Crater of the Fallen Star
Author Note:
Credit for this story idea belongs to ChaseIsKing. He may have a similar one coming out soon as well.
Trigger warnings for major character death and Bill Cipher at his absolute worst.
Chapter 1: Descent
Location: Throne Room of The Fearamid, hovering over what was once Gravity Falls, Oregon, United States, North America, Earth, Sol System, Sagittarius Arm, Milky Way Galaxy, Virgo Supercluster, Dimension 46-41'\
Date: Undefined due to local temporal anomaly. Last known synchronicity was August 25, 2012
Bill Cipher laughed maniacally as he floated in the triangular opening of the Fearamid. "Hahahahahoho! This is just too perfect! Didn't you brainiacs know the Zodiac only works if you all hold hands? And what's better, you've gathered every threat to my power together into one easy-to-destroy circle!"
A wave of flames washed across the Zodiac, burning away the painted circle on the floor. While Pacifica and Robbie both quickly patted the flames out of their hair, glowing red ropes shaped like simplistic arms-Bill Cipher's arms-snaked around Stanley and Stanford. They struggled in vain against their bonds as Bill levitated them in front of his eye, his real arms spread wide.
"You wanna see what happens to your friends when you can't get along?"
Fiddleford, Gideon, and Wendy each expressed their defiance, with Fiddleford pulling out his banjo and Wendy her axe. "We're not scared of you!" Wendy said.
"Oh, but you should be," Bill said, and snapped his fingers. All the members of the Zodiac save for the two sets of Pines twins suddenly went limp, their eyes rolling up into their heads as they were surrounded in a red glow and lifted into the air behind him.
"You know, this castle could really use some DECORATION!"Bill shouted, and all six floating figures vanished, only to be replaced by six banners that unfurled on the wall behind Bill. Gideon, Robbie, Soos, Wendy, and Pacifica… all transformed into grotesque tapestries, each bearing an image of one of the six, frozen in an expression of terror over their respective Zodiac symbol.
Mabel and Dipper gasped in horror. Turning away from his new "artwork," Bill addressed the eldest of the two pairs of Pines twins. "Looks like it's too late for your friends, Stanford," He pointed at the younger pair and four glowing blue triangles filled with crazily arranged bars sprouted from the floor, locking over their heads as a pyramidal cage. Both Stan and Ford cried out. "But you can still save your family! Last chance: tell me how to take Weirdmaggedon global, and I'll spare the kids!"
"NO, don't do it!" Dipper yelled, reaching between the bars of the cage.
"Yeah, Bill makes bad deals!" Mabel loudly agreed.
Bill turned toward them and floated closer to the cage. "Don't you toy with me, Shooting Star!" His eye became the image of a swirling spiral galaxy. "I… see… everythi-"
He was cut off by Mabel spraying him right in the "all-seeing" eye with the can of paint they'd used to draw the Zodiac on the floor. "AHHH! OW, not again! Every time…" he shouted, rubbing his eye.
"Nice shot, pumpkin!" Stan said as both he and Ford grinned. With Bill no longer paying attention to them, the red arm-like ropes fell from Stan and Ford, dropping them the short distance to the ground, as Bill turned around again, screaming "I just regenerated that eye!"
"I know that hurts because I've accidentally done it to myself," Mabel said, holding up the spray can triumphantly. "Multiple times!"
Dipper pulled the red flashlight he'd enhanced with magical size-altering crystals out of his vest and turned it on, aiming at the bars of the cage. The cage grew large enough for the twins to slip through the bars.
"Save yourselves! Run!" Dipper told his Grunkles, holding up the magic flashlight. "We'll take care of Bill!"
"What?!" Stan said.
"That's a suicide mission!" added Ford.
"Trust us," Dipper said confidently. "We've beat him before…"
"And we'll beat him again!" Mabel finished, pulling out and cocking her grappling hook. After bumping fists with their free hands, the twins turned toward the eldritch horror still rubbing his single eye.
"HEY, BILL!" Mabel yelled while both she and Dipper waved their arms, "Come and get us, you pointy jerk!" Then they ran beneath Bill, heading for a passageway going deeper into the fortress.
