what this has been all about? I am trying to liberate your dimension from itself!”

“What does that mean? ”

Ford’s question is almost a shout, but this time, Bill doesn’t flinch. A strange, distant light has come into his eyes; he steps forward, so that they’re almost chest to chest, and the moonlight turns his skin a brilliant cold copper. He looks like an angel, and for the first time Ford understands why angels had to tell humans not to be afraid.

“People like you and me are so much more than our species, Fordsy,” Bill hisses. “The greatest visionary of your time, and they relegate you to some safety school’s grant money and a shack in the Oregon woods! It is a big fat cosmic insult that you don’t rule the Earth, and you know it. ”

“No. I don’t.”

“You do! Don’t lie to me!” Bill’s voice harshens, sharpens into something alien. “You’re my ticket out of my dimension, and I’m your ticket out of yours. As soon as that portal opens, I’ll make you something greater than anything you’ve imagined. All-powerful. Why study the laws of physics when you can make them?”

“You lied to me,” Ford says, putting distance between himself and his muse. “You’ve been planning this the whole time — you have been planning this for all of recorded time. And you thought I would willingly help you subjugate my world?”

“ Liberate! ” Bill snaps, the sleeves of his shirt igniting as he shouts. “I would liberate this world! This dimension! It would be a party that never ends with a host that never dies — so much more than this mortal coil humans won’t stop complaining about!”

Fiddleford bursts through the door, and Ford turns to look in muffled surprise; the engineer, having heard the commotion, is breathing hard, gun aimed at Bill’s head. Without thinking, Ford starts to take a step forward to stand in front of it; he chastises himself for the instinct. 

Then he sees Bill flinch, hard, and throw up his hands over his face. He is trembling, whether from fear or for anger, and the single eye peeking through the space made by his arms shines yellow in the light of the hallway beyond. 

Ford steps in front of the gun and meets Fiddleford’s eyes.

“I heard him shout,” Fiddleford says, breathless. “Thought he was gonna try—”

“No. He wasn’t going to hurt me,” Ford murmurs, unsure how he knows this even now. “But you were right.”

Fiddleford looks equal parts relieved and afraid. The pity underpinning his expression makes Ford’s eyes sting and his breath catch.

“Right about what? ” Bill asks. His voice tilts upward, hysterical. 

“Why are you standin’ there?” Fiddleford lowers the barrel of the gun. “In front of him, after all this?”

“I don’t know,” Ford says.

There’s a moment of silence. Awful and taut as a bowstring drawn back. 

“One more minute,” Ford says, looking at Fiddleford with bleary eyes.

Fiddleford sighs, and his brow crimps. “Ford. C’mon. We need to decide what—”

“One.”

Fiddleford compromises by standing outside with the door cracked open, his shadow visible on the far wall. The thought of his friend hearing anything that is about to happen would have mortified Ford at any other time, but the part of him that would have cared has been carved out of his chest. 

“ Please, ” Bill says, with a strange, exhausted whine. “I’ve worked so hard. You’re my big million-year break. I’m your muse. Put aside that pesky sense of decency humanity is so proud of — what do you want?”

“All my life, I’ve wanted fame and power and the respect of my peers,” Ford says, looking down at his hands. 

“Yes! Exactly—”

“And since December,” Ford says, voice starting to truly break for the first time, “I’ve wanted a long life with you in it.”

Bill stares at him, lips parted, frozen mid-step. His fingers twitch like he’s about to reach forward, but he stays still. 

“Why?” Ford continues, with an empty, small laugh. “Why me? I summoned you — I know I did something that brought you here. But why did you make me believe we could be something more than a… a master and his instrument?”

“You were never just an instrument,” Bill says, voice quiet.

“Never just an instrument,” Ford repeats, the pain in his chest growing heavier. 

Bill steps forward, grimacing, speaking like every word hurts. “Fordsy. Please. Just listen. I’m telling the truth when I tell you that you’re a genius! I never thought— when I met you, I didn’t know I’d want to— geez, I can’t say it. Don’t make me say it.”

He says the last sentence like it’s a joke, but his face looks drawn and ashen. Ford wants to snap at him, to say that he is tired of listening to the platitudes he knows are lies, but he doesn’t. A treacherous, pathetic question bubbles from his chest in its place, and he presses his lips together like that will stop him from saying it.

“Do you love me?” Ford asks, fists clenched so tight they begin to shake.

Every thought in Bill’s head sounds like a scream. He hears Ford’s question, and at the same time, he doesn’t hear anything at all.

The part of him that wants to clutch Ford Pines like a pawn in a game of chess screams at him. Say yes, you big dumb idiot, there is only one answer that works and not speaking is the worst answer you can give! Humanity 101 — the only thing these sugar addicts crave more than salt and glucose is love!

He ignores the voice, and when he swallows the motion is painful.

Bill has told people he loved them before. Never seriously, but he’s said the words in sequence, and he’s been believed. In the 50’s, when he was running Billville as the prophet Silas Birchtree, he told his followers he loved them all the time, patting their heads and feeding the scraps that remained of their egos. He even said it to Janie, once, as she nestled her head against his desiccated shoulder and hummed an old hymn. It was an answer to her question, obviously — I love you, Janet Planet, you’re my favorite worshipper . It was a lie, like most things he told her. Bill couldn’t love anyone but himself.

But what did it all mean, then? 

The dreams, the comfort, the words of a long-dead jerk of a shaman echoing around your head? What did it mean when you could only sleep soundly with one person by your side? When one mortal human made himself comfortable in your thoughts and didn’t leave? What did it mean when remembering the things you’d done to him in another lifetime made you feel sick inside?

“I need you,” Bill says, voice thick, eyes stinging.

This is not what he should have said. Especially not following a pause, especially not now. He can feel it even before Ford’s vision clouds, before the man steps back and his glasses catch light of the room in twin white frames.

