-Interlude, various conversations and then a continuation- part 1

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(After the DDNMD game, in Ford's room)

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Dipper slowly pushed the door to Great-Uncle Ford's bedroom open. And he had an odd mixed feeling of relief and uncomfortable exclusion as he saw Grunkle Stan and Mabel sitting next to Great-Uncle Ford (and what his great-uncle looked like just then). He paused, and began to quietly back out of the room, thinking that maybe he should leave and just let them…

...but then Mabel looked up and straightened, and he saw both Grunkle Stan and then Great-Uncle Ford lift their heads to look over, and…

"Get over here, silly!" Mabel enthused out, making a wavey sweater-hand motion at him from Great-Uncle Ford's left side. She said it a little more quietly than usual, but it was clear from looking at them all that they all thought…

Dipper couldn't help but blush a little and duck his head slightly, as he moved the rest of the way into Great-Uncle Ford's bedroom and closed the door behind him with a soft click, as the door latched shut.

...He still felt both a little like he was intruding, and a little like he was not, as he walked over to where Mabel was sitting, smiling up at him, and Grunkle Stan was looking him over with a slight grunkly frown, and Great-Uncle Ford was looking up at him with a tired but welcoming smile, and...

"Sorry," Dipper said, feeling completely silly and maybe a little stupid about it, now, as Mabel crawled her way up into Great-Uncle Ford's lap, and Dipper sat down at his great-uncle's left side where Mabel had just made room for him. And Dipper couldn't help but let out a breath as Great-Uncle Ford wrapped the arm he'd just had around Mabel around him, too, and…

--Dipper let out a soft laugh as Mabel practically tackle-hugged him in place, still half in Great-Uncle Ford's lap. Great-Uncle Ford let out a slightly startled laugh himself, and Grunkle Stan… Grunkle Stan just moved in a little closer, to wrap his other arm around Mabel in a hug, for 'full hug coverage', as Mabel liked to put it.

"Are you all right, my boy?" Great-Uncle Ford asked him quietly, and Dipper let out another breath and nodded a few times. Yeah, he'd been out there for awhile, and kind of almost gotten 'cornered' by the two demons again, but… yeah, he was fine.

He just hadn't wanted to disrupt what was going on in here, is all. He… hadn't really thought he'd be able to try and make anything better, just by being there. But with the way Mabel was hugging him now and giving him that lopsided smile, he knew that she knew, and that she thought he was being a big dumb-dumb head about it.

Because yeah, Great-Uncle Ford had been looking a lot better than he usually did when he and Mabel tried to bookend him with hugs and… just sitting next to him for awhile sometimes, when he couldn't even do that. And yeah, it had left Dipper feeling grateful, and happy almost, that he hadn't gotten in there first, before Grunkle Stan had sat down where he usually sat -- and boy, had that been uncomfortable to feel when he'd realized what he was thinking...

...but it was really the truth. Dipper was terrible at making Great-Uncle Ford feel better, and when he'd walked in… It was weird, but Dipper knew that this wasn't something Mabel had done. And he probably wouldn't have believed it, if he hadn't saw it. But the way Great-Uncle Ford and Grunkle Stan had been sitting next to each other...

...yeah, Mabel totally had stars in her eyes of excitement over it for a reason (and yeah, she'd just been waiting for him to come in, to share). Because when Dipper had walked in, Mabel had been curled up right into Great-Uncle Ford's left side, sure, but at Great-Uncle Ford's right...

Grunkle Stan had been sitting there with his arm around Great-Uncle Ford's shoulder, and Great-Uncle Ford had been just leaning up against him, his head knocked up against Grunkle Stan's own, and… he'd looked so relaxed. They both had. Great-Uncle Ford had had his arm around Grunkle Stan's back, too, and they'd both had their eyes closed, and… Mabel had almost been superfluous, a superfluous hug, in addition to that. And that was saying something.

And there wasn't any awkwardness there, either. Something had happened, that had had them finally… well...

"--You two finally hugged it out!" Mabel almost squealed out at them, finally, his twin unable to keep it in anymore. And...

...oh. Oh, man. Dipper had maybe been expecting old-man blushes, or some looking away and scratching the back of their heads, all embarrassed, with some denials or something. Because with the way the two of them had been fighting before they'd gotten back, and the extra week that they hadn't talked about yet, that had worried him and Mabel at first when they'd first heard about it -- because an extra week of the two of them being 'dumb' and arguing without them around to try and stop them, when they'd been yelling at each other like that, the last time they'd saw them? That was kind of horrifying. But with the two of them acting like this now, Dipper had thought...

And he hadn't been the only one. Dipper winced, and he saw Mabel's face fall, and her struggle not to frown, as the mood between their grunkle and great-uncle shifted to something that neither of them had been expecting. Something kind of heavy and… hurt, almost.

And it was a guilty kind of hurt, that Great-Uncle Ford was feeling. (Which meant…)

"...Grunkle Stan?" Mabel asked, her voice wavering a little bit as she looked up at him, and their grunkle let out a sigh and gave her a little squeeze of a hug, before letting go to muss up her hair a bit. "Did you…?"

"Wasn't exactly a hug," Grunkle Stan told them both in grunkly old-man tones, though he sounded almost muted as he said it. "Guess we worked through a couple things, though."

Dipper had to stifle a frown as he felt Great-Uncle Ford wince at his side. ...But apparently, so did Grunkle Stan, because he just sighed and looked tired himself, as he lifted a hand and… ruffled Great-Uncle Ford's hair, next? (Woah.) "Hey, knucklehead, I ain't mad. You know that. Right?"

And somehow, this made things even worse, because Great-Uncle Ford curled in on himself a little more and looked even more miserable, now.

"I'm sorry, Stan," Great-Uncle Ford said quietly, looking away, not looking at any of them, and he looked slightly startled as Grunkle Stan ruffled his hair again at the back and then pulled him in closer, kind of cupping his head and neck.

"I ain't," Grunkle Stan said roughly, and, okay, he and Mabel were totally lost now. "And you shouldn't be either."

Whatever was going on, though, what Grunkle Stan had just said seemed to work, at least a little, because… It had Great-Uncle Ford looking terribly pained all over again, but kind of… more openly this time? And he just sort of… ducked his head up against the side of Grunkle Stan's head next, and started to relax again. It looked… painful. But… kind of that good kind of painful? Like the pain was bleeding out slowly, instead of just staying stuck inside.

