"We're not leaving!"
The voice outside her door sounded like Dipper Pines. It had been awhile since Wendy had watched him die horribly, so she surmised it must be that time again. She wasn't too happy about it, but it was what it was. She might "see" Dipper or even "talk" to him (once she had even "kissed" him) but every single time Dipper Pines attempted to rescue her, she ended up watching him die.
Wendy Corduroy was no longer sane, and she knew it. It may be argued that one who is insane cannot be insane if they recognize their lack of sanity. The trouble for Wendy was that recognizing her insanity was much easier than recognizing reality. There were too many instances when she had been sure that everything around her was real, that she could trust her visual and auditory senses—that she could trust her sense of touch. So many times where what was happening couldn't possibly be in her head.
So many times she had been wrong.
She wasn't sure how long she'd been Bill Cipher's captive, or if she even was being held captive. He called her his queen, and said that he kept her close by and locked up because she was self-destructive, and couldn't be trusted. The self-destructive part rang true, but she didn't remember becoming his queen. Honestly, she didn't remember much at all. Or at least, she couldn't trust her memories. They lied to her, told her she was important, that there were people out in the world that cared about her and would surely come to rescue her from captivity—if she was in captivity. So either her memories were lying, and she wasn't actually important to anyone, or she wasn't actually in captivity. Maybe.
Dipper had come to rescue her countless times, only to meet various gruesome deaths at the hands of Bill Cipher. Seeing that (she was pretty sure, at least) someone could not actually die more than once, she had a strong suspicion that all those rescue attempts were in her head, or somehow orchestrated by Bill. But were they all? Or had perhaps one of the attempts been real, and she really had watched her best friend die horrifically once, without even knowing that the blood and viscera covering the floors, walls, and occasionally her, had actually been real?
And then there was the Mabel popsicle. Wendy had seen Bill and some of his minions levitating a large metal and glass tube through the halls one day. It looked like there was someone inside, so she had followed them to get a closer look. When she finally got a clear view of inside the tube, she broke out in a fit of giggles at the ridiculousness of it all. Mabel Pines, her best friend's twin sister, was frozen. She was blue, like a blue raspberry sno-cone. Of the many things she had seen that she was convinced had happened, she knew this was the least likely to be real. For one thing, "Mabel" was entirely too skinny. Her cheeks were gaunt, and her normally thick brown hair appeared to have thinned considerably. No, the Mabel popsicle was definitely a product of her deranged brain. Of that, she was sure.
So when Wendy heard Dipper's voice through her door in the middle of the night, she rolled her eyes. She knew if she saw him or "talked" to him, she'd end up being convinced he was real this time—like every other time. She was tired of the emotional toll watching her best friend die had on her. Bill (or her brain) needed to give it a rest.
"I'm not doing this again, Bill! I know Dipper isn't really here!" she called out. Of course, she had said the same thing countless times before, and had ended up been convinced by "Dipper" countless times before that he was real and was really there to rescue her. She didn't expect tonight to be any different.
"Dip, don't! It's obviously a trap!" a familiar feminine voice called. Ah. Pacifica was in this hallucination, as well. That was occasionally the case.
Wendy sighed, and folded her arms over her chest. This was happening, so she might as well get it over with. She waited while someone pushed her door open slowly.
"Wendy?"
The Dipper standing wide-eyed in her doorway looked different than he normally did during his rescue missions. He was taller, his cheeks were slightly sunken in, and at least a day's worth of stubble covered the lower half of his face. His dark brown hair was shaggy, and it fell into his eyes. He had a satchel slung over his shoulder, and was wearing a shotgun holstered to his back. He was also wearing her old green flannel shirt.
Wendy nodded at him. "Dipper. You look different tonight." She wondered if he was supposed to be from the same timeline as the gaunt "Mabel popsicle." That couldn't be right, though, because this Dipper appeared older than that Mabel.
Dipper took a step forward, then stopped. "Is it really—wait, what? Tonight?"
"It can't really be her, Dip...can it?" a soft male voice with a Southern accent came from behind Dipper.
Wendy felt her eyebrows rise. "Gideon? I haven't watched you die yet."
Both Pacifica and Gideon came into view behind Dipper, and were both as wide-eyed as him. The two of them looked like slightly older, more weathered versions of themselves than Wendy remembered.
"I beg your… you haven't… watched me die?" Gideon said, looking not a little confused and concerned.
"Look, are we doing this, or what?" Wendy asked, irritably. She knew it was only a matter of time before she began believing they were real, and she wasn't looking forward to grieving their deaths.
The three teens still stood in her doorway dumbly. Dipper was trembling. Of course, that was normal. Dipper trembled a lot when he came to rescue her.
