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real-jaune-isms · 3 years

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RWBY Volume 8 Chapter 13 Review/Remix

We should have guessed something would go wrong. Things were going way too right at the end of the last chapter. But shit didn’t just hit the fan, it hit the ground and then bounced over the edge into an abyss. And with only the finale chapter left in this Volume, I can’t imagine how they’re going to fix all of this before we have to wait another year for more good news.

Since we can’t have bad without first knowing good, the writers are kind enough to open this episode with some hope. Jaune’s half of the group, that is to say JNR plus Oscar and Emerald, see one of the portals open for them in the communications room. They don’t know if people will actually know to use these things to evacuate without the message Jaune was trying to send, so they decide to do some portal hopping and spread the word on foot. But first they have to make sure these things actually work, so they need to send a giunea pig through. Just his luck, they send Jaune and it does not pair well with his history of motion sickness. He doesn’t hurl, but he does land on his face and rise to his hands and knees when he safely comes out the other side of what looked like the trippy space rift from 2001 a Space Odyssey. The others follow close behind and take a moment to be in awe of this pocket dimension they find themselves in. Jaune recovers quickly and takes command. He and Nora will be going from portal to portal spreading the word about evacuation to Vacuo, while Ren Oscar and Emerald will be leading the pack and calling Shade Academy once they’re in Vacuo that they need to prep for hundreds of refugees. They part ways and Oscar gives a playful little salute, then Jaune leaps over the edge of the platform they were on. Someone should have told him about Ambrosius’ dire warning last week... Okay fine, we see a frame or two of him opening his shield so clearly he’s gliding down to the nearest other portal not falling into the void. Meanwhile Nora is once again riding Magnhild like a rocket powered broomstick to fly away into a portal of her own. We abruptly cut to a subway station where everyone is comedically hiding behind the stairway and peek out to look at the portal before them. One civilian is coaxed into stepping forward and checking it out, so he throws a rock at it. Because his luck continues to screw him over, Jaune comes through at that exact moment and gets hit on the head with the rock. His sudden appearance scares everyone into diving behind the stairs again, but they do peek out once more after taking a second to realize they just saw a person come through to talk to them. Jaune pulls out his Scroll to show them his Huntsman license so they’ll take him seriously, and presumably it works out great. We see Penny and RWBY coming in through their own portal and likewise being amazed by Ambrosius’ handiwork before seeing other people starting to pour in while Nora and Jaune are calling out directions and reassurances, such as the Happy Huntresses and the refugees under their protection. They wonder aloud about how few people have come through yet, but the priority is getting Penny and the Staff into Vacuo safely so they’ve got to trust Jaune’s team with this. Speaking of Vacuo and Jaune’s team, we see what happens when the green team gets into the desert outside the city. There’s an intense sandstorm raging around the area where the portal lets them out, and they can’t see which way to go to reach Shade. Worse still, cell service is down so they can’t call anyone. And civilians are starting to come through into this chaos so it’s just getting worse and worse. Ren can mask them from any Grimm that might catch a whiff of all that negativity, but only for so long.

As Nora is leaving one crowd of incoming civies to go help bring in another, Cinder arrives hiding beneath a cloak and we see her give a little smirk. Next thing we know, and explosion goes off and at least a dozen innocent people are launched into the void below. Irreversible consequences there, as far as we know, and it causes a real panic. Team RWBY tell Penny to just keep going into Vacuo while they deal with this, and we see Cinder gleefully flying around looking for the object of her hatred. She spots which way the team is heading and blasts some fire in the path to cut Ruby off. Cinder makes a clear reference to something Oscar said in an earlier conversation the heroes shared, and this throws the girls for a bit of a loop but they’re still ready to throw down.

With a swing of Crescent Rose, we cut back to Cinder and Watts meeting with Neo in the alleyway. She’s learned you catch more flies with honey than vinegar, so she apologizes for how she’s treated Neo and promises she will get the revenge she wants so badly this time, but in order to do that Cinder will need to use the Lamp. Neo reluctantly does some magic of her own and pulls the Lamp out of her hat. The two glare at each other for a moment as Neo refuses to let it go, but she conceded and through unknown means tells Cinder the password. Maybe she wrote it on her Scroll and showed her? Either way, Cinder uses the final question to ask to be shown what Team RWBY’s plan is for the handoff with Ironwood. Jinn seems upset to hear she has to go against those nice kids, but the rules of her existence must be obeyed so she grants it anyway. I got some real “Jafar steals the lamp from Aladdin” vibes, and I can’t say I minded being reminded of that great Disney film. Cinder’s trio get to see every conversation the heroes have planning out all the successes we just saw last episode, and now we know they’re totally prepared to make it go wrong at every turn. Seeing Cinder so in control and prepared brought me back to Volume 3 where she was at her most dangerous as a villain, and that’s not a bad thing. It’s been a long time coming and justifies her continuation as a threat. What quelled the pit in my stomach a bit was the look of betrayal when Cinder realized Emerald switched sides on her. She recovers quickly and suggests they help Watts finish what he started and tear the Kingdom down with his intellect. To that end they break into Atlas central command and slaughter just about everybody inside. This would seem to include that devil of the workplace Bill who spilled coffee and microwaved salmon at work. And if that was Velvet’s dad as we liked to theorize, then that’s a real shame. The ladies leave Watts to his work, but on her way out Cinder tells Watts this is everything he deserves, possibly as a way to mend bridges between them. I prefer to hope she sealed that door shut behind her and she’s leaving him to die with the plummeting city because she’s still mad he roasted her. We see that Jaune’s warning broadcast getting cut short was indeed Watt’s doing, and just to be more of an asshole he wipes a bloodstain off an apple and eats it while he does so. With that sabotage taken care of he shifts focus to the airship hangar where the birds are cuffing the Ace Ops. But they only manage to restrain Elm before Watts sends an AK (Atlesian Knight) into the area and has it charge right at them primed to self destruct. It almost gets Robyn but Marrow jumps in the way and is knocked out. That means his Semblance wears off and Harriet is free to sprint into the airship the bomb is still loaded on to. She’s intent on finishing this last mission even if it means killing herself. Vine runs after her and manages to grab the closing cargo door with his stretchy arms before it’s too late. Robyn and Qrow are left quite worried.

Speaking of desperately destructive military personnel, Ironwood regains consciousness in his cell to the sound of crumbling debris and the realization of his failure at the hands of these teens. Jacques is in the next cell and wastes no time criticizing him for failing to keep Atlas afloat. He’s happy to gloat that his fellow man has lost, though he does wistfully admit he’s lost too. Ironwood looks like he might have a breakdown as he processes the fact that all his efforts have been foiled and he can’t be the hero of this situation, that those he thinks are the dangerous insurrection who will ruin everything are going to win... when he hears a buzzing sound. The door to his cell seems to be glitching before shutting down entirely. He’s hesitant to walk out but it stays deactivated and he finds his weapons just casually lying on the ground a few yards away from his cell. Jacques seems to not understand there are consequences to insulting a person every chance you can get and pleads for James to let him out of his cell too. Ironwood just silently loads up his big laser gun and turns it on the door of Jacques’ cell. Sure, he’ll open the door, he says emotionlessly. And the man opens fire. Jacques has a moment to realize what’s happening and seems fearful, but he lost the pity of the FNDM 4 Volumes ago. Whatever Ironwood calls this cannon of his, it leaves behind green fire and annihilates Jacques’ cell... and him along with it. Weiss’ father in name alone is dead and the Schnee family will never get a chance to settle things properly with him for how he treated them. Weiss arresting him, Winter promising him Weiss wants him to be rescued from the falling city, gods only know what Willow had said to him last, and whatever obedience Whitley showed him before he was dragged off to jail. There are the last things they said to him and they have to live with that forever. Question is, who’s going to tell them Jimmy did the deed? He’s got no time to do so, he’s a man with a mission.

We go from one fiery dilemma to another as Team RWBY are still struggling to deal with Cinder even 4 on 1. She flies upward and creates a cyclone of fire beneath her to make it that much harder to reach her, before complimenting the team on the depth of their plan. She acknowledges she wouldn’t have been able to deal with it by herself, so in a way she’s grateful these girls taught her to ask for help. That help indeed comes from Neo, who’s approaching in disguise from behind Ruby. Yang notices Neo approaching, and charges in to push Ruby out of the way. But that means Yang takes the hit instead, and it takes out the last of her Aura. She hits the ground hard, and tumbles over the edge of the platform. In a threefold shot we see Neo mad that someone got in the way of her surprise attack, while Ruby and Weiss are freaking out and Blake immediately sprints past the latter to try and make a save. She throws Gambol Shroud as far as the ribbon will let it go, but it’s not far enough. Yang falls into the void below, dissolving into gold sparkles once she reaches a certain depth. This has all seemingly happened in a matter of seconds, which would explain why Ruby didn’t have enough time to get back on her feet from being shoved to the ground and use her Semblance to try and save her sister, and why Weiss didn’t have a chance to try and catch her on any glyphs or summon a Lancer to ride down and catch her. She’s not the fastest with making those summons anyway, she’s still got some room for improvement before she can make instant saves in that way. Long story short,

Don’t give the writers shit for having Blake be the only one able to try and help.

The fact that she fails to save her partner is of course very upsetting for Blake and she screams Yang’s name with all the appropriate despair and sorrow. Ruby doesn’t have a lot of time to process the fact that her sister may have just died since Neo wastes no time attacking her and all her focus has to go into self defense and trying to win that fight. We can see in the background Weiss holding Blake back, because this poor woman seems to want nothing more than to dive in after Yang either out of suicidal despair or a last feverish hope that she survived and can be rescued. The denial and depression soon turns to anger though, and she grabs her weapon with a look of murderous rage before charging in to attack Neo for what she did. She grabs Neo with her ribbon and tries to slice her in two, but it’s just an illusion and the real one is fighting with Ruby heading up a pathway towards one of the portals. Weiss turns her attention back to Cinder, and is doing an okay job of holding her own but not getting any hits in of her own. The tables seem like they could turn for our protagonists when Penny flies in to join the fight and punches Cinder in the face. But Weiss didn’t want Penny getting involved, and Cinder seems pretty glad to get another rematch with her. And she certainly is more prepared this time, compared to Penny who tries to summon her swords and forgot she doesn’t have them anymore. She takes a hit and lands in a crowd of civilians, though she does land on her feet and quickly improvise by making some new swords with her magic and then flying back into the fray. Weiss skates on her glyphs up a path to get a better vantage point, and pulls Cinder out of attack mode with a black holding glyph that seems to yank on her like gravity. Turns out the glyphs are vulnerable to fire though, so Cinder burns through it and quickly finds where Weiss is so she can send a flurry of fiery glass blades her way. Weiss happened to choose a spot right by 3 portals so there’s about a dozen innocent bystanders around her that are in danger. She thinks fast and summons her Knight’s sword to shield them, but some of the blades do go through a portal and send some other people diving for cover in the train station. Jaune is there to defend some of them with his shield, and immediately realizes the evacuation job just got a lot harder. Unfortunately for Weiss, these glass shards superheat and explode at her feet, sending her flying off the platform. She still has Aura though, and catches herself on a glyph to catch her breath. In the meantime, Cinder goes back on the defensive against Penny and Ladybug continue to tag team against Neo. Blake hears screaming and realizes she could also try and help Weiss and Penny deal with Cinder, but feels really conflicted about it. Who needs her more, can she just give up on getting vengeance for Yang? What can she even do against a Maiden? She just doesn’t know.

Back in the skies, Harriet is getting close to Mantle when she gets an alert of a disturbance in the airship’s cargo hold. Putting the controls on autopilot, she goes down to check on it and sees Vine made it aboard. She’s about to arm the bomb, but he stops her and voices his thoughts that this may not be the best plan for them anymore, much to her annoyance. She asks him if this is really the side he wants to take here and now, and he doesn’t want to call it a divide like that. But he lays out the facts: Their commanding officer has been deposed so his authority is moot, the city is going down and there’s likely going to be no stopping that, and the people are going to be brought to safety regardless. So why bother bombing a city full of innocents whose other options are run away to the barren desert or be crushed under a giant hunk of rock? But Harriet isn’t having that shit. It’s the principle of the matter, it’s about following through and standing with her decisions. If she’s not obeying what Ironwood ordered... then what is she anymore? To disobey him or let the teens continue their rescue efforts means acknowledging they’re in the right and she’s wrong. And after the last few days of seeing them as her enemy and losing a fight to them... her pride just won’t allow it. She has to see this through, because it’s what Clover would have done. He was a good soldier, he died doing what the general told him he had to. Vine admits that doesn’t mean he was right to die on that hill. He wasn’t an infallible paragon of good judgment. Harriet doesn’t like hearing that either, but she can’t seem to find the right words to defend her stance on Clover. Probably because those words are something to the tune of “Clover was my friend, and I want to do right by him because I miss him dearly”. But to say that would mean the Ace Ops were also wrong after the mission in the mines, when they were so condescending in telling Team RWBY that you have to just be coworkers with your team and you can’t be friends. And she seems to prefer suicide bombing death over admitting some teenagers knew more about friendship and teamwork than her and her squad. That ego and temper really need some working on, and one starts to worry she’s too far gone to ever get a chance at working on them. Before Vine can give some heartfelt reassurances about being allowed to feel their feelings for each other the airship gets bumped hard and Harriet goes back into angry work first mode. She arms the bomb and tries to dump Vine out the cargo doors before rushing back up to the cockpit and regaining control of the ship. The bumping was caused by Robyn flying another airship into them to try and keep the bomb from being delivered, because how was she to know Vine was about to defuse the whole situation? She does have the good sense to let up on her efforts and come around behind the other airship to rescue Vine when she sees he’s hanging on for dear life. In the meantime, Harriet has to deal with another angry bird as Qrow uses his bird form to fly right up to her windshield and turns back at the last second to crash through the glass and tackle her to the floor. The two fall down the ladder back into the cargo hold, where Qrow seems ready and willing to give Harriet the rematch she’s been wanting so badly. But since nobody’s at the controls and Harriet didn’t turn autopilot back on, the ship’s going to crash... except it’s not because Watts overwrites that too and makes sure the bomb is gonna get where he wants it to.

Down in the Vault, Winter is trying to call any of the teens she can reach to get an update on the plan’s progress. No signal, we know now to thank Watts for that, but what she does find is a red dot appearing on the ground and quickly moving to the center of her chest. She promptly realizes its a laser sight and puts up a glyph to shield herself, but it’s a real strong green blast. Ironwood is coming down the elevator with his greek fire cannon, and he fully intents to put his former lieutenant down for betraying him. For all his paranoia he never thought she would stab him in the back, but that’s just what happens when you have good people at your side while you go mad with power. James tries one last time to insist he knows the right course of action for Atlas. Winter should just step aside and let him kill Team RWBY to reclaim the Staff and Make Atlas Floating Again. But she won’t back down, it is her job and her passion to protect Atlas and its people, and she’s not quitting in the face of this new enemy of the peace. Because Ironwood is the villain here, as much as he thinks he’s right. The extremes he considers necessary are too far. Ironwood actually sheds a tear when faced with this declaration, but I think it’s the last of his heart and humanity leaving as he shuts himself off from all but his machine like devotion to the cause.

Back in the Vacuan desert, Ren’s Aura runs out after spending a few minutes masking thousands of refugees, and the three green teens wonder where the heck Penny is, since she should have been among the first through the portal and her Maiden powers would be able to make quick work of the sandstorm. Oscar grows especially concerned and tries to run back into the pocket dimension to go check on her, but he hits the portal hard and gets bounced back. Oz realizes this new issue is Ambrosius’ doing, and we flashback to when Weiss was telling the big blue builder how to make the central location and all its portals. She happened to use the phrase “a one-way ticket to Vacuo”, since they had no intention of going back to the crashing Atlas. But Ambros took that too literally in the wrong way, and made the Vacuo portal the only one to be one way. They can hop around between Atlas portals all they want, but once you’re in Vacuo there’s no going back to help with the fight they don’t even know is happening yet. But these three have problems of their own, because bat-like Grimm are swarming in and attacking the unguarded civilians. We end the episode there, and boy am I not ready for the finale to only make things worse before 8 months of no resolutions. Are you?

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bytheangell · 4 years

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To Fall Again

(Read on AO3) Square Filled: Inter-dimensional Travel for @shadowhunterbingo Pairing: Jimon Rating: Teen and Up – Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Tags: Multiple Universes, pre-fic character death, angst with a happy ending Summary: Simon Lewis didn’t think moving on was possible. He didn’t think he’d ever be ready to fall in love again. It’s a good thing life rarely waits until you’re ready. NOTE/WARNING: There is no character death that happens within the current timeline of this fic, but there is one that takes place just prior. However, all versions of the characters who appear in and are the focus of the fic itself are, and remain, alive and well! -------------

Simon Lewis never expected to love again after Jace Herondale. Like everything that came with Jace, their love exploded shortly after the fuse was lit, a brilliant burst of excitement and color and adventure and passion. Most flames that burn as bright as Jace did would be expected to burn out just as fast, but he never did.

And he never would have, Simon was almost certain - too bad they never got the chance to find out before his light was snuffed out instead.

Jace worked as a bounty hunter, it was the family business, and they knew the dangers. They did what they could to mitigate the risks but it wasn’t enough. After it happened Simon wondered if he had it in him to take revenge - he and Jace were polar opposites when it came to a lot of things, a stomach for violence included, but Simon thought he might have it in him for this.

For Jace.

He didn’t get the chance to find out as Jace’s siblings took care of that for all of them. They also looked out for Simon during those first few weeks when he barely left the house, never answered his phone or texts, and was very obviously not doing great. When it was clear Simon needed a change of pace - or at the very least to start leaving the apartment again - they convinced him to take on a part-time bartending job with his friend Maia. They want him to be happy, he knows that - hell, he can tell they even want him to move on - but he knows the latter is impossible and he isn’t so sure of the former if he’s being honest.

He takes the job anyway if only to make ends meet without needing help from the Lightwoods. It turns out to be one of the best decisions he ever made.

New New York is too busy of a city for Simon but he can’t bring himself to move. Ever since it was branded as a centralized hub for Official Interdimensional Travel the influence of people passing through from other worlds nearly quadrupled. Simon is still weirded out by the common use of portals between worlds but many others take full advantage - some looking to start over, others to simply get away for a day or two. A lot of missionary sort of work from more advanced universes to struggling ones, which is cool and all. It’s just a lot, and not for Simon.

Until he sees Jace again.

It’s only been four months since the funeral when Simon catches sight of the familiar blonde hair walking away from him. He does a double-take and nearly brushes it off like he usually does - it wouldn’t be the first time he saw a stranger in a crowd and thought for just a moment it was Jace, knowing full well that it wasn’t - except there’s something more to it this time. Something about the way the figure carries himself, the style of that leather jacket, and when he drops something and turns around to pick it up Simon sees his face for the first time and nearly faints.

It’s actually Jace, but it isn’t his Jace - even from here Simon can see he’s missing a scar on his neck that Jace got when one of his bounties had a hidden knife they didn’t find when they searched him and tried to get free, managing to get one good swipe in before Jace knocked the weapon away.

So not his Jace, but still… Jace.

And then just as quickly he’s gone, lost in the crowd. By the time Simon manages to gather himself enough to try and follow there’s no sign of him anywhere, and Simon doesn’t stop thinking about it for a very long time.

---

The next time Simon spots him he’s coming out from the back with four plates of food, two in his hands and two balanced on his arms.

All four drop to the ground with an unceremonious clatter when the sight of Jace sitting on one of the barstools catches him off-guard.

“Simon, what the fuc-” Maia starts, fully ready to tear into him over the food that’ll have to probably be comped off that group’s bill and re-made on the fly, but when she catches sight of the blonde at the bar she softens immediately.

“Take 30, Lewis. I’ll clean this up.”

Simon stands there, unsure of what to do. Does he leave? Does he talk to him? How does he even begin to-

“Hey, you alright?” Jace asks, leaning over the counter a bit towards Simon.

“No,” Simon says immediately.

“It’s just… you’re looking at me like you’ve seen a ghost.”

A ghost. Close enough.

“I.. you…” Simon starts, but he can’t seem to find the words. “Jace, right?”

“Jonathan,” Jace says.

Jonathan Christopher.

“And you are…?” Jace - no, Jonathan - asks.

It hurts Simon to hear, to realize he doesn’t know, but of course he doesn’t. Why would he?

“Simon,” Simon says, with a small, sad smile.

“You’re still staring, Simon,” Jonathan points out.

“Shit, sorry. I should go-”

“Wait,” Jonathan stops him. “Why? If you don’t mind me asking?”

“You look like my ex,” Simon says, then cringes when he realizes how that sounds. “He, uh. He died.”

“Oh,” Jonathan says. “I’m sorry. I should go-”

“No, please,” Simon says, not intending for his voice to sound as pleading as it does. “I’d actually, uh… I mean if you’re going to sit for a drink, maybe we can just chat? Unless that’s too weird. That’s too weird, isn’t it?”

Jonathan smiles, and god, there’s that grin Simon fell in love with. “Not at all. I’ve got an hour or two before I have to head home.”

Simon takes the next hour off - Maia is very understanding - to talk to Jonathan about his life and where he’s from, but it’s over too quickly and soon he’s on his way, back to a universe without Simon.

A universe where he’s still alive and well and thriving.

Simon wonders how many more versions of him are out there.

He never expects to actually find out.

---

The answer is a lot. It seems like no dimension is complete without its own Jace Herondale, or occasionally Wayland or Morgenstern. Sometimes he goes by Jonathan or J.C.; sometimes he’s a chef, or a soldier, or a pianist; sometimes he recognizes Simon and sometimes he doesn’t... but at the core of him, he’s always just Jace.

Simon talks to one or two of them when they cross paths, usually stopping in for food or a drink during their travels. The only problem is that they’re always on the way to somewhere, and never stay long enough for him to really get to know.

He knows how absurd that desire is, the desire to have these other Jace’s stay, and-- and what? Because whatever Jace comes through isn’t his Jace - he has a job, a family, an entire life to get back to, he doesn’t want to stay and comfort Simon.

Until one does.

Jace Herondale is the grandson of Imogen Herondale, a well known and wealthy politician in the dimension he’s from. He travels for fun because he’s a bit of a troublemaker and his family decided it was better to let him wander and do his own thing if that’s what keeps the family name from being dragged through the dirt.

Simon knows this because they talk, and when it becomes increasingly apparent that Simon doesn’t intend on kicking him out of the bar Jace stays until close and then admits he doesn’t have anywhere else to be if Simon wanted to grab a nightcap.

They end up back at Simon’s apartment. Nothing happens, but they talk some more, and Jace stays the night on the sofa. He stays the night after that, and the one after that, too. Simon offers to trade-off and take the sofa, and when Jace refuses he hesitantly offers to share the bed instead.

Just to sleep, they agree - until sleeping together leads to, well, sleeping together, and Simon isn’t sure how he feels about it.

Simon is, however, sure how he feels when this Jace Herondale leaves a week later with murmured apologies about needing to do some damage control back home.

After that, Simon goes a little numb. It’s like losing Jace twice, in a way - he knows it isn’t the same, he knows he shouldn’t have hoped for this new thing to last, but he had. And now that it’s gone his heart breaks all over again at the cold, empty space beside him in bed.

He tries to ignore the next time he catches sight of another dimension’s Jace, except it’s one where Jace knows him, so Jace approaches Simon instead. Attempting to avoid him is one thing, but Simon can’t bring himself to brush off Jace once he’s standing there in front of him with that infectious smile and gleam of mischief in his eyes.

Simon can’t bring himself to grow too attached, so he does the only logical thing: he shuts down entirely. He tries to convince himself he’s fine with one night stands, forces himself to go through the motions with the constant reminder that it isn’t him, that there’s nothing there.

He hates it.

Perhaps the lesson he’s meant to take away is that he needs to stop trying. No one else is going to fit the mold of exactly what he needs, to know what he’s going through and what he’s missing. They can’t, and he shouldn’t expect them to.

The easy solution is to go back to passing acquaintances - little chats from behind the bar that end there with nothing more. No hopes to crash, no expectations to fall short of. Better than nothing, and safe.

He’s okay with it. Not the fake, forced okay he was with the casual hook-ups, but actually okay. It’s a taste of what he wants, of what he’s missing, and since he knows he can’t have it all it’s a realistic expectation to allow himself.

And then for a while, he stops crossing paths with any other Jace’s, or J.C.’s, or Jonathan’s. He wonders if maybe they warned all the other dimensions about the weirdo bartender in New New York who talks too much and always manages to say the wrong thing, and maybe they’re avoiding him. Or maybe he just came across as many as there were, and that’s it. After all, there may be an infinite number of realities, or dimensions, or whatever out there, but it isn’t as if they have access to all of them. He should be lucky to have found as many as he did.

Days pass, and then weeks, and then months. It never gets easy, but it gets a little easier, and Simon finds himself falling into a pretty solid routine. He’s made some friends at work, mostly through Maia, but they still totally count and they all go out some nights after work. And work is actually going great - he’s an assistant manager under Maia now, which only comes back to bite him in the ass sometimes.

Sometimes like this night, in particular, exactly one year after Jace’s death, when he decides to cover for not only Maia who is on vacation but two other employees who called out sick. And of course, there’s some sort of bachelorette party or something that drags at least twenty customers to the bar who seem determined to order non-stop overly complicated mixed drinks and shots - on top of the entire rest of the restaurant’s worth of drinks he has to make. He wanted a distraction tonight, sure, but maybe he should’ve been a bit more careful what he wished for because he’s about to lose his goddamn mind, and--

--and then there he is. On this day, of all the days, it feels more like seeing a ghost than ever before. His blonde hair falls softly across his forehead and into his eye, and he pushes it away just as he looks up and makes eye contact with Simon. Jace. Of course, there would be a fucking Jace doppelganger here, tonight, right now, and-

“Si?”

Jace’s voice is soft, pained, and Simon’s thoughts stop dead. As does the rest of him. He has a million things to do and is in the middle of turning around with a bottle in his hand to make some shot with a name he can’t repeat with a straight face, but he just freezes at the way Jace is looking at him. Unlike the other times, this feels different, somehow. Like fate, a small voice in the back of his head offers, but Simon is quick to quiet it.

And then someone is literally snapping their fingers to get his attention and he doesn’t have much of a choice other than to give Jace an apologetic grimace before mouthing ‘sorry’ and going back to making drinks.

He keeps an eye on him, though, watching as Jace lingers before finally approaching the bar. Simon is still drowning in drink orders but since Jace is actually at the bar now he can at least go over for a second, even just to see what drink he wants.

“Can I get something for you?”

“What?” Jace asks, then shakes his head. “Oh. No,” he starts, but then seems to realize that means Simon is going to leave again so he quickly amends his answer. “I mean, yeah. I’ll take a rum and cola.”

Simon nods, and grabs for the bottle and the soda hose, pressing the ‘cola’ button and watching as the brown carbonated soda mixes with the bottle of rum he turns over into the glass at the same time.

“Sorry,” Jace says as Simon makes the drink. “About earlier. That was creepy of me. I didn’t mean to be- it’s just you-” Jace stumbles over his words.

“You have a Simon, in your world, don’t you?” Simon offers, and Jace looks relieved that Simon understands.

“Yeah,” he says, and Simon notes the way he hasn’t broken eye contact since he came over like Jace is afraid to look away and lose him even though Simon clearly isn’t going anywhere other than the other side of the bar and back.

“Hey, another drink down here, sometime tonight maybe!” An impatient man yells from the other end of the bar, and Simon winces.

It’s only then Jace looks away from him and down the bar. “Are you alone back there?”

Simon nods. “Perks of being the boss, I guess. Everyone else called out,” he admits. “It’s fine,” he adds quickly.

“Doesn’t look fine,” Jace points out.

“Fine, it isn’t fine. I’m dying. I think my wrists are going to fall off and if I have to make one more buttery nipple shot for that bachelorette party I might actually cry,” Simon admits in a rush. “Happy now?”

“No,” Jace says. “But I can help.”

Before Simon knows what’s happening Jace’s rum and cola is empty and Jace moves to the small opening at the end of the bar.

“You can’t come back here,” Simon says, but Jace only cocks an eyebrow.

“Says who? You’re the boss, aren’t you?” Jace grabs a nearby white towel and drapes it over his shoulder, already rolling up his shirtsleeves. “Want the help, or not?”

Simon knows that Maia will have his head for this but right now he can’t be bothered to worry that far ahead. He just needs to survive until close. “Ask me if you can’t find something, or don’t know a recipe, or-”

“Relax, Simon. We got this,” Jace promises, and Simon can already feel the panic and tension fading at the reassurance.

