Everything was coming up Pines.

Bill Cipher had put up one hell of a fight, but after all was said and done, he had lost the battle. The rift used to connect the physical world to the mindscape had evaporated into nothingness, the two realms separated once more. The dream demon himself looked smaller, the yellow that filled his form now faded, no longer entirely opaque as he struggled to remain corporeal.

"This isn't over." Bill's voice was soft, a mere shadow of its usual self.

"You're not fooling anyone, Bill." Dipper took a step towards the demon, who eyed him warily. "We beat you fair and square."

Despite everything- the chaos that pervaded the family's surroundings, the strain of the battle that they had just fought, the niggling feeling that as long as Bill was still around they weren't out of the woods just yet- Stanley Pines couldn't help but smile to see the boy stand up for himself, and against a demon no less.

"Fightin' back," he whispered to himself, the sound lost amidst the hisses and crackles of broken machinery and dying magic.

"I don't think so." Bill replied. "You Pines are going to pay for what you've done, starting with…"

A moment passed, a tense, silent moment in which each member of the Pines family sized up the threat in front of them.

"Eenie…" One finger uncurled from the demon's fist to point at Mabel, her bright sweater a beacon of light and color amidst the darkness.

"Meenie…" Another finger pointed at Ford, whose face paled ever so slightly, his hands clenched in tight fists.

"Miney…" A third pointed at Dipper, whose thin arms trembled, though there was fire in his eyes as he stared back at the demon.

Stanley gulped as he realized that Bill had only one finger left, leaving only one option for the first target of his vengeance.

Bill extended the fourth and final finger.

"Y҉óu̷.̧"

In the blink of an eye, the world turned gray, and his family disappeared. It was just just the two of them now.

Bill was a vibrant yellow once again, brighter than he had been since the rift between dimensions had been sealed, the lone source of color remaining in a world gone monochrome.

"Welcome to the mindscape- also known as the Pines family vacation home!"

Stan paused, trying to put together the logic behind the demon's statement, but the pieces didn't all fit together, and those that did painted a picture that he'd rather not dwell on.

"…I'm not even gonna ask."

"Don't sweat it, Fez. Just stay tight and ŕela̶x͘."

And suddenly, Bill pulled.

But it was a strange kind of pull, one tugging not at his body but at his mind, his soul, his very being. Stan felt an overwhelming urge to give in, to let the demon have his way, to close his eyes and go to sleep and not have to think about when, or if, he would wake up…

No. He couldn't. He wouldn't. Stan didn't know what Bill was planning this time, but he knew that whatever it was, it was wrong. And he was damned if he was going to let Bill win.

Stan stood tall and summoned all of his willpower into focusing on pushing Bill out of his mind, pushing back on the mental force that threatened to overwhelm him.

Bill shivered for a brief moment before starting his assault anew. At first, Stan enjoyed watching Bill's reaction, watching him clench his fists, the anger and hatred contained within his one-eyed gaze- but it proved to be a distraction, and he closed his eyes so as to focus better.

Minutes passed. Maybe hours. There was no way of tracking the time here, no clocks, no sun, no sound, just mind against mind, demon against human.

"Stanley?"

That wasn't Bill's voice. It was one he knew far better, one he had grown up with, one that had been missing from his life for far too long.

Stanley opened his eyes.

"Ford?"

Ford nodded somberly, shooting his brother a wry grin.

Bill, Stan noted, was nowhere to be seen. Not gone- he could still feel the weight of his presence in his mind- but out of the picture for the time being, at least. They were alone for now. Just two brothers against the world, just like the old days.

"I'm so glad I found you. I followed Bill in here, and I think I know a way to get you out."

The pressure that had been building in his head reached a crescendo, and he had to keep repeating Ford's words to himself to stay focused on the conversation at hand. A way out. He knows a way out.

"You do?"

Ford nodded, pushing up his glasses with his index finger. "My research indicates that if you go to sleep in the dreamscape, you'll wake up in the real world, and then this whole thing will be done with. No more worrying about Bill."

Stan could hear the blood rushing through his head, could feel his heart pounding in his chest. His eyelids felt heavy, drooping on their own when his attention flitted elsewhere. His body and mind both cried out for rest. If that was all it took… if all he had to do to get away was close his eyes and drift away…

"That's it. Just go to sleep…"

Somewhere deep down, in some dark corner that hadn't been overcome with pain and fog, a warning bell went off in Stan's mind.

"No."

Ford took a step back, wide eyes staring into the gray abyss around them, refusing to look at his brother.

"No? What do you mean, no? Don't you want to stop Bill?"

There was something ever so slightly off about his smile, about his speech, even about the way he pushed up his glasses…

Stanley took a breath and looked up and down at Ford.

"Come on. We can do this. You can do this."

Their eyes met, and Ford extended his hands, six fingers reaching for five-

And Stanley punched him in the face.

Ford's glasses fell to the floor, frames scratched and lenses cracked but otherwise more or less intact. He took a step back, hands raised with palms open.

"What was that about?"

"Give it up, Bill. I know you're not my brother. You can drop the act any time."

A minute passed. Stanley focused on steadying his breaths, watching his chest rhythmically rise and fall- which, he noted, didn't seem to be necessary for Ford… no. That wasn't Ford. He knew his brother better than that.

Was Ford's lack of breath a failing in the imitation, or did he not need to breathe in this strange, otherworldly realm, either?