“How do I know anything you’ve ever told me is real?” Ford asks, shoulders shaking.

“I don’t have to tell you that!” Bill says, trying to meet his gaze, sick to his stomach. “You know. ”

Ford’s throat bobs. Bill steps forward, once and then twice, and puts his hand on Ford’s arm. He expects the man to recoil, but he doesn’t; he stays still, blurry in the darkness like a celluloid still. He wants to say something, now, three syllables to three words — his throat is dry and thick and painful. Human speech is an awful thing to rely on.

“It doesn’t change anything.” Ford draws himself up to his full height. “You used me and lied to me. I was a means to an end.”

“Just think about what you’re costing us,” Bill says, voice small. “That power. That totality. You want a life together? I can give that to you!”

“You can. I don’t know if you would.”

“Of course I would. For the love of everything, I would give you an eternity!”

“I never needed an eternity, Bill.”

“What could you possibly—? ”

Ford pulls him close. Heart to heart. He is leaning forward to hold Bill, so tight it pulls the breath from the smaller man’s lungs. Bill makes a sound of protest, too strangled to be an actual word, and tries to push himself away; he needs to convince Ford, to get his foot in the door, to do anything that will prevent what’s in motion. His shoulders and arms betray him, and he sags into the grip.

“I only wanted a lifetime,” Ford says.

Bill feels his author nod over his shoulder, just a moment after he says it. There is a hum, the smell of ozone.

With a terrible understanding, Bill detaches himself from Ford and turns around. Behind him, the engineer stands with his gun raised and an ineffable kind of pain in his expression. He’s looking right through Bill and Ford, like he’s thinking about anything but them. Ford’s hands come down on Bill’s shoulders, trapping him in place, and Bill feels an inexplicable stinging in his knuckles. 

A betrayal. A familiar one.

“What are we doin’ with him?” Fiddleford asks, like everything is decided already.

Bill is angry. Underneath the dread and the sadness, the great open wound in his soul — feels like your atoms are trying to fly apart — there is a little burning spot of anger, and if Bill doesn’t pour gas over it, he will crumble here and now.

Do not think about Ford. Not for a second. The trap’s closing in, buddy, but they haven’t caught you yet. 

“You’re not doing anything to me, tough guy,” Bill hisses, voice acrid and furious enough to actually make Fiddleford flinch.

“Like hell we aren’t,” Fiddleford says, finger drifting toward the trigger for a moment before retreating. “You think we’re gonna let you go?”

“I know you are.” Bill leans forward so that his face is near the barrel of the gun, even as his instincts scream at him to cower back. He feels it crackling, inches from his forehead.

“Hang on,” Ford says, a new note of fear and caution in his voice. “Wait. We need a place where we can—”

Fiddleford balks at Bill’s proximity to the barrel. The gun dips, the man takes a half-step back, and Ford’s hold lessens for a fraction of a second.

Bill drops into a crouch, lunges to the right. Ford shouts after him, a word that Bill can’t make out because Fiddleford left the door open behind them; the swinging barrel of the Quantum Destabilizer follows him in a quarter-arc of wicked blue, and then Bill is in the hallway and sprinting like mad. 

He falls, bangs his knee against the floor, keeps running. He isn’t sure if he’s holding his breath or if he just doesn’t have any breath to spare, but he can still run and that is all he can do. There are footsteps behind him, the keening cry of the weapon charging itself, and Bill half-expects to be turned into a soot mark on the wall at any moment. But he isn’t. 

The elevator is freezing cold, dark as pitch — the faulty ceiling lights finally gave out. Bill slams his fist against the interior panel, letting out a cry as the torn skin on his hand grates against the gauze. He slumps against the wall, succumbing to every agony this body is throwing at him, shivering despite the burning in his body and the sweat on his brow.

A moment before the elevator doors close, someone lunges through. Bill falls to the ground, heart in his throat, something just south of a scream catching in his mouth.

It’s Ford. Just a second faster, just early enough. Something metallic slams into the doors as they shut, and Bill hears the engineer shouting outside the door. Pleading.

“Ford! Override the—”

Too late. Ford could do something, now, if he had the will, but when he faces Bill, his face is haggard.

“Where would he lock me up, huh?” Bill snaps, drawing himself back into the corner, standing on shaking legs. “You want to build a bunker to hold me and the other monsters?”

“What are you planning to do?” Ford asks, the question genuine and desperate. “It’s autumn, almost winter. It is freezing outside. Do you plan to wander until you find someone else to… to use?”

Bill is silent. He looks down, at his hands, at the blood seeping through the knee of his pants. He should be revolted by himself, but he can only think of Ford and his voice and the tears hovering at the edge of his eyes. Ford’s furrowed brow softens into something more tired and more plaintive when Bill lifts his gaze again, and the expression makes Bill’s stomach twist.

“Bill. Please.” Ford sinks to a knee in front of him, reaches for his face. “I still— don’t run off to God knows where without thinking.”

“I won’t be your prisoner,” Bill says, feeling his smile crawl up his face like a painful tic. “I have plans. I always have plans. Backups and alternatives. A window open where the door closed.”

“I know you’re lying to me right now,” Ford says, fingers hovering above a tiny cut on Bill’s head, voice hoarse.

And Bill realizes, to his own surprise, that he isn’t lying.

Months ago, when his old followers visited this town, he charged them with a task: the construction of a portal, to the specifications he gave them before the Bureau of Whatever-the-Hell blew everything up. He gave them a list of cities, of locations where the ethereal dividing line between dimensions thinned and Weirdness bled through. Which means that Janie’s out there, somewhere. Building. Putting the family she bound by blood and obsession to work. He knows it because he knows Janie, as little as he’s thought about her for the past eight or so months.

