Chapter Text
Who knew reincarnation would suck like a vortex?
Then again Bill also has to live with the fact that unfortunately, he had chosen this. He had chosen, instead of going through the relentless chore of “empathy sessions” which consisted of a billion trolley problems, pet therapy with animals that despise him, and several million hours of good deeds in Theraprism volunteering facilities in places, to go through this dumb trial that the Axolotl has mentioned offhandedly as he was in a therapy session that would allow him to skip right to the last stage of his progress.
“Wowzers Axie! You’re looking worse for wear! You look like a decompressed jellyfish!” Bill hums as the pink deity floats over to him. Its eyes are somber and it’s got the saddest look Bill has seen on its ugly face in quite some time.
“Yes, Bill… let’s just get to our session.” Its voice is weak and upset, too, he finds. Its sadness is barely disguised, like a parent pretending in front of a toddler that grandma really did go to live on a farm very far away. And Bill doesn’t like being treated like a kid.
“Not even a trace of that guppy positivity! Spill the tea, guppy, did someone die?” Bill teases, resting his arms on his knees with a giddy look. The pink deity’s frown deepens.
“Yes. A lot of people did.” The bluntness that it’s delivered with is so different from the usual type of response he’d get from God. The Axolotl usually skirts around uncomfortable subjects, sugarcoating things unrelated to their session until they might as well be a metaphorical word cake. He squints his eye as he tries to piece together what might’ve caused it. It takes him a minute but he thinks he’s got it. Any excuse to go off-topic is an excuse worth taking!
“Ooooooh! I know that look! A bad, new dimension popped up, hasn’t it? What’s this one’s deal?” He smiles cheekily with his eye, legs swinging back and forth “Is everyone in the dimension a screaming ball of baby mutations? Is it one where gnomes overtook the planet and started destroying other worlds? Axolotl deniers?” he presses, much to the Axolotl’s growing displeasure.
“Bill-“ Axolotl feebly says but Bill is anything if not persistent.
“C’mooooon, it’s clearly got your frills in a twist! Tell your pal Cipher what's weird about this one-“
“Bill, have you heard of Exwhylia?”
Truth be told, Cipher expected more resistance. Furthermore he didn’t imagine the Axolotl to be getting so worked up over a dimension even more useless than his own. It looked like a cheap replica of what he remembered of his own dimension’s culture.
“…The knockoff version of my flat minds plane? Yeah, know that one. Fordsy wrote about it once-“ Bill starts but gets cut off pretty fast.
“It got destroyed. Erased, all across the multiverse. In a way similar to yours.”
It stunned him for a bit and if Bill knew what it was like to breathe then he’d probably stop. Bill knew by all means he was an anomaly. And every other alternate universe that included him was a byproduct caused by that anomaly as well. A mass extinction of a dimension wasn’t common. But this wasn’t about him. This was Exwhylia being destroyed, not his home. Before he could speak, the Axolotl answered.
“We found the culprit…it was a baby triangle. Like you. Says his name is Pyramid Steve” Bill almost wants to laugh. Another triangle decided to take advantage of the fact Bill got stuck in jail and got the spotlight? Of course, there’s some poser out there trying to-
Wait…baby triangle? A kid?
Bill turns it over in his brain like a hamster on a wheel. Eventually, he asks “…How old is he?”
“Almost seven”
Damn…that’s upsetting. A child managed to cause an extinction event and do what he did at twenty at the age of six. Damn child prodigies. If the Axolotl tells him that the kid is also an Irregular, Bill might actually flip. Although he’s been thinking too long because the Axolotl asks him something first.
“I wonder…Bill, I have a suggestion.” The fish ponders and when Bill looks its harsh frown softened to an almost thoughtful, hopeful kind of smile. Bill squints, suspicious.
“What’s is it, Frilly?” the demon asks and the Axolotl comes closer to him, gentle and considerate as ever.
“I noticed that your progress in terms of empathy had been…lackluster at best” The amphibian muses “You don’t get along with other creatures, definitely not pets and generally you struggle a lot with opening up to beings due to just how peculiar your circumstances are.” It’s true. Pet therapy sucks when claws are all you end up getting out of it.
