TW: Mentions of dead animals

Dreams.

Dreams are strange, are they not?

One minute you are awake, your thoughts racing and you are, for some reason, thinking about the most random and embarrassing moments from your childhood because you still cannot get over the fact that you actually ended up doing that one embarrassing thing.

The next, darkness hits you.

Suddenly you are in a place you no longer recognize, or maybe you do, and the story that is taking place before you is so absurd and yet your brain does not try to comprehend it but instead accept the weirdness that it brings.

Dreams can fool you sometimes, making you believe that what you are experiencing is really happening until you are awoken by your alarm clock and realize your day has yet to truly begin.

Dreams can make things that are so strange and out of the ordinary make complete sense and you no longer question why that fish wearing the top hat is talking to you, telling you that you are some kind of savior that is going to change the world for the better.

Dreams can sometimes seem better than the reality that you live in and you wish with all your heart that you never end up waking up but instead stay here forever in your perfect fantasy world.

Dreams can fail to fool you, and now you are in control of the story that your brain has created for you.

Dreams can be a gateway to unlocking memories that have been lost or forgotten within the subconscious, opening them back up to you so you can remember what you did not know you had lost in the first place.

Dreams are strange.

But Bill doesn't dream.

He's said it before and he'll continue to repeat himself until people finally begin to listen:

Dream demons don't have dreams. Dream demons don't have nightmares. What they experience when they close their eyes are merely memories that are resurfacing. Nothing more. It's simply to keep the mind busy and preoccupied until the body is ready to wake up and begin to move around once more.

That's all.

Though, if that was all of it... and there was nothing more to it than that- Then why was it that when Bill closed his eyes and went to sleep, he was seeing memories that he did not recognize?

It was happening way more often now and it was becoming harder to ignore. Someone else's memories were colliding with his and for some reason he was watching their entire life story being played out. Why, though? Why was this happening to him? What made things even more confusing was that Y/n seemed to be in all of these extra memories. Whoever's life story Bill was looking into seemed to know Y/n personally.

His first thought was that maybe he was looking at the memories that belonged to whoever used to own this body before he was reincarnated into it.

But if that was the case, wouldn't Y/n have mentioned the fact that he was in the body of their old friend or something? Wouldn't they recognize his face as having belonged to someone else?

"Hey, thought I might find you up here," his body spoke for him, looking down at a much younger version of Y/n sitting on top of a roof of some random house with their knees tucked into their chest.

This wasn't a dream.

But it also wasn't a memory that Bill possessed.

He didn't quite understand what this was.

"You found me."

Oh. Oh their voice- it was so soft. So... broken.

Bill's body moved to sit down beside them, looking down at their shivering body with a small frown.

"Are you cold?"

They shook their head.

It didn't matter. Bill's body shrugged off the hoodie they were wearing and moved to drape it over Y/n's shoulders which they silently accepted.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

Y/n shook their head, continuing to stare up at the night sky and avoid his gaze.

"Alright. That's fine, we don't have to if you're not up for it right now. Is it okay if I stay up here, though?"

They shrugged.

It wasn't a yes... but it wasn't a no, either. So Bill's body stayed put, watching Y/n as they watched the night sky over them.

There was this feeling building up in Bill's body. It wasn't an emotion Bill was feeling, but something within this body was feeling it.

Concern. Worry. Guilt.

Bill's body sighed heavily, the head turning to now face the ground.

"We'll get out of here. Someday, I promise you we'll get out of here. Once we graduate from high school, we're leaving and never coming back. We'll find a nice, quiet town where you, me, and Cinnamon can live together as a happy found family. We'll start over, start fresh."

"Oh, you are not bringing Cinnamon along with us."

This caused Bill's body to shake with laughter, looking back over and smiling gently towards Y/n who was now facing them. Their (e/c) eyes now bloodshot and glossed over.

Had they been crying this whole time?

Who hurt you, Candle? Tell me who hurt you and I promise you it will never happen again.

"What- You can't expect me to run away from here and not bring him along! He is most definitely coming with us!"