He remembers the pile of letters crammed into his mailbox right after she and her caravan left town. WE’LL MEET AGAIN, written over and over again in ink and lead and syrup and blood. And one he thought might have been Janie’s, in a pretty cursive no amount of time wore down, on which a small postscript was added:

South where it’s brighter!

“Then you can blame your best friend when they find me dead in a ditch,” Bill says. “You don’t want to be part of my plans? Alright, then. Stay in this suffocating world and don’t come crying to me when you realize what a mistake you’re making!”

Ford looks hurt, profoundly so, and Bill has to swallow hard to be able to speak again.

“Well?” Bill asks. “Any last-minute change of heart, brainiac? Come on.”

“I love you,” Ford says, voice breaking, words thick. 

Bill stares at him, uncomprehending. The doors to the elevator open, metal ringing. Ford’s fingers close the gap and brush his face, and Bill realizes that his author is wiping away the thick tracks of tears on his cheeks. He was crying this whole time, and he didn’t feel it.

The god in a human vessel stands, feeling delirious, feeling like he’s about to vomit. He cannot stay here. He does not know what he’ll do if he stays. He doesn’t know what decisions he will make or undo, what plans he’ll ruin.

So he runs. Fast as he can, he bolts for the door, shoves his feet into his boots, rips a jacket off the wall. Ford is calling his name, over and over again, or maybe that is only a memory of his voice.

The air outside is freezing cold and dark as pitch. Bill feels it whipping against him, stinging his face and his wide-open eyes, and he does not look back.

The last resident of Gravity Falls to see Bill for several months is Carla Grendinator.

Bill finds himself in familiar woods when his vision clears and he can no longer run; he pauses long enough to rest against a tree and vomit, ridding himself of what little was in his stomach, then tries to keep walking forward.

“Hey!” calls a familiar voice, firm but concerned. “You okay?”

Bill stops, stiffens, and doesn’t turn around. He can hear footsteps behind him, too close to run from, and he yanks his coat tighter as though this will hide his identity. It does nothing, of course, because he is still shackled to this human body that Carla has seen dozens of times. He forces a thin smile and looks back at her over his shoulder.

“Hey, Cars,” he says, snapping his fingers. “I’m fine. Just…”

“You don’t look fine,” she says, voice lowering as she approaches him. 

Her brown eyes are narrowed, peering to see him better in the darkness of the woods; he shoves his hands into his pockets, wincing as pain shoots up his injured fingers, and feigns indifference. She takes in his appearance piece by piece, and her concern grows clearer on her face by the second.

“What happened?” she asks.

To his own horror, Bill’s eyes start to sting again. He looks down and lets out a small, teetering little laugh.

“It’s a lot to explain.” Bill digs his nails into the wrist of one hand, stomping from foot to foot. “I wouldn’t know where to start.”

“I mean, I don’t want to pry into your business. But…”

Carla hesitates, then smiles at him the way she would smile at a kid — at George. 

“...I’ve got cocoa. And something you can borrow, if you’re going to be walking around at night. An old scarf from my mom, cozy as shit.”

Saying yes is dangerous. Ford and Fiddleford could be looking for him now, ready to drag him back in a unicorn-hair net and lock him in a bunker to rot. He thinks about running again, about making some excuse or teasing her for treating him like a little lost boy in need of charity.

He follows her home anyway.

It feels strange to accept a drink and to listen to her speak; Bill feels as though she should somehow know what has transpired, that she should spin around with the thermos in her hand and brain him with it like any other human would. But right now, she’s just handing him cocoa, asking him if he’s feeling alright, telling him about what her mother used to be like (she was a writer, she loved old songs, she couldn’t dance but made up for it with enthusiasm) . When Carla hands him the scarf, it is a long section of blue knitted wool that feels heavy on his shoulders and smells like elder pine.

“It’s… it’s nice,” he mutters, letting his eyes close for a moment. “You sure you want me to have this?”

“You can always give it back to me when you see me again,” Carla smiles.

Bill takes another sip of cocoa before he can start to feel queasy.

He deflects every question she has until she stops asking them. Eventually, when he is warm again, he asks her if she can give him a ride to the bus station, and she agrees with a note of hesitation; he alludes to a family emergency with all the subtlety of a brick to the face, so she stops asking questions. Even this late at night, she’s more than willing to help him, more than willing to drive him down the road to the Speedy Beaver station just outside of town.

As the two of them leave, Bill catches a glimpse of George peeking out of his bedroom door, a little mussed, caught in the yellow light of his bedroom. He waves to Bill, smiling when he recognizes the man, and Bill waves back with his unbandaged hand.

When he gets out of the car at the station, he gets out with a stolen handful of dollars from the glove compartment and fresh tears in his eyes. He is surprised that there is anything in him left to cry.

So Bill, wearing Ford’s coat, gets on the bus and wraps a dead mother’s scarf around his shoulders. He sits with his burning head pressed against the window and falls asleep, wondering if the barrier that kept him in Gravity Falls in the first timeline will turn him inside-out when he tries to leave in this one.

As it turns out, something does happen when he leaves Gravity Falls. He dry-heaves, hard, and shakes like he’s been tazed, and for a few moments his vision goes black.

Then he wakes up, and he’s still on the bus. Heading south, where it’s brighter.

The other people on the bus do not look at him, or acknowledge him, which is a relief. He is out of tears, but he is still shaking in his seat, breath catching over and over again in his throat like a record with a deep scratch across its top.

What does brighter mean?

What would it mean to Janie?

He has an idea. Or he thinks he has an idea.

Bill sleeps on benches and in bus stops and between the shelves of public libraries. His first week on the road is a dark blot in his memory, one in which he subsists by dining-and-dashing at whatever restaurants he sees along the way. He has to save the little money in the pockets of Ford’s coat for bus tickets, on top of the paltry amount he stole from Carla — he’s not sure why thinking about that makes him feel like he’s swallowed rocks.

