#sffs

Spring covered Gravity Falls like a quilt. Behind the budding treeline, new eyes glimmered, witness to the forest in all its wonders. The little town, shaking off the last of the morning mist, began to stir in its waking. In the prairie meadow of the former Northwest Manor, the sun reached through towering cloudbanks to take Ciphord in its arms.

Ciphord; radiant and changed, shining, shining. Hadron; awash in their light, subsumed by it, renewed. And approaching, hands raised in defence or supplication, rumpled, ragged; Stanley.

‘Please,’ he was saying, over and over. ‘Please, please, let him go… You can have me, please, take me, don’t hurt him, I know he’s in there I would always know my brother’s face, please! Let Ford go, take me instead!’

Stan was staring, staring into Ciphord’s radiance, clutching at his face, mouth an ‘O’ of terrified awe. Hadron recognised that look – his own aged visage in the mirror after nightmares of things his waking mind had struggled desperately to forget.He put himself bodily between Stan and Ciphord, looking up at his newly-formed beloved, and the years seemed to fall away.

‘Easy, Honey-eyes,’ he murmured. ‘Can you do an indoor shine? Can y’all do that for me?’

Ciphord dimmed gently.

We are unsteady, they quavered in Hadron’s mind, their light rippling and coiling. The spirits of our children are keeping us together, but not for long…

Hadron understood. He turned to face Stan, determined.

‘Listen, Stanley, listen,’ he said, without force, without blame. ‘They don’t know you. Least, not how Stanferd does. Listen, they’re joined in there. It’s their choosing – its Stanferd’s choosing. This ain’t no shotgun wedding and they don’t need no exorcism. I know it’s so much to take in… for me too! But Stanferd’s no victim in this, sure as we’re standin’ here. They’re joined...’ He wept again at the thought of it, had to pause to dry his tears on his sleeve.

‘When I brought you here I had no idea, no idea it would come out in the wash like this. I was so afeared for Stanferd but I was an ol’ fool! An’ now... now I’ve gone and caused a tangleknot... and if y’all hurt each other ‘cause of me I won’t never forgive myself. So please! Please...’

Stan’s gaze moved away from Ciphord with a visible effort. He sank to his knees.

‘I don’t understand,’ he muttered, repeating himself just as he had repeated his early pleas for Ford’s life. ‘I don’t understand… I’m your brother! I don’t understand how you could... to me… to the kids…’ His whole body seemed to heave with the panic of it, then a terrible stillness fell over him like a cloak. ‘Was it all… nothing to him? Am I… nothing to him?’

Ciphord rested one of their many hands upon Stan’s head. He did not attempt to shake it off.

‘Bill wanted to go,’ they told him gently, in their voice that was two voices that were many voices. ‘He thought he had lost his loves forever. He was so tired. By preventing him, you saved Stanford, saved Bill, saved us. You are not nothing, Stanley. Your love for your family makes you strong – makes you everything.’

Stan stayed kneeling in the grass, wiping his face, struggling to absorb this. Finally, he looked up.

‘So what… what are you, then?’ he asked Ciphord at last. ‘Clearly you’re Ford and… Bill Cipher. Ford... and Bill Cipher, in some kind of... Can Ford…’ he turned to Hadron, unsure. ‘Can Ford see us? Can the demon see us? Is Ford’s – ’ he composed himself, breathed in ‘– body somewhere back there in the woods?’

Ciphord’s shape wavered, limbs and eyes and angles forming and unforming and forming again. Sensing their unease, Hadron came over and Ciphord put more of their arms around him and held him close. The light of Bill’s unborn children covered him protectively.

‘They ain’t never been like this before,’ Hadron began. ‘When we lived together in the 80s, when we called your Mystery Shack our Haven, Bill named his joining with Stanferd the three-legged waltz on account of how it weren’t like no demon possession. It was both of them, doin’ the best they could with their smarts in one body. Ciphord, a whole new person, made of Stanferd, made of Bill. They were… are the only beings in the whole o’ the multiverse who can join together this way. It’s a powerful magics, full o’ god-stuff! But to me… to me, they were just a delight to have around…’ Hadron became choked with emotion and had to hide his face in one of Ciphord’s many arms. ‘I remember…’ he repeated to himself, wondering.

‘Your haven,’ Stan repeated. Looking into Ciphord’s eyes-upon-eyes for too long made him feel faint, and he fixed his gaze instead upon Hadron’s narrow shoulders. ‘You were happy.’ It wasn’t a question. ‘Ford had… had a whole life that I never even –’

But Ciphord was making low sounds of distress, and it wasn’t Stan’s words that had so disturbed them. The sun vanished behind rolling clouds. Hadron opened his mind to ask Ciphord what was troubling them and was immediately bombarded with wails of anguish. A torrent of grief hit him through the bond and he staggered against Ciphord’s form, now blindingly bright.

Cannot stay! Hadron heard in his mind, and he knew at once whose voices he was hearing. No more time here! River calling, river singing! We love – What was that word? A name? So sweetly familiar… Hadron scrunched his fists into his face, forgetting his spectacles, which flew off in the tumult and shattered somewhere nearby. He tried to focus through the roaring that flooded his whole being, but the name was gone before he could parse it.

Ciphord, unravelling, no longer in control, leant towards were Stan knelt and, before Hadron could stop them, took Stan’s hand in many of their own. Stan screamed as those divine fingers seared his flesh. You can help us, Hadron heard, and he knew that Ciphord meant the plea for Stan. Please help us. Ciphord’s light began to set the surrounding meadow ablaze. Hadron scrambled up, grabbed Stan, hauled him back, covered both their faces. A great sound filled all the sky, a great light-

Then, stillness.

In a nest of smoking meadow flowers, Ford lay curled around Bill’s tiny shape. Despite the violence of their separating, they looked to Hadron’s blurred sight as if they were waking from nothing more than peaceful sleep. He recalled, for the first time in almost forty years, lying beside Ford beneath their triangle-patterned quilt in the Haven, watching him awaken from the bliss of Ciphord.

Bill opened his eye first, pulled in a huge breath, then another. Hadron!He cried through the bond. He was too weak to put out his arms and pull his beloved Third in, but Hadron went as if pulled, gasping his sobs.

‘Bill!’ he wept, barely able to speak as he fell down beside the two thirds of his soul. ‘My shining one! My sunbeam! You’re really here!’ He gathered Bill and Ford in his arms, cradling them against himself.

Ford awoke slowly, trembling, as confused and afraid as Hadron had been only a few hours ago. The glow of his bond marks flickered like candle flames in the loaming darkness of the storm gathering above their heads. When he raised himself a little in the singed grass, Hadron saw that he was riven from shoulder to hip by a great golden scar. Bill saw it too, and laid his delicate hands upon it, an unreadable emotion in his eye.

Very gently, Hadron stroked his hand over Bill’s side, marvelling at his golden warmth, his softness.

‘Our Muse,’ he breathed, meeting Ford’s eyes. From down in the valley there came a murmur of thunder.

‘We should go in,’ Hadron said faintly, covering Ford with his woollen shawl, lifting Bill in the crook of his arm. Stan had risen from his knees, and came wordlessly to them, holding out his hand for them to see. Below the calloused knuckles, the symbol burnt into him shone with a golden radiance.

‘What.. does it mean?’ he asked, voice strained. His eyes were dark with confusion and sorrow.