A/N: I would like to apologize in advance for this chapter and point out that altairattorney should get 50% of the blame.
"Eew, stop that! It's giving me the creeps!"
Bill laughed at Keyhole's protest, and made his eye roll back into the socket one more time just for the heck of it. "Turns out I can see through anything that's my same shape, not matter where in the multiverse! Like a peephole or something," he said. He hadn't quite gained unlimited knowledge, though he knew a lot of things, but now he had the means to gain it, or at least to get close: all he had to do was watch and-
"WHOA!"
"Watch out!"
There was a cry and then a crashing sound, a couple of curses and further sound of breaking glass. There had been a lot of windows in there - they had taken residence in the remains of the Hall for time being, as people out there kept running in circles and crying for their old boring life - but there weren't many left now: Kryptos and Hectorgon's attempts at flying had taken care of those left intact by Bill's attack.
"You know, guys, I learned how to do that in moments," Bill pointed out, sitting back on what had been the Chief Circle's bench. "And took on Time Baby."
"Hey, you are still trying to figure your powers out, too," Hectorgon pointed out, getting back on his feet - which was to say, hovering slightly above the ground. "And besides, I was going just fine. He hit me."
"Oh, shut up. Let me try… wait, wait, I think I got the hang of it!" Kryptos exclaimed, and hovered a few feet from the ground as well. "Whoa. I mean… whoa."
That was kind of cute, Bill thought: the power he had given them was little to nothing compared to what he held, but they seemed elated anyway - especially Kryptos. "You're welcome," he said with a shrug, then rose up in the air. "How 'bout a race? All the way to… uh…" Bill paused, and turned to give a quick glance outside to look for a landmark of some kind. Hard to find any: most of the buildings were just rubble by now.
The streets were pretty much empty, because of course the citizens were all cowering somewhere. Bill had decided not to bother trying to get them to come out or even to make contact again: sure, he ruled that world now, but it wasn't like he was interested in ruling . As far as he was concerned, no law was needed: let the lot of them learn to enjoy his new world, or cower in their old one.
Some had already joined the party, especially the ones who had come out of the old prison whose remains were still burning in the distance. It was on it that Bill's gaze eventually fell.
"Race ya to the prison - big fire on the right," he finally said, and sped off without another word.
"Hey!"
"Wait! You got a head start!"
"What were you expecting , suckers?" Bill called back with a laugh, and just sped up. Those two had no hope to keep up with him anyway, so it wasn't like he needed to cheat, but hey - why not?
He made it to the ruins when they were still barely halfway through, and realized they weren't quite as empty as he had expected: Pyronica wasn't too far away, digging up something from a pile of rubble that must have been part of the Irregular Hospital - right next to the prison, to remind Irregulars what their place was. Bill immediately hovered down behind her and peered over her shoulder.
"Watcha doin'? Whoa, watch out with that thing!" he protested as soon as Pyronica turned, very nearly taking out his eye with one of her horns. Bill was sure he could regenerate it, but he'd sooner spare himself the trouble. "Only got one eye her- okay, what's that?"
Pyronica gave him a wide grin, lifting up what she had found. It looked like a bunch of very small squares fused together, each of them with its own eye, but with only one set of arms and legs. All of its eyes were blinking blearily, clearly trying to clear out the dust. "No idea, but it's cute! I found it under the rabble. Can we keep it?"
Bill shrugged. "Can't see why not," he said, and peered closer at the… thing. "So, what are you, amorphous… thing?"
The response he got was a garbled mess, and caused Pyronica to frown in confusion. Bill, on the other hand, could understand pretty well.
We are too many for only one name .
"Ooh, gotcha! So what, did the lot of you fuse together for the heat of the fire, or what?"
Another garbled response only Bill understood. It wasn't one he liked.
"... Wait, an experiment? They used pieces of executed Irregulars to make you?"
"They did that a lot. I found out in prison."
Bill turned back to see that Kryptos had reached them and was hovering a few feet away from him, his mouth set in a tight line. Further back, Hectorgon was trying - without much success - to catch his breath after the race.
"What were they even trying to do?" Bill asked, but deep down he didn't really care about their reasons: all he could think of right then was Liam, all he could do was wonder whether his body had been used for something like it, too.
Kryptos shrugged, and turned to glance at the remains of the prison where he had languished for the seven years Bill had spent in the Infinetentiary. "Guess they were trying to figure out how to give people extra sides with better chances of success. Or how to fix Irregulars."