Bill turned bright red and vibrated with rage as Mabel briefly stopped to stick her tongue out before running after Dipper down the corridor. Ford yelled "It's too dangerous!" He and Stan started to run after them, only to be stopped cold by Bill's telekinetic grip. Though back to his normal yellow, the triangular monster's eye was still narrowed in anger.
"NOT SO FAST! YOU TWO WAIT HERE!" he yelled, raising a hand. The enlarged cage that had previously held the younger twins collapsed back into the floor as an identical (though smaller) cage enclosed the elder pair. "I'VE GOT SOME CHILDREN I NEED TO MAKE INTO CORPSES!" Bill shouted, his voice echoing even more than usual as he morphed into a horrifying new shape. It was a three-tiered, blood-red pyramid, the gaps between the tiers filled with jagged yellow teeth and lolling black tongues. Six glowing yellow arms extended from the central tier, with Bill's normal legs transforming into arms as well, matching the hat floating above the pyramid's apex. Right below the hat, Bill had sprouted four void-black eyes with yellow slit pupils, one on each of his sides.
"SEE YA REAL SOON!" the monstrosity growled in a voice that could be described as nothing but demonic, before scrambling like a spider onto the wall and down the passage after Dipper and Mabel, with Stan and Ford grabbing the bars and shouting in vain for him to stop.
Mabel knew that she and Dipper had quite a head start, but Bill had caught up extremely quickly. She didn't dare spare the time to look back, but whatever form Bill had taken, he was enormous. She could hear the random pillars that crowded the corridor being smashed to rubble behind them as Bill screamed "WHEN I GET MY HANDS ON YOU KIDS, I'M GONNA DISASSEMBLE YOUR MOLECULES!"
Suddenly, Dipper pulled Mabel to the left down a side passage. Moving too fast to stop, Bill crashed into the wall, but Mabel knew that wouldn't buy them much time, especially considering that this new passage was a dead end. The twins looked up, seeing a long shaft over their heads, and Mabel got an idea.
Bill Cipher quickly recovered from his impact with the wall, and shouted "YOU'VE TRICKED ME FOR THE LAST TIME!" Mabel grabbed onto her brother and fired her grappling hook straight up into the shaft, pulling them away right before Bill's massive yellow hands smashed together where they'd been standing. But as they zoomed up the shaft, screaming from both terror and velocity, Mabel could hear Bill climbing up the shaft behind them almost as quickly, roaring incoherently as he did.
"Augh! I can't believe this! The kids are gonna die and it's all my fault," Stanley lamented, collapsing to his knees in the glowing blue cage. "And all because I couldn't shake your stupid hand!"
Stan sighed. "Dad was right about me. I am a screw-up."
"Don't blame yourself. I'm the one who made a deal with Bill in the first place," Stanford admitted, sighing as well. "I fell for all his easy flattery. You would have seen him for the scam artist he is."
Ford drew a canteen from his coat and took a drink, then sat down and offered it to Stan.
"How did things get so messed up between us?" Stan asked, taking the canteen and sipping from it himself.
"We used to be like Dipper and Mabel," Ford said, "The world's about to end, and they still work together. How do they do it?"
"Easy," Stan answered, "They're kids. They don't know any better."
Ford suddenly stood back up. Stan put a hand on his arm and asked "Hey, where you goin'?"
"I'm going to play the only card we have left: let Bill into my mind," Ford answered, glancing briefly down at Stan before staring straight forward again. "He'll be able to take over the galaxy, and maybe even worse… but at least he might let the kids free."
Three weeks ago, Ford had been jumping down Stan's throat about endangering the universe by turning on the portal, and now he was ready to release the monster behind this whole mess just for a probably-hopeless chance at saving the kids?
Stan was well aware that despite (or more likely because of) his genius intellect, Ford could come up with some phenomenally terrible ideas, giving up had rarely been one of them. Extreme stubbornness was one of the few personality traits the two of them had very much in common.
Stan sprang up, tossing the canteen aside as he exclaimed "WHAT?! Are you kiddin' me? Are you honestly tellin' me there's nothing else we can do?!"
"Bill's only weak in the Mindscape. If I didn't have this darn plate in my head," -Ford knocked on his skull, producing a metallic clang- "we could just erase him with the memory gun when he steps inside my mind," Ford said, pulling the device from inside his coat.
