Chapter Text
Dipper was dealing with everything well. More or less. Probably as well as anyone having survived what he did. The weirdmagedon still haunted him of course. It haunted Mabel too and almost certainly everyone else having experienced it, there was no escaping it. But still, what haunted him most weren’t the actual events. They were disturbing, sure, but they were also easier to process.
Perhaps it was the morality of the issue. Bill had tried to take over the world and had made everything horrible. And sure, the whole event, chases and fights, was terrifying. But it was clear-cut. Bill had evil plans and Dipper and the others were the good guys. They stopped him and it was the right thing to do. The whole situation with Dippy however...
Well, looking back it wasn’t great. It was pretty terrible actually. Dipper knew that in retrospect, what he did was wrong. But the other - Dippy - just pushed him. He was too bright, too perfect. It drove Dipper mad. And sure, Dipper knew that he wasn’t without faults. But seeing Mabel’s ideal version of her brother and seeing how different they were... It made him feel worthless and inferior, okay.
Dippy’s expression was the worst part. No scratch that, the sound was the worst part. The snap. It sounded so real, was so real. He had expected Dippy to dissolve or melt or something. Like Ty... Like his clones. He had expected it to be somehow not real. The illusory world was so bright and cheerful. The sound just hadn’t fit. It just... Then came the desperate gasping for breath. It was so human, so real. And Dippy’s expression, so disbelieving, so fearful. Dippy had looked as if something impossible had happened, as if Dipper’s betrayal was unthinkable.
He couldn’t stop thinking about it. Whenever he’d step on a branch, his brain would compare the sound to the snap. Even other sounds alarmed him now. Yesterday, the sound of the toaster had made him jump in fright. At night his heart raced as he thought about how Dippy’s skin felt in his hands, about it’s warmth... There was something else. The clones. While he thought he had moved on from the incident, the nightmares infrequent, the thoughts of Dippy led him to think about T- about the clones.
Maybe Dipper wasn’t dealing with everything well. He was dealing pretty badly actually. He had almost managed to convince himself that he was over what happened to the clones. To Tyrone. The thought preyed on his mind in the deep darkness of the night. What they had looked like as they died.
He missed Tyrone. He had tried to push it down, to forget, but how could he. He missed him so much. His gums ached with it, with an unquenchable hunger for someone who understood him, for someone who could see all the jagged parts of him and who could told him "it’s okay, i’ve got you. It’s okay, i understand. It’s okay, i’ll keep you safe.". It burned at him, the wound howling like a wolf in the night, as raw and torn as the day it happened. It seemed inconceivable, to think that he could have walked past that printer. He could have lived a life without this grief. Without having to see himself die, over and over. But it would have been a life without having shared that moment.
That time, on the roof. It was like those moments in movies, those moments where everything clicks in place. Tyrone had understood. In a way no one else had, a way no one else ever would, in a way no one could. Dipper had many special memories in Gravity Falls, moments of adventure and mystery, moments with his sister and his family, moments of triumph and failure. But that moment on the roof, that little piece of borrowed time, was different. It was his. Dipper didn’t really know how to be himself. Perhaps that, above all else was the greatest mystery of Gravity Falls. He was always trying, always fitting more or less badly into the moulds others had set for him.
That’s what made his moment with Tyrone so special. All his other successes were just him matching the expectations of others, for a little while. The protective brother, the curious apprentice, the hard worker, the smart one. Tyrone had understood and that understanding cut trough Dipper, cut through his layers of expectations and obligations. Then it cut deeper, trough his fears, his doubts, his insecurities. It cut until only Dipper remained, until the only people on the roof were just Dipper and Tyrone. And in that moment the weights Dipper had carried slipped from his shoulders, his existential terrors and his silly, petty fears.
It just... clicked. It worked. They worked. And in that moment Dipper wanted to tell Tyrone a million things and ask him a million more. He could still remember the warmth that spread through his blood. Then he looked at Tyrone and his blood ran cold. Perhaps the real tragedy of Icarus wasn’t his fall, but that he had managed to rise so high, until everything fell apart. The more he had risen, the more he would be doomed to fall, the more his heart would race as he fell towards the lashing waves.
That’s how Dipper felt back then. He was so happy to finally have found someone who understood. Then everything slid from his grasp. It was almost like breaking apart. Dipper hadn’t know that people could break like that, that hearts could feel that cold. He couldn’t look away. Tyrone was melting. Tyrone was dying. Dipper felt like he was dying too, like he was drowning in the lashing waves. He didn’t die. So he watched, watched as Tyrone dissolved before his eyes.
When he thinks about it, in the darkness of his bedroom, what strikes him is that-. That no one knew. Dipper was the only one who knew about Tyrone’s death. Nobody else even knew about Tyrone existing, no one was there to mourn him besides Dipper. So Dipper mourned. He mourned for who Tyrone was and for who he could have become.
He couldn’t help but think it in the end. His clones, Tyrone, even Dippy were dead. One way or another Dipper had killed them.
He was so tired, his bones aching with a grief no one but him could understand. That’s when he had an idea, a terrible, selfish idea. No one but him knew what had happened with the printer. No one had moved it. In fact, they had probably all forgotten about it. It wasn’t the first time he thought about it, but he’d always been to afraid. He was afraid that the person that would come out of the printer wouldn’t be the Tyrone he remembered.
But tonight grief howled loudly in Dipper’s heart, the memories of what he had done not letting him escape it. Ignoring his problems wasn’t working. Dipper needed to do something.
He had to bring Tyrone back.