Full Circle

Title: Full Circle

Summary: Another form, another time. Bill Cipher was not the first one to be offered as much. And he was not the first one to accept.

Characters: Stanford Pines, Stanley Pines, the Oracle, Axolotl.

Rating: T

Here’s @michirucipher‘s commission, in exchange for her generous donation to the GF charity drive. She requested a scenario in which Ford was actually Liam’s reincarnation (won’t make sense if you haven’t read Flat Dreams, I’m afraid!), so here it is. Hope you like it!

I also incorporated @dubsdeedubs‘s Same Coin theory because honesly, I love it to death.

***

“Hooooly– Hey, Ford, is that gold?”



Stanford didn’t need to turn to know what Stan was talking about: his own flashlight was enough for him to see the walls and ceiling of the cave were glinting faintly beneath a thin sheet of ice. “Indeed. If you’re feeling foolish, that is.”

“Huh?”

“Iron pyrites,” he explained, letting his flashlight run over the closest wall. “Also known as Fool’s Gold. I would have expected you of all people to be able to tell it apart from real gold,” he added with a grin, and turned to shine the light straight on his brother’s face. “Is your eyesight worsening, by any chance?”

Stan made a face, lifting an arm to shield his eyes from the brightness. “Oh, har har.”

“I’m serious. Perhaps we should interrupt this expedition to get your eyes checked. Come to think of it, you’ve also been complaining about your back more than usual…”

“Knock it off, will ya?”

Stanford’s grin widened. “It’s only natural for a big brother to worry, you know,” he said, getting a groan out of Stanley.

“We’re twins, Poindexter.”

“I’m older by–”

“Minutes don’t count!”

That was a point Stanford had argued against countless time and he was ready to do so again, but something caught his attention before he could: a scraping sound in the back of the cave, like something being dragged across the icy ground. He and Stan both turned, shining their lights towards the source of the noise, but they could see nothing: the cave went deep into the side of the coast, a long tunnel with several turns… and the noise was coming from right behind the corner.

Ford reached to grab the gun the same moment Stan stepped beside him, brass knuckles already on his free hand. It was quite a primitive weapon, but amazingly effective, considering the sheer amount of times Stanley had punched them both out of trouble in the past two years at sea.

“Ready?”

“Yep. Let’s kick some butt and– wait, what…?”

The scraping noise came again, closer, and this time something peered at them from behind the wall of rock: something round and gray, with beady black eyes, a quivering nose and whiskers. It stared at them, then gave a honking noise.

… Oh.

Feeling rather dumb for the earlier sense of alarm, Ford lowered his gun just as Stanley began searching for something in his pockets. Finally, his hand came back out holding a camera. “Mabel’s gonna love this,” he muttered, and crouched down. “Hey! Hey, you! Get over here!”

The seal pup stared at them for a few more moments, then inched closer, blinking at them.

“Thaaat’s right! Good pup. Now keep that cute look and– HEY!”

It happened before either of them could do anything: the seal opened its mouth and a tongue darted out, unnaturally long like that of a huge chameleon, snatching the camera from Stan’s hands before turning to scuttle away, the camera in its mouth.

Definitely not something a seal was supposed to be able to do.

“What the– hey! HEY! Come back here!” Stan snapped, running after it. “Dammit, Ford, why is it that freaks keep finding us?”

Running beside him, the icy gravel on the ground crunching under their boots, Ford gave a barking laugh. “We’re the one actively pursuing them. You did save the pictures you already took for the kids somewhere else, right?”

“Sure I did! But I ain’t gonna let some anteater with flippers steal stuff from– whoa.”

Stanley skidded to an abrupt halt as soon as he turned the corner the seal-chameleon thing had disappeared behind, and Ford narrowly managed to avoid crashing into him. He didn’t waste time asking what the sudden stop had been about: all he had to do was looking ahead. The seal-chameleon was heading to a larger cave within the cave, at the far end of the tunnel, and that cave glowed.

Glow worms, was the explanation that immediately popped in his mind, but he highly doubted that was the case: he had seen the kind of luminescence created by glow worms, and that was not it. It was something different, otherworldly; Stanford Pines had seen enough otherworldly things to tell.

