Dipper POV
The sound of birds chirping at each other somewhere close above me crept into my dreams, slightly tugging on my unconscious mind. Sunlight growing just outside my closed eyelids had the same effect.
I groaned and sleepily pulled the brim of my hat down to block it out, turning inwards the figure I was sleeping against.
A low toned chuckle reverberated through my body and mind, along with the realization that the figure I was sleeping on was not the same triangle shaped statue half buried in dirt with an arm outstretched and a top hat, shocked me into the waking world.
My body responded to the dose of adrenaline, scrambling clumsily a foot or two away from the person on tired limbs. I ripped my hat off my eyes to see my new surroundings, getting assaulted by the bright sunlight in the process.
To my bleary eyes the honey toned man in front of me was literally glowing. He was relaxed, smiling even, leaning back on both his hands with his legs stretched out to the side crossed at the ankles. His smile drew my attention back to his face, it was wide and curled lazily at the corners, up turning the corner of his eye I could see that wasn't draped under blonde messy hair. He laughed again this time louder and I could only stare at him more confused.
"If you're leaving so soon you might need this." He leaned all his weight to one hand and with the other lifted a familiar backpack from behind him, my backpack.
The introduction of something new, honestly something real because there was a small chance I was still sleeping, snapped me back to myself. I checked our surroundings, we were still in the same clearing I had fallen asleep in just a few hours ago, but...
The statue is missing.
Gone and not even a blade of grass out of place to suggest it had somehow been moved or dug up, no, just gone like it had never been there.
Suddenly the gears in my head clicked together and once again the man in the middle of the grass patch had my attention. But this time I noticed things I hadn't a second ago, the amount of yellow that bordered on a little absurd. He had a large yellow overcoat laying in the grass around his arms, and looking at his hair again it was more golden yellow than it was blond, his eyes were similarly golden leaning more yellow than brown. Even more so, the fact that he wore a suit, tight black dress pants and shoes to match the black vest over a white button up, all tied together with a bow tie at the collar, pinned with a little yellow triangle in its center.
I felt my jaw hit the floor. He tilted his head to one side, the smile playing on his lips turned mocking. "Well well well. He remembers me. How sweet." Even his voice sounded familiar, but not as electronic as I could remember and a bit deeper too but maybe that was just my mind building dreams in my head all these years.
"Are you going to say something or just stare at me. If I'd known a form like this would have gotten your attention I would have tried it sooner." He tossed my backpack between us, jump starting all the building thoughts in my brain.
"You're not- You can't- He- we." They flooded together, pouring out my mouth faster than I could form full sentences or questions.
"I am," he said almost like he was thoughtfully answering my not finished question, "and I can and you didn't. Well not really." He flicked his hand around in the air, gesturing at nothing, "I mean that was quite the trick and certainly no one's been able to do it before, but-" He tapped his fingers, which I realized where masked in black wrist length gloves, against his temple, "You didn't fully trap my mind, just my physical form."
"How?" I crashed backwards off my heels onto my ass in the dirt, crushed by the ever growing weight of the realizations he was giving me.
"You didn't think that a dream demon wouldn't have any other powerful connections?"
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?"
My jaw twitched, but still even like this, I didn't feel fear. Deep in the back of my brain I knew the jolt that had gone through me was excitement.
Before I could answer him, he snapped his fingers again and color returned. The human version of him was back sitting just a few feet in front of me with his legs crossed and hands folded, smiling.
"Maybe," I said and his expression shifted curiously, "or maybe I'm the one who's changed." I sighed, for one thing younger me would not be having this conversation, he would have naively run straight to Ford.
"You have definitely changed." He mused "In my time of confinement I had a lot of time to reflect. I've also had to sit back and watch for the last few years." He looked me up and down, taking in my worn dirt ripped jeans and ratty blue hoodie zipped up to my throat. "Watching you in particular."
"Why?"
"Why not?" He laughed, "I don't need a reason! Besides, you're entertaining."
"How am I entertaining?" I'd only come here to sleep, some early nights I'd come here in tears, and then rage but after that it was just pure exhaustion that drove me out of the shack and into this little clearing.