Looking at the strange invention, Stan suddenly had an idea, his eyes widening as it came to him. "What if he goes into my mind? My brain's not good for anything."
Ford chuckled grimly. "There's nothing in your mind he wants… It has to be me. We need to take his deal. It's the only way he'll agree to save you and the kids," he said, grabbing the bars of the cage.
"Do you really think he's gonna make good on that deal?" Stan asked as he took hold of the bars right next to Ford. Though no stranger to long odds, Stan had also known plenty of people like Bill, in disposition if not power. Giving that triangle what he wanted would not help the kids.
"What other choice do we have?"
Ford looked as hopeless as Stan felt, but staring into his brother's face, so similar to his own, another crazy idea struck Stan like a bolt of lightning.
"You said there's nothing in my mind Bill wants," Stan said, a grin that Ford knew all too well slowly spreading across his face. "What if he thought there was?"
Ford's expression became one of confusion. "Stanley, what do you…"
But Stan had already taken off his coat and fez, making it abundantly clear what he meant.
"Stanley, it won't work! Bill was in my mind for over a year-"
"Can it, poindexter!" Stan cut Ford off. "For your information, I've been you for three decades. What, you think I've never done this before? Get a load of this." Stan's next words were in a flawless imitation of Ford's own voice, though it wasn't something he ever would have said. "Stanley, it won't work because blah, blah, blah, I sound like a nerd robot!"
Ford responded by undressing even faster, then putting on Stan's discarded outer clothes as Stan did the same with Ford's. Finally, Stan messed up his hair to match Ford's and pulled on his six-fingered gloves. He stuffed the empty fingers with cotton balls and stitched them to the adjacent fingers with a needle and thread. Because of course Ford had those in his nerd coat.
When they were both finished switching clothes and glasses, Stan outlined his plan.
It felt like hours that Mabel and Dipper had been running through the twisting halls of the Fearamid. They could no longer hear Bill Cipher chasing them, and assumed he'd fallen down that shaft from earlier, but yellow blinking (winking?) eyes just like his were everywhere, on the walls, the ceiling, and even the floor. Random staircases ran in all directions, like one of those impossible illusion drawings that Dipper's math teacher liked. Suddenly, they turned a corner and faced a blank wall.
"You know…" Dipper gasped, "I'm starting to think there's no way out of here."
"Like Grunkle Stan always said, when one door closes…" Mabel said, taking Dipper's flashlight and enlarging her own fist until it was larger than her body, "choose a nearby wall and bash it in with brute force!"
She did just that, smashing through the dead-end wall.
"Hah! Now let's round up the townsfolk, and together, we can defeat… oh, no." Dipper's potentially inspiring speech was cut short as he looked through the hole in the Fearamid wall to see that the townsfolk had already been rounded up… by Bill's henchmen, four of which encircled the group of people who had piloted the now-destroyed Shacktron. As they watched, the one shaped like a walking pair of dentures picked up a gnome and swallowed it.
"Oh no…" Dipper said again.
But it was too late anyway. Behind them, a terrifyingly familiar voice said, "Peek-a-boo!"
Mabel turned around and walloped Bill in the eye with her still-gigantic fist and he screamed, "OWW! Seriously, again with the eye? THAT IS IT!"
Bill zapped Mabel with a ray of blue light, shrinking her arm back to normal and turning her to stone, then grabbed her in his own pitch-black fist.
"MABEL, NO!" Dipper yelled, but there was a second flash from Bill's eye, and everything went black.
When Bill entered the throne room, still gigantic but no longer any more monstrous-looking than usual, he held up the kids clenched in his fist. The elder Mystery Twins gripped the bars, mouths open in horror.
"ALL RIGHT, FORD, TIME'S UP! I'VE GOT THE KIDS! I THINK I'M GONNA KILL ONE OF 'EM NOW, JUST FOR THE HECK OF IT!"
Setting the petrified younger Pines twins on the floor in front of the cage and raising his massive fist over them, Bill slowly chanted, blinking after each word with a different symbol shining like a bright red spotlight from his eye.
"EENY…"
The Pine Tree.
"MEENY…"
The Shooting Star
"MINY…"
The Pine Tree again.
