I'm still alive! Slowly but surely working on the next chapter. Enjoy, and as always, thank you so much for your reviews!
Pain seared through his body. Stabbing pain, hot, tiny needles piercing each nerve cluster, the core of each cell. He struggled to open his eyes, and when the white spots in his vision finally cleared, he found himself staring into two blank holes and a gaping black mouth. Bill's mask. He gazed at its silent shriek for a moment longer before struggling to train his vision beyond it, to Bill himself. The body lay out of his reach, blurry in his reeling sight.
Stiffly, Dipper pushed himself up and pain sprang anew throughout him. He was beginning to remember; an intense ritual. Energy building up, unleashing. Lightning. Bill, then him. Pain. Darkness.
His eyes roamed down to his own body, and he started when he saw his right arm. There were strange, branch-like burns etched like brands up and down the limb, from shoulder to knuckles. He remembered reading about this somewhere. Lichtenberg figures. Patterns that sometimes appeared on the skin of lightning strike victims. His arm was numb, but to his relief, he was able to move it, to wiggle his fingers.
He began to crawl toward Bill, dragging himself over the smeared blood on the floor. He was sure he already looked like a wreck; all blood and sweat and more bodily fluids than he'd like to think about at the moment. What was a little more?
Bill's body was sprawled on the side, face angled toward the floor. As Dipper approached, he saw that Bill also bore the telltale Lichtenberg figures, branching down his left arm, standing bright red against the shock-pallid skin and the deep black binding marks.
'We match,' Dipper thought, disoriented, willing his head to stop swimming. He couldn't focus. Everything hurt. But he had to see if the ritual had worked. His heart ached, his head pounded, his skin crawled with pain.
He had to see if it worked.
He rolled Bill gently so the body lay on its back. It was still warm.
"Bill…?" he croaked, putting a trembling hand to the pale cheek, brushing across those ridiculously long lashes, "Bill?"
Nothing.
Dipper dropped his hand, breathing heavily, willing himself calm. So it was done.
But then the body beneath him gave a low groan and its eyes shot open, wide and panicked.
One black, one yellow.
Bill.
He sat upright with a pained gasp, looking wildly about the room, then down at himself. He brought his hands up to his face, flexed the fingers, stared at the long-dried blood on his wounds, silent.
Dipper watched him, caught in the awkward space between disappointment and relief.
"Bill..." he began, but trailed off when he realized he didn't have anything else to say. The demon didn't even cast a glance his way, too preoccupied with his own flesh. Slowly, Bill began to shake his head, murmuring softly to himself.
"No...no no no...no...no! This wasn't supposed to happen!" he pushed himself up, huffing with the effort, staring with increasing horror down at his still-naked body, "it was supposed to work! It was supposed to work!"
"We'll find another way..." Dipper offered weakly, but his voice was just a hoarse croak. He wasn't even sure Bill had heard him.
The demon was becoming frantic, whipping himself up into a rage. He kicked the extinguished candles, snatched up quartz only to hurl it back at the ground like a petulant child. He tore at his hair and let out a howl of frustration.
"It was supposed to work! How could it not work?! Everything was in place! Everything was in place, everything was-damn it!"
"We'll find-" Dipper began again, but abruptly shut his mouth when Bill rounded on him like a feral animal.
"YOU," he said, pointing at Dipper with a bloody, shaking finger. His voice echoed, trembled, and his eye was red with fury, the glowing white slit of its center focused like a sniper's crosshairs on the boy, "this is YOUR FAULT!"
"What?" Dipper asked, dazed and more than a little terrified. Bill looked ready to literally tear someone apart, his hands curled into tense claws as he stalked toward Dipper. This was more in line with the Bill Cipher he used to know, used to have nightmares about. Bloody and murderous, stalking toward him and seemingly ready to end his life right then and there.
"YOU ruined the ritual somehow! EVERYTHING WAS IN PLACE! WHAT did YOU DO, PINE TR-"
Something crashed into Bill's forehead with a loud thwack and the demon was knocked backward onto the floor, dazed and reeling. Whatever had hit him clattered to the floor loudly beside Dipper.