“The heck is that?” Stanley asked, and he shrugged.

“One way to find out. Isn’t that your camera?” Ford said, pointing his flashlight downwards. There it was, sure enough, slimy with saliva but otherwise unharmed. It looked like the seal-cameleon hadn’t found it interesting enough to be chased over it, and had dropped it: Ford turned just in time to see it disappearing into a puddle on their right, which clearly meant said puddle was actually connected with the ocean outside.

Stan grunted, reaching to grab the camera and trying to clean the saliva off with his sleeve. “Looks like it’s still working. Would have sucked if we couldn’t take pictures now - whatever is over there just looks like something Dipper could wet himself over. What a nerd.”

“He’s an intellectually curious young man.”

“Two nerds.”

Ford snorted, giving his brother shoulder a light punch. “Well then, manly men first. Lead the way.”

***

Somewhere, a shard of consciousness stirred for the briefest of moments.

Not yet, someone - or something - soothed. Not just yet. But soon.

The consciousness returned to its slumber. For a time.

***

“Lemme guess: all the science-y mumbo jumbo you’ve been spouting just means ‘I have no idea what this is’, right?”

“More or less,” Stanford admitted, observing closely the bit of glowing ice he had just managed to hack off the cave’s wall. It definitely looked and felt like ice, but at the same time it felt different: ice would have melted at least slightly under the warmth of his skin, leaving his fingers damp. That odd material, however, did no such thing.

And it glowed. It glowed pink, and it was everywhere in the cave: on the walls, the ceiling, the ground, just bright enough to allow them to move around and observe without needing the flashlights. Ford reached in his pocket for a lighter and touched the material with the flame, holding it there for a few seconds. Nothing happened, and nothing melted.

“Maybe we need something bigger,” Stanley said, frowning in thought. “I think I have a flamethrower somewhere on the boat.”

“… You brought a flamethrower on a boat mostly made of wood?”

“Yeah.”

“Dare I ask what for?”

“Just in case.”

Ford took a mental note to look for said flamethrower and chuck it in the ocean before shaking his head. “I don’t believe trying to melt it would accomplish anything. I’ll take a few samples for analysis,” he said, pocketing the sample and turning to find a few other spots where he could take samples - only to find himself staring at something at the far end of the cave, something that had been hidden by glowing stalagmites when they had entered: a small stone shrine with something glowing pink on it. As they approached it, Ford could see that the something one the shrine was made of the same material that covered the cave, but it had been polished and shaped into a small sculpture of… of…

“Hey! I know what that is! It’s that salamander thing I had back in the Mystery Shack, whatchacallit…”

“Axolotl,” Stanford said, frowning slightly at the small statue and thinking back of something he’d heard while drifting across dimensions, many years before.

Praise the Axolotl!

He had heard it many times in his wanderings, but nobody could or wanted to explain him precisely what or who the Axolotl was.

Well. Almost nobody.

***

“… Can I ask you a question?”

“You just did.”

There is a hint of humor in Jheselbraum’s reply, and Ford smiles a bit sheepishly.

“Heh. I did ask a lot of questions since I awoke, didn’t I?”

“You asked questions even while unconscious,” adds, smiling. She doesn’t smile with her mouth as much as she does with her eyes, all seven of them.

“Ah,” Ford says, and this time he can’t quite ignore a stab of embarrassment. He really, really hopes he hasn’t said anything too odd while recovering from the wounds sustained in Exwhylia. He clears his throat. “Er. Anyway… I was wondering if you’d tell me something about the Axolotl.”

She stares at him for a moment, unmoving and unspeaking, then she glances towards the far end of the room. There is a tapestry there, one of many in her palace-temple, and it shows a bright pink, frilled salamander. An axolotl. It cannot be a coincidence, not with so many people praising ‘the Axolotl’ across so many dimensions.

“He was here when it all started,” Jheselbraum finally says, slowly. “And he’ll be here when it all ends.”

There’s something ominous about those words, and Stanford finds himself swallowing. “Is he… some kind of deity?”

She frowns slightly, something rather off to watch on a being with seven eyes. “I suppose it might fit your kind’s definition of one,” she says, then, “You believed Bill Cipher to be one.”