"Dude, Cinnamon hates me. And I hate him- it's a mutual hatred that we have both come to terms with. You bring him along and we'll both be suffering."

"Orrr you'll both learn to live with one another and get along for the sake of my happiness! You never know what the future holds for us, and I really want my two best friends by my side as we escape this hellhole and travel the world together to find a better home for us. You can't just expect me to abandon Cinnamon here with my parents. They'll probably throw him to the streets or starve him!"

"Okay, okay- Geez, way to go making me feel guilty for envying how much you love that little demon that you call a pet. If I die in my sleep because of him, though, it's totally your fault," Y/n muttered, but Bill could see through the body's eyes the small smirk on his Candle's face that they were trying to hide.

"Cinnamon is not going to kill you."

"You never know! You said it yourself: you never know what the future holds."

Bill's body laughed light heartedly, shaking their head. The head then turned to look at the night sky, smiling softly.

"We're going to get out of here... I'm going to make sure of it. That is a promise."

When Bill's head turned to look back at Y/n, the scene changed instantly and now in Y/n's place was a familiar face Bill recognized all too well.

"You are going to be the one to get us all out of here? Don't make me laugh," Pyronica hissed, the chains that were attached to her rattling as she tried to move her head to Bill's level. "All human promises are empty, there's nothing behind those words you speak."

Wait- This wasn't one of Bill's memories, either.

Was this supposed to lead Bill to believe that whoever's memories he was experiencing right now had encountered Pyronica at some point in time? That didn't make sense in the slightest.

The only time Pyronica had physically been here on earth was during the time they were all trapped in Weirdmageddon.

During that time, not once had Pyronica found herself in a situation where she had been chained up like some kind of a prisoner. She had been right by Bill's side the entire time. He would have known if something like that happened to her.

So when did this take place? What was going on?

"I won't lie, some humans are... pretty crappy when it comes to keeping their promises. But I swear, I'll do whatever it takes to set you all free! I'm not just going to leave you all here like caged animals, it's not right!"

'You all'? Who else was here?! Bill was starting to freak out. He didn't like what he was seeing.

"Look kid, if I can't break out of these chains then there's no way someone as weak as you would be able to. We're not getting out of here, we've accepted our fate at this point and it's time you face the facts and accept it, too." There was a pause. Pyronica hung there in the air for a minute as she thought to herself before lifting her head back up to stare at Bill's body. "You can't help us... but maybe there's someone else that you can help."

"Who? Who can I help?"

And just as Pyronica went to answer the question, Bill's vision went dark.

Silence.

A gasp.

Bill's eyes opened wide, sitting up and looking around startled.

He quickly turned to face the nightstand that sat beside his bed, grabbing a notebook and pen that he had left there and flipping through it to find a blank page. Whenever these strange memories came to Bill, he would end up forgetting about them in a matter of minutes after waking up. All he'd be left with was this vague feeling that something happened last night. He just wouldn't be sure what that "something" was. Hence the notebook. He asked for one from Y/n weeks ago without giving them a reason why he needed it. He's been using the notebook to help jot down what he remembers, hoping he's fast enough to get something down before it all fades to nothing. At first, he tried to write as much detail as possible only to find he was missing so much by trying to take the time to write it all down. Now he only writes a list of words, hoping that just looking at the words will be enough to jog his memory:

Y/n
Roof
Cold
Concern
Leaving
Cinnamon
Pyronica
All
Can't
Help

That's it. That's all he was able to remember and write down before all the information faded from memory. Why wouldn't the memories stick? Why couldn't they latch onto his brain and stay so he could analyze them properly? Instead he was left with more questions than answers and it was becoming aggravating.

Something he did notice, though, that was becoming a repetitive word that he was repeatedly writing down was the name of his mortal roommate. Whoever was the owner of these memories had a strong connection to Y/n. They spoke all the time, hung out frequently- but if it just so happened that the owner of these memories was once the owner of Bill's current body, then why hasn't Y/n said anything about it?

Maybe that's why Y/n really wanted to help him in the first place. Maybe they've known all along.

