Heyy yeah so this is gonna be a ~~dream chapter~~ and I feel the need to open up with a preemptive promise that it's happening for a good reason and definitely not because I'm stalling for time before I have to figure out the plot beats of the next few updates ha ha haaaa

I don't usually do content warnings, but since it might juust barely break the boundaries of the posted rating, note that this chapter includes sexual content of a slightly stronger nature than what's been included so far.

That night, every one of them dreamed deep.

–

Dipper dreamed he was sitting on his bed, in his room, in his parents' little two-story home in Piedmont. Three old leatherbound books were spread out in front of him on the comforter, handwritten and meticulously illustrated. Once upon a time he'd had these journals practically memorized, before they were lost; now, in dreams, he had them again, but the words turned to watery smears as he tried to devour them. The illustrations jumped before his eyes. He rubbed furiously at his face to help himself focus, but it only made the books fall away from his memory more quickly. He tossed them from the bed.

Agitated, he got up and walked downstairs with the intention of eating breakfast. When he made it to the ground floor, though, the house was no longer his own. He was in a rustic, whitewashed parlor, adorned by bluebirds in flaking paint. Wirt was there, for some reason, on a lounge next to the burning hearth. "Wirt?" Dipper asked, but the other boy didn't seem to hear him. He laid unmoving with hands clasped above his breast, like corpse. Vines grew up from under the furniture and spiraled around his arms and legs and chest and face.

Dipper backed out of the room, frightened for reasons he didn't understand, and turned. He found himself facing the living room of the Mystery Shack, where Soos was sitting in front of the television. Dipper ran toward him, asking for help, but Soos just turned around and lifted his eyebrows. "Dood, I need help too. Have you seen Melody?" Dipper tried to tell him that Melody didn't matter right now, Wirt was in the other room and he might be dead, but Soos acted like he couldn't even hear him. "Yeah dood, like, I'm not tryna freak out or anything? But like, my kids are missing. I dunno how long you can go with missing kids and not feel like you're kinda, heh, cracking up, y'know?"

That broke Dipper's single-mindedness. "Wait… the Sooslets are missing?"

"Yeah, dood. I mean, honestly I kinda don't even really know what to do anymore?" He twiddled his thumbs. "I guess I'm gonna try to go to Gravity Falls. It's better than curling up under a tree and lettin' a bear eat me, right?"

Wirt was dead and Soos's family was missing. How had everything gone so wrong? "Okay. Okay, I'll help you, Soos. I just gotta…" Dipper slumped, overwhelmed, against the wall. His vision blurred, and he put a hand over his left eye. When he pulled it away again, his palm was covered in blood, which he found concerning. He stumbled down the hallway to the bathroom so he could wash it off, but when he got there it turned out to be his and Mabel's upstairs bedroom in the Mystery Shack instead.

He hadn't seen this room in five years, but every detail, from the faded pink posters on the right wall to the shelves piled with birdcages and boxes, was still vivid. A sheet of morning sunlight cut down through the dusty window, where Sara was waiting for him. She turned to look when he entered.

"Hey," she said, and beamed to make his heart stop. "You were right. Gravity Falls is an amazing place. I'm so glad I got to see it."

"'Course," he croaked. "I… I knew you'd like it." She wore jeans and a flannel shirt that were shockingly evocative of uncounted childhood fantasies. She sat down on his bed and patted the mattress next to her with a tilt to her head and a suggestive look in her eye.

"You can join me if you want."

He did want to, but weren't there other things he was supposed to be doing? "I can't," he said, combing his hands through his hair. "I… I have to –"

Oh, come on, don't you deserve something nice? a nasty voice suggested from over his shoulder. The words chilled him. Dipper looked back at Sara, and as he did, the denim and flannel were replaced with sheer purple lace. He swallowed, and as if it could read his mind, lace in turn yielded to an uninterrupted expanse of dark skin. His breath hitched in his throat. C'mon, kid. It's just a dream. Take what you want. She laid enticingly back against the pillows with splayed hair and parted lips, and took his hand. She pressed it against her chest.

