Chapter Text
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Breathe in and feel the motion of this rock spinning in the void, feel the slight shift of the plates in his bones.
Breathe out and winds blowing wildly the next continent over in time with the air leaving his body.
Breathe in and wonder if he should let the plants he felt under him take root within him, wondered if it was better for the ground to swallow him, to let him sleep forever, free from the pain of-
Suddenly he was soaking wet, skin stinging with the touch of holy water, and Dipper shot up, broken from his reverie.
Mabel stood next to him on their front lawn, an empty water bucket in her hand.
“You scared Willow,” she said, kneeling a bit to offer him a hand up. He took it with a wince and Mabel easily pulled him to his feet, noticing the plant roots poking from his back.
“How?” he asked. “I made sure I was out of the house before I started.”
Mabel frowned a bit as she turned Dipper around and began to clean his back off.
“I know but one minute she was sleeping on my lap while I was knitting, and then she was screaming about the ground swallowing her up.”
Mabel held up a piece of root, and raised an eyebrow at Dipper, who blushed.
“Oops,” was all he could manage to say.
She sighed but said nothing, knowing how much of a crapshoot it could be for Dipper to access his omniscience sometimes.
“Did you find out anything?” Mabel asked as they made their way to the porch swing.
Dipper sat down after Mabel did, and with a kick of his legs started them moving.
“Not a lot,” Dipper admitted ruefully. “There’ve never really been a lot of empaths running around. Right now there’s-” senses expanded and contracted back in on himself “-about forty.”
“In Oregon?” Mabel asked.
Dipper shook his head.
“In America?”
Dipper shook his head again, and Mabel felt the bottom of her stomach drop out.
“No. Way.”
Dipper was about to continue but then Willow poked her head out of the house.
“Uncle Dipper, why is the inside of my head itchy?”
“Come here Will,” Dipper asked, stilling the porch swing. She came over and clambered onto his lap, and Dipper licked his thumb and smeared it across her forehead. Willow giggled and bopped at his hands.
“Better?”
Willow jumped off. “Yup.”
“Now go back inside-”
Mabel interjected. “-and tell Hank and Acacia that I want the three of you to sort your laundry.”
Willow’s lip stuck out but she went inside to do as she was told.
Mabel grinned at Dipper. “That’s the kids out of the way for fifteen minutes. What else did you learn?”
Dipper thought back and then remembered why he had started spiraling out of control in the first place.
“What’s wrong?”
He put a hand behind his head. “Um….”
“Dipper Pines you tell me right now-”
Her hand was moving towards the flip flop on her foot and Dipper held up his hands in acquiescence. “Okay, okay!”
He took off his hat, held it loosely in his hands. “From what I could tell before…before I lost myself, if Willow’s like them then she should be able to sense what other people are feeling-“
“The colors she sees-“
Dipper nodded. “Yeah, the auras. And after a while she’ll probably start feeling other people’s emotions like they’re her own.”
“Okay.” Mabel waited for the other shoe to drop (the metaphorical one, not the one she had in her hand to fwap her brother if he waffled again.)
“Everyone…every mind I had touched…Mabel, they were all insane. And from what I could tell when I was researching, almost everyone with empathy ends up going…going mad. They end up completely overwhelmed with information, and they just drown, they lose themselves-“
A tear dripped off Dipper’s face and hit his white dress shirt.
“I’m so sorry Mabel,” he said quietly, unable to look at his twin.
“Don’t be.”
Dipper’s head shot up and he gaped at Mabel. He could tell from her face and aura that she was worried, but nowhere near as worried as he thought she would (should) be.
Mabel started to count on her left hand, each finger with a different ring on it.
She extended the finger with her decoder ring on. “One, if you ever apologize for saving the life of my daughter, your niece again, I’ll ward off the Shack and make you sleep on the porch for a week, and run the hose on you every day to wake you up. Okay?”
Dipper gulped.
“Yes Mabel.”
Another finger, bedecked with a Ring Pop, stretched out. “Two, she has you and she has us. We know what Willow can do. We know a little bit what she’ll be going through. You can teach her how to keep her mind clear I bet. She will always be surrounded by people who know her situation and love her and want to help her. That’s…” Mabel’s face dropped. “-that’s more than most other empaths have, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“Finally-“The finger with her engagement ring extended outwards. “You should take the kids to the store and get some ice cream for after dinner tonight.”
Dipper immediately perked up.
“Can I get my own tub?”
“Sure Dipdops!”
