As angry as he was at Bill for (however unwittingly) setting in motion the events that might have stolen Mabel from him forever, Dipper was not prepared for the surge of emotion he felt when he finally found the wretched remains of his demon.

Soaked to the skin, so bitterly cold that he was shivering ceaselessly, Dipper was not in any enviable condition himself; as it was, he'd been combing the forest with waning assurance for over two hours, and now he felt hollow with weariness and bleak despair, as scoured as an old bone stripped of marrow a lifetime before.

All he wanted was a moment's respite from the frigid, needling rain, and his standards for shelter had never been lower. He staggered nearly to his knees against the skeletal, spindly trunk of a dead willow, catching himself against the glass-smooth bark on bleeding palms, breathing hard. As he rested, his gaze drifted over what he took to be a dead animal; he was too exhausted even to move away, and only closed his eyes, feeling heartsick.

It was a moment before recognition burst over his mind like shrapnel, and the sick sensation sharpened to a grief so strong it stole his breath. His eyes snapped open, and now he did go down onto his knees, reaching out with shaking hands to touch the sodden black suit jacket.

"Bill?" Dipper whispered. He felt raw inside, shattered like glass. It wasn't supposed to be like this. He and Mabel had never really discussed it, not aloud, but they'd both known without needing to be told that their demons were hundreds, if not thousands, of years old—he shouldn't have lost his, not already, not before he, Dipper, had a chance to, to get married and have children and grow up … Dipper started to cry, silently, curling his hands to fists.

Then a ragged, paper-thin voice said, hoarsely, "H-hey, kid. How's … how's tricks?"

Dipper gasped, inhaling a fair amount of the rainwater now drizzling in diagonally beneath the leafless, raking branches. He sputtered, "Bill! Oh my gosh, hold on—" Dipper took off his vest, shook it out with a snap, rolled it up and wrung it out—it was still soaked, but now, at least, it was no longer dripping—and laid it carefully over the bloody ruin of Bill's broken chest. The vest looked very small, a brilliant blue against the slick black fabric, and seemed woefully inadequate, either as cover or for warmth.

"Mm," said Bill, after a moment. "Thanks, Pine Tree."

The reason that Dipper hadn't immediately recognized his demon—the bright yellow triangular head normally being a pretty considerable tip-off—was that Bill was now entirely human, head and all. Dipper's demon had high cheekbones, a narrow chin, skin the color of coffee with just a dash of cream, and curly yellow hair cropped short; his eyes were a startling, feral gold, with cat's-claw-thin vertical pupils, and they were glowing very faintly, although glazed with pain and fever-bright.

More worrisome was the blood literally, it seemed to Dipper, everywhere: there was blood on Bill's gloves, and pooled thickly enough beneath where he had curled stiffly against the trunk of the dead willow that the frozen ground wasn't absorbing it. When Bill spoke, Dipper saw blood on his teeth. Half his hair was matted with it; Dipper worried that there was a skull fracture somewhere underneath the mess, although Great-Uncle Ford had told him that head wounds bled a lot so maybe it just looked bad. There wasn't any sense borrowing trouble, his mother would have said.

Dipper chewed the inside of his cheek anxiously. It was one thing to borrow trouble, and another to assess your (many, many) problems realistically.

He'd been working toward this moment for hours, but now that it was here, he found that he had no idea what he should do. He had had the vague idea, when he'd first galloped out into the wilderness, that he and Mabel would, between them—with Dot's help, probably, if Dot would help: he and Bill didn't seem to get along very well—convey Bill home, and then they could go from there, appealing to the Grunkle twins for help. Now, by himself … Dipper had never felt more dismally aware that he was twelve years old and small for his age.

"Hey," Bill said. He coughed, cleared his throat, then snapped his fingers up at Dipper. "Come in, space cadet. You're givin' me a crick. C'mere, kid."

Dipper sat, gingerly, on the bloodied earth, wincing in spite of himself at the cold seeping through his shorts. How did Bill stand it? He was wet through—wetter, even, than Dipper himself, and Dipper felt that he'd been born soaked and would die soaked; warmth was a distant memory, glowing like a coal and oh, gosh, a fire would be so nice

Exasperated, Bill reached up, slung an arm around Dipper's shoulders, and dragged him down against him into the cold mud. Dipper closed his eyes and set his jaw, bracing himself in a kind of all-over bodily cringe … but he found that Bill's body was actually quite warm. It was, he thought, like curling up with a small portable stove, or a large (if gangly) cat.

"Oh," Dipper said, surprised. Bill grinned smugly, looking more like a cat than ever.

