Reawaken

She seemed older somehow.

Dipper wasn't sure if she was, though. After all, the first time that Wilma had shown up on the Mystery Shack's doorstep, he hadn't known that she was Bill Cipher. He could only have identified her as a girl his age at that time. Now he was looking at a girl that he knew was not a girl, who he knew well was a demon of an unknown age. Such would not disappear from his mind, no matter how much the pre-crafted rose lips curved into a smile that now spoke of nothing but deception.

He looked away and lowered the cap of his trucker hat. If anything, he didn't want Bill catching the clear grimace pasted on his face. When the demon had shown up the previous morning in the same cutesy little blonde girl body, both twins had immediately flipped out. The closer they looked, however, the more they realized it was not the blonde from before. Bill had not possessed Sally Poole. The hair was less pale, the body was much lankier, and most noticeably the eyes were a bright emerald green this time. She was a different girl—and the twins were quite upset about that until Bill explained. Not that it made anything better, considering what he had to say.

"Her name is Mary Poole, my dear children." The demon said calmly. A wide, disturbing smile spread across the possessed face. "She is the older sister of little Miss Sally Poole! And she's been dead for a good three months now."

"You killed her!" Mabel interrupted. Bill laughed jovially, eyes blinking separately in an attempt to close.

"No, no! Yeesh, you kids jump to such conclusions sometimes, I swear." He snickered. Mabel stepped back next to her brother with crossed arms and puffed cheeks. "You can wipe those expressions off your little faces because I didn't have squat to do with Mary Poole's death. She just happened to…unexpectedly pass away while playing with her little sister, that's all. Tea in the tea set got poisoned, or so I hear! A good old batch of laundry detergent dumped right in dear ol' Mary's cup. I just took the poor child out of her resting place and repaired her a bit…that's all."

"Eww." Mabel cringed and took a few steps behind the counter.

Dipper, on the other hand, stood his ground. His gaze was not as brave; both brown eyes directed straight at the ground at the implications behind Bill's words. With or without the book the boy could not decide exactly how to interpret what the demon had said…especially with the prominent grin stretching the blonde's face. Even after weeks of Bill's presence in the Mystery Shack, the young boy couldn't decide what had truly lay behind the phrase. He wasn't even sure he truly wanted to know. Especially since when he hesitantly asked the demon about it, Bill had simply grinned maliciously and told him that the world was very cruel. That humanity was much crueler than he as a demon could ever hope to be.

Dipper grimaced at the memory, his grip tightening considerably on the broom handle between his tiny hands. It had been so many weeks since the demon vessel had shown up at the Mystery Shack again, smiling maliciously and completely prepared to live out his presented challenge. Dipper was too aware that he had made a mistake in basically inviting the demon into his house, into his LIFE, but at this point he didn't really have a choice but to keep a suspicious eye on the creature. To frequently sneak a glance at the blonde girl in her strange olden-style outfit as she sat by the bobblehead display case.

Bill had hypnotized Grunkle Stan into letting 'Wilma' work at the Shack. Both twins were sure of it and could do absolutely nothing about it. The crafty little bastard had simply slipped into their Grunkle's mind while neither twin was looking (because after all, no child could be on guard 24/7) and placed in the old man's mind the idea that 'Wilma' must be hired as soon as she showed up again. There was no other explanation for Stan's lack of foresight in hiring a girl clearly under sixteen—he had, after all, given the lanky blonde child a job before she had even asked.

"Disgusting, manipulating, inhumane…" Dipper muttered under his breath.

He immediately ceased his speech once he felt a pair of skinny little arms wrap around his chest and tighten. The brunette boy froze, feeling the possessed body press against his own—he could almost see the satisfied smile on Bill's face without even turning around to face the creature. Dipper wouldn't give the demon that satisfaction, though. He kept his gaze focused directly on the wall in front of him. It didn't seem to deter the demon in the slightest.

