The twins were pressed together tightly, clasped in the single, massive hand of the being they feared the most. The position was uniquely uncomfortable in that: A, they were dozens of feet off of the ground and B, they could be dropped at any time at the whims of someone who hated them. What surprised Dipper the most was just how dead it felt. It didn't feel like a human hand, warm and constantly in slight motion. It felt like the hand of an animatronic, firm and dead. The static constantly flying from Bill's oddly electrified form pricked the pair uncomfortably and made what little hair that wasn't already standing on end fly upwards.
"Alright, Ford. Time's up. I've got the kids." Bill's voice boomed over their heads, bouncing off of the walls and driving needles of fear into their brains. Their friends waved in the sound waves, frozen in screams of agony and fear.
"I think I'm gonna kill one of 'em now just for the heck of it!" EENIE..MEENIE...MINEE-"
"Wait!" Mabel mustered a loud yell despite the pressure on her lungs and Bill paused, his pupil flickering back into its usual small black slit.
"What, Shooting Star? Need a tearful goodbye? Trying to beg for your lives? Get on with it, I haven't got all day!"
"I…" Her eyebrows pulled together and apart repeatedly as her mouth opened and closed, trying to form the words that wouldn't part with her.
"Come on, kiddo. You're trying my patience here."
"Kill me instead of Dipper."
"Mabel no!" Dipper tried to grab onto her, but she leaned out of his grasp as well as she could. Bill, to their surprise, opened up his hand, releasing them onto his palm. The twins ignored the opportunity for escape (jumping at that height would mean death anyways). Dipper only stared at his sister in disbelief.
"Oh really? And just why should I, huh? What makes you so much worthier of being killed? Dipper here has caused most the trouble."
Mabel only stared at the ground.
"All, right then. If you're not going to give me a reason I'll just kill Dipper!"
"No! It's my fault we're in this mess anyways. I gave you the rift to stop summer from ending. I'm the selfish one. I've always been the selfish one. Kill me instead of him."
"That isn't true! Don't do this!"
"Yes it is, Dip. I put everyone in danger just because I wanted things to stay the same. People could be dead because of me, Dipper. It's only fair that I get lasered to death instead of you. You did your best to help everyone while I just hid inside my bubble."
Dipper's retort was suddenly interrupted by an ear-shatteringly loud peal of laughter. Bill's cackles screeched into their ears, shaking the Fearamid where it floated. "This is too good to be true! Dinner and a show! Tell ya what, kiddo. If you do one teensy little thing for me, I might just let you kids try to live after Ford gives me the code! All ya gotta do is tell everyone in Gravity Falls what you did."
The twins screamed together as Bill's hand suddenly shot upwards at an alarming speed. The capstone flipped up and they were suddenly outside, staring at the destruction below.
The air was hot and nearly dripping with humidity, yet the winds blowing through were ice cold, carrying the smell of rotted corpses and burnt hair into their faces. There weren't any corpses around to see, yet the smell persisted, against all logic. People sprinted and huddled alternately, trying to escape the eyebats they hadn't escaped before. Despite being saved only a few minutes previously, the residents of the town didn't even consider fighting back.
Bill's body followed his hand upwards, shrinking and re-expanding to as he pushed himself through the hole. A massive, inky black megaphone materialized and hung in the air before him. He pressed the trigger, releasing the third hellishly loud noise of the night (day? Who knew. Time, as Bill had said, was dead. It mattered not whether it was the sun or the moon above them.).
"All right, listen up humans! Your darling Mabel Pines has something she wants to say to you! If you don't listen I'll tear out the pieces of your inner ear individually! Eyebats, stop the throne rebuilding for a moment, will ya? I want them to hear this!"
The eyebats stopped their conquest at Bill's words, rising up to hover in the sky above their targets. Every eye was turned towards Bill and the children. Soon the eyes of every human followed. Down in the streets below them, Lazy Susan pulled up an eyelid to watch the new spectacle.
Bill, seeing that he finally had the audience he wanted, floated the megaphone upwards towards Mabel. It didn't change its size, but stayed on as it floated upwards.
"Don't listen! He's lying to you! This isn't right!" Dipper yelled into the megaphone as it came to rest near his face, but all he heard was his own voice, at normal volume. No one could hear him.
"Nice try, Pine Tree, but no cheating! Only Mabel can use that megaphone. I'm not letting you start another one of your little uprisings. Now come on, Shooting Star. Spill the beans before I spill yours into a wood chipper."
She stood trembling before the town. The back of the megaphone was larger than her entire head; there was no way that it wouldn't catch everything she said. And blast it all over town. Admitting her guilt to almost everyone she'd ever cared about.
Almost everyone. A hand slipped into her own, equal in size and weight, but much, much sweatier. Dipper looked at her, a small smile pushed onto his lips. Things were bad, but they were there together.
Bill rolled his eye. Mabel took a deep breath and turned back towards the town.