The contact seared like an iron. He wrenched away from her. "No, no no no no…" These, the seeds of a good dream, were turning into the stuff of nightmares. He felt it in his gut. Whatever, be that way. I'm not gonna force you to take advantage of a good thing. He turned around, demanding to know who was doing this, but there was no one present – just an earthen tunnel extending through the wall of the bedroom and far away. He swallowed, dryly, and stepped into the bunker. "Who's there?" he called. His voice echoed in exactly the way of the one that urged him to act on his own worst impulses.

No one but us, Pine Tree! the voice responded. Pine Tree. Pine Tree. No. That was wrong. Follow me! the stranger continued. We've got something to do.

Dipper was self-possessed enough to falter, but not enough to refuse.

The bunker was as chilly and damp as he remembered. The walls reflected sick yellow from the string of bare lightbulbs hanging on an extension cord along the wall. "Who's in here?" he asked again.

You're obnoxious when you ask questions.

At the end of the corridor was an iron door, and it swung open when he lifted the latch. Inside stood a capsule in the middle of the room, with a rounded glass door. The cryogenic chamber. Dipper shuddered. The figure inside the chamber was not his own, like he'd left it so many years ago. It was female, tall, with a flare of red hair glimpsed through the frosted glass.

His heart plummeted. "Wendy?"

Oh, yeah. She's going to die in there if you don't get her out, you know, the voice said cheerfully. Dipper scrambled at the control panel, and the door of the capsule cracked open with a hiss and a pouring wave of mist. He shoved the door away with all his strength, and reached blindly into the fog. Auburn hair brushed his fingers. He squinted to see. One of his hands fell upon the girl's face, and the other on her leg. "Wendy!" he cried again, and when he did her eyes snapped open.

That was the moment he knew he'd made a mistake, but in the way of dreams, he wasn't sure exactly how. This wasn't Wendy, it couldn't be. Wendy's eyes were brown, not blue –

He woke up when the girl began to scream, and the dream shattered like glass against the day.

–

Sara dreamed of darkness first, and warmth. Within the dream her eyes were closed, and someone was holding her tight to their body. She wanted to roll over and go back to sleep, but when she tried to bury herself in the close embrace, something dug unexpectedly into her side and she cried out in pain. Her eyes opened with difficulty. It was dark gray afternoon, and she was high in the branches of a dead tree, its vines snarled around her legs and waist.

In the shadows on the ground, something lurked with great mad eyes. Fear tore her chest, and she pulled her father's gun from her belt, pointed it at the dark shape. "Why did you come back here?" She tried to sound brave. Maybe she even succeeded. The thing in the shadows stared, and smiled, with a wide void of a mouth that she vividly remembered the feeling of against her body, even to this day. "Just go. I don't want to hurt you." Tears fell from her tired eyes.

The grinning abyss said nothing, but took a step forward, and brought the darkness of the forest with it, like tidewater. It raised its great deerlike head and climbed the shadows in the recesses of the tree until it settled in the branches next to her. She'd known from the beginning that she wasn't going to be able to keep the promise that the pistol made. She let it fall from her hands. They sat together quietly in the warm rising swell of night. "Help me," she whispered to monster at her side. "Please. I don't want to die here."

Two eyes blinked yellow and blue back at her. She said, with tears on her chin, "What we had was never really love," because it seemed only fair that she should be honest. "But you still brought me here with you. That's what happened, isn't it?" No answer. She hadn't expected one.

Invisibly in the dark, the black beast wrapped its arms around her shoulders. Its color ran right down though her skin and into her veins, cold as saline. She trembled. The boundary between the two of them was thinner than she'd known. She'd never have guessed, when they were together, that they'd been forging a connection any deeper than that of their bodies. Would have she have still chosen to be with him, if she'd known then what she knew now? The branch digging into her flesh made her suspect not.

Gradually, the smiling shadow left her side, but the darkness that it had brought with it remained. "Don't go," she begged, but the monster had moved on. She was just a momentary object of pity. The tree wrapped her tight in its branches, trying to comfort, but the stabbing sensation remained; she bit her lip and tried to bear it. The wild-eyed beast opened its terrible mouth, but only to scream, in high ululating thrills like a tortured woodwind.

It was all too much, so Sara gave up. She curled in around the branch impaling her side and accepted exhaustion and grief, until the vines made their way to her heart and pinched it right out like a candle.

