Hello friends! This is a story I've been roughly planning since right after "Not What He Seems" first aired. What started as a Dark!Dipper fic has turned into a Bill Redemption Arc, and I hope everyone enjoys it.
For those of you waiting on an update to Revived, don't worry, I haven't abandoned it. Just working on another story for now. I'll switch back when I need a break from this one.
"Nruter yam I taht rewop tneicna eht ekovnt I! Nrub ot emoc sah emit ym, Ltoloxa!"
A fist. Collision. The disintegration of his form, and in turn, his mind. Nothingness. The deepest abyss he had ever come to be a part of. Non-existence.
Then a light - no, a mist. Swirling, blowing, coming towards him, enveloping him. His eye was open again; how long had it been closed? Mere moments? Years? Centuries? He couldn't tell, couldn't possibly know. In the oncoming cloud a figure began to take shape before him.
"Rehpic Mailliw," greeted a massive, floating Axolotl. He stared at it for a moment, confused, then rubbed his eye with both hands. The Axolotl remained before him.
"Uoy s'ti," he replied, hesitant in his words. Why was he speaking like this? "Nrub ot emoc sah yllaer emit ym neht."
"Mailliw, etiuq ton," said the Axolotl. "Revo morf raf si emit ruoy."
His mind felt cloudy. What the creature was saying didn't feel true - couldn't be true. But... Why? He felt like he couldn't remember. He could hardly remember who he even was. The words tumbling out of him felt like nonsense, and he wasn't entirely sure why he was saying them.
"Em ekil dnuos t'nseod taht... Mailliw," he said.
The Axolotl tilted its head at him. "Eveileb I, Llib referp ouy."
And in a rush, it all came flooding back - every moment, every triumph, every failure of the past hundreds and thousands of years. The destruction of his home, his wandering through the universe, his entrapment within the dream realm, the people he inspired, the things he couldn't do, the discovery of Stanford Pines and his technical prowess at the heart of Gravity Falls, his untimely outing as a demon, chasing Stanford through the Nightmare Realm, being resummoned after a short thirty years, Weirdmageddon -
He was Bill Cipher.
For a moment, Bill felt the urge to laugh - he had himself back! But the feeling was snuffed out by the realization of where he was, of who he was talking to. He didn't have himself back; on the contrary, he had nothing. And he was about to lose even that.
Except...
"What do you mean, 'my time is far from over'?"
The Axolotl smiled at him. "Oh, good," it said. "You remember now. I knew it would catch up with you."
"Don't change the subject," Bill growled. "What did you mean by that? Isn't this the end? Isn't this where you send me back as something else to atone for all my sins?"
"I would, but this isn't the end at all," replied the Axolotl. "Far from it. The device created by Fiddleford McGucket was indeed of great power, but it never had the ability to complete erase anything. Only split it into fragments and hide it away."
Bill narrowed his eye in confusion and annoyance. "Okay, so what does that mean?" he asked. "Am I not dead? Am I..." He trailed off in confusion. There was only one possibiliy he could think of if he wasn't dead. The last place he'd been…
The Axolotl nodded.
"Yes," it said. "You are within the mind of one Stanley Pines, and you have been for almost four years. Your consciousness was a scrambled mess within his own lost memories, and I was unable to use any of it to contact you. But he has begun to remember you. And so, you have begun to piece back together."
"...I don't believe it." Bill floated backwards, one hand pressed to the space just above his eye. "I'm alive," he said, more to himself than to the Axolotl. "I'm alive... And I'm inside a human host!" Laughter bubbled out of him like a spring geyser, quickly turning maniacal as he turned towards the sky - or space - or whatever was above him. Then he returned his gaze to the Axolotl and pointed a defiant finger at it. "And there's nothing you can do about it!"
As the great creature stared at him with its pitch black eyes, reflecting back on him everything he'd ever done, Bill began to falter.
"...So why did you bring me here?"
"To give you a chance, William."
Bill gave the Axolotl a look of disbelief and floated towards it again. "First of all, don't call me that," he said. "Second, why? And what kind of chance is this? If I fail are you gonna kill me for good so you can turn me into a turtle or something?"
"I doubt a turtle would be able to atone for the misdeeds you have committed," said the Axolotl. "As for why, it is because I have compassion for all things. I would not harm you, nor would I hinder your efforts. I only seek to give you a chance to right your wrongs before your fate catches up to you."
"My fate? What fate is that?"
The Axolotl turned its head away from Bill, and the mist began to clear, showing the vastness of space around them.
"The fate you chose the day you destroyed your home dimension."