Bill didn't know how late it was into the night at this point. He left the room before he could check his alarm clock. All he really knew was that Y/n and these memories were connected and he planned to get some answers. He was so tired of not having any answers.

Also just tired in general. He really should just go back to sleep.

But no, here Bill was now banging against Y/n's door repeatedly and loudly to wake them up and get them to start talking.

"What the actual crap, Cipher?! It's three in the freaking MORNING! You better have some good explanation for this before I decide to kick you out of my house," Y/n muttered, opening the door and glaring at the demon who had awoken them from their slumber.

Fun tip to know about Y/n: they would rather be asleep dreaming away than be awoken in the middle of the night for some random reason that could have been dealt with in the morning.

"Who does this body belong to?"

...Again, this could have been dealt with in the morning.

But no.

Of course they had to do this here right at this second.

"Bill, what- Are you serious right now? Your body belongs to you," Y/n said confused, not entirely understanding why Bill was wasting their sleep time asking this.

"No, no that's not what I'm asking. I'm asking whose body was this before I was placed into it. Who owned this body before me?"

There was a pause that occurred where the two of them were just staring at one another in complete silence.

"...I'm sorry, what? How would I know? Bill, I've never seen this body before. The first time I ever saw it was when you walked into the General Store that night. Before then, I didn't even know this face existed."

"Liar. I know that wasn't the first time!" He lifted up his notebook, waving it in the air. "Ever since I was reincarnated, I keep seeing memories in my sleep that don't belong to me! I've narrowed it down that these memories must belong to whoever inhabited this body before me."

"And you're assuming I would know who they were because...?"

Bill handed over the notebook. "Flip through the pages."

"What?"

"Do it!"

Too tired to argue with the dream demon that had woken them up at this ungodly time, Y/n took the notebook and began scanning the words on each page. As they did this, they noticed one word in particular was being repeated on each page. Every page. Over and over again.

Y/n.

"...Bill... what the heck? You're telling me you've been dreaming about me every night?!"

"No- Not dreams! I told you, I don't have dreams! These are memories! Almost every night, I'm met with a new memory that must have belonged to whoever owned this body first. But there's one thing that's the same in every new memory I experience: your presence. You and I- or whoever- are always in the memory talking to each other. If you're not talking, you're laughing. If you're not laughing, you're crying. You and this person act like you've known each other all your life! I figured if anyone would know who owned this body first, it would have to be the one person I keep seeing in every single one of their memories."

Y/n stood there, still flipping through the pages as Bill spoke. This didn't make sense to them, not in the slightest. There's no way that Bill was seeing them in these memories, he had to be mistaken. He had to be. Maybe whoever he was seeing looked awfully similar to them but wasn't them and he was just confusing them for somebody else. Maybe they were a doppelgänger. Doppelgängers exist, don't they? If dream demons were real, then surely doppelgängers were, too!

Look, they weren't sure how Bill was seeing them in these memories but there had to be some other explanation than the fact maybe they knew the previous owner of the body. Because they didn't. They would have remembered if they did, especially if they were as close as Bill described them to have been in the memories. They wouldn't just forget a face. They couldn't.

Could they?

"I mean- Okay, yeah, that makes sense. I see where you're going with this now, but Bill I'm telling you: I don't know who owned this body before you. I don't know how I'm in these memories you're seeing, but they have to be wrong because I've never seen this body be-"

All of a sudden, Y/n stopped talking. They were on the last entry that Bill had just written minutes before waking them up.

Bill frowned, noticing their sudden cut-off. "What? What is it?"

"...Cinnamon. Why-... Why did you write Cinnamon?"

Bill noticed how soft their voice became. It took him a minute to recall why exactly it was he had written down that word, his recollection of the memory he just witnessed fading away by the second.

"I- er, my body was talking about leaving. We were going to leave home together, just this body, you, and Cinnamon. You... You didn't like the fact that I mentioned Cinnamon, though. I think you hated him? Or something... I don't really know. Why?"

Y/n wouldn't even look up as Bill spoke, just continuing to stare at the page. It was starting to worry the demon. Maybe he should have waited till the morning to bring this up. But if he had, how much would he have remembered about the memory?