They sat together like that for a little while, unspeaking, Dipper cuddled against Bill's shoulder and Bill's eyes half-closed, as though he were dozing. The only sound was the ceaseless hissing whisper of the rain, rattling together the willow's fanned-out, bony branches. After a time, Dipper became aware of something warm and wet in the small of his back, and his stomach sank; he squeezed one hand between his body and Bill's to touch the spreading stain. When he raised his hand back to eye-level to examine his fingers, sick with foreboding, he saw that his assumption was correct: his fingertips were sticky with blood, and there was a long, thick smear of it across his knuckles and down his wrist.

Great-Uncle Ford would doubtless be fascinated to learn that demon blood was red, like human blood. Dipper just felt nauseated.

"Bill," Dipper whispered; his voice was barely audible over the whisper of the rain, even in his own ears. He thought again of California, of himself clinging to equally young sister as thunder rolled overhead, and his scalp prickled with apprehension and self-loathing. Was he really going to sit here, clinging to Bill just like he'd clung to Mabel all those years ago? And after Bill had saved his life, was he really going to sit here and let him die—because he, Dipper, didn't know what to do?

"Mm?"

"You're a hero," Dipper said, in a very small voice.

Bill's eyes opened at once. His pupils contracted, thin as a papercut. "Wha—?" His expression, while still undeniably feline, took on a cast of horrified panic, like a cat that, having finally caught the red dot of a laser pointer, has just discovered its white-hot cutting edge has severed its feet.

Dipper shook his head, turning his face against Bill's shoulder, trying not to breathe in the coppery scent of the blood in his hair, and trying just as hard not to feel like such a lowlife creep for taking even this incidental comfort from someone in Bill's weakened state. "I hated you," he breathed. "I hated you so much for, for always being so mean to me, for calling me names and scaring me—"

Bill said nothing. Dipper wasn't sure that he was breathing, but when he glanced at him, alarmed, he saw the yellow cats' eyes watching him, intent but utterly unreadable. Dipper released a breath he hadn't known he was holding.

"... for not being more like Dot," he finally finished. "Mabel's demon—he loves her, and she knows it, he never lets her not know it. And I always thought, why can't that be me? Why did I have to get Bill?" Dipper felt Bill flinch at that, but he went on, resolutely, "So, after the God-killer, when we couldn't find you, I figured you'd just taken off again, like you always do. I wasn't worried. I wasn't mad, even. It was all so … so normal." He bit his lip hard enough to taste blood, and hid his face once more against Bill's shoulder. He didn't want to meet those yellow eyes.

He was afraid that he'd hurt Bill, but more afraid that he hadn't.

There was perfect silence. Dipper tensed, but heard Bill breathing, and forged ahead.

"So when I realized you were hurt—"

"Pine Tree," Bill said suddenly.

Full of spent intent and bewildered by the interruption, Dipper snapped, "What?"

Bill smiled, thinly: a scimitar-smile, radiating sharpness into his voice. "Let's make a deal."

"Uh … " Dipper felt that, somewhere, he'd lost whatever advantage he had. He wondered if Bill was suffering from delusions. Blood loss and all. Did that happen to demons? "What exactly are you—?"

With that same unnerving grin, Bill shifted, wincing only slightly, in order to shove his hand rudely into Dipper's face. "Never, ever mention any of this again, and I'll stop putting spiders in your pillowcase every morning." He paused, then amended, "Make that on weekend mornings. Have to get you out of bed quick for school. S'my job."

Dipper's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "What are you … "

Bill flapped his hand. "Deal! No more feelings, no more spiders!"

Exasperated, Dipper thrust his hand impatiently into Bill's. "Fine, but—"

Dipper's hand burst into familiar blue flame, and he inhaled so sharply that he began to choke. Bill withdrew his own hand at the last moment, his expression fiercely gloating. "Hah! I knew it. You got my powers, kid. Good fuckin' luck with 'em. Bet it happened when I switched us—"

"When you what?" asked Dipper faintly. He was staring down at his hand as if it had bitten him.

"Switched us," Bill repeated simply. "Funny bit of fiddling. Never done it before, hope never to do it again—I took your place, you took mine. S'why I was gettin' the hell out of Dodge, so you wouldn't just hang around all stunned and maybe get stepped on and squashed. I was not running away." Bill sniffed, then coughed, clearing his throat thickly. "Okay? Anyway, sorry and so forth, but I figured you'd prefer it to getting reduced to a splat of blood on somebody's palm. I'm saying you were an insect, in every conceivable way, compared to that ugly bastard," Bill clarified unnecessarily.

