Miz glanced over. What a complicated mess of feelings. She paused to consider it before flicking her fingers, making a soft snap, and gathering some loose soil together to form a large stuffed animal.
Hearing the soft snap had Bill suddenly pulling his arms away from his face. He remembered in a rush that Miz was there with him and that she could feel absolutely EVERYTHING that he was feeling just then. "--Put on your headband," he told Miz shakily. He had no idea how well he was or wasn't regulating his energy self at the moment anymore, or his emotions on top of that, and what she was or wasn't actually able to feel coming off of him. But he knew she had to be feeling SOMETHING, because she HAD been able to feel what he'd been feeling before, out in the forest. So if his emotions were spiking any higher than--!! ...he didn't want to think about that.
Miz slipped it back on and blinked at the mild disorientation before showing Bill the doll she made. "Here big brother, it's got velcro along the neck. So you can rip it's head off, put it back on and rip it off again." She held the doll out for him.
Bill stared at it for a moment, not comprehending. Then his eyes jittered side-to-side slightly, and suddenly it occurred to him that the thing she was holding out in front of him was really just a small pillow. Once Bill had equated it to that... Bill reached out, snatched it out of her hand, and pulled it in to his chest as he rolled over onto his side and curled up around it.
He brought the side of it up to his mouth and bit into it quickly and ferociously. Multiple times. While making cut-off growling noises at it. Miz nibbled on her cookies and waited, trading out hearing for taste (in her headband) for the moment.
Robbie was not quite hiding behind a gravestone watching this. --He was being smart about things, okay? No reason to get blasted or turned into stone again by the triangle or his sister for no reason. He could just, y'know, wait here for a minute while they both calmed down... and then go and piss them off. Yeah, great plan, Robbie. He shakily sat down on the ground behind his gravestone cover and hoped they wouldn't notice him before he wanted them to. (...If he wanted them to.)
After awhile, Bill stopped biting the doll and more or less completely collapsed against the ground, breathing heavily. He was still shaking slightly, but it was more on-again off-again light shivering than hard shaking. Miz tossed the last cookie into her mouth and swapped out taste for hearing again. Looked like Bill was done with his minor tantrum for now.
"I'm not being a very good big brother," Bill muttered out quietly. He hadn't been trying to help her figure out her empathic senses better; instead he'd taken her singing. And he hadn't started working on her broken-Bill problem really at all yet.
"You're being a fine big brother." Miz assured him. "You're still new to this. You were the little brother with Liam, right?" she sat back.
"Yes," Bill said miserably, curling up around the doll a little more and curling his fingers into it. He missed him, he missed him, he missed him. ('Liam?' thought Robbie.)
"Being the older sibling is hard. I had two younger sisters and a younger brother. I know how it is," she told him. "But the thing is, you're still my brother. And as your sister, I say you're a fine big brother." Miz had always been the oldest child. It was really nice to be doted on for once. Time Baby didn't count since he'd never done anything brotherly for her.
Bill made a soft chittering noise that sounded almost painfully worried, and, dude, Robbie knew that he should not be hearing this. If they found out, he was so dead...
Unless...
...Oh, yeah. He could USE this.
Miz scooted a little closer, not reaching for Bill, waiting for him to come to her, if he needed it. She liked hugs now (craved them), after having her friends help her work through her fear of physical touch. She knew it helped a lot when her friends let her know they were there, where she could seek out affection if she wanted, but they let HER choose if and when she did so. Miz waited. If Bill needed her, she would be here. Seeing Bill so sad made all her 'Big Sister' instincts rear up.
Bill finally started to settle down. He not quite painfully rolled back over onto his back and blinked, realizing how much closer Miz was to him now. ...Did she want to hug him again?
"HEY!" they both heard, and Miz and Bill turned their heads to see Robbie stand up over at a nearby tombstone. He was trembling a bit (all he really wanted to do was run away in the opposite direction) but he still stumbled his way closer (but not TOO close).
"If you're gonna say something stupid, do yourself a favor and walk away now," Miz growled softly. Bill was vulnerable right now. She wasn't going to allow this idiot to try anything.
