Bab 165: -Try restarting the universe- Part 2
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....Yeah, okay. Stan could see how that might be a good idea. If his brother would agree to do it. But even if Ford did, there were a lot of ways this could go wrong, still. One was just the fact that Stan knew how his conversations with the kid usually went on stuff like this, and just trying to talk about this stuff itself could lead to a lot of easy misunderstandings. And that was even if you weren't trying to look for the worst possible way to take every last thing that somebody said while you were doing it, the way that Ford probably would. And if either of them started fighting over the 'proper' definitions for things, like Bill still did with him sometimes...
Stan sighed, flipped his crossword puzzle book closed (with the pencil stuck in it, marking his place), and tossed it onto the table. (He figured he was gonna need his full attention for this. "Okay, I hear ya. But what are you intending to do with this conversation? Just clarifying your definitions? What are you wanting to get out of it?" Because he figured he'd better work that one out properly first, so he'd have a good place to stand to tell them both when they needed to stop because they weren't getting anywhere where they were trying to go, if they even ended up doing this thing in the first place.
"I just want to understand." Miz had a strained expression on her face as she said this. "I don't like misunderstandings that aren't funny," she insisted. "And I'm misunderstanding Ford a lot." ...Well, Stan couldn't disagree with her there, the demon-dragon-lady really didn't understand Ford one bit.
Stan looked over at his brother. Ford hadn't spoken up again yet, but he was listening -- he sure as hell wasn't that engaged in that book he was reading; Stan could tell.
Stan turned back to the dragon-lady. "Look, if you two want to talk to figure out vocabulary, or somethin', we're gonna need some ground rules -- and one of 'em is that I'm going to be sitting right here listening, and if I say stop, you're gonna stop when I tell you to, 'cause I don't want this thing escalating again like every other time you two have ended up going off at each other, every time you've tried talking at each other before this." Stan moved his eyes over to look at Bill. "You want your brother here with you for this kinda conversation as well?"
"Only if he wants to be," was Miz's reply, to which the older demon made a chittering sound and immediately said, "Of course I want to be. --I DON'T want you alone with Stanley," the kid said almost grumpily, eyeing said Stanley again side-long over this.
"Guess we've got our two referee-interpreters, then." Stan let out a breath and turned to his brother. "Well? Do you wanna try to get your 'definitions' straightened out with this one?" Stan asked him, tossing a thumb Miz's way.
But to this, Ford simply set down his book on the table and scoffed. "I don't see how that's important in any way. We don't need to 'understand' each other." Ford felt he knew far more than he needed to know about demons already, thank you. He didn't particularly care to know what this one thought of him any better, in any sense of the word. And he looked off-put -- and felt rather horrified -- at the very idea of Miz 'understanding him' better, in any way. Because that would likely just mean that her verbal attacks would be that much more accurate and damaging against him -- which was, he felt, the very last thing that he needed from her or anyone else at the moment, thank you. "And quite frankly, I don't want to."
Ford folded his arms, leaning back in his chair, and Stan held back a sigh. (Damnit, Ford. He knew what his brother really meant there, but did he have any idea what that would have just sounded like to anyone else, let alone some crazy not-understanding-him demon?)
Miz was frowning at the scientist. "So… you… want me to keep misunderstanding you?" She sounded both frustrated and confused. "You… want me to keep getting mad at you when we both say things that don't match up and get offended?"
Ford glared at her, while Stan straightened up in his chair a bit and groaned. "--No, that's not what he wants," Stan cut in for him quickly, while shooting his brother another (annoyed) look. Clumsy as it was, Miz was trying here; Stan could tell. Ford trying to shoot down her attempt right outta the gate wasn't gonna help anyone now or later -- like the kids, when some other misunderstanding might happen later with them -- least of all Ford himself right now. "He ain't explaining himself real well right now. --Ford, elaborate," Stan told him next.
Ford let out a huff of breath. "Stanley, this is pointless!" he told him. Because yes, he'd realized what his brother had been getting at when he'd more or less pointed out to him days ago that he hadn't truly been treating the man-eater like the demon she (probably… no, almost certainly) was. But-- "I don't need to 'understand' a demon any better than I already do -- I understand them well-enough as it is! --They're all heartless monsters that--"
Miz pointed at Ford. "--That. Right there. What exactly is your definition for demon? Because 'heartless monster' isn't what mine is."
Ford glared at her. "Whether you use a different word for it is hardly much more than a distraction! --It's what you are." Ford shot back at her, already more than done with this new 'game' of hers, and mad for Stanley playing along with it to begin with. "You are a monster who thinks that the entirety of our living existence is all just some sort of game for you to play at, and take great fun and delight at messing around with other peoples' lives and their very existence and livelihoods and families--" Ford was gripping at the table now, almost panting for breath in his rage, "--destroying every last thing that you can get your hands on, after you're all done toying with it, and with them! Because that includes people to you!" Ford was nearly shaking in place now, as he said, "None of you care about anything or anyone else in the least, and--!!"
Ford cut himself off at the last, because Stan's hand came down on his shoulder -- to just sit there, even as Ford flinched and tried to stop shaking in place in his rage. (He'd barely even noticed when Stan had gotten up from his chair and started to make his way over, he'd been so engrossed in the past, in trying to ignore the flashes of horribleness that had flickered across his vision, as he'd almost against his will remembered bit and pieces of--)
Stan stood there and held his hand there on his brother' shoulder, rubbing it back and forth just a bit, as Ford slowly calmed down, panting for breath. (And yeah, the kid had a hand on top of his sister's head at the moment. ...Some kinda signal to let Ford speak his piece first for now? Well, whatever it was, Stan was kinda appreciating the help at the moment, whether the kid realized it was the right thing to be doing right now or not. He raised his eyes to the kid's own, and the kid gave him the shortest of nods as he did it. ...Huh.)
After Ford had calmed down again a bit, and pulled his hands back into his lap (really, more wrapped them around his chest while disguising it as just crossing them in front of him; hell, Ford…), Stan tried to decide whether or not to continue… then thought 'the hell with it' (his brother should be able to say 'stop' on his own, too, if he needed it) and Stan nodded to Miz. It was her turn.
Miz bit her lip, then took a deep breath and said, "I don't think life is a game. I thought it was a cartoon show, but aside from that, I do SO care about others! I just don't care about every single person that I meet. And just because I don't care for them doesn't mean I immediately kill them, or whatever the heck your definition of a demon will do to people!" And now Miz was shaking a little herself. Because when Ford had called her a monster before… she'd maybe thought he'd meant the kind of monster under the bed that she could laugh at and scare away herself as a triangle. But some of the stuff he'd said just now, about destroying existence and livelihoods and families?! That was-- That was just-- It spoke to something a heck of a lot worse than that, something much darker, and--
It left Miz shivering and shaking in place. Because he'd called her that. He thought she was that. He'd called her and her brother-- her-- her brother-- had her brother ever--?!?
Her brother, who was standing there right next to her, began to pet her slowly, and gently, on top of her head, never looking away from either of his Zodiac as he did it.
Stan stared at Miz for a moment. "...Wait, back up." He cut off both Ford and Miz before they could escalate this whole conversation-fight-thing any further. Because... "You think life… is a cartoon show?" Stan asked Miz incredulously, and… oh, and now he was remembering how Miz had mentioned 'plot' a few times before. How she was supposed to move 'the plot' along in her own dimension… (hell, she hadn't been talking about moving around land now, had she…)
Miz grimaced down at the ground and shuffled her feet. "Thought. I know it's my reality now, but back when I was human," she stated, "There was a children's cartoon show that I really liked." She looked a little embarrassed (the heck?) as she said... "It was called Gravity Falls, and it was about a pair of children spending a summer with their great uncle, discovering supernatural mysteries and eventually defeating a triangle demon…" Miz was blushing now. "It was one of my favorite shows."
Stan stared at her. So did Ford.
Bill let out one of his 'so annoying' chitters and literally tossed his free hand up in the air, as if he was discarding the idea out of hand, almost. "It's fine," the demon told them both. "That happens sometimes."
"That--" Ford looked like he was trying to wrap his head around that one, and gearing up to very much not like the idea of that one bit. "What--"
"--It happens more often than you might think," Bill emphasized, giving Ford a long look.
