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For the first time since the end of the world, the Shack is silent during its morning hours.
For the first time since this all began, there’s no reason to go out running into the night. It’s a peaceful change of pace from what it has been — coming out of hiding, rounding up survivors. Doing whatever possible to save what he could of the town’s last residents.
The daylight hours dragged on too long. Maybe the nights, even more. It’s only after sunset that he’s dared to step foot outside the house, risking Eye Bats just to raid the stores. Tempting fate just to buy them all a little more time. Four days he’s done this, stealing and delegating with some unwavering hope that he’d find his family again.
There are four more sleepy bodies in the house tonight, and Stan remembers what it’s like to breathe again.
Even then, it’s like gasping for air.
There are four more bodies safe inside the Shack, but it’s clear from first sight that they’re the farthest thing from fine.
Their entrance should have been a forewarning. No one fine would burst into the house the way they have, looking nothing short of horrific. They wouldn’t be covered in grotesque purple bruises, scratches. Crusted blood. They don’t have to breathe a word about what they’ve been through for him to know.
They aren’t fine.
Soos, a gentle giant on any other day, is ready to throw hands the moment the door flies open. Seldom has he ever seen Wendy bare her teeth, but it’s armed with a crossbow and some animalistic instinct telling her to shoot to kill that adds levels to her image. His two employees, at the ready for anything, his kids, charging them all.
When all is said done, the signs never stop coming. Shaky voices. Battered bodies. Soos’ raised fists. Wendy’s avoidant eyes, his sweet niece and the tears that won’t stop flowing when she throws her arms around his neck.
And there’s Dipper.
Unobservant as he seems, Stan watches him far too keenly to just dismiss the oddities when he sees them. He isn’t ignorant of the way Dipper’s subtly had to grab for the wall when he thinks no one is watching. Or the way he’s been squinting since he first barged in.
He sways just enough for him to notice.
Because the minute he does, so does Mabel.
It happens as Multibear starts to address the townsfolk gathered in his living room. From across the way, and as discreetly as possible, Stan sees her pinch at the back of his vest when he leans too heavily to one side. Steadying him. Dipper shoots her a look that he doesn’t completely know the context behind, but it’s the way Mabel’s expression falls to it that he thinks he’s better off not knowing.
It’s still enough evidence to tempt an explanation.
Which is why, as nonchalant as possible, he crosses the living room in strides when the group breaks. Drumming up the facade, ‘you look like heck,’ Dipper’s impassive response of a collision with a tree (worded that way exactly, he notes) is only a jump start to his building suspicion.
Wendy’s admission of guilt to the car accident gives him more than enough reason to be concerned.
It’s barely five o’clock when she comes clean to him, but with the ever-present scarlet darkness outside, it may as well be an endless midnight. Sending both the kids to sleep seems like the best option. Stan’s already started to see them come undone at the hands of their own barrage, the adrenaline of charging the house having more than just run its course. There was no denying the exhaustion manifesting in the both of them, the way their shoulders slump as they turn to head for their room.
He has a heavy heart when he has to stop them from climbing the staircase, ushering them deeper down the hallway instead.
Of all the times to discover the hidden sofa-bed in Ford’s room, he’s glad it’s after the attic’s already been destroyed.
They’re quiet walking the hall. The kids cling to his side and cling to one another — and he doesn’t need to look down to know they’re holding hands. They always do, of course they do, when the world has shaken them so badly that the only thing that could root them back in place is the other.
It makes the notion of leaving them alone that much more unbearable, the shock of what they’ve been through only just now making its rounds. Beneath the shadows of the night, he sees the traumas surfacing in the kids. It’s only after they’ve dropped their weapons and their guards that he sees them.
There are nightmares swimming in both their eyes, and Stan has never felt like more of a failure than to let them drown in them.
Though Soos and Wendy piece together what they’re able to, it does little to paint the burning picture of just what the kids have seen — what they’ve done — to survive. They’re far jumpier than when the zombies had stormed the house, and it doesn’t truly show until he’s about to separate from them for the evening.
It takes him ten minutes to collapse the futon, and thirty-five more to get Mabel to stop crying.
When he lays her sleepy self down for the night, he’s reluctant to let her brother do the same. He’s seen enough of the warning signs. The dizziness. The loss of balance. Dipper hasn’t been slurring too many of his words, but it’s an antagonizing game of attributing which to what. Between pure exhaustion and a medical diagnosis, there were simply too many symptoms overlapping.
He’s a few of them shy of textbook. But with the risk of still so much left to lose, he adamantly decides it’s better to be safe than sorry.
Stan never thinks he’d ever have to tap into his kick-boxing knowledge ever again, but he’s had more than his fair share of blows to the head on the mat just to let it fade.