Fix them, of course. There was a lot of talk about fixing Irregulars. Bill remembered Liam talking about that from time to time, how he had hoped some way to fix him may be found before the Inspection came for him. He had always shrugged those words off, certain as he was that no one could possibly be stupid enough to think Liam was anywhere near expendable.
Still worried for that dumb Inspection? Don't be a chicken. You'll be fine. When they see how smart you are, you being a freak won't matter anymore .
But Liam was smart! Real smart! He could have-
He could nothing, his father had said then. But it had been a lie. He could have done a lot. He could have done anything . He could have changed that wretched world, and he surely would have been a lot nicer about it than Bill could possibly bother to be.
He scowled, and his eye fell back on the amorphous shape that apparently had no other name than just that - Amorphous Shape. He snapped his fingers, and a faint white glow appeared around it.
"Okay, you guys… it is guys , isn't it? Lots of you in there. Okay, great. So, you guys are in. Congrats. You can fly now. Practice with the other newbies here," he added, and turned to hover away.
Suddenly, he didn't even feel like boasting for beating Kryptos and Hectorgon in the race. He could use being on his own for a bit. Unfortunately, Pyronica wasn't especially perceptive when it came to personal space, and she followed him.
"Hey, Bill. A dime for your thoughts?" she asked, coming to talk beside him. Bill didn't turn, but he did give a small laugh.
"Gotta pay more than that for those , Ronnie."
"Aww, c'mon! Don't I get a friend discount?" she asked, giving his side a nudge. Not too long ago, that would have been enough to make him topple over. Now it didn't even change the trajectory of his hovering.
"Nope. Shouldn't you be off to find the people I listed to you guys, anyway?"
"Hey, I was looking. Then I found Amorphous Shape."
"So go back looking."
She rolled her eye. "You really are no fun today. So, what's crawled in your eye and died there? I mean, c'mon," she insisted, and reached to grab him and spin him around so he'd face her. Honestly, anyone other than her trying to do that right in that moment would have been blasted a couple of galaxies away. "You should be happy! Look at this world! You made it all better!"
Somewhere in the distance, there was an explosion. Screams followed.
"... Well. 'Better' is relative anyway. You made it a lot more fun! Me and the guys are loving it. I thought you were, too. We're free to do anything we want, with no dumb law to follow anymore! And it's all because you were smarter than Time Baby!"
Fine, that did help some. "Not too difficult, that," Bill said, but didn't really try to keep some smugness out of his voice. Pyronica's grin widened.
"Yeah, but still! You could have used the Time Wish all for yourself, and didn't," she said. Bill frowned a bit, wondering exactly which part of gaining immense power and near-omnividence did not figure as using the Time Wish for himself, but what she said next was enough to shut down any thought for several moments. "I mean, you could have used it to bring back your brother, and instead you used it to change a whole dimension!"
… What?
Bill's sudden, stunned silence caused Pyronica to blink. "Bill? Are you okay?"
You could have used it to bring back your brother.
"I…" Bill began, but he found himself unable to say anything. The colors in the sky swirled, filling his vision. All of a sudden, his eye hurt like the first time he had seen color. All of a sudden, his everything hurt.
I always wished I could see the colors .
He never had. He never had because he was gone.
Could have used it to bring back your brother .
But he hadn't. He hadn't because the thought hadn't occurred to him until now, he hadn't because he hadn't even thought about it .
"Bill, what's-"
"Go away."
"But-"
"GO AWAY!"
Of the several things that happened all at once - his body turning black and his eye red, blue flame sprouting from his hands, the sky above them turning blood-red, his own voice loud as thunder, Pyronica turning around and bolting off - Bill was truly aware of nothing but the sudden ache somewhere in his center.
He hadn't even thought about it.
Thousands had died in the chaos and anarchy that had followed Bill's takeover. Thousands more, including Bill Cipher's birth family, died when the sky turned black and meteors rained down.
He knew. He didn't care.
The one family he'd had was gone, and he'd missed his chance to bring him back.
… Or had he?
The stretch of land where the Second Dimension's weak spot was hadn't remained unschathed: the meteor shower had struck there, too, destroying what was left of the low stone construction that had stood there. But it didn't matter at all, because that was nothing but a marker and Bill knew where it was.
