A/N: Aaaaaaaaargh! Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Jolly Yuletide, Satisfactory Saturnalia, Creepy Krampusnacht, and all the other wonderful December festivals be good to you and your loved ones, and have a Happy New Year! (collapses in a heap) Ladies and gentlemen, it's been... eventful. The last two months have been filled with work, sickness, stress, and everything else that can be crammed in the leadup to Christmas. I wish I could say I hadn't seen this coming, but after the dose of the flu in November and all the delays that cause, I knew that releasing anything in December was going to be a trial, having tried and failed to do it before. But, I wanted to give you all a present - so here we have the latest chapter!
Hourglass Cipher: Thank you so much for your lovely review, and I hope I haven't left you waiting too long! I hope this latest chapter lives up to the hype!
Kraven the Hunter: Yep - I told you it would be someone unexpected. I could make jokes about Eldritch Horrors called "Bill," but John is a little bit different. Meanwhile, I love the idea of Melody as a wristwatch, it's so beautifully twisted! Thank you so much for the review!
toolman19: Aye, and it's kind of worse when you get to know the nature of the Filth. And yes, this is definitely a situation that cannot simply return to normal. Thanks again, and I hope you enjoy this latest installation!
Northgalus2002: So sorry I couldn't update sooner, the world went mad in November. But to answer your question, there's actually going to be a few tests of morality in the next couple of chapters... and I hate to say it, but Axolotl probably won't be creating another Bill. Where the Filth is concerned, there are worse things possible. As horrible as he was in canon, and as horrible as he can be across the worlds of fanfic, at least Bill wasn't in the pocket of someone nastier... (ominous music) Once again, I hope this chapter proves just as entertaining - and intriguing!
OMAC001: Without saying much, John is a relatively young monster, but the Filth itself is eons old, and tied to something far nastier and far more horrific than John himself. As for what this something is, you'll have to wait and see. So... Hindrance and occasional Help.
Megahammer11: Ouch! If it helps, read in bright daylight, well away from any possible sources of insects, and play something reasonably pleasant in the background. If this doesn't work, in summary: Wendy keeps travelling onwards, becoming more and more exhausted until she runs into her family, all possessed by eldritch parasites from beyond our reality. They want to kill her and/or make her one of them. Faced with a choice between killing her family and spending the rest of her days being hunted down, she picks the latter and legs it. Please let me know if this helps. Also, as much as I'd like, cutting these damn chapters short has been... really tricky. I keep trying, but there's just so much to detail... and that's even before I start adding my preludes! Hope you enjoy this latest chapter, though.
Guest: I always look forward to your reviews! I'm so glad you liked the buildup to Not-Melody, John, and the codes - I had a lot of fun writing about it. And yes, that's Mr A's host alright! Well done. I hope this next chapter lives up to the high standards you've come to expect, and I humbly beg forgiveness for the delay.
Other Guest: Thanks so much for the lovely review - I'm a big fan of the "What if Bill won" tales, and it means a lot to be rated so highly!
LoyalTheorist: Don't worry, we're onto a more optimistic stretch; I can't spoil everything, but I can say that Dipper and Wendy won't be half dead. Granted, they won't be doing too well in the meantime, but you'll have to wait to see just how much suffering we can leverage from that chapter... BWAHAHA!
So, without further ado, the latest chapter - my present to all my viewers, reviewers, favouriters and followers! Feel free to furnish me with your opinions, insights, theories, critiques and corrections - especially to the insomnia-induced typos that creep up on me in the dead of night.
Read, review, and above all, enjoy!
Disclaimer: Gravity Falls isn't mine... and neither is anything of the crossover material.
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Why the hell do I have to be a doll for this game?
Why can't I just be an ordinary human being? It's not as though it'd make things any easier for me; true, I'm up against my age-regressed dad and my almost clinically brain-dead mom, but it's not like making me human again would give me any real advantage over them. Seriously, this "game" of yours gets more obnoxious every day, Bill.
It had only been a few short weeks since the sick little contest had begun, and Pacifica was already sick to death of it all.
The game was all-consuming, unceasing, and utterly without mercy, demanding almost as much of its participants as it did its inevitable victims; every day, there were challenges to face, pop quizzes to puzzle through, obstacle courses (of a sort) to run, and regular interrogations to endure. Each of the three contestants were tested time and again for their potential as true scions of the Northwest legacy, every aspect of their character measured and studied for any traits that might make them worthy of the Northwest family throne – or unsuitable for the role of Bill's favourite minion: chief among the valued qualities was ruthlessness, followed closely by pride, Machiavellian intelligence, cruelty, a disregard for the rights and emotions of others, a pronounced sense of superiority to those outside the family (with the exception of the family's patron, naturally)… and rarest of all, the ability to feed Bill Cipher's bottomless appetite for chaos without flinching, faltering or failing.
The rules had been made abundantly and infuriatingly clear: each aspect of their character was to be tested time and again, and once the Henchmaniac examiner of that particular challenge was satisfied that they'd proved themselves, the winner was to be awarded with a barb of the Northwest throne and a fraction of its otherworldly might; unfortunately, this also meant having a jagged mobile chunk of metal permanently merged with the winner's flesh, with all the agonizing pain and lingering aches that came with it.
