A/N: This chapter was impossibly difficult to write for some reason.

Chapter 10

"Ladies and Gentlemen, be amazed by the horrible, the disgusting, the appalling – mer-snake! Tail of a fish, body of a snake! Augh, look how horrible it is! Hey, you! No touching, can't you see the sign!? Yeesh."

The tourists flocked around the object in question – a rotting fish tail poorly glued to the head of a snake that Stan killed on the porch yesterday. Really, not the worst attraction he'd ever made. The scales nearly matched, too. Nearly.

The oohing and aahing tourists snapped several pictures.

It was at this moment that a multi-toned screech of agony sounded from the room directly above the museum. Coming from Dipper and Mabel's room, then. And based on the unearthly ring to his scream, he was feeling a bit more demon than human. The noise set Stan's heart racing painfully in his chest – not because Dipper sounded like a demon, but because he sounded hurt, and that mattered a helluva lot more.

The tourists, unknowing of the resident dream demon, huddled together and looked about nervously.

Stan cleared his throat. "And uh, that is the poltergeist haunting the Mystery Shack! If you leave money on the floor, he'll pick it up at a later, unspecified time!"

"Sounds reasonable," the tourists nodded to themselves, and began setting dollar bills on the floor.

"Yeah!" Stan crossed his arms approvingly. "That's right; come back tomorrow for another twenty bucks and the floor will be clean! Spooky, right?"

A second yell rang out, this one of frustration – and this time through the floorboards. Huh. From the basement, then. Ford.

"It spoke to me," one of the tourists breathed, eyes round. The other tourists crowded her in awe.

"Yeah, they uh – money makes 'em scream!" Stan hesitated. "That came out wrong."

Frowning, Stan tapped his foot on the ground. The heck was going on with Ford and Dipper? Only one way to find out, really, and he couldn't delay or he'd get an early heart attack from worry. "All right!" he shouted at the tourists. "Out, out, out! Your twenty bucks covered twenty minutes, tour's over! Come back tomorrow!" He shooed all the tourists out of the Shack; most of them were still muttering in worship about the Girl Who Was Spoken To.

Stan grumbled as they left the Shack. Now, all he needed was someone to take in the next group of people…. Turning around, he saw Soos humming and fixing a broken shelf.

"Soos!" Stan yelled, pointing at the handyman. "You take the next tourists. Tell them you're a slime alien! Get them to stick money on your body!"

Soos saluted. "Yes, Mr. Pines! I will go where I am needed!"

"That's the attitude I like, Soos!"

Better check on Dipper before Ford. Dipper was likely to need him more, and Ford was likely to be an elusive recluse. Dipper's bedroom door was closed when Stan reached it, and Stan couldn't hear anything from the other side.

But hey, privacy. "Hey, kid?" He rapped the wood. "Not dying in there, are ya? Cuz then I gotta call your parents and that's a mess I don't wanna deal with!"

No response.

Stan's brow furrowed. He knocked again. "Uh, Dipper? Seriously, kid, this isn't funny."

No response.

"All right, I'm coming in!" Stan declared, twisting the doorknob – only for Dipper's voice to shriek from the other side –

"Don't come in!"

Stan hesitated. "You okay in there?"

"I'm – I'm fine! You don't need to worry about me! Really! I'm uh, I'm naked! Yeah. Don't come in!"

Stan's brows rose. Oh. So the kid was…. Stan coughed. "Yeah. Good talk, Dipper. Um. You uh… yeah." Scratching his back, Stan wandered back downstairs. Good thing he'd had the 'why am I so sweaty?' talk with Dipper. "Stellar parenting, Stan," he commended himself, puffing out his chest. Now all that was left was to tackle Ford…. Ugh.

Maybe for once Ford would actually let him in on what was going on. Stan snorted. Nah. That loser was way too self-absorbed. But Stan could at least drag him out of the basement for a bit – sounded like he needed a break.

Muttering about his brother's ungrateful shenanigans, Stan punched in the code for the vending machine and wandered into the elevator.

"Level two, land of my hermit brother," Stan grunted.