"That is surely quite the cruelty and hatred you carry with you, Pine Tree." Bill whispered in the boy's ear—his tone was quiet and enchanting, and surprisingly thick with amusement. Dipper's grip on the broom handle tightened. "And to think I have done nothing to you and your family since I've gotten here!"

"I'm pretty sure you tricked Grunkle Stan."

"Well, dear me, Pine Tree! That was a bit of a necessity, wasn't it? After all—"

"Necessity or not, it isn't anything GOOD." Dipper interrupted, finally turning around to push the possessed girl away from him.

Irritation only dug into him more when he could actually see her expression. 'Wilma' had a face pasted on her that spoke of nothing but amusement at his own anger—but Dipper caught view of her hands quite quickly. A true contradiction of her face. Normally plain nails curled into dark black claws and pale skin was flushed a dark red of frustration. Her hands spoke of how the demon within was fighting desperately to hold back an anger that was so used to being released whenever it pleased.

"You're giving yourself away, Bill." Dipper noted, taking one of the hands and raising it up to the demon's face. Her eyes creased immediately, sharply jerking the hand out of Dipper's hand. The limb immediately began to morph away from the demonic figure and back to the tiny and fragile hand of the corpse girl. With that, the regular grin returned to the stolen face, albeit considerably weaker than before.

"My bad!" Was all that the demon seemed to be able to manage after his accident. Dipper crossed his arms, eyes narrowing.

"I don't even know what the heck you're doing here, Bill." He shook his head and clicked his tongue. The stretched grin on the blonde's face quickly fell into a tight frown, skin morphing to a slightly gray tone—the tone that truly reflected the deceased. Dipper was slowly but surely noting the weak control that Bill seemed to have over the new body. He figured it could only be because the dead were a bit more difficult to deal with. Perhaps they were simply more…floppy, the brunette supposed (with a slight shiver running through his own body at the thought).

"Is it not obvious why I'm here, Pine Tree?" Bill replied, lacing thin fingers together behind the girl's back while crossing one high laced boot behind the other. For all intents and purposes his girlish pose gave off a clear vibe of innocent—to Dipper it just sent more shivers down his spine. Both of them knew the uncomfortable game that they were playing. "Was it not you who challenged me to this? After all…the book is GONE. I've already taken care of that little problem. You're the only little problem I have left…you and your little challenge."

Clacking boots brought the blonde creature closer to Dipper, the latter finding himself paralyzed in fear as delicate hands wrapped around his face. Said terror only grew as the slim fingers grew into pitch black claws that dug into the tween boy's skin. The pasty white skin that the demon inhabited began to change—first to a bright and extreme yellow, then to a glowing red. Her emerald eyes darkened to a pitch black and the pupils changed to a pure white, though that was not nearly as unsettling as the separate eyes merging into one.

Loosely, in the back of his mind, Dipper could only half-wonder why no one in the store wasn't noticing the changes in the lanky girl. The rest of his conscious was dedicated to a palatable fear of what the girl could do with her possessed body, and with the dark red droplets of blood slipping down his cheek.

"STOP THAT!"

Dipper was knocked out of his reverie as Wilma was pushed out of his frontal sight and onto the floor beside him. Black limbs were ripped away from the boy's cheeks; they left long rips of blood to drip down his face. The blonde hit the floor with a loud thumping sound, a slight shriek escaping from her lipless red face as her body quickly resumed its false form. Above her towered Mabel Pines, cheeks puffed in frustration and a glowing kitten shirt flashing down upon the possessed corpse.

"Mabel!" Dipper cried, grasping weakly at his sister's sweater sleeve in an attempt to pull her away from the clearly frustrated demon. His twin didn't move away from her stubborn stance in front of her brother; if anything, her cheeks only puffed larger.

"Shooting Star." Bill managed a weak smirk. "How nice to see you."

"I am so sick of this guy!" Mabel stomped her foot in irritation, waving her hands back and forth aside her long curls. Dipper's grip on her sweater loosened slightly. "He comes here with some dumb promise that he'll live up to your challenge and stop being so dumb and dangerous, and when has he done it even once?! He just…he just causes trouble! He just hurts people instead!"

