It strains the eyes as it stretches on and on forever… a state of being wherein space is truly empty, in total defiance of imagination and the laws of physics. It is the void, the infinite nothing, an impossible thing set adrift within itself forever and for never. Ironically, this is a place that many a strange and terrible improbability calls home, things constructed of abstract nonsense and somehow not in violation of the very nothingness that should define what the void is.

A faint speck of gold is such a thing, hanging in empty space, wrapped in an ethereal babble that, if light were to be anywhere, may be visible from its violent undulations. Drawing closer reveals the speck doesn't sit alone, instead being the center of a whole galaxy of glowing glyphs and images etched from light of the barest blue. Closer, closer… and it's plain to see, this is the realm of balderdash that Bill Cipher, the golden glow in the dark, calls home.

He idly sits alone here, pondering thoughts vast, cool, hopelessly entropic and misanthropic. And sometimes, Bill Cipher likes to float alone in his island in time and play video games from the 1980s, a period he somehow views as the golden age of Earth's entertainment technologies. The liquid crystal screened handheld happily beeps and boops in his tiny, dark hands, despite the lack of atmosphere, or batteries for that matter, engrossing the one-eyed monster through his imprisonment in the Blind Eternities. Beep, boop, beep, boop… and then, game over.

"What?! This game always cheats! Why do I keep spawning the same game?"

With a violent flick of the wrist, the cheap plastic handheld is flung into the undulating cloud of orbiting glyphs, violently crashing into one and bursting into an odd-sized explosion as the shifting rune spins off into deeper darkness. The sulking imp does not dwell long on his loss as another out of place object tumbles closer toward his sphere of influence. Bill seems lost in grim thought until the somersaulting intruder comes within mere inches of his form, until he flicks his wrist once more and stops its hurtling passage. At the cost of its forward momentum, the object was set to violently spinning, carrying on for many minutes from lack of friction.

"Heh, okay then." Bill chuckled before reaching out and catching the object in his tiny fingers. "I think you're warmed up enough."

The spinning stopped immediately, rendering the object much more identifiable. It seemed to be a completely flat, black square, though the black of the two-dimensional shape made real seemed pale in comparison to the infinity it was set against. More important was the humanoid figure in the out of place article; his back was turned to the demon as he stared a moment, and though whoever the man within was inaudible, he seemed to be doubled over in pain or nauseated delirium. A moment passed, but Bill allowed no more time to pass.

"Sick again, eh? Well, sucks to suck, come on now!" Bill spun the square about, catching it with his cane so that the human trapped within rattled about a moment before regaining his balance. "No rest for the wicked, Preston! Your bad dreams await!"

Preston Northwest, looking less than dapper in a ragged suit that looked picked to pieces by tiny sets of tooth and nail, sweaty and pale from his plunge through the void, gasped and heaved within his confines. He stared at Bill with a mixture of probable hatred and dread.

"Aww, Preston… you look like you aren't having any fun at all." Bill jeered with a cheeky waggle of the finger. "I hope you don't feel like you're being ironically punished, or anything. Or cheated! I'd hate to think that you think I cheated you! After all, it's sport to have the engineer hoist with his own petard. Or something like that. You can look it up when you get back to your body."

Preston only snarled in silence, clenching his teeth and fists together in awful anticipation.

"Expecting nightmares already? Hmm… nah. We'll start with something a little more Euclidean."

Cipher's piercing gaze was averted as his eye set to glowing with a ghastly green light. The light issued forth in a series of quiet pulses in front of the pair, drawing together a ring of swirling luminescence. It started slow, but second by second the ring spun about, filling out the empty section within its borders with a wide palette of colors. The colors pooled into shapes and shades, making from nothing an image of a small apartment painted with afternoon sunshine. It was a simple place, defined by dull, off-white paint, cheap linoleum floors, and numerous cardboard boxes stacked atop one another and any furniture items large enough to accommodate them. Though the apartment was clearly in the middle of a state of move-out, it still possessed a faint hint of coziness mixed with an undertone of old-meeting-new that made it slightly appealing. Appealing, and more than a little strange that Bill Cipher would conjure this of all things.

