Mabel woke up silently, for once in her life. No over-exaggerated yawning, or immediately leaping up to bounce on the bed, or loudly greeting the day and every single object and person in sight. She just… woke up.
She blinked her eyes open, her gaze resting on the ceiling of the attic she had come to know as her new home, then immediately flopped her head onto its side on the pillow to look over to her sibling, who hovered just above his own bed on the other end of the room. His bed was unmade, but she knew it was only because they hadn’t touched it since the last time Dipper properly slept there. Somehow, it felt like they hadn’t spent the night up here together in weeks when only a few long, long days had passed.
Her twin was wearing the same outfit (sans hat) that he’d basically worn all summer–so far, it seemed, much like a ghost, his appearance was permanently affixed to the vest-and-shorts attire he’d worn when they faced a certain triangle for the final time. Gravity, apparently, could act on his clothes, considering how they hung off him as he floated, but nothing else in this reality. His eyes stared intently at the ceiling, and one of those new appendages attached at his lower back twitched the slightest bit every few seconds. The tiny wings were rather adorable, even though they looked far too much like a bat’s and they were just limply hanging off of him as he laid in the air. Of course, she’d prefer if they weren’t there at all, because Dipper wasn’t supposed to have little wings. Nor was he supposed to be floating. Nor sporting a permanently black sclera in his eyes darker than her worst nightmares and a piercing, burning gold for pupils.
Lots of things were wrong here. Impossible things.
Yet… well, if she was waking up now, and it appeared that none of this was a horrifying dream after all, then they’d have to accept it.
(Fully accepting was likely going to take a while.)
“Hey, Mabel,” Dipper muttered, not even bothering to glance over to her.
“Hey, Dips,” she replied quietly, dropping her gaze from him to his unmade bed. “Couldn’t sleep?”
“…I don’t think I’m able to s̨l͘e̶ep̀ anymore.” She’d heard a little bit of the new echo in his voice that time, and she tried to not shudder at it.
They continued in their respective positions for another minute or two, the air thick.
Before Mabel could think the question over completely, she asked, “What were you doing, then?” After all, the circles around his eyes made him look exactly like that one time he literally spent the whole night reading mystery novels. He wouldn’t look like that right now (even after the… transformation he endured, which must’ve been excruciatingly painful) if he didn’t need sleep to begin with, right?
Dipper winced, and her heart dropped to her stomach, desperately hoping that whatever part of that that was the wrong thing to say wouldn’t hurt him too much.
“You wanna go see if Grunkle Stan’s up?” he asked back, not-so-tactfully changing the subject and not sounding as nonchalant as he had probably tried for. She merely nodded and crawled her way out from under her blankets. She couldn’t remember the last time she felt this exhausted; honestly, how did their grunkle expect them to get a decent amount of sleep after all of that?
She couldn’t help but notice that Dipper was being oh-so-careful to not actually touch the bed or the floor as he slid down. His sneakers still floated about half an inch over the wood boards. He was probably afraid of trying to touch things in the high likelihood that he’d merely go right through them. She couldn’t blame him.
She patted down her purple polka-dot pajama pants, then held out her hand to him, pasting on a little smile. He returned the smile gratefully and grasped her hand with his own, taking heed to not prick her with those new claw things at the ends of his fingers. (A thought flew through her mind, tutting that they’d be much less menacing if she painted them pink. That made her smile a little more genuine.)
She led him out and down the stairs- ignoring how he got a little lazier and floated along without actually moving his legs- and paused once they had reached the first floor.
Still holding hands, they peered into the kitchen. There sat Grunkle Stan nursing a steaming mug of coffee, looking every bit his age, yet not caring and drinking more watered-down burnt beans than he should.
-_-_-_
Stan happened to glance up and noticed them- well, really, only Mabel, but it was a safe assumption to say that Dipper was likely right next to her- once they’d been there for almost a full minute. He did his usual morning greeting- a rather gross-sounding grunt- and took a long sip out of his mug. Mabel took the invitation and walked further into the kitchen, gripping something invisible in her hand- yep, that must’ve been her twin.
“Whaddya want for breakfast? We’ve still got some cereal, or I can whip up some Stan-cakes and eggs-”
Mabel glanced over to the side before interrupting him. “Um, we’re not really hungry.”