A grappling hook. He turned his aching head to look behind him.
Mabel stood in front of the parted curtains of the entrance, eyes blazing and finger still resting on the trigger. She clicked the switch that swiftly reeled the rope back in and wasted no time in running to Dipper, standing in front of him protectively. Her back was to him, but he could see her stance, tall, shoulders squared, fists clenched.
"Don't you dare touch him, Bill," she said, and her voice was quiet, cold, distinctly un-Mabel-like. Bill raised his head, ignoring the steady flow of blood streaming down his face.
"Shooting Star…." he growled in warning, his eye still a red ember.
"No!" Mabel barked, and it seemed enough to take Bill aback, his eye blinking from crimson to pale yellow once more. There was a tense silence, an awkward standoff. Bill didn't move from his position on the floor. Mabel took a deep, shaking breath and continued.
"Listen, I don't know what kind of...what kind of...weird ritual this was or what you two did, and I don't want to know. But I can see that my brother is hurt. And I won't let him get hurt again."
Ignoring the shocked expressions on both their faces, Mabel finally turned from Bill to gather up Dipper's clothes, her mouth set in a grim line. When she was done, she began helping him put them back on, easing his legs through the holes of his shorts, his branded arm through his shirt.
"Its okay, Dip, the Alpha Twin is here to take care of you..." she murmured comfortingly. It would be an understatement to say that having his sister clothe him in his state was embarrassing, but Dipper didn't resist. It all hurt too much, the burns, his head, Bill's apparent fury. All the while, the demon sat sprawled, watching, silent.
Mabel helped Dipper up with a grunt, hooking his arm around her neck and supporting his waist with her free hand. She looked down at Bill with strange mixture of sadness and anger, an expression that set her usually cherub-like features into something more world-weary and adult.
"I thought you cared about us, Bill," she sighed softly, "but Dipper's hurt, and you were too busy throwing a tantrum to care. I'm taking him to the hospital, like I should have done the first time he got banged up hanging around you. I'm doing it because I love him. But I guess that's something you couldn't possibly understand. Here."
Bracing Dipper against her with one hand, she fished around in her pockets with the other before pulling out her oversized sunglasses. She threw them at Bill and they skittered to a stop at his feet.
"Go back home, Bill. Stop acting like a spoiled brat and go back home. We'll figure out what to do once I know my brother is going to be okay."
She turned, helping Dipper along, and slowly led him out of the room. Before the two vanished beyond the curtains, Dipper glanced woozily over his shoulder at Bill.
Bill just sat, flabbergasted, among the blood and the glass, unable to do anything but watch them go.
It was a good time later before Bill finally left the museum. He had spent nearly an hour sitting on the floor among his own blood and the ruins of the ritual, thinking. Finally, he'd managed to gather his wits about him and erase all evidence of the ritual, cleaning himself of as much blood as he could and redressing before stepping out into the bright, warm Oregon morning. Even under Mabel's sunglasses, he squinted against the sun beaming down onto the gleaming asphalt. With a resolved sigh, he stepped off the museum stairs and onto the sidewalk, beginning his trek back to the Mystery Shack.
He briefly considered disobeying Shooting Star, going anywhere else but where she called "home". What was the point? The ritual hadn't worked, he wasn't sure what else would. Maybe it was time to leave. Take matters into his own hands. Track down that cult, maybe try to kill them before they could capture him again. It was a risk, but he was getting desperate.
But Shooting Star, as much as it pained Bill to admit, was right. Pine Tree was hurt, and it was more or less his fault. Bill tried to convince himself he wasn't being sentimental. He owed it to the kid to at least make sure he was all right.
He watched his feet as he walked. What a sad sight he must have been. Just another weak human, head bowed, hands stuffed in pockets, shambling aimlessly down some podunk town street. Purposeless. Powerless.
"Hey, Bilbo!"
An old red pickup pulled up beside him and Wendy leaned out the driver's side window, giving Bill a friendly wave, "whatcha doing, man? On your way to the Shack? I can take you there, if you want."