Sound came through the field of imagery first, somehow, the scratching whine of tape being drawn from the roll, stretched over the creaking frame of a cardboard box, and patted down expertly. A soft grunt echoed from beyond the ring's field of view, though moments later Pacifica huffed into view, wearing a dusty green sweatshirt and a pair of jeans deep into the beat-up phase of their life. She was carrying another box from the next room and plopping it atop a stack of two, and the drop of the deceptively heavy load caused the second box of the stack to crimp, and the contents within to audibly crack. Shock played over the young woman's face, and she hurriedly picked the heavy cube up again, setting it aside to investigate the damages.

A young woman… that's what she was now. Preston, pale, haggard, ruined, watched confusedly what Bill had chosen to torture him with tonight: his daughter, maybe seven, eight, nine years older than he last remembered her being. Has it truly been so long? He couldn't even remember anymore, as each time he lied down to rest he was visited by torment and robbed of the solace of a good night's sleep. But this was a first… the first time Bill hadn't resorted to monstrous visions of entropy, the first time Preston felt something besides horror the second he began to dream, and the first time he could remember seeing his only daughter in years. Here she was now, living in some small, single bedroom apartment, dirtying her purebred hands with manual labor. Even if he didn't like the idea of the latter, seeing her at all made him feel…

"Hey, hey." Bill interrupted, snapping his fingers rudely in Preston's face. "None of that. Pay attention, you're here because you deserve to be."

As they watched, Pacifica casually opened up the box she accidentally crushed, and grimaced as she took in the sight of contents. It was once their plates and bowls, and now… well, one or two plates were still unharmed. The bowls, though? No. Not so much. With a sigh, Pacifica taped the box back up, doing her best to smooth out the crimps and creases. Her frustration slowly mounted as the aged cardboard fought her efforts; how they ever managed to close up this survivor of many moves past in the first place was unbelievable. They should've just bought new boxes, she mused to herself with a shaking head. Once it was duly resealed, she swapped the damaged case with the heavy one, placing the broken plate crate atop the stack. Pacifica then drew a sharpie from her back pocket and, smiling wryly, scribbled "FRAGILE" across the crinkled surface.

"Yeah, so… guess it was the movers, right? Meh… I'll just drop it on purpose or something. We'll get more."

After a moment of smiling, Pacifica sighed and strolled off to continue her work. She hummed as she left, and the soft tune had a ring of genuine happiness to it that refused to be ignored. It wasn't long, though, before she was drawn back into the front room by the sound of the front door opening and closing.

"Dipper?"

"Yeah, it's me." He muttered as he shuffled ten or twelve envelopes in his hands, plucking important items from the mass and eventually discarding the chaff. He spent a few minutes browsing the remainder. "Mm, can you remind me to call the power guys and shut it off?"

"Already did that for you." Pacifica answered quietly before slipping back into the bedroom.

"Oh? Hmm, okay. Can you remind me to call the internet guys so they can—?"

"Did that too."

"Really? Is there something you missed?" He asked with a smirk.

"Nope. I'm totally ready to get up out of here."

"I can see that." Dipper mused, scanning the room and seeing that, at the very least, another seven full boxes had been packed and added to the collective. She'd already filled the utility closet and now the living room was stuffed with their combined property.

"Did we get anything in the mail besides junk or bills?"

"Hmm." He shuffled through the few items left to him once more. "Nope."

"Nope? Wait, wait. Nope?"

Pacifica returned a moment later with an incredulous expression, peering at Dipper as he fiddled with the envelopes in his hands. His gaze was deliberately diverted from her, and the edges of his mouth were tightened slightly, as though he were hiding something. She smirked then.

"Oh, okay. Well if there's nothing else." Pacifica answered with a shrug as she turned around, sashaying a bit as she strolled into the kitchen. "Then I'll just have to cancel the celebratory sex."