A brief reprieve from it all, the memories come rushing back to him. Fuzzy pictures of Ma and Ford hanging over him on the couch. Fuzzier memories of them giving what little aftercare they could without a doctor.
It’s his turn this time, armed with a slightly sharper understanding and better means to take care of it. With the promise of coming in to check on him periodically, Stan flips out the lights for the first time.
It’s two in the morning when he slips into Ford’s room again, the third time tonight alone.
They’re still sleeping.
They’re not alone either, and the thought of it helps to settle some of the uneasiness. A short distance away, the Northwest kid lied curled up on the lounger with Candy and Grenda at her feet. The two of them slept atop piles of old cushions and blankets, a pitiful accommodation underserving of their gratefulness.
His eyes fall on the kids last.
Mabel’s been still the entire night, her hands tucked beneath her pillow and curled up close next to her brother. At some point since his last check-up, Dipper’s rolled onto his back from the side previously facing her, both hands resting across his stomach.
Stan drops to one knee next to the pull-out, one hand leveling himself against its brass edge. As light as he can, he pats at Dipper’s cheek, but it does nothing to rouse him. He bites back on his lip.
‘He’s fine. Don’t work yourself up.’
Stan keeps his voice low, mindful of the other slumbering children in the room. “Dipper.”
He stirs this time, just a little. At the sound of his name, Dipper draws in a sharper breath, sleepy instinct that has him stretching his shoulders out against the cot.
He’s still waking up. Still responding. It dispels his initial concern, for now.
When he sees Dipper’s eyes fighting to open, Stan takes it upon himself to help them manually with his own hands. Softly prying his heavy eyelids open, he grabs for the small flashlight in his belt with the other, clicking it on to check his pupils. The moment they shine in his eyes, the relief is instantaneous. They’re still shrinking in the rays of light. Still growing in the darkness.
He checks the other just as swiftly — dilating all the same. It’s too dark to distinguish if his pupils are the same size, but he’s waking up just fine, and he’ll let himself believe that it’s more than enough proof for now. It’s by the time he’s moved to the other eye that consciousness has already started to flood back to him, and Dipper moans in protest of the flashlight’s harsh beams.
“Sorry kid, you know I don’t like havin’ to do this either,” he whispers, clicking off the light. Stan tugs at his sleeve, gentle. “Sit up.”
Despite his fatigue, Dipper does as he asks, his core shaking when he raises himself up to sit criss-crossed. When it seems like he’s struggling to find the last push of energy, Stan plants a firm hand to his midback to help him hunch over.
“How’re we feelin’?”
Dipper doesn’t answer him right away. There are parts of him still trying to figure out if he’s awake. Even more questioning why he was awake to begin with, and when he could go back to sleep. For as many times as he’s done this, Dipper doesn’t seem to remember the episodes between each check-up. A good or bad thing, he hasn’t decided yet. Either way, he still gives him that blank gaze every time.
After a few seconds of dazed staring, Stan finally sees the recognition click in his eyes.
“Tired…” he murmurs, impulsively rubbing at his eyes. Stan gathers that much, and it makes the routine of waking him so frequently like this that much worse.
If that’s the only answer he had prepared, it would’ve been enough. But it’s seemingly out of nowhere that Dipper winces, bringing one hand to rest against his stomach. “A little sick, too.”
Vomiting. One of the key things Ma told him to be wary of. “Like throwin’ up?”
He shakes his head. “No, just…my stomach. Hurts.”
To that, Stan sighs, but not entirely with relief. There’s a lot to level with that, at least. Stress. Injury. Hunger strikes him as an afterthought, but it’s arguably the one that stings the most. Dipper hasn’t been too enlightening about his three days alone, but he doubts he’d been eating much.
He probably wouldn’t have much to vomit to begin with.
“I’m gonna get you some water,” he says, patting his back and standing. His joints pop in protest as he does, but do nothing to slow him down. “Don’t lie back down just yet.”
When he exits the room, he focuses his efforts towards dodging the resting survivors in his living room. Each step is calculated as he moves through the dark, narrowly missing stray limbs and locks of hair en route to the kitchen. For all the damage the Shack has sustained, there’s an alarming amount of his dishes still intact.
The first time the water ran clean through the faucet, it felt like the holidays came early.
Waiting for the stream to run cold, Stan spies the net of apples hanging from one of the cupboards. A miraculous snag from the other day, and it only cost him a scraped knee and a few minutes of panic. The thought of grabbing one for Dipper is a fleeting one, and he brings his eyes back to the cup as it fills. Forcing him to eat wouldn’t make matters better. It’s barely a promise that he’d stomach water.
What he will do when he slips out of the kitchen, though, is pause to swipe one of the plastic bowls on his way out.