Dipper swallowed hard, as he watched this. Mabel had used to have an easier time at this stuff, before. Pain had used to drain away a lot more quickly, in elementary school. Just… shave both your heads, and she'd let go and it'd all drain out in almost an instant. But things had gotten harder and harder in middle school, and Dipper had started to see it last summer -- what it looked like when your twin held in pain, instead of letting you help them get it all out.

This looked like something Great-Uncle Ford had been holding in for a really long time, and this wasn't going to go away in just an hour, or even one night.

Dipper exchanged a look with his twin, but Mabel gave him something of a hopeful look, and Dipper couldn't help but relax a little bit.

"Stan…" Great-Uncle Ford said quietly.

"Nope, none of that," Grunkle Stan said next. "Nobody's being sorry. We're all just fine. Everything worked out over there… uh, kinda. Yeah. --And we're not needin' to talk about any of this stuff again anymore," Grunkle Stan rumbled out, almost hurriedly at the end there.

"Grunkle Stan…" Mabel chided, and said grunkle pulled a grunkly-grimace on them.

"--Tonight," Grunkle Stan amended, after a Mabel-patented 'I am going to prescribe you so many hugs' glare. "We ain't gonna talk about any of this junk any more tonight. --We've got other stuff to talk about," Grunkle Stan brought up next. "Like 'what did we learn from this one'. Yeah?"

Mabel pulled in a breath, and she and Dipper exchanged glances, (and Dipper tried to tell her to just let it go for awhile, he was pretty sure pushing was going to make it worse), and… "...Fiiiiine," Mabel said, not quite collapsing up against Grunkle Stan's back, and staring up at him.. "But you two are going to tell us about that whole summertime-without-us week, misters! And no leaving anything out this time, either!" she declared, pointing up at them. "I want all the details!"

At this, Dipper stared a bit, because he saw Great-Uncle Ford raise his head away from Stan's shoulder slightly, and… turn to his own twin, to give him an imploring look. A 'do we have to?' look.

Stan huffed out a long-suffering sigh. "A little bit. Later," Grunkle Stan said, while exchanging a twin look with Great-Uncle Ford, that had him grimacing and looking away, but not arguing, and... (Oh, man. Wow. Wow. Dipper hadn't actually thought that Grunkle Stan was really being serious, when he kept saying that he was the 'alpha twin'. Oh man...)

Dipper sent a twin-look of his own to Mabel, a sort of 'did you just see that?' look. And Mabel gave him the slightest nod, followed by what was the scariest sort of determined look he'd ever seen out of her, which read: 'if the grunkles don't tell us, we can ask Bill.'

Dipper really wasn't sure about that one, but...

...after glancing up at his grunkle and great-uncle, he could understand the urge to know exactly what had been going on over there in that other dimension with those other 'them's, that they just didn't know about. Because if it had messed with their grunkle and great-uncle this much...

(Which was messed up. Their grunkle and great-uncle had already told them a lot, but Mabel was right -- they'd apparently left out a lot of stuff, too. A lot of stuff. And...)

Wait. Did this mean that Bill had done something to try and get them to stop fighting, that had worked better than anything Mabel had managed to come up with to-date, ever?

"So," Stan said. "What did we learn outta that crazy triangle demon this time?" he prompted, and Dipper saw his twin try not to look disappointed as Great-Uncle Ford grimaced slightly and straightened in place, moving a bit away from Grunkle Stan's side to sit up on his own. (Wow. Yeah, he really had been leaning up against him a lot and everything. ...Well, at least they really were acting like twins again? Finally? Huh. Was it gonna be weird seeing them like this, when they hadn't been like this around them before?)

"Ummmm," Mabel began, game for trying to help Grunkle Stan out. (She was trying to get Grunkle Ford to stop dwelling on whatever bad stuff was making him feel awful right now.) "Which one?" she asked first.

"Both of 'em," Grunkle Stan said promptly. "Miz agreed to it, too." And he had a slight almost 'gotcha' smile going, that Dipper noticed.

Dipper frowned slightly. "She really likes stories," he put out there. "She was a lot heavier on the roleplaying and stuff than even… uh, even Great-Uncle Ford gets, sometimes?" Dipper tried not to wince at what he'd just implied. He'd only meant that he usually used it as a means to an end, setting up the scene, and... "--It's not that I don't like that stuff!" DIpper said. "I mean, you always mix it up with lots of fighting--" It just… always felt like there was a lot of depth when Great-Uncle Ford did it, is all.

"It's fine," Great-Uncle Ford told him, to Dipper's relief. "I've had many more years to think of backstory and characters for the settings."

Dipper couldn't help but blush at this. "I, uh," he said. "I think I understand what Bill and Miz were saying about murder-hobo campaigns, now, though," he told them all. But then he couldn't help but frown. "I don't think I want to play them that way, though," Dipper admitted, glancing over at Great-Uncle Ford. "Not if Bill's going to talk his way out of everything. He's got the build for it," Dipper noted, "Even with the super-low charisma score." With the way he'd dorked up all the numbers, and all the items he had that (mostly) made up for it...

"Aw…" Mabel said, and Dipper couldn't help but wince. "Dipper, I liked getting to talk with the werewolves, though." She sounded a little resigned to not getting to do that again, though. Because if it was going to hurt Great-Uncle Ford seeing Bill doing stuff like that...

"--I'm fine," Great-Uncle Ford said. "I just…" He grimaced.

"Ford, don't go pushing yourself," Grunkle Stan told him.

"It's not that," Great-Uncle Ford told them. "I just... " He pulled in a breath. "If it was just Bill, I could tell him to stop. But…" He trailed off.

"But?" Grunkle Stan said, as Great-Uncle Ford got super quiet, looking down.

"...I don't want to talk about it, Stan," Great-Uncle Ford said quietly.

"Doesn't have to be specific," Grunkle Stan told him. "Just keep it general."

(Dipper glanced between them almost anxiously. The way Grunkle Stan had sounded so level there had seemed almost… dangerous. And he wasn't completely sure why.)

Great-Uncle Ford grimaced at this, and pulled in a breath. He looked away, and let it out as a sigh.

And then he finally said, "Bill and another demon working together is… too much."

There was a pause.

"That happen often?" Grunkle Stan said, and Great-Uncle Ford shook his head, still not looking at any of them.