Stan wasn't keen on finding out the hard way.

The form of his brother became twisted, shrunken, appearing as a monstrous caricature of itself for a brief moment before dissolving entirely, replaced by Bill in the shape of a triangle once more.

"What gave it away?"

Stan glared, pointing his finger directly at the demon's lone eye.

"You think Ford would just smile and say it'll all be okay? You think he would throw his hands up and back away from a fight? You know nothing about my brother!"

"I know more than you do about him, Fez. S͞o̶ m͟uch mo͝r͟e." As Bill spoke the last three words, his body displayed a series of images, flashing through them just slowly enough for each one to be individually discernible. All images of Ford. Ford in college, Ford wandering the woods of Gravity Falls, Ford in some dimly-lit cavern that Stanley couldn't recognize.

All times that he hadn't been there for Ford.

Stanley felt dazed, unfocused, and he wasn't sure whether that was because of Bill's mental warfare or just the natural result of coming to terms with the images before him.

"And that's exactly why I'm not giving up, after all the work I've done to get my brother back-"

"And why did you bother? Don't tell me it's because you careabout him- oh, you're hilarious. You did it out of guilt, because you knew that everything bad that had ever happened to him, everything that had torn the two of you apart, was your fault."

A piercing pain shot through Stan's head, making him flinch despite his best efforts to stay still. He could feel Bill pressing in on him, ready to crush him at the first sign of weakness, and it made him queasy and shaky-

"And what did you get out of that meager attempt at making amends? A brother that still hates your guts? Another addition to your lengthy list of screw-ups? Face it, old-timer. Soon enough you'll have no house, no job, no name, no identity to call your own… The world already thinks Stanley Pines is dead. You might as well make it off̷ici͡al͝."

"So you want me to, what, give up and let you destroy the world?"

"Come on, I'm not gonna destroy this place, just liven it up a little! Your sorry excuse for a family will probably be glad to have more weirdness to explore."

Bill drew closer until he was just out of arm's reach, then extended his arm, thin and dark and filling with blue fire.

"So do the first worthwhile thing in your life and let me in."

Stanley's mind flashed back to when he'd heard that phrase before, when Ford had said it in the argument thirty years ago that had changed his life forever.

"…I'm giving you a chance to do the first worthwhile thing in your life…"

But Ford had been arguing to hide the journals, bury the dangerous knowledge that they contained in the far corners of the earth, to make sure nobody could use them for their own malevolent ends.

Most of all, Stan realized, Ford wanted to keep them away from the demon whose large, single eye was fixed on him now.

Stan slumped his shoulders and gave the demon a tight nod, moving his hand cautiously forward.

"Alright." he muttered. "For once, I'll do something worthwhile."

Bill inched closer until their fingertips were nearly touching, waiting on Stan to make contact and confirm their agreement. "Glad to hear someone around here has finally wised up."

And, in the blink of an eye, Stanley leaped forward and tackled Bill. His fingers slid between the bricks that lined the demon's body and clutched Bill's eye tightly in his left fist as his right hand reached out to tear Bill apart piece by piece. At the same time, his mind reached out to the spot where he had felt Bill's presence most strongly and focused on that, no longer worried about protecting himself but on destroying Bill in the very way that the demon had aimed to destroy him.

So Bill wanted a piece of him, eh? Well, the feeling was mutual.

The hand gripping Bill's eye soon ached with the sensation of pins and needles, a sensation that crawled up his body as his grip held tight. The demon squirmed, but seemed unable to move away from his trapped eye, and soon enough he was falling apart, clean lines widening into cracks that permeated his entire being, bits of his body sloughing off and sinking into the gray ground below.

"Ending you," Stanley growled, "is the most worthwhile thing I could ever do."

"Nǫ ̸ǹo͘ no…́"

And suddenly the pins and needles feeling was replaced with burning, blue flames licking his hand and engulfing his arm as the remaining portion of Bill's form went from a dull yellow to blood red. His mind was nearly consumed with pain and fog and confusion, but Stan repeated one mantra to himself, one direction that he would follow at all costs.

Hold on.

His vision grew dim and fuzzy, and white spots flickered in and out of his line of vision haphazardly. There was a ringing in his ears, a chime which kept growing higher- and higher-pitched and louder and louder until it was near-deafening. His whole body was aflame now, the individual wounds becoming a single, overarching sensation of pain. And he could still feel the weight and the pressure of Bill's eye against his hand as he held it all the more tightly.

Hold on.

His vision splintered into shards of color that in no way resembled the scene that had been before him only seconds earlier, many of the fragments filled with colors that he could not name, could not even recognize. The ringing was overtaken by a harsh screeching, a scream that was not quite human or animal in sound but something else entirely, the source of which he could not identify. Stan felt his body being pushed and pulled and torn by some indiscernible force- Bill's doing, it had to be, though he couldn't feel Bill's presence in his mind or in his hand anymore, couldn't feel anything but the burning and the tearing.

Hold on.

His field of vision shrank until it was the size of a peephole, and the shards of color flickered rapidly between hues, as if looking through a kaleidoscope. The shrieks and the ringing grew dimmer, replaced by something resembling radio static, the kind of sound you get when you mix up the numbers and try to tune into a station that doesn't exist. And he was still burning, every part of him was still burning, always burning.

Hold-

Stan finally lost his struggle to remain conscious, and the world went dark and silent.