Only once the winner had won every single barb could they become the head of the family and claim the near-godlike power of the throne itself – the sole caveat being that Bill effectively owned them from then on.
This in itself would have been bad enough, but the Henchmaniacs had decided to make the contest a thousand times more excruciating by ensuring that the challenges never truly ended. Every little thing they did, every habit, every tic, every behavioural quirk was jealously scrutinized for any sign of traits that might make them unsuitable for the position, adding a maddening sense of paranoia to the proceedings. It was impossible to tell when you were being watched, only that the Henchmaniacs could peek in on you whenever they pleased and study everything about you – even when you were asleep. In fact, it got to the point that Pacifica could only assume that they were always watching her, and was forced to keep up the pretence of being a "true Northwest" at all times.
As for mother and father… well, they didn't cope very well. In point of fact, they didn't cope at all: mother's already-fragile composure had cracked violently on the first day of Weirdmageddon, and the ordeal of her husband's fall from grace had shattered it into a billion pieces; meanwhile, father had never recovered from losing his position as family patriarch, his ego raw and bloodied from his descent, his sanity stretched to the breaking point by having to endure the pain of being forced to first sit and then vacate the Northwest throne.
His regression, followed by the humiliating discovery of his own childhood conditioning, had just about destroyed him. Of course, he still wanted to win the contest, still wanted to reclaim all the glories he'd won as an adult and then some, and with an effort of will he could even mimic the effortless confidence he'd possessed in his days as the patriarch… but after all he'd been made to suffer, Preston Northwest just didn't have an ounce of real confidence left in him anymore.
Needless to say, almost every single test degenerated into a spectacular display of neurosis sooner or later. Mother could barely bring herself to respond to the simplest inquiry without lapsing into a catatonic trance, and what answers she could bring to the table were little more than nonsensical gibberish.
Father appeared to do well at first, once he was given a properly fitted suit and a chance to recover his equilibrium anyway: he aced the pop quizzes easily, answering almost every single question without a moment's hesitation and dazzling the examiners with one perfect example of ruthlessness after another. But when the time came for him to actually act, to inflict the horrors he'd spoken of on the targets that the Henchmaniacs had summoned up, father's confidence left him. Their mocking laughter disarmed him instantly, his attempts at appearing fearsome were dismissed as childish fancy, and getting violent only left him wilting under their accusing stares; the fact that all of the victims were taller than him only made him feel a thousand times more insecure.
"I can't do this while I'm a child!" he'd wailed, face streaked with tears of bitterest humiliation. "Please, I just need to be made into an adult again! Restore me to my true age and I'll be able to hurt them any way you want! Just make me a grown-up again! I WANNA BE A GROWN-UP!"
The Henchmaniacs responded by promptly sending him back to his room with a failing grade.
At night, Pacifica could hear him crying softly as he struggled to come to terms with what he'd become and how far he'd fallen. Often, he'd try to repair his punctured self-esteem through words alone, muttering little slogans to himself like "I am a Northwest, no matter how old I am! I can be a thousand times better than I was today!" and "I got to the top once, I can get there again!" He recited all his past achievements in a seemingly endless mantra of dates and company names, as if trying to remind himself how powerful he'd once been might make him powerful again. But in the end, he always fell back on dreams: every night, just before he subsided into a whimpering, trembling slumber, he would whisper "It's just a dream. It's not real. Bill wouldn't really do this to us, not after all we've done for him. When I wake up, I'll be an adult again, Weirdmageddon will never have happened, and the Northwests will be in charge again. Everything's going to be okay…"
But of course, he'd always awoken from his slumber to find that he was still a child, still a prisoner, and still in the midst of Weirdmageddon.
And as for Pacifica herself… well, that was a different matter altogether. Like her father, she knew all the answers to the questions posed to her, having been extensively tutored on them by the man himself in gentler days: she knew how best to display the family's pride and elitism; she knew the art of the put-down, the social sabotage, the making of pariahs; she knew how to carve a place for herself in the spotlight, to make herself appear imperious and all-commanding. To her eternal shame, she even understood a little about the ruthlessness the family businesses demanded – and how to inflict it if necessary. Ostensibly, she had every advantage father possessed; she'd even been transformed in a similar fashion, and on the face of things she might even have the same weaknesses as father.
Then again, being forced to go through this test in the body of a doll was aggravating, but not cripplingly so: true, the reduction in height was a handicap at times, and the lack of sensation to her glossy porcelain skin made her feel even more confined than before – as if her flesh itself had become a prison from which she could not escape, a tailor-made jail cell so much more restrictive than Bill's demented playground.
Of course, there was one significant matter that proved just as much a motivation as it was a discouragement: the mysterious Mr A's letter. True, it had given her hope, but it had also left her with an entire warehouse of questions that nobody could answer save for Mr A himself – and he hadn't sent any more notes after the first.
If Pacifica had read correctly (and there was no way of checking, since Pacifica had destroyed the original just to make sure nobody could find it) then there was a way out of the game: there was a way to win without becoming Bill's pawn, to see Dipper and Mabel again and maybe, just maybe save the day… but of course, it involved winning just enough barbs to escape. Problem number one: how many barbs was enough? She knew she couldn't win the entire throne, but just how many barbs would be safe to accept without Bill turning her into a finger puppet? Problem number two: how was she going to manage an escape with the power she'd earned from the throne? Was this just something she'd have to figure out for herself once she got a barb or two?
