my garbage

yes it’s midnight as im posting this. i worked on it the last few days and it’s kinda whatever imho but i wanted to make something in dedication to this game that gets a lot of attention but not particularly special attention for what it represents, at least to the extent it does to me, so ofc. i had to do something. it’s not my favorite game per say, not even my favorite story-driven game. but nonetheless it’s been a heavy niche interest of mine for years, only blooming so incredibly strongly since november of last year

Saturday, 6:30 a.m.

Ford hadn't slept well.

He'd elected to spend the night on his cot down in his study. Even though he had no proof and a solid metal barrier in his head, there was an irrational part of him that feared Bill might be able to read his mind and predict his plans if he was too close to him. He'd decided it was easier to just sleep somewhere "safe" than spend all night trying to argue his own brain out of its paranoia.

The safety hadn't been much of a comfort. Every time he opened his eyes, he was sure he could see the outline of the Quantum Destabilizer laying on the worktable across the room.

He gave up and got up for breakfast an hour after sunup.

When he exited the vending machine, the first thing he heard was muffled pop music and laughter from the living room. He pushed open the door; Bill and Mabel were up with the sun as well and had apparently elected to throw a spontaneous dance party. Mabel had set her boombox on the TV, was blasting the soundtrack from one of her cartoons—"Let's tag along, with Cinnamon, 'cause all you have to do is believe!"—and was unsuccessfully attempting to teach Bill a dance move.

"You have to do it like this," Mabel said, pointing at her legs, which were crossed at the knees with her left foot crossed over her right foot.

"That is what I'm doing." Bill's left foot was positioned straight in front of his right foot.

"No it's not! Look, you've got to move your left foot further to the right!"

Bill looked at his feet, looked at Mabel's dubiously, and looked back at his own; and then hesitantly scooted his left foot a few inches to the right.

"Yes," Mabel sighed. "That's step one, okay?"

"Okay."

"Now step two!" Mabel swung out her right foot and crossed it over her left ankle.

Bill swung out his right foot and placed it down directly in front of his left foot.

"Bill!"

"What!"

Mabel cracked up and leaned against Bill's side, hugging him, while he protested, "I'm doing the same thing you are! It looks exactly the same! Don't play mind games with me, Shooting Star."

Curious. Was this a second dimensional thing—did crossing his legs over each other not come naturally to Bill? But Ford had seen him cross his legs while seated plenty of times. Maybe it was only when he was trying to dance? Ford had been taking notes on Bill's body language in human form; maybe he should make a note of this—

Why bother? What value did the information have? When Bill would be gone forever in a few hours.

Bill had coaxed Mabel into giving up the dance lesson and switching to something more freeform, grabbing her hands and spinning around the room with her to a far goofier song with annoying sound effects. His gaze glanced over Ford, glanced away; and then he stopped and did a double take, almost throwing Mabel off-balance. "What's with the sour face?" he demanded, breathing heavily from exertion. "Hey, am I not allowed to dance now?" Mabel glanced back at Ford.

Ford just shook his head dismissively and hurried through the living room, heading to the kitchen. He had the unsettling feeing that Bill had seen more than he let on in Ford's face. He told himself, again, that Bill couldn't read his mind. Not like this, anyway.

####

6:35 a.m.

Ford was making breakfast when Dipper came downstairs. Dipper glanced into the living room, then lowered his eyes and hurried past without greeting Mabel. He couldn't meet Ford's eyes, either.

That was kind of how Ford felt, too. "Eggs and bacon?"

"Just eggs."

"Scrambled?"

"Yeah. Thanks."

He added a couple of eggs, and a couple more for Mabel.

"Good morning!" Stan's greeting made both Ford and Dipper flinch; it was far too boisterous for the somber room. It almost sounded forced. "Beautiful day, isn't it?"

Ford glanced toward the window. The sky was gray and overcast. "Eggs and bacon?"

"Yeap, thanks."

He added more to the skillet. "You're cheerful this morning."

"Of course I am. Why wouldn't I be?" he asked, a shade defensively. "Aren't you?"

Ford offered him a wan smile. "Of course."

Dipper just stared at the table, looking slightly sick to his stomach.

####

6:40 a.m.

The only ones who seemed to be in a genuinely good mood were Mabel and Bill, bounding into the kitchen, still breathing heavily from their exercise. Mabel moonwalked across the kitchen until she bumped backwards into a chair. She sat and flopped over the kitchen table, arms stretched out across the tabletop, and only sat up when Ford sat a plate in front of her. Bill looked at the filled chairs, the four Pines with their four plates of food, and the empty skillet, and leaned against the counter with his arms crossed. "No, that's fine," he said, still catching his breath, "I didn't want breakfast anyway. Thanks for asking."

"Bill! Ask nicely," Mabel said.

"Please don't make me starve, while I watch you eat, because you've magically ensured I can't feed myself."

Mabel pushed her chair out to stand, but said, "I don't think that was nice."

But Ford sighed and stood first. "I'll deal with it." Maybe providing the death row inmate his last meal would help assuage Ford's misguided conscience. When Bill saw Ford get out the eggs and bacon again, he frowned and looked almost ready to say something; but he just shrugged moodily and looked away.

For a few minutes, an awkward silence reigned over the room as Ford cooked Bill's breakfast. Stan cleared his throat and said, "So, uh—hey, Mabel. What're you up to today?" As if he didn't know full well. Ford had told him last night why they'd scheduled Bill's execution for Saturday.

"Thanks for asking," Mabel said, like she'd been just waiting for someone to bring it up. "I'm going out with Candy and Grenda! Grenda's mom's picking me up at seven." No wonder she was up so early.

"At seven?" Stan repeated, checking his watch. "That's less than twenty minutes, isn't it?"

Mabel processed that. She looked out the window. It wasn't light yet; but then that was only because of the cloud cover. "Oh." She started shoveling eggs into her mouth.

"You're ditching me today?" Bill groaned in exaggerated irritation. "I don't believe it. I'll be bored out of my mind."

Mabel blew a raspberry. "You'll live!" (Ford winced.)

"At least leave me with the Color Critter tapes so I can entertain myself."

"No! We have to watch those together! Especially the two-parter, that's up next."

Bill let out the loudest, longest sigh. "Fine. Leave me to suffer."

"You big baby."

Ford offered Bill a plate of eggs and floppy bacon. Bill took it without saying anything; but he looked at his plate with three strips of bacon, Ford's as yet untouched plate with two, and his eye flicked to Ford's face. Ford's breath froze; for a moment his panicked mind was sure his pity offering had given him away.

But then Bill looked away with a deliberate air of indifference. He grabbed a spoon out of the drawer and started shoveling eggs in his mouth like he hadn't had a decent meal in days. (When had he last had a decent meal?)

As Ford sat again, Mabel asked, "Grunkle Ford! Do you want me to pick up one of Phrancisco's solo albums? He only went solo after you got stuck in space, right?"

He tried not to think about Mabel bringing him home a gift just to discover that he'd executed her friend while she was out. (Would she ever speak to him again after this?) "N—no thanks, Mabel, that's fine. You should buy something for yourself."

Bill groaned. "You two and your terrible taste in synth pop." He slurped down half a strip of bacon. "Hey, if he isn't getting anything, pick me up a CD by Mysterious Mo's Average Joes, would you? They should be in the rock section."

Mabel laughed. "Who? They're not gonna have that!"

"Why not! They were really popular. In the 1960s. For seven weeks. Any decent record store oughta have them."

(What kind of music did Bill like, Ford wondered desperately. He knew what songs Bill had referenced, he knew what songs Bill taunted him with—Bill's soundtrack was as carefully curated as his dreams were choreographed, designed to evoke a specific effect—but what did he like? It was too late for Ford to learn.)

"I'm not going to a record store," Mabel said. "I'm going to a Phrancisco concert."

"What?! Since when!"

"Since I won tickets like, two weeks ago! I told you!"

"No you didn't."

There was an unexpectedly vicious edge to Bill's voice that made Ford tense up. He met Stan's gaze; he'd clearly noticed it too.

"Oh," Mabel said. "Well. I'm going to a concert. That's what Candy and Grenda are coming over for."

"Huh." Bill leaned back against the counter, nibbling at his second strip of bacon. There was something darkly calculating in his eye as he stared at Mabel. "So that talentless hack is in town? Where's he playing? He can't be at the convention center, no way he could pull a crowd that size."

"He's not in Gravity Falls, he's in Portland."

