Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

In a void, no one could say why a thing once set in motion should stop anywhere; for why should it stop here rather than here? So that a thing will either be at rest or must be moved ad infinitum.

Unless something more powerful gets in its way…

----

Reality was a strange and resilient thing. It could take a beating and still come back from the brink swinging. No place was this so true as Gravity Falls. The quaint little town had been the epicenter of a tear in reality and, only a year later, it had stitched itself back together with nary an eyebat or madness bubble out of place. Even the people had pushed through the weirdness and emerged unscathed.

“Never-mind all that...”

Well, relatively unscathed. To the casual observer Gravity Falls was just a boring town in the middle of nowhere, but a closer look revealed the cracks that had been meticulously glued together. Any time the anomaly would rear its head, the town collectively looked away.

No matter, it wasn't the first town Leaf had passed through that had a problem facing reality. To ignore the obvious was part of the human condition and where money was involved the blind-spot extended even further. That bit of oversight was why she could acquire a lovely old brick building with few follow up questions. 

Old logging towns really did have some of her favorite aesthetics. She’d been reluctant to part with her Portland townhouse, but providence called and that had required her to relocate to the tiny nowhere town in the middle of the woods. Still it wasn’t all bad, the building had originally been some sort of hardware store in the distant past with a storeroom on the second floor. In other words…

A loft starter kit.

The back of the store had a wooden structure attached to the building that had been used as a rain shelter to keep equipment dry. The frame itself was made from old, dense redwood that would be illegal to harvest nowadays and had the added bonus of creating a deck space up on the second story. After getting a local contractor to clean up the place, the decrepit brick building had become delightfully rustic. Soon, the exposed brick in her first-floor office space had been scrubbed, and the hardwood floors stained an attractive walnut hue. The light-fixtures were the same industrial lamps as before only dipped in gold paint and with Edison bulbs set in the light socket. Her computer sat upon an equally ancient looking desk that at some point must have been used as a workbench. A wooden sign with fractal burned letters hung over the entrance announcing: 

PRISM Business Consulting

No one cared to ask who she was or why anyone in the hick’s end of nowhere would hire a consultant. Then again, nobody ever asked why a consultant would care about distortions in the fabric of spacetime, or fire-breathing manticores, or glass bowls that compelled people to eat nothing but mashed potatoes. Just as well, she didn’t feel much like working for her money.

Instead, Leaf did what she always did: she placed a maneki neko statue in the shop’s window and waited. The lucky cat was carved out of a solid piece of black basalt and polished to a reflective sheen, but its eyes were made of translucent amethyst that glittered in the sunlight as though beckoning the townsfolk to enter.

She didn’t have to wait long before a man wearing a ‘MAYOR’ sash entered. Leaf gave him a bright smile.

Politicians were natural liars and she’d never met one that didn't harbor some secret ambition. They were selfish creatures and did nothing that didn’t benefit them first in some way or another. It came with the territory and it was practically expected, really. However, Mayor Cutebiker turned out to be surprisingly earnest. All he asked for was a way to promote business and tourism in Gravity Falls so the next Pioneer Day could be a success.

Leaf had stared at him wearing that same plastic smile and waiting for the rest of the list but it never came. That was literally all he wanted. She hadn’t expected a challenge, but she had certainly expected something more interesting. Then again, the type of people the maneki attracted weren’t exactly complicated beings with rich inner lives. They were simple people with deep pockets and all of them wanted some variation of the same tired thing: riches, status, the attention daddy never gave, an invitation to the country club’s exclusive sitting room…

She recovered nicely and assured Mayor Cutebiker that she could do all he asked and more. Leaf even knocked off a few zeroes from her usual fee and promised to build and implement a revitalization plan for him. She sent him off with a business card and a copy of their signed agreement. She’d watched him go feeling strangely conflicted. On the one hand, she had severely undercharged him, but on the other politicians usually didn’t tell the truth or asked her to do something so damn wholesome with city funds.

All this goodwill meant was that she was already in the red, and Leaf would have to really stick it to the next guy. Hopefully, Gravity Falls wasn’t full of goody-two shoes asking her to help out with community service. A girl had to eat! Surely there were at least a few rich bastards she could squeeze!

Enter one Preston Northwest with the air of a man accustomed to speaking to the manager to get his way. Finally a bit of luck!

Leaf patiently listened to the man’s incessant boasting and prattling carefully listening to the gaps of truth left by the lies. She’d done her research before coming to Gravity Falls and therefore knew the Northwests were wealthy, but had been a whole heck of a lot wealthier just a few months before. He blustered on belittling her status and demanding to see some sort of references before he would do business with her.

“Mr. Northwest, I assure you I can provide all the references you wish. However, well there’s really no delicate way of putting this, your valuation has dropped fifty points in the last eighteen months. According to public records, Northwest Manor was recently sold in an estate sale for a sum of $8 million. You must understand, a portfolio with a working capital of less than ten is… well… perhaps you would feel more comfortable consulting the financial advisor at your bank’s local branch.”

The shift in the man’s entire demeanor let her know she had struck a nerve.

“I assure you in spite of what these slack jawed yokels may have insinuated. The Northwest fortune-”

“Mr. Northwest, there is a time and a place for appearances, but medicine and finances require trust and honesty. I’m sure you can appreciate someone who can secure you cold hard cash instead of making empty promises. Truth be told Mr. Northwest, you don’t have the money. You lost half of your fortune and had to resort to selling your tangible assets to stay afloat. I can only imagine the amount of credit card debt you’re running now that you are living well beyond your means. You don’t have $8 million dollars in your bank account, do you Mr. Northwest? How much is it then? Seven? Six?”

“FOUR! There’s only $4 million left!” he all but bawled out the number. 

“Oh Mr. Northwest…” she tutted as though he had confessed some great sin.

“I don’t know how it happened! We changed absolutely nothing and it’s still falling! Please! I can’t go to the bank like some… some… poor person!”

“Well, I suppose given time you are well on your way to poverty. As I said, you cannot afford me, although,” she paused as though considering her options, “I suppose the Northwest name still has quite a bit of social capital. There may be some wiggle room.”

“Does that mean you will-”

“That depends. I will have to do an assessment to see what I’m getting my firm tangled up in, but if the assessment is promising then perhaps we can talk about making an exception for you.” 

“Yes, yes of course!”

She noted how his eyes lit up like a well-trained hound watching a bag of treats. A life of privilege was all about being important enough to coast by as an exception to the rule. Leaf clicked her pen and picked up a notepad.

“Let's start at the beginning. How did you lose all those funds?”

It was strange to watch a grown man fidget in place as though he were all of six years old. “It was a series of poor investments.”

“Can you be more specific? I assure you, I’ve heard it all: stocks, options, bonds, tech unicorns, MLMs, crypto…”

Preston mumbled something under his breath which couldn’t have possibly been right. Leaf stopped and stared at him before he finally cleared his throat and repeated himself.

“Weirdness. It was weirdness bonds.”

Her eyes narrowed and Preston realized they were brown with a strange indigo sheen to them. “Where did you get weirdness bonds, Mr. Northwest.”

“It was during last year’s, erm, incident. But never-mind all that! The point is the money is gone.”

“Now, Mr. Northwest, if I am expected to work with you and restore your fortune, I am going to need honesty. More importantly, I need to know that I can trust you. Now I don’t know how you managed to get your hands on weirdness bonds, but I can’t think of anyone pleasant who peddles in them,” she replied, setting down the notepad. “As part of your assessment, I am only going to ask you this once. Mr. Northwest, who sold you the weirdness bonds?”

Preston swallowed thickly as he glanced about nervously before whispering, “Bill. His name was Bill Cipher.”

Leaf pondered the odd segue long after Preston had left. She had gotten as much as she could out of the man, which unfortunately wasn’t much. He hadn’t been around for most of it and simply considered Bill’s excursion a personal inconvenience.

Bill Cipher.

She hadn’t heard that name in a long time. She’d worked for a lot of global conglomerates before opening up her own consultant firm. No company ever broke into the Fortune 500 list without having a few demon, genie, or yokai wranglers on the payroll, and all of them knew Bill Cipher was blacklisted. The poor saps who were desperate enough to deal with him ended up paranoid millionaires living in shacks up in the mountains and screaming about the trees with eyes; or so the stories went.

In all her years, Leaf couldn’t recall ever having encountered anyone who had seen Bill, much less allowed themselves to be driven mad by him. And yet here he was, in the middle of nowhere, with a trail of broken deals in his wake.

Son of a bitch corn chip tried to break the world without so much as a note.

Her pen idly doodled a triangle on a scratch piece of paper. That would explain the tears in the fabric of space scattered all around the town and the way gravity felt a little crunchy in certain spots. This was going to be a more intensive clean up than she had originally thought.

She drew an unbroken line of concentric circles tightening around the smaller triangle as she pondered Preston’s words. He had mentioned a circle, symbols, and people holding hands: a zodiac wheel. The corners of her mouth twitched into a smile. 

If Bill had been defeated by a zodiac wheel, that meant he was sealed and bound somewhere in town. Her pen came down to stab the center of the triangle as though to pop the eye she had forgotten to draw.

Sticks and stones may break your bones and words will then enslave you…

“But first, to business,” she sighed before turning her attention to the Mayor’s project. It shouldn’t take too long to throw something together and set it off on whatever passed for social media feed out here in the sticks. Then there was still the matter of spinning straw into gold for Preston’s fortune. The man could stand to benefit from sitting with his panic and misery for another day, but she’d throw something together for him too.

Where did the time go? 

Well she supposed wherever it was allowed to go. It flowed like a river, never still, never stopping and made its own rules. It carried off everything and left nothing but bones in its path. Leaf wasn’t a fan of Time. Granted Time wasn’t too fond of her either, but if they each served their purpose and kept a respectable distance there was space for both of them to thrive. There was no point in animosity between them. In the end, what was Time if not another stony meadow to clamber through; another river to ford.

The bell on her front door clambered announcing a new visitor and interrupting her musings. Belatedly, Leaf realized she had forgotten to remove the maneki from the window. The blasted thing was probably bored and amusing itself by hauling in common randos off the street.

She glanced up but saw no one over the edge of her monitor. Odd. Leaf stood up only to stop short as she saw a little girl with big brown eyes and a mouth full of braces smiling up at her.

“Hi! I’m Mabel and I wanna hire you to find a wife!”

Alright, that was definitely a new request. 

Touche maneki. Touche.

Chapter Text

“Hi! I’m Mabel and I wanna hire you to find a wife!”

Yep, she’d heard that part correctly. Leaf opened her mouth to dispel the notion that she was any sort of matchmaker but, that wasn’t entirely true, was it? She had brokered a marriage once or twice although each time it had been to people well in their nineties. Nevertheless, Leaf stood and walked around her desk to greet the new arrival and shake her hand.

“Hello Mabel, I’m Leaf and welcome to PRISM Consulting,” she replied as though she was addressing a potential customer with a legitimate request and not a child asking to find a mate. “Did you happen to lose a wife or want an entirely new one? Though, I must admit, you look a bit young to be thinking about marriage.”

“What? Ha-ha! No! It’s not for me. It’s for uh, someone else! And he’s definitely an adult. He has a beard and everything,” she said as though she were very knowledgeable on the subject.

“Ah. Well, even so, it’s considered bad form to discuss potential marriage business without at the very least having the groom present,” Leaf responded before leaning back on her desk. The child, Mabel, didn’t seem the least bit discouraged.

“That’s why I’m hiring you to come with me! You make house calls, right?” she asked and Leaf raised an eyebrow.

“Those would be doctors, Ms. Mabel, and I’m not a doctor,” Leaf squinted as though trying to parse through something hazy in her vision. “There’s also the fact that I charge an obscene amount of money by the hour.” 

“So I guess that means you won’t give us a discount? Not even for love? ”

Weirdly enough, this was not the first time she’d heard that request, albeit it had never been made by someone so young and sparkly. “‘Fraid not. It would ruin the brand.”

Mabel seemed to ponder her options before asking. “How obscene are we talking about?”

“How much you got, kid?”

Mabel dug into her pockets and emptied them onto the desk. Among the piles of glitter glue, construction paper and felt hearts there was a large clump of unicorn hair matted with what was clearly unicorn blood. Yes, that iridescent sheen was unmistakable and it was devoid of dirt or grime meaning she hadn’t found it on the ground. How had a child managed to wrangle one of those beasts? Surely not by herself.

Alright, lucky cat, I’ll bite.

Leaf took the rainbow mess of magic and gore along with the crumpled $5 bill beneath it before motioning to a nearby chair.

I suppose if I can find ethically sourced human sacrifices, a wife isn’t too much of an ask.

“Have a seat Ms. Mabel, you’ve bought yourself a consultation.”

On the surface Gravity Falls remained the same. Even after the nightmare of Weirdmaggedon, the town had moved on as though nothing strange or unusual had happened. Ford wondered if it had to do with the caliber of people in Gravity Falls or an ingrained human need to harbor in ignorance. Did a small town beget small minds or were humans genetically predisposed to crave the well worn grooves of a boring life? 

Monsters, demons, and magic had all been proven real. Yet in the aftermath of that realization everyone had collectively decided to simply pretend it never happened! At first he had understood, or at least attempted to rationalize their behavior. He didn’t expect the entire population to embrace the unknown, but to see practically all of them collectively stick their heads in the sand greatly annoyed him. 

At times he could feel his frustration reach the boiling point. More than once he’d had to fight back the impulse to throw a blunt instrument at someone or at the very least yell at them to read a book. Each time Stan shrugged it off and told him to leave things be. 

Sometimes he envied how easily Stan coped with his emotions. If his twin was ever angry, or upset, or was simply ornery, those around him seemed to shift and excuse his behavior. Yet, if Ford were to ever express such negative but entirely justified emotions, someone would inevitably end up staring at him as though he was the irrational one. Or worse, they might look at him with fear in their eyes. Everyone could tolerate a freak as long as it kept its mouth shut and behaved. And so Ford kept his thoughts to himself and said little if anything to the townsfolk.

Willful ignorance aside, Ford had noted their denial hadn’t stopped the populace from sidestepping around fairy rings, keeping out of the lake after dark, or simply not whistling back at the thing whistling in the woods. He ventured to hypothesize that this confounding oxymoron of denial and precaution was in itself an evolutionary defense mechanism etched in the human genome to keep from going mad. What did it say about him that he seemed unable to master this and the thousands of conflicting and implied quirks that comprised the human experience?

“Grunkle Ford?” Dipper’s voice cut into his thoughts and he realized he had been kneeling next to rodent imprints on a muddy trail for entirely too long.

“Yes, sorry. It appears our quarry is this way,” he pointed in a general direction through the brush.

They were hunting gnomes, or something equally small but decidedly more feral. For all their dismissal of fact, the townspeople were always keen to point them in the direction of the trouble whenever it started. There it was again. That self-preservation mechanism that kept them safe from harm all the while directing the nearest madman towards the danger.

And that was exactly what he was: A madman, trailed by a teenager armed with nothing but a leaf blower and a molecular disruptor gun on its last leg. 

This couldn’t possibly be a responsible course of action, but Ford couldn’t forbid Dipper from coming along even if he tried. It was only their second summer together which meant Dipper had been insistent on spending as much time as possible monster hunting with him. When Manly Dan had raised loudly proclaimed badgers had overrun and destroyed most of the logging equipment it had taken only a cursory glance to see animals didn’t leave little boot prints. They also didn’t have a habit of running off with diesel tanks.

“Do you really think gnomes might have done this? Why would they take the fuel tanks?” Dipper asked as he looked around for any signs around the trail.

“Hard to say with gnomes, Dipper. It could be they need it for something they’re building. They may have developed a taste for it. Or their queen just thought it’d be funny,” he stated flatly as he recalled his own encounters with the gnomes and their attempts to offer him to their queen… whatever that would’ve entailed.

They pushed through, past a few low-hanging branches but stopped short at the sight of a vast swath of destruction that suddenly appeared beyond the treeline. It looked as though that particular piece of the forest had been scraped off and taken elsewhere. Scorch marks as well as the remnants of a steel drum littered what could very well be considered a crater.

“Huh, well we found the tanks,” Dipper mentioned as he kicked a nearby charred bit of warped metal.

“Yes, this is quite unsettling. Look there, at the blast radius, do you see anything strange?” Ford asked as he brought out a notebook.

“It’s a circle.”

“Not exactly a circle, a near perfect oval, and look around. The trees around the rim of the crater aren’t damaged at all. No shrapnel, not even singed.”

“So, like a contained explosion?”

“Precisely.”

“Why would gnomes start using explosives?”

“An excellent question, although I’m not entirely sure they did this, at least not by themselves. I’d like to know how they managed such a contained radius.” 

“Magic?” Dipper ventured a guess, “Do gnomes even have magic?”

“The best way to find out is to ask them, but that poses the task of conducting an inquiry with a heavily armed and possibly agitated subject.” Ford reached into his coat and brought out a GPS tracker, one of the few bits of modern technology he had actually grown fond of. He marked and saved the crater's coordinates so that he might return for further analysis later.

Dipper spotted that the trail picked up again on the far side of the blast zone. The broken twigs and odd scuff on the ground weren’t unusual but the deep grooves on the tree bark certainly were. The more they followed the path, the more disjointed and chaotic it became. 

Ford knelt and found bite marks on a low bush. Either the gnomes had gone rabbid or killbillies were roving further down the mountain than before. Regardless, they were not properly armed to face whatever lay at the end of this trail. It might be a good time to retreat and regroup.

“I think we should-” Ford’s words were cut off by the sound of a rustle in the undergrowth. He reached to grip his gun while pulling Dipper behind him in a single fluid motion ready to confront the danger. 

A lone gnome burst out from a clump of sedges. His clothes were tattered and his face was covered in blue war paint. The feral gnome bared oddly jagged teeth as it snarled at the intruders. It was only because of the pointed hat -still intact and attached to his head- that Ford could tell that he was and still might be a variation of gnome.

“Whoa! He looks… different,” Dipper said, raising an eyebrow at the strange display.

Ford released the grip on his gun and instead grabbed a net. If he could trap one of the anomalies he could run some tests in his lab to see what exactly was wrong with them. 

“Stand back, Dipper. We don’t know what’s wrong with it or if it’s in any way contagious. Luckily this one appears to be a straggler so it won’t be much of a threat as long as we’re careful.”

The gnome glared at them with bloodshot eyes before throwing his head back and giving a piercing shriek.

“...unless it does that…”

“Grunkle Ford?”

The ground shook as a dust cloud appeared in the distance. Dipper started up the leaf-blower but Ford noted the entire forest seemed to be crawling with feral gnomes all of them heading towards a single location: their location.

“Dipper, run!” he yelled before shooting at the base of a few trees causing them to topple and form an obstacle. It did little to stem the rush as the two would-be monster hunters fled back the way they came.

“They’re getting closer!” Dipper yelled as he used his leaf blower to push back a smattering of the little beasts who had gotten too close.

“This way!” he grabbed Dipper’s wrist and veered off the path. Low branches and sharp brambles clawed at them as they pushed through the woods before they slid down a steep incline and bolted towards a meadow. At its center was a collection of broken stones forming a rough circle. “There they are! Protection stones! If we can get into that ring I can activate them to form a shield. I just need-”

They skidded to a halt as small pointed hats rose up from the tall grass and cut off their path. Dipper revved the leaf blower but no sooner did he blow a handful away when more leapt out. Ford looked around them and noticed a familiar face albeit with a jagged beard and reddened eyes.

“Shmebulock…” it growled

“There's too many of them! They’re everywhere! W-why do they look like that?!” 

“Dipper, get behind me,” Ford ordered as he unholstered his gun and pointed it at the gathering mob although he knew it was a moot point. They were surrounded and therefore they were going to have to fight their way out. Ford braced himself. “This is going to be unpleasant.”

“So then Wendy wasn’t home, Grenda went to drop off Marius at the airport, and Candy is going to be the flower girl in her cousin’s wedding so she has dress fittings today and then after they were all going to go get their hair and nails done which sounded AMAZING but since her cousin was paying for everything we didn’t feel like it would be okay for me to just show up without an invitation-” Mabel’s voice echoed through the woods as she led Leaf towards the gnome’s den.

They had been walking for quite some time and Leaf was glad she had been mindful enough to slip on a pair of sneakers before following Mabel into the woods behind her office. She kept an eye on her phone, snapping pictures and scanning the surroundings for any sign of feral anomalies. Every so often she would find something interesting, place it in a sample jar, and then tuck it away into her messenger bag: a sprig of blue winter speedwell blossoms, a few fiddlehead ferns, a piece of quartz in the shape of a perfectly isosceles triangle. 

By then, her guide was five minutes into explaining seating arrangement etiquette and the virtues of finding the perfect match. For her part, Leaf enjoyed listening to Mabel provide a detailed account of her morning. Listening had always come easy to her, it absolved her from having to actually formulate topics to talk about while at the same time making the speaker feel content with the exchange. It didn’t hurt that Mabel’s rambles actually provided context to the town and her current objective.

“-that’s when Dipper and great uncle Ford decided to check it out. I kept telling them I could help but…” Mabel’s words trailed off.

The abrupt silence made Leaf stop and look at Mabel. “Something the matter?”

“Nah, it’s alright. It’s just that- do you ever get a weird feeling, like someone doesn’t take you seriously?” she asked, “I love grunkle Ford, but when he’s around Dipper they both nerd out at each other and don’t care about what anyone else thinks. I tried to tell him about the gnome queen and do you know what he did? He just said ‘that’s nice, I’ll see your drawing later’ and walked away. So they ran off to investigate and left me behind to go buy snacks or whatever! I get it, Dipper is like his apprentice, but sometimes I wonder if he even likes me.”

Leaf mulled the question and noted the distress in her voice. Teaching Mabel about The Patriarchy TM hadn’t exactly been part of the agreement but it had to be a crime for a child to have such sad eyes. Ah there it was, her mortal weakness: Leaf never could stand to see a kid genuinely upset. 

“That is quite a conundrum you got there. You know Mabel, there’s going to be a lot of people who are going to underestimate you because you look small and cute. Speaking from experience, that’s a blessing and a curse. After a while, it starts to become infuriating, but since he’s your uncle I’m not going to suggest you resort to homicide just yet.” That part at least got a laugh from Mabel. “Hey, I’m on the clock, so legal suggestions only. How about we knock this out and then you can rub it in their faces.”

Mabel’s smile widened. “I knew it was a good idea to hire you.”

“I aim to please, boss,” she grinned before checking her phone and watching the readings flicker once more. “Hm. Odd.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Probably just magnetic interference but I’m picking up some weird energy readings. It’s like something’s warping the signal.”

“Could be the gnomes nearby.”

“Could be, if they got really weird, really fast…” 

…and turned into a manic triangle that started punching dimensional tears left and right.  

Mabel’s attention shifted elsewhere but Leaf couldn’t help but notice how she walked directly south, as though to avoid something lying dormant in the woods. There it was again; that same unspoken horror that invoked the phrase ‘never mind all that’. This would require a private excursion for a later date.

“So we go to the gnome tree. We find Jeff. What happens then?” Mabel asked.

“Ideally, remain unseen, snap a picture, upload it to the Cinder app, and wait for a hit.”

“The Cinder app on your phone.”

“Yes.”

“But how do the girls in the Cinder app find out where Jeff lives?”

“Usually through cyber stalking his social media,” Leaf muttered under her breath as they climbed a sloping hill, “but for today’s purposes, I’ll be turning on the location feature.”

“And then what happens?”

“The usual. Gnome meets girl… they sort out the hierarchy and by tomorrow they have a new queen.”

“What if we don’t find someone?”

“Highly unlikely.”

“But what if we don’t! Is there a Plan B? We don’t have any weapons. Should we have brought weapons?”

Leaf fought the urge to smile. “We don’t need weapons. They’re gnomes, Mabel. The last thing we want is to hurt them.”

“I still think we should have a Plan B.”

“Okay, well if no one else steps up, looks like one of us is getting married,” Leaf teased.

“What?! Ew! Gross!”

Leaf laughed at the immediate reaction. “Relax, boss. Even if they’ve gotten a bit spicy , they’re still just a bunch of little guys. What’s the worst thing they could possibly do?”

This was perhaps the worst thing that Ford had ever encountered… barring the thirty years drifting between dimensions and Weirdmaggedon itself. Still, out of all of the anomalies he had categorized on Earth, this was the first time he had found himself severely unprepared. After everything he’d done, everything he’d been through, who would have thought gnomes would be the end of him?

Ford had expected to be torn to pieces and he had fought as best he could. However, using a molecular disruptor on gnomes was about as effective as using a sledgehammer to abolish a swarm of mosquitoes. Eventually, they had overwhelmed and pummeled him with some variation of fairy dust until he blacked out. 

When he awoke, Ford found himself inside a cage, his wrists and legs bound tightly as the acrid scent of burning wood tinged the air. His pulse raced as the binds cut into his wrists. He could see very little from this vantage point save for the fact that the skies had become an ominous red. Dipper lay slumped against his back distressingly still.

“Dipper. Dipper, wake up!” he called out and for a few brief moments he feared the worst until his nephew shifted. Relief flooded his thoughts. “Are you hurt?”

Dipper groaned in response. “Grunkle Ford… I can’t move… what happened?”

“The gnomes sedated us and dragged us back to their den.”

Ford felt Dipper flinch as he no doubt noticed they were being held at the base of a gigantic pile of bones cobbled together to form a throne. Or at least, that’s what it looked like at first glance. The gnomes -if they could still be called such a thing- had apparently developed a taste for larger prey. Ford hoped to be long-gone before  they became too adventurous with their diet.

“The gnome tree looks different,” Dipper stated flatly and devoid of immediate panic, unlike Ford who felt as though he were moments away from hyperventilating. 

No matter how many times he tried to ignore it, the echoes of the previous year kept gnawing at him. He attempted to mentally talk himself off the ledge. Surely he could crush the growing panic under a wall of cold logic. 

The sky was crimson because of a sunset. 

The binds were tight but not the intangible conjurings of a mad god. 

There were no golden eyes within the shadows. 

There was no mocking laughter echoing around him. 

It was all in his head. 

Bill was gone.

“I’m going to move and I want you to try and get the knife in my coat pocket,” he said through clenched teeth as he fought the irrational dread flooding his senses.

He needed to focus on something, anything, before he lost control. The gruesome throne beyond the bars of their prison monopolized their line of sight and Ford latched onto the construct. What did it mean when relatively peaceful gnomes suddenly became viciously carnivorous? They had always been opportunistic predators, but their kills were usually small prey animals, birds, mice and the like. This felt almost sinister. What pushed them to kill larger beasts and then erect this monstrosity with their remains? 

At least he didn’t spot any human skeletons amidst the debris. In fact, there were several pieces that only somewhat resembled femurs and skulls. His gaze narrowed as he spotted a garden rake trussed up and made to look like a skeletal claw. The more he studied the display, the more Ford understood that they had built a throne of bones and things that merely resembled bones.

The realization wasn’t exactly comforting but it gave Ford something to hope for. Perhaps the gnomes weren’t too far gone after all. Perhaps this was simply their first clumsy attempt at viciousness.

“Well look who the barf fairy dragged in?” Jeff appeared atop the throne as the rest of his swarm crept out from the shadows. “You two have some real nerve showing your faces out here after the mess you left behind.”

“You must be Jeff,” Ford glowered glad to have found a target for his actions. “I demand to speak to your queen.”

“Ha! There are no queens here, big guy. Just one king and you’re lookin’ at him!”

“What do you mean you have no queen?” Ford demanded. “What did you do to her?”

“Ha! That's yesterday's news old man! The old queen got done in by a badger going on a year now,” Jeff smiled as he picked up a wooden scepter carved to look like a poorly proportioned skull.

“Yeah… Mabel might have mentioned that,” Dipper mumbled as he tried his best to not look like he was rummaging through his uncle’s coat.

“Eh, who needs ‘em. We’ve been taking care of ourselves just fine! Turns out we like having a bachelor pad, isn’t that right guys?” Jeff called out to the others who grunted in approval. “The only downside is we gotta take turns cooking. Good thing you stopped by, we were just about out of options!”

“You’re going to eat us?” Dipper yelped, causing the gnomes to cheer.

“Have you gone completely insane?” Ford yelled over the din.

“Yeah and whose fault is that, Mr. Odd-pocalypse? You Pines broke the world and left us holding the bag!” Jeff yelled as he jabbed his scepter at the two. “But hey, we managed without you. We got along fine! We fixed everything you broke! We're not even mad about it, right boys?”

The other gnomes grumbled in response.

“See? No hard feelings!” Jeff gave them a toothy smile before turning to the throng of gnomes, “Chuck ‘em in the pit!”

“You said there were no hard feelings!” Dipper protested as the gnomes stacked themselves into a gargantuan form and lifted the cage before carrying them towards a massive fire pit

“Nothing personal, kid, but gnomes gotta eat. We've never had human before, but you know what they say: you gotta try everything at least once!”

“Grunkle Ford!”

“The knife, Dipper!” 

He could feel Dipper frantically tugging on his coat followed by a distinct metallic clatter. “Oh no… oh nonono! Grunkle Ford I’m sorry… I…”

Ford felt as though someone had knocked the air out of him. The knife glistened just beyond their grasp as though mocking them as they were carried to their doom. On the other side of the ‘throne’ was a hole scooped out of the earth and filled with crackling flames.

“It’s okay, Dipper. It’s going to be okay,” he repeated the lie as though it would somehow make it true. In reality, Ford’s mind was a haze of static. He felt like a dumb animal, too stupid and terrified to think of a way out. He should have told Stan where they were going. He should have brought more weapons. He should have been firm and forbidden his nephew from following him.

As he felt the heat of the pit a single thought pierced through the stunned panic.

We’re going to die.

Chapter Text

“It’s okay, Dipper. It’s going to be okay,” he repeated the lie as though it would somehow make it true. In reality, Ford’s mind was a haze of static. He felt like a dumb animal, too stupid and terrified to think of a way out. He should have told Stan where they were going. He should have brought more weapons. He should have been firm and forbidden his nephew from following him.

As he felt the heat of the pit a single thought pierced through the stunned panic.

We’re going to die.

“FIRE IN THE HOLE!” Mabel’s voice echoed through the field followed by a muffled thunk. Smoking canisters punched holes into the gnome amalgamate. They burst and filled the air with… the scent of apple pie?

The dissonance jarred Ford’s thought process more than the crash of the cage as they were dropped. Ford lost what little balance he had and landed hard. The plate in his head gave a loud metallic clang against the bars, but thankfully the cage was still a ways away from the fiery maw.

Not dead. Not yet.

He looked around to see the gnomes had collapsed into a pile as though stunned. Their reddened eyes were open wide with dark, dilated pupils and their tiny limbs twitched as though seizing. He twisted around and spotted Mabel atop a tree holding a pair of binoculars and plastic wand with a very gaudy star on the tip. Below her, at the base of the trunk was some sort of secretary(?) in a pencil skirt, cardigan, and lilac tinted glasses grasping what appeared to be a small rocket launcher.

“There’s more there on the left!” Mabel pointed the wand at their targets while the strange woman reloaded and took aim. “Ready? FIRE IN THE HOLE! I love saying that! I’m going to use that for everything now!”

More of the gas canisters rained down on the gnomes and the frenzied snarls finally ceased. Mabel slid down from her perch and high-fived the stranger before the latter slung the weapon over her shoulder as though it were a backpack. The spiced, warm scent of apple and cinnamon wafted over the sea of pointed hats as the pair picked their way down into the chaos.

“So this is, what? Plan D?” Mabel asked as she made grabby hands at the woman only to be rewarded with a white sticky note.

“Nowhere near that bad. I’d put it at A.6,” came the woman’s prim response as she nudged the gnomes out of her path with the tip of her shoe. Mabel laughed before scurrying to the fallen cage.