Bill let out a huff. He shivered slightly. "No," he said to her, slowly sitting up. "My Zodiac. He's here; I'll listen."
Robbie swallowed. "Uh," he said, because he was not expecting that. He shifted from foot to foot. "You, uh, you play pretty good-- no, wait, I mean--" Robbie winced and shook his head, looking angry with himself. He pulled his hands out of his hoodie pockets and clenched them at his sides. "I mean," he began again, "You leave my parents alone!" he told Bill, pointing at him. "You better not kill them or anything, or I'll--"
"--Yes," said Bill, which left Robbie stopping, blinking at him, and going, "Uh, what?"
"I said 'yes'," Bill said. "I left your parents alone. I didn't kill them."
Robbie sort of stared at him. "I, uh, I mean... like, if you get angry or... something..." And now he was feeling weird and confused again.
"I was angry," Bill told him, leaning forward a bit, then back a bit, shifting in place. "So I left. I didn't kill them."
"Uh," said Robbie. "Right." Great. So... now what?
Miz was trying to relax, filtering out the emotions she'd picked up from everyone and sighing as she converted them into pure energy. "Well, if that's all." She glanced at Robbie. "Was there anything else you needed?" Her eyes had turned yellow with demonic slit pupils as she stared him down.
Robbie stared at the two of them (barely holding back a shiver at the girl's eyes). Should he ask for more? He hadn't even gotten to threaten the demon yet. "I, uh, don't want you killing them ever. My parents."
"I don't like them," Bill said. "You don't like them."
"Hey!" Robbie complained, getting angry again. "They're still my parents!" And then he leaned back on his heels and almost turned and ran away at the pissed-off angry look that suddenly dropped across the demon's face for a couple of seconds there. (To him, Bill was way scarier than Miz, even when she did the thing with the cool-looking demon eyes.)
"Make them not talk to me, and I won't feel like killing them," was what Bill told him next.
Robbie twitched. "I... what?" It took him a couple seconds, as he remembered how to breathe again. "Uh, yeah. Okay." ...Hey, what else was he going to say to that? Miz snorted. "Just tell your parents that they make Bill uncomfortable. That's how you try to keep them from talking to other people."
"That won't work. It's never worked." Robbie groused, stuffing his hands in his hoodie pockets again. "They just try and talk at you until they think you're okay with whatever, and everything's fine." He looked away from them. "Maybe I can… I dunno, tell them that you're allergic to them or something. Like, demon allergies."
Miz twitched. "Well… technically… I kinda would be if I stayed around them too long. Overdosing on happiness CAN happen. I threw up once... it ended up creating a planet... that was distressing..." She frowned as she remembered that strange orange alien she'd met. A shame she couldn't stay near him, he seemed nice... which was the issue.
It was Bill's turn to twitch. "Sorry," he said, a little miserably. He hadn't realized exposure to 'happiness' was that bad for her, before. He should have asked. He'd just assumed, and...
"It's fine. It's like milk. I'm mildly lactose intolerant but I still like the taste so I drink it. And I'm fine unless I drink too much. But for those two, I would need to be around them for a few hours to get too much," she explained. Bill paused as she used her 'purposeful' human defects to explain the way her powers worked. He frowned and wondered if Miz was still making vessels with allergies, even after more than 600 billion years, because she thought of them the same way -- because she thought 'allergies' were 'normal' and something she needed to do. If she thought of 'too much, overdose' as being like a stupid human overreaction to things… if that was something she understood better than layering and all the measures related to THAT...
"Oh yeah, I am definitely telling my parents about that allergies thing," Robbie told them both. Then he looked at them between them and realized… "UH. Yeah. So, I'm just gonna go..." because he should probably get going while the going was good. Robbie tossed a thumb in the direction behind him, then turned away from them. (He could save the 'Liam' thing for later, just in case it might be important.) He frowned to himself as he walked back down the hill. (How had that demon-sister of his done that cool thing with her eyes, anyway? ...Hey, maybe he should look into something like that for his band. They sold colored contacts like that, right? Maybe...)
