To the Nights in the Hold of Stone (BillDip)

One Sunny Morning(1)

This really was him, Bill fucking Cipher, the dream demon that not to many years ago sent the town into an upheaval of chaos.

I dug my hands into the grass to stabilize myself, forcing my pathetic brain to form at least one cohesive sentence, "What are you doing back here?" That wasn't it, I know why he's here in Gravity Falls, presumably still stuck here because of the weirdness field, but that didn't explain why he was in this opening of the forest with me.

He took a moment before answering, in thought the smile fell from his lips making him look even more, bothering so, human. "I am here because you came to me." Holding eye contact with him felt like trying to have a staring contest with the sun.

"Me? I- are you gonna try and kill me again?" I'd said it but my body didn't respond to it. I didn't feel tense and I didn't want to run away.

"You don't think I'm going to try and kill you again." He observed instead of answering. I shook my head slightly and his smile returned, his gaze turned upwards, "It's quite a beautiful sunny day isn't it?"

I said nothing, shocked back into silence by the quick switch in conversation.

"Well, I think it is. I also think we should have a quick chat. Seeing as you haven't pulled the energy gun out of that backpack and tried to kill me, and I haven't used any of my immense power to try and kill you." He shifted on the grass, pulling his legs under him and sitting up straighter.

I did my best to do the same, trying to get comfortable as my tired and aching body protested the hard ground.

"Ok, sure. But I'm a bit at a loss, and you seem to have some sort of plan so you should start first." I gathered my hat from its forgotten place in the grass, trying to sooth down my messy brown hair and placed the hat back on my head.

"Easy round then. Why don't you think I want to kill you?"

"I- I don't know you just-" I scrambled, internally smacking myself for the embarrassing stutter I thought I'd gotten rid of ages ago. I had to actually stop and put effort into putting the thoughts together.

Memories of many previous nights out here against the statue and waking up to it in the morning, unlike today. The year I'd spent back in California running ragged from insomnia induced by night terrors, not to mention the onslaught of bullying I was the target of because Mabel had told people about our summer, she hadn't told the whole truth though. In the picture she painted Mabel had spent her summer completely boy crazy, having nightly sleepovers with her new friends. I on the other hand was put in the corner of her story, obsessively bugging the locals about monsters, and panicking at the first sign of supposed danger. I'm still not entirely sure why she'd told it like that, before going to Gravity Falls we had always had each other's backs at school. She never cared before what people thought about us, but that summer changed her and suddenly her personal image was very important. At school she'd quickly befriended a group of slightly popular girls and left me in the dust. Where I rotted away, but I made it through the year, dreaming of coming back to Gravity Falls. To the adventure.

It wasn't till he'd asked that I realized for all these years now I'd been craving the adventure he created.

I waved my hand in the vague direction behind him where the night before his statue stood. "You're not acting like the Bill from before, and it's been so long I might just be delusional enough to believe it." Thankfully this time the words sounded much more confident and composed, I was starting to feel a bit more like adult me instead of 12 year old me who'd last seen Bill Cipher. I guess that was another reason my immediate reaction wasn't that I was in danger.

His eyebrow shot up in amusement, "I don't think I've changed that much." His fingers snapped and in the same second color from everything around us started to drip off like wet paint till everything was nothing but gray scale. Bill himself changed too, his body twisted inward like a black hole opened up in his gut, with a flash he was the larger than life triangle again. The one centered eye wide and flashing as he asked, "Have I?"