"YOOOOUUUU!"
The Shooting Star flashed a second time, and Bill started to bring his fist down when a voice yelled "WAIT!"
Bill paused, looking down at his prisoners.
"I surrender," Ford said.
"GOOD CHOICE," Bill replied, and shrunk back down to his "normal" size.
Stan grabbed the front of his brother's jacket and shook him, saying "Don't do it, Ford! It'll destroy the universe!"
"It's the only way!" Ford replied, sounding just as desperate as Bill wanted.
"HAHAHAHA!" Bill laughed, floating in front of the cage, "Even when you're about to die, you Pines twins just can't get along." With a snap of his fingers, the cage retracted back into the ground and glowing red armlike ropes once again wound themselves around Stan, bringing him to his knees.
"My only condition," Ford said, "is that you let my brother and the kids go."
"No dice, Sixer," Bill replied, crossing his arms. "My last offer has expired, and I'm done being generous. I'm gonna kill one of 'em, but if you want, I'll let you pick which one! Now who's it gonna be: Pine Tree, Shooting Star, or your worthless brother?"
Stan could barely think. Up until now, everything had gone according to plan. Bill threatened the kids, Stan and Ford put on their act, and Stan pretended to surrender to Bill in exchange for his family's safety. What was supposed to happen next is that Bill would accept that offer, Stan would shake his hand, and Ford would erase Stan's mind with the psychotic triangle inside. But that hadn't happened, and now Stan faced the hardest decision of his life.
He had to save Ford or the plan wouldn't work. Even though he knew his brother was just as willing to make the ultimate sacrifice as Stan himself, Ford had to zap Stan with that memory doohickey once he shook Bill's hand. Which meant that in order to save the universe… either Dipper or Mabel was going to die.
"Tick-tock, tick-tock, Ford!" Bill said, his eye morphing into a clock face. "I won't wait forever!"
How could Stan choose between his niece and nephew? They were even closer than he and Ford had been at that age. Whichever of the kids survived would be heartbroken, forever without their twin. Stan knew exactly how that felt, and he wouldn't wish it on anyone. It was an impossible decision.
One which, fortunately or not, wasn't in Stan's hands.
"Well, seeing as you can't seem to decide... I'm sure you know what Shooting Stars do best, don't you Fordsy?"
Bill raised a hand, and Mabel's petrified body glowed with a red light, then shot up toward the ceiling, stopping abruptly at the highest point of the throne room, at least a hundred feet. Then his hand dropped, and the force holding Mabel in the air disappeared.
Whether another cruelty of Bill's or simply Stan's own perceptions playing tricks on him, Mabel seemed to fall in slow motion. Immediately, all thought of the plan vanished Stan's mind, and he charged forward to catch Mabel… or tried to anyway. Even with his legs moving faster than they'd done in decades, Stan wasn't going anywhere, as if the floor had become a treadmill. "Can't be damaging the merchandise, can we?" Bill said conversationally.
Stan's heart dropped alongside Mabel as he watched in helpless horror.
CRASH!
The sound of the impact, Stan and Ford's wordless cry, and Bill's hysterical laughter echoed around the cavernous room. Mabel's body shattered into thousands of pieces. Stan fell to his knees, only to be pulled back upright by an irresistible force.
"Now," Bill said, dusting off his fingers, "are you going to give me the equation," -he floated over to Dipper's statue and leaned on its stone hat- "Or are we going to find out how long it takes Pine Tree to deafen himself with his own SCREAMS?"
Tears streamed down Stan's face, and when he looked into Ford's equally tearful eyes, he knew what he still had to do. Ford's expression, utterly heartbroken but still determined, said it all. Both of them knew it was their fault the prophecy didn't work, and as a professional con man, Stan knew when to cut his losses. Any further attempt to negotiate with Bill would just cause Dipper to be tortured in ways too horrible to contemplate. Stan wiped the tears from his face and stepped forward. It was time for his last and greatest con.
"No…" Stan croaked, "I'll let you into my mind."
"It's a DEAL!" Bill said, and extended his right hand, a nimbus of blue fire igniting around it. Stan extended his own hand, covered by Ford's six-fingered glove, and grabbed the triangle's blue-flamed one.