“Me neither,” Stan admitted, “but I still gotta feed you kids. It’s kinda part of my job as your grunkle, and breakfast’s the most important meal of the day, and all that crap.” He set his mug down on the table and leaned back on his chair with a weary sigh. “I wanna be able to say I at least did that when your parents get here.”
“What?” Mabel cried out. “Why are they coming?”
“Gravity Falls made its way into national news as the center of all the weird that started everywhere.” That’s one of the first things he learned when Mark and Anna were finally able to get a call through the incredibly busy phone lines; though he was unsurprised by the fact, he couldn’t have found out on his own, since the TV currently didn’t work. “No one outside the town actually understands what happened, of course, but I get why your folks are scared.” He sunk further down and rested the back of his head on the top edge of his chair, folding his arms over his stomach. “Though I’m glad they had the decency to call first, I’m really not looking forward to them screaming at me.”
Mabel’s face somehow looked even more distraught. “Do they think all of this is your fault?! That’s so unfair! You didn’t do anything wrong!” Goosebumps ran up the arm grasping air; everyone had figured out rather quickly that Dipper’s presence caused a chill, especially when he was upset.
“Actually, I did everything wrong,” he corrected, coming off harsher than he intended. “And I’m not enough of a coward to not admit that some of this is my fault. Though they’re probably never going to talk to me again after, if they can help it, nor let you two stay here.” He looked up to Mabel’s face and the space where Dipper’s surely was, then picked back up his coffee and muttered halfheartedly, “Good riddance.”
When he took a few more sips of his coffee, then realized that the twins were still standing in the exact same spot, the visible one wearing the exact same facial expression, he relented on what he had said before. “Alright, I’ll let you two off without breakfast just this once, but don’t tell anyone.”
Mabel gave a microscopic nod, likely answering for both of them, and shuffled away towards the living room.
He took a deep breath once she was out of sight, and considered getting yet another cup of coffee, when she meekly reappeared.
“Dipper wanted to know when they’ll get here.”
Stan grunted out a response. “Eh, probably late today or early tomorrow. That’s if there isn’t too much panicking going on on the roads, though.”
She nodded yet again- man, he was not used to her lack of loudness and enthusiasm- and walked back out.
Frankly, though, he couldn’t blame her for acting out-of-character. He couldn’t deny that he was, too.
Stanley Pines was never scared, no matter what name and identity he went by. Yet, somehow, he was scared now- for Dipper, for Mabel, for all the people in the world who now would suffer the presence of demons (that weren’t awkward and dorky like Dipper, because that kid couldn’t possibly become as evil as Bill and his friends, he was physically and mentally incapable of such inhumanity, he was sure of it)… and, if he was being really honest, for himself.
(An old man was allowed to secretly wish he could be with his grandniece and grandnephew for a little longer, right? Even if he knew that he had screwed up their lives far beyond repair, just like he did to his brother? And couldn’t do absolutely anything about it except ask for forgiveness? Forgiveness that even Ford wasn’t quite willing to give him yet?)
Stan bowed his head over his mug, which only contained a few last drops of black clinging to ceramic, the strong perfume of coffee not helping him as much as he pretended it did throughout his lengthy, disappointment-filled lifetime.
-_-_-_
Mabel wasn’t sure anymore if being in the living room was any better than the kitchen, where the food that Dipper couldn’t eat (in his current condition, at least) sat there and mocked him. Here, his own just-barely-obtained and uncontrolled powers spat in his face.
The room was still drained and in disarray from when Dipper had appeared, realized what he’d become, and had a bit of a… meltdown, for lack of a better term (though Mabel wished she could come up with a word that sounded a lot nicer). The top half of the walls had lost their color, which had dripped down and puddled on the floor. The windows and TV screen had cracked, and currently stood about one puff of air away from completely shattering. Stuffing poked out from the marred and shredded couch cushions. There were wrappers, cheese puffs, and chips lying on the floor and every other available surface, but that part honestly wasn’t much different from before.
The lightbulb had been the first thing to explode when Dipper… yeah. There was plenty of sunlight streaming in through the severely damaged window glass, though, due to the time of day, so it wouldn’t have been needed, anyways.
If Mabel hadn’t valiantly swooped into action when he had started the… well, there really wasn’t a better word for it, was there? The room would probably be in a much worse state without her immediate action to calm her brother down then.