“Get to the point, fish brain”
“You are incredibly close to finishing your therapy program and aside from empathy, most of your other issues have been somewhat…mitigated.” The Axolotl says softly. The word ‘mitigate’ is doing some serious legwork there. ”Bill, I want to suggest a way to transfer from the inpatient program to an outpatient program” Pink Frilly is definitely putting too much faith in him. Bill may have lost his edge, but he’s more than capable of regaining it as soon as he’s exposed to the outside world.
But. Is he gonna take advantage of this momentary lapse in judgment? Heck yeah!
“You mean…I could leave? Get reincarnated finally?!” He gasps out quietly.
“Well no, there would be conditions” The God waves its tail. Bill waves his hand dismissively.
“Like what?” He asks. Always read the fine print. God isn’t gonna trick a con man into signing some shady deal. Like 700 hours of community service as some kind of handyman to reach some level of redemption. That would be lame.
“You’d be supervised, obviously…and you’d become the legal guardian of Pyramid Steve”
Now that is…interesting. It’s so interesting it circles right back around to being stupid.
“…why?” he says, genuinely confused. As far as he remembers, kids are fragile little bags of crying and snot. Easily breakable and immature. And perfect little gullible minions. So a Max Security Criminal terrorist with mental issues getting placed with a traumatized six-year-old does not seem wise…unless he’s in a bad sitcom or a canceled miniseries on a subscription service.
“The character similarities you both share are down to 98,8% percent. And both of you have been through a similar traumatic experience.” The Axolotl exclaims, suddenly oddly chirpy “If there is anyone who could relate to his situation, it would be you.” he emphasizes.
Bill is gonna have to press X to doubt on that one because just how messed up was this six-year-old for the guppy to that conclusion? Frilly never was good at adjusting his view to pre-existing notions of law or morality. As most gods tend to do. He rolls his eyes “Please-“
“It would be a great exercise in empathy for you to care for another person in a situation similar to yours!” The Axolotl gets closer to him. The triangle demon narrows his eye.
“Children aren’t thought exercises, Axie.” He defends before realizing he’s acting reasonably and feigning morality when this kid could be his ticket out of this place.
“I’ll bite. It’s a deal!” Children can’t be too hard to take care of, he was one once himself! Some people still tell him he acts like one!
He met the little thing, later that day after his session. The Axolotl led him down a Theraprism hallway path until they reached a bench. A woman with hiscase file sat there, glancing between papers diligently. But his eyes wandered to the tiny triangle next to her, softer and smaller. His edges were more rounded than Bill’s making him look more childish. He didn’t have his titular brick pattern and his shoes and arms were a saturated blue as he fidgeted with them nervously. He wore a small purple hat and next to him looked to be a plastic bag full of random stuff. And, like Bill, he had one big eye at the center but it was blue and bright, like the saddest puppy in a Sarah McLachlan commercial.
Still, this is nothing different than a sale, a deal. So Bill takes a deep breath, straightens out, and smiles as he approaches with the salesman's confidence that the Theraprism has not yet managed to beat out of him.
“Hey there, ankle-biter!” he exclaims chirpy as he approaches. The child looks up at him and…stares. Just stares blankly, unnervingly. For way too long. Bill almost begins to question if his skills got rusty or if this kid is just reaaaally weird until it speaks.
“Are you my new dad?”
And just like that Bill feels the metaphorical air get knocked out of him.
It really shouldn’t for as much as it does. Axolotl pretty much told him as much. The kid’s an orphan and a get-out-of-loser-jail-free card in one. Still, Bill dealt with morons, schmucks, and the desperate. He just needs to be what they want him to be and they fall right into his hands.
“Uhhh…sure, kid! If ya want me to be! Kinda weird but… who am I to judge!” He adjusts his bow tie and tries to get back on track “Name’s Bill Cipher!” he says proudly tipping his hat.
The kid doesn’t seem that impressed or awestruck. Instead, he looks more anxious and terrified. Hilarious!