“Can I get five tubs?”
“Don’t get greedy now.”
“Three?”
“Yeah sure brobro!”
The mood lightened, the twins went inside.
It never occurred to either of them that Dipper hadn’t learned everything that he could about empathy.
---------------------------------------
Willow Pines wasn’t surprised when they got back from Christmas Break that their English teacher, Ms. Cheboi, wasn’t in the room when class walked in. Ms. Cheboi had spent all of November and December teaching from her chair, heavily pregnant. She was on maternity leave for the rest of the year, and they were supposed to have a new teacher today.
Willow was going to miss Ms. Cheboi. She was one of the most patient people she had ever met, and even through her shields Willow could feel aqua waves of kindness rolling off of Ms. Cheboi.
She couldn’t wait for Uncle Dipper or Mom to take her by the hospital to see Ms. Cheboi and meet the baby that Willow had spent the last two months watching grow. It had been the most amazing thing, to not only see a separate set of colors coming from Ms. Cheboi, but see them grow stronger every day the closer she had gotten to her due date.
(She had tried to explain to her family, but only Uncle Dipper really got what she meant. Then he had a funny look on his face and was giving off happy-sad vibes.)
Willow’s best friend, Vierna Ramirez, slipped into the desk on Willow’s left, and popped a piece of bubble gum into her mouth.
She blew a bubble and popped it. “Whaddya think the new teacher will be like dude?” she asked Willow.
“Someone who teaches us stuff,” Willow deadpanned, and Vierna blew a raspberry at her. She almost said something else, but then the door opened and their new teacher walked in.
Their new teacher was perhaps the palest person Willow had ever seen in her life, and she had met several vampires. She had limp blonde hair, light blue eyes, and wore a white pantsuit with white heels.
Willow wondered what her laundry bills were like, and if she could see every vein in her arm like a jelly fish.
She snuck out a piece of paper, to pass that observation as a note to Acacia because it was simply too good to be wasted, but suddenly her shields were being battered by a wave of…positive emotions?
Willow looked around as unobtrusively as she could. Everyone in the class room was suddenly happy, bright yellows and pinks and in Gary’s case, chartreuse and brown mixed into a weird hue. It was weirdly uniform, almost as if someone had slammed the emotion into their heads.
The wave subsided as soon as it came, and everyone unconsciously relaxed back to their normal emotional states.
Willow looked up at their new teacher and felt her heart skip a beat.
For the first time in her life, or at least the first time she could remember, she could read…nothing from this woman. Not a slip of color, not an insight from her Sight, absolutely nil. Looking at her for long, looking at the clear nothingness that surrounded her teacher made Willow’s stomach churn.
She caught the woman’s eyes before she could look down and saw there the same shock that was surely on Willow’s face.
The moment stretched, long and uncomfortable, until they both looked away at the same time.
Their new teacher shook her head, and then clapped her hands together.
“Hello kids! My name is Ms. Aspicia, but please, call me Ms. Lilly!!! Now, I know that Ms. Cheboi assigned everyone Hamlet to read over break so if you will turn your pages to-“
Thoughtlessly, Willow grabbed her copy of the play out of her backpack but her mind was churning.
The rest of the class passed in a blur, and Willow wasn’t surprised that as she was walking out the door with Acacia and Vierna, Ms. Lilly tapped her on her shoulder.
“Uh, Willow was it? A moment of your time please?”
Acacia shot her a Look, and a hand went into her pocket. Willow sighed and shook her head. Acacia nodded and walked down the hall with Vierna.
Ms. Lilly drew the door to a crack, and motioned for Willow to sit down.
“Play dumb kid,” Grunkle Stan’s voice said in her ear. “Play dumb and play it by ear.”
“Um, is this going to take long?” Willow asked, twirling a piece of hair on her finger. She would have played it a little heavier on the ditz but she was concentrating as hard as she could in making sure her shields were still in place. “I gotta get to class.”
Ms. Lilly laid a hand on Willow’s arm. The teen stiffened despite herself, but if Ms. Lilly noticed she hid it well.
“Willow, I can tell that you have a special talent. You do not have to lie to me, you can see them, can’t you? Colors around everyone you see? Feeling things that aren’t coming from you?”
Reluctantly, Willow nodded. No use lying when Ms. Lilly could obviously tell.
“You’ve taught yourself how to protect your person and your mind, absolutely astounding, I assure you.”
“Thank you,” Willow politely said, and did not correct Ms. Lilly.