Miz watched him leave before turning back to Bill. "Do you want to talk about it?" She had a feeling Bill was projecting, he'd said he hated parents, just as a thing, and probably was thinking about his own. Her own Shape parents hadn't been... the best or most supportive... but she knew that they weren't the worst. There were much worse parents out there. She knew that from her human life. One of her friends had literally had the fairytale-like stress of the evil stepmother and a neglectful father who had allowed the abuse to happen because he literally did not love his daughter and had even admitted as much to her friend once she was older and confronted him about it.
So Gray might have been embarrassed/disappointed(?) in her as his son... but Orange had tried to be a good caretaker. Not mother. Not after Miz's checkup at the hospital. Not when the two of them had simply accepted the Council's treatment of her. They weren't parents. They were her birthers. They weren't... parents. Not in any way that counted. But she didn't hate them. They were just... boxed into their lots in life and too afraid to challenge the system. Cowards, but not awful people.
Miz wondered if Bill would be comfortable talking about his parents. It was probably a touchy subject.
"It's fine if you don't want to talk about it," Miz told him when Bill didn't respond.
"They're all dead," he told her finally, staring up at the sky. "I don't have to bring any of them back, too."
Miz nodded. "That's your call." She paused. Should she mention this? Would it upset him? "Aside from Liam, is there anyone else you'd like to bring back?" She watched him closely.
Bill covered his eyes with the palms of his hands and let out a laugh.
"I should bring them ALL back," he told her. "Liam won't like it if I don't-- he'll call me a monster, probably." That had been what the other Liam had said to that other Bill that Bill had Seen. He didn't want to risk it. Liam had been so, so angry... he'd said...
"Liam is a kind person." Miz observed, reminded her of Will. "So he'd probably want everyone back, even strangers." She wondered how Will would feel if he'd known what she did.
"Even the ones who killed him," Bill confirmed. "Which makes no sense." He paused. "There's a line I knew," he told Miz, moving his hands to his chest. "She probably wouldn't be happy to be back. She burned down so many things. She wanted me to break everything to fix it." (At least, that's what Bill had thought Nora had meant.) Bill frowned. She'd probably think it was all for nothing, if he brought her back, along with everyone else.
Miz gave him a gentle smile. "Well, you DID break everything." She smiled wider. "And you're going to fix it, right?"
"Yes, but... Liam wouldn't want me to kill the circles again, if he doesn't want anyone dead," Bill told her. "She wanted me to make what she'd done worth something. To finish it." To his mind, the two wants that Liam and Nora had had were mutually contradictory.
"Well, you don't have to kill them," Miz commented. "If the Circles think they're so great, separate them. Put them in their own little corner of the world. See how long they last, how long they survive without the 'lower cast' supporting them. See if they'll beg to come back once they realize their way of life was built upon exploiting others and without others to exploit, they're nothing." Miz grinned. It seemed like a solution that would work, to her at least.
It wasn't the first time she'd thought about this. She wanted to see how the 1% would feel once they realized that without the 99% of lower class working so hard, they would have nothing. It'd actually been something she'd thought about back when she was human. When she saw movies about the rich people trying to survive some apocalypse themselves and leaving all others to die... how the heck had those idiots ever think they'd be able to survive? They had no idea how to grow food, or sanitation work or anything that they simply took for granted.
Bill let out a tired sigh. "They'll 'survive' just fine, after I finish fixing everything," Bill told her, stopping short of outright complaining. "That's the whole POINT."
"What sort of survival is it?" Miz tilted her head. "Just... being alive forever without needing food or any other sustenance?"
Bill let out a breath. "Well, it sounds like you got farther than you were before, if you thought of that!" he told her, with at least a little more enthusiasm than he'd been feeling before. He turned his head to look at her. "Didn't read like you'd thought of that with those farmers in that experiment of yours, before."
"Re-writing their biology to survive on nothing was a little too invasive, I didn't want to do that without their permission. Also, I once offered it and got turned down." Miz tilted her head back to stare into the sky. "A lot of people think that a life lived without struggle isn't living at all." She sighed. She could understand that. If you had everything you wanted, couldn't die, and never wanted for anything... how boring would that be?