They do have this. In fact, they work together so well anyone watching would think they’d been doing it for years, and by the end of the night they’re calling out for bottles closer to the other and tossing them back and forth without a second thought. Simon doesn’t know if Jace is just good at making things up as he goes or if he really knows his stuff, but he doesn’t ask about a single order that comes his way, and they clear out the last customer minutes after closing.

Simon counts out the register, takes well over half the tips they made that night, and folds the bills over to hand to Jace.

Jace looks at the money like he’s never seen it before. “Keep it,” he says.

“You just saved my ass,” Simons points out. “It’s the least I can do.”

Jace only shakes his head. “No,” he says. “Just… being here. This? This is more than enough. You have no idea-” he starts, but the words catch in his throat. “Sorry, I should go.”

“Wait,” Simon says, instinctively reaching out to grab Jace’s wrist to stop him. He knows he shouldn’t - just passing acquaintances, he reminds himself. But there’s something different about this time, about this Jace. “What is it?”

Jace hesitates, and then in a voice so quiet Simon almost doesn’t hear it, says, “I lost you.”

Jace realizes the slip-up the moment it leaves his lips. “Him,” Jace is quick to correct. “I lost him. My Simon.”

Simon isn’t sure what look crosses his face at that, but whatever it is has Jace shaking his head back and forth. “Yep, that’s too weird. I knew it would be. It’s just… it’s been a year, and you aren’t the first Simon I’ve run into from another place, but when I saw you here, tonight, it was like… like…”

“Like fate,” Simon offers, voicing the thought he had previously. “It isn’t too weird,” Simon adds because he doesn’t want this Jace to leave, not yet at least. “I lost you, too.”

Simon wraps up his shift faster than he ever has before, moving fast despite the exhaustion he feels starting to settle in. Jace sits at an empty table while Simon finishes everything he has to do to close the bar down, having a drink or two while he waits, and then Simon makes a drink of his own before joining him.

The longer they talk the more Simon knows the similarities are too specific to not mean something. It’s been a year to the date for both of them, they both had an Alec and Isabelle and Maia of their own to help them through, and Jace was a bartender before he and his Simon met.

“I actually haven’t poured a drink since,” Jace admits, swirling the liquid in his glass around a bit. “It was a totally random robbery-gone-wrong, and Si was playing a set at the bar that night. Wrong place, wrong time.”

“My Jace’s was an occupational hazard. He was a bounty hunter,” Simon admits, and the Jace in front of him spits out his drink in shock.

“I what?” he says, eyes wide. “Fuck that’s intense.”

Simon laughs. “Yeah, tell me about it.”

The hours pass and soon it’s late, they’re both a little on the other side of sober, and it’s obvious that Simon can’t send Jace off alone like this, not that Jace seems to have any inclination to leave on his own. Simon waits for the little voice in his head to tell him to send Jace back home anyway, that this is all just going to lead to awkwardness and regret and disappointment… but the voice never comes.

Simon can definitely feel that it’s different this time, and he’s pretty sure Jace can, too, because they get each other in ways that the others never had. It isn’t that Jace’s Simon broke up with him, or that they never dated, or that they never met each other at all. This time each knows exactly what the other needs because, for the first time, they’ve both been through the same loss.

They get back to Simon’s apartment and Simon tosses Jace a pair of sweatpants and a t-shirt to change into. Neither of them says anything but Jace has to realize it’s a pair that used to belong to Simon’s Jace with how perfectly they fit him.

“I can sleep on the sofa,” Jace offers, but Simon shakes his head.

“You don’t have to. I mean, if you’d rather, that’s fine. But… I wouldn’t mind the company.” Simon doesn’t realize he’s holding his breath in anticipation until Jace nods and makes his way towards the bed, and all of the tension and anxiousness eases out of Simon at once. Jace goes to the left side - his side - and Simon goes to the right.

He doesn’t have to ask as he moves forward at the same time Jace shifts back toward him, their bodies fitting together perfectly, and Simon begins to drift off with his arm wrapped around Jace, lulled to sleep by the steady rise and fall of his breathing.

-------------

For a few moments, Simon forgets where he is. He’s wrapped around the warmth of another body, just like he dreamed of so many times - except this isn’t a dream. In fact, this is more than he let himself even dream of lately. For a moment Simon forgets and it’s as if nothing bad has ever happened in his life.

But then Jace stirs beneath him and he’s forced to acknowledge the reality of his situation - that this, like all the other times, can’t stay forever. Simon just waits for the other shoe to drop while they wake up, and eat breakfast, and spend some more time talking and even watching some mindless reality tv show; until Simon has to go to work and has an awkward moment where he expects Jace to leave with him, except Jace stays on the sofa.

“I’m… I have to go to work,” Simon says, not for the first time that day.

It seems to click very abruptly in Jace’s head that this isn’t his place, and of course Simon expects him to leave when he leaves.

“Oh. Right. I’ll just…” Jace starts, and only at that moment does it become apparent to Simon that Jace hadn’t planned on leaving.

“You can stay, if you want,” Simon is quick to tell him. “I’ll be back in a few hours. There’s plenty of food, and the tv, and video games and stuff?” He sounds unsure, but Jace almost immediately eases back into the sofa.

“Thanks,” Jace says, and Simon realizes he’s relieved that he can stay.

Jace also stays the day after that. And the day after that.

And Simon realizes, slowly but surely, that Jace doesn’t plan on leaving.

Simon brings up the fact that Jace has an entire life he just casually up and left- not because he particularly wants to, but because he knows they have to talk about it eventually - but Jace just shrugs.

“I told Alec and Izzy where I am. I think they’re actually kind of relieved to know I’m at least out and about” Jace says, settling back against Simons’ shoulder while they watch a movie on Simon’s day off. “But whenever you want me to leave just tell me. I don’t want to overstay my welcome.”

That’s just it - Simon doesn’t want him to leave. Ever. But he also can’t bring himself to say it, so instead, he just mumbles something noncommittal and turns back to the movie.

It’s nearly a week later when Jace tells him he’s going back home to check in with his siblings. Simon doesn’t expect him to come back at all, figuring this has to be it, this is Jace’s way of sliding off without making a scene and the inevitable heartbreak Simon feared all along.

Jace leaves, and Simon fully expects to never see him again.

So when Simon’s getting ready for bed that night and he hears a knock at the door, his heartbeat races at the implications. It can’t be… can it?

When he opens the door to see Jace on the other side, suitcase in tow, he doesn’t know what to say.

“Hey,” Jace starts. “I know this is… well, Alec said it was ‘incredibly presumptive’, but… I’d like to stay. If you’ll have me. And if not, if it’s too much, or too weird, I get it, and just say the word and I’ll go back-”

Simon steps forward to close the space between them, cutting off Jace’s rambling by pressing their lips together for the first time. It doesn’t feel like the first time, though - it feels like this is where he’s always meant to be. Jace kisses him back, leaning into the motion easily.

“Only I can nervous-ramble that much,” Simon informs him matter-of-factly after they pull away.

Jace laughs, and it sounds like the sweetest music. It sounds like hope and happiness; like everything Simon worked so hard to keep himself from feeling for the better part of the past year.

“You’re welcome as long as you’d like,” Simon reassures him, stepping aside so Jace has more than enough room to come in and make himself at home.

And Jace does. It isn’t long before it feels like their home again, the way Simon hadn’t realized he missed as much as he did.

Simon knows that true second chances are rare - he had enough ‘almost’s pass through his life to recognize this one for what it is. It isn’t going to be the same as before, but it doesn’t need to be: he has a second chance at love, and he plans on taking it.

#jimon #jace herondale #simon lewis #shadowhunters #shadowhunterbingo #THIS ONE GOT AWAY FROM ME SORRY NOT SORRY #elle writes a few deadbeat lines #long post

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amyscascadingtabs · 5 years

Text

and the sun paints the skies and the wind sings our song

It’s the last stretch, the finale, the very last bit of their long rollercoaster ride to becoming parents, and Jake thinks he’s never been more in awe of his wife.

((jake and amy are trying for a baby in season seven and this popped into my head when i took a break from studying today and then it basically wrote itself so here you go loves))

read on ao3

She’s so focused.

He’s never seen Amy so focused before. Not even when she’s hard at work at a burdensome case, filtering out even the quietest of noises from her surroundings until he has to wave a hand in front of her face to get in contact with her, has he seen her this focused. Not when she studied for the Sergeant’s exam and would drag her books into bed with her every night and wake him up with her too-creepy singing and frantic braiding, and not when she’s chewing on the back end of her pencil while she works on a particularly tricky crossword, has he seen this look of total and utter determination.

It’s the last stretch, the finale, the very last bit of their long rollercoaster ride to becoming parents, and Jake thinks he’s never been more in awe of his wife.

They’re not alone in the room - there’s a doctor and two nurses present, instructing Amy, instructing him on what to do to help her - but he’s barely looking their way right now. His body is glued to the same uncomfortable chair it’s been glued to for most of this long, crazy, day, and his eyes are glued to her. To her face, twisting in pain, to her lips pressed so tightly together and to her eyes squeezed shut for the duration of the contraction. It’s almost scary to watch, and yet, he’s transfixed by it.

He’s in charge of counting. That’s the one thing he can do except offering his hand for her to squeeze his hand so hard he thinks the bones in it are going to snap; he can tell her to push for ten, breathe deep for two, come on you can do it just one more for as long as the wave lasts, repeating the same instructions time after time.

He can’t help but think about how many far-out screwy twists and turns of the Universe have taken place for them both to end up together in this hospital room tonight, and yet, it seems like the only thing on Earth which was ever truly obvious. The two of them, together and forever, and he may feel a little superfluous in this room right now but he would never consider leaving.

He’s staying. Always.

He’s not certain whether or not his wife is in there for the moments when her face is screwed up with so much purposefulness, wonders whether she’s transported to another dimension where nothing can disturb her, but then after every minute to a minute and a half there’s a break between contractions and it’s like he watches her return to the room, blinking in confusion and sighing a little in relief. The grip on his hand and wrist loosens and he’s quick to hold a straw to her lips so she can get some tiny sips of clear strawberry drink. He presses a kiss to her sweaty forehead and tells her how proud he is of her, that she’s doing so great, that she’s killing it, and she gives him a weak-but-there smile in return.

“I am?” She whispers as if it were ever something to question, and he smiles wider.

“You’re awesome.”

“Mm,” she says, and then she grimaces a little. “This really hurts a lot.”

It’s so timid, such an understatement to describing what he’ll never know but guesses is something so intense he’d probably pass out within seconds if he ever experienced it. It’s probably the completely incorrect response, but he’s laughing at her, rubbing her shoulder affectionately and placing a firm kiss on her lips.

“It does, huh?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“I still think you’re doing awesome,” he assures her, and she manages another faint smile before she grimaces and tenses again and he starts again with the counting.

Push for ten, breathe for two, come on you’re so close just keep going.

He thinks of the first morning she sat down across from him, glancing at the disorderly mess of toy figurines, case files and half-eaten bags of sour straws on his desk before neatly starting to arrange the assortment of carefully chosen stationery items on her own. He thinks of late nights at the precinct, brainstorming ideas and bickering about whose time it was to go and make coffee and who owed the other one a chocolate bar from the vending machine this time. He thinks of bets made in the name of friendly competition, of bills on credit cards he’s still paying off to this day, of you’re not allowed to fall in love with me and you do know me and the sight of her throwing a ridiculous quantity of nuts in the air and pumping her fist whenever she caught some with her mouth. He thinks of realizing he liked her as more than a friend and being unable to do anything about it except watch her be happy from a distance, of romantic-stylez and six months apart and that wasn’t nothing, that was real and maybe, yes, a little, I was confused.

He’s reminded of flirty jokes at Charles and Gina’s parents wedding and that painful sting of jealousy returning in his chest upon seeing her with Dave Majors, he’s reminded of an undercover operation and how her hands doubted for just a second before finding his shoulders when he kissed her the first time, failing to ignore the thought of how right it felt. He thinks of how decisive her lips were when she practically pushed him up against that tree and he just let her, would have let her keep going if she hadn’t opened her eyes and noticed the criminal, and he thinks of finding her in the evidence locker the day after and the world changing in an instant with that third kiss.

He’s always had a bad memory, but he remembers every little detail that led him to her, led him to that sewer where he watched her ramble the Miranda rights and realized all he really cared about - even more than winning their bet - was making her happy, every turn that led him to the car where she promised she would wait for him and keep fighting for him, every step that took him back to that evidence room on one knee with a ring box in his shaking hands. He remembers their crazy wedding day and how nothing else mattered in the end because he got to marry the love of his life, and he remembers the realization that if he wanted kids with anyone he wanted them with her. He remembers the final decision to start trying, and he remembers a pile of more positive pregnancy tests than anyone should ever need to take in order to be sure.

They were always going to end up here.

Somewhere, somehow, this is where they’d find their way, and he never believed in the concept of soulmates but he believes in them, the two of them, together and forever and fighting their way through whatever curveballs life insists on throwing them.

Every little detail about this moment, from the ring sitting comfortably on his left fourth finger to the almost inaudible Taylor Swift tunes playing in the background to the way her nails are digging marks into his hand with how hard she’s squeezing, is where they were meant to be.

The two of them, together, for however long their future together stretches.

And in just a moment - it’s so close, he can almost touch it - they’ll be three.

Another contraction ends, and she looks up at him with a tired dazedness in her eyes, but there’s still determination there as he meets her gaze and feels his heart swell with love for the n-th time in the hours they’ve spent at this hospital.

He’s never been so ready.

It was always meant to be like this.

#surprise!!!!!!!!#it's a fic #this was a surprise even to me i wrote this in like two hours #jake and amy are trying for a baby and i'm crying #my writing #b99 #brooklyn 99 #brooklyn nine-nine #peraltiago #jake x amy #b99 fic #brooklyn 99 fic #brooklyn nine-nine fic #b99 fanfiction #brooklyn nine-nine fanfiction #jake x amy fic #jake x amy fanfiction #peraltiago fic #peraltiago fanfiction

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mcrtimersmith · 4 years

Text

He heard the rumors.

There were myths of a guardian of this forest, supposedly the very last of its kind doomed to walk the world and dimensions before someone came to take its life. Many locals spoke of antlers that scratched the sky, dragging along its spine in smaller points (like SPIKES), a tail longer than his body and so very UNLIKE a normal deer, and feathered like a bird.

And its eyes.

The entire upper half of its face had six red eyes. All-seeing and all-knowing. Mortimer wasn’t surprised that most thought of it as a living GOD.

It went by many names, but the original was Actaeon, after the foolish man who infuriated and offended the Greek Goddess, Artemis, and had been turned into a STAG as a punishment.

Mortimer only knew that fact because of Bill.

Regardless, Mortimer presses on, maneuvering carefully through the woods. The trees looked as though they reached PAST the atmosphere of this planet; the leaves were forever stuck in Fall while others were suspended in air, held there by an unknown force. As he paused briefly to tap the nearest leaf, TIME caught up and it crumbled to ash.

The roots of each massive tree stuck haphazardly out of the ground, providing a harsh landscape for him to move through. Mortimer wondered how this creature could live in such a place, but only briefly. If it had truly lived its whole life here, then he wouldn’t be surprised that it could traverse this place easily.

It only made SENSE.

Hard as it was, Mortimer could see the barest hint of light peeking out through the leaves of the trees. A mist hung among the trees, clearer than a normal fog and smelling new and fresh. But oh, the teen knew something that others didn’t when they came here.

He was being WATCHED.

It was a test, Mortimer knew. He was being watched by he creature itself, judging him, looking THROUGH his mind with those six eyes, trying to find any ill-intent to give itself a reason to twist this forest into a maze. To let him DIE here.

“All those that go in,” An elderly Cryonic had pondered to him. Her hands were grey and shaky as she had offered him a cup of tea, “...NEVER come out...” She had teared up a little bit in sadness, lamenting to herself of her lost son. She did offer him the crucial advice he needed to make sure that he did NOT end up like the rest of them.

In good conscious, Mortimer had left everything he had brought with him (PORTAL GUN NOT INCLUDED) with the old Cryonic. There was nothing of value was within the bag; it was a means of gaining the Old Creature’s trust. And, hopefully, it was WORKING.

In quick glimpses, he would catch sight of those eyes watching him from the corner of his own. If Mortimer looked off in that direction, they would already be gone. For a moment earlier, he had paused, looking around for what he had been searching for, and the forest had grown incredibly silent, deathly so. It was as though someone had pressed the mute button. No sound, no birds. Nothing.

And then finally, Mortimer saw it. It was a great distance away, standing there with those knowing eyes, and tail swishing calmly about its lanky, almost FRAIL frame. They stare at each other for a few of those silent seconds, before it turns away from him and begins to walk away.

A sign for him to FOLLOW.

So he does; Mortimer picks up his previous pace in order to keep the shape of it in front of him. Mortimer figured that it would NOT wait for him if he proved to fall behind. This was still a part of the test. As soon as it realized he could keep up at that pace, it moves quicker, Mortimer fighting to get over the stumps and roots to keep up. He does, only barely, and it doesn’t run any faster.

Mortimer could only think that it was LEADING HIM somewhere. Wherever it was taking him, Mortimer could only follow. This was his chance to see it. To learn about this exceedingly rare creature that supposedly only came around once every few centuries.

A treeline is broken through, leaving Mortimer ragged and lost for breath. This clearing...it was calm. Time was passing here, unlike the rest of the forest. He could only suspect it to be a POWER of Actaeon. Actaeon stands there in the clearing, studying him and so much closer. Mortimer could possibly reach out to TOUCH IT. He does not, however. Not when he’s come this far.

Actaeon stands beside a smaller tree, normal sized with leaves pinker than a cherry blossom and a massive knot taken out from the bottom. A noise comes from there, tiny a young. He looks to Actaeon for approval; it does with a gentle nod of its head. All six eyes close with its blessing. Mortimer carefully closes the distance, treading carefully and moving slowly. Actaeon steps towards the left, movements suddenly so very old and weak. Mortimer eyes are locked on what lays in the knot.

Two younglings. He wishes to know the name of Actaeon’s species, but the name has been lost for longer than possibly even BILL has been alive. They are clearly young, antlers tiny and tails missing the gorgeous array of feathers that Actaeon wears with pride. 'Protect them.' A voice hisses in the back of his mind.

‘Keep them safe in my stead.’ He turns to look at Actaeon; the wise creature lays its old body down in the grass, eyes sad. Mortimer didn’t know that it could SPEAK to him. His hands draw away from the two creatures, chest suddenly CLENCHING as sadness prickles at the corners of his heart. ‘The people here. They grow more vicious and needy to claim my antlers. I have lived for many centuries and all have died in this forest.

‘One....one of them had laid an arrow in my flank. Tipped with poison. Killing me slowly.’ Mortimer takes a few steps towards Actaeon, taking a careful seat in front of them. ‘My time has finally come...you have done well to come here. To show no viciousness or greed for my kin. Therefore...’ Actaeon‘s breathing began to grow ragged, a black sludge spilling past their teeth and staining into the grass.

As it touches, the greenery DIES.

‘Therefore....I place them in your care...” The atmosphere around Mortimer SHUDDERS; the two younglings make terribly cries as Actaeon‘s head DROPS. The woods ECHO with the impact. Time ceases; there area freezes, save for the small bit of life around the two. The poison from Actaeon’s lips dribbles. The roots of the surrounding trees act to banish it from their veins and bring Actaeon’s corpse back into the CIRCLE.

Humanity was a POISON.

Mortimer is careful as he gathers the two, vowing them safety and care as he fires off a portal nearby. He could almost HEAR Actaeon’s voice thanking him as he steps through with their children.

#drabble #it's long tho so it's not REALLY a drabble #i had this idea and #:)))

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dreamseersystem · 5 years

Text

How I Met Bill and Dipper

First to start as a note. I can visit worlds and dimensions, mostly when I sleep. Most of the events occurred during the "dreaming" cycle, but I always lucid dream.

It all started in the end of 2015 for me. When I first found myself running from Oryan (a crazed Celestial Asshole that was bent on owning me) yet again and Alcor (of the Transcendence Timeline) sent me through the portal. He... Gave his life to save mine and the niblets. Nydia and Nall (children of another Dipper and Mabel I knew before this). He used the last of his magic before transferring it to me to change them into dragons in the scape and erase their memories until we were safe. He then casted a spell to seal away my magic and hide me from Oryan. The side effect was, which I didn't find out till I woke up, was that is made me appear as a 14 year old female. He pushed me through the portal and sealed it behind him. I didn't wake up till a few days later in the dimension.

I found out later I basically landed naked on Dipper and Soos carried me back to the shack after wrapping me up in his shirt. During my time asleep, Bi was watching through his Windows. I sensed this, still having some powers despite being sealed and watched him in return. He sensed me and I faded into a healing sleep.

When I woke up it was a week before Dreamscapers. I spent that time finding out how the dimension differed from canon and really the only thing was me. One night before a few days Gideon would summon Bi, he decided to enter my scape to spy on me, got caught by Nydia and we talked. He was interested in me and all so we made a deal. He was allowed in my scape while I was sleeping and he wasn't allowed to attempt any possession and whatnot. He had some idea I was familiar with the timeline and it was also stated I would not reveal anything about the future in the agreement.

Dreamscapers went about the same, just me disappearing until the end, telling Bi that not everything is what it seems, and Gideon Rises went the same except when leaving Gravity Falls I was on the bus too... The barrier stopped me from leaving and I was thrown out of the bus. One of the shards got me really bad, and Bi offered a deal, he'll save my life for the ability to possess me. I made the terms more fair, only saying when I give him permission or sharing the body and I wouldn't be removed from it.

Need to say he used it to his best advantage. Causing trouble for me with Dipper and Mabel. He left me alone at nights only because I was helping Stan with the portal. I decided I would help a bit since I would be going by my own smarts and not what the future was. That way he got more rest.

We had a hate relationship. I played with him and got the upper hand a lot. He hated me and resented me. At the same time, Dipper got over his crush for Wendy and found out he had one on me instead. By Sock Puppets, both were interested in their own ways. Bi was more possessive, Dipper was more loving. Bibae's reason for making the deal with Dipper then was to mess with his feelings for me. I know for a fact now it was because he was jealous.

As the portal came closer to getting done, I knew I had to make plans to protect Bi from Ford. Meanwhile, after Dipper's bout of possession from Bi, we found out he could see Bi like I could in the scape. Which caused more conflict. They were always fighting. Bickering even worse than they are now. There was a few times they got along... But not really until the Northwest Party. He got pissed that a ghost would be Dipper's end and threaten to throw his ectoplasmic body into a dark abyss of the Nightmare Realm. Needless to say, I had to stop him and let Paz do her thing.

Since Bi started possessing me, some of my powers were able to leak through the seals, tho not enough to let Oryan find me. I was able to devise a way so Ford couldn't detect Bi. But the downside was he couldn't fully possess me anymore. Well, downside for him. It was something we talked about because we knew he would be back. But, he agreed it was necessary since he didn't want Sixer knowing he was back yet.

The day he came back into this dimension was... Taxing. Dipper got mad at me because I sided with Stanley. We had a fight... That night I went out onto the roof and just me and Bi were up there listening in on Stan and Ford. When they went to bed, Dipper came up and we talked. He realized he made a mistake and he should have trusted me. We all were tired at that point and fell asleep on the roof together. Mabel took a picture of me and Dipper and somehow caught Bi between us. It is a cute picture. Might have the drawing I did still somewhere. Have to find it.

Ford was smart. He traveled to a few dimensions that heard rumors about me. Saw certain symbols that matched my seals. He never trusted me. Even when I offered him information I normally wouldn't give. But he was too fascinated by me to shun me. So he would talk to me and ask me questions which I only vaguely replied to at the time. I met some Fords... Only my first Forddad was good... The rest... I won't go into it here... So I was wary.

When Bi finally revealed himself to Ford, he sent me away to not know what was going on. I think he suspected even then that I was talking to Bi. He got Mabel to get stuff for the barrier, tho Dipper tried to make light of it. He didn't think Ford was possessed in the basement like Ford thought at first, he was scared that Ford found out. And almost did with the brain scanner. I, meanwhile was busy with my own thing and planning for the barrier. I knew it would go up somehow. I was setting up a place to stay out in the woods. And by the time I came home the barrier was up. I couldn't go in because of not only my connection with Bi, but because of the powers I didn't know of yet that laid dormant.

Ford had me sent away then. Dipper pleaded for me, but he would not be moved. By this time the power that was unsealed was starting to overwhelmed me, whisper thoughts into my head, losing control of who I was. The darkness that had once consumed me was returning. I let Bi's talk of revenge sway me. So I knew what to do. Bi never had to use Blendin except in changing a few things in the past to make everything fall into place. But a part of me knew what was happening. I was able to drag Ford and Dipper into the Dreamscape and place a protection spell on them to prevent harm. I warned them that I would lose myself and the next day Weirdmageddon began. I was the one whom convinced Mabel to give the rift over. I'm the one that broke it.

I remember bits and pieces myself after this. Bi told me most of it. But I was... Not feral, but I lost myself to my own darkness. The insanity that once drove me to do very bad things. Bi said to him at the time I was very... Bad ass but scary. Tho he wasn't scared of that till later. He let himself at me like how he wanted to from the beginning. Causing pain and suffering. Stuff he regrets now. He did it to purposely hurt me. During one of these sessions I started to feel and know who I was again. I remember seeing Ford being tortured. I remember seeing Dipper waving his hand across my face as he removed the chains. I remember him hiding me behind a pillar and running off with his sister into the pyramid. I remember Stan and Ford switching clothes...

I snapped out of it then... I wanted to warn Bi, but I knew I couldn't. So when Bi entered the scape, I did too. I remember mostly the fire. Calling out to Bi as the fire surrounded him and Stan. Him yelling that I was stupid and needed to get out of there. Me refusing. Bi said he felt fear for the first time in his life then. He actually did care about me in his own way. Just never was shown how.

He used the last of his power to send me out of Stan's mind. He told me later that Stan asked him why if he had energy left... Bi had simply said... "Because at least they can still have a future."

I woke up outside the scape and everything was falling around us. Bi was shattered. By the time we were on the ground we saw the rift still open and didn't know why... Then I remembered. I had a shard of Old Bill left inside of me. Any Bill was connected to the rift. I knew what I needed to do. I told Dipper to get everyone in the circle and activate the zodiac. I was able to use that power to Ascend. I turned into the Ascended form and shattered myself on the barrier, causing it to break and send a power surged throughout the dimension. Thus causing the transcendence. I ended Weirdmageddon only to start the era of magic. I remember everything fading to black.

Dipper said it was calm then. That I was gone. Stan had lost his memory. And everyone was shaken. He cried for me. But somehow he knew I would return there. Stan had regained his memory because of Mabel, and all that was left of Bi was a stone statue. Summer ended, but the adventure wasn't over yet. That would be five years later.

Dipper: I'll take it from here for the interval.

After they were gone, everything hung just felt out of sorts. The world was changing and didn't know how to handle it. I went back to school as the nobody. Parents said the events should just be forgotten and just focus on dealing with school. Neither of us really forgot our summer. I was focused on seeing Astra again. I knew he would return. I spent five years sticking to the books, dealing with Mabel's crazy adventures. Not getting into those here.

When I just had graduated, I had a huge fight with my parents that night and went to bed. They couldn't understand why I would want to go back to Gravity Falls. To the Supernatural. Mabel said she was just leaving and acting like she is on a road trip. We both wanted to go back. It was that night I suddenly saw Astra for the first time in five years floating right above me and making me fall out of bed. He "convinced" my parents to let us go to Gravity Falls and we left within a day.

Astra: This is where I continue off. Those five years... Happened in a night in reality. It was like watching from beyond. I remember the scape... Shapes forming around me... Seeing Alcor in the space between life and death and explaining what he did. Seeing Old Bill one final time, the last piece I knew of then passing beyond. Being surrounded by the Flock as they recognized me as their new master. Feeling myself reform. It was different than the other times. Usually when I died I would appear back in my own scape awaiting for another portal to open... Another world to visit... But I was still in this world. I haven't returned to my scape. I was still in the dimension's scape. It was surreal... Something had changed... I didn't know what then... I guess from the transcendence. I still don't know why...

We returned to Gravity Falls. I made a deal with Ford about protecting the shack. For you see, I was weak and only Dipper was able to see me. I made a deal to claim the shack as my territory so I could appear in reality and be grounded there. It took a little time but I was able to claim the town too. I appeared to people and made deals under the name Alkaid. I created my demon self you could say. Our Alk didn't split from me till way after. I even got our Gideon on my side by healing his mother. By then I had an inkling of what was to come to GF so I made a deal with him that he would start a protection squad to watch over the supernatural.