There was a cracking sound as Bill Cipher's body turned to stone and descended to the floor, letting go of Stan's hand. Out of the statue came a glowing yellow spectral image of Bill, which rose into the air as all the color drained from Stan's vision. Bill rubbed his hands together, cackling with insane glee, and rushed straight for Stan.
Bill Cipher was surrounded by blank whiteness.
"Oh, I'm here! I'm finally here!" he said, exulting in his success.
Turning, he saw a single door. Naturally, that's where the secret to opening the hateful barrier around the valley would be hidden.
"Look at this place: a perfect, calm, orderly void!"
The door grew closer, though whether it or Bill was moving was unclear.
"Gotta hand it to ya, Ford," Bill said as he placed his hand on the doorknob, turned it, and pulled the door open. "You really know how to clear your m-"
What Bill saw behind the door was so far removed from what he'd been expecting that at first he didn't know how to react. Knowing Ford as he did, Bill would have expected a scroll or book containing the information he sought. But there was no scroll, no book, not even Stanford himself behind that door.
Instead, Stanley Pines stood in the middle of the Mystery Shack living room, brass knuckles gleaming on his fists, and glaring at the triangle with an expression that Bill knew very well, having seen it on Ford plenty of times lately: cold defiance.
"WHAT?!" Bill yelled.
"Welcome back to my mind, Cipher," growled Stanley, "It's the last one you'll ever see."
Outside, Stanford was the only one left in the Fearamid, at least the only one not currently transformed into either stone or fabric. The glowing tentacle-like ropes had vanished when Bill turned to stone and Stanley had collapsed to his knees, eyes closed and jaw slack. Trying (and failing) not to look at the scattered shards that had once been his niece, Ford pulled Fiddleford's memory gun from the inside pocket of Stan's coat. He spun the specifier dial until the tiny screen at the back read "STANLEY PINES." Only a total mind wipe would have a chance at erasing Bill. Anything more specific and Bill Cipher might be able to hide in some obscure corner of Stanley's Mindscape. Ford aimed the raygun into his brother's face, which looked even more like his own now than ever. Maybe that would make this easier.
Who am I kidding? Ford thought as his finger tightened on the trigger. All of this is my fault. My whole life has been one mistake after another. If only I'd thanked Stanley before now. If only I'd listened to Fiddleford and never turned on that infernal portal. If only I'd never made that deal with Bill. If only… I'd forgiven Stanley for his mistake all those years ago. I'm so sorry, brother. For everything.
Ford looked away and shut his eyes before pulling the trigger.
"THE DEAL'S OFF!" Bill Cipher shouted at Stan, and turned to leave.
But the door slammed in his face and burst into flames, which spread quickly around the room. So bright blue they were almost white, Bill somehow knew those flames meant nothing good for him.
"WHAT THE-?! NO, NO, NO, NO!" Bill screamed.
Stan took a step forward. "It's over," he said, "You're going down, Bill. You're getting erased. Memory gun… pretty clever, huh?"
The memory gun? Bill had thought that thing was hilarious when Glasses first showed it to Ford, laughed hysterically when Fordsy had gotten some of his own memories wiped, and when Glasses drove himself insane trying to forget what he'd seen? Well, that had been some of the best entertainment Bill had in the last century. But he'd never considered the possibility of being inside someone's mind while it was erased.
A new emotion arose within him, one Bill had never felt himself (or if he had, it was so long ago that even he'd forgotten), but was very familiar with, having inspired it for eons in countless others across the Multiverse. Bill Cipher was scared. Terrified, in fact. He had to get out of this somehow. Maybe Mackerel didn't know what erasing Bill like this really meant.
"YOU IDIOT! DON'T YOU REALIZE YOU'RE DESTROYING YOUR OWN MIND, TOO?" Bill yelled, and as if to prove this, the walls of the imagined room started to fade behind the blinding flames.
"Compared to what you've done, that's a small price," Stan said, hatred dripping from every word. "One I'm glad to pay when it means my family is the last one you'll ever tear apart."
Okay, so Mackerel did know what he was doing. Of course, he and Sixer would have planned all this out. But surely Bill Cipher, the Master of the Mind, couldn't be trapped so easily by some self-righteous meatsack! He could just jump right out of here! Turning his back to Stan, Bill reached forward, willing the door to open.