–

Beatrice dreamed she was in her room, in her bed, and the moon shone across the wooden floor before her eyes. A body pressed close to her back and an arm was wrapped around her waist, probably that of little Mary; Beatrice had few gracious words to say about sharing a bed with two of her sisters every night, but in autumn and winter she quietly welcomed their warmth, and this was no exception. She shouldered down into the comfort of the pillow with intent to sleep, but the arm against her ribcage was restless. It walked slowly up her side with two fingers.

She became conscious, gradually, that it couldn't be Mary in bed with her, not like this. Who, then? She tried to look, but couldn't find the strength. The hand on her side was growing bolder with each minute, raising goosebumps on her thighs under the covers and drying her mouth. Beatrice was suddenly struck with a thrilling fright at the realization of the person behind her. He shouldn't be here – she'd be in so much trouble if Mother found out – but she was so very glad he'd come.

His hands tightened around her waist, pulled her nearer. She flung an arm over his head and turned to him languidly, stretching her stomach alongside his. The heat of his breath was on her ear, and every place his skin found hers made static fog. Beatrice leaned in to kiss him with a belly full of sparking matchheads, and couldn't abide her hips sit still; she trembled so violently that she thought she might be laughing. They rolled into one another's arms until he was nearly on top of her, and his hands were everywhere, and her head fell back mutely against the pillow with thoughts of bliss.

The moonbeam was still bright on the floor, but now the shape of someone stood within it, and it had a terrible look on its empty face.

Beatrice shouted and tried to leap away from the vision in the light, but it was faster than her. The person lashed out and took her around the waist, dragging her kicking and screaming from the bed with strong rough arms. She tried to yell for help from her brothers, but a hand covered her mouth and flung her down onto the hard floor. The moonlight was blinding and she couldn't see her assailant as he grabbed her face and her leg with burning fingers, and forced her to look at him.

He leaned into the light. He only had one eye.

–

Wirt dreamed he was standing in the dark hall of his childhood home, agitated and alone. The knob of his mother's bedroom door was at face height, and he turned it two-handed, feeling frustratingly small and weak. The door pushed inward a crack and a golden column of light widened across his face; "Mom?" he called as he stepped into a room furnished by giants. He scuffed his feet on the blue carpet that he still remembered helping his dad put down, once upon a long-ago time. "Mom?"

His stepfather was standing by the far side of the bed, gazing down at something on top of it. Wirt jumped and grabbed and scrambled and finally pulled himself atop the mattress with short breath. "Mom?" he asked again, but there was nothing upon the expanse of quilt and feather pillows but a little baby swaddled in green. Wirt was filled with immediate disappointment.

"Go on, Wirt," his stepdad said, putting his hand on his back. He shied away from it. "Hold him. This is you new little brother."

"I don't want a brother," he said, turning to his stepdad. "Where's my mom?"

But his stepfather had disappeared. It was nighttime, and he was in the woods, the same woods he'd been haunting in body and mind for days now. He turned in a circle, scared out of his wits and unable to remember who he'd been looking for up till now, until he realized that he wasn't quite alone; his little brother still laid on the ground in a bed of leaves near his feet, staring up at him with big gray eyes. Guilt tore Wirt's chest and he gathered up the infant in his arms, held him over his shoulder and clutched him tight. Someone was moving out in the trees. Someone tall and black.

The Beast blinked slowly, wolflike, and said, Give the boy to me.

No matter how long he lived, or how old he grew, Wirt would never forget the sound of that voice. He felt so scared that he thought he might fall, but he held his little brother tightly nonetheless and said, with a voicebox full of courage he didn't feel, "You're dead."

I am dead, the Beast gutturalized, but you are not.

The Beast reached out for him with a long pale arm full of despairing eyes. Wirt was nearly paralyzed, but stepped and stumbled backward, preparing to flee. Then he looked down and realized that Greg was gone from his arms. He was left holding a desiccated bundle of leaves and twigs instead. He let them fall, and the debris landed in a blackberry bramble at his feet.

"You took him," Wirt said, looking up. The Beast said nothing. "You took him! You took Greg!" Anger displaced his fear, not entirely, but enough. "You took my little brother!" He started forward, desperate for a sign of him. "Give him back to me! You can't do this!"