More to the point – problem number three: could she even trust Mr A? For all she knew, this could be just another one of Bill's twisted jokes: maybe following the instructions was just another way that the crazy corn chip could get his claws into her – or worse. And of course, she couldn't exactly ask anyone, not without giving the entire game away and ruining her only chance to escape and save the others. For now, the only thing to do was play along… and be ready for the inevitable double-cross.
Just like old times, Pacifica mused absently: at the age of five, after being subjected to the things that had accompanied the bell, little Pacifica had confided in one of the servants about how she really felt about the bell. Half an hour later, she'd been summoned to her father's study, where she quickly discovered that the servant had told her parents everything. Once the punishment was over and done with, father had used the incident as a perfect example of how the plebeian masses could only be trusted if bound through money and never-delivered promises. For the longest time, Pacifica had believed him, regarding the common peoples of the world with "justified" contempt and fearing the consequences of failing to live up to her parents. Now, though… now all she had was "Trust No-One."
Play along, and be ready for the inevitable double-cross.
But… if the barbs could make her as powerful as Mr A claimed, perhaps it'd give her the power to wriggle out of whatever was being planned for her; all things considered, it probably wouldn't allow her to turn the tables on Bill – after all, the rabid tortilla was a lot of things, but stupid was quite clearly not one of them – but maybe it'd be just enough to give her an edge.
Whatever the case, Pacifica had one significant advantage over her competitors in this little game.
She knew how to disguise her true self: ever since father had initiated her into the ways of the family, she'd learned to hide her feelings, to mimic happiness when she was lonely, to make herself seem impossibly confident when all thoughts of a brighter future seemed pointless, to conceal her fears behind a mask of elitism and insults, to lie so convincingly that nobody could possibly doubt her sincerity. Even in the days after Dipper had revealed her family's true history to her, she'd still been able to keep up the pretence of aristocratic self-assurance – even as she grappled with her own anger and wounded pride.
And that was her strength in the contest. She could pretend to be someone in the spotlight, to keep up the façade behind closed doors, even when the Henchmaniacs were watching; she could win where mother and father failed. Oh, sure, maybe father had known the same art as a child – after all, he'd been conditioned in much the same way as her – but had forgotten the subtleties. Perhaps, somewhere along the line, he'd forgotten the difference between performance and personality.
But that's the danger, isn't it? She thought feverishly. The longer you wear a mask, the better it fits. Your face changes under it… until you take it off and find that there's no difference between you and the disguise anymore. It's happened to you before, and it can happen again if you're not careful. And that's the danger of the game: win too much, and it won't matter even if you do escape.
She wasn't proud of her first victory.
The days leading up to it had been bad enough, what with the gruelling uphill march through Amorphous Shape's questionnaire: after almost a week of listening to the Henchmaniac's smug interrogation and her own monotonous replies, she was just about ready to start headbutting her way through the wall. The fact that most of it involved discussions of assaulting homeless people and variations on the prisoner's dilemma with Dipper and Mabel only made it a million times more dispiriting.
But when the time came to actually perform the practical exercise – and prove that she was as ruthless as she claimed – Pacifica had almost faltered.
Laid out before her was the very worst of the Northwest family's ideals made manifest, a living sea of dull-eyed barely-sentient proles dependent on the guidance and patronage of the wealthy in order to survive, a multitude of victims in dishwater-grey uniforms just waiting for a victimizer to descend. Her assigned task was to walk among the crowd and enact the typical Northwest attitude upon them – but this time stripped of even the shallow charm that father wore at social events: she was to be proud, dignified, insulting, arrogant, and utterly without empathy. In short, she was to treat them as badly as Nathaniel Northwest had treated the unfortunate lumberjacks of Gravity Falls, if not worse.
In other words, to win the test, she'd have to become the old Pacifica – exactly the way her father had wanted her… and this time, operating in a vision of reality where the Northwests had at long last pierced the final barrier between them and ultimate power and arrived in a world entirely subservient to their whims; a world that would not resist their commands, nor protest their decisions, or even imagine limiting their powers; a world designed to serve as nothing more than a plaything for the Northwest family to do with as they pleased.
So this is what you wanted, father? she'd asked herself. Is this what the family always wanted? I mean, it wasn't enough for us to worship Bill as a god: we wanted to be just like him. It's not just our family name that's broken – it's the entire family, ever since Nathaniel Northwest took power!
For the longest time, Pacifica hadn't been able to act. Looking down at that ocean of helpless figures, all she'd been able to see was the betrayed look on Dipper's face, and even as the Henchmaniacs shouted at her to get on with it, all she could hear were the words "another link in the world's worst chain." Ironically, it was the thought of the letter's promise – her one opportunity to escape – and her fear of never seeing Dipper again that had finally driven her down the hill from Northwest Mansion and into the sea of proles.
And there, for perhaps twenty minutes, she'd been her father's daughter.