“Dipper! Grunkle Ford! Did you see us? How awesome was that?!”

“Mabel be careful! The gnomes have gone crazy!” Dipper called out a warning.

“Whaaat? These little guys? They’re just hormonal,” Mabel dismissed his warning and tossed aside a stunned gnome with a grin before taking the sticky note and slapping it on the cage. “Bap!”

Ford stared in amazement as the paper blackened and curled before melting the bars off in a perfect circle.

“What was that?” Dipper asked as Mabel busied herself untying the two.

“Magic!” Mabel beamed as she stepped back and gave jazz hands. 

Ford rubbed his wrists as the ropes fell away. “Who’s your friend, Mabel?”

“Oh right! Guys, I want you to meet Leaf, she’s a professional!”

“A professional what?” Dipper asked skeptically.

“Consultant!” Mabel grinned.

Ford watched as the woman grabbed a nearby gnome and gave him a scan with a hand-held instrument before tossing him over her shoulder only to repeat the process with another gnome. Judging by her attire, she looked as though she would be better suited behind a desk. However, there were little incongruities to her appearance that made her seem a tad bit off. There were the lilac lensed glasses for one, her right hand had a white glove etched with strange symbols that flickered in absence of light, and then there was her hair. 

It seemed normal at first: a jet-black mass pulled into an uncreative loose bun, the type sported by receptionists and bank tellers alike. However, the longer he stared at it, the more he was certain it was absorbing the entire visible spectrum of light and reflecting nothing in return. It stood out like an unsettling rip in the fabric of space. As his mind wrapped itself around what he was seeing, the color sort of changed and became an unimpressive dull black. 

He blinked and shook his head. Spotty vision was a symptom of a concussion, wasn’t it? Perhaps he was seeing things. Then again, she seemed to have too much information for an average human. If that was her classification at all. Which brought up yet another distressing point: What exactly was she? 

She didn’t have the tell-tale shimmer of glamour that anomalies used to hide their true forms. Other than the slight oddities in her apparel, she looked human. No pointed teeth, no blunted claws, no weird pupils, or at least nothing noticeable. Maybe she was using a yet uncataloged type of illusion. She could be a new type of entity, or a witch.

He emerged from the cage and stood up only for the world to spin around him. 

Or maybe I really do have a concussion.

“That’s a lot of dead gnomes,” Dipper mumbled, cutting off Ford’s thoughts and redirecting his attention to the piles of bodies around them. The growls had fallen silent and now only the crackling of flames and the fading hiss of the gas echoed around them.

“Add accessory to gnomicide to my list of crimes,” Ford muttered and blinked as the woozy feeling refused to fully subside.

“They’re stunned, not dead, and pretty soon they’re going to be very unpleasant to be around,” Leaf corrected them as she finished her scanning. “Mabel, grab your boys and get out of here.”

“Wait, aren’t you coming with us?” Mabel asked with concern.

“Nope. I still have to snap that picture, remember?” Leaf grabbed something from her bag that extended into a baton with a sharp snap. “I need you to get back on higher ground and book it if you see them getting too rowdy.”

“Whatever it is you’re doing. W-we can help!” Dipper protested. 

“No, your uncle is hurt, the best thing for you to do now is retreat,” Leaf said in a no-nonsense tone.

“Grunkle Ford, you’re bleeding!” Mabel gasped and only then did Ford realize something warm was dripping down the side of his face. He attempted to wipe it off and his gloves came away red.

“It’s just a bump,” he reassured her, all the while reluctant to admit that the newcomer was right. “It’s nothing to be concerned about. Whatever you’ve got planned, we can handle it.”

Leaf then spun around and turned to face him. It took all of Ford’s willpower not to look away from her intense stare which felt as though he were being scrutinized under a microscope. After a disconcerting amount of seconds, she seemed satisfied with her analysis and broke visual contact.

“Listen, I don’t know what you think is happening, but this is not what we would call a ‘winnable’ fight. It’s a ‘don’t die’ and ‘don’t lose any limbs’ type of situation, okay? Now I’ve got just enough rounds left to get one more chance at this but I can’t do my job and look after you at the same time,” she informed him.

“I assure you I have faced far worse-” Ford objected.

“There are children in this situation and I want you to really think about the implications of what you are about to say to me right now.”

Ford’s mouth opened and closed in pure outrage as his hackles rose. This person, this ameteur was attempting to lecture him about his family’s safety! He had forgotten more about strange and dangerous anomalies than this woman could ever begin to comprehend. How dare she insinuate that he didn’t understand the situation they found themselves in!

“We are more than capable of taking care of ourselves now that we are fully aware of the dangers,” Ford bit back angrily, “now you can tell us what you’re planning, or you can get out of our way.”

“You’re not even armed,” Leaf pointed out while raising an unimpressed eyebrow. The assessment fell like a bucket of ice water on him. 

She couldn't possibly know his gun and knife lay somewhere beneath the pile of stunned gnomes. Perhaps she simply assumed he had stumbled blindly into the woods without a lick of preparation! Maybe he didn't have a weapon per se, but he still had his fists and his wits and… and… half a bag of jellybeans somewhere in his coat pockets.

“We still want to help,” Dipper frowned, “I lost the leaf blower and the whistle, but there’s got to be something else I can do.”

"I'm with Dipped and Grunkle Ford! We're not running away!" Mabel declared loudly.

"This is a bad idea," Leaf stated in her best client management tone.

"As your boss, I insist you bring us along!" she grinned with her hands on her hips.

Leaf gave a long suffering sigh but tossed Mabel the launcher and a cluster of canisters. She then reached into her messenger bag and brought out a pad of sticky notes. Each square of paper had writing scrawled in iridescent ink. Mabel squeaked and made grabby hands at them only for Leaf to hold them up out of her grasp.

“I mean it. If it gets bad, you run,” she then handed it to Dipper. “This is a deton-it pad to use as a last resort. These are on a five second timer. Tear them off one at a time. Upside-down for explosion, right-side up for implosion. For use on inanimate objects only. Do not stack them or you might create a black hole and I don’t need that on my record… again.”

“No fair,” Mabel pouted.

“What happens if they’re stuck on sideways?” Dipper asked as he stared at the pad curiously.

“Wild-card. But also don’t do that, it confuses them and they’ll stop working if they get too annoyed.”

“Wait, are these alive?” Dipper asked but Leaf had already turned to go.

“Yes, no. Maybe. Ish. Definitely ishy. Less talky, more walky,” she called out over her shoulder. “If you’re going to tag along, keep up.”

Mabel cheerfully shouldered the cluster of ammo before quickly scampering after Leaf. Ford reluctantly followed so as to keep a watchful eye on his niblings and not because his head was throbbing in pain and he had no better plan. He noticed Dipper was carefully studying the paper slips he had been given as though trying to decipher their meaning.

“Dipper my boy, may I see those?” Ford asked as he stayed back and out of the stranger’s earshot.

“I was trying to see how they work, but they just look like glittery scribbles on paper,” Dipper said before handing them over.

“They’re magic,” Mabel whispered dramatically.

“Vellum actually,” Ford corrected her as he studied the pad, “the ink itself is displaying unusual properties. Where did you meet your new friend?”

“Oh, I hired her in town. She just opened an office in the old building next to the taco place!”

“You just randomly hired her?” Dipper asked.

“Yes! The sign on her window said ‘problem solver’ and we had a huge problem.”

“Did she say what her qualifications were?” Ford asked as he gave the sticky notes back to Dipper. Something about this didn’t add up, and he so hated to be in the dark. It wouldn’t be the first time another monster-hunter came to Gravity Falls, but there was something not quite right about this one.

“Oh here! She gave me her card!” Mabel dug into her pocket before offering a glossy black card to Ford.

His distaste only grew as he saw the corporate logo and he had to stifle a groan. She wasn’t just another monster hunter, she was far worse: a corporate gun for hire.

Oh he’d dealt with her type before. They were all the same: full of arrogance and greed, lacking any scruples or integrity. They over-promised, under-delivered, and kept stringing people along for as long as the checks kept rolling in. Every scientific discovery ever made was corroded the moment these consultants sank their claws in and tore it to easily marketable chunks. What they lacked in imagination, they more than made up for in ruthless greed.

This woman was a scam artist at best and a vulture looking for a corpse to pickover at worst. She didn’t care about the noble virtues of scholarly pursuit. She didn't care about the wellbeing of the local ecosystem. Even a treasure hunter was better than one of these soulless vipers devoid of any sense of wonder.

“Mabel, what did you promise her?” Ford asked.

“Nothing! I paid her five bucks and some unicorn hair and we’re gonna work out the rest later.”

“Mabel!” Dipper yelped as though struck.

“What?! She guaranteed results!”

“You can’t just go around promising vague things to strangers!” her brother exclaimed. “What if she wants your soul or your eyes or your eyes' souls?!”

“Dipper, please. Leaf has a cute office with a desk, and business cards. She isn’t some creepy hand witch selling fake watches, she’s a pro!” 

“I’m sure that’s what she said, but I wouldn’t take a consultant’s word on matters of expertise,” Ford glared at Leaf’s general direction. “You didn’t sign anything did you, Mabel dear?”

“No, we just shook on it.”

He flinched and clenched his jaw to keep from saying something crass. It wasn’t Mabel’s fault she was so trusting and the world so unkind. It wasn’t her fault that Gravity Falls chose to attract the worst of this dimension’s beings. One thing was certain, he would protect Mabel from all of them to his last breath.

“Grunkle Ford, is something wrong?” her small, worried voice forced him to be civil.

It’s too early to tell.

“No, I’m sure you’re right, my dear. Ms. Leaf just may be one of the only honest ones, but when it comes to payment, let me do the talking,” he reassured her. This was doing little to soothe his migraine.

“You know I can hear you,” Leaf called out as she stood a good ten feet away on the far side of the fiery pit. The three of them flinched before following after her.

Leaf wished they'd taken her advice and left when she'd asked them to. It was easier to be reckless if she didn’t have to babysit two kids and a guy she was pretty sure had broken his fall with his entire skull. She also didn’t know whose brilliant idea it had been to go gnome hunting, but somehow she doubted getting broiled alive in a cage had been a part of it. 

Typical weekend monster chasers. They stumbled into the woods without a manual or proper training and always ended up as something’s dinner. They never knew when to leave well enough alone. It was always ‘lets capture Bigfoot’ and never ‘lets make sure we are capable of grappling with the ramifications of capturing Bigfoot’. Surely there were easier ways to get killed.

Leaf carefully picked her way around the pile of bones searching for Jeff. Her movements were wary as she listened for anything amiss. If he truly believed himself to be the Gnome King, Jeff wouldn’t be stunned by the volley of canisters. If he was smart enough to attempt a coup, he was smart enough to run and hide the moment things didn't go according to plan. No, this little creep was lying in wait, ready to ambush her the moment she showed weakness.

The whispering behind her continued much to her irritation. She didn't care what they thought or said about her. Gossip and distrust was par for the course. However, they were so caught up in their little murmurings they failed to pay attention to their surroundings. They were going to get mauled and she was as of yet unsure if she felt like stopping it from happening. A good mauling could be a valuable learning experience.

“If I were a little maniac, where would I hide…” she muttered under her breath.

Emphasis on the word ‘little’.

She stared at the giant pile of bones and her gaze unfocused. Her eyes shimmered indigo as they peered into the realm of possibility. Bits and pieces of litter became clear and revealed her target. She saw flickers, echoes of what could be. Yes, there was Jeff still perched up there and about to pounce on Ford- no… on Dipper . She supposed it wouldn’t be sporting to let the kid get his eyes clawed out.

Her leather glove creaked as she tightened her grip on the baton. Writing flickered over the metal rod as she lifted it over her head before it came down with a deafening crack. Bones and wood shattered on contact, causing the throne to sag, before collapsing in an avalanche. The collection of garbage spilled over the fiery lip of the pit and smothered the flames. It was enough to cause Jeff to lose his footing and tumble down atop the rubble.

“My throne! You wrecked my throne!” Jeff wailed.

“Hello, you must be Jeff! I’m glad I could finally get your attention!” she smiled brightly.

“You’re gonna regret that! Gnome Army! Get her!” he snarled dramatically but then nothing happened. “D’you… d’you hear me? I said get her! Hello! Gnome army?!”

“Sorry Jeff, I think you’ve had enough alone time with the boys,” Leaf smiled as she used her nightstick as a golf club to knock a few bones out of the way and into the now extinguished fire pit.

“You, who are you? How do you know my name? Are you- are you challenging me?!”

“Ew. No. I’m just here to facilitate the transition of power. Now smile, big guy!” she grinned and brought out her phone to snap a picture.

Jeff looked surprised before turning to glare at the Pines. “Really guys? You brought in a broker? What’s the matter, too afraid to fight your own fights?”

Ford raised an eyebrow and gave a shrug which somehow managed to enrage Jeff all the more.

“Alright, how much are they paying you?” the would-be gnome king asked.

“Aw, Jeff, you know the rules. Confidentiality clauses being what they are,” she booped his nose with the tip of her baton, “I could lose my license. Then there’s all the paperwork…”

“Don’t toy with me, Dealer! ”

“Dealer? I hardly know her!” Leaf replied before twirling her nightstick and resting it over her shoulders like a yoke. “Thank you, thank you I’ll be here all night!”

Jeff seemed unimpressed as he clambered atop the remains of his bone pile and tried to stand at her eye level. “Very funny. Enough games. Which one are you? Why are you really here, Dealer? You big shots are too busy running the world to be caught out here in the middle of nowhere!” 

“Y’know, since I’ve gone freelance, I prefer the term ‘Consultant’. It’s got a nice vague ring to it, wouldn’t you say?”

Jeff blinked before making a face.

“Oh great, figures you’d be that one. You’re a long ways from home sweetheart, and about two weeks too late. We already took care of it ourselves.” 

“Now that part is negligible. I’ve seen your work, it’s messy. Not enough form to the function.”

“I’m not going to sit here and take criticism from the likes of you!” He then paused as though suddenly struck with inspiration before giving a toothy smile. “Hey, so if you’re not a Dealer anymore, I’m betting you didn’t make a deal with the Pines to stop me.”

“Not in so many words, no.”

“Good! That means you can walk away! Whatever it is they’re paying you, I’ll double it! Triple it even! I got my hands on some top tier Atrophides. Great source, 100% pure. It’ll have you seeing pixies for days,” Jeff smirked.

“Now where did you get your tiny little hands on something like that?” she asked, tilting her head curiously. That had been a restricted substance for the greater part of a century. The fissures were off limits unless… “Who’s your source?”

“Ah-ah, trade secret!” Jeff tutted, “Although, I might be convinced to share if you felt up to a little deal on the side.”

He extended his hand to her, wiggling his fingers at her.

“Hey! Stop trying to bribe my consultant!” Mabel yelled as she stomped up to Jeff, “She’s mine. I saw her first!”

“You don’t own her!” Jeff yelled even louder. 

Just as it looked like they were going to come to blows, Leaf’s phone pinged. “Well this has been fun, but I’m going to have to decline your offer.”

“What? Why?!” the mad gnome demanded.

“I can’t switch sides half way through the job. It’s bad for the brand,” she replied offhandedly, “and besides a better offer just cropped up.”

“Oh, I see, you’re gonna fight dirty. Joke’s on you, I can fight dirty too!” Jeff lunged at Leaf.

She gave him a bright smile as she raised her white-gloved hand and snapped her fingers. The sound was crisp, sharp, and about as loud as a gunshot. Time stopped and all the color drained from the world. Jeff remained fixed as though suspended in amber mid-lunge. Leaf’s impish grin remained and she flicked the frozen gnome’s nose.

“Not nearly as vicious now, are you?” she chuckled to herself.

“WHAT THE HECK IS HAPPENING?!” Leaf jolted in surprise as Dipper all but shrieked next to her. 

“F-rack’s sake kid, don’t scare me like that!” Leaf yelped only barely catching herself from swearing at a minor. She looked down at the teen who was on the verge of a nervous breakdown only to then notice that his uncle didn’t look too far behind. Her eyes narrowed curiously as they remained stubbornly mobile.

“Huh, that’s weird. Usually stray parties don’t get pulled into Negotiation Space,” she observed.

“WHO ARE YOU? ARE YOU A DEMON?! GREAT UNCLE FORD IS SHE-? IS IT HIM ?!” Dipper stammered and even Mabel was backing away slowly.

Ho boy…  

She didn’t have time for hysterics and showing up disorganized to a meeting was a sure way to get your ass handed to you at the negotiation table. 

“Listen kiddo, I don’t know why you’re still moving, but going off like that is going to spook my client. So I’m going to need you all to get real cool with a bunch of stuff reeeally quickly.” 

“I thought I was your client,” Mabel frowned.

“I KNEW IT! WHO ARE YOU WORKING FOR REALLY?!” Dipper had retrieved a stick and was brandishing it at her.

Leaf took a deep cleansing breath and closed her eyes lest she do something unprofessional and end up convicted of witchcraft. Again. People had stopped burning witches at the stake, right? Surely the worst they could do was a river dunking… or they could crush her with boulders. That was marginally better. 

The clock is ticking…

“Okay. Let's go with the abridged version: Hi I’m Leaf Cafrune. I am a consultant to humans but my official title with these creatures is ‘Dealer’. I make deals, it’s in the name, they’re not very creative for this sort of thing. This right here is a run-of-the-mill Negotiation Bubble, it helps hash out the details in a temporally suspended environment. You weren’t supposed to get dragged in but you did. So I need you to behave less like neolithic apes and a little more like civilized creatures. If you do that for me, I promise I’ll answer any questions you may have after we’re done here, deal?”

“I-I guess-?” Dipper lowered the stick.

“Good! Now just stand there and don’t say anything that might get your teeth confiscated.”

Mabel squeaked and covered her mouth with both her hands. Dipper was staring at her as though she were about to rip out his heart and Ford’s looked as though he were one misplaced word away from erupting.

Okay, not doing so hot here…

Before she could reassure them that they were in (almost) no danger, she was interrupted by a loud booming voice. 

“DO YOU WISH… TO INITIATE… DIALOGUE?”

The voice echoed all around, and reverberated as though composed of multiple creatures speaking as one. 

"Ah!" the Pines yelped and ducked as though dodging an attack and preparing to lash out.

Leaf lifted an eyebrow at them. The screaming she had come to expect. The balled up fists and picking up debris as weapons was new. Just who were these people?

She filed that away for later examination. After a beat, she straightened and collapsed her baton before smoothing the wrinkles in her skirt. From the depths of her bag she brought out a compact and took a moment to retouch her make-up as something shimmered in the air expectantly. She closed the mirrored case with a sharp click and made eye contact with the Pines family hoping to get her point across by making a shushing motion.

“Please and thank you, Chess,” Leaf responded to the disembodied voice in a sweet tone. The three disturbed humans seemed momentarily appeased or at the very least spooked into obedience.

She took another deep breath centering her thoughts all the while hoping the Pines didn’t do anything particularly barbaric. Homo Sapiens could be so savage when encountering the unknown. After a beat the voice boomed once again.

“DIALOGUE… INITIATED.”

There was a flash of light and a small female gnome appeared at the center of the bubble. Other than the usual pointed hat, she was quite different from the feral specimens they had encountered that day. Her body seemed softer, more graceful than the males and she was smaller. Piercing green eyes gave Leaf a once over before she tossed her auburn braid back over her shoulder seemingly satisfied with what she saw. Her outfit was unusual, white boots with matching gloves that peeked out of an impeccable sky blue pea-coat.

“That’s an interesting look for June weather,” Ford mused and seemed to instantly regret it once the little gnome turned to scrutinize him.

“Bold words from a man wearing a frayed turtleneck and a dirty trench coat,” she responded with a haughty sniff. “This is Peruvian wool.”

“You came all the way from Peru?” Mabel piped up. “Is that where your family is from? It’s winter down there right?”

Leaf cleared her throat loudly and Mabel fell silent. Apparently this lot were terrified, but not terrified enough to follow directions. She didn’t know if that was a good thing.

“You must forgive my interns, they’re new,” Leaf said motioning to a pair of chairs and table that had not been there a few moments ago, “shall we, miss…?”

“April.”

“Miss April, can I get you something to drink?” Leaf asked.

“Honeysuckle, straight.”

“Ah a woman after my own heart…”

Ford looked at the female gnome ( Gnomette? Gnomaiden? ). She seemed rather calm considering the chaos she was about to dive into. He made mental notes as he studied both her and Leaf. It was difficult to focus on gnome sexual dimorphism when he had just witnessed massively overpowered anomaly, quite possibly category eight or higher. 

His gaze flickered to the strange spiral pattern etched beneath their feet. It seemed to have been branded onto the ground itself. Was it a result of this so-called Negotiation Space or something more sinister? 

A Dealer. She had called herself a Dealer. Someone who made deals. She was right, it wasn’t a creative name. Then again, how much of that was true and how much of it was some elaborate lie?

There were too many questions pending, questions that she promised to answer or perhaps lie her way through. And then there was the casual flippancy of it all, the Cheshire smiles that didn’t quite reach her eyes, and the sense that she was already twelve steps ahead. Her motivations might be different, but the methods had a sickening familiarity to it. All she needed was a top hat.

He watched as Leaf smiled and flattered and chatted with April regarding the ‘wonderful opportunity’ she had available. A bottle filled with an amber liquid had materialized out of nothing and poured itself out into a crystal tumbler that had folded itself into existence like a clever bit of origami. 

How many equally ephemeral cups of tea had he shared with a demon long ago over games of chess…

“What is she doing?” Ford hissed under his breath, not liking the exchange one bit.

“I think… she’s still doing the plan,” Mabel said quietly.

“What plan? The one where she rips out our brains and wears our bodies as meat suits?!” Dipper protested in a harsh whisper.

“Dipper, she isn’t evil.”

“And how would you know that, Mabel? You just met her like five minutes ago!”

“So did you! What makes you an expert on this all of a sudden?” Mabel said.

“This whole thing stinks of Bill! I can’t believe you’re not freaked out about this!”

“Bill is gone, Dipper. You saw him, we all saw him turn into that statue. He’s gone for good, right Grunkle Ford?”

Ford blinked owlishly before clearing his throat. “Yes. Of course. He was trapped within Stan’s mind and when it was wiped everything it contained was erased from existence. Therefore logically, Bill was erased from existence.”

Ford noted how Dipper squinted as though sensing something off about the way he said ‘logically’.

“Even so, I would be careful putting too much trust in someone we’ve just met. Bill may be gone, but he’s far from the only dangerous creature in the multiverse,” Ford clarified. 

“See, Mabel? For all we know, she’s the reason the gnomes went crazy. We should be freeing them from her control or-or finding a cure for whatever she infected them with!”

“Will you listen to me for once?” Mabel said with a frustrated sigh and crossed her arms, “They’re not sick, Dipper. They’re lonely. It even said so in your stupid journal which you didn’t even bother to check. They’re going crazy ‘cos they haven’t had a queen in forever and it’s making them act cuckoo bananas.” 

“That’s not… that’s…” Dipper stammered as though caught making a mistake, “well, why didn’t you say anything?”

“I tried to tell you this morning but you were so caught up with your nerd things you ignored me. I tried to tell Grunkle Ford and he ignored me,” Mabel huffed although there was something in the way she stood that made it apparent she was more hurt than angry. “When you guys get together you act like nobody else has anything important to say. And yeah, I don’t love how this looks either but Leaf heard me out instead of just patting my head and saying ‘that’s nice’. At least she's trying to help.”

There was a long awkward silence as both Ford and Dipper looked away sheepishly. Stan always said Ford had to be the dumbest genius he knew. At times Ford was tempted to point out that Stan knew very few if any other geniuses at all so the data subset was bound to be unusable for comparison purposes. However, standing here in front of his very upset and frustrated niece, he had to admit that there were times when he was indeed an idiot.

“I’m sorry, Mabel. I should not have dismissed your assessment,” he said, kneeling to her eye level, “perhaps if I had listened, we would not have been so cavalier about entering their territory.”

Mabel seemed to brighten at his words and Ford took it to mean he had adequately validated her concerns. Then again validation did not always mean-

“That’s ok Grunkle Ford, you’ll just have to sing the Ford Wrong Song! You too Dipper!” she grinned in response.

“Mabel…” Dipper whined in protest.

Ford blinked. Ah yes, there it was, appeasement. 

“I suppose that’s fair,” he said with an apologetic smile. “So tell me Mabel, have they really had no queen for over a year. Did they even search for a replacement?”

“They did but I never saw them go after Lady Gnomes,” she squinted and the three of them observed April as she laughed and emptied her glass with all the gusto of someone drinking liquor instead of honeyed nectar. “Come to think of it, I haven’t seen a lot of Lady Gnomes in the forest.”

“So they’ve been searching for brides of different species?” Ford asked, his curiosity piqued at the implications.

“Their track record around here isn’t great,” Dipper nodded. “Last year they tried to kidnap Mabel as their queen and then Gideon. But other than that they’d seemed fine. I’d thought they’d just given up on it.”

“Leaf says that when boy gnomes are alone for too long it messes with their heads. That’s why they looked so angry and tried to eat you guys.”

“I see. A lack of proper hierarchy and structure has destabilized their brain chemistry and turned them savage. Fascinating, if not terrifying,” Ford noted as he glanced at the two women across the way who seemed deep in conversation regarding… mushrooms? “So, I assume April is to be their new queen”

“No. Not right away anyway. Leaf says she has to make sure the new queen is capable of handling wild gnomes. So they’re gonna talk and if April can handle it, Leaf said she’s gonna set her up on a date with Jeff. Since he’s like the Alpha Gnome now she’s gonna have to convince him to step down as king and accept her as the new queen. If April can do that, the others will accept her too,” Mabel explained. 

“Who would possibly want to date that right now? Look at him, he looks like a goblin,” Dipper shuddered.

“Then we have reached an agreement,” Leaf’s voice echoed around the bubble and the words themselves seemed to make the liminal space shudder in anticipation. The Pines’ attention focused back on the two who had apparently concluded negotiations.

Ford’s eyes widened as he saw Leaf’s white glove flicker with strange iridescent glyphs before bursting into a blue flame. Raw panic clawed at his insides as every ounce of his being was screaming at him to run. This was wrong, every part of this felt wrong. And yet the small gnome didn’t seem at all bothered by the exchange.

“We have a deal,” April agreed and shook Leaf’s hand essentially sealing their arrangement and all the horrific ramifications that came with it.

Ford expected Leaf to erupt in a burst of triumphantly maniacal laughter. He expected cruel irony, or violence, or the world to distort into molten chaos. What he did not expect was to see Leaf dust her hands of soot before handing April her card.

“Here’s where you can reach me if you have any questions. I’ll send you a copy of the executed contract for your records as soon as you’ve settled in. Is paper fine or do you still prefer parchment?”

“Can you do digital?” April asked after a moment’s thought, “it’s easier to keep track of things that way.”

“Of course, I also offer RuneSign for digital verification.”

“Oh that would be perfect. And uh…” April trailed off before giving a sly grin. “...you wouldn’t happen to provide contract literacy services, would you?”

Leaf gave an airy albeit seemingly good-natured laugh. “No miss April, I am not hosting any workshops at the moment, but I don’t blame you for asking. I’ll give you a few moments to prepare before we give up the room.”

If he was honest with himself, the interaction was actually a little boring. Oddly enough, boring was exactly what was keeping him from doing something extremely foolish.

“Uh… Grunkle Ford? I can’t breathe,” Dipper rasped out and only then did Ford realize he had scooped up his niblings and was clinging to them for dear life. Slowly he released his grip on them.

It was fine. A deal had been struck and they were not inside out, or growing new limbs, or crawling with mutated centipedes or…

It was fine.

She had turned her attention back to them. She was approaching them now. He was unarmed, blood pounding in his ears, and his vision dimming around the edges. He should flee, but within the confines of the bubble where could he run to?

It was fine.

She had no claws or strange yellow eyes or a manic grin. Her face wasn’t twisted in cruel mockery, in fact she looked concerned(?). He couldn’t possibly be reading that correctly. 

He should attack. He wanted to attack. He wanted to lose every semblance of humanity so he could bite, kick, and scream. So why was every part of him frozen in place?

It was fine.

“Are you alright?” Leaf asked and he had the irrational feeling that she could see into the depths of his soul. “Listen, I understand this must be a lot.”

He must have looked like a madman seized up in fear and unable to enunciate a response. He stared at her in mute horror as she pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed the blood from his temple. The motion seemed almost genuine. Again, the contrasting input frazzled his perception and convinced him he had to be misreading her at every step. Thankfully Mabel spoke up before he slapped the offending hand away.

“We’re okay! We’ve seen loads of weird things in Gravity Falls, so this is no big deal, right Dipper?”

“What are you going to do with that?” Dipper asked, pointing at the bloodied handkerchief.

Leaf glanced at him as though to make a glib remark but thought better of it. “I was hoping to stop the bleeding, here you really should put some pressure on that.”

As the seconds ticked by and she did not reveal any immediate nefarious intent, Ford felt some of the dread subside. The faint scent of blackberries wafted from the  handkerchief and it seemed to center his thoughts. He gingerly held the bit of cloth to the cut on his head and took a few steadying breaths. His vision began to clear and he noticed she had stepped away from him almost immediately. He supposed he should be thankful that the woman respected his need for space. Then again…

Perhaps she’s just worried I’m going to lash out like a wild animal. 

“We’ll be done in a moment,” Leaf assured him and that same false smile crossed her features the moment she nodded to April in acknowledgement. “Alright guys, step back a bit. We want to give them some space.”

Leaf led them away from the two gnomes but Ford's gaze remained on April as she circled Jeff all the while studying him like a specimen in a museum. The tiny would-be queen seemed more curious than put-off by the feral gnome’s appearance. At any other time he would be more than a bit intrigued by the intricacies of gnome courtship. However under the current circumstances he couldn’t pry his attention away for too long from the dangerous being keeping him on edge.

“Three, two, one…” Leaf counted down before snapping her fingers once more and restarting time. 

The world flickered like a skipping record before starting up once more. The bubble burst and color flooded back in along with the sound of an unhinged gnome face planting into the ground. Jeff spat out a mouthful of dirt leaping back to his feet. His reddened eyes darted searching for his opponent only to stop short when he came face to face with April.

He froze, staring at her all the while panting like a beast. His eyes flickered from Leaf to April to his own muddied hands. He seemed to consider his options as the gnomes stirred and hobbled towards their king. They too stopped short at the sight of April and began to murmur.

“Sh… shmebulock…” a hesitant voice rang out as though in disbelief.

“Queen…” another murmured in agreement.

April did not bother to look at the others and instead approached the Gnome King. Jeff’s back arched like a cornered cat as she closed the distance between them. He bared his teeth as though threatening to bite if she came too close, still the little gnome maiden did not so much as flinch at the display.

“It’s happening! Love has tamed the savage beast!” Mabel declared gleefully, “are they going to kiss? Is that what’s going to happen now? They’re going to kiss and get married and have gnome babies…”

“Uh… yeah… something like that,” Leaf said as she attempted to coax the Pines towards the forest.

The crack of a whip broke the stillness followed by a piercing shriek. In spite of Leaf’s attempts they all turned to see Jeff attempting to scramble away only for something to latch on to his leg and drag him back. The new gnome queen had cast off her coat to reveal she was wearing plated armor underneath and armed to the teeth.

“You dare usurp my throne…” April snarled as she yanked on her bullwhip and dragged Jeff back towards her.

“WaitWaitWAIT!” Jeff yelped before she pounced on him. Her gloves were gone and in their place were leather bracers and bronze pointed claws.

