A/N: In which things come full circle.
"Um, Bentley?" Alcor asked.
Bentley hummed and moved further down the document, taking the occasional note on the side. His grades had been slipping, and maybe if he got them up the Counselor's Office would finally stop hounding him about his 'alarming increase in absences' and 'sudden drop in classroom engagement.'
"Do you—you've read that thing five times, do you think we could talk?"
Instead of leaving like he usually did after waking Bentley up from whatever nightmare he'd been experiencing, Alcor had hung around, speaking and cutting himself off, fretting and pulling at his hands. Bentley turned around in his seat.
"I need to get my grades up," Bentley said.
Alcor didn't look persuaded. In fact, his face grew tenser, and Bentley tried to ignore how rumpled Alcor's clothes were. "We really need to talk though. And hey, tell you what, you talk to me and I'll help you with your grades! It'll be a deal!"
A deal. Of course. Bentley scowled and turned away. "No thanks."
Behind him, Alcor let out a strangled noise of frustration. The door slid open moments later, then slid shut, and Bentley breathed out through his nose. The words swam together on the screen, and instead of focusing on them he found himself remembering you were wrong too.
He pressed his lips together and underlined one of his notes. 'Conjugation depends on plur-' Too late, he realized it was unfinished. With a muffled growl, Bentley scribbled out the sentence entirely and put his forehead down on his desk.
Inhaling through his nose, Bentley stared at the fake woodgrain. He traced the familiar, if fading, rings and stripes with his eyes, all the while knowing that if he were to dig below the lacquer, there would be nothing but off-white filler material, cheap and sturdy and fake.
You were wrong too.
In a burst of temper, Bentley smacked the top of the desk. He couldn't have been. He wasn't. He'd gone in there to save two people, even if he had failed in the end. He had to be right. He had to be.
Gritting his teeth, he straightened and pulled his MSS towards him, starting once again from the top of the paragraph describing conjugation conventions and exceptions. Focusing took more effort than it should, and his stylus shook in his left hand.
"Verbal conjugation depends on three factors: the temporal nature of the action, plurality of the noun which is doing the acting, and if an adverb is modifying it." Bentley read, tapping the stylus on the desk. The door hissed open. He kept reading. "While most weak verbs move from –e in the present to –io in the past and –ien in the future, modal verbs do not."
"Bentley," his father said. "Stop."
He hunched over and raised his voice. "While modal verbs end in the weak verb –e in the present tense, they change to –ont in the past tense and –ente in the future. Please look at the chart of modal verbs and their conjugations in the chart below and remember, all that is currently shown is—"
Bentley's father put his hands on Bentley's shoulders. "Bentley. You're acting very, very childish."
The words he was reading had no meaning. His mouth opened and translated them into audio, spilling past his lips in a rush of white noise. The sound was dull against his ears, like speech underwater, the sharp steady drumming of his stylus on the edge of the desk puncturing the surface.
Suddenly his hover chair was pulled back and turned around and his MSS fell out of his lax fingers and clattered on the desk. The sudden silence was overwhelming.
"Bentley," his father whispered. "Bentley. Stop doing this."
"What?" He asked. "What, do you mean stop ignoring the demon who literally ate me?"
His father's eyes widened. "What?"
"He ate me," Bentley hissed, nausea bubbling in his gut. "He ate me, hurt me, he controlled me."
Part of him was savagely pleased with the horror on his father's face. Part of him felt a terrible shame at the way his dad's eyes grew more tired and his mouth drew down deeper. But the smallest, deepest part of him felt a relief, like he'd just set down a weight that he hadn't noticed he was carrying.
But the moment passed, and his dad's eyes somehow straightened, somehow sharpened. "You're here now," he said.
He couldn't believe his ears. "What?"
Moving down to his knees, his dad said, "You're here now. You're not eaten. You're not controlled. You're hurt, both physically and emotionally, but you're alive."
"I can't believe it," Bentley said, low and breathy. "I can't fucking believe it. You're taking his side too?"
His father opened his mouth, then closed it again. His hair was graying, Bentley realized, and he didn't stop the scathing internal commentary on early senility setting in. Guilt mixed with the anger in his stomach.
"…why do you think there are sides?" He asked at last, eyes flitting between Bentley's.