Declaring herself the undisputed master of the proles awaiting her, she'd given orders, loudly and imperiously – for food and drink, for entertainment, for anything that might impress the examiners watching her. She'd even commanded that the proles carry her around on a sedan chair made of living human bodies. Any proles too slow to act had been subjected to her unbridled wrath: she'd screamed, she'd insulted, she'd humiliated, she'd even kicked a few of them. She'd called them every single name her father had ever used against the poor and underprivileged, and let them know in no uncertain terms that they were a thousand times less than her. Just to finish off, she'd demanded that the proles kneel before her and kiss her feet – which they did.
None of them resisted. None of them said anything in protest. None of them spoke at all. They simply followed her commands, and unless specifically ordered not to, they stared. And staring into those innocent, guileless eyes, Pacifica couldn't help but feel as though they were judging her; in fact, if she looked for long enough, she could easily imagine those bland, anonymous faces taking on different features – until it was no longer a helpless stranger she was abusing, but a friend: Dipper, Mabel, Soos, Wendy, Mr Pines, the rebels at the Mystery Shack, the people who'd helped her to realize what friendship was.
And when the Henchmaniacs had begun to applaud, it had taken every last atom of Pacifica's willpower not to vomit.
They'd congratulated her, told her that Bill would be proud, and taken her to the throne for the first of many barbs. There, as mother and father had looked on with sick, despairing eyes, Pacifica had been allowed to kneel before the throne and bare her back to it, allowing a hooked barb to telescope from the left armrest and burrow deep into her back – an invasion of her body made all the more alien and disturbing for the simple fact that it didn't hurt at all; she could still sense it there, which was arguably even worse, but there was no pain whatsoever. The only "pain" lay in what she'd done to earn this monstrous reward.
It's just an act, she'd told herself, as the barb had slowly earthed itself in the porcelain-flesh. This isn't really me. I can pretend to be whoever Bill wants to be, but I am still myself. No matter how many barbs I earn, no matter how many times I pretend to be my father's daughter, I'm still a good person. I'm not just another Northwest. I'm not another one of Bill's pawns. I'm me.
Whatever the case, the first barb definitely gave her power: the hook of the throne granted her a form of telekinesis, allowing her to move objects at a distance – though never anything larger than the average chair – and with it came a simple but impressive ability to manipulate matter itself. Through this power, she could craft small objects out of the surrounding environment, sculpting available matter into new shapes with the power of her mind; with an effort of will, she could also destroy, erasing other objects by rendering them down into inert matter.
It was a basic power and, once again, deliberately limited to small, inoffensive uses. Pacifica found that she could create books, for example, but couldn't quite get the hang of generating the text inside the covers, for the pages always emerged covered in a meaningless hodgepodge of squiggles. But this limited gift wasn't the point of that first reward, of course: it was there to whet her appetite, to make her long for more barbs and the abilities they could grant her, to inspire her to commit greater atrocities in pursuit of power.
After all, father had done similar things to her when she was little: good behaviour, proper snobbery and effortless winning had been rewarded with lavish celebrations, extravagant presents, even a rare and genuine expression of approval from her parents (approval, but never affection); failure was punished with the bell – and all the things that it brought to mind. And for all she knew, that was the way father had been trained when he was a child; perhaps his father had been trained the same way, too, a chain of conditioning stretching all the way back to the start of their family.
And now Bill Cipher was starting the whole process all over again, this time conditioning Pacifica to enjoy torture and cruelty. Here, she wasn't a human being or even a doll: she was a rat in a Skinner box, rewarded for now but always left with the threat of punishment on the horizon.
In the end, she could only return to her room in silence – to rest in preparation for the next day's questionnaires. She wanted to scream, to throw up, to shatter glass, to rage and tell Bill Cipher to go to hell. She wanted to beg forgiveness from the proles, to insist that she didn't want to hurt anyone, to cut herself open and tear out the hook. But she couldn't: the Henchmaniacs were watching. Acting up would mean a black mark on her record. Acting up would mean losing her chance to see Dipper and Mabel again.
Instead, Pacifica had simply stood in front of her mirror, her doll's face sculpted into an expressionless mask, and let her newly-developed powers flow out across the room. All in all, she found telekinesis more agreeable than matter sculpting, and so she gave it the bulk of her focus.
And as books, vases, potted plants and cushions began to orbit her body like planets in an unearthly telekinetic waltz, she'd told herself, I am not just another link in the world's worst chain. I will escape. I will see Dipper and Mabel again. I will not forget myself.
Over and over again, like a prayer: I am not just another link in the world's worst chain.
With time and repetition, she could almost believe it.
On her second practical test, Pacifica had walked among the proles again, and at the instruction of the Henchmaniacs, recruited them to serve at Northwest Mansion – not as servants, but as guards. Arming her newly-hired guards with blackjacks and handcuffs, she'd stationed them around her parents' quarters and prevented mother and father from leaving for any reason. Any resistance from father was met with use of the buzzer. Impressed, the Henchmaniacs awarded her with a second barb, granting her the power to levitate at will – "a sign of your superiority over others, Lady Northwest," Amorphous Shape had cackled.
I am not just another link in the world's worst chain.