"...". Nothing. Her words wouldn't come at first, but Dipper squeezed her hand more tightly, and soon enough the words tumbled out, badly paced and in a jumble.
"It was me. I. gave Bill the rift. Um...I didn't know it was him, he was in someone else's body and I wanted summer to last forever so I thought that maybe he could fix it I didn't know what the rift was and I'm so sorry so sorry I'm sorry this should have never have happened I ruined everything I hurt everyone I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry!"
She fell to her knees, pulling Dipper down with her, and cried. The sobs wracked her body, pulling themselves out of her like screams. They echoed around them, bouncing off of the walls of the barrier and back into town, magnifying them over and over. Soon they were immense, rattling the windows and forcing the townspeople to cover their ears instead of their eyes. They were crying too, albeit more quietly.
After a while even Bill seemed to get annoyed with her loud sobbing and evaporated the megaphone. Her crying continued undeterred, even as he pulled himself and his hand back down into the Fearamid. He then pulled off the end of the Stans' cage and unceremoniously dumped the pair into the top, allowing them to fall several feet before Ford and Stan caught them both.
Bill raised the previously occupied hand to his eye and stared at it for a brief second before his eye receded and teeth emerged. He gave the tear-dampened hand a massive lick. "Mmm, child trauma! My favorite!"
"You're disgusting. How could you do this to a child?" Ford yelled at him, hugging Dipper close to his chest. Stan was hugging Mabel just as tightly, wiping away her tears.
"Oh, I'm the disgusting one now? Says the guy who put his family in danger over a silly little equation. By the way, why don't you hand it over already? Seems you don't have much else to lose anyways, considering Mabel just trashed your family's reputation again."
"She did no such thing! It was my fault for not telling her about the rift in the first place!"
"And my fault for not paying attention and accidentally switching backpacks with her!" Dipper shouted up at him from the safety of Ford's grip, glaring intensely at him.
"Who cares if it was Mabel's fault or not! Give me the equation or your family's as good as dead!"
"You said you would let them go!" Mabel joined the yelling, tears momentarily forgotten.
"I said I would after Sixer gives me the code! I didn't say anything about not killing you before he does! Come on pal, you wouldn't let your whole family die over a bunch of silly little numbers, would you?"
A ring of burning flames burst forth from the floor, slowly but steadily constricting itself around the pyramidal cage. The irregular bars grew thousands of needle-thin blue spikes. The cage began to shrink.
The smoke of the fire began to drift into the cage. Dipper coughed at the burn in his throat.
"Come on Stanford."
The heat beat against their faces. A thin sheen of sweat replaced Mabel's tears.
"Just give up."
The tassel on Stan's fez began to singe. His family curled in on itself, awaiting the end.
"The old offer still stands. You'd be better off in my crew than you would be dead. Your family might even be able to come with."
A long, thin needle began to poke itself into Dipper's cheek.
"FINE!"
All at once, the flames stopped and pulled back outwards, shrinking until they disappeared entirely.
"I'll take your stupid deal. Just..don't hurt them."
"Attaboy, Sixer! I knew you'd come around!"
Dipper dropped to the floor inside the still-tiny cage as Ford's knees disappeared from under him. A spike sliced into the back of his vest as he carefully rotated himself around, just in time to see his great-uncle shake hands with Bill Cipher.
Bill bounced out of his physical body, ricocheted off of the ground, and plunged directly into Ford's mind. His eyes grew blue-white and he fell to his knees, tears streaming down his face.
A moment later Bill emerged, eye crinkled and twice as bouncy. He slammed himself into his body and soared upwards, howling in glee. A quick bright flash and he was outside. The Pines family watched through the window as the barrier broke, the cracks shining in inverse.
Years later, Ford reflected on the day everything went to hell. He was scribbling down equations in his new study, neck chained to the wall. He was supposed to be solving the problem of reconnecting what was left of the nightmare realm to the universes Bill didn't own yet.
Bill had mounted the heads of numerous horrifying creatures around him, but he was warm and dry. His pens never ran out and he was never hungry or tired. His life was a carefully ordered stasis. Dipper was in a nearby room in a similar situation. They could talk through a two-sided blackboard (Bill thought that making them constantly write backwards to communicate was funny), but could only touch or see each other on the rare occasions that Bill took them both outside of their rooms at the same time. Bill claimed that if he ever allowed Ford to die, Dipper would take over his job.
Mabel and Stanley were allowed to run wild around Bill's new world. Their only purpose was keeping their twins in line. Sometimes, if Ford was doing a particularly good job or Bill was in a good mood, he'd let him see them through his body. They had been camping out in a small colony of humans lately, sharing food, labor, and tales in exchange for safety when they slept. Mabel was still a ray of sunshine, and had attracted quite a following over the past few years. People saw her creativity and optimistic attitude and Stan's cunning and fighting prowess and decided that the pair was their best bet against dying.
He was puzzled by that. No matter how desperate things got, most people's primary goal was to keep on living. They'd give up anything to save themselves and their families. Even the world.
He wondered if it was worth it.