When Dipper failed to rise to the taunt and instead just curled a little tighter against Bill's side, hugging himself, Bill began to feel uneasy.

"I didn't mean it about the spiders," he said wheedlingly. "It's spiders from now 'til the heat death of the universe, I'm afraid. And we didn't actually shake, so you can't hold me to it. Which means you can go on with your gooey feelings-sharing, if you want." He ratcheted his voice into a shrill but lethal impression of Dipper's stutter. "'Uh, uh, B-Bill, you're my, um, my hero! You, you saved my life and I l-love you even though you're not, not a huggy British jerk with a d-dumb um, um, umbrella!' That's where you left off." Bill smiled in what he clearly believed to be an encouraging manner.

Dipper said nothing.

Bill let out his breath in a small sigh, and slipped his free arm around Dipper's shoulders. The boy felt cold, and Bill's concern began slowly to rise, mercury in a thermometer held inches above boiling water. "C'mon, Pine Tree, kiddo, cheer up. You could take over the world now, if you wanted. Remake everything in your image. Your fidgety, weirdly sweaty image." If Bill expected a reaction to that—Dipper felt very sensitive about his problems with certain fluids—then he was quite disappointed. Dipper continued to say nothing, although he lifted one hand to clutch at Bill's silken lapel, like a child in the thorny grip of a nightmare clinging to his teddy.

Or to his big sister.

Oh, Mabel


Bill felt like hell.

His chest hurt, his head hurt, and the amount of energy he was spending to keep Dipper more or less warm was draining him as rapidly as a sieve: it was far more than he could afford, without his usual nigh-limitless reserves to draw on.

Little flashes of formless movement in his peripheral vision made him jumpy and paranoid; being limited to just five senses on only three dimensions was quickly driving him completely crazy, something he hadn't believed possible before now. There was blood, foul and metal-tasting, in his mouth, and blood dripping into his eyes. He kept trying to blink it away, but his right eye was almost completely useless—he had no idea what had happened to it.

(He was used to mono-vision, though, so it wasn't as much of a catastrophe as it might have been; it just hurt his already aching head to keep it screwed so tightly shut.)

And now, now, he was having to deal with the kid's little mental breakdown, or whatever the hell it was. God damn you, he thought venomously at Dipper. You little shitcake. You're not worth this. Nothing and nobody is. Go straight to Hell.

Bill felt like crawling into a black hole and pulling it in after him.

Instead, he tightened his arm around Dipper's shoulders, resisting the urge to crush the fragile collarbones. His mortal muscle mass probably wasn't up to it, anyway, although it was a nice fantasy. "Hey. Hey, kiddo. Pine Tree. Listen to me," you little asshole, he added mentally. Onward. Forward momentum, so he wouldn't fall flat on his face. "Look, it's not the end of the world—"

"But it is!" Dipper cried. Bill drew back, surprised to find the kid crying like … well, like a little kid, he supposed. "It is the end of the world! I'm never getting Mabel back now, because I'm, I'm a demon—"

"Wait," said Bill. "No. There's some serious misinformation here." He paused to cough; it left a bitter taste at the back of his tongue, different from the taste of blood, and somehow worse. Onward.

"You're not a demon. You gotta be—well, we're not born, exactly—we've got parental types, sure, but—" Don't get bogged down in little details, Cipher. He'll never understand them. Go! "Demons are beings of pure energy," he went on, doggedly. "It's why we've gotta bond with human beings, to get a physical form. Um. Not quite this physical," Bill amended, nervous about that bitter taste. "I don't think, anyway. I'm gonna wring Duane's birdy neck if this kind of shit is what we're really all working toward."

"Duane?" Dipper raised his head a little, beginning gradually to be coaxed from his miserable huddle by curiosity.

Bingo, thought Bill. "Not important," he said airily. "Pan-dimensional being in charge of special forces. Assigns demons to humans, uhh … runs the complaint department." Bill frowned, remembering a certain searing session after he'd found out the catch about guarding Dipper Pines. "Communicates through owls," he added, victoriously delivering his pièce de résistance.

"Owls?" Now Dipper was staring up at him, his mouth a little open. Enchanted, Bill thought; then, no. Fascinated, like a rabbit by the hunting weasel. Yes, yes, yes! Cipher carries the day! Into Bill's momentary silence, Dipper persisted, "Like, regular owls? Normal owls? Not, not freaky-weird owls?"

"Like regular, normal, non-freaky-weird owls," Bill confirmed, settling back down. He was so tired … "You contact Duane by shouting owl jokes at owls until he tells you to shut up. That's how you know you got him on the horn."

