Chapter Text
Having eyes in many places was nothing new. Having implanted himself into societies all over Dimension 46’\, his visage was everywhere, from drawings on telephone poles to every piece of American paper currency. Through every eye, he was able to see if he only wished it — one of the perks of what was basically omnipotence and omniscience. This dimension would call him a god — those who knew him had called him one. Omniscience and omnipotence were nice, but unfortunately, he lacked omni presence. He knew all and had plenty of power, but he couldn’t be everywhere at once. Ultimately, he had always just been himself.
Until now.
Being in two places at once, having his consciousness in two places at once was one of the strangest things he’d ever experienced, which was saying a lot. The split was indescribable. He was whole in both places, fully aware, fully conscious. It was like there were two of him, whole but only partially under his control. There was more there, hiding beneath, currently unconscious, but he knew it would soon regain itself and share control with him. Without that part of him there, he felt somehow incomplete. It probably would’ve been overwhelming for any other creature, but because he was, well, Bill, it didn’t do anything.
The other part of him, though, was unconscious for a reason. Mason “Dipper” Pines, or Pine Tree, as he liked to call him, had only been a human, gifted magic by a god, and later granted a shared godhood because of what a good f- devotee he had been. The boy had been tormented so much by his own kind, cast aside, whether directly, as by his bullies, or indirectly, as by his parents or sister. All Bill had needed to do was show him the understanding and attention he had received nowhere else, and he became putty in his hands. He hadn’t, of course, accounted for the genuine care Pine Tree seemed to show him in return, and he had come to some uncomfortable realizations in his ministry that he refused to acknowledge, even to himself.
So he wouldn’t. Simple as that.
For now, he had some humans to take care of. Both bodies opened their respective eyes at once, and man, that was gonna take some getting used to. Maybe he could learn how to control them each separately, but for now, they were purely unison, entirely under his own control. He used Dipper’s mouth to grin, as his voice came from both physical parts of him. “Wow, what a time this is gonna be!” He laughed giddily. “Oh, oh I didn’t realize this would happen! I’m both of us!”
“Get out of him! Stop it!” Shooting Star shouted. Liquid — tears — poured down her face, which was scrunched up in some deep level of misery. Why should it be? Her brother was in better shape than he’d ever been. He was a god! She had nothing to cry about. Oh, except maybe for the fact that she had pushed him away, and, to some extent, caused him to bring about the apocalypse. But that wasn’t such a big deal!
“Bill, you’ve gone too far!” Sixer was shouting at the same time, as Shooting Star’s hysterics kicked up to a 9, now including screaming and jumping up to try and reach them, despite how high in the sky they were, and the fact she couldn’t fly. She could if Bill willed it, but why would he? She would have to earn such an ability through loyalty, just as Pine Tree had earned his place as Bill’s equal companion.
“No such thing, Sixer! This world is ours, now! Just imagine the things I can do, now that I can be both of us!” Bill flexed his fingers, looking at his own blackened ones and Pine Tree’s midnight blue, both at once. He felt something stirring deep within them, yet he knew it wasn’t Pine Tree waking up. Not here, anyway. He wouldn’t be conscious soon. No, he must have been waking up within them. Somehow he could just tell.
They floated down towards Shooting Star, still hovering out of her reach as she continued jumping up, grunting in frustration each time she did. “Your brother is a god now, kid! You should be happy! Look, if you swear complete loyalty to us, you can even spend time with him!” He barked a laugh. “Well, that is, if he wants to spend time with you! He was preeeetty hurt by what he saw in that bubble I put you in!”
“He’s my brother! He’ll want to spend time with me! You- you corrupted him, you monster! You made him some- some other thing! Once we get him back to normal, you’ll see!”
Bill gestured to the world around them. “Please! There’s no such thing as normal anymore, Shooting Star! Abnormal has become the norm! This is our world now! Your brother and I have been planning Weirdmageddon since the beginning of the summer!”