(They all knew he could probably fix all of this to look and function like before with a deal, but no one was about to make him do demony things yet, or make him feel any worse about his newly-infused inhumanity, especially Dipper himself.)
She trudged to the old, beaten-up couch and dropped into it like a heavy stone, and he mimicked the gesture on the adjacent couch cushion, again preventing himself from actually touching it, never letting go of her hand.
Her stomach chose to gurgle at her a few seconds later, calling for attention.
Both twins jerked their line of sight towards the growl in surprise. Mabel quickly got over the unexpected noise disrupting their silence- though, honestly, it should’ve been expected- and frowned at her belly, as if it offended her. “Quiet, you.”
She heard a subtle snicker next to her. She glanced over to see that Dipper was wearing the tiniest smile at the sight of his sister scolding her stomach. His hand had even warmed the slightest bit. Her own lip twitched up in response, pleased to see his mood brighten a little.
Her stomach released an even louder groan that sounded something like Waddles trying to meow.
Both burst into giggles, which quickly grew into cackling laughter louder than all of the patterns on Mabel’s many sweaters combined, because things became hilarious when you were tired and your life had officially gone off the deep-end into permanent demonic territories less than 24 hours ago and you were now scared of things that were much more terrifying than claymation movies and ancient teddy bears, and they only became funnier when Grunkle Stan started shouting from the kitchen to keep it down because he was certainly going to get deafer at this rate.
Neither even noticed that Dipper’s laughter sounded a lot harsher and closer to demented than it used to.
When they finally calmed down into sporadic chuckles, Dipper’s attention returned to why they started in the first place- apparently, Mabel was very hungry. “You, uh, sure you don’t wanna eat?” he asked warily, though still a little less concerned than he would’ve been without all that laughing to get him feeling more like his old self.
“No, I don’t really have an appetite,” she replied, as if it was an everyday occurrence for her to not want to eat- which it wasn’t. “I just wish this little grubber would agree with me!” she exclaimed as she finally let go of Dipper’s hand (how they managed to hold on to each other through that whole laugh-attack, neither knew) and squished up her belly with both of her own.
As if in response, it growled at her again. And Dipper was starting to look like a worry-wart.
She groaned, for she knew that Dipper was going to insist on her getting some breakfast, even though she really didn’t want it, both for his sake and for the fact that the thought of having even cereal wasn’t a pleasant one. It practically made her gag.
“Ma̷b͜e̵l…”
“No!”
Before, it was always her pulling a puppy-dog look at him to get what she wanted, but it seemed that roles had reversed. Now, her brother’s face had contorted into something so sad and worried and guilty. She didn’t stand a chance against such an honest expression of love and concern.
She groaned even harder and averted her eyes shamefully. “Fine, Dip-butt! I’ll go get something, but only if you shut your pie-hole about it.”
As if pouncing on the words before Mabel could even think of taking them back, Dipper rushed out an eager “D̢҉e̢̕a̢͜͡l̸͠!” just as she finished her sentence, and a small blue flame puffed out his hands.
Both blinked, then their eyes widened as they realized what just happened.
Unintentionally, the twins had made their first demonic deal with each other.
Dipper’s golden pupils were quickly shrinking at the same time as his face was paling to paper white in horror, and the air around them was getting sapped of all heat. Mabel lifted up her hands to do something, but couldn’t figure out what. “Wait, Dip-” she began, only to falter in how to finish.
The TV and windows finally decided to shatter spectacularly, and the upholstered furniture started to peel, and Dipper vanished.
“D-Dipper?” Mabel whispered, confused and scared by the sudden disappearance. She frantically stood up and looked around the room. “Dipper, where are you? Come back!” Fear clenched her heart, and her voice rose into panicked octaves. “Are you okay, bro-bro? Why can’t I see you?! Dipper, come back!”
She could hear a chair screeching as it scraped the floor, then footsteps plodding toward her. “Mabel, what happened?” Grunkle Stan called as he made his way to the living room. Just as he got around the corner, there was a knock at the door.