Bill paused and gave her a long look. Then, without really knowing why, he walked around the truck and slid into the passenger side. The woman began driving again, talking over the brain-addling noise that she and her ilk called music.
"I told Soos and Melody I'd help them out with some new attractions today, so I was on my way there anyway. How's it hangin', man?"
He gave her a miserable glare that she likely couldn't see through the heavy tint of Mabel's sunglasses. Wendy continued, nonplussed.
"Oh yeah, I forgot that you like, can't talk or whatever. Hey, uh, are you okay?" she gestured toward his hands, bare and bloody, "you should really go to a doctor for that. Your forehead is all jacked up, too. Did you get those fighting monsters? Dipper and Mabel are kinda like the resident monster-fighting badasses around here. You won't believe this, but they even managed to help take down this all-powerful chaos demon! Okay, now you must think I'm crazy."
Bill stared at her, then sunk deep into the passenger seat, arms crossed.
"I know, I wouldn't believe me either. Has Dipper taken you to see that creepy old statue in the middle of the woods? That's the only proof left. Urban legend has it, if you shake the statue's hand, the demon will reappear and want to make a deal...spooky, right? But I guess, uh, I'm kinda breaking the law by telling you about all that. The mayor kinda forbid anyone ever mentioning it ever again. But like, if we hide the past...I don't know. Who's going to protect the future?"
Bill grimaced and stared at his lap, bitterly thinking of the statue and how shaking its hand did not, in fact, do anything at all. They continued in silence for a few more moments before she spoke again.
"Kinda weird talking to a mute guy. Makes things a little...one sided? Hey, I wanted to tell you, you're really lucky."
Bill's snort of contempt was much louder than he had meant it, but it did have the effect of making Wendy jump slightly, which he found gratifying.
"Okay, so, maybe not super lucky. I mean, being mute and living in a hole or whatever has got to suck. I meant you finding Dipper. He's a great guy, y'know? I'm glad he, I don't know, has someone now. He deserves the best."
Bill set his mouth into a thin line, staring at the deep wounds on his hands until the truck came to a stop and Wendy unbuckled her seat belt.
"Well, we're here. Hey, maybe sometime later today we can all hang?"
They exited the vehicle and Wendy gave a short wave before heading into the Shack's gift shop area. Bill watched her go, then skirted around the other side of the building to enter the foyer. He stood in the doorway, staring into the empty old Shack.
He remembered when Ford had built the thing; he'd been watching even then. The Shack felt as much as a home to him as anything did; but ultimately, it wasn't. He had no home, probably never would, no matter how nice Pine Tree and Shooting Star had made it seem.
He considered heading into the basement, pouring over Ford's notes again. Trying to find something he had missed. But he was drained, tired, and, if he was going to be honest with himself, afraid. He was stuck in his weak, wounded body, at the mercy of mere humans. They could take what they needed from him at any moment, without warning, without fail, could rend him in two and leave him, broken and pained, able to do nothing but rebuild. Until the cycle repeated itself. Over and over and over again. And now, on top of it all, he was alone.
All because he couldn't keep his temper in check.
So, he did one of the few human things he actually approved of; he sought out Stanley's liquor cabinet, grabbed a full bottle of whiskey, and proceeded to get absolutely fucking plastered.
The sound of movement outside jolted Bill from his drunken stupor. He sat up on the couch, the now nearly-empty bottle still clutched in one hand.
'Pine Tree,' was all his muddled mind could put together. He and Shooting Star had come back. Now, he supposed, was his time to...what was it called again? Apologize. That, and ensure that Pine Tree was okay.
Why did he care anyway?
"Stupid puny one lifespan meat puppets…" he slurred to himself as he stumbled his way to the front door. The sound of the porch steps creaking on the other side of the doorway was distant and dulled by the alcohol. His vision swam. There were three doorknobs and it took him a moment to grab the real one. He wrenched the door open wide, ready to defend himself, explain himself to Shooting Star, and yes, apologize.
Standing on the porch in front of him, looking battered and tired, but no less aghast, were Stanley and Stanford Pines.
They gawked at Bill, mouths agape, and Bill stared back before uttering two simple words.
"Oh shit."