Then I found Bi... Well what was left of him. His statue. Took me awhile but I found it. It was then I met Axxie for the first time. He told me that I couldn't wake him up until we had a way to split his power, so he wouldn't go mad with power like before. I had an idea then. Time Baby owed me a favor. So I went to the future and claimed a Time Wish. Used it to bring Liam to our time without changing the events of the past. I was able to devise a spell to split the power Bi had and share it with Liam. Liam was all for it, he wanted to see his brother again. So we did it and Bi was awaken in human form and Liam gained a human form as well.

To say Bi didn't take to the new look was an understatement. He hated it... Resented me, Dipper, and Liam... Whined, threw fits, screamed with rage as we had to limit his use of powers to protect ourselves. Ford didn't help by bullying him a lot. Shenanigans occurred. Axxie decided to take a more physical form and hang about to tease him too. I tried to reason and teach. Bi... Hit me only once then. We were on the roof that night and I brought up if he truly hated me for now... That maybe if I could have taken his place back then... He slapped me... Said that I shouldn't say such things. He told me... He didn't hate me. He was just... Confused and it felt odd having a human body of his own. He never had feelings like this before... And it confused and frightened him. We talked more and slept on the roof that night. The next day I saw him talking with Dipper. It took awhile... He was still getting used to everything. But soon he and Dipper found out they cared for each other too. Tho they still had their spats. Like even now. We bonded in a special Celestial marriage ceremony and found out Dipper was a Forest Guardian soon after.

Then Dipper's parents came for a visit. There was no warning. Even I didn't See it. But they came and demanded Dipper and Mabel return home and rid themselves of any magical taint. They called me a monster and said I brainwashed them. That I would condemn them. That I was evil.

I don't remember much then... I shut down... I always do when people call me things like that because I start believing it. Bi held me and Dipper fought and yelled at his parents. They left... We were hurt... They had joined the new group of Anti-Magics that was going around. The Pure Ones. The Untainted Ones they called themselves. We vowed to protect the town then. And to support each other. It wasn't a few months later in reality I found out about soul bonds and we realized that we were connected like that. And the rest is another story.

There isn't much more to it. We had more things that happened afterwards, stuff that happened with ex friends... Personal things. I won't talk about Old Bill. I'm... Not ready for that story yet. Too painful still. I did say something about him before ages ago. But that's all I want to talk about it for now. Bill, Dipper, and me have triplets together. And many more through our other mates. We are still happy and care for one another very much. Tho Bill is a lazy ass these days lmao.

And that is that.

#Astra txt #soulbond #soulbonding #bill cipher #dipper pines #Our story

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shadowofthelamp · 5 years

Text

Two AM

Another kofi commission! Some post-canon heartshipping (can be taken as platonic or romantic) with video games and bad cartoony ice creams. This was commissioned by @temporallyanduin. Feedback is super appreciated, in replies, comments, or tags!

AO3 Link

Wordcount: 1480

Warnings: None

Yugi was asleep. It was 3:45 am, a time one normally would be asleep at. But his phone started blasting out his ringtone from its spot upon his bedside table, and he fumbled for it, jamming the home button a few times before remembering how to actually answer the call.

“ ‘ello?” He mumbled, only to hear static followed by a muffled shriek. That helped wake him up. “Who is this?” He stumbled out of bed, checking the caller ID- he saw it was from Ryou moments before the call ended.

Yugi shoved his duel monsters deck in his pocket immediately hurried downstairs- his sweatpants would be good enough, and he tossed on a jacket and coat before running outside to the subway. It was light on foot traffic at this hour and he fired off a few worried texts.

[ru ok?]

[this a magic thing? i grabbed my deck in case]

The colors of the subway car seemed washed out and too bright at the same time, and Yugi practically sprinted out as soon as he hit the right stop, running until he reached Ryou’s apartment. He hit the doorbell and was buzzed in, and took a deep breath, bracing himself before opening the door-

-To see Ryou on the computer with headphones on his head, playing some game with creepy lighting where he was flicking though screens in a grimy-looking office.

“Ryou?”

Ryou jumped, before whirling around. He tugged his headphones down to his neck. “Yugi? What are you doing here?”

“You called, and then there was a scream and you wouldn’t answer my calls-”

“I did?” Ryou glanced over at his desk. “Where is- oh.” He reached down and pulled his phone out of his pocket. “I must have called you on accident, I’m just playing a game and I’ve been dying a lot. You probably just heard one of those times.”

“So- you’re fine?”

Ryou smiled. “Yes, I’m- dammit!” Something must have roared in the headphones, because he flinched. “I was so close that time…”

Yugi’s heart was still going about a mile a minute, but his breathing was starting to settle. “What.... what game was it?”

“It’s about a haunted pizza place. The animatronics try to kill you, and you just have to survive your shift. I’m on night four and it’s really tripping me up.”

“Can I watch? I kind of ran here, and-”

“Of course- as long as I’m dead, I’ll make us some tea. I probably needed a break anyways.”

“Don’t you have work in the morning?” Yugi asked, and Ryou shrugged.

“If I do the shelving at the gift shop with bags under my eyes, it’s not like they’re going to buy any less.” He paused. “Want to stay for the night?”

Yugi opened his mouth to decline, but then realized it would be a lot nicer to just wait here than heading back home right away after that panicked sprint. He had an afternoon shift at the shop today, not a morning one. “Alright.”

“The couch is pretty comfy.” Ryou said, heading over to the kitchen and pulling out a few teabags. “Cream or sugar?”

“Sugar.” Yugi said, glancing at the screen. It showed a bunch of empty mascot suits, like the ones at Kaibaland. “You said it was a horror game?”

“Yeah, it has a bunch of jumpscares but it’s the tension that gets you.” Ryou said, setting down a kettle of water to boil.

“Huh.” Yugi pulled out his deck and shuffled it just for something to do with his hands, and Ryou noticed.

“You brought your-?” Suddenly, a grin slid across his face. “You thought I was in trouble and you brought your deck?”

“Hey, it’s saved our lives more than once!”

“I’m not complaining, it’s just… man, our lives are wild, huh?” Ryou leaned against the counter. “I was sent to another dimension and you playing a card game saved me.”

Yugi smiled. “It does sound kind of weird when you put it like that.”

“Want to play a round while we wait for the tea?”

Yugi yawned. “As long as we’re here…”

Ryou pulled his deck out from his desk, then plopped down on the floor. “I’ll go first. I set a card facedown and summon Headless Knight in defense position…”

_________

Maybe it was because Ryou’s adrenaline was still running high from the game, maybe it was because Yugi was just tired, or both, but Ryou managed to beat him by the time the tea was ready. Dark Necrofear had taken control of his Summoned Skull and used it to finish him off.

“Nice one.” Yugi said as he scribbled down -600 points as it destroyed his Armored Dragon. “I probably should head to bed-”

“Didn’t you say you wanted me to watch me play?” Ryou said as he put his deck back together.

Yugi raised an eyebrow, but smiled. “You’re a bad influence.” He joked, but grabbed a chair from the kitchen to set it next to the computer.

Ryou unplugged his headphones so Yugi could hear too. The rapidfire clicking and moving around almost made him dizzy, but he could see why Ryou was getting frustrated- most of the time, he almost made it almost to the end, but then something killed him or he ran out of power.

Ryou’s commentary was more colorful than he’d expected, and Yugi realized this was the first time they’d really been alone together, especially since school had ended. Ryou’s pale skin looked almost ghostly in the game’s washed-out light, and seeing him so focused was almost like seeing a whole new person.

He ended up falling asleep on the chair and woke up with a blanket on.

_______

After that, Yugi took time to visit Ryou about once a week. Usually after work, as their sleepovers were starting to become more commonplace. Ryou had showed him the game, and Yugi found out that while he had a knack for games like chess or duel monsters, video games that required lightning-fast hair-trigger reflexes took more getting used to.

Yugi also came over to drag Ryou outside- when he wasn’t at work or doing errands, he tended to coop himself up in his apartment. Really, it was a wonder he’d survived living on his own for so long.

“Holy crap.” Ryou had been pulled out of his apartment earlier by Yugi for lunch together, but now it was his turn to drag Yugi towards the ice cream truck.

“What?”

“Look at the new flavor!” Ryou was holding back a laugh as he pointed, and Yugi’s eyes widened.

“Me?” It was his face, right there with gumballs for eyes.

“I’m getting it.” Ryou pulled out his wallet, rifling through for a few yen bills and handing them over. “One duelist pop, please.”

“Certainly- oh!” The man running the truck stared when Yugi met his eyes. “Ah… hello!”

Yugi thought for a moment, and the man simmered in his own sweat before he said “I’ll have one of those too.”

A few minutes later, they were sitting by a park fountain as they unwrapped their treats together.

Yugi stared- one of the eyes was down by the mouth, and the colors all melted into each other.

“Tough luck.” Ryou said. “I’m glad I’m not famous enough to have my image mutilated like this.” He took a bite out of Yugi’s hair. “Huh, you taste like raspberry.”

“I would have thought I’d be more of a cherry man.” Yugi said, taking a bite himself. “Oh, you’re right, I do.”

“What flavor you think they’d make me?” Ryou wondered.

“Boo-berry.” Yugi grinned, booping Ryou’s nose with his ice cream and leaving a little red stain on it.

Ryou started laughing, trying to lick at the bit of ice cream, but his tongue couldn’t make it all the way, so he just gave up and booped Yugi right back with his melted likeness. Yugi wiped at his nose with his thumb, then licked it off there.

“Coward.” Ryou said. “You didn’t even try to get it.”

“I don’t think my tongue somehow grew that much while I wasn’t looking.” Yugi said, taking another bite of the ice cream. “Besides, I’m not sure you aren’t just sleep deprived.”

“I still haven’t worked all the way through my game library yet!” Ryou protested.

“You also haven’t gotten back the money’s worth on your mattress either.” Yugi said. “I’ll stay over tonight, and if I bring dinner, do you promise to go to bed by two?”

“Are you going to just get Burger World?”

“...Answer the question.”

“Counter idea. You bring dinner, we both play, and then I’ll go to bed at two. Deal?”

“Deal.”

They didn’t end up getting to bed until 3:15, but they were so tired they ended up just falling asleep on the couch together, and Yugi counted it as a victory.

#heartshipping #ryou bakura #yugi mutou #yugi muto #yugioh #shadow writes stuff #temporallyanduin #kofi commission

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rmjagonshi · 6 years

Text

Whole Again - Chapter 20

Whole Again on AO3

Stanford just lied there, gasping in and out, chest and abdomen heaving. His wrists burned with every movement, his arms strained against the ropes. He didn’t need to hear the slam of the bulkhead to know that Bill had locked himself away in the improved prison they had used once not too long ago. Bill had struggled with his magic for about a full day to fix the door after Stanford's last night terror. He knew where Bill had gone. Or…was it Stan? He didn’t know! He’d called out to his brother, but had Stan actually responded? Was he still there? Was his brother still in there? Struggling for control?

He felt something cool slide over his wrists, burning away at the rope, a stray remnant of magic left. He could untie himself now, get dressed and leave. He…he was in no danger…probably. The bulk head was closed, and Bill was low on magic after dream weaving with four minds. He could get up and pretend that this never happened. Pretend that Bill wearing Stan’s face hadn't just...just tried to…to…

He was safe now. He was…he was safe. Bill wasn’t going to hurt him. Stan was in control. Stan wouldn’t hurt him. He was safe.

But he wasn’t okay.

Not in the slightest.

And he was still hard. And the ghost of Stan’s rough and calloused hands running over his skin was doing nothing to alleviate it.

A pitiful whimper escaped his throat even as he tried to quiet it. Why was he still hard? Every fiber of his being had been against what Bill was doing. He had used Stan’s form – while Stan was still aware – to try and rekindle what they’d had before he figured out what Bill was planning. Bill wasn’t stupid. Woefully flawed and was confused by seemingly simple things such as toasters, but Bill understood what sex was. At least, understood what it was in relevance to humans and human relationships.

But understand what it was and what it meant did nothing when Bill had not had a physical body to do anything with. Was that why he had tried to force this? Now that he was in Stan’s body, was he trying to experience what it was to be human in the long term?

Stanford felt a pulse of heat race through his veins.

Stanford wasn’t so wrapped up in his own denial as to say that he wouldn’t like that. Fuck! If Bill had his own body, even the one he’d had during his brief takeover of Gravity Falls…

Stanford felt himself shudder at the thought, cock throbbing as he imagined slick hands on him. He’d wanted Bill to stop, but he had no real reason for it. Because he had wanted it. Desperately. As much as he hated Bill for everything he’d done, Stanford wanted him. He didn’t want to. He wanted to be able to put Bill in his past and keep him there. Or rather…he wanted to want to. Because he didn’t. God he was sick! And still fucking hard!

He growled at his own lack of self-control. He was weak. And sick. A freak. Even more so than he had thought because apparently thinking of his brother, acknowledging that it was his brother’s body over him had only made him want it more! In his mind, the images of Bill and Stan blurred together, contrasting hands, slick and rough, voices overlapping like some distorted horror track, both saying the same words. Telling him how much they wanted him, how much they loved him. He felt tears bead at the crease of his eyelids.

Why was he like this? Why did he have to be this way? Wasn’t he already fucked up enough? He felt another jolt of lightning when he clenched and unclenched his sphincter. Bill had just had his fingers there. The sharp sting of too much friction giving way to a slick glide. Stan hadn’t gotten deep enough to hit his prostate. But his mind filled in the gaps.

He remembered what it felt like. Admittedly, it as just a mental projection of a tactile response built of predicted nerve signals, but he very much remembered what Bill fucking him with those tentacles had felt like. What would it have been like with Stan? He felt the dry precum in his thighs pull at the sensitive skin, the ghost of Stan’s cock teasing. He canted his hips into nothing, pitiful whimpers dripping from his mouth.

God damn it! He wanted it. He wanted it more than anything right this moment. He wanted to feel Bill’s – Stan’s, FUCK it didn’t matter anymore – hands on him, inside him, over every part of his body. He wanted it, needed it, and yet the thought was painful. Shameful. Why the HELL had he told Bill to stop!?

Stanford yanked at his wrists and felt the cord come loose, the frayed ends draping over his head and hair on the pillow beneath. He wasted no time ripping off the shirt tangled on his forearms. No time to be delicate, no time for foreplay. He needed this now! A six-fingered hand wrapped itself around his straining erection and Stanford felt a spark envelope his body. Images of Stan, of Bill, of both of them filled his mind. Ghostly images of hands on him, following his movements, touching him right where he wanted it most. He tucked away the extra pinky, pretending the rough touch was from someone else, was from….FUCK!

He didn’t want that! It was his brother for GOD’S SAKE! But he couldn’t deny that the feel of Stan’s hand on him felt otherworldly. That the image of Stan with his grinning lips wrapped around his cock had sparked something he didn’t want to think about. God, did Stan know how to give head! Stanford pushed the thought of where Stan learned how to give head out of his mind. The wet slide of a molten tongue, the briefest of suction at the head, the tiniest scrape of fake enamel.

Stan had lost his teeth over the years, what would it feel like without the yellowed dentures?

Stanford's mind reeled at the image of Stan on his knees in front of him. God! His memory filled in what that damn tongue had felt like on his skin. How damn hot Stan’s mouth had been. His hand gripped his shaft tightly as he imagined Stan taking the full length into his mouth again. Of letting Stanford go at his own pace, of face-fucking his brother, Stan’s mouth pliant and open, lips dragging with each thrust, fingers kneading at Stanford’s thighs. He rolled his hips into his fist, pretending he could feel Stan’s heat, his passion. Stanford whimpered as the ghost of a gravel voice mixed with a cackle filled his ears and yellow eyes filled his mind.

He felt a twist in his gut, he wanted to throw-up, to dig a knife into his skin, to drink poison that would burn the thought out of his head. But denying it served no purpose. It hadn’t done him any good before, so why would it be magically better now?

The Stan in his mind gazed up at him with yellow eyes, light glinting, corners quirked in a grin. Stanford imagined gripping the black bowtie wrapped around his neck, knocking off the top hat from his silver hair. His skin a golden hue as Stanford cupped his cheek. He could almost hear the moan rumbling up from Bill’s throat, only to realize it was coming from himself.

He was working himself at a breakneck pace, hand practically a blur and the harsh slap of skin on skin filling the empty room, dancing in the air with his desperate moans and whimpers.

Something was seriously wrong with him because in no way could he rationalize this. In no way could this make any logical sense. He wanted Bill, but GOD, did Bill looking and acting like his brother set his blood aflame. He wanted Bill, but in that moment, he had, damnit, wanted it to be Stan. But why?! He wasn’t attracted to his brother!

Wasn’t he?

The rush he felt when he imagined Stan’s voice in his ear told him otherwise. He really was a freak, wasn’t he? The feeling of his body tensing, told him yes. He was close, stupidly, pathetically close to coming undone from thinking about Stan. He rolled his hips again, biting back a cry.

He didn’t know what was going to send him to Hell first, loving and desiring an interdimensional being that wanted to burn dimensions for fun, or lusting after his own twin brother. God, what was wrong with him?!

The image of Stan on his knees slowly blurred and dissolved into that of his muse. Bill on his knees before him, taking his cock into that strange eye-mouth of his. He whined. He was closer, god he was so close. And hearing Bill speak with Stan’s voice, calling him ‘Poindexter’, telling Stanford that he was proud of him, that he loved him…that gravel harsh tone that haunted his dreams for decades, it finally sent him over the edge.

In the throes of ecstasy, Stanford sunk his teeth into the flesh of his hand, tearing the skin and filling his mouth with blood as images of his brother with pale yellow eyes filled his mind.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

He didn’t know how much time had passed when he opened his crust sealed eyes again. Didn’t know how long the congealed vomit had been cooling against the side of his face. His glasses had been knocked off, skittering somewhere over the diamond plate floor. His vision a blur of shapes and muted colors until he scraped off the gunk from his eyes, feeling the lashes pull and losing more than a few of them. Not that it mattered, odds are they would grow back in a few minutes.

His reaction time was heavily impaired. He felt drunk, wasted, or like he’d taken too many hits in a bar brawl. Had he gone on a bender with Rick? Where they hell was Beth? Was she ok? He rose, shaking, to his knees and felt the cool slick of vomit peel from his skin. The odor was rank, acrid, and familiar. God, what the hell had he taken? He felt along the floor for his glasses, blinking in hopes that his vision would clear. His hands grazed the texture floor, sharp edges where the steel molding process was unrefined catching in his fingers, leaving small cuts and scrapes. He squeezed his eyes shut, pressing his eyelids closed hard enough to distort the shape of his eyes. he could feel them shift, become move oval as the sclera adjusted to the new pressure. When he opened his eyes again, he could see, the blur of the room came into focus, the colors became brighter, more defined, shapes had sharp edges and he found his glasses quite easily after that. He snatched them up, lenses down on the metal flooring - thankfully spared any scratches - and slotted them onto his face, grimacing at the way the residual sick spread further over his face.

He needed to get cleaned up before he went looking for Beth, then he could ring Rick’s neck for forgetting about his own daughter. Not that he was any better, he’d woken up in a pile of his own sick after all. Man, he should not have kids. Kids are a pain, a real hassle, but he was a shitty caretaker to boot. There was no way he was going to be able to take care of a kid. And what happens when they start walking, start learning about the world? What happens when they start asking questions he doesn’t want to answer? Hell, what if he can’t answer them? He’s not the smart one, Rick’s the genius. Rick is the one with all the answers, though he might just give you the wrong one for shits and giggles.

He loved the man, but Rick can be a jerk sometimes, and that was saying a lot coming from a jerk like him. Sure, Rick had his smarts, but he was woefully unprepared to take care of a two-year-old. He was a better parent to Beth, sweet kid. Always wanting hugs and airplane rides from her ‘uncle Stan’. Shit, he needed to find her! What was she wearing the last time he saw her? That pink and white spotted dress with the purple knitted cap, right? But he needed to find out where he was first. Okay, what did he remember? He was, he’d gotten into a fight. Was it a bar fight? Had they crossed paths with Rico again? Wait, no…no it was just him and another guy. He remembered there just being just one other person. He was winning, maybe. He had the other guy pinned.

He lurched forwards, grabbing onto the edge of the table filled with Rick’s experiments. Least, he was sure it was Rick’s. His legs were shaky, and he stumbled with every step. His mind was a foggy mess, he couldn’t have told you what year it was, let along what day or what he’d been doing the night before. GOD DAMN! He was layin’ off-a the booze and shit from now on. Rick can get all mopey if he wants. Stan was gonna stay sober after this shit. Someone had to take care of Beth.

He was in a room, all metal, could be a warehouse. There was even some machinery chuggin’ away that took up a good chunk of it. The table offered no real help, just a bunch of beakers and titration do-dads, a Bunsen burner, and a bunch-a jars with weird fish in them. Nothin’ looked familiar, but then again, he didn’t understand anything of what Rick did anyhow.

Okay, so he was in a warehouse…type…place, he’d gotten into a fight with some guy…wait, was it a fight? He remembered roughin’ the guy up, but….shit, he remembered a lotta skin. Miles and miles of really, really nice skin. Had he hooked up with some guy? Did he get paid? Wasn't Rick, that’s for sure; they flirted a hell of a lot, but Rick and him had never so much as kissed. Not that he didn’t want to, but Rick was…well, Rick was Rick.

So he’d fuck some random dude. Ok. Okay. He could handle that. A quick search of his pockets told him he was in his underwear…and that he didn’t have pockets. And that he was a hell of a lot fatter and older than he should be.

The HELL!?

What the HELL HAPPENED?!!

DID RICK DO THIS?!

FUCK THAT GUY!

SCREW HIM!

No, DON’T screw him! Rick can go lie in a ditch somewhere! He would take Beth and go up to Oregon to see Ford….

Ford….

Wait.

Stanford…

Stanford had reached out to him.

Gravity Falls.

They fought. All over some stupid journal.

Ford fell. Gone thirty years.

He got him back just a few months ago. With the kids…and Soos.

Oh.

Beth was gone.

Rick was gone.

They were…they were on the Stan O’War…

They’d fought.

Ford had tried to run. He’d….oh…god….

Stan lost his grip on the table and slammed onto the floor on his knees, pain shooting up from his kneecaps and telling him they were likely bruised, if not bleeding. He felt like throwing up again. What had he done? How could he? And he’d just left him there! What they hell kind of brother was he?

No, this was better. Ford might be stuck but it was better than being around him right now. Stan isn’t safe right now. But, he’d let him go, right? He’d…burned the…rope, right? Ford could get up and leave. FUCK! He didn’t know! And he couldn’t risk going out to check. He had lost control of himself so easily, what’s to stop it from happening again? No, he couldn’t leave. He’d just stay in here. He had to. He wasn't safe. Ford wasn't safe with him.

The memory of it made his head swim.

It had been far harder to pull away than it should have been. He didn't want to stop. He wanted to give Sixer what he wanted, give him the animal Ford saw him as. But the desperate plea calling out his name, calling out ‘Stan’, he couldn’t. Not Ford. He wouldn’t let himself be that much of a monster. Not Stanford. Never Stanford. Even if he wanted to. And, GOD, did he want to. And he knew that at one-point Sixer had wanted it. At one time, Sixer had practically begged for it. Sixer had wanted him so desperately that he had forgone all reason in an attempt to bridge the gap between their worlds.

But Stanford didn’t want him. He wanted Bill. Ford wanted someone who wasn’t there. Who shouldn’t be there. Ford loved a monster that didn’t deserve his love. Sixer loved Bill, loved a daemon that did nothing but abuse and manipulate him. That told him that he was bound for greatness, told him that they would change the world. Ford loved a monster that had every intent to spend the rest of eternity abusing his newfound pet. Because he would have kept Sixer, his little Fordsy, his adorable little pet. Would have kept him by his side, would have given him anything he wanted. Would have done anything he wanted, if only Ford would have joined him. He would have kept the kids – been repeatedly tempted to change up their faces and grind them into dust – but he would have kept them for Sixer. He would have shown Ford the universe, everything in it. They could have ruled the entire dimension, just the two of them, gods among ants.

Instead...instead he got careless. instead he got angry, jealous. Instead, he got impatient and arrogant, and it was his downfall. He hadn’t expected Sixer to say ‘no’, he hadn’t expected the kids to be as clever as they were, he hadn’t predicted that Shooting Star to be willing to leave her fantasy world behind. He hadn’t predicted that there would be enough blind courage among the denizens of the town to actually prove to be a challenge. He hadn’t predicted that after all that time, that Stanford would have chosen his brother over his muse. Who’d a thought they would one day be one in the same.

But the end result was nothing short of perfect. This had been what he wanted his entire life; just to be with his brother. He was with Ford, and it was just them. Just them and nothing else. They could still be together. They could still do the things they always wanted to do. He could still be with the one person he loved more than anything. Except…

Except Ford didn’t love him. Not like he was now. He was human…he had spent the last sixty years living as a human, living as Ford’s twin. And Ford didn’t want Stan. Ford didn’t love Stan.

*~*~*~*~*~*Explicit Violence and Gore Warning*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Sixer loved him, but only when he did bad things. Only when he didn’t deny who he was. He wasn’t human. He wasn’t ever supposed to be. He’d begged to be spared and his wish was granted. For his crimes, he got to re-live everything, got to live an entire life trapped in a human form. He got to live as Stan. But as much as he pretended, he wasn’t Stan. He never was….and denying it wasn’t the answer. He loved Ford. Would do anything for him. He would do anything…even if it made him sick, even if it…could he? Could he do this? Be who he’d been? Anything but that! ANYTHING ELSE! He would die for this man, he would kill for this man – has killed – GOD DAMN IT! WHY!? Why this? Why Bill? What did Bill do to earn Ford’s love when Stan couldn’t? He didn’t deserve it! He didn’t deserve it. Stan didn’t deserve it either. But even if he didn’t, Ford did still love him.

But…just, not as he was. Not now.

Only when his eyes were yellow. He glanced at his reflection in the glass beaker at eye level. His eyes were brown. Horribly, boringly brown. That wouldn’t do. They weren’t his eyes. They were his human eyes. His fake ones. The ones Sixer hated. He reamed at them, pushing them into his eye sockets and trying to pop them. They weren’t the right eyes. They were the eyes Sixer hated. It hurt. A lot. But pain was funny again. Not like it used to be. When he went to look again he saw that his eyes were the right color if a bit fuzzier than they should be. There were two of them. He used to have only one. He could do that. Maybe. He couldn’t concentrate enough to make his magic do what he wanted; all but drained after last night - or was it earlier that night? He could still fix it, he just needed something sharp. Sixer kept sharp things in here, didn’t he? He stumbled to his feet, searching the table were IQ kept his beakers of the more toxic things he played with.

There was a scalpel, a set of tweezers and other things he couldn’t put a name to right now. Not one in a human language anyway. This body’s coordination was terrible. He knocked over several glass jars and beakers reaching for the scalpel, the contents spilling in small clouds of dust, and splashes of fluid that mixed together and started smoking. He reached for the scalpel again, instead, grabbing a shard of glass from the broken jar with the ground fish scales. It would do. Might even be sharper than the scalpel. Deformed silicone molecules tended to form hyper sharp edges. It was perfect.

He brought the shard up to his face, inspecting the conchoidal fracture and ultimately deciding that it was indeed sharp enough. Now which one was gonna go. Right? Or left? He closed each eye, one after the other gauging how it felt, how much effort it took to close each one, what perspective felt more right. Eenie-meanie-miney mo. Which eye would have to go? He really needed the eye in the middle of his face, but it was unlikely that he could force that. It would take way too much magic, and too much surgery to get right. Right…right, starboard, dextral…

He closed his left eye again. He could see still, and things shifted in practically imperceptible ways. Right. Right. He opened his left eye and closed his right. He made his decision. Stabby, Stabby!

He brought the glass shard up to his face, up to his eyes and took a swipe at his eye but his arms wouldn’t cooperate. He missed, scraping across his cheek instead. The skin parted, uneven, and shallow. Hardly a scratch despite the amount of blood welling to the surface. He giggled, oh, oopse, well, time to try again. He took another swipe at his eye, but he kept blinking, eyes watering. This was going nowhere.

Stupid human automatic functions. He just wanted to keep his eye open, but his lid kept closing. Every time he brought the shard of glass near his eye, his lid would close, even when he tried to force it open. He squeezed the shard tighter in his fist, the jagged edges slicing into the meat of his hand. The pain was dull, barely there, barely noticeable. That wasn’t important right now. His fucking eyelid wouldn’t stay open! He set the pointed edge of the shard against the bridge of his nose and drug it diagonally across his eye. He could feel the skin part under the edge of the glass, the smooth conchoidal fracture creating a perfect blade edge that slid through his skin with hardly any resistance. He could feel the blood well up, the skin separating under his fingers. The pain was sharp, his eyes instinctively watering more, blood and tears running down his face. The salt just stinging the wound and enhancing the pain. The pain was real, sharp, the blood pungent. But he hadn’t cut all the way through the skin of his eye lid. His eye was still intact, though he couldn’t lift the lid to check for sure.