-_-_-_
Wendy nervously tapped the toe of her boot to a frantic beat as she waited for one of the Pines to answer and let her in. Though she had never cared that much about her appearance in the first place, she knew she looked rather ragged and sleep-deprived as she stood there, especially with her lip gnawed raw from biting it and her fidgety, paranoid looks about her surroundings when nothing had ever spooked her or tackled her down in this part of the town. (Well, in normal conditions, anyway.)
Honestly, she was not entirely sure why she had come to the Shack in the first place. Yes, Dipper and Mabel were her friends, and… stuff happened that she was still trying to comprehend, but she doubted she could actually be of much help at the moment. Nothing about this whole complicated mess could be resolved with her axe or her wit.
A few seconds after she knocked, she heard the resident grumpy old man shout in her general direction, irritated, “Who’re you?!”
“Wendy!” she shouted back through the door, then decided to just let herself in like usual. She walked in to see him and Mabel, neither properly dressed for the day (though she’d seriously considered not bothering with such things, either, before coming), inspecting their immediate surroundings, eyebrows drawn together.
“Uh, hey,” she greeted, attempting to maintain her normal attitude. “What are you guys looking for?”
“Dipper disappeared,” Stan grunted, not mentioning how only Mabel could really say that, seeing as he’d already disappeared for everyone else almost a week ago.
“I thought you could always see him?” she asked the girl, who made an odd gesture between a nod and a shrug.
“I guess he teleported or something,” she muttered, sniffling and rubbing at her nose with the back of her hand.
“Huh.” As she walked in, she pointlessly looked around as well, and noted how cold air still lingered around them. In that case, he was likely still in the house. “Did you try your room?”
Mabel mumbled out something kinda like “Was about to” before sprinting up the stairs.
As she did that, Wendy turned her attention to her boss- well, she assumed he still was, even though the Mystery Shack hadn’t been open for business lately. “So, uh, how’re you guys doing?”
“Good, but we’d be better if you didn’t ask,” he muttered near-instinctively, for his heart wasn’t really in it.
She knew she actually wasn’t that much older than the twins, but she couldn’t help but feel a much bigger age gap right now. “No, really.”
Stan seemed to secretly appreciate her attempt to act like an adult. “About as good as you can expect. I don’t know what’s going on between them half the time, and it’s a little harder to be a grunkle to an invisible kid.” He glanced up to the ceiling, where they could hear Mabel rummaging through the attic and shouting her brother’s myriad of nicknames. “Like right now- I have no idea what happened, just that it got both of ‘em upset. And Mabel’d been laughing her head off right before that, too. Bipolar, those kids.”
“We’ll figure it out,” Wendy assured with a thin smile. “Me and Soos and everyone else has got your back, Stan. Yours and Dipper’s and Mabel’s.”
Clearly trying to not sound touched, because he always acted too tough for feelings, he said, “Too bad you’re all idiots.” Her smile now felt more natural.
A louder thump was heard upstairs, sounding like something heavy fell, and Mabel was threatening her brother to come out or face her bedazzler.
Stan merely grumbled, “We should probably help her out.”
Wendy nodded and propelled herself up the stairs, reaching the top much faster than him. “Yo, can I come in?”
She peered in once Mabel gave her the affirmative, and realized she’d never seen the twins’ room before. It looked rather disheveled, but she was pretty sure a lot of the mess had happened within the past few minutes. The temperature caused Wendy to shudder, yet Dipper was (apparently) still nowhere to be found. And Mabel looked very desperate to find him. Where else in the Shack would he go hide?
“Hm… It’s technically not in the Shack, but he might be on the roof,” Wendy suggested once the thought came to her.
“You’re right!” Mabel turned to face her excitedly. “Why didn’t we think of it before? Come on!” She leaped back toward the staircase, and gestured for the other two to follow her.
“Don’t bother, Stan, we’re going to the roof,” Wendy informed him, as he was about halfway done with his arduous trek up the stairs. She heard him curse under his breath as he turned to go back down.
The two girls reached the ladder at the same time, but Mabel climbed up first. Wendy poked her head out the trapdoor on the roof just as Mabel was rushing over to that one spot Dipper always sat, where she directed her anger and relief.
Wendy shyly waved, just in case Dipper was looking in her direction, and went back down the ladder. She was pretty sure it’d be better to let the twins talk privately. As she lowered the door, she let out a quiet sigh of relief. Hey, she wasn’t as useless as she thought after all.