"Wendy," he said low, his voice tremulous. "We thought you were dead. There-there was so much blood. I never—we never..." He couldn't finish his sentence. He stumbled forward and threw his arms around her, squeezing so tightly that her back popped. He buried his face in her shoulder, and began shaking with sobs.
"Shit," Wendy muttered, as she hugged him back. She knew it wasn't real. She knew it. But like every other time, she was starting to believe that this might really be Dipper. She rubbed his back, and felt his warm tears soak through the fabric of her thin nightgown.
"I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry!" he sobbed. "If I had known you were—they told me you couldn't have survived—I looked for you, I tried, I swear!"
"It isn't your fault, Dipper," Wendy said, her voice husky with emotion. Dammit. And there it was. Regardless of the fact that she knew she'd soon see this Dipper and his companions die horribly, she felt for him. He seemed genuinely contrite. His tears felt real. He even had his own scent: gunpowder, pine needles, and disinfectant.
Wendy pulled back from him, and took in his appearance. She frowned and reached up to touch the butterfly bandage over his eye, then trailed her hand down the side of his face, his stubble rough under the pads of her fingers. This Dipper was handsome—almost dashing.
"Huh," she murmured, mostly to herself. "So you finally aged up."
Dipper frowned, and opened his mouth to say something, but stopped himself. He craned his neck back toward the door, clearly hearing something. Then Wendy heard it. Footsteps. Running footsteps. Accompanied by high-pitched giggling.
"Dipper, someone's coming!" hissed Pacifica.
"We have to go," urged Gideon, as the giggling grew louder. "It sounds like—"
"It's Bill," Wendy confirmed. How many times had this happened before?
"But Mabel—" Dipper began.
"Seriously, Dipper?!" Pacifica hissed. "We'll come back for her. Now grab Wendy and let's go!"
Dipper did as he was told, and grabbed Wendy by the hand. "Come on, lets get you out of here," he said low, as he pulled her through the doorway.
"You're a sexy Dipper. I wish you didn't have to die," Wendy said in her head. Well, she thought she said it in her head. But Dipper's quick, confused glance back at her, and his exclamation of "What?!" indicated to her that she had, in fact, said it out loud.
Wendy shook her head at him. Something would go wrong in the escape soon, and he would find out what she meant in a very unpleasant way. Best to just go along with it for now.
/
Dipper's heart was pounding harder than it had any right to without simply failing. He was holding Wendy's hand. Wendy. His best friend and crush, whom he thought was dead. But here he was, holding her hand, and running with her, following Gideon and Pacifica, to escape the Fearamid. And she had called him sexy… but in the same breath, said very matter-of-factly that she wished he didn't have to die. That was disconcerting.
He didn't have much time to ponder it, however, because as the teens were running through the throne room toward the opening in the Fearamid, the high pitched giggling had morphed into a maniacal cackle.
"OH WENDY, MY QUEEN, MY PET, I'M IN THE MOOD FOR SOME TARGET PRACTICE! DO YOU WANT TO BE THE TARGET TODAY, OR THE GUN?"
Wendy gripped Dipper's hand more tightly, and when he ventured a glance back at her, her mouth was a grim line, and her eyes were brimming with tears. What had Bill done to her? The target or the gun… what did that even mean?
"WENDY!" Bill's shriek was sharper this time, more angry than maniacal. "WHY ARE YOU NOT IN YOUR ROOM, YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO STAY IN YOUR ROOM UNTIL I LET YOU OUT!"
Apparently, Bill just thought Wendy was wandering the Fearamid unaccompanied, and had no idea she was being rescued. The knot in Dipper's stomach loosened slightly. Were they really going to get away with this? They were nearly at the opening. It seemed almost too easy.
"PINE TREE?! OH, PINE TREE AND FRIENDS!" Bill's voice boomed through the throne room, and suddenly, there he was—standing in front of the opening to the outside world. Gideon had to skid to a stop to avoid colliding with the triangle-shaped demon. Pacifica wasn't as lucky. She tried to dodge around him instead of stopping, and was clotheslined for her efforts. Literally clotheslined. Bill had summoned an actual clothes line out of nowhere, directly in in her path. Directly at neck height. Pacifica was thrown violently back, an angry scarlet line seared across her throat. She landed hard on her back, and grabbed at her neck while emitting a harsh, raspy, bark-like cough, her eyes watering over.
"Paz!" shouted Dipper. He moved to check on her, but Wendy stopped dead in her tracks and yanked Dipper back to her side. Bill pointed at Pacifica, laughing and mocking the noises she was making. Trying to take advantage of Bill being distracted, Gideon attempted to move slowly in a wide arc around the demon.