“What else have you discovered?” she asked, leaning in a little closer to Willow, who did her best not to flinch away. Ms. Lilly didn’t have the overabundance of emotions that usually overwhelmed her when people got close, but habits died hard, and Willow wasn’t used to being this close to someone she didn’t know.
“What do you mean?” Willow responded, genuinely puzzled. When it came to her empathy, Willow figured telling what others were feeling and occasionally feeling those emotions herself was about the extent of it. She did a lot more with the Sight and her fire than she did her empathy.
“You don’t know?” Ms. Lilly looked shocked. “Oh! Oh my goodness, my dear girl. Well-“
The warning bell rang and Ms. Lilly grimaced.
“I must let you go, I know, but think on this. There is much, much more you can do with your gift than you could have ever dreamed of.”
The bottom dropped from Willow’s stomach. Uncle Dipper had never told her that.
The shock must have been apparent on Willow’s face, because Ms. Lilly patted her hand with a little laugh.
“I know just that idea must be a lot to take in! Why don’t you think about it for a day or two, and when you’re ready, come see me after school. I will teach you all you could ever want to know.”
Ms. Lilly got up and rummaged in her desk.
“Need a late note?”
--------------------
She sensed the kid coming towards them before anyone else noticed.
Nothing new really.
And to be fair, everyone else was distracted.
Vierna and her older brother Thor were having an intense conversation over whether Tío Soos’ infinite pizza slice was realllllly infinite or if it would run out after all seven of them kept biting on it for like, a really long time dude, you know?
Acacia was giggling with Reina and another friend of theirs, Tracey Valentino. Willow had known forever that her sister had the world’s biggest crush on Reina, despite Acacia consistently insisting that they were “just friends. Really. No, really really I mean it.” In the last year she had noticed that Reina was starting to feel the same way around Acacia as well, deep lustful reds and confused pinks and a tinge of yellow anxiety.
She and Hank had mutually decided that if one hadn’t asked the other out by Reina’s birthday in July, they were going to lock the two of them in a room together until they spat it out.
Speaking of Hank, he was currently holding hands and looking dreamily into the eyes of his latest boyfriend, Hiroto. Hiroto in turn looked like he really wanted to eat his lunch.
It was funny, Willow thought. Hank on the surface seemed like he would be an open book, and as easy to read. But she could never really read him. There was a part of her older brother that was closed off, like…like he was one of those nesting dolls that they still randomly had twelve of at the Shack. But after the outer doll, all the others were glued shut, layers within layers locked away.
She liked Hiroto. And she had a feeling Hank and him would amicably break up in about another month, just like every other person Hank had gone out with before.
Hank loved everyone, but it was, for now that way, only on that first layer.
“Um, excuse me, are you Willow?”
Everyone else looked up at the young man, probably a freshman, who had come up to their table. Out of the corner of her eye she noticed Acacia slip a hand in to her pocket, and Hank stiffen ever so slightly and sighed. Darn it, she had it.
She shook her head and her older siblings settled down. Willow looked up at the kid, all brown hair and violet anxiety and something a little darker underneath. She didn’t recognize him; probably someone from Odenton, the next town over. Southwest High School was mostly kids from Gravity Falls, but there were also a lot of kids from Odenton too, who weren’t as sanguine about the supernatural as Fallers tended to be.
“Do you think you could, you know, tell me if Sharon Li would go out with me?”
Willow sighed. And as she had found out in middle school, when they went from Gravity Falls Elementary to Southwest Middle School, the ones that weren’t scared of her or hated her guts thought she could see the future.
“No.”
He looked completely gobsmacked. He must be new.
He stuttered out, “Wha…what do you mean no?!”
“I can’t see the future. Or read minds. So yeah, can’t tell you. Wouldn’t tell you even if I could because that’s kind of invasive and creepy.”
Plum anger burst out all over him as he latched on to what he wanted to hear rather than what she said.
“You can so tell me and you just won’t! Oh my god you are such a bi-“
Hank and Acacia, bless them, did nothing, except try and keep massive shit eating grins from their faces.
Willow looked at him, staring deep into his brown eyes.
She said nothing.
“Wha…what are you doing?”
She continued staring, and noticed a particularly nasty zit on his forehead.
“I…I’m…you….” He paled and ochre fear washed over him.
“I don’t need you any way!” he spat out and turned from the table.
Willow had another bite of her sandwich, and dutifully held up a hand for Thor to high five her.