"Aww, what? There was gonna' be celebratory sex?" Dipper followed her, disappointed. "How long was there gonna' be sex?"

"Hmm, a couple weeks, I guess. I was thinking we could finally break in the counters here." She teased, wiggling her hips and showing off her backside as she leaned over the surface, facing away from him. "But, since you haven't done anything reward-worthy…"

He watched a moment from across the room as her body swayed. It reminded him of their first summer, bringing to mind the image of her naked body in the mirror as he took her from behind. With a sigh, and an instantly thought-hampering hard-on, Dipper conceded to her "point".

"Alright, alright, you win. I have one other thing."

She turned and smiled, a sincere grin that made him smile right back before he dipped into his worn out courier bag, tossed casually to the floor by the entrance like every day for the past five years they'd lived in the apartment. Moments later, he procured a large yellow envelope, already previously opened and handed it over when Pacifica clapped her hands and crossed the room. It took all of a second for her to empty the contents: a satisfying endeavor for her, given her long anticipation of this day. The papers within were verbose, to say the least, but as Dipper watched her eyes dart end to end like lightning he knew it wouldn't be long before-

"'Masters in Physics, Congratulations Dipper Pines.' Yes!" she nearly shouted as she threw her arms around his neck and pulled him tight. The papers she held poked him gently in the ear, but Dipper couldn't help but smile; today was a good day.

"Congratulations indeed, Mr. Pines." Pacifica said, kissing his cheek and releasing him. She stopped to look back at the paper though. "Wait… you didn't give the college your real name?"

"Meh." was all he could say, although he did add a shrug and a smirk for good measure.

"Oh come on… you aren't going to write 'Dipper Pines' on your job applications are you? I love your real name."

"You never even use my real name!" He answered with a chuckle.

"I do too, like when… huh… shut up!"

She laughed too, reaching in close to pinch his ribs and nudge his shoulder in defiance. He reflexively backed away, still chuckling lightly until he hit the edge of the bulky, faded, squishy sofa that rest behind him, set within a sprawl of carboard boxes. Tilting back over it, Dipper gripped Pacifica by the forearms and tugged her down on top of him. Far from an accident, his lips waited patiently for hers, and it wasn't long before he was gently kissing her while his hands roamed under the back of Pacifica's sweat shirt. She smiled while their lips graced each other's, though she eventually broke the kiss to sit back and start pulling off the baggy green impediment. Only a black sports bra lay beneath, the last line between Dipper and her breasts. That did not last long either.

Bill watched the proceeding with utter disinterest as it escalated ever further, the sounds of young love and young, eager sex diffusing into the nightmare void as he did. Preston, for his part, only looked mortified, although there may also have been a mote or two of shame or disgust. This served much better to capture Bill's eye, and he turned to his prisoner with impish glee.

"What's wrong, buddy? Don't like the show? Oh come on, I know what you're into." Bill laughed and kickstarted the prison-square about a flick of his cane, spinning Preston within for what felt to be a thousand instant revolutions. When he finally stopped, he had the picture perfect look of bitter, green sick.

"Don't make that face, you creep. Pervy, pervy Preston. Heh, hey hey! I have an idea! A great idea!" Bill nearly screamed as he jabbed Preston in the chest with his finger, poking right through the physical barrier of the space the man was sealed in but allowing no egress. "Yeah! I know what'll make you feel better! Let's see what happens in another universe!"

Bill spun his cane again, twisting the ring of light that now displayed Pacifica sprawled on the floor, her face lost in a look of ecstatic highs. The image was replaced with another, a vague mix of light colors on one side and darks on the other. The demon snapped his fingers, and the ring divided into two, allowing the mixed images to be still and reveal the view of another world. To the right, distilling from the brighter colors, Preston watched with dreaded anticipation as Pacifica was revealed; she was dressed well, better than that drab sweat shirt she was wearing in that dirty apartment. She looked to be walking with an entourage of official looking men and women, and as the image sharpened, Preston was briefly relieved to see the dress code was easily corporate formal; they walked along the perimeter of a large, fancy sky scraper before she and the five people with her stepped through the sliding, plate glass doors. In this timeline, it seems, Pacifica had chosen better for herself.