"Now, now, Shooting Star, such a challenge takes time. It IS a challenge of defying nature itse—" Bill stumbled to his feet to lecture Mabel, but the girl interrupted the dream demon quickly.

"Don't gimme that!" She yelled. People in the Mystery Shack were starting to stare at the girl as she threw her tantrum—Dipper briefly wondered in the back of his mind why none of them had bothered to pay attention when the lanky blonde 'Wilma' had been turning a demonic red and trying to scratch his face off. He supposed Bill had done something to distract them. It wasn't like he was incapable of it. It didn't matter anymore anyways, really; the store was already fairly empty and now the remaining customers were slowly fleeing.

"What have I done, exactly? I'm just trying to make an effort here, child. The least you could do is try to respect that." The demon placed thin arms behind her back and leaned forward, pressing her forehead against Mabel's. The girl twitched and pressed her free hand against Wilma's chest. "Can you not at least respect my effort to take this challenge and win the respect of that which I desire? That which I love?"

"…I know love." Mabel replied softly. For once, and maybe only once, a serious tone seemed to have overtaken the girl. Her grip tightened on the black fabric slung over Wilma's body. Despite that, the blonde's malicious grin only increased in size. "A lot of my love has been pretty superficial, I guess, but…I know that there was still an affection in it. And there ain't a single drop of affection in your freaky little body…it ain't nothing but plain, simple, gross desire and want."

"Mabel." Dipper tried urgently to intervene but Bill interrupted the boy immediately.

"That's awfully bold of you, little itty bitty Shooting Star. Awfully bold for a little girl who has not ever encountered actual affection and love outside of her family, to call MY affection and love to be false." His tone was now that akin to a deep and angry hiss, both hands wrapping around Mabel's lower arm. Dipper released his sister's sweater to grasp frantically at the poofy sleeve of the dream demon's false form; he found that it was like a mouse trying to drag a redwood tree out of the dirt. "Interrupting my goal is a truly impertinent one, if not a wildly valiant one. I can at least give you credit for your downright bravery, Shooting Star—not many people have the downright stupidity-ridden bravery that you have."

"U-um…I don't need compliments from you!" Mabel snapped, confusion riddled in her expression. Bill's vocabulary was a bit much for her but she wasn't about to let him win here. Neither was Dipper, apparently, as he had moved from yanking at Wilma's poofy sleeve to yanking at Wilma's fingers that wrapped tightly around Mabel's arm.

"Such a stupid child." The dream demon shook Wilma's head in what seemed to be disappointment. "Such a stupid, stupid, stupid child. I wonder, do stupid children known that in the case of dual birth…a deal made by one in the birth carries over to the other?"

"W-what? I'm not stupid, silly! I'm an 'ingenious mind' and a creative gift to this world, you silly." Mabel straight up with pride in her voice, a shaky smile crossing her face. Dipper, on the other hand, narrowed his eyes; Bill's words sent a rash of discomfort through him. He didn't like a single thing about what had been said.

"The terms of the agreement were that one of the birth would be mine if I was successful." Bill continued, ignoring Mabel's self-praise. The girl narrowed her eyes slightly, waving her arms back and forth to free herself from the demon's tight grip. It was nary worth the effort; her arms remained within Wilma's hands. "Which I guess would mean that if Pine Tree was within my grasp, then if I so desired…so would be Shooting Star."

Dipper was too late to realize what Bill was getting at.

He was too late to realize as Wilma's body collapsed to the ground with emerald eyes rolling up into her head and limbs going limp as she hit the hard wood. Mabel's body quickly followed hers, landing on top of the lanky girl's heavily decorated body to successfully muss up Wilma's perfectly styled hair. The two girls lay there on the ground for a moment; the only movement was two remaining customers peering out from behind shelves and Dipper staring down upon them with clear horror on his face.

Then, slowly and awkwardly, Mabel stumbled to her feet with her arms held away from her torso at an odd angle.