On her third test, Pacifica had sent out her guards to inspect the proles and had them gather the population into a single cohesive marching group, advancing across the plain like an army of ants; anyone caught marching out of step was to be dragged off to the cellars of Northwest Mansion, where they would stay until Pacifica felt they had learned their lesson. Beatings were conducted down there, but never any murders, thank god. Nonetheless, Pacifica was still awarded another barb, expanding her senses and allowing her to magically review her new domain with a passing thought.
I am not just another link in the world's worst chain.
On her fourth test, she had demanded that the proles begin the construction of a vast ziggurat in her honour. For the next few days, she oversaw the process of quarrying, cutting and transporting the stone to the building site at the foot of the mansion's hill, demanding unending diligence from every prole at work: anyone caught "slacking" or making a mistake was viciously flogged by prole guards. For weeks on end, the air was filled with nothing but the rumble of magical construction equipment, the thud and crunch of stone being laid, and the distinctive crack of the whip; for days, Pacifica feared that one of the proles might die, that she might have done the unforgiveable over the course of the test – and for every night, her dreams were filled with the thunderous roars of the Lumberjack ghost as he cried out for vengeance once more. But when the scaffolding was finally cleared away and the finished ziggurat unveiled, the proles had all survived – and Pacifica was awarded with her fourth barb: pyrokinesis, granting her fire at her fingertips; though the flames were never bigger than a decent-sized campfire, this was once again a taste of greater power, another temptation to commit greater crimes in pursuit of the next sickly-sweet taste of magical dominion.
I am not just another link in the world's worst chain.
Now it was her fourth week of contests, and, as she absently exercised her newly-acquired powers upon the contents of her bedroom, Pacifica could only wonder what was going to happen next: there were still dozens upon dozens of barbs left on the throne, after all, and given that none of the proles had died yet, there were still so many horrific things the Henchmaniacs could encourage her to do.
And where was Bill?
Over the last few weeks, he'd remained conspicuously absent from the games he'd orchestrated, not even showing up to gloat over father's latest humiliation; instead, the Henchmaniacs were around to speak for him and officiate the challenges he'd created. Needless to say, none of them were interested in answering Pacifica's questions, and regularly threatened to ossify her body and leave her frozen as an inanimate doll if she kept badgering them.
But then, even the Henchmaniacs seemed to be making themselves scarce around this particular end of reality: over the last few weeks, 8-Ball, Pyronica, Teeth, Xanthar, Hectorgon, Keyhole and Lava Lamp had all slipped away for parts unknown, and even Kryptos and Amorphous Shape didn't seem in any mood to stick around Northwest Mansion for any longer than necessary. So, either they were more interested in observing the spectacle of her conditioning than interfering in it… or there was something much more entertaining out there in the realms of Bill's new empire.
So what was drawing their attention away?
And what was to be her next challenge?
And when would she have enough power to escape? The letter had told her only to take what she needed to escape, but how much would be needed to make her way out of this prison? How would she know? After all, it wasn't as if the Henchmaniacs would actually tell her which powers would allow her to stage a jailbreak?
All Pacifica could do was wait, silently punishing herself for having played along, endlessly repeating the mantra – her sole reminder not to lose herself in the contest:
I am not just another link in the world's worst chain.
The briefing for the next test arrived early on the Monday of her fifth week, delivered by a bored-looking Amorphous Shape, who stayed just long enough to dump the briefing folder in Pacifica's orange juice before vanishing off into the ether.
Lesson #5: Retribution and the Denial of Empathy, it read. Report to the drawing room and see how much fun you can have just by bringing the pain to someone who really deserves it! Bonus points for death by torture! Remember, though, it's not about the revenge: it's about the callousness. Feel absolutely nothing for your victim, and you win the fifth barb! Please be warned: we're testing your vital signs this time around – if your heart's not in the game, we'll know. No pretending!
Pacifica's heart sank. They were onto her now. There was nothing she could do to win this test: playing the part insincerely would only net her a massive demerit, and her best chance to escape this hellhole would go sailing merrily out of her grasp… or worse still, the conditioning would work exactly as Bill had intended, and Pacifica would find herself enjoying the torture of another living being; her personality would change to fit the performance, a tiny bit of herself – her real self – would be chipped away, and Pacifica would take one step closer to being Bill's puppet.
But she had no choice: Kryptos and Amorphous Shape were still watching her. By now, she had learned to recognize when a Henchmaniac had left this little corner of reality, and with a little bit of psychic awareness, she could tell that her two remaining examiners were keeping a very close eye on her. So, trying valiantly to keep the despair from registering on her face, she began the long, slow march from the dining hall to the drawing room.
It seemed to take years.
Maybe this was just her own mind playing tricks on her, or maybe Bill was deliberately distorting time in these corridors, just to heighten the sense of dread; whatever the case, her footsteps took over an hour to land (or so it seemed), scattered dust motes hung in the air like snowflakes, and the simple act of pushing open the drawing room door dragged on for what felt like days – and the door itself seemed a thousand times heavier, too.
But when she finally stepped inside the drawing room, she found herself greeted by a sight that caught her almost completely off-guard.