“Oh, don’t act like you haven’t had this brewing for the past several millennia, Bill!” Sixer spoke up, rolling his eyes and pointing at him accusingly, as if it would do anything, like some sort of anti-Bill laser beam would shoot out and kill him with the power of hatred.
It didn't. This wasn't the Mindscape, where if he willed it, it would happen. This was the physical realm now.
"Sure, maybe I have! And I’ve gotta say, I have to thank both of you for making this possible! I’ll thank you, Fordsy, for building the portal in the first place at my behest! And Shooting Star!” He turned to face her specifically. “You handed over the rift in exchange for your own private bliss! Without the two of you, none of this would’ve been possible!”
Everyone looked at Star, various looks of shock and horror on their faces. Bill’s grin widened.
“Oh, oh! Did no one know? Did I just reveal the secret that I asked for the rift, and you handed it to me? Well,” He chuckled, “I guess the cat’s out of the bag now! You have fun dealing with all that together! Pine Tree and I are gonna head back to my penthouse suite and get used to this whole ‘merged souls’ thing together!” He took both of their bodies and flew back up to the Fearamid, despite the loud protests from the Pines family and adjacent company below.
Xanthar, who had remained fairly loyal and not protested Pine Tree’s company, was who Bill approached to leave in charge while he slept. Well, “slept”. Whatever it was, he knew he needed to do it, because Pine Tree was awake within them, but not without yet. He needed some questions answered, and who was Bill to deny him that?
Pine Tree had woken up in an unfamiliar room. It had the ugliest wallpaper he'd ever seen, partly due to the fact that it was a color he had never seen, yet some part of him knew it was called snolpin. Where had he gotten that knowledge? Where was Bill? And Gravity Falls?
The more he looked around, the less familiar everything became. There were oddly shaped chairs, and he was in a… bed? If he could even call it that. It was the furthest thing from what he on Earth would describe as one, but he was laying on top of it, and had some sort of disgusting, slimy cover on top of him that was supposed to function as a blanket.
He slowly turned and got out of bed, only to find the floor was some type of moss, which… was actually sort of fun to walk on. He didn't mind this part. He walked to the dresser and ran his hand across the top. It was made of some sort of wood-like material, but it wasn't wood. Like some odd facsimile of it. Everything here seemed to be some twisted facsimile of what he knew. Weird and unfamiliar as it was, it reminded him of Bill.
It comforted him.
There were two doorways in the room, both seemingly made of the same moss as the floor. He opened one of them and peered through into a bathroom that seemed fit for a frog or something. The toilet, sink, and shower were just self-sustaining fountains of water, with no clear source, and the floor and walls were all moss. The only difference was a perfectly normal-appearing mirror.
Looking into it, he saw himself, with a few key differences. Of course, his skin was still mostly the same midnight blue, and he was covered in stars that seemed to twinkle. His eyes were mismatched now, one its usual brown, the other almost glowing gold. That must have been from the merge he had with Bill. Speaking of… he still didn’t know where his companion was.
The mirror felt so out of place, despite this being a bathroom, that Pine Tree felt compelled to reach out and touch it. When he did, the surface rippled like water, revealing another location through it. This one appeared to be the town center of a very quaint town. Thatched roofed houses, streets of bright red dirt, and various animals Pine Tree didn’t recognize. Its inhabitants, however, looked anything but quaint, reminding Pine Tree of the orcs from Dungeons, Dungeons, & More Dungeons. They were big, ugly, and looked just as creepy as the species in the game.
Yet something spurred him onwards, and he found himself pushing through the mirror, where he stepped into the town center. He found himself immediately soaked, standing in the middle of the fountain he hadn’t realized he’d been looking through. Looking behind him, he saw it was made of a reflective metal. Okay, so reflections were how to get around this place. Good to know.
He began to walk through the town, trying to sink into the shadows as much as he could, scared of its inhabitants and what they might do to an outsider. No one seemed to pay him any mind, save for a few random glances he got. The fact that any residents looked at him without murderous intent gave him a little comfort, enough to walk into what, despite not being able to read the language, he knew was marked as a diner of some sort.
