Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Brain's wrists ached where they were bound, the sharp edge of the heavy manacles digging into his fur. His knees had long since given up protesting the cold steel floor. But his mind—his mind was sharp as ever was. Perhaps even sharper.

He looked up as footsteps echoed into the chamber—slow, deliberate, almost playful. Playful in the way that he knew the owner of the footsteps was deliberately toying with him, drawing out the inevitable.

Pinky entered the room with a smile that didn't touch his eyes. His eyes only burned, an internal furnace of malice. Pinky wasn't happy to see Brain. But the way that his spiked shoulder pads straightened and his stride lengthened made it clear that Pinky was experiencing some sort of vicious joyfulness at the sight of Brain, bound and defeated.

The robotic guards on either side of Brain parted, giving their master space.

"Did you think you could stop me?" Pinky purred. "You and your little rebellion?"

Brain didn't flinch. "No. I knew I couldn't stop you alone."

Pinky tilted his head, mock-curious. "Then why try?"

"Because it worked." Brain's voice was hoarse but steady. "They're safe. You'll never find them now."

For a moment, the mask cracked—just slightly. A twitch at the corner of Pinky's scarred eye. A flash of annoyance. Then, the smile returned, wider and thinner than before.

"Is that the best you can do? You're all alone now, Brain. There's no one left to hear your speeches. No more plans. No more escapes." He stepped closer, boots clacking against steel with each step. "Do you know what I'm going to do to you?"

Brain stared up at him. "I'm not afraid of you anymore."

The words hung in the air. Defiant. Final.

Dark Pinky leaned down, close enough for Brain to smell the ozone clinging to him. His voice was quiet now. Intimate.

"You will be."

Chapter Text

Egghead didn't warn her how much it would hurt.

To be fair, there hadn't been time. No chance to calibrate the portal, no chance for last-minute questions, no tearful goodbyes. Just a brief look between them—urgent, unspoken—and then he pushed her in.

It felt like her entire body had been turned inside out, then folded like origami by someone angry and not very good at origami. Her brain still buzzed with static, and her fur felt like it had been dipped in battery acid.

Definitely in the top five worst experiences.

She landed hard on cold concrete. For the first time in what felt like hours—or maybe seconds—it felt real. The air didn't shimmer. The gravity was consistent. The air smelled of wind and rain.

She curled into a ball, shaking, breath hitching. The tears stung. Just from the pain, she told herself. Just the pain.

Something landed behind her with a soggy splatch.

Billie rolled away instinctively, raising her arms up in a defensive posture as she bounded to her feet. "Blinky?"

A long-legged orange fish lifted its face from the pavement, blinking first one blue eye and then the other as it unsteadily got to its feet. It stumbled forward, and landed back on the ground. It wiggled sadly and made a small, wet "mwurf."

"Blinky!" She scrambled over, checked its flippers and fishy gills for any sign of injury, and cradled it like a soggy balloon animal. "Where's Egghead? Where's Brain? Did he—did he follow us? Is he okay?"

Blinky's head wobbled side to side, pitifully.

Billie's ears lowered. "So he's still back there."

Another mwurf.

She stood, still holding the fish awkwardly in her arms as she helped it to its feet. She looked up at the night sky—this one was different. It felt bigger. Emptier.

"Okay," she whispered, gripping Blinky tighter. "Then we're gonna find our way back to Egghead."

Chapter Text

The machine hummed like a wasp nest. Its needles pulsed with light, wrapped around Brain's skull like a sadistic metal crown. He could feel it—pressing—into the folds of his mind, parting synapses like curtains, rifling through memories with no regard for how fragile they really were.

But it wasn't the machine that frightened him.

It was the voice behind it.

"You locked the secret away somewhere in that squishy cerebrum of yours," Pinky muttered. His tone was bitter. Tight. "That's cheating. You're cheating."