"Kid, what the hell?" Stan said next, completing Ford's sentence, because… what the hell?
Ford, for his part, seemed to get unstuck once Stan got the thought out there for him, and now he looked absolutely irate. "Just because the multiverse is infinite, doesn't mean that--"
"--our dimensional set, taken on its own, isn't actually infinite," Bill drawled out, both interrupting and contradicting him. "The stupid lizard is lazy, yes -- the stupid thing just got done spinning up a dimension for Pine Tree and Shooting Star to land in that we just got done visiting THAT DIDN'T EXIST HERE BEFORE," the demon-kid thundered out at them next, cutting Ford off before looking up at Stan. "--But that doesn't mean anything," Bill continued, gearing up to apparently what was supposed to be his main point.
"Ford, give the kid a minute, here," Stan said slowly almost under his breath, not looking away from the kid. "Pretty sure this might be important." He heard an agitated huff from his brother, but Ford stayed silent next to him, annd Stan counted his small blessings.
"Look," Bill began again, glancing between them. "The multiverse may not be infinite, but the Mindscape is EVERYWHERE. Thoughts travel. The 'collective unconscious' -- the way you humans think of it -- isn't a thing," Bill put out there, "But! Everyone's so-called 'Dreamscapes'," the kid shot an annoyed look Ford's way, "Do connect out to the general Mindscape -- not just their own internal one -- and sometimes, when that happens, thoughts and events that cause a big enough 'ripple' in the general Mindscape can travel. And then people in other dimensions can get 'glimpses' of those events that happen in other dimensions inside of their dreams without anyone else actually trying to put it there. And sometimes, the people who get those 'glimpses' even decide to WRITE IT ALL DOWN in a book, or into a screenplay, and make it all into a SHOW. --It happens sometimes. That's all. --You don't need an infinity to get a bunch of so-called 'repetitions'; things just need to impact each other. Like that." The kid shrugged.
Stan stared at the kid, because, really? This was a thing?
"And sometimes some of the higher-level beings and demons with some form of Sight or spying capability are lazy and just go looking for things that they can steal and pass off as their own on purpose. Multidimensional 'reality TV', woop-dee-do -- so what," Bill said next, almost in disgust, waving that one off, too. "It isn't necessarily accurate most of the time." After all, not everybody had 20/∞ vision like he did! "And spending time chasing every 'echo' of something down the ostrich hole, trying to figure that one out, just isn't worth it, most of the time," Bill told them all next. "I've even been communicating with two 'blogs' that are linked to a dimension that I haven't really Looked into... much from the outside-here yet, and..." he didn't really want to talk about it, because he'd only just realized what he'd done wrong and only just recently fixed, last time he'd make assumptions on anything there… --Though admittedly that was mostly only because he hadn't been able to use his All-Seeing Eye, to See into it properly, before, so the blame for that could largely be laid at Stanley's own feet, he was certain.
(And even if he could have done it at the time, that much earlier, Bill also wouldn't have wanted to try it at a time when he'd known that other Bill Cipher from that other dimensional set might have potentially been watching -- watching that dimension while the connection was still present -- and potentially noticed his own 'Eye-spying' somehow(?!?!). Bill hadn't wanted to risk… well, Stanley getting angry at him if he ran into a problem with that, with that other Bill Cipher who he didn't understand at all yet, later. Ha. --Anyway...)
"...that dimension does seem to have a cartoon show like that. --I've been reading your blogposts there," he told Miz, not wanting to go into too much detail on her own role in the ongoing connections (let alone why and how that dimension existed in his dimensional set because of her in the first place…) "And it's half the reason why I'm not worried about any of those idiots -- or anyone else -- 'finding out' who I am when I write things to any of the blogs over there," he told Stan next somewhat absently, waving it off. "They won't ever think any of us could possibly be real there, because of that show." After all, why would any of the locals there think he was actually 'the real Bill Cipher' even if he said who he was, when there was a perfectly good explanation for why someone -- or several someones -- might want to pretend to be him over there, because of that apparently somewhat-popular show...
"There were a lot of role-playing blogs where people pretended to be characters from the show," Miz shrugged, explaining the concept a bit better to the two older men in front of her. "It happened a lot."
"I could see how the energy signals from the communication lines connected to that time-distorted hyperdimensional whatsit were flowing into and out of that dimension, and I was able to decipher the datastreams as part of that, then access it myself -- no weirdness necessary." Bill carefully left out how he'd been sending communications to that dimension there, though, really not wanting to get into that whole mess with either of his Zodiac right then. "The 'Gravity Falls' cartoon show they have there isn't of any concern to ME; from what I could access from their own networked world-wide-internet, it seems FAR too general in the whole," and far too skimpy on any specifics, "-to be of any use or detriment to anyone else." Meaning: other demons who might try and take advantage of any information therein. "I didn't bother to check how much of it was accurate. That's generally a waste of time."
After all, even if someone was necessarily accurate on the generalities, being more attuned to the finer happenings of one specific dimension that they were somehow seeing glimpses of in their dreams… most of the devilish-details just didn't make it through the Mindscape to 'Dreamscape' to awakening process intact, and the final product of any of the forms of entertainment that Bill ever saw come out of something like that were always dodgy at-best. And even though Bill could track down the Dreamer connected to those sorts of things properly -- if there even was one to begin with, coincidences did happen -- it wasn't as though anyone could necessarily mine any of those dreams for more useful information than one would get just by viewing that singular dimension oneself directly, not even himself. And trying to do things that way, rather than just going with direct-viewing, usually disrupted or broke the Dreamer's connection to that dimension, if he tried! --It just wasn't worth it. Dreamers were all well and good, but Bill had found out over the years that only Sensitives could do that sort of thing with any consistency at all, and...
"But the portal specifications--" Ford said urgently, suddenly looking alarmed, and Stan turned to look down at him, blinking in shock, because he hadn't thought of that at all--
"--Relax, Sixer. The 'portal blueprints' they dreamed up there were a load of garbage that will never get them anywhere," the kid told them both, to the tune of Ford letting out something of a breath of relief, which honestly left Stan feeling a little bit odd. "And so is the 'math'. --That, I checked," the kid told them next. (Bill hadn't checked much else besides that for anything to do with the show, though, other than the general-basics of having noted that 'he' was known there in the form of a character from some cartoon show that was there and apparently also 'a thing' for some people there, too.) "Even when it's a thing, the details usually get lost, or rewritten entirely. So even when it is, it isn't. --Don't worry about it," the kid repeated. "It's just your normal weird fluke," the kid shrugged off, completely unconcerned with all of it.
"...Right," Stan said slowly, feeling a little off-balance at this for a moment. "So, uh... should I be claiming royalties or somethin' outta these people?" he asked next, to a "HA!" outta the kid, and the usual sort of not-so-happy with him for 'not takin' things seriously' kind of annoyed exclamation out of Ford. (Welp, at least that lightened the mood a bit.) Stan shook his head and asked Miz next, "Right. So, you think you saw some kinda cartoon show that maybe was a little like all of us, way back when, when you were a human." Talk about weird, hell. "What does that have to do with anything?"
Miz continued, "Well, the show had a yellow triangle demon named Bill Cipher in it. So when I died and woke up as a yellow triangle, I kinda thought… well…" She shrugged helplessly. "I don't go around killing people for fun or anything, though, and ah… well…" Here, she looked a little guilty. "Even when I tried to go against the 'plot' I remember from the show, certain events still happened, like fixed points…" She looked solemn. "Like the destruction of the 2nd dimension. I didn't mean for it to happen, but it still did."
Bill, who had placed a hand on her head earlier, started petting her on the head again gently.
("Not your fault," Bill reminded her under his breath. Because it wasn't. Her. Fault.)
"So I figured, if the same things are going to happen, regardless of what I do, then I should plan out how to make them happen, but in my own way. If I could hit all the points I need with the least amount of pain and suffering for the people around me somehow…"
(Bill visibly twitched at this.)
Ford… looked irate. "Are you honestly telling me that you're going to continue to destroy dimensions, and kill hundreds of trillions of people, all because you saw a TV show where something like that happened once?!" Ford grated out at her, slamming his hands into the table again and shoving himself to his feet. (And Stan didn't even try to stop him that time.)