Walking into this place was… strange. Suddenly, he was in a themed diner. Usually if it was a human decade, Earth diners liked the theme based on the 1950’s, the heyday of diners. But this one was… 1990’s grunge. It was a diner, to be sure, but the decor threw him off completely.
Regardless, he walked up to the milkshake bar section and sat on one of the high seats. The… he was inclined to just call them orcs. The orc in front of him was dressed for the part of the diner, like he was the bassist in Yellow Day. “Teg do Okak Aga?” He asked. Pine Tree had no clue what he said.
“Um… have you seen-” He paused, because as he started talking, he realized his voice didn’t entirely sound like him. It sounded like… like Bill’s voice was layered under his, as if he was possessing Bill and holding the reins instead of the other way. Which, Bill wasn’t possessing him, but where was he? “Have you seen a yellow triangle float this way?”
“Oh, Okak think Okak're funny, do Okak?” Okay, that one Pine Tree pretty much understood. He furrowed his brows in confusion. What was funny about that? There were things a lot more absurd than Bill afoot.
“No, I just-”
He was cut off by the orc letting out a loud roar, and then in an instant, the rest of the orcs in the room started roaring, as well. “TAAG HIM!” The one behind the milkshake bar held up a comically large knife, and that was when Pine Tree got the good sense to run. Whatever he’d done or said wrong, clearly it got him into a predicament that he’d better escape from, and now.
He broke into a sprint right out of the diner, hordes of orcs roaring and gathering more from the streets around him. He didn’t know what they were saying, or why they wanted to kill him so much, Maybe mentioning Bill had set them off? Did they have some business with him? He had so many questions and absolutely no ability to ask them. He ran until he found himself cornered in an alley. Just as he thought all hope would be lost, he felt a hand pull him up above the roaring crowd.
He looked up, and saw Bill, hovering beside him and holding onto his hand, holding him in the air by it now. “Jeez, Pine Tree, you’re able to fly. It’s not even like you could be stopped if this was real life. But it’s not, which makes it, like, way easier to fly anyway.”
“Wait, if this isn’t real, where am I? Where was I? What’s going on?” Pine Tree asked, hovering on his own. Once Bill noticed him doing that, he released his hand.
“Your soul isn’t quite sure how to adjust to being merged with mine and split between two bodies, so I think it’s taking its time until it knows how to process that without completely overwhelming your senses. Merging your soul with a god will kind of do that to you.” Bill explained. Pine Tree looked down, and the city was on blue fire, the orcs no longer screaming in their language, but instead screaming in agony. “As for where you are… This is Dimension 47523-B. Or at least, a mental facsimile of it. It seems like with our merge, our minds are also somewhat… segmented. This is just a piece of my past.”
“What piece is it? I mentioned you, and they started chasing me to kill me.” Pine Tree rubbed his arm.
“They don’t understand English too well.” Bill explained. “It probably wasn’t that you mentioned me, it’s that you sound like me. This is one of the dimensions I destroyed when I was… well, when I was going around destroying a bunch of dimensions for fun. Before I found 46’\, and started having fun with that one.”
“Oh. Well, that makes sense.” Pine Tree nodded.
“I wouldn’t go digging around in here. Seriously. We can find our way to your mind, and you should hang out in fragments of your own subconscious. Mine is a mess, and dangerous, like these guys! Man, those-” Bill said something Pine Tree couldn’t even begin to pronounce, “-sure were a place to start, huh?”
“Sure was.” He mumbled. He didn’t want to just hang out in his own subconscious. If he could explore Bill’s, he could learn more, figure out how to really help him, what the root of all his problems was.
“Well, you’ll be waking up soon. Why don’t we head somewhere a bit more familiar, in the meantime?” Bill snapped his fingers, and they were in the cabin again, in their comfortable chairs by the fireplace. “I've got Xanthar running things upstairs, so we’re fine to relax together for a bit while your soul catches up!”
Pine Tree smiled, summoning a cup of hot cocoa for himself. This was good for now.
“Sounds great.”