Bill's eyebrows went up slightly. "Who said anything about rewriting anyone's biology?" he asked her. "Just change the Rules." He shrugged. "I didn't vote for gravity. And I didn't vote for people needing to eat food and starving if they don't get any. Or dehydrating without water to drink. Or dying and staying dead when they're killed. Or having to stay where they are, instead of going wherever they want to go!" He spread his arms out to the side. "The problem isn't STRUGGLE, it's a LACK OF CHOICE," he told her. "There are always fun things to do. Always. Most people are just too stupid to know it! --That's where the 'making everything FUN' part of things comes in, in liberating everyone -- so that things aren't BORING!" he told her. Because why would anyone want to keep living if there was nothing FUN to do to make life worth living? He wouldn't make such a simple stupid mistake as leaving out something like THAT! That wasn't liberating -- that would just make everything an infinite-lives CAGE. "So you want to do something hard -- fine," he told her. "Go right ahead! --But don't feel like you can't stop when you want to and decide to do something else, instead. Just... do what you want, whenever you want, and if it ISN'T fun, or STOPS BEING fun, then just GO ON to the next thing! Why not??" he asked her somewhat rhetorically, lowering his arms.
Miz considered that. "A world where everyone can do whatever they want?" Bill nodded at her, then shook his head and told her enthusiastically: "Not just a world; every world in every dimension, and everyplace in-between!" Miz thought about it. It sounded nice, if very simple, despite actually being quite complex to pull off. "But what if what they want is to make other people sad?"
"Then the people who want to be sad welcome them in with open arms," Bill told her promptly. "And nobody else has to be where they are."
"What if... they were someone like Gideon who wanted Mabel to love him? But Mabel doesn't love him?" Miz asked. Free Will was complicated after all. But Bill waved that off with a, "Find a Mabel that feels the same way. Or let him stick himself in a bubble where he can't tell the difference, if he really wants it that bad." Miz frowned as she realized, "That would be a lot to keep track on. An infinite Gideons with an infinite desires." Miz shivered.
"Not all Gideons are the same," Bill told her. "Some are pursued by Mabels who they don't want the attentions of! And not all dimensions exist all at the same time. The 'infinite' dimensions aren't actually infinite in the way you might be thinking," he told her. "The stupid lizard only spins them up when it needs to, or wants to, as far as I can tell. --It's lazy," Bill told her. Or, well, as lazy as it could get. Which was pretty lazy overall, in Bill's opinion.
"Hm..." Miz closed her eyes in thought. "Rewriting the Rules of the universe would require a lot of power." She wondered how much it would take. There were some dimensions where physics didn't work like she was used to. Would it be like that?
"It's easier when you're sitting outside of it. Like the stupid lizard is. Almost impossible while you're standing in the middle of it, though," Bill grimaced. "Leverage is a thing!" Miz nodded. "Does... do you think my Void of Doors exists outside of it?" she asked.
"No idea," he told her. "Haven't seen it, let alone Seen it. --I didn't try to open a Door yet." He'd found the one Miz had 'left' inside his head, finally, and effectively 'warded' that one, too. The main one she'd made 'outside' of it, in this dimension, he'd warded and booby-trapped with several more things than that. He'd technically spent more of his time on setting things up to automatically be attracted to (and form around) the 'Door', than time to actual create the traps and locks themselves.
"Well, I know for a fact that my Ax can't access it. Even if he somehow can see parts of it." Miz settled more comfortably on the headstone. After all, her dad hadn't pulled her home that first time she went gallivanting off with Seb, even though he'd disproved of her going back here. And he still couldn't stop her from going through her Doors.
"Interesting," Bill murmured. "Are you sure it's not lying to you about that?"
Miz frowned. "...I guess I wouldn't know. I can't feel Ax's emotions. Never know what he's thinking." It made it hard to tell what he was feeling. She had no idea how to read his rather impressive poker face. (After all, what was >( -__- )< supposed to mean?) She relied more on the exasperated sighs he let out to tell how he was feeling.
Bill let out a soft snicker. "...Want to borrow anti-Bill and toss him at your lizard's head? He does specialize in the Emotions of the Heart, not the Thoughts of the Mind." Miz giggled. "Anti-Bill... is he a purple square or something?" Oh my god, if he really was...
