Chapter Text
nine days post portal
Dipper couldn't feel anything anymore. He knew how Mabel would feel about his numbness if anything it just made it worse. After talking with Stan and learning about the real Stanford he couldn't bear the feeling overcoming him so he opted for cutting it out just refusing to feel anything. That being said he had yet to find a way to bury the rage that threatened to surface at the mere thought of his uncle. He rarely left the attic room and practically lived in Mabel’s sweaters. The scratchy fabric made him feel closer to her when he doubted he could see her again.
Stan made little attempt at getting him to stop moping.Had made no attempt at getting him to run the shop and had mostly left him alone since they broke the news to their parents. They of course couldn’t tell them the actual reason why their daughter wouldn’t be returning home at the end of summer, so Stan had forced Dipper to brainstorm stories. They decided to go with the one where Mabel was out during the ‘earthquakes’ and they hadn’t been able to find her in the following days. The phone call was rough and Dipper hadn’t been able to explain it all the way through before he started stammering tears falling down his face and Stan took over hands shaking but voice steady and far more coherent than Dippers previous attempts.
Dipper read through the first two journals in record time, not having Mabel constantly distracting him and commenting on how something on page 50 looks like a butt made it easy to do. He tried to imagine what she would say as he flicked through the pages apathetically. Why didn't she just listen to him. Why did she trust Stan?
He pulls himself together. He didn't have time to mope around, though that is all he's really done recently. He flipped back to the front of the journal and started over....
Stan spent most of his time on repairs and trying to find a way to repair the portal in a way thatwould allow for it to maintain stability. Leaving Dipper to fester in his feelings was probably not the best call Stan could have made but considering all of his wrong choices it was far from the worst. He scoured over his notes and Ford's that dated from several decades past to the just a few weeks ago. He had to get them back.
If he could get them back that is. He had no reason to think that she or Ford were alive in there however he also had no reason to believe that they weren't. One of those were easier to bear than the other aso he poured himself into working on the portal tempted to contact Fiddleford to ask him for help again after all the man had seemed to recently be regaining his sanity even if it wasn't perfect. All Stan could say with certainty he knows is that he would try with everything in his power to make sure thaat Dipper doesn't spend decades searching for his twin like he had. He was going to get mabel back before another thirty years could pass, hopefully before a single decade could pass.
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Mable wasn't certain as to exactly how much time had passed though she was certain it had been at least a week.
She felt lonely and Ford was far from a conversationalist. She was tired of her only human interaction being lectures on how reckless she was being, at least Dipper had the decency to let her goof off a little bit, even if it annoyed him.
She hated this place.
Ford led the way mumbling to himself Mable caught an occasional ’inconvenience’ or liability. She had a feeling he was talking about her but she didn’t really pay him much mind. She missed Dipper sure he would occasionally fixate on the journals and Oh-So Mysterious Author—who is apparently their great uncle who is also probably the most boring person Mable had ever met.
Dipper would probably love it here and Ford probably wouldn’t spend the entire time mumbling about him if they had swapped places.
Mable could imagine how amazed he would be and the discussion that the two would have if he were here. Dipper was going to be so jealous that she got to meet the author and he didn’t.
”Where are we going?” Mabel asks Ford, breaking the agonizing silence between the two of them.
“We have to keep moving, Melody,” he responds,”Unless you want Bill’s beasts to find us?”
“For the hundredth time it’s Mabel,”She almost whines,” And I don’t want Bill to find us I was just trying to figure out if you actually have a destination in mind”
“ Well, Maple, we can’t exactly stop for long periods of time if we don’t want to be found, can we? No so why would I have a specific place in mind?”He sneers, and Mabel just nods along allowing the silence to take over again.
She missed Stan.