The Beast just disappeared before his eyes, like smoke.

Wirt was falling apart at the seams. The trees around him were writhing, trying to tell him something he couldn't understand. "Give him back to me!" he cried to the sky, to anybody who might be listening. "Please! Y-you can't…" And then he had an idea. "Take me!" he cried, and put out his hands as if asking to be cuffed. "Take me! Give him back and take me instead!"

The woods were still moving around him excitedly, trees creaking, wolves howling. A storm was brewing. Now there was rain in the air. He said it again, into the wind: "Take me!" Lightning fissured the sky. "I'll do anything! Bring my brother back!"

He didn't remember anything of the dream after that. His mind's eye stayed empty until he woke.

–

Mabel's dream was only half a dream. The other half was a memory.

The memory was warped, of course; the moment in question hadn't taken place in her parents' basement, and there had been more people there in real life – Robbie, Pacifica, others. The walls had not been lined in curling thorns and brambles either, like the Oregon wilderness itself was trying to stage a protest of the events unfolding, but other details were frighteningly well-remembered. The cracked earth ceiling and the sparking control panel on the wall. The glow of Ford's portal in the center of the room, and the awful wind it kicked up, blowing Mabel's hair in her face and watering her eyes.

She knew this moment intimately. She remembered. Her leg was trapped under a fallen beam from the ceiling, and her left index finger was broken – not a debilitating injury, but hot and painful. Her brother had taken her hand when she tried to confront him in front of the activated portal, and twisted until bone cracked.

He'd smiled.

Now Dipper was crouched in front of the glowing doorway, in a pool of light rich with cold color. He'd been felled by the same collapse as she, when the portal's vibration grew violent enough to cause structural damage, but unlike her, he was already standing again. He had an awful look in his eyes when he turned them up, and grinned through the sheet of blood flowing down his face. A deep slash carved straight through his birthmark. Mabel heaved to see it.

"Sorry to leave you stuck there, Shooting Star," her brother crowed, standing jerkily, like a marionette with an amateur on the strings. "But – oh, who am I kidding? I'm gonna LOVE making you watch while this thing tears open your space-time!" Mabel shook her head, once and then over and over. She couldn't stop. Dipper's words were snakebites and she was getting woozy.

"Let him go, Bill!" Uncle Ford's voice echoed from the shadows, but Mabel couldn't see him. She was trapped, unable to move, just an observer to a moment she couldn't change even in her own dreams. "He's just a child! He's not strong enough for you! Take me instead!"

"No dice, Sixer!" Dipper – Bill – spat, wiping red from his mouth. "You know, I'm kinda comfortable in here! I think I'll stay, at least until I've finished remodeling this universe so I can move in!" Dipper laughed, and collapsed, and vomited on the floor and then stood up again. Mabel wanted to cry, but her innards felt frozen. No part of her could move.

A small dart sputted from the darkness and caught her twin brother in the arm. He roared with anger, as much as a twelve-year-old can roar, and wrenched it out, but the damage was already done. He started to sway.

"Leave him, Bill! He can't handle you being in there any longer!" Uncle Ford was here now, stepping into the light where Mabel could see him, holding a syringe against his own arm. His face was a hard line, and his gray hair caught in the wind. "I'm going under! My mind is open to you! Take me instead, just leave the boy out of this!" He put the needle under his skin. Mabel hadn't been there to see it in close-up at the time, but the dream offered new perspective, and the sight was an imagined amalgam of every blood donation and IV injection she'd ever had. She felt sick.

"Uncle Ford, don't do this!" she tried to beg him. He didn't hear her, either in the present or the past. Dipper fell to the ground, and Ford stood there, heaving, for a second longer, until he also collapsed.

Mabel cursed her impotence. She kicked at the beam holding her down, but with all her strength, she couldn't move it more than an inch at a time. She tried to scream, but she wasn't sure she was making any noise at all. "Uncle Ford! Grunkle Stan! NO!" Nothing and no one responded to her pleas. There was nothing she could do but wait through those one, two seconds when both her brother and uncle were still on the ground, until the moment when Ford started to stir again.

He stood. He stumbled. Mabel's eyes filled with tears. Ford looked up, and doubled over, and a grimace split his face.