“So… remember when I said the alpha gnome and the new queen were going to ‘work it out’?” Leaf asked as they watched the brawl escalate.

“I thought you meant, like a date!” Mabel exclaimed.

“I never said it was going to be a date.”

Another crack of the whip was followed by yet another piercing shriek. They then saw the little gnome maiden leap up and slam against Jeff causing everyone in the vicinity to wince. April then grabbed him by the front of his tattered shirt and lifted him up to his feet.

“She’s… going to make an example of him. It’ll be fine, as long as he doesn’t struggle,” Leaf reassured them and yet the one-sided fight continued.

“Just play dead, man!” Dipper called out over the chants of ‘Queen’ that had begun to echo through the crowd.

“Okay! I think we should give them some privacy,” Ford interjected before pulling the kids away from the scene. “Let's head back.”

“Wait, Grunkle Ford, she’s not going to kill Jeff is she?” Mabel asked. Leaf and Ford shared the look of two adults being asked a question with no correct age-appropriate answer.

“No! Of course not, she’s just…showing dominance is all,” Leaf said a little too quickly. 

“Pull his beard out!” a nasally voice piped up.

“Lots of dominance! The guy tried to murder your brother and uncle. He has to learn. Learn not to do that. Without permission,” Leaf's explanation came in short bursts as though she had to cobble it together on the spot. Mabel seemed unconvinced but decided not to press her on it.

A gravelly voice yelled out, “Hit him the chair!”

The outburst was followed by a chorus of cheers that erupted behind them as they slipped into the forest without further incident. Random gnomes scampered out of the woods to witness the fight that by now had to be overkill. Ford glanced at Leaf as though to voice a concern but then thought better of it. 

Dipper had no such filters, or perhaps he simply had less sense than his uncle. He broke the silence first. “Why apple pie?”

"Hm?" Leaf blinked.

"The gas from before, it smelled like apple pie. Why?"

“Bath Bombs and Beyond had a special,” came her snarky reply but when he gave her nothing but a flat stare she decided to grace him with a real answer. “Gnome Queens usually bake pastries for their favorite subjects. The familiar scent shuts down the aggression portion of their brain and calms them down.” 

“So, there wasn't any weird chemical in it, just the smell? Would any other scents work?” Dipper asked curiously.

“Pumpkin spice packs a wallop, but that wasn’t really an option.”

“Why not?”

“Because, Dipper, it’s summer ,” Mabel stated as though it were the most obvious thing in the world. However when both her uncle and brother gave her a blank stare she gave a sigh. “You guys are hopeless. Pumpkin spice is a fall fragrance, it’s not available year-round. That would be too much power for mortal hands!”

Leaf cracked a smile. “Vanilla sugar would also work, but I don’t love it. Gives me a headache.”

"So, what exactly are you?" Dipper demanded. 

Real subtle, kid. The question had clearly been burning a hole in his thoughts. 

When she raised an eyebrow at him, he pushed on. "Are you a demon?"

This did make her roll her eyes and she stopped walking.

"Listen, I know you're still a kid, and not one given to dimensional travel so I'll give you a pass, but we don't use the d-word in polite company. It's a derogatory term mono-dimensional beings use to discriminate against pan-dimensional nonlinear entities and a quick way to out yourself as dimensional supremacist," she stated dryly while staring at Ford.

To his credit the man had the wherewithal to look embarrassed for not teaching his nephew better manners. Or perhaps he was simply woozy from the whole ‘being bludgeoned over the head’ thing. Dipper scrunched his nose all the while staring at Leaf as though she’d threatened to kill his puppy.

“But no. I’m not a demon . I’m human… mostly human anyway,” she replied before walking on.

After a moment of walking in silence Mable spoke up. “What do you mean, mostly human?”

“Well, exactly that. I am human, but you don’t mess with the weird without becoming a little weird yourself,” Leaf replied as she stepped over a fallen branch.

“So does that mean you can die?” Dipper asked.

“Why? Was this all just a convoluted plan so you could murder me and bury me in the woods?” she asked sarcastically and this time Mabel did crack a smile, “Everything can die, Dipper. Stars do it all the time. Why would I be any more special?”

This time, the silence dragged on for a longer period of time before it was interrupted by Dipper’s next question. “You said you were a Dealer. How did that happen?”

“Are you asking how do you become one?”

“Yeah, can anyone do it?” Mabel replied suddenly, very interested.

“If you go Business School, yes.”

Dipper sighed in frustration when Leaf did not clarify he stared at her. “Wait, you’re serious?”

“Summa Cum Laude and a 4.0 GPA will get you in the right ballpark.”

“I think I would have noticed if the College of Business were dabbling in the occult,” Ford scoffed as the absurdity of it all spurred him into voicing his disbelief.

Leaf gave a one-armed shrug but offered no further explanation much to Ford’s annoyance. It soon became clear to the Pines that Leaf would answer questions, state something ludicrous, but provide no further context unless asked. It had the effect of leaving them with infinitely more questions than when they started.

“So you’re telling me that you met Bigfoot and helped pass the laws against hunting him?” Dipper’s skepticism was palpable.

“Actually, they prefer ‘Sasquatch’, and they are an entire genus. The famous one you’re thinking of is a bit of an exhibitionist called Dennis, whom I’ve met,” she said with a smirk. “The laws had been on the books for a while. I just amended them to expand the area they covered.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Look it up! Washington state, Sasquatch Law. It’s real!” Leaf had to laugh at the expression on Dipper’s face. Children were astoundingly earnest and delightfully expressive, unlike the man who had been staring at her blankly for the past half hour. 

By the time they had arrived at a curve of the road that led straight back to town, the moon had risen prominently. The paved road meant she had fulfilled her end of the agreement and successfully escorted them back to civilization. Conveniently, this also meant the inquisition was over, for the time being anyway. 

“Welp, it’s been real, but this is my stop. And now for the saddest part of the evening.” With a snap of her fingers and a poof of smoke, a small black envelope appeared in Leaf’s hand. Ford’s reaction was to pull the children behind him, which got him another pointed look. 

Jumpy aren’t you? Alright, making a note: no more flashy tricks around you.

“Your bill, mam'selle .” She offered the envelope to Mabel but it was Ford who took it. Leaf blinked but gave him the same bright smile he had seen in the bubble, the type that didn’t quite reach her eyes.

“Take care of that, whenever you’re ready,” Leaf said brightly as though there were nothing amiss before turning away from the trio, “I am ready for a nice long soak. See you around, Pines family!”

They watched her go as she rounded the curve of the road and vanished into the growing darkness. Ford’s hand gripped the black envelope tightly as though it might wriggle away and cause another apocalypse if he let it go. He didn’t know quite what to make of what had happened that afternoon, but he did know better than to just take Leaf’s words as truth. How did that Russian proverb go?

Trust but verify. 

“Grunkle Ford,” Mabel’s shy voice cut into his thoughts. “Is everything alright?”

Ford glanced at Mabel before looking back at the black envelope in his grasp. There were too many variables and not enough information.

“I don’t know,” he admitted, “I need to do more research.”

Chapter Text

It was a dark and stormy night, a lone figure thought as they trudged through the woods.

Except, of course, it was June in Oregon which meant it was neither dark nor stormy. The full moon hung bright upon the sparse clouds. Its light cast the woods around Gravity Falls with a silver sheen and lured the strange creatures to creep out of their abodes and bask in its brilliance. 

A party moon, perfect for mayhem.

While the residents of Gravity Falls were content to settle in their beds, the moon beckoned the wild and the weird to come out and play. To the west, there were the sounds of gnome revelry as their moonlit celebrations announced the arrival of a new queen. Even Jeff had gotten into the spirit of things, albeit with significantly less teeth than he used to have. To the east the yowls of manotaurs echoed between the perilous cliffs followed closely by a roar from the Multi-Bear berating them for ruining his zen garden. The waterfall itself shimmered and sparked as though it were composed of steel blades striking flint. All in all, tonight the forest was feeling lively.

Amidst the buzz of activity, a single shadowy figure picked her way through the woods. She was tired from chasing down gnomes all afternoon, but as much as Leaf would have loved to settle in for the night with her favorite book, duty called. Quite literally, if the ringing in her ears was any indication.

She picked her steps carefully through the ferns and clumps undergrowth, pausing only to check a mechanical instrument and make small adjustments. Occasionally she would stop short and check her surroundings before doubling back to seemingly starting all over again.

Damn thing is on the fritz again. I told her the sensitivity was too high.

Her instrument then blipped before wavering and burning out.

I just finished paying for that. Lifetime Warranty my ass. Note to self: Get my money back from Cogwheel.  

Her lips were set in an annoyed scowl as she pocketed the useless tech. The entire point of coming to Gravity Falls was to deal with this problem quickly and without attracting attention. Instead, here she was walking in circles with a burnt out meter. She supposed it wasn’t a complete loss. Ripples this intense had to mean she was close. Leaf could almost feel the forest vibrate as though straining to contain the anomaly from breaking loose and flooding the valley.

“Guess I’m doing this the old fashioned way,” she sighed and brought out a tiny origami star the size of a pea. She brushed away some of the dead foliage from the forest floor before placing the star atop the soft loam and then waiting. After a beat the star burst into bright green flame which then lifted itself off the ground and seemed to turn expectantly towards Leaf.

“Hey there little guy, it’s me,” she smiled and offered another star which it quickly took and consumed. “I’m here to fix the problem. Have you seen anything?”

There was a moment where the small lick of flame seemed to consider her words before vanishing back into the soil. She waited patiently while the will-o'-wisp made up its mind. The little flickering lights were technically creatures in her employ and so they were bound to help her. Then again, they were simple, silly little things who might say no just to see her reaction. That might pose a problem.

Leaf had never been one to boss around or menace her underlings. As long as the job got done, she wasn’t one to interfere or micromanage. Even so, will-o’-wisps were chaotic entities even in the best of times. Hopefully they would understand that the danger they faced outweighed their boredom. 

Moments later, a troupe of the neon green lights burst out of the soil and hovered around her. It seemed they were taking this quite seriously without the usual coaxing. Something must have rattled them in order to make them so agreeable. She dutifully gave them each an origami star as payment and the flickering lights began to mark the way.

They stopped at an open meadow that seemed to have been created by a massive beast simply toppling over an entire grove of trees. These were battle scars left behind by something very large and very weird. Grasses and moss had taken over in the wake of the destruction but it didn’t take long for Leaf to realize the true extent of the problem. 

At the center of a clearing there were four gashes in the very fabric of reality. They seemed to have been sealed with some sort of adhesive, but rather than heal, the rifts had festered like smothered wounds. Globs of the strange sticky glue had come undone and were dripping off as a foul tar-like substance. Someone had clearly tried to help but it was the equivalent of a toddler stopping the bleeding by tossing dirt on a cut. 

Massive concentric fairy rings had cropped up encompassing the entire meadow as though to keep the madness from overflowing onto the rest of the forest. Ah, so the will-o’-wisps had been doing something constructive after all, but there were limits to their power. The centermost ring seemed singed as though plagued with acid burns, a tell-tale sign the barrier was beginning to fail. 

“Thank you, I’ll take it from here,” she reassured them before handing each of them another star.

She thought back to those open craters she had spotted by the construction site. It was clear to see why the gnomes had resorted to concentrated explosives. It was infinitely simpler to cauterize the entire thing and let the wound scar over, but doing so made the fabric of space lose its natural flexibility. Extensive scarification would also change the texture of the dimension and seal off the flow of energy between the two sides. If done enough times, the scarring would change the ecosystem until Gravity Falls became devoid of its unusual charm.

And that would be a shame. The world needs more wonder in it, not less…

She quickly went to work. Donning a pair of black rubber gloves, she unfurled a collection of tools from her satchel and went about the mundane (albeit dangerous) job of cleaning, scraping, and disposing of the strange ooze that seeped around the edges. After she finished, Leaf tossed the mess and gloves into what looked like a garbage bag printed with strange golden pictographs. Once the toxic contents were effectively sealed away, she took a moment to study the edges of the cuts. Reality seemed to have been strained to the point of splitting open.

She reached for a spray bottle filled with something that glowed a faint blue. She spritzed the cuts and the edges twitched as though alive. Slowly, the glowing liquid formed tiny fractals over the span of the gaps and created a lattice to keep the tears from getting any larger. A smaller, accidental nick would have easily closed with a few sprays but this was no mere paper-cut. This sort of damage would require stitches.

“A stress tear, not the normal rip…” Leaf muttered to herself as she went to her toolkit and picked up what looked like a large needle and a spool of iridescent thread. 

Violet light flickered through the trees as Leaf worked. Each pierce of the needle released a flash of energy as though the rift itself were wincing. The occasional cowl paused to stare with a puzzled ‘m-hoo’ before fluttering off towards saner pastures. Through it all the will-o-wisps hovered at the edge of the meadow as though watching to see if Leaf would actually do as promised.

It didn’t take long for her to finish. The needle pulsed with a fading violet glow in her grasp as she stepped back and observed her handiwork. The slashes had been sealed up, stitched closed and cleansed from foreign particles allowing them to finally heal. They were now imperceptible to the naked eye with only a slight distortion to betray they had ever been there at all. She ran a thumb over the faint mark and seemed satisfied with the result.

“There, all better. Keep people and animals away from here for a month or two and they’ll heal over stronger than before,” she smiled at the wil-o-wisps before gathering her tools. The wisps crossed the threshold of fairy rings and hovered up to the sealed breaches, flickering excitedly as they noted the change. 

One of them broke away and hovered in front of Leaf, flickering from green to blue in quick succession. 

“Yes, I know there are more, but these were the largest. I’ll take care of the others later.”

The tiny flame burned brightly before resuming a normal green hue. Leaf stared for a moment, unsure she had actually heard them correctly.

“What do you mean ‘he’s here’? Who is here?”

The wisp flickered yellow more and this time warped its tiny frame into the unmistakable shape of an equilateral triangle. Leaf felt her stomach twist into knots but the indigo sheen in her eyes became brighter.

“Show me.”

“Sixer I swear if you two don’t get your butt up here for breakfast I will go down there and drag you up myself!”

Ford winced as his brother’s voice cut through the static-filled speakers. Installing an intercom system between the basement and the kitchen had seemed like a good idea at the time, but it had soon become Stan’s favorite mode of harassment.

“Stanley, not now, we are in the middle of important observation!” Ford snapped back and unplugged the device.

Dipper stood behind him observing three glass domes surrounded by a random assortment of equipment. He was holding a notepad and chewing on a pencil thoughtfully as the instruments flickered with sporadic readings. Behind the glass, the nefarious items remained, unwilling to share their secrets: a black envelope, a pad of sticky notes, and a bloodspattered handkerchief.

“Black sealed envelope… sticky notes made of vellum… uh… glitter ink scribbles… Handkerchief… is… purple swirls… smelled like bubble gum.”

“I believe that print is called paisley,” Ford corrected him absently as he fiddled with the calibration before pausing, “Dipper, did you say the handkerchief smelled like bubble gum to you?”

“Yeah, the cotton candy one.”

“Interesting, I thought it was more akin to blackberries, but now… red jelly beans.”

“I mean, I guess it could-”

“Hold that thought,” he hurried to the other side of the lab and returned with a strange lump of wires and metal, “I had hypothesized she might have used pheromones on the gnomes. I wonder if she is adept at using scents instead of glamour to hide her true appearance. Any luck on the digital front?”

“No. There’s no record of a Leaf Cafrune anywhere and when I searched for a Dealer it kept giving me ads for used cars,” Dipper frowned as he scrolled through his phone. “Huh…”

“What is it?”

“Washington really does have a Sasquatch Law. First one was in 1969, then it was amended in 1984 and again in 1991.”

“That was… 21, 22 years ago,” Ford muttered looking puzzled, “is that what forty year-old women look like now? How old do you think she looked?”

Dipper gave him a look as though he were being asked to solve a calculus problem with the numbers half-erased using only his head. Ford had never felt more understood in his entire life. Women would forever remain inscrutable to him. He could only hope Dipper had better luck in his own endeavors. 

The instruments buzzed as they finished their analysis.

“Nothing! Nothing at all,” he glowered at the readings being spat out via ticker tape. “Simple compound molecules and organic matter. Not so much as a speck of anomalous substances or energy. This cannot possibly be correct. There’s something we’re missing!”

“Yeah, breakfast time!” Mabel declared as she stood in the doorway looking annoyed. “Grunkle Ford, if we’re going to run around and do the monster-hunting biz, we need to refuel!”

The glass isolation units gave off a pressurized hiss as they unsealed and opened. Ford picked up the inert handkerchief and watched as flakes of his own dried blood crumbled off. He seemed to be deep in thought but then turned to Mable and offered the scrap of cloth to her.

“Mabel, what does this smell like to you?” he asked.

“Ew. Wait. Is that Leaf’s hanky?” she asked, looking at her uncle and brother oddly, “what exactly are you two doing?”

“It’s for science!” Dipper blurted out a bit too quickly.

She eyed them for a moment longer before answering, “It’s sweet. It kinda smells like Smile Dip!”

“My dear, what is your favorite candy?” Ford asked.

“I do love Smile Dip! It was my favorite before it was discontinued, but that’s a complicated question, Grunkle Ford. Why do you ask?”

“Cotton candy bubblegum is my favorite,” Dipper replied before sharing a look with Ford, “what does that mean?”

“I’m not sure, there must be a connection,” he murmured, staring at the cloth as though it might suddenly reveal why it smelled like his favorite jelly bean.

“It’s a little strange that we aren’t getting any readings from the explosive stickies,” Dipper frowned. “You’d think the ink would have some weirdness to it.”

“It makes no sense,” Ford scowled, “maybe we’re looking at this the wrong way. The ink might only be part of the equation with something serving as a catalyst. On their own, the items may register as inert.”

He set the handkerchief down and picked up the deton-it pad. The vellum had come back as nothing more than bleached and stretched animal hide and the ink showed traces of silver but in such small quantities it might have been an error. He took one of the sticky notes and placed it on an empty chalkboard nearby. This time, in the dim basement lighting, he was able to see coils burn into the dark green surface before the implosion occurred and took a chunk of the chalkboard with it.

“It seems to have left no trace of the original material,” Ford stated as he ran his fingers over the clean cut edge of the chalkboard, “we’ll have to conduct an explosive test outside. I don’t recognize the inscription on these. I don’t believe it comes from any human source. I feel as though we're doing something wrong.”

“You two do realize you can just call Leaf and ask, right? She gave me her card and everything,” Mabel sighed.

“Mabel if you're just going to be sarcastic…” her brother sighed.

“Dipper, you’re in a dark basement sniffing girl clothes,” she pointed out skeptically. At that unfortunate moment, Stan arrived looking more annoyed than usual.

“Sniffing girly clothes, like a couple of creeps. That’s the big important thing you two were up to all night?”

This time it was Ford's turn to bristle at his brother’s tone. “That is an egregious oversimplification of our methodology.”

“This is middle school all over again…” Stan sighed before pointing at the two teens, “you two, upstairs. Eggs don’t age well and neither does my patience.”

Dipper made as though to protest only to be cowed into silence by one of Stan’s well-placed glares. Mabel grinned as she bounded back upstairs all the while Dipper muttered under his breath. With those two gone, Stan turned to face his brother, who had resumed trying to piece together a puzzle that might not entirely be there.

“Sixer, you can let it go for five minutes. All the weird spookums will still be here later.”

“That isn’t the point.”

“Did you even sleep?”

“I can function,” Ford sniffed irritably, “There’s too much work to do. I have to make sure I’m not missing anything or the problem might get bigger.”

“We can’t have that.”

“Stanley, I’m being serious.”

“So am I, can you imagine? Hordes of women walking into the woods, knowing more than you, saving your life, making you look like a chump in the process… where does it end?”

Ford blinked at his brother, utterly speechless all the while looking like a very offended owl.

“Mabel told me what happened. She said you got your ass handed to you by a bunch of gnomes and she had to hire some pair of legs to bail you out,” Stan grinned.

“ Language , Stanley! And that is not an exact summary of what happened,” Ford mumbled as he angrily snatched a specimen jar and placed the handkerchief inside. He took a brief moment to label the glass ‘Unknown Oddity #993’ before and storing it on a nearby shelf filled with similarly labeled jars.

“Yeah well, Mabel also told me she gave you this little love note which you refused to let anyone open,” Stan’s grin widened when Ford immediately spun around to face him. He had very casually picked up the black envelope and was now holding it out of Ford’s reach.

“Stanley put that down!”

“You want it? Come and get it, Poindexter,” he laughed as he rounded the corner of the work bench and kept out of reach. “Now I really want to know what this thing says!”

“Stanley stop!”

“Yeesh, you’re a real pain when you don’t get enough shut eye, d’you know that?”

Ford didn’t reply and instead chose direct action. He tackled Stanley and grabbed the envelope only for it to tear open in a cloud of gold dust. Stanley coughed violently as Ford covered his nose and mouth to keep from inhaling it. The torn envelope lay in the middle of the chaos and next to it a slip of paper that embodied all of Stan’s nightmares.

Leaf was planning on doing absolutely nothing that day. The maneki had been distracted by a quartz mouse, her office was locked up tight, and her phone set to ‘do not disturb’. Handling clients was exhausting even when she didn’t have to deal with paranormal complications; especially when the clients were children. 

She liked kids. Truly, she did. However, like most things, children were best experienced in moderation and she had just about reached her quota.

Gravity Falls had proven to be a place that left her with more questions than answers. Despite last night’s revelations, the forest itself was too vast to cover in a single night. She could feel there were still things lingering in the gloomy shade of the trees. The woods moved strangely, as though it were an animal favoring a bruised ache underneath the surface. Alas, Rome wasn’t built in a day and Avalon wasn’t felled in a night.

She had returned to her abode for a quick dinner and gone to bed at an irresponsibly late hour. Her midnight excursion had left her drained. That meant that today was dedicated to recharging. A goal that was quickly shattered the moment someone pounded on her front door.

Leaf groaned and tried to ignore it, but apparently whoever it was had been going at it for a while and was showing no signs of stopping. 

“Someone better be dying, or someone is gonna die,” she grumbled before dragging herself out of bed and grumpily opening the door. “WHAT?!”

“AH!!!”

Stanley Pines feared nothing. No, that wasn’t entirely accurate. Stanley Pines feared very little, but when the door swung open and something resembling one of the undead snarled at him, he felt screaming had been a completely understandable response.

“Is that all?” Leaf asked flatly before going to close the door. Thankfully someone far more sensible took over the conversation.

“Leaf! Hi! Did we wake you up? Gosh we’re so sorry! It’s just that your office was closed downstairs and we saw the new mailbox and we figured maybe someone upstairs knew where you lived,” Mabel gushed, turning on the charm and stopping the door from closing by casually leaning on it. Leaf pondered the ethical ramifications of letting go of the door so she’d fall over. Ultimately she chose the light side.

“Mabel, it’s too early for whatever this is.”

“It’s noon,” Dipper pointed out, earning him an acrid glare that would put Medusa to shame. It was potent enough that Ford cautiously put himself between the annoyed woman and his nephew. 

Leaf blinked at the sight. For a moment she thought she might be seeing things, but no, clearly there were two men wearing the same face darkening her doorstep. Twins. They were identical twins. The sight of them made something uncomfortable settle in her chest. 

She would laugh if she had the energy for it. It appeared history did not repeat itself, but it had a hell of a rhyming scheme complete with a repertoire of irony and sarcasm.

“Why?” Leaf asked with an exhausted sigh feeling ancient and as though she might just crumble into dust at any moment.

“Why are we here?” Mabel piped up gleefully.

“Sure, that too,” Leaf yawned.

“We’re here to get an explanation about this!” Stan demanded having regained his composure and waving a piece of paper in front of her.

“It appears to be an invoice,” Leaf replied after a beat.

“What do all these weird scribbles mean? Why is Mabel’s name on it? AND WHY DID IT EXPLODE?”

Leaf stared at him as though she were filtering his words through static before giving a sleepy grin. “Heh, you opened the glitter bomb indoors. Nice.”

“It was amazing! The entire basement is sparkly!” Mabel gushed.

“Now we’re all covered in this shiny gunk!” Stan fumed.

“I love it!” Mabel interjected. 

“Oh so you are…” Leaf noted that indeed all four of the Pines family members were dusted with the glitter to various degrees. “It’ll fade in a few hours, provided you pay the invoice.”

“What kind of weird prank are you pulling here? Are you a loan shark? Is this some sort of curse?!” 

“Are those my only choices?” Leaf asked, stifling another yawn and wondering if she wanted to continue getting yelled at by a stranger.

“Listen here you! I see you for the hack you are and-”

Leaf slammed the door before he could get another word in. It turned out the answer was no. She wasn’t in the mood to deal with belligerent old men, twins or otherwise. She needed another two hours and a strong cup of assam tea to even entertain such a notion. 

Putting the entire exchange out of her thoughts, Leaf sank back into her bed and lay there in the cool darkness provided by her heavy curtains. It had been a long time since she had exerted this much energy, if she didn’t pace herself she would start having hangovers again. For a brief moment she felt as though she might once again drift off when the ivy in her balcony started complaining. 

The mental jabbing of the plant woke her up and she realized that not only were the Pines stubborn, they were incredibly stupid. They were climbing the Whinging Ivy plant and it had announced their presence before making itself the slipperiest thing to be grasped.

No way around it, she’d have to get up and deal with this. Whatever this was.

Outside, the Pines men were busy doing something foolish while a concerned Mabel looked on.

“Grunkle Stan. Sometimes, even I have to stand back and ask ‘am I ackin’ cray cray?’. And maybe now’s the time for some introspection,” Mabel called out in her best mediator voice as the rest of her family grappled with climbing an ivy wall that very clearly was not enjoying the experience. 

After Leaf had slammed the door they had discussed a rational course of action, and yet somehow ‘break in and get some answers’ had won out. When her lock stubbornly refused to be picked, they went with plan B.

“It’s about the… principle, pumpkin! You can’t run away from your… problems! You gotta… face them down… and punch them in the face!” Stan called back before losing his grip and sliding down several feet.

“Please don’t punch Leaf in the face!” Mabel called out.

“No promises, sweetie!”

“I’ve never seen lamina patterns like this in ivy before. It may be a weird strain native to Gravity Falls,” Ford muttered as he made little progress in his own attempts to climb.

“It’s acting like it’s alive. Like it knows- ah!” Dipper yelped as he slipped but Ford grabbed him by the front of the shirt to keep him from falling.

“All plants are alive, Dipper, they just express it differently from animals, but I agree. This strain is acting a bit peculiar.”

“Thanks for the biology lesson Professor Know-it-all, how about you do something useful instead of just pointing out the obvious?” Stan growled.

Ford sighed. He had agreed, in theory, that they needed to confront Leaf. He had agreed that it might require forcing said confrontation and not taking no for an answer. Logically, that meant breaking into her home was the quickest way to achieve their goal. And yet he found himself asking…

Am I, as Mabel put it, “ackin’ cray-cray”?

“Sixer! Today if possible!” Stan cut into his thoughts and Ford responded by tossing Dipper up onto the balcony deck. The boy landed with a thunk and all the grace of a sack of wet cement. 

“I’m okay!” Dipper hopped up looking only slightly bruised.

“Good! See if you can find us a rope or a ladder or something!” Stan yelled back and grinned triumphantly when Dipper lowered an old iron ladder part of the building’s old fire escape system. “YES! Success! Everything’s going according to plan.”

Ford raised an eyebrow at that, but knew better than to point out his brother’s inconsistencies. Stan seemed to understand people better than Ford ever had and, in spite of the strange quirks and behaviors, Leaf claimed to be ‘mostly’ human. So just this once, he  followed Stan’s lead. Now there was a phrase that had gotten him in trouble for as long as he could remember. 

“Dipper, help your sister up,” Stan rumbled as he checked the door for locks only to find the balcony door was unlocked. “Heh, I love it when they make it easy…”

“That was easy?” Ford asked, eyeing the rope burns on Stan’s hands. He would have fared no better if it weren't for his own foresight in wearing gloves.

“Hey, sometimes you actually gotta work for it. This time we got lucky,” Stan smirked, pushing the door open and walking in like they weren’t breaking and entering. Ford reluctantly followed but they both stopped short as they noticed a figure standing in front of them.

“Fifteen minutes. That’s hardly what I would call impressive,” Leaf had her back to them and was fixing herself a cup of tea. She seemed more composed than before and no longer wearing her fleecy pajamas, though there was still that glimmer of irritation in her voice. “I don’t recall inviting you in.”

“Yeah well we needed to have a little talk,” Stan frowned.

“I can’t fathom why. I don’t believe I ordered two scratched up, out of breath old men to bother me on my day off.”

“Hey! I’m not… not out of breath!”

Leaf smiled a little at his outrage as she checked her kettle.

“I’m here to talk about this envelope you gave my niece. It’s bad enough you’re preying on poor innocent children, and destroying my basement, but five thousand dollars?! Are you out of your gourd? There is no way anything you did amounted to five gees!”

Leaf seemed unconcerned by his tone and focused on pouring the boiling water into the ceramic teapot, pausing only to inhale the fragrance for a brief moment before responding. 

“Does your brother share that same sentiment? I seem to recall saving his and your nephew’s life. I’d hate to think what a return for that would look like, even with a receipt,” she mused, watching the tea leaves as though they were the most interesting thing in the world, “But I’m off the clock now, I suggest you come back tomorrow and make an appointment.”

“We’re not going anywhere until you tear up this bill!” Stan said, looking more irate by the second. 

It wasn’t lost on Leaf that Stan was a full head taller than her and, in spite of his age, still looked like he could do some serious damage if pressed. Ford was standing silent by the door not making eye contact but his face was set in the same stern look. 

Oh, so it’s like that.

As cornered as she felt, Leaf forced herself to remain calm. It would do absolutely no good for her to respond in kind when a male was being irrational.

“I don’t know what you think you’ve heard, but I can’t do that-” she replied.

Stan closed the distance between them and for a brief moment Leaf pondered the merits of running. There were two of them, she doubted she would get far. Then again, the quieter of the two didn’t seem to be paying attention anymore.

The entire exchange, Ford had been distracted by the bits of decor within the kitchen. There was a large chunk of powder blue chalcedony crystals on the windowsill glittering in the sunlight. As far as he could tell it had been part of a rather large and formidable geode. The crystals were flanked on both sides by a deer and a swordfish carved out of solid ironwood, both polished to a sheen so glossy they seemed to be made of chocolate. 

Shadow boxes lined the small kitchen nook area displaying metallic dragonflies and jeweled beetles of unusual colorations he had never seen before. There was something like a damselfly but tinted an iridescent white and whose wings had eyespots that followed him around the room. His gaze finally settled on an intricately carved limestone slab being used as a pot stand. It was about the size of a small notepad and the flowing pattern seemed to be some sort of mesoamerican design he couldn’t quite make out. His fingers itched for pen and paper so that he might research the pattern’s origins at his leisure. 

The piece felt as though there was a long and complex history behind it. Everything in that kitchen felt as though they were fragments of a larger narrative. There were stories behind each strangely beautiful piece; entire worlds and biomes he had never had the opportunity to glimpse but for these tiny slivers. 

Stan on the other hand, couldn’t care less about the decor.

“Listen here and you listen good. You met my niece and you got her wrapped up in something that doesn’t smell right. I don’t know what your deal is but I know a hack when I see one and if you think you’re gonna see a single red cent-” he raised his hand to jab a finger at Leaf. Rather than raise her voice, she casually tipped the teapot over. Scalding hot tea splashed onto Stan’s pant leg and the response was immediate.

Ford jolted out of his observations when Stan yelped and jumped away. He turned to face Leaf but whatever retort he had in mind died on his lips once he saw the look she was giving them which could only be described as venomous.