Miz managed to keep her cool, but only barely. "That ISN'T what I do at all! --I think this is another definition problem. I don't go around killing and enslaving people. I have jobs from Time Baby sometimes, but for the most part I just travel and learn things. Make Deals, create planets and hang out with my friends." Miz groaned. "And aside from what happened to the 2nd dimension, I've never destroyed any other dimension. Ever," she told him firmly. "Dad would get upset if I did that on purpose -- or even by accident or something," she added quickly, trying to cut off what she realized would probably be Ford's next argument there. "And I don't want to make him upset. And I literally have no reason or desire to do so, so I don't. Less dimensions would mean less places for me to hang out! That'd be boring!" she added, giving a selfish reason for why she'd want that something she was talking about, just like Stan had told her to do.
But Ford was still shaking his head and looking just as angry. "You say that now, but even if you're telling the truth," and it was clear that Ford did not think that was the case, "You yourself have stated before that you want to be like Bill Cipher!" Ford said, pointing at Bill roughly.
Bill narrowed his eyes at Ford.
"Our definition of Bill Cipher is different too." Miz sighed, rubbing a hand across her face.
And Bill went a little bit still at that, blinking as he looked down at her.
"...He does always get me wrong whenever he thinks of me inside his head," Bill said, in an odd, almost uneasy tone of voice.
"This isn't about definitions!" Ford insisted, slamming a fist into the table beside him. "It's about basic facts--!"
"--Look, I don't know what idea you have of Bill Cipher inside of your head," Miz told him, "But clearly it's wrong and not me!!" Miz looked frustrated. "I don't want to do those kinds of things to people, ever! But if the same thing's going to happen, regardless of how I try to stop it from happening, and generally end up worse because I tried to stop it, then why shouldn't I do it on purpose in a way that I can control and mitigate the damage?"
"You said you want to be like him!!" Ford repeated angrily. "To be more like him! --Who do you think that he is?!?!?" he yelled out at her, feeling almost a sense of disconnect at the very idea that she was trying to somehow make some case for being-- being less bad than he actually was!?!?!
Miz flinched back a little at the yelling. "...a triangle…" she mumbled. "...with magical powers…" She looked almost embarrassed.
Ford let out a strangled sound, and stared at her in absolute and pure disbelief at what he was hearing just then.
"--there wasn't all that much to go on from the show, aside from some fan-theories and stuff--" Miz whined. "--but from what little we got from the show-writer--"
And as Miz continued talking and talking, Ford stared down at her with a growing sense of absolute horror. Because… he'd completely misread the situation here. Miz… somehow... had absolutely no idea who Bill Cipher actually was. What he was. What he was like. This man-eater -- demon -- whatever she was -- had absolutely no idea, and-- and she was here now and-- and looking for guidance from him?! From Bill Cipher!? On how to be a "better" demon??? --Just like him, when she didn't know who he even really was?!?
Oh no. Oh, no no no. No, that couldn't be true. She was already too-- No. No. That just couldn't be--
"--but there was clearly something I was supposed to go with, people treated me as if I was like that, even when I didn't do anything remotely close to it, so they must have some idea of what I'm supposed to be like--"
Ford began shaking his head in pure disbelief. A 'magical triangle' with 'powers'. This couldn't be right. No. She had to-- had to be lying to him-- nobody was this stupid and wrong, or just plain blind, about anything--
--he himself had thought Bill was a true and dear friend to him, once--
--She had a sense of empathy she hadn't been able to shut off herself, for Axolotl's sake!!! She must have been able to sense such things from him directly. --She had to know better!
"--yeah he was a villain in the show, but that's because it was from the human's point of view so--"
"--Stop talking," Ford choked out, too many emotions swirling through his heart and chest and brain to try and catalogue or deal with at the moment. "Stop talking, now." He could barely think, over the noise and the confusion running through him just then. But what Ford did know was that this just wasn't right, wasn't anything like right, none of it, and--
Stan glanced over at his brother, who kept shifting between looking red and looking a little bit pale, over and over again, and (thankfully) Miz closed her mouth when he told her to and stopped talking. She didn't look all that happy though.
...Largely, because Miz wasn't stupid. She knew this wasn't going well, and she was having trouble figuring out how to deal properly with Ford. He was rejecting her off the bat without even attempting to understand her. Reminded her a lot of the debates she'd had with some racists to try and get them to stop being mean and rude to people, never worked.
"...Bill," Stan said slowly, wondering if he was making a really big mistake here in asking him... "You got any idea how the hell to get these two seeing eye to eye here?" Because Stan didn't know a hell of a lot about 'Bill Cipher, the crazy triangle demon', but he sure as hell knew some things about the kid who'd been talking his ear off the past few weeks, here and there, on the regular. But that didn't mean that he knew all the crazy demon stuff the kid had gotten up to before he'd punched the demon into pieces inside his head. And that sure as hell didn't mean that he knew what to say about the kid in front of both Ford and the kid's new sister, that wouldn't maybe cause some even bigger problems pretty damn quickly… like an even bigger shouting match between Ford, who didn't want to talk about other dimensions and all the shit he'd lived through that the demon had probably pulled, and Miz, who didn't seem to want to think much of anything she thought was 'bad' about her brother...
But what the kid said next wasn't what Stan had been expecting at all. The kid didn't try and 'define' himself better to any of them. Bill just looked down at Miz, his eyebrows slightly raised, with a slight frown on his face, and he didn't do anything like what Stan had been expecting him to do, at all.
Instead, what he did was say...
"...Your idea of…" Bill paused, as he looked down at his sister. "Your 'morality' is…" and Bill trailed off, his eyes jittering slightly from side-to-side for a moment. "...flat," Bill said next, then seemed to shake himself mentally, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment before correcting himself slightly, saying, "-Ish. It's… flat-ish. Not… flat-flat, or flatter-than-flat, but..." Bill pulled in a breath as he thought. "--It's mostly the same as that Stanford's," Bill said finally, sounding a little odd again, and…
...Bill felt a little bit odd, just left of weird, as it finally occurred to him that this was, in fact, the case. Because after what had happened in that dimension with the human-looking, always-been-human Bill… and in thinking about some of the things that Miz had said to him before in this new context that she'd all just given them now...
Bill's hand twitched upwards slightly on top of her head reflexively, without anything that resembled in any way conscious thought.
Ford stared at Bill, absolutely aghast at Bill's belief that the man-eater's morality was-- "Her morality isn't like mine!" Ford protested. "I don't think that it's funny or a joke to run around killing people!!" he yelled out at them.
"...And neither does she," Bill murmured out, frowning ever so slightly. "She doesn't like it when 'innocents' get hurt," he added, tilting his head as he looked at her, slightly.
Miz nodded. She'd said that very thing when she'd created that Toybox back in that other dimension where demons could do all sorts of awful things to 'not-real' people instead of 'real' people. (Not that Bill had quite gotten into the finer details of philosophy with her on the issues posed by that particular way of thinking back then, or just yet, that 'having a soul' meant it wasn't okay to torture someone and kill them, and 'not having a soul' made anything and everything you did to them just fine... a way of thinking that very closely resembled the way that all demons-from-the-outside thought about the people-playthings here that clearly weren't demonic individuals that were anything like they were at all… but then again, his sister had created all those constructs so perhaps in that way...)
"What?" Ford said, taken aback. Because that clearly wasn't true. If it was, she wouldn't have ever treated him the way that she did! If she did believe that, she never would have ever hurt him! Or the niblings! Or--!
(Stan was watching the kid carefully, because something didn't feel right about this… He'd felt this kind of confusion in the air like this before -- and a missing tension, like it should've been hanging in the air, but wasn't yet -- and when he had...)
Ford shook his head roughly. --Better not to even bother with attacking the most obvious of surface lies, here. He knew Stan would have been able to see through that one easily without any help. "She clearly doesn't know how to act around other people, and doesn't care when she gets it all wrong," Ford told Bill, as if the dream demon didn't know. "--You don't know right from wrong, and don't care about it," Ford insisted, addressing Miz directly, trying to avoid all the flash and noise at the surface of things, to dig down straight to the main issue here instead.