"You're going all the way to Portland?!"

Mabel leaned slightly away from Bill. "Yeah?" She sounded wary now. Ford didn't blame her; he'd never seen Bill snap at her like this before. 

"W—Pff!—It might have been nice to know earlier!"

Mabel shrugged helplessly. "Well... sorry! Now you know!"

"Fine." Bill sighed angrily. "You're going all the way to Portland for a show—so you're not getting back til, what, dinner time?"

Mabel sucked in a breath through her teeth. "Actuallyyy, we're staying in town overnight and coming back tomorrow."

"WHAT!"

"Yeah, it's a late show. And Grenda's mom has some kind of reward thingy at a hotel she wants to use—"

"And you DIDN'T ASK ME?!"

The entire room fell silent, staring at Bill. Dipper's gaze darted between Mabel and Bill, bewildered. Stan put a protective hand on Mabel's shoulder.

Face strangely neutral—controlled, Ford thought—Bill said, "I meant. You didn't... tell me?"

Stan growled, "Not an improvement, Cipher."

"Warn, didn't warn me."

With a chill Ford hadn't known she possessed, Mabel said, "Excuse me? Was I supposed to?" Ford didn't know a lot about adolescents, but he recognized that voice. That was the quiet rage of the teenage girl offended. That was the voice that got fruit punch poured in your hair.

Bill stammered, "I mean— That— Well—!" He paused, ate a large mouthful of eggs to give himself time to regroup, and said, "Through no fault of my own, I'm completely dependent on you for any kind of mental stimulation, kid. You don't think maybe a 'hey Bill, would it bother you if I'm gone all weekend' would be polite?"

"So what if it does bother you!" Mabel's outburst was so vehement that Bill flinched in surprise. "I'm just one kid, you're a—an ancient psychic ghost triangle thing! You can't depend on me for everything, that's insane, I don't even know how to be whatever you need! Do you think I'm gonna stay inside the shack all summer just because you want me to?!"

Bill's mouth worked uselessly for a few seconds, grappling for words. Voice strained, he said, "I mean... not 24/7, but..."

"Unbelievable." Mabel shoved her chair back. "I'm gonna pack. If you'll permit me, Mr. Bossy." She stormed from the room.

"Hey, hold on—!" Bill started to follow, but stopped in the doorway—glancing back over his shoulder, worriedly, as if searching for something—and looked directly at Ford, for just a moment. And then he was gone, stumbling up the stairs trying to catch up with Mabel.

Bill knew. Ford was sure of it. He could tell the future, even as a human, they were aware of that. He couldn't see very far, from what Ford could tell; but this was a strange, powerful weapon, perhaps its beam was visible from chronologically farther away. Or maybe Ford himself had betrayed it somehow—in his face, in his body language—he remembered the way Bill had stopped dancing to stare at his face. Or maybe it was just intuition. But whatever the case, Bill could tell something was coming.

He wasn't trying to get Mabel to stay because he was worried about getting bored; he knew she was probably the only thing that might shield him from execution.

He knew that if she was out of town, he'd be defenseless.

####

6:50 a.m.

Their voices rose until they were audible from downstairs: "—But two whole days is ridiculous—!"

"Ridiculous to WHO! Ridiculous to you?! If you think you can just—just—manipulate me into staying here forever—"

"Manipulate?! Oh, all right, is that what you think of me! You've got some nerve, Shooting Star—"

Ford looked at Stan. "We should—"

"Yeah."

They hurried upstairs, Dipper close behind.

"Wait—" Dipper caught Ford's coat and tugged him back before he reached the bedroom door. "Don't, we should let them work this out."

"Are you serious?"

Dipper lowered his voice. "She's... been under a lot of pressure because of Bill. She's been acting like it's her job to save him. Maybe it'd be good if she... sorta figures out..." He screwed up his face. "Okay, I just want her to start hating him again, is that so bad?"

Well. At least it was honest. "If he gets angry enough to hurt her—"

"Then she'll flip him on his head and break his arm. I'm really not worried about her safety, Bill's pathetic," Dipper said. "Really, really... really pathetic."

Stan said, "Yeah, she'll be fine, she's a baby tiger. And maybe this'll be good for her! She won't... you know. Miss him as much. Silver lining."

Ford was worried about how bad she'd feel once she learned the last conversation she ever had with Bill was a fight; but maybe Stan was right. If Bill had died the day after Ford had discovered his true plans for the portal, would Ford have regretted that their last conversation was a fight—or would he just have been relieved that Bill was gone? Ford hadn't regretted that fight a single day since then.

He hoped Mabel would feel the same about it.

####

7:00 a.m.

There were no sounds of violence through the bedroom door—just stomping and thudding as Mabel packed. And the argument, which only seemed to be getting worse, Bill's strident voice drowning out most other sounds: "—and on top of that, you won't even give me the stupid cartoon tapes so I can at LEAST entertain myself while you're gone?!"

"AaaAAARGH THAT'S ALL I'M GOOD FOR TO YOU, ISN'T IT? I'M JUST YOUR ENTERTAINMENT!"

"Well—! Well SO WHAT! Like YOU'D spend any time with ME if you didn't think I was fun! What ELSE am I to you if not just your FUN SUMMER FIX-IT PROJECT?!"

"I THOUGHT you were my FRIEND!" 

All three eavesdroppers cringed.

"WELL! If you're gonna act like this just because I wondered what you're up to, maybe NOT!" (All three eavesdroppers cringed harder.) "What kind of fun are you good for, you wouldn't even be into burning a house down!"

"OH YEAH, WELL—YOU WOULDN'T EVEN BE INTO—into—n-NOT BURNING A HOUSE DOWN!"

"OHHH WOW, GREAT COMEBACK."

Shrilly, Mabel shouted, "SHUT UP!"

"All right," Stan muttered, "This is just getting petty, I'm breaking this up."

Dipper moved like he was considering getting in the way. "But Grunkle Stan—"

"I think we're way past the point of your sister hating that demon." Stan opened the door a crack. "Hey—!"

Bill and Mabel rounded on Stan, faces red, tears pricking at the corners of Mabel's eyes. They both shouted, "STAY OUT OF IT!"

Stan quickly shut the door. A sweater gently thudded against the other side. Stan said, "Maybe we oughta let 'em work it out."

"It isn't getting violent, is it?" Ford asked.

"Only verbally."

Ford hesitated; but then nodded uneasily.

####

7:05 a.m.

Mabel said, "Grenda's mom's outside, I'm LEAVING."

"FINE! GO! Who needs you?! I could DIE and you wouldn't care!" Bill's voice cracked on the word. 

Ford was sure he knew.

"MAYBE I WOULDN'T!" (All three eavesdroppers cringed harder still. Ford hoped she wouldn't remember saying that tomorrow.) "Get out of my room!"

"No, YOU get out! I'm staying right here!"

"Fine!! Then you can just stay here all weekend!"

"FINE!"

"FINE!"

There was some final angry rustling and the zip of a backpack; and then Mabel was storming out of the bedroom. She slammed the door, rubbed her eyes, and glared at the guys.

They tried to look like they hadn't been listening.

"Leave him in there," Mabel snapped, pointing at the door. She was shaking with anger. "He's in TIME OUT."

Ford and Stan nodded. Dipper glanced nervously at the door, "Um..."

Mabel glared into his eyes.

Dipper raise his hands in surrender. "Okay, fine."

As Mabel stomped downstairs, Ford nudged Dipper and whispered, "It's fine. He won't be there very long."

The reassurance made Dipper look faintly sick. "Yeah."

####

7:07 a.m.

Candy and Grenda grinned as Mabel burst out of the shack, ran to the car, pulled open the back door, and slid in. Grenda cheered, "Mabel!"

"Are you ready to board the Party Bus?" Candy asked.

Grenda whispered loudly, "That's the new name of the car."

Instead of answering, Mabel slammed the door, fastened her seatbelt, and hugged her backpack to her chest.

Grenda and her mom turned around to stare at Mabel from the front seats. Grenda's mom asked, "Is everything alright, sweetie?"

"'M fine, Mrs. Grendinator," Mabel said, staring at her knees. "I just... fought with a friend this morning."

"Oh, honey..."

Voice shaking, Mabel said, "Can we just go? Please?" Her hands were trembling.

Mrs. Grendinator nodded. "Of course."

As they pulled around the Mystery Shack and toward the road, Mabel glanced toward the attic bedroom window; but no one looked back.