"Not if you don't count the Henchmaniacs," Great-Uncle Ford said dourly. "But--" he seemed to almost twitch in place, "The two of them were-- were playing together-- and--" Great-Uncle Ford cut himself off abruptly, almost snapping his mouth shut.

Grunkle Stan was watching him the entire time, carefully.

"...Okay," Grunkle Stan said slowly, and Dipper saw him rub a hand across Great-Uncle Ford's back. "I got it. Bouncing stuff off each other is a couple steps too far."

And weirdly in synch, Dipper noted. The two demons were eerie sometimes in how they would just mirror each other without what looked like any pre-planning. The way the two were able to just… do stuff around each other to reach the same goal, without trying to do it on purpose? Dipper had seen how the two moved around each other, or would be doing the same thing as each other, while not even looking at each other--

...Maybe Miz really was a Bill Cipher, too. Maybe when Bill said that whole thing about 'a me that is also me', he was really on to something about...

"I'll tell 'em to try and lay off of doin' that around you too much," Grunkle Stan said next.

"...It would be best if they didn't do it around anyone at all," Great-Uncle Ford muttered, which just had him grimacing as Grunkle Stan told him, "I ain't gonna tell them not to do that stuff around me," next.

"Stan…" Great-Uncle Ford not-quite complained.

"Nuh-uh," Grunkle Stan told him. "Ford, I'm serious. I can handle it. Believe me, you don't know half the stuff the kid's told me so far, and the more I see the two of 'em together… --You have no idea how much stuff I'm learning about the kid, looking at her," Grunkle Stan told them.

Great-Uncle Ford looked up at Grunkle Stan over that one, and Dipper felt a sudden sort of panicky shock. (So did Mabel.)

And their grunkle and great-uncle noticed, turning towards both of them.

"--Dipper, it's fine," Grunkle Stan told him.

"--Mabel, I know," Great-Uncle Ford said shortly after.

Mabel let out kind of an odd laugh, and Dipper didn't get what was going on here. At least, he kind of hoped that he didn't.

"...Know what," Dipper said slowly, and… then he felt like dirt at the sad, almost hurt look Great-Uncle Ford gave him, at how his face fell.

"I would never hurt you and your sister, Dipper. Never. You-- you have to know that," Great-Uncle Ford told them both quietly

And Dipper swallowed hard as Grunkle Stan told them, "Ford knows that Miz thinks she's another Bill Cipher. He remembers when she told him the first time. And we were listening to you all from the close side of the boat."

Dipper's stomach dropped.

"I…" Dipper swallowed hard, as he looked up into the faces of his two, suddenly very serious-looking great-uncles. "I didn't actually think that you would…"

"...You were both looking out for each other, I understand that, Dipper," Great-Uncle Ford told him quietly, and he felt his great-uncle give him slightly more of a hug with the arm at his side. "Some things are simply too great a risk--"

"--I should have known better than to listen to either of them at all!" Dipper verbally castigated himself, angry at himself. "I--"

"Dipper, Mason, stop," Great-Uncle Ford told him, and that finally gave him pause, halted the cycle of self-loathing that Dipper was feeling just then, as he pulled his knees up to his chest and curled in on himself, even as Mabel pressed up against him, surrounding him with her own hug. "I know how hard it is to feel right about something, when Bill is so very convinced of something else, otherwise. I know what that is like. And he does believe that, very strongly."

"I still shouldn't have believed him," Dipper said, feeling frustrated at having listened to the dumb dorito over his family. He was so stupid about it. He kept making the same mistakes, over and over again. Mabel had been right about Grunkle Stan and the portal, and now--

"Don't worry about it," Grunkle Stan told him. "The kid and Miz know that Ford remembers the stuff about her saying she's Bill Cipher just fine, now; it's just that they don't know that we know that you two know, now. Heh. --Or the other way around. We're gonna hit both of them with that one, now, real soon," Grunkle Stan told them. "See how much of a loop that throws the kid for, yeah?"

Dipper and Mabel exchanged a look at the smile Grunkle Stan had on just then, and then Dipper… well, he couldn't help but shrug it off. (Though that was really a load off of his shoulders, hearing the two of them talk about it. He'd hated having to walk on eggshells over everything about that, and Mabel...)

"So Miz and Bill really are a lot alike?" Mabel asked, unprompted.

At this, Grunkle Stan made a face. "Well, kinda. Not exactly. It's more like…" Grunkle Stan scratched his cheek. "Kinda looking in a funhouse mirror. How some stuff could've happened differently with the kid. --Some stuff's the same, or kinda-almost-nearly. It's really more like a siblings thing. Not a twins-thing, though. Even if they are 'supposed' to be 'the same'," Grunkle Stan put it, with a grimace.

Dipper frowned. Looking at Miz to learn more about Bill… if they really were dimensional counterparts, then it made sense that Grunkle Stan could do that. But it felt weird to think about it, let alone think about it that way.

Then Dipper blinked as Grunkle Stan shrugged and said next, "Like all the stuffed animals. Miz likes 'em, obviously. And Bill ain't really into that specifically, but I was able to get the crazy triangle to, y'know, bite pillows and stuff when he gets too angry and all stressed out and junk, even before I knew about her and... --What?" he said, as Great-Uncle Ford turned his head to give him an incredulous look. "It's one of those 'constructive outlets' things for getting mad, right? Punch a pillow? --Kid's lousy at punching, so he sorta bites and claws at 'em instead," Grunkle Stan told them matter-of-factly, to a slight giggle from Mabel. "Hey, he's got a body now; getting him to tire himself out actually works, so I'll take what I can get," he told them all next. "Figure that's better than sending him out to go explode a few trees, anyway," Grunkle Stan told them. "Not like we need any more firewood--"

"--Perhaps we should get back to the DDNMD discussion," Great-Uncle Ford interjected rather strongly, and… yeah, Dipper could get behind that one. Because from the look on his face, Dipper realized that Great-Uncle Ford was probably having the same mental image that he was trying to get rid of just then: Bill cuddling up with one of Miz's huge stuffed animals...

"Sure!" Mabel said, happy to help. "Soooooo… Bill's super-paranoid about traps and stuff, still," Mabel pointed out. "This time, he even checked every single foot for traps. It made the dungeon take forever!"

"Might've been trying to set a good example for his little sister," Grunkle Stan put out there. "Kid treats this stuff like real most times. I know he sees it as a good' teaching tool' with us," Grunkle Stan said almost sarcastically. "He might feel the same way about it with her. And from some of the stuff I've heard him tell his sister… pretty sure he's trying to do the exact opposite of showing her any bad habits at all," he told them.