"LET ME OUT OF HERE! LET ME OUT!" For a split second, Bill's hand burst into his own familiar blue flames… but they fizzled into sparks.
"WHY ISN'T THIS WORKING!?" Bill panicked.
Why couldn't he escape? Wait… the deal. It was still in force. Mackerel had shaken Bill's hand, just like so many before him. Though none of his victims had ever known it, a formal deal bound Bill Cipher just as thoroughly as it did the poor sap who shook his hand. That meant Bill couldn't leave Stan's mind until either of them broke the deal, or the terms were satisfied. With mounting horror, Bill realized that neither of those conditions were possible.
Mackerel's end of the deal was only to let Bill into his mind, and he had done so. But since Mackerel hadn't asked anything in return, Bill couldn't escape by completing the terms, nor by failing to do so as had happened in his first deal with Pentagram. Because there were no terms to fulfill. Usually, this sort of open-ended deal was Bill's favorite kind, but this time he'd been tricked instead! What to do, what to do…? There had to be some way out of this!
"Hey, look at me," Stan growled, taking another step forward, "Turn around and look at me, you one-eyed demon!"
Though he didn't want to, Bill turned. Pointing one accusing finger down at Bill, who had by this point shrunk down to the size of a cat in his terror and desperation, Stan continued, "You made one fatal mistake: you messed with my family."
"Y-YOU'RE MAKING A MISTAKE!" That was it! Mackerel was as greedy as mortals came; Bill had watched him enough to be sure of that. If he could make a new deal, Bill could get out of here! "I'LL GIVE YOU ANYTHING!" The flames were getting closer, so he pulled out all the stops, offering everything even most selfish of beings could ask for. "MONEY! FAME! RICHES! INFINITE POWER! YOUR OWN GALAXY! PLEASE!"
Stan said nothing, never expressing even the slightest hint of the avarice which Bill and so many others had thought to be his most defining trait. No, those eyes contained only cold fury, tempered by the deepest hatred.
As the electric-blue flames of the memory gun finally made contact, Bill started to lose control over his own form, instinctively flattening back into two dimensions. With an effort of will, he forced himself back up and stared at his hands, which fizzled like static. "NO! WhAt's HApPenNIng tO ME?"
A long-forgotten memory surfaced from the fathomless depths of Bill's twisted mind. Only one thing could possibly save him now. That uppity salamander was the the biggest waste of ultimate power in the Multiverse, but it was duty-bound to oblige the Terminal Invocation, and would hear it even here in what little remained of Stan Pines' Mindscape.
Concentrating on the incantation meant Bill couldn't control his shape, so the rapid transformation distorted his voice, but he knew he'd still be heard.
"NRUTER YAM I REWOP TNEICNA EHT EKOVNI I! NRUB OT EMOC SAH EMIT-"
Before the Invocation could be completed, Stan drew back his arm and hammered a brass-knuckled fist straight into Bill's wildly fluctuating form. With an almighty scream of agony and a flash of omni-colored lightning, Bill Cipher shattered into countless fragments, which were quickly consumed by the hungry blue flames all around.
Stan took a few deep breaths he probably didn't need, since this was all in his head anyway, even if only for a few more seconds. He looked over at the table next to his recliner, one of the only things not yet consumed, and picked up the framed photograph sitting there. It showed himself standing in front of the Mystery Shack, one arm each around Dipper and Mabel, with Waddles in the corner. All three of them were smiling. Stan smiled too, remembering when that photo was taken a few days after they'd rescued Mabel's pig from that flying dinosaur. The day after that had been the first time Bill Cipher invaded Stan's mind, before he'd found Ford's second and third Journals and restarted the portal. Before everything went wrong.
In a few seconds, only one of the people in that picture would still be alive, or as near as made no difference. And once reality hit him, Dipper would probably wish he wasn't, at least if Stan's own experience was anything to go by.
"Guess I was good for something after all," Stan said, closing his eyes to the encroaching flames oblivion. "Sorry I wasn't good enough."
Ford kept the memory gun's beam trained on Stanley's face for at least two minutes. To him, those minutes felt longer than the last forty years. Finally, he dropped the weapon with which he had just destroyed both his greatest enemy and his greatest friend. It clattered on the stone floor.