“I don’t respond well to threats,” Leaf calmly answered the question he didn’t ask as she picked up a dish towel to clean the spill. “If you’re going to trespass, the least you could do is be polite about it.”

“You closed the door,” Ford replied as though to explain their intrusion. He regretted speaking almost immediately but it was clear that Stan’s brand of diplomacy had failed.

“Then you should have known it wasn’t a good time, Mr. Pines.”

“Doctor,” Ford bristled as he watched her rinse the hand towel, “it’s Dr. Pines, and th-this was an urgent matter.”

“Well, Dr. Pines, did any part of your doctoral thesis acquaint you with the concept of manners?” she asked, with a look in her eyes that made him feel like a grad student who hadn’t studied for his final. “Or is breaking into a stranger’s house your usual approach to unpleasant news?”

She was speaking too fast, or maybe he had simply been foolish enough to step into a confrontation he was unprepared for. His tongue felt as though it had forgotten how to shape the proper words. Regardless, as much as he wanted to retreat and let Stan handle the rest of the conversation, it was too late to pull back now.

“I didn’t- we didn’t-” he fumbled over his words and looked away as he felt her scrutinizing gaze. 

Out of sheer force of habit, he put his hands in his pockets. He half expected her to press on, barging over his stammering words to berate him and make her point. When she remained quiet he ventured a glance to her face and noticed she no longer looked particularly annoyed. Gathering his thoughts, he felt his tongue finally work properly.

“You’re right. We shouldn’t have done that. We shouldn’t have disturbed your rest and we certainly shouldn’t have barged into your home unannounced. It was wrong and I… we apologize for our behavior,” he said in as even a voice as he could muster.

“Are you kidding me right now?” Stan looked positively offended before his brother elbowed him into staying quiet. 

Leaf regarded the two evenly. “I suppose I can see how a glitter bomb can be interpreted as potentially threatening.”

“It was… ahem. Quite startling,” Ford grew quiet for a moment before curiosity got the better of him, “the glitter. You said it would fade if we pay the invoice. How? How would it know to do that?”

Leaf regarded him as though his question had thrown her off. After realizing he was serious the corner of her lips pulled into a bemused smile.

“No one has ever asked me that before. It’s never come up,” she replied, considering his question, “The glitter is a type of fractal dust that grows exponentially the longer the debt goes unresolved. It feeds on the energy left by unresolved possibilities. It knows, the same way yeast ‘knows’ to stop making alcohol once all the sugar has been consumed.”

“It runs out of its raw material,” Ford murmured observing the gold dusting his sleeve, “fascinating.”

“If y’don’t mind, that’s not why we’re here,” Stan groused, “we’re supposed to be keeping her away from our easily-influenced kids! For all we know this was a trap to tempt children into her home where she could steal their souls!”

“A) You two broke in. B) Souls? Are you kidding? The resale value on those is garbage. If I’m going to get ripped off I’d just as well take diamonds at least those are shiny,” Leaf scoffed before sighing, “can’t a girl just want to get paid for her services without an ulterior motive? It’s not as though I’m randomly luring children into my kitchen.”

“Hi, Ms. Leaf, can I come in?” Mabel’s voice called from the doorway. The appalling timing was not lost on Leaf.

“Ah so I see you’re including the minors in your felonies,” Leaf gave a defeated sort of sigh before preparing more tea, “I suppose you might as well join the party, dear. How do you take your tea?”

“With cream and ten sugars please!” Mabel grinned as she hopped onto one of three bar stools nearby. Dipper followed Mabel silently before looking curiously at both of his uncles. Clearly things had not gone according to plan, but at least they hadn't walked in on a fistfight.

“I assume you’re here to contest the items on your bill,” Leaf stated as she placed the cup of sweetened tea and oddly shaped shortbread cookies in between Mabel and Dipper. “May I see the invoice?”

“Oh, sure!” she made a grabby hand motion at Stan who then very stiffly handed over the slip of paper. Leaf set the paper down on the counter between herself and Mabel.

“Now which items were invoiced in error?”

“Oh, uh, no. It’s right…” Mabel trailed off while nibbling on what Ford could now tell was a shortbread nautilus.

“Then I’m a bit baffled,” Leaf said with a wry smile, “how about you tell me why you’re really here.”

“We were hoping this could be one of those ‘on the house’ dealies,” Mabel said with the biggest, most pleading eyes. Leaf gave her a thoughtful glance before tearing up the invoice. Mabel’s face lit up into a grin only to watch as the pieces of paper trembled and pulled themselves back together as though they were magnetized. “What the-?”

“I am bound to fulfill a contract once it has been fully executed,” Leaf explained as she tore up the invoice again and made it burst into flames with the wave of a hand. The ashes fell in a pile only to rearrange themselves back into the same slip of paper with a flash of light. “I can’t tear up a contract. Even if I want to. Even if I didn’t mean it. Even if I really, really like you… there’s no backsies. I can do a lot of things but in return I have to follow The Rules and they can’t be broken. Most people don’t like to abide by rules, which is why I added the glitter bomb as an incentive.”

“So we are stuck like this until you receive payment,” Ford said with a frown.

"A harmless inconvenience that will multiply the longer you ignore it."

Mabel looked down at her arms which glittered faintly where she had hugged her grunkles earlier that day. “I mean, it’s just a little glitter. It’s not so bad.”

“You’re kidding, right?” Dipper asked incredulously as the sun revealed he had a large smudge of glitter on his face. “You heard the part where it will multiply!”

“It’ll be fine! You can tell girls you’re a vampire! Girls like vampires!”

“Mabel!”

“So let me get this straight,” Stan sighed, “you’re sayin’ we owe you $5,000 and if we don’t pay we just gotta live with a little glitter? That’s your big threat?”

“I think the purpose is to provide an inconvenience not a credible threat, Stanley,” Ford replied, his face set in that odd half frowning expression he got when he was thinking.

“Sixer, I once lasted an entire day without my hands just to get out of giving back someone’s stolen watches. Some sparkles aren’t going to make a dent in my day!”

“Isn't that just a ghost story you tell tourists to get them to buy merchandise,” Dipper pointed out.

“Irregardless! There’s no amount of glitter that can make me fork over that much cash!”

Leaf watched the family with detached curiosity as she sipped her tea. She noted how, out of all of them, Mabel was the only one not voicing an opinion. The girl was instead staring at the slip of paper in her small hands as though it might burst into flames yet again. For a brief moment Leaf thought Mabel might cry. However, she was pleasantly surprised when instead of tears she looked up at Leaf with sharp determination.

“So this is my bill, right?” Mabel asked after which Leaf tilted her head to one side intrigued.

“Yes.”

“And I have to pay for it.”

“That is the idea of a bill.”

“What if I work it off?” 

It wasn’t the first time someone had offered to do that. The problem being that most people assumed all she did was go to cocktail parties, monster hunt, and coordinate the Fae’s music festivals. In reality her job was far less glamorous.

“Mable, I know you had fun yesterday, but my work is rarely that interesting. It’s mostly emails, reports, and powerpoint presentations…”

“I can do boring things! Business things! I once ran the Mystery Shack all by myself and made more money than my Grunkle Stan could in a week!” she beamed proudly. Ford gave Stan a quizzical glance while his twin rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly.

“...not to mention peonage has been illegal since the 40s,” Leaf continued.

Stan muttered something to Ford who replied, “to pay off a debt with work.”

“Well don’t think of it as pilgrimage!” Mabel exclaimed.

“ Peonage ,” Dipper corrected as he helped himself to another cookie, fascinated to find this one was distinctly cut and stamped to resemble a live ammonite.

“Whatever,” Mabel waved him away before turning the full power of her pleading eyes to Leaf, “I can be like your apprentice!”

“This isn’t the type of job that has apprenticeships,” Leaf replied dryly, recalling her own initial forays into the cutthroat world of corporate business.

“Well… what does it have?”

Leaf seemed to be deep in thought as she looked down at her tea. The corner of her lips twitched in a faint smirk as she looked up at Mabel. “The word you’re looking for is Intern .”

While the rest of her family gave Leaf a blank stare, Mabel’s face broke out into a wide grin.

-LAST NIGHT-

“What do you mean ‘he’s here’? Who is here?”

The wisp flickered yellow once more and this time warped its tiny frame into the unmistakable shape of an equilateral triangle. Leaf felt her stomach twist into knots but the indigo sheen in her eyes became brighter.

“Show me.”

A few of the lights stayed behind to shield the stitched rends in the meadow, but most eagerly pushed forward deeper into the woods. Their colors flickered from passive blue to yellow to a vivid orange before settling into a calm green once they arrived at a shadowy grove. The pines were tall and almost completely obscured the sky above. However, starlight still managed to peek between the narrow gaps between their branches. There, at the base of a massive Douglas fir, under a moonbeam so bright it might as well have been a spotlight, stood Bill Cipher.

Leaf slowly crept towards the statue, holding out a tentative hand as though to touch him only to retract her fingers at the last moment. Every ounce of her self preservation screamed that this could not possibly be right. It had to be a trick, an illusion, a joke played by the moonlight.

The first thing that came into her mind was how small he looked. Reduced to a slab of cracked and weathered stone, he hardly seemed impressive. If anything, all the moss and greenery seemed about to swallow him whole. How ironic, the lord of entropy felled by his own sword.

A lifetime of absence finally made sense. Was this why no one had heard of him for decades? Had a deal gone so horrendously wrong, his existence had been burned away? How long had he been abandoned here, forgotten… alone?

Had winning really been worth the risk?

The statue remained silent, his hand extended in a final offer. 

Bill had always lacked attention to detail. He had always been too impatient, too reckless, too chaotic to be trusted. His contracts were atrocious with large gaps that could be exploited. He had cruel pointless clauses he sneaked in for his own amusement. Eventually, he did away with contracts altogether and resorted to handshake deals and vague promises. He had been shown all of the multiverse’s intricacies and Bill used the knowledge to become a conman.

He had been warned regarding his attempts to overflow the rivers of entropy. The axolotl himself had intervened more than once to keep him from tipping the scales. He was a danger to everyone, including himself, but his true sin was that he was careless. It was only a matter of time before he encountered someone just clever enough to get him into trouble. Not that he ever listened. He always believed he was the cleverest one in the room, incapable of being tricked or manipulated. 

Always the puppetmaster, never the puppet.

Now all that remained of Bill was a crumbling statue. She supposed it was a fitting monument to ward others against following in his path, but even now, something about the statue felt wrong. His presence had always burned like an inferno on the senses, but after the wildfire came the cold and desolate ashes. She could sense only dying embers marking the place where his entire being should be. They were the echoes of a larger presence; footprints in the sand.

If he isn’t here, where is he?

She snatched up a fallen twig. Her dark eyes were set in determination as she then drew a circle around the statue. Then another. And then added ten familiar symbols.

It was a zodiac wheel. Specifically, Bill Cipher’s zodiac wheel.

The ring smoldered in a bright, golden hue as though on fire as it came to life. Slowly, it rose the earth like a hologram tilting just so around the petrified statue and casting it with a faint glow. The symbols flickered on and off sporadically: a llama, question mark, pine tree, shooting star…

“Wake up. Where has he gone?”

Pentagram, shooting star, llama. The symbols flashed in a swift sequence.

“Why is it always an ordeal with you… Reset and run a diagnostic,” she frowned and waved her hand over the symbols rearranging them in a new order and changing the color from gold to white. The zodiac wheel spun this way and that before finally flickering and remaining still.

Llama, glasses.

“I know the data is incomplete, I can see he’s well and fractured right in front of me.”

Glasses, pentagram, heart, pine tree.

Leaf pinched the bridge of her nose. “You had one job…”

Heart, pine tree.

“Oh, you’re sorry. Is that meant to make me feel better?”

Heart, pine tree.

“We gave you an entire nexus, a thousand years to prepare your glyphs, an isolated environment, an entire brotted containment field and this is what you did with it?!” Leaf’s eyes flared with a deep violet glow.

HEART, PINE TREE.

“Stop. Stop apologizing. Tell me where he’s gone.”

Question mark.

“You don’t know,” she repeated as though it were the most inane sentence in the English language. “You mean to say that on top of failing to bind him, you lost him?”

The symbols all fluttered sheepishly and Leaf had to fight the impulse to do something violent.

Heart, pine tree.

“I swear Cthalia never gave me this much trouble and she had tentacles the size of a bus ,” she spat before pausing to keep her anger in check. “Retrace your steps. It can’t be that difficult to track one chaotic entity. For gods’ sake this we’re in the middle of nowhere, not downtown LA!”

Llama… ice… pentagram…

“Then narrow it down,” she sighed all the while mentally asking the multiverse for patience. The symbols flickered as though unsure how to answer. “Where did you see him last?”

Hand. 

“That’s better, I think I can-”

Crescent. 

“Are you shitting me right now?”

Hand. Hand… Crescent.

“What is this, a quantum snap? Are you broken?”

Crescent. Hand. Shooting star, pine tree, hand, crescent, hand, crescent, hand…

“Alright, alright, don’t hurt yourself. I’ll figure it out. You on the other hand I am very disappointed in,” she scolded.

Every symbol in the zodiac glowed brightly as though deeply offended.

“Oh don’t give me that. This isn’t about the glyphs. This is about your job performance and this ,” she waved at the petrified remains at the center of the zodiac, “is very sloppy work. If it keeps up I’m going to force you into retirement.”

PENTAGRAM.

“Then show me, because all you’ve done tonight is apologize and shift the blame.”

Shooting star, glasses, ice.

“Don’t push me. I’m here to clean up the mess you two made, not coddle you.”

Pentagram, glasses.

“Yes. You two because you were meant to stop him. This is your fault as much as his!”

HAND. CRESCENT. 

“Well then you chose the wrong glyphs! I don’t care how cool your prophecy was, it failed and that’s still on you!”

Shooting star, ice, heart…

“Get back to work, and while you’re at it clean up your workspace. This looks very unprofessional,” she jabbed a finger at the wheel and the symbols returned to their original positions before glowing a bright gold and settling into the earth around Bill’s form.

A gilded sheen flickered over Bill’s stony exterior and all the moss and debris crumbled away. While it appeared as though someone had merely given the statue a good scrub, the change reached far deeper than that. 

A missing fragment, a broken deal, an incomplete ritual… whether anyone else realized it or not, the unfulfilled potential was adding up. The universe had a way of filling in the gaps and keeping the currents of entropy from straying from their proper course. 

Some called it karma, others called it luck, fortune, or destiny. Leaf knew its name well, just as she knew how this intransigent power always had methods of making everyone honor their debts.

Leaf's hand rested in Bill's frozen grasp as though he had asked her to dance.

"Sticks and stones may break your bones and words will then enslave you," she hummed in sing-song.

Tiny blue flames flickered weakly from the stone fingers and Leaf smiled. There was enough of him left to recognize her presence. It was not enough, but it was a start.

I will have what I'm owed one way or another, but until then…

The rules of possibility were in her favor. All she had to do now was listen, and wait for the right moment to act.

Chapter Text

 The time has come, the Walrus said,

To talk of many things:

Of shoes — and ships — and sealing-wax —

Of zodiacs and rings

“I don’t like it,” Stan grumbled as he gripped the steering wheel tight enough to make the faux leather creak.

Stan had reluctantly agreed to take Mabel to Leaf’s office that morning. Initially, he had refused but when she called his bluff and asked for the money instead Stan had grumpily reached for the keys. Dipper’s own efforts to dissuade her were met with Mabel’s legendary ability to railroad any dissent and get her way. Ford supposed he was thankful the self-propagating glitter had taken her willingness to work as payment, but he remained cautious. Too often he had let himself be lured by someone’s friendly appearance only to regret it far too late. 

Dipper seemed to share his grunkles’ misgivings and he had asked to be dropped off at the library. Although the boy remained quiet throughout the ride, Ford suspected Dipper’s request had been a ruse. No doubt he was off to conduct his own investigation on the matter. Ford probably should have forbidden it, but when he weighed the potential fallout of stifling Dipper’s curiosity to the danger posed by letting him pursue his interests he supposed a little snooping couldn't hurt. Leaf didn’t seem the type to harm the children… well at least not in broad daylight. Hopefully Dipper wouldn’t get into too much trouble. 

“She’s got an angle I can’t see, and I don’t like it,” Stan fumed.

“You’ve said that ten times already, but it’s not going to change anything,” Ford replied as he stared at the scenery whizzing by. 

"I still don't fucking like it!"

"Well then maybe you should have paid the fucking bill," Ford sighed too tired to curb his brother’s profanity when the kids weren’t around.

"Don't tell me you're okay with it. Yesterday you were looking for a reason to burn that broad at the stake!" Stan accused him.

"Yes, well, the results of our interactions have proven… inconclusive," Ford sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, "and besides, you know as well as I do by now Mabel will insist on being her intern even if we do decide to pay off the debt."

Stan remained quiet for a beat before grumbling, “I can’t believe you apologized to her."

“Not this again.”

“Yes, this again! An entire year living with you on a boat and not once have you ever admitted to being wrong about anything! You always gotta be right! Even when you’re wrong, you’re just less right!”

“Stanley, I was simply trying to defuse a situation that you had allowed to escalate.”

“Well I didn’t know she was gonna be right there when we walked in, did I?”

Ford blinked and slowly turned to stare at his brother in disbelief. “Wait, so in your ideal situation, we would have broken into this young lady’s house-”

“Oh she’s a lady now, is she?”

“We would have broken into her home and she would be where exactly? Still asleep?”

“Yeah. Then we could rummage through her stuff.”

“To what end?!”

“I don’t know! We never got that far!”

“I can’t believe I let you talk me into burglarizing someone’s house. Again! ” At this rate Ford was thankful this woman hadn’t called to have them arrested or worse.

“You know, for being an interdimensional criminal you sure are easy to scandalize,” Stan grumbled as he glared at the road.

“I became a criminal with the end goal of defeating Bill not… not… petty theft!”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re so damn noble your shit don’t stink,” Stan huffed and once again drove in silence for all of ten seconds before cracking a smile, “well, at least it wasn’t a total loss.”

“And why is that?”

“I figured out she’s not a witch!” 

“Pray tell how did you deduce that, Stanley?” Ford asked in a flat tone as though he could already tell he wasn’t going to like the answer.

“Cos, Mr. Inconclusive, I swiped this on the way out and I still got both my hands!” Stan said gleefully as pulled out what looked like a small ceramic tile from the inside of his jacket. It was the stone of indeterminate origin that Ford had spotted on the counter.

“Give me that!” Ford huffed, grabbing the stolen item from his brother’s careless grasp, “you could have broken it.” 

“Yeah, I caught you eyeballing it… and fifteen different things in that place. This was the only thing that could be easily swiped. You like it?”

Ford ran his fingers over the sculpted patterns. From its heft and texture he could tell it was carved out of limestone. It took all of his will power not to lick the rock so that he might see the mineral’s full spectrum of colors.

“She’s going to notice it’s gone,” Ford stated grimly.

“It can’t be that pricey. She was using it as a coaster.”

It was a replica then, not the original. Yes, that tracked. Ford couldn’t see anyone being careless enough to take an archeological find and risk damage to it through everyday use. “You still shouldn’t have taken it. For all you know it could have been cursed.”

“Oh yeah, cursed kitchen tiles, we all heard of those.”

“I’m serious.”

“Sheesh, you’re such a bitch to shop for, you know that? You know if you’re so worried then maybe you should go give it back to her,” his brother’s snide response held an all too familiar sing-song tone.

“Really, Stanley?” he stared at his brother as though he were being childish.

“Just sayin’. Aren’t the uptight prissy librarian types the ones that do it for ya?” 

“Business casual attire hardly constitutes a librarian.”

“I don’t get it. You turned down the nerdy book guy at the pier-”

“He was reading Ayn Rand unironically in broad daylight!”

“Then there was the marine biologist.”

“She was a geologist working on an oil rig who thought global warming was a hoax and didn’t believe in dinosaurs.”

“All’s I’m sayin’ is that you’re 0 for 2. So maybe stop being so picky.”

“Well if you’re so keen on it why don’t you ask her out?” he snapped.

“Nah, chick like that can’t handle a rugged worldly guy like me. She needs someone like you: a harmless nerd with a caffeine addiction.”

“Stanley, I'm old enough to be her father… or… grandfather. We still haven’t landed on her age.”

His brother’s grin only widened. “So you have thought about it!”

“Yes, Dipper and did the math on her claims regarding the yeti legislation and…” he trailed off when he saw his brother clearly meant something other than Leaf’s age. “Can you get your mind out of the gutter? Not everything is about… about…”

“Fuckin’.”

“I was going to say reproductive urges.”

“And I was going to say, it’s been how many years? You need to get laid or your bits might fall off from lack of action.”

“I’ve yet to know of a dimension where that is even remotely accurate,” Ford scoffed at the very notion, “besides, I’ve dedicated my life to the pursuit of knowledge. Anything else would just get in the way.”

“Yeesh. At this point just donate your balls to science now and skip the middleman.”

Ford winced and turned away in disgust. “You've got a gift with words…”

“Gotta get ‘em all out before we head back.”

“Lucky me,” Ford muttered under his breath

He focused his attention on the fleeting blur of civilization as it gave way to a shady tree lined road that led up to McGucket’s manor or as his friend preferred to call it ‘McGucket’s Hootenany Hut’. The sight was not unpleasant but something about the glare of the sunlight bothered his eyes.

Ford shook his head and took off his glasses before rubbing a hand over his face. He could feel the distant buzz of an oncoming migraine. They were becoming more frequent now, though whether it be due to age or the years of self-neglect catching up to him was still anybody’s guess.

“Hey, you alright?”

“I’m fine,” Ford replied out of sheer reflex.

The silence this time drew longer. Perhaps it was one of those comfortable silences that lulled Ford into a sense of calm. Perhaps Stan hadn’t noticed. Perhaps the kids had kept him adequately distracted.

“You’re not sleeping, are you?”

Perhaps his brother was too damn observant when it suited him. It wasn’t a question as much as it was Stan confirming what he already knew. Ford’s lips pressed together in a scowl. 

“I’m fine.”

“Is it the nightmares again?”

This time it was Ford’s turn to prolong the silence. But of course, to Stanley, silence was acceptance.

“Ford, you don’t have to get into it but… he’s gone. You know that right? He’s gone. You saw it. I saw it. The entire town saw it. He ain’t coming back.”

“I am aware."

As Stan frowned and glared at the road, Ford could sense he was blaming himself.

"Stanley, I'm fine. It’s just that being back here is dredging up old memories. There's nothing new about that…” he trailed off as his fingertips wore at the flat edges of the stone carving in his grasp. 

The truth of it was that Ford's dreams this past year had been relatively tame until that first night back in Gravity Falls. Something about the vivid images of chaos and destruction of that nightmare had left him too rattled to go back to sleep. He had been actively refusing to think about it, better to keep his mind occupied in other matters than whittle away his time worrying about monsters under the bed. It was nothing he couldn’t handle on his own.

Besides, who would he tell?

Dipper? Mabel? What sort of person burdens children with the irrational fears of an old man?

And how could he ever tell Stanley? The man took every one of Ford’s emotional blips as an indictment on his own performance as a brother.

What would even be the point of sharing his nightmares? It would achieve nothing other than make his family worry over an old man’s nonsense.

Hadn't Ford put them through enough?

He’s dead. He’s dead and gone. There’s nothing to worry about.

So why was it he still couldn’t bring himself to say the name ‘Bill Cipher’ out loud without flinching? Could it be he was afraid it might summon the creature from beyond the abyss?

Why was he always so angry whenever someone dismissed the clearly visible remnants of Weirdmaggedon with a flippant ‘never-mind all that’? He didn’t need validation, he knew the horrors had happened and they had been real. Yet they hid away from the truth as though that might make them forget the cold feeling of their limbs being turned to stone. 

They denied the horrors he had been forced to witness.

To Ford the memory was always there in the fringes of his thoughts. Like a beating heart beneath the floorboards, he could sense it if he stayed still for too long. Perhaps others could simply go on with their willful ignorance, but nothing would ever make him forget the weight of an iron choker tightening around his throat or the bite of electrified chains around his wrists. There were days when their glib dismissal filled him with rage.

And yet, he was doing the same thing, wasn’t he? Some part of him felt that if he didn’t say Bill’s name, he wouldn’t speak the chaos into being. How childish. How absurdly naive. He was no better than an adolescent chanting “Bloody Mary” in front of a mirror. 

As though he could ever command such power to begin with…and yet the reticence lingered.

“I’m fine. Really. I’ll drink some of that special nereid tea tonight before bed for a good night’s rest.”

Stan grumbled something about the smell but otherwise let the matter drop. Mabel wasn’t the only person in the family too stubborn to change their mind once it was made up.

They arrived at the manor's stately entrance and Stan grimaced as he saw some kind of terrifying mechanical monstrosity blocking the driveway. Considering Fiddleford's proclivities, this could be a sign that he was feeling either stressed or inspired. Ford pocketed the stone emblem as he emerged from the car only to duck as something exploded.

"Hey! Watch the paint job, you old kook!" Stan yelled out the window.

"Fiddleford! Fiddleford, are you alright?" Ford coughed as he covered his nose with his sleeve.

Fiddleford soon emerged waving his hat to dispel the clouds of black smoke. He was cackling as though someone had told a particularly amusing joke before realizing the Pines were in his driveway.

“Ford! Ya made it!” the eccentric engineer grinned. His face was smudged in grease and the fringe of his hat was slightly singed but he seemed otherwise unharmed.

“I take it that something went awry?” Ford said, studying the creation.

“Naw, the engine is just a bit too fast for the old gears,” the manic engineer grinned, pushing the goggles up out of his face.

“I see, do you need a hand?” Ford said as he stared at the smoking heap of metal.

“No offense Ford but engineering’s never been your strong suit.”

“You’d be surprised! I picked up quite a bit from my interdimensional travels.”

“Well in that case, I’m gonna have t’heave the whole thing up and redo the load bearings to see if that fixes some of the lag,” he replied as he removed his goggles and cleaned them with a rag.

“I see… and is it supposed to be making that noise?”

“Just you wait until I flush out the lateral bushing and anodize the launching plate, then she’ll really roar!” 

“I think I understand.”

“Heh, then you better explain it to me ‘cos that’s a bunch of nonsense,” Fiddleford cackled as he saw his old friend stare at him like a ruffled owl. “You always were good at pretending t’know what people are talkin’ about.”

“I was just making conversation…” Ford looked abashed and rubbed the back of his neck.

“Oh I bet, but ya didn’t come all the way out here just t’have a nice chat about old slag heaps, didya?” 

“It really is good to see you again, Fiddleford.”

“Oh get on with it!” Stan bellowed from the driver’s seat as he honked the horn, “Ford! Tell your hillbilly boyfriend we ain’t got all day!”

“Stanley either get your butt out here or wait quietly in the car!” Ford snapped blushing furiously before shaking his head and turning to Fiddleford who had already begun disassembling the broken machine. “I apologize for his behavior…”

“Aw don’t pay your brother no mind. Some people are just stuck in their ornery ways like that.”

“I know but still… I didn’t… we aren’t… that is to say-”

“You know, you’re still pretty dang cute when you’re flustered Ford,” Fiddleford grinned at Ford’s deepening blush before reaching under the hood of the machine’s engine. He emerged holding a dirty rag containing what could only be described as a lightbulb with extra bits. “But the actual reason why I called you over is ‘cos I want you to take a look at this.”

“A vacuum tube?” Ford asked.

“A Fleming valve. One of the prototypes by the looks of it. The melted wires and the bits of metal here are mine. Tried to refurbish it.”

Ford took the tube and noted it was unusually heavy and cool to the touch in spite of it having only recently been in use. The coil still glowed an ember red and at the base of the glass there was a stamp in faded ink that read ‘Edison 1863’.

“This piece should be in a museum.”

“Now why would I do something foolish like that?” Fiddleford drawled, “You’re still not gettin’ it. Look at the inside. There should be a looped filament, carbon, tungsten wire like any other old lightbulb.”

Ford looked at the wiring inside and at first glance it appeared to be normal, but upon closer inspection he realized the glass was not glass at all, it was a solid piece of crystal or quartz. The wiring inside was actually an inclusion which had been trapped within the matrix of the crystal as it was formed. And the wiring wasn’t just glowing, it was shifting, moving like molecules jostling for position. This couldn’t have possibly been made by a human. At least not without help.

“Ah, y’see it now don’tcha? Tinkered with it a bit and it’s no ordinary Fleming valve. It’s not even a proper rectifier. It takes power and amplifies it all it takes is a little spark and…” he motioned to the mechanical creature behind him. “Poor Gobby here didn’t stand a chance. Whatever it was s’pposed to run must’ve been enormous. There’s an entire box of these doohickeys all cracked and burnt out. This is the only one that still works.”

Ford rubbed his chin as his gaze shifted from the bulb to the Manor.

“I never took the Northwest family as the type who encouraged inventors,” he frowned, a bit annoyed with himself for never bothering to give those elitists more than a cursory glance.

“There’s somethin’ else you need to see. The box these came in had this stamped on the outside,” Fiddleford reached into his back pocket and fished out an old weathered label printed in scarlet ink. The words ‘SUPERFLUOUS AUTOMATA Co.’ were written in bold curling script around the all too familiar figure of a zodiac wheel. The wheel’s slots were all empty save for a single glyph he couldn’t quite make out but there at its center was a figure composed of tesselated diamonds he had never seen before. Whoever or whatever this thing was, it was clearly not a triangle. It was not Bill. 

His stomach dipped somewhere below the knees.

“Fiddleford, where did you get this?”

“Oh you think that’s terrifyin’? Come inside. You’re gonna love this.”

Leaf sat at her desk absorbed in her work. The preliminary stage of Mayor Cutebiker's Pioneer Day celebration was complete. She had tugged on a few strings and called in some favors to line up corporate sponsorships. There were always companies out there that needed to tick the right boxes and put on a show of giving back to the community. Sticking a logo on an event banner and cutting a check was always easier than actually dealing with the unwashed masses. Not to mention, this was all a big massive tax write-off. 

Child’s play…  

It would have been far more satisfying if she had charged a steeper price. If anyone had deep pockets, it was the local government. Small town politics being what they were, Leaf definitely could have bilked them out of thousands and they would have thrown her a parade for it. As it was, she was leaving money on the table and she so hated that.

Curse her adherence to ethical standards! 

Leaf would have to take it out on someone else to balance out the universe. She eyed the Northwest file on her inbox before turning back to her monitor.

Tempting, but that particular well is pretty much dry. To skim off the top, there must be a ‘top’ to begin with.

The Northwest family name had been left in tatters and humiliated in front of the whole town. Dealing with Bill tended to leave that sort of fallout. It was amazing they lived to tell the tale. Either Bill was finally growing out of his terrible trillions, or Preston and his family were unusually lucky. Leaf was leaning towards the latter.  She stared at the image of Nathaniel Northwest’s statue emblazoned in the front of the marketing materials she was preparing. A thought occurred…

"Ms. Leaf, are you sure this is all you want me to do?"

The silence was shattered and Leaf was reminded of the small technically-teen girl she had taken on as an intern. The adorable child had shown up in a blazer with shoulder pads that would make any quarterback envious. After a (gentle) lesson on proper office attire for the 21st century, she had set her down to work on filling a jar with tiny origami lucky stars. She regarded Mabel over the rim of her glasses and noted the jar was mostly empty.

“Yes, I am sure,” she replied before going back to her project.

“It’s just… I can do all sorts of things! Maybe I can drum up some business! Give out flyers or paint banners or…”

“Mabel, I did warn you this work is very dull. The best use of your skill, right now, is to make those stars for me. I can’t assign you more until you have finished your current project.”