Brain winced as a sharp pulse seared across his temple. A flash—Billie's laugh, distorted and fading. The scent of ozone. A chalkboard. A song with no lyrics.

Pinky leaned closer, peering at the monitor with narrowed eyes. The shadows under them were too deep, too sunken. His hands twitched at his sides.

"Let's try a deeper layer," he whispered.

The machine obeyed with a low, mechanical growl.

Brain's head jerked.

Another flash—Pinky, an unknown number of years ago, holding a slice of cake with a candle in it. No context. No sound. Just that moment, stuck in time.

Pinky's voice came again, quieter this time.

"You think hiding it makes you smarter than me. But I know you, Brain. I know how you think. I know where your secrets go."

Another jolt. Brain bit down hard, tasting copper.

"I know what you dream about," Pinky said.

The machine was pulling something else now—faint echoes, hazy memories that felt like a mixture of reality and dream. A hallway with no doors. A fish with legs swimming against the current. A music box that had no music.

And in the next memory, Pinky saw himself.

A happy version. Unscarred. Unbroken. Laughing as he helped carry wires across the lab, babbling about buttered toast and ninjas and how they were somehow related. Pinky waving at Billie and Billie smiling back. Pinky holding Brain's hand, his eyes tired and heavy after a failed attempt at world domination.

Pinky stumbled back, eyes wide. "No," he whispered. "No, no, no. That's not—that's not me. That's not who I am."

Brain coughed, voice barely audible. "It was."

Pinky's breath hitched. His hand hovered over the console. Then clenched into a fist.

"You think that makes you better than me?" he hissed. "You think hiding behind memories makes you right? You think she chose you? She pities you, Brain. That's all."

Brain didn't answer.

Pinky slammed the switch again.

The machine shrieked.

Inside Brain's mind, doors slammed shut one by one. Billie's voice blurred into white noise. The fish with legs turned belly-up. The music box cracked and fell into a pile of splinters.

And somewhere behind Pinky's eyes, something trembled.

Chapter Text

The night air smelled… normal.

It was the first thing Billie noticed. No hum of security drones. No crackle of surveillance grids above her head. Just the quiet, damp scent of pavement after rain, and a breeze that carried nothing mechanical.

She pressed herself into the shadows of the alley, heart hammering in her chest. Her instincts screamed at her to duck, to cover her ears, to expect the overhead whine of aerial sentries scanning the streets. But the sky was clear. Just stars.

Blinky sloshed in a half-cracked plastic soda cup beside her, his gills fluttering anxiously.

"Stay still," she whispered, watching the empty sidewalk. "Don't blink. Don't breathe. Don't even mwurf."

Blinky gave a soggy mwurf of protest.

Billie risked a glance around the corner. The street was quiet. No drones. No foot soldiers. A couple of humans strolled by in coats, one laughing too loudly at something on their glowing phone. A delivery bike buzzed past, trailed by music.

She stared at them, stunned.

No curfew. No IDs. No uniforms. Just people out at night, enjoying themselves.

They didn't know. They didn't know who she was. What she was running from. What she'd left behind.

Who she left behind.

She ducked back into the alley and pressed her hand against her chest, grounding herself. The weapon in her left hand felt comforting.

"Okay," she murmured. "Different world, I guess? Mebbe different rules."

Blinky wobbled out of the cup and landed with a wet plop on the ground, attempting to stand upright on his spindly legs with all the dignity a damp fish with legs could muster.

"Right," Billie said, nodding at him. "We need information. We find a screen. A signal. Somethin'."

They moved carefully, sticking to the darkest patches. A half-lit newspaper stand flickered at the corner. Billie approached cautiously, scanning for traps. There were none. Just vending slots, most of them jammed or broken.

One newspaper had fallen onto the wet ground, pages stuck together by rain. Billie bent down, peeled it open.

HEADLINE: Diplomatic Talks Collapse—Conflict on Brink Between Anvilania and Dunlikus

She read it twice, then stared at the date. Current. Real. This was now. That ruled out time travel. Or at least reduced the possibility.

