Work Text:
Alcor catches sight of himself, sometimes.
He sees himself in mirrors. He sees himself straightening his pinetree hat, smiling back as he gets it just right before Mabel darts by and knocks it off his head. A groan, a ‘Maaabellll...’ a giggle as she slings an arm around his shoulders and puts it on backwards… he sees the grin hiding behind his eyeroll, the laughter in his long-suffering sigh. The happiness.
The happiness .
He sees it here, too. He sees it fading in the rippling waters of Gravity Falls Lake.
Floating above it, marveling at what a puddle it seems to him now, how the depths that once seemed unknowable to him are now all too shallow, how the monsters that lurked within would never again scare him like they once had; they couldn’t, not when there’s something far more monstrous lurking behind those golden eyes.
He fixes on them now.
Watches them flicker and change with the waves, even as he remained perfectly still.
Those eyes; they were always changing, rippling, distorting-
And dissolving, slipping quickly out of mind as Acacia burst out of the water and tackled him with a dripping hug. Suddenly he could laugh again, he could go ‘Alright, alright, I’m good now’ as she told him Mommy sent her over to knock that dorky expression off his face...
He could let grasping hands drag him down, let them tug and pull and plunge him into darkness. Alcor gasps for breath, and chokes on a liquid, a sweet, iron-tanged liquid that feels so wrong to love. He tastes it, he drinks it, he closes his eyes and he breathes it.
He’s been drowning so long, it almost feels like fresh air.
Maybe he doesn’t have to fight this, he thinks. Maybe this is what he was always meant to be.
Maybe he can just… let go.
Let himself sink to bottomless depths.
Let himself drift in the rippling current that brings him from summons to summons, from victim to victim.
Let himself go… and let the monsters he swims with now lead the way, lead him deeper, deeper, deeper into darkness and chaos and laughter, laughter at these meatsacks that call him with their piddly little mortal problems, with their circles and their deals and their demands and their screams OH THEIR SCREAMS HAHAHA HE CAN’T TAKE IT CAN’T GET ENOUGH OF THAT HILARIOUS SOUND OH HE CAN’T BREATHE-
And in times like this, Alcor catches sight of himself
Sometimes, it’s in the flash of a blade. Sometimes, it’s in a glistening puddle of blood, or in the white’s of a child’s pleading eyes.
Wherever it is, it stops him dead, because there is no boy in a pinetree hat staring back at him. Where there should be Dipper, there is now a demon he doesn’t recognise. Where there should be happiness, there is now only bared teeth and glowing golden irises.
The sight shocks him every time.
Shames him, to see he’s sunken so low. To see he’s changed so drastically.
He stares, and the strange demon stares back. He touches the demon, and it ripples, changes.
Always, always changes… and he wonders if he can change, too.
If he can go back.
If he can learn to recognise himself again.
Can he?
A Mizar in need, a daughter to care for, laughter, happiness, age, death, CULTISTS, CHAOS, PAIN- and he catches sight of himself.
Can he?
A bet, a university, a group of friends he can be himself around, laughter, happiness, age, death, CULTISTS, CHAOS, PAIN- and he catches sight of himself.
Can he?
A sister only he can save, a body to hide his pain in, a father he always wanted, laughter, happiness, age, death, CULTISTS, CHAOS, PAIN- and he catches sight of himself.
Can he?
He asks this to the stranger in the mirror.
Can he?
Can he ever?