Clearly this was not what Mabel wanted to hear and she sighed loudly before picking up another strip of paper. No doubt she felt that her job was a pointless task assigned just to keep her busy. And yes, there was an aspect to that, but at the same time, internships were meant to teach. Mabel had curiosity and drive, but she lacked patience. Her focus was reserved for her own interests and fluctuated wildly. The stars were a good training device.

It was around noon when Leaf finally pried herself away from her desk and stretched. She noted with no small satisfaction that Mabel had filled up half of the massive jar and she smiled.

“That is an excellent morning’s work, Mabel. Thank you for your help,” Leaf then reached into her desk drawer and brought out a glass fountain pen. The pen looked as though it had been carved out of an icicle save for the silver nib. Through the clear glass, Mabel could see the violet-blue ink that caught the light and shimmered like stars on a cosmic background.

“I think now is a good time for you to break for lunch-”

“OMIGOSH WHAT IS THAT?!”

Leaf blinked and looked down as though noticing the pen for the first time.

“Look, but don’t touch,” Leaf warned as she set the glass pen down on the desk in front of Mabel, “this is a promissory pen. Although many people still use quills for this purpose, I think it’s rather tedious to have to pause and dip every three letters…”

“It’s a glitter pen!” Mabel crowed gleefully as she peered up at Leaf. “Is it magic? Are we going to do magic? Is this-?”

Leaf held up a finger in a shushing motion as Mabel all but imploded from excitement. She then reached into her blazer’s inside pocket and brought out the same bone-white fingerless glove from a few nights before. Upon closer inspection, Mabel could see it was made from some kind of leather and it briefly glowed as Leaf slipped it on her hand and made a fist.

“The first rule of using any promissory instrument, always use the appropriate gear. This is a T&C glove. They can’t be bought, they have to be made, and every responsible wielder has their own version of it,” she picked up the pen and the ink inside it seemed to come to life, “this is your only protection from accidentally trading away your voice, memories, family members, or various body parts. If you learn nothing else today, know that you should never mess with the unknown without the correct personal protective equipment, got that?”

Leaf then took a star and drew a tiny dot at its center. The glove flickered with iridescent patterns the instant the ink hit the paper. Once Leaf set the star aside to pick up a new one, Mabel snatched it up and studied the ink.

“Let it dry, don’t get it on your hands,” Leaf warned.

It wasn’t just the ink, the paper felt different in ways that Mabel couldn’t explain. Something had been done to it and it felt… valuable. It was like holding a freshly minted gold coin, or picking up a scrap of paper from the gutter and finding out it was a twenty dollar bill. The puffy stars were neat on their own, but these felt like currency.

“Leaf, what are we making?” she asked as she noted how each stroke of the pen set off a ripple of runes on white leather.

“They’re called tokens. Certain creatures can’t be bought with the usual currency. For example, elementals don’t see a point to gold, jewels, or mushrooms. For them I have to provide something a bit more real. So I make tokens,” she explained.

“You pay them with ink?”

“Not exactly. Every part of the token is important. They have to be made by hand. Your time and effort give the final product value. The ink… well the ink is just a final stamp to show that it’s yours.”

Mabel had the feeling Leaf wasn’t being entirely honest with her, but she didn’t know enough to prove her wrong. Rather than pry, she observed as each star received a tiny dab of the glittering ink as though committing each motion to memory.

“Can I have one?” she asked, peering up at the woman with enormous eyes.

“I’m not in the habit of giving away money, in any form,” Leaf said calmly all the while pointedly ignoring the massive puppy eyes Mabel was giving her. Alas, although Leaf liked to consider herself a strong willed, there was something about pouting children that always got under her skin far too quickly. “Although… I suppose this is your lunch time, if you were to make a few now, it would be entirely off the clock…”

Leaf hadn’t finished her sentence when Mabel grabbed a strip of paper and quickly began folding. The older woman chuckled to herself as she saw her intern create a handful of puffy stars in record time. 

“If you’re going to do this, then you might as well do it properly,” Leaf shook her head with a grin as she removed her glove and offered it to her intern. Mabel squealed with glee as she slipped on the glove and saw it resize itself to her hand. “Now take the pen carefully, it’ll only need a spot.”

Mabel’s eyes widened as she saw the glass pen glow and felt its hum in her grasp. It was as though she had suddenly tapped into an electrical current. The weight of the pen hadn’t changed, but somehow it felt heavy, as though she were using it to move some great unseen wheel. She made the first line and the power thrummed against her grip making her hand clench. Then, just as before, the star she had marked changed.

“This is amazing…”

“Don’t make too many,” Leaf warned as she flexed her fingers, “you’re not used to the pull and you’ll end up with a cramp.” 

Soon, Mabel had six bright pink stars of her own. She handed back the pen and the glove but couldn’t tear her eyes off her creations. “I made those! I did it! I did magic!”

Leaf smirked as she donned the glove and continued with her own batch of stars. “I’m glad you enjoyed it.”

“I loved it!” Mabel said, wiggling her fingers, “It stung a little bit but other than that, it felt amazing! It’s like what a magic wand would feel like.”

“It’s not exactly magic, but I get what you’re trying to say,” Leaf smiled as she finished marking the last of her tokens, “still think making the stars was a waste of time?”

“I… I never said that,” she replied looking sheepish.

“True, but you were thinking it,” she then reached for her desk and grabbed a pad of vellum sticky notes. “Promissory pens are curious, moldable things. Once you understand how to use them…”

She wrote the word ‘butterfly’ on the note before tearing it off and sticking it on the desk. The edges curled as though some force were crumpling it before the paper rearranged itself into a fluttering butterfly with violet iridescent patterns on its wings.

“...you can do just about anything,” Leaf grinned as the paper butterfly landed on the tip of her pen.

“Can you teach me? Will you teach me?” Mable asked as the butterfly took flight once more and this time landed on her nose.

“Learning something like this is a big responsibility, Mabel. It’s never about the power, it’s how you use it.”

“I’m responsible! I’m plenty responsible, and mature for my age!”

“You certainly have potential and that is probably the most important piece,” she mused while gathering the stars and placing them back in the jar. “We’ll see how your internship goes, and if you do well, then…”

“Eeeeee! Thank you thank you thank you!” Mabel got to her feet and ran to hug her. 

The motion caught Leaf off-guard and she tensed for a moment unsure of how to react before awkwardly patting Mabel’s hair. 

“I didn’t say yes…” she protested weakly but Mabel simply squeezed her tighter.

Leaf forced herself to relax as the excitable child was already conjuring visions of all the things she would be able to do with her upcoming powers. Leaf only half paid attention to her ramblings. She was still stunned by the sudden act of affection. Could it be that she couldn’t remember the last time someone had hugged her?

When was the last time someone had willingly touched her?

Who had it been?

A few years ago perhaps? Surely it hadn’t been that long ago.

Her thoughts were cut short by the sound of the front door opening and Leaf glanced over to see…

“Dipper!” Mable finally released her and rushed to her brother’s side. The excitable teen grabbed him by the wrist before dragging him back to the workbench.

“Mabel I we need to-”

“I’ve got so much to tell you! Look, I made tokens!”

“That’s great Mabel but I need to talk to you-”

“No you don’t get it, it’s like magic money so I can pay elementals for things!”

“Mabel please, I really need to talk to you!” he gave Leaf a fleeting, worried glance. “In private.”

Leaf shook off the strange emotions and took the glass pen back to its case inside her desk. She gathered a few of her things before glancing back at the two siblings.

“Mabel I am about to close for lunch, so why don’t you head out. I’ll reopen the office in an hour.”

“Okay Leaf, I’ll see you in an hour!” Mabel called out as Dipper all but dragged his sister outside. “Don’t start anything cool without me!”

Leaf didn’t know what Dipper was fussing over, but whatever was happening could happen outside while she sank her teeth into a Bahn Mi upstairs.

Ford followed his friend into the dark halls of McGucket Manor. Most of the walls were still bare sporting only a faint outline where the family portraits had once hung. Here and there, Ford spotted bits of scrap, a disassembled washing machine and an entire hallway filled with banjos. At the sound of a small jingling bell he looked around curiously.

“When did you get a cat?” he asked, looking around.

“Not a cat, that right there would be a racoon,” he explained before smiling sheepishly, “turns out that when I lost my marbles I ended up gettin hitched to a racoon. When the memories started coming back and I wasn’t so… y’know… it just felt wrong to leave her in the dump.”

Up in the rafters, Ford noticed a pair of clever eyes staring back.

“I can see that…”

“Tate says he’s not callin’ her ‘mom’, but he’ll come around,” McGucket continued and Ford found himself at a loss on how to respond. “That was a joke, Stanford. You really need to lighten up.”

Ford opened his mouth before closing it and giving a nervous smile. “Forgive me old friend, I suppose I’m still a bit rattled. I had assumed our troubles with demons were at an end. I’m realizing now how naive I was.”

“It’s not your responsibility to contain every danger. And not every bit of risk is a catastrophe. Sometimes it’s just pretty dang neat,” Fiddleford said cheerfully but it was clear Ford was not listening to any of his advice.

“I’m afraid my experience has taught me otherwise,” he stated as the gnawing dread that pooled in his stomach only grew.

“Maybe, but what’s the point of finding weirdness if you take all the fun out of it?” Fiddleford cackled as they reached the vast library of the manor.

"I can't say I approve of you using these artifacts no matter how much fun you're having. If they're forged by a demon nothing good can come of it."

"Or maybe you’re just gettin’ too old for this, Stanford."

Ford frowned but before he could voice his offense, his eyes caught sight of an enormous tapestry. It depicted the all-seeing-eye embroidered with blood-red silk over a black background. Below it was an image of fire and destruction and below that, bleached bones. Words failed him. Ford would be tempted to call it an artistic rendering of Weirdmaggedon commissioned in poor taste after the chaos except the tapestry was clearly older than anything else in the room.

“The previous tenants left a lot of their things behind when they skedaddled. The wine cellar was a nice surprise, this… not so much,” he went to the tapestry and moved it aside before pressing on the wooden paneling to reveal a hidden doorway. As they stepped through, the sconces on the walls lit up as though activated by motion sensors. “Turns out, the Northwests weren’t always a family of bumbling idiots. There were a few branches on that family tree that had a good head on their shoulders and more than a few had some real special interests.”

As the room lit up Ford’s gaze settled on a bronze plaque embedded into the hardwood floors. It read:

The Six To Run The World

A humbled heart his green will heal

She lights the way in blue

In red she crafts the metal wheel

He sings in citrus hues

The gold seeks dreams to puppeteer

Don't summon or indulge

But violet's gifts you must revere

She is power, wrath, and judge

The chamber was a smaller, but still cavernous, library splitting into different segments each with a bookcase and a tapestry showing a creature surrounded by a zodiac wheel: a purple coil, a red tessellation, an orange treble clef, a green ouroboros, a splotch of black ink with dozens of piercing blue eyes staring back from the darkness, and the all-seeing-eye… Bill Cipher.

“There are more…” he breathed.

“There were ,” Fiddleford explained as he waved to the bookcases, “I’ve been readin’ some of these books, or at least trying to. What I found does mention those rings.” 

Ford noted that other than Bill's, all the other ones are empty except for one symbol. In spite of himself, Ford’s eyes settled on Bill’s image and the full set of symbols in his tapestry. What did it mean that Bill’s wheel remained full? Was he not entirely gone? “If the glyphs stood for people then why do they only have one but Bill has ten?”

“I’ll be honest with ya, Stanford, I can’t make head nor tails of this except the stuff in the red books. Everything else is… well it’s difficult to explain. It ain’t exactly gibberish but a close approximation to it.”

“You’ve read these books? Just how long ago did you find this place? How long did you expect to keep it from me?”

“If you’re going to overreact over every little thing we ain’t gonna get very far.”

He was right, of course, Ford knew falling into hysterics would help no one. Still he couldn’t help but feel a little betrayed that Fiddleford had simply kept this from him. Considering everything they’d gone through, the truly sensible thing would be to set fire to the entire chamber. He pressed his lips into a thin line and nodded.

“I don’t think you need me to tell you how dangerous it is to delve into these sort of books but… please, tell me about what you’ve learned.”

Fiddleford regarded him for a moment before going to motion towards the crimson tapestry.

“Some of these diagrams, they’re downright genius, were made by a fella named Addlebert Northwest. Turns out he was Nathaniel Northwest’s younger brother. Bit of an eccentric even before the family came into money. Think I woulda liked him,” Fiddleford said as he picked up a scarlet tome and thumbed through it. “He was trying to build… something… not quite sure what, but he found rare metals here in Gravity Falls and set up shop. He had some crazy ideas even by my standards. They start out simple enough, but then halfway through he hits a wall…”

“Let me guess, he made a deal , ” Ford’s hands clenched into fists, knowing all too well what it meant to be influenced by a so-called muse. 

“Somethin’ like that… See those red diamonds? He calls her Tessandra, patron muse of engineers. Mostly he just says she inspired him to think bigger and expand the limits of his understanding. But whatever she did, it worked. After summoning her he designed some amazin’ things and I ain’t just talking about the valves.”

Ford couldn’t help but turn to face the gold tapestry. Bill’s depiction seemed to mock him while at the same time offering him all the knowledge housed in the books next to him.

He glared at Bill’s embroidered depiction. “And what did the books call him ?”

“Stanford…”

“It’s a simple enough question.”

“The red books don’t go too much into who or what the others are. They tend to focus on Tessandra. I don’t think old Addlebert reached out to anyone else neither.”

“But he was aware. That there were others, I mean. There must be some mention of him, otherwise why the tapestries?”

“Called him Mr. Cipher. Muse of dreamers,” Fiddleford sighed before giving Ford a sidelong glance, “kinda fitting when you think about it, in an ironic kinda way.”

“What’s the lord of nightmares to do without dreamers to terrorize,” Ford said dryly, finally tearing his eyes away and looking at the other tapestries more closely, “so there are, or were , six demons and various Northwests made deals with all of them at any given point.”

He noted how each tapestry had an adjoining bookcase filled with color matching books except for the first one. The violet bookshelves were conspicuously empty save for a single leather-bound journal. He stared at the creature in the tapestry and realized with a jolt that he recognized the pattern. 

It was a spiral, the same spiral burnt into the ground of the negotiation space.

The bell on PRISM Business Consulting’s front door rang cheerily as Mabel and Dipper left the office. Dipper cast a glance behind them as though to see if they were being followed while Mabel rambled on about her future as Leaf’s apprentice.

“Mabel, listen. I poked around a little bit and asked about Leaf. According to my sources, she’s just arrived in town a few days ago and already she’s made deals with the mayor, and the Northwests. Now, I have a few theories,” he stated, bringing out a folded piece of paper that opened up to reveal what was essentially a poster full of conspiracies and diagrams.

“So she’s a successful businesswoman, there’s nothing wrong with that.”

“It’s more than that. You saw what she did with the gnomes. For all we know she could be trying to take over the town,” Dipper frowned as Mabel skipped ahead towards a brightly colored restaurant with a sombrero for a roof.

“Who exactly are your sources?”

Dipper pressed his lips in a thin line as though debating whether to say.

“Well okay then, keep your secrets. I’m going to go buy myself a taco!”

“I talked to Gideon, alright?”

“Ugh…” Mabel made a face as though she had been offered a teaspoon of cold medicine, “Gideon, Dipper? Gideon? ”

“He’s gotten better.”

“Why? How come? And also, are you serious with me right now?”

“Listen, if my theory is correct and Leaf is gonna manipulate the town, I wanted to talk to the guy who’s done it before,” Dipper frowned as he pointed to a corner of his diagram showing a grainy picture photocopied from a book. “Gideon had been looking for books like the journal. He never actually found them, but he did find a picture of one.”

It was a photocopy of a photocopy and the details were hard to make out. It appeared to be some sort of crater but there, outlined in yellow highlighter, was the somewhat hazy image of the explosive rune burned into the ground. It could be the very same that Mabel had seen in the deton-it pad… or it could have been a kitty pushing a stroller it was hard to make out. He pointed to the man standing at the edge of the crater staring at the camera with a manic grin.

“His name was James Dailey, he was a full on psycho. He burned down the local school, blew up some railroad tracks, but cops finally arrested him when he tried to sacrifice half the neighborhood to bring back his dead wife.”

“All you have is a fuzzy picture. That guy could be anyone.”

“It’s James Dailey! Gideon spent a long time trying to find his book. A book, I might add, that seemed to give him the same powers as Leaf!”

“So one guy went crazy. What does that have to do with anything? People here go crazy all the time.”

“It means she’s dangerous!”

“It doesn’t mean anything! You talk about it like all of last summer wasn’t dangerous. Well just because something is dangerous doesn’t mean it’s wrong. You’re dangerous, Grunkle Ford is dangerous, all of Gravity Falls is dangerous!”

“Are you listening to yourself?”

“No. You listened to Gideon without any proof at all, now you listen to me. Today I made these,” she brandished a little paper star with a glittery dot at Dipper, “and you know what I learned? The magic of these things is not just waving a wand around, it’s also about what you put in. Magic is work. And yeah, it hurts to use the pen after a little while. And yeah, if I wanted to cheat, I could have someone else make them for me, or trick them into it. But that isn’t the pen’s fault, it’s not Leaf’s fault, it’s nobody’s fault but the person trying to cheat. It’s not about the power, it’s about what you do with it. If Dailey Smith did all those things, then it was because he was a bad person, it wasn’t because he had powers!”

Dipper looked disappointed as he folded up his poster and tucked it back into his vest’s inner pocket. Clearly he had hoped to convince his sister fairly easily, but she was somewhat correct. He had very little proof other than Gideon’s rumors and a grainy picture.

“He could have been possessed,” Dipper mumbled.

“Yeah and he could have also raised the dead even when he promised not to!”

Her brother had the decency to look sheepish as he rubbed his arm, “how many times are you going to use that against me?”

“A billion. Two billion times!”

He was quiet for a beat as they walked towards the Hermanos Brothers restaurant before finally breaking the silence.

“I don’t get it.”

“What’s there to get? Zombies are a bad idea.”

“No I mean, you’re sticking up for Leaf and you barely even know her. I don’t get it.”

Mabel walked ahead of him for a little while before sighing and turning around.

“It’’s hard to explain.”

“Hey, if she’s forcing you-”

“No! No… that’s not… that’s not it,” she turned to face him with a deep frown on her face, “Dipper, do you remember what happened after we went home last summer?”

“We went to middle school?”

“Yeah and you had all these stories and really neat adventures that you went on with Grunkle Ford.”

“Hey, you and Grunkle Stan had fun without me. Great uncle Ford also let you come along plenty of times.”

“But it’s different. He looks at you different. And you… You see him and it’s like he’s who you want to be when you grow up. I don’t have that,” she fiddled with the friendship bracelet around her wrist and looked away, “you went home and you were Ford’s Apprentice. I went home and I was just the dumb girl who didn’t get a summer boyfriend and almost got everyone killed.”

“That wasn’t your fault-”

“Yeah well, remember Mrs. Russell’s art class?” she asked, wiping at her eyes with the back of her sleeve.

Dipper winced as he recalled the short, portly woman who had scowled at Mabel’s excessive use of neon and glitter.

“Ceramics, theater, language arts…” she listed off the subjects and each one was darkened by a memory of a teacher overwhelmed by Mabel’s intensity and reacting negatively. “I’m not like you. I’m not good at nerd things, and I’m not… I’m not good at anything else. Leaf is the first adult not to treat me like I’m a failure or annoying. She listened to me, and I like her, Dipper. You saw what she did. She fought a full gnome army! She stopped time! She made things explode! I want to learn how to do that and she’s willing to teach me. I want to go home after this summer being able to say I’m Leaf’s Intern.”

“Does this mean you want to be a Dealer like Leaf when you grow up?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think I’ll ever really know for sure, but I want to be more like Leaf than Mrs. Russell.”

Dipper had that same pensive scowl he got whenever his mind was warring with his heart over what to say.

“What happens if Leaf is not a good person?”

“She is.”

“But we don’t really know that.” 

“ Dipper… ”

“I just don’t want you getting hurt. There’s no proof she’s bad, but there’s no proof she’s good either. She could be getting her powers from something or someone who’s manipulating her.”

“It’s not like that, at least, it didn’t look like that.”

“Well, what did it look like?” he asked.

“The pen. The glitter pen. She called it something… can’t remember but she showed me how the pen can make things happen. It had the same ink as those stickies.”

“Okay, so maybe if Great Uncle Ford sees it he’ll know where it comes from.”

“She’s not going to just give it to us. She didn’t say it, but it’s obviously important.”

“Well…” Dipper bit his lower lip worriedly, “maybe we don’t tell her.”

“She trusts me, I’m not stealing from her!” Mabel protested only to be shushed by her brother as he looked around for anyone who might be overheard.

“It’s not stealing. We’re just borrowing it for analysis. We’re not even going to use it and we’ll give it back.”

“I don’t know Dipper…”

“Hey, you said she was a good person. She could be in over her head, wouldn’t you want to help her if she was?”

“I guess…” she frowned and stared at her shoes.

“At least this way you can prove that there’s nothing strange going on.”

Mabel’s eyes locked with her brother’s and she scrunched her nose as though trying to read his mind. “We’re borrowing it…”

“Yes.”

“We’re not going to use it.”

“I’ve been around enough of Great Uncle Ford’s cursed items to know better.”

“And we’re bringing it straight back.”

“If there’s nothing wrong with it, yes.”

Mabel took a deep breath before nodding. “She keeps it in her desk drawer.”

Ford stared at the spiral embroidered in silver and gold. The coils seemed to splinter and shift in the light forming a pair of eyes. Except, now that he got a better look at it he realized it wasn’t a spiral at all.

“It’s a fractal,” he said, staring at the shimmering violet thread, “who is this?”

“You seen it before?” Fiddleford asked.

“I… I’m not sure what we saw,” Ford admitted.

“That there doodle is called Trace Trompe L’oeil.”

“So there’s a muse for dreamers and another for engineers. Which one is he supposed to be?”

“Trace is a she,” Fiddleford said looking up at the indigo eyes peering down at them, “this one’s old, older than the other ones. She ain’t got a subset of people. One of the red books just calls her the Muse of Power. Warns against calling on her by name.”

“So a muse for the rich and ambitious,” Ford scoffed with no small amount of venom as he pointedly ignored Bill’s area and picked up the single dusty journal on the violet bookcase. 

It was a simple leather bound volume quite light and about half as thick as his own journals had been. The front had a metal clasp embossed with a floral pattern and the words ‘VIRTUS EST DIGNIS’.

“Power to the worthy. Or rather, power belongs to the worthy,” Ford translated out loud before he unbuckled the clasp and flipped it open to the first page. “...From the Desk of Dr. Asphodelus Northwest, 1882.”

The pages were yellow and weathered but the India ink lettering remained solid and bold as though it had only just dried on the paper.

“My father, Nathaniel Northwest often called himself a wizard and claimed the world was full of unfathomable powers he alone could speak to. 

There is little truth to that claim, and this manuscript would be ill-spent disputing the ramblings of a lunatic. In truth, my father was a half-wit and a charlatan, but one with an astounding amount of luck. I make no case in favor of my family’s merits, nor will you, dear reader, find anything within these pages that is not the full and unabridged truth. One of those truths of course being, that our entire family, our fortune, our social standing is built on a lie. My father did not found Gravity Falls, that honor went to a stranger, though perhaps, better man than he:

Quentin Trembley

I would advise against wasting your time searching for him. You’ll find that the name and the man behind it have been erased from history. 

This too is not a tale you will find in this tome. The pages of this journal contain something far more extraordinary, amazing, and dangerous than a mere exposé of backwater political intrigue. Indeed, the town of Gravity Falls is full of wonders that test the very foundation of the world.

I understand that not all of humanity is ready to take that leap and I will not think less of anyone who understands their limits and opts to turn away. If your heart holds no love for the strange and miraculous, I implore you not to turn the page.

For although my father died an idiot, he was right in one respect. This universe is indeed full of unfathomable powers one can speak to, and on occasion -if one is astoundingly lucky- they speak back.”

Ford felt as though the book were burning in his ice cold hands. His eyes remained focused on that final phrase. Something about how it was written, the way the ink appeared to shimmer, made him feel as though he were seeing some terrible naked truth.

Time seemed to slow to a crawl. Fiddleford said something but it all melted into static as he thought he could see gleeful eyes superimposed on the page and hear manic laughter ringing in his ears. He had seen what happened when the powers spoke back. He had lived through the blood curdling terror of attracting the attention of said creatures. He thought the ordeal over, the nightmare finally broken…

They speak back…

The words burned into his retinas, glittering with the same specks of light within the ink and he felt the veil of the world lift. In that brief and horrifying moment, he caught a glimpse of the gearworks of reality. He saw something his mind could not translate into proper actionable information. 

This was different from Bill. Bill’s cruelty and even his madness could be understood. Whatever this was it felt older and unfathomable. There was a wrongness to these words, to this entire book that his mind was unable or unwilling to name.

A primitive dread ate up all of Ford’s rational thought and froze him in place. He was an ape confronted with fire for the first time; a neanderthal watching the seams of the earth split in two; he was a mortal staring into the oblivion of an apathetic abyss. And yet still he prayed that it would not turn to notice him just as an ant might pray for a human’s mercy.

This journal should not exist. 

Humans were not meant to know. 

Humans were not meant to perceive the inner workings of the universe. 

Humans were not meant to converse with it. 

They speak back…

A hand clasped his shoulder and he jumped. The spell broke all around him and the world started up again. His heart was pounding from the ordeal but the book… He stared at it but it was just a book. Nothing more.

“Ford, are you alright? You’re as white as a ghost!”

He stared at his friend as he tried to swallow the lump of dread that had latched to the back of his throat. 

“Y-yes. I’m fine,” he forced himself to sound calm before answering, “the multiverse is simply, a little bigger than I had supposed.”

Fiddleford scrutinized his friend warily. “Alright, I think that’s enough library time for t’day anyway.”

“Yes. Wait, what? No I need- we need to catalog these books.”

“Stanford, in case you haven’t noticed, they are quite well cataloged and color coded.”

Ford grimaced as he looked around the neat stacks of books. “What I meant to say is, this information is dangerous and it has clearly been used in the past. I think it’s our responsibility to understand the knowledge here, even if we never find a use for it. If nothing else it will help us stop-”

“They’re encrypted,” Fiddleford interrupted what was quickly becoming a self-righteous rant.

Ford looked at him with a puzzled glance before flipping to the second page of the violet journal and realizing the scribbles on the parchment appeared to form a twisted dripping pattern but nothing resembling words or numbers. His brow furrowed as he flipped the pages and found more of the same inkblots interspersed with blank pages.

“This makes no sense.”

“They’re all like that ‘cept the red ones,” Fiddleford said as he snagged a thick red tome and cracked it open to show Ford, “I told you, they’re all written in some sort of code. The red ones are the only books not full of gibberish.”

Ford stared at the offered pages and his brow scrunched even tighter. “You can read this?”

“Well shoot, the measurements and instructions are a little archaic but it’s not too bad once you get used to it,” he replied.

Ford’s eyes flickered over the page before turning to look at his friend with growing concern. 

“Fiddleford, these pages are blank.”

Chapter Text

See the sky and all the land together again

See the way the earth can stay below

Who do we think we are? Everything plays a part

There are some things we are never meant to know

Leaf had been summoned.

It had been years since anyone had been reckless enough to summon her. She’d felt the pull immediately after lunch. That annoying tug felt like a case of the hiccups that would not abate until she answered it. Still, with Mabel returning and still hyped up over a morning of paper stars and ‘magic’ she couldn’t just leave to deal with the annoyance. Mabel would want to come along and the last thing she wanted was to haul a child across 35 dimensions just so she could yell at some junior executive interrupting her work to beg for stock tips. 

She put up with the distracting call until she could close for the day. She had been half expecting Mabel to suspect something was up as Leaf rushed her out the door, but the kid was surprisingly accommodating and ran off the moment Dipper showed up. If Leaf had been paying attention she would have questioned it as odd behavior but the incessant tugging was beginning to make thinking clearly nigh impossible.

Imagine her surprise when she appeared before a full board of directors.

The boardroom she was in had the usual long cherry wood oblong with six seats and floor-to-ceiling windows found in nearly every generic highrise. The only difference here was that the carpet on the floor around her chair was etched with a violet zodiac. The slots around the central spiral were all empty save for one depicting The Sword as a symbol. So here she was trapped in a conference room: four geriatrics and one hostile entity summoned against her will. 

Leaf tapped a finger on her desk restlessly as though by doing so she could whittle time away all the quicker. Apparently nothing could begin until the President of the Board appeared. After a few tense moments of silence, the door opened and the man deigned to grace them with his presence.

She stared as he entered carrying a banker box which he placed on the table. There were bags under his flat, slate eyes. His hair, always so perfectly dyed and coiffed in the past, showed streaks of gray and seemed to no longer be on speaking terms with his brush. Pebbly sort of salt and pepper hairs had attempted to form a beard before giving up halfway around his thin wide lips. Leaf thought he looked a bit like a toad, if amphibians could afford hair transplants and fat injections. 

“I’m so happy to see Ms. Cafrune could take time from her busy schedule in Gravity Falls to join us for this emergency meeting.”

Her fingertip twitched as he mentioned her location. They had been keeping tabs on her. She should have expected as much, although it seemed they did not have all of the facts. They had the name of the town but not the correct dimension or time otherwise they would not have burned up one of their last remaining summons to speak to her. The corner of Leaf’s mouth twitched in annoyance but she managed a polite smile. 

“Just Leaf is fine, Ms. Cafrune is… well an alias, but you already knew that, didn’t you Derwyn ? Loving the new hairline, by the way. What is this your fourth one?” she replied as her tapping ceased and her head tilted in amusement as she regarded each of the five board members. Not one of them looked a day younger than 60, “you lot are looking a bit more run down than I recall. I take it the economy is still in shambles over here?”

The president pursed his lips as the others’ faces twisted in discomfort. Good. Leaf hated being summoned, almost as much as she hated seeing their faces. She was going to make this as unpleasant as possible.

“Now that the formalities are out of the way, shall we get started gentlemen? As I made abundantly clear in my exit interview. Our contract has ended. Where do you get the balls to drag me back to this sinking ship?” she asked in a tone that implied she was showing great restraint, but the fluorescent lights began to flicker erratically overhead. The display provoked the same reaction as a rattler’s tail and every member other than the president visibly tensed.

Her smile widened and she extended her hand towards them. The Zodiac beneath her feet glowed brighter as a tremor began to make the entire building shake. Several yelped and leapt to their feet as thought to flee and Leaf curled her fingers into a fist causing the shaking to escalate.

“ENOUGH!” the president slammed a hand on the table and popping the illusion like a soap bubble. “Leaf we all know you cannot exert control outside of the zodiac ring. Now can we please talk like civilized adults?” 

The flickering lights stopped and Leaf leaned back on the chair before spinning around in a carefree display. “You’re no fun anymore.”

There was hushed muttering from the far side of the board room as old entitled men argued amongst themselves. She was, of course, aware that well to do gentlemen always cringed away from risking their own skin. This little display, illusion or not, had put a bitter taste in their mouths.

“You know what? Fine, just go, you spineless cowards. I should have handled this myself anyway!” the president spat before each of the other members of the board walked out. 

Leaf found it very difficult to feel anything but disdain for this place. It felt as though she were being confronted with a dried out husk. The dying embers of enterprise leaving a bloated corpse on life-support. Why couldn’t they just let it die? She ignored them all and stared out the window at the drab gray cityscape slowly dipping into evening. 

It occurred to her that it wasn’t just the concrete washing out the color of the world. The entire dimension was pale and drab like the bleached skeleton of a once thriving coral reef. All the magic had dried up and with it all the spectrum had been reduced to mere traces. This place, this dimension, was abandoned, left to its own devices.

