Work Text:
She doesn’t trust you enough.
She doesn’t trust you enough, “Stanford Pines”, and you can hear the quotation marks and doubt in both their voices, but it’s hers that matters, she’s the one who can ruin it. She’s the one you liked best, the one who trusted you most, but…
It turns out Mabel doesn’t trust you, the you you’ve been, over the lies on paper, the remnants of a past that’s brought you so close, so damn close-
She presses the button.
If they were expecting the machine to just shut off, they don’t know a thing about momentum. Then again, you didn’t when you were their age either. Probably. Definitely not in regards to a machine that’s half nuclear, half magic. The glowing stops from the edges, but the portal still glows. You cling to that hope. That small light of hope. You peer into it and let yourself hope that maybe it was too late, maybe this will work…!
But then a loud grinding noise fills the air. The light of the portal dims and the world shifts around you. Gravity kicks back in. You slam hard into the ground. Your old bones ache. Your heart aches worse.
It didn’t work.
It didn’t work.
You think you hear Mabel crying, Dipper shouting, Soos….doing whatever Soos does. You have no idea about any of that.
There’s a swing set on a beach and it’s fading away and you….
You sit up in time to watch Mabel hug her brother.
Why do they-
How could they-
Why can’t we-
Thirty years of work!
You’re not sure what’s worse: the sorrow welling up inside you at having been ten seconds away from seeing him again and now knowing you never will; the anger at these kids who came into your life, reminded you of yourself and him as kids, only to ultimately steal that reunion from you; or the fact that you don’t…feel either of those. You know you’re sad, miserable, inconsolable. You know you’re angry, furious, enraged.
But all you can do is sit there on the floor and feel nothing at all. Staring up at the portal that took your brother from you, that you gave so many years to, broke so many laws for, and now sits deactivated. Broken, likely, from the override.
You can hear the waves roaring in your ears from a summer long ago.
Maybe it’s better there, wherever he is, than here, where one press of a button destroys your entire world.