The elevator opened to Ford's study; the place looked frankly depressing with low light – why didn't Ford ever install any of his extra-special skin-softening light bulbs down here? Prick. Went and invented something like that so the family fawned all over him. Snorting, Stan geared himself to give Ford a loud talking-to.

But when he actually saw his brother, he forgot his intentions entirely.

Any words he had prepared died at his lips. His long strides came to a faltering halt.

Ford was not at his desk. He was instead curled up on the floor, knees to his chest, and arms wrapped around his legs. He was crying.

Not like most people – not loud, or red-faced, or puffy-eyed. Ford cried silently, with an expression on his face that would have been apathy on anyone else. Like he was used to crying alone, and being quiet about it, and he didn't want to make any big fuss, he just had to sit with the world pressing in for a little bit, and get out what the emotions in his body demanded. It occurred to Stan how diminutive Ford looked, helpless in a sea of papers and trembling in his huge coat like a little kid.

And honestly, he had been a little kid when Stan last saw him cry. And that was a long, long time ago.

Somehow, Stan's instinct had not changed at all. He found himself moving forward, extending a gentle hand, kinder words forming at his lips –

Only for Ford to shove his hand away and skitter to his feet, eyes wild. "What did I tell you about disturbing me in my work?" Ford spat.

Metal bars slammed down over Stan's sympathy. Somehow it still hurt when he lashed back, "Work? You call crying in your study work?"

He regretted the words immediately, because Ford's expression immediately converted to a clinical detachment. He wiped his eyes and straightened his shoulders. Ford didn't show his hurt - he dismissed it. "Stan, I need the phone number of Dipper's parents."

"What!?"

"I'm going to call them."

"What? Are you crazy? When did you last sleep?"

"That doesn't matter right now. They need to know what's happening with Dipper."

"Ford, Dipper's parents don't even know you're alive – and what, you're gonna call them and tell them his son is a demon?"

"That's exactly what I'm going to do. They need to know the truth. Better to hear it now than get him damaged at the end of the summer."

Stan recoiled, curling his lip up. "Damaged? That's your nephew you're talking about!"

"Not anymore, Stanley. It's high time I stop pretending anything can be done about him. What matters now is managing the damage. I need to do what's right for all of us."

Stan's heart plummeted. "What the hell do you mean by that?!"

"The number, now."

"No! You're not telling them anything! You're gonna march your butt back to your desk, hole up like you always do, and figure out a goddamn answer to the mess you made."

For a second, it looked as if Ford was going to argue. As if he was going to refuse. Then he closed his mouth, and his eyes sweltered. "Fine. I'll have an answer."

Both twins stomped away from each other, convinced the other was out of their mind.

Dipper lost whatever connection to time that he had once had. Floating above his bed, he simply existed, blissfully blind, and outside of reality. A few minutes could have passed, or a few hours, or a few years. Even a couple hundred decades wouldn't have amazed him.

He fell into a lazy stupor that that was the closest he'd gotten to sleep for a while. He saw nothing, and thought little. He let his mind drift. The subjects that he perused were a lazy mixture of Dipper-thoughts and Bill-thoughts. For once, he did not try to take either side. He did not try to feel conflicted about one side or the other. It just was as it was. Sometimes he grazed over memories from Gravity Falls, sometimes he brushed over unearthly places and monsters. It all felt equally the same to him.

"Hey, kid?"

Huh. What was that? It was outside his thoughts. Frowning, Dipper tuned into the gravelly voice.

"Uh, Dipper? Seriously, kid, this isn't funny."

Of course he sounded familiar! That was none other than Fez! Dipper opened his mouth to warmly greet Fez, when a jolt of pain zapped through his eye sockets. The welcome twisted into a grunt of pain; it was at this point his eyes began to reform, growing from his optic nerve, stitching together his cornea, plumping out and filling the socket.

"All right, I'm coming in!" Stan's warning voice came from the other side of the door.

Fear surged in Dipper's chest. If Stan saw this - "Don't come in!" Dipper shrieked, then let out a moan and clutched his face. It hurt it hurt it hurt -

"You okay in there?"

