AN: So… This is most likely the most tragic of all the one-shots. Who am I kidding… It IS the most tragic.
Because… Well, we all know what happens to the Journals in Weirdmaggeddon. Tragic ending, yes… But it's not the end of the one-shots, I promise! You still gets to see Eins, Zwei, and Drei all happy before this happens.
You have been warned. Takes place right after Mabelland is destroyed.
Blood and minor gore warning.
Song for this chapter: Things We Lost In the Fire by Bastille
"Whew, that was cray-cray!" Mabel stood, brushing off her sweater as Waddles shrank down to his normal size. "I'm sorry I was such a pain in there, guess I sorta lost track of what was important." She threw an arm around her brother's shoulders.
"Hate to break up the reunion, my dudes, but we gotta find shelter," Wendy said, gathering up the supplies they'd dropped. "Let's get moving before Bill finds us here."
"Yeah I don't wanna be turned into an action figure," Soos said nervously.
But right as they set off…
"Hey Dipper? Where's Drei? Is he back helping Great Uncle Ford find a way to take out Bill?" It was as if she just realized that Drei wasn't with them. Actually, she probably had just realized it, what with the distractions in Mabelland.
Dipper looked at her, eyes wide, and tears began to pour down his face again. Wendy looked at Mabel and made 'quit it don't ask about that!' gestures, but Mabel didn't get it.
"Dipper…?"
"M-Mabel… Drei is dead."
"Wait…. W-what?" Her eyes widened like her brother's had. "Dead? No, you gotta be wrong…"
"Bill killed him and his brothers right in front of my eyes." Dipper was trembling again, and he pulled his pine tree hat down to cover his leaking eyes.
"Oh Dipper…" Mabel then had tears of her own. "What happened?"
And so, trekking across that weird wasteland looking for a place to hide, Dipper told the story.
"Dipper go! Get out of here, take the brothers with you!" Ford pointed at the hatch with the stairs that would lead down from the bell tower, and the four had just enough time to run down the stairs before Bill reached Ford.
"Come on guys!" Dipper led the three behind the half-melted pedestal where the town founder used to stand. From there, they watched in horror as Bill turned Ford into gold.
"CRE-" A hand muffled Drei's cry.
"Shh Drei," Zwei said softly, though his face was full of anger. "They can't take us by surprise, okay?" Drei nodded, though when Zwei removed his hand his face was snarling.
"Arghhh… THAT'S ENOUGH!" Dipper had leapt onto the pedestal, pointing at Bill with a surprising amount of rage in his small body. "You leave my great uncle alone!"
The brothers looked at each other. This was not how it was meant to go, but they would stand behind Dipper. No matter what. So stand behind him they did, Eins with a hand on the boy's shoulder, Zwei grinning out at the henchmaniacs and giving them a little ripple of his fingers, and Drei looking like he was about to attack someone.
"Oh well isn't this CUTE." Bill turned to face them. "My puppets are back for an encore! And you think that you can beat me, Pine Tree, just because you have these three on your side?"
Eins stared into Bill's eye, unblinking. "We do have methods of defeating you, Cipher."
"I, uh…. Guys help," Dipper squeaked, looking up at each of them in turn, eyes full of terror because, at the end of the day, he was still a kid.
He felt Drei's hand curl into his, heard his best friend whisper, "but to beats him… Wes need nine more peoples…"
"Oh yeah, show us your BRILLIANT PLAN. YOU DON'T HAVE ONE DO YOU? Everyone's waiting on you! Your friend here said you have a way! What are you WAITING FOR? DO IT!"
"AHHH BILL!" Dipper ran forwards, away from the protection of Eins, Zwei, and Drei, and attempted to punch Bill right in the all-seeing eye. There was a flicker of blue flame, and the twelve year old was sent flying, tumbling until he hit a tree.
"DIP!" came a cry that cracked in the middle. Dipper opened his eyes to see Drei running over to him…
Before all three brothers were lifting into the air by Bill's telekinetic red aura. Zwei struggled and screamed. "Let us go you cosmic *sshole!"
"Zwei stand down!" Eins called, not resisting. "Don't make him angry!" Drei was near Eins, whimpering.
"Yeah, DON'T MAKE HIM MAD!" Bill said with a chortle. "Makes no difference though, Two, you were gonna bite it either way!" His eye shifted to look at all of them. "HA IT'S NOT LIKE YOU WERE EVER ACTUALLY ALIVE ANYWAYS! JUST JOURNALS WHERE OLD FORDSY STORED HIS INFORMATION! NOBODY CARES ABOUT MAGICAL CONSTRUCTS, KIDS! NOT EVEN YOUR SO-CALLED PRECIOUS 'FAMILY!' THEY CAN'T SAVE YOU NOW!"
And…
And…
Bill's hand ignited with blue flames at the same time Zwei's body did. The world was reduced to screams as Drei, Eins, and Dipper shrieked, but the worst… The worst was Zwei himself.
His flammable blood boiled and fed the flames, and parts of his flesh fell away like paper. He writhed, unable to escape Bill's hold or his fire. His melting eyes leaked from beneath their lids and his hair drifted away as sparks, along with sections of charred cloth. Slowly, his thrashing slowed as his screams began to choke off as the fire reached his insides. Then he was silent.
The flames burned away every bit of him, not even leaving any ashes.
"OH WHO TO PICK NEXT," Bill said, tapping his face and looking at the remaining two. The could only stare, Drei clinging to Eins with all four limbs and Eins with his arm around Drei.
They wouldn't be surprised to know they had tears on their faces.