To the left, the dark colors coalesced… the boy was revealed, working tiredly into the night on some incomprehensible project. Stacks of mindlessly difficult texts on physics were piled up on either side of the computer he sat in front of, and after a few minutes of relentless typing, Dipper leaned back to stretch his aching spine, glancing off to the side as someone from beyond the field of view tossed him one kind of energy drink or another, which the Pines boy happily cracked open and greedily drank. He looked tired and pale, but whenever he dove into his work, it seemed he didn't mind.

Dipper and Pacifica both seemed perfectly happy in this world where they weren't together. The only difference between the two visions was exactly, and only that: they weren't together.

"See that, Preston? There's a universe out there where they aren't just plowin' each other all day, making you red in the face with that dumb jealous rage you get! Yeah, you know what I'm talkin' about!"

That comment caused Northwest great grief, and with a hint of that indignant anger Bill jested about, he crossed his arms and screwed his eyes shut, growling inaudibly within his spatial confines. For his part, Bill only chuckled and continued his griefing.

"Yeah. Know what went different in that universe? Know what the one variable that gets the 'better outcome' is? It's you, Preston! You!"

The twin rings merged into one again, green lightning swirling round and round until a new image was formed. It was a short lived glimpse, but Preston, for what he saw, knew what it was showing: he himself, Preston Northwest, with all his pride and arrogance, decided for once in his life to let something that unsettled him simply take its course. It upset him, yes, that his daughter, his one and only child, would ever dally with the Pines boy… but this time, Preston opted not to interfere. They thought they were in love, but he knew, deep down, that time was the test to beat.

And in letting them have at each other, his daughter and the boy, Preston was proven right in his belief. Time, without the pressure of Preston trying to tear them apart, inevitably, irreversibly, forced them apart. Because in the end, without a reason like Preston Northwest, or Bill Cipher, or traveling to the distant future to take what you want and save the person you love, Dipper Pines and Pacifica Northwest eventually came to the understanding that they were two different people with two different ideas of where they wanted to be.

And this was a most bitter elixir to drink.

"Your sin is your arrogance, Preston Northwest." Bill uttered with incomparable venom. "Such hubris to think you could just take what you want… you sold me your soul, your future, and all your dreams, thinking you could take and take from the world. It's your fault you're here, in more ways than one."

He dashed the scrying circle to the background and banished the alternative world view with a frustrated grunt. A moment later, Bill loomed large in front of Preston's view, perhaps no longer interested in entertaining him, possibly eager to terrify his prisoner, but either way, Bill was simply done with him.

"Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit a fall!"

The square that Preston was trapped within shattered, and he was lost within those shards as they drifted idly in the void for the seconds that followed before a hole opened in the pitch black. It was in fact not a hole, but the toothy maw of some god forsaken thing that swam through the inky space it appeared in like water. He saw it from inside one of the shards that he was still somehow bound within, that mass of doom appearing in the scattered vision of his left eye while its associated sliver of space spun haphazardly, and in the moment before the cosmic horror was swallowing the drifting bits all in one nasty gulp, Preston Northwest screamed out a loud, less than mute scream. It was cut short by the sickly snap of the perfectly round mouth of the tentacled monstrosity, which in turn disappeared from view as quickly as it appeared.

Bill sighed happily and leaned back as if sitting in an easy chair that never was. With that done, his work for the evening, morning, or whatever it may be was finished. Maybe he'd drop a line to Discord or Kyubey and see what they were doing with their immortality? It had been a while since he checked in on the Kyubey continuum to see what they were up to; he wondered how their Karmic Law experiment was going, in his own mischievous, mean-spirited way of wondering. Hmm… perhaps later. Bill Cipher, for the moment, was struck with an urge to check in with some more mundane "friends" just to say he was keeping an eye on them. What kind of friend wouldn't do that?

