Ford placed the last notebook neatly on top of the pile before closing the now tidy desk drawer. There, done. Then he turned around to survey the rest of the room. He dropped to the floor, closed his eyes, and thunked the back of his head against the desk. The thinking parlor was a mess. He'd come in here maybe thirty, forty-five minutes ago thinking that perhaps this was where he'd stashed away that Tesla poster. His search was successful, but the process of searching had also reminded him the thinking parlor was one of the rooms that had been largely passed over last year during the purging and re-organization to make the house more child-friendly. He'd removed the electron carpet – he couldn't imagine the fallout had the children accidentally swapped bodies with each other, and he didn't want to – but that had more or less been the extent of it. It had seemed to him that a belated organizing of the room would make a good Saturday afternoon project – productive while still giving his mind a break from work and leaving himself readily available should the children suddenly need him – so he had dived right in. Now that he was just deep enough in that his only options were to finish or to leave the place worse than when he arrived, he was regretting that decision immensely.

"Daddy?" Mabel had wandered into the room only a few minutes ago, paper and crayons in hand. She had taken a long look at the mess Ford had made of the place before commandeering a little end table for her drawing supplies. The items Ford had previously placed on the table had been unceremoniously relocated to the floor. She then dragged the table through the detritus over to the couch so as to have a place to sit while she did her coloring. None of which Ford had objected to, both because he appreciated her company and because it wasn't as though she was making the mess situation any worse.

"Yes, sweetheart?" Ford responded, his lips quirking up in an amused smile. Presumably she intended to ask him about his strange fit of housekeeping-related industriousness, or perhaps about his moment of defeat upon realizing the Herculean nature of the task before him. He opened his eyes, and the smile quickly dropped from his face. Mabel's expression was not one of interest or confusion; she was staring down at the page in front of her, though Ford had serious doubts as to whether she was actually seeing it, with a look of intense and troubled concentration. "Is something the matter?"

"Yes," Mabel said, though she still didn't look up at him. Her grip on her crayon tightened. "Daddy, I don't like your friend."

Her words came out in such a rush, it took him a few blinking seconds to parse them out. "You don't like my friend? You mean Fiddleford? Did he do something to you?" Had Ford made the wrong decision after all? He'd chosen to believe Fiddleford hadn't hurt the kids and wouldn't hurt them and now barely a week later…

"No! I love Uncle Fiddleford; he's the best." Mabel paused briefly to count on her fingers under her breath. "He's the fifth best."

Ford slumped back against the desk again, the breath going out of him in one relieved whoosh. "Good. That's good. But then who are you talking about if not Fiddleford?" Ford had made a number of acquaintances in town over the past year that he could reasonably term a friend, but none of them exclusively or excessively so that he would expect Mabel to refer to them in that way.

"Your friend," Mabel repeated. "The yellow one."

"My yellow friend?" Ford didn't think he knew anyone who was jaundiced. Maybe Mabel was referring to hair color? Did he know anyone with blond hair?

Mabel nodded. "The yellow one. And he's got a big eye and he lives inside your head."

This time when all the air left his lungs, it seemed in no hurry to return. Yellow, a big eye, and lived in his head? There was only one being that could refer to, but there was no possible way Mabel could… "Do you mean Bill? Bill Cipher?" he finally managed to strangle out.

Mabel bit her lip thoughtfully, then nodded. "That's what he said his name was, I 'member now."

Ford sat up straighter and looked her straight in the eyes. "Mabel, this is very important: how do you know who Bill is? When did you talk with him?" Ford had told Bill very clearly and on multiple occasions that he didn't want him going into the children's minds. He did have a fair amount of iconography related to Bill, especially down in his study, so Mabel very easily could have picked up on the look of Bill from there, but Stanford doubted she would have identified Bill as his friend from that, and she certainly couldn't have talked to him that way. The only way she could have actually talked to him is if Bill had gone into her mind, which Ford had told him not to do. So he wouldn't have, right?