“I’m…Steve.” Booo. Bland name, if you ask Bill. And the little kid seems embarrassed himself of it by the way he’s shifting in his spot. The therapist next to him seems more content frowning at the folder next to him than actually focusing on the kid they brought him. Pretty incompetent, but hey, everyone here is.
“I…I don’t know what’s going on?” The kid stutters out, a little confused triangle mumbling in a British accent that sounds like a joke in itself.
“They didn’t even tell you what was happening? Yeeesh, the government is a joke! How much do you know?” He asks out of curiosity, crouching down with hands on his knees and with as close of a smirk as he can get with being just an eye.
“Uhmm…ma n’ pa are gone…” Steve as it calls itself stutters looking at the hospital floor “and so is everyone else…and it’s all my fault-!”
“Woah kid-“
Tears are welling up in that blue eye and Bill suddenly realizes he poked the water dam and it was not stable to prod at. And suddenly, the kid is bawling and the Axolotl and the lady staring are at him like it’s his fault. Yeah, blame everything on the criminal, why don’t ya?
“I’m sorry-! I didn’t mean-! I DIDN’T KNOW! I just-they they w-were t-trying…” The baby rambles and mumbles through thick tears and Bill is starting to grow uncomfortable and fuzzy at the edges because the sight hits a little…too close to home. “e-everything was f-falling apart! I j-just didn’t w-want them t-to leave!” Bill shakes his head. God, he cannot be dealing with this. Is this kid really like how Bill was back in the day?
Wait…like him. He’s supposed to be similar to him right?
Bill looks around for a second, eye stopping at the window showing the expanse of the sky, the stars. He can salvage this. So he grabs the kid by the arm and drags him over to the window.
“Hey… Look up there, kid” he points outside, putting a hand on the kid’s back reassuringly. The child sniffles, but listens and looks up.
“H-Huh?”
“Uhhh, see that? Whaddya think?” He asks and he can practically feel the Axolotl and the weird space lady folder staring and evaluating him behind his back. Bunch of pricks, at least he did something. Those two just stood around to judge him while the triangle cried like a… well, like a baby.
However, his guess seems to pay off because the kid seems entranced, eye stuck to the view outside. He leans in slightly on his tiptoes to reach the window. Short stack, can’t even float.
“What are…those?” Steve asks as he stares up at the sky with wonder and Bill finds a kind of…fondness in the kid’s eyes. One he shared as a baby triangle.
“Those pretty lights up there, kid? Those are stars!” He says proudly “The whole nine yards! Well, more like five at best but you get it!” He adds. He’s not gonna give it that much grace.
“Those aren’t the ones I saw… back home” Steve wipes his eye and Bill almost smiles. A rebellion in Exwhylia. Wonder if they put the kid on awful medicine too.
“Of course not, kid! You catapulted yourself into a whole different dimension outside of time. There are thousands more!” He laughs as the kid grows more amazed “And galaxies and moons! Heart’s content!” He adds to really spice it up a bit
“So…they were real? I wasn’t crazy?” Steve answers and Bill has to laugh. Which he does. Loudly.
“HAHAHAHA! Kid, reality is an illusion!” He says patting the kid on his weird purple hat “Anything is real someplace in the galaxy! And crazy? That’s just a compliment.” His eyes glance at the Axolotl and the lady next to him. The God is giving him a strained smile while the glowing space lady gives him a disapproving glare. Whatever, mixed reviews are still good reviews.
“Woah…” Steve sighs drawing Cipher’s attention back to him. Blue eye full of wonder.
…
...
...
“Can I eat one?”
…If this kid keeps it up he might have the chops for a beginner henchmaniac. Destructive and weird? He’s got the qualities down! And since those other losers ditched him, he needs to assemble his new crew from scratch so he’ll take what he can get.
“I think we can take this as a good sign, don’t you think?” Axolotl looks at the star light lady and she scrunches her barely visible eyebrows with the most doubt she could muster in an expression while possessing no visible facial features. Bill pulls an innocent expression to sell her on it, but he doubts it’s that, that makes her nod her head. It’s more likely the little isosceles holding onto his orange jumpsuit and trying to get him to stare out the window again.