####

7:10 a.m.

Candy reached over to rub Mabel's upper arm. "Who did you fight with?"

Grenda asked, "Was it Pacifica?" Both of them had a lot of thoughts about Mabel's deal to help at Pacifica's alpaca ranch, which they were politely swallowing down until and unless Mabel and Pacifica had a falling out and it became acceptable to be mean about Pacifica again.

Mabel shook her head. "No, it's... You don't know him. The new guy staying at the shack."

Grenda and Candy exchanged a glance. They didn't know very much about the "new guy" at the shack, except that he was the reason they couldn't have sleepovers at Mabel's place this summer; but Mabel insisted he was actually really fun; but also she couldn't tell them his name or anything about him. They already didn't think too highly of this mysterious new guy.

Warily, Candy said, "The new guy who you said is like a cool big brother-slash-sister?"

Mabel winced. "I... don't remember saying that."

"You said that."

Grenda threw in, "Like three days ago! When we were jumping off Candy's roof and you said he could probably do all kinds of cool low gravity tricks if he was there! Remember?"

Mabel groaned and thudded her head against the window.

Grenda said, "He sounds like an uncool big jerk-slash-loser if he made you upset." Candy nodded emphatically.

Mabel didn't answer for a moment. "I used to think he was," she said. "Now I just... think he needs friendship. More than I can give him by myself."

It was a miserable grey morning as they got on the road.

####

7:25 a.m.

They'd left Gravity Falls, passed beneath the defunct railroad track, and were almost to the highway when the Triple Digit Truck Stop's lumberjack statue appeared between the trees. That was the place where the Pines and Bill had negotiated the terms of his captivity. Mabel and Bill had traded pancakes there.

Quickly, voice tight, Mabel said, "I forgot to use the bathroom at home. Can we pull over?"

"Sure, Mabel."

"Sorry."

Before Mrs. Grendinator had turned the car off, Mabel had already opened the car door and was sprinting for the truck stop's attached convenience store, slinging her backpack over her shoulder as she went.

"Mabel, wait!" Candy unfastened her seatbelt as fast as she could and ran after her.

Mrs. Grendinator put her hand on Grenda's before she could get out of the car. "Who is this friend of Mabel's?"

"We don't know," Grenda said. "She won't say a lot about him. Candy and I think he's some kind of werewolf catboy they have to keep hidden from the public. You know what the Mystery Shack's like."

"Hmm." Mrs. Grendinator watched Mabel, lips pressed together in worry.

When Grenda caught up with Candy inside the convenience store, Candy pointed toward the restrooms. "Mabel went into the unisex restroom," she said ominously.

Grenda winced. The one restroom with a real door. It was the only one you could cry in with total privacy. "So it was a fight fight, huh?"

"We should grab her extra road trip snacks." Candy eyed an aisle filled with various forms of jerky.

Grenda nodded, "Definitely extra snacks."

####

7:35 a.m.

Candy and Grenda were admiring a souvenir plastic skull painted with a patriotic stars and stripes pattern when Mabel finally emerge from the restroom, face freshly washed, eyes scrubbed, looking significantly more cheerful. "Hey guys! Are we looking at cheap souvenirs?"

"Yeah, check out this cool skull!" Grenda said.

"And it has babies." Candy held up two miniature starred-and-striped skulls.

Grenda held out a plastic bag. "Hey—while you were busy, we got a bunch of snacks: Nyumalums, Gummy Koalas, Cheese Boodles..."

"Ooh!" Mabel rummaged through the bag. "And... plastic dinosaurs?"

"So we can make Mabel Juice at the hotel!"

"Aww, guys! That's—really thoughtful, thank you."

"Of course, any time," Grenda said.

Candy said, "We know you don't want to talk about your other friend, but... we want you to know you can if you ever want to."

"And if you don't, we're here for you anyway!"

Mabel gave them both a watery smile. Without a word, she pulled them into a tight hug.

They hugged her back; Grenda squeezed them both and lifted them into the air for a second.

Mabel said, "You're the two best friends I could ever ask for, you know that?" She pulled back, put her hands on their shoulders, and said, "I'm putting the whole thing at the shack out of my head! I'm not letting it ruin our trip to Portland! We're going to have fun and watch some old guy play a synthesizer!"

"Yes!" "LET'S GO!"

They left the convenience store together, chanting, "Syn-the-siz-er! Syn-the-siz-er! Syn-the-siz-er!"

####

7:50 a.m.

Dipper, Ford, and Stan had kicked aside Bill's sofa cushion bed and taken over the attic window seat so the could uneasily hover near the attic bedroom and listen for anything inside.

Bill was completely silent.

"Probably meditating or something," Stan said. "Spitefully meditating. I keep catching him meditating on the downstairs toilet. Usually in the middle of the night."

"I've seen him in the living room," Dipper said. He remembered coming downstairs when he was out of his body and catching Bill watching Dr. Calligraphy—the radiant golden aura that had surrounded Bill on all sides until Dipper broke his concentration.

Ford muttered, "As long as he isn't breaking anything."

The Quantum Destabilizer was a powerful weapon; its beam could be seen from miles away. Ford had never seen it at work fully unobstructed on Earth, but in the Nightmare Realm any missed shot had still been visible, a bright streak in the roiling dark, long after any other beam of light would have faded to invisibility.

At least Gravity Falls was in a valley, hidden from the rest of the world by mountains and trees; but it was an overcast day and only getting darker. They wanted to make sure Mabel was far out of visual range before they fired the quantum destabilizer.

They decided to execute Bill at noon.

It was a long wait.

####

11:55 a.m.

Ford went down to the gift shop; waited five minutes for the tourists to empty out as Soos escorted them into the museum for the noon tour; and slipped behind the vending machine. When he came back up with the Quantum Destabilizer's carrying case, Melody stared for a moment from the cash register, then quickly averted her gaze.

Mrs. Ramirez had been watching television in the living room since she'd finished breakfast around ten. As Ford passed through again, he paused awkwardly, fiddling with the strap of the destabilizer's carrying case. "Mrs. Ramirez," he said. "We're, ah... going to make a bit of noise upstairs. Just—don't worry when you hear it, it's all under control." She'd gone to bed before he'd given Soos the news and woken up after the shack had opened; he didn't know whether Soos had had a chance to tell her.

Mrs. Ramirez took in Ford's nervous expression, his stiff posture, and his mysterious black case, and quietly asked, "It is time?"

Ford nodded solemnly.

She merely nodded back, her expression placid and unreadable. "Okay," she said. "Before you go, please turn up the volume for me. The remote is missing."

"Of course." Ford knelt down to turn the volume knob. When she said it was high enough, it was almost twice as loud.

Dipper and Stan were both standing right outside the attic door when Ford came back upstairs. Dipper looked like he was about to be eaten alive by anxiety. He flinched when Ford put a hand on his shoulder, but he didn't look away from the door.

Voice low, Stan asked Ford, "You sure you don't want me to do it? I know this isn't the first time you've shot at him, but it's, uh... it's a lot easier to shoot in self-defense than it is to execute a helpless prisoner."

Ford elected not to ask questions. "No, it should be me. I designed this weapon, I know how to handle it." He gave Stan a wan smile. "Besides—it's high time I shoot Bill without your head in the way."

Stan laughed wryly.

Dipper sat on the floor and put his head in his hands.

"Are you alright?" Ford knelt next to Dipper.

"Yeah." Dipper waved Ford off. "Just... didn't get much sleep. Little dizzy."

No stomach for murder. Ford had been preparing for this for over thirty years; Dipper hadn't. And that was a good thing. "You can go downstairs if you..."

"No no, I'm fine, I..." Dipper took a deep breath and lifted his head. "I'll face it."

Stan nodded. "Good man."

Ford should have made it an order—he could have told Dipper to keep Mrs. Ramirez company—but he just nodded.

He stood, took a deep breath, and gripped the door knob. Time to face it.

####

12:05 p.m.

The room was still; the only light came indirectly from the window. There was no sign of Bill.

Ford frowned.

Moving as quietly as he could, keeping his back to the wall, Ford crept around the perimeter of the room, checking the closet by the door, Dipper's bed, Mabel's bed.

On the nightstand by Mabel's bed was a disheveled stack of papers; Ford recognized them as her crayon drawings from yesterday's lesson. In the top picture, Mabel had drawn Bill in his true triangular form alongside a pink heart-shaped Flatworlder shooting magic rainbows and blue fire. "FIGHTING EVIL WITH RAINBOWS! (BILL'S ON PAROLE TO HELP.)"