It was the way out of that dimension, but it was also the way through the fabric of time. Now that he knew how to use it - now that he knew how to open a passage, and had the power to do so - he could go wherever andwhenever he wished. It was so simple he could hardly believe he hadn't thought about it before: he would go back in time and ensure that Liam never died. He would snatch him from the executioners' angles and take him into his future - a better future, where no stupid law would make him an outcast for something as minor as mismatching sides. A world where freaks were in control and he could have anything he wanted by just wishing for it.
Bill would give him knowledge to match his own, of course, because he was sure Liam would love that. He would see all the colors ever imagined and more . They would leave behind that dump of a world and travel through all ten thousand dimensions, and liberate them as well. They would be unstoppable, all-powerful, all-knowing and eternal, and no one - no one - would ever look down to them again.
He just needed to open up the portal, punch his way through that one weak spot in reality, and reach for what he wanted. It was easy. It should have been easy.
It was not.
Bill tried. Bill raged. Bill attempted time and time again to force his way through, but it was all for naught. The opening, be it through reality or through time, refused to open.
"NO! WHY?"
He knew the reason why the moment he asked, because his eye rolled back and he could see what Time Baby had done. He could see what he had accomplished, stretching his powers to their very limit to ensure that the weak spot - the only way out of the Second Dimension - would be a weak spot no more.
IMMENSE KNOWLEDGE, AND YOU ARE STILL A FOOL. YOU HAVE CHOSEN YOUR NEXT PRISON, BILL CIPHER.
The shriek of fury that followed was heard across the dimension, drowning out even the crack of thunder and the deep rumble as the ground beneath him split. Something within Bill's mind - something that was already heavily damaged, like an angle distorted by too many blows - cracked further, ready to shatter for good.
"... He wouldn't kill us , would he?"
8 Ball's question was met with a pretty grim silence. The bunch of them was sitting in the remains of an old building, some distance away from the General Assembly Hall, where Bill still dwelled. It looked like Time Baby had done something to keep them trapped there, but they hadn't really caught many more details, because none of them really dared to ask Bill a question while he was throwing a full-blown tantrum.
Truth be told, none of them felt safe even being anywhere near him - which was why they had been steering clear for… how long had it been again? A week? Something like that. And, if the thunders and earthquakes and tornadoes that shook the world were of any indication, Bill hadn't calmed down at all.
"Wouldn't risk going there, just in case," Pyronica finally spoke, and turned to glance at Kryptos. That made him a bit nervous, though he tried to hide it. He was kind of a newcomer - second last to join in, if one counted Amorphous Shape - and definitely less of a hardened criminal than any of them. Hectorgon and Keyhole were alright, and so was Teeth if he didn't count the fact he chewed just about anything, but the others were all pretty intimidating. 8 Ball was just plain scary, Paci-Fire kept muttering about millions he had slaughtered on moons, Pyronica was literally on fire, Xanthar was… well, Xanthar. Plus, Amorphous Shape was seriously creepy.
Not the kind of company he had thought he would keep one day, but then again nothing had really gone according to any plan he may have had before being arrested.
"Say, do you think he's gonna calm down at some point?" Pyronica was asking. "You've known him even longer than us."
"Not really," Kryptos muttered, looking down. "As in, I knew him before, but I'd known him for a little less than three years before he disappeared and I was arrested. Only saw him again when he came back and you guys broke me out of prison, so you've spent more time with him, really. And when I knew him, he wasn't some kind of all-powerful… whatever he is ."
Hectorgon sighed. "I wonder why he even cares so much about leaving this dimension. I mean, it's ours . A whole dimension! If he just were a bit more reasonable… what?" he asked, trailing off when Kryptos gave a sudden laugh.
"Do yourself a favor and do not use that word in front of Bill," he said. "Or else you can be reasonably sure he'll blast you into smithereens."
"... Duly noted."
"Okay, but really, for how long is he gonna pout over this? Because-" Teeth began, only to trail off when Amorphous Shake spoke. Its voice was a garbled mess, but Kryptos had had some practice and was beginning to understand most of it.
There are armed people . Behind that wall.
Kryptos nodded, his mouth suddenly dry, and spoke in a low voice. "Guys? We have company," he said, trying not to move his mouth too much. That was one of the pains of having it separated from his eye: everyone could see he was speaking.
To their credit, the others didn't even look around and kept acting normal - so normal, that, for a moment before Paci-Fire spoke, Kryptos thought he had spoken in a too low voice and had not been heard.