Bill blinked at her. "Yes. You Saw him when you were looking?" He would have thought she'd have said something at the lake if she had.
"Naw, but back when I was human, I read about him. Sounded kinda neat, in a funny way." She laughed. Good to know some of the fan-works information was valid here (even if the purple square design was for some weird demon-version of Tad Strange, before the episode actually aired and people found out who the guy really was…) Then again, there was a chance that every piece of media she'd seen for the show existed out there somewhere. Ugh, that was both hilarious and rather disturbing. Wasn't there that one fic she read where Ford was just evil. And a rapist? She shuddered. Nope. She wasn't gonna go to that world. Nope. Never. Not in a trillion years and more.
Bill tilted his head at her when he saw her shudder. He waited for her to say something, but when she didn't, he slowly sat up and said, "We should work on your 'emotional waves' problem." He looked down at his body, and his hands. "I think I'm mostly stable again." And they were more than thirty feet away from the closest humans -- the Valentinos down the hill. Bill glanced over at her. "I can try meditating as you work. Human females are actually able to do it properly; that's one of the main reasons why I swapped over to this bio-sex!" he told her. "I've never Seen a human male who could."
Miz nodded and slipped her thumbs under her headband to lift it off. She shivered as everything came back again. The smell of the soil, the minor tremors in the ground as the undead shifted in their graves, the images from every knot of tree bark and triangle across the world and multiverse. She pulled her focus back with the ease of practice and rubbed her head. Ok, time to see how this worked.
Meanwhile, Bill tapped the simplified control pad at his wrist to turn off the extra visual input he'd been getting from his 'invisible' bodysuit's sensors. (Miz had her Eye open again, so she wasn't at such a sensory disadvantage anymore to need him to be looking out for her that way, and it was too distracting to have all that being tossed at him for what he was about to do.) He then pulled himself into a relaxed yet upright cross-legged posture and not quite closed his eyes. He lay his hands on his knees, palm-down, and stared out at nothing, with his eyes half-lidded, as he regulated his breathing.
Miz closed her eyes as she felt and Felt both inside and outside herself. After having that sense shut off and turned back on several times she thought she might be able to track it down now. It was a thing that was part of her. As natural as moving, as natural as being able to disperse her consciousness into and around the physical layer of the world around her. She could Feel where it was, what it was. But how to control it? Like the way an eye would blink and the lungs moved air for breath, it was a natural background action that went on without her needing to control it.
But you could not blink if you chose to. You could hold your breathe if you wanted. Not for very long but you could. Miz held her Empathy closed. She could do it. But for how long? She was never any good at NOT blinking. And creatures generally needed to breathe. She felt this metaphor wasn't entirely accurate. She could survive without her Empathy, even if it left her feeling a little... empty. But the thing was, she COULD hold it back, keep her powers from doing that thing they did with the absorbing and the feeling... but it wouldn't be for long. Maybe a few hours at a time. Perhaps she should try the Layers thing that Bill mentioned. Miz tried splitting herself, not physically into another instance of herself, but around herself. Another her outside her. Like an onion.
She giggled to herself at how silly that sounded. Layer on multiple 'hers' and then cutting off consciousness from them. So that they would absorb the emotions, without actually being able to feel them. Set each of them on 'Filter' mode and by the time the energy reached the 'her' on the inside, they were pure, clean, and easily digestible! She wiggled at the odd feeling of being 'her' inside 'herself' inside another 'herself'. It felt like wearing multiple layers of clothing, a little... contained in here. Like a shell... or...
...an exoskeleton...
"Ooooooh...." Miz said. That's what he meant.
"Problem?" Bill asked smoothly, sounding a bit zen, with a slight buzzing undercurrent to his voice. "Or solution?"
"Solution." Miz grinned. She wiggled, trying to get used to this feeling. "Hm... it's kinda tight."
"You found something that worked?" Bill asked her, slowly shifting his eyes over to her.
"Multiple layers of 'me' filtering out the emotional resonance before the energy reaches me and gets absorbed normally."