"Yes?" Miz shrugged, agreeing with him without issue. "I don't know anymore what counts as right or wrong. But I do care about it," she told him. "I just… I know that there are some things that make me feel bad when I do them, and it's generally on a case by case basis, okay? That's pretty much all I have to go by," she told him with a huff. "Like, I don't like to harm people who haven't done anything to me, but there are some people who haven't done anything to me that I DO want to harm. Like pedophilic rapists. I like to hunt them down and make them suffer." She let out another huff of breath again. "And from all the things I've seen, I don't think there's a way to even really define a real universal right or wrong, so I just go by how I feel about stuff. Is that really so wrong?" she ended up asking him. Because it wasn't like her dad or Time Baby had really complained all that much about it! (Well, maybe Time Baby did, but her dad certainly hadn't! And he was really good! He would've told her if that was really wrong for her to do... right? He had told her sometimes when she did certain things that she should -Calm down- so clearly he DID have an opinion on what she did!)
Ford was feeling faint as he stood there, and left utterly speechless, as he listened to this. Because hearing this man-eater talk about how she always did what she felt was right, at any given moment, was just...
...wrong. It was wrong, and wrong, and there were universal evils, just as there were universal truths, and if she didn't realize that, then--!
Meanwhile, Bill was thinking heavy, and hard, just then. And something had occurred -- and was occurring -- to him, in waves and wavefronts, though trying to express the information in some sort of easily-relatable-to-humans manner, let alone in causal relationships to each other, was taking him a bit of work, as well.
"You… have been feeling other peoples' emotions, and hearing their thoughts, for a very long time," Bill said slowly to Miz. "That is… likely on average the 'norm' within the standard deviation of the 'good' side of 'good versus evil' morality. Yes? --But is that what YOU want?" he asked her, slowly building up steam. "Is that what you do and still think and feel now, for your own self, after blocking all the rest of everyone else out from your own thoughts and emotions and being? And-- want to keep on feeling, without changing it all again later?" Bill asked her directly, trying to confirm something with her before he went any further.
Miz blinked up at him. "I don't know," she admitted. "I haven't really had…" she frowned. "I don't know yet," she decided. "I'm still learning. And, I don't know what I want to feel or think yet." She'd never really thought about that. She'd just… always gone with whatever it was she was feeling at the moment. The idea of choosing who she wanted to be… that… she'd never really gotten to do that before. Other people had always told her how she was supposed to be. That was 'normal', wasn't it?
Stan glanced over at his brother, who'd been pretty quiet there now for awhile. Ford was standing there, staring at Miz, as she said this. He looked like he was breathing only shallowly, and he was looking a little wide-eyed and pale. Stan slowly put his hand on his brother's shoulder again, but he didn't react to it this time; he didn't even seem to feel it.
"I…" Bill's expression went through several, continually-changing flashes of emotion, and Ford seemed to bristle again and again under Stan's touch. "--thiiiink…"
"--Don't you dare, Bill," Ford ground out almost breathily, with a terrible anger in his eyes as he suddenly realized that, "You're going to ruin her."
And Bill visibly flinched and took a step back away from her in an instant, lifting his hand away from her head completely. (And whatever expression the kid had had slowly-growing on his face just before that? Left his face just as quickly as that, too. Stan frowned a bit, because that had been almost a grin there, but… it hadn't looked like any of the ones Stan had seen out of the kid before, and it worried him that--)
Stan straightened slightly in alarm as he watched this happen, and he felt the immediate increase in tension in his brother's shoulder under where he was holding his hand -- his brother had been surprised by Bill's reaction, too. Moving away from her like that at what Ford had just said to him.
(Hell, so was Stan. That had sounded like a challenge or a command, coming outta Ford like that -- but the kid had reacted instantly to it, almost reflexively, in a really bad way.)
--But then the kid whipped his head around towards Ford after a beat, to glare at him, and if looks could kill-- "I'm NOT going to DO THAT!!" Bill shouted out at him, in that dual-toned high-and-low-pitched voice Stan had only really heard the kid do when he was a triangle before, that now the kid only did when getting that stressed. "She's MY SISTER!!" And… holy shit, the kid really did look seriously freaked out right now, under all the raging anger on top and out on display, because from the look in his eyes and his posture-- "I--" Bill snapped his mouth shut again, then turned away from Ford and opened it again, and before Stan or anyone else could stop him, the kid blurted out, rattled off at her quickly--
"--You're still stuck in that stupid flat karmic cycle, and if your stupid lizard is 'good' and you are registered as its opposite, then you are registered as 'evil', and if you have not been wanting to have those certain things happen, but they still happen anyway, no matter what you do or don't do to try and not-do them--" Bill looked up at her directly, looking irate (but not with her), "--then it's PROBABLY BECAUSE you are 'evil' and what you want is the direct opposite of what karma wants to give you, because of that," Bill told her, while still looking tense. "'Evil' doesn't get what it really wants, EVER, when it comes to that stupid Karma system," Bill told her. "Whether you want that or not, you NEED to disconnect from it NOW, before it turns all of reality against you again, or 'self'-sabotages you even further!! --I WANT you to be ABLE to make YOUR OWN decisions here, and SEE them THROUGH!!! Even if--" Bill cut himself off rather abruptly, looking strained, with his hands curled into slight fists at his sides.
Miz curled in on herself. "How do I do that?" she asked quietly. "I don't want to have to break my bond with dad…"
"You shouldn't HAVE to be his opposite!" Bill told her -- almost yelled out at her, shit; Stan winced. "You shouldn't have to be ANYTHING that you DON'T WANT to be, or DO anything you DON'T WANT to DO!!" Bill's voice was getting higher and higher, and those vibrating weird odd undertones the kid's voice sometimes got were sneaking in there again. "That's NOT right, that's NOT 'fair play', that's-- that's--" (Ford was staring at the kid now, like something was slowly dawning on him, and Stan pressed his hand down on Ford's shoulder a little bit -- not now Ford, not now, c'mon, geez…)
"--But he took me in after the 2nd dimension was destroyed." Miz weakly protested. "And all he's really asked of me is to uphold my pillar and be his opposite. And I still don't really know what that means." Miz shook her head, looking frustrated. "But beyond all that, I didn't actually know for sure if I really was the Bill Cipher of my dimensional set until I met my AXOLOTL. And he… well…" she grimaced. "He said that I wasn't what he was expecting… I was the Bill of my dimensional set, but I wasn't the Bill he'd meant to get." Miz seemed saddened to admit that. "And I don't know, I guess, part of me wanted to be the Bill that maybe he'd wanted. Because I thought that was what he meant when he told me that I was Bill Cipher, but not the right Bill Cipher…"
"--no no NO!" Bill protested. "I've TOLD you BEFORE! You don't have to be anything that someone else WANTS!!" Bill told her, reaching out to take her by the shoulders (and for a moment, Stan almost thought Bill was about to start shaking her, he looked so angry and tense and insane about something). "What other people want isn't IMPORTANT!! --YOU SHOULD BE YOU!!!" Bill told her. "The stupid lizard is-- stupid!! And yours is, TOO!! And the only reason ANYONE EVER tries to tell someone else that they WANT them to be SOMEONE ELSE is--" Bill gritted his teeth. "It's NOT fair to play things that way. It's NOT--"
(It was about this point that Ford was left absolutely speechless again at the sheer hypocrisy he was seeing out on display here, right in front of him…)
"--The only reason that ANYONE, that that stupid lizard would want you to do something like THAT, would be if-- if--" and here, Bill cut himself off with a look of dawning horrified realization. "Would be if-- if-- if--" Bill went completely upright and rigid, as he sounded out and climbed over the logical barrier, and realized -- and then said -- "If it got something out of it, too," Bill breathed out, before looking absolutely livid all over again. Because it was USING her for something, making her DO things that she really DIDN'T WANT TO do, and--
(...And it was about this point that Stan grimly confirmed something that he'd been suspecting for awhile now. The kid always, always down-talked the 'stupid lizard', every damn chance that he got. But when push came to shove? The kid always seemed to also have some sort of a blind spot, when it came to that god-lizard thing of his. Because the kid never seemed to actually think -- all that easily, mind you, and certainly not on his own when the dragon-lady wasn't involved -- that the lizard would actually, actively do anything really, really wrong...)