"Because there are!" Bentley said, fisting his hands on his knees.
Bentley's father breathed in, then out through his nose. He was quiet for a good long while, but his hands were wrapped around the edges of Bentley's chair so that he couldn't turn back to his desk.
"Just let me work," Bentley muttered, looking away at the floor where his bed would be. He'd put it up for the first time that day, thinking that maybe a small modicum of productivity would help. It really hadn't; it made the room emptier and lonelier.
"I don't know everything that happened," his father said. Bentley avoided his gaze and traced the lines in the linoleum floor with his eyes. "And while this in no way excuses Alcor's eating you, from what I've gathered through conversation with Torako is that you did run off into danger without realizing you were swimming into deep water."
"Yeah, okay, that was dumb!" Bentley snapped. He crossed his arms. "And sure maybe I should have prepared better or whatever, but should I have let Carmen and her kid just die? I thought they were going to die! What the hell else am I supposed to do, just watch as people get screwed over and do nothing? And why's Torako off tattling to you anyways?"
"Because she's concerned, Bentley." His father pulled the chair forward, voice thick. Bentley froze. "Because we're all scared and concerned for you because you are sliding downhill and I don't know how to help you if you don't reach out."
Bentley stared at his father, his temper dulling. There were tears building up in his eyes, his hologlasses doing nothing to hide them. He said nothing.
He couldn't remember the last time he'd seen his father cry.
His father let go of one of the sides of the chair to rub at his eyes. Bentley could have turned the chair around, could have locked it in place so that it wouldn't move, but he just stared at the wet patches on his father's cheeks, the way his father's hands shook, the way he took in a deep, rattling breath to try to compose himself. Did he—did he do this?
The voice telling him that it was all Alcor's fault, it had always been and would always be Alcor's fault, was faltering and growing dim. It fell silent a moment later.
"Sorry," His father said. "I just—Bentley, I was so scared. I'm still so scared, because you're so deep in your anger and hurt that you're blinding yourself and hurting yourself. I don't want you to go down that road." He rubbed the heel of his palm into on one of his eyes, and then let go of the chair.
Bentley didn't turn to face his desk. Instead, he slid off the chair and onto his knees, not touching his father but wanting to. He had done this. This was his fault. And if this was his fault, then what else was?
His throat started to close up. "But I…" He stopped. The words were there on the edge of his throat, but he didn't want to say them. "But if I was wrong, then…"
He grit his teeth. You were wrong, Carmen whispered in his mind. Alcor's exhaustion, his uncharacteristic tendencies; Remember this, she said. Had said. You were wrong.
"If I was wrong, then…then it was worth nothing," he said finally. The words did not hang in the air; they fell, and Bentley imagined he could hear them clattering on the ground. Heavy. Solid. Real. "If I was wrong," he swallowed the lump in his throat, "then it was all my fault and I'm why Carmen and Nadeshka's lives aren't theirs and I'm why everything was screwed up and I'm why Daina Sainz is winning her election by leaps and bounds and I'm the fuck up, I'm the worst and I'm stupid and—"
Bentley's father pulled him into his chest, pushed Bentley's face to his shoulder. He felt his father bend his head and press his forehead against Bentley's scalp. Bentley's eyes stung and his nose stuffed and he suddenly couldn't stop crying.
"Shh, no, Bentley, no," his father murmured. He started rocking from side to side. "It's not your fault that the situation happened. It's not even Alcor's. It's whoever was cruel enough to think up such a thing."
"But I—" He said. His breath was shuddering in his chest, his lungs weren't expanding far enough before grief and guilt caught them and collapsed them again. He clutched the back of his father's sweatshirt and pressed his face into the fabric.
"It's not your fault. The situation was screwed up to begin with."
"But I screwed it up even more," Bentley howled into his father's shoulder.
For a long while, his father was quiet, rocking back and forth. He shifted so that he was sitting down and shifted Bentley into his lap, and then resumed swaying from side to side. His cheek pressed into the crown of Bentley's head.
At last, he spoke. "You both screwed up. You didn't trust each other. You didn't talk to each other. You didn't listen. You and Alcor probably overreacted, made bad decisions."
He pressed himself closer, but didn't say a word. His breaths were hitching less often, and when he went to move his fingers they hurt from being so tensed up.