Most noticeably, though, were her pupils that curved into disturbing ovals.

She laughed as soon as she managed to catch her balance. The sound, that loud and barely controlled shrill and hysterical giggle, almost sent Dipper off to vomit. It was not his sister. He knew it was not his sister. SHE didn't have Mabel's rosy cheeks. SHE didn't have Mabel's off-kilter chuckle. SHE barely even managed to puff her cheeks up with that child-like glee that Mabel always expressed. Even the flashing kitten shirt seemed to have less of a bright glow.

No.

It was certainly not Mabel Pines.

"Why the HELL…" Dipper whispered. His arms hung limply at his sides as his twin sister hobbled around the Mystery Shack. Her wild cackle seemed to fill every corner of the room, almost shrill enough to scare off the remaining customers. "Why the HELL would you even think this was the right idea…"

With that, the brunette girl turned sharply to her brother. A toothy grin stretched across her face, almost too wide to truly be a product of a human face. Even on a child it would have frightened off any normal person; Dipper wasn't about to let himself be scared away by this. He COULDN'T. Not if he gave a damn about his sister. So instead, he stepped boldly forward towards the girl who was now chewed (almost curiously) on her own hair. It dropped from her teeth as he approached, eyes narrowing and smirk pasting itself on her face.

"What the hell is this?!" Was all Dipper could manage to yell at Bill.

"'Love' can mean a lot of things, Pine Tree." Bill replied. A clump of brown hair still hung loosely from Mabel's front tooth; the demon didn't seem to mind that it was apparently stuck there. "In this case…'love' referred directly to the affection shared between two creatures, and also the 'love' that refers to possessing the other creature as their own. As 'mine'."

"Why Mabel?!" Dipper screamed. He had officially lost control of his temper. He had tried so hard when this nonsense had begun to keep his sister out of this ridiculous challenge and out of Bill's obsession affection for him—and even with that effort, Dipper had still lost. Mabel had still fallen prey to Bill's little game. "You never claimed any LOVE for her! You never said that you had some WEIRDO AFFECTION for HER! What the hell made you go after her?! What'd she even do to deserve this?!"

"For one, she struck me and opposed my effort. That's a good reason, wouldn't you say?" Mabel's hands clapped in an almost childish glee. Dipper's hands tightened into fists. "And two, it is just what I said. Dual birth—that's twins, mind you—results in both twins being under the influence of any deal made by one twin. Any deal you make with any creature, Pine Tree, automatically affects Shooting Star if the creature that made the deal so wishes for her to be affected. Mind you, this doesn't often happen, since most creatures don't know about it. Hell, I could've used it when I possessed YOU…if I had moved fast enough. Sadly I didn't."

"But you broke what we agreed on!" Dipper snapped. "You…this sure as hell ISN'T defying your nature! You're being just as horrible as you always are!"

"Oh darn, looks like I did." Mabel's shoulders shrugged, face still twisted up in amusement. "Looks like a leopard just can't change their spots. Too bad for you, I'm already in Shooting Star's body and there isn't a single thing you can do about it!"

Dipper stood there for a moment, digesting what was being told to him. Bill didn't plain to leave Mabel's body. He had lost his twin sister. He had lost the wacky and goofy girl who was almost never serious…yet was always willing to listen, even if she wasn't always helpful in her lent ear. The twin sister who was always sitting around giving birth to some crazy and creative idea like using a Bedazzler on her face or making a whole attic wall into a scrapbook of silly Photoshopped pictures. That one kid that had always been there for him, no matter how ridiculous his own ideas were.

Then Dipper ceased his internal monologue to think more seriously.

"Bill…" He said slowly, hesitantly. Bill twirled a clump of curly brown hair around Mabel's finger absentmindedly. "Why would you even bother to possess my sister? What…what exactly do you have to gain?"

The expression that crossed the demon's face was enough to cause panic to run through Dipper's entire body.