The president sighed loudly, interrupting her musings on the darkening cosmos.

“You don’t have to do this every time I call on you,” he said in a tone tinged with resentment.

“Then you should learn to take a hint and lose my number,” she responded apathetically.

“You think it’s an easy decision to call on you? Do you have any idea how difficult this is for me?” he demanded, “Do you know what it’s like to see you there looking exactly the same as you have for these past 40 years.” 

“And yet you soldiered on, you brave soul,” Leaf drawled sarcastically without bothering to look at him.

“This is not a game. I worked so hard to build this company and into what it is. Do you think this is easy? Do you think I like admitting I need your help after you just up and abandoned us when it was convenient?” he spat out his accusations as he stormed around the table to stand in front of her. His hands grabbed her chair’s armrest forcing her to acknowledge him as he loomed over her.

Leaf tipped her chin up to stare at him with eyes more violet and vibrant than anything found in this corner of the universe. She clearly did not fear him. It unnerved him how he would bellow and scream but she could still stare straight at him. Her gaze cut through him in pure disdain as though he had crawled out of the primordial ooze and thrown up on her shoes.

“Everything you’ve ever had was handed to you,” she said in a calm, patient tone as though she were speaking to a toddler. “Your father gifted you diamond mines as your graduation present. You cheated brilliant but less-connected men out of their life’s work and used the butchered parts to cobble together a name for yourself. And even this you mismanaged and fumbled at every opportunity. The only work you’ve ever done, Derwyn, was the task of finding great men so you could step on their necks to hold yourself higher.”

Leaf could see him for what he truly was. He was a failure saved by the grace of the birth lottery, but now that his luck had run out, he was nothing. He had done everything to buy labels for himself: innovator, magnate, founder, engineer, genius, pioneer… The list went on and on but the reality was that he had to spend a fortune crafting his image to make-up for everything he lacked. At his core Derwyn was a small, pathetic little man with no talent for anything other than inheriting and losing vast amounts of wealth, and how he hated that Leaf could see it.

“You’re angry. I hate it when you get irrational,” he bit out and pulled away. His fists were clenched at his side in helpless anger.

“That’s the man I know!” she crowed and he flinched as though she had struck him. “Avoiding the subject the moment things get uncomfortable. Never quite able to grasp the concept of constructive criticism, did you? If you ever wonder why I left, there it is, right there.”

“Let’s not rehash the past. You and I have history, I admit, but that’s all the more reason why you’re the only one who I can call on to help,” Derwyn responded stiffly.

“Of course, where are my manners? How are Joyce and the kids?” she asked, her eyes still cold.

“Don’t.”

“Well clearly you feel as though we have some sort of relationship. So let’s catch up. Fetch us a coffee and you can tell me all about how the divorce is going. Come now, give us the tea,” she said, placing her chin in her hands in mockery.

“Stop it!”

“You know, darling, you really should have gotten a prenup to save you that massive headache. Then again, you shouldn’t have cheated on her with your secretary. That was very cliche of you. What’s this, affair number five? Couples therapy certainly isn’t working, you should get your money back-”

“I said shut up!” he snapped but Leaf merely gave a bark of mirthless laughter at his outburst.

“Gods, you’re insufferable even now. I would have thought age would ferment a personality out of you but I expected too much,” she tutted, “Let’s not keep wasting each other’s time. What do you want, Derwyn?”

“I want to make a deal,” he bit out through clenched teeth. “The company. It’s not. There were poor decisions being made. There’s some people who have gotten in the way. I would appreciate it if they were to disappear. Permanently.”

“A hit job, Derwyn? Really? Well this is a new low, even for you,” Leaf said with a disapproving frown, “I’m not in the business of ending lives.”

“Oh come on! Try and be creative for once! Turn them into frogs, send them off to a parallel world, just make them stop being a problem!”

“It doesn’t work like that. There are rules I can’t break.”

“Can’t or won’t,” he said with a frustrated sigh.

“Even if I could it would not be for this,” she said her tone shifting to being dead serious, “There are limits even to my power, so try again. This time be sensible.”

“Sensible!” he shouted looking as though he would like to throttle her before deflating and rummaging through the banker box.

“Try and be creative for once,” she threw the words back at his face with a mock smile. “Besides, the only thing corporate crime gets you is a slap on the wrist, hardly something to kill over.”

“It’s not that simple,” he muttered as he rubbed the back of his neck, “People, the wrong people, took files from our database and went tattling to the Feds. By the time we figured out what happened, they’d frozen most of our accounts and I had the FTC on my back ready to raid my downtown office. They know everything. They have everything!”

“You’re going to jail!” she announced as though he had told her he’d won a trip and he scowled at her.

“No! Not yet. You just need to make this go away… I need to make the investors whole. We can make up some cover story about misrouted funds, but I need… I need money.”

“Color me surprised you got there in the end,” Leaf said with a long-suffering sigh, “all right, money is less onerous. For the sake of argument, how much are we talking about?”

“I’m… I need…” he fumbled the stack of papers next to the box before grabbing one and handing it to her.

“My, my, that is quite the accounting error,” she tsked, “you realize you’d have to give me something of equal value to trade for such a fortune?”

The man seemed to steel himself before meeting her gaze defiantly. “I have it. I know exactly what you’re looking for and I found it. You do this for me, it’s yours.”

The room temperature dropped by ten degrees and the lights began to flicker once more. She never liked Derwyn’s ability to pay just enough attention to be a nuisance. If he noticed her searching, this meant he had been dabbling in more than just casual stalking.

“What could you possibly know about what I’m searching for?” Leaf scrunched her nose in disdain.

“More than you give me credit for. I know it’s not what, but who. That’s why you’re in Gravity Falls. You’re looking for someone, and lucky me, I found him first.”

“I never liked you knowing things. It doesn’t suit you,” Leaf’s eye twitched in annoyance.

“You should have asked my help to begin with,” he picked up a thick file and slid it over to her, “Dr. Stanford Filbrick Pines. 12 PhDs, obsessed with the supernatural. More brains than sense with none of the credibility. I found him, begging for grants from anyone who wouldn’t laugh him out of their office. So I threw him a bone. Gave him a lab, and some funding to keep him busy. Figured he’d come in useful some day.”

“Why do you presume he is the one I’m looking for? There’s an infinite number of dimensions which means infinite versions of him,” she pointed out.

“Cards on the table I wasn’t sure about him myself. I poured money into his little projects figuring he’d find out what you were after. Kill two birds with one stone. And all I got in return are drawings of mushrooms and rock formations! This man’s supposed to be a physicist! Just look at this crap!” he picked up the box and dumped its contents on the table. Loose pages of parchment and notes spilled out. Three red journals skid across the polished wood surface and stopped in front of Leaf.

Curiously she picked up the one closest to her. A gold six-fingered hand with the number three adorned its cover. She was surprised to find it was a handwritten field journal, each weathered page designed and laid out with detailed illustrations. She could all but feel the passion and care that had gone into compiling such a record. These pages held pieces of a man’s soul and radiated a warm steady rhythm like the soft heartbeat. Why would this be here? Surely he wouldn’t have parted with it willingly.

“You took his research,” she stated, her brow furrowed in confusion.

“He bitched the entire time.”

“Why? You don’t even want it,” Leaf said incredulously.

“I paid for it, didn't I? He signed the papers and took my money,” Derwin gave her a smug self-satisfied smile as though daring her to say something to the contrary. “It’s my research now.”

At that moment Leaf found herself having trouble reconciling this man’s actions with those of an adult. Derwyn was displaying such crude and painfully childish cruelty. He had taken Dr. Pine’s work, something that had probably been the man’s entire life, simply because he could. There was no real motivation behind it, no greater scheme or purpose other than to cause distress. Derwyn had simply known that this was the best way to hurt him, and had done it on a whim.

“Should have read the fine print,” he laughed, “learned that one from you and now he knows it too.”

“Yes, I suppose you were the sort of child who enjoyed playing keep-away with other people’s things,” she said, lost in thought.

“Well, look at you, pretending to care,” he sneered.

“All you’ve shown me is that you targeted and destroyed some poor sap’s life,” Leaf responded, closing the journal with a snap and tossing it back onto the table, “if this is all you have to offer…”

“I think it’s a very reasonable offer,” he said, grabbing a page from the table as though to study it, “you’re right, Leaf, I may not know what you’re after, but I’m a betting man. And, here’s me making a bet it wasn’t a coincidence that this weirdo insists on hovering around your new home. So do this for me, this one little thing, and I’ll tie him up in a little bow and give him to you. No questions asked.”

“Human sacrifice, is that what it’s come to?” Leaf rolled her eyes.

“If that’s what gets you off. Far be it for me to tell you what to do with your things,” Derwyn mused as he walked over to a small cabinet and poured himself a drink. Seeing him be so casual with other people’s lives made something in Leaf snap.

“You don’t even care. I might kill him. I might turn him inside out and see how long it takes for him to die. I might rip out all his teeth, or… or… turn him into a frog! And you’re okay with that! You’re comfortable selling off another human being! How can you be this way?” she practically yelled at him in frustration.

“Well, sweetheart. What choice do mortals have other than nihilism when all the gods have retreated from the world?” 

Leaf blinked. “What did you say?”

“You heard me. You think I’m stupid and I can’t tell what’s going on, but I was there forty years ago,” he walked over to the window and stared out at the cityscape, “I can still remember when the sky was blue, truly blue, not this grayness. There were reds, and yellows, and greens… When you left, you took the color with you and more. I can’t explain it and no one else can sense it but you all left us and took something away. We have been rotting ever since.”

Leaf stared at him with something akin to pity. It hadn’t occurred to her that he could see the dulling of the light. It was not decay what he felt, but a longing for brighter days, for that faint spark of magic in the wind, and the shimmer of the unknown skirting across the moonlit skies. Or in this case, a longing for the kind of reality that no longer existed. In this sense, it wasn’t the world that was decaying, it was the people. 

“Hm. So you have.” She couldn’t help but wonder just how deep the rot went, but then, Derwyn was never one to keep her guessing.

“Not that you care, right? Not enough to do anything about it anyway,” he asked with a cruel smile before tipping back his drink, “So what’s it going to be? You want this freak or not? And before you turn me down you should know, I have no problem with putting a bullet in that big brain of his for wasting my time.”

Leaf’s face was inscrutable as she stared at Derwyn. The silence lingered for an uncomfortable amount of time as she sat there slouched upon the plush leather chair.

“How many have you killed?” she finally asked.

He blinked as though taken aback. “What kind of question is that?”

“A simple one, I should hope. What’s the number, Derwyn?” she asked.

“Fuck off, where do you get off judging me. You play with people’s lives but never once stop to think what happens to all those toys you leave behind! How many? As many as I had to! As many as it took to get things done!”

Leaf’s irises took on an eerie glow and in the span of a few seconds she could see them. Every life that this man had taken out of greed, envy, or simple cruelty. The shattered timelines branched out, bleeding with the unfulfilled potential of existence cut short. They built up around her reaching to the sky in a twisted pile of broken dreams until they blotted out her entire field of vision. There were many, far too many. She blinked and her eyes settled back into vivid purple.

“Perhaps, I was simply wondering if you were actually going to kill him or if you were bluffing,” she said with a one-armed shrug.

“Keep me waiting any longer and I’ll show you how loudly he can scream.”

She felt a deep revulsion at the sight of him. She could see it clearly, far too clearly now. There was nothing left of him, he was rot all the way through, a disease manifested into human form. The echoes of what she had seen continued to reverberate around her. So many shattered directly or indirectly by the actions of one, selfish man. Still he stood before her defiant, as though challenging her to do something about it all the while using yet another life as a shield.

Leaf took a deep breath resigning herself to the fact she had no choice before standing up. This charade had gone on long enough.

A black glove appeared on her right hand riddled in glowing iridescent symbols before her fingers burst into bright violet flames. 

“A deal’s a deal,” she said, offering her hand to him. Derwyn’s face split into a manic grin as he strode over and clasped Leaf’s hand executing their contract.

“I knew it. I knew that’d get you,” he laughed as he grasped her hand in his. “You’ve always been a bleeding heart. I knew you couldn’t resist rescuing a pathetic little-”

He swayed as his vision swam and he felt a tightness constricting around him. Leaf’s face remained impassive but her eyes darkened as she gripped his hand tightly. He blinked and looked down to see what he had thought to be flames coiling around his wrist and up his arm. The light wasn’t fire, it was something else that spiraled out of the palm of her hand in twists and impossible coils.

“What are you doing?” he gasped. He felt a sudden shortness of breath and tried to pull away but the grip on his hand was like steel. The light grew and split off into a web pinning him in place like a butterfly on display. 

“Fulfilling my promise,” she replied and it was then he noticed her eyes no longer looked human. Her pupils had shattered and mingled with violet streaks until all he could see was an eternal fractal pattern pulling him into a void. 

“We- we had a-!”

“No. Not my deal with you. My contract with the universe. You see, I keep the balance between order and chaos. Stagnation and atrophy. I deal in Potential but you… you took too much,” she leaned in close to whisper, “you left a void and it must be filled.”

“Leaf. Please!” he choked out but her eyes remained broken and inhuman.

“ Horror vacui… ” the words left her lips barely a whisper but they seemed to reverberate through the very fabric of time and space.

It started slowly at first. The tips of his fingers began to turn black as though stained with ink. The dark streaks then bloomed upwards blotting his arm, then his shoulder, then his neck. It felt like fire and shards of ice ripping his molecules apart to render them inert and liquifying him from the inside out.

“It’s my fault,” she murmured and her voice had warped to take on a fractured quality, “I let this go on for too long. I left you thinking you could make better choices. The stealing, the greed, the envy… it only got worse. This is my fault. You are my fault. I should have stopped you long ago.”

He choked as his knees buckled and his legs shattered into something that looked like brittle obsidian shards. All the while his face remained twisted in pain and terror. His eyes were the last to change, frozen in dread long after his lungs had crumbled into dust.

“Don’t worry. This time, you’re coming with me,” she murmured as the blackened stone cracked and crumbled into fine sand sifting through her fingertips. 

Leaf stared at the pile of carbon dust left where Derwin Nereus Lump had once stood. There where his heart had once been, there was now a small bottle of finely cut glass filled with glittering ink. She reached down to pick it up and held it up to the light. The newly formed glass was still warm to the touch and glowed a faint red as though only recently pulled out of the kiln.

Oh Derwyn, you were such a waste of a man, may you serve a better purpose as ink.

“None of this makes any sense!” Ford exclaimed as he all but threw down a green tome onto the desk. “There’s no cryptography, no optical filters, nothing on the spectrometer-”

“Ford, I really think we should call it a night,” Fiddleford yawned.

“I can’t, this is going to bother me until I figure it out,” he grumbled and flipped through the pages as though they would suddenly surrender their secrets.

Stan had left long ago, having grown bored with the tedious analysis of the journals. Fiddleford had ‘translated’ the blank pages of the crimson journals and certain ink blots into legible script. However, after hours of comparison and testing various journals, he was no closer to cracking the cipher.

“Y’know, Ford, you haven’t tested the gold ones yet.”

“I haven’t tested a lot of things,” he bristled and pointedly kept his eyes focused on a page covered in spidery streaks of ink.

“It just feels like we’re in the spaghetti throwin’ stage of this, so maybe you should take a look.”

Ford’s grip on the emerald book tightened as he tried to fight his impulse to storm off. Objectively, Fiddleford was right, but that didn’t mean his friend wasn’t withholding his thoughts on the situation. Ford hated being ‘managed’ even if it came from a place of concern. He finally lowered the journal and glared at his friend.

“Why don’t you just say what you mean?” his voice was terse and Fiddleford raised his hands in an appeasing gesture.

“I’m just thinkin’, it ain’t a coincidence I can read a book made by the muse of engineers. Maybe there’s nothing tangible to decipher about the writing. Maybe it’s all up here,” he tapped at his temple before cracking a smile, “kinda gives a whole new meaning to being touched in the head.”

Ford stared at the gold book Fiddleford offered as though it were a viper. Gingerly he took it, flipped it open to the first page and immediately dropped it as though it had scalded him. It fell open on the desk and Fiddleford stared at the nonsense symbols on the page. He looked up and only then noticed his friend was white as a sheet.

“Stanford? Are you alright? What does it say?”

Ford couldn’t look away, his heart pounding in his ears. He heard Fiddleford’s question but found himself unable to speak. There spread across two pages, written in dark scrawling ink it read:

H̷̓ẹ̶̭l̚l̀͒ͅo̖̓ S͗̓͢i̝xeͪr͜!̉ D̑̊ḭd̸̳̄ y̛o̜ͬu͚̣ m̧̖͟i̅s͚͙̀s m̻͖̹e̝ͩ?

“Ford? Ford!”

The longer he stared the clearer the writing became even though the letters didn’t change at all. It was as though he had been stumbling through blindly and suddenly remembered how to read. A hand rested on his shoulder causing him to flinch but at the same time taking him out of the panic spiral. 

That’s right, it was different this time. He took a shuddering breath and placed a hand over Fiddleford’s. He wasn’t alone, not this time.

“I can read it. It’s getting clearer the longer I stare at it,” he replied before picking it up once more and showing it to him, “can you see anything.”

“Just a bunch of scribbles cobbled together,” he said, “one point for the Touched in The Head theory.”

“We're not calling it that,” Ford grimaced although it had less to do with a name and more to do with the fact that he was being forced to interact with Bill once more.

“You know Ford, you don’t gotta read it if you’re uncomfortable-”

“It’s fine.”

He flipped the page before his logic caught up to his ego. Perhaps it was not the smartest of moves, but Bill always made him act impulsively. This time, he simply wanted to gloss over the entire shameful ordeal with minimal discussion about his feelings. Was that too much to ask for? His eyes focused on the page and the words flowed far more easily now.

Trouble in paradise?

Can’t say I blame him. You should have called it a night hours ago but you’re just so darned obsessed with me! I’m flattered Fordsy, truly!

Kinda fitting how everything you did before now has been a waste of time.

A big ol’ trip all around the world looking for answers and where did it lead you?

BACK TO ME!

“So what’s it say?”

“The ramblings of an insane demon. He used temporal scrying to write things he thought would rile me up. It’s a cheap party trick,” Ford huffed in annoyance.

Well aren’t you a little killjoy. Whatever happened to the magician’s code? Sheesh, I’ve heard of sore losers, but you’re the first sore winner I’ve ever met! HA HA!

Nah, I’m just kidding.

I should have known I’d need something that packs a bigger wallop to impress you. So’s how about we make this interesting?

“He’s trying to make a deal,” Ford’s deadpan tone concealed the jittery energy coursing through him. It was the feeling of an ant waiting for the other shoe to drop.

I know what you want. 

You found out about the rubes that run this trainwreck known as reality. Yeah I used to be in a crew with them, before they sold out, went corporate, and got LAME! 

One day they’re melting galaxies with you to make dimensional s’mores, the next they’re too tired to hang out and they bail on you halfway into turning an entire dimension to jelly because they got work in the morning. So you’re just stuck there with an entire loaf of bread in one hand, Schrodinger’s peanut butter jar in the other, and NOTHING TO SHOW FOR IT!

BUT THAT’S OKAY!

I’M OVER IT!

“I don’t think he is…” Ford muttered under his breath before shaking his head, “I don’t even know where to begin. He’s saying he knows the other entities and he’s insinuating they were close. He wants to trade for information, but that last part is an assumption. He's yet to get to the point.”

Hey now. I wouldn’t say ‘close’. We were acquaintances at best.

You know, I’m kinda ticked you’re wasting your time with these losers instead of cracking open my books. You think you’re gonna find anything out there more interesting than me?

You don’t call, you don’t write. I’m starting to question your motives, O̭͎ͨL̛̇̅Ḏ̽̉͟͞ F͎ͪR̵͎͉ͣ͢I͋̂Ẻ̵̋ͭN̢ͦ̿͡D̢ͧͨ.

But just to show you that I’m not the jealous type, I won’t hold it against you. 

Heck, I’ll even tell you all about them!

“What’s the catch,” he found himself responding before he could stop.

Funny you should ask! Let’s play a game!

Let’s turn this into one of those ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ books! Make the right choices, I spill my guts. Make the wrong ones and you get NOTHING! All the knowledge in these books get sealed away from you, FOREVER.

Ford set the book down and took a breath to calm his anger. Bill was toying with him, he couldn’t let him win. Hell this wasn’t even Bill himself, it was the equivalent of graffiti scrawled on a bathroom wall.

“Everything' alright?” Fiddleford asked, trying (and failing) to hide his concern.

“Yes. Bill is just trying to bait me into doing his bidding again by telling me he’ll unlock the journals if I do as he says.”

“Convenient.”

“Isn’t it?” he sighed, “just as well, I’m not stupid enough to play his games.”

You’ve gotten so boring in your old age!

Where’s the guy would would stay up until 3:00 AM working on impossible equations, pass out, and throw an all-night rager all in the mindscape? I miss that guy!

That guy knew how to party!

That guy understood the score!

That guy would know that you don’t have a choice! Game’s already started, Sixer!

In fact, you should be getting a phone call, right around… N̥̖̗͆̌ͨÕ̭̰̘̇̒Ẁ̷̰̘͙̚

His phone rang in his pocket and both he and Fiddleford nearly jumped out of their skins in surprise. Ford looked down in annoyance as Stan’s name appeared and he hung up the phone without answering. It was late. He'd told Stan he'd be back by midnight, it was almost two in the morning. He knew his brother would be angry, but he just needed a few more minutes to find a stopping point.

“I'll call him when we're done. I told him this was going to take a while,” he justified himself to nobody in particular. Fiddleford really wasn't in any position to begrudge Ford his hyperfixations.

You sure showed him who's boss!

So here’s the first task, Fordsy.

Billy says:

Don’t pick up the phone.

Almost immediately the phone rang again, this time it was Mabel. All at once Ford felt his hands become ice cold, and a sick feeling settled in the pit of his stomach. The faint sound of manic laughter lingered at the edge of his thoughts. Something was wrong.

Something was terribly wrong.

He quickly dropped the book and fumbled to pick up the phone.

“Grunkle Ford! Come quick! Something’s happened to Dipper! Please! We need your- No Grunkle Stan don’t touch it! Don’t get it on your hands! IT SEES YOU! CLOSE YOUR EYES! DON'T LET IT SEE YOU! DON'T LET IT-!”

“Mabel? Mabel!” Ford called out but the line had gone dead. He turned to face his friend with a frightened expression. “I have to go. I have to go home right now!”

Fiddleford immediately got to his feet and motioned for him to follow. “C’mon, you can explain on the way.”

As the two left, the gold journal tumbled to the floor, momentarily forgotten. It landed open to a page nearly blacked out in scribbled ink, its only legible words read: 

YOU LOSE! HAHAHA̵͚̤̺͔̰̽́̂̕̕H̴̷͔̠̜̐͡A̯ͦ̌ͫͣH͈̭̔̊A͓̗̤̜͆̈́̐̕͟͠͠H̼̗͋͑͒̑̉͒͟A̸̗͗̈́ͣ!̧̨̥̓̃̕

Chapter Text

We dance round in a ring and suppose.

But the secret sits in the middle and knows.

There was this commonly held belief that love required someone to be foolish.

It was hard to tell which came first, love or idiocy, or if one begat the other. Regardless, for such a thing to take root one required boundless optimism and so it was the domain of the young. Love, true love, required patience and a level of naivete that people lost over time. Practicality, disappointments, and the realities of life eroded away such gilded thoughts and hardened what had once been a yielding heart. 

Like a wooden statue left at the edge of the sea, time peeled back the glossy layers of varnish and wore away the splinters into crumbling salt. Time left only a shadow of those spring romances.

The longer Leaf lived, the harder it was to remember those earlier days when she had entertained the notion of love untainted by cynicism. The young were allowed to be stupid, but by that same allowance, they were expected to grow out of it. As time progressed, she saw relationships devolve, the glitter crumble away until all that kept a pair together was a primitive and selfish desire not to die alone.

Leaf stared at the glass ink bottle in her hand, her gaze a million light years away as the abeyant ink inside coiled in black and iridescent scarlet swirls.

She had loved Derwyn once, back before she was “mostly” human. Or so she thought. Surely there had to have been some affection for the man.

Wouldn’t it stand to reason then, that some part of her should have survived being doused with eternity long enough to love him still? If it had been real enough to keep herself anchored to his point in time, shouldn’t she feel something now?

Leaf waited for a sudden realization, an epitome, a bolt of enlightenment or sorrow. Anything. She waited, but there was nothing there. In spite of her best efforts, all she felt was a horrifying apathy as though she had done nothing more than crush an ant on her way out the door. 

One less person who remembered her as she was. One less thing tethering Leaf to her past; swallowed up by the massive overpowering noise of the universe. Was it that he never mattered, or had his pettiness made him so insignificant as to fall off her perception entirely?

Perhaps, he would have mattered if I had stayed.

She made a face as the very idea was nauseating and instead placed the little pot of ink on a shelf next to a dozen or so similar glass jars in her study. 

Leaf prided herself in being reasonable, but she’d sooner rip out her own eyes than bind herself to a man such as Derwyn. She doubted they would have lasted a year before she pulverized him with or without The Laws demanding it.

There was a rustle as she stepped away and eyes flickered to a piece of paper that had fluttered to the floor after spilling from a banker box. There, staring back at her was a familiar face albeit this one was a shade paler. His wan smile did nothing to soften the dark circles under his dark eyes. His shoulders were slouching as though bogged down by some great weight. 

“Dr. Pines…” she sighed as she picked up the paper.

Everything that had happened to him, everything that he had been put through, had been her fault. She could sense his distress, sharp as frostbite on her fingertips. If she closed her eyes and focused on the resonating patterns on the fabric of the universe, she could hear his grief. With everything lost, what would happen to him now?

The man staring back at her was a stranger. He did not deserve his current fate, but there were billions upon billions of injustices happening at any given time. He was owed nothing. The universe was a massive, unwieldy beast. It was callous, unyielding, and cruel in its indifference.

“But not today,” she murmured as the page began to smolder into curling patterns and flecks of glowing paper began to break off and form into self sustaining flames. A troupe of violet wil ‘o wisps soon emerged and playfully surrounded Leaf. 

“Alright, listen up. That means all of you pay attention. Take this box and deliver it to the man who it rightfully belongs to. After that, I want you to lead him to some treasure, the real kind. He’s going to need it.”

She spotted a piece of opalized wood on her desk and was reminded of the drab colorless world she was sending them off to. Leaf supposed it was unfair that the whims of the elder gods would taint a place that had otherwise done no wrong. Her thoughts lingered on Dr. Pines, the man who would search in vain for wonders in a place that had gone barren. The universe didn’t care about him anymore than it cared for a single grain of sand on a beach, but just this once, just for today Leaf would soften the edges and make it gentle.

“One more thing, one last thing. When you get there, paint his world in color. Give him a proper show. Do you understand?” The small wisps twirled in place just so in response. “Alright, off you go.”

The little flames trembled eagerly before spinning rapidly around the box and vanishing with it in a burst of flame and light. Leaf watched them go wondering, not for the first time, if she was doing the right thing. Doing something kind out of obligation did not absolve her guilt. If anything, arbitrarily meddling in the lives of mortals often did more harm than good.

She felt a migraine coming on as a deep weariness seeped into her bones. There was so much left unfinished, there was always so much to do. For all his faults, Derwyn was not wrong. She was interested in a Dr. Pines, just not that Dr. Pines. 

She waved her hand and Bill Cipher’s Zodiac appeared like a hologram overlay. She stared at the six fingered hand, and noted it was identical to the one on the cover of the journals. The sigil glowed and beneath it the name ‘Stanford Pines’ appeared in neatly flowing script. Her eyes then flickered to the crescent symbol. Last she spoke to the zodiac it had trouble parsing between the two, if Dr. Pines was the hand, then could the crescent be someone close to him? His brother or one of the children?

Bill had left his mark on this place which meant there was more she needed to investigate. One thing was quite clear to her: Stanford Pines knew what had happened to Bill. Whether he would surrender the knowledge willingly was another matter. From what Leaf had gathered, people who made a deal with Bill rarely made it through unscathed. Once the shenanigans subsided, they didn’t take kindly to being asked about their lapse in judgment. Or as Gravity Falls liked to put it:

“Nevermind all that!”  

And so the options were to A) just ask the man or B) keep digging for clues on her own.

“Yeah, there’s no way he’d tell some random stranger,” Leaf muttered as though the very idea was preposterous. “I’ll take option C.” 

The thing about being someone with access to a “higher” vantage point was that she wasn’t tethered to the here and now. She could always just lift her head a little bit and take a look at someone’s entire chronology. A quick peek was exactly what she needed. Leaf picked at Ford’s thread unfocusing her eyes and peering into his timeline… 

Only to be inflicted with searing eye pain by the sheer overload of information.

“Ah! Mother fracker! ” she yowled as she rubbed at her eyes. Her hands came away red. Her eyes were bleeding. 

Lovely.

She stumbled out into the hall and into the bathroom only to freeze when she saw her reflection. 

Her eyes were still broken, pupil, iris and sclera blended into black and violet fractals. Blood smeared down her cheeks and dark indigo patterns swirled all over her face giving the illusion that his skin was splitting open. Even her hair remained void black as though it were a jagged hole torn out of space itself. She looked like some eldritch abomination was clawing its way out of a human form.

“Oh. Oh no…” she groaned as she realized she had gone far beyond her usual limit and her higher dimensional presence was leaking out, “c’mon. Not now… not now…”

She took a deep breath and focused on quickly retracting all of her self back into the third dimension. The action made her vision swim and she immediately threw up a chunk of gravity. The strange gold substance landed with a heavy slosh against the sink and Leaf had to grab the edge of the counter to keep from tipping over.

“Ugh,” she groaned as she thunked her forehead against the mirror. Her mouth tasted like old pennies, 1943 bronze-struck wheat pennies to be exact. “Okay… I get… I did too much. I’m going to stop now… I won’t do it anymore… and you’re going to be cool and… stop throwing up. ‘Kay?”

She took deep breaths and slowly closed herself off a little at a time. Just as she had fully retreated into her fourth dimension another wave of nausea struck and she retched out pure time. The metallic purple substance sounded like a grand pianos crushed by a singularity and tasted of a thousand jury summons back to back. Leaf coughed as she clung to the edge of the sink now stuck in a time bubble with 1.25x the normal gravity and somehow looking even more inhuman than before. 

This was going to be a long night.

Ford locked the containment unit with trembling hands. The pressurized hiss meant the seal Fiddleford had improvised was holding.

They had arrived at the Shack to find it being torn apart by an ink blob that seemed to alternate between thrashing in pain and wanting to devour whoever was closest. It had the usual set of anomalous properties: hypnotic eyes, shifting through various states of matter, incredible strength, the capacity to infect via physical contact... 

None of those things had bothered Ford. Hell, the thing was closer to the multiversal standard than a baseline human. Even so, there was a wrongness to it that he couldn't quite put his finger on. Something about it was too close to the chaos of the Nightmare Dimension and his knee-jerk reaction had been to shoot it dead.

“Grunkle Ford wait! That’s Dipper!”

Ford ran a hand over his face in an attempt to settle his nerves. If it hadn't been for Fiddleford's quick thinking he might have- The thought was interrupted by the sound of the door opening. He could see Stan reflected on the containment unit as he walked in.

“Mabel’s patching up old Whatshisface, Tate's coming to pick him up. I never seen a man do that much damage with a banjo. It's gotta be some kinda farm-boy fighting style, right?” Stan said with an incredulous laugh. Ford could see a pink glittering bandaid over the bridge of Stan’s nose and his left eye sported a shiner.

Why hadn’t he just answered the damn phone the first time? Why couldn’t he have gotten here quicker? Would he ever be rid of this demon’s curse?