"Alcor should not have…eaten…you to save you if there was another way," his father murmured. "I'm sorry you both had to go through that."
"Both?" He asked, pulling back so that his face wasn't pressed so far into damp sweatshirt.
"I know you've seen him. He's hurting himself just as much as you were, just in…just in a different way." Bentley's father pressed his lips to Bentley's head, and then moved away. His voice was still a bit thick, but it wasn't as alarming as it had been before. "Demons aren't meant to make deals so much out of their favor; it hurts them. He's been doing that a lot lately."
Bentley moved his head back, opened his aching eyes more fully. "Why?"
His father smiled. It was a tired, worn sort of smile. "Because he cares for you as a person."
"That's not why he came at first though," Bentley said, because it wasn't and it needed to be said. "He came because I'm Mizar."
Letting out a rush of air, his father leaned back on one hand to ruffle Bentley's hair. "I thought so too, but he said it was because you weren't afraid of him."
Despite himself, Bentley snorted. "Then we have very different ideas about how this started."
"That's what I said." His father's smile was a bit more genuine. "Then he told me you actually met once, in dream, when you were nine and he was still not all him. And you weren't afraid of him."
He couldn't remember it. But he remembered being nine, when all he knew was that Alcor righted wrongs, that he punished the guilty and saved the innocent. That Bentley would never have been afraid of Alcor.
That Bentley wasn't quite him anymore, though. He'd probably be afraid for a long, long time. But maybe, just maybe…
"Where's Alcor?" Bentley mumbled the question at the floor.
"Living room," His father said. There was a hand in his hair again, and after a moment, he said, "Go. I'll be here."
The 'okay' stuck at the back of his throat, and he stood. Scrubbing his eyes with the back of his sleeve, Bentley left the room and entered the hallway. It took only a few shuffling steps to arrive at the doorway to the living room.
When he peered inside, Alcor was sitting above the couch, face in his hands. He was about twenty again, but his tailcoat looked worn and the bottom of his pants were frayed. Bentley took a step into the room.
Alcor's head snapped up as he jumped. It took him a moment to register that Bentley was there, and when he did, he immediately opened his mouth. "Bentley! Are you okay? Were you crying? Do I—do I need to leave? I can leave."
Bentley shook his head. He took another step into the room, and then another, until he was a meter or so away from Alcor. He stood there, and stared.
His eyes had thick, dark bags under them, and his face shifted subtly from more defined to less. There were golden stains on his sleeves, on his shirt, and the stars fastening his tailcoat were dull. His hair was longer than usual, a little messier, and if there was anything Bentley had learned about Alcor, it was that he was a bit fussy over his appearance.
"…Bentley?" Alcor stood, his feet hovering just a few centimeters off the floor. "What's wrong?"
"I'm sorry," Bentley murmured, eyes cast aside. He wrapped his arms around himself and tried to keep himself from bawling again. "I'm sorry."
"I—it's not your fault," Alcor said. You were wrong, Carmen whispered.
"I was wrong," he repeated. He had been. He had been so wrong and how could he have been so stupid? "I screwed everything up."
Alcor stepped forward, and when Bentley didn't step back or freeze up, he said, "Maybe, but so did. So did I."
Then he pulled Bentley into a hug, slow and gentle and unsure. Bentley stepped forward, and wrapped his arms around Alcor's back. He was starting to cry again.
"I am so sorry," Alcor whispered into Bentley's hair, just to the left of where his dad had pressed his face to Bentley's head. "I am so sorry, I am so sorry, you never have to forgive me but I am so sorry."
"I'm sorry too. I should have listened." Bentley reached up with his hands to smooth the back of Alcor's jacket, and Alcor's hands smoothed Bentley's hair in return. One lingered on the top of his head, and the other slid over his good shoulder, arm warm across the top of his back. Down around the bottom of his ribcage, he could feel Alcor's wings pressing in, curling around his side and to his back.
"Me too." Alcor pressed his nose to Bentley's scalp. "We should have talked. We should have tried."
"Yeah," Bentley said, that familiar choking feeling in the back of his throat. "Yeah."
They stayed that way for what felt like forever but probably wasn't. When Alcor finally withdrew from the hug, Bentley found himself missing the warmth.
"Can I—I want to show you something, if that's okay," Alcor said. "I have to go get it though."