"He keeps being in my dreams. He said he's your friend and he's helping you build your portal machine and that you said we should all be friends so he can help you even more," Mabel told him.

Once again, this was all Stanford's fault. Bill had come to him with a practical solution to a problem and Ford had turned him down. But because he had been too… too what? Not scared, Bill was Stanford's friend, and Stanford wasn't scared of him. Too nervous maybe, too worried about upsetting Bill, so Stanford had lied and pretended that Dipper and Mabel were the only reason he had turned it down. Then Bill had once again attempted to solve the problem very practically. If the problem was Ford was worried about how the children would handle having Bill in Stanford's body when they didn't even know who Bill was, then the practical, logical solution was for Bill to introduce himself to and befriend the children.

"But Daddy," Mabel continued, "I don't wanna be friends with him. He's bad, I can tell. You have to make him go away."

Stanford rubbed his temples, cursing Bill and the mess he'd dropped him into the middle of. If he had only listened when Stanford had told him to stay out of the children's heads… "I know it must have been upsetting to have him appear in your dreams like that uninvited. I've told him not to do that, and I'll tell him again next time I see him. He won't bother you anymore."

"He can't bother you anymore either. You have to tell him. 'Cause he's mean. He pretended like he's all nice, but he's not, I can tell. I can. He's bad and you have to tell him to leave forever," Mabel insisted.

He ought to have known that Mabel would pick up on Bill's dislike of her and Dipper. The children, especially Mabel, were uncannily perceptive for their age in that regard for obvious reasons that Ford didn't care to think about too much. How in the world was he going to explain the reality of the situation to her in a way that she could understand? "You're probably right that Bill's attempts to be nice weren't entirely genuine. That's because Bill and I used to work together all the time before you and your brother came here. Once you had, I started working less because I wanted to spend time with the both of you, and Bill is… let's say jealous of the time I'm spending with the two of you and not him. That's why it's hard for him to want to be friends with you, but he was really trying and I think you could be friends if you wanted to. If you don't want to because he makes you uncomfortable, that's okay, I'll tell him to leave you alone. But I'm still going to be friends with him on my own time."

Mabel shook her head. "No Daddy, you can't be friends with him anymore either. He's not just pretending to me and Dipper, he's pretending to everyone because he's mean and he's bad."

Stanford sighed. "Sweetheart, I've known Bill a lot longer than you have, and you don't understand-"

"NO!" Mabel shrieked, her face contorted into an expression of rage that Ford had never seen before. "I'm not stupid! I'm smart enough to know, and I do know, and he's bad!"

"I never said you were stupid," Ford said. "Mabel, you need to calm down."

"No, no, no!" Mabel stamped her foot in time with her words. "You did say I was stupid. You said I was too stupid to understand, but I do. You aren't listening, just like Mama never ever listened. You're supposed to be better than Mama, but you're not, and I HATE YOU!" With a final scream Mabel threw her crayon at Ford's head and then ran out of the room. In a state of shock Ford looked down at the crayon now sitting in his lap. It was yellow.

Mabel had said she hated him. What was he supposed to do now? Should he chase after her and reprimand her and demand she apologize for her temper tantrum? Should he chase after her so he could apologize to her? Should he let her cool off for a little while and then go after her? Stan was still out running the errands Ford was pretty sure he'd made up on the spot to get out of helping organize the thinking parlor, but Dipper would be able to comfort his sister until she was willing to talk with Ford. Ford eventually decided the third option would be best, so Mabel could calm herself first, but mostly because it gave him a little more time to sort out who was supposed to be apologizing to who for what. He was the adult; it was his responsibility to be the one who knew those kinds of things and then explain them to Mabel, the child. It also gave him more time to process the fact that Mabel had said she hated him. He knew she hadn't meant it. She was six years old and had been throwing a tantrum; tantrum-throwing six year olds were prone to saying all kinds of things they didn't mean. She hadn't meant it. It still hurt like she had.

