Chapter Text
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“Congratulations--” Bill just about sneered out, then stopped.
Ford clenched his teeth and his hand went for his gun reflexively. Bill might be on nearly the opposite end of town from them just now, but that didn’t mean he found it acceptable for that demon to talk to his brother like--
“You just gave ANYONE who wants to take advantage of you a BLUEPRINT and a ROADMAP to the BARE MINIMUM they need to do to get you to trust them,” Bill continued.
“What?” he heard Dipper say from where his grandnephew was standing next to him.
“Way to go!” Bill said next, with more sarcasm in his voice than Ford had ever heard out of anyone, let alone-- “That’s not how humans or demons or ANYONE works! NO-ONE is a trustworthy person.”
“What?” Ford heard Dipper whisper out next, but Ford couldn’t manage to tear his eyes away from the screen to look down at him, because Bill looked so--
“You two can’t even trust YOURSELVES, because even your own stupid physical bodies will BETRAY you, give in and BREAK down and COLLAPSE on you in pain and DEATH at even the SMALLEST OF PROBLEMS!” Bill added, and the earlier anger in Bill’s voice had shifted halfway through to something like outright disgust as Bill threw his hands up in the air.
Ford was staring at the screen in disbelief.
So was Dipper next to him, he had no doubt. Mabel, he had no idea about, as she hadn’t spoken yet, but…
Ford stared at the monitor as he listened to Bill’s voice project out of the speaker system, as Bill said: “You want to share some REAL, WORKING advice on ‘trust’ with that ‘anonymous’ instead of that BAD information you just spouted off? TRY THIS ON FOR SIZE--” and Ford felt his eyes widen and his stomach drop as Bill took in a breath. “--The ONLY thing you can TRUST,” he heard Bill grind out, “Is that people will ALWAYS work in THEIR OWN best SELF-interest.”
He felt a shudder run through him as he saw Bill look up at Stanley, as he saw the look Bill was giving his brother as he said, “Unless they’re SUICIDAL. Or think being COMPLETELY IRRATIONAL is FUN and like getting killed.”
And Ford didn’t breathe until Bill looked away from Stanley again.
“ASK AROUND to figure out WHAT THEY WANT, look into WHAT THEY DO to learn WHAT THEY PRIORITIZE and HOW LONG they can concentrate on the prize,” he heard Bill rattle off from the chair he was sitting in -- Stanley’s chair -- in the living room of the Shack. “If you know THAT, you will know EXACTLY how long you can expect them to do what you want them to do, after TELLING THEM you can give them something they want and SHOWING them you can do it.”
“Oh my god,” Ford heard Dipper say, as if something was dawning on him all of a sudden.
“...Is that how Bill thinks?” he heard Mabel say quietly, almost soberly, at his left.
“Oh my god,” Ford heard Dipper repeat.
“Trust a demon to be soulless,” Ford heard Fiddleford mutter off and behind him, from the other end of the lab.
“He does that,” Ford heard Dipper say, sounding more than a little panicked, though it shifted quickly to numb shock: “That is what he does.”
Ford heard all of this, and Ford kept his mouth firmly and carefully shut.
“You’ll ALSO know when they will STOP working with you and betray you, because they’ll ALWAYS do it for SOMETHING THEY WANT MORE,” Ford heard Bill say, and Bill didn’t just sound angry this time. This time, he sounded coldly furious. “Every. Time.” Ford heard him intone, and Ford swallowed hard. “And you’ll know what that something more IS. And trust doesn’t have anything to do with INSTINCT.”
Ford saw Stanley look like he was about to say something, except… he didn’t.
He wasn’t quite able to follow the low-voiced discussion that was going on between the niblings just then. He was too focused on the screen, and Bill’s words.
“I might trust someone to KNOW something, or PULL OFF making something for me, but I wouldn’t trust them NOT to break it later for some COMPLETELY STUPID AND NONSENSICAL reason!” Bill continued on, not looking at Stanley and clearly oblivious to Stan’s near-response. “And JUST BECAUSE they MIGHT be able to do that ONE THING for me DOESN’T mean that they can do ANYTHING ELSE, or that their instincts are something I can or should TRUST!”