"Fine, Sixer!' he barked aloud, speaking to himself. "You want this? You want me to use you instead?" His fingers ripped at his turtleneck. "Fine! Have it your way! We'll work together, see? We'll make sure Pine Tree never gets hurt – ever – AGAIN!"

The timing was – always had been – too perfect, and in the dream, it played out crystalline, as if relishing its own precision. Ford's body jerked toward Dipper's prone form, toward the whirling and shaking portal that seemed close to bursting. His – Bill's – right boot lifted from the ground, lending a precarious moment to an already-unsteady puppeteering gig. The boot began to fall toward her brother's ear.

Then footsteps rushed from the shadows. Grunkle Stan. Grunkle Stan was coming! Where had he been all this time? It didn't matter. He was here now. This time, he'd be able to fix everything. Things were going to be okay.

Stan barreled into his twin brother's shoulder, knocked him straight backwards, sent his feet wheeling against the ground. Bill was still getting used to such a massive form after spending so long in Dipper's, and his momentum was unaccounted for. He stumbled behind the yellow tape on the concrete floor and lifted into the air before their eyes, a black shape crucified against the light of a thousand other worlds.

All exactly according to Ford's plan.

Bill screamed when he was pulled back into the portal. Cries for mercy, promises of revenge. Mabel sobbed. Stan just stood there, unflinching, glasses mirrored white. Bill kicked and scrabbled against nothing and, extremity by extremity, he disappeared back into the blinding whiteness of his terminal world. His words were cut off with a whimper, not a bang. The light pulsed as it consumed him, and the earth above and around them shook.

Mabel had forgotten, almost, that she was trapped. She pulled with all her might, and finally dragged her leg out from underneath the ceiling beam, leaving behind her shoe and a lot of skin. She didn't care. She scrambled for her brother, taking him by the shoulders and sobbing for him to wake up. His head lolled. He had bags under his eyes and bile at the corners of his mouth. "Dipper!" she said, over and over and over again. "Dipper, wake up, please…"

She hardly noticed when Stan, silently, hit the button to deactivate the portal. She didn't care when the light faded, and the grinding technology slowed and quieted. She just cried, and kept on crying until the living memory faded out, and the only things left in the world were her and the salt on her face. It was still there, a little bit, when she woke up.

–

Greg dreamed that he was awake.

He felt like one of those mornings where his mom woke him up for school, and he thought he'd pulled himself out of bed and gotten dressed and eaten breakfast but then woke up in bed again anyway when she called him a second time, and it kept happening again and again. He blinked his eyes open and sat up in the same place where he'd fallen asleep on the floor next to his brother, only this time with the funny feeling that he didn't weigh as much as he should have. The world looked different, in the dream. It was dark, but he could still see fine. It had stopped raining, and the woods were quiet, and the world was a hundred million shades of blue. Even the last bit of the fire in the fireplace was blue. It was like living under the sea.

The trees outside seemed bothered. Greg caught them saying the same thing over and over: Go, she-wolf. It doesn't want you here. Leave. Be free. Go. He could guess what a she-wolf was, but didn't know why the trees were saying it until he turned to look out the missing wall, and froze. A wolf was standing out there in the trees, staring at him. Its eyes were the only yellow thing in the whole blue world. Greg's heart leapt, and he snapped a hand back grab his brother's leg.

"Wirt," he squeaked, "Wirt!" But Wirt didn't respond. Greg could feel him move when he jaggled him, but his body was light, even lighter than Greg's. This was a dream, though, he reminded himself, and that made him a little calmer.

"Do you want something?" he asked the wolf, hoping for the best but expecting the worst. The wolf didn't talk like it had used to. It just whimpered, and put its front end close to the ground, begging or bowing. "What?" he asked again.

The wolf said, "Arwwwoo," and sent its eyes over his shoulder. Greg turned around. A stranger was standing next to the bed by the fire, and putting a black hand out to touch Beatrice.

Greg jumped straight to his feet. "Hey!" If he shouted loud enough, maybe the others would wake up, but his voice came out too small. If Wirt had been the one yelling, it would have sounded better. He balled up his fists, like his dad had taught him to if he ever needed to fight, just in case. "Who are you? What are you doing?"