All that time thinking I was the one… "the face of the man destined to destroy Bill Cipher…" and not once did I make the connection to Stanley, Ford thought bitterly. Now both he and Mabel have paid the price for my arrogance.
With Bill Cipher gone, his power began to unravel. The six banners on the wall transformed back into people, falling to the ground in a heap. The statue of Dipper lying on the floor faded back into flesh and fabric, and though the boy didn't move, Ford was dimly aware of his slow breathing. It was the only sound in the vast throne room besides that of Ford gathering pieces of gray stone into a single mound..
All across the valley and the town, assorted monsters and Henchmaniacs were pulled back into the enormous Rift, followed by the blocks of the rapidly disintegrating Fearamid. The massive tear in reality began to shrink away into nothing.
When it vanished, the natural laws of the universe reasserted themselves (perhaps helped along a little by a certain frill-faced extradimensional lawkeeper) in a huge pulse of bright purple energy. The upwards-pouring waterfall of blood, the rampaging water tower, the ruined buildings, the burned skeletons of the trees, the titanic goat, and the melted statue of Nathaniel Northwest; all was restored to its original state.
Most of the townsfolk, including all that had been in the throne room, save for the Pines, suddenly found themselves standing in the town square. With no ambient Weirdness (or magic cheat codes) to sustain their corporeal forms, Xyler, Craz, and Rumble McSkirmish faded away.
And in the woods not far from the former site of the Mystery Shack, a strange triangular statue sat half-buried in the dirt, already coated in moss, lichen, and mushrooms, as though it had stood there for decades. When a bird landed on the statue's extended right hand, its slight weight caused the thin stone arm to crack at the base. The bird flew off at the sound, but the damage was already done. With a sharp crack, the arm snapped off from the main body of the statue, and from that point, miniscule cracks spiderwebbed across the entire effigy until at last, it crumbled into dust.
In a clearing somewhere close by, an old man kneeling on the forest floor opened his eyes. He wore a long brown coat, a red turtleneck sweater, horn-rimmed glasses, and black pants. On the ground in front of him lay a nearly-thirteen-year-old boy and a small pile of dark gray rubble.
Slowly regaining consciousness, Dipper became aware that he was lying on something soft. He could hear birds singing, and the air smelled not of burnt hair and nightmares, but of fresh green grass and pine needles. Opening his eyes, he saw a sun-dappled forest clearing, not the unearthly black stone of Bill Cipher's fortress, nor the scorched earth and blood-red skies he'd become used to over the last several… days? Weeks? How long had it been? Was this another trick?
Dipper sat up and looked around. To one side was a small pile of rocks, but right behind him was… Great-uncle Ford, just kneeling there and looking around with a blank, slightly confused expression.
"Grunkle Ford!" Dipper said, leaping to his feet and taking his great-uncle's hand. "You did it! Unless this is another one of Bill's tricks…"
Suddenly appearing to notice that he was not alone, Grunkle Ford looked right at Dipper, but didn't seem any less confused. "Oh, uh… hey there… kiddo. What's your name?" he said in a voice that was decidedly not Grunkle Ford's, but one even more familiar. Dipper grabbed the black six-fingered glove he was holding and pulled it off. One of the fingers was full of cotton.
"Grunkle Stan?" Dipper asked.
"Huh? Who're ya talking to?" Stan said, looking around as though expecting to see another person in the clearing.
"Grunkle Stan, it's me, remember? Why are you wearing Grunkle Ford's clothes? How did you guys get rid of Bill?"
Stan still looked thoroughly clueless. After about a second, he asked, "Kid, I don't know what you're talkin' about... or who you are... heck, I don't even know who I am. And what's a 'Bill?'"
What is the deal with Grunkle Stan? Dipper wondered. It was a question he'd asked himself many times this summer, for various reasons. This time seemed the most worrying of all, even compared to when he'd found out Stan had been lying to them for most of the summer. "Did… did you hit your head in there or something?"
Dipper heard footsteps behind him and jumped, ready for anything, but save for his attire of a torn black suit, the new arrival was identical to the man Dipper had just been talking to. In his six-fingered hands was a familiar maroon fez, which he placed almost reverently on Grunkle Stan's head, then put his hand on Dipper's shoulder.