He picked it up to study the pink Flatworlder—Mabel?—and saw another picture underneath: Bill floating in the sky, blue flames again hovering over his raised hands, staring out of the paper as if he could see Ford; beneath Bill, Mabel had written, "I BELIEVE IN YOU. YOU CAN CHANGE!"

Ford's stomach turned. He grabbed and stuffed the second drawing in his pocket—he couldn't stand to look at it—and turned away from the others, trying not to think of Mabel, trying not to think of Bill standing on top of the TV excitedly lecturing about two-dimensional genetics and driving to the moon.

It wasn't until then that he saw the sign.

A bent pink posterboard read "WARNING! TRIANGLE ZONE!" in Mabel's round handwriting. The I's were dotted with hearts and the rest of the poster was covered in stickers of triangle-shaped objects. It had been angrily, crookedly affixed to the ladder up to the loft over the bedroom with too much duct tape, half warning, half flimsy barrier.

When Ford backed up to the window to try to see further up onto the loft, he could just see Bill, laying on his side, hood up and shoulders hunched, back to the room. No wonder he was so quiet. His tantrum must have exhausted him—and he certainly hadn't gotten enough sleep over the past week; he'd climbed to the highest point he could find and went to sleep.

Ford could shoot Bill in the back without ever waking him.

He carefully unpeeled enough duct tape to bend the posterboard to the side, made sure the Quantum Destabilizer's strap was slung securely over his chest, and climbed as quietly as he could.

Bill lay curled up in a ball, as small as Ford had ever seen him, beneath the round golden yellow and sky blue stained glass window on the far end of the loft; as though waiting for a sunbeam through the window that would never reach him.

####

12:08 p.m.

The longer Ford was in the room, the more queasy Dipper looked. When Stan was worried he was about to get the kid's half-digested eggs on his shoes, he hissed, "What's taking him so long?" (Dipper started.) "Did he lose his nerve—?"

####

12:09 p.m.

The atmosphere abruptly grew eerily quiet and still. There was a shrill, whistling shriek and a blast of blue-white light so brilliant it pierced the cracks of the wooden boards in the attic bedroom's walls.

Every light in the house went out. The air conditioning was silent. The television in the living room turned off. Abuelita waited in the dark, staring at the screen, her expression calm and unconcerned, her hands in her lap laced so tightly that her knuckles were white, until the whine upstairs faded and the TV flickered back on.

####

Soos and his current tour group fell silent, staring at the ceiling as the strange blue lights between the boards faded and the electric lights turned back on. A mom gripping her two children's hands demanded, "What was that?" A few other tourists started murmuring.

"Oh, that?" Soos laughed nervously. "Probably just our resident mad scientist, testing out death lasers from space again, heh."

There was a pause, and then the tour group chuckled appreciatively.

"Haha, right? Hey, speaking of mad scientists—if any of you guys are hungry, stick around after the tour, I'll give you directions to Greasy's Diner. Sometimes Fiddleford McGucket gets coffee there—you know, the famous inventor guy?" Soos pointed over the crowd. "But first, let's go this way to see the invisible man. Or—heh—not see him. You dudes know what I mean!"

As the tour group moved on to the next exhibit, Soos paused to flip up his costume eyepatch and frown at the ceiling.

####

Stan and Dipper rushed into the bedroom. The air was hot, stagnant, and stuffy. Dipper was the first to spot Ford in the loft. "Great Uncle Ford?" He rushed up the ladder, Stan following as fast as his bad back would allow.

Ford was kneeling on the floor, the Quantum Destabilizer dropped across his thighs. There was a hole through the wall straight in front of him, and a pile of ashes three feet in front of his knees. The destabilizer's beam had clipped the loft's stained glass window and shattered it. 

All the tension had drained from his face. All the skin sagged into a deep frown.

"Grunkle Ford...?"

"It's done."

Dipper swallowed hard. "So... Bill is...?"

Ford turned to look him in the eyes. "Yes, he's dead."

Neither one of them needed to say anything else to know what the other was thinking. They just shared a look—the two most miserable co-conspirators in Gravity Falls.

Stan, unenthusiastic, said, "Great. Let's go downstairs and celebrate."

####

12:20 p.m.

They got soda and pie, sat in the kitchen, stared into space, and didn't eat.

####

1:00 p.m.

The streak of empty sky opened up by the Quantum Destabilizer's beam had sealed shut again.

It began to drizzle over Gravity Falls.

####

During Soos's lunch break, he went upstairs to quickly patch the hole in the wall before the rain could intensify enough to flood the attic. Everyone downstairs pretended not to hear the hammering.

Stan crossed paths with him when he came downstairs to grab a few more supplies. "Soos? Why are you going upstairs with a broom, a dust pan, and a flower vase?"

Soos said, "Well, I was gonna clean the attic, but it seemed kind of disrespectful to vacuum Bill up, so..."

Stan grimaced. "I'm sorry I asked."

Before the next tour started, Soos brought the sofa cushions downstairs and finally returned them to the folding sofa bed.

####

Dipper went down to the cellar to play video games on the old TV. Abuelita was still in the living room, and Dipper didn't want to use the TV he and Mabel had set up in the attic nook last summer. He didn't want to be anywhere near that bedroom.

"You sure you don't wanna play pinball?" asked Tumbleweed Terror, for the fourth time.

Dipper lost another life. He sighed irritably. "No, man. You tried to kill us last summer, remember?"

"Only on account of your cheatin'," Tumbleweed said. "If'n you don't cheat, I reckon we could get along just fine."

"No. I don't even like pinball."

There was a chilly silence. "Now, them's fighting words." It shot off threatening green sparks.

Dipper scooped Rocky the geodite out of his lap, stood, turned the TV at an angle, and sat down farther away from the pinball machine.

It gave up sparking and sighed. "Hey—whatever happened to that blonde prisoner?"

Dipper flinched and looked at the pinball machine. "What? Who?"

"The one y'all kept locked down here for a day sometime last month. Golden-haired gal with jaundice dressed like a Roman emperor. She, uh... mighta sweet-talked me into letting her play a few rounds for free. Didn't make no difference—terrible reflexes like hers, she weren't no high score candidate anyway." It sounded really defensive about having given someone free balls. "Said her name was 'Goldilocks'. I didn't buy it—but she seemed like a real desperado type, figured it weren't none of my business if she wanted to keep her name secret."

Dipper frowned. He turned away from Tumbleweed Terror. "You won't see her again."

"You sure? She said she might come back, I've been keepin' track of her last score—"

"She's gone. Just—stop talking about her." Dipper lost his last life. He groaned in frustration, and started the level over again for the fifth time. None of it was familiar. He wasn't thinking about the game.

####

"Fishing," Stan said, calling through the open guest room door as he finished another lap of the hallway. He'd taken advantage of Bill's absence by flinging open every door that had remained shut all summer.

"Hm?" Ford was seated at the guest room desk, consumed with writing in his journal like a possessed man trying to exorcise his demon through ink.

"We oughta go fishing," Stan said. He'd been wandering around the shack like a restless ghost since the rain started, loudly making plans now that the rest of summer was freed up. "Fishing season's been open a month and we haven't gone yet! You're gonna love it—the kids and Soos are great fishing buddies."

"Great," Ford said distractedly.

"I bet the guys at the Mackerel lodge think I haven't been out there because I'm embarrassed they kicked me out," Stan muttered. "It's not like I can tell 'em why I couldn't get out of the house..." He trailed off, looking at the ring on his left pinky with the symbol of the Royal Order of the Holy Mackerel—the one Bill had shoplifted at the mall.

He crossed his arms, pinning his left hand against his ribs. "My boat might be a little too small for all five of us, though," Stan said. "I wonder if Soos has repaired his since last summer?"

"Yes, yes," Ford mumbled.

Stan frowned. "Hey, Poindexter." He leaned on the desk to peer over Ford's shoulder. "Whatcha writing?" Ford hadn't seen anything that interesting lately, had he?

Ford froze, shoulders tensing, one hand sliding under the cover like he was about to slam it shut. A page and a half were completely packed with words, crammed together without any of Ford's usual headers or esoteric margin doodles, the only illustration a small diagram of a planet encircled by a ring, a moon, and what looked like a sea serpent.

Guiltily, Ford said, "As much as I can remember."