He needed something else, something better. Something to make him feel just a little more normal. He was finally going to be himself again. The first step. He was only supposed to have one eye, right? He’d lived for over a millennia with one. He just needed to fix it. The glass didn’t work, so he needed something else. He swept his arm across the counter again, knocking over glass beakers and slicing his arm open on the shards; caustic substances burning away at his skin, leaving behind trails of foul smelling smoke as it ate away at the flesh of his arm. He held one hand to his eye, blood seeping between the gaps and trailing sticky rivulets down his arm. Why? Why was he holding it? Was it some kind of human instinct thing? It made no sense, but he held it there anyway as he searched for something more substantial to finish the job. He spotted a glint of something reflective roll through some strange blue liquid (Copper sulfate pentahydrate solution). It was perfect.

He cackled as he brought a pair of pointed tweezers to his left eye. Sixer was gonna be so happy. He was gonna look normal again. He was gonna be normal. He was gonna be himself. Finally. After all this time. He was going to see the world as he should see it. He felt glee as he shoved the tweezers into the eye and felt the aqueous humor drain.

*~*~*~*End of Graphic Violence*~*~*~*

Stanford wrapped a towel around his waist, though there really wasn't a reason to. He was alone, as much as one could be with a dream daemon locked away on a tiny ship. He leaned into the door, posture drooping, damp hair leaving a dark stain on the wood. He’d taken a shower immediately after sitting up and leaving the bedroom, washing the evidence of one more shame down the drain. The air was cold now, the water droplets beaded on his skin making it even worse as his hair stood on end to retain some heat near his body. He hardly noticed. He was shaking, but not from the cold.

He was afraid. He was afraid of what Bill would make Stan do. He was afraid of what his reaction would be. Would he fight back and possibly hurt his brother? Would he let it happen? Would he want it? He slumped against the door, legs no longer holding him up, he slid to the floor.

What was he supposed to do now? Where were they supposed to go from here? Was this going to happen again? Was he safe? Stan had regained control. He was himself long enough to stop it from happening. But…how long could he stay in control? Bill was stronger. Bill was always stronger. And it didn’t help that Stanford couldn’t figure out what the hell he wanted. He felt weak. He felt sick. He wanted to talk to someone. He wanted his brother, dammit!

Stanley. Stan wasn’t gone. Stan was in there still. Even through the fear and the confusion, Stanford felt a wave of relief wash over him. Stan wasn’t gone. Bill was in control, but Stan was still in there. Stan had responded when he called out to him. Stan had saved him. He could still get his brother back. His hands clenched and unclenched, nails scaping against the door. He’d gotten used to being alone over the decades. He used to pride himself on his ability to disconnect from his emotions, his baser needs. But...Stan. God, after coming back, to being greeted by the kids, and Stan, he’d gotten used to light touches, warm hugs, pats on the back. In the few months he’d been home, he had gotten so used to it that just over a month without made him crave it.

Maybe that was why he was torn about what happened. He didn’t want it, but he craved the touch, the affection that usually came with it. He wanted it to be Stan because Stan was the one he wanted affection from. He wanted it to be the way it used to be when physical affection was easy between them. When there was no underlying conflict, nothing but the swell of feeling when sharing touch.

If…if Stan had gone slow, had let him calm down first, had…maybe he would have been okay with it. Maybe he would have enjoyed the intimacy. Maybe it could have been how it was…would he taste that same? The memory of Bill’s taste had faded over the decades, but he never forgot it entirely. It was a depraved and guilty pleasure of his to mix tonic water and energy drinks any time he was able to snag both in the multiverse. Would Stan taste like that? No, of course he wouldn’t. Stan was human, he would taste like, well probably Pitt cola and cigars. But...would he…would they…? DAMN IT!

He squeezed his eyes closed to stem the flow of tears. Here he was again, forced to choose between his brother and the one being he had absurdly and forsakenly fallen in love with. Was it love, though? He was bordering on obsession. This was so far beyond healthy that it was laughable. Why? Why Bill? Every time he tried to define why he love that monster all he could ever conclude was that, he always had. Logically, that couldn’t be the case as he had only known Bill for a few short years, but it still felt so familiar. It felt like he had loved Bill forever. Just like he had loved Stan forever. Stanley was his brother, the one that had been with him from literally the beginning. Stanford could try and convince himself otherwise all he wanted, but nothing would ever change that. Stanford Pines loved his brother, end of story, no matter what hair-brained scheme he came up with or project he destroyed. Stanford would always love him. And now, now Stan was sitting in a self-imposed prison thinking god-knows-what and…this was all too much.

He was calm…-er now, he was clear headed. While not completely at full strength, he could carry a weapon. He needed to check on Stan, if Stan was still in control. If not, then he would wait. He was good at waiting.

On shaky legs, Stanford stood from the floor and felt the towel fall to the floor with a flop. He was numb to the cold now. He took a few tentative steps out into the galley, keeping his back to the counter and eyes trained on the bulk head. There was no movement or sound he could detect, but the door was well insulated. He crept backwards to the bedroom, resisting the instinct to jump every time something in their cramped living space came into contact with his backside. He dressed hurriedly once he was safety behind the door.

*~*

OK, okay. It was going to be fine. He had his pistol set to stun. It would give him just enough time to get out and lock the door behind him. He was just checking on Stan. He was just making sure that Stan was okay, that they were okay, that this was all Bill’s doing and they were still going to stay together. They weren’t going to let this come between them. He had to explain, he had to talk to Stan.

His nose wrinkled at the smell as the bulkhead swung free. Acrid, Sulfurous, and mixed with the pungent scent of acid and smoke. The smell of sweat and urine came next, fainter, but growing stronger the further he stepped into the room, pistol held in front of him at the ready. The constant thrum of the engine dulled to a low purr while they sat idle in the water. His eyes adjusted slowly, he had lost his ability to recognize things in the dark; too complacent, too confident in his surroundings. But this was just Stan. It was his brother, really his bother this time, and Stan needed help.

“Stanley, are you…Stan?” He could just make out a figure hunched in the corner in the darkness. The outline of his body just perceptible from the surrounding darkness. He flicked on the light, illuminating the room with dim blue light from the ceiling mounted fluorescent bulbs. He noticed the puddle of sick first. Then the mess on his work table…then the blood. There was a lot of blood.

“Stanley?” His brother was huddled in the corner muttering to himself. Voice low, imperceptible, and blending in with the rumble of the engine. He would have missed it, had he not been listening for it. The trail of blood and sick lead to the corner that Stan was curled into, his feet and shorts stained with a variety of orange and red hues. Stanford rounded the puddle when he saw Stan flinch, turning his face just enough to watch him.

“Get away.” Stan’s voice was low, horse from being sick and strained. He was in pain. He was bleeding. And he wasn’t healing. Least, not that Stanford could see.

“I Said GET BACK!” He dodged as something sailed through the air in his general direction. It would have missed him had he stood still. This was new behavior for Bill, but achingly familiar. This was Stan. Could be no other in the multiverse. Stan would hide his pain, throw insults and sometimes things to hide how badly he was hurt. He’d make up excuses for limping, for bruises, and scrapes. He never liked for Stanford to see him hurt. But he had to be sure. He wasn’t going to be fooled again. He slowly approached his brother, taking slow and deliberate steps. Hands held out in front, weapon held loosely; a threat, but not an imminent one. As long as Stan didn’t attack, he was safe. They were both safe.

“Stan…why are you bleeding?” Stan flinched, turning his face back towards the corner, watching Stanford from the corner of his visible eye. Stanford took a moment to glance to the mess of his less important experiments. He had no doubt that there was a fight. What did Bill make him do?

“I’m not going to hurt you. Please.” He took another small step towards Stan, holding out one hand in an attempt to calm his brother. He wasn’t expecting the laughter that Stanford labeled as ‘unhinged’. He tightened his grip on the pistol, finger brushing against the trigger.

“You should.” Stan’s voice was soft and filled with a turbulence of emotions. It made Stanford’s chest ache. “I know you want to.”

He took a steadying breath and swallowed. His tongue felt swollen, like it was trying to choke him. “What do you mean?” He wasn’t sure if he wanted to know the answer. He met Stan’s eye as he stepped to the right, trying to get a better look at Stan’s face. He was hiding behind one bloodied and mangled hand. The blood was far worse that he realized. The slick mess coated Stan’s face, his hand and arm, and seeped into his shirt. The white fabric absorbing the pigment until it dripped with it.

Stan’s eyes flicked to his side arm, watching it warily. No, not…Stan wasn’t afraid that Stanford would shoot him. Stan was watching it like he wanted it. Like he was begging for it. Stan met his eyes again and he could see the turmoil spinning behind his brother’s face.

“I’m not safe.” The words shot like a bullet through his chest. And he would know what they felt like, too. His fingers loosened. The clatter echoed as it reverberated off the walls, a cacophony almost drowned out by the beating of his own heart. That, no, he can’t…that’s….Never. Never!

Stanford stumbled to his knees and crawled the last foot to kneel before his brother, their knees smacking together when Stanford pressed into his brother’s space. He brought a shaking hand up to cup Stan’s cheek, smearing blood and tears over the tanned skin. His other hand hung in the air between them. He shouldn’t be hesitating, Stan needed help. He flexed his fingers, rolling the air across his six knuckles before cupping Stan’s bloodied hand covering his left eye. He tried to pry the hand away, but Stan only turned further into the corner.

“Stan, look at me. Show me your eyes.” He felt Stan’s shoulders shake with a stuttering and silent laugh. Fear gripped Stanford’s core and dragged it down, down, down…

“Eyes? You wanna see my ‘eyes’?” the laughter was audible now, the sick sound twisting Stan’s words until they were poison. He wasn’t even sure if this was Stan anymore. His thumb twitched for the pistol resting on the steel floor a few feet away. Stan turned to his brother, laughing and grinning through the pain. When Stanford tugged at Stan’s hand again, it came away easily, flipping to lace their fingers together and smear the gore over his own hand.

“Sorry, Sixer, but I seem to have misplaced one.” His grin was inhuman.

“Shit! Stan, what the hell!?”

In all his years in the multiverse, Stanford had seen firsthand the results of violence. The gore, the mutilated flesh, the sticky and gooey bits that would break the minds of those unaccustomed to it – he wasn’t sure if his mind wasn’t broken. But Stan’s face was more than he could take.

There were three near centimeter wide gashes from the bridge of his nose, across is eye and back towards the temple. They crisscrossed over one another, the middle one looking as though it was cut in the opposite direction to the others; like he’d been sloppily drawing lines with whatever he’d used to eviscerate his face.

It was safe to say that the eye was a lost cause. There wasn’t anything in the eye socket but a deflated sack of mangled tissue. The eyelid looked as though it had been fed through a shredder. It was cut in several places, some dividing the thin tissue entirely. The entire left side of his face was coated in blood, and the viscous fluid from his drained eye. It dripped passed his lips, down his chin and finally soaked into the already ruined shirt, thick and crimson with blood already. The smell was nauseating.

If I ever get the chance, I’m going to find a way to wring his neck. Fuck, Bill!

Door’s already open, Nerd, all ya gotta do is reach for it. I won’t stop ya. Stanford flinched at the voice in his head. Unsure if it was Bill speaking to him again or if he was finally disassociating from the trauma. He decided to ignore it for now, instead, focusing on the immediate problem of Stan bleeding out.

“Stanley, listen to me. You need to concentrate. This is serious. If you remember at all how to heal this, I need you to try. Bill’s magic works on instinct. If you can figure it out, we can use it against him. But I need you to try. I can’t fix this.” He brushed his thumb under Stan’s good eye, fingers curling over the ear near the hair line.

“I can’t, Poindexter. All outta magic. Can’t even make my eyes be the right color anymore.” His shoulders shook with a dry laugh. “Or, er, ‘eye’ anyway.”

Stanford squeezed Stan’s hand tighter, the blood squelching between their fingers. Stan’s skin looked pale against the contract of the drying blood. His lips were tinged with blue, and his breathing rapid and shallow, rank breath puffing across Stanford’s face. He was going into shock, if he hadn’t already. Stanford’s hand slipped down to press into the pulse point at Stan’s neck.

Ba-bum

Rapid. And weak. Stan’s remaining pupil was contracted even in the dim light. If the blood loss didn’t kill him, the shock would. And at their age, it was almost assured. Why would Bill do this? What does it accomplish? He’s only limiting his own functions!

He shook his head free of the fury creeping to the forefront. He needed Stan to remember how to heal this. He could be angry with Bill later. Right now, Stan was in control. Stan was the one that needed help, Stan was-

“I did this.” Stan’s words brought his whirlwind of a mind to a screeching halt. What?

“I wanted this. I needed this! One small thing I can do to feel normal! One thing to make you love me again!” He felt the bottom drop out of his chest. What?

“Nothing I do anymore is enough! I thought I could do it. Be what you wanted! I want to want to be who you want! But I just can’t!” Stan was crying now. Fat tears pooling at the edge of his lid and spilling down his cheek to mix with the rest of the mess he was covered in. His mouth hung open after every word, and Stanford only now noticed that Stan was missing his teeth. The yellowed dentures somewhere in this mess, not that any of it mattered. Nothing mattered right now except the absolute absurd things that Stan was telling him. Nothing made sense. This was Stan. It had to be. But why would Stan do this to himself? Was it because of what happened? No, God, Stan, Bill did that. Not you. You wouldn’t!

“Stan, what are you saying?” His mouth was suddenly far too dry.

“I don’t know what to do anymore! I’m not Stan, I never was, but damnit, I WANT to be!” Stan’s free hand came up to cover the one on his cheek. He was caught now, both hands trapped by Stan’s. He tried to swallow. Instead his throat clenched and locked shut. He couldn’t breathe. Stan brushed his lips against his palm, whispering into the skin “But, I’m just not! I’m not Stan. I can’t be what you want. I don’t know what you want!”

“Stanley….” He didn’t know what he wanted. He thought he did. He knew what he wanted to want.

“NO! Don’t you get it! I’m not Stan. I never was!” He jerked back at Stan’s screech, but he was held firm. There was no running from this. “You weren’t supposed to be a twin. I spent sixty years thinking I was something I wasn’t. I spent sixty years thinking I was human, thinking I was worth something. I don’t want to be this! I don’t want to be Bill! But I can’t keep pretending I’m not! I can’t, I just can’t anymore!”

Stan heaved faltering breaths as he fought his body’s automatic fight or flight response. Stan wasn’t getting enough air, he was choking on his own panicking, so his body closed off his windpipe. No, wait, that wasn’t…

Stan had lifted both of Stanford’s hands to his throat, twelve fingers wrapped loosely around the pale neck, blood smearing beneath his palms. Stan urged him to squeeze, using his own hands to press Stanford’s into his throat.

“I’m not Bill, I’m not Stan. I’m no one. I can’t be one or the other, and I’m a danger to you being both.” Stan licked at his blue lips. Breath shallow and far from bridging the space between them. He was dying. The shock was killing him.

“I know part of you wants this.” He pressed Stanford’s hands harder into his neck, his voice coming out strained. “I do to. I think it would be ok, if it was you.” The corner of his mouth turned up in a pathetic semblance of a grin. Stanford’s heart stopped. “Please…”

In one smooth motion, Stanford slid his hands over Stan shoulders and wrapped his arms around his twin. Nails diffing into the ruined cloth and leaving little scratches on the skin underneath. He pressed his lips to Stan’s shoulder, eyes clenched tight enough to hurt. Stan’s skin smelled like sweat and vomit mixed with death, but it didn’t faze him.

Nothing made sense. Nothing was okay. Everything was wrong all at once and he was not strong enough to deal with it.

He felt Stan’s arms hesitantly wrap around his lower back and pull him closer. When everything else was going wrong. This…this was okay. This was right.

Chapter 1

#Stancest #Whole Again #Stanley Pines #stanford pines #stan is bill #bill is stan #sea grunks #stan o war

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nickiplague · 6 years

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Truth Inconceivable - Waking Up ch. 6

Hallo again the humble author is here again to give this out and plead for reviews... I know my stuff isn't that good, but please leave me a review! I would like to hear what y'all think! What do you like? What don't you like? What is just weird? What should I change?

“See Pinetree, in the end of it all I still won! I may have left your dimension, but you’ll be the one to suffer!” A horribly familiar laugh echoed around me fading into single long tone.

“Uh… hah! Wahhh!” I jerked awake and out of bed. Literally. My hand flailed for support and found nothing but air, I crashed to the floor of the blindingly bright room trying to figure out where the heck I was.

“Geez man, calm your tits, fuck!” Who was…? I saw a guy with dirty blonde hair sticking up all over his head looking down at me where I lay on the floor. Then I remembered… that’s Joey. I’m in the loony bin. What the hell was that dream? It sounded like…

“...Bill…” I breathed the name and shuddered. Bill was erased from Grunkle Stan’s brain… but Stan did get his memories back… what if Bill comes back too?

Joey’s face scrunched up, “No, Joey. There’s no Bill here dude, well unless you count that grandpa of a counselor William. Even then he hates the name Bill…” As Joey trailed off I started to get up off the floor.

Suddenly, there was a loud banging on the door, which made me jump, and Chip’s voice called out, “All right, everyone up! You got 30 minutes for showers and restroom before breakfast! Make it count!” Then the door opened and Miguel and Sonny shot out the door followed closely by a scrambling Joey. I could hear Chip yelling at the next group and realized I needed to book it.

I quickly got to my feet and reached the door, but I had to stop short to keep from being trampled by the next group as they barreled past me. They all stripped as they entered the restroom, chucking their clothes into a large, wheeled hamper by the door so I followed suit and joined the general rush for the shower area. Each one had been claimed already and I wasn't feeling too comfortable after the implications Miguel made last night so I turned to go to a toilet stall instead, only to have someone grab my arm and drag me to the far end of the showers.

When we came to a stop and was sure I wouldn't fall I looked up and saw my arm in the grip of a big guy who I was sure was one of Yao’s roommates. “Hey I’m Nick, this is Rick. Don’t stand around on your own in here like that, Yao almost got you before I did. You can use this shower with us.” He turned into the water and pointed at an indention in the wall. “Stick your hand there it will give you a little soap, it's all you get to wash with so use it wisely...for your hair too.”

With those words he went back to washing and ignored me. I tried to talk to Rick, but he hid behind Nick. It was awkward enough showering with others and trying to talk with them made it worse so I just rushed to finish washing and left with them. We quickly used the toilets and I heard Rick shout and shove me into someone I looked up and saw a relieved looking Joey, “I think you lost something. I have enough trouble looking after my smol, keep a better eye on yours.”

Joey gave him a funny look and laughed, “Well technically speaking I have three ‘smols’ now, as you call them.” While shaking his head he guided me towards a new bin where Miguel and Sonny stood dressed and holding out sets of clothes for us.

“Damn dude, get decent! No one wants to see your junk hanging out like that!” As Miguel jeered at us I was hit with the horribly embarrassing fact that I was still stark naked. My face was burning with shame as I swiftly jerked my clothes on, falling over in the process.

Someone caught me before I hit the ground, “Already falling for me? I’m flattered, truly.” Yao had caught me, literally, with my pants down. He surprised me by showing off shocking strength and lifting me into a bridal style carry with ease, “Such a small and delectable treat you are…” He grinned at my obvious discomfort and then, surprisingly, he set me down on my feet, “Now let’s get the cute little prince all dressed up!” He reached down and pulled my sweats up the rest of the way before Joey shoved him away.

“G-get away Yao! Don’t touch my roommates…” he stood in front of me as I jerked my shirt on and stepped into my shoes. Miguel and Sonny looked shocked and slightly horrified.

“Well I am soo sorry for looking out for your newest roomie, but if you aren't going to protect him maybe he should be under me instead?” He winked at me past Joey, “My care that is, seeing as I’m the one who saved him from bashing his head on the ground.” He turned around walking towards the exit, “Maybe we could swap? You get Nick and I could get Dipper? They almost never approve swaps though, oh well…”

As he left Joey spun around and started checking me over, “Did you hurt yourself? Did he hurt you? Are you alright? Did he grope you? I’m sorry I let him get you, I was in shock, I j-” I stepped away from his frantic hands and words.

“I… I’m fine really...he didn't do anything other than catch me and pick me up,” I grimaced at how that sounded. “Let’s go alright? It's probably almost time.” As if he had heard me, we heard Chris call for everyone to leave the restroom. I looked around and noticed that most everyone was already gone, “Look like we’re the slowest… heh… come on let’s go.”

Once out we got in line and Chris unlocked the door to our , “Alright guys first breakfast and then 2 hours of individual counseling.” He was saying this as we filed past him out of our dormitory. Once everyone was out he led us down the way to the dining hall meeting up with the girls along the way. I saw Mabel further up in their line with another girl leaning forward and resting their head on her’s with their arms around her waist it was good to see she already had a friend.

Other’s were talking quietly, so I tried to get her attention by softly calling out, “Mabel. Hey Mabel!” I thought I saw her start to glance back, but I guess she just couldn't hear me. We entered the dining hall and I decided I’ll try to sit and eat with her.

Goddess... Yao is soo slimy... but everyone should have a 'little' likability or be given the benefit of the doubt... right? I don't know... Anyway! Please leave me a review! I want to know what y'all think! Have a lovely day!

#mabel pines #pinecest #dipper pines #my first fanfic #fanfiction.net #fanfiction #fanfic #truth inconceivable #dark story #dipper and mabel #mabel and dipper #gravity falls fandom #gravity falls #lime

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emberglowfox · 6 years

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hi my name is boo boo the fool and i decided that literal midnight was the best time to try my hand at writing the sick supehero au that i totally fell in love with

ill prolly draw some stuff for this too once i manage to pry some free time back from life’s clammy hands

@actualbird @pastelmogar

enjoy, i guess? haha

It had started with an accident.

Jeremy swears that he didn’t mean to take anything. He just has a bad habit of sticking things in his jacket pockets and forgetting about them, and unfortunately ‘a bottle of Mountain Dew that he definitely did not pay for’ falls under the category of things. He’d just been browsing the local gas station on the corner of the street, slipped a drink he was considering buying into his pocket, and walked out without realizing what he’d done.

He’d been all the way down the street when his clammy fingers had brushed the bottle, and he’d jolted with the realization that oh fuck, I just stole something.

Not that it was difficult, really. He doubted the cashier even knew he was there. He’d known going to the store on his own was a bad idea, but Jeremy Heere, King of Bad Ideas, had done it anyways.

He’d been so caught up in his morose ‘Guess I’m a villain now’ spiel that he’d failed to notice the figure behind him, watching him with a beady pair of ice-blue eyes.

Mistake number one.

“That’s an interesting power you’ve got there,” the figure had said, and Jeremy, articulate as ever, had spun around and asked, “Y-you can see me?”

“I can,” the figure had said.

“Who are you?” Jeremy had demanded, definitely not shaking and attempting to hide the stolen bottle behind his back.

“I’m many things,” the figure had said, tilting their head thoughtfully. “But you can call me the Squip, if that is what you wish.”

Jeremy, who’d been bleary from being up studying for a few nights in a row- possible also the reason he’d taken the bottle in the first place- had failed to connect that name with the name of the mysterious supervillain sweeping through the city like a plague.

Mistake number two.

“You know, your power is an incredible gift,” the Squip had said, and Jeremy had swallowed and looked at the ground.

“It- It’s really not.”

“Is it not? The ability to be seen whenever you wish and only then? Is that not a powerful ability?” The Squip had said.

“Nobody ever sees me,” Jeremy had said.

“Do you want them to see you, really?” The Squip had asked.

Jeremy hadn’t been able to answer that question. The one person who’d always been able to see him- Michael- was probably the only person who wouldn’t grind him into the ground for simply existing. Did he really want to be seen?

“You know,” the Squip had said. “That ability of yours… If you really do want to be seen, we could put it to excellent use. If you truly want to be known by all,”

Jeremy, in the darkness, had been unable to see the malicious smile that had formed on the shadowy figure’s face.

“I can help you.”

“What’s the catch?” Jeremy had asked, because nothing came for free. He knew that even before he’d slipped and fallen headfirst into the world of supervillainy.

“No catch,” the Squip had said. “You’ve already proven yourself.”

Jeremy had glanced at the bottle in his hands, then back up at the figure.

“And if I accept… Everyone will know my name.”

“Every single person in this city. You have my word.”

Jeremy, the fool that he was, had accepted.

-----

Jeremy whoops as he guns it down the street, the Squip trotting at his side and Comedy sprinting at the other. In his backpack, he can feel the weight of a few snack packs and several thousand dollars worth of bills. Comedy carries the same amount, if not more.

It’s the usual routine tonight; no grand heists or scheming, just hitting the local gas stations and grocery stores and running off with whatever loot they can jam into their backpacks. It’s the last heist of the night, so the Squip has informed him to put on his mask.

The tragedy mask, a thin white half-mask that Jeremy can only assume is made of metal, covers half of his face with a sad frown. It’s fitting, really. It’s a part of his costume, but he only wears it when he wants to be seen. When he wants everyone to see him and know his name.

A part of him, deep inside, twists in sickening agony, shrieking at him that what he’s doing is wrong, wrong, wrong. But that’s just what he’s been trained to think. Jeremy knows that. The Squip’s told him so, time and time again.

The Squip whistles and Jeremy catches a glimpse of the sleek black car that pulls up like a dog running to its master. As the Squip slides into the front seat, Jeremy and Comedy hurl themselves into the backseat and slam the doors behind him.

“Drive, Squip, drive!” Comedy howls, although they both know that now they’re not in any real danger of getting caught. Once they’re to the getaway car- lovingly and ironically dubbed the Batmobile- the cops can’t touch them.

The Squip tsks indignantly, icy blue eyes flashing dangerously in the rearview mirror, but presses down on the gas. The car shoots from its stopped position with a screech, slamming both Jeremy and Comedy into the seats with the force of its acceleration.

Outside of the tinted windows, the city bleeds into a blur of crooked shadows and bright streetlights, as well as the occasional red-blue flashes and wails of police cars trying in vain to drag them out of their ecstasy.

“How much did you get?” Jeremy asks Comedy, who has his legs kicked up on the seat in front of him- no small feat, considering his stature and the dimensions of the Squip’s car. Comedy is short- shorter than Jeremy, easily, with light brown hair punctuated by a shock of red. It looks cool; Jeremy considered getting a stripe of his own, maybe blue, but what if Michael noticed? What if Michael saw?

“Not much,” Comedy says. Even under his mask, a grinning plate which mirrors Jeremy’s own, Jeremy can catch his crooked grin.

“I got a thing or two of booze from the Publix. Want some?”

“No drinking on the job,” the Squip says from the front seat, and the frosty underlying threat is enough to make Comedy go tense and shove the bottle he’d began to pull out back in.

For a moment, there’s silence, before Jeremy asks, “Gummy bears?”

“Fuck yeah, hand ‘em over,” Comedy says, and Jeremy tosses him a few packets of Haribo he’d snagged in his earlier practice run.

“I hope you’re not wasting our time with stealing gummy bears, Tragedy,” the Squip says. Jeremy has to force himself to speak.

“I stole them on my own time, Boss.”

That’s thankfully enough to keep the Squip off of him, and he breathes an almost silent sigh of relief.

“What in the-”

The car swerves, and Jeremy barely has time to latch onto the seat in front of him as the world tilts dangerously sharply. The Squip, thankfully, does not flip the car, but they do skid to a less-than-graceful stop.

The Squip swears angrily and throws open the door with more force than is probably necessary, and Comedy and Jeremy scramble to follow. Confusion and a little bit of fear knifes its way through Jeremy; they’ve never had to stop, never been stopped, like this before.

As Jeremy steps out of the care and onto the pavement, fingers coming up to fiddle with the edge of his mask, he hears a familiar voice that makes his heart stop.

“Holy shit, I did… Not expect that to work.”

Jeremy’s head snaps up and he scours the direction of the voice, mind racing because no, it can’t be.

And thankfully, it’s not.

The newcomer, who presumably managed to get the Squip to almost flip their car, is not who he thought they were. They’re just a random strangle, decked out in a dull brown hoodie, a disposable face mask, and what appears to be some sort of weird blindfold.

“Another hero wannabe,” the Squip says flatly, and Jeremy internally cringes at what he knows comes next. “Tragedy, Comedy, take care of this.”