Stanley shifted in place slightly, and almost -- yet didn’t -- interject again.
“The very BEST you could hope for there, with someone you THINK you can trust, is that they ACTUALLY TELL YOU what their instincts are telling them instead of LYING to you about it or NOT TELLING you instead.” Ford closed his eyes and passed a hand over his face. Because hearing that from Bill was so hypocritical and wrong… “There is NO SUCH THING as total trust and thinking otherwise will get you KILLED faster than you can BLINK,” he heard Bill say, then end with: “Idiots.”
There was a long pause.
Ford reopened his eyes and stared at the monitor, in something like anticipation and dread. --Anticipation at what Stanley would say... and dread at how Bill would react to it.
He was expecting Stanley to tell Bill off. To tell him he was wrong. To tell him he was out of line, out of his mind, out of something, though Ford didn’t know precisely what.
What he saw instead was Stanley, his own brother, sigh deeply.
What he heard his brother say instead was, “Well, you’re not wrong.”
“HA!” Bill said, straightening in place and looking pleased with himself -- if not outright… vindicated?... at Stan’s words. Bill grinned up at Stanley, and Ford watched this all happen from a monitor on a piped feed, rerouted to a lab in Fiddleford’s mansion from his house’s basement lab, captured from a nearly-invisible bug that Ford had placed in the Shack’s living room several weeks ago on the day that he’d called off his deal with Bill Cipher, one he’d made and placed and hidden there later in the day that very same afternoon.
And Ford felt cold as he watched Stan stand up slowly.
He watched as Stan moved towards Bill.
He watched as Stan lifted up Bill’s legs and moved them to the side.
He watched as Stan sat down in his chair, letting Bill’s legs fall back down into that ‘gated’ position across him...
...and he watched as Stan lifted up a hand to Bill’s head and mussed Bill’s hair up a bit.
Ford watched and listened, as Bill let out a sound that sounded something like an ‘ack!’ and batted at his hand.
“What-- you-- why.” Bill said flatly, looking confused and almost upset.
“Because kid,” he heard Stanley say, sounding tired as anything as he dropped his hand to the chair’s armrest behind Bill’s back, “You’re not right, either.”
Ford let out a breath that he didn’t know he’d been holding.
“This is really messed up,” Dipper said, and Ford silently agreed with him.
"Kid--" Stan began to... explain to Bill? Ford wasn't quite sure what, because...
Mabel leaned forward and switched off the monitor and speakers.
“Mabel!” Dipper yelped out. “Why did you--” He reached forward to turn it back on, and Mabel grabbed up his hands and got in his way.
“We can just ask Grunkle Stan later, right?” she said. “We don’t need to listen to them right now.”
And as she said this, she was looking up at Ford with more than a little worry in her expression.
Dipper followed her gaze up to him.
It took Ford two tries to swallow, and another two tries to talk.
“...Yes,” he said eventually. “Let’s just content ourselves with asking Stan about it later.”
Ford knew he wasn’t going to be asking his brother about what Bill had said, however. He wasn’t going to ask about what Bill had meant, why he’d said what he’d said...
It wasn’t as though Ford was completely unfamiliar with the thought process, after all.
That was the way most denizens of the multiverse that he’d encountered had thought and acted.
It wasn’t a surprise, no. What was a surprise was that, in less than a handful of minutes, Bill had expounded upon and put into words that philosophy in its simplest form. Ford had never heard it related so directly, unabashedly, and clearly.
But it wasn’t unfamiliar to him.
He really wished it was.
‘Well, you’re not wrong. ...You’re not right, either.’
Stan had surprised him.
Ford had never thought of his brother as being more optimistic than he, but... the way Stan had said it...
‘You’re not right, either.’
‘You’re not right...’
It wasn’t Bill’s words that Ford needed any point of clarification on.
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