She looked back at the street, the people, the silence overhead.

No one had stopped them.

Her fingers tightened on the paper, reading the headline again about nations on the brink of war.

"Pinky would never allow that to happen," she whispered.

The Pinky she knew would've flooded both capitals with gas, sending their populations into a sleeping stupor before letting them start a war. The message would be clear: comply—or else.

If he was feeling benevolent, he'd only replace the leaders with identical animatronic lookalikes, empty-eyed puppets programmed to obey his every order and smile for the cameras.

If he was feeling less generous…

It wouldn't be the first time an entire city was turned into a plain of glass.

She swallowed hard.

The world she came from didn't permit disobedience, chaos, or chance. It was safer. Quieter.

She hated it. And the mouse behind it all.

Blinky nudged her gently.

"Yeah," she said softly. "Let's keep movin'."

Chapter Text

The workroom was quiet but for the low, rhythmic clink of metal against metal.

Pinky stood at the table, gloved hands poised over a grid of carefully arranged components. Burned wires. Scorched lenses. Shattered fragments of circuit boards, each placed with clinical precision. A few were tagged. Most were unknown.

He tilted his head, eyeing them like pieces to an infuriating puzzle.

"Are you sure," he asked slowly, "this was all you were able to recover from Brain's machine?"

The nearest robotic guard whirred softly. "Affirmative."

Pinky didn't look away from the table. "Check again."

Silence.

"Now."

Metal feet clanked as the guards departed. He exhaled through his nose and leaned forward, resting both hands on the edge of the table.

So many pieces. So close to learning what Brain had built.

The machine had been elegant once—obscenely so, for something put together from scrap and spare parts. Brain had built it in secret, of course. Pinky's spies assured him that it was just another exercise in Brain's self-delusion, the latest in a very long list of failures.

When Pinky realized the truth, it was too late.

Naturally, he confirmed none of his spies were double agents. He was very thorough. He spent many late nights personally pulling apart bodies and memories, peeling back layers of loyalty.

In the end, he realized they hadn't betrayed him.

They'd just been wrong.

So he killed them anyway.

He picked up a warped filament, still faintly glowing at the core. Held it close to his eye and turned it over his fingers.

"You always thought you were clever," he murmured. "Always had to be the smartest one in the room. Had to lecture. Had to plan."

He tossed the filament down with a sharp clatter and began to pace.

The movement helped him think. Sitting still only made the static worse. Thoughts needed motion. Rhythm. Forward momentum.

The pieces were here—at least, the ones that hadn't been obliterated in the explosion Brain so graciously left behind. Pinky had sifted through every wire, every diode. Scanned for residue. Traced signal echoes across half the continent.

It had to be a teleportation device of some kind. That made the most sense. The rebel base had been a trap anyway—a last stand. A monument to Brain's failure.

Of course he would build something to escape.

That's what I would've done.

He'd deployed search parties immediately. Grid by grid, expanding in concentric rings from the ruins. Scouting for power spikes, anomalous footprints, anything resembling a trail.

But there was nothing. No energy patterns, no molecular residue.

No Billie.

Pinky growled. There had to be something he was missing. He was smart. Smarter than Brain. He could figure it out, or unravel Brain's mind in the process.

Or both. Both would be good.

He stopped mid-stride. Tilted his head, just slightly, as a new thought occurred to him.

He'd need help. Unfortunately. Pinky's jaw tensed.

He turned sharply on his heel, striding to the control node embedded in the wall. A single gesture summoned one of the guards—sleek and silent.

"Activate Project One," Pinky said.

"Authorization confirmed," the machine intoned. "Reinitializing dormant system."

Pinky made his way down a cold metal corridor. At the far end, a hidden door slid open with a hiss, releasing a burst of cool vapor that spilled across the floor like a fog. The lights inside flickered—orange, then red—as dormant systems came to life. Deep within the mist, something began to stir.