"I will not let you hurt him," Eins said calmly, straightening an arm in front of his now only brother. He was scared, though. His face was impassive, serious, but on the inside he was terrified. As he knew Zwei had been, even when he was grinning out over the crowd of villains like an actor. They'd learned to hide their fears behind who they were. Now was Eins' greatest test.
Get his brother out of this.
"THEN I GOTTA GET YOU OUT OF THE WAY FIRST!" crowed Bill, and wrenched the two apart. Drei grabbed for his brother, sobbing, but missed.
"Hey Drei, it's okay. You're gonna be fine. Just stay calm, he won't have any reason to hurt you then," Eins soothed, voice shaking, cracking once for the first time in thirty five years.
"DON'T TELL THE KID THAT AND DON'T MAKE PROMISES YOU CAN'T KEEP. REMEMBER, ONE… REALITY IS TORTURE AND LOVE IS A LIE!"
And then Eins was aflame. He refused to cry out for a torturously long time until one scream of anger and desperation for it to STOP ripped from his throat as he spasmed in midair. His glasses shattered and got bits of glass in his eyes, causing him to screech again… And this time he couldn't stop, going just the same way Zwei did, cries petering out and turned into nothing, with no remnants to show he ever existed.
"EIIIINS!" screamed out Drei. He was far, far too terrified to think of fighting, of being scary. Nothing in his roughly one year and a summer of life had ever, ever prepared him for this. He was shaking, much like he had been when he first came out of cryo, curled in on himself.
"AND NOW WE HAVE YOU, THREE."
Drei cast a look over at Dipper, who was just starting to shake off his paralysis. "D-Dip…"
"Hmmm… What do I do with YOU? Could imprison you, keep you as a prize! Ah, or a PET, you do act like an animal half the time…" Bill's eye turned up in a sadistic grin. Drei uncurled a little. If that happened… The others might be able to save him. He saw Dipper breath a barely visible sigh of relief.
"AH WHO AM I KIDDING KILLING YOU IS MORE FUN!"
And panic. "DIP! DIP PLEASE HELPS ME!" Drei shrieked, screaming and thrashing though the flames hadn't even been lit yet. "DIP… DIPPER PLEASES!"
"DREI! DREI NOOO! BILL I'LL DO ANYTHING JUST DON'T HURT HIM! DON'T HURT HIM!" Dipper was screaming too, waving his arms to catch the triangle's attention.
"BUT PINE TREE YOU HAVE NOTHING I WANT ANY MORE!"
A startling change came over Drei, suddenly. He curled his legs up again, halfway, stilling except for his shivers. His screams died down and there was only infinite, endless sadness in his expression. Somehow with those words he'd simply become…
Resigned to his fate.
He gave Dipper one last little wave, his hand covered by his too-long sleeve, and then he was burning. Monocle melting and molten glass dripping onto his skin, indistinguishable from the flames. Wings appearing in his terror only to have the thin membranes seared right off. Burning, melting, screaming, crying…
Dying.
And Drei was gone.
But some small, small bit of mercy left the metal rim of his monocle. Maybe Bill just botched the incineration, or maybe it was on purpose. But Dipper snatched up the ring, still hot to the touch but no longer glowing. Before Bill could notice, he shoved it onto his left wrist like a bracelet (it had been an oversized monocle, and Dipper had small hands), a charm to never ever forgot his first and best friend.
"Not much of a threat now, ARE YOU?" Bill asked Dipper with a cackle. "THERE'S NO ROOM IN MY WORLD FOR HEROES, KID! AND YOU COULDN'T EVEN SAVE THEM!" Then he turned back to his band of freaks.
"Eh, some of you eat the kid, or something."
And Dipper had ran, ran until he lost them, blinded by his watering eyes and terrible grief but he couldn't break down, he couldn't he had to save Mabel. Like he couldn't… Save… Drei.
And then he'd found Wendy at the mall. He remembered flinging himself at her in a hug, sobbing, partly from relief but mostly from seeing his best friend murdered right before his eyes. She had listened to his awful, awful story, told through his heart wrenching cries, curled up on her lap while she hugged him. For the first time, he didn't care if he was acting like a child in front of her.
Someone he cared about had died because of him. Three someones.
"I… I didn't th-think anyone would… People were f-frozen or transformed, n-not… Killed," he had said with a sniff.
"Bill is just insane," Wendy had said. Even her heart hurt; she had met all three brothers, and had also become friends with Drei, who was always good for a laugh. "He… He takes what he wants and never thinks of the consequences."
They had fallen asleep like that, Dipper admitted as his story drew to a close. After the day they'd had, they'd both needed comfort.
"Yeah, dude," Wendy said quietly, affectionately squashing Dipper's hat onto his head. "Then we dodged monsters and came to find you, Mabel."
Mabel was silent, taking Dipper's left hand and looking at the metal ring, covered in ash and warped in places.
"Mabel, I never even got to tell him how much he mattered. It's hard for me to even tell you I love you sometimes, how the heck was I supposed to say it to him without things being awkward?" Dipper's voice was tinged with regret. "But I did he was family he was like a brother… They all were… And now they'll never know!"
His voice had risen to a howl again, and both Wendy and Soos had to look away. Things were too painful.
"And… And…" Dipper continued in a quiet voice. "Drei never even got to be completed. He died incomplete, Mabel. The one thing he wanted and he couldn't even get that." And then Dipper just couldn't continue.
Mabel choked back her own cries and brushed the tears off her face and his. She would cry later, grieve and scream and sob for their lost friend. But for now, she had to be strong for her brother. For now…
"We have to take Bill down."
AN: Poor guys. :( Some small bits were inspired by fan art, like Drei's last little wave…
To those who know what the next one-shot will be… No spoilers in the reviews, please! *sits back and waits for hell to break loose*