-_-_-_
He knew Mabel was near him before she’d started loudly calling him variations of “Dipper”. The twin-link (as he and his sister had started to refer to it) didn’t only mean that they could see and touch each other. He could feel the distress tightening her chest painfully (and not the funny kind of pain, either- wait, no, he’s not supposed to think there is a funny kind of pain), and could even approximately determine her location, if he focused enough on the link.
He hovered over the shingles on the Shack’s roof, which looked like they were precariously holding on for dear life. How the house didn’t fall apart as much as it could’ve during the battle, he had no idea.
When the “deal” happened (no no no, why’d he have to turn it into a deal?), he had actually gone straight to the place with those demon sheep, first, hoping their cuddliness would soothe the conflicting emotions roiling in his belly. (Even though it was such a small thing he agreed to, he had felt the tiniest bit of a power boost, and more than the tiniest bit of smug satisfaction, and he didn’t want to feel either of those.) He thought it actually did help, a little, nuzzling his face into the wooly back of the smallest sheep there, but he soon noticed Mabel’s anxiety, strong enough to disturb him while on a different plane of existence. And so, he returned to the roof, hoping for a little bit of time to himself before he was found.
It wasn’t a particularly pleasant time of contemplation alone, but at least Mabel didn’t see him feeling so divided, broken, and self-destructive.
“There you are, Dipper!” He didn’t bother turning around to greet his sister as she lifted herself onto the roof. “You’re such a jerk-merk, hiding up here and scaring me like that!”
She carefully stepped over to sit down beside him, hugging her legs to her chest, much like the curled-up position he had donned. She elbowed him gently. “Don’t go disappearing like that again, okay?”
“No p̢rơḿįses̀,” he mumbled into his knees, because he really doubted this would be the last time he did that. He heard the entrance to the roof gently close- must’ve been Wendy, since he heard her in the house earlier.
“Were you up here this whole time?” she asked, expression softening, now that her strong emotional state had faded down.
“I’d been somewhere else for a while,” he admitted, eyes flicking over to see her mildly confused expression. “But, well…” He turned his attention back to the view of the forest and clear, blue sky. It looked just about the same as it had all summer, somehow. “The view wasn’t as great.”
“I’m gonna miss this,” Mabel muttered wistfully, taking in the beauty of a place they just might never see again.
Even though this place of danger, adventure, and mystery had also been the place he became… this… he had to agree. “Me too.”
For a while, they just sat there, pretending things were the same as before. They never could be, they both knew that, but it was nice to indulge in wishful thinking.
As usual, it was Mabel who interrupted the silence. “Since, as far as I can tell, you’ve held your end of the agreement, I’ll go do mine.”
Dipper looked over to her incredulously. She ignored it.
“You wanna come with?” she offered as she lifted herself off the shaky shingles. “I know watching someone eat isn’t all that interesting- unless that someone is Manly Dan with all-you-can-eat pancakes- but you can if you want to. It’s okay if you’d rather stay here.”
“No, I’ll- I’ll come with.” Because only Mabel would understand what he needed to hear, that it wasn’t really that bad to make deals, especially the relatively harmless ones, and it’d be fun to see what she’ll put into her Mabel Juice this time around, and he didn’t think he deserved a sister like her.
“Great! You’ll get to say hi to Wendy!” she chirped, her usual cheerful tone starting to come easier to her. “Maybe she can reach those sprinkles Grunkle Stan put up on the top shelf so I couldn’t use them. Ooh, and I think we have some cheese, I can put some in-”
“Thanks, Mabel.” He supposed she wouldn’t think that the things she said were worth his gratitude, but he said it anyway.
Her mouth quirked up into a small smile. “No problem, bro-bro.”
Neither of them had to say it out loud, but they knew that she wanted them to stick together just as much as he did, and that meant more than either could put into words.
It was going to be difficult- talking to their parents was just going to be the first step in their long trek to a sense of normalcy, if such a thing could even exist- but they could do it if they had each other.
Mabel grabbed his hand and dragged him back inside with her, excitedly chattering about everything that came to mind, just like she would do throughout the many years ahead of them.
(Began December 30, 2016, and finished revising March 31, 2017.
Thank you to Mary P. Sue for helping me have the confidence to post this. Seriously.)
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