Bill awoke to darkness, first; then there was cold, seeming to envelope his entire body, sending him into a succession of involuntary racking spasms that shook him like a particularly savage dog for several eternal moments, then left him both slack-limbed and utterly perplexed. It was only when two more such convulsions struck him, subsiding each time for a few precious minutes, that Bill realized he was shivering. He had never had cause to do that before—he had never been cold before—and he didn't think that he much cared for it.
Humans, he recalled distantly, raised their core temperature in a really quite creative variety of ways: catching and killing animals in order to wear their skins—that was right out, of course; not that Bill harbored any notable fellow feeling for all creatures cute and furry, but rather he felt so drained, so damn dead-dog-tired, that the very act of continuing to draw breath after breath after breath was beginning to seem somewhat greater of an undertaking than it was necessarily worth. The cost-benefit analysis—and oh, God, he was starting to sound like the twins' nutty grand-uncle—ticking calmly away in the back of his mind was not producing encouraging results. So, butchering his own fur coat, while it would be hilarious, was absolutely not on the table.
They also built fires, he remembered. He glanced around for a couple of sticks to rub vigorously together—at which his knowledge of building fires both began and ended—but, this being a pine forest, he was not exactly thrilled by an abundance of choice. Experimentally, he snapped his fingers, a gesture that, in this context, would normally conjure up a handful of blue flames.
Nothing happened.
He tried again, this time with his non-dominant right hand. He was sullenly unsurprised to find that nothing continued to happen.
Bill sighed heavily, then gasped as white-hot agony slid between his ribs like a knife. He doubled up around his midsection, then flung himself back again with a cry, so suddenly and with such violence that he cracked the back of his head on the cold ground. He didn't just see stars; he saw constellations, the births and deaths of entire galaxies, each occurring simultaneously in a flash as well as over an eternity beyond even his comprehension, whirling around his all-too-human head as he fell backwards into the frigid dirt, reeling mentally as well as physically.
Why had he ever wanted to be human, again? Bill exhaled, shakily. If this was how Dipper felt all the time, then it was no wonder the kid was a goddamn basketcase. Just getting up in the morning without breaking something felt to Bill like it had to be a minor miracle, or at least an act of serious heroism. The kid could be forgiven his (many, many) neuroses.
Cautiously, Bill laid the impossible weight of his aching head down onto something icy and unyielding—probably just frozen earth, but maybe the ancient bedrock of existence, for all he knew (or cared). His thoughts felt like shards of glass tumbling in a wet cardboard box. Although he was breathing shallowly, through his mouth, every breath raked across the raw flesh of his throat, rasping like sandpaper; each inhale tasted like metal shavings, and every exhale brought up blood from a shredded lung.
He wasn't sure what would happen if he tried to teleport in this tattered condition, and he rather doubted he had the strength for an attempt anyway. Bill barely felt capable of closing his eyes. He resolved that, if by some completely undeserved miracle he made it to see a shiny new day, he'd try to be nicer to the kids: being mortal was a hell of a gig.
"Bill's hurt," Dipper announced without preamble.
Mabel looked up from her magazine. It was the steamy July issue of Boyz Kray-Z, and she'd been studying the ginger centerfold with a degree of intense interest rather more prurient than one might feel comfortable associating with a twelve-year-old girl. "What? But I thought you said he'd probably skipped the dimension altogether." She glanced at Dot, drifting beside her in air; the little demon just shrugged. "How do you know?" Mabel asked.
Dipper hesitated, then replied, sounding bewildered, "I … I really don't know. I just do. Know, I mean. That he's hurt. He's lost, and he's hurt, and he's scared, and—" He closed his eyes, lifting his hands to lightly touch his temples with the tips of his fingers, wincing as though stricken by a terrible migraine. The gesture looked hokey, like something that creep Gideon might pull in his fake-psychic act, but Mabel thought Dipper didn't realize he was doing it, and that worried her. "—and maybe he's dying. I have to go find him!" He raced out of the attic room, pausing only to slam the door behind him.
