Chapter Text
The road is bumpy, dust and pieces gravel crawling from underneath of askew put asphalt gather around on the shoulder. It hadn’t rained in many days. There weren’t that much mosquitoes before, but now, when all the water is gone, there’s even less of them, hiding between the plants, which falling leaves can ensure them with progressively less and less of shadow. Breathing that air full of sand in the town all the young people had run away from is hard.
Sun shines bright upon the horizon of morning, turning slowly into noon. Heat doesn’t yet beam from the earth, but in three, maybe four hours shoes will melt into sidewalks.
Year has recently surpassed its middle. Pine trees got a chance to succeed at their pollinating before the drought began, now unripe pinecones sleep on the branches with scales shut tight, before falling down in autumn when the drought will already be gone. Mountains ascend high into the sky around the valley, which entrance opens with a gentle saddle, it’s easy to drive down, but when trying to leave, there are a lot of accidents occurring, better to be careful.
The bus creaks reaching the highest point and without a stop to glance over the familiar view, rolls down. There is no AC and the window is stuck, it opens only an inch or so. At first, it was bearable, but now you could boil alive just by inhaling the stale air. At last, how long the drive has already been, seven hours? Their most recent transfer happened back before dawn.
Dipper reaches down into the backpack side pocket and finding the bottle, pulls it out from under the pile of stuff always magically finding their way onto the surface. It’s empty though, just like he left it. He eyes the other backpack shoved in between his legs and the sit before him, but as he recalls, Mabel took sweetened water, strawberry flavored. Seems like he won’t be having a drink, not until they’re off-road. He swears at the damn binder always hugging him too tight.
Behind the window sight of an ample resident lurking on the hill above the road blinks for a second, and then a cistern with letters painted on it, but the bus drives too fast to make them out. Dipper sees none of these with head leaning low tugging at the zipper which just will not close, all the things probably coming out as useless later, inflating his travel backpack from inside like a balloon. When he eventually succeeds, by the road he sees a sign standing.
Weathered words read ‘Welcome to Gravity Falls’.
He elbows Mabel but she, instead of waking up, swings to the side and on another road bump almost falls of her seat. Dipper reaches out in her direction rather rapidly grabbing by the woolen vest which by the way is ridiculous for today’s weather then drags her back onto the seat.
“Here we are. Our stop’s in a minute.” says Dipper, trying to get vest’s hair off of his hands.
Something that might be remains of gummies they ate on some bus station few hours ago still sticks to his fingers now along with the damned hair so he resigns any more efforts. Mabel’s yawn is loud and accompanied with a full body stretch that cramps Dipper against an unpleasantly heated up window.
“Here we are. That really was a beautiful of a nap.”
Dipper murmurs something in response. He didn’t get to sleep nor in the last bus they took where the kid row before had been kicking his seat all the way nonstop while simultaneously watching Tik-Tok without earbuds, nor on the bus station where he was looking after their luggage nor in this bus. Sums up to twenty hours. He’s really nervous about reuniting with grunkles. Mable drinks the last of her water and zips up her backpack with no problem. Like the absolute fool he agreed to get his one packed with clothes and little things while Mabel would get eatables and crap she couldn’t get him to carry after one of the stiches got ripped filled with one another vest.
He takes his phone out of a pocket, unlocks it and sure enough the open convo is just like the last time he examined it. Person under the number assuring him to be grunkles inviting them on vacation to Gravity Falls. He’s not that irresponsible not to verify that claim so after number days’ worth of exchanging texts they, him and Mabel, together decided to get on a video call and yup, the number sure was Stan and Ford, maybe somehow more wore out, with hair a little grayer, Stan got a new scar and Ford new pair of glasses, but no mistake made. The call itself didn’t last long, signal in the Shack was always flaky not speaking of the internet connection, but it was enough to calm Dipper down for some time.
To get kinda okay after what happened that summer, it wasn’t easy. They aren’t okay even now, well, Mabel is, and Dipper is happy for her, of course he is. He couldn’t loose Mabel, he just couldn’t. But sometimes he wishes it turned out different.
Now is one of these times. He wishes he could stop, but he still looks down on the screen and reads every message a couple of times, carefully, looking for a hint or a slip-up that will reveal the liar who made him believe what they said and come here and who will do even more harm, than they had done to them before. He clutches at his phone as the wave of panic rises in his throat and in between the ribs. ‘Nothing can really happen’ he reminds himself, he really tries to mean it but it just does not work. So many things can happen, so many things can not be as he thought that they would be, maybe the grunkles changed their mind and they don’t want to see these awful kids ever again, man, last time they came around they dragged the almost-end-of-the-world along.
“Hey.” says Mable and puts her hand over Dipper’s phone. “You’re alright?”
Dipper looks up and purses his lips.
“Wanna hug?”
Before he gets to answer, bus stops and the driver turns his head facing two last passengers, some kids. ‘Not kids, he thinks, high schoolers, I guess. I’m really getting old, aren’t I… The boy looks fifteen, but the girl seems older, they really look alike. When have all the other people left anyways?’
Mabel nods and picks her backpack up from the dusty floor. She gets up, wobbles a little and heads over to the exit. Fresh air pours into the closed space, it’s still too warm for Dipper’s liking though. With his backpack he stumbles onto the narrow aisle where he can barely reach the ukulele which Mabel put on the luggage shelf in the morning and forgot about. She could reach the damn thing placed so high for no reason with ease, she’s good six inches taller than him. Dipper curses under his breathe and finally grabs ukulele by the neck, pulling it down.