"Where?" was all he asked.
"Behind the wall on our left."
"How many?"
"Does it matter?" 8 Ball grunted. "Flatties are short work. 'Ronica?"
"Way ahead of you!" Pyronica exclaimed, and next thing Kryptos knew was that she had launched fire against the wall in question, causing it to explode and a whole bunch of Triangles, Squares and a couple of Hexagons to be thrown back. Xanthar charged the next moment, trampling most of them, so truth be told there weren't many left for them to trounce, much to Paci-Fire's chagrin.
However, Kryptos hardly paid attention, because the moment he rose up in the air he noticed something else. Someone else, someone he knew - a rather old Triangle with a limp, trying to get away quickly from what had been his hiding place behind a pile of rubble.
Oh no, you don't .
The Triangle let out a cry when Kryptos landed right before him, causing him to suddenly stop and stumble back. He landed hard on his lower side and tried to scoot back, but another bunch of rubble stopped him almost right away. He looked up, eye widened, just as Kryptos' shadow fell over him.
"Hi, Randall. Long time no see. Seven years, give or take a few weeks."
Randall's eye twitched from place to place for a few moments, as though he was trying to find an escape route, but he was trapped in a corner and he knew it. He finally looked up at him, his surface now a pale orange.
"Kryptos, you need to listen to me. This has to stop. This is folly, and-"
"Oh, you still remember my name. Nice. Thought you'd forgotten. Tad is dead, by the way. So is Pentos. Thanks for asking. What about C-C-Croatoan?"
"I… I don't know. I lost sight of him when we had to split to go into hiding. He might be dead - thousands have died, hundreds thousand. Maybe millions, Circles know-"
"Circles knew nothing ," Kryptos cut him off, hands balled into tight fists. "Bill's the one with answers."
"Bill is insane! He's destroying our world! You can't seriously-"
"HE TOOK ME OUT OF THE PRISON WHERE YOU HAD LEFT ME TO ROT !" Kryptos screamed, taking another step forward. Randall recoiled, then he seemed to brace himself and scowled.
"We had no power get you out of there! There was nothing I could have done!"
Kryptos snorted. "Not willing to risk it, huh? Bill was right. You are a coward. And you grow a spine now , to go against the one who's liberated this hellhole?"
"Bill is worse than even the Circles ever were!"
"Then you're gonna tell him that in person, because he'd like to have a chat with you, you know. Told us to get you to him if we found you or C-C-Croatoan. Good thing you just ran into us, huh?" Kryptos said, and reached to grasp him and pull him up. Old as he was, Randall could hardly put up any resistance. "Who knows, maybe seeing you will brighten his mood."
"Kryptos, please-"
"You should have listened to him when you could have," Kryptos cut him off. "Tad, too. He was wrong. You were wrong ."
"If he thinks he's gonna keep me in here forever, he's so wrong !"
A blast of blue fire underlined his last word, shattering yet another column. There weren't many left and that normally would have caused the whole structure to collapse. Which was to say, if the laws of physics still meant something. As it happened, they didn't - no more than they applied to him. He should have been tired, after so much screaming and blasting anything within his sight out of existence, but of course he wasn't: energy did not get tired. Energy did not need rest - it was restless by definition.
Bill hadn't expected to find a downside to his Time Wish. He hadn't expected that dumb baby to lock him in, either. For an all-seeing being, that had been one aggravating lack of foresight. Time Baby must be laughing himself into hysteria over it, Bill thought darkly, and obliterated another wall.
Maybe he should start using it more, he thought, glancing at his hands. He'd been having so much fun wreaking havoc on his dimension that he had neglected the fact he could see anything , peer into other dimensions and alternate realities alike. He probably had powers he wasn't even aware of yet - and really, he might just see his way out of there.
… How about a quick look into a reality where he could go back in time and get Liam there, safe and sound? It was well within his power. Just a tiny peek before he got serious about it and found a way to make it happen in that reality as well?
Well, why not? He hadn't seen him in a long time. It couldn't hurt, Bill decided, and let his eye roll back in its socket, opening his other eye.
It could hurt, and it did.
But not for long.
"Bill, what is… this is… how… what have you done?"
"I liberated this place, Brainiac, that's what. No rules! No Circles! Told ya you bein' a freak wouldn't matter anymore! No need to thank me. Here, have a-"
"Are you insane? This is complete madness!"