There was a moment's silence. Dipper's frantic footfalls ceased, then became louder again, and from outside their bedroom door he called, "At least, he thinks he's dying. He might just be being overdramatic," before thundering back down the stairs a second time.
Mabel, already on her feet and halfway across the room in pursuit, glanced back longingly for a moment at the ginger centerfold still lying open on her bed. She came back, carefully stashed the magazine between her mattress and the box spring, then took off after Dipper at a run.
They began to realize how daunting the scope of their dilemma, though, not when they had trouble finding Bill—Dipper had some kind of homing thingy in his head now, Mabel knew, judging from the vague terms and expansive gesticulation with which her brother tried to explain why they were striding with such unflinching determination in a direction that seemed random to her—but when they fell headlong into an impact crater that was, of course, completely undetectable in the dark.
Congealing at the bottom was several inches of thick, unidentifiable goo. It had streaked all across Dipper's face and splatted in Mabel's hair; in the interest of scientific inquiry, Dipper smeared a little of the mess onto his fingertips, rubbing it against the ball of his thumb in an attempt to categorize the texture. Great-Uncle Ford, he thought, would almost certainly taste it. Dipper, on the other hand, was not quite that dedicated to his studies, and anyway it stank foully. He'd probably contract some kind of horrific disease, or his lips would fall off, or something.
"Oh gosh," Mabel wailed under her breath. Dipper didn't think she was aware she was making any noise at all. "Oh gosh, oh gosh, oh gosh. Dip-dop? Dipper?" Her hands flailed out, as blind in the pitch dark as Dipper was himself, bumped against his arm, then latched on with all the panicky strength of a poor swimmer. "Dipper," she whimpered; her voice made him remember, suddenly, the countless late nights spent huddled under the old embroidered quilt, Dipper clinging to his big sister in terror of the savagery of a coastal California storm raging out their window.
Dipper wiped his fingers on his shorts, then began to stroke Mabel's hair, soothingly. "Shhh, it's okay," he murmured. "Dot'll be back for us soon—probably doesn't even realize yet that we're not right behind him—and he'll get us out. He can teleport you, easy, then you can help me … "
"Dipper," Mabel whispered, a little more strongly now. "That's the problem. I think I hurt my ankle when we fell. I don't—think it's broken, but I can't … " She trailed off as Dipper's fingers tightened spasmodically in her hair. "Ow, Dipper—"
"He did this," Dipper hissed. "Bill—he must've lied to me, like he lied to Great-Uncle Ford all those years ago, and now you're hurt—" His voice was so low and so savage that Mabel felt a twinge of fear. It was the first time she had ever felt the least bit afraid of her twin.
"Dipper," Mabel said. "Come on, stop, that's silly. I don't think our demons can lie to us … " Her brother's grip tightened again, without warning, his fingers twisting sharply. More shocked than actually hurt, Mabel gasped, "Dipper, you're hurting me—"
Naturally, it was then that Dot came swooping erratically at them from out of the dark, calling Mabel's name in a shrill tone that suggested his mental state was somewhere just barely to the left of outright panic. He obviously hadn't overheard the entirety of their conversation; nonetheless, he did not hesitate in snatching Mabel from Dipper's grasp, leaving the boy on his hands and knees in the foul black muck.
"I'm sorry," he was crying, over and over. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry." But Dot didn't come back, and after a time, Dipper scrubbed his gooey hands across his streaming eyes and set slowly and laboriously about hauling himself out of the crater, at a loss for alternatives. Sitting around and crying about it, while undeniably cathartic, seemed a waste of both energy and resources. He just hoped Dot had taken Mabel back to the Shack, and that Grunkle Stan had taken her to the hospital without asking too many (inherently unanswerable) questions.
At length, it began to rain.