The weather gets warmer. Not warm enough. The haze of fog is everywhere as Bill follows the coast; northern California’s autumn is marked by gray skies and explosions of leaves that lash the sky in bursts of orange and yellow. Bill mistakes them for fire a few times, as he lets his head rest against the windows of different buses, as he gets lost along the roads and valleys. He loses days on routes that never seem to end, loses nights wandering small towns looking for somewhere to sleep. He remembers Ford’s words a few times, turns red at the thought that he is proving the man right, waking up with hands so cold he has to run them under a lukewarm bathroom tap before he can work the buttons of his coat.

He needs to reach southern California, fast. There are places where building a portal would be easy, there, in the eastern deserts and the flatlands. He thinks about Janie, and the kiss she placed on the corner of his mouth before she left.

She was so sorry to go.

Bill wonders what he’ll tell her when he sees her again. He decides he won’t tell her about Ford at all. Some things are better left unremembered.

Three more days. Or maybe six. Bill takes the wrong route and screams at the bus driver until another customer belts him across the face and tells him it was his own damn fault. He laughs like a maniac when he hits the floor, sliding down the bus stairs and slumping against the doors — when they open, he stumble-crawls off the bus into a city that swallows him up.

It’s easier not to think about Ford here. He’s in San Francisco, or somewhere like it, and it’s loud and it stinks and the young people lounge at the bases of ludicrous palm trees like they’ll never die. The trolleys are easy to use, so long as no one notices him grabbing onto the back before they start moving, and so long as his grip holds. 

No one he talks to knows who Janie is, or Silas Birchtree, no matter how annoying Bill manages to be about it or how many people he asks. On a number of days, he finds himself sitting on a street corner and just laughing at nothing, and people walk by without sparing him a second glance.

Well, except the guy who told him that he smelled. Bill chased him for a block. Laughing and calling after him, telling him exactly how he’d die. 

(He had to make it up, but it had the same effect that telling the truth would. Who needed unfathomable powers, anyways?)

On his third or fourth or seventh day in the city, a man takes pity on Bill; the businessman Bill accosted at a bus stop hands him five dollars, forces a smile, and says that his name is Fred, not Ford. Bill shouts something along the lines of of course I knew that as the man makes a quick exit, then sets off looking for a bus that will take him east of a city he’s decided he hates.

One good thing about a noisy, terrible place like this: no dreams. Bill barely gets any sleep on the average night, anyway, but he’s glad what sleep he gets is devoid of anything memorable. For all of the cajoling and screaming and shouting he does in his waking hours, he sleeps like the dead.

And you look like it, too, he thinks, staring into the mirror of some dingy gas station as his stomach growls beneath his coat. 

“Sir, we have other customers who need to use that bathroom,” says a nasal-voiced teen just outside the door.

“Neat!” Bill replies, and rips the soap dispenser off the wall.

Time means nothing out here. 

Bill becomes more nocturnal as the days trip by, as every moment bleeds into the next. He’s been in plenty of dimensions where time was warped, or moments erased and repeated themselves, but he’s never felt like this: dragged forward in the present, even as his mind pulls him backward.

He hasn’t been eating much. Maybe that’s it. This stupid human vessel can only function if he’s fat and happy, and otherwise, it’s useless. What a joke! He wonders how humans ever made it out of the Dark Ages like this, or whether the Axolotl gave him a weaker body on purpose.

Maybe he did, maybe he didn’t.

The weather clears, and it somehow makes Bill’s mood worse.

Cold skies, clear and pretty. Look at them in a picture, and you’d think it was June. The wind is as harsh and terrible as ever, and Ford’s coat is the only thing that blocks it out; Bill’s face and legs and hands are freezing, all the time, every hour of every day. In one town, Bill finds a library, and he spends vast useless hours there simply because he knows the outside will be sunny and bright and freezing to the bone. He tries to research Janie or his own cult in the library and finds nothing, but it keeps him occupied. Bill wonders if Fiddleford felt like this, reading over whatever snitch of an archive contained all that information about him, and crumples the page he’s reading in his hands.

(No librarian sees this. He smooths it with a huff and replaces the book on the bottommost shelf.)

He falls asleep amid the stacks, one night, his presence unnoticed by whatever librarian closed up shop. The smell of books is strong, and his scarf is warm, and Bill falls asleep in some degree of comfort for the first time in…

A while. For the first time in a while.

He doesn’t dream. Bill tells himself he doesn’t dream. Not of warmth, not of someone’s arms encircling him, not of anything. When he wakes in the morning, he goes to the bathroom and washes his blotchy face with the sink’s freezing water.

He doesn’t go to the library again. Not here, or in any city to speak of.

He thinks he sees one of his old Ciphertologist acolytes, one day, on the outskirts of a dying industrial town already falling victim to urban sprawl. He follows them for five blocks, trying to see their face, and when they finally turn around to accuse him of being a private investigator, they are just an angry old person with a funny-looking birthmark on their forehead.

Bill leaves without saying anything. He just turns down the first blind alley, face blank, feeling nothing at all.

When he wakes up the next morning, he has a cough that starts deep in his chest and sounds like an engine misfiring.

It doesn’t leave.

This is bad, he thinks, and keeps moving.

When you find your favorite cult, it’ll all be different. You’ll find them soon, here in these bright sunny places, and they’ll take you in and call you Lord like they damn well should. You won’t have to lie to anyone anymore, and they’ll all love you because loving you is what they do. They can’t be far now. Can’t they feel what you’re feeling, the cold and the hunger that burrows deep? What do they eat? How does Janie feed them?

What did Janie tell them that made them still believe in you after all this time?

Bill thinks in circles while sitting in the passenger seat of some old woman’s car, listening to gospel music rattle out of the radio in bursts of static. She saw him hitchhiking and had a little mercy on him, and he can tell she’s starting to regret it; she looks straight ahead, having stopped trying to make conversation several minutes ago.