Oddly enough the process afterwards is ridiculously fast. Bill only has to sign a few documents and sit around in a chair while the Axolotl fills in the rest for him. He’s allowed to magic away his awful orange jumpsuit get back his neat bow tie and get the little amount of stuff he owns.
The little speck of his old dimension... He thought they’d never let him hold it again.
The kid clings onto him with a death grip and he keeps asking questions. What is reincarnation? Why are we reincarnating? Do you know my uncle? He also wears jumpsuits for seeing stars, yada, yada. After a quick, bored “You’ll see” from Bill he thankfully shuts up.
Still, he doesn’t pull away and Bill considers if maybe this will be a decision he’ll grow to regret. It’s just a deal. Something he has to do to get what he wants, he’s been doing that for years! Worst comes to worst, he dumps the kid in a ditch and tries to trick some kind of brainiac into doing his bidding, in whatever weird form he ends up in.
They sign the documents, and get shuffled away into a room with a large portal open on the ground. It spins in galactic, ethereal blue clouds, shaped like a funnel with no bottom visible inside. There’s a loud clank and when Bill looks back, the door’s been locked behind them. Although judging by the windows that show nothing behind them, he guesses they're onesided and they’re still being monitored. He looks back at the portal.
A bit morbid if he has to say so himself. They’re essentially sending them to jump into a pit like they’re taking a plunge. He understands people wanting him to do that but…the kid next to him is a six-year-old.
“What is that?” Steve peers over the edge squinting his eye and Bill pulls him back enough so that he doesn’t tip over the edge. He peers himself. It doesn’t look like anything nefarious or a cheap trick. This does look like the real deal. He sighs and looks at the small isosceles staring up at him
“That’s the portal to your new life kid! We’re both getting reincarnated!” He laughs before trailing off.
“Say goodbye to what you are now! …you won’t be it after this…” he adds wistfully. Steve sits down at the edge, legs dangling in the abyss swinging back and forth as they touch the surface clouds. The low hum of magic swirling in the portal fills the silent room, like the sound of the most annoying AC unit ever.
“…It kinda looks like toilet water.” Steve comments.
‘Yeah and we’re the ones getting flushed out.’ he thinks. The Axolotl should choose different colored clouds.
But Bill is getting bored of this. Time to hurry this up.
“Well as they say, kick the baby!” And he proceeds to do just that, kicking Steve off the ledge with a grin as the little child screams, the sound dying down as the triangle disappears out of sight.
“HAHAHAHAHAHAHA” Bill laughs manically to…no reaction.
It kind of catches him off guard. He just kicked a child in front of the Interdimensional equivalent of CPS and nobody batted an eyeball?
“Sheesh… seriously?” Bill sighs bitterly as he looks down. He briefly wonders whether or not this is something he wants…before shrugging. Well, he hasn't thought of any other escape plans. Time to peace out and hope he ends up as something durable. He turns away from the cloudy pit in front of him and lets himself fall back into it.
'Hopefully this time will be better' he thinks to himself.
.
..
...
When Bill wakes up, he realizes four things.
One, they got reincarnated in a car or some kind of vehicle because they're moving.
Two, he still has his memories so that's nice. He was worried they might take those away.
Three, he is most likely a human based on the five fingers on his hand and the feeling of skin. The little six-year-old in the back seat with an eye that resembles Steve's further supports this.
Four, the car they are in is on an active road and is moving straight down with no breaks...while he's in the driver's seat.
"OH SHIT-"
Bill does not unfortunately have much time to react as he sees a bus behind him round the corner and nearly run them over. The former demon does at least have the reflex to avoid getting crashed into by...driving off to the side of the road and crashing into a road sign before he can hit the brakes.
The impact does knock the breath straight out of him and get the terrible car safety pillow to cushion the crash but so far? Outpatient care seems to have forgotten about the word 'care' and about his or this kid's well-being at all. Zero stars.
...The last thing he sees before passing out from the crash is the text visible on the sign, clear as day.
"Welcome to Gravity Falls!"
"Nothing To See Here Folks"
Ah, fuck.