"Don't you remember what I said in your dream?" Bill chuckled, running one glitter encrusted finger under Dipper's chin. The boy grabbed the wandering hand and pulled it away from his face, a clear glare present on his features. The dream demon allowed the boy to hold the hand away from his face and simply allowed a tittering snicker to escape him. "I don't think you do, Pine Tree. But I did say it rather clearly."

"Get to the point, Bill."

"So stubborn." Bill laughed. Then Mabel's possessed face went completely free of expression. "I told you quite simply, boy, that demons do not expect things to love us back. We force them to."

The brunette boy and his possessed sister stood there for a moment in the now empty store. Then, Dipper shook his head in disdain.

"So what? Are you going to hold my sister's body hostage until I say that I love you too? Don't be such an idiot. Mabel's too stubborn to let herself stay possessed for that long…and you shouldn't think I would let it happen, either. Book or not." Dipper spat venomously, turning away from his curly haired twin sister. Despite that, though, he still tilted his head just enough to see Mabel's possessed form. It was just enough to see the demon within her simply shake his head in false disappointment—a disappointment closer to amusement than it was to genuine sadness.

"You have such a small thought process, Pine Tree. I mean, honestly. I had thought better of you." Bill grabbed the boy and flipped him around to face his possessed sister, her arms lacing around his neck as she closed in on her twin. Dipper shivered visibly. "Now don't be too nervous there, Pine Tree, it's just me. Your good old friend Bill Cipher. Nothing to be nervous about…honestly."

"I…if you aren't…if you aren't going to hold her hostage…" Dipper stuttered weakly, uncomfortable with the direction that Bill had chosen to take this possession. The demon giggled slightly and tightened the grip on the boy's neck, pressing his sister's nose against his. Young male humans were so damn easy to manipulate when it came to women, even the ones they were related to. "If you aren't going…g-going to hold the body hostage…what a-are you going to do?!"

Bill grinned widely, slowly running one pink-painted nail down the tween boy's face as he pressed the boy against the wooden wall of the Mystery Shack. With that, he lay one quick glossy peck against the brunette boy's cheek, continuing to a longer kiss right on the lips. The demon pressed his possessed body hard against her sibling, as lusciously as he could while in the body of a twelve year old. Dipper himself had frozen solid, arms splaying out against the redwood logs that made up the Shack's wall. His large eyes had widened as far as they could; all thought had escaped his mind as the one thing he had never even thought of doing before occurred.

With that, Bill pulled away from Dipper with a small smirk plastered on the face of his possessed subject—slowly he moved Mabel's mouth to her brother's ear to whisper in it. "Possessing bodies is good for more than just hostages….after all, there are just so many high cliffs and trees that one could just unfortunately have a nasty fall from. If you get my meaning, Pine Tree."

Dipper's eyes widened—though at this point he didn't even figure that was even possible. Bill was threatening Mabel's life with this possession? Certainly it had crossed the brunette boy's mind once or twice that Bill might be capable of such a thing while in control of a body, but he had never thought that the dream demon would actually do it. Or threaten to do it, anyways. Dipper supposed with Bill possessing an already deceased girl, it hadn't been much of a concern that the blonde girl would end up careening off a cliff or anything.

Mabel, though…

Mabel was a completely different story.

"You'd do it, wouldn't you." Dipper said. It wasn't a question.

"Well, why wouldn't I?" Bill replied nonchalantly, releasing one hand from Dipper's neck to check at the cheerily painted nails. A frown crossed the face he currently owned. "Such gaudily bright colors. Tasteless. World might be better off without a child so brimming with lack of taste."

"You killed Sally Poole without a second thought." Dipper continued, ignoring the demon's comments on his twin's rather out-there sense of style. "You can't even be bothered to bat at an eye at her older sister dying. You just don't care about death in the slightest."

"Now he's getting it!" Bill released the other hand on Dipper's neck to sarcastically applaud the boy. Dipper narrowed his eyes and attempted to push his sister's possessed body backwards; Bill would have none of it, steadfastly keeping the gaudy girl in place. "So what do you say, Pine Tree? It's a fair offer. One twin for the other twin. Your life for hers. Join me in the mindscape and be mine, and she will be able to live peacefully for the rest of her life."