“I think that was like a six,” Hank said, opening a bag of pretzels.
“No dude, that was an eight, she really had him going,” Vierna argued.
Hiroto opened his mouth, and everyone paused because Hiroto almost never talked.
“Seven,” he said, and took a sip of his Coke.
Acacia leaned into Willow, knocking her head against her little sister’s shoulder.
“So what did Ms. Lilly want to keep you after for?”
Willow froze. Fuck.
“Nothing. Just told me to pay more attention in class.”
Acacia cocked her head. “Really? That’s it?”
She looked down at her sandwich, no longer hungry.
“Yeah, that’s it.”
-----------------
“And hold…and hold…and good!”
Willow fell back on her butt panting. She had never thrown fire longer than four minutes before, yet here was Uncle Dipper saying by summer they were going to make it up to ten.
She felt a hitch in her chest, sighed, and took out her inhaler to take a puff.
Uncle Dipper threw aside the umbrella he had been using to ward himself off from Willow’s flames. It disappeared into the ether, as he sat down next to her on the grass. He pulled her into a hug, and she felt the last remaining weaknesses in her chest disappear.
“Thanks Uncle Dipper.”
She looked up at her uncle, and then down at the grass, up into glowing eyes briefly, and down at the grass again. How to ask, how to ask….
“What’s eating you Little Fighter?” he said.
“Nothing.”
He flipped her hair over her face, making her sputter and laugh.
“Uncle Dipper!!” she cried as she pulled her hair back and away.
“You going to tell me what’s on your mind?” he asked, with a grin that showed both rows of teeth.
She looked down at her hands, shy again.
“Would….would you ever lie to me Uncle Dipper?” she finally asked.
Uncle Dipper was infinitely better at guarding his emotions, his aura from her than she ever would be, but she still got a wave of “oh shit” from him.
“I can’t promise you that Willow,” he replied, sadness etched on his face.
She could see, if not feel, the pain coming from him. He was going to be more honest than usual for the next few minutes then, out of guilt.
“Are there others like me?” she asked.
Dipper froze.
Finally, he managed to choke out, “Yes.” He looked at her. “Why do you want to know?”
“Oh, I was just thinking about how I’ve met people who can see the future and people that turn into wolves or geese under the full moon, but I’ve never met anyone like me.” There, that should be the right balance between airiness and genuine emotion (because she wasn’t exactly lying, not all the way.)
“Oh. Okay. Um….”
Uncle Dipper flopped backwards onto the grass, and huffed out a breath.
“What don’t you want to tell me?” Willow pressed, flopping down as well, resting her head on his stomach.
He said nothing and she pressed on. “Whatever it is, it can’t be worse than what I can think of if you give me about twenty minutes and-“
“They’re all mad.”
Well. Holy fuck.
She took a deep shuddering breath. “Go on.”
“I think before they went crazy, they could do the same things you could.”
“And?”
Uncle Dipper looked sheepish. “And that’s kind of all I know.”
Willow sat up and looked at her Uncle.
“Seriously?”
He frowned a bit. “Yes seriously.”
“But…but…you know everything!” Even as the words left her mouth Willow knew she was being unfair, because…well, Uncle Dipper didn’t, and he didn’t like what he had to do to learn more things.
He must have seen the changing look on her face because he didn’t call Willow out on that, just sighed.
“I’m sorry Willow. It’s….I…I know that it can be lonely. Being…unique.”
Willow honestly hadn’t thought about being the only empath she had ever met until today. But Uncle Dipper probably wouldn’t feel any better if she told him that.
“Did you say everyone else like me is mad?” she asked instead, because that was a more pressing concern than the Crushing Burden of Uniqueness. “Do I need to worry about that?”
He smiled, and patted her hand. “I think you’ll be fine there Willow-cat. I’ve tried my best to teach you how to shield your thoughts, and we all know what you can do. As far as I can tell, no one else had that.”
He sat up and got to his feet, offering her a hand. She took it and he pulled her up and into a hug.
“Are you going to be okay?” Uncle Dipper asked.
“Yeah,” she said, face full of dress shirt and the smell of pine.
“Think we can convince your dad to make corn dogs for dinner?”
Willow giggled as they started to walk back to the house. “Noooooo! Corn dogs taste like Play-doh!” Uncle Dipper smiled, like she hoped, clearly relaxing and relieved that he hadn’t messed her up emotionally or whatever.
Her mind was buzzing however. She had a lot to think about before school tomorrow.