Stanford skimmed the page. The writing was too cramped for him to read most of it, he could only pick out a few phrases that Ford had capitalized in lieu of properly sectioning off his thoughts—"POLYGONAL GENETICS," "SPHERICAL GEOMETRY," "BISHOP BISHOP," "WHAT IS 'EYM'???" Stan pressed his lips together and nodded. Fine. However Ford got it out of his system, as long as it was out.

Stan pushed off the desk and wandered from the room. "We could get fishing gear tomorrow," he said, knowing in his heart no one would be in the mood for it once Mabel got home. "Drizzly, cloudy weather is great for fishing. This is the perfect time to go out on the lake."

Ford had already buried himself back in his journal, writing as fast as he could.

####

Abuelita had dozed off in her seat with the TV still playing soaps.

She was the only person in the house whose conscience felt clean.

####

7:00 p.m.

For the first time since the beginning of summer, Melody stayed over for dinner. 

It was a very quiet dinner.

####

10:30 p.m.

"I don't... wanna sleep in the attic tonight." Dipper hovered awkwardly in the guest room's doorway. "You know. With... Mabel gone and all."

"How come," Stan said, "you scared of ghosts?"

Ford shot him a look. "Stan."

"What!" Stan shrugged. "There shouldn't be a ghost anyway, right? That's what your fancy gun is for? It destroyed his... soul or whatever he's got?"

Guilt briefly flashed across Ford's face. He nodded sharply. "Dipper—I'll be sleeping down in my study tonight. You can sleep in my bed if you'd like."

Stan almost asked why Ford was still sleeping downstairs, with the demon out of the picture; but he figured it was for the same reason Dipper wanted to stay out of the attic. Scared of ghosts. Not necessarily literal ones.

"Hey," Stan said to Dipper, when Ford had left and the door was shut. "It's—fine if you want to stay down here. Really. Spending the night in the same room as a dead body's no joke."

Dipper opened his mouth, decided he didn't want to know, and shut it. "Thanks."

Stan was settling into bed and about to take off his glasses when he glanced around the room, flinched, and swore under his breath.

"What?" Dipper glanced across the room. He cringed.

Soos had placed the flower vase on the guest room's fireplace mantle.

####

10:32 p.m.

Dipper carried the vase into the living room, set it on the table, and ran back to the guest room.

The axolotl in the fish tank studied it curiously.

####

11:59 p.m.

In a hotel room in Portland—the Grendinators sharing one bed, Candy and Mabel sharing the other—Mabel waited silent and still for Candy to fall asleep. When Mabel was sure Candy was out, she took her phone off the bedside stand, hid under the covers, and turned the phone's volume down to the smallest sliver of sound possible. She looked up the song "We'll Meet Again," pressed play, and held the speaker up to her ear.

She wiped her tears with the bed sheet.

####

Sunday, 10:15 a.m.

The rain was coming down even more heavily than yesterday.

Soos had been reminded of a broken umbrella Ford had given him a couple weeks ago, and gone looking for it to fix it. He'd now been searching for it for over half an hour.

"I'm sure I left it in the office," Soos said, checking the coat rack in the entryway again to see if he'd hung it up there and forgot.

Stan grunted. "Everything's going missing. The remote's been missing for days." He, Ford, and Dipper were sitting in the living room watching some feel-good Sunday morning news story about a performance troupe that did interpretive dance to bird song. No one was enjoying it. "I don't think I've seen the remote since before the whole eclipse-or-whatever."

"Oh, I found it," Soos said.

"You did? Where?"

"Yeah, it was in my Monster-Mon backpack for some reason? It was pretty waterlogged though. I've been trying to dry it out in the office."

They processed that. Then Ford let out a bark of laughter. "Did Bill bring it along when we went camping just so no one could use it?" He sat up and sucked in a deep breath to shout the question to Bill—and then remembered. The air whooshed out of him in a long sigh. He slouched back onto the sofa.

They heard a car pulling around the house.

Every head turned toward the door.

Outside, Mabel's muffled voice said goodbye to her friends.

There was a moment of dreadful hesitation; and then Dipper, Stan, and Ford were on their feet and moving to the entryway.

Stan opened the door before Mabel could reached the doorknob. "Hey, sweetheart! How was the show?"

Mabel started. "Oh! Great! Hi guys!" She looked between their faces warily. "Whaaat are you all doing here?"

They all avoided meeting her eyes in different directions. Stan said, "We were just—watching the TV and heard you pull up."

"Oh," Mabel said. "Well. The concert was amazing! I got an autograph!" She pulled up her sweater (which today had what looked like two kissing parrots with her sleeves serving as their wings), to reveal she was wearing a pale blue t-shirt of Phrancisco's first album cover, signed in black marker. "Yesterday we went to a cool bookstore, and we got those fancy donuts this morning! Grunkle Ford, we got a lot of pictures of that weird crystal shop sign on the way home!"

"Ah," Ford said. "Good."

She swung around her backpack on one strap to unzip it. "I got two CDs—one of Phrancisco's new stuff and one with acoustic covers of his greatest hits! Except I don't think he had any hits? So I guess they're just his favorite songs." She pulled out the acoustic album. "I... got this one for Bill. I'm gonna ease him into liking synth pop by taking the synth out first." She looked between the guys. "Where is he?"

They winced in three different ways.

Cautiously, Mabel asked, "Is he still in the attic?"

Stan and Ford exchanged a look. Stan lost the silent argument. He looked at the weathered porch between the door and Mabel's shoes and mumbled, "Weshotim."

"Say wha?"

Stan cleared his throat. "We got that—space gun of Ford's working. We shot him. He's... I'm sorry, sweetie."

Mabel stared at Stan. She dragged her gaze from his face to Dipper's. Dipper bit his lips, staring at his feet. He wouldn't meet her eyes.

She looked from Dipper to Ford. "Grunkle Ford?" Her voice was small. "Is it true?"

For a long moment, Ford said nothing. He dragged his eyes up to meet her stare, took a deep breath, and nodded. "He's dead."

Mabel's eyes widened.

She backed out of the doorway, face blank with shock. Stan reached for her, "Sweetie—" but she jerked her arm away before he could touch her. She turned, leaped off the porch, and ran around the shack toward the main road, her sweater making her look like a colorful bird fluttering away into the gray rain.

"Mabel—Mabel!" Stan stepped out onto the porch. "It's pouring out there, you can't go out!"

Dipper ran several steps after her; then stopped and glanced back at Ford, searching his face for a cue—now what?

Slowly, Ford put a hand on Dipper's shoulder, holding him back. "She... probably doesn't want us to follow."

Dipper's shoulders sagged, but he nodded.

"She'll be fine," Stan said worriedly, "right? She just—needs time. Gotta grieve in her own way. She'll be back later."

"Yeah," Dipper said, voice thin. "She'll be fine."

Stan stared into the rain a moment longer; then nodded sharply, turned, and shuffled back inside.

Quietly, Dipper asked, "Did we do the right thing?"

Ford didn't know. His stomach had been twisting with guilt and doubt since yesterday. His conscience had kept him up half the night. "I hope so." He feared they'd have second-guessed themselves no matter what.

Ford looked at the Hand Witch's ring; but its cabochon remained a steady, deep blue.

####

8:00 p.m.

Mabel returned to the Mystery Shack when dinner was almost over, shoes and knees muddy, hair hanging in wet tangles around her shoulders.  Stan sent her upstairs to change into something dry before she ate; she obeyed without saying anything.

Soos quietly hustled into the living room to grab the flower vase and hide it back in the guest room.

By the time she came back downstairs, everyone had finished eating and Abuelita was washing the dishes. Mabel was wearing a sunny yellow t-shirt. Nobody said anything.

Abuelita had set out a plate for Mabel; she ate alone in the kitchen. Nobody disturbed her.

####

8:45 p.m.

Mabel stopped in front of the living room on her way to the stairs, looked in at her family—Stan, Ford, Dipper, Soos—like she wanted to say something; but she changed her mind and headed up. After a few minutes, Dipper quietly slid off his seat, said goodnight, and followed Mabel upstairs.

"Whaddaya bet that poor kid's in the doghouse now?" Stan muttered. "Bet he'll be back down here in a few minutes."

Ford shook his head. "She—probably needs her brother right now."

Dipper didn't return.

####

Monday, 1:00 a.m.

Stan had said that now that they finally had the house to themselves again, he was gonna enjoy one of the privileges of being an adult he'd missed all summer: staying up to watch boring late night movies. Ford and Soos sat up with him.