Walking by the driver he doesn’t get a ‘goodbye’ back and he gets his backpack strap stuck in the closed door. Driver opens it for the second time and drives off with a horrid screech that might be a sound of a worn v-belt.
Dipper looks around and sun dazzles him from above. Couple yards down the road Mabel is standing with hands resting on hips, he follows her gaze. In that direction strolling you can get to the Mystery Shack in maybe half an hour. He has a nasty gut feeling as she laughs and waves at him to hurry up. Mabel turns and moves on in one possible direction in her mind – home.
*
They stood where the trees opened in a glade for a long time. Mabel eyeballed it patiently and surprisingly thoroughly. Dipper doesn’t even remember if the Shack changed. He doesn’t remember how it looked form afar and he’s not sure how they found themselves at its door, but here everything looks cleaner than the last time.
Like someone stole his memory. He knew he was waiting until Mabel would let them cross the border of Stan’s property, but nothing after that really.
‘You can’t steal one’s remembrance – he thinks and corrects himself immediately – obviously you can steal remembrance, you can steal entire people with their thought and emotions, they almost had Stanley stolen. He frowns.
If they’re waiting anyway, he might make it to back up a bit and look at the Shack again. It seems it had been rebuilt before grunkles departed, when Soos was the Mystery Man for a moment. Dipper frowns again, when Mabel knocks at the door for the second time and still no one opens. He wanted to be here since he left yet now he wants to run. He actually might just turn around and go away the same way he came, grunkles wouldn’t even know he was there at all.
He doesn’t though. Just grinds his teeth and hopes nothing bad happens.
Mabel knocks for the third time and her enthusiasm seems to burn down, something from underneath floats to the top, fear maybe. It doesn’t make sense. Everything has to be just fine now, everything has settled. What happened before, what happen last time was simply a misfortune. The kind that happen once, Mabel thinks and correct herself right away.
‘There is no misfortune, and even if, it’s never just one. There always is more to come, they come in flocks, the more you try to get ride of them, the harder they bite. God I hate mosquitoes.’ She thinks about of all that, all of what happened in Gravity Falls and after they left Gravity Falls, what happened with Dipper and for a moment she feels guilty, like part of that misfortune should affect her more in the long run, but it’s dumb.
Dipper glances at the forest behind and rubs his arm shifting on feet. Mabel opens her mouth to ask if she can somehow help, but realizes that she can’t. Like she ever could.
Scratching behind the closed door alarms of someone’s presence and the twins tense up, as if they both thought of same thing – there is an intruder inside.
But the face coming to light in the cracked door is Stanford’s. At first he seems concerned and maybe… suspicious? – thinks Dipper,… worried – thinks Mabel, but it lightens up just as soon. He opens the door wider, but it stops abruptly at around a crack palm broad. Stanford mutters something, shuts it back again, Mabel and Dipper hear sounds of wrestling with the security chain and more scratching.
“Children!” Stanford’s whole smiling person stands in the entrance, he puts his gun down onto the umbrella stand.
“Kids!” exclaims Stanley at the same time. Seems he got around to crawling out of the living room, while Ford fought the chain.
“Grunckles!” yells Mabel and runs into an embrace with Ford, it gets him stumbling back a little.
“It’s you!” sighs Dipper and almost drops the ukulele in relief.
Stanford gives him a worried look.
“Of course it’s us. Something’s wrong?” he pulls this expression again, the same he had when opening the door, it makes Dipper think of how he looked after crossing the portal back then.
He wants to shake the memory out of his head, but before he gets a chance to respond, Stanley bursts into laughter.
“Ha, I knew and I knew a long time ago!” he shouts at Ford. “Look at you.” he squeezes Dipper in a hug so tight he swear that if after twenty hours of binding nothing broke, a rib snaps now. “You don’t even look like a wimp anymore!” Dipper swears he saw a tear gathering up in a corner of Stan’s eye. He strains a smile. “And you got a tattoo! Parents know about that one?”
Ah yes, the tattoo. Dipper doesn’t really like to think about it, he usually just pretends it’s not there, or wears long sleeves. Today’s to hot for it though. He gets some ‘haha’ out and roughly a ‘yea sure thing’ but doesn’t press on the subject.
Stanley finally lets him go, still cracking up, walks up to Mabel and gives her buzz cut, which he finds hilarious too, a noogie as she starts cry laughing.
Dipper considers for a second how weird the situation feels, he always assumed the reunion would happen the other way. Him and Stanley never actually got along, why would he go up to him first? It would be more logical if it was Mabel, it just makes sense. ‘But have I really thought about that? Like though thought. Or have it simply appeared in my head at some moment? I guess I did. It would be sad if I haven’t thought about going back to Gravity Falls.’
“Dipper.” only now, when Ford got past the doorstep in the shadow, Dipper notices his new wrinkles, around eyes and on the forehead, ones he couldn’t see on the screen on video call.
He also notices the grey stripe of hair grew wider and the glasses which distinctly thickened and the turtleneck gone, replaced with a v-neck and the latter throws him off the most for some reason. Ford is also absent of his old coat, it is too hot for it as well, thinks Dipper.
“Good to see you. Good you’re here.” Ford reaches his hand out for a handshake but Dipper ignores it and goes for a hug.
He can’t remember if they ever hugged before, Ford always seems so distant, as if he never really became more real than he was on his journals’ pages.
Dipper freaks out for a moment and considers backing off, but then Ford returns the hug.
‘It’s going to be okay now’ thinks Dipper ‘it’s all going to be okay now, even if only for a moment.’ Except that summer isn’t going to last forever and it’ll fade way sooner than he would like. He shakes the image out of his head.
“Good to be here.” he responds.