"Yeah, but it's not too bad. This world sucked anyway, so hey. Here you are again in a better one. A fun one. Stop being a stick in the mood and let me show you-"
"You must stop this! Are you out of your mind?"
"Sheesh, you're welcome, Brainiac. Nice to see you too. How 'bout thanking me for saving your life and- Hey! Hey! Let go!"
"You must stop this! People are dying, Bill!"
"So what? People were dying before, too. Heck, you would have died if I hadn't come ba-"
"YOU'RE CRAZY! What's gotten into you?"
"Wha- what's gotten into you, you mean! Let me go - don't think I'd go easy on you just 'cause you're my broth- whoa!"
"I am not!"
Wait, what?
"Liam-"
"I don't know who or what you are, I don't know what you've done to Billy, but I know this is not my brother's doing! It can't be! You can't be who you claim you are!"
"Oh, knock it off! Of course it's me! Just improved - not some little kid anymore. All-knowing! All-seeing! All-powerful! You can be, too! I thought you were the smart guy. Just join up. I mean, look! You wanted to see the colors? Here they are! You can see the Third Dimension, too, and a lot more! There are thousands of dimensions, and we can visit them all!"
"You're insane."
"Yeah, we've established that. Insane enough to come back in time to save your angle, though, so don't complain-"
"If this is what awaits, you should have let them execute me!"
"... What? Are you SERIOUS? I did the IMPOSSIBLE to bring you back! You have no idea what I've been through! I saved your sorry angle and THIS is what I get? You won't even waste your breath to at least THANK me?"
"Thank you for what? For destroying our dimension? For killing… how many people have died, Bill?"
"Who cares? You can't go for checkmate without sacrificing some pawns - and said pawns would have left you to die for being a freak without a second thought! They already did!"
"I'd have preferred to die without seeing any of this! I'd have preferred to go without knowing what kind of monster you'd become!"
A scowl, a sudden sense of heat behind his eye. Bill ignores it. He will regret doing so.
"Look, now you're startin to get on my-"
"I would have never left any of my books behind if I had known this would happen! This should not have happened!"
"Shut up."
"YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED!"
"I SAID SHUT UP!"
His anger explodes, and the rising heat behind his eye turns into a beam that gives Liam no time to speak, no time to move, no time to scream. When the light fades, only a moment later, there is nothing left.
A moment of stunned silence follows, and then it is Bill to scream, his voice echoing through the multiverse.
"No! No no no no NO! Come back! I didn't mean to! I DIDN'T MEAN TO!"
Bill's eye snapped open, pupil blown wide. Something in his mind, something that was cracked and fragile and barely holding up, shattered beyond repair.
I didn't mean to!
It was too much. It hurt. He wanted it to stop. He wanted it gone .
The all-seeing eye chose not to see. The all-knowing entity chose not to know.
Bill Cipher chose to forget.
Somehow, the blue flames burning away any memory he held of Liam felt cold.
Kryptos wasn't sure whether the eerie silence that greeted them was a good sign or not.
Granted, there were no more thunders, the earthquakes had stopped and the tornadoes vanished - pretty much all at once. So, that had to mean Bill wasn't so mad anymore, right?
"Who's gonna go in first?" Teeth asked. The way he hid behind 8 Ball made it pretty obvious he wasn't gonna volunteer. Kryptos sighed.
"I am, I guess," he muttered, and took a step towards what remained of the General Assembly Hall. "Er… hey, Bill?"
"Kryptos, please!" Randall spoke up, trying with no success at all to break free from Paci-Fire's grasp. "You need to listen to me! This can't be what you want."
Kryptos scowled. "Still beats prison," he said coldly. "Take it with Bill and see if he's willing to listen-"
"HEY GUYS!"
"GAH!"
Bill landed in front of them with a crash, digging a small crater in the ground and throwing them all backwards before bouncing back in the air. He took a look at them and laughed.
"Heehe! Should have seen the look on your face! Faces. The ones who've got one or more, anyway. Was starting to wonder where you'd gone. I mean, coulda found you in snap, but still."
The collective sigh of relief was so loud Kryptos had to wonder if it was possible for it to be heard across the dimension.
"Sooo… not mad anymore?" Pyronica dared with a hopeful grin. Bill shrugged, waving his hand.
"Nah, I'm good," he said, coming to sit on one of her horns. He did that a lot, especially when they were up to something. "Can't remember why I was that mad in the first place."