"...He didn't nyarf the game," Dipper noted. He could've, to mess with 'his sister'. "--I mean, okay, he kind of did with the fireball at the end, but he didn't pull the whole 'this game is broken and I'm gonna wreck everything you throw at me' junk he pulled on me, before we switched the ruleset." Really, before they'd made Bill give them a ruleset that wasn't completely broken. Since Bill had apparently come up with the game in the first place.

(Dipper still felt weird about it. The way Bill had been looking at him, when that had first come up. And then Bill had asked him if he liked it. If he liked the game Bill had made, even if Bill hadn't admitted it outright...)

(He'd seemed almost on pins-and-needles, almost nervous in some way, when he'd asked. While he'd been waiting for Dipper to say…)

(--And the way Bill had smiled afterwards had been...)

"Probably didn't want to spoil stuff for his little sister," Grunkle Stan put out there. "She likes the game, he wanted her to have fun…"

"...But he still set off that fireball at the end," Mabel said, with a slight frown.

"Yeah," Grunkle Stan said, frowning himself. "He did…"

There was a pause.

"...Bill goes out of his way to avoid fighting in the games when he doesn't have to do it," Dipper added. "That hasn't changed." Even if he had been more extreme about it this session -- but then, Miz had been setting up the game differently than Dipper did. Bill did a lot of flying up and out of the way in Dipper's games; even if he tried to play it off as gathering intel for them pretty much every single time, it still stood out a lot. More often than not, he played the spy-and-support role, when it came to encounters. Not first-string, not tank; support. He almost always left most of the actual killing up to Mabel and Grunkle Stan, and only jumped in himself when it looked like they were starting to get overwhelmed.

"If there's a choice… does he really pick not-killing someone?" Dipper asked Great-Uncle Ford, because that seemed a little unbelievable to him. "I mean, maybe he only did it because Miz doesn't seem to like the whole 'murder-hobo' thing..." or because he didn't want to go off risking his own character dying -- but that was an argument they'd had a couple different times, after each session, now.

"Eh, the way I see it, the kid thinks killing someone when you don't have to is a waste of time and energy. It's that whole 'efficiency' thing he's got going." (Stan had pretty much figured that one out from just talking to Bill about killing versus not needing to a good several weeks ago, what with the agreement and in getting him to let him take point on fights, along with everything else.)

"'Not having to' generally means not getting in the way of something Bill wants, Stan," Great-Uncle Ford said quietly, "And it doesn't work. Bill doesn't generally feel the need to inform anyone of what, exactly, he wants, until you've already crossed him." Dipper and Mabel exchanged a look at this, because this wasn't how this whole argument usually went, when the two of them got talking about it.

"We're his Zodiac -- far as he sees it," Grunkle Stan said, then amended. "Pretty sure letting us know is pretty high up on his list."

"He hasn't told us what he really wants yet, Stan," Great-Uncle Ford said next, almost quietly, and that had Dipper and Mabel exchanging yet another glance.

"He wants his brother back," Grunkle Stan said straight-out, and it left Dipper feeling wide-eyed and almost breathless. "And I'm workin' on figuring out the rest of it, whatever else he wants outta everything. --Don't know what stupid twisty thing he's got going, that has him worrying about... aw, hell," Grunkle Stan said next, then rubbed a hand across his face. "Okay, yeah. Nevermind. Think I've actually got a handle on that one, now. Hell," Grunkle Stan said kind of darkly, like he was kicking himself over something.

"...Stan?" Great-Uncle Ford said slowly, straightening in place.

"--You, don't ever bring up his brother again. Ever," Grunkle Stan told Great-Uncle Ford outright. "Having one, not havin' one -- none of it," Grunkle Stan told him. "That's what pissed him the hell off with you, that had him lettin' you have nightmares to hell and back again, and almost... " Grunkle Stan shook his head, then grimaced again.

"He did what to Great-Uncle Ford?" Dipper asked, on the heels of Mabel's, "--Grunkle Ford, are you okay??"

"--I'm fine," Great-Uncle Ford told them hurriedly, though he didn't look too happy about something, and Grunkle Stan said, almost as quickly, "--Look, I talked the kid back out of it again, it's handled. No more nightmares for Ford. Yeah?"

Dipper and Mabel felt truly uncomfortable at this, as they looked between their great-uncles.

"Look, just don't-- either of you, don't go bringin' it up, the whole thing's a hot-button nuke-everything kinda thing for the kid, he's--" Grunkle Stan stopped and let out another frustrated sigh. "--Look," he said, sounding like he was levelling with them all. "I think the kid's…" He glanced over at Great-Uncle Ford. "Hell, you thought he didn't even have one, and you've been, what, tryin' to kill him for years? Find a weak spot? --He--"

"Family isn't a weak spot!" Mabel protested, strongly.

"--It is when somebody's got 'em held hostage and is usin' them against you as leverage," Grunkle Stan told them all. "Ford nearly gave up that equation-thingy the triangle wanted so bad over you two, durin' the whole Weirdmageddon thing." Grunkle Stan glanced over at Great-Uncle Ford. "He knew it, didn't he? He figured it out real quick."

"...Yes," Great-Uncle Ford was staring at him, now. "Frighteningly so."

"...Which you'd never expect outta somebody who never thought of family as anything other than junk, yeah?" Grunkle Stan said almost leadingly.

"Or, he could have seen someone else do it before, to see how effective it can be," Great-Uncle Ford said slowly, but he seemed almost tense now.

"Triangle wasn't bein' theatrical in the pyramid, Ford," Grunkle Stan said, like he was building up steam. Like he was almost… "He almost threw in a 'two-and-a-half' there and everything," which confused Dipper (and also his sister) -- but for whatever reason, Great-Uncle Ford seemed to get what he was saying, and he looked almost shocked, even as he shook his head vigorously at Grunkle Stan. "He was shakin'. Actually shakin'. That hand... --I couldn't figure out why, barely thought about it at the time," Grunkle Stan told him, almost urgently. "Thought maybe he was just that angry, except that didn't fit--"

"Stan--"

"--He didn't actually want to do it." Grunkle Stan looked both angry and almost… alarmed, now, and the way his grunkle had breathed those words out had the hairs on the back of Dipper's neck standing on end. "He really, actually… that son of a--" Grunkle Stan grimaced, looking angry as anything. "That was mostly a bluff. --Maybe half a bluff, the stupid--!!" He cut himself off, then looked up at Great-Uncle Ford. "...He would've still done it anyway, wouldn't he," Grunkle Stan said next, still angry, and then some. "He really was still gonna kill Mabel."