Pinky didn't move. His hands curled into fists at his sides.

It wasn't failure to ask for help. Not really. This was still his project. His fallback plan. The others hadn't understood it—certainly not Brain. Not Billie. Pinky didn't like to admit it, but he owed a lot to Project One.

Pinky allowed himself a slow exhale.

A brain—pale, veined, suspended in a nutrient bath—hung at the center of the room, held aloft by a tangled nest of wires, cables, and control rods. Nearby, a set of eyes floated in a sealed glass tube, tendrils of wiring tethering them to the central mass. The pupils dilated as the room's lights adjusted.

Monitors blinked online. A waveform fluttered on the nearest display.

Pinky stepped forward. He looked into the tank.

"Hello again, Snowball," he said.

Chapter Text

The hiding place was a crawlspace under what had once been a gas station convenience store. The shelves above them were rusted and cracked, and the windows of the refrigerated cases had been covered by years of grime and mold. No one came here anymore. That made it perfect.

By day, Blinky and Billie slept in short, shallow snatches—a habit from the rebellion, when rest had to be taken in pieces and safety was never guaranteed. By night, they moved quietly across the land, inching closer to where she hoped Acme Labs stood. It had been a long time since she was last anywhere near that place, and she wasn't sure if her memories were correct. Or even if this dimension—she had mostly admitted to herself that Egghead had somehow sent them to another dimension—even had an Acme Labs where she remembered it being.

It was, all in all, a terrible idea.

It was also the only one she had.

She curled on her side now, her right arm looped protectively around Blinky, who squelched softly against her stomach like a lukewarm hot water bottle. The dream took her before she even realized she'd fallen asleep.

She was back in the tunnels.

The lights flickered. Then dimmed. Then failed.

The air reeked of ozone and burning fuel. The only sound was Billie's breath, coming faster and faster. And the metallic footsteps that seemed to echo everywhere around her. A voice called out to her.

"Comply," it said.

Billie turned and ran.

She could hear others around her, behind her, ahead of her, all running, running away. Screams. Billie couldn't tell who was screaming. Maybe it was her.

She stumbled into a door. Slammed it behind her. She locked it. Once with the deadbolt. Again with a heavy beam across the frame. Then sealed it with a code from the nearby pad.

There was a polite knock on the door, which she somehow heard over the screaming.

The door opened.

Pinky stood on the other side. He was smiling, but there was no joy behind it. The joy had left him long ago.

"You left," he said. "But you didn't go anywhere."

Billie screamed.

She bolted upright with a gasp, heart hammering, fur damp with cold sweat. The weapon in her left hand hummed as it powered up.

Darkness. Quiet.

For a moment she didn't know what was real. The dream clung to her, whispering in the corners of her mind.

Then something warm and damp leaned gently against her side.

"...mwurf," came the sound.

Billie blinked down at Blinky. The fish had somehow curled up beside her like a sleeping cat, his soggy flippers draped protectively across her leg. His glassy eyes were fixed on hers, blinking out of sync, but steady.

She let out a shaky breath. Rubbed her face with her right hand as she deactivated the weapon in her left with a faint click.

"I'm okay," she whispered, more to herself than to him. "It was just a dream. Just a dream."

Blinky didn't respond—just nuzzled closer.

She sat there for a long time, one hand resting lightly on his head. Trying to slow her pulse. Trying not to think about how real it had felt. The footsteps. Pinky. The door.

She stared into the dark, listening to the sound of Blinky's quiet gill-breathing beside her.

And wondered what else her nightmares had in store for her.

Chapter Text

The lights on the machine flickered in concentric pulses, changing from blue to orange and finally to a steady red. A hum built in the chamber as fluids and electricity traveled.along their conduits. Monitors lit up.

One monitor showed an awakening waveform, the first twitch of a neural impulse.

Inside of a fluid-filled tank, Snowball's brain stirred.