A new ring in the ether opened up, this time a vivid, smooth thing of violet that drew an unbroken, flawless circle in front of the well-hatted fiend. The space inside the viewer rippled like pond water until the called image was revealed in full: a suburban living room furnished with excellent taste, a far wall decorated with a number of framed college degrees, a side table with a candid photograph of Dipper and Pacifica, faces pressed together at the cheek looking at a camera that one or the other held in front of them. The sensor panned away from the faintly lit living room toward the dining room, which, besides being well-lit in comparison, was also occupied. Sitting across from each other, sharing coffee and a laugh, were a Dipper and Pacifica perhaps a few years older than when Bill had showed them previously. Bill would never acknowledge the fact, but here and now they were much happier.

He didn't care to listen at first, and perhaps he already knew what they would be talking about. The situation suggested they were relating the day's happenings over refreshments. Their exchange was broken though; Dipper, quick as lightning, turned his head about and instinctively rose to his feet. He wore a look of concern. This was a part Bill was sure he wanted to hear: this was a new episode, after all. Who knows what'll happen next?

"Sit, sit." Pacifica said softly, standing slowly and sashaying around the table until she was next to Dipper. She kissed him gently and nudged him back to his seat before leaving the table and strolling to the hall.

She followed the hallway to the source of the sound that had disturbed their conversation, but conveniently gone quiet, guided by the soft glow of LED night lights that occupied a couple of sockets along the way. Pacifica smiled as she thought about how much she loved designing her house, furnishings and all. She had decided, for instance, that she was tired of darkness, and adding a soft glow to her life was overdue. Dipper had once told her that while that was poetic, it was also a bit a silly. Pfft! He was a bit silly!

Bill's scrying field followed Pacifica while she walked, and he paid closer attention when she stopped in her tracks and searched the air behind her. Her face, it was plain to see, had the look of someone who felt like they were being followed. Rightly so, Bill thought, but she could never see the sensor. She was distracted again by a faint whimper and a tiny cry, so she abandoned her search for the unseen watcher and instead turned her attention to a nearby door. With a flick of the wrist, Pacifica opened the door and quietly slipped inside the nursery.

In three steps, Pacifica Pines was leaning silently over the side of her daughter's crib, looking down at the infant as she stirred from her slumber and began to cry. Shushing her softly while she picked the pink-pajamaed infant up from her bedding, Pacifica held her child close and rocked her back and forth. The young woman spent maybe ten minutes running through her "the-baby-is-crying" mental check list, and after finding all was otherwise well, concluded she was spooked by a noise outside the window. The news did say a storm front was going to be blowing in. Checking the window, finding it locked and secure, Pacifica allayed any errant fears of intruders or damages before her daughter started to cry a little more.

"Shh, shh, shh, sweetie, it's okay…" Pacifica whispered sweetly, taking her child back toward the crib, pausing to cradle her and swaying back and forth. This soothed the crying baby a bit, but only a bit. "It's okay, Gracie, shh. How about a lullaby, hmm?"

Pacifica rocked Gracie back and forth in her arms a moment, smiling and calling to mind the nursery rhyme she'd taken a liking to during her time with Dipper. She smothered the laugh that came to heart whenever she remembered him performing the little dance that came with it.

"Well who wants a lamby, lamby, lamby…? I do! I do!"

Her voice lilted gracefully, and almost immediately the child ceased to cry and was caught in rapt attention.

"So go up and greet your mammy, mammy, mammy… Hi there! Hi there!"

Pacifica planted a tiny kiss on Gracie's forehead.

"So march, march, march around the daisies…"

Satisfied that Gracie was satisfied, and very quiet now, Pacifica slowly returned the sleepy baby to her crib, stroked her cheek while her tiny eyes drifted shut, and slipped silently back to the door…

"Don't, don't, don't you forget about the ba-aby."

And she pulled the door shut, leaving the nursery tucked into the colorful glow Gracie's color-wheel night light and the gentle blanket of the peaceful night.

The End.

Thank you for reading.