"Yes," Great-Uncle Ford said, without any doubt in his expression, tone, body, or voice. "He would have killed her, if you hadn't stopped him." (Dipper felt a chill go down his spine. Because they were talking about--)

"We stopped him," Grunkle Stan said almost on reflex (which left Dipper blinking). "Hell." Grunkle Stan shook his head. "'Least now I know why the kid gave me that kinda look, when I told him I don't want him doin' anything he doesn't want to do, ever. That that's half of what the agreement is for." There was almost a laugh under his tone now. "Still does."

"Stan…" Great-Uncle Ford said quietly.

"--He got all nuts about hearin' about that other house burning down, y'know. That whole week there," Grunkle Stan said next, sitting back a bit, looking… Dipper wasn't quite sure what. It was almost like… Grunkle Stan was talking to himself out loud? Trying to finish working something out? "That home. Like his home, burnin' down, too. Kid was goin' halfway outta his mind, until he fireproofed the Shack, to try and…" Grunkle Stan let out a breath. "--Kid ain't human, but he can relate. He knows. He knows what that feels like," Grunkle Stan told them next. "And--"

"...you can't actually believe that he can--" Great-Uncle Ford began.

"He doesn't care," Dipper interrupted, unable to keep it in anymore. Because-- "He was going to kill Mabel--"

"--He knows better now," Grunkle Stan said, in tones that reminded Dipper of the zombie apocalypse, what Grunkle Stan had been like then. "He knows what'll happen if he even thinks of--"

And Dipper saw Grunkle Stan stop, and pull in a breath, as Great-Uncle Ford put a hand on his shoulder.

And he felt Mabel hug him, reminding him that she was here, and okay...

He saw Grunkle Stan breathe for awhile, and then, finally, pick up again, kind of heavily, with, "Kid's got an idea of what kinda blackmail it'd be, having a sibling as a hostage like that. He'd do damn near anything to get him back, I'd bet." Grunkle Stan sent Great-Uncle Ford a look. "Except tell other people about him. In case they might try and stop him." And Grunkle Stan looked grim as anything as he said next, "Or try and kill that brother of his again, once the kid finally manages to bring him-- back."

And Grunkle Stan wasn't the only one left blinking at the look of sudden (extremely, completely horrified) realization that spread across Great-Uncle Ford's face.

There was a long pause.

"I…" Great-Uncle Ford began slowly, and almost carefully, still looking a little shocked.

Then all three of them jolted in place as Mabel loudly clapped her hands together once.

"So!" Mabel said brightly, with a smile on her face. "No talking about Bill's brother, because he gets crazy-stupid-protective about him, even when he's dead! Got it!"

It left Dipper and their great-uncles feeling a little embarrassed, and a little on-edge. They'd almost been talking about Mabel like she hadn't even been there. And she'd let them do it.

"Sorry," Dipper muttered out at her, pulling down on his cap, and he was.

"It's fine," Mabel told him, whapping him in the arm with a sweater-covered fist. "Brothers get stupid sometimes about things!" Dipper winced again. (So did Grunkle Stan and Great-Uncle Ford.)

"Uh…" Dipper said, searching for something. It was kinda his turn to try and pick up something else, next. "There's…" Oh, right. "Bill had that whole thing planned out right from the start, with that fireball spell of his," Dipper noted. "He knew what the campaign was, and he planned stuff out towards that." Dipper had suspected that Bill had done that before, but he really hadn't ever been that blatant about it, before. Then again… "If he hadn't ended up using it, I probably wouldn't have noticed it, though." A lot of things with his campaigns had been like that so far, with Bill. Stuff would happen, and eventually Dipper would trip over something Bill had done, or planned for, and...

"The kid making plans for everything without talkin' about it is nothin' new," Grunkle Stan noted, though he sent a look to Great-Uncle Ford, who gave him a nod. "What else."

"He had a whole thing planned out for how a vampire could get food while also not killing anyone," Mabel noted next.

"Well, if the villagers agreed to his plan, at least," Dipper added, not really sure if that actually would've worked out so easily, with the way Miz had been playing out the players. They certainly hadn't seemed like they'd be so open to the idea. ...Unless the 'not dying after being eaten' or 'bitten' thing might've somehow played into it.

"That sound like anything we can use?" Grunkle Stan said next.

Dipper frowned, because was it, really? "I mean, the dumb dorito's really talky," Dipper noted. "He's still really easy to distract with talking, to make him stop fighting." But they all already knew that. Just because it worked with them, though, didn't mean it'd work with the rest of the town. Heck, during Weirdmageddon, it hadn't actually stopped Bill from…

"Wait." Dipper paused as something else occurred to him. "Is that why Bill didn't kill anyone in town during Weirdmageddon?" He looked up at Great-Uncle Ford. "He turned everybody into stone, and they all just… it wasn't anything close to permanent." The whole stone chair had just fallen apart, so easily, and... Dipper's eyes widened as something else occurred to him. "He actually stopped when he thought you gave up," Dipper said to Great-Uncle Ford, as he realized... "Except you didn't just give up, you made a deal with him, right?" he asked Grunkle Stan next. "The equation, for us safe."

"He likely wouldn't have kept that deal, Dipper," Great-Uncle Ford told him.

Dipper almost protested, because what if--

--but then Grunkle Stan told them, "I didn't think he was gonna hold up his end of any deal." And that made Dipper feel pretty uncomfortable (because Grunkle Stan knew a liar when he saw one), but...

"Okay, but, he didn't kill anybody in town. He could've. Would making the eyebats have killer laser beam eyes be harder, just zapping everybody dead, than zapping them all stonified and flying them all back to the Fearamid?" Dipper asked kind of rhetorically. Because if he was some evil triangle demon who was at least as bad as… heck, as Gideon if he'd had Bill's powers, instead of Bill himself? "Why would he even need people, to make a chair out of them? He made a whole floating pyramid thing out of nothing!" It made absolutely, literally zero sense. And as much as Dipper would like to just write the dumb dorito off as having zero sense… "Did he just forget to furnish the stupid thing?"