They step to the side with a flick of their dark blue cape, a ripple of bright blue static sliding across it and sparking at the tips. Jeremy waits for Comedy’s lead; Comedy’s been doing this way longer than he has, and he has the upper hand.

Comedy opens his mouth to speak, and the newcomer stutters, “Oh, fuck,” and rips off of his blindfold.

Of all the possible outcomes of this situation, Jeremy did not expect this at all. He’s not upset in any way. How could he be?

Staring at him is the most beautiful set of eyes he’s ever seen. The very world around him pales in comparison to the sight in front of him, he realizes. Nothing else matters but those eyes and the beautiful person they belong to.

Where others’ eyes are simply brown, these are different. They carry the weight of the earth, brown like the soil from which men so desperately sought to pull gold. Jeremy thinks he can see it; flecks of silver and copper dappled across a sea of earthy tones. They’re beautiful, and Jeremy can’t think of a thing in the world he wouldn’t do for them.

“Stop,” the newcomer with the beautiful eyes commands, and Jeremy does. How could he not? It feels so right to do as the newcomer says. He’ll do whatever is asked of him. He has to. So he stops. He doesn’t blink. He doesn’t breathe.

As his lungs begin to burn, he sees those beautiful earthly eyes widen in horror.

“Wait- Fuck, no, I didn’t mean- I mean go! G-get out of here, and don’t rob this store again. And do all of your bodily functions, please. Holy shit.”

Jeremy breathes, air filling his lungs, and he does as the eyes say. It fills him with a deep sadness to leave them, but if it’s what they desire, it’s what he will do. At his side, Comedy leaves in a run, sprinting towards nowhere but what can be called away, and Jeremy follows.

He gets almost half of a mile away when the trance breaks, and Jeremy crumples to the ground like a cheap paper doll.

At his side, Comedy hunches over and stares at the ground, eyes wide.

“What in the everloving fuck was that?” He says, panting. Jeremy doesn’t know.

It’s a superpower. It has to be. Still, what the fuck kind of power is that? Mind control with eyes? Holy shit, that’s an overpowered ability if Jeremy’s ever seen one.

“Now that’s interesting,” the Squip says from where they’ve appeared behind Comedy and Jeremy, and Jeremy freezes. Oh, fuck. They left everything behind. The Squip is going to be pissed.

Oddly enough, they seem more thoughtful and upset. In the dim light, Jeremy sees the Squip’s permanently distorted form shift, face twisting into a thoughtful frown.

“Very interesting indeed.”

Jeremy had no idea what that would mean for him. He wishes he could have realized, and then the whole thing could have been prevented.

But… Could it really?

#proofreading? i dont know her #i hope this sounds okay im. out of practice #ill hopefully write more bc this is short haha #bmc superpowers au #My writing #bmc #minific

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butterflyinthewell · 7 years

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Palimpsest (autistic!12th Doctor fanfic)

TITLE: Palimpsest SUMMARY: Disability does not equal tragedy, and love is a promise that endures beyond missing memories. (Set after the episode ‘Oxygen’. Blind!autistic!12th Doctor, Whouffaldi) RATING: T GENRE: Angst / Hurt-Comfort / Humor PAIRING: Whouffaldi (Wait for it...trust me.) LOCATED: FF.net: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12493583/1/Palimpsest AO3: http://archiveofourown.org/works/10938483 (Whouffaldi Forever) and also under the Tumblr cut TRIGGER WARNINGS: Unsanitary moments, food, graphic description of suffocation in a vacuum, eye scream, body horror.

I wanted to play around with blind!12 using a mobility device and being independent. The Doctor losing his sight doesn’t have to be tragic and I don’t think he would see it as such.

This story is an acknowledgement of Face the Raven from the Doctor’s POV, and it’s meant to point towards Every Love Story. That makes it kinda-sorta an AU, yet I wrote it with a “could be canon if you squint” mindset.

Bring tissues, you might need them. Allons-y!

[Still image from the Doctor Who episode Hell Bent. Taken from inside an old-fashioned diner. There is a juke box and red booths on the left-hand side of the photo. On the right-hand side are red stools, the counter, a drink machine and other diner-type knick knacks. The 12th Doctor is outside the glass doors, poised to step inside. He’s carrying his electric guitar and wearing his sonic sunglasses.]

“Had to let you know just what would happen. Yes, I had to let you know the truth. I know I've got to do this. Would you hold my hand right through it? Would you...”

--Gloria Estefan, “I See Your Smile”

People died because of his recklessness. But not Bill. Not today. Not if he could do something to prevent it.

The Doctor inhaled deeply and blew all the air out ten times in a row. Hyperventilating left him tingly, but it would buy him time. Chaos reigned around him, yet he remained calm. He removed his space helmet with a decisive snap-click.

Frigidness bit into his skin like fangs. Pain slammed through his ears as they popped in the negative pressure, and they rang so loud he hardly heard his own hearts pounding. The last breath he inhaled rushed out in a cloud of thick, white mist. It seemed to shape like a bird before evaporating.

Bill’s eyes fluttered and rolled; she had lost consciousness. Ice formed where she sweat from fear. Her brown skin looked ashen and the membranes inside her twitching mouth turned a terrifying blue-gray.

The Doctor’s chest burned. He shoved the helmet over Bill’s head, twisted it into position and grabbed her arm. Ringing continued inside his skull while he pulled Bill’s space suit panel open and rerouted its circuitry. His body gasped spasmodically for air, but the strength of his diaphragm couldn’t overcome a vacuum. What little breath he dragged in got violently sucked out before he fully inhaled it. He swore his internal organs were on the verge of bursting through his nostrils.

One more twist and Bill’s suit began to march in the same instant he felt the spit in his mouth become froth. He gestured at Nardole to get Bill outside. Ivan and Abby had already gone ahead to clear the way.

The Doctor hunched his shoulders, which pressed the rim of his space suit over his ears and mouth. Somehow, that helped the pain. He staggered outside. Now there was nothing to inhale, like having plastic wrap pressed over his nose and mouth. Flashes of light lit his visual field. Just cosmic rays, not too dangerous in small doses.

His eyes stung, then burned. So did his eyelids. The lack of oxygen triggered a brief myoclonic seizure-- his whole body jerked and flailed. Nobody saw that, thank the stars.

Nardole kept stopping and looking back. The Doctor stumbled ahead of him when Bill’s suit took her off-course. Another seizure wracked his muscles. Darkness pricked the edges of his vision. Details began to disappear as if his retinas lost resolution. Everything swam around him. Who turned his vitreous and aqueous humor into carbonation? Oh, right, vacuum.

Bill came closer. She was still too out of it to correct her course. The Doctor caught her shoulder and redirected her towards Nardole. Their destination was ten steps away. Nardole didn’t look back when Ivan and Abby disappeared into the other open airlock with Bill. Maybe they thought he was right behind them.

Pain became unbearable agony. The Doctor’s skin went numb. Pressure built up in his muscles and a feeling of irrational anguish heated his bones. How ironic, he was going to have a meltdown in the vacuum of space and probably die right after.

But he saved Bill. That made the pain worth it.

The Doctor spread his arms, squeezed his eyes shut and screamed. It didn’t matter that his lungs had no air to produce sound. Screaming felt good. Screaming gave that energy somewhere safe to go. He curled his fists and thrashed his head backwards. There was nothing to bang it against, but his body did it anyway.

Reality turned dizzying as his eyes rolled. Now his entire visual field bubbled as he cried the tears that always followed the peak of a meltdown. Euphoria flooded through him. Reality became decidedly less real. He didn’t care about the pain anymore. Endorphins were kicking in. If dying felt like this, it wasn’t the most horrible thing in the world.

Consciousness began to leave him as someone grabbed his arm and hauled him forward. Visions of a petite woman wearing a pale blue sweater danced through his head. Briefly, he glimpsed the edge of a smile on her lips.

He noticed himself shouting something. It didn’t make any sound until the chamber pressurized.

“C-Cl-Clara! Clara? Clara!”

Mid-shout, he noticed something missing. Then he passed out. When he woke up later, he realized he was blind.

Palimpsest

A search for solitude drove the Doctor into what he always did-- he ran. He needed to get away from Bill and Nardole for awhile. Bill wasn’t much of a bother. Nardole’s overabundant concern after the events aboard Chasm Forge wore on his last nerve. He tried to be helpful without it seeming obvious...and it got annoying!

The Doctor hated other people imposing limits on him. Rules were one thing. Rules needed to be followed, and he understood the utterly painful consequences of breaking them.

But limits? Limits were, well, limiting! How did anybody expect him to adapt as a blind man when they tried to do everything for him? Everyone bumped their head, banged their knees and tripped over things. Why did he hear sighs of pity if he did it a little more often than sighted folks? Blindness, shimdness!

So off the Doctor ran, and here he was, materializing the TARDIS in Nevada yet again. He liked Nevada. A huge, rocky nowhere similar to Mars. Somebody could wander the highway forever and never see another living person unless they sought them out on purpose.

He’d been coming here for a month now to practice independent blind travel. Being careful to park the TARDIS back in his office exactly zero-point-zero-zero-zero-one seconds after departing made his exits and re-entrances almost undetectable.

The Doctor tugged his coat lapel for a reassuring whiff of chalk. The electric guitar strapped to his shoulder shifted against his back. He saw the TARDIS so well in his mind’s eye that he forgot he wasn’t actually seeing until he opened the door.

Hot, dry and dusty desert air stung his nostrils. Everything looked like what he saw if he pointed a flashlight at his eyelids while they were shut, except they weren’t really shut and the haze had more white than red in it. Light perception was all he had. Ironic, his eyeballs didn’t hate light until they couldn’t see properly anymore. They focused instinctively whenever they sensed bright illumination even though his brain knew they weren’t going to see anything useful. Old habits died hard.

Cutting out vision reduced his chronic sensory overload and absolved him from worrying about bothersome social cues. Actually, going blind made his tendency to miss social cues a little more understandable. Only one dilemma remained: the anxiety of chronic sensory under-load. No problem-- his previous incarnation was prone to hyposensitivity. Doing something stimulating filled in the void.

And a long walk in the hot desert sun would do just fine. Nardole might tear out the hair he didn’t have if he found out about this. The Doctor chuckled at the mental image without regret.

He whipped his sonic sunglasses out of his breast pocket and put them on. A tap from his fingers turned the already-dark lenses nearly opaque. Dimming the perception of light forced his eyes to relax. Next, he reached into his side pocket for his white cane. The rigid cane fit in his pocket the same way he fit inside his TARDIS. Pocket dimensions were awesome like that.

Folding canes didn’t work for him. They were nifty, however they didn’t transmit enough tactile information. Also, they weren’t sonic.

This cane was the coolest thing he ever asked the TARDIS to design, if he said so himself. The long white cane looked nearly identical to the typical white canes used by blind humans. Black golf club handle, white body and a reflective red strip near its mushroom tip. It nearly reached his nose when he let the tip touch the ground. People who walked fast needed longer canes.

The Doctor arranged the leather handle comfortably in his right hand. Leather, because rubber felt disgusting to his hands the same way unevenly lumpy foods felt disgusting on his tongue. He held it as if shaking hands with the handle, slid his index finger down until it rested on the smooth fiberglass length and positioned his hand in front of his navel. This pushed the cane tip forward at an angle outside the TARDIS door.

Faint blue light shone in the cane’s tip, the glow overpowered by the sun. The same blue light erupted off the top of the handle. Information traveled telepathically from his hand to his brain-- there were plants and rocks ten meters ahead. Fifteen meters beyond them, the highway. He grinned as he received input about the position of the sun and the direction he faced.

Not the first sonic cane I ever used, but definitely the best!

“Nice work, Sexy,” The Doctor patted the TARDIS’ door frame.

After he emerged onto the dusty desert soil, he marveled at how everything sounded clearer without walls blocking the sound waves. He swung the cane to the left and tapped the tip against the ground as his right foot took a step. Then he swung it in a low rightward arc to tap the ground again when he brought his left foot forward. Clear a space, step into it, clear the next space, step into it. Each swing arced slightly wider than his shoulders.

Wait, there were rocks around, weren’t there? He switched to sliding his cane instead of tapping it. Instantly, he found himself gathering more information about the hard-packed dirt that felt like cracked clay. The repetitiveness of exploring the ground wore itself familiar in his mind. He hardly had to think about using the cane just like he hardly thought about blinking, breathing or stimming.

Thinking about stimming prompted the Doctor to bring his left hand up to his face. Few people knew of the stim toy he kept literally up his sleeve. He chewed the stem of his black No Gloom ‘Shroom, which he wore on his wrist via a clear key ring coil. His sleeve concealed it perfectly when he wasn’t using it. He continued forward with the ‘Shroom poking out of his mouth. Gnawing the hard food-grade silicone felt similar to chewing the bottom of a well-worn tennis shoe. Biting that instead of his fingers redirected his urge to chew his fingernails until they bled.

Lots of toe-smashing rocks peppered the area. The cane warned him of each one. He stepped over them without breaking his stride. Hot tar scents wafted towards him. Loose, rough dirt gave way to hard smoothness. He put the No Gloom ‘Shroom away and slid his cane in a wide arc to seek obstacles. Asphalt had a much different rattle than the dirt. Ah, the highway. Newly re-paved since his last visit, judging by the feel and smell of it. He knelt and gave it a quick lick so he wouldn’t burn his tongue. It tasted strongly bitter and a tiny bit earthy. Yup, re-paved exactly one week ago.

“South,” said the Doctor. He knew which way was south, but he wanted to see if the cane did, too.

The cane shifted slightly left like metal trying to reach a magnet. Perfect. Excellent. He hopped onto the road, letting his cane lead him to the double yellow line in the center. The seemingly endless asphalt radiated the sun’s heat like a furnace. He welcomed the warmth.

Being able to go any direction he chose without being shouted at to watch out for something in his path felt like liberation. So what if he looked a little silly when he stumbled? Did sighted people really think he experienced the same discomfort they did about his blindness?

Sure, things were hard and frustrating at first because losing a sense took getting used to. Honestly, he had more trouble shaving than he did walking, but he figured shaving out eventually.

Regeneration was harder than going blind. Learning how to use a whole new body with all new sensory issues, differences in hand-eye coordination, being taller or shorter than before and learning to recognize a different face in the mirror definitely took more getting used to than being blind.

Maybe that was the tragedy to the sighted-- they thought of all the things a person never got to see before they went blind and they forgot that life experiences came from more than vision. The Doctor had already seen a great many things. In his mind, there wasn’t much to miss now.

Loud, fast rattling noises made him pause mid-stride. Its rhythm was snake-ese for back off, stranger.

“Oy, Hissy, I’m not going to step on you. You’ll get run over if you stay there.” He gestured to his right with his cane. “Go on, go find a rock to sun yourself on.”

The snake hissed in protest. She got here first, this was her spot. The Doctor stood his ground.

“You won’t attract a boyfriend if you’re road pizza.”

This stubborn snake didn’t relent until he sent her a weak telepathic nudge. Using barely-functional telepathy without touch required immense focus and effort. All he did was appeal to the snake’s instinct for safety. Finally, the reptile came to her senses and slithered off the highway.

The Doctor resumed his former stride and recalled the entertaining outing he yesterday. He popped into the early 1950′s for a visit with an old friend who happened to be blind. The moment he told her he lost his sight, she sprang into action and taught him a few tricks that made eating a much cleaner affair. His only issue was understanding some of what she said. She spoke with the unique pattern of a deaf person and read his lips by touching his mouth. They had a fascinating conversation about politics over dinner.

Then he accidentally left his Rubik’s cube behind, yet didn’t have the hearts to retrieve it when he went back and discovered her fiddling with it. He wondered if she ever figured it out. She probably did-- that cube had raised patterns as well as bright colors.

Nothing about her seemed tragic at all.

And last week, a present-day pal gave a guest lecture on physics at the university. The Doctor held the elevator for the esteemed visitor while he and his entourage filed in. There was a lot of beeping and soft hissing while the elevator whirred.

As they emerged, the Doctor said, “Don’t get tired up there, Stephen.”

A long pause followed. The Doctor waited patiently.

Stephen’s synthesized voice replied, "Dream on, Doctor.”

Nothing about him seemed tragic, either.

The Doctor surfaced from his thoughts and listened to his cane clacking. Colors and shapes swirled through his ‘visual’ field. On some occasions they resolved into elaborate multicolored grids on a solid gray background. Other times, they were swirling blue-white blobs much like what he experienced when he closed his eyes to sleep. More often than not, it resembled old analog TV static.

Humans called it prisoner’s cinema, the hallucinogenic response of a brain amusing itself when its eyeballs couldn’t relay visual input for long periods. It got its name via the experiences of prisoners kept in dark solitary confinement cells. The Doctor learned to enjoy the 'visual’ stimulation whenever it happened.

Freedom like this had his feet itching to dance, so he did! He took a diagonal forward step with his left foot, crossed his right leg behind the left one so the toes of his right foot pointed to his left heel, bounced off his right foot and immediately opened up again by landing on his left foot. Another dance step followed, this one beginning on the right foot. A hop punctuated every step in perfect syncopation. His cane stayed centered in the road, almost acting as a pivot point while his skipping had him hopping from one side of the double yellow line to the other.

He did an absolutely perfect imitation of Judy Garland following the yellow brick road in The Wizard of Oz. Being able to dance like a total goof without hearing someone chastise his carelessness greatly lifted his spirits. He skipped half a mile down the highway without a care in the world.

Normal walking resumed once the Doctor worked the excess energy out of his system. Exerting himself caused sweat to bead on his forehead. His cane alerted him to a TARDIS a hundred meters ahead. Oh, that ridiculous thing, it still thought buildings were TARDISes?

The Doctor detoured off the highway. His cane gently tugged him towards the door. He shifted to hold his cane like an extremely long pencil and choked up on his grip to shorten his swing. The tip clanked against the metal on the bottom of the door. He extended his arm until the cane lay flat against the door and slid it side to side until it hit the handle.

Air-conditioned coolness wafted against his face as he stepped off grit and onto smooth laminate tiles. Outside the diner, he had zero idea of why he woke up in the middle of the night panting with desire or longing to kiss the lips on a face his mind refused to see.

Everything rushed back whenever he entered here, and it would leave him again when he exited. Very similar to dealing with Silents, except no suggestions got left behind. Neural blocks never liked the overabundance of neurons in autistic brains. Time and neuroplasticity would eventually restore everything the way nature overtook abandoned towns. Until then, he had to play mental peekaboo.

A sigh escaped him. This was the one place where his loss of sight wasn’t horribly tragic. His first stop-in brought a ton of questions. He explained that being exposed to the vacuum of space boiled his eyeballs like eggs and that was that.

Here it came, the memory flood. He let it wash over him.

Her smile. Her laugh. Her face. Their adventures together. The trap street. Darkness. Feeling time fracture and snap back. A flash of light as the raven plunged into her chest. Hearing her shrill scream of agony. Watching black smoke emerge from her mouth. The way she fell to her knees, her arms still stubbornly outstretched. The way he nearly rushed forward to stop her head from hitting the cobblestones. Being held back only by his honoring her wish to face the raven alone. How helpless he felt at seeing her slump backwards. Her body convulsing in a death spasm. Approaching her and kneeling amid the leaves littering the cobblestones. Seeing her last agonal gasp. The shock, the silence, the utter pain. Finding pebbles from Gallifrey caught in the treads of her shoes. Feeling the end of his own timeline in those pebbles and realizing he could still save her. The hell within his confession dial. Those billions of years he gave up for her sake. His rage at the Time Lords.

He plucked her out of time like he swore he wouldn’t. He broke every rule laid out for him and almost tore apart the universe because she meant more to him than his own existence. His duty of care nearly ended everything.

Somehow, mere days afterward (relatively speaking), he found himself in the past, blabbing to a stranger named Erwin about the whole thing before his last memories of it faded away. After hearing the rant, all dear Erwin wanted to talk about was cats in boxes.

The Doctor mentally derailed his own spiraling thought patterns and refocused on the present moment. He came here on Wednesdays for...well some memories weren’t so clear. Habit, perhaps.

Telling stories about his adventures over a snack or drink showed her he was wasn’t wandering the universe alone. He needed her to know that, but couldn’t tell her why without jeopardizing their future.

She sought desperately to see any sign that he remembered her. He worked desperately to convince her that he didn’t. Breaking the facade needed to be done carefully or not at all. No tidal waves allowed.

The diner door swung shut behind the Doctor. Ice cubes crackled into a glass cup, followed by the slush of liquid being poured over them. He smelled tater tots fresh out of the oven. His mouth watered. When did he last eat? He couldn’t remember.

“You’re early,” said a woman’s voice.

A brief, brilliant smile lit the Doctor’s face as he propped his cane up against his shoulder. “I beat my old record by--” he licked his lips, tasting the air, “exactly ten-point-two minutes.”

She snickered. “What did you do? Run the whole way?”

“Nope. I skipped.” He demonstrated for her upon approaching the counter.

“You’re daft.”

"Mmhmm.” The Doctor waggled his eyebrows behind his sunglasses. “Tried to be normal once. Worst ten minutes of my life.”

His guitar and cane got propped up against the counter while he eased himself onto the stool. The sunglasses came off next. He placed them beside the radio. She liked to see his eyes, so he wouldn’t deny her that even though it meant being irritated by the daylight filtering through the windows. The colorful prisoner’s cinema show dissolved as the left side of his visual field turned uniformly gray. By contrast, the right side was hazy black.

Always the perceptive one, she closed the blinds on the windows framing the door. The bothersome brightness cut in half. He followed the sounds of her movements with his eyes. Just a reflex he allowed to “run” without interference-- the exact same reflex that prompted students to glance up whenever someone slunk into class late. People born blind lacked it because those pathways never formed in their brain. The same wasn’t always true for those who lost their sight.

Footsteps crossed behind the counter again. Water ran. A damp towel wiped down the counter top. A plate clunked and slid audibly closer. Near it, a glass.

“Lemonade is at twelve o’clock, napkins are at two and the tater tots are at three.”

“Thank you.”

The Doctor brought the warm plate to six o’clock, placed the napkins at three o’clock and shifted the cold, moist glass to two o’clock. The greasy tater tots were already arranged end to end in concentric circles with the ketchup in the middle. Just how he liked them.

He started on the outermost ring of tater tots first. “Your lady-friend mentioned you’ll be heading out soon the last time I came here. Are you flying back home?”

“No...I’m going to travel for a bit to clear my mind.” She sighed. Her shoes squeaked softly on the tile floor. "The man I told you about still has amnesia.”

“Oh. Nothing new? At all?”

“Nope.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Clara,” said the Doctor with sincerity. He offered her a tater tot.

Clara’s small, soft fingertips brushed his when she accepted his offering. The brief touch rippled across his nerve endings like fireworks. He absentmindedly rocked back and forth a few times to avoid reaching for her hand. Instead, he pulled his lemonade glass closer and sipped generously. His eyebrows went up in pleasant surprise.

“Oh, this must be the pink lemonade. It’s sweet.”

“Yeah? A sour drink and tater tots don’t sound appetizing.” She smiled-- it was remarkable how easy it was to hear smiles in peoples’ voices-- and poured herself a glass. Then she cleared her throat and took a sip. “How are classes going?”

“Fantastic. Did I mention I’m the professor and not a student?”

“Huh. No, you didn’t.” Clara leaned on the counter. “I was a teacher once.”

The Doctor tilted his head to make eye contact with her. Not hard, he followed her voice and measured a few centimeters upward. His eyes instinctively focused. Sometimes it made Nardole forget briefly that he wasn’t actually seeing. He liked that it unnerved some people.

“You were a good one,” he said. Silently, he added, You taught me, so I teach the world.

Something dripped on the counter. She wasn’t holding the towel or anything drippy. He made her cry again. That wasn’t good. He pretended to reach for a napkin and knocked over his lemonade, causing it to spill everywhere.

“Oops!” The Doctor leaped to his feet and tried unsuccessfully to contain the spreading mess with his hands.

“I’ve got it.” Clara seized the wet towel that plopped on top of the sticky spill.

“Sorry, I wasn’t watching what I was doing.” The Doctor joked. He reached for the towel. “Did I ruin anything?”

A barely perceptible giggle entered her voice. “No, no, it’s fine. Eat your tater tots. I’ll clean this up and get you a fresh glass.”

Success, he steered her away from feeling bad for now. He let her clean while he finished off the delicious tater tots. She took the plate and set his new lemonade in its place.

“Ah, thanks. So...” The Doctor sipped generously, using it as an excuse for his sudden, awkward pause. His mind scrambled through a list of ‘small-talk’ phrases. Talking at people was easy. Talking to them proved challenging. “Where do you plan to travel to?”

Clara was at the counter again. Her gaze felt like a physical presence. One that wasn’t unpleasant.

“I don’t know yet,” she said, “Maybe somewhere far away and not like here. Somewhere different.”

Faint crackles issued from the radio when the Doctor settled his guitar against his body and began absently strumming chords. Each note transmitted through his sonic sunglasses to emerge loud and clear despite the tiny speaker.

Lately, he’d been on an embarrassing Gloria Estefan kick. He caught himself strumming the vocal line of I See Your Smile. Then he decided that wasn’t so bad and kept playing.

Clara tried to move stealthily closer. She forgot how sensitive his ears were. Their sensitivity hadn’t changed since he went blind, but he paid more attention to the information they gathered. He feigned obliviousness as he ‘accidentally’ turned his eyes towards her. Only a blind man could look into the eyes of the woman he loved without her realizing it.

All at once he switched to the song she wrote across his hearts in the cloisters. That song was love, and love was a promise. It sounded slightly more elaborate than its first incarnation. He still hadn’t finished it yet. Maybe he never would. How did anyone finish a song still being sung for the first time?

The Doctor’s fingers stilled, letting the dissonant chord he just played fall silent without resolving. Somehow, in two swift movements, he set the guitar down, grasped Clara’s shoulder and stood up.

Rather than pull away, Clara clutched his coat lapels and stepped forward to wrap her arms around his waist. He returned her embrace. The crisp, stiff fabric of her waitress uniform almost burned his fingertips, yet he couldn’t make himself care. She felt so small in his arms. Was she always so tiny?

Time to drop the bomb.

“Clara,” said the Doctor, “I won’t remember much --or any --of this when I step outside.”

Clara’s arms tightened. Not feeling her heart quicken became unsettling. Unsettling wasn’t the worst thing in the world, though.

“So you’re heading out?”

The Doctor nodded gravely. If he stayed any longer, he knew he wouldn’t want to leave.

"I may not recognize you if we cross paths outside this diner.” He turned his head and spoke against her hair, “I’ll always be around, Clara, but this is when we talked.”

“So that’s it? Goodbye forever?” She sounded slightly cross, and he didn’t blame her.

He snorted disdainfully at fate. “What’s ‘forever’ to an immortal?”

Clara slipped her hand past his coat’s collar to cup the back of his neck. Her warm, soft skin suffused a myriad of emotions through his body. Tears welled in his eyes when he tried unsuccessfully to see her face. He sensed her looking back. What irony-- he struggled to make proper eye contact with her when he had perfect eyesight. Now, he couldn’t stop doing it.

"Clara, there’s something I didn’t get to say to you.”

Clara’s other hand joined the first. She didn’t care that he couldn’t see her. “You said goodbye when the neural block kicked in.”

“I’m not saying goodbye again.” A teary-eyed half-smile appeared on the Doctor’s face. “I wanted to say hello. Hello, Clara Oswald, it’s so very nice to meet you.”

He cupped her cheeks in his palms. They were wet with tears. Another fell as he touched the corner of her mouth.

“There has to be something I can do.” She swallowed hard, struggling to maintain barely maintainable composure. “Something to help you remember.”

The Doctor expected heartbreaking sadness. Instead, he felt the same warm joy he got after seeing Rose one more time. Hope worked miracles on broken hearts.

He wiped her tears away. “Smile for me, Clara. Go on. One last time.”

Clara gave him a little, impatient shake. Such an endearing human response.

“How could I smile?” she asked, her voice cracking.

“Because love is a promise,” the Doctor’s half-smile finished unfurling, a reflection of the joyful hope he felt inside, “and I promised you that I’ll remember your smile.”

Finally, Clara, by virtue of being Clara, picked up on why he asked. The Doctor noticed her tense facial muscles relaxing. Her cheekbones softened and rounded. Feeling her smile form was as glorious as seeing it happen.

He slid his hands inward, his long fingers tracing all the details of her lips, cheekbones and the corners of her eyes. Time had no grasp on her skin. Like a photograph, the way she looked now was how she would look forever. Only death had the power to corrupt the smile beneath his fingertips, and plucking her out of time meant she decided when to meet her ultimate fate.

“I won’t forget,” whispered the Doctor.