That could be dealt with later. After Ford had given Mabel her cooling off time, one of the apologies he would insist on would be one from her for saying that she hated him. She would apologize, he would forgive her and tell her he loved her, and she would respond in kind. There, simple, straight-forward, easy. That solved and practically done already, except for the actual doing of it, which would be dealt with later. It was all of the rest of what happened that was problematic.

Ford jumped to his feet and began pacing the room. Then he tripped, stopped, kicked things out of the way until he had cleared out a good stretch of open floor, and resumed pacing again.

Bill had been in Mabel's mind. Dipper's too by the sound of it. Why would he have done that? Stanford could understand how it was a practical solution to the problem as presented, and he had assumed it was his own fault for presenting the problem in that way. But now that he wasn't dealing with Mabel confronting him and having to defend his friend from her, Ford could see that for the insane backwards logic it was. The only reason he had jumped to that conclusion was because he had been conditioned to think that when something went wrong with the children it was his fault. (Conditioned by whom? Not Dipper and Mabel. Not Stan. Not Fiddleford, not any other person in Gravity Falls. By himself? But that didn't make sense either, did it? Pavlov rang the bell, not the dog.) Yes, he had presented the problem with the logical solution being for Bill to go introduce himself to the children and visit them in their minds but he had told Bill not to go into the children's minds. There had been no ambiguity, no uncertain terms, Ford had said on multiple occasions that he didn't want anyone to mess about with the children's minds, not Fiddleford, not Bill, not even Ford himself, nobody. If Bill had thought there was a compelling reason for Ford to change that stance, he should have said so and asked permission before he did anything.

The only logical inference Ford could make as to why Bill hadn't asked permission was he had been hoping to quickly befriend the children and then present the matter to Ford as a fiat accompli, believing that Stanford would then accept the matter and move forward. Would he have? He shouldn't, Bill had violated his trust deliberately and that should take priority regardless of how things had turned out. But if they had turned out fine, and if Bill had been there brushing off Stanford's concerns, telling him he was being ridiculous being upset when nothing bad had happened then maybe… maybe he would have accepted it. At that point, by Stanford's own admission there would be no reason for him to refuse Bill's suggestion of allowing him to take over his body while he was sleeping. So logically, Stanford would have to respond to Bill violating his trust by placing even more trust in him.

Ford fisted his hands in his hair and forced himself not to scream.

But why? Why was it so important that Bill had to trick and manipulate Ford into taking his deal? Ford had told Bill he wasn't comfortable with it; Bill was supposed to be his friend, so that should have been the end of it. Was he angry Ford had told him no? Was he really only trying to ensure the portal was completed faster? Why did that matter? Yes, Ford was excited to see the portal finished and would prefer to see it sooner rather than later, but within reason. The original projections, before all this mess had started, had them running the first test on the portal at the beginning of June. Two more months. That was, as Stan and Fiddleford had made a point of mentioning on numerous occasions over the past week, plenty soon enough. There was no need or any reason at all to have it done any faster beyond Bill's claim that Ford was capable of it and his pushing to have Ford live up to his potential.

That had been Pa's excuse, hadn't it? Ford had the potential to make millions, and Pa had been trying to push Ford into making something of himself, and that had been the reason for all his less than ideal behavior. No, Stan wasn't here, and the only way to sort out this mess was to be straight-forward and honest, so call it what it was, abusive. Pa had used pushing Ford to reach his potential as an excuse for his abusive behavior.

That didn't necessarily mean that Bill was doing the same thing. There could be other explanations. It was just a disturbing point of congruence. Just like Mabel accusing Ford of not listening to her like Steph hadn't didn't mean Ford was guilty of dismissing Mabel out of hand like Steph had. Ford had listened and judged that Mabel didn't know enough about the situation. Maybe that was Bill's reason for not listening to Ford. Or maybe he shared Steph's reasoning, or maybe it was something entirely separate from both of them. None of them were necessarily the same thing. They were just points of congruence.

Just points of congruence. That's all he had, points of congruence and a lot of questions that lacked satisfactory answers. Oh, and a daughter who had accused him of being just the same as her abusive mother and said that she hated him. Can't forget about that.