Better safe than sorry.
Navigating through the living room is easier the second time, rounding each silhouette with ease. Dipper’s still hunched over when he crosses the threshold, but he’s opted for swinging his legs over the side of the pull-out to get a footing against the floorboards. He has his hands fleshed out against the tops of his legs, still battling to keep his eyes open.
It’s a grim sight. Miles from the fighter he’s been slowly becoming all summer, and Stan makes sure that Dipper won’t let him see the frown growing in the dark.
Poor kid was really struggling.
“Here,” he prompts, handing it off. Dipper takes the cup with both hands as Stan lowers himself to sit next to him on the mattress this time. “I want you to try n’ drink that before you go back to sleep, got it?”
Dipper doesn’t answer him with anything more than a nod, raising the glass to his lips. Though he takes the first two gulps ravenously, it’s the most ambition he’ll get out of him tonight. It’s only after then that he falls into a sluggish pace, letting the glass sit in his lap for intervals at a time.
Over the course of ten minutes, they sit in silence. Dipper sips at it slowly, slower than Stan wants him to, but he doesn’t push it. As long as it’s going somewhere, he'll sit there as long as he needs to.
But every time Dipper pauses, Stan has to keep himself from staring him down for too long. With every new glimpse, there’s seemingly more and more to pick up — scratches along his neck that he’d missed the first time. Bruises at the edges of his face that have grown larger than they were hours ago. The ever-hanging bags beneath his eyes looking far heavier and darker than usual, almost sickly looking in the low light from the hallway. He’s a hospital trip waiting to happen, but Stan doubts that there are any clinics in town that are still in one piece.
Slammed around like a rag doll, car accidents, it’s an honest miracle he isn’t dead.
Tentative, Stan raises his hand to place it in the middle of Dipper’s back, fully expecting him to flinch. But even though he was hesitant about Stan examining him up close only hours ago, he does quite the opposite this time — leaning into it. He thinks he even feels him relax a little, the muscles beneath his hand sinking at his touch.
For such a small kid, he carried a startling amount of tension in his body.
He knows why, now.
‘Kid, what’ve you been doin’...?’
Soos and Wendy spell out to him what Dipper can’t, and it’s the suspicion he’d been dreading to hear: that his own twin is missing, having been captured by the very demon he’d been trying to shield them all from.
How he wishes that was the worst of it.
It’s the latter that fills in Soos’ gaps, the revelation of Dipper and Mabel’s separation. He doubts he’ll ever forget the feeling of his heart dropping into his stomach at Wendy’s disclosure, of the three whole days of hell endured where the kids didn’t even have each other.
Then…then that. Stan can’t even begin to fathom the level of scrutiny Dipper’s put himself under because of it. To be there, so close, without the power to stop it. Lost in thought, Dipper keeps his head down, staring into the glass as if it held the answers to everything.
“…It’s not your fault,” Stan starts, breaking their silence. “What happened with Ford, I mean.”
He probably hasn’t heard that yet.
Dipper’s eyes widen at the remark. It’s as he raises his glance to meet Stan’s that he sees it — the guilt that no amount of sleeplessness could ever hide. With all he’s been wrestling to keep hidden, it’s suddenly no wonder why his body is as run down as it is.
It isn’t his fault. What he wouldn’t have given for someone to have told him the same.
He knows Ford isn’t the only one Dipper thinks he’s let down, and he’s determined to shoot down that thought too before it crosses his nephew’s mind.
“Or your sister, for that matter.”
He’s heard pieces of what happened between the two of them.
In mere words, Stan sees how little it takes to clear his conscience. The doubt in his eyes wavers just enough, a sort of relief he hasn’t allowed himself to feel since this all began. Dipper looks behind and over at Mabel when he says it.
She quite literally hasn’t moved all night, frozen in place right down to the strands of her hair and how they fanned out against the pillow.
“…We’re sure she’s okay?” Dipper asks, fatigued. If his voice isn’t a dead giveaway, his eyes are, when he turns back to face him. “Mabel hasn’t woken up once, even though you keep coming in here.”
“Neither’ve they,” Stan says, cocking his head to gesture towards the other girls. “Besides— I’m sure you’d be sleepin’ the same if I didn’t have to keep comin’ back.”
Deep down, Dipper knows he’s right.
Deeper down, Stan knows there are parts of him that still won’t accept that as an answer. When Dipper speaks again, it isn’t so much an argument in the making as much as it is a desperation to come to terms it.
“Grunkle Stan…she was in that thing for four days...”
“Untouched,” he counters, soft, “while you’ve been outside of it, gettin’ yourself beat down left n’ right. Remind me again— which a’ you two do I need to check on every couple hours?”