"Candle? ...Why does that word stick out to you?"

Snapping out of their trance, Y/n lifted their head up to stare silently at Bill. It creeped the dream demon out with how intense the stare was from the human. Without any warning, Y/n suddenly reached out and grasped Bill's wrist before exiting their bedroom and beginning to drag him down the hall. Now, up until this point Y/n always asked if he was comfortable being touched before going ahead and touching him. They knew how important it was to ask and double check if he was comfortable in the moment. The way they grasped hold of him just now, though, gave Bill the indication that this must be serious. And for the first time, he didn't mind being touched without any warning. He felt safe whenever it was Y/n touching him. He knew they would never intentionally hurt him.

As they sped-walked through the house, Bill was led straight through the back door and out of the house. He wasn't quite sure where Y/n was going with this, but followed nonetheless as they seemed to be on a mission to get somewhere.

In Y/n's backyard sits a tree, a black willow tree to be exact. This was the only thing they had in their backyard other than overgrown grass that needed to be mowed and mosquitoes that could bite for days. Bill always found himself looking at this tree through the sliding glass back door whenever he sat at the kitchen table. He wasn't sure why it fascinated him so much. It didn't, really. It was just a tree. A tree that his eyes always seemed to turn and gaze over at whenever there was time to do so.

Moving closer towards the tree, Bill began to notice that there was something on the ground sitting right in front of it. He squinted his eyes, following Y/n to get a closer look. Once close enough to see the object on the ground, he realized it was a stone with a placard fixed onto it. It was hard to read what was on it, at least until Y/n took out their phone and turned the flashlight on.

Cinnamon

That's it.

That's all that was written on it.

Bill's eyes widened, turning his head to glance over at Y/n. Their expression was unreadable, however.

"...What is this?" Bill asked softly.

"You know... if you asked me yesterday, I wouldn't have known the answer. I completely forgot this was out here. I completely forgot-... Cinnamon... Cinnamon was this cat I knew," their voice was very soft now, trying to keep it from breaking as they spoke to the dream demon. It was all coming back to them now. How could they have forgotten about the cat that made them hate cinnamon? "He was a mean thing, he hated me with all his guts. To be fair, though, it was a mutual hatred between us. I despised that thing. I like cats, but Cinnamon? He must have been a demon straight from Hell that was sent to torment me. He scratched me every time I was too close to him- not like I tried to ever get close to him. He would purposely get close to me, get pissed that I was in his presence, and then proceed to scratch me to the point I'm soaking my socks with blood! He was awful, I hated Cinnamon with every fiber of my being."

Bill frowned, looking back down at the little grave and tilting his head to the side. "If you hated him so much, why give him such a fancy little gravestone? I'm surprised you didn't just toss his corpse into your garbage can and be done with him."

"I would have. I know I wanted to- but..."

"But... what?"

Y/n frowned, their eyebrows furrowing as they tried to remember what had happened. "...I don't know. I don't remember. Why... don't I remember?" They gasped, turning to look at Bill with their eyes beginning to gloss over. "Why don't I remember, Bill? The creature that I hated more than anything else in this world- I completely forgot Cinnamon even existed up until five minutes ago! Did you know he's the reason behind why I hate the candles I own so much? On the subject of those candles— Why do I own a bunch of candles that I hate?! That doesn't make sense! If I hate the scent of Sparkling Cinnamon, why would I own a bunch of candles with that scent?!"

"Uh, Candle-"

"I would have never bought all those candles if I knew I hated the scent- that would have just been a waste of money! So why do I own so much? Why would I have bought a fancy gravestone for a cat I never actually gave a crap about?! And why would I have let that cat live with me as long as he had?! He's not even my cat!" Y/n screamed, tears pouring down their face at this point. But then they suddenly stopped screaming, realizing the words they just said. "He's-... Cinnamon wasn't even my cat. He lived here, but he wasn't mine-... So then why did he live here with me?"

Silence fell over the two of them, the moon shining down on them to give them some source of light within the darkness of the night.