(...because every single time the dragon-lady told him something seriously messed-up sounding about her lizard, it seemed to bowl the kid over every. Single. Damn. Time.)
(It left Stan feeling almost sorry for the kid. Almost.)
"Dad wouldn't do that." Miz's breath hitched as she trembled. Sure, she might have thought about it as a possibility-- but never seriously. "H-he wouldn't--" her eyes were tearing up and she was trying in vain to keep her voice steady. "--j-just-- he can't just be using me--and even if he was I--" It would hurt… but she'd still accept it. So long as she could be wanted. And… didn't that just make her a fucked up person?
"Everybody wants something," Bill told her, "As long as they keep wanting to be alive. --I want you to BE HAPPY and HAVE FUN," Bill told her, "And--" then he paused, and seemed to realize something as he stared down at her face, and her expression, and he seemed to tense up all over again. "Iiiiiii...(?!)" he said, then seemed to mentally pull himself out and away from whatever hole he'd just about dug himself down into, "--want, that's, --you needed to know this, I-- I-- you weren't being happy before, when these things were happening, they keep on happening, it's-- I'm not making this badly-any-worse, not that kind of worse!!-- not!!-- I'm NOT just trying to shift around the feeling-bad either-- I'm trying to make things better for YOU--!! I am!! --I-I --If you know this NOW then all the things can be better-- the better kind of worse-- sooner-- better-- more-- it's-- it's just a little bad now, for-for EVERYTHING being better than just-bad almost-right-away not-too-much-later--!!" and his voice was starting to rise all over again as Bill verbally (and physically) flailed (his arms and hands) about, trying to backtrack without backtracking what he was trying to do here for her, that he'd just realized was obviously upsetting and hurting her, because he was the one telling her this...
And Stan wanted to interrupt, to get Bill to back down for now. Because Ford was upset as hell already, and Miz was crying now, and Bill looked like he didn't know how to handle this in any way, shape, or form, at all with her...
...so Stan did. He let go of his brother's shoulder to take the three steps forward that he needed to, to put his own hand down on top of Bill's head.
"I-- I… I..." Bill wound down, looking three kinds of miserable as he looked down at his sister and his shoulders slumped a little bit in place. His hands dropped down to hang at his sides, and...
...Stan took over for him, before things got any worse here. "You're wanting to tell your sister the truth, because a little hurt now means a lot less hurt overall later, before things maybe get any worse, even worse later," Stan said for the kid, trying to translate into normal-people-speak what he was pretty sure that the kid was actually trying to tell his little sister, here. "You aren't trying to hurt her--" Stan winced, as Bill literally shoved himself back against Stan's chest, physically trying to back himself away from and not touch the dragon-lady again. Those two hands he'd been flailing about with, and had hovering on top of one of her shoulders, barely even touching her at the end of everything there? He'd just ripped himself away from her in an instant, like she'd been on fire and he'd been the one causing the fire.
"--Nope, wrong thing, kid. --You two, hug it out. No talking for awhile. C'mon," Stan said, moving the hand on the kid's head down to the demon-kid's back and pushing -- then shoving him forward, telling him, "You're not gonna freaking break her by touching her, kid," --until the kid actually did it. "Yup. Good job, there, kid," Stan told him after the kid had finally, and with almost-glacial slowness finished wrapping his arms around his little sister again, and his little sister had buried her head in the kid's chest and wrapped her arms around him almost-immediately right back... and then, and only then, Stan moved the hand at the kid's back, back up to the top of the kid's head, to let it stay on top of him there. (And Stan glanced back over his shoulder at Ford, who was staring at this, looking a little grey almost, and… he saw his brother lower his head slightly and raise a hand, to pass it over his face.)
Stan sighed. (...Yeah, he'd called it. This whole thing had been headed for all kinds of screwed-up, there. Hell.)
Miz clung to Bill and muffled her sobs into his chest. "D-daddy w-wo-wouldn't-- he can't-- why--" she didn't want to believe it. But what reason would Ax even have for-- why?!
(Of course no one would want her without wanting to use her somehow.)
Stan was watching his brother and Ford seemed to have a lot on his mind, none of it good.
And then Ford slowly raised his head, and lowered his hand away from his face, and said to Bill, in a very quiet but horribly angry tone, "You did it to me."
('Oh, shit,' thought Stan, as he turned his head to stare at his brother. Not now. He didn't have a handle on the demons right now, not really--)
Bill turned his head towards him slowly, and Ford clenched his jaw. "You never treated me like myself." His fists were clenched at his sides and his chest felt like he was being stabbed in it, all over again. "You were always waiting and waiting for something -- watching, and waiting, and-- did you really think that I didn't notice?!" Ford said, his voice rising. "That I didn't try?" To try to be what you wanted?? "And then, after-- after the portal-- I--" Ford was shaking in place at this point. "You never stopped trying to make me into--" what you wanted! "You--"
--It hurt. It hurt so much. To see that Bill was actually capable of this, of-- of trying to care for another full-blown and fully-independent individual-- capable of actually caring about another different and completely-separate person than the demon himself-- to see that Bill was-- it was-- this was-- so wrong-- no-- no-- why her and not him-- why wasn't he the one to deserve-- why-- wasn't he good enough to be the one to deserve--?! no-- he couldn't-- this wasn't-- that man-eater was horrible-- this wasn't fair--
--why hadn't Bill cared about him?! Why-- why had he refused to-- why couldn't he just-- what was the difference here?! Why her and not him?!? --What was so wrong with him, that Bill didn't want him--?! But the demon liked and wanted her--
But Ford stopped talking at the look on Bill's face. The confused look on Bill's face.
--And that just made Ford even angrier.
"--Your brother has collapsed nine different dimensions to-date!" Ford snapped out at Miz next. (Trying to go for the throat. Trying to hurt Bill back. Because if he couldn't take Bill away from her, then he would simply do the opposite--) (Trying to get her away from Bill Cipher before--) "And destabilized and then taken over thousands of others!" Because if she really had any sense of decency in her at all, then she should be horrified by the fact that-- "He's not a good--"
"--Fifteen," Bill interrupted him, glaring. (Though it wasn't his usual burning-hot glare. This one looked a hell of a lot tired and older to Stan, and...)
"--What?" Ford said, halting in the middle of his tirade.
"I've destabilized and collapsed fifteen dimensions," Bill corrected him, in a tired, yet 'factual' tone of voice. "And five of the ones you've heard about, I took credit for, after killing everyone who did it, everyone who was involved, everyone who knew anyone who was involved, and everyone who knew any of them. And then burned down anything and everything that any of all of them had ever touched," Bill stated almost emotionlessly.
"...Why?" Miz asked him, looking up at him with a strained expression on her face. Though it seemed more from her crying than any sort of negative judgment towards his actions.
Bill looked down at his little sister, and he said:
"Because it's too dangerous for anyone else to know. I can't trust anyone else with it."
"You--" Ford stared at him, almost blue-screened for a moment at what Bill had just admitted there, at the utter evil and depravity of it…
...and then Ford let out a dark chuckle, as he realized the real reason why Bill had done it.
"--You didn't want to risk anyone else learning how to finish collapsing that space you were hiding in!" Ford grated out, irate that this was Bill's reason for so much death. This greed of and for unshared knowledge, only for him to have and to hold--
"--I was keeping the rest of those demons from finding it out!" Bill snapped out at him, just as mad, if not moreso. "Once they learn something, it spreads like wildfire between them -- if any of the EVER learn how to do it, it would NEVER STOP!!!" Bill told him, looking downright furious, "They'd take down EVERYTHING!" Bill yelled out at him, and it brought Stanford up short.
"I haven't collapsed any dimensions, that I know of… just destroyed the 2nd by accident and created the 3rd…" Miz muttered out, as she wiped at her eyes. "But you wouldn't have done such a thing unless you had a reason for it." She didn't let go of Bill though. "It would be a waste of time and energy if you didn't have a reason." She understood her brother well enough by this point to know this.