"So you were able to isolate the vector, then," Bill said, letting himself fall back down several levels and then straightening up a bit, shaking out his arms. "Good job!" Though he blinked as he parsed the rest of that statement. "Multiple 'you's?" he asked. "They aren't..." He wasn't entirely certain how to put this. He'd heard the air-quotes, as Stanley put it, but he was finding that his terminology and hers didn't always match. "...There isn't any Mind to them, is there?" he asked his sister a bit skeptically. He didn't think that she'd make that kind of a mistake, making multiple versions of herself with a rudimentary sort of Free Will but no actual control over anything whatsoever, and no real ability to properly handle the emotions she was being bombarded with -- just feel them. (That was a recipe for a very different sort of insanity.) But it was an egregious enough one that he felt he had to ask, to correct her if need be, just in case.
"Naw, they're all me. It's more like multi-tasking. But I can sort of 'program' them to do something -- in this case, filtering, without being conscious." Miz continued to wiggle. It really felt weird. She was going to need to get used to this.
"Ah," Bill said, relaxing somewhat. "That's... not how I would think to describe it, but... hm." It took him a moment. "Yes. That does sound a bit like the layering I used to do, I think. Before I learned to self-regulate my energy flow a bit differently," he added, for completeness. He was somewhat happy that she was open to learning those basic skills he'd listed off to her in the forest before. (He'd be happier if she had already known how to do them before meeting him, to not have been taken advantage of or pushed around to 'spike' in such bad ways before. But Bill was practical; in his opinion, now was better than NEVER.) Bill tensed and relaxed his shoulders, then let his arms hang down at his sides. "There are also ways to intercept things before they impact your own energy being by creating a sort of projected field of control that extends outside yourself, too," he began, wanting to make sure he gave her the concept now, while he knew he still could. (He didn't know when she might leave or how quickly she might go when she did, and this wasn't the sort of thing to talk about anywhere but in-person, in a dimension where he had most viewing that had to do with Seeing him locked down.)
"--But that can get very complicated, very quickly," Bill warned her. "Handling the interactions, feedback, recycling energy, changing flow direction, preventing siphoning or externally-applied distortions. --Those require layering to do, among other things," he let out a laugh, "At least the way I figured out how to do it!" he told her. "I'd get used to this automatic layering first," he told her quite seriously. "This is a good order to do it in! And it's very difficult to do the first time," he praised her. "I learned to create exoskeletons after I learned this, using a similar idea but a different process on physical matter," he added. "And yes, the feel of it can be a bit odd at first," he noted as he saw her wiggle. He thought for a moment. "...You could probably modify your headband now, couldn't you? That might feel different. If one way of doing this gets too uncomfortable..." He paused. "And one way might be easier to drop completely than the other," he added after a moment of thought. "Layers may take longer until you're used to shifting their characteristics quickly, but there should be less... dizziness?" Bill put out there. She had said she seemed to get dizzy when she tried to sense things that weren't 'there' for her to use (like her Eye when suppressed). Having things layered in 'harder' and less permeable strata could effectively feel the same way, if she tried to 'pull' to feel more, instead of working with (not through) this new method.
Miz blinked. "I also found a way to hold down my Empathy so it doesn't reach out to absorb stuff. But I can only hold it for a little while. So I think the Layering I'm doing would be a good substitute."
Bill nodded. So she really had isolated it. "Direct suppression is difficult, and should be uncomfortable. That's closer to... a human tying off a limb very tightly, right before they're about to AMPUTATE it," he told her, suppressing a shiver at the thought of her potentially doing that to herself, cutting off PIECES of herself. "Layering is a MUCH easier way to handle the filtration and walling-away-or-redirect processes," he confirmed. "Much better than getting rid of something entirely! --And why would you want to?" he told her. Getting rid of a sense was bad, not good, as far as Bill was concerned. More senses meant more information!
"I'm just gonna have to get used to this feeling." She wiggled again. "But at least I can tell which part of myself is the part that's doing it. Could probably rework the spells on my headband to only seal that off." She held up said headband. Then she paused. "I could also fix my headband but pretend I didn't. It might make the humans feel more comfortable?"
