Truth

seiya234:

It was a good thing he was a being of pure
energy with no weaknesses (mostly. Ish. It was complicated) otherwise Dipper
was sure he’d be dead by now.

As it was he had no idea how Mabel and Henry and
Stan were managing it.

The triplets had been home from the hospital for a
week, and Dipper had never seen bags under his sister’s eyes until now.

It didn’t help that the babies loved to sleep…on
completely wildly different schedules. There was only an hour or two a day it
seemed where all three of them were asleep together. The rest of the time just
as one went down the other two would wake up.

Mabel hadn’t changed her clothes in three days.
Henry fell asleep standing up this morning. Stan had been uncharacteristically
quiet, all the energy he usually put towards snarking and being a grump
dedicated to staying awake and alert.

It was a good thing that Dipper could hold them
and touch the babies like he was able to do for Mabel otherwise they would have
been fucked.

Currently he was in the nursery trying to rock
Hank to sleep. They had put the kids up in Mabel and Dipper’s old room, in the
attic. It felt right, to have them in the bedroom that so many of their
adventures and hopes and dreams had started in.

It was also up a flight of stairs and on the
complete opposite side of the house from Mabel and Henry’s bedroom, so it was
not perhaps the most well thought out idea.

The door clicked open and Dipper looked up. Mabel
stepped in, her daughters in hand, both awake and howling like deranged
banshees. She sat all three of them down in the rocker that was sitting next to
Dipper’s chair, and pushed the chair into motion.

The twins rocked the triplets for a minute,
the only sounds coming from the infants in their arms as cries turned to
snuffles turned slowly, one by one, into sleep. Mabel placed Acacia and Willow
in the crib, and Dipper followed behind with Hank. He made sure all three of
them were positioned okay within the crib, and smiled as Hank and Acacia rolled
to squish up next to Willow.

Then he phased downstairs, to the kitchen,
where Mabel was making herself a jumbo cup of coffee.

“Make me one too please?” Dipper asked. He
didn’t need it per se, but would make
Mabel feel better, to see that he was suffering in the trenches just like she
was.

She smiled at him, silently letting him know
that she both saw through that but appreciated the effort, and pulled down
another mug. When the pot was done, they both took their cups (Mabel having ‘sacrificed’
the coffee to Dipper for 25 minutes of corporeality) outside and sat on the
porch swing that had recently been put up.

Dipper pushed them off and they started to
swing. Soon one of the babies would inevitably wake up and they would have to
take care of them but for now it was just the two of them, and the sun rising
on the horizon.

The world stretched out in front of them,
quiet and peaceful, a calm before the storm.

“We need to tell them everything,” Mabel
said suddenly, out of nowhere. “About you, about us, about Grunkle Stan, about…about
Grandpa Stanley.”

Unthinking, Dipper’s hand reached for her
free one, and took it up into his palm.

“We will always be honest with them,” Dipper
agreed.

“We will never lie to them,” Mabel
continued.

Dipper looked out over the front yard. “Their
trust in each other will never falter,” he said, an old pain going through him.

Mabel gave him a sad smile and countered
with, “They will know they can always trust us. Always.”

“Nothing will ever hurt the-“

Mabel squeezed his hand. “Dipper, we….we can’t
promise that. No matter how much we want to.”

Dipper almost objected, but he knew, deep
down, that his twin was right.

“Well,” he said instead. “I will do
anything, anything to protect them.”

Mabel leaned into his shoulder, and Dipper
felt a hot tear drip onto his shoulder.

They drank their coffee.

They watched Gompers get into a head butting
contest with the totem pole.

And inevitably, Acacia woke up wailing,
bringing both of her siblings back into consciousness with her and breaking the
spell on the yard.

As Mabel got up with a grimace, Dipper
thought of a portal and of siblings separated.

Never again.