"Okay," Bentley said. "I'll wait."
Alcor smiled, one corner of his mouth tugging up across his cheek. "Usually that's my job," he said, and then slid out of this world and into who knew where.
Letting out a huff through his nose, Bentley lowered himself onto the couch, pressing his hands into his eyes and wiping away the tears. He nestled into the corner and rested his head on the back cushions, stared at a corner in the ceiling.
Exhaustion had just started to settle in on him when Alcor pulled himself back into the physical realm, a large thick book held in his hands. The pages—actual, literal pages, things that Bentley hadn't seen outside of his father's amateur attempts at bookbinding in his younger years—were yellower than white, but they looked to be in good shape.
"What's that?" he murmured. Alcor hesitated, then sat down next to him, the book in his lap. The cover appeared hand-crafted, written in a language that Bentley could not read. It looked only vaguely familiar.
"A scrapbook," Alcor said. "One I'd forgotten for far too long. It's about—it's about Mabel."
"Oh," Bentley said. He remembered the name, but only just. "Who was…"
Alcor smiled, bitter and nostalgic at the same time. He ran his fingers down the edge of the spine, which opened from the left rather than his father's preference for the right. "Mabel made this, you know. She was my sister. The first Mizar."
Bentley was quiet as Alcor opened the cover. The first page was filled with bubbly script, mysterious in that he didn't know how to read it, but he could see that there was a hand behind it. Alcor chuckled when he read it, murmuring foreign words under his breath.
"What does it mean?" Bentley asked, peering around Alcor's arm at the words.
"She's—she's calling me a giant nerd. Like, it's a person who knows a lot of things and focuses on them. And she said not to become all sad and depressed and stupid. I haven't done very well at that," he said. Bentley didn't know what to say, and just watched as Alcor took in the words before turning the page.
There were two pictures on the first page. The one at the top was a group of five people: an old man in an odd red hat, a young teenager with long hair in an even odder hat, a young adult in a cap he'd seen in batball pictures, and two children, one with long hair and wearing a bright pink sweater and the other with short hair, forehead obscured by another one of those batball pictures. The last was remarkable because—
"That's…that's your Tyrone ego, right?"
Alcor opened his mouth, and closed it again. He smiled, somewhat longing. "You could say that."
Bentley frowned, and looked down at the picture, bending further over so that he could see it up close. It was Tyrone, down to the smallest details. But why would Alcor choose that form to emulate?
Alcor tapped the picture, right next to the smiling girl. "That's Mabel. And below," he moved his finger down to the next picture, in which a middle-aged woman was yanking two men closer to her in the picture—one of which, he realized, was Alcor. "That's her again, with me and Henry."
But where had Tyrone gone? While Alcor flipped the pages, laughing at memories of these strangers to Bentley, at food fights with three redheaded children ('My niblings,' he'd said, fondly), at evening drinks with the Henry ('Man, his apple cider was the best! Everybody got sloshed'), at cards with the old man ('Grunkle Stan was a cheat and you can't tell me otherwise'), at water wars with Mabel ('She always went for the eyes!'), he felt a realization dawning. The human kid from the first photo wasn't there anymore, but in all the group pictures that he wasn't, there was Alcor.
"…that was you, wasn't it?"
Alcor smiled but didn't say anything, enamored in a picture of the three redheaded children wearing odd black hats and black robes. He traced their faces, one by one.
"You were Tyrone. You were Mabel's brother."
"I've known Mabel since before the day I was born," Alcor said. He looked up from the book at last, something tight in his eyes. "She was my rock. She helped keep me…well…human."
Bentley stared at the demon, and tried to remember the Tyrone-in-the-picture's face, young and excited. He looked down at a self-portraiture of Mabel, and saw her features in Alcor's face.
Alcor extended one hand. "Hello Bentley," he said. "My name's—my name's Dipper. Dipper Pines. It's nice to finally meet you."
He looked tired and wary all at once. Bentley looked down at a picture of Alcor sprawled out on the ground with the three children, then babies, curled up against and around him. He looked up.
Bentley took Alcor's hand and shook it. "Hi Dipper."
And Alcor—Dipper—smiled, wide and toothy and full of all the joy he'd seen reflected in that scrapbook, and Bentley thought that this was something worth trying for.