"Yes, but he doesn't care about that," Bill said, with a 'tch', "To him, his too-flat 'morality' doesn't ever let him 'justify' that sort of thing, ever, for any reason--"
And then Bill realized what he'd just said (and, further, what might actually really be happening now, given the line of reasoning he'd just followed, continued on from before, about how Miz's 'morality' was flat-ish in almost exactly the same way as that Stanford's) and Bill immediately stopped talking, stopped short, almost freezing in place.
Miz sniffled. "Everyone has some reason for doing what they do. There are things that can be justified or forgiven. And there are also things that can't…" She rubbed her face against Bill's chest and asked quietly, "What was your reason?"
And Bill suddenly got the most pained and painful look that Stan had ever seen on anybody in his life--
And Stan felt an odd sort of muted almost-panic, as he watched the kid tilt his head back all the way back on his neck, and slowly snap his eyes shut. And hold them like that.
The kid wasn't looking. He was refusing to look. That was completely the opposite of anything and everything that Stan had ever seen or heard out of the kid to-date; the kid always looked at everything, no matter what. He didn't freaking avoid--
But the kid was. That was exactly what the kid was doing; Stan wasn't seeing things. The kid looked very pained. --And scared, Stan realized, more scared than Stan remembered seeing him, even when everything had been burning down around them both, inside his own brain.
And the kid just stopped still and didn't seem to (barely) manage to do anything more than breathing, just then.
"...Brother?" Miz tried again, slowly tilting her head to look up at him.
"...Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii…" Stan finally heard the kid let out, almost softly.
"What, nothing to say, Bill?" Ford slowly gritted out, fists still clenched at his sides. (Stan shot him a look, because really?!)
Bill slowly pulled in a breath at this. He still had his head tilted back. He still had his eyes closed.
And then... he didn't. His head slowly came down; he slowly, ever so slowly opened his eyes. He looked down at Miz, and his expression was...
--"Thank you for what? For destroying our dimension? For killing… how many people have died, Bill?"--
...how many people have died, Bill?
"I'd have preferred to die without seeing any of this! I'd have preferred to go without knowing what kind of monster you'd become!"--
I'd have preferred to die without seeing any of this!
Bill still forced himself to meet her gaze.
That wasn't him.
That wasn't him.
He wasn't him.
He wasn't him.
--He wasn't that MORON who had screwed up and killed his own brother!
No. HE was the one who Looked before he leapt, and that Liam had NOT been HIS brother!!
HIS brother would listen to him! His sibling would listen to him!! Because--
Miz blinked, worried now. "Brother?"
"--Cause does NOT always come before effect," Bill told his little sister. "I WILL fix everything, and then it will NEVER have needed to ever have been fixed in the first place." Bill took in another slow breath. "I haven't fixed those dimensions yet. By the time I'm done, none of them will have ever crashed again in the first place. I will BREAK causality, too," Bill told her. He straightened up a bit, looking down at her a little more fully. "The math will take a LONG time to explain. I promise I will make it all work," he told her.
He told her everything that he could, in such a terribly short moving span of time. He told her what he could, in this stupid thoroughly-too-limited dumb human language that they were speaking, and he explained it to her like he would have tried to explain it to his brother, if he'd ever planned on trying to bring him back before everything had all and forever been fixed in a way that it had never needed fixing in the first place before, first.
His brother, who he trusted. His brother, who was so very much smarter than him.
His brother, who would get it. His brother, who would understand.
"You're going to 'fix' it," Ford practically breathed out, in absolute incredulity and shock. "You…" Was this some kind of joke? Did Bill truly believe that--?! "--You can't fix what you did!" Ford yelled out at him.
"I can fix it, and I WILL!" Bill turned in place and yelled out at his damn Zodiac. Because he NEVER--
"Like hell!" Ford yelled back in pure disbelief.
"Ford--" Stan began, unconsciously dropping his hand away from the kid's head, as he stared at his brother.
But Ford shook his head and kept going. "Even if you could somehow 'fix' all of that, somehow," Ford snarled out at Bill, as if Bill could just wave a magic wand and make everything somehow all better?!?! "--'Fixing it' -- even if anyone was ever stupid enough to believe that somehow your idea of fixing anything would somehow be a good idea -- won't make what you did any less wrong!" Ford spat out at the demon. "It won't make you any less of a heartless, horrible, dimension-destroying MONSTER!"
"You aren't LISTENING TO ME!!" Bill yelled back at him, irate. "You NEVER LISTEN!!!" (And Stan winced hard at the mix of emotion in the kid's voice now, because that was anything but--) "It WON'T HAVE HAPPENED in the FIRST PL--!!"
"Kid--" Stan tried to cut in. (But it was too late. Far, far too late. It was until later that Stan would realize when everything had gone completely off the rails -- and that had been when he'd asked the kid to help him try and get Miz and Ford to see eye to eye. ...Well, the kid had sure done almost that. ...in the very worst way imaginable...)
"You can't just roll back everything and make it all never happen!" Ford yelled back at him again, really starting to lose it this time. "People didn't just lose their lives, they lost their families!" Ford yelled back at him. "They ended up refugees in other dimensions!" Ford gritted out, calling him out on the truth of the matter. "You wouldn't just have to rewind time in all of those dimensions, once you magically made them all whole again -- you'd have to rewind everything, everywhere, across every dimension that's ever existed!!" Ford told him.
And the last thing Ford had been expecting Bill Cipher to say to that was an exasperated, "YES!!!"
Ford stared at the insane dream demon in absolute shock.
And he wasn't certain whether he felt more terrified or angry or just out-and-out scared, as he told Bill, "I will remember it. --Are you going to roll me back into nonexistence, too!?" really, demanded it out of him, shaking in place as he said it.
"NO!!" was Bill response back to him, even more angry than before.
"Then YOU CAN'T DO IT!!" Ford yelled back at him, while feeling like everything was finally falling apart around him. Worse than Weirdmageddon, worse than anything else he'd ever felt and had to live through before. Because he'd known, he'd known that Bill was insane, but this, this was--!! "It's impossible for anyone to--!!"
"YOU--" Bill began, but he shook his head roughly, and then turned away from Ford "--AREN'T IMPORTANT HERE," Bill said, as he looked back down at his own sister (and leaving Ford going absolutely white with shock for a moment). "YOU understand me, right?!" he asked her, cupping the bottom of her jaw oh-so-gently with his hands. Because it wasn't that Stanford that mattered, here, to him -- that Stanford wasn't the one he was trying to convince, to explain to, to--
"No, she doesn't!" Ford yelled out at him. "Because she actually knows that killing other people is WRONG!!!" Ford was breathing heavily now, as he turned to Miz. "If you have any ounce of decency in you at all--" he began.
"SHUT! UP!!!" Bill yelled back at him, dropping his hands away from Miz's face. (And Stan's eyes went a little wide as he saw a glow start up, under Bill's skin. A blue glow.)
(And it was about this point that Stan realized that the kid's hair was completely black now-- all of it was black, no blue in sight-- no, fuck, it wasn't just black and staying black, the part that had been blue before was starting to turn red on the kid, somehow.)
Stan was tense, so much so that his neck ached. "Ford--! For fuck's sake, shut up and just let the kid talk to his sister!"
"She's NOT his sister! He doesn't even HAVE--"
But then Ford shut up on his own. Stan didn't know why he did, but he did it.
(Ford stopped talking because he finally saw how Bill's coloring had changed. His hair was red; his eyes were red in their irises, and glowing blue in the sclera. And he saw how Bill himself was starting to glow under the barrier under his skin with a vast amount of suppressed energy despite this. Which shouldn't have been possible, not if--)
(--unless--)
Ford just stopped talking and stared, as he realized that Bill was--
"...brother?" Came Miz's voice. Small and… afraid? Stan snapped his eyes back over to her, looking down at her over the kid's shoulder, at how she was worriedly frowning at all the kid's glowing and the red and--
(Mis knew the signs of an explosion when she saw one. Brother's might be different from hers, but the basics were the same.)
And the three of them watched as Bill seemed to stop for a moment, and take stock of himself…
...and then Bill closed his eyes and seemed to hold himself in place and just concentrate. He pulled in a deep breath, in through his mouth...