“Hey, it’s gonna be alright, ” he put a hand on Ford’s shoulder, “The kid’s stable, a lil’ gooey, but what teenager isn’t?”

Ford knew his brother was trying to lighten the mood but he couldn't bring himself to look away from the frozen mass of black ooze in the containment chamber. The world was slowly constricting around him like a massive python. His heartbeat quickened as though he were prey being chased.

“I-I don’t even know where to begin,” he said feeling lost, “the readings are all coming back inorganic. It’s clearly there but the instruments are having trouble picking it up. I can’t even find his bones!”

Ford’s voice wavered and all of a sudden found himself pulled into a hug. He shut his eyes and tried very hard to get his distress under control, but the sudden spike in terror refused to abate. What if it was too late? What if this thing had already consumed him? What if the infection spread?

“Stanley… I don't even know if he’s still in there…” he whispered, finally voicing his greatest fear.

“You can’t think like that. The kid’s a fighter. He’s not going to let some punk alien gunk get the better of him.”

“I’m sorry…” Ford apologized, “I shouldn’t have stayed out so late. I shouldn’t have left him alone. I shouldn’t have let myself be distracted.”

“It’s gonna be alright. We both knew the kid was going to get into trouble sooner or later,” Stan said, grabbing his twin by the shoulders and looking into his eyes, “this isn’t your fault but you gotta pull yourself together. We can’t fall apart. He needs you.”

Ford’s frightened blue eyes stared back at Stan’s brown ones. It wasn’t lost on Ford just how much Stan resembled their father. The man had not been one for displays of emotion but he had instilled in the twins a sense of grit and determination… even if that meant suppressing every instinct and human emotion.

“Okay. Okay, I’m good,” Ford nodded and took a deep breath. 

“You sure?” Stan asked as he hesitantly let him go.

“Yes. I’m fine. I’ll be better once I find the origin of this fluid. It’s exhibiting temporal properties. Maybe… maybe that’s why the instruments aren’t able to get a reading.”

“You got all sorts of spookums here. Any one of them could have done this,” Stan frowned.

“Grunkle Ford,” Mabel’s voice echoed through the lab and the pair turned to see her standing at the entrance. She was wearing bright yellow dishwashing gloves and in her hands were four pieces of broken glass. 

Ford approached Mable and knelt to observe what he could now tell was a broken pen. He adjusted his glasses and his brow furrowed. The ink rippled with the same sheen as the creature in the chamber. “Where did you get this?”

“It was an accident, Dipper tried to write with it even though I told him not to and then I tried to stop him but…we… I stole this pen, I lied about it, and now it’s broken,” Mabel sniffled as large tears brimmed at the corner of her eyes, “she trusted me and I betrayed her trust.”

Both men flinched in unison as they realized who it was Mabel was talking about.

“Mabel, sweetie, it was an accident. I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Stan said, now finding himself in the unenviable position of having two people he cared about having complex emotions. 

“No, Grunkle Stan you don’t understand!” she protested, “Leaf warned me about how dangerous it was to mess with this stuff. She’s going to be so mad at me.”

“What exactly did she say?” Ford asked cautiously.

“This is called a Promissory pen. If you know how to use it you can do anything with it, but it shouldn’t even hold it without a special glove for protection and the ink should never get on your hands,” she said in a tone that betrayed the fact that she had been mulling over that particular bit of information for some time. “When the pen broke, the ink got on Dipper and he- he turned into that.”

“I see,” Ford frowned as he went to grab a specimen jar and Mabel carefully placed the broken pieces inside it.

“It’s- it’s my fault again, isn’t it? Just like the rifts, just like Weirdmageddon.”

“Mabel, no,” Ford immediately cut off that line of thinking, “you’re not to blame for this. It’s as you said, an accident. You did the right thing by telling us.”

She stared at the broken pieces in the specimen jar and that Pines' determination settled in her big brown eyes. “No. I haven’t, not yet. I have to come clean. I have to tell Leaf what happened.”

Ford and Stan shared a concerned look. There was no telling what someone with this kind of power would do to a thief. If fairy tales were to be believed, witches didn’t suffer mortals who tried to scam them out of their magic and Leaf, well, suffice to say their interactions so far had been nothing if not transactional. While she didn’t seem to harbor any ill intent, she could just as easily think it fair to leave Dipper to his fate. 

No, even Stan understood they needed leverage if they were hoping to negotiate. They needed to find something to give as payment or hold for ransom. A deal like that would take time. Or at least it would have if Mabel hadn’t been staring at them intently having already made up her mind.

“Leaf is the only one who can save Dipper!” Mabel insisted as she took off her contaminated gloves.

“Perhaps but we need to be cautious about what we say,” Ford said hesitantly.

“Eh, listen Pumpkin, what Sixer means is that this is one of those situations where we gotta massage the truth a little.”

Mabel silently glared at them, her arms crossed in front of her chest in disapproval. Clearly she was waiting for them to make the right choice.

It was Stan who finally gave a frustrated sigh. “I’ll get the car.”

Mabel perked up and ran to hug Stan. 

“Yeesh, kid. Who raised ya to be this honest?”

Ford’s expression became dour as he closed the specimen jar. He couldn’t shake the feeling that this was all going to end badly.

Her treasonous body had officially rebelled against her. 

After resisting every attempt to resume business as usual, it was clear to Leaf nothing would fix this other than a much-needed rest. A day or two without tampering with the fabric of reality should set her back to full strength. Well that much she could do. Taking a weekend off actually sounded nice, almost like a mini vacation.

Defeated by her own exhaustion, Leaf had finally gone to bed and settled into the quiet darkness of her bedroom. The plush bed and cool sheets provided exactly the kind of soothing environment that placated her thoughts and allowed her mind to slip into a deep dreamless rest.

This isn’t so bad. Who knew? Maybe she’d sleep an entire day away.

The universe, of course, had other ideas. 

“-GOTTA WAKE UP!” Mabel’s shrill voice jolted her out of blissful nothingness into the harsh chaos of morning.

Leaf blinked in confusion as she tried to shield her eyes from the glaring sunlight. Someone had pulled open her curtains and rudely yanked away her covers.

“Mabel?” she groaned, grabbing at her head as the blend of light and noise ignited a migraine. “It’s Sat’rday. Office is closed.”

“I’m sorry I just really need your help right now Dipper is an ink monster and it was an accident but now there’s nothing we can do to-”

Leaf was not entirely listening and tried to grab a pillow to throw to whap her into silence with only to then realize… “Why am I wet?”

“About that, uh, you weren’t wakin’ up,” a gruff voice echoed from the doorway. Stan was there looking as though he’d gone three rounds with a sledgehammer. In his hand was a suspicious looking drinking glass.

All at once the pieces slotted into place. They’d shown up, broken into her house when she hadn’t answered the door, and tried to waterboard her in her sleep. Annoyance bled into something closer to fury. 

“What in all the nine hells-?” she hauled herself out of bed, ready to break the rest of Stan’s nose when a small hand clutched her damp sleeve. 

“It’s my fault. I’m sorry but please, please Leaf, you have to help my brother,” Mabel’s voice trembled as though she were about to burst into tears.

“Mabel…” Leaf gave an exasperated sigh. She was cranky at being so rudely woken up but choosing violence at this particular moment seemed wrong for a vague reason that her barely conscious brain refused to elaborate on. 

Leaf visibly deflated before glaring balefully at the child. It was then she noted Mabel’s stance. Her hands were curled into two small fists as though ready to fight, but her eyes were frightened. She didn’t seem to have slept at all the night before and her sweater was torn.

She is afraid and came to you for help.

“Alright, alright, I’m up,” she grumbled before waving in Mabel’s general direction. “Take it from the top. What happened?”

“We… I stole your glitter pen. I know I shouldn’t have but Dipper wanted to study it and he said we were only going to borrow it but he didn’t listen to me when I told him it was dangerous and… and… I really am sorry,” Mabel’s confession poured out of her as she braced herself for anger.

Instead, Leaf stared at nothing as though processing the information before giving another sigh, “of course you did. Let me guess, you spilled the ink on someone.”

“Please, it’s Dipper. He’s-”

“I know. I know,” Leaf said with a groan as she rolled herself out of bed, “let me put on something dry first.”

They arrived at the Mystery Shack with a screech of the old Diablo’s tires. Leaf counted at least three red lights the old man had run through including numerous stop signs. Either he was either a menace or this was indeed an emergency. Knowing her luck it was probably both. 

She exited the car and stared at the old building before her. The place had clearly seen better days, but that gaping hole in the roof had to be new. Even so, there was something oddly familiar about it. It felt a bit like visiting an old friend’s bedroom. She shouldered her messenger bag and followed Mabel towards the front door but immediately stopped short of stepping onto the porch.

“What the-?” she blinked and reached out to poke something in mid air. The light around her rippled and runes appeared revealing a dusty pink force field shielding the entire structure. Before she could comment on it, the front door fell off its hinges. Mabel squeaked in surprise. 

One inconvenience at a time.

Leaf braced herself and pushed past the barrier. She clenched her jaw as she felt a sharp stinging sensation all along her skin. Who would bother building such a large sanctuary? And for what purpose?

“Grunkle Ford?” Mabel called out but Leaf pulled her back. The inside of the house was dark, but what she could see looked as though a tornado had struck. 

“Ford? Ford!” Stan yelled as he pushed past them and ran inside heedless of any danger. 

“Grunkle Stan, wait! It’s not safe!”

“That’s right, so stay outside where it’s safe, pumpkin.”

“I’m not leaving you guys to fight monster Dipper all alone!”

Leaf only half listened to their bickering as she noted the streaks of ink smeared on the walls and ceiling. Her fingertips brushed against grooves dug into the wooden paneling and frowned. This was wrong. The damage, the size of the creature, all of it was disproportionate to a bit of spilled ink. She caught movement and she stared into the dark shadows of the adjacent room, her eyes glowing much like a cat’s.

“Guys, I’m going to need you to stop talking,” she said in a distracted voice as she held up a hand and carefully peeked from behind the doorway.

Glancing up she could see where something had punched a hole through the roof and then torn through the second story to reach the living room. She slipped on her violet-tinted glasses as she rummaged through her bag and grabbed something that looked like a silver compact.

In a single fluid motion Leaf tossed the compact to the middle of the room and it sparked into life. Bright pink bolts of energy coursed out and ensnared a blob of ink about the size of a large raccoon.

“Well, that wasn’t so hard,” she smiled, “you made it seem like… it… was… huh.”

She trailed off as she noticed the blob of ink was only part of the creature. In the snare’s glow, Leaf could now see her mistake. What she had actually caught was the beast’s tail. The actual thing was about the size of a bear and it could see her. 

“That… is a lot of static…” her eyes widened in surprise.

Leaf felt its gaze boring into hers, that great emptiness reached towards her as though to devour her whole and fill the nothingness. Something like this didn’t just want to feed on simple physical matter. This thing hungered for everything she ever was and would ever be. She’d made a deadly mistake: this creature wasn’t spilled ink.

“ Neverwere… ” she breathed before turning to both Stan and Mabel, “Run!”

The trio took off down the hallway as the wall exploded. Leaf tossed out a few more snares causing the beast to stumble but never for long. Stan finally grabbed Leaf and Mabel before pulling them into a room just as the creature bulldozed past them. It scrabbled down the hall shrieking the entire time until it crashed into a room full of mirrors.

Leaf pried Stan off of her and knelt touch the ground only for it to burn her when she tried to summon her zodiac. The humming of the barrier buzzed against her ears.

Okay. That’s closed off.

She immediately turned to the two with and checked them for ink and scratches.

“It didn’t touch you, did it?” she asked looking them over, “Don’t ever let it touch you!”

“That thing was supposed to be on ice,” Stan said looking dazed and out of breath, “Ford! We gotta go down there. We gotta go down to the basement and find him!”

“That was Dipper,” Mabel looked about to cry. “It’s gotten worse, how could it have gotten worse? Did he hurt Grunkle Ford…” 

“That is not Dipper,” Leaf replied looking visibly rattled, “that thing is a Neverwere, a paradox monster formed when the cosmos rots. It’s an infection you find on the corpses of dead dimensions. It should not be here, it shouldn’t exist within a stable world!”

“What did you think we dragged you here for?!” Stan shot back as he pulled Mabel in a protective hug, “Did you think we would have called you if this was just some regular weird thing?”

Leaf snapped her fingers over and over again summoning her will-o'-wisps, each time her fingertips sparked like a broken lighter as the wisps failed to materialize.

“You called me to wrangle a chicken, that is a T-Rex! And with this karking barrier you’ve got up, you’re asking me to do it all analog. I can’t bare-knuckle box this thing into submission! It doesn’t-,” Leaf stopped short as though only just then realizing something. “How long has this shield been up?”

Stan and Mabel froze and shared a look.

“Who wants to know?” Stan asked.

“About a year,” Mabel said, choosing to come clean, “why?”

“That might explain some things. Gods I wish I’d brought more than just knives,” she replied before reaching into her bag and bringing out a pair of obsidian knives. She knelt and placed the knives in front of her. Using a piece of chalk, she began to draw a series of lines in a specific pattern on each of the blades. “Ok Mabel, here's a quick crash-course so pay attention. Right now the shield you have around the shack is keeping a lot of power contained, but it’s been doing that for months now. You ever see what happens to a contaminated snow globe after a while? The water turns brown and the insides rot.”

“Hey, snow globe water’s not for drinking! I can’t be held liable just because a few of the dumber kids ended up in the hospital!” Stan protested defensively. Leaf paused what she was doing to give the man an incredulous look.

“So that thing that took Dipper…” Mabel interjected.

“You guys made a great big snow globe with infected water then Dipper drank from it,” Leaf said as she finished and the knives glowed an emerald green. “Not 100% exactly what happened but a close approximation.”

“What are you making?” Mabel asked.

“Occam razors,” Leaf replied as she placed the knives back in their leather holsters and offered one to Mabel, “be very careful with this, it will cut anything as long as the runes are active. I need you to go outside and sever the unicorn hair keeping up the shield.”

“But won’t that mean we’re unprotected from… other things?” Mabel asked.

“Listen, I can’t do anything for Dipper while that bubble is still up and I can’t be in both places at once. I promise this will fix everything,” Leaf placed a hand on Mabel’s shoulder.

“Does this mean I’m not fired? You’re not angry about the stolen pen?” Mabel asked, rubbing away tears with the edge of her sweater’s sleeve.

“Oh I am positively furious. After this I will have a full on rampage, maybe two,” she informed Mabel in a no-nonsense tone, “but no Mabel, you’re not fired. You made a mistake and did the responsible thing by calling me for help instead of hiding it. So this is me helping and my intern is the only person I can trust to do this.”

Mabel cracked a watery smile before launching herself at Leaf and hugging her tightly. The motion caught Leaf by surprise and she gingerly hugged her back. Truthfully she was trying to steer the kid out of harm’s way more than anything else. It had never occurred to Leaf that Mabel might actually come to like her as a person.

“Promise everyone is going to be okay, Dipper, Grunkle Ford, Grunkle Stan and us. Promise me.”

“I wouldn’t lie to you,” Leaf responded, looking mystified, “I promise.”

Stan was looking at her with a strange look on his face and Leaf stared at him as though unsure what to do. Thankfully Mabel was more emotionally intelligent than either adult in the room and stepped back with a determined look on her face. 

“Mr. Pines, please go with Mabel and keep her safe,” Leaf said as she readjusted her bag and began to stretch.

“You just said you couldn’t take that thing on your own,” he pointed out, “fancy knife or not, I don’t think we should split up.”

“I said I couldn’t subdue it. I didn’t say I couldn’t fight it,” she corrected him, “I just need to keep it busy long enough for Mabel to sever the shield.”

“Won’t the ink get on you if you fight it?” Mabel asked, looking up from examining her knife.

“I’ll be fine. I’m different.”

“How different?” Stan pressed, looking skeptical.

“Different enough.”

“That’s not an answer!”

“Look, do you really want to unlock my tragic backstory now or do you want me to save your brother and nephew? Because we only have time for one of those things!” she snapped, irritation bleeding into her tone.

Before Stan could give a witty comeback that definitely would have had him winning the argument, the Neverwhere shrieked just beyond the doorway. Leaf didn’t wait for them to respond and she kicked open the door before running into full view of the monster.

“DTXL HVWRB! YHQ SDUD TXH WH GHV XQ GHVPDGUH, FDEURQ !” she yelled at the looming oozing shadow and promptly slashed at its face with her knife.

A spurt of ink splattered the floor and walls as the Neverwere lost one of its eyes. Before the thing could come to its senses, Leaf booked it down the hall and around the corner. The Neverwere followed shrieking all sorts of threats as it stumbled through the shack half-blind and enraged. 

Good. It was following her blindly which meant the other two were safe. She looked over her shoulder and saw the thing far closer than she had anticipated.

Too close! Too close! 

She veered through another corridor hoping to use the monster’s momentum against it but it braced itself by snagging the wall with its claws and lunging. She once again veered around another hallway nearly tripping over a throw rug in the process. They were as far away from the front door as possible but at the same time she found herself cornered in some kind of makeshift museum.

In the dim sunlight being filtered through yellowed windows, Leaf could finally get a good look at the creature. It was vaguely humanoid but its body limbs and features seemed to be molded of ferrofluid that shifted and warped with every step. 

Leaf had lied to Mabel when she said this wasn’t Dipper. In a cruel twist of irony, everything she was seeing, from the violence to the dripping ooze came from him. Dipper had never been more himself than he was right now. 

Leaf had suspected as much from the beginning but there was nothing quite like visual confirmation. If she had to guess, Dipper had probably gotten ink on his hands and his stained skin had burned a hole through the permeable layers of reality. There was a reason Leaf used a glass pen and only ever when wearing a T’s and C’s glove. Physically interacting with abeyant ink without protection turned the user into a vessel.

And once you were a vessel, all sorts of things would try to fill you.

The Neverwhere hissed as it formed a set of mandibles with serrated teeth. The black ooze dripping on the floor wasn’t ink, not really, it was instead a distillation of all the potential bad endings Dipper Pines had avoided. Every version of the boy that was left mutilated, or cursed, or died, or simply lost… all of them were trying to take the spot of the one version of themselves that lived happily ever after.

That was all a Neverwere truly was: unfulfilled potential reaching for a vessel.

It stared at her wary of the knife in her hand as it circled closer. Faint hissing words garbled together and she heard it spitting insults at her.

“Now, now, big guy. No need for name calling…” her eyes wandered to the rippling ooze, shifting and twisting as though unable to settle on a fixed form, “...there’s so many of you. How are there so many?”

The lights flickered just then and Leaf could feel the shield pop like a soap bubble. The Neverwere looked behind him sensing the change. Leaf drew a sharp breath and snapped her fingers. Flames, bright violet and scorching hot surrounded them, cutting off the Neverwere’s escape. This time, it was Leaf who leapt at him and, in a moment of feral instinct, sank the emerald blade deep into the creature’s shoulder. It immediately burst into flames and thrashed knocking her away. She rolled on her side, keeping her grip on the knife and taking a large chunk of his shoulder and his entire left arm with her.

“You do not belong here,” she said, getting to her feet. Her shadow loomed over the cornered beast. “You should not exist and if you will not go willingly, I will cut you out of this world, piece by piece.”

The Neverwere watched his severed limb began to dissolve into nothing in a fizz of effervescent bubbles. It keened at her before raising its good arm in a fist and smashing the floorboards. Both Leaf and the Neverwere crashed through and kept falling a good twenty feet before landing roughly on a cement floor.

Dust and the clatter of splintered wood surrounded Leaf. She groaned as she rolled over to stare at the light that didn’t quite reach the bottom of the hole. She muttered a few choice curses before attempting to get up, only for something to prick her arm. The knife lay beside her, shattered to pieces. Her shoulders slumped as she saw the obsidian fade from emerald green to dull gray. Those were nigh impossible to replace. 

It’s so difficult to find good knappers nowadays.

Today was just not working out.

A hurried scraping sound informed her that the monster was in the process of fleeing. She snapped her fingers and a dozen or so pale green wisps appeared. She jabbed a finger at the shadows with a single silent command.

Ǥꗞ.

For once, the tiny licks of flame didn’t argue and quickly split off in search of the creature. A few of the lights remained to illuminate Leaf’s surroundings as she tried to get her bearings. The place looked like a retro laboratory complete with boxy monitors and computer tape. There were rows and rows of shelves filled with identical glass jars each labeled by a number. 

If she ventured to guess she would say this place used to be a state of the art research facility that had been abandoned but was now being repurposed. 

There it was again, that weirdly elusive feeling at the edge of her perception. Everything here, from the machines to the way the wires locked into place just felt familiar as though she were seeing a drawing of something she’d witnessed in person.

A pained cry interrupted her thoughts and immediately a path of floating wisps lit up all of them pulsing in alarm. Leaf immediately bounded into the dark corridor following the trail of lights. Another choked scream echoed through the labyrinth of passages, closer this time. The lights stopped at a door, torn from its hinges and tossed aside. There under the glow of a flickering fluorescent light, stood the Neverwhere, its jaws stained with something metallic. 

Leaf’s eyes burned with a violet light as she recognized the substance immediately. Stolen potential was dripping from its fangs like molten gold. 

“What have you done?” she asked, suddenly filled with revulsion.

Desperation was one way of looking at it, then again, only a desperate monster would risk the wrath of reality by breaking a fundamental law. Yet with this action, the Neverwere had sealed its fate. It had ceased to have a place and had instead become an error in the programming of the universe. 

Leaf’s eyes hardened. Errors were all slated for immediate deletion.

Ford was floating in nothing. He couldn’t recall how he had gotten here, only that something had gone wrong. The darkness itself flowed around him as though he were at the bottom of a deep lake. The air felt incredibly thin and it was difficult to breathe.

“Well, well, well, well, well, look who it is!”

The familiar voice felt like an icy grip seizing his heart. Ford thrashed trying to get away but his body was heavy and didn’t respond. There, in the nothingness before him a single eye opened, as wide as he was tall, and stared at him.

“You’re not real. We defeated you,” Ford hissed through gritted teeth as he tried to hide his fear behind defiance.

“Ha! You always did have a high opinion of yourself, Fordsy, but did you really think you could kill a god?”

Massive hands seized him as though he were a doll and pulled him closer. Bill had never been particularly careful when taking control of Ford’s body, and it looked like he wasn’t going to start now. Ford felt the air squeezed out of his lungs.

“You’re dead,” he choked out and the eye crinkled into a smile.

“No, but YOU will be and really soon too!”

Ford struggled weakly but he felt something begin to tear his muscles apart. “You… you can’t… hurt me…”

“Me? Oh. OH! You don’t even know! Hahahaha!” Bill cackled gleefully as he loosened his grip but the pain didn’t fade.  

“I’m not doing anything to you, brainiac. Something’s eating you alive, and I don’t mean in the figurative way. Look.”

Ford looked down at himself and he saw cracks forming all along his body. Each fissure felt like hot knives cutting him open and from the wounds molten gold bled out him. Bill’s hands were stained with the gold ichor that shimmered in the darkness with a strange iridescence. A long reptilian tongue slithered out from behind Bill’s eye and licked the gold off his fingertips.

“Mmm… I always wondered what your potential tasted like. It’s sweeter than I thought it’d be.”

“Potential…?” Ford gasped as he floated in the abyss feeling weaker by the second.

“Yes, Potential,” Bill grinned with a manic glee as glowing blue chains latched on to Ford’s throat and limbs and he pulled on them like puppet strings. “Everything you are, everything you will ever be gets poured into you when you begin to exist, and OFF YOU GO into the universe. But something cracked you open and drained every last drop, like a cheap little juice box! You’re DYING Sixer! Isn’t that hilarious?!”  

“Gah! Let go!” he choked through the pain but the chains tightened and his body moved of its own accord. The jerking motions deepened the cracks and Ford felt as though a rough yank would tear him apart.

“But you wanna know what really chaps my sides? Of all the things to kill you, you let some retrograde parasite get the better of you. Didn’t you KNOW I was saving you for LAST?”  

The chains went taut, each pulling from different directions as though to rip his limbs off. Ford gave a strangled cry as he felt his bones shatter like panes of glass, cartilage popped, and blood vessels burst.

“You’re MINE. I’m the one who’s supposed to kill you, Sixer! ME!”

All of his nerve endings burning and Bill was jamming a claw into every single one. Ford screamed again only for his vocal chords to snap and his voice box to shatter as they were severed by the fissures coursing through his body. He felt as though his entire being had ossified only to be shattered under the blow of a wrecking ball. 

The torment drove him to incoherence. Was this death? Is this what dying felt like? A mind shattering inferno of mute agony? When would it end? Why wouldn’t it just end?!

“Don’t you worry, Fordsy. I’ll fix you, just like I ALWAYS have.”

Ford had no strength left in him. His broken form hung limp from the chains like a disjointed marionette. He could do nothing but watch helplessly as Bill’s eye transformed into a gaping maw. He shut his eyes tightly.

I’m afraid… Please…

It was an inarticulate thought fueled by a mind overdosing on terror and pain. There was no one to save him, not from the darkness, not from his shattered state, and certainly not from Bill. He had given away his fate to a demon. He’d been a fool to think it was over. He was a fool to think he could ever be free. 

ꞆዛꗛɌꗛ ᎽꗞU ᕔɌꗛ...

A voice rippled like wind chimes through the shadows and the chains holding Ford snapped. Gravity flipped back on and he felt himself falling like a puppet with its strings cut. He braced for an impact, only to land on something soft and warm. Fearful blue eyes opened expecting to see a void, but was instead met with a sky full of stars. 

Blood was pounding in his ears as he tried to make sense of what had just happened. Bill seemed to have gone. Whether it was because he had fled or been banished Ford couldn’t tell. Regardless, his fight or flight instinct kicked in and he tried to sit up. 

Bones, flesh, and sinew scraped together wrong in twisted in disjointed angles that served only to sharpen the already excruciating pain. He choked out a muted cry before collapsing in a trembling mess.

ᗫꗞᙁ'Ꞇ ᙏꗞᕓꗛ.

The stars moved and shifted over him in strange patterns until he realized that it wasn’t a night sky at all. He was being held in the palm of a giant hand belonging to being made up of stars. A second hand was gently resting over him, holding his broken form very much like one would hold an injured bird. The pain began to fade and he blinked away tears to see stardust flowing from the creature into the fractures crisscrossing his body. He watched as he was painstakingly put back together like repairing a broken porcelain doll. Little fractal coils stitched each fissure closed and he felt them repair his throat.

Ford gave a shuddering sigh as his lungs functioned properly once more and his breathing finally leveled off. He stared up with dazed eyes as the comforting warmth radiating from the twinkling stars soothed away his aches and pains. 

An unfamiliar feeling settled deep in his chest and it took him a moment to recognize it. A tendril of starlight reached towards his face and a clear droplet coalesced on its very tip. He watched in wonder as the light refracted through it with impossible colors before the coil reached down and brushed the dew drop against his parched lips.

Concentrated starlight tasted like chocolate. It was such a ridiculous notion he found himself smiling.

He didn’t know how long he lay there, staring at the cosmos in physical form as it settled his thoughts into a pleasant stillness. He could have remained there forever, but eventually the hand covering him pulled away and he could see the featureless face of the being who had saved him. 

The creature’s warmth had seeped into his bones and loosened the tension in his shoulders. Some primitive part of Ford instinctively understood that he was beyond the grasp of anyone who could wish him harm. He now recognized the emotion making his heart feel as though it were overflowing. For the first time in decades, Ford felt protected.

“Where am I?” he asked, his voice still hoarse but somewhat unsure. Nothing he could perceive of this being assured him that he would receive an answer.

Ford had heard of the existence of good extra-dimensional beings from the Oracle but the figure before him didn’t look like the Axolotl. It didn’t look like an amphibian at all. Its spindly form was translucent, and vaguely humanoid. Branches of coral-like growths sprouted from the top of its head and instead of a face, the creature had a single spiral galaxy just beneath its skin that formed something like a mask. He itched for pen and paper so he could capture the image properly while at the same time feeling a great reluctance to move from where he lay cupped in its hand.

The creature didn’t respond and instead carefully deposited him on a nearby ledge. As Ford slipped out of its hold and onto solid ground he couldn’t help looking down. The creature’s legs disappeared into a black expanse that flowed out into the horizon like a murky ocean. That was darkness where it had found him. 

As the creature pulled its hand away, Ford felt a sudden jolt of panic at the loss. Anxiety bloomed in his chest at the thought of being alone once more. It would go, perhaps forever, never to be seen again! He didn’t even know what it was! 

“Wait!” 

Without thinking he leapt up and grabbed onto the creature’s fingertip. Surprisingly enough it stopped and gently lowered him back down so he wouldn’t dangle precariously over the abyss. “Please wait. Why did you help me? You can’t just rescue me and leave without a word. I don’t even know who to thank.”

The blank face stared at him but there was something about the way the stars shifted, he could have sworn it was smiling as though it found him endearing. It rested its hand on the ledge so its fingers curled around Ford in a kind of sheltering motion. Even so, he stubbornly clung on, refusing to let go, feeling for all the world like an ant attempting to stop a freight train yet somehow succeeding.

“Please stay, I have so many questions. What is this place?”

It tilted its head to one side as though considering his request. The stars swirled within its form, flickering with different shades of purple, blue, and gold. As the giant became lost in thought, Ford spotted something dark blighting the starlight on its other hand, the same hand that had healed him.

“You’re hurt. Was that… was it because of me?” 

It didn’t respond but instead knelt so it could observe him better. He should have been terrified. Anyone sensible would have shied away from such scrutiny, but Ford stared at it in wide-eyed wonder and reached out to touch the creature’s face. His hand looked comically small in comparison to the giant but again something about the way the stars flickered made him feel as though it were giving him an amused smile.

“What are you?” he pleaded with the impossible mystery before him. His blue eyes were filled with a burning need to know more, hoping that in some infinitesimal way he could come to comprehend the incomprehensible. He had found something his primitive brain could only process as treasure and he was reluctant to let it go.

“Please, I’ll do anything. Just tell me, how can I see you again?”

The starlight softened into gentle pastels and something akin to purring thrummed pleasantly all around him.

ᎽꗞU ᙏUꕷꞆ ᙡᕔҜꗛ Uᖘ.

Ford woke up gasping for air as though he’d been holding his breath. The first thing he registered was that he was on the floor. The second thing he noticed was that part of his lab was smoldering as though it had recently been on fire.

“Hi. Welcome back.” A vaguely familiar woman was kneeling next to him holding an almost comically large syringe. “You know we really need to stop meeting like this.”

“How did you-? What are you-?” he stammered as he wiped what seemed to be gold paint from his eyes and tried to get up.

“Nope, sorry, gonna need you to stay down,” she replied as she pushed him back onto the floor, “you got a bad case of, ah, space botulism. Had to flush it out.”

“Space… botulism…?” his brow furrowed as he stared at the ceiling. Ford’s thoughts felt like they'd been shuffled out of order and he had a difficult time following her words. 

“Yeah, sorry. Give it a sec, it's almost done,” she replied as she bandaged what he would later realize was the injection area on his neck.

“Leaf,” he said, suddenly remembering her name.

“Yep.”

“Leaf the Consultant.”

“That’s me,” she replied with false enthusiasm as she wiped her hands on a rag and tossed it aside.

“Mable… Stan…?” 

“Both safe and above ground. You, on the other hand, have a knack for getting into danger,” she informed him. “How do you feel?”

“Like you just dipped me in battery acid,” he retorted dryly as he kept staring up at the ceiling in shock.

“Oh, wow. That was a whole entire sentence,” she said, patting his shoulder before standing up, “you’re gonna be fine. Just take a minute to rest.”