“You know,” he says, voice slurred with lack of sleep, “I had something beautiful, in my life.”

“Oh, did you?” she says, offput, disinterested.

She drops him off too far north of his destination, and he says nothing about it.

Bill wakes up in Ford’s arms.

He’s snuggled close, tight enough that his author’s shirt has left an impression on his face, and he nestles deeper as the light through the window brightens. Ford cards his fingers through Bill’s hair, gentle as ever, and Bill smiles to himself; he can hear the far-distant crackle of eggs cooking downstairs, of something Fiddleford is making on the stove. Ford kisses the top of his head, letting out a chuckle that rumbles through his chest like a satisfied purr.

“Fordsy,” Bill murmurs, reaching a hand up to cup his face. “You’ll never believe—”

Bill wakes up on the floor of a bus station. A custodian is jabbing him in the face with a mop. He rips it out of the guy’s hands and hurls it across the room.

He’s dreaming again. He’s dreaming again, and his clothes fit loosely, and he has no idea where his Ciphertologists are.

He tries to contact Janie in her dreams, and finds that he can’t. He keeps thinking he hears Ford’s voice around the corners of his own mind, floating down the hall, chasing him as he tries to navigate anywhere else in the Mindscape. He is terrified of what will happen if he follows it; he already tastes bile in his mouth at the thought of Ford seeing him like this, of being proven correct.

Don’t kid yourself. You’d kill for him to come find you right now.

Bill tells the little voice in his head to shut up and decides he just needs to sleep less, or sleep during the day. He’ll be fine. He’ll make it out of this, like he always does. He’s hungry and cold, but he sure as hell isn’t dead yet.

And you’re not going to die, the little voice says, condescending. But you might if you walk into traffic, big guy!

He stops just in time, before his footsteps can carry him off the curb. He blinks. He’s in the middle of a main street he doesn’t recognize again.

There’s a bus stop down the road. He spits and turns toward it.

Fall asleep. Wake up. Keep moving. Cold means nothing anymore. You wound up in northern Arizona, idiot, they won’t be here. He gnaws on a pack of beef jerky he stole from a gas station and keeps moving.

The lingering cough he shook a few days ago is back with a vengeance. He wonders how humans ever survived these without throwing themselves off the nearest cliff. In the evening and morning, when the world is hazy around him, he thinks he sees Ford standing on street corners or watching him at great distances, and he only realizes they are shadows or mirages or other baffled humans when he closes the distance.

Fall asleep. Wake up. Keep moving.

Print it, big shot, you’re running out of time.

It’s December.

Bill learns it’s December when he steps onto a bus and sees a tinsel snowflake taped above the door.

When he asks the bus driver if he’s seeing things, the man confirms it’s the first of the last month of the year, and Bill laughs long and hard — hard enough that the driver, unsettled, waves him through without taking any money. He takes a seat at the back, meeting the eyes of the other confused or irritated passengers one by one, and pulls his scarf up over his face.

“Happy anniversary!” he says, drumming his fingers against the seat in front of him. “Happy anniversary, Sixer!”

“Sir, I’m trying to read,” says the man in front of him, turning to give him a narrow and unamused look.

Bill should put this guy in his place — tell him something horrible, shout at him, give him a taste of what will happen when his future overlord rings Weirdmageddon in with his loyal death cult. But there is nothing inside Bill left to fight, or kick, or scream. He realizes it in a sudden and final moment — he wasn’t aware he was running out, but he’s tapped the well and found it dry as a bone.

He leans back in his seat and squeezes his eyes shut, makes himself as small as he can. Bill feels sick, like everything inside him has decided to curdle at once. He lets himself lie on his side, small enough to take up just two seats when he tucks his legs in, and chews at the chapped skin on his lips. A wave of despair crashes against the bulwark he built in his head, over and over again, eroding something he doesn’t have the strength to rebuild again. 

It’s December.

He’s been away from Ford for a month and a half. It’s only been a month and a half — a long time to get lost, but a fraction of a fraction of a single blink in the span of Bill’s unfathomable life. And it feels like it’s been centuries and eons, like he’s already forgetting how it felt to sleep in the security of his author’s arms. Bill wraps the scarf tighter around his mouth and exhales hard through his nose — it’s the closest he can get to a scream.

He’s about to throw his arm over his eyes to block the grating, migraine-inducing flicker of the headlights passing by the window; he pauses, confused, when a sudden flash of light is bright enough to turn the insides of his eyelids pink. 

Any distraction’s a good one, buddy, he thinks. 

He sits up, looking around, and sees nothing that could have produced the light; the guy in front of him has started doing a crossword, an old lady is doing her lipstick in a compact mirror, and two kids sitting behind him and to his right are muttering to each other. Arguing about whatever human kids argue about. Bill closes his eyes and sinks back down again, wincing as a bruise on the side of his head touches the cold seat of the bus.

Footsteps. A cleared throat.

“Is this seat taken?” asks a young girl, voice high and loud and chipper.

Bill groans and sits up, shoving himself toward the window with a wordless grumble. He looks out the window, catching the reflection of the girl in it; the ghost-image reveals a kid in a warm-looking knitted sweater, features indistinct except for the wild curls falling to her waist.

“Excuse me? Mr. Guy mumbling to himself?”

Bill raises an eyebrow. “Didn’t know I was doing that.”

“Oh, you totally were. I do it too! The other day I was thinking about calico cats out loud for so long that I forgot they were a real type of cat.”

“They do sound fake,” Bill says, thumping his head against the window. “Did you know they’re all girls?”

“That’s what I’m saying!” the girl says, throwing her hands up. “All sisters and no misters.”