Fff – just go away! The pain intensified - "I'm – I'm fine! You don't need to worry about me! Really!" ow-ow-ow what will get Stan off my back? Dipper blurted the first thing that came to his mind: "I'm uh, I'm naked! Yeah. Don't come in!"

Whatever it was, it seemed to do the trick. Stan called out an awkward farewell and his footsteps descended the stairs – Dipper groaned. Whatever. He'd rather Stan believe that about him than walk in on what was actually going on.

This process of his eyes growing back didn't feel much better than the process of gouging them out in the first place, and Dipper bit his wrist to shut up the sounds that wanted to escape his mouth. At last, all the liquid and gunk crusted on his cheeks peeled away; the soreness around his eye sockets eased.

When it was over, he blinked experimentally. The all-eyed vision didn't return. He was back to simple binocular vision.

This wasn't something the human body could normally do…

And his eyes hadn't regenerated with his will. It just happened, and he hadn't been able to control it. So… his body would take action to heal or preserve itself, with or without his prompting.

"Like any immune response," Dipper muttered. "Just… works a lot faster." And did inhuman things like regrow eyes.

On one hand… that was a very good thing. On the other hand… Shouldn't he be a little more freaked out by this?

He'd effectively torn out and regrown his eyes. So, why wasn't he freaking out? Why wasn't he screaming, or in shock?

Rubbing around his eyes, Dipper glanced down. The journal was splayed open on his bed with the spine bent backwards, and blackish blood dotting its cover. Dipper sighed softly.

God, this was all so wrong. He shouldn't be in this mess. He was supposed to be a being of pure energy, unaffected by –

No, that's… something felt wrong about that statement. Dipper snorted. Well of course! He wasn't exactly wearing the sort of body suitable for a being of pure energy. The whole human façade was unnecessary – like yeesh, two eyes? He really only needed one, when his true ability lay in seeing with his mind!

Nonono. Dipper clutched his hair. This was his body. He wore it because that's how he used to look, that's how he should look –

But he hadn't always floated, hadn't always had these abilities – those were the new, invasive things, those were Bill's, those –

A laugh ripped itself from his throat. New? New!? Hah! As if he hadn't used those very same abilities an infinite number of times in the past! As if he hadn't ripped apart dimensions, slain humans, scorched the earth, turned people into pineapples and cities into cats!

And Dipper had the audacity to call his powers new! Bill laughed. Pine Tree had never understood anything about him! From the start, he'd been a clueless little kid tripping around supernatural things he didn't understand!

Hah, like that first deal with Pine Tree -

Bill suddenly cried out and clutched his temples because his vision bifurcated – he saw himself wearing that pine tree hat he always did, with such delicious fear in his eyes, and the words on his lips "Just one puppet?" At the very same moment, he saw himself cackling and floating, fire in his palm, reaching out to seal the deal, a deal that Dipper didn't trust but that sounded reasonable and –

Screaming, Dipper covered his eyes. The discordant vision was whisked away along with the dual memories of that awful deal.

"Okay…" Dipper breathed out slowly. "I'm seeing Bill's memories now. Okay. That's okay. I'm o-"

Twisting around, Dipper made as if to throw up, but found he couldn't. He had nothing to throw up. His body wasn't even tangible enough to do that unless he conjured something to vomit, but that was just gross.

"Eugh…" Dipper hid his face behind his arms. His weird chunky light-skinned arms. Yeah.

Oh god, he needed Mabel. He couldn't make it a night without her. She needed to come back with a huge smile and she needed to call him bro-bro, Dip-Dop, Dipper – anything that would remind him of who he was, anything he could use to convince himself that he was –

"Dipper!" screamed a gravelly voice downstairs, "Dinner!"

Dinner? Had that much time passed?

He didn't have to eat, but Mabel always insisted he join the family at every meal to make him feel as normal as possible. He wanted to yell down at Stan that he wasn't coming down today, but Mabel wouldn't be happy about that. She would want him joining the family like Pine Tree would. Like Dipper would. Like he would. Right.

It'd make him feel more normal. It was something he used to do almost every day before… before this mess.

"Coming!" he yelled down the stairs. He let out a shaky breath and then floated over to examine himself in the mirror.