The person at the back of the house stopped and straightened up when he heard Greg speak. "Well, well, well, well, well," a voice said back to him. A chill went up his spine. It was a strange voice; it sounded like it was shouting, even though it wasn't loud. "Look who we have here! We finally meet, face-to-face!"

A man-shape stepped toward Greg, but it was a triangle shape that came out of the shadow. Just a yellow triangle, with one eye and a bowtie. Greg had never seen anything like it before. Was this even a person?

It was rude to stare, though. "Um. Who are you?"

"Ha! Ha ha ha!" laughed the triangle. He had little hands, and put them up to his chest, like he thought it was really funny. "Boy, it's sure been a long time since I've gotten to introduce myself to someone new! My name's Bill! Bill Cipher! Nice to meet you, Candy Pants!"

When the triangle said his name, the wolf outside started yelping and howling. Greg turned around. The wolf jumped back and forth, baring its teeth. "Arrrrrrooooh!" it yelped. The triangle narrowed his eye.

"Alright, you busybody, that's enough." The triangle snapped his fingers and the wolf disappeared into the air, just like that.

Greg stood very still. "How did you do that?"

"This is a dream in a world made of dreams, kiddo!" the triangle told him, and made a happy tent out of his fingers. "Boy, I haven't had this much power in five Pines-years!" Greg didn't know what he meant by that. This triangle seemed nice enough, but he wished he hadn't made the she-wolf go away. It wasn't doing anything really wrong.

"Will the wolf be okay?"

"Probably! I'm sure it'll have plenty of opportunity to annoy you again when you're awake!" said the triangle, Bill. Greg was trying to remember that name. Something about it seemed familiar, but he couldn't recall. "But for now, kid, I want us to get to know each other! How you been doing lately? You holding up?" The triangle kicked back like he was sitting in the air, and flipped his hand so a fancy-looking drink appeared in it.

"Oh. I'm alright." Greg fiddled his fingers. "Well, um, okay, I guess I'll start at the beginning? My name's Greg, and –"

Bill said, "Yeah, yeah, sure thing, Candy Pants," with his eye drifting over back toward Beatrice. "So hey, kid, listen," and all of a sudden he was down by Greg's shoulder and throwing an arm around it. "I hear you've been having a pretty rough time lately, yeah?"

He thought about that. "Well, I'm lost in the woods and my socks have been wet for two days straight. I miss my mom and dad and everybody was fighting for a long time and I didn't know how to make things better. I don't think I really like eating candy anymore and Beatrice is hurt and –"

"Ho boy, that she is!" Bill shot out his little hands and feet in the air, like he was trying to make a snow angel. "The Bluebird's a real trooper, but she's getting worse lately, isn't she? She could even die! That would sure be awful!" Greg squirmed. "I tell you kid, I've been watching you for a while now, and I like you! You've got guts!" The triangle poked him in the stomach. "That's why I've decided – I'm gonna help you out!"

That perked his interest. "How?" But then he remembered the more important question that he'd been distracted from since realizing he was talking to a triangle: "What are you doing here?"

"Oh, don't mind me!" Bill fluttered his eyelashes and flipped a hand. "I've just been hanging out the last few days! Watching, waiting, all that good stuff! And out of everyone in this unworkable mess of humanity -" he rolled his eye at the big kids on the floor "– I think you've shown yourself to have the most potential! I'm here to make sure you know the name Bill Cipher! I think we're gonna be great friends! Really – great – friends!" His eye got bigger and yellower with each word. Greg took a step backward.

"Um… I dunno," he mumbled. He didn't want to be rude, but this didn't feel right. "I think I should tell Wirt you're here."

"Aw, come on, kid! There's no need to do that!" The triangle perched thoughtfully on the mantle above the fireplace. "I mean, not that you could even if you wanted to! The only people really here are you and me, anyway! Ha ha ha ha ha…!" Then he serioused up: "I mean it though, kid! You and I have a lot in common!"

"But you're a triangle."

"A triangle! That's rich!" Bill laughed again. "Nah, kid, I'm not just a triangle! No more than you're just a kid!"

"I am a kid."

"Nah. You know what we're gonna be, you and I?" Greg shook his head.