"Oh, ho, ho, I don't think so, Whitey!" Bill said. His arm extended like a Stretch Armstrong doll, and he punched Gideon hard in the side of the head. Gideon's eyes rolled back and he collapsed: the hit had knocked him unconscious. Bill then yoinked Gideon up by his ankles, and held his limp form dangling upside down, ten feet in the air.
"Put him down, Bill!" Dipper shouted.
"Okay!" said Bill cheerfully. He moved his arm so that Gideon was now dangling in the open air past the opening in the Fearamid.
"Wait, no!" Dipper cried, pulling away from Wendy, and running forward.
"YEET!" screeched Bill, and with a flick of the wrist, he sent Gideon sailing into the air over the dead forest.
Pacifica, who was sitting up by this time, uttered a mangled scream. Dipper scrambled to open his satchel and pull out the bubble gun. He pushed past a cackling Bill and did his best to aim at the falling form of his friend. He pulled the trigger, and nothing happened.
Panicking, he whacked the gun soundly with his off hand, and suddenly a quick burst of fire sent several bubbles out into the air. By this time, he'd lost sight of the falling Gideon.
Dipper was a realist. He was under no illusion that one of the shots he'd gotten off had miraculously hit and saved Gideon. He had just watched one of the few friends he had left die. He felt like his chest cavity was slowly filling up with jagged ice crystals as he turned away from the precipice to face Bill Cipher.
"You'll pay for that, you stupid Dorito," he said low. Pacifica had gone to stand with Wendy, who seemed oddly detached and unaffected by what had just happened. He met Pacifica's tear-filled gaze, and tossed the bubble gun to her.
"Take her and go," Dipper ordered. "I'll be right behind you." He saw Pacifica open her mouth in protest, so he cut her off. "GO!"
"Wait, I'm supposed to see him die first!" Wendy cried, pulling back against Pacifica's grip on her arm. "He's not real! He has to die so he's not real!"
"What the hell did you do to her?" Dipper asked Bill, who was watching Wendy struggle against Pacifica with glee.
Bill turned back to face Dipper, his single eye narrowing. "I made her my queen. I've given her everything you couldn't. Even things she didn't want, but ended up loving," he murmured. He noticed Dipper unholstering his shotgun, and chuckled. "You know that thing can't kill me, so why even bother?"
Dipper's eyes flicked to behind Bill, where he watched Pacifica successfully wrestle Wendy off the side of the Fearamid. His stomach lurched. He hoped Paz was able to get the gun to work.
"Because," he answered Bill, as he chambered a round. "It will still hurt a hell of a lot." He leveled a shot directly at Bill's eye before he had a chance to react, and pulled the trigger, sending a spray of heavy buckshot into the demon's center mass.
"GAH! YOU'LL PAY FOR-"
CH-CH BLAM
"WHEN MY EYE GROWS BACK I'M GONNA-"
CH-CH BLAM
With every shot, Dipper moved, until he was roughly at the spot where Pacifica and Wendy had gone over the side.
"THAT'S IT, PINE TREE, YOU'RE-"
CH-CH BLAM
Dipper stepped backward off the ledge, just as Bill screamed, "SHOOTING STAR WILL PAY FOR THIS, PINE TREE!"
The cold realization of how badly he'd just fucked up made his stomach drop even worse than the fall did. With Gideon dying, and trying to get Wendy and Pacifica off the Fearamid alive, Dipper had completely forgotten that the point of this badly botched mission had been to locate Mabel so they could save her. And now he'd gone and severely pissed Bill off, and his sister was the one who was going to suffer for it.
But not if he could help it.
Dipper maneuvered his body until he was able to face the ground as he fell, and quickly came to the realization that he may actually not be able to help it.
The ground was coming toward him really, really fast. His unspoken, but he hoped, heavily implied plan, had been for Pacifica to shoot up at Dipper once she and Wendy were safely on the ground. He saw no bubble, however, and he was nearly at the treetops.
And he was in the treetops
And the treetops were in him
Tearing him open
Impaling
Snapping branches, and blinding pain
Heartbeat in his stomach
Hands scrabbling for a hold
Trying to slow
Trying...
/
Wendy brushed the tears from her cheeks as she watched "Sexy Stubble Dipper," as she had begun to think of him, plummet to the earth. She knew it was time to watch this Dipper die, but she was sad about it nonetheless. This time felt a bit strange, because in all his prior rescue attempts, he'd never actually gotten her off of the Fearamid. She assumed Bill would come down to collect and console her, as soon as she was once again broken by watching her best friend die.
