Chapter Text
The following year was PERFECT!! ABSOLUTELY!! BILL WAS TOTALLY ENJOYING IT, COMPLETELY AND PERFECTLY SATISFIED!
He had EVERYTHING! He could do ANYTHING! The party never ended and he was having so much fun!! All that scared screaming. People trying to flatter him so that he would spare them. He made Mona Lisa come to life and steal a ferret from another painting and then she fought with the ferret’s owner. Funny. The Suez Canal became a giant mouth that screamed and could be heard miles away. Funny. Whales walked on land and ate people, some seas became lava, a giant statue of Lincoln terrorized cities and there was now a portal in the Bermuda Triangle that sucked people into Kansas. Because the Bermuda Triangle should do something like that. “You would find that interesting,” he found himself saying to the golden statue. In his suite. All alone.
He frowned. Then he angrily threw a fireball at the wall.
Why the hell wasn’t he happy?!?!
This was STUPID! One stupid mortal couldn’t possibly make such a difference. It was supposed to be a bonus at best! And Ford wasn’t cooperating, so instead it was just frustrating!
…But it was also the only damn thing he could think of that could be missing.
Fine! He was Bill Cipher, damn it. He was basically God now. If that’s the case, then he will start again. He will make it work somehow. He hasn’t really tried that hard yet! HE’LL FIND A WAY TO MAKE THAT IDIOT UNDERSTAND THAT HE LOVES HIM AND HE’S DAMN LUCKY IT'S NOT ONE-SIDED!!
But he refused to waste any more time on just trying different approaches and wait for a result. Sure, seeing the future wasn't as easy as people imagined, sure, it was always changing, sure, it existed more in fragments of possibilities at any given moment than something clear, but that was enough for him to draw some basic conclusions. Finding out what might happen if he did this or that.
Why hadn't he thought of it before! He could just change Ford's perception artificially. How much different was it to make the chaos and destruction seem okay for Ford by influencing his brain than making him see a new color? "Damn it!" He growled when he saw the result: Ford WAS fine with that. He joined his gang, and at the same time, enjoyed the privileges he had as Bill’s partner… And he was no longer making his overly clever or downright embarrassing jokes and wasn’t adorably ‘fascinated’ by some interesting creature in front of him – because instead, he blasted it with a ‘weirding-up ray’ he’d made and then laughed at the result. He didn’t mind even going against Bill himself and it wasn’t… it wasn’t him.
“You’re annoying me,” he informed the statue and tried to find something else.
Oh, this looked interesting. Do it the other way around than it was at the start – Gravity Falls becoming a bubble of normality in a crazy world. Ford would have a whole town where everyone would be happy. He didn’t know anyone in the rest of the world anyway… Okay, fine, maybe also move the kids’ parents here and stuff like that, but… WHY THE HELL DO YOU CARE ABOUT WHAT’S HAPPENING SOMEWHERE IN EUROPE?! “Damn it!”
It didn’t work. Nothing he saw in that tangle of possibilities worked. “YOU’RE ANNOYING ME SO MUCH!” he yelled at the statue. And then he froze when he noticed – but that didn’t make sense. He was looking into the FUTURE. Why was he seeing himself about to shake hands with Stanley in the future… AND WHY THE FUCK WAS HE SERIOUSLY DOING THAT?! Did HE hit himself in the head in some possible line of events?!
That didn’t make SENSE!! Neither that he saw it in the FUTURE, nor that he was such an idiot and didn’t notice… didn’t notice. But he actually DIDN'T at first. He frowned. Now that he was thinking about it, he remembered that something strange had actually happened at that moment. There had been some… strange impulse that made him look again and realize they had switched places. “That’s weird,” he muttered. And then he waved his hands, determined to investigate it more.
Being able to control time, he just returned to the fateful moment – sort of. His past self was still there, frozen in time just like everyone else. It was more like a still frame than actually moving to the past. This helped him see it differently – and he noticed a fine powder floating in the air. Daydream-not flower? Seriously?
He recognized it immediately, of course. It was too infamous to not know, although so rare he hadn't actually seen it before. The powder created from this flower enabled you to see a different universe in which a version of you existed, influence it, and merge the two selves together if you liked the outcome and wanted to move into this world instead of staying in your own.
But wait. If some version of him was trying to get here through it, why didn't they merge? Why did he just change the variable, observed the result, and then disappeared? Why did he let this place go? Everything turned out PERFECT here! He would eventually solve this one last little problem too! And besides, it didn't really matter that much!!
Bill frowned and used his now-strengthened power to open an imaginary window to look at the perpetrator. He blinked when he saw... a human. A pathetic human. And himself at the same time.
Well, it was no wonder that Bill wanted to get somewhere else then.
But why wasn't he here?! And why was he a human? Was he a human from the beginning in that world?
Bill waved his hand to look back further in the past of that world and widened his eye in surprise. "WHAT THE..." It was the same in there. THE SAME. Until he didn't recognize Stanley from Ford.
……HE SPENT TRILLIONS OF YEARS IN SOME FUCKING THERAPY BECAUSE OF THEM?!?!
Okay. In that case, those versions of the Pines' family surely were SO dead once he got his hands on them. Maybe ONE of them would be spared, but… He actually wanted to see that, so – with mischievous laugh – he tried to find the moment. Instead, he blankly stared at the window in shock. “ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!”
Alright, he took it back. That Bill wasn't the same as him. Not at all. He must have overlooked some variable, some change that meant that world WASN’T the same as this one. Like, for example, that he was born an idiot there. Because what do you mean that Bill was basically obsessed with Ford – not the other way around as it should be?!
