H.. Hey guys. Please don't be too mad at me for abandoning you for so long, but I'm going to try to pick this story back up. It's been swirling in the back of my mind for a while now, desperate to get back onto the page. So here we go again.

"This is fascinating!" Ford exclaimed, startling Dipper who had begun to nod off.

"What?" Dipper sat up at the table and looked at the papers scattered between him and Ford. They were down in the lab trying to figure out Bill's unique biology by pouring over the extensive data they'd managed to collect in the short week they'd had him.

"Look at this, Dipper," Ford passed an X-ray to the teen. Dipper held it up to the light, and found he was looking at a picture of the once demon's skull.

"I don't know what I am looking at Ford," Dipper complained, trying to stifle a yawn.

"Compare it to this," Ford pushed a textbook on human anatomy across the table, open to images of the human skull.

"It looks the same to me, HOLY CRAP!" Dipper exclaimed, finally realizing what his grunkle had noticed. "There aren't any fuse lines!"
"Exactly. Exactly. When humans are born, the eight bones that make up the cranium are separated, to allow the bones to slide over each other while passing through the birth canal. As a human grows, these bones fuse together, leaving behind distinctive lines. But Bill doesn't have these lines, which means?" Ford asked.

"He wasn't born!" Dipper exclaimed.

"Exactly. For a while I was worried that the demons that turned him human didn't make a body for him, but rather stole one from another human. But this proves that theory wrong. They did in fact make a body, rather than take a body."

"And they took shortcuts," Dipper added.

"Yes. Yes. This could spell trouble if they took shortcuts elsewhere. What if his immune system is flawed, or he is missing an important gut bacteria?" Ford furiously started writing in his new journal, while Dipper did the same in his.

Elsewhere in the house, the residents where asleep, as the time was currently 2:00am. Stan and Mabel were tucked away in their rooms, while Bill had been moved from the chilly lab to the couch in the living room. Said once demon was tossing and turning in his sleep. One of the many downsides to being human was a lack of instinctual control of one's dreams.

Bill's dream found him chained by his wrists to a pole, nearly hanging, while his friends whipped and beat him. The pain seemed real, and the fear certainly was.

As Bill cried out, he heard a familiar laugh all around him. It stirred some deep memory, a memory he'd long forgotten before his puny human mind had dumped nearly all his memories, or perhaps he had repressed it. Whatever the case, it sent chills down his spine, as the color washed away from dream, and he found himself in an empty void.

"Hello?" Bill called out, his voice cracking with his fear. The laugh echoed again, like a knife scraped over a stone.

"Remember me?" the voice called out, before Bill awoke by falling off the couch.

"Are you okay?" Mabel stood over him, worry in her eyes, a plush pegasus held to her chest. "You where thrashing in your sleep."

"No," Bill answered honestly, sitting up and rubbing his temples.

"Bad dreams?" Mabel asked. Bill nodded. "Dipper gets those sometimes. He usually goes outside and looks at the stars for a while till he feels better."

"What do you do?" Bill asked. Mabel smiled at the question.

"I hold on to my plushies and hide under my blanket where the monsters can't get me!" Bill couldn't tell if she was joking or not, as was often the case with the more rambunctious of the younger twins. "Here," she held out her plush pegasus for him. "Why don't you try?"

Bill gingerly took the toy from her, unsure of what she wanted him to do. Mabel rolled her eyes.

"Try hugging her," she suggested. Bill tried, and was quite surprised to find he actually felt a little better. Already that ominous voice he had heard was fading from his mind.

Mabel helped the once demon back onto the couch and tucked him in.

"Try to get some more sleep okay," she said as she headed back upstairs. Bill curled up around the plush toy, and slowly let his mind slip back into unconsciousness.

An hour latter, Dipper passed through the living room on his way to bed, but paused by the couch holding the being that once was his greatest enemy. He wrinkled his nose when he saw the toy caught in the demon's grasp, but his expression softened when he noticed new bruises on his hands. Bill had been thrashing in his sleep again.

The demon's night mares hadn't gone unnoticed by the young explorer, and night terrors were something he was all too familiar with. He'd had them on and off since he was young, and they were never a pleasant experience. Looking at the once demon, Dipper couldn't help but feel a twinge of sympathy, as he resolved to talk to Bill about his nightmares in the morning, but first, he needed to sleep. He'd stayed up way too late again with Ford, who never seemed to get any rest.

Just a short chapter to get me back into the swing of things, and to establish a few important plot points, as well as set up Dipper's character arc. As always, I thrive on your reviews.