Sincerely Yours, Bill Cipher

To Be Human

     Yule finally notices that I'm at the window. With a frantic look, partially realizing what our plan is, he shouts out to Florian, "It's Milo! Milo! Our dad's name!"
Even I didn't know the answer to that question. Florian is just as dumbstruck. He can't hear Yule. His long pause sends fear soaring into my chest. I feel Merrily and Pacifica shaking, as they're pressed to my sides. Dipper's and Mabel's hands are grasped tightly as they watch. I can see their minds working, trying to figure out a way out of this. "Tyler, you know it was so long ago-"
He receives a fist to the face before he can finish. Brindle screams. Tyler's attention in thrust toward us at the window. Oh no, no, no...
Florian's knees buckle, and he crumples to the floor, his hands against his bruised cheek. Brindle cries out again, quieter this time, and she wraps her arms tightly around her belly. Flames of fear flicker in her gaze. I regret ever pulling the two of them into this. Nothing we can give them in return will ever make this worth it. If I had known that it would go so much worse than poorly...
Yule dares to make an escape, forgetting about the harm the salt barrier can cause him. He shrieks when he can't pass through, almost as if he's been shocked. He growls with frustration, wringing his hands through his hair. He looks to be doing awfully. I can't help but wonder what was that he did to hurt his brother earlier. I'm sure it was accidental, but we previously thought that he was harmless as a category one.
"You know," Tyler chuckles darkly, standing over a shaking Florian, "I should kill you too for pulling a stunt like that." His eyes darken and he sneers. His teeth look unnaturally sharp. "I am beyond furious!" His eyes flash with hate for the boy on the ground before him. "How dare you toy with my agony! If you think I'm just a worthless creature without feelings of my own, you are sadly mistaken." The corners of his mouth turn up, but the rest of his features stay twisted up in negative emotions. "Who's at the window, double? Who is it? Is it your fake family? Is it Bill Cipher?" Florian steals a look at us. He has no idea what to do now. Tyler laughs madly. "Then what a lucky day for me! I've dreamed up a thousand ways to kill that wretch!" He spots me in the window before I can duck. His eyes light up in an awfully crooked way. "I was right? What are you doing here, Cipher? In all logical ways, it makes no sense! Unless you're just trying to torment me, like this horrible haunt-" His expression changes to confusion. "Unless you're here to... save the ghost? Demon, is it? Here to retrieve your brethren to cause more havoc? To cause the deaths of more than just my brother?! It must- I don't-" he shakes his head. "No matter. I'll have you dead anyway!"
"Tyler, you have it wrong!" I shout back, trying desperately to make him understand. However, he's so caught up in his own unending grief that I don't think I can ever get the truth across to him, much less change his mind. "I never meant for your brother to die!" That would be the last thing I could ever mean to do. "He's my best friend!" He is and always will be. "I love him, just like you do!" I always have. "I've already told you, he sacrificed his own life! His choice!" He told me himself. "It was other demons that I cut myself off from that hurt him! I am not a demon!"
"Yeah, and I'm not a human. Oh, wait..." He laughs again, but his voice is filled with sadness. "Have you come to taunt me? Is that it? I hate the way I am! You will never know how painful it is to eat and eat, yet never be satisfied, always hungry! You'll never know the terror of seeing the occasional horrifying reflection in the mirror, only realizing that that monster is just yourself! You can never understand how much I want, how much I need to be human!" He jabs an envious finger at Florian. "He has everything I don't! He is everything that I should be!"
Florian's lip trembles. "That's exactly what I used to think about you," he whispers miserably.
Brindle shivers next to me, too afraid to dash in after her husband, seemingly afraid of what might happen to either of them. She bows her head and begins to chant softly. I think she's placing another luck charm on Florian.
"We're not the same!" Tyler wails. "You've probably lived a comfortable life where everyone knows you are a human that is living the life of a fae. They accept that. That's normal for them! Me- I found out what I was all alone, swearing I could never let my family find out. The fact that her oldest son was kidnapped and replaced with a monster would terrorize my mother, and surely my father, and my little brother. Then they died- they died, and I wondered if it was all my-" He claps his hands over his mouth, but he's already said more than he wants to. "No, no, I meant," he hastily covers up his previous statement, "that you still killed my brother, Cipher! Not me! Just you! And I'm going to kill you myself for that!"
     Oh my stars. Tyler Shields is worried that his bad luck to those around him as a changeling is the cause of his father's and brother's deaths. He's hiding that behind accusations against me.
     But by the way his eyes bore into me now, nothing, no matter what he believes, is going to get him to stop whatever he plans to do to me and my friends.
     And I don't even have mere seconds to decide what to do next.