Fresh tears dribbled onto his thumbs. Clara’s uniform rustled when she leaned closer to him. He bent towards her. They bumped foreheads once, nuzzled noses twice and exchanged three brief pecks on the lips. A perfect Wednesday kiss.

The Doctor drew back for a breath and returned to kiss her properly. Clara slid one hand up into his curly hair, keeping him close. No tongues, just the silken slide of soft lips and warmth.

When their mouths parted, she asked, “Will you be okay, Doctor?”

He brushed his lips against her brow. Her hair smelled like strawberries this time.

“Of course,” he said, “I’m the king of okay.”

A total lie. He was going to resume feeling empty and lost without knowing why. A grief different than he felt for River. He knew what became of River. He wasn’t going to know what became of the hole in his mind where someone very important to him used to be.

“The sun’s going down,” said Clara.

“Hm, describe it?”

She stepped out of his embrace to open the blinds. They creaked a lot. He squinted instinctively in the light.

“It’s bright yellow at the horizon, orange higher up and fading to dark blue. Kinda reminds me of an ocean.”

“Visit Europa in 9990. They have a great seafloor cafe if you like sushi.”

“Space sushi?”

“Clara, you can’t put ‘space’ in front of everything that isn’t on Earth. I thought we went over this.”

“Right, space-man.”

The Doctor had no comeback for that. He closed his mouth and put on his best grumpy old man frown. Rather than speak, Clara leaned against him with her arm around his waist. He relaxed and awkwardly slipped his arm around her shoulders.

People treated sunsets like endings. The Doctor hated endings, so he saw sunsets as sunrises somewhere else. Planets turned and life went on. Sometimes part of continuing onward included painful separations. He couldn’t sit around doing nothing for a thousand years. Stagnation ruined people. What good was he if he let his skills get rusty?

The Doctor watched his ‘gray’ world go dark as the sun sank below the horizon. He reached past Clara to gather his guitar and cane. She handed him his sunglasses. He put them on with flare.

Clara offered her elbow even though the distance to the door was less than ten steps. The Doctor accepted and let her guide him.

“Let me be brave, let me be brave,” He heard her mutter to herself. She worked up the admirable courage she showed on the trap street.

They paused just inside the closed door, hugged and exchanged another long, lingering kiss in the last moments of dusk.

Clara cupped his cheek in her palm, her soft hand like balm on his aching hearts. “Run, you clever boy, and remember your promise.”

Smiling-- a sad, hopeful smile-- the Doctor turned and said something he always wanted to say to her.

“Run, you impossible girl, and remember me.”

She laughed. It was music that made his hearts dance. His throat ached at knowing he wouldn’t remember that sound five seconds from now, but he got her to laugh one more time. Her happiness became his hope.

The Doctor pushed the diner’s glass door open. Stinging pain screamed across his skull and faded. Everything that took place inside sloughed away. A small pang tightened his throat. He frowned and pursed his lips, trying to figure out why he remembered what he ate and drank, but not who he talked to.

Who was that girl again?

“Hm.” The Doctor absentmindedly stepped without tapping his cane.

Lucky for him, the cane caught a rock long before his foot did. That reminded him to start tapping. Wait, wasn’t he testing this new cane?

“TARDIS,” he said.

The cane’s mushroom tip and handle glowed brilliant blue in the darkness. And the damn thing tried to turn him around towards the building he just exited.

“No, no, no, not the diner. TARDIS.”

But the cane insisted a TARDIS was present. Apparently, the programming still had some bugs. Pesky, annoying bugs.

Suddenly, the diner emitted a groaning noise that rapidly faded. The Doctor gasped when air rushed in to fill the empty space. He walked across the vacant ground, reaching with both his hand and his cane. Nothing, like a diner never stood there at all.

A strange sense of familiarity washed over him. He tugged on his coat lapel and breathed in the reassuring chalk scent.

“You’re going senile,” muttered the Doctor. To his cane, he said, “And you are, too, you silly thing! Take me to the TARDIS.”

Now it began leading him in the right direction. Arriving here required going south on the highway, so the return trip took him due north.

The cane informed him of which prominent constellations were present in the sky. Remembering the stars caused grief to wash over him. He traveled among them with someone special, and he couldn’t remember what she looked like or how she sounded.

No, Doctor, get away from the hole in your brain. It hurts to poke. Just leave it.

Making his brain think of something else often helped. He thought about his cane. The sonic cane proved a rousing success. A success to be proud of, bugs notwithstanding. He gripped it properly, grinned at the night sky and ‘Dorothy-skipped’ his entire return trip to the TARDIS. In fact, he got so into skipping that he would’ve overshot his destination if the cane didn’t alert him.

The Doctor pocketed his cane and removed his sunglasses once inside. He twirled around the console room, shifting dials and pulling levers. The TARDIS wheezed around him as he sang under his breath.

“I get a little tongue twisted every time I talk to you...”

Ding went the cloister bell. A perfect landing less than a second after he took off. He cracked the door, waited for signs of Nardole and stepped out when there weren’t any. For effect, he brought along a broom. Brooms provided great excuses for being in strange places.

The Doctor hurriedly swept his shoes clean, then swept the floor around the TARDIS until he didn’t feel any grit under his feet.

Satisfied, he left the broom leaning on the TARDIS and crossed the room to his desk. Daylight poured through the windows, so he put his sunglasses back on to block it out. Then he sat, spun his chair around once and laid his hands on the heavy book atop his desk. Still open the way he left it. Of course it was, he hadn’t been gone a full second!

Raised dots peppered the page like tiny bubbles. Grade two Braille was way more efficient and quick than grade one. Grade one Braille spelled out entire words. Braille cells were six dots high and two wide. And whole words filled a lot of page-space. Books written in it were enormous.

Now, grade two Braille? It took long words and shortened or abbreviated them. Syllables and even whole words got condensed into fewer cells. It had a lot of similarities with text-speak, but grade two Braille abbreviations made more sense.

The Doctor’s Braille reading speed wasn’t as fast as he read while sighted. He annoyed himself by continually trying to look down at the book, so he closed his eyes. Wiggling the toes on his right foot as his fingertips glided across the page helped him process the dot patterns. Funny, his brain didn’t fully absorb the information unless he did something with his right foot.

He considered himself a quick study, though, so he fully expected to be an expert by tomorrow morning. Besides, knowing Braille would let him read in the dark if he got his eyesight back. Why wasn’t it required curriculum in every school on Earth? Braille was cool.

“A-hem!” Nardole announced his presence. He didn’t sound pleased.

The Doctor did his best to appear distracted by Edgar Allan Poe’s poetry. He turned the page when he realized he was reading The Raven. That poem upset him for reasons he couldn’t pinpoint.

Nardole cleared his throat again, louder. “Doctor, you did it again.”

“Did what?”

“Traveled.”

Oh, great. Did Nardole find out about his trek on the highway? The Doctor removed his sunglasses and squinted at him.

“I didn’t go anywhere.”

“Liar.” Nardole stomped forward and plopped something paper on the desk, “That’s a photograph of Helen Keller.”

“Yes, and it’s a very nice photograph. But I can’t judge a photo as much as I judge thoughtless potato-heads who wave photos in a blind man’s face.”

“That’s not the point!” Nardole’s voice rose in pitch. “It’s a photograph of Helen Keller solving your textured Rubik’s cube! This is...Doctor, this-this-- this is an epic fail!”

“It didn’t change history, did it?”

“Again, that’s not the point!” Oh, the poor bald bloke’s face had to be redder than his clothing by now. “Stephen Hawking just sent me an urgent email. He wants an explanation for the monster truck tire delivered to his house yesterday afternoon.”

The Doctor slammed his Braille book shut and burst out laughing.

Groaning-wheezes issued from the TARDIS engines. Such a comforting, hopeful sound.

“...so wait, you’re like, I dunno-- Rain Man?” asked Bill.

The Doctor had just spilled a secret to Bill, a test to see what she knew about the information he gave her about himself.

“Actually, the character of Raymond was based off a man named Kim Peek. Kim Peek wasn’t autistic. He had FG syndrome, a condition that results in learning disabilities due to partial or complete agenesis of the corpus callosum.”

“Oh! I saw a documentary about him in high school. I don’t remember much about it-- I kinda, uh, fell asleep in that class.”

The Doctor smiled and shook his head. “Kim’s memory was exceptional because his brain tried to work around its own unusual structure. Not everyone with FG syndrome has abilities like he did. Nice fellow, by the way, much smarter than people gave him credit for.”

“What makes autistic brains different, then?”

“Autistic brains have an excess amount of connections that don’t get trimmed away over time. Some areas have stronger connections than others.” He shrugged his shoulders and cocked his head. “Simply put, my ‘socializing’ and ‘recognizing social cues’ connections are dialup, but my mystery-solving connections are fiber optic. Splinter skills, basically.”

“Really?” She was asking questions. He liked that. It meant she didn’t pretend to know things when she didn’t. “Doesn’t life get hard, though? I thought autistic people were sensitive to noise and stuff. Are you?”

“Yeah, sometimes. I have more trouble with touch than hearing.” He followed her pacing with his eyes out of habit.

“Let me put it another way: Autistic brains constantly search for symmetry and asymmetry. Then they try to avoid asymmetry as much as possible because they prefer symmetry. Symmetry makes sense. Symmetry is safe. Sometimes, if symmetry isn’t present, I create it myself-- that's the repetitive behavior known as stimming.”

“Stimming, that’s what you’re doing with your hands.” Bill smiled-- she absorbed what he said like a sponge. What a great student.

“Yes, actually, I am. I do it a lot.” The Doctor twisted his clasped hands against each other to put pressure on the joints. “Every autistic person's inner balance is unique to them. Some people don’t prioritize socializing because their brains are too analytical to chin-wag about somebody’s new baby. Sometimes sensory issues make focusing on conversation a chore if the lights are too bright or flicker too much. It’s like you trying to have a conversation with someone constantly taking your photo.”

“Ugh, that happened to me at a party once. It was annoying. I finally shouted at him to clear off before I broke his camera.”

“See? Autistic people can have a similar reaction to things that seem totally innocuous to you.” The Doctor waved his hand in a ‘there you go’ gesture.

“And all those ‘difficult’ behaviors you see so-called ‘martyr autism mums’ complain about? They’re what happens when somebody mucks up the mental symmetry an autistic person creates for themselves. Maybe it’s a routine, maybe it’s a form of stimming, maybe it’s an interest-- and these mums wreck it all the time because they think it looks too abnormal. Then they blame the child for being difficult or misbehaving.

“Guess what? A teetering tightrope walker flails to keep their balance, and so do autistic brains. If either loses their balance, they fall. For autistic people, falling means meltdowns or shutdowns.”

“But what about people who are...um, I dunno, really severe?” Her jacket’s zipper clanked against the console. “You know, the ones who wear diapers and can’t communicate at all?”

Amusement crinkled the corners of the Doctor’s eyes. “That form of autism doesn’t exist.”

“Why?”

“High functioning, low functioning. Mild, severe.” He opened his hands in a sweeping gesture, “All arbitrary observations from the outside. Autism is autism. Nonverbal autistic people communicate in their own way. They’re not locked up in another dimension-- they’re right here, waiting to be treated like real people instead of problems. Someone who can’t talk or feed themselves can still be smart. Just because you can’t see what’s going on in their head doesn’t mean nothing’s going on.”

“Like Stephen Hawking,” Bill said, smiling, “He isn’t autistic-- he has ALS-- but I went to his lecture a few weeks ago. What an amazing man. He has eyes like yours.”

“Blue?”

“Wise.”

“Ah. There! Wait! There you go! Stephen Hawking is a fine example of what I’m talking about. Take his computer and fame away, and all of a sudden people will start treating him like he’s an infant incapable of complex thought and lamenting how tragic his disability is. The same thing happens to autistic people. I was one of those, as you put it, ‘really severe’ ones when I was a kid. Not everyone ‘grows out’ of being nonverbal or needing help with basic tasks. But I know first hand what that’s like to be talked to as if I’m stupid. It’s offensive.”

Rustling noises from Bill’s coat. The puffy yellow one. He could tell by how it sounded. She was scratching the back of her head in thought.

“But you talk. How did you learn that?”

“Painfully,” he answered, “It isn’t something I like to talk about. Let’s just say damage was done.”

“I’m sorry...”

“Bah,” He shrugged, “it’s not your fault.”

“How can I help if you need it?”

“For me, personally? No light touches. It hurts. Firm is better.” His eyes crinkled at the corners even though his mouth didn’t smile. “And in general? Listen to autistic people about autism. They know what it’s like.”

He blinked, “Oh, and avoid Autism Speaks and anything ‘light it up blue’ in April. That ‘charity’ doesn’t represent what autistic people want. They operate like Chasm Forge, so barely any of your money goes to autistic people who need it right now. Donations fund marketing, advertising, fundraisers and research that may lead to eugenics later. Autistic people may end up like a lot of Down’s syndrome babies.”

Bill stayed quiet for a long moment, taking it in. A rail creaked when she leaned on it.

“Blimey, I had no idea about any of that. I just did a walk for-- oh, wow. Never again. I hope I didn’t offend you or anything.”

That time, he smiled. “You wanted to help. That’s a good thing. Sometimes good intentions go bad. That doesn’t mean you’re bad. You know better now, so do better. Wear red next year and you’ll be fine.”

“Red instead of blue. Gotcha.”

And that was that for the conversation.

A light flashed on the console. The Doctor sensed it and instinctively looked down towards the source as he eased the locking mechanism into the upright position. Deeper wheeze-groans sounded while the TARDIS rematerialized.

They were in Nevada again. The Doctor crossed the console room and stepped outside. It wasn’t as hot out this time. The air smelled wet.

Bill hesitated in the doorway. Good, she was learning to be cautious and curious. Her rich, low voice almost blended into the wind when she asked, “We aren’t going to run into robots that speak Emoji, are we?”

“Nope. Not in that timezone. We’re still in the present.” The Doctor snapped his fingers to close the TARDIS doors. “All we’re doing is taking a walk.”

“Ah, like a Sunday stroll?”

“More of a ‘Wednesday wander’ if you want to get literal.”

The Doctor pulled his cane out of his coat pocket and held it in the pencil grip. Bill joined him, her shoes crackling on the dry soil.

“Good thing I brought my umbrella.” She jiggled her umbrella. It squeaked. Ah, one of those huge clear ones that four people could fit underneath. “The sky looks dark.”

“Over there?” He pointed south.

“Good guess.”

“Tch, no. My cane told me.”

Bill chuckled and zipped her coat up all the way. Dirt crackled when she scuffed her shoes over it. “Does it make coffee, too?”

“Har-har. It’s not a Starbucks, but it can find the nearest Starbucks.” He beckoned her closer, a gesture of trust. “C’mon, elbow.”

More coat rustling. The Doctor felt Bill’s elbow brush his knuckles and lightly held onto the back of it. His fingertips rested just above the joint in a manner that wouldn’t obstruct its free movement.

“I’ll assume you already know about the rocks.”

“Mmhmm. Let’s get on the highway. It’s straight ahead.”

Bill stepped cautiously over the rocks. The Doctor’s cane bounced off a few. They hopped onto the highway and walked south. Their footsteps nearly got lost in the desert’s vast openness. Bill stayed close to the highway’s edge rather than venture down the center. The Doctor edged her inward.

“Don’t worry about vehicles, Bill. It’s flat for miles, you’ll see one coming long before it gets here.”

“It’s a two lane road.”

The Doctor released Bill’s elbow and dodged ahead of her. He spun around to face her while walking backwards, clasped his hands behind his back and tapped his cane just as he would if he were moving forward. A big, silly grin lit his angular features.

“We’re fortunate, then. I have great hearing.”

Oh, he could almost sense her momentary alarm at seeing him walk backwards like that.

“You’re weird,” she muttered under her breath.

He stopped squarely in front of her and curtsied elegantly. She laughed and whacked his arm in passing. Chuckling, he pivoted on his heel to grasp her elbow again.

“There’s a truck coming towards us,” said Bill, her voice still light with a smile. She edged over to the opposite side of the highway despite it being a long way off yet.

The Doctor heard its engine. Typical knock-knock noises. It was a semi.

“Oh? Big truck, little truck? What’s it look like?”

Engine noises rumbled closer. Now the truck would be close enough to see details.

“Big truck. Not sure of the make. The nose curves sort of downward and there’s three pipes on each side of the cab. There’s a silver grill and bumper.” Bill slowed her stride as the truck noises approached. “It has a really cool custom paint job. The background color is blue, but there’s stencil work that looks like red flames on the front and sides.”

“Ah, an old friend.”

“You know the driver?”

“Yeah.”

He raised his hand in a wave when the semi was less than a hundred meters away. The truck honked its horn as it rumbled by, its huge tires vibrating the asphalt.

Bill stopped and twisted to look at the departing truck. “Um...”

“Problem?”

“I didn’t see a driver.” She faced forward again. “Probably too much glare from the sky. Anyway, speaking of tires-- did you really get a tire delivered to Stephen Hawking’s house?”

“Yup.” The Doctor grinned at his own impish wit. “You could say I ‘tired’ him out.”

Bill wiggled the elbow he held back and forth. “Doctor, you’re impossible. Absolutely, ridiculously impossible.”

That word. Impossible.

An impulse in the back of his mind had him releasing his grip on Bill’s elbow before he realized he’d moved. He turned abruptly right. His cane slid off smooth asphalt to rattle over hard-packed dirt as he ventured into a large, empty space beside the highway.

Something important happened here. But what? Why? How?

“Doctor?” Bill hedged.

Mysteries. The Doctor loved mysteries. He grinned as he rubbed his chin in thought.

And froze.

Here. Here, on this spot, he touched and kissed another smile. The owner of that smile didn’t materialize in his mind. He propped his cane against his shoulder and extended his hands to trace an invisible face.

A tsunami of grief slammed through him. In its wake, an incredible, comforting love stretching beyond time or space. A love that eclipsed his sadness and shone around the hole in his memory like an ethereal solar corona.

Tears trickled out from beneath his sunglasses. They weren’t sad. Sad tears meant endings, and this didn’t feel like an ending.

Bill, sensing his concentration, came closer without talking. Her unobtrusive presence subtly shifted the air flow on his right. He could hear her breathing.

“Brains forget people, but hearts remember the feelings those people gave us,” said the Doctor. He remained poised, his fingertips mapping the air. “It’s why you never doubt that your mum loved you, isn’t it?”

“I was too young to remember her,” she said back, her voice soft.

“Your heart beat inside your mum’s belly for nine months. It knows things your brain doesn’t. Sometimes, I think people would be better at listening to each other if hearts had ears.”

“Really?”

“Mmhmm.”

A cool drop hit his face. Not a tear. Another landed in his hair. Splat-splat noises began around him. Within seconds the sky opened up with a full-on downpour that drenched everything it touched.

“Oh!” Bill’s umbrella squeaked, then snapped open. Rain pattered noisily on the plastic. “Doctor, you’re getting soaked.”

The Doctor pocketed his sunglasses to keep them clean. He pushed Bill’s umbrella aside. She got the picture. Her umbrella plopped on the wet ground as she opened her arms to let the downpour swish over her coat.

“See? It’s just water falling from the sky.” He grinned, invigorated by the hope rising inside him. “The best parts of life are experienced, Bill. So be still. Close your eyes. Experience the rain with me.”

“Wow.” She was smiling, too.

“Yeah. Wow.”

The impact of each chilly raindrop twinkled like stars against his skin. He ran both hands through his wet hair, tilted his head back and spread his arms. The hope in his hearts spiraled upward into the rain pouring down.

Once, he told Missy that love was a promise. And Clara’s smile-- the tactile memory of its wrinkles and curves-- had embedded itself in his fingerprints where the neural block couldn’t wholly wipe it away. The rest of her face escaped him, but not the smile. He must have promised to remember it because he loved her.

And love always found a way to continue, regardless of time and space.

“Doctor...are you crying?”

The Doctor totally forgot Bill was still there. Rain pattered off her umbrella-- she picked it up when he wasn’t paying attention. He blinked and rubbed his eyes. They were wet. It wasn’t rain.

“Yeah, I am, but it’s not sad.” He sniffled, “I was having an experience.”

“I can tell. I didn’t want to interrupt. Aren’t you cold?”

Light wind blew against his face. The downpour began to let up. They were both soaked to the bone.

“Me? Cold? Nah.” The Doctor said, feigning offense. “I have a lower body temperature than humans. Now come along, Potts. Let’s get you somewhere warm.”

She automatically stepped ahead of him. He sped up and walked beside her, opting to tap his cane rather than hold onto her elbow.

“Have you seen The Wizard of Oz, Bill?”

“Of course. Who hasn’t? Why?”

“Oh, no reason...just this.”

The Doctor showed Bill his Dorothy-skip. She was greatly amused. Then he taught her how to do it. They skipped back to the TARDIS together.

“...‘Cause when I close my eyes, I still can see your smile. It’s bright enough to light my life, out of my darkest hour...”

--Gloria Estefan, “I See Your Smile”

youtube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTd1r_6lfrE

A palimpsest is a piece of paper that has been written on, erased and written on again. The old writing that gets erased to make room for new writing is still faintly visible and may be legible. An old grade school spelling test with erase marks that were later written over is a fine example of a palimpsest.

#12th Doctor #Clara Oswald #Whouffaldi #actuallyautistic #autistic headcanon #Twelfth Doctor #Nardole #Doctor Who #blindness #autistic!Doctor #fanfiction #my fanfic #okay to reblog if you want

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fereality-indy · 7 years

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Gravity Falls Valor Force Rangers Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Ford's Basement Laboratory

Ford is busy working through the sound being pumped down from the party upstairs, he would have happy to be up at the party but he was never comfortable in large social gatherings. The twins know this, so when he asked to be excused from the celebration they allowed it. He was still planning on heading up in a while to put in an appearance. For now though he was just tinkering around with some new equipment he had Fiddleford order from one of his suppliers. It is some sonar equipment that will be perfect for he and his brother's next sea excursion, especially after he's done modifying it.

His head was bopping along with the upbeat tempo when suddenly he heard the music stop and a loud ruckus come over the speakers. He rushed over to the monitors he had set up (mostly to know when one of the family was looking for him). What he saw was one of the most extremely ugly men he has ever seen (and he has seen plenty during his time on the other side), either that or given his clothing he was an enormous Gnome. It appeared that Mabel's friend, Grenada was it? Guava? No it's Grenda, stepped up to dissuade the whatever he was. He panned the camera around and he saw Soos and Melody picking his brother off of the ground outside the entrance to the room the party was being held. He fought the urge to run to check on him and brought the camera feed back onto the matter at hand. As he saw Grenda fall after the creature backhanded her into the wall.

"Dang it, where did I put them?" He said as he began searching through his lab while still trying to keep one eye on what was happening above him. As he saw the twins and their friends be surrounded by some black mannequins, he found the dark gray box he had been searching for. He began activation sequence as he opened the case to release what was inside. "Now hopefully whoever receives these will be able to get here in time to help against these monsters."

Meanwhile Upstairs

"CRYPTIZONES, ATTACK!", Vodak ordered and as one the black mannequins charged towards Wendy, Dipper, Mabel, Pacifica, & Thompson.

Mabel the first to react as she ducked back from the outstretched arms of one of the attacking creatures. She hauled off and decked the creature.

"Ouch!", she called out, "watch out all. These guys are solid."

She was then grabbed from behind. The creature that grabbed her threw her towards the wall, she caught herself before hitting it face first.

Thompson tried delivering a forward thrust kick only to have the creature grab his foot. The creature then flipped him over causing him to land on his stomach. Another creature kicked him in the stomach, hurling him a few feet away from Mabel, where he landed with his back against the wall.

Pacifica delivered a solid palm thrust into the chest of the creature that was reaching for her, only to come to the same conclusion that Mabel had just yelled out. Two of the creatures grabbed her and threw her so she crashed into the rising Mabel.

Dipper attempted a grapple with the creature in front of him, just barely dodging a blow from another in the process. The creature he was grappling with took advantage of this distraction and lifted him off of his feet. It then lifted him into the air and threw him across the room. He landed in a heap near Thompson.

Wendy was fairing better than the rest of the group (growing up the child of Manly Dan and having three brothers that are becoming more like their father every day will do that). She had already taken down one creature and was in the process of throwing another one to knock down a third when she saw Dipper get thrown. This distraction was all the creature needed to twist from her grip. While it righted it self the first creature she had knocked down had worked it's way behind her. The newly free creature landed on it's feet and kicked out striking her in the chest, she went backwards tripping over the first creature in the process. After she landed, her foot was grabbed and she to went flying towards the rest of the group.

As the group attempted to regain their footing five different colored beams of light flew into the room and struck them. As they processed what happened, Dipper is the first one to notice that everything has gone to gray-scale.

"Whoa, wait a minute?", Dipper calls out as he looks around. Having been to the mind-scape before he recognized this effect.

"Dipper, what's going on here?", Pacifica asked as she stood up after untangling from Mabel and saw the lack of color in everything besides her four friends. In fact they each seemed to be a little more colorful than she remembered, almost as if she was seeing an afterglow of the beams of light that had hit them.

"Aw, man. Not this again," Mabel bemoaned as she looked around, "At least the creatures are frozen while we're here."

"Well that's not exactly how this place works Mabs," Dipper said as he and Wendy helped Thompson get to his feet.

"Ok man, why does everything look like my granny's old tv?", Thompson asked as he rubbed his sore backside.

"We're in the mind-scape," Dipper replied as he walked over and examined the creatures and their leader, "Now the real question is how we got here? Bill has been gone ever since we wiped him from Stan's mind. And none of these guys seem like they would be able to drag us into it."

"There was those beams of light that hit us," Wendy added as she joined him in looking them over, "You think they have something to do with it?"

"Very astute observation Wendy," they heard a familiar voice say as someone walked out from the shadows, "Intelligent and brave, no wonder the phoenix chose you."

"Grunkle Ford!" Mabel and Dipper called together.

"Greeting kids," Ford said as he stepped fully into the light. "Sorry for the location, it was the easiest location and way for me to explain what just happened."

"Alright then Grunkle Ford, what is going on?", Pacifica questioned.

"Well I don't know much about your current opponent, but a few days ago some sensors I set out after Stanley and I returned from our first sea voyage registered a class six disturbance in the in regions spatial field." Ford said as he walked over and studied the tall gnome, he was certain now that that was what it was. After seeing the expectant face of his great nephew he continued, "As soon as I was free I went out to investigate to location of the disturbance, but all I found was a shattered stone with mystical residue coming from it. It's currently back in my labs to be studied."

"You think this guy is the cause of the disturbance?" Thompson asked as he was still trying to process what was going on. The only real thing he knew right now is that it is never boring around the Pines twins.

"Unfortunately no. This gentleman here," Ford said as he gestured towards the giant gnome as he turned to face all of the assembled teens, "would only register a two or three on the scale, if he registered at all. Though I wouldn't be surprised to find out he is connected some how. But I digress, the initial question is still unanswered."

He slowly paced in front of the teens,"During my time on the other side I met many an interesting people. One being I met while traveling was an Eltarian named Zordon. As we discussed dealings with our home worlds and compared stories of being tricked by evil beings, he told me of how he was able to create a team of of defenders for his home dimension. The process used was a blend of science and mystical energies that created what he called the morphing grid. But seeing as the evil they were created to fight was locked away for eternity he hoped he never had to use the grid again. I took many notes as we talked and planned to enact my own grid if I ever return home in order to battle Bill, but I never got the chance as the fight against him was already in progress. It was during that first trip after Weirdmageddon that Stanley and I found ourselves somewhere near the Greek Isles defending a dying pegasus from a small flock of harpies. I realized that he and I were not going to be able to keep on handling this instances on our own for to much longer. I remembered the notes and plans I had made and as we worked towards trying to help the pegasus to survive, I began discussing the plan with Stanley."

He paused there for a moment, looking pensively at some items he held in his hand. After what seemed like a good minute, he continued. "As I was pondering how I could power my morphing the pegasus spoke to me. Rather than dying in vain he wished to join me in my quest to do right in the world. As he passed his spirit coalesced into a token that began my search for noble creatures to help in my quest. Eventually the pegasus was joined by a phoenix from near Rome, a kelpie from the Scottish shores, a tanuki from Japan, and a jackalope from the American south west. These five, along with a power source of my own design, became the basis I built my morphing grid around."

"Whoa. I know nothing is sedentary when you guys are around, but what are you going on about?" Thompson asked. "And what were those beams of light?"

"He's explaining that now Thompson," Wendy calmly replied.

"Thank you, Wendy. Yet another reason I can see why the phoenix chose you." Ford said as he walked over to her, in his hand he held a necklace like medallion. When he reached her hand handed over the medallion. "To answer your question Joseph..."