As expected, the luxuriously-furnished room had been outfitted with all the accoutrements of a torture chamber: the lush carpets and Persian rugs had been covered with a thick layer of plastic matting, the astronomically expensive wallpaper hidden beneath a protective shroud of surgical-issue curtains; the furniture had been moved all the way to the back of the room, well behind the curtains, and in their place, glistening stainless-steel trays and gurneys stood in readiness, each one crowded with a vicious assortment of knives, drills, syringes, corkscrews, pliers, scissors, hoses, buzz-saws, siphons, garrottes, vices, and other instruments too complicated to describe. All this was exactly as Pacifica had been dreading, but at the very centre of it all was an element that she honestly hadn't been expecting.
Right at the heart of the torture chamber, strapped into a dentist's chair, was none other than her father.
And if the young Preston Northwest had looked pathetic before, now he looked downright pitiful. His already pallid skin had turned a deathly, cadaverous white from fear, and his gawky little face was streaked with tears – real tears, not the shallow mimicry of grief that the family occasionally employed at funerals, a genuine and undignified display of terrified, horror-stricken sobbing.
"Please," he whimpered. "I know what they told you to do, Pacifica, but… well, please, just think about this for a minute."
Pacifica took a deep breath as she struggled to recover her equilibrium. She hadn't been expecting this: the lesson plan had claimed that she'd be torturing someone who "deserved it," yes, but she'd been thinking that Bill was going to target someone he wanted revenge on – Dipper, say, or Mabel, or at the very least someone out in the world beyond the mansion who'd had the misfortune to inconvenience him. She'd never dreamed that her father, one of her competitors in this little game, would actually be selected as a victim.
Meanwhile, father himself was still rambling on, his voice only growing faster and faster of its own accord as his terror began climbing towards its peak. "You just can't do this to me," he insisted. "I'm… I'm the patriarch of one of the greatest families on the planet; I've led the Northwests from strength to strength through some of the worst recessions and crises ever faced by the United States. I mean, you can't just let it end like this! You can't just kill me!"
Pacifica blinked, silently reviewing everything her father had just said. Once upon a time, outpourings like this would have seemed almost normal: in the event that Preston Northwest was too stressed or upset to simply proclaim his usual demands of "I am your father and you will obey me!" he would instead fall back on his achievements, his qualifications, the victories he had won in the name of the family, the empires that he'd toppled, the monopolies he'd forged, the riches that he'd horded… and he'd always ended by glaring down at Pacifica and sneering, "And just what have you achieved in your life, young lady?"
Once upon a time, Pacifica would have thought this was just something all parents did to their children, something that the adults of any family did to ensure order among the younger generation. But since she'd befriended Mabel and gotten to know her family, she'd learned that this was not the case: the members of a family were supposed to care for one another, to listen to their opinions, to try and reach compromise if possible – or at the very least to learn from their mistakes; they were not supposed to fear and mistrust one another. Father's put-downs were not normal; the threats against failure were not normal; the bell was not normal.
And once again, Pacifica found that tiny little ember of hatred beginning to burn ever-so-slightly brighter. It was a fire that had been left to die ever since the end of that last confrontation with her freshly-regressed father, ever since she'd felt shame over using the buzzer on him. But now…
Suddenly, those monstrous-looking instruments on the trays nearby were beginning to look disturbingly alluring.
Almost robotically, she crept closer; the sudden anger must have shown on her face, for father immediately swallowed hard and spoke again – faster, higher and even more desperate than before. "Pacifica, I'm your father," he blustered. "I've given you everything – your home, your education, your toys, your friends… I mean, do you think you'd have gotten anywhere near the Lucroses State Boarding School if it wasn't for me and this family's influence? You'd never have received all that precious golf training if I hadn't made the right investments! And all those birthday parties? They only happened because I made them possible! Think about what you're doing: you owe me everything! You can't just…"
By now, Pacifica was looming over the nearest of the trays, and it was taking all her available willpower not to bring the whole thing crashing down on father's head.
You gave me "everything" as a reward, she thought furiously. You gave me anything that could be used as incentive to make me act and think the same way as you. You never loved me, not really. You never cared about me, never even thought of me as a person: I was just something to mould into the perfect heir. And what about everything I did for you? I saved the lives of every single guest that night! I saved your mansion, and I cleared our legacy of the crime you were happy to keep a secret! I risked everything to save your life, and for a while you even encouraged me to join Ford's circle, but the moment it wasn't convenient to support the rebellion, you went right back to toadying up to Bill! And that's how you repaid me for giving a damn about you.
Now holding one of the nastier-looking blades in her hand, she began to advance on the dentist's chair.
"Let's not be hasty," father babbled. "We… we can help each other! I-I-I mean, I might not have much pull right now, but I know Bill still listens to me every now and again. I can put in a good word for you if you just hear me out: you'll win the contest in a day with my help! I'll give you anything, I promise you! I'll give you anything you could possibly want!"