The eye turned bright bloody red. "We're going to be GODS."

Bill lifted his hands, and with a crack and a roar, the roof splintered and flew right off the house. Greg fell backwards with wind whipping his hair. All the clouds in the sky had disappeared, and the big half-moon was above their heads, turning everything silvery on top of the blue. The Edelwood tree growing up around the back of the house creaked and spread its branches into the air, like a stretching hand. Greg grabbed at his brother's arm. Still, none of the big kids would wake up.

"I mean, would you look at this place!" Bill cried, becoming bigger and bigger as he rose into the air, in front of the moon. "Look at this world Stanley made for us! Part real world, part dream, part unknown!" He cartwheeled in place. "All it needs is a little more time, kid! A little more time to incubate, before this little mixed-up bubble pops and floods across all of reality! And then you and me, we'll be kings and deities! Lords of dreams and darkness! Is it just me, or does that sound great?!" He winked at Greg, and it was definitely a wink, somehow, even though there was only one eye involved.

Greg leaned back and stared. He hadn't been able to see the sky this well since Halloween night. It was even bigger and blacker than he remembered. He was going to ask a question, but Bill beat him to talking. Heat seemed to radiate off of all three of his sides. "I've been sleeping for a long time, kid! Just a little sliver of the wonder and terror that is me, trapped inside of the head of a teenager! Can you imagine anything more humiliating?" Greg had been looking forward to being a teenager for a long time now, actually. He gulped. "This place, though!" Bill lifted his little hands to the sky. "This place is part mindscape, and that means it's part me." Lightning cracked across the starry sky and turned the world green, just for a second. "I'm awake again, and I'm getting stronger! And I've got plans! Big plans! Universe-sized plans! Ha! Hahahahaha ha ha! Ha… ha…"

But then Bill stopped rising in to the sky, and dropped his hands again. He gazed off for a second, and then looked back at Greg. "But I'm not the only one who's getting stronger, am I? This world is partly the stuff of me, but it's partly the stuff of you, too, kid!"

"What?" Greg asked. He clutched at the front of his sweater, but Jason Funderburker wasn't there to make him feel better. The frog was curled up behind Wirt's head, smiling in his sleep. "No, that's not right. I'm not from here. I'm just visiting."

Bill rolled his eye. "Yeah, sure, kid, just visiting! And while you've been visiting, you've attracted a lot of attention, not just from me! The god of this world got its roots in you pretty good back in the day, I hear! And I guess it must have liked you, because it wants you back!" He snapped a finger and pointed out into the woods. "So you're gonna be handed a lot of responsibility soon! And I figure if we're gonna be co-rulers when the rest of the multiverse succumbs to our respective realms, we should make sure we get off on the right foot! So I say again –" Bill held out his hand and kicked out a jaunty foot "– the name's Bill Cipher, and I think you and I are gonna get along famously!"

Greg looked at his hand, and shook it cautiously. He didn't understand a lot of what Bill said, but he seemed nice enough, right? "I do like making friends," he reasoned out loud.

"Absolutely! There's just one thing I've gotta ask you to do, kid!"

"What's that?"

The triangle threw his arms out. "Don't tell anyone that we talked here! Don't mention my name! In fact, it'd probably be best if you forget that we spoke at all until you see me again!"

Greg wanted to think the best of Bill, but that struck him as awfully strange. "But –"

"I know, I know. You'll want your brother to know about this fantastic dream you had tonight, right?" Bill rubbed where a chin would be. "But you gotta trust me kid, I've got a plan to help all of us! Your friends, too! But I need my name to stay out of it! Understand?" Greg nodded hesitantly. "I want you to know I'm your pal, though, Candy Pants! And I'm gonna prove it to you!" Bill threw up his hands and blue fire sparked in his palms, the same color as the embers in the wall. Greg stood up as the triangle turned and, again, lifted a hand toward Beatrice.

Greg was interested now more than scared, but he still asked, "What are you going to do?"

"Just a favor for my best new buddy," Bill said, and tipped his hat at him. "Fair warning, she might scream, but take my word for it, she's gonna love it!" The triangle smiled a big toothy smile at him, somehow again using only his eye.