"I keep telling you that you can call me Thompson, everybody does." Thompson interrupted.

"Well Thompson," Ford said as he handed the next medallion to Dipper, "to answer your question, when I saw on my monitors that the party was being attacked I figured it was time to activate the morphing grid. This sent out the spirits to choose their representatives."

"So did you plan on us being these representatives?" Pacifica asked as she stayed close to Mabel.

Ford noticed that the two of were holding hands as he handed the two of them medallions. He answered her question as the girls themselves noticed, "No, I had hoped that the representatives would be chosen and I could tell them what was going and then they would be able to get here in time to help. I actually was hoping for once that you all would be left out of this, but a part of me knew. It wouldn't be a Pines summer with out something happening. Though I have to be honest, I am surprised at who the spirits chose."

He handed Thompson the last medallion before he continued, "These medallions are your physical connection to the morphing grid and with them you will be able to call upon the spirits for assistance."

"So they will come out and attack these creatures for us?", Mabel asked even though she was barely paying attention. She was trying to figure when her and Paz had started holding hands. She wasn't complaining but they hadn't talked about letting anyone else know yet.

"No, that is not what will happen Mabel." Ford responded with a chuckle. He pointed over at her medallion as he continued, "As I said, the medallions are your connection to the spirits. When you place them on you will feel the spirits helping enhance your own natural abilities and perhaps they will even grant you other abilities."

"Perhaps? That doesn't sound too encouraging, Grunkle Ford." Dipper said as he turned his medallion over in his hand examining it. He looked over as Wendy place her medallion around her neck. As she did so he noticed the slight reddish hue that she had been exuding began to practically blind him before it died back down to the level it was at the beginning. "What was that?"

"That was the spirit bonding with Wendy," Ford said as he turned towards the ginger haired young lady, "Wendy, because of your intelligence and courage you have been chosen by the phoenix to be the Red Ranger. And as the Red Ranger you will be the leader of the Valor Force Rangers."

"Whoa. That feels interesting," Wendy as she was processing what she was told. Suddenly she got it and started waiving her hands in protest, "What, wait a minute. I'm no leader. Dip would be a much better leader, he's the one who always comes up with the plans when we go out on mystery hunts. Or even Paz, she's used to telling people what to do."

"Hey!", Pacifica snapped back until Mabel gently squeezed her hand.

Dipper put a calming hand on Wendy's shoulder and said, "Look I may make the plans, but you're the one who makes sure that we all make it through everything when my plans invariably go awry. I'll follow you anywhere."

Wendy smiled at this and as she looked around she saw the others nodding in agreement.

Ford then turned to Dipper as he put on his medallion and a green glow flared then ebbed, "Well put Dipper. It's acts like that that caused the jackalope to choose you as it's representative as the Green Ranger. The jackalope values both speed and wisdom."

Turning towards Mabel as she and Pacifica had finished putting on their medallions, a mixed glow of blue and pink settling back down. With a smile Ford continued. "Mabel, you were chosen by the kelpie to be the Blue Ranger due to your connection to water. Your charm and playfulness caught it's attention also."

He then looked over at Pacifica as he continued, "And Pacifica, you have been chosen by the same pegasus that started me one the journey to create the Rangers to be the Pink Ranger. Nobility and honor are traits it respects."

As he turned to the final member of the chosen quintet all he saw was a solid black mass that then coalesced back into the young man who's name he couldn't place. "And you Joseph..."

"It's Thompson, sir." Thompson said as he looked over from his friends to Ford.

"Oh yes," Ford said as he scratched his head, "You've been off at school for awhile haven't you? How has it been treating..." Ford stopped himself as he realized he was getting off topic, "Actually, we can talk about that later. It seems the tanuki has chosen you to be the Black Ranger, got a little bit of a mischievous side there don't you. The tanuki is known to hold those with a big heart and not a small amount of luck in high esteem."

"Well I have to admit I am feeling empowered," Mabel said as she lifted her arms up to flex. It was only half way through the movement that she realized she was still holding Pacifica's hand. "Ooops."

Dipper cocked an eyebrow at what he just saw before he turned back to his great uncle, "How much longer are we gonna be in the mind-scape?"

"Well according to my calculations you should be coming out of it right about," Ford was looking at the watch on his left wrist, "now."

Back In The Waking World

"Alright Cryptizones, they're weakened." Vodak called out from the back of the swarming creatures, "Destroy them!"

The closest creature swung an overhead chop downwards towards Wendy's head, she reflexively brought her arms up to block and as the chop hit sparks flew from her arms. She then pulled back and decked the attacking creature, sending out more sparks at the impact point. The creature flew across the room.

A second one reached towards Pacifica only for her to float upwards out of it's reach. She the dropped down and hit a literal dropkick on the way down. Once she landed she continued downward and swept the feet out from under another creature. As she rose up she hit a roundhouse on the next closest creature.

Dipper ducked low and sprung forward, landing a clothesline on two of the creatures as he jumped straight through them and landed a good ten feet away. He then ran back into the combat and rapidly began throwing chops at every creature he could reach.

One of the clotheslined creatures flew straight into the table holding the punch bowl, launching the punch into the air heading towards the battle-zone. Mabel threw her hands up to keep the punch from splashing her face, when suddenly the punch stopped mid-air. Feeling a little bit of a pull caused Mabel to move her hands and she noticed the punch moved with her hand movements, she then caused the fluid to wrap around one of the creatures and then flung it across the room.

Thompson waded into the creatures punching the creatures as he went. Then one moment he was standing there and the next he was gone, replaced by another one of the creatures. This confused the creatures he was fighting, finally deciding that he just disappeared so they turned to join one of the other fights. He was trying to figure out what happened when he looked at his hands and saw they were identical to those of the creatures. He walked up behind two of the creatures who were trying to get behind Mabel. He grabbed the heads of the two creatures and slammed them together. Mabel turned towards him, preparing to attack only for him to jerk out of the disguise.

The Rangers regrouped and took stock of the remaining Cryptizones. As they watched another dozen creatures come out from behind their leader, the Rangers heard Ford speaking to them one more time, "Rangers, it's time for you to test out the full capabilities of the medallions. Now do as I say..."

As one the five teens got into a fighting stance, they then thrust out their right arms straight, before finally reaching back and grabbing their medallion. Wendy then called out, "Alright Valor Force, It's time to kick it into action Ranger style!"

In a flash the red aura flared over all but Wendy's head, the aura then becomes a new uniform. The torso is red with a silver star design, well actually it almost looks like the entrance into the Gravity Falls Valley where the ship had carved through the cliff sides. The lower half of the uniform was gray pants capped off with a black belt and holster. Black gloves and boots finished off the look. She calls out, "The majestic phoenix, Red!" and finally a helmet forms. It is the same red as her uniform, with a rounded rectangular visor.

Dipper's green aura surrounded him and coalesced into a green version of the uniform. Before his helmet appeared he called out, "The enigmatic jackalope, Green!"

The blue aura flowed over Mabel before it washed back reveling a blue uniform. She called out, "The fervent kelpie, Blue!" and then her helmet came into being.

Bright pink pulses en-capsulizes Pacifica before it revealed a pink uniform like the others wore. She tipped her head to the side before calling out, "The noble pegasus, Pink!". As she straightened her head, her helmet appeared.

Thompson stood still as the black aura enveloped him before merging with his shadow, leaving him in a black uniform. "The clever tanuki, Black!", He called out before the helmet surrounded his head.

"Whoa, not bad.", Mabel said as she took in everyone's new look.

"Looking Good Dip," Wendy said with a hand on his shoulder.

"Not bad yourself," Dipper replied with a smirk in his helmet.

"They could use some accessories," Pacifica added off-handily.

"Guys, I don't think they're admiring our new look." Thompson said as he called attention to the approaching Cryptizones.

The Cryptizones, while surprised at the change of outfits, continued to advance on the group of friends. The Rangers dropped into their various fighting stances: Wendy stood with her arms loosely at her side and her left foot just slightly in front of the her right, while Dipper seemed to be ready to reach out and grapple, Mabel was in a standard boxing stance, Pacifica held her right hand up near her shoulder as her left foot had slid approximately six inches in front of her right, and Thompson stood with his left foot straight at Cryptizones and his right was held back and at a ninety degree angle, his arms ready to attack.

The creatures rushed forward and as one the Rangers lashed out and began to fight through the mob of Cryptizones. Wendy rushed through knocking several over as she went. Dipper grabbed the first Cryptizone that reached him and threw him into three others. Mabel ducked and dodged as she worked through hitting jabs and uppercuts as she went. Pacifica caught her first opponent with a thrust from her right hand and followed up with a roundhouse to another Cryptizone. After sliding forward two steps Thompson lashed out with a near vertical kick that knocked the closest Cryptizone back into three others. From there the team made short work of the remaining Cryptizones. They then turned towards Vodak.

"Well look at the time," Vodak said as he looked over at the advancing Rangers, "I think I hear someone calling me."

He then turned and ran towards the door, blinking out of site as he passed through it. The fallen Cryptizones disappeared with him.

"Alright Rangers power down," Wendy called as she dropped out of Ranger mode. The others followed suit.

"That was awesome," Mabel yelled as she ran over and hugged Pacifica before she realized what she had done. She started to pull away but Pacifica held on to her left hand.

"Well, how long has this been going on?", Dipper asked as he watched his sister actually blush from the continued contact.

"Uhmm," Mabel started before Pacifica squeezed her hand.

"If you must know Dipper, we both realized we were interested in each other before you two left last year." Pacifica calmly answered, "And we've been talking all through the school year. Do you have a problem with that Pines?"

"Not as long as you treat her right," Dipper said with a smile. He was glad to see his sister happy with some one, and this explained why she turned down Rory DeMarco awhile back.

Hearing his approval lifted a weight off of Mabel's shoulders she had been carrying since last summer. She rushed over to her brother and pulled him into a non awkward sibling hug. "Thank you Dip, I've been so worried you wouldn't understand. I could take disapproval from anyone else but if you had, I don't know what I would have done."

"Of course I understand Mabs, she makes you happy. That's all I need to know," Dipper replied as he returned the hug.

"She does," Mabel said before she leaned closer to her brothers ear and in a whisper added, "You need to go get what makes you happy now."

Dipper sputtered some as she the released the hug and went back to Pacifica giggling all the way.

--------------------------

Well this ends the third chapter of Valor Force Rangers. We start off with Ford down in his basement while the party was going on upstairs. He then notices the fighting going on and the appearance of the villains cause him to begin searching for something. Meanwhile the gang are attempting to fight off Vodak and the Cryptizones, but aren't overly successful. Suddenly they are hit with five colored beams of light and they are in the mind-scape with Ford. He explains the lights and let's them know they are now Power Rangers if they wish. After they return to the waking world they discover their new abilities as they fight off the villains. They then bring out their new uniforms and proceed to take out the Cryptizones. Vodak runs with his tail between his legs.

Also remember to check out my other Gravity Falls works here:

Gravity Heroes - A few months after the Mystery Twins head home from Gravity Falls Mabel gets a call from Soos telling her that Dipper was found turned to stone out in the woods. The problem is Dipper is standing right next to her. This leads them off to a new adventure.

Gravity Heroes: Sidetracks - A series on one shots & drabbels that are stories that are in the Gravity Heroes-verse but aren't necessarily required to read the main story-line. It's essentially my take on the classic Marvel Comics Presents.

Welcome To The Gravity Falls Region - My take on the Pokemon AU. Follow the adventures of the potential Pokemon Master Dipper Pines and his sister Mabel, Pokemon Coordinator extraordinaire, while they travel through the Gravity Falls Region.

The Curse - Thanks to a misunderstanding Wendy is targeted by a fairy curse. This is a short story following what happens afterwords.

I also would feel honored if any of my works inspire any art. If you do I would love to see them. Thanks again to all who have read this far. I have received art now from Deviou5, Siryleleen, & Polydactyly Zodiac. These will be posted soon in my Deviant Art account as fan art and credited to them. Thanks again you three. I'm happy to see different interpretations of the characters from the Gravity Heroes AU. Let me know by PM if you do and I'll send out a list of the full descriptions to you. The art is now up at fereality. deviantart just remove the spaces. A new pic of Yami is now up.

Again I'd like to give a shout out to dusk4224, EZB, SuperGroverAway, ddp456, & A Pleasant Dream. It was their stories that made me want to get back into writing and to want to start with Gravity Falls. Please check out their stories if you haven't already.

Please review. I'm always open to constructive and helpful criticism, though if you're gonna troll please move on.

#Valor Force #Wendip #Mabcifica #Gravity Falls #Wendy Corduroy #Dipper Pines #mabel pines #pacifica northwest #Thompson #Stanford Pines #Power Rangers AU

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neyla9 · 7 years

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Cipher’s House Chapters 23-25 (Finale)

Ao3 Version

I had left the hotel, but… it didn’t work… Why didn’t it work!? I thought if I could just get through the door, I could escape, but… something won’t let me… Probably Cipher, but… I just don’t know anymore…

Dipper sat on the ground, hunched over and crying; his tears stained the dirt beneath him. He noticed the shadow of someone stepping out from the hotel, and walking over to him.

“There, there~” Cipher said. His tone almost sounded… compassionate. “Don’t feel so bad about it; no one can escape Cipher’s House.”

Dipper felt a firm hand on his shoulder. The touch helped bring his thoughts back to what was going on, and Dipper stood up on his shaky legs, but didn’t say anything.

“Come now,” Cipher began to lead Dipper back into the hotel, and Dipper let him. “Let’s get you back to your room so you can rest~”

The pair walked in silence to Dipper’s room, and Dipper felt like he was losing his strength to fight back with each step. By the time they reached his room, he just wanted to give up.

Cipher… no, Bill helped him into bed, even tucked him in… it felt nice… made Dipper want to forget that Bill was soul-stealing demon.

“Now, get some sleep,” Cipher whispered, smiling as he exited Dipper’s room. “And just… forget about everything…”

Dipper closed his eyes and felt the embrace of sleep creep closer. Should he really give up? What was the point of continuing the fight? He couldn’t leave. He had tried everything! Should he really just continue to suffer at hand of the hotel’s guests and just hope he wouldn’t someday die? Then the question remained, what would happen to him if he did give his soul to Bill?

“Are you really going to give up?!” an angry voice exclaimed. Dipper awoke with a shock and found Bill staring angrily at him, only… he was wearing different clothes; a dirty, grey hoodie, and ragged, black jeans. Instead of a black eye patch, he was wearing white bandages, and on the opposite eye too! And the most glaring differences; his hair was light blue, and his visible eye was an intense yellow color.

“Who… are you?” Dipper asked the stranger.

“You already know that,” the stranger sighed and crossed his arms. “You overheard one of my conversations with my cousin.”

“So, you’re Will,” Dipper frowned in thought. “Wait, you knew I was there?!”

“And ensured your escape,” Will shrugged and sat down on the bed. “Now it looks like that was a waste of effort…”

“This coming from the guy who asked Bill to kill me,” Dipper countered and sat up in the bed.

“Because I didn’t want to watch you suffer,” Will explained. “Look, Dipper… you can’t give up. There are people out there waiting for you, people who care about you…!”

“What other choice do I have!?” Dipper shouted angrily. “I’ve already tried to escape, I even ran right out the front door, and it didn’t work!”

“And why do you think that happened?” Will inquired. “Why do you think that, despite your best efforts, you can’t escape this place?”

“I don’t know,” Dipper replied honestly. “But I bet it has something to do with your cousin-“

“No, it doesn’t,” Will insisted.

“Then tell me what it is!” Dipper demanded.

“I… can’t…” Will looked like he was struggling to reply.

“Why?”

“… Because you don’t want to hear the answer,” Will shook his head sadly and sighed. “One thing I can tell you however, is that you can’t trust anything in this place…”

“You listen to me right now,” Dipper growled. “I want you to tell me what’s going on with this place.”

“You really don’t,” Will let out a sad chuckle. “But alright, I’ll tell you what I can… Everything that’s happened to you… it happened because you wanted it to.”

“What?” Dipper exclaimed dumbfounded. “That literally makes no sense! I want to escape, that’s all I wanted almost from the moment I sat foot in this hotel!”

“And before too…” Will mumbled so low that Dipper almost didn’t hear it. “Fine. I’ll tell you how to escape. You need to leave through the front door, walk out into the woods… no hesitation, no looking back… keep the desire to return home strong in your mind… and whatever you do, don’t think about the hotel…”

“Is that all?” Dipper asked, finding it hard to believe that it was that simple.

“Yes,” Will nodded and smiled to himself. “Bill was right… you really do have a strong willpower. Perhaps… you’ll make it.”

“I will make it,” Dipper rose from the bed and exited his room. He marched down the hallway, his destination the front door.

In the reception room, Bill was sitting behind his desk. The demon looked up in surprise when Dipper arrived.

“Ah, have you rested?” Bill asked. He seemed slightly put off by the look of determination on Dipper’s face. “W-where are you going?”

Dipper didn’t respond. He walked towards the front door, and walked out into the night.

“Wait!” Bill shouted, running after Dipper, but stopping at the door. “There’s nothing out there but cold, hard reality!”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I’m finally going home! I almost can’t believe it! I didn’t pay attention to my surroundings, I just kept running, and before I knew it, the forest around me had faded away, leaving only a white void behind. But I don’t care, as long as I don’t- No! Don’t even think about it! But… Why can’t I stop myself from thinking about it…?

Dipper had been running, but had finally run out of breath to the point that he slowed to a walk. He tried his best to focus on his home, his family, but… images of the hotel kept haunting his mind. He tried his best to ignore those thoughts, but… it just didn’t work.

Soon enough, he felt a hand on his shoulder, and he knew who it was. He just had no idea how Bill had followed him into this white void.

“Go back~” a barely audible voice whispered into his ear. “This way only leads to ruin…”

Another hand grabbed Dipper’s other shoulder, while the voice kept whispering into his ears. He closed his eyes, tried to focus on anything else, but memories of the hotel kept surfacing no matter what he did!

It began to feel like he was being pulled backwards, like the hands on his shoulders were trying to drag him back to the hotel.

“Looks like you could need some help,” a friendly voice said. Dipper opened his eyes and saw… the Grim Reaper. There was no mistake; it was a skeleton, wearing a dark gray robe, carrying a scythe, and even had an hourglass on the waist sash that kept his robe tied.

“Oh, god,” Dipper whispered, horrified at this realization. “I really am dead…”

“What?” the Grim Reaper looked pretty confused considering he didn’t really have a face. “No, no, you’re not dead, just travelling through dimensions.”

“That place… was another dimension?” Dipper supposed it made sense, except he still didn’t know how he wound up there.

“Go back~” the voice whispered again, and Dipper felt the tugging getting worse.

“Please!” Dipper pleaded the Reaper. “Please help me! I don’t want to go back to the hotel!”

“Ah, so you’re a guest from Cipher’s House?” the Grim Reaper asked and nodded. “I see. That explains it. Uh, maybe you should take a look at just who it is that’s trying to drag you back to the hotel…”

Dipper hesitantly turned his head to see who it was, and he saw… himself. An almost see-through, ghost white version of himself, but still.

“W-what?” Dipper’s eyes widened, whether it was from shock or fear, he didn’t know.

“We have to go back!” the ghostly apparition demanded.

“I don’t understand!” Dipper felt like he was about to cry from pure confusion.

“Do you know why you ended up at the hotel?” the Grim Reaper inquired, but quickly provided the answer. “Because you wanted to escape reality, and never come back.”

“N-no,” Dipper shook his head, feeling the apparition grow stronger.

“We couldn’t go on living like that,” the apparition said. “How could anyone expect us to?!”

“Reality is far from paradise,” the Reaper shook his head. “Some people just can’t handle it.”

“No, no, no!” Dipper insisted. “Cipher’s House is terrible! How could anything reality has to offer be worse than that!? Reality is where my sister is! My parents too! I love them!”

“The hotel was terrible because you kept trying to leave!” the apparition snarled. “But not me! I’m the part of you that yearns for more than your precious reality can ever offer!”

“No, I’m not like that!” Dipper was starting to cry. He was using all his strength to fight the pull from the apparition.

“It’s kind of funny,” the apparition chuckled. “You spent all this time trying to escape your own escape from reality~”

“Please…” Dipper begged the Grim Reaper again. “Help me… I just want to go home…”

“There’s not much I can do,” the Reaper shrugged. “Whether you like it or not, that’s a part of you.”

“Please…” Dipper was sobbing now, barely holding on.

“Stop fighting,” the apparition whispered. “Haven’t you fought enough? Wouldn’t it be better to give in? Just close your eyes and remember that dark night… the night you realized there was something better than reality~”

“I can suppress the voice for now,” the Grim Reaper suggested. “At least until you get back home. But after that, you’re on your own… But are you really sure you want to return to reality? The thing that pushed you over the edge and made you seek Cipher’s House… it’s still there, waiting for you.”

“I know,” Dipper sighed. “But I’ve made it this far; I can’t give up.”

“Very well,” the Grim Reaper swung his scythe and all of a sudden, it felt like a great burden had been lifted from Dipper’s shoulders.

All he heard before his vision faded to black, was his own voice, echoing in the distance; “You’ll be back”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*WARNING* I don't usually put warnings at the beginning of my fics, but I think there's a chance that some people might be sensitive to some of the things written in this chapter. Please know that most, if not all, of the things written in this chapter do NOT reflect my own personal meaning. This chapter aims to portray someone with severe anxiety and depression, so if you are sensitive to such topics, please do not read any further. Thank you.

Take a look around you… Gaze upon this reality that you call your own. A bland, dreary, terrible place… a place with dangers lurking around every corner. A world that does not care about your inconsequential life, for you are but a dot in this among billions of dots in a grand cosmos… And you don’t matter.

Dipper opened his eyes, feeling disoriented for a moment. The room he was in… it was his dorm room. For a moment, he feared that this was just another of Bill’s sick, twisted mind games.

He looked outside his windows; the sun was shining, he could see the usual building in a familiar street, people were walking around… normal people! Not terrifying monsters!

He wondered if maybe it had all been a dream… a horrible nightmare that had seemed so real, but was only a construct of his own mind.

He picked up his cell phone, which was lying on the nightstand next to his bed. He opened it and found a bunch of messages had been left. Before examining them however, he looked at the date and time. It was nearly eleven pm, and according to the date, it was six days after his exam… he had been gone, but it hadn’t even been a week.

He looked through his missed messages. Most of them were from his sister… Mabel! Now he remembered! A tear appeared in his eye when he realized he had forgotten her name.

The first message had been sent the day after his exam, and was asking him how it had gone, and if he thought he had gotten an A. The second had been a sent a couple hours later, asking if he had gotten the previous message. Shortly after there had been a message asking if he was just too busy to respond. Two days later, Mabel had sent a message asking if he was mad at her. The next day, a message apologizing for whatever wrong she had done. And finally, a worried message asking to just please contact her.

The first thing Dipper did, was calling up his sister. He held his breath, wondering what he’d say to her.

“Dipper!?” the unmistakable voice of Mabel responded. “Is it you!?!”

“Yes, Mabel, it’s me,” Dipper replied, trying his best to keep voice steady, while his eyes filled with tears.

“Oh, god, Dipper!” Mabel laughed in relief. “What happened? We’ve all been so worried about you!”

“Yeah, sorry about that,” Dipper scratched the back of his head, and he wondered if he should tell the truth. He swallowed, his throat felt tight. He knew no one would believe him. Any story relating to the hotel would be seen as either a vivid dream, a lie, or a delusion. “I… I just needed some time alone…”

“You could have told us! Me, mom, and dad were all worried sick!” an angry tone had entered Mabel’s voice.

“S-sorry, I kept my phone turned off, so I didn’t see your messages,” Dipper lied.

“Alright,” Mabel sighed. “As long as you’re okay.”

“I’m… I think I’ll be fine,” Dipper mumbled.

As the days began to pass, more and more memories returned to Dipper.

Like how he had been considered a boy genius throughout most of elementary school. His parents would praise him, and Mabel would look up to him. But around the time he entered Junior High, things had taken a turn.

Dipper had felt so much pressure, from his parents, his sister, his teachers. There would be times when he would suddenly be gripped with fear, without even knowing why. Other times, he would go through periods of time, from hours to weeks, where he wouldn’t feel anything, and was unable to do much of anything.

His parents got worried, so they went to the doctor. The doctor responded that there was nothing physically wrong with Dipper, but that he had developed anxiety and depression. The doctor had said this was common for young teens, and suggested that Dipper’s parents should sent him to a therapist or psychiatrist, and that there were plenty of medication that could make it easier for Dipper to handle his anxiety attacks and depression episodes.

His parents had said no. They said that if the problem was mental, surely Dipper could handle it on his own. And how could they be sure that Dipper wasn’t just faking it for attention? Especially now that his sister was really blossoming into a beautiful and talented young lady. If something was wrong with Dipper, his parents were sure that Dipper could overcome it on his own; he just needed to try harder.

Mabel had once been his closest friend. Now she was his only friend, and they weren’t so close anymore. Hundreds of memories surfaced of Mabel bailing on him to hang out with her newest boyfriend. And while Mabel had at first been trying to support Dipper’s anxiety and depression as best as she could, eventually she became convinced that he had to be faking it, because it was like he was always feeling anxious and depressed, like it was just an excuse not to do anything.

Dipper’s parents had planned for him to go to a great college since he was five. His mother had even gushed to her friends that her son would someday go to an Ivy League University. But during Dipper’s final High School exam, the anxiety had become too much, and he had thrown up during the test.

That one instance had cost him a lot, and he had only gotten a C on the test. His parents had been so disappointed.

Still, Dipper had managed to make it into a decent college, but the pressure hadn’t stopped; it had only gotten worse. Now his parents expected him to surpass any other student in his classes, because according to them, he was too good for this college. And Dipper had tried, he really had! He had sacrificed any time he could have spent on making friends and relaxing to studying; working and working, preparing for the exam.

During the exam, Dipper had had to keep rushing out of the room, because he kept feeling like he was about to throw up. Needless to say, this had taken up a lot of his test time, and when the time for the test ran out, Dipper knew he had failed.

On the way home, he had been willing to do anything to escape this… anything so he didn’t have to see his test score… And that was when he had arrived in Cipher’s House’s dimension.

But things would be different now! He just… had to try harder…

Dipper honestly didn’t know what to do… He knew if things were ever gonna change, he needed to see a therapist or a psychiatrist, maybe get some medication, like that doctor had suggested, but… he was a broke college student… he couldn’t afford any of that. He also needed support, and well… his parents had never believed him, and only supported his academics. His sister was more focused on her dates than his wellbeing.

Dipper tried to hold on, he really did, but… he got his exam score in the mail… 55%, an F… All his answers had been right, but he had only managed to fill in little more than half of it.

It wasn’t fair! Dipper knew he sounded like a spoiled child, but it wasn’t fair! He had studied his ass off! Trying his damndest to get past his mental handicaps! And he knew there were people out there who hadn’t studied half as much as him, who hadn’t struggled an ounce of what he had suffered through, and they got off with an A.

His parents had called him, expressing disappointment in him. They told him that he needed to stop goofing off and take college seriously. His sister had called. When Dipper expressed his struggles to her, she had responded: “Well… don’t you think you could try just a little harder? I don’t know when you got this lazy, but you used to be so good at schoolwork!”

Dipper had left a note on his desk, right next to his computer. It was a suicide note. But Dipper wasn’t actually going to take his own life… he had just written the note so no one would try to look for him or wonder what happened to him.

He exited his dorm room, hiding his key under the mat; he wouldn’t need it anymore.

Stepping outside into the fresh air, he walked down the street slowly. He closed his eyes and thought about the hotel, and it was almost like he could visualize the building as he walked.

He opened his eyes, and found himself wandering through a dark, foggy forest.

Keeping a steady pace, it wasn’t long until he spotted light in the distance. And there the hotel was, looking exactly like he remembered it, except for the broken door, which had been repaired.

Dipper walked up to the front door and knocked three times.

Shortly after the third knock, the door open, and Bill stuck his head out.

“So glad to see you’ve returned,” Bill smirked, his eye sparkling with mirth. “It took longer than I expected, but it was bound to happen sooner or later.”

“I… I’m here to stay,” Dipper whispered, his voice shaking with fear of what was going to happen.

“Ah! Of course,” Bill chuckled. “Like I said, all of our guests eventually want to stay forever… There’s just one itsy, bitsy thing we need to discuss…” Bill pulled something out from behind his back; it was the glass vase from his room. “The matter of payment, of course~”

#billdip #cipher's house #cipher's house au

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badonkodank · 7 years

Text

A Simple Word So Heavy

ao3

Chapter Six: I Continue to Face Them

A/N: Okay, this is the last chapter in this little adventure. Thanks to everyone who followed along and encouraged me, it really means a lot! You guys keep me going. ;) OH! The some of you might have noticed (or you may have not) that each chapter is a line from the song "I Have Made Mistakes by the Oh Hellos"- give it a listen if you want more feels!