You don't even have to kill him, Pacifica told herself. All you have to do is make him suffer just as much as he made you suffer. Make him feel as miserable and as frightened and as utterly helpless as he made you feel back when he really was in control. Make him scream like the pathetic child that he is. In fact, you don't even have to use your hands: Bill gave you powers like this for a reason…
Reaching out with the newly-acquired powers of her mind, she seized upon the nearest trays of instruments, and one by one, scooped up every last device available: the scalpel, the rib-spreader, the eyelid-sized pastry cutter, the chisel, the taser, the claw hammer, the baton wrapped in barbed wire, the double-strength sandpaper, the pear of agony, the thumb screws, the ocular acupuncture needles, and even the dreaded buzzer. All of them swooped off their trays and zeroed in on father's helpless face like a swarm of angry locusts, hovering closer and closer until…
"Please… I… I'm sorry! Is that what you want to hear? I'm sorry! For everything I've done to you, I'm sorry! Please, just let me make things right! I'm sorry, alright? I'M SORRY!"
The swarm of hovering instruments paused in mid-air as Pacifica slowly considered what she'd heard. Father was crying again, his eyes full of terrified tears and his face frozen in a rictus of horror… and whatever else she could say about him, he wasn't lying. She knew that fearful, near-earnest look in his eyes all too well: he'd been wearing it back at the Fearamid, when father had been desperate enough to encourage her to join the circle.
And yet…
"Are you?" she asked quietly. "Are you really sorry?"
"I… I…"
"Just one simple answer, father. That's all I need."
If anything, Father began to sob even harder at that point. "I don't know," he said at last. "I don't know! Nothing makes sense anymore! Everything's wrong and nothing makes sense to me: I don't know if I'm sorry or if I should be angry or if I should be trying to work with Bill or if I should just try and find some way to cut my losses and run! It just doesn't make sense!"
He took a deep breath, and gradually began to settle down. "Before all this began, I knew… I thought I knew how the world worked: the family as a whole was to be upheld at any cost; the next generation were to be taught the lessons we'd learned by any means necessary; money and power were the only sanctities in the world, and the only things in life worth pursuing; Bill was our patron, our god, and he would one day arrive on Earth to reward our faithful service... but Bill's here now and… well…"
"You're wondering what was the point of it all," said Pacifica. "You're starting to wonder if everything you spent your life on was a waste of time. You're starting to wonder if you were wrong."
Father nodded helplessly.
"Welcome to the club. Maybe now you know how I felt when I walked into that hidden room and found that little shrine to the worst atrocities our family ever committed… or maybe you'll understand just why I was so angry with you when I found that you'd had a bell of your own when you were my age."
She telekinetically shook the buzzer in the air by way of emphasis.
"I… I know, but… it's tradition," said father helplessly. "Every Northwest Child has been trained via behavioural conditioning ever since the science was first developed: it's just… just how we've done things. The family must be upheld, money must be horded and Bill Cipher must be served, and for that to happen, the next generation have to be trained accordingly. This is the only thing that works – daddy told me so!" His eyes widened as he realized what he'd just said. "Father told me so," he amended.
"And you never once questioned? You never stood back and asked, "why do we have to keep doing this?' I mean, you didn't even know if Bill Cipher was even real back then: all you had were a few pre-Depression Era stories and tapestries. I can understand remaining loyal to family, and I can almost understand the power-hungry thing, but why would you continue serving Bill for so many years when you hadn't even seen him in your lifetime? Surely you could have started asking questions once you were too old to have the buzzer used on you."
Father hesitated.
"I did… once," he said softly. "But only at the very end. I've already said we've had to pay the price for demanding so much of Bill, and sometimes the price is our health. We don't always die well, you see. My father was no exception: it took less than a year for the cancer to run its course, and by the end he was barely able to breathe, much less speak. Most of the time, we had to keep him sedated and unconscious, he was in that much pain. But one day, I was sitting by his bedside, double-checking the will and readying the death certificate for the inevitable signage – and then, without warning, he awoke. For just a few minutes, he was just sedated enough to talk without the pain in his chest from crippling him, and right then and there… I don't know why that was the question that sprung to mind, but I wanted to know why the buzzer had been necessary. I wasn't angry or anything like that," he added quickly. "I was just… curious. So I asked him why the behavioural conditioning was needed at all."
"And he looked at me and said, 'It'll all make sense one day. My own father used fingernails on a blackboard in place of a buzzer, and he was alive to see the last time Bill Cipher was summoned, to see his power in action: that summoning, that power, it saved us from the Depression, boy. He gave us things other wealthy men can only dream of. We owe our lives and fortune to him. It'll all be worth it someday, some distant generation… and maybe that generation will be yours to foster. All you have to do is keep the faith and keep the family loyal, and the blessings of the great Bill Cipher will keep flowing… and one day, we will be as gods. One day, it'll all be worth it.' And then he just went silent until the next dose of sedative sent him back to sleep. He died two hours later."
"When I said I questioned the rule only once, I meant it: any doubt I had passed with my father. In the end, I believed everything he told me. How could I not? I was already a man by then, and I'd won a fortune for the family three times over, and all because I'd followed the rules that Bill and Nathaniel Northwest had set for us. So I believed. I worshipped – secretly, but still I worshipped. I raised you exactly as my father and his father before him were raised, because I believed… because I knew it was the only way we could rise to greater heights; because I knew that in this world, only most ruthless individuals prosper and only the most loyal families survive; because I knew that one day Bill Cipher would arrive on this Earth and reward our unquestioning loyalty… and that's how I thought the world worked."
There was a pause, as the echoes slowly died away.