“Is he as powerful as Bill?”

“He’s on an entirely other plane, since long before Bill Cipher opened his eye to the world.”

“And can’t he destroy Bill? Put an end to his reign of terror once and for all?”

This time, Jheselbraum looks away. “A long time ago, I asked him the same. I raged and demanded for him to do so. But that is not how it works. He does not intervene directly. He gives guidance, and that is all,” she says, and pauses for a moment before adding: “He’s the one who led me to you.”

That was all Stanford could get out of her about the Axolotl and, as far as he was concerned, all he needed to know: he was meant to destroy Bill, and that was all he should focus on. It was all that mattered.

***

“Huh. And what would that thing on the screen be?”

“Xolotl.”

“Oookay. In English?”

“A god of ancient Aztec mythology,” Ford said, gesturing towards the laptop. “Xolotl was the god of fire and lightning, but he was also closely associated with death - believed to lead souls in their journey to the underworld. He would guard the Sun as well, as he was–”

“A busy guy.”

“You haven’t heard all of it yet,” Stanford said, unable to hold back a smile. “He was also, and I quote, ‘the god of twins, monsters, misfortune, sickness and deformities’. He was often depicted as a monstrous black dog and–”

“That looks nothing like a pink lizard,” Stanley pointed out, cutting him off and nodding towards the monstrous painting on the computer screen.

“Axolotls are not lizards. Either way, I was getting there,” Ford muttered, and scrolled down, shifting aside to let Stanley lean closer. “Take a look here - there were two spirit animal forms associated with him. One was the Mexican Hairless Dog. The other…”

“… The water salamander species known as the Axolotl,” Stan read aloud, and frowned. “All right. I see your point there. What do you make of it, Sixer?”

Stanford was quiet for a few moments, and glanced at the small statue resting on the desk. Even in the well-lit cabin of their boat, its glow could be seen clearly. “I heard much about ‘the Axolotl’ during my travels in the Multiverse, but it never occurred to me that this entity may have made an appearance in our dimension as well,” he said, and reached to take the statue in his hands. It still felt cold as ice, but gave no sign of melting or deteriorating in any way. “Looking back, it was rather foolish of me not to think of this. I did study many aspects of pre-columbian civilizations, after all - although to be entirely honest, I focused on some more than others,” he added, with no small amount of embarrassment. But how could he not be fascinated by a culture who had believed people with six fingers to be not freaks, but beings with divine powers?

Unaware of his thoughts, Stan scratched his nose. “We didn’t find this in south America, though. We’re all the way up in the Arctic.”

“It is possible that Axolotl manifested himself in many cultures throughout the ages. Cipher did, after all,” Ford said, putting the small statue down. “The Aztec depiction of the Axolotl may not be the only example - simply the only one that wasn’t lost to time. What I do wonder now is just what this statue is made of,” he added, and glanced at the equipment on the small table at the far end of the cabin. “All analysis have been inconclusive so far, and–”

BLEEP! BLOOP! BLEEP!

The tune of an incoming call caused the image of Xolotl to disappear from the screen, replaced by the profile picture of the caller - a pig wearing glasses and a fez. The sight was enough for Stanley to light up like a Christmas tree. “How ‘bout we drop it for now? You can go back to geekin’ out over it later,” he said, and took the call.

“GRUNKLE STAN!”

“Great uncle Ford!”

“Hi, kids! You’ll never guess what tried to snatch my camera today…!”

By the time the call ended, well over a hour and many photographs later, it was well past midnight and, while his mood had drastically improved, Ford felt too tired to resume - as Stanley would put it - geekin’ out.

His brother didn’t remark on that when he closed the laptop and climbed on the top bunk, but he did remark on something else.

“Hey, why didn’t you tell Dipper about the statue?”

Ford shrugged, pulling the covers over himself. “Too many questions and hardly enough answers,” he said. “Had I told him what little we know and nothing else, it would have probably driven him up the wall. I’ll discuss it with him when I can give him something more to chew on.”