...and the glow under his skin slowly faded on the outbreath. On the next deep breath in, his hair shifted back down through black to blue again, before he even finished blowing his breath out, like watching a sunset reverse itself in high-speed motion in reverse.
Stan realized he'd been holding his own breath only when he stopped holding it. When he realized that he'd started holding it when he'd started hearing that angry humming-buzzing noise that had been emanating not from the kid's mouth or throat, but coming out as some kind of vibration through his skin. One that the kid was no longer doing.
Stan waited for the kid to take in and out a third breath, just for kicks and for safety, and then he said, "You got things under control there, kiddo?"
"I'm fine," was Bill's terse response, as he slowly opened his eyes back up again. "I'm not going to ever hurt my sister, vessel or not. Not even her vessel," he repeated flatly, before looking back down at her.
And then Bill said, a little more haltingly. "I… should not have to collapse any more dimensions again anymore. Now that I am out. --It will take time to explain everything else to you in enough detail for you to understand why I did what I had to do, more fully. But I promise that I can explain it all to you, to make it make sense. I didn't do it for no reason. And I wouldn't have done it if not-doing it hadn't meant I was never getting out. I had to get out. --I needed to get out first, before I could fix everything. Now I can fix it, but it's going to take time until it's never-happened again like it all will be," he told her. And then Bill took the plunge. "Can you trust me, to wait to 'reserve judgement' on me and all of what I did, until I have explained? Everything?"
(Stan stared a bit, and glanced over and back at his brother. The kid didn't talk about trust often, and when he did… it was a clusterfuck, let's be honest here. But the kid was sounding almost like a grown-up adult, and almost actually some kind of sane, as he said it, the way he'd just said it here.)
(Ford took one small step away from him, backwards. One odd, almost spasmodic step away from what he was seeing and hearing here, right in front of him… because why wasn't she… why wasn't she really, already ready to… why wasn't she already…)
And Miz thought about that. Thought about how many people had been sacrificed for this. For Bill's plans. For his goals. Everyone he killed. Everyone he hurt. She thought about all that and...
"I'm not happy." She glared up at him before her expression softened. "But I will trust you." She sounded a little resigned, and a touch annoyed, but she hadn't stepped away from Bill, hadn't rejected him.
(Ford looked like he'd just been punched in the gut as he realized that... Bill had just....)
Bill pulled in a shaky breath, and he let it out slowly.
"I'm… not happy either," Bill told her with brutal honesty, and a shaking voice, dropping his head a little bit towards her. "But I will trust you, too."
(And now, Ford was clutching one hand at his chest, fisted above and at his heart... though he didn't seem aware he was doing it, as he stared…)
Miz sighed, not looking happy at all.
Despite that, Miz reached up and patted the side of Bill's head, now that it was lower and she could reach, and had her other arm wrapped around his back. "I'm willing to listen. When you're ready, and able to explain. I won't hate you. I love you and I'll always love you. Even if I might be mad at you for a while," she promised.
"Love you, too," Bill said somewhat stiltedly, almost as stiltely and strangely as he'd had trouble hugging her before this tonight, and even though Stan saw him flinch at the 'being mad at you' mention, his breathing began evening out slowly; his body slowly relaxed. "Love you," Stan heard Bill repeat, like he was trying it out all over again. "Love you, love you, always. Always my sister, forever." He breathed out softly, "...no take-backs, forever…"
Ford turned away from them, expressionless now, and walked right out of the room. Stan watched him go and grimaced.
The kid was breathing easy again -- relieved, almost -- though definitely tired as hell, and Stan took a minute to say, "Yeah, we're gonna stop here. ...Pick this one up again a hell of a lot later," Stan said, taking a step back and away to the side, completely disengaging from the kid. "Pretty sure you're right about the definitions thing there, Miz," Stan added as he turned away from the two demon-kids, "You two had better pick that one back up upstairs yourselves in the attic with each other first, and then talk to me all about it, before you even think about talkin' to Ford again, you hear me?" he said, as hurried off to leave the room after Ford.
"Yes. Yes. Yes," Bill murmured out, in answer to each of Stanley's question-command-queries, as he breathing slowed down and evened out further.
Miz nodded at Stan. "Okay." She almost told him, 'You should go talk to Ford. He doesn't look alright.' But Stan was already out of sight.
---
Stan didn't have a hell of a lot of brainpower to spare for anyone other than his brother right now, but he did hope that the dragon-lady would get the kid upstairs without too much trouble. The kids were already in bed and damn well had better have stayed there, so they shouldn't be coming downstairs and walkin' in on any of that anytime soon, but...
...Hell, Stan could only handle one, maybe two things at a time, damnit. There was only one of him here, y'know. (And sure, Dipper had told him about how his messed up photocopy machine worked, but Stan wasn't going to go off fixing that stupid thing up, to try that one all over again.)
It'd be fine. (It'd have to be.) Kids knew better than to come down at night after some yelling.. They weren't going to set the kid off that badly again, anyway, even if they did. (And it wasn't like he couldn't come running if--)
No, damnit. Focus. One thing at a time. First things first, no distractions.
Stan came to a stop in front of Ford's bedroom door, and knocked on it only briefly before turning the doorknob and shoving his way in.
He found Ford immediately, his back turned towards the door, curled up on his bed, with his knees pulled up and in to his chest.
"...Ford," Stan said slowly. He closed the door behind him, and as he approached, he realized...
Ford had that hand still clutched to his chest. He was curled in around himself like… like that hurt. Like something there hurt.
Ford had his eyes closed, and he was breathing almost careful-like. Like it almost hurt to breathe. ...or like he was worried something would start to hurt, if he breathed the wrong way.
Stan carefully sat down on the side of the bed, and placed his hand on Ford's shoulder.
Ford didn't respond.
"...Ford," Stan said slowly. "I don't know what's going on with you, but the kid's a damn sun's worth of energy, minimum. I can't have him going supernova on us, right in the middle of the damn house," Stan told his brother, just as slowly. "...Okay?"
"He's..."
"Huh?" Stan said. His brother had breathed out something, but it had been too damn low for his hearing aid to pick up.
He saw his brother pull in another breath, and...
"He's more than a star's worth of energy. And Bill is physically here," Ford said quietly, eyes still closed, still curled in on himself on his bed, with that fist -- his right hand -- pressed up against his chest.
"Yeah," Stan said. "He is." Stan pulled in a breath. "And I'm pretty sure he could burn through that damn anchor like nothin' doing that, but it'd kill all the rest of us…"
"...in the process," Ford finished for him, shifting slightly in place.
"Yeah," said Stan, feeling a little uncomfortable.
There was a long silence of about a minute or so. And then Ford said:
"...How long have you known."
Stan blinked. "About the 'going supernova' thing? --Kid threatened it on the morning of the second day, right before I told him I wasn't jailing him or nothin'. Don't think he was kidding around about that." Stan scratched the side of his cheek. "All I really got outta that was that he didn't want to do it if he didn't have to, for some reason, 'cause if he did, he already would have done it instead of just tellin' me about it. ...Hell, kid didn't even know about the anchor at the time," Stan muttered out at the last, with a bit of a wince.
Ford curled in on himself a bit more, and he let out a soft, almost breathy laugh.
"This is why you're not worried about him," Ford said, and Stan wasn't sure if that was just pure hysteria, or the hysterical laughter under that talking, or something else completely different. "This. Because he didn't 'blow us all up' on day one."
"Day two," Stan said. "Wasn't that late in the afternoon when you first grabbed him, that time. That day counts as a day, too."
Ford let out another wheezing sort of laugh, and raised his other hand up to his face, to cover it.
He shook a little in place, and Stan rubbed his hand over Ford's shoulder for awhile, waiting while his brother rode whatever the hell this was out on his own.
...except Stan really hated doin' it like this, and he was fed up enough with everything that he just shoved himself up and over--
"--W-what are you doing?" Ford blurted out, flustered, as Stan climbed into -- okay, yeah, on top of the covers of -- the bed with him, and wrapped an arm over his brother's shoulder and chest.
"It's a hug. Prescribed by me," Stan told him as belligerently as he could, hugging him a little closer. "Don't like it? Deal with it."