"Stanley will notice," Bill told her, with a slight grimace. "He's good at noticing lies. It's easier not to lie," he told her, "Or to just leave things out," though Stanley usually noticed that, too. Stanley didn't always call Bill on it, usually let things 'slide', but he noticed. "But... he was trying to help you earlier," Bill told her. He'd been watching Stanley closely, and been pleased that he'd actually attempted to help, not undermine or hurt, his sister. And Stanley had done it consistently, too. "If you tell him, then he can help you better. He will also like it, that you are trying to fix something that was part of what went wrong," Bill noted. Stanley had been consistent about that, too. "Fixing that means that the same thing can't happen again."
Miz nodded. "So... leave my headband as is for now, talk to Stan about my ideas for a possible solution and ask him which one he thinks would make them all the most comfortable?"
"Fix the headband now if you haven't already, the rest of them can't tell anyway. Tell Stanley what you did and know now, so that he can have input on what you do, too. Don't tell anyone else unless he tells you to. Yes," Bill restated back to her in his own concept-words, with a few slight revisions.
"Ok." Miz nodded and fiddled with the piece of cloth. The change was barely noticeable but she slipped it back on and allowed her Layers to absorb back into herself. Ah~ much better. Less constricted feeling.
Bill tilted his head at her. "It feels different, doesn't it?" he grinned at her.
Miz grinned back. "Yeah. My head is clear without being quiet. Well, too quiet at least." She tilted her head. "It's nice to have my Eyes back."
Bill nodded. "Good!" He reached out and patted her on the head again. "Good job, little sis!"
Miz purred, feeling happy and content and so very safe here with her big brother. This was what a big brother should be. Nothing like that jerk Time Baby who was the worst brother. The two demons cheerfully got to their feet and made their way back to the Shack.
----
Chapter Epilogue:
Robbie let out a breath as he pushed himself over the low wall at the bottom of the cemetery hill. He had barely survived that one. He could barely believe he'd done that.
Fuck. He couldn't believe Bill Cipher had to come by his house! And a little sister?! Seriously! No one EVER tells him anything! Robbie groaned. At least the two demons didn't hurt his parents. He was gonna ask Wendy later about the whole 'Bill's little sister' thing. Did she know about that? Did they tell everyone except him?
He dropped his feet back down onto the ground and stopped. His parents. Bill had gotten angry with them, but Bill hadn't blasted them or messed with them like he'd done to Pacifica's parents. He'd gotten angry with them...
Robbie brought his head up slowly as he realized…
...his parents hadn't convinced him. They hadn't convinced Bill that 'death was okay'. Or 'natural'. Or any of that junk.
Robbie turned back to look up the hill, frowning slightly as he shoved his hands into his hoodie's pockets. Bill had pushed back. His parents hadn't been able to convince him. Not like they did everyone else. Everyone else, they'd just talked to, and talked to, and talked them into...
Robbie frowned, hunching his shoulders slightly, as he pulled a hand out of one pocket to finger the heart on his chest. It wasn't okay for people to die. And it was weird that the demon seemed to get that. That, like, people had to just STOP. It wasn't okay that people had to do that, to not survive and not come back. If people could come back...
--Not the whole 'zombie thing' coming back, but actually come back...
Robbie let out a breath. Bill didn't think death was 'natural'. So what did he actually think about it? ...He'd gotten angry about it.
Robbie wasn't stupid. The way Bill had been talking about his big brother Liam… that guy was straight-up dead. And Bill was still angry about it.
And the demon hadn't been about to let his parents talk him out of feeling angry and upset and all mad about it.
Robbie stared up at the hill for awhile, and then he turned away.
Robbie didn't really know what to think about the demon still, and he still had a lot of mixed uncomfortable feelings about the guy, but if Bill didn't think that death should be a thing… if the demon thought that death just wasn't fair...
Robbie clenched his jaw, and glared at the house, and the wake room, and everything that was there, the whole building.
...well, Robbie could definitely get behind that.
He walked back to the house, fingering the heart on his hoodie as he went. Feeling the heartbeat of the heart underneath it.
Epilogue end