His eyes looked a little red and swollen, but… at least they were there. Still just as yellow as before he gouged them out. Dipper stuck his tongue out at his reflection. "Hate you, Bill." After a moment of thought, Dipper made the swollen redness around his eyes disappear; nonchalantly, he added 'voluntary body modifications' on the list of abilities he now possessed. Attempting to change his eye color was met with failure – Dipper added 'with limitations' to his mental list, and left his bedroom.

Drifting downstairs and into the kitchen, Dipper found Stan sitting at the table alone, jabbing his potatoes so violently that it looked like he was practicing for a particularly violent murder.

"Uh, you okay, Stan?" Dipper settled himself into a sitting position an inch or so above his chair.

"Thirty years of my life to bring your great uncle Ford back, and nothin's changed. Not a thing." Stan decapitated his broccoli angrily. "I always hated broccoli."

"He's uh, not coming to dinner, then?"

Stan sighed and shoveled potato into his mouth. "You know what kid, I don't know how to break this to you. I'm not good at sugar-coating. So I'll just say it outright. My brother thinks we should call your parents."

Dipper tensed. "Call my parents…. why?"

Scowling, Stan averted his eyes. "Because Ford is a dumb screw-up."

"Stan…"

"He's worried about you, kid. Just wants them to know what's going on."

Dipper stilled. "He doesn't think he can help me."

"Kid, that isn't what…" Stan sighed. "All right. Yeah, he doesn't have any ideas yet, but –"

Dipper's vision went white. He jolted out of the chair. "N-no, no, he has to find a way!"

"Easy, kid. I told him to get back to it." But something still wasn't right in Stan's demeanor.

"You don't think he can do it either," Dipper breathed.

"I just, think it might be practical to give them a heads up!" Stan chuckled bitterly. "'Course, what'd we ever tell 'em? They'd never believe us. No, it's better to keep this quiet." He said it like he was trying to convince himself, and terror built beneath Dipper's ribs. Both Stan and Ford thought he was a lost cause. That nothing could be done.

"No, he has to find a way," Dipper insisted. If Ford couldn't help him, nobody could. And if nobody could, that meant he'd be stuck like this… forever. And not just for his own life span, oh no- he had a strong feeling he wouldn't get a reprieve like that. This was forever. Forever, eternity, permanently, stuck as some horrible amalgamation of him and Bill, never ending, only worsening, never having a solution – or worse, if this kept degenerating, if he forgot himself entirely, if -

Dipper clutched at his chest, heaving so hard that it was almost laughter because god no Ford couldn't give up,

"Dipper, Dipper!" Stan was out of his seat and grabbing Dipper's arm, "He's trying to find a solution! It's just – stay calm!"

And then Dipper really was laughing – probably crying too, he couldn't tell but he hadn't slept in weeks and he couldn't handle this for another week, forget a lifetime! "Oh, IQ's trying to find a solution, huh?" Dipper laughed hoarsely. "Thinks he can stop this, huh? That's real cute, Fez, but your brother never knew anything!"

"Dipper, calm down!"

"He is and always has been just a dumb human messing with things way above him! He did this to me and now he doesn't even know how to fix it!" Dipper reared back so that he looked down on Stan, and he sneered while tears streaked down his cheeks and his fists trembled. "He never knew anything!" Wrenching his head back, Dipper unleashed a scream that echoed through the house, a scream that gained several tones, that sounded less like his voice and more like someone else's – flames gathered in his clenched fists, crawled up his arms -

The scream twisted into words, "I҉̙̻̮̫̼̦ don'̴t͠ wa̧̮͖n͕̣͖̩t ̧̟̳͕̱to b͝e H͈IM!"

A shockwave blasted out from his body; the windows shattered, the Mystery Shack shuddered. Fiery blue energy assaulted the borders of the binding circle, which buckled and quavered beneath the onslaught.

Even this was not enough, even this could not satiate the panic and rage building in Dipper's chest – the binding circle was too constricting, like wire bars eating into his skin. Grinding his teeth together, arching his back in the air, Dipper fed power into his flames – downstairs he heard Ford scrambling to get to the kitchen – as if to stop him! With one final wave of fire, the binding circle exploded into nothingness.

Dipper vanished.