"Bill," Y/n whispered, tears streaming down their cheeks as they stared at the dream demon who watched on silently with a look of sympathy in his expression, "is it possible... for me to forget someone entirely who I might have considered a close friend at one point? How-... I'm looking at your face right now and nothing comes to mind, but-... the moment that you mentioned Cinnamon, I instantly remembered everything about that cat. I know that cat didn't belong to me. So if he didn't belong to me... Am I going insane? Am I crazy for forgetting the face of someone who might have been my friend? I'm crazy, aren't I? How could I have possibly forgotten-"

"It's possible it wasn't your fault for forgetting."

"...What?"

Bill's face turned grim, a memory of his own resurfacing before he sighed heavily and ran a hand through his hair. "I'm not saying that this might have been the case, but I do know of one way you could have forgotten something entirely without ever meaning to forget about it in the first place. You could say that maybe it had been... erased from your mind." He growled lowly after these words spilled past his lips, looking away from Y/n as he thought back to the piece of technology that destroyed his entire life.

"Wait- erased?! My memories could have been erased?! How is that even possible?"

"Back in a small town known as Gravity Falls, a man both brilliant and stupid created a device known as the Memory Gun. The purpose of it was so he could erase all memories of the weirdness that was occurring in the town," Bill explained, disgust and hatred laced in his voice. He wouldn't go into detail as to why he hated talking about it so much. Y/n didn't need to know all of the different purposes that gun was used for. They didn't need to know that the Memory Gun was the cause behind his death and the reason he had been reincarnated in the first place. That was a secret he felt comfortable keeping to himself and himself alone. "The gun was very successful at its job. It was a piece of technology that was way ahead of its time in this dimension. I can't be certain that's what caused your memory loss, however. Maybe you got really bad amnesia at one point, I don't know. Besides, that gun resides all the way back in Gravity Falls; I don't know how someone like you would have gotten your hands on it. So... yeah, it's probably not that. Ignore me- I'm tired and throwing random ideas at the wind."

Y/n sniffled, crying silently while hugging Bill's notebook close to their chest. They didn't know what to think of all of this, it was just too much. Way too much. The idea that a part of their life was missing was absolutely terrifying, but the more they thought about it... the more they realized the holes in their memories that they never thought to question before. Everything felt as though it was both coming together and falling apart at the exact same time.

"...What if you're right? Hypothetically speaking- say that the Memory Gun was used on me and that's why I can't remember who owned your body before you. ...Are those memories gone forever? Is there no way of getting them back?"

Bill sighed, lifting his head back up slowly to see Y/n once more and, oh— it broke his heart to see that look of fear on their face. It wasn't right. He wanted to fix this, remove their fear altogether and let them know that everything would be okay. "...There is a way. If the same machine that I am thinking of was used on you then hypothetically speaking your memories were not destroyed but merely locked away. If that happened... then I promise you, Y/n, I will do whatever it takes to help you retrieve those memories. I need to know who owned this body before me. I need answers just as much as you do. We will figure this out, I promise."

There was a moment of silence, a moment of understanding between the two. Neither got the answers they wanted tonight, but at least they knew now that there were questions that they needed answers to. Before 3 a.m. they had no idea of the possible memory loss that Y/n was experiencing. They had no idea that there was someone that they were forgetting. Someone who has encountered Pyronica in their past. Bill needed an explanation. Y/n needed to remember.

Both hoped that neither would have to wait long to get the answers that they seeked.

Dreams are strange.

Memories are even stranger.

Especially when they don't belong to you

Memories of the woods.

Memories of a lake.

Memories of a pink moon.

Memories of a golden man rising, being reborn once more.

A man awoke from his slumber, very distraught and horrified.

He looked around, sweat soaking his body as his blood ran cold.

Once the man found his voice, he screamed so loud he hoped the whole house would wake up and hear him.

"FORD! FORD, HE'S BACK! BILL'S BACK!"

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Chapter 20: Sunday, Feb 19th, 2023

One More Chapter
Before the Hiatus
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