The amount of truth to it silences him. Dipper shrinks in on himself, looking. He doesn’t have the energy to fight with him. Not tonight. At the withdrawal, Stan sighs.
“…Mabel’ll be fine,” he answers, serious. His tone is a touch firmer, but no less reassuring. “She’s in a lot better shape than you are. Went to sleep no problem, hasn’t stirred, she’s not the red flag here.”
A slip of rare openness, following it.
“You’re the one I’m more worried about right now, if I’m honest.”
Dipper says nothing throughout the Stan’s lecture. It’s only when he hears the afterthought that he shows the smallest sign that he’s been heard — the raise of his eyebrows that speaks louder than any words, the way Dipper’s eyes fill with moderate surprise at Stan’s confession.
It’s paining more than anything.
The flippancy Dipper’s placed on his own life is more personal punishment than it is dignified resolve. And if the mere thought of being remotely considered a priority came as a shock, the damage has already been done.
It reminds him too much of himself.
Because he knows that guilt, through and through.
He knows the guilt of damning your twin to circumstances they never asked to be part of. Knows the endless churn in your stomach of this isn’t enough, there’s more that can be done. Knows what it’s like to be too conscious of the time as it passes, the looming fear that the longer it took to make things right, the higher the chance that they were as good as dead.
Stan knows too well. He lived thirty years of it.
But like the torrent of thoughts framed with Mabel in mind have only just festered, Dipper suppresses a gag that — ‘shit’ — sounds a bit too much like wet choking to just let slide.
Without second thought, Stan grabs for the bowl. As swift as he can while still staying quiet, he angles it just below his chin, and Dipper’s clawing for it the moment it’s within his reach. Stan keeps it stationed in place, his other hand firm around the base of his nephew’s neck and trying his best to ignore the veins bulging beneath his fingers.
“Easy, easy—”
For several tense seconds, he forces himself to listen through the retching. It’s no new torture, but it’s only now hearing them come from his own flesh and blood that it’s like nails to a chalkboard. He holds his breath while Dipper continues to lose his, bracing the inevitable sickness. But nothing comes.
A strand of spit, at worse, drips to the bottom of the bowl. He clears his throat.
“F-fine,” Dipper croaks, “I’m fine.”
Stan sighs, squeezing the back of his neck in solidarity.
“Yeah. You are.”
They all would be, eventually.
There are a few sips left in the glass, but he’ll let him off the hook tonight. Stan takes the cup from his hands to set on the floor, the bowl right beside it should he need it. He’s hopeful he won’t have to.
When Stan rises from the bed, Dipper sinks a few more inches into it, taking it as his cue to swing his legs back onto the cot. Stan helps to him to lie back down on his side, pulling the blanket up and over his shoulders as he yawns. He’s already kept him awake for too long.
“Get some sleep. I’ll be back in a few.”
He dreads having to say that. Probably Dipper more so having to hear it, knowing they’ll run through this same routine again in a few hours’ time. But he’ll let it go for the meanwhile, burrowing himself against the bed as comfortably as he can manage.
Before he knows it, he’s dreaming.
Despite the misery in knowing he’d be awake again soon, Dipper drifts back to sleep mere moments after he shuts his eyes. Stan has the hunch that a clearer conscious has had more than just a hand in helping him settle down this time.
Even after his work is done, he lingers by the bedside.
Stan keeps his gaze on him. The rise and fall of his chest. There’s something calming about watching him breathe. About watching the two of them breathe in unison. Maybe it isn’t until now that the relief has felt genuine, when they’re both in his sight. He’ll drop the act when they can’t see him.
There are few things about this apocalypse that could render him hysteric, but he isn’t about to let the kids know how many mental breakdowns he’s suffered since their disappearance.
‘I don't know what I'd do with myself if you got hurt on my watch.’
Though his nephew’s potential trauma remained a top concern, something stirs within him — enough that he brings a hand to rest on top of Dipper’s head. Some sudden, protective instinct that surfaces before Stan has a chance to recognize what it is.
For just a few moments he’ll keep it there, tangled in his hair as if to grant him the of peace mind he’s been missing these past days. He’ll pull it away, the absent wish to pull out all the ill thoughts with it.
Stan offers what little comfort he can, before slipping out of the room again.
It’ll be five o’clock when he needs to come back.
He won’t have to skirt sleeping survivors next time, not when the bulk of them were up and at the ready at first light. He’ll still slip into Ford’s room, past the other girls and Mabel to run through this again, but there’s the conviction that there’s less to fear. The world outside may be falling apart at the seams, but he almost feels whole again.
There are four more sleepy bodies in the Shack tonight, and he’s thankful for each.
He still needs one more for everything to be okay again.