"If I say no?"

"Well." Bill pushed forward again, staring pointedly into Dipper's eyes with those strange oval pupils. "Then I will likely take this body to the nearest cliff I can find and throw her off of it."

Dipper stood, pressed against the redwood log wall, for what seemed like a good long hour. Mabel's possessed frame stood in close proximity to his still body, heavily glittered hands resting on the boy's cheeks in what seemed like an expression of affection. Bill seemed completely willing to wait out whatever decision that his object of affection came to. The two, one brunette boy and one girl possessed by a dream demon, seemed to anyone on the outside to be engaged in some long standing staring contest. Finally, with a heavy sigh, Dipper sighed and his head dropped down to stare at his feet. Bill's, or rather Mabel's, face broke out into an expression of victory.

Before he left the earthly form he had bound himself to, Bill lifted Dipper's head upwards so the boy could stare into the distorted oval pupils and take in the toothy smirk that crossed his sister's face.

And quietly, right up against the boy's lips, he whispered: "I always win what I want in the long run, Pine Tree…and it was most certainly you that I wanted."

()()()()()()()

She knew.

Oh God, how she knew.

Mabel Pines had struggled for years to figure out a way to get her twin brother back—even daring a trip into the mindscape once or twice—with no fruit in her effort. Even with all of her mourning at Bill Cipher's success in stealing her twin, no one else seemed to know. No one else seemed to even remember. Dipper was a memory long gone and long lost to everyone who he had previously known, and the mere thought drove the seventeen year old 'Shooting Star' into her own personal madness.

It drove her to madness that she was now 'born an only child'—that her parents couldn't remember this twin that Mabel talked about and passed Dipper Pines off as an imaginary friend. It drove her to madness that Grunkle Stan didn't remember the boy that he had held such a secretive affection for, a secretive effort to 'man him up'. It drove her to madness that Soos couldn't remember the boy he had constantly messed around with, that Wendy couldn't remember the boy that had so awkwardly confessed to her, that no one in town could remember when 'Dipper and Mabel' stopped Lil' Gideon from his horrible deeds—only Mabel had revealed the truth to them in their minds.

Only she knew that Dipper had existed.

And only she knew why he was gone, and why.

…And how she was partly responsible.

Mabel knew she had done what she had done—interfering with Bill's harassment of her brother—in order to stop Bill Cipher from hurting people. Specifically, from hurting her twin. In no way had she expected him to turn his attack onto her. Certainly she had not expected the dream demon to play with the loopholes of Dipper's loose contract with him, and possess her body. Never had she expected to be a hostage, under threat of death, in order to get her poor brother to follow Bill to the mindscape.

It haunted her.

She wouldn't let it show, though. Slowly she learned that as she grew, it wasn't as charming to have this imaginary friend that she claimed to be her twin brother. Mabel Pines maintained a lot of her childish behavior as a teenager, like crazy sweaters and weird artistry and girly obsessions with stupidly manufactured bands, but people seemed to think that imaginary friends (no matter how real they were or had been) was a little too far into the crazy zone. So she quickly learned to smile and try to pretend that everyone was right, and they were no 'Pines twins'—only the Mabel Pines.

It never left her, though, floating above her own possessed body and her twin brother's frightened body as Bill Cipher used her to trick him. Nor did it ever leave her, hearing Bill Cipher's words come out of her mouth as she watched him touch her brother so inappropriately. Those terrible, manipulative words…

"I always win what I want in the long run, Pine Tree…" She whispered as she sat at a little pizza joint surrounded by her equally gaudy friends. Only one girl heard her, and simply sent her a confused look. Used to Mabel's odd phrases, though, she paid it no mind. "…and it was most certainly you that I wanted."

"I love you the most, Pine Tree."

Mabel clutched her legs tight to her chest, burying her face in her knees and hoping that none of her friends noticed as she wept over her sibling…the sibling that never existed.

END