Below him, Stan laughed. “Hah! True. He wouldn’t be getting any sleep at all if you told him. Good thinking,” he said, and yawned. “Young people actually can stay up all night. Pfft. Can you imagine that?”

“Not anymore, I’m afraid.”

“Man, we’re old.”

“You’re just as old as you feel.”

“Then I’m ancient.”

“Heh. Just sleep, Stanley.”

They both slept and they both dreamed. For Stanley it was a house in the woods, ridiculous sweaters, a boat in the ocean and laughter and an arm slung over his shoulders.

For Stanford is was fire and screams and a sense of despair he couldn’t explain.

***

Saw his own dimension burn.

***

No no no why is this happening what has he done.

Everything burned. In the distance, someone screamed.

This is all my fault I did this I let him do this.

A voice thundered all around him, dreadfully familiar.

“LISTEN, EVERYONE! The Circles were a bunch of hacks! The Laws of Nature were made up and are gone! Name’s Bill Cipher, and there is only one law from now to eternity - no law. This party never ends - so join it, or join him!”

My fault my fault my fault.

Something rose above the flame, a form familiar as it was huge, black as night and with a single red eye. It raised its arms, laughing, and the flames faded into darkness.

***

Misses home and can’t return.

***

In the dark, a single candle. Flickering light cast on the pages of a book.

“I’m tired, Billy.”

“One more story! Just one!”

“Then you’re going to sleep?”

“Sure!”

“Pfft. Liar.”

“Heehe.”

***

Says he’s happy. He’s a liar.

***

Still worried for that dumb Inspection? Don’t be a chicken. You’ll be fine. When they see how smart you are, you being a freak won’t matter anymore.

Hey, chin up, buddy. Look. One of these days, you and me are gonna sail away from this dumb town. We’ll hunt for treasure, get all the girls, and be an unstoppable team of adventurers.

All-knowing! All-seeing! All-powerful! You can be, too! I thought you were the smart guy. Just join up. I mean, look! You wanted to see the colors? Here they are! You can see the Third Dimension, too, and a lot more! There are thousands of dimensions, and we can visit them all!

***

Blame the arson for the fire.

***

Someone taking him away. Walking was difficult. Keeping himself from weeping was even harder.

“Come, young man. I can promise you it is quick, and that you will feel nothing. You’re so brave.”

Empty words. They didn’t make it any better.

He turned around, silently begging whoever may be listening to let him have one last glimpse of his brother. His prayer went unanswered, like all of his prayers before then.

When death came, it was quick. But it wouldn’t be the end for him.

It would, however, spell the end for his world.

***

It was all my fault.

***

Ford knew he was dreaming. It was an odd feeling, dreaming and being aware of it, looking around and seeing nothing but flames, hearing nothing but screams from people he couldn’t see.

Weirdmageddon, had been his first thought; he had to be dreaming of the day Bill Cipher had managed to break into their dimension, bringing his chaos on Earth. But that wasn’t right: something about it was different. Whatever he had witnessed in his dream was not Weirdmageddon, but it was - without a shadow of a doubt - Cipher’s doing.

My fault.

Stanford groaned, reaching up to hold his head. It hurt, it really did, thoughts and memories crossing it that made no sense. They simply did not belong there, did not belong to him.

“They do.”

Ford winced, and turned to see something huge and pink hovering behind him, frills moving gently as though in a breeze.

“… The Axolotl?” Ford found himself asking, realizing how plain stupid the question had to sound only moment after it left him.

The creature tilted its huge head on one side. They were floating in what seemed nothing but a sea of blackness. “Was it the frills to give me away?” he asked, and leaned closer without waiting for an answer. “Well then. You’ve come to find me. Reclaiming what’s yours, I see.”

“What’s mine?”

Axolotl stares at him for a few moments, then lifts a huge tail, revealing something that had been hidden by its sheer mass - the stone statue of a triangular being with one single eye.

For a moment, Ford was certain he was looking at Cipher, because who else could it be? And yet, upon closer inspection, he could tell it was not him. This one was smaller, with the mismatched sides of–

an Irregular

–a Scalene triangle. He wore no hat and, instead of holding out one hand, he was holding out both - palms upwards, as though pleading.