"Uh, because Time Baby sealed us i- aaagh!"
As Xanthar landed on Keyhole - literally landed on him - to shut him up, Bill just shrugged, letting his legs dangle. "Sheesh, relax. It's fine. That dumb baby is a pain in the angle, but he can keep me in only physically . I have other ways to get out, and I can find ways to get someone to open the passage up for us again. Just trust me - you do trust me, don't you?"
"No."
"Nope."
"Never."
"Not in a million years."
"Hahahahahah! Well, you do learn," Bill snickered, patting Pyronica's head and reaching up to dry a tear of mirth from his eye with his other hand. "But we're gonna get out, no worries. We'll just keep partying here until then, and when we finally- whoa, whoa, wait. Is my eye playing tricks on me, or that's old Randy? Paci, put him down," he said, getting off Pyronica's horn.
Randall let out a yelp when Paci-Fire dropped the old Triangle on the ground. Randall lifted himself on his hands and knees just as Bill came to hover over him.
"Well, look at that! Lookin' good in color, old friend! Missed me?"
"Bill, you need to put a stop to all this! Please, listen to reason and-" he trailed off with a cry, and Kryptos found himself wincing. But Bill hadn't hurt him: he had just snapped his fingers, lifting him off the ground as well so that they'd be at the same eye level.
"Ha-ah! I don't do reasonable , Randy, remember?" he pointed out. The others snickered, and Randall shot Kryptos a glance that was nothing short of plea. He turned away, and the old Triangle had no choice but to plead with Bill. He may as well have saved his breath, but he still tried.
"Bill, you must know that this is insane!"
"Sure I do. I know lots of things," Bill pointed out with a dismissive wave of his hand.
"Then put a stop to it! This is worse than anything the Circles ever did! They and their peers deserved what they got, but the rest of us did nothing to deserve-"
"That's right," Bill cut him off, eye narrowing. "You did nothing. You have no idea what I went through while trying to do something for this dump of a world - and meanwhile, what have you been doing? What has everyone been doing? Nothing. You looked down and carried on. You let them have their way. Now let me have mine."
"I thought you wanted to make this world better!"
"Better, worse. Limited concepts for limited minds, old friend. And to think you read so many books! Hey, you know what happens when you gaze too long into an abyss, right?"
"The… the abyss also gazes into you?"
"Bleep! Wrong answer!" Bill exclaimed, and snapped his fingers. Randall stopped levitating and dropped on the ground with a yelp. "Nothing happens. 'Cause the abyss doesn't give a damn about you."
"You… you're not making any sense!"
"Sense is overrated, old man. A mental cage built to keep all of us put in our proper place," he added, making quote marks in the air, and began circling him. "I'm breaking that cage, Randy, even if it means breaking the minds that refuse to leave it."
Randall's confused, frightened expression turned into a scowl. He rose, and pointed a finger at Bill. "You have gone insane, you… you monster. This is nothing like the world Liam would have wanted! He would hate everything you have become!"
Oh, boy .
For a long moment, no one spoke and no one moved: everyone just froze and stared at Bill, waiting and dreading for his temper to flare up again… except that it didn't. Bill just paused in mid-air and blinked in confusion before speaking again.
"... Who the heck is Liam?"
The same, exact incredulity showed on each and every face - or whatever they had as a face. Kryptos wasn't sure what to think. Had he just forgotten about his brother? But how could it be? He used to bring him up all the time, saying that he was the smartest guy he had ever known, that he would have never known of the Third Dimension if it wasn't for him. How was that possible? Was he just toying with them, or he really didn't remember?
Randall's eye widened, and he sputtered. "What… how… no, this can't be! Liam! You can't have forgotten your-"
A beam of blinding light cut him off, and caused everyone else to yelp and back off. Kryptos shut his eye against the glare, and when he opened it again Randall stood exactly where he had been a moment before - arms raised, eye wide with terror, and entirely made of stone.
Above them, Bill shrugged. "He was getting boring, anyway. Have had enough preachin' to last me a lifetime. So, who wants to play a round of Spin The Person ?"
They all did, though Kryptos had to wonder how much of it was simply out of eagerness to please Bill and keep him in a good mood. Maybe it was a bit of both.
Bill never brought Liam up again.
None of them was stupid enough to ask.
"I mean, who would sacrifice everything they've worked for just for their dumb sibling?"
- Bill Cipher, Sock Opera.