"...No," Great-Uncle Ford said slowly. "I was… upstairs in the Fearamid at one point. Unfrozen. When Bill first asked... well, demanded for the equation out of my mind, I woke up in the 'penthouse suite', as it were. It was fully-furnished," Great-Uncle Ford told them with a frown.

"Okay, so… he was just keeping them around… why?" Dipper asked. "I mean, this is evil overlord 101, right? Why would he do that? --I know he doesn't make sense practically any of the time, but..." It was just so frustrating!

"...Maybe," Great-Uncle Ford said slowly, but he looked almost pained as he said it. "He…" He pulled in a slow breath, then looked to... "Dipper, do you remember… did you hear anything he told the town, while I was setting up the quantum destabilizer?" Great-Uncle Ford asked him. "Or did any of your friends tell you what he said, afterwards? Their actual interactions with him would be very important--" Great-Uncle Ford stopped, seeming to realize something that made him almost cringe.

Dipper frowned. Bill had been talking to them all. "No. Uh… I could ask Pacifica?" He knew she had been right there.

"Yeah, okay. Gonna table that one for now, then. --Anything else?" Grunkle Stan said.

"No, wait," Dipper said. "I just--" He glanced over at Great-Uncle Ford. "Do you really think that he might've, uh, maybe wanted to make a deal with the people in town, too? Like… like maybe trying to make a compromise with that vampire and the villagers?"

Great-Uncle Ford and Grunkle Stan exchanged a look.

"...That's ...possible," Great-Uncle Ford said, with great reserve, and Stan rubbed his face. "But… it would not have gone well, for any of them. I…" he looked away.

"Other dimensional stuff?" Mabel said.

"Yes," Great-Uncle Ford said tersely. "I'd rather not… talk about it."

...Well, that wasn't completely worrying at all. With, y'know, Bill apparently owning other dimensions -- like the one his hat apparently connected to -- and doing who-knew-what with them. Dipper and Mabel exchanged another look.

Dipper frowned. Because, the more he thought about it… the whole thing with the chair was just… poor planning. It was almost as if Bill had purposely set things up so that all those townsfolk could be freed quickly and all at once. And Bill had let Gideon know how to free the townsfolk. he had to have done that; how else could Gideon have known about that? But why would Bill do that? Had he been gloating, or something? Letting him know how easy it would be for somebody to let him out of that dancing cage, if only he could just reach…? --Okay, nevermind, that kind of gloating did sound like something Bill would do. Ugh. Stupid dorito.

...There was so much they still didn't understand about Bill. Like why he'd attacked them all to begin with; why had he invaded earth? Because from what Dipper had learned in all this time around him, Bill always had a reason for doing what he did. Maybe it was something that they would never think, and usually it still didn't make any sense -- because the dumb dorito was insane -- but... A crazy party and taking over the Earth? That wasn't a reason, that was an action. "How is throwing a Weirdmageddon party supposed to help bring back Bill's brother?" Dipper groaned out.

Grunkle Stan sighed. "Pretty sure that was just the 'hey, I've escaped' celebration. Ain't like I got a lot of pushback from the kid on not trying to pull one of those again. --More like, none," he said, sending a look to Great-Uncle Ford. "Kid made it sound more like it was for the demons than for him."

"That's…" Great-Uncle Ford blinked, then got a thinking frown. And he got quiet.

"Well, Miz said that Bill plans to overthrow the Axolotl," Mabel put out there. "Maybe he needs to do that, before he can get his brother back?" she spitballed. "And he needs help from his friends to do that? Do they want to take over the world before helping him with that?"

Stan scratched his chin. "Kid's okay with not talking with his demon 'friends', for at least a while. But the whole apocalypse thing is off the plate now; he needed his friends to take over the place. The way the kid's talked about it, he thought he needed them to do that to make this dimension 'his', and to make people agree with that. --I told him he don't need to do that. Not sure I've completely convinced him yet, though," Grunkle Stan noted, crossing his arms. "Kid's definitely changing tactics now, like I want him to. He's got some new plan in mind. Hasn't gone over it with me, yet." ...Yeah, a plan that probably involved Grunkle Stan, somehow. Dipper remembered seeing how Bill had reacted when Grunkle Stan had said… and the way Great-Uncle Ford had panicked hadn't made anything better. Bill thought Grunkle Stan would, and could help him out with something, somehow, as crazy and off-the-wall as that was.

"Whatever. I'll get it outta him eventually. Maybe after his sister's left again, and he don't have to worry about her maybe being disapproving of people getting killed, 'accidentally' or otherwise," Grunkle Stan mused out loud. "--Murder ain't the kid's first option, though. Not unless he thinks that's what he's gotta do to get what he wants. --It's why I want him talking to me so much," Grunkle Stan said at Great-Uncle Ford, "Coming to me, first. --I've been giving him options. He comes to me, I tell him what I don't like, what crosses my line, and I give him more choices. Anytime I can give him something better, he takes it and runs with it, every time."

"Bill doesn't do 'better', he does worse," Great-Uncle Ford said disparagingly.

"I don't care how he defines it, as long as he sticks to only doin' stuff that I'm okay with!" Grunkle Stan ground out at him, and they both started looking combative.

"Is that part of the rules?" Mabel asked next, and it left the three of them blinking again. "I mean, in Dipper's games, you almost have to kill bad guys to get experience to level up, right? If Bill wasn't in our party, he wouldn't get any experience at all, almost. But Miz's game wasn't like that," Mabel told them. "She said we'd all get the same amount of experience, just for playing, right?"

"That isn't how real life works, though," Dipper noted.

"But it kinda is! Well, at least sort of," Mabel said next, walking it back a little, almost embarrassed. "I mean, everybody has different experiences, and… um… it's okay for me to be really good at knitting, and you're good at DDNMD, and Grunkle Ford is really good at baking--"

"It's simply an application of organic chemistry," Great-Uncle Ford said, with a slight blush.

"Which you almost never do," Grunkle Stan said, eyeing him. "When's the last time I saw you cook, huh?"

"We don't have an oven on the Stan 'o War II, Stan," Great-Uncle Ford pointed out, to a "Whose fault is that, huh? With all your geeky gadgets and--" he was cut off by Great-Uncle Ford messing up his hair, with a veritable smile on his face.