Bill laughs at that. Really laughs at it, with the dumb human laugh that he only learned he could make by spending time with Ford. He quiets after a moment, looking down at his hands, at the place where his bandage used to be and the tangle of additional scrapes he’s accumulated since he ran. Now he really can’t look at this kid; he swallows to fight the growing lump in his chest.

“Hey,” she says, real sympathy in her voice. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Bill says, voice low and raspy and awful-sounding. “Never better, kiddo.”

“I’m not a therapist, or anything,” the kid says, “but you seem pretty down, buster.”

Bill raises his eyebrows. “I’m doing fine, shortstack. You want something, or are you just passing time?”

“Well, when I came over here, I wanted one thing, but now it’s two.” The girl holds up a hand, then roots around in her pockets; Bill watches in the reflection as she wiggles her fingers into the pocket of her seasonally-inappropriate skirt. A moment later, she emerges with a grin and something unidentifiable in her hand.

“First order of business is getting a smile on that face,” she says, shoving something toward him.

Bill looks down to see a handful of green nonsense, clutched in the girl’s pale freckled hand. He squints at it, then takes it with a feeling of trepidation; it unfurls in his grip, and he lets out a surprised snort when he realizes what it is.

“Daisy chain,” he says, bemused.

“Yup. It’s kinda squished, but I made it myself.”

“You think this is gonna cure what’s ailing me, huh?”

“Not until you put it on,” she scoffs, “ doi. ”

Bill tosses it over his head. It falls over his neck, settles on top of the scarf he’s wearing. The kid next to him fixes its position, and he closes his eyes for a moment and inhales the scent; nothing feels real, right now, and he’s alright with that. It can be spring in his head.

“How’d you make a daisy chain in December?” he asks, poking one of the flowers with his thumb.

“I’m a witch.”

Bill snorts, then clears his throat to hide it.

“That was a smile, wasn’t it?” the kid asks, sounding very smug.

“You have no proof. I’ve got a scarf on my face.”

“Suuure I don’t. You’ve got eye crinklies.”

“Fine. Fine.” Bill sits up straight, wincing as his back cracks. “You got me. I smiled. What was the other thing you wanted?”

The kid pumps her fist. Bill starts to turn toward her, then feels something bump his foot; he squints at the floor and sees a dark, square object on the ground. 

“That, actually,” the kid says. “It’s mine. I dropped it when I got here, and it skidded over.”

“Oh. Sure.” Bill kicks it her way, and she bends down to pick it up. A mop of brown hair falls over her face as she gets ahold of the thing.

“Thanks!” she says, hair scattered over her face and shoulders as she sits up. “Gotta go. I hope you feel better soon, train guy. You seem, like, really familiar.”

“I just have one of those faces, kid,” Bill says, sinking back down in his chair — thinking that she seems a little familiar, too. “Now skedaddle.”

Something adhesive touches his face. He touches it, wrinkling his nose, and feels a star-shaped sticker on his cheek. A moment before he drifts off, he sees another flash of light; he blames it on the faulty bus lighting and rolls over to shove his seat into the chair.

When he wakes up, just in time for his next stop, the kids are gone. He’s not sure why that fact nags at him until he remembers that there were no other stops along that route.

Huh, he thinks, as he turns his feet toward the nearest gas station. Weird.

The daisy chain — the only evidence that the encounter on the bus was real — snaps off at some point that day, too fragile and pretty to survive a dry southwestern winter. By the time Bill realizes it’s gone, he’s already decided that he probably dreamed the whole thing.

No good things happen for him after that. Not for a while.

He gets lost near Death Valley. The driver of the next bus he finds lets him on out of pity.

Bill catches sight of himself in the rearview mirror and realizes his nose is still bleeding from that morning.

You can’t run from your dreams forever.

Stay awake too long, and dreaming will be all you have the strength to do.

Do you want to shoot it now? says a little voice in his head, with the needling tone of a director who’s been waiting on his star. It sounds exactly like him — it’s whatever part of his brain is left to despise himself.

Bill nods. In a little nowhere town somewhere between Death Valley and Las Vegas, he falls asleep.

FADE IN:

INT. THE PENTHOUSE SUITE OF THE FEARAMID — NIGHT

BILL CIPHER, eternal nightmare king and head party animal of Dimension 46’\, sits on a throne of frozen human agony. He holds a beverage made of ultraviolet light and the refined agony of several unicorns — shaken, not stirred. He’s whistling to himself, despite his lack of a mouth; his golden form burns bright and cheerful.

Booted footsteps resound in the hallway outside. Bill perks up and stops atomizing the statues of various Northwest family members. He teleports around the room in a flash, making sure no dust has accumulated on the tapestries and statues and graven images of himself and his mu loyal devotee. 

FORD PINES, gray-haired but unmistakably immortal, enters the frame.

FORD

Sorry I’m late. I’ve been studying

the celestial jellyfish in that old galaxy

you’ve been eyeing. How’s Earth?

BILL

Same as usual. You missed a huge

volcanic eruption this morning in Italy.

Two catastrophic events in one millennium!

It’s a greedy little country, I’ll tell ya.

Ford smiles and takes the dream demon’s hand in his. His palm eclipses all four fingers. Bill follows as Ford moves forward, removing his outer vestments, rolling a crick out of his neck. The man’s network of geometric tattoos glows a brilliant electric blue as Bill reaches around, running small fingers along the patterns.

FORD

Did you miss me?

BILL

Sixer, a millennium is like nothing to me.

You were gone for a day.

FORD

(teasing)

That’s not an answer, dear.

BILL

I was too busy to think about you at all,

brainiac. You think being a god-emperor

comes easy? I’ve got a lot on my plate!

FORD

Do tell.

BILL

I just had to reconstruct the throne — it 

was digging into my back, big time.

FORD

Mm-hm.

BILL

And I had to rewrite the laws of physics

so that we can finally take that trip to

that resort I built out of dark matter.

FORD

Of course.