“YOU ENDED UP LIKE THIS AND REFUSED TO COME HERE?! SO WHAT ELSE WERE YOU LOOKING FOR?!”
……It was even worse than he’d thought. That Bill didn’t pine for Ford just in that universe. He tried to get Ford to be with him in a thousand worlds!! THIS was what he used that flower for?! Something so STUPID and UNIMPORTANT?! “Well, there you have it!!! And what was the point of it, huh?! You threw away the chance to have all your wishes fulfilled by moving HERE for some guy, some stupidity like love, and he still didn’t want you!! THANKS! At least I have confirmation that he really doesn’t deserve me!! Oh, I will have a look at it right now. To see your present. To see how miserable I feel when I’m being stupid like this. At least I will be able to finally actually let it go!” With a sharp wave of his hand to the other side, the worldview began to move forward. And at first, it was all confirming his conclusion. Bill was forced to live with the Pines' family. They were pushing him to improve and it was of no use to him anyway. He felt satisfied. But then the worldview actually skipped to the present.
And he froze in shock again. Because… because the Bill in the window really didn’t look miserable at all anymore.
On the contrary.
He laughed casually, snuggled in Ford's embrace, while he probably read something from a book to him. And Ford smiled too. And kissed his forehead.
Or they played Dungeons dungeons and more dungeons with Dipper and Dipper high fived with Bill when he got a perfect number on the dice.
Or he was in the kitchen with Mabel, creating her latest crazy idea: an ice cream sundae in the shape of a puppy. Because he apparently remarked that this invention from his prison bubble should be possible to create in real life.
Or he and Ford went on expeditions. They worked in the lab and when he had had enough, he hugged Ford from behind and whispered something in his ear and he blushed so beautifully and nodded.
Bill, along with Mabel, Soos and Melody, was humming along to some playlist of stupidly popular songs while they made pancakes together.
He watched it all, bewildered. But that was... No! That was stupid! He already changed his appearance for Ford. If he had to completely transform WHO he was to make this possible, for Ford to be able to accept him, it wasn't worth it.
But the scenes continued.
Bill excitedly showed the others the latest moving town panorama, in which a person turned into a pile of spaghetti at the push of a button and Mabel went 'ew', but then she just laughed and gave him a thumbs up.
Pacifica's father had been giving Dipper trouble when he went to pick her up for a date. So he was surprised by bees when he opened the car. Ford sighed softly at first, but finally just shook his head slightly with a smile – and Stanley laughed out loud and patted Bill on the back like saying good job.
They all… accepted this if it wasn't ruining lives? He could stay weird. Love dark humor. Act mischievously when someone deserved it. All of that. But also not be alone…
This didn't make sense. How could he be happy THERE? He had everything HERE. Literally everything he had ever wanted. THIS was a perfect reality, except for one thing. In there, he had nothing except that ONE thing. No powers. A limited, pathetic, and purely human life. AND on top of that, it wasn't as if everything was according to what he wanted in the relationship. He wasn't the one who decided everything. He accepted a ‘no’. Ford wasn't under his control, being able to do what he wanted. And Bill still looked so disgustingly happy?! It didn’t make any damn sense.
It didn't. But it was undeniable that in there, Bill WAS happy. And he didn't exactly need to understand HOW it was possible to be jealous. To selfishly want to feel that too.
He blinked. And his gaze flicked to Ford. His own Ford. Who now, in the past, stood there in Stanley's suit, waiting anxiously to see if they would manage to destroy him. Who HOPED he would be rid of him forever.
It started the same way in THERE. But then he didn't recognize the switch and now he was watching a movie with dinosaurs eating people, the only one laughing when someone didn't run in time, surrounded by family that didn't mind.
"I'm not THAT crazy," Bill breathed heavily, and the flash of a change of scene in the window made him look back there. Ford said something and put on a satisfied expression, while Bill rolled his eyes and laughed. Another one of his stupid jokes. And then Ford hugged him and kissed his neck.
“I can’t be that crazy. I… I WON here. I’m not going to throw it away. I…” He was suddenly filled with frustration and he yelled at the statue, as if it was Ford's fault. “It doesn’t even have to end like this! Not here as well! This is a one in a billion chance. Do you understand?!” he shouted. “I could be screwed for trillions of years in a therapeutic hell and nothing would come of it! I could lose everything, because all it takes is one stupid thing to go differently and it won’t end LIKE THIS! I can’t trade world domination and having everything I want fulfilled with a snap of my fingers, for…”
For the family. Actual acceptance. Actual love. A surprised exhale when Ford gave him a small device for his birthday that allowed him to create little things out of nothing, even without any abilities, and he immediately set about investigating what craziest combination of flavors he could come up with in one cake. Watching stars together…
“I… I won…” he exhaled heavily.
And he was alone.
And he felt miserable.
And not understanding HOW he could be happy like this somehow didn't matter. Not really.
He swallowed hard. He still couldn't believe he was doing this. Obviously he WAS even more crazy than he had thought. So much so to bet everything on this.
He took a breath... and time started to move back for REAL. Everyone really returned to where they were at that moment, including him. And before time started again, Bill forced himself to forget the flash that had changed it here in the first place. EVERYTHING had to be the same for this madness to have the slightest chance of working out.
Full of enthusiasm, he was about to shake hands with Ford. Finally, absolute victory and world domination were within reach! Of course. He was Bill Cipher, after all.
And right now, he had basically already won.