“… What’s the meaning of this?”

Ford’s voice reached his own ears as though from miles away. He tried to look up at the Axolotl for an explanation, but he found he couldn’t take his eyes off the statue. He stepped towards it, mouth dry, as the being spoke.

“You already know what needs to be done for it all to become clear.”

He did. Inexplicably, senselessly, for no good reason, he knew. Stanford Pines stepped closer to the statue, and crouched in front of it. He stared again at the eye - it looked so horribly, unbearably sad - and finally reached to take both of the upturned, tiny hands in his own.

The stone melted away like wax, and the small black hands clenched around his. Something deep in Ford’s head seemed to snap like a frayed rope stretched too far, and there was pain. Lots of it.

None of it physical.

***

“I didn’t know he would do that! I had no idea!”

“You couldn’t know. It is not your fault.”

“Do something! Stop him! Please!”

“I cannot. I am sorry. Your dimension was always meant to fall,” the being says, and wraps its tail around Liam’s shivering form. “Reality is ever-changing, but every now and then there are fixed points. There must be. And nothing in existence can erase them.”

Liam shuts his eye, and presses it against the Ancient’s tail. “I didn’t mean for this to happen! I just… I just wanted… I had no choice, I thought he should have it, I thought he should know, I thought…”

“I know.”

“What happened to him?” Liam chokes out. It makes no sense, none at all. Why is this happening? Why is Bill doing this? He remembers him when he last saw him, and he just wanted a story. How could it all turn out so wrong?

“… You could say reality did.”

“I… I didn’t want to know any of this! Why did you bring me here?” he lets out a sob, and looks up at the being before him through a veil of tears. “If he can’t be stopped, why? Why bring me back?”

A flick of the tail, and its tip reaches to wipe his eye. “He can be stopped. But not here, not now. And your story is not over yet,” the Axolotl says, and curls its body around him. It feels warm, and it’s impossible not to feel a sense of calm. It will be all right, something murmurs in the back of Liam’s mind. He will be all right. You will be all right.

“I want my brother back,” he chokes out.

“You will. Another form. Another time. Close your eye.”

Liam closes his eye. When opens it again - when he opens both eyes, a mere moment and a trillion years from then - he remembers nothing. He knows nothing. He can hear, but not understand, what someone exclaims above him.

“It’s a healthy boy! He… wait, what is it with his hands…?”

***

For a time, Stanford could only stare at his hands as they flickered from six-fingered humans hands to tiny black ones and then back, time and time again, and his whole form along with them. His mind scrambled to make sense of it all; even as everything fell into place, as memories of a past life resurfaced clear as those from his current one, it almost felt like it was too much to take in. Too much to understand.

“So this is what you meant?” he said. The voice that left him was not his own, and at the same time it was. It belonged to him, no more and no less than his other one. “Another form, another time?”

“Yes.”

Stanford laughed, loud and bitter. “Was that how you gave me my brother back? By turning me in his pawn? By making me an instrument in his downfall in the end? By almost making me lose another brother to stop the monster I created?”

His last words turned into a cry, and Stanford - no, Liam - stood on unsteady, thin black legs. He turned to Axolotl, eye wide with disbelief. “Where is he now? What really happened to Bill?”

The Ancient looked down at him. “That is a lot of questions.”

“You owe me answers!” he snaps, and his form ripples back into that of Stanford Pines.

A moment of silence as the Axolotl considered that point, then he nodded. “Very well. As you probably have worked out by now, the chains of events leading to Weirdmageddon needed to happen.”

“If I never created that portal–”

“Then Bill Cipher would have kept terrorizing the Multiverse for billions more years to come,” the Axolotl cut him off. “Everything you did was instrumental in stopping him.”

“And where is he now?”

Liam’s voice, again. Weaker. Desperate.

Where is my brother?

The Axolotl nodded at something behind him. Stanford turned to see that the blackness behind him was starting to ripple like water. “Another form, another time,” the Ancient said. “I offered him as much, too, after his defeat. He only had to invoke my name. And so he did.”

“So… he’s going to be reborn, too?”

A chuckle seemed to reverberate all around him. “Going to? You talk like his return is bound to happen in the future. I never said a such thing. Another time - that is all I said.”