BILL

And there was the beauty pageant where

I was every judge and most of the 

contestants, and Pyronica still won—

FORD

(chuckling)

And this was necessary work?

BILL

Yes, because I still had to get lunch

when it was over. And that was all before 

noon, baby. I’m not just a pretty face.

Ford looks back, smiling, then does a double-take. His grin widens.

FORD

No, you aren’t. But I haven’t seen that  

particular face in a few years.

Bill looks down, surprised. He has taken a familiar form again, without realizing it: human in every way, save for the golden eye. He looks back up at Ford, a flush on his immortal and all-powerful face. He pokes himself.

BILL

Huh. Didn’t realize I was in the mood.

Ford cups his devot muse’s face in his hands.

FORD

Admit it. You missed me.

BILL

You first.

Bill leans forward and kisses F

Everything freezes.

Bill watches everything in third person, shivering, freezing in the winter air that surrounds him in real life. He can’t feel his fingers anymore, except he can, because they hurt like hell and they hurt even worse when he tries to warm them up. Using his blue fire makes him feel like he’s about to explode, but it’s the only thing keeping him alive. Sparks slice the air past his fading vision.

Nice dream! says a voice in his brain, one that mostly sounds like himself. Not a bad way to close the show. You like it?

Bill shakes his head. Wherever he is, he shakes his head.

Sheesh, alright. We’ll cut it. Anything else you’d like to see before you g—?

FADE IN:

INT. DORMITORY ROOM — NIGHT

STANFORD “FORD” PINES, junior undergraduate student at Backupsmore, sits on his bed and lifts a can of inexpensive beer with a broad smile on his face. His best friend sits across from him at the foot of the bed, inebriated, hair tousled. A musical soundtrack plays on a vinyl record, spinning endlessly in the corner.

FORD

Here’s to another semester completed

and another round of exams vanquished.

BILL CYPRESS, the friend in question — born a human, never anything more than human — snorts and takes another sip of his beer.

BILL

Sure, and here’s to all the paychecks 

I’m dumping into this fine institution to 

scrape out a passing grade.

FORD

“Fine” institution might be a stretch.

BILL

Hey, they put me in a class with you.

Can’t be all bad, huh? Somebody

up there likes you, buddy.

FORD

Of course, Bill. And I would— oh,

God, look what I’ve done now.

Bill looks up and giggles at the sight of Ford. Foam from the beer he was drinking has left a white smudge of foam down the man’s face, and he struggles to hold his leaking can up while taking care of the mess. 

BILL

Hold on, smart guy, I’ll get you

a paper towel. Sheesh, look at

all that foam. Did you shake that

can before you opened it?

FORD
That sounds like something you

would do.

BILL

Me? Why?

FORD

Who knows? Scientific curiosity.

BILL

I’m not just going to run around

shaking beer cans for the hell of it.

I may be a theater major, but

I know how to structure an experiment.

FORD

(amused)

Oh, so you’d need a scientifically 

sound reason to shake the beer?

BILL

(begrudgingly, also amused)

Yeah, genius, something worth my time.

Bill, clumsy and tipsy, reaches forward to help Ford with the mess on his face. He wipes away some of the foam, smiling, then realizes that his friend isn’t speaking. 

Ford is staring at him, lips parted, eyes drifting down fraction by fraction. Bill swallows, unsure how to adapt under the attention.

BILL

You alright, Sixer?

(beat)

Do I have something on my face?

Ford kisses Bill, fast and hard, then pulls away with a panicked expression. 

The kiss ends. Bill stares at him, stunned, unblinking. Ford, already flushed from the alcohol, reddens.

FORD

Oh, good Lord, I’m sorry. This—

the drinks went to my head. I don’t 

know why I—

BILL

When does Tennessee get back?

FORD

(beat)

I’m sorry?

BILL

Fiddleford. When is he coming back tonight?

FORD

He had a date with Emma-May.

BILL

Thank God.

Bill grabs Ford and yanks him into a kiss, so excited it knocks the glasses from his f

Blackness, blackness, blackness — Bill watches in third person as everything burns away like an overspun roll of film.

You like that one? What a riot!

Bill doesn’t think it was very funny. He doesn’t know what he thinks about anything at all.

Woof, tough crowd. Don’t tell me you’re feeling sorry for these animals. I’m talking about you, too, buddy — a pity party’s the only type of party we don’t like!

  He tries to tell the voice in his head to shut up, but it’s him, as needling and stupid as ever. He closes his eyes, or squeezes them tighter. Maybe they were already closed.

Fine. Cry about it, then, see if I care. Here, I’ve got something you’ll like better. It’s really cinematic, kid, one for awards season. Stop me if you recognize anything.

FADE IN:

EXT. DERIVATIVE CINEMATIC PLANE RUNWAY — NIGHT

Everything is black and white and covered in a fine winter mist. It’s the 40s, or maybe it’s the 80s, or maybe this hasn’t happened yet but it’s guaranteed. BILL and FORD are looking at each other. 

Bill is crying. Of course he is. 

BILL

You’re just saying this so I’ll leave!

Some disciple you turned out to be.

FORD

I’m saying this because you know it’s true.

We never belonged together, Muse. You

belong to the stars and the universe.

If you stay here with me, you’ll regret it.

BILL

I w—

FORD

Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow.

But soon, and for the rest of your

eternal life.

Bill doesn’t have the decency to let the tears roll down his face. He wipes it, angry, furious at himself for the display of it. This doesn’t make sense. Nothing makes sense.

BILL

Goddamnit, what about us?

FORD

(with a sad smile)

We’ll always have Gravity Falls.

BILL

(smiling; audibly, embarrassingly in tears)

Yeesh. Cornball.

FORD

We didn’t have it for a long time. 

We’d lost it. Until you came back, and

we built it up again.

BILL

You shouldn’t know about that part.