"Why is –?" Too late. Bill turned to Beatrice's prone form and grabbed her, on her face and her leg.

He was right; she did scream. It started at surprise, and turned quickly to pain, and kept on going until it strangled on a hurricane wind that blasted out of the sky like to blow them right out. The trees bent and lashed crazily. Greg dropped to his knees and clapped his hands over his ears. He wondered if this dream was starting to turn into a nightmare. Noise cracked the ground, made green lightning split the stars again, shrunk the moon, sent the roof flying back onto the house, tile by tile. He couldn't even open his eyes to see if Beatrice was okay; the scream and the wind were the same thing, both beating at his knuckles. He curled up as tight as he could and thought that he should stand, run, anything to get away or to help, but then something hit him hard in the side and –

–

Greg opened his eyes as he rolled with the little kick Wirt had accidentally landed in his ribs. Everything was so immediately different that it was almost the most confusing moment of his life. The sun falling through the house was too bright to see in, and Jason Funderburker was hopping over to him with a worried look, and everybody was yelling at the same time about something Greg didn't understand.

The only thing that had followed him from the dream was Beatrice's voice. She really was screaming, and as she kicked out hard, Dipper went stumbling away from her, into the half-kitchen. "What the hell are you doing?!" she screeched.

Sara was on all fours by the end of the bed, looking like she didn't understand things any better than Greg did. "Bea, what the –?"

"He grabbed me!" Beatrice sat up in bed and pulled her knees up to her chest. "He grabbed me while I was sleeping and –"

"I'm s-so sorry!" Dipper had his hands on his face. His voice shook. "Jesus Christ, Beatrice, I'm so sorry, I – I don't know –"

Wirt asked, "Beatrice, are you hurt?"

"He was sleepwalking," Mabel insisted. She tried to pull her brother to his feet. Her hair was a sleepy brown puffball. "He used to do it all the time when he was younger, it's just an old –"

"Did you see it? He grabbed my face! I couldn't breathe –"

"Are you okay?" Dipper stood up and stumbled toward her, and she scooted away to the far end of the bed. "Did I hurt you?"

Sara insisted, "She's fine, look at her, she's fine," and put a hand on his shoulder as he walked by, but he jumped away from her touch. Greg's eyes skipped up to the tree in the wall. The roots were starting to move. He swallowed, and tugged on his brother's cape.

"Wirt?" he asked, but Wirt wasn't listening.

Beatrice was still arguing that Dipper had terrified her, Dipper kept apologizing, Mabel kept defending him, and Wirt and Sara were still trying to get the shouting to stop. But the big tangle of voices came up short all at once when they heard a much bigger rumble. The woman in the tree was stirring, slowly turning her head back and forth and unbending her legs. The black cat that had been sitting in her lap all night furled slowly down the roots like they were stairs, and jumped to the ground.

"Well, a raucous g'mornin' to you too, children," it drawled as the woman opened her mouth to yawn and raised her woody hands to rub at her face. "I wasn't plannin' on leavin' so early, but I doubt I could keep 'er in dreamland any longer even if I wanted to." Two bleary green eyes peeped open from the darkness between the roots. "I 'magine she'll be upset when she sees you've eaten her food, so it's probably best you get y'selves goin'."

Suddenly, their argument didn't seem so important anymore.

Mabel started grabbing everything she could and the others ran to do the same. The sun got shorter and shorter on the floor as Greg watched. It was only a minute before Wirt took his brother's hand as the group left the little part-house into the songbird forest, jogging awkwardly with stiff sleepy muscles. Greg looked back as best he could and waved a hand at the black cat where it sat at the edge of the house. It blinked a yellow goodbye.

They ran for a while, until everybody was puffing cold smoke and holding their hands to their sides, and finally started to slow down. It didn't sound like anyone was coming after them, anyway. Greg still didn't know if the tree woman could even get up. Eventually, their fear faded out, and Greg had his first opportunity to say hello to the trees, and listen to the birds. The sunshine was pink and the ground was bright white, and everything was dry. The rain had left the ground when it left the sky, too. The whole group walked with their noses in the air, watching the treetops.

It was a while before anyone noticed that Beatrice wasn't limping anymore.

The ugly cut on her leg had healed to a faded scar.

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