Mabel couldn't help but giggle. "I bet Miz would be so jealous to see Ford bake! She can't bake at all. She told me that. Was feeling pretty down at herself about it, actually." That was an interesting piece of trivia, but Stan steered the conversation back to the topic at hand.

"Right. Dragon-lady's got negative-1 points in cooking that involves pastries." That got another giggle out of Mabel. "So, what. You think the kid's maybe blowing smoke on that one, with the game? He's convinced that's the system he has to work with, killing people the second it looks like they won't leave him alone?" Stan put out there, then frowned. "Like... maybe not an experience thing. Maybe it's…. more of a progress thing?" Grunkle Stan noted, though he didn't sound very sure of it. "Kid tried to keep us pretty on-track in your games, Dipper. We don't hit too many 'encounters' just for killing; he helps the most when we're powering through stuff to get to the… it's the whole plot thing. To get to the end of the thing. To get where we're going." Grunkle Stan frowned even further. "In your games, we can only progress if we kill the stuff that's in our way, so he... does that." And now Grunkle Stan looked like he wanted to curse for some reason.

"But he finds it boring," Mabel noted, which left Dipper feeling… weird about the whole thing.

"Does he really just want to… talk his way around stuff, the whole time?" Dipper asked, because… Did he? Bill… did practically interrupt his own fights with them, when they started talking to him. He stopped fighting, and started… well, taunting, most times, but--

"--Yes," Great-Uncle Ford said, "But that is only because he tends to get more out of it. Having people working for him increases his reach, and exponentially increases what he can do, if he can convince someone strongly enough that they will then go out recruiting others to his cause." And he sent some kind of a look Grunkle Stan's way that Dipper didn't quite catch.

"Wait. Bill has a cause?" Dipper said, confused.

"Getting his brother back?" Mabel asked, then frowned. "But Grunkle Ford, you said he doesn't talk about that with anybody else."

"That isn't…" Great-Uncle Ford began, then grimaced and stopped. "I'd rather not."

And for some reason, that had Grunkle Stan giving Great-Uncle Ford a very long look.

"...What does Bill usually tell everybody and their dog that he wants?" Grunkle Stan asked, and Great-Uncle Ford grimaced, looked down at his hands, and admitted:

"I don't know," Great-Uncle Ford said quietly. "I've refused to listen to him, any time the subject has ever come up." And from looking at him, it was pretty clear that Great-Uncle Ford didn't want to know. Though for some reason that Dipper didn't understand, he also looked a little afraid for whatever reason he had right then, too.

Well, Dipper didn't blame him. It was probably some stupid, insane thing that didn't have anything to do with anything. Because if it wasn't about Bill's brother, and that was what he really wanted…

...then whatever the dumb dorito was telling people instead wasn't really important, then, was it? It couldn't be.

Grunkle Stan let out a sigh, Great-Uncle Ford grimaced a bit, and after a little more talking (this time about Miz, instead of Bill, and how she had played -- and whether she'd had any ulterior motives with what she'd been doing or not, because apparently Grunkle Stan thought she was a little more twisty and less direct than Bill Cipher himself?), they concluded their discussion, with Dipper and Mabel going back to their room for a bit, while Stan went to the kitchen to start working on dinner.

And once Dipper was back in their room, he grabbed his old journal -- the one Mabel had given him at the end of last summer -- and sat down on his bed. He pulled out a pen (not paying much attention to his twin as she tossed herself into her own bed across the room from him, and grabbed up one of her stuffed animals to hug), and started scribbling down all the new things he had just learned. There was so much they still didn't know about Bill! --Even worse, every new thing they learned only brought up even more questions for him. (Admittedly, the problem was driving him a little nuts, because the more questions he asked, the more questions he had, and it was starting to get to the point that a lot of those questions could only be answered by Bill--)

Dipper bit his pen as he frowned. Still, he was getting closer to something. And the more they knew, the closer they'd get to figuring out how to get rid of Bill once and for all.

The only problem now was, did they talk about the whole 'brother' thing with Old Man McGucket, or not?

And to figure out the answer to that question, Dipper glanced up at Mabel.

"Hey, sis?" Dipper began.

---

(Back to the present. After Miz and Bill and "the Grunkles" return from the diner)

---

"Welcome back~!" Mabel greeted them when they got home. Miz waved, but Bill simply nodded at her before he not-quite pulled Miz with him up the stairs and out of sight. Mabel blinked at seeing this, before turning to them both to ask, "What's wrong with Bill?"

"Ran into Gideon at the diner." Stan made his way past her to the living room.

Mabel winced at this. That couldn't have gone well. She remembered the tap-dancing cage. "Did he--"

"Bill and Miz got out before he could see 'em," Stan told her, not quite collapsing into seat in his sofa chair with a grunt.

"Bill didn't do something really bad to him, did he?" Mabel asked, though she clearly had some mixed feelings on the subject. (Mostly because she thought that nobody deserved to have Bill torturing them with sailor dance moves forever, not even Gideon, 'reformed' or not.)

"Nah," Stan waved off. "Kid got himself and his sister outta there without the little jerk even realizing they were there." Gideon had been on a fishing expedition there with his questions. He hadn't wanted to run into the kid; he'd only stopped sweating once he'd thought Bill wasn't nearby, and that Ford had things under control.

"More importantly," Ford knelt down in front of Mabel. "What happened between you and Gideon? The man-eater claims he tried to kill your brother--"

And from the way Mabel stiffened and looked away, Ford began to frown. (And Stan's frown deepened.)

"How many times has that little jerk tried to kill you two?" was Stan's question next, not like he didn't know about the explosives in the mountain rock heads -- he'd been there; he remembered it -- and Ford whipped his head around to look over at him in shock.

"Um…" Mabel dissembled, and that sent a chill down Ford's spine. "I mean, he didn't really try to kill me until the thing with the mayoral election?" she said with a sigh, not looking too happy just then. Then she looked up with a frown.

"Gideon didn't say anything about Dipper, did he?" Mabel said next, with something of a steely glint in her eye, and a set to her jaw, and...

"No," Ford said, not quite rushing to reassure(?) her. "Gideon said nothing about you or your brother. Just Bill."

"Good," Mabel said with a nod, still looking quite uncharacteristically serious to Ford.

Ford paused for a moment, taking this in before adding, "...Bill seemed rather adamant about Miz not meeting, seeing, or talking to Gideon, for some reason."