Rats, thought Pacifica. That's all we are: a family of rats, all raised to love the Skinner box. Every generation raised for operant conditioning. My god, we were puppets all along.
"But if you don't know what to believe in anymore, why did you keep participating in this contest?" Pacifica asked. "Why bother to take part when you know that you'll only ever be Bill's pawn."
At this, father was suddenly once again on the brink of tears. "Because I don't know what else to do," he said. "I've been the head of this family for so long, I don't know what else to be. It's all I've got. And… well, if I'm not the patriarch, who am I?"
He offered a desperate, pathetic smile, perhaps in a desperate attempt to reclaim the triumphant grin he'd worn as an adult… in that moment, just before Preston started to cry again, Pacifica came to a realization: as an adult, tanned and polished and perfectly tailored to the image of a successful CEO, wealthy patriarch and all-around epitome of earthly power, her father had often seemed so different that it was hard to see even the vaguest familial resemblance (but to be fair, it wasn't as if her mother looked much like Pacifica after all the facelifts and hair dye). More to the point, she'd never even seen any photographs of Preston Northwest as a child, for even the prized family portraits from his childhood had been carefully sealed in father's private vault. Now, though… looking at that weird little smile, Pacifica couldn't help but remember her own image in the family portrait above the fireplace, the vision of her younger self with that silly, childish grin – a snapshot of the days before the conditioning had really kicked in.
"You know what?" said Preston quietly. "I'm not even frightened anymore: there's no point any pretending that anything's ever going to change. We're dead. This family is finished. We got exactly what we wanted, and it's killed us all… and it all happened while I was at the helm. Do whatever you want to do to me. Just… just get it over with quickly."
There was a pause.
You hear that? You've got his permission. What more do you need? You've got to hurt him if you want to win this challenge, and you've got to win this challenge if you want to escape, and you've got to escape if you want to see Dipper again. Simple as that. Just give him a good old-fashioned hiding and leave it at that. No fuss, no mess, no mercy. Come on, it's not as if you care enough about him to regret hurting him. He's just a punching bag, nothing else.
But she'd seen and heard too much to reduce him to an object: she knew that, if she hadn't met Mabel and Dipper, she would have been just like Preston, coldly raising a child to carry on the family name and fortune without a trace of mercy. And in that moment, Pacifica saw, with perfect clarity, the next stage in Bill Cipher's game: another form of operant conditioning, rewarding bloodshed with power, using revenge to iron out any personal reservations about torture. A game of corruption, compromising every one of her hard-won principles one by one, until she thought, spoke and acted just like Bill.
And she knew what she had to do. It would hurt, of course, and it would probably send her straight back to square one, and it might even cost her the chance to escape, but…
I am not just another link in the world's worst chain.
Pacifica took a deep breath. "No," she said at last.
"What?"
"I'm not going to hurt you," she said simply. She looked skywards, where the Henchmaniacs were no doubt still watching. "You hear me? I'm not playing along anymore! You can punish me all you like, but I'm through with this sick contest! I'm not going to torture or kill anyone! Get your entertainment elsewhere, because this game is officially OVER!"
And with that, she flung the swarm of torture devices at the wall as hard as she possibly could. She was immediately rewarded with a spectacular eruption of cacophonous sound as the wrecked devices clattered down the length of the wall into a colossal pile of junk, the dreaded buzzer shattering into useless electrical wreckage as it hit the ground.
But no Henchmaniacs appeared.
"COME ON!" Pacifica roared. "WE'RE DONE PLAYING! LET'S GET ON WITH IT! YOU MIGHT AS WELL STOP WATCHING AND GET A LIFE, BECAUSE I'M NOT INTERESTED IN BEING YOUR ENTERTAINMENT!"
The room remained stubbornly Henchmaniac-free.
"BILL, IF THIS IS ANOTHER ONE OF YOUR JOKES, I WILL BE VERY DISAPPOINTED."
If anything, the silence only deepened.
"Hello?"
Tentatively, Pacifica cast her mind across the mansion, searching for any sign of the Henchmaniacs or anything working on their behalf.
Nothing.
No Henchmaniacs.
No Bill.
No surveillance.
Whatever had drawn Bill's attention away from her game had proved so entertaining that Amorphous Shape and Kryptos had finally left the mansion unattended.
And they'd also left the throne unattended.
Which meant-
Pacifica's eyes lit up.
With a wave of her hand, she undid Preston's restraints, allowing him to totter out of the dentist's chair at long last. "What's going on?" he asked nervously.
"We're escaping!" Pacifica shouted, unable to hide the triumph in her voice. "Go release mother from her room and then get throne room as quickly as possible: I'm going to take as many barbs as I need to create portals of my own, and then we are officially on our way out of this hellhole!"
"But-"
"No buts! We are officially free from now on! The Northwests are no longer Bill's servants: from now on, WE ARE A FREE FAMILY! Now hurry: I don't know what's got Bill so preoccupied, but it's probably not going to last for very long. We've got a jailbreak to stage!"
A/N: This chapter's soundtrack choice is Betrayal by Iain Ballamy.
Coming up next, a rich tale of cabin fever, paranoia and violence! Feel free to theorize just who could be next!
Or, if you prefer...
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