Wayfarer [Bill Cipher x Reader] [REVISED]

Chapter One: Northern Downpour

Memory is a broken television set.

Sometimes, it will roll out entire episodes of a life, where outfits, playgrounds, and soda brands appear in crystal clear detail, arranged as if on a set. Sometimes, it plays broken clips, single shots that blur at the edges when you look at them too closely. Sometimes, instead of an image, white fuzz plays on the screen over and over until you change the channel.

Over the years, the channel menu changes and warps, its contents jumbling. Some channels are removed; others arrive to take their place. Some channels change their content.

Others are as fixed as the mountains. For as long as the memory of the memory reaches back, they've played the same thing: the bitter ache of losing a pet, the sensation of trembling knees before a presentation, or the warmth of soup on a cold winter's evening.

Or, in this case, a set of eyes. A set of eyes whose owner you had forgotten, even though you'd spent a bittersweet, life-changing three weeks in each other's company, weathering the storms and basking in the sunshine of your time together—

—before it all came to nothing. Nothing but this channel.

Of course, the potential quirks and flaws of memory were far from your mind the day you first met him. After all, that evening, you had other matters to dwell on. Leaving Yosemite, you watched as around you the mountains grew soft and green-black in the cool, rainy shroud of twilight, the round curves of their conifer-speckled sides passing by in the night to the steady swish of your car's tires on the rain-darkened asphalt.

Swishing past blurred rain shadow after blurred rain shadow, your mind couldn't help but wander from the barely visible mountains and trees to your current issues. The problem remained: could you really continue your road trip after this?

After all, this was a long, expensive trip for two being supported by one, thanks to your roommate Mabel's hasty exit from the trip. True, family came first, and an elderly great-uncle's stroke was nothing to sneeze at, but you couldn't help but wish... Oh, whatever. Nothing to be done about it, you supposed.

And speaking of family... You groaned a little. You'd promised your mom that you'd come home and "babysit" (B/N) after the trip was done, hadn't you?

Of course, it wasn't like you had anything in particular against (B/N), besides his being loud, annoying, and completely lacking basic life skills. And it wasn't like it was that much of a downgrade from working forty-five-hour weeks at Chile's. But life could stand to be a bit more fun than watching your brother get killed by a creeper in Minecraft for the thousandth time, couldn't it?

Of course, now, there wasn't even the meager flow of waitressing money to rely on, thanks to your little... disagreement with the manager back in May. You sighed. Ah, well. At least you had the authority to send (B/N) to his room for punishment, unlike forty-something soccer moms at the restaurant.

But, all things considered, it looked like you were going to have to throw in the towel early and head home after making another stop near Lake Tahoe. Well, at least Yosemite had been nice, you thought, shaking your head. With that in mind and the night pressing in, you pressed down on the gas, the car gaining a little steam on the highway's gleaming surface. The landscape whirred by as you threaded between the mountains, mind already on the route back home.

Then, heading around one particularly sharp curve, your eyes caught on a curious sight.

In the shadow of the mountains, half-obscured by the rain, stood a tall neon sign. It swayed slightly in the wind, its unlit form almost completely stripped of paint. Underneath its worn form huddled the long, boxy silhouette of a gas station, its canopy covering a row of gas pumps and—was that a person?