Now Dipper scowled, uncertain. "You're pulling my leg."

Bill raised his eyebrows. He found that he quite liked eyebrows. They were very expressive. "My hand to … well, you know. Owl jokes. Any old owl you find flapping around."

"So I could go talk to him right now!" Dipper tensed, as though readying himself to pelt out into the rain in search of an owl right then.

Bill groaned, for internal consumption only. "That would be a monumentally bad idea. Duane's a stickler for regs. If he knew what I'd done—" I'd be a bucket of quarks smeared from here to Oz was the truthful thing to say, but probably not what Dipper needed to hear at this exact moment. "... I'd be in a lot of trouble," he bowdlerized lamely.

So would you, Bill added silently, without a demon to thumb its nose at your fate. And no one's better at thumbing their nose than Bill fucking Cipher. But Dipper's eyes were shining, and he seemed to have forgotten all about his little existential crisis. Bill decided to be content with that.

He closed his eye and let out his breath in an uneven, rasping sigh.

Dipper looked at him with sudden alarm, going so far as to lightly touch his face, patting his cheek. Bill quelled an instinct to snarl, and instead muttered, "'M fine, kid. Just resting my eye … uh, my eyes … for a second." It was within spitting distance of the truth, anyway.

"We should maybe get out of here," Dipper said nervously. In an absent gesture of equal parts anxiety and a certain possessive concern, he smoothed the shoulders of Bill's suit, straightening the soaked lapels he'd clung to not long before. "If I have your powers, can I teleport us … ?"

"Dunno," Bill replied frankly, not bothering to open his eye. If he was being entirely honest with himself—and what else did he have now, anyway, than honesty?—he was not confident that he had the energy to do so, and he noticed, wretchedly, that Dipper was starting to shiver: Bill wasn't producing as much heat as he had been. He was scraping the bottom of the barrel where his reserves were concerned, yet in spite of that, he made a conscious effort to summon up a little more, just a little, so the dumb little human wouldn't be so miserably cold as Bill was himself. "It's never come up before, as far as I know."

"I could try," said Dipper. His voice was doubtful, but adamantine determination lay beneath the apprehension, like steel beneath slippery silk; in that moment, Dipper's simple human determination had a power all its own that Bill couldn't help but admire. To Bill, it intimated something even more incredible, an implacable core of strength buried so deep Dipper himself wasn't aware of it. Maybe, with access to Bill's own reservoir of demonic power, Pine Tree might be able to pull off a miracle after all …

I did think it'd probably take one. And I was right: I don't deserve it.

Bill smiled, his eyes closed, the right oozing blood from beneath the lid that trickled slowly down his face, like tears. The moon came out, at last, although it was still raining; to Dipper, by its peculiar gloaming light, the blood on Bill's face looked black. "Give it a shot," he encouraged weakly. "Couldn't hurt." A beat. "Too much."

Then, on some bizarre impulse, he said, "But Dipper—" Bill realized it was the first time he'd ever called the kid by his actual name.

The cold and the rain and the agony of his wounds swung away from him. That was fine, good even, to no longer be in such pain … but it took away Dipper, too—the boy's powerful determination, radiating like fire; Bill's understanding, at last, that Dipper did care for him, in some way, or at least didn't want to live bereft of his demon entirely; most importantly (for some damn reason), it stole away the warmth of Dipper's small body curled against Bill's caved-in chest, which had eased some of the pain, not only of his body but also of his heart.

The entire world slipped like a dishonest smile caught in its lie, and Bill could not hold any part of it, not even the memory of that incredible warmth, given so freely; instead, his mind filled with ash, and as he lost consciousness, Bill had time to think, in agonized surmise, Another? Oh, no—no no, can't be—I can't have destroyed ANOTHER—

No, no, no no no—I'll give anything, money, fame, power, whatever, just don't let it be true, oh no, no no NO, DipPER—

After that, lost in a darkness that was as vast and cold and silent as the spaces between stars, Bill knew no more.


Author's Note: There's been a bit of confusion with my beta readers regarding Bill's freak-out there at the end of this chapter, so I'll just say: tragic headcanon backstory, only somewhat resembling the actual, you know, canon backstory we read about in Journal 3. (Which, yes, I have, although I started writing this before I finished reading it, because while I have been accused of a super-nerd-ery, I'm not a very clever boffin.)

The only reason it isn't more straightforward is because I'm in love with confusing and potentially heartrending stream-of-consciousness-type narration where acute blood loss is involved.