None of them cared about the movies. They just couldn't think of sleeping.

During a commercial break between movies, Soos said, "So... I figure we can put the door back up on the downstairs bathroom, huh?"

Stan gave him a tired look.

There was a knock on the back door.

All three of them whipped around to face it.

"Dude," Soos whispered. "It's like, one."

Stan said, "Who the heck...?" He glanced at Ford.

Ford was just staring at the door, eyes wide and mouth turned down, face sick with dread, like he was sure he was about to get arrested for murder.

Stan slowly stood, looked around for a potential weapon, remembered that any potential weapons had been cleared out of the common areas, and cautiously went to open the door.

Standing outside, pants soaked up to the knees, one ankle hooked over the other, hand on hip, using a broken umbrella like a cane, wearing top hat and black gloves and a sequined gold tailcoat—

"Hiya, Stan!" Bill Cipher beamed brilliantly. His gold tooth matched his new coat. "Didja miss me yet?"

Stan punched Bill in the nose.

####

I considered ending the chapter right after the execution when they were eating pie lol.

They landed near where they'd camped last night. While the Pines climbed out, Bill stared at the sharp gray rocks beneath the cliff. The blood was gone. It took him a moment to process that Ford was speaking: "We can pack our tents, return Tate's boat, and borrow a phone to call Stanley for a ride."

Bill numbly climbed onto land.

Their tents were in disarray, but more or less where they'd left them the night before. While Ford and Dipper dealt with the largest tent and cleaned up the campsite, Bill methodically attempted to fold up the tent he'd slept in.

He couldn't make sense of it. There were too many plastic rods with too many little joints and too many fabric flaps, he couldn't parse the geometry of it. This should be easy, he'd watched Dipper assemble the tent last night, how hard could it be to do the same in reverse?

But it wasn't working. His hands were shaking. The joints were bending wrong, the joints were bending in directions that shouldn't exist, in impossible dimensions, shrinking and expanding perversely as they twisted in alien foreshortening—

Bill let out a gasp so loud and sharp that Ford and Dipper immediately whipped around to face him. Ford asked, "What is it?"

Bill couldn't speak. He just stared down at his awful human legs.

"Bill?"

Voice very far away—but impressively calm and flat—Bill said, "I have to sit down."

"Why? What happened?"

"My legs aren't working. I can't feel them."

His knees buckled. He tried to grip them to keep them straight, but found only one arm responded. "And—my left arm." He dropped to his knees in the mud.

And suddenly he was the center of attention, two humans moving around him in a dizzying flurry, all grotesque limbs and fabric: "Hey, are you okay?" "What happened? Are you injured?" "Think we should get help?" "Maybe he needs food—"

Too much. He closed his eyes, but there were still fingers on his arm and shoulders and back. He swatted at them with his functioning hand. "Don't touch me don't touch me DON'T TOUCH ME!" His shriek startled the birds from a nearby tree. He attempted to bite somebody, he wasn't sure who—this was what he'd been reduced to, no legs, no strength, no power, he couldn't even protect himself from being touched, all he had left was his teeth—but he misjudged the distance and bit only air. But it was enough to make the humans back off, shrinking into the distance.

"Don't touch me. Stop trying to move me. Don't ask me why I can't move. I don't know. This—this—" he gestured frantically at his body. He was moving too fast, talking too fast. "This—corpse—human body—is stupid. It's just being stupid! I need to sit. Leave me alone, I need to sit. I need to sit, and—look at nothing, and breathe." He was talking far too fast, breathing too fast. "I need it so much. Go away."

No matter how hard Bill tried to imagine the humans spontaneously ceasing to exist, they did not go away. Ford knelt in front of him, studying his face. "Try to smile."

Bill forced a smile. "Good. Good, good. Positive thinking."

"No. I'm trying to see if you're having a stroke." He sat back. "Your face muscles are still working symmetrical."

Bill decided to keep smiling anyway. He thought it might help. Happy happy happy.

"You say your can't feel your legs."

"Yes."

"Or your left arm."

"Yes."

"Did you feel any pain beforehand? Tingling in the limbs, or...?"

"No—no, no. They were working fine and then they were gone. They just—disappeared." Bill laughed. The laugh went on too long and sounded too high and too nervous. 

Ford nodded. "Okay. Drink this."

A water bottle materialized in Bill's field of vision. It took a couple of tries for Bill to manipulate his hand through three-dimensional space to grasp it. He shakily drank as much as he could. It tasted like drowning.

"Dipper, run to the bait shop and call for an... The nearest hospital is at least twenty miles outside Gravity Falls' weirdness barrier, Bill can't get there. Call for a doctor and I'll stay here to—"

"No," Bill snapped, "no no no, don't call a doctor. I don't want—" He didn't want to be seen like this. He didn't want somebody picking him up and helping him into an ambulance like he was too weak to move himself. He didn't want Mabel to know. Bad enough Ford and the brat did. "I don't need it. I'm fine."

"Fine?!" Ford gestured at him in disbelief. "Three fourths of your limbs aren't functioning—!"

"I'm fine, I'm fine. Something's wrong with the body. It's got nothing to do with me. I'm fine, I'm just in it." He shut his eyes and tried to breathe. "Just—just let me sit."

"Let you sit and then do what?"

"Give me time. It'll come back. Don't tell anyone and—stop looking at me."

There was silence. Bill didn't want to open his eyes. He heard Ford stand and walk away.

####

"Do you think he's faking?" Dipper murmured.

Ford hated that that always had to be the first question. "I can't imagine what he'd stand to benefit from pretending he can't walk." Bill had been desperate to get back inside the last two days. If he'd now decided to—what? maybe take advantage of his freedom to try to escape?—then why hadn't he done that when they got separated in the lake, or in the caves where Bill could see in the dark and Ford hadn't known how to call the geodites? If he was trying to separate Ford and Dipper from each other so he could kill them one by one—why hadn't he just let them die?

It was hard not to think about how he really had saved them for no clear reason.

"He's spent two very stressful days hardly eating, sleeping poorly, and hiking through half the mountain. I'd say he needs food and rest. And probably more water." He'd gulped down two thirds of Ford's water bottle.

"Seriously? He can't feel his legs, is—is that normal for like a day without food and sleep?" Dipper asked. "People can go longer than that, right? You've gone longer."

"It's not a 'normal' symptom of exhaustion, hunger, or dehydration. But I think he'll fight us if we try to get medical help. Let's deal with the immediate problems first and—see where we are then. Even if it doesn't help, at least then he won't be paralyzed and starving."

Dipper nodded uncertainly. "What do we do if he's dying?"

The boy catastrophized at the drop of a hat. In a way, Ford supposed it was a good thing—having been through his fair share of catastrophes, he knew it helped to be prepared—but Dipper was so young. "Get him to a doctor as soon as we can; and, if that isn't enough... hope we're lucky." In other words: hope Bill stayed dead.

Dipper nodded again. "What's our strategy if Weirdmageddon restarts? Maybe... I wonder if that's what the Axolotl was trying to warn me—"

"Lunch first," Ford said. "Then we can plan for the apocalypse."

####

Bill knew they were going to make him move. They hated him. They would parade him through the streets to make a mockery of him, look at the alien loser in a malfunctioning corpse, washed-up puppeteer who can't even control a meat marionette, he's already dead and you can make his corpse in the forest a tourist destination—

"Okay," Ford said. "We'll give it an hour. Dipper's heading to town to get some proper food and call the shack."

The shack. Like a prison cell with an open door and a black hole inside trying to suck him back in. "Don't tell them—"

Dipper said, "I won't, I'm just letting them know we're not dead. And that we'll call again in a couple of hours."

No doubt so that Bill couldn't kill them without the shack knowing something was wrong. "Right."

"Do you... want any specific food?"

"Not hungry."

There was a pause. "Right. I'll just... grab something."

Bill didn't care what he did. As Dipper left the sound of each footstep was like a knife in Bill's ears. He just needed to breathe, needed to breathe and be normal and feel normal and happy—

Something soft landed on his head.

Bill opened his eyes.

There was an unzipped, slightly moist sleeping bag draped over his head and around his shoulders; and Ford standing several feet away, hands awkwardly clasped behind his back, looking somewhat embarrassed with himself.

Bill said, "What."

Ford cleared his throat. "It. Helped when you were, ah... had a hair cut. I thought—it can't hurt."