(beat)

You said it was now until the end of time.

You said you’d never leave me.

FORD

Oh, Bill, you know I never will.

Someday you’ll understand that.

He takes a step back. And Bill wants to follow, but he can’t move, can’t do anything but sit there with his face streaked with tears and his hands covered in scrapes and the rain coming down around them. Ford looks at him with all the love any human has ever had for another.

And Ford

The dream ends early. Too early. Bill is crying while the credits roll and the orchestra plays it out. The tears hover in the air around his face, catching light that doesn’t exist. Stars. They look like stars.

Aww, he forgot his line! His own voice says. And you — you’re supposed to drag him onto the plane with you, buddy, whether he likes it or not. We’ll just have to cut it, then. Don’t die yet, I’ve got a real hit in here for you somewhere.

Bill doesn’t have the energy to fight whatever he’s going to see next. Hell, he doesn’t even want to. Maybe when he dies this time, Ax will have mercy on him and just throw him into whatever interdimensional prison other would-be dimensional tyrants go to — at least he wouldn’t be curled up in some cold alleyway, talking to himself.

Can’t believe you and I are the same unfathomable demon. You’re a wreck! The voice cackles in his ear. C’mon, what’s next? These are going to get real fun when DMT starts flooding that dying animal brain we’re stuck in.

Bill bites his tongue, hard, deliberately. The pain hasn’t been funny for months.

FADE IN:

EXT. WEIRDMAGEDDON. A MORE FAMILIAR ONE. — DAYNIGHTWHENEVER

You remember this place, Bill. You see it in third person from the start, this time: Ford Pines, older and wiser and made into something cold and jaded, levels the Quantum Destabilizer at the center of your form. The church bell startles him, but not enough to sway his aim. Maybe he listened to the old hack fortune-teller who told him to think before he took his shot. 

Hard cut as a searing bolt of energy creates a boiling hole in your body, just below the eye. And it hurts, even to watch it from a distance, it hurts. You turn around, golden form jittering like fireflies struck by lightning. Your crew gasps and cries out in chorus, then falls silent.

Ford just stands there and watches. You have enough time to kill him and make it hurt. He knows this; you know this, and nothing happens. If you could smile, in this form, you would.

BILL

(happy?)

Here’s looking at you, kid!

Ford is crying, which makes no sense, and in this form and in this agony you cannot cry at all. 

The light unravels everything. You leaves an atom of yourself behind. Maybe Ford finds it, gleaming like a little gem. Maybe the wind just takes it away.

What the hell was that? asks his own interior voice, red with fury. You call that a dream sequence? You really are losing your mind, Jack!

Bill has stopped feeling anything at all. Physical, mental. He thinks something along the lines of I have always been insane and you and I both know it, and he hears himself scoff in reply. 

Fine. No more movies for you. Hope you made the most of your run here, Billy, because it’s over! Lights out! Curtain call! You’re freezing to death in an alleyway, and you’re too useless to—

FADE IN:

INT. A FAMILIAR HOUSE IN FAMILIAR WOODS — MORNING

BILL and FORD work side-by-side in a kitchen. Neither of them speak. They don’t need to. They are both very human and both very alive, and the radio plays “As Time Goes By,” as sung by Vera Lynn. There are smile lines around Bill’s mouth, and small wrinkles at the corner of Ford’s eyes, and both of them are going gray around the temples.

As Ford hands another dish to Bill to be dried, the man sidles closer and rests his head on Ford’s shoulder. Ford chuckles. It’s an inconvenient way to do the dishes, isn’t it? Who cares?

They both look so happy. Go ahead and pretend it’s real. It’s a nice idea to die with.

Bill’s incessant mockingbird of a brain doesn’t have anything to say in reply to this final dream. Everything is quiet. Everything is still.

He takes a last, shuddering gasp of real air; it is cold and wet and revolting, but it keeps him conscious for a few more moments, long enough to open his eyes. He sees someone standing at the head of the alley, head bowed against the bleak December, backlit by the last rays of a setting sun. The man lingers at the entrance, head tilting, taking a half-step back as he sees whatever wreck Bill has made of himself. He’s hesitating, but he isn’t leaving; he casts a long shadow over the dingy pavement.

The silhouette — Bill knows that silhouette. 

This can’t be real. He knows this can’t be real, that this is the traitor dopamine flooding his brain, and he curls further in on himself even as his heart roars in his ears. Bill is screwed in every way imaginable, and if he starts hoping now, the last emotion he’ll feel while he’s alive will be overwhelming disappointment.

But when he squeezes his nails into his chest under his stolen coat, his nerves spark, and the impossible dream in front of him doesn’t fade away. It’s Ford, live, here and now; he found his muse, despite everything, and he is picking up his pace to carry him home. 

Bill lets out a cry that may be a sob. The sound of his own voice, ragged and high, startles him; it does nothing to dissuade Ford, who is taking off the coat he’s wearing, muttering something under his breath. And he wraps it around Bill and helps him up, grunting as he rebalances himself with a half-dead human shell dangling off his shoulder. He takes two steps forward, testing, and Bill tries so very hard to move his shaking legs.

“ Ford, ” Bill says, the word falling out of him in an awful, pathetic whimper. “I knew you’d be back. I knew you’d miss me. You have no idea what I’ve—”

The man stops dead in his tracks. His hold on Bill’s arm tightens, enough so that it almost bruises. He turns, and the light catches in his dark eyes; his brows are furrowed, and he looks baffled beyond measure.

“Uh, buddy,” he says, in a hoarse, cigarette-marked voice. “Do you know my brother? ”

Bill blinks.

A moment later, the realization hits him. It hits whatever last untriggered thermal switch in his brain prevented him from falling completely unconscious while his mind dreamed itself to pieces.

Bill, held aloft by the con-man drifter known as Stanley Pines, blacks out.