"Dammit!" a tearful Pacifica rasped next to her, as she pounded her fist against the gun Dipper had tossed her. She aimed again at her moving target just as he hit the treetops. She ran to be directly underneath the dead pine tree that Dipper was tearing through at nearly terminal velocity. He was about halfway down the tree when the gun finally fired. A thick bubble shot toward him, but it wasn't fast enough to actually encase him. Instead he hit it and the force of his body pushed it down, so it at least cushioned his impact with the earth. The earth wasn't the problem, however. The problem had been the multiple tree limbs and branches that Dipper tore through, and was torn through by, on his way down.
"Oh God, oh God, Dipper!" Pacifica cried, kneeling next to the ragdoll-like form of her friend. He was bleeding from multiple gashes all over his body, but by far his worst injury was the branch the size of a person's forearm that had run through his lower right abdomen, and stuck out his back. Blood pooled sluggishly around the edges of the limb.
Pacifica reached forward tentatively and touched the base of Dipper's neck, then let out a relieved sob. "He's not dead."
"Yet," murmured Wendy.
If Pacifica heard Wendy, she didn't give any indication. She had gotten down to business, pulling medic supplies from her backpack. "I'm going to do what I can for him here, but I don't want to move him in case his neck or back are broken. I need you to go to the UFO and get Ford and Soos to come out here with a stretcher and a neck brace. And have Melody prep the med bay, because this," she indicated to the branch impaling her friend, "is gonna require surgery."
Wendy was sad, but she was beginning to feel a little annoyed. Dipper's deaths were usually quite brutal (often much worse than this) but quick. Why was Bill, or her brain, or whatever made her hallucinate, drawing his death out so long this time? Was there supposed to be some lesson in this?
Wendy shook her head. "No."
Pacifica paused cleaning one of Dipper's gashes that she was preparing to stitch shut, and turned her head to stare at Wendy. "I'm sorry… did you just say...no? As in no, you won't go get help for Dipper?"
Wendy nodded. "I did. I need to see him die so this can all be over with. He usually dies last. Maybe I'm supposed to kill you before he can die?" she mused. "I've never had to kill someone who tried to save me."
Pacifica blinked at Wendy uncomprehendingly. "What the hell are you playing at Corduroy? Watch him die? Kill me? Are you insane?!"
"Yes, I think so," Wendy said calmly. Tired of craning her neck to look down, she took a seat on the loamy forest floor beside Dipper, across from Pacifica. "I've watched everyone I've ever cared for die multiple times, but none so many times as Dipper. It's always a rescue mission. Sometimes you're there with him, sometimes Mabel (when she's not being a popsicle), sometimes Ford or Soos and Stan. Sometimes my mom, and I hadn't seen her for years before Weirdmageddon happened. My dad, once. My dead grandma Corduroy. Never Gideon, before, though. It was a shame he had to die this time."
Pacifica's eyes welled over with tears at the mention of Gideon. She brushed them angrily away, and tried to stop her hands from shaking as she threaded a needle to suture Dipper's wounds.
"Wendy, you aren't hallucinating this. This is happening. Gideon just died for real, and Dipper is well on the way to the same fate, unless you help me."
The sincerity in Pacifica's voice made Wendy's chest ache. "No, see, this can't be for real," she said quickly. "Because he always dies, which means it isn't real. But if he lives, I can't—I don't know—I'll still be expecting him to die horribly any second, because that used to happen… the first few times he came to rescue me, he didn't die right away, and it always hurts worse the longer he lives, because I start to hope that maybe this time...No… I can't think this is real, because when he dies, it'll break me even more—" Wendy was starting to hyperventilate.
"Breathe, Wendy," Pacifica said more calmly than she felt. "Just breathe, okay? This is real. This is real life. In real life you can help prevent Dipper from dying, by going to alert the others, so they can bring a stretcher and neck brace, so we can get Dipper back to the UFO safely, and Ford can perform life-saving surgery on him."
Wendy's chin was quivering. "But… if this is real… that means if he dies, he dies for real." She looked down at her best friend's torn up body and a sob escaped her as she touched his face. "He's hurt so bad, Pacifica. What if I help and he dies anyway?"
Pacifica reached out and squeezed Wendy's hand. "In that case, at least you'll have done everything you can for him. And I'll be here to help you through it. Please, Wendy. Please help Dipper."
Wendy nodded, and stood up. "Okay. He can't die. If this is real I don't want him to die. Okay," she said again, mostly to herself. With a quick glance at their surroundings, Wendy's old tracking instincts kicked back in, and she got her bearings. She started out at a jog, but soon broke into a run, in the direction of the UFO.