"Really?" And then, rather suddenly, Mabel went back to being her usual smiling and cheerful self. "Well, I guess Bill maybe has another reason not to go into town and make a big scene now, right? That's good," she said next, rather brightly, before going back to her coloring book.

Ford started at her where he was kneeling down in front of her, rather at a loss for words.

He looked up at Stan, and his brother exchanged a look with him that Ford didn't quite understand, before turning away from him and picking up the remote to the TV.

Ford slowly stood up again as Stan clicked the TV on. He rather wanted to ask after the mayoral election (-- had he missed something important? He'd given the mid-control tie to the niblings to help them help him win the thing, and he remembered hearing that Stan had in fact won the election... but had also then lost it because he hadn't filled out the proper paperwork, apparently, among other things like his long history of known criminal enterprises and crimes…). But with the way Stan was acting, turning on the TV so dismissively like that, his brother clearly didn't want to talk about it just then.

Ford frowned as he turned away, walking across Stan's view as he headed for the gift shop and basement (to no response from Stan, not even a complaint at said view-blocking).

But when he got to the door to the basement in the gift shop, and saw Dipper at the Mystery Shack's register counter with Melody, he thought the better of letting the question go so completely, and stopped at the vending machine opening to ask, "...Dipper, could I talk with you downstairs for a moment?"

Dipper looked up, and then nodded and got up, closing his book and putting it under one arm, but stopped (and almost winced), when Melody said, "I can take a break in 5 minutes."

"Ah," said Ford, "That's… good to know?"

Melody gave him something of a significant look. (And Dipper was staying right where he was… why?)

"Dr. Pines," Melody said to him, "With all due respect, Dipper and Mabel aren't supposed to be out of sight of myself, Soos, or Mr. Pines for the rest of the week.

Ford blinked. Then he remembered. "Ah, yes." The punishment Stan had given them. He paused for a moment, as he realized that Dipper was still standing over by the counter, and Ford began to frown, not understanding the problem. "But surely, it would be alright if Dipper remains with me--"

"--Mr. Pines didn't say you were on the list," Melody told him, and that stopped Ford right in his tracks, a bit stunned. "But you can ask Mr. Pines if you like," Melody said simply, and Ford stared at her.

"Surely, that was an oversight--!" Ford began to protest, but at Melody's lack of change in expression, and Dipper's slight wince in place where he stood...

"You can ask him," Melody repeated. "He just went in with you, didn't he?"

"...Yes, he did," Ford frowned.

And then Ford's eyes narrowed slightly.

"Mabel was in the living room alone just now," Ford began, at the realization that the niblings were apparently being given unequal treatment in this regard, and he saw Dipper grimace slightly and look away from him, rubbing at the side of his arm, as Melody said:

"The door was open; I could see her from here. Mr. Pines closed it after you, Bill, and Miz walked in."

Ford stared at her. And then Ford looked down at Dipper.

Dipper looked up at him, with a half-strained smile.

"...We could talk up here?" Dipper tried, then looked away almost embarrassed and ashamed as Ford felt his own face fall.

Ford stared down at Dipper for a moment, and then he knew what he must do. His course was clear.

Ford straightened up to his full height in place.

"I'm going to go talk to Stan about this," Ford declared, turning on his heel and striding back through the door to the living room.

"Good luck!" he heard Melody call out good-naturedly behind him, as if she truly meant it (she probably did, given what he knew of her), and Ford barely stifled the wince.

He strode into the living room of the Shack, and was greeted with the sight of Stan watching some odd show about babies slapping each other.

Ford stared at this scene for a moment.

And then he shook his head slightly, firmed his resolve with a steely glare at his brother, and opened his mouth to--

---

Ford sighed as he stepped out of the elevator with Dipper, down at the basement level.

--It had been a win that still felt like a loss. He and Stan had talked, and Stan had gotten up and followed him back into the gift shop, to explicitly tell Melody himself that Ford was now 'cleared' to watch one of the niblings at a time, anywhere inside the house, on his own.

--But not both of the niblings together, not either of them alone after 10pm, and not with any of them one single step outside of the house. Not the parking lot, not the yard, not even a single one of the porches, even though the niblings were not constrained to the house proper and could go out onto the porches and out into the yard with proper, 'adult' supervision.

And Ford had had to swear up and down to his brother that he wouldn't try to help the niblings get around their grounding, to get even that much.

It grated on Ford that he was given so little trust by his own brother in this respect. ...Not least of which because Stan himself was, of the two of them, the more childish and less-responsible one by far...

--It wasn't as though Ford had approved of what the niblings had done, risking themselves life and limb, let alone to that extent! If Bill had realized what they had done before he and Ford had realized something was wrong, or simply been more resistant to Stan's demands at first, and gone after them both alone--

(Hearing Mabel try to protest on his behalf that Stan was planning on giving Bill 'full' watching privileges in less than a week, more than he was giving Ford himself now, 'so why didn't Grunkle Ford even get that much?', didn't exactly improve Ford's mood any, either.)

(To this, Stan had said that Bill getting that was going to be contingent on 'the kid' actually understanding what 'babysitting them' meant, and... proving it. Somehow. --A point upon which Stan was not at all clear with them on, as to what the specifics of what that might actually entail, to a degree that it left Ford suspicious of what-all his brother was leaving out of this 'magical' solution and training course he was apparently, supposedly going to be putting Bill Cipher of all people, though, in order to get him to such a point.)

(But still, there was the existence of a 'somehow' that Stan seemed completely adamant about and upon prior to this allowance for Bill -- a fact which only marginally made things better, in Ford's own opinion…)

But what was done was done. Stan was being critically stubborn about this, and -- more importantly and rather worse in For's own opinion -- the kids were listening more to Stan than to him on this, so Ford would have to go along with it for the interim.

...Well, at least he could have Dipper down in his lab with him, now without having to drag his grandnephew down there 'against his will' and Stan's own expressed 'orders', risking his twin brother's own ire and who-knew-what else, with Bill Cipher currently at his brother's back....

Once they were downstairs with the elevator door shut, and Ford had finished checking the space for eavesdroppers both inert and active, electronic and biological (cryptids included), once again... the scientist let out a soft sigh and sat down in a chair, motioning for Dipper to take his own seat in a nearby one as well.

And once his grand-nephew was seated, Ford asked him what he'd wanted to ask him upstairs. "Dipper, how many times has Gideon tried to kill you."

"Three," Dipper told him promptly.

Ford blinked at him, taken aback.