It took Bill a moment to figure out what he meant. "Oh." The towel. Ford had seen him hide under a towel. Right. 

Ford winced and muttered, "Maybe it can hurt."

Bill croaked, "What."

It wasn't until he tried to speak that Bill realized he was crying so hard he couldn't breathe. His vision swam, his shoulders shook, his breath came in sharp hitches—no no no no, that wasn't okay, not in front of— Stop, stop, stop.

He covered his eyes with his hand. The water bottle slid off his thighs and spilled on the ground. Between gasping breaths, Bill forced out, "This's—this is—good. Good."

"How is it...?"

"It's a—hint. This—it's—prob... probably... ps-psycho—som—ss—" 

"Psychosomatic?"

"Mm. Mhmm." He tried to get in a deeper breath and failed. "'Sgreat. Means—no inj—injuries. Flesh is—fine."

"So you're..." Ford's footsteps came closer, "saying it's psychological—?"

"No!" Bill let out a hysterical laugh. "I'm FINE! 'M happy. It's the body. It's—some hormone—hunger—exhaustion—just... s-synapses—and neurotrans—transmm—tr—"

"Easy. You can barely talk." He heard Ford sit next to him, felt the sleeping bag shift as he brushed against it. "Try to focus on breathing—"

"WHAT do you THINK I'm TRYING to—" Bill ineffectively pummeled Ford through the sleeping bag. "Move! Move, move, move! Don't t—touch—" He let out a frustrated scream that morphed into a humiliating sob, and had to clap his functioning hand over his mouth to smother the sound. He was not this body; he was a separate thing locked inside the body. This body was a prison, this body was a punishment. The legs didn't work, because the body was doing something to him. These weren't his tears, his grief, his fear. They were the body's. Which hormone was at fault? What could he blame other than himself?

He felt Ford's weight shift away from his side. "Okay, okay," Ford said. "Just... take it easy."

Bill socked him again. "Don't t-talk to me like a horse." He covered his eyes.

He didn't mean to risk his life for Ford.

Former friend, false worshiper, useless pawn, now enemy. Bill had just seen him floating out there and he'd done it—and he'd forgotten he could die.

In the Nightmare Realm he had saved his friends from peril billions of times before, because it was so easy for him, powers like a god, to see someone he was fond of and casually pluck them out of harm's way. It had been billions upon billions of years since Bill had been vulnerable to physical harm. He'd seen Ford in danger and he'd done what he always did and he'd forgotten he could have died.

He could have died. Eternally, permanently, last chance—he could have died.

And it would have been for nothing.

Bill was selfish. He had effortlessly saved friends billions of times but he'd also casually let them die just as many—assuming he didn't kill them himself. He saved friends because he liked them; but he didn't put himself out for ex-friends. Ford hadn't had one nice thing to say to Bill in years. Bill would never lure Ford back under his sway. Ford's survival endangered Bill's. But Bill had saved him anyway. He hadn't even stopped to think.

He didn't know. He didn't want to know. He didn't want to think about saving the human hellbent on killing him, he didn't want to think about almost dying, he didn't want to think about how peaceful it had been floating under the water, how easy it would have been to open his mouth and breathe in—he didn't want to think. He wanted to stop thinking. He wanted to empty his mind. He couldn't meditate through his hitching breaths and the way his stomach ached from struggling to keep his sobs silent, and his legs and left arm were gone.

He was fine. He was happy. He'd always been happy. Happy happy happy.

His entire body shook with sobs. He was dizzy—gasping between sobs for air he couldn't get. He was so lightheaded and crying so hard he couldn't stay upright. The edges of his vision went dark.

Ford wrapped an arm around Bill's shoulders and tugged him against his side. He held him up until Bill was too exhausted to cry anymore.

####

There was zipper noise, then a sound like shifting vinyl. Bill cracked his fingers apart to peer through them. Ford had unrolled the portable chessboard and was setting it up. "What?"

"It looks like we'll be here a while," Ford said, addressing his statement to the chessboard rather than to Bill. "It's... something else to focus on."

Bill wasn't sure what the emotion clawing its way through the grief-stricken haze in his mind was, but it felt very similar to relief. He nodded. "S—smart. I'm already—getting bored." His cheeks itched, his eyes burned, and his head was throbbing. As Ford set up the board, Bill closed his eyes and tried again to force himself to breathe more evenly. He was still dizzy from hyperventilating. Embarrassing—even a comatose human can breathe, and Bill couldn't even get that right. "Black?"

"I know."

Of course he knew. Bill always chose black. "First?"

"Fine." And Ford also knew, despite white traditionally getting the first move, Bill always moved first.

Bill waited in numb silence for Ford to finish setting up the board and sit on the other side. Moving almost automatically, Bill picked up a queen, hopped it over his line of pawns—

"Play it properly," Ford said irritably. "I put up with your cheating and lying for years, I'm not putting up with any more."

Bill gave Ford a look that he intended to be deeply offended, but immediately realized was probably just wet and pathetic. "Really? Now?"

Ford at least had the good sense to look a tad embarrassed, but he said, "I didn't set up the board to watch you move random pieces around like an untrained kindergartener."

"Three of my limbs don't work, Stanford."

"Are you suggesting your right arm doesn't remember the proper rules of chess?"

He wondered what Ford would say if he said yes. "I have a headache."

"You're probably dehydrated." Ford rummaged around in his backpack and offered over another bottle of water.

Bill reluctantly accepted it. He probably was dehydrated. "You owe me your life."

Ford fixed him with an unimpressed look. "You're trying to cash in a life debt... so you can cheat at chess?"

Bill opened his mouth; paused as he slowly thought that over; and dissolved into broken, hysterical giggles. "I don't know w-what I'm trying to do." He covered his mouth, squeezed his eyes shut, and tried to steady his breathing again.

Ford sighed. He waited until Bill had regained some control over himself; and then he said, "You can make up one new rule."

Bill considered the offer. "Total, or per game?"

"Per game."

Deep breath. "Fine. But I'm not telling you what it is. You have to guess it."

Ford considered it. "Three conditions."

"Mm?"

"One: you have to share what the rule was at the end of the game. If any of your illegal moves didn't conform to that rule, you automatically lose."

"Mm."

"Two: any rule you come up with has to apply to both sides of the board equally. Nothing that only advantages you or disadvantages me," Ford said. "Three: if I can figure out what your new rule is before the game's over, I can use it too. Obviously, you lose if I ask you about the rule and you lie."

Bill mulled over Ford's terms. His head was so foggy, he'd already forgotten the first one. "Deal."

"Deal."

####

Bill lost every game.

Badly.

He was clobbered. He was creamed. He was a faint red smear upon the pavement.

Back in Ford's dreams, Bill had won a good four-fifths of their games. Ford had heard during his travels that Bill was a mediocre player, but he didn't think he was so bad that all of those games had been won due to cheating. Even when he wasn't cheating, Bill had sometimes taken Ford by surprise.

But now, Bill was squinting at the board like he was struggling to see where the pieces were. Occasionally his fingers pinched down on thin air like he was trying to grab a non-existent piece. So Ford assumed the catastrophic losses were more a reflection of Bill's mental state than his skill level.

The option to make up rules didn't save Bill, but it at least made the games more interesting—and unlike the rest of Bill's abysmal playing, the new rules gave Ford a glimpse of the devious mind still buried somewhere in the traumatized human body.

The first round, Bill decided that the queen could leapfrog over pieces like a knight, and when Ford pointed out that would mean whoever had the first move could put the opposing king in checkmate in one move, Bill grudgingly amended the rule: the queen could leapfrog to an empty square, but could only take pieces in a straight line in the conventional manner. Ford had to maintain a phalanx of pieces jealously clinging to his king to guard against Bill teleporting his queen to the king's side. Bill managed to check him twice before Ford won.

One round, Bill decreed that rooks could only land on pieces the same color as they were sitting on, then smugly nestled his king on a white square next to Ford's rook on a black square; and then promptly lost the game when Ford pointed out both of Bill's rooks were currently on white squares, meaning he'd broken his own rule before he'd revealed it.

One round he decided that kings could move like queens, which Ford only discovered when he thought he'd checkmated him and then Bill zoomed his king across the board to take Ford's bishop; and then Bill lost a few moves later when Ford used his own king's newly revealed power to properly corner Bill.