In a neighboring jar connected by wires, his eyes turned and pupils dilated. They focused on the imposing form of Pinky before them.

And Snowball screamed.

Not out loud. He had no mouth, no tongue, no body. But across the neural uplink, a signal flared like a banshee's wail—raw panic, pain, and too many months of nightmares in the long silent dark.

After a moment, he steadied.

"Ah." Snowball's voice crackled through the lab speakers. "You brought me back." He said it with forced composure, noticeable even through the synthesized voice. As if Pinky had done him a favor. As if Snowball hadn't begged the last time.

Pinky stood just outside the containment glass, arms folded, eyes narrowed. "You can keep your gratitude. I need your brain."

A soft laugh, hollow and without levity. "You always do."

Pinky's eyes narrowed, but he didn't rise to the bait. He gestured, and the main terminal unlocked with a flash of code.

"This," he said, tapping in his authorization code, "is what I've already recovered from Brain's wreckage. Diagrams, energy traces, melted fragments. Half a device and one very smug mouse that refused to divulge any useful information."

Data streamed onto the screens in harsh geometric bursts. Schematics, notes, and graphs.

Snowball said nothing at first, scanning everything with the speed of a digital mind. "This wasn't just teleportation. Brain wasn't trying to move through space." He hesitated. "He was trying to move through worlds."

Pinky scoffed. "Cross-dimensional travel is a theoretical dead end."

"It was," Snowball said. "Until now."

He zoomed in on one of the reconstructed waveform graphs. "This pattern here—it's quantum residual from multiversal harmonics. I'd bet what's left of my mind that he cracked a cross-dimensional tether."

Pinky studied it, staring at it as his fingers drummed on the table.

Snowball's voice softened. "You're closer than you realize, Pinky. Smarter than he ever gave you credits for. He always looked down on you, didn't he? All of them did. But not anymore."

Pinky's posture relaxed just a little. A smile crept up his face. "I'm going to build it," he said. "I'm going to bring her back."

Snowball began assembling projections, filtering through layers of corrupted data and half-melted circuitry.

"Your assumptions on the harmonic resonance were surprisingly insightful," Snowball murmured, the eyes in the jar flicking between charts. "And your repurposing of the Einstein-Rosen matrix? Inspired. You really are wasted on brute force applications."

Pinky preened slightly. "I am rather brilliant."

Snowball chuckled. "If I could wear a hat, I'd tip it."

They worked like that for a time—Pinky pacing, muttering calculations under his breath while Snowball offered corrections, suggestions, praise. Together, they mapped the pathway Brain must've taken: not a jump across space, but a breach across dimensions, tunneled rather than ripped. But where Brain's device seemed to have ended up at a random arrival point, theirs was a trip with a set destination, and not the haphazard expedition into an unknown dimension.

There was a pause as Snowball scanned Pinky's latest diagram.

"Pinky," he said carefully, "your draft for the quantum regulator… it's too aggressive."

Pinky froze.

"If you push it this hard without stabilization, the breach won't just open to one reality—it could punch through hundreds. Simultaneously. Reality doesn't stitch back together cleanly, Pinky. You're not building a portal, you're building a buzzsaw."

Pinky said nothing.

Snowball continued, more urgently now. "I understand the need. I do. You want her back. But if we refine the waveform, we could—"

"I'm not waiting," Pinky said, voice flat.

Snowball's eyes flicked as Pinky turned toward the console.

"Stop," Snowball said quickly. "Let me run the simulation. I can fix the design. I can—"

Pinky tapped the shutdown code.

"No! No, don't leave me in the dark again!"

The lights dimmed.

Snowball's voice warped, dragged through digital mud as the chamber's systems powered down.

"Please—Pinky—don't—don't leave me in the dark agai—"

Silence.

Pinky stared at the blank monitors for a long moment.

Then turned back to the schematics.

"I'm bringing her back," he muttered. "And no one is going to stop me."