Bill raised a hand, ready to speak in his own defense, when a blinding light distracted him. He threw his arm over his eye to shield himself, then carefully lowered it as the light subsided. Where the Axolotl was looking now shone a brilliant cluster of stars, a distinct constellation with shining lights between each point. It was Ursa minor, one Bill was well familiar with in his travels through the universe. Though the way the beams of light connected the stars…
"The Little Dipper?" Bill asked, incredulous and confused.
The Axolotl turned to him once more, its pink skin now highlighted by the stars, black eyes glimmering. "The key to everything you seek, and everything you need, lies within the child of the stars," it said. "He holds power he knows nothing of, power that a being such as yourself could unlock. And in turn, he could unlock new things within you…"
Bill gave the Axolotl a disgusted look. He remembered enough about his enemies to know who the 'child of the stars' had to be. "You're telling me that Pine Tree is…" He stopped for a moment and looked back at the constellation. The powerful twin was Mabel, wasn't she? Bill had to lock her away, had to make sure she was guarded and impossible to get. Then again… Dipper was the one who had freed her. But that alone didn't indicate any sort of hidden power, did it? All the same…
Dipper was close to Stanford. Stanford was the one to contain the original rift. Dipper shared his interests, his goals… And to have a chance at a brilliant mind like that again, someone who could really do things in the real world on Bill's behalf…
"...The key to everything," he said, his eye upturned in glee.
The Axolotl nodded. "Yes. And you will need him, for the barrier between the Nightmare Realm and Gravity Falls grows thin after your attempted apocalypse. Weirdness is flooding into the town at increased levels, and soon it will encompass more than just Gravity Falls. A tear in the fabric of reality may spell doom for the entire universe."
Bill gave the Axolotl his most thoughtful look. "I see, I see," he said. "So what you're saying is… I use the kid to tear a hole into the Nightmare Realm, then start Weirdmageddon 2.0!" He cackled in delight. "With that kid bound to me by whatever deal I can get him to make, I can't be beat! Thanks, Ax! You're a real helper!"
The Axolotl seemed unfazed. "You choose your fate, Bill Cipher," it said.
"My fate is gonna be sitting pretty on your throne," Bill said with a jab of his finger. "You think you know everything, huh? Wait 'til I'm back in power! My reign will never end!" He laughed again, then pulled his cane into existence and twirled it around his fingers. "For a God, you sure are stupid!"
His laughing died down and came to a stop as the universe around him began to fade, stars and galaxies going dim and disappearing before his eye.
"You choose your fate," the Axolotl repeated. "Will you choose differently this time? Or will you remain on the path of destruction?"
"I already told you -" Bill grasped his cane tightly and furrowed his brow as the mist began to fade out with the stars. Even the Little Dipper was going away, bit by bit. "Hey, knock it off! I'm talking to you!"
"Ylesiw ti esu. Nruter nwo ruoy dekovni ouy," said the Axolotl as it began to disappear into blackness.
"I'll see you again soon, Ax!" Bill yelled into the space between them. "And you won't be prepared!"
Then it was gone, and there was nothing but a deep, unsettling darkness.
Yet in that darkness, Bill Cipher was alive.
Stanley Pines jerked awake in the darkness of his bedroom, covered in a cold sweat and breathing heavily.
The feeling of solid ground beneath his feet was alien at first; he and Ford had only docked ship a week prior in anticipation of Dipper and Mabel's arrival. In just a few more days, the twins would be back in Gravity Falls, sixteen and ready to drive their Grunkles into twin heart attacks. It was an exciting time, just like every summer; but as Stan shambled his way to the bathroom, he wasn't feeling as psyched up for it as he had been before.
"That damn nightmare again," he said into the mirror as he ran cold water over his hands. He splashed his face, shook his head, then turned the faucet off. "Freakin' creepy triangle guy… I don't even remember the apocalypse! Why I gotta remember you all of the sudden?"
The only reason he knew it was a memory and not just a dream was because he had offhandedly told Ford about the first nightmare, when the triangle man turned into some sort of pyramid-beast and chased Dipper and Mabel away from where he could save them. Ford had been very worried, had explained that the triangle man was the big bad guy they had erased his memory to defeat. Ford was afraid that the nightmare meant the triangle man could somehow manifest in Stan's mind for real.
Sounded like a bunch of bull, in Stan's opinion.
So he didn't tell Ford about the other nightmares - even the really vivid ones that seemed too real, the ones that had to be memories. No use worrying his brother about something as silly as bad dreams. His memories were coming back, so what? At his age, he felt lucky to have a good memory.
Stan glared into his mirror for a moment. His eyes didn't look right in the dim lighting - there was almost a glow to them. But when he tried to focus, it seemed to vanish, and he was just looking at himself. His dreams were just putting him on edge… that was all.
"Just a stupid nightmare," he mumbled as he headed back for bed.