Solemnly, Ford explained, "We had to erase his mind to defeat Bill. It's all gone. Stan has no idea, but…" Turning back to face Stan, Ford continued, "He saved the world. He saved you. He saved me."
Ford knelt and placed his hand on his brother's shoulder. "You're our hero, Stanley," he said, and wrapped his arms around Stan's neck in the first hug they'd shared in over forty years. As the implications of what Ford just said sank in, Dipper could feel his eyes watering and pulled down the brim of his hat to conceal his silent tears, then wondered why Mabel wasn't there bawling her eyes out. He looked around the clearing again and saw no one but himself, Grunkle Stan, and Grunkle Ford. No Bill (thankfully), no Wendy or Soos or any of the others who'd been there in Grunkle Ford's failed prophecy circle. And no sign of Mabel either.
"Um… Grunkle Ford?" he asked, reluctant to disturb his great-uncles' moment, but unable to shake the feeling that something else was horribly wrong. Something much worse than Stan's amnesia. "W-where's Mabel?"
If Ford had looked sorrowful before, it was nothing compared to now. Dipper could hear him choking back sobs. After a few seconds, he stood up, pulling Grunkle Stan to his feet as well, and turned back to face Dipper. Grunkle Ford's face and glasses (really Stan's glasses…) were streaked with tears. "Di-… Mason… I'm so sorry."
"W-what for?" Dipper asked, and the look in Grunkle Ford's eyes caused dread to well up from the pit of his stomach. In answer, Ford only shifted his gaze a few feet to the side, staring at the small pile of rocks Dipper had woken up next to.
She can't be buried under there. It's too small, Dipper thought, but looked more closely at the dark gray rubble anyway. Most of it consisted of tiny broken shards smaller than golf balls. He noticed something black sticking out from the middle of the pile, and pulled it out. Mabel's grappling hook? Why is this buried in some random pile of rocks? The last thing I remember is Bill turning Mabel… to stone… Now that he was thinking of it, Dipper could see distinctive shapes among the shards.
The neck of a sweater.
No, no, it can't be...
The hem of a skirt.
No, it's impossible…
A hand. One that Dipper knew as well as his own, even rendered in cold gray stone.
"No… no… NO! NO! NO!"
After all they'd been through this summer, after surviving love-crazed gnomes, cursed statues, getting possessed by ghosts, traveling through time, being shrunk down to the size of bugs by Gideon, nearly being eaten by living Summerween candy, staring down a Gremloblin, escaping a prehistoric monster, beating Bill Cipher in his own territory, fighting a giant robot, busting zombie heads with karaoke, facing off with the Shapeshifter, saving him from being murdered by Bill, surviving a homicidal romance-crazed artificial intelligence, the brain-frying Society of the Blind Eye, winning a freaking gladiator fight in the distant future, opening the portal, saving him and Ford again by beating Probabilitor at his own game, brawling with unicorns, and breaking out of a sickening prison built from her own fantasies… After all that, how could Mabel just be gone?
Dipper picked up the largest piece of shattered stone. On it was etched an achingly familiar star shape, the three lines of its tail cut off after just an inch. Tracing the thinly etched lines, Dipper could almost hear Bill Cipher's grating laughter. Even though he trusted Grunkle Ford that Bill was gone for good, Dipper knew exactly what the psychotic triangle would have said:
KNOW WHAT SHOOTING STARS DO BEST? THEY FALL!
Author Note:
I'm sorry guys. That final episode just has so many ways it could have gone wrong, and believe it or not, this is one of the nicer ones. Even if it doesn't exactly make things any better for Dipper, at least it's not totally worse, right? This Bill is most definitely gone, no reincarnation for him.
That's a good thing for me as the writer, too. This was my first attempt at writing from Bill Cipher's perspective, and it's making me feel weird, like my brain needs a power-wash. I'm probably going to have to do it again in my other stories, but hopefully not for a while.
Hope everyone has a happy new year. Here's to 2021 being a lot less crazy than 2020 was.
PM me with theories and suggestions, reviews are inspiration, wear a mask! BYE!