(He'd hated having to tell his brother to stop and shut up out there; 'I'm sorry' didn't fucking cut it. He hadn't handled that one for him at all, and he'd seen Ford getting hurt just listening to the two of them; he'd let Ford go through the wringer, not having any idea how to stop it, and… Words just didn't fucking cut it. Stan did actions, and he was damn well hugging his brother over this. And if he got punched for it, then, well, so be it.)
He felt and heard his brother let out another shaky, more hysterical sounding laugh at 'his antics' this time -- yeah, well, what else was new.
...except his brother didn't turn around and punch him, or try to shove him up off of the bed.
Instead, his brother grabbed him by the arm he had over his shoulder--
--and pulled him in even harder. Closer in. It, uh… kind of surprised him. A lot.
"Uh, yeah," Stan said, feeling a little off-center all over again -- though this one felt a lot different than the off-center he'd been feeling before. "Right." He tried shoving his other arm under Ford's side, and his brother actually shifted around a little bit and let him do it. "Great. ...Good talk there. Glad you're with me on this one," Stan said, just to have something to say.
He felt his brother give out a huff, so he decided to go for broke and wrapped himself around his brother in a real damn hug for once, and… and his brother slowly relaxed into it. (Holy shit.)
...Stan let out a breath and knocked his forehead lightly into the back of his brother head, while he was at it.
"You're a crazy, dangerous lunatic, you know that?" Stan muttered out. (He couldn't friggin help it. His brother had damn near made the dumb demon go supernova on them just by talking at him too much.)
"So I've been told," Ford murmured out in reply, and Stan let out a huff of breath at that, because he was pretty sure that he was the only one who'd ever called him that, lately. Mostly over all of that dangerous 'weirdness' stuff of his. But...
Stan felt his brother relax in his arms, and start to breathe a little easier, and he decided...
...to just let things lie. Talking right now wasn't gonna help. Ford was exhausted. Emotionally, or whatever, sure, but exhausted was exhausted.
(And Stan wasn't really feeling up for getting in yet another fight with his brother again, either. Or any misunderstandings. Or any more yelling. Or arguing. Or...)
So Stan just lay there, and held onto his brother, and...
...he tried to feel like everything was just fine and… 'at peace', he guessed. Like his brother had used to say to him on the boat a few times.
'At peace.' Somethin' like that would be really great right about now, Stan thought to himself, as he lie there and hugged him and breathed, just like his brother was doing, and trying to do.
And Ford lay there himself, with his brother in his arms, and he tried not to think too hard about forgiveness and anger. Because if a demon-like man-eater could love Bill Cipher, and Bill Cipher might actually be capable of loving someone else in return…
(Was it possible that he could still end up having this, too? Even after everything that he had already done… that no-one could ever begin to be forgiven for…
(...was it really at all possible to just be forgiven? Just like that? To still be able to be loved by someone, even if they were also awful? Even, and despite everything he had done… and had done to him--)
---
Miz got Bill back up to the attic without incident. She was relieved for that, at least. Bill was still clinging to her a bit (arms wrapped around her shoulders from behind as they walked) nervously all the while, and Miz let him. She'd been pretty much the same with Xanthar sometimes, and for a few weeks after Ammy got shot...
"Are you okay?" Miz asked when they both finally settled down on some pillows.
Bill breathed for a bit, and then he finally let out a small laugh and said, "...are you still mad at me?"
Miz was quiet for awhile, waiting. And Bill sighed out a bit, knowing it wasn't going to be that easy. He shifted a bit in place uncomfortably, and breathed a bit more, and then finally said next, "It's going to take a long time to explain everything to you."
"I know," Miz said. And she couldn't see how it would ever be fully explained. Even if he'd been desperate to get out, why had the only solution he saw been the death of billions? There could have-- must have been another way...
"One trillion years is a long time," Bill told her next.
"I know," Miz told him, with a nod. Somehow, she doubted this was going to be easy for him, no matter how it all turned out. If he really didn't have a good answer for everything, and she pointed that out to him, what would he do? And if he didn't listen to her when she knew he was wrong… she didn't like to think that she might not be able to forgive him, but that was looking like a real possibility, and...
"...I want to see your show, right here and now," Bill told her next, startling her a bit. "The show you saw. I want to see it."
Miz regarded him for a bit, worrying a little. "Will you be… alright with watching it?" she asked, not wanting to upset him (more than he'd already been).
Bill nodded, then shook his head. "I--" He paused. Would the show show anything at all about what had happened during any of all of those collapses? Miz had implied that the show that she'd seen hadn't actually shown all that much about that cartoon demon at all, but... "I can say 'stop' if I need to stop for… awhile. I..." He swallowed. He had no idea how far back it went, in whatever it went into for the 'Bill Cipher, triangle demon' character she'd seen in that show, or how much any of it might talk about Liam, but…
"This is important," Bill told her. "I can't… fix everything-else yet, but if I know this, then I can help you with…" he trailed off. But he didn't give up. His little sister might be angry with him, but he couldn't let that stop him from doing what he could; he had to focus on what she still needed, right now. And earlier, she'd said that she'd felt 'trapped' by all those 'fixed points'. She didn't want to do those things, at least some of them, whatever they were, so he had to know what they were to try and help her out. Because that was what a good big brother did; they helped their littler sibling(s) out.
Miz leaned against his side, interlocking their hands together. "Okay." she said. "Though, the show doesn't tell us much about Bill's past at all, I got more of that kind of thing from the writer's social media or panels where he answered questions…" and Liam was from a fanfic, of all things!
Bill blinked at this. "He put on the show?" Bill asked her of "That... other Bill?..." he asked her, still blinking, and now a bit (thoroughly) lost.
Miz looked at Bill, and then giggled slightly -- she couldn't help it. "He, the writer, Alex. He's the human who wrote the story down and made it into a cartoon. He also voiced multiple characters in the show, including Bill, Stan and Glasses." she told him (to which Bill replied with a "Hm..."). "But he mentioned the book Flatland in a roundabout way in one of his Q&A sessions, and had stated that Bill didn't have the best relationship with his family…"
"--Brothers and sisters aren't family," Bill told her quickly, then frowned. "Unless we're going by Stanley's definition there."
"Not sure what definition he meant during that Q&A." Miz shrugged. "But the show itself only followed the Pines during last summer. Anything else was information I got from extra content made surrounding the show. Not a lot has happened yet since my timeline is still pretty far back, but the UFO crashed and created the valley, so that's one thing to check off the list." Miz shrugged.
Bill looked at her, and then he said to her, almost suspiciously, "...You said that 'the 2'nd dimension burning down' was a fixed point." He frowned. "That happened before last summer…" so… "That wasn't part of the show. Was it?"
"There was a point in the show where Bill talked about the 2nd dimension, and an image of it on-screen burned. It could have been literal or a metaphor, but either way, my dimension burned."
Bill thought about this with a slight frown on his face.
"Start with that, then show me everything that you remember seeing in the order that you saw it in," Bill told her. Because if he was going to help her get around the Karmic system in her dimensional set… "This is a worst-case scenario. The worst kind of worst-case. I want to know what will maybe happen -- or TRY to happen, that you think will happen -- if we can't disconnect you from things properly, over there." He needed to know what he was going to be helping her to fight.
"...I can play the whole series, maybe fast-forward some parts…" Miz turned to face the wall and held out her free hand, the other was still holding Bill's, and projecting a screen. Well, movie marathon, here we go.
"--No," Bill told her. "Don't fast-forward anything. I want to see it the way that you saw it," Bill told her carefully. He didn't want to miss any small detail out that she herself had seen. He was in a human-ish body right now, and... "I can… try to be even lower in this stupid human-ish body for this?" he offered. He didn't really like the idea of doing that, not one bit, let alone actually doing it all that much, but if he actually tried taking full advantage of that...
"Well, we might have to stop and take a food break. But I can show you exactly what I saw." Miz told him, moving her fingers and getting the screen up and running, paused for now as she waited for the go ahead.
"That's fine," Bill said to her, "We have food up here." And with that, he let himself sink into the pillow-nest a bit more.
"Okay." Miz nodded.
And a nostalgic melody began to play as the theme song appeared on the screen.
---
PERTIMBANGAN PENCIPTA 
Mlzuum4
Mlzuum4 Sorry for the long wait, I had some issues to deal with