Ford’s eyes widened, comprehension dawning in. “Do you mean he could take a new form in the past as well? That it has already happened before he was even defeated?”

“Of course. Time is so much more versatile than your kind make it out to be. You asked an interesting question a short while ago. Did I really almost make you lose another brother?”

Images were starting to appear in the rippling darkness, like on a screen. The ocean, and a boat Ford recognized right away. And on it, putting away some rope while whistling a tune, was… was…

… Wait. Wait a minute.

“Stanley,” Stanford Pines breathed.

Bill!, Liam called out deep within his mind, surprise and relief and sheer joy mingling together in that one word.

“I said you would have him back, and I keep my promises. Another form, another time.”

“It was him,” Ford sayd, and turned back to the Axolotl in disbelief. “All this time - all along - it was Stanley.”

A huge head moved briefly in a nod. “Bill Cipher was powerful. Only one being in the Multiverse could defeat him. And that being was Bill Cipher himself. What better way to absolve his crime?”

Mind still reeling for the revelation, Stanford swallowed. “Does he… does he know?”

The Axolotl shook his head. “No, he does not. Just as you knew nothing until now. Do you wish him to?”

Another flicker, Ford’s form changing into that of a triangle for just one moment, and Liam’s voice - the old voice - rang out one more time.

“No.”

“No,” Stanford repeated, glancing down at his hands. They were back to normal, as normal as his six-fingered hands could be, and for a moment he tried to imagine what Stan would think of it, what it would be like for him knowing that it had been him to almost murder Dipper and Mabel. The thought made a chill run up Ford’s spine, and he knew it would be so much worse for Stan. It would downright kill him. “No. Never.”

“Very well,” the Axolotl said, and lowered himself so that his muzzle would be only inches away from Ford. “This is it, then. The last you’ll see of me. Go back to your–”

Stanford’s form flickered for one final time into Liam’s, and he threw his arms around the Axolotl’s neck.

“Thank you,” Liam said. His words were met with a brief chuckle.

“Do not thank me. This is what you both earned. Now go,” he added, and gave Liam a nudge. He fell back, down down down into the dark - only to open his eyes with a start, in his bunk, rocked by the gentle waves of the ocean.

***

“Ugh, seriously? Even here?”

Stan grumbled, throwing aside the old boot he had just pulled out of the water and setting the fishing rod aside. Just his luck, fishing up trash even that close to the Arctic. Worst way to start the day. He may as well stop playing nice and throw grenades in the water - that would surely get them some fish. Sure, Ford would definitely be against the idea, but–

“Stanley!”

“I wasn’t really gonna do it!” Stan blurted out before his brain could catch up with his tongue and remind him that mind reading was not among Stanford’s many talents. “I mean, it’s not that I was thinking of doing something illegal, y’know, just thought I’d… huh. You okay, Poindexter?” he asked, taking a step back. His brother looked all the world like he had just bolted out of bed and was staring at him like he had just grown antlers or something like that. “Er… maybe you shouldn’t have coffee for a bit, how ‘bout– hey, wha…?”

Stanford covered the little distance between them in a couple of strides, and threw his arms around him in a crushing hug before Stan could react. That was a bit weird, but wouldn’t have been unappreciated under other circumstances. Under any other circumstances.

“Wha– Ford, wait, wai–!”

Too little, too late: Stan toppled backwards, thrown off-balance, and the bucket right behind his legs did the rest.

SPLASH.

***

“A-a-atchoo!”

“Bless ya.”

“Thanks.”

“Not gonna tell me what that was about?”

Stanford sniffled, pulling the blanket tighter around himself, and shook his head. He glanced up at the stars that still showed, the sun still too low in the sky to hide them all from sight.

“… Remember when I read you books as kids? Told you stories?”

Stan shrugged, his hands tight around a cup of hot coffee. “Sure I do. What now, wanna tell me a story for the heck of it?”

Will you be quiet if I tell you a story?

A scary one!

The scariest I can think of.

“Can’t see why not,” Stanford heard himself saying, and smiled. “Did I ever tell you about Dimension 52…?”