"I've been in your head Pinetree, I've seen how the cogs turn and have changed over the years, you're more entertaining than any other part of my zodiac." His hands splayed out in the air, "What to hear something I've been thinking about for about 3 years now?"
I was in way too deep at this point to tell him no, "Yes."
"I think you should join me." His smile broadened impossibly bigger.
Sleep deprivation, I think, jolted a laugh from this, "Join you?" I gasped, "In what?"
"You are the smartest human I've had in my zodiac in a long time and you can't puzzle something this simple out." He laughed in my face right back, "I want you to come with me! You're being stepped on and stifled here, just think of the things you could do on your own! Better with my assistance! Ditch these dick bags! I won't get in your way. I will carve a path for you, I will make you stronger!" He was projecting like he was speaking into a crowd, meanwhile to me it felt a little like he was shouting in my face. Yet for what he said next his voice came down to a near-confidential whisper, "Your confidence has been stolen from you and I can offer it back, all I ask for in return is your presence."
I could feel my heart beating in my throat, he wasn't just talking with me anymore he was offering me a deal like Mabel Land.
"Pinetree- Dipper. I can't foul you, we've been round this bend before which is why this time I think you'll listen to me. I was wrong before, with Shooting Star, and I've aged sense then. I'm wiser now and I see you clearly."
"It's only been a few years." I muttered, shaking my head, any other coherent thoughts I had turned starved eyes on the attention he was giving me.
"Time is an illusion, and I am an immortal being. Age and time don't apply to me the same way they constrain you."
I didn't want it to stop, but a deal with Bill was dangerous when left vague and open ended, "My presence? I don't get it, in return for all- that" I had to unzip my coat, stripping down to just a plain orange t-shirt as the summer sun got warmer above. "I don't believe you."
He shrugged, "I ask for your presence and," he pressed his lip into a line in thought, "assistance. In exchange you can finally be free. That's my price, you come along with me on this ride and be free, and I promise to not kill your friends and family. As a bonus."
"My friends and my family, meaning you're going to kill other people's friends and families. What are you planning? Are you going to turn the world into chaos again?" I asked tentatively, trying to force adrenaline through my sleepy body, to be ready to run. My legs protested immensely and a larger voice in my head convinced me to stay.
"I do want to kick start weirdmageddon again, but not in the way I did before. Sure some humans might die but not by my hand, just the casualties of their own stupidity." He shifted his head to one side, the messy locks of hair that had been concealing that side of his face fell away.
I blinked, for a moment thinking it was just a trick of the light. I stared, a yellow triangle took up the space where his iris should be against the white of his eye admitting a soft glow that turned his skin slightly golden. "Is that-" the words fell off, nothing came to me that could describe it.
He reached up, pushing his hair behind his ear, he pulled down on his check with one finger, "Oh this? It's not visible in the other form, it's the pure embodiment of my power. All demons have one." With the explanation out of the way he shook his head to scatter his hair back across his cheek partially covering it, ending the conversation.
I went along with it, the idea of weirdmageddon happening again was more pressing then how he presented himself in this, oddly attractive, human form. "You said, not in the way you did before, what does that mean? If you want me to be a part of everything you should at least tell me what you're planning first."
"Mh, good point. But I think I'll wait. You should think about that offer, we don't have to make any deals now." We had both been sitting so still that him standing up surprised me, I clambered much less gracefully to my feet. Like this I found he was taller than me by just a little.
"What are you going to do?" I asked, feeling something in my chest constrict, but it didn't feel like fear.
"Nothing, for right now." He stretched long arms above his head, "I can finally move around again, maybe I'll go sightseeing around town." I heard a snap of fingers and a cane hooked around my arms and body, with a tug of the other end I was standing toe to toe with him. "I will wait for your answer, how about later today? I'll ask again then."
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Welcome Welcome, See it's different already! Surprisingly the idea for this first chapter woke me up at 4am in the morning and is one of the main reasons I started seriously editing this book and now here we are.