One round Bill decided that once any back row piece was captured, it reincarnated in the body of the corresponding front row pawn. Ford genuinely liked the new rule—it meant you had to capture and checkmate both the king and the king's pawn before the game was over, and you had to be more cautious about what pieces you took since it could inadvertently set up a previously harmless enemy pawn to devastate your side of the board. But by the time Bill revealed that rule by jumping a pawn like a knight, Ford had already taken Bill's king's pawn and seen a way to checkmate him in two moves. It was a sore disappointment to end the game before getting to experiment with the new rule.

A few games were so short that Ford won without ever seeing Bill pull a nonstandard move. Round seven was one such game. Ford cornered Bill with a knight and a bishop. That had been the quickest match yet. Game over. "Checkmate."

"Checkmate," Bill said. 

Ford paused, looking over the board, thinking moving his bishop must have given one of Bill's pieces line of sight to his king; but no, his king was perfectly safe. "What?"

"Checkmate."

"You can't mate me, I just mated you."

"I know. Checkmate."

Frowning, Ford said, "Explain."

"The extra rule this game is that both kings are wearing suicide vests." He tapped his king, "He's wired up with enough explosives to wipe out the whole board." There was a look of steely exhaustion on his face. He looked like the kind of desperate, hopeless man who would put on a suicide vest. "If I'm going down, you're coming with me."

Ford laughed so hard his stomach hurt.

It was petty revenge for losing seven games in a row. A frustrated child flipping the chessboard, but making a self-deprecating joke out of it: as long as we both know I'm going to lose anyway...

When Ford had recovered himself enough to look at Bill again, Bill was giving him a faint, grim smile that didn't quite make it to his one open eye. Still—he looked a little less miserable than he had for the past hour. Or the past couple days.

Ford said, "We'll call that one a stalemate."

"I'll take it."

####

After trying all morning and half the afternoon, Dipper had remembered part of what the Axolotl had told him. Just one phrase: sixty degrees that come in threes. He could hear the rhythm and rhyme of whatever the Axolotl said next, something something something -eez—it rhymed, he was sure of that—but the rest...?

It took Dipper over an hour and a half to get back to the campsite; he'd gotten lost in his thoughts, and consequently, gotten lost in the forest. He returned with a plastic bag of the kind of junk food they regularly saw Bill consuming in the shack, a few slices of gas station pizza, and a clear takeout container of nachos. Bill immediately went for the nachos.

While Bill was inspecting the circle-shaped tortilla chips with obvious disappointment, Dipper rummaged around in the plastic bag until he found a small jar of rainbow sprinkles and offered them to Bill. Bill took it without acknowledging Dipper, awkwardly untwisted the lid with one hand and ripped off the seal with his teeth, and liberally drowned his nachos.

"The gas station looks like an earthquake hit it," Dipper reported. "And most of the cars had popped tires. I guess they must've floated up and then crashed back down." He took a cheese pizza slice and offered the box to Ford. "Nobody I asked saw the Axolotl."

Ford glanced at Bill, expecting him to have some kind of comment on that; but Bill just grunted "Mm," focused on the chess game like he thought he'd be killed if he glanced away.

Dipper pointed out when Bill pulled an illegal move, Ford explained the new rules they were playing by, and Dipper settled down to watch. He tried to razz Bill the next time he lost; but Bill made such a pathetic figure that he couldn't even enjoy making fun of him and quickly gave up.

During the next game, Bill unexpectedly slid a pawn backward diagonally to take out Ford's queen. While Ford was silently fuming over the loss of his most powerful piece, Dipper hazarded, "Can pawns capture both forward and backward?" That would have been Ford's guess too.

But Bill simply said, "No."

Dipper mumbled, "Huh," lost focus on the game, and stared off into the distance, murmuring something under his breath. He kept getting lost in his thoughts today. Ford supposed nobody in this hiking party was in the best mental state.

Maybe pawns could move like bishops? But when Ford tried to slide one diagonally across the board, Bill said, "That's illegal," and Ford returned it to its original spot. There was some hidden condition he was missing. Maybe which color square the pawn was on? Or maybe it was like en passant, you could only capture an enemy piece backwards if that was the first time the enemy piece moved?

When the game was over—Ford won, but Bill had held out longer than usual—Ford asked, "All right, what was the new rule?"

"Pawns can capture forward and backward." While Ford and Dipper stared at him in mute outrage, Bill ignored them to casually shift his posture from kneeling—his knees had gotten sore—to lotus position, and said, "Next game?" as though he couldn't even be bothered to notice the humans' fury.

"But that's exactly what we said!" Ford snapped. "You lied to me!"

"No," Bill said, "I lied to the kid. I'm not playing against the kid. Why are you paying attention to what I tell him?"

Dipper demanded, "How is that fair? Anyone listening would think—"

But he fell silent when Ford laughed. "Of course," Ford said. "I should have expected that. Any loophole you can find. That's part of the game to you, isn't it."

Bill gave Ford an unsettlingly knowing look; and Ford supposed it was part of the game to him, too.

(Somewhere in the back of Bill's foggy mind, he kept count: three times. Before today, Bill wasn't sure he'd heard Ford laugh once this summer. What changed? What was Bill doing differently? Maybe Ford only liked him when he was completely broken.)

It took until halfway through the next game for Ford to realize Bill had moved his legs.

####

Over Ford's protests that they should wait until his strength was back, Bill insisted they get moving immediately. He'd rather be locked in the shack again than spend one more minute sitting by the lake.

"I hate being surrounded by trees. Why do humans like nature so much. This is miserable." Caked in mud, still wearing a towel like a skirt, teetering with exhaustion, Bill certainly looked like the most miserable camper to ever exist. "I cannot begin to tell you how sick I am of looking at pines."

Ford wondered whether the pun was intentional.

Bill's limbs were weak and uncoordinated. He could twitch his left fingers when asked, but his grip strength was nonexistent and the arm hung limply at his side when he wasn't actively trying to use it. His legs moved, but when he tried to get to his feet he collapsed back into the mud. But he thought he could probably stand with support. He ignored the hand Ford offered and crawled to the nearest tree to lean on as he got to his feet. Ford could see Bill's knees tremble.

"I don't need your help," Bill grumbled. "I can stand fine on my own."

Ford wouldn't argue with Bill's definition of fine. "But can you walk?"

"I could." He couldn't even make the lie convincing.

"Then be my guest."

"I'm saving my strength."

It would almost be funny if he wasn't being such an inconvenience. "Well, you're here and the boat is over there." Ford gestured. The shore was much further away than it had been yesterday. "If you can't walk, then you're either crawling or you're getting help. Which you'd prefer is between you and your dignity."

Bill's face reddened. "Don't talk to me about my dignity, like you've ever cared about my dignity..." He twisted around to inspect the tree behind him, tired gaze looking over the branches—maybe he was planning to break off a walking stick? He attempted to grab a thin branch that wouldn't serve as a walking stick for a toddler. He wasn't strong enough to break it off. He kept trying.

They were never getting to the boat. "Please let me help."

"Go jump in a lake. Again."

How did Ford handle this without prodding at Bill's bruised ego? "Consider it my thanks for—ah..." Ford cleared his throat. "For actually telling the truth about the eclipse. In spite of... what was no doubt immense temptation to lie like a cheap rug. Since we didn't believe you anyway." He had averted his gaze in embarrassment; he forced himself to face Bill like a man. Bill was actually looking at him again. "And for not chucking my gnephew's body off the cliff when you had the opportunity." The bar was so low it was on the ground, and yet it was still impressive that Bill hadn't found a way to dig under it. "And... for saving my life."

Bill set his jaw tight, as if he didn't like being reminded of his moment of decency; but he said, "Fine, get over here." He held out his good arm. "Help your hero and savior limp triumphantly off the field of battle."

When Ford offered his hand, Bill ignored it, and practically snarled when Ford tried to wrap it around his waist for support. Rather than putting his arm over Ford's shoulders, Bill seized a wad of fabric near the collar of Ford's t-shirt as a handhold to hang his weight from. Ford felt less like he was supporting Bill, and more like he'd just gotten in trouble and his father was marching him into the living room by his collar to give him a stern talking-to.

"First time you've ever thanked me for anything I've done for you," Bill muttered. Ford told himself he could drop Bill once they were on the boat.

Dipper was completely zoned out, waiting on the boat staring off in the direction the Axolotl had flown. He didn't react as Bill sat next to him, and Bill didn't acknowledge he existed. Ford started the motor, and they crossed the lake toward Tate & Backle's Bait & Tackle.

####