This time when he pulled at his hair he managed to yank out a not insubstantial chunk of it. Since he didn't want to add premature baldness to his already long list of problems, he stuffed his hands down into his pants pockets. Which is how he managed to jam his finger on something else already in there. He grabbed the pen cap or whatever it was with the half-formed notion of throwing it at the wall as a form of petty vengeance and stress relief.

It wasn't a pen cap. It was a ring. A heavy gold ring with four hands centered around and clasping the stone. It was the ring that palm reader at the fair had given him months ago, but the stone wasn't bright blue anymore. It was black. Black means you can't turn back. Superstitious nonsense. That palm reader had been a fraud and this ring just had one of those color changing stones, like in the mood rings they were selling for a dollar down at the convenience store. Any other day, any other time Ford would have believed that whole-heartedly, but right here, right now, this stupid ring condemning him felt like – no. Stop it. It was a silly superstition, and he didn't believe in it, he didn't care, he was going to… wait a second.

As Ford had begun to clench his fist around the ring so he could throw it after all, the light coming in from the window hit it at just the right angle. The stone caught the light and flared in a vibrant show of color. The deepest, darkest, midnight… blue. The stone was still blue. And it was still a lot of superstitious nonsense, but Ford had to believe there was a way for him to sort through all this mess and pull through, and if the ring was going to support that belief, well then he could believe in the ring too. Just for now.

What was it that old crone had said? Before she had given him the ring she had offered him a warning. A warning that while most of the people around him were trustworthy, one of them was not. Which was starting to sound a lot like what Mabel had been saying. And when he thought about it, while a single point of congruence was merely a point, if you managed to get enough points, they could form a pattern. And what was a satisfactory answer anyway? Was it an answer that addressed all aspects of a question in a logical, complete, and truthful manner, or was it just the answer you wanted to hear? The former, certainly. If Ford was a scientist, it had to be the former.

Ford stood absolutely still and relaxed his body. He closed his eyes. He breathed in through his nose, 2, 3, 4. Held it, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Out through his mouth, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. "Bill is bad." He said the words slowly, testing the shape of them. Bill was bad. Bill was bad.

It felt like solving that one crossword clue from which all the other words fell into place. It felt like making that final twist on a microscope, sending the specimen jumping into focus. It felt like a sudden epiphany cascading through his mind bringing everything, everything, into crystal clarity.

It felt like Ford was going to throw up.

He sat down on the floor in the fetal position, breathing slowly and steadily while he waited for the shock to pass. It did, surprisingly quickly. Or perhaps not surprisingly. Because now that Ford had wiped away the piles of justifications and excuses Bill had been making, that Stanford had been making on Bill's behalf, suddenly everything made sense. If Bill didn't care about Ford at all and had only ever been pretending to so he could gain Ford's trust and eventually use him to build the portal, then that made sense. If Bill had been trying to push the entirety of Ford's sense of self-worth to rest on his intelligence and abilities as a scientist so Ford would spend all his focus on building the portal, even to the detriment of himself and those around him, then that made sense. If Bill hated Dipper and Mabel because Ford prioritized them over everything, including Bill and the portal, then that made sense. If Bill disliked the emotional support and connection Ford shared with Stan and Fiddleford, but still saw them both as useful tools in pushing forward the portal's construction, then that made sense. It wasn't the answer he wanted, but it all made sense.

So that left only one question. Why did Bill really want Ford to build the portal?

He had to talk to Bill. No, he had to confront Bill. He had to demand to know what the portal was really for. Then he would tell Bill that he wasn't going to be his pawn anymore, and that Bill damn well better stay away from Ford and his children.

Ford shifted his legs into lotus position and regulated his breathing. He was too keyed up to go to sleep right now, but he could meditate and enter the mindscape that way. Truthfully, he was probably too keyed up to meditate either, but he would make it happen through sheer force of will if he had to. Mabel had asked him to tell Bill to go away, and Ford had listened.