When they say it then, they're content and know it's time to stop keeping count. There will be so many more instances in which it's said in the future, so there's no need to cling to the moments. They both know the other feels the same way.

Weirdmageddon had come and gone, and with it, had left the anger, the resentment, the petty grudges. All of it seemed to have been sucked into the rift along with the horrors that had never belonged in their world. And as if making up for him missing out on the the twisted, perplexing events of Weirdmageddon, Ford's emotional state had been thrown through the wringer and spit back out within the space of a few hours.

He'd dreamed of the moment Bill Cipher was vanquished so many times in his life, imagined the relief that would wash over him as he and millions across the multiverse rejoiced, for the triangle's reign of terror had ended. After his meeting with Jheselbraum, it had become a cemented into his mind that not only would it come to pass, but it would be him to do it.

Never once had he considered an alternative to the prophecy. Never had he wondered if Cipher's defeat would come by someone else. Never had he considered that the circumstances resulting in the defeat of the demon would be devastating.

Because it hasn't been he to save the universe, but Stanley.

Stanley had saved everyone.

And he wasn't able to remember.

No longer had there been a Stanley around to remember, just an empty shell, blinking slowly as if dazed, the look on his face not unlike that of a child discovering the world for the first time.

Ford hadn't been able to completely identify the feeling tightening his chest, but he hadn't bothered to truly make an effort. He knew enough to be aware that the his inability to breath had nothing to do with a physical problem. He wanted to be numb, to push everything he felt into a box for later review, but the plethora of emotions rushing through him wouldn't allow him to do even that. Instead he was left with an ache in his bones that resulted from far more than just residual soreness of the battle, which had ended minutes ago. He wanted to ignore that, too, just like he wanted to ignore pressure behind his eyes as he knelt down and bit back the urge to scream at the man in his arms to just hug him back already!

He didn't allow himself to break down just then. As he stepped away from the man on the ground, he forced himself to get pulled together. He knew he had to keep a hold of himself if he ever planned to get through the rest of the day. And he had to get through the day, if not for any other reason than the fact that he needed to be there for the kids. Dipper and Mabel, who were so broken up over the events that they remained huddled together, staring at him with their grief on display for all to see. It broke Ford's heart even more.

Yet he knew he couldn't allow them to become swallowed by their pain either; if they did, they might never recover- especially Mabel. She and Stanley had had such a special bond, that he had known after seeing them interact for only a few minutes. If she was allowed to wallow in her sadness, she could be hard pressed to ever come back to them.

Perhaps the same thoughts had gone through her twin's mind, because Dipper grabbed his sister's hand and dragged her to her feet to envelope her in a tight hug that seemed to calm her. Ford hated the way his heart clenched painfully at the sight, less for the reason that it was gut wrenching to see the two hurting so badly, and more because he wished more than anything that he had his sibling to help him get through this.

He cast his attention back to Stanley and saw he'd gotten to his feet and looked around with eyes still so curiously wide. He hadn't bothered to right the fez, which still sat crooked atop his head, and Ford swallowed the lump in his throat. It wasn't right. Nothing about it was.

Stanley was a hero, and he didn't even look like himself.

Ford wanted to grab the man by his shoulders and shake him, scream at him to cut it out and complain that he still hadn't gotten a thank you, that the sweater he wore wasn't comfortable when compared to the crisp dress shirt he was used to. He knew it would do nothing, because there was no Stanley in there to remember. He of all people knew how well the memory gun worked, and how useless it was to try and bring lost memories back. Still, Ford couldn't stand seeing his brother not looking like his brother.

Soos helped him assist Stan in changing back into his suit, and the entire time Ford felt like he should've said something to the handyman, something to comfort him. He'd seen how much the man cared for his brother, and he hadn't missed the affectionate looks Stanley had shot him when he thought nobody was looking. The two clearly had some form of bond between them that went beyond just a boss and employee, and Ford wanted to say something to him, though he couldn't think of what.

After that, Ford handed Stanley off to the kids. They needed him, even if it wasn't him. He could see it in their eyes, their body language, that they still didn't understand, and Ford was reminded of just how young they were. It was easy to forget that they were only children on the cusp of teenhood. He watched as the children and Soos led the man who was and yet wasn't theirs with varying expressions of worry and sadness. They would refuse to believe Stanley was gone until they'd exhausted all their options, Ford knew, because that was who they were. They were the kids who had endured the horrors of Weirdmageddon and come out possibly stronger because of it; the kids who, instead of running away from the strangeness of Gravity Falls, tried to understand and help it. They were amazing kids.

He wished they wouldn't try. He already struggled with figuring out how to deal with the overwhelming guilt of taking away their uncle, and the sorrow of losing his brother, he had no idea how he would be able to handle the grief stricken children when they finally came to terms with the fact that their uncle's mind was gone, and with it, him.

When Mabel brought out the scrapbook, Ford almost left the room. He didn't think he'd be able to bear to watch, knowing how devastated she would be once she allowed herself to give up when she realized Stanley wasn't going to remember anything. He'd almost allowed his own selfishness to pull him away from the kids instead of help them, even when he knew it was a lost cause- he could see that much in the confusion on his twin's face as Mabel went on about the macaroni interpretations of her emotions.

Yet he could also see that, while he couldn't remember, he wanted to. Oh, if Mabel and Dipper's desperate attempts to get his memory jogged was heartbreaking, then Stanley's expression of genuine bewilderment as he squinted, trying to remember something he wasn't even aware he should remember, was just devastating.

But then Waddles, that swine that Ford had been highly irritated to have had roaming the halls of his house when he'd first been introduced by Mabel, tipped the balance and it was Ford's turn to be confused. It was the best kind of confusion, certainly, because soon as Stanley had said that pig's name, Ford felt his heart slam hard against his ribcage and he was quick to join Dipper, Mabel and Soos, crowding the man that wasn't yet his brother, hoping beyond hope that maybe... just maybe he would be.

He had no idea how it was possible for Stanley's memory to be returning, but he refused to ponder it's possibilities until he was sure the moment hadn't been a fluke. Yes, he would hope for the best, but he wouldn't allow himself to get caught up in the excitement. Not like Dipper and Mabel had.

And it had all gotten simultaneously better and worse after that. Stanley had started to remember: The Shack, the kids…

Pretty much everything except Ford.

That much had been evident in the first hour they'd all talked. Ford hadn't been able to stop smiling as his brother remembered, but as Stanley had interacted with the three younger people of the group, Ford had noticed he kept shooting glances his way. Each time his brows had furrowed and after the fourth or fifth time Ford understood why, and the realization that his brother still couldn't figure out who he was had slammed into him like Xanthar had way back when.

Ford had to swallow several times to force the lump of dread in his throat back down where it belonged. He'd known, logically, that it made sense for Stanley to remember Dipper and Mabel when they were, after all, the ones in his most recent memory. But when he began recalling first hiring Soos, and being there for the twins' birth -memories which were decidedly not recent- Ford began to worry.

No, not worry- that wasn't the right word. Worry was when someone tripped and you thought they might be hurt. Worry was when you couldn't remember whether or not you'd left the stove on. It was empty wallets and crumbling dimensions and a crying child. What Ford felt then, was dread. It was the same feeling he got when Bill showed up in one of his dreams, and when he found himself somewhere with bounty hunters on his trail, and most recently, when Bill had gone after the kids. It was cold and stiff and no matter what you did, it lingered, always in the back of your mind, always whispering "what if's" in your ear.

And for Ford, it wouldn't stop one traitorous "what if" in particular:

What if he doesn't ever remember you?

Ford had done his best to ignore that. That voice that shouldn't have been there anymore, still preying on his deepest fears despite no longer existing. It would be fine. Stanley would remember him. He knew he would. He just hadn't yet because the right memories hadn't been brought up.

Stanley would remember eventually. He'd have to be patient, Ford knew, and he had been… for quite awhile, actually. He'd known how important it was that he let Dipper and Mabel re-bond with Stan, so he hadn't interrupted. In fact, he'd been enjoying listening to all the stories they told about their summer adventures, recounted all the times his brother had punched a supernatural creature in the face. However, evening had come and the sun began to set, casting the room into softer light and his patience out the door. It had gotten to be too much, the waiting, the wondering, the watching Stanley remember everyone but him.

Mabe had mentioned being hungry a bit earlier, but hadn't gotten up to remedy that, and Ford decided it was as good a chance as any to remove them from his brother's side for a few minutes. It wasn't that he didn't wanted the kids around when Stanley remembered him, but it also… was. There'd been things in his and his brother's past that were meant to be private- in fact, pretty much the whole of their past had been that way; only meant for them. He loved them, but when it came to Stanley remembering him, he didn't want them around.

Ford glanced over at Soos, clearing his throat softly to get his attention. Soos stood up from where he'd been knelt next to Stan and smiled at him. Ford tried to return the sentiment but failed when he replied immediately to the unasked question.

"Do you think you could take the kids to get something to eat?"

Soos had met the his gaze steadily a moment, silent as he considered the request and Ford nearly sagged with relief when the handyman nodded a second later. Ford had had to hold in a thank you when he smiled, asking the kids if they wanted to head out and eat.

Mabel seemed about to protest, clearly not wanting to be parted from Stanley, but Dipper stopped her by grabbing her hand and giving it a light squeeze. He was much less subtle in his movements when he motioned over his shoulder and Ford waved awkwardly when Mabel whipped her head in his direction, her eyes growing wide as she realized what Soos and her brother were getting at.

She was quick to get up after that, dragging Dipper with her and asking Stanley if he'd be hungry for anything. Of course he said no and told them to go have fun, which had been the end of that, and Ford once again found himself impressed by how perceptive his niblings were. He was also thankful that they'd been so willing to give up time with their favored uncle in order to give him a moment alone. He made a mental note to give them hugs specifically for that later.

It hadn't been easy after that. The two of them stood awkwardly, unsure of where to start or what to do with themselves. Ford did his best to remain relaxed, to act as if everything was fine and he hadn't gone with Mabel and Dipper solely because he hadn't been hungry either. It was difficult to manage when he wanted nothing more than to pace in an attempt to calm his nerves.

After some silence, Stanley sat back down in his chair, petting Waddles' head when the pig snuffled at him. When he looked at him again, recognition continued to elude his gaze, and Ford sighed heavily while leaning against the TV. He had no clue where to start and was one of the most frustrating things.

It didn't help that the dread that hadn't ceased eating at him began making him wonder whether or not he deserved the confusion in his brother's eyes. After all, he'd been the one to erase his memories in the first place, so maybe it was been fair that he hadn't been remembered. Still, the thought of possibly being forever removed from Stanley's memory made Ford want to curl in on himself and disappear.

Of course, being full of surprises, Stanley crossed his arms and fixed him with a hard stare before breaking the silence.

"Alright, so why are you important?"

"What?" Ford blinked, surprised by the familiar blunt manner in which the question was delivered.

"Look, I kinda got the gist of how this remembering thing works. If your important, I've got ya somewhere in here," he tapped the side of his head, "and ya keep looking at me like I should've figured it out a long time ago. So help me out here."

"Oh." Ford thought he'd been doing a good job of hiding his distress, but apparently it would seem he'd failed miserably if someone with no knowledge of his tells could figure him out. Still, he had no idea of how he was supposed to tell Stanley. He was stuck between being blunt, taking the route of, "well we shared a womb for nine months, so yeah I'd say I'm pretty important", and the "I don't know if I'm important to you, but you're my brother, so you're at the very least, important to me", approach.

He had the perfect opportunity to have Stan remember him without disturbance, and he couldn't figure out how he was supposed to do it. So, of course his first response was to panic and clamp down. "I, uh, it doesn't… it doesn't matter."

The look Stanley gave him made Ford think of their mother when one of them had tried lying to her and she'd struggled with deciding whether she wanted to smack them or laugh at them. It had been ages since he'd seen anywhere wear the expression, and seeing it on his brother made him both suddenly nostalgic and extremely wary.

"Oh no ya don't," he argued, getting up from his seat and pointing angrily at him. "Just cuz ya don't wanna put the effort into helping me don't mean ya get to say it's nothing!"

"It's not that I don't want to put in the effort," Ford protested, "it's that I don't know where to start."

"Oh, gee, I have no idea what that's like." The bitter snap made Ford pause and curse himself. He'd been tactless with his words there. Of course Stan would be sensitive about not remembering things; Ford could only imagine how frustrating it must have been for him, to know he knew something, and yet not know a thing at all.

Still, he shook his head, deny his brother answers. He didn't want to confuse Stanley more by trying to give him their life's story. After all, that's where the kids and Soos had started with him: Where they'd first met him in their memories. How was he supposed to find a good place to begin? And dammit why hadn't he thought about all of this before he'd sent the kids away?

Of course, the motion's true meaning was lost on Stanley, so he tightened his hands into fists and glared at him. "Knock it off! Just because I don't remember doesn't mean I'm an idiot, Ford, so just tell me!"

It took a moment longer than it should have for him to process the words, but when he did, Ford stood shocked, not daring to move, or even breathe as he watched Stanley. The way his expression went suddenly from irritated to slack and wide-eyed nearly broken Ford, he himself daring to believe then that he'd heard correctly. However, just as soon as the slack expression had come, it disappeared once more, replace by a downturned mouth and scrunched brows.

Ford held his breath completely, watching as Stan's mouth began moving ever-so-slightly mouthing his name, until, after several seconds of tense silence, the confusion on his face disappeared.

When he finally looked up at him again, Ford didn't miss the tears threatening to spill over in his eyes. And when Stanley smiled tentatively as cleared his throat, Ford resisted the urge to wring his hands together. For his part, Stan seemed unsure of what to say, if the way he continually opened his mouth only to close it immediately after was any indicator.

"So, um," he started slowly, "doesn't this mean thanks are in order again?"

Ford couldn't have stopped the the sob from tearing out of his throat if he'd wanted to as he all but threw himself at his brother, burying his face into Stanley's shoulder, the small, "Whoa!" he got in response making his chuckle thickly.

"Thank you," he whispered hoarsely into his twin's jacket. He whispered it over and over until it seemed to have lost its meaning and it was hard to believe he'd ever had a hard time saying the words in the first place.

He couldn't bring himself to loosen the white knuckled death grip he had on his brother, even when he heard the kids return. Stanley didn't try to pry him off either, though -in fact he held him just as tight- and that made Ford's tears flow harder.

Forty years. Forty years Stanley had been waiting for this. When he'd hugged him in that clearing, the first time he'd dared embrace his sibling since returning home, and had been met with nothing but limp confusion, Ford had been so sure that wish of his brother's would never be fulfilled.

He'd been so sure that his mind would be forever lost, and he'd felt all the more devastated with the knowledge. Because despite every chance he'd been given to hug his brother before and during Weirdmageddon, he hadn't. That left the embrace hurting him more than the torture Bill wrought for the sole reason that… it was the first hug he'd given his brother in forty years and Stanley hadn't even known who he was, or how important the moment had been. Hell, he hadn't even returned the gesture. And Ford had thought that would be it.

Now, knowing it wasn't, that he could hug Stanley and that he knew who he was and how much it meant, it was enough to overwhelm Ford. He didn't even think he would've step away from Stanley if he could right then, afraid he'd collapse if he did.

In the space of only a few hours, he'd been abused and terrified, he'd watched his some of his family nearly be destroyed by the demon he'd invited into the world, and then he'd witnessed his twin taking the fall for his own mistakes. He'd proceeded to destroy said twin's mind, and then he'd been crushed by the guilt of doing so. He'd suffered in a prison of his own mind, even for a short time, worrying about the kids, dreading what would become of his brother's memories of him, and what would become of his brother in general. Then, through a simple argument that particular pain and fear disappeared

All of that, in the space of a few hours. He didn't know how to process any of it other than to cling to his brother for dear life and comfort himself with the reminder that Stanley had called him Ford. Stanley remembered. Stanley was back, and he was okay. And it was fascinating, how arguments seemed to be what surrounded all the pivotal moments in their lives. In a convoluted sort of way, how Stan remembered him made perfect sense.

How he was remembering continued to remain a mystery to him, but Ford still wasn't interested in figuring it out just yet. For the time being, it didn't matter. Stanley was okay, and he was back, and that was all that mattered. And Stanley was there and hugging him back, and he didn't hate him.

And then it struck Ford, with that thought, that Stanley didn't remember everything. It made him aware his sibling probably didn't even know he should have reason to be hating him, which left Ford's relief slowly melting into apprehension, as he realized the next step in getting all of Stanley's memories back would be the same as everyone else's.

Just like Mabel and Dipper had begun going over the parts of their lives with their uncle in them, he'd have to do the same until his brother was able to piece things together himself. He'd have to remind him of all the fights, all the hurt and heartbreak… and the reason he'd lost his memories to begin with. He didn't want to. Not yet, anyway. He wouldn't be selfish and never tell Stanley, but it could wait, if only for the night. Just a little while longer.

Ford started when he was pulling from his thoughts by two pairs of arms wrapping around his and Stanley's waists, squeezing tightly. Ah, right, the kids. Ford sniffled, quietly as he could manage, and ruffled Dipper's hair before releasing Stanley in order to do the same to Mabel. He didn't miss the way his brother scrubbed roughly at his eyes when they broke apart, and Ford sent him a shaky smile, which was returned without hesitation.

Dipper and Mabel took the opportunity their distance provided and tackled Stanley back onto the sofa chair. Ford chuckled softly and joined them, perching on the skull-table and doing his best to ignore the way both kids looked between him and his brother slowly with knowing expressions. The smiles that broke out on either of their faces had Ford shaking his head and Stanley grunting and changing the subject before they had the chance to ask any questions.

"So, where'd Soos go?"

"Oh, he said he was going to help Wendy 'clean up some of the chaos'," Dipper said, shrugging.

"He'll be back later," Mabel finished, tucking herself into Stanley's side and releasing a content little sigh.

They all remained like that for some time, until the sun had set and Mabel had dozed off, drooling a bit onto Stanley's arm. Dipper was debating whether or not to wake her up and get her to bed, and Stan, of course, was being no help in deciding. Watching the three of them interact, it made Ford smile fondly. They may have had a long way to go in helping Stanley remember everything, but if every day went as well as today, Ford had high hopes for the future.

When Stanley came back into the living room carrying a fresh bowl of popcorn with Mabel at his side telling him about the progression of TV quality, and one of his favorite shows, "Ducktective", the last thing he'd expected to find was his brother with a big device in his arms, Dipper trailing behind carrying a circular case. He had no idea what this would be about -but then, that was normal now, wasn't it?- but it looked nerdy, and he frowned.

"Aw, c'mon, I'm not even back into the game a week and you're gonna bore me?"

Ford rolled his eyes at him as he set the device, which looked a whole lot like a projector, if he remembered correctly, onto the skull beside the chair. Dipper carefully set the box onto the floor beside it and then stood off to the side, watching them. Mabel went over to her brother's side, to no doubt ask what was going on. Stan wanted to know too, since Ford seemed pretty serious about whatever he was doing as he set up some more things that confirmed for him that what his brother had was, in fact, a projector. Good, he enjoyed getting things right.

Though, what he planned on showing them, Stan had no clue. He had no plans to be quiet about his curiosity, though. "Hey- ho, what's all this for?"

"I found these upstairs," Ford explained, "It's from when we were kids. I thought you might like to see them."

"Oh." Stan blinked in surprise. He still couldn't remember everything about their history together, but for the past two nights Ford had explained as much as he could think to, telling him why he'd lost his memories and apologizing until he wasn't doing much more than stuttering over the same remorse filled words repeatedly.

He'd been doing really good with remembering things, that was what everyone had assured him of when he'd gotten frustrated, but the sharper details of his childhood with Ford were still a bit of a blur to him. He'd tried and tried to clear them on his own, but the moments seemed determined to remain hidden from him. So if Ford seriously had film, he definitely wanted to watch.

He refused to get emotional over the fact that his brother had kept such delicate, precious things all these years, though. He hadn't even known they'd existed, and from what he could recall, he'd been the one living in the Shack the longest. Or maybe he had known? Nah, if he had, the memory would've come back once he saw the projector.

From what he'd figured out on his own and what Ford had explained to him, his remembrance seemed to be triggered by familiar faces and images that were important to him. He was pretty sure if he was touched by the sentiment of the device now, it would qualify as "important" and have triggered any memories if he'd had them. Which left him wondering just what would be on the film reel. He also wondered how close his brother was to being done setting up, because he wanted to see them sooner rather than later.

They'd gotten a lot of his memory back during the day today alone, having gone all over town, reminding him of all his favorite places, introducing him to some people as they went. They'd gotten dinner at Greasy's Diner and Mabel had, after getting onto the topic of his cooking skills, helped him to remember his special brand of "Stan-cakes". With all of that finished, they were coming up on the end of the day and Stan was looking forward to it, because even if it meant staying up until he was beyond exhausted, it also meant going over his past with his brother, specifically.

He enjoyed the time spent together with Ford. The portal and Weirdmageddon had been some of the first memories involving him to come back, and so while at times it was distressing and confusing, putting the puzzle back together in order, he treasured every moment he had with his sibling. He knew just how important their time together was, and he was more than happy to occupy his brother's time.

Part of him had a hard time believing Ford cared enough to want him to remember everything so quickly, because according to more recent memories, Ford supposedly only cared about himself, but Stan did his best to shut that part of his brain up. It was true, he'd thought those things about his sibling at some point or another, but he didn't now. And maybe that was only because he didn't have all his memories of Ford. Either way, until he had all his memories back and could make an educated decision on how he felt, he'd continue to tell himself to be quiet. Ford cared about him, and whether or not Stan initially thought he did wasn't important.

Once he looked to have everything set up, Ford smiled widely and Stan snickered under his breath. He was acting like a kid on the first night of Hanukkah, practically bouncing from foot to foot, wringing his hands and motioning for him to sit, which made Stan all the more eager to see what was on the film.

"Well, we're set up, so… whenever you're ready…"

"Ha, yeah, alright." Stan punched his brother's shoulder as he took a seat.

Ford nodded, probably more to himself than anyone, and stood there a moment, staring at the wall before groaning softly and turning back to the projector. Stan bit his tongue to keep from laughing. It was funny when Ford was so focused on doing one thing that he forgot the main part. "One moment." He blushed and went to getting the reel into the projector.

Stan waited patiently, not saying a word, just listening to the rambling he always got from his brother; Ford tended to talk when he was nervous and doing work with his hands. Stan was pretty sure it had something to do with the fact that he was used to explaining what he did to everyone around him, since his mind moved twice as fast as theirs.

"I don't remember what's on this, precisely, but I know they're nice- all of them. I used to watch them before McGucket moved in to work on the Portal. I suppose you never heard about that though, so nevermind. Point being, I think you'll enjoy these. I just have to put this here and..."

Stan smirked in amusement at Ford when the man grinned as the reel clicked into place. He opened his mouth to cut his brother off before he could get going again, but stopped when he saw Dipper grab Mabel's hand, the two of them moving to retreat from the room.

"Oi, where you headed?"

The children startled and Dipped scratched the back of his neck while Mabel saved him by answering. "We're just gonna leave you guys alone now. Personal bizz an' all that. Yeahhh."

Before he could say anything in response to that, Mabel winked and took a turn dragging her sibling out of the room, Dipper uttering a short, "G'night." before disappearing from sight. Stan could hear them clambering up the stairs, whispering to each other softly enough that he couldn't catch what was being said. He only shook his head fondly at their antics. Those two really were the lights of his life most days, and it was times like these that that was brought to his attention.

He didn't know how he'd ever gone through life without them around, but he couldn't imagine never having met them now. He did know that once they went home, life would get pretty boring again. A final sharp click made Stan flinch and check on Ford, who'd completed hooking the film up, and he hummed under his breath. Actually, with him around, it might not be too boring at all...

It would take a period of adjustment to get used to someone other than the twins being around the Shack twenty-four-seven, but Stan would be more than happy to go through that period of time it if it meant Ford was the one whose company he would be getting used to. Stan was kind of thankful for these nightly memory joggings because those alone had allowed them to get used to each other faster than they might have and talk about things that had never been discussed in depth before then.

Stan wasn't exactly thrilled that he'd lost his entire life's story, even if it had been his idea to start with, but, shockingly enough to himself and probably everyone else, he was actually glad it had all worked out the way it had. Even if not remembering everything in one sitting grew progressively annoying, he and Ford had been able to just talk openly, about everything, and while he wasn't completely sure of where it was they stood exactly, he rested easy on the knowledge that Ford… probably wasn't going to kick him out of the Shack like he'd wanted to when he'd first been brought back.

Stan wasn't sure exactly what they'd do about their living arrangement, but if he'd taken anything from the way his brother had been treating him the past few days, it was that they would figure it out. He sure hoped that was what Ford was thinking anyway. He was a little afraid to ask. He'd do it later- probably after the kids left. Yeah. Probably… Maybe.

"Okay," Ford said, jarring Stan out of his thoughts, "Sorry about that. Just let me know when you're ready."

Stan couldn't help but laugh at his brother then. Ford was practically vibrating with… well, he wasn't sure if it was excitement or nerves, but either way he looked like Mabel after her tenth cup of Mabel Juice™ and it was pretty hilarious to see his brother's mannerisms parallel his bubbly great niece. Ford only watched him with a mixture of bewilderment and concern. "What?"

"Nothing," Stan chortled, getting a hold of himself once more and waving his brother's next question off, "No, I didn't remember anything new."

After a moment of scrutinizing him, Ford nodded and turned his attention back to the task at hand, satisfied with the answer. He flicked on the projector and settled into the collapsable chair beside the sofa, his designated spot for the routine. It took a few seconds for the reel to begin playing, but Stan kept his attention glued to the wall where the picture would be popping up. He had no idea what he was in store for, but was eager to see nonetheless, because if the moments had been worth filming and saving for so long, they had to be special, and there was no way he wanted to miss even half a second of that.

The two watched and talked for hours, chatting after each individual clip before continuing with the next captured moment. They kept to the cycle until the late hours of the night crept up on them and one or two clips were lift on the reel that they were too tired to watch.

Ford was the first to break, surprising both of them with a yawn big enough Stan briefly worried his jaw might've been dislocated. Of course, that had set off a chain event, causing him to yawn too and realize just how beat he was. Neither one of them made any move to get up, though, as that had become part of the routine too. They'd exhaust themselves reminiscing, and then they'd just go to sleep. It wasn't the best thing for their backs, but the two didn't much care. There was something comforting about being able to fall asleep right next to the other. Something familiar.

Stan's lip twitched into a smile when he pictured the bunkbeds littered with random toys and knick knacks from their youth. Yeah, those had been the days, when it had just been the two of them, full of their childlike spunk and irrational senses of optimism. They'd sure had some fun back in the day. The short clip of him chasing Ford around with a paintbrush on the beach came to mind and Stan smiled as he peaked an eye open to check on his brother. He'd already closed his eyes and leaned heavily against him, his hair tickling Stan's chin when he tilted his head down.

A fond and content noise made it out of his throat and Ford purred back in response. Stan closed his eyes and chuckled softly. That was one of the weirder noises he'd heard from his brother since he'd come out of the portal, but it was one he could at least get behind. After all, if that was one of the more subtle ways Ford expressed happiness, who was he to complain?

Stan contemplated taking his hand out of where it had settled in the popcorn bowl to ruffle his twin's hair like he'd have done when they were younger, but he didn't feel like mustering up the energy it would take to move. He was comfy and he didn't want to ruin that. Besides, his limbs felt heavy enough he wasn't sure he'd make it all the way up to where Ford's head was rested against his shoulder.

Instead, Stan settled for a soft mutter. He hadn't dared to say it since… had it been right after that DD and More D thing with Dipper? Yeah. He hadn't said it since then, too afraid he wouldn't get the response he wanted, or any response at all. This time, it came as easily as telling Wendy to get back to work, and Stan knew it would be well received.

"G'night, Ford."

He didn't look to see his brother's reaction- he didn't have to when he felt Ford's arm wrap loosely around his shoulders, giving him a tight squeeze. The affection in his brother's tone when he finally responded made Stan's smile solidify on his face to the point where he didn't think he'd be able to get it off.

For so long he'd been waiting to hear the words echoed back at him, and from the way Ford spoke, his own smile evident, it sounded like he had been too.

"Goodnight, Stanley."

But nothing is a waste, if you learn from it.

#gravity falls #the grunkles #mystery twins #soos #ahhhhhhh #this one was fun and makes me happy and ah #just #yeah #thanks to all who have liked/reblogged so far #my writing #my ff #mine

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