Ford lay there in a daze as the memories of the past 24 hours slowly came to him. The journals, Bill, the monster…

“It’s loose!” he sat up and looked around for signs of the creature, “That thing it-it’s some sort of temporal parasite!”

“It’s under control,” Leaf assured him as she flexed her fingers and sorely wished she’d remembered to bring a bottle of water.

“You don’t understand!” Ford protested only to be met with a flat stare in response, “Alright, maybe you do, but that doesn’t mean-”

His words trailed off as Leaf stepped aside and he could see what was behind her. There, on his knees, chained to the floor, was the figure of a man in a tattered blue coat. Disturbingly familiar electric blue restraints were clasped around his wrists powered by a bright azure zodiac encircling the prisoner. 

Ford stood up as recognition flickered through his gaze. It wasn’t the first time he had encountered one of his dopplegangers, but it was highly unusual for them to seek him out.

“Dr. Pines, don’t get too close,” Leaf called out as she wrapped her left hand in gauze, “he can still bite.”

“I’m not afraid of him. I want to know why he’s here.”

The shadowy figure straightened and a book tumbled out of its coat. What should have been a familiar red journal was instead cobalt blue. Ford reached down to pick up the book and turned it over to reveal a pine tree on the cover with the number three emblazoned in black scrawl.

“Doc Pines…” the prisoner's rough voice was filled with amusement, “that's what they call me back home.”

Blue eyes stared back at Ford exactly the same shade as his own, but the careworn face on the stranger was nothing like his.

“You’ve always been a brave kid, Ford, in every universe,” the man said calmly.

“You’re not-”

“No, I’m not you. I’m Dr. Mason Pines and in my dimension…” the fluorescent lights flickered on and Ford could then clearly see the man’s face. There on his forehead was a birthmark in the shape of the big dipper, “...you call me Grunkle Dipper.”

Chapter Text

And you only live forever in the lights you make

When we were young, we used to say

That you only hear the music when your heart begins to break

Now we are the kids from yesterday

“In my dimension, you call me Grunkle Dipper,” he said with a good-natured smile.

There was stunned silence as Ford gaped at the man. It shouldn’t have surprised him as much as it did. After all, the multiverse was a vast place of infinite possibilities. Before he could formulate a proper response a sharp voice interjected.

“No one is calling you that,” Leaf called out and the prisoner’s smile faltered.

“Well then, Doc Pines is fine too,” he said with a tired sigh.

The man’s friendly demeanor perplexed Ford. Having seen what he had of the universe, it was not impossible to believe there was some world in which he and Dipper had traded places. Unfortunately, there was not enough information to reach such a conclusion. If anything, Ford wondered if he was some kind of shapeshifter able to transform from ooze monster to old man. That in itself was not a problem. The real question was-

“I bet you’re thinking ‘but is he evil?’,” said Dipper, or rather, Doc Pines, “I could just rationalize my choices by proving morality to be a series of necessary social norms designed to uphold the status quo and maintain a functioning society of advanced apes.”

“I suppose that’s true, but that argument would run counter to-”

“-pandimensional existence in which every eventuality-” the old man grinned.

“-is theoretically possible and therefore morality becomes a redundant if not moot point!” Ford finished and he couldn’t help but give a smile of his own.

“Hey! No. Stop that,” Leaf snapped from across the room as though she’d spotted a dog about to chew on the carpet. Or in this case, one scientist getting too chummy with a world-ending paradox.

“Dip, erm, Doctor Pines…” Ford stumbled unsure what to call this version of his nephew.

“Just Doc is fine. For what it’s worth, it’s good to see a version of you again. In spite of the circumstances,” he motioned to his shackles.

Ford glanced down at the chains holding him. He noted the glowing blue zodiac burning on the ground was not something he was familiar with. For one, the houses on the outer ring were empty and instead of Bill’s image at its center, there was a pine tree symbol. As though to remind him of the danger, the constricting manacles buzzed with energy and Ford instinctively took a step back. 

He remembered those restraints all too clearly. There were nights when he still felt the weight of them and his heart quickened in anticipation of pain. It disturbed him that Leaf could summon them at will. His motions kicked away a piece of wood that he recognized as a crossbeam he looked around and noted his lab was destroyed. In spite of his own aversion to the restraints, he couldn't deny they were necessary. Judging by the wreckage, this man had endangered his family. How exactly he had accomplished such a thing still eluded him, but it was better to be safe than sorry.

“I don’t understand, how did you get here?” he asked.

“He found a hole in reality and slithered through,” Leaf answered as she circled the prisoner and checked that the binding was holding, “one count of reality drifting, two counts of rift-bezzlement, and 49 x 10 ¹⁰³ counts of cannibalizing timelines…”

“Gee officer, can’t you let me off with a warning?” Doc replied dryly.

The restraints crackled with power and slammed him down on the ground. Ford nearly jumped out of his skin as he watched Leaf staring at the scene, unamused. In her hand was a clicker remote and her thumb was firmly on the button. 

“Gah!” Doc Pines cried out as the zodiac ring’s concussive thrum knocked the air out of him. 

“I don’t find it funny,” she stated coldly, “Do you even realize what you’ve done? You broke a Law. The Law. You shined a great big spotlight on this dimension.”

“What… what are you talking about? I haven’t…”

“You brought attention to this place and now I have to do something about it!” There was pure outrage in her gaze as she felt the weight of the decomposition he had accelerated. The zodiac ring was containing his energy, but he was a walking glitch in reality. If she hadn’t stopped him the compounding errors would have dissolved the entire dimension into static.

“I didn’t… I… Ford! AH!”

There was another sharp crackle of electricity that lit up the dark basement. A shadow then stepped in front of her, blocking her view of the man. After a beat she realized it was Ford. His hand was held out in front of him as though to appease Leaf but it stopped short of touching her. The crackle of the restraints was making him visibly flinch as though he could feel the jolts and surge of power himself, but still he held his ground. 

“Ms. Leaf, please stop.” In the dim light of the basement room, she could barely see his trembling fingers, “whatever it was, whatever he did… please. No more.” 

Eyes that were too frigid to be human stared at him and seemed to assess something before looking away. She released the button and the restraints loosed. Doc gasped for air as he lay curled up and twitching in the aftermath.

“You wouldn’t be so merciful if you understood what he’s done to you,” she informed him.

“Then perhaps you can explain it to me, because if this is some twisted act of vengeance on my behalf then I want to make it very clear that I want no part of it,” Ford said, his gaze now fixed on the control in her hand.

“I can’t explain something as complex as the basis of your reality right now. We are quite short on time.”

“I assure you, I’m a quick study,” Ford didn’t budge as he stood in her way seemingly daring her to shove him aside.

It was a ridiculous and futile notion. Leaf had wrangled a Neverwere with her bare hands, by comparison, a lightly mauled old man was nothing. She very much could and would shove him out of the way, and she’d be entirely correct to do so!

Leaf took a deep breath that came out in a frustrated sigh.

“Fine. Look for yourself,” she took off her glasses and offered them to him. She saw him hesitate and she waved them in front of him impatiently.

He gingerly took them from her hands and awkwardly peered through them. The violet faceted lenses seemed to light up the room but when he turned to see the prisoner…

“W-what is that?!” he stepped away from the man or rather the thing masquerading as a man.

There in the center of the zodiac was a blob of black ink transposed over the golden shimmering figure of a man. It was encased in a faint blue bubble but within the enclosure thousands of tiny rifts were perpetually being torn open and healed by the light of the zodiac. Gold splattered the walls, the ceiling, and every flat surface in the room. He looked down and saw his clothes soaked in it. Gold smeared on his fingertips as though they had been violently shredded… Gold… like the strange liquid that bled from the fissures in his nightmare… gold that Bill had found sweet…

“What did you do to me?” Ford asked as he saw that beneath the mess, his skin looked as though it had been tattooed in violet ink shaped like cracks. It was as though he were a porcelain doll that had been fractured and glued back together. He rolled up his sleeve to see the pattern reach up past his elbow in a jagged spiderweb pattern.

“It’s not what it looks like,” Doc Pines pleaded.

“Tell me, what is happening to me? What- what is this?” Ford looked up at Leaf and was somewhat surprised to find her clothes were also covered with gold mingled with a strange violet substance. Her eyes bore into his for a moment before raising a stained hand to study her own fingers. She acted as though she could see what was on her hands without the lenses.

“There’s something called ‘potential’ which is this energy that flows through all dimensions. Kind of like water, it flows and circulates through the multiverse,” Leaf replied, “when a creature comes into existence, potential flows into the little divot their presence makes upon the world. Everyone’s potential adopts a unique signature and a unique color. Yours happens to be gold, mine is purple.”

Everything you are, everything you will ever be gets poured into you when you begin to exist, and OFF YOU GO into the universe…

The memory of Bill’s words crackled in his mind as everything started to make terrible sort of sense.

“You had a shield around this building and it formed a blister, sealed off from the flow. This isn’t a problem for short amounts of time, but after months of stagnation the potential within became putrid. Add to that a collection of highly unstable relics in this place and you created something like a powder keg. When the kids brought home my pen it was like igniting a spark,” she was using small words and analogies to explain unfathomable truths but the man seemed to be following, “Dipper got the ink on him. It burned a hole through the membrane of his existence and infected his timeline.”

“Space botulism,” Ford concluded and Leaf paused, pleasantly surprised that he understood.

“Yes, and that wound made it easy for every other version of himself to reach through and connect with him. That black goop, that’s the festering unfulfilled potential of timelines that never happened trying to exist,” she responded, “it goes by many names: Abeyant Poisoning, Crossroads Disease, Liminal Syndrome. When it reaches the final stages, the victim becomes a Neverwere: a creature whose natural habitat is dead or dying dimensions. That in itself is a problem. Neverweres are anthropomorphic black holes built to consume and sterilize a dimension clean in preparation of building something new. This thing did not belong here. I tried to destroy it but it escaped. It was losing its grip on this world so it tried to replenish its lost potential by feeding off yours.”

But something cracked you open and drained every last drop, like a cheap little juice box! 

Ford felt dizzy as the link between his nightmares and reality began to blur. He wanted to sit down but the only chair within reach was torn into six pieces. A shiver ran up his spine as he stared at the man. No. It was a Neverwere. No matter how human the monster looked, there was gold spattered around his lips. 

“That’s why you’re seeing this version of Dipper. It’s the version of him that most resembles the stolen potential and the one who was able to solidify his hold on your nephew,” Leaf said as she studied his face.

“Is that why my arm looks like that, and why your hand is bandaged?” he asked as he settled for steadying himself by leaning against a nearby counter. At first, Leaf seemed unwilling to answer the question, but Ford refused to drop the matter and stared back at her expectantly. Finally, her stance softened.

“You were dying,” she said gently, “I had to act quickly to stop you from unraveling. Even so, you lost a significant amount. I took a bit from myself to seal off the cracks at least until they heal and close up on their own.”

“A skin graft,” he murmured as he flexed his hand but couldn’t feel a difference, “a Potential graft.”

“Something like that.”

He took off the glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose as though he were in the midst of a migraine. He offered them back to Leaf all the while he felt as though he were in a kind of daze. The world was spinning too quickly or maybe it was the bloodloss… potential loss? He grabbed his left arm without thinking, attempting to touch a wound he couldn’t see. The darkness, the void, Bill… it wasn’t just a nightmare. He had been dying. 

Ford had never been one to believe in an afterlife. He did not consider himself to be a good man by any metric and so, it was not surprising that in his final spasms of consciousness, he caught a glimpse of the hell that awaited him. There was something else he was missing, some piece of the puzzle that was slipping beyond his recollection. There had been darkness and pain but also something warm, like starlight and chocolate?

He shook his head as his addled mind spewed incoherent nonsense. Perhaps his brain was failing to boot back up after being so ruthlessly unplugged. 

I’ll die soon enough, but not just yet…

Ford’s tired blue eyes turned to the man trapped within the zodiac. This thing that pretended to be his nephew had in fact tried to kill him. It would have succeeded were it not for Ms. Leaf.

He couldn’t help the feeling of betrayal that filled him in that moment. Even though he knew it to be irrational, even when he knew that it was futile to expect reason from an unreasonable universe, he still couldn’t accept that any version of Dipper would ever become this murderous.

“Why would you do this?” Ford asked, grasping for anything that would make this make sense. He looked down at Doc Pines who was doubled over and unwilling to make eye contact.

“It’s my one chance,” the man whispered, “This is the only way to fix things.” 

“How? By killing us?” he asked, his voice tinged with something too close to resentment, “in what world does that fix anything?”

“You heard what I am,” Doc Pines replied barely above a whisper, “please understand, I’m just trying to fix my mistake.”

“You attacked Stan and Mabel! You just about got your wish and killed me in the process! What could you possibly say that would justify any of this?!”

“Bill won,” he said in a wavering voice as he looked up at Ford with haunted eyes. The finality of those words crashed over Ford like ice water.

“What do you mean, he won?”

“We didn’t win. Weirdmageddon came, the rift opened, and we failed. Mabel… the boys… they’re all gone, Bill consumed our world. I couldn’t… I couldn’t save them. I couldn’t save any of them,” his voice broke and his head bowed in shame.

Ford stared at him caught between outrage and a deeper sickening emotion he couldn’t describe.

“The fact that you’re a Bad Ending doesn’t give you the right to take this timeline’s potential as your own,” Leaf said coolly, “stealing someone else’s potential to keep yourself alive violates the laws of reality. You can’t be yourself and someone else at the same time. It’s like trying to ignore physics. Your very existence now dissolves whatever reality you inhabit-”

“If you’re going to kill me then kill me, but spare me your lectures, demon,” he cut her off as his face morphed into a bitter glare.

Leaf met his gaze with indifference, “There’s a little boy you’re trying to destroy just so you can undo the mistakes of an old man, and I’m the demon?”

“So you are capable of kindness,” he spat his face scrunching into something ugly, “where were you when Bill burned my home to the ground? Where were you when he tore my sister into atoms and took little Stan hostage? Where were you when Sixer tried to rescue us and he… he… I’ve lost everything! Out of every reality, this is the only one where everyone gets to have a happy ending! This singular point of light in an infinite sea of darkness! And yet you begrudge me for reaching for it! How dare you stand there and lecture me about what is fair when everything and everyone I’ve even known has been burned into ash!”

Ford flinched, staring in quiet horror as the man began to sob in his chains. His words struck a chord deep inside him. Was this truly the only dimension where everything had worked out? What lengths would he have gone through if he had to endure the same fate as this man? If he had seen everything he loved be killed in front of him, would he have fallen as low as to take a child’s life if it meant a second chance?

“It won’t bring them back,” Leaf said softly.

“You won’t even let me try! Just let me try! You can kill me, take what you will from me! Take all of it! Just please, let them live,” he turned from Leaf to Ford, “please, if-if you could just use some of that ink, you could bring them here, like it brought me. We could isolate the damage. It wouldn’t even have to be here, it doesn’t have to be the Happy Ever After Dimension, we could go somewhere more expendable.”

It was the desperation of a drowning man. Ford remembered what that felt like, the acrid burn of it searing away his sanity, but now he was witnessing first hand how much worse it could be. His gaze flickered to Leaf anxious to hear her say something comforting, but her face remained impassive.

“You’ve nothing to bargain with,” she explained in that same frigid tone, “you’ve broken so many rules that your potential has become gangrenous. Reality is actively rejecting you. You shouldn’t have come here. You shouldn’t have reached out.”

“Then kill me!” he snarled but he soon crumpled into himself. “Kill me and get it over with.”

Ford finally spoke up. “You’re not going to actually kill him are you?”

Leaf stared at him for a long while as she slipped on a black fingerless glove. 

“No of course not,” she replied in the same flat tone, “I’ll simply be extracting Dipper from this mess.”

“You’re lying.”

“Dr. Pines,” Leaf sighed, “this thing-”

“His name is Dr. Mason Pines. Doc Pines. He is not a creature or a mindless beast, he is a person!” he snapped angrily as he once again stood between Leaf and the prisoner.

She stared at him as though she were actively holding back from saying what was on her mind. It was hard not to feel as though he were being condescended to, and, who knows, perhaps she was right and he was being sentimental. Still, Ford remembered being trapped in a strange dimension and scrabbling to survive. He remembered being alone and scraping by thanks to the kindness of strangers. Now, it was his turn to show that same compassion.

“Dr. Pines, I understand. You relate to this man. You look at him and think ‘there but for the grace of god go I’, but his very presence in your world is a danger. I would never ask you to make this choice, I won’t ask you to agree with me, but know that I am not wrong when I say he cannot exist,” she said meeting his eyes, “there’s nothing you can do to reverse what he has done to himself.”

Ford stubbornly refused to move. He knew she was probably right, and this was futile. Deep down, he understood this was like trying to unfry an egg, but the idea that all that pain and loss was inevitable cut him to the core. And, if he was being honest, he was upset by the idea that his world was the only one in the entire multiverse where everything had worked out.

“You promised,” Mabel’s voice cut through the tension and all three of them turned to see her walk in. “You promised everyone would be okay.”

Leaf hesitated and Ford noticed her become tense as though she were cornered. Mabel gave them all a disapproving look before taking small hesitant steps towards Doc Pines. The prisoner looked at the child through tearful eyes as though she were a ghost. 

“You’re him, aren’t you? You’re Dipper,” she said it with such certainty none of the other adults denied it.

Doc Pines trembled as he saw the girl looking up at him with wide brown eyes filled with worry. It wasn’t her, of course, it wasn’t his Mabel, but the sight of her filled his mind with yesteryear’s memories. The little boy that shared his face, Doc Pines could butcher and sacrifice gladly. His self-loathing could mute any regret when it came to hurting Dipper, but when faced with a younger version of his sister he felt his resolve crumble. Shame filled him and he bowed his head to stare at the shackles around his wrists.

“Mabel, I’m sorry… I’m so sorry…”

“Hey, it’s okay, Dipper, you’re just a little lost,” Mabel put her hand out and placed it over the bubble. “We’ll help you.” 

“Mabel, I wouldn’t get too close,” Leaf warned but she soon found herself on the wrong end of Mabel’s outrage.

“You promised everyone was going to be safe!”

“I promised you Dipper, your Dipper, was going to be safe,” Leaf clarified but Mabel was having none of it.

“What does it matter if he’s from here or somewhere else? He’s just Dipper and you promised me he was going to be okay!” she insisted as she stood defiantly next to Ford and all but stomped her foot.

“This is not what we agreed,” Leaf protested to no avail.

“If it’s a bargain you’re looking for, then take something from me,” Ford said, offering his hand.

“And me!” Mabel chirped.

Leaf stared at the two of them as though they’d just volunteered to have their lungs removed. Ford noted there was irritation in her gaze but also a reluctance to tell Mabel ‘no’.

“Where the hell is Stan?” she sighed wishing for a voice of reason amidst the Pines family tree and clearly finding herself scraping the bottom of the barrel.

“He’s finding a ladder so he can climb down here!” Mabel announced.

“I thought Stan didn’t keep ladders in the Shack,” Ford murmured.

“He is not coming!” Mabel announced yet again earning her a skeptical look from Leaf.

“So let me get this straight. You want me to rescue Dipper from this,” Leaf waved her hand in the zodiac’s general direction, “but you don’t want me to damage the parasitic consciousness that has latched on to him. You also don’t want the parasite to suffer any consequences for breaking reality and then you want me to shape it into a stable form so it can run off into the sunset. Did I get all of that right?”

“Yes?” Mabel said as a bit of hesitancy eeked into her voice.

Ford knew they were asking too much. Even if Leaf hadn’t spelled it all out the way she did, even if her patience wasn’t running thin, they were asking for miracles and offering very little in terms of payment. This was a bad deal and Ford expected her to walk away or at the very least yell at them for being unreasonable.

Instead, Leaf clenched her jaw and took a deep breath before holding out a hand to Mabel. “The knife if you please.”

Mabel’s brow furrowed in confusion before remembering the emerald blade in her pocket. Leaf took it from her hands and walked her towards their prisoner. Ford fidgeted in place wondering if he should step in. She hadn’t agreed to fulfill Mabel’s request but surely Leaf wouldn’t kill him in front of them. Right?

“This is my day off,” Leaf muttered resentfully, “I should be in bed, spending my entire day doing nothing but watching TV and eating junk food. But nooo…”

She drew the knife and it gleamed with a brilliant green light.

“ You decided to mess with the universe,” Leaf griped as she turned the blade downward and sliced into the containment bubble.

“Um… Ms. Leaf isn’t that the only thing keeping the rifts in check?” Ford asked he received a withering glare that seemed to ask ‘do you want to do this?’.

“W-what are you doing?” Doc Pines asked as she snapped her fingers and violet flames engulfed her right hand.

“Something I’m going to regret, now sit still, I’ve never done this before,” Leaf ordered as she scruffed him like a cat.

“I-Is that knife on fire? Wait, hold on!”

“I said, stop wriggling!”

Ford and Mabel stood off to the side watching as Leaf wrangled that old man and wielded the knife with dangerous accuracy. The zodiac’s blue light was steadily glowing brighter as violet flames seemed to branch out and consume whatever it was she was cutting away. Finally there was a pulse of light so intense it shifted from blue to be white and Ford shielded Mabel from the brilliance. Then, as quickly as it appeared, the dazzling light faded and the darkness swooped back in.

Ford heard the clatter of something shattering on the floor and he blinked away the stars in his eyes to see the emerald blade broken into pieces of lifeless flint on the ground. Doc Pines lay face down twitching atop a fine layer of ash and in Leaf’s arms was…

“Dipper!” Mabel launched herself at them.

It was indeed her brother, bruised, scratched, singed, passed out, but alive. Ford noticed the boy’s fingertips were stained in black as though he had dipped them in an inkwell but otherwise didn’t seem any worse for wear. Leaf herself looked like a vexed cat, but she didn’t protest when he opened his arms to take his sleeping nephew.

“Is he gonna be okay?” Mabel asked as she stood on her tippy toes to see her brother’s pale face.

“He’ll be fine, he’s just sleeping it off,” Leaf replied as she flexed her hastily bandaged left hand. Her slow movement betrayed the fact that it was bothering her. “Keep him away from rifts for a few days and he’ll be back to norm- OOF!”

Leaf was yet again surprised when Mabel threw herself at her and pulled her into a tight hug. This time the surprise was fleeting and Leaf gently touched the girl's head affectionately.

“Thank you,” Mabel whispered, clinging to her tightly.

“Yeah well, don’t make a habit of it…”

Mabel let her go and turned her attention to Doc Pines. Leaf’s softened expression settled into something inscrutable as she watched the old man slowly pushing himself to a sitting position. He moved in stiff cautious motions as though everything hurt. His already tattered coat was now shredded to ribbons and Mabel could see where the slash of the knife had left pale cut marks on his skin. He wasn’t bleeding, but even so it was clear his body ached from the procedure.

“Are you okay?” Mabel had approached him because of course she did. Out of everyone in this town, this little girl had the biggest, most forgiving heart.

Doc Pines froze like a deer caught in the headlights and stared at Mabel. Undeterred, she reached into her pocket and brought out a little first aid packet. He continued to stare as she brought out a disinfectant wipe and reached out to clean the grime from his face.

“I told you you were going to get wrinkles if you kept frowning. Looks like I was right,” she smiled at him as her small fingers gently cleaned the flecks of dried gold from the corner of his lips. 

Doc Pines blinked away tears at the motion. It was so easy to love her, he had a hard time remembering why they had ever fought at all. Why hadn’t he just embraced her? Why had he turned everything into bitterness and resentment over meaningless fights? Why couldn’t he be half the person Mabel was? Even here, when meeting with the worst version of her brother, Mabel could still see him. Even as broken as he was, Mabel could still find it in her heart to love him.

“Yes, you were right. You’re always right,” he whispered feeling his voice grow tight.

“Ha! And don’t you forget it!” she beamed in response, “you know, you look a lot like Dipper except your eyes are blue instead of brown.”

“They used to be brown. Long time ago,” his voice had become hoarse and subdued.

“Huh, what turned them blue?” she asked and Doc Pines’ brow furrowed.

“I-I don’t remember. It could be a number of things…”

“Does this mean Dipper’s eyes are going to turn blue when he grows up?”

“Only if he makes dumb choices. Which, I suppose, means it’s more likely than not.”

“Ha! This guy gets it!” Mabel laughed before turning to Ford, “Can we keep him?”

Ford turned to note that Leaf’s expression hadn’t changed. She still remained unmoved by the man’s plight and instead seemed ready to pull Mabel away at the first sign of trouble.

“He can’t stay here,” she replied before Ford could answer.

Mabel pulled a face and began to protest. She hadn’t caught Doc’s entire rant, but she’d heard enough to know he was all alone. There was no Mabel, no Stan, no Ford, no one at all for him. The thought of sending him back to that loneliness was too terrible to consider! He needed his family!

“He has nowhere else to go!”

This time it was Ford who cleared his throat and stepped in.

“She’s right, Mabel. There can’t be two Dippers within a single dimension. Should they ever come into contact, they would dissolve and take our world with them,” he explained quietly.

“What does that mean?” Mabel looked between Leaf and Ford for an answer, “What’s going to happen to him?”

This time Doc took it upon himself to break the news. “I believe this means I have to go to another dimension. One that doesn’t already have a Dipper.” 

Mabel’s lips pressed together tightly, clearly displeased by the revelation, but the three adults were already in agreement.  She felt a deep ache in her chest as she turned to look at the man her brother could become if things went terribly wrong.

“Am I ever going to see you again?” she asked and he gave a laugh that sounded a bit sadder than he’d intended.

“I’ll be here as soon as I wake up,” Doc Pines nodded to the sleeping Dipper in Ford’s arms, “take care of me, ok Mabel? Make sure I don’t do anything stupid.”

Mabel sniffled, “I don’t think that’s possible.”

Leaf remained quiet as she let them have their parting words. Ford noted her eyes seemed focused elsewhere as though searching the settling ash and dust for meaning.

“Everything is going to be okay, Mabel. You’ll see. You’re going to be amazing.” 

Leaf’s fingers snapped once more and violet flames crackled around her black gloved hand.

“It’s time to go,” she said and extended her hand for him to take.

They stood in an empty post-apocalyptic wasteland. The earth was untethered from gravity and chunks of it floated all around beneath the glow of a withered red sun. It was a dimension in its death-throes. Its last suns were fading out, the laws of physics were worn threadbare, and soon even the dancing of atoms would decay and cease altogether. Leaf found it beautiful and melancholic in the way the end of things always was. But she wasn’t here to take in the last gasps of dimension 4&-B’.

Mabel and Ford had watched as Doc Pine took her hand and both vanished from the world. To his credit, the man was repentant. There had been no fight, no final struggle, no violence. In the end, he took her hand without question and, in a burst of flames and fractal dust, they had arrived here.

“You can drop your glamour now Ms. Leaf. I don’t think it’s necessary anymore.”

Leaf continued to stare at the fields of chaos before her, lost in thought. He had noticed the shimmer around the edges, because of course he had. It had been a precaution she’d taken before going to bed, and she was glad of it now otherwise Mabel would have gotten a nasty surprise when they’d gone to wake her and found a monster in her place.

“Do they know? Do they understand what you are?” he pressed and she finally turned to look at him. The human appearance melted away and she stood before him half-fractal sky and half-decaying mortal.

“Do you?” she countered feeling exhausted by the conversation before it fully started.

“No. If I’m being honest, I don’t. Will you tell me?”

“Really? No conclusions drawn from your observations? I thought you’d settled on the fact I was a demon. I’m almost offended,” she drawled, her voice dripped with sarcasm and Doc Pines’ lips twisted in a mirthless smile.

“You’re prickly. You’re stern. You’re callous and moody. I don’t think I saw a genuine emotion cross your face the entire time you interacted with the people around you,” he casually pointed out as though he were speaking on the color of the sky, “you smile when you have to, but your eyes are cold. You’re a control freak and you control yourself most of all. I’d say this was a game to you but you don’t seem to be having any fun.”

“So you were paying attention,” she responded with a tight smile, “and what do you believe I am?”

“I did call you a demon, only you’re not, are you? I saw how you rescued Ford. I saw how you were with Mabel. You’re kind. You’re merciful. You’re compassionate. You protect them. You care…” he said, sounding like a child denied a toy.

She stared at him emotionlessly waiting for the rest.

“You’re a muse. A real muse.”

Her lips twitched into a smirk, “A Muse. Now there’s an archaic term. These days we prefer the term Dealer. There hasn’t been a proper muse alive in centuries.”

“What happened to them?”

“The Muses? They were all consumed. How else do you suppose Dealers are made? Well… almost all of them. Out of all the creatures that masquerade under the title, Bill is probably the closest thing to a muse you’ll encounter.”

Leaf glanced up at him and was surprised to see grief in his eyes.

“Could you have stopped Weirdmaggeddon, if I had summoned you… if I had called on you, would you have been able to save us?” he asked and she found his gaze uncomfortable.

“I don’t deal in hypotheticals,” she said, turning away from him. “The unfortunate fact is that you are a Bad Ending, and there are so very many of you. The universe finds a balance and every victory exerts a price. Tipping the scales to give you such a meaningful win would have been cheating. The best advice I would have given you before now would’ve been to move on and try to heal.”

There was a long pause and in that moment, Leaf stared out into the broken world as though to absorb some of the weakened sun’s warmth.

“So, that’s it? My family was murdered by a psychopath and you’re telling me it was all part of some grand equation!” he yelled, his hands clenching into helpless fists of rage, “But that’s not what happened at all was it?! When the universe gave me a shot, when I found my own loophole, you were there in an instant to intervene! How dare I, a Bad Ending, touch the Happy Ever After timeline!”

“You keep calling it that-”

“Because it is! That place is the only dimension where it all works out! It’s the only place where no one had to get hurt or sacrifice anything to win! And you, you chose to protect them from themselves! That chance! That one chance was mine to have and you shielded them from consequences! How is that fair?”

Leaf looked at him with sadness. “They are children. Wouldn’t you want to protect them from the world for as long as you could?”

The question struck him like a punch to the gut and he slumped onto his knees. He had expected scorn from her or at the very least a lecture on how insignificant his loss was in the grand scheme of things. Never would he have believed that her motivation was so trivial. She intervened in order to let children be innocent for a while longer.

He slumped in defeat.

“You are kind. You are compassionate. You care… and it is so unfair that you exist. It is so unfair that you’re real, but I ended up summoning Bill instead,” his voice wavered as he stared at his coal black fingertips. The stain seemed to be growing like corruption eating away at him. “Was there nothing I could have done to save them?”

“There are versions of you that do just that,” she said kindly.

“How many? I want a number.”’

Leaf’s black fractured eyes unfocused before responding. “Twelve.”

“Twelve,” he breathed, “and in how many of those was Ford a child?”

Leaf fell silent and she saw tears in Doc’s eyes. For all of his age and experience, the man was still just a lost little boy in the cosmos. He was looking for validation. He was looking for a single shred of proof that this wasn’t all his fault. That at the very least another version of himself was good enough to protect his family. 

Mabel was right, he was still just Dipper.

“I was never going to save them, was I?” he asked as he doubled over in pain. The black rot had crawled up his arm and his legs began to crack and split as though they were made of brittle charcoal. “You play favorites and you leave the rest of us to make our way alone…”

Leaf forced herself to stare at him. This was the price that had to be paid for breaking the Law of Possibility. The moment he crossed that threshold, reality had no place for him. It was like mixing vinegar with baking soda and expecting nothing to happen. This was his own doing. There was no animosity involved, it was just as he said: the end result of balancing an equation.

Dipper pulled in a ragged breath as he looked into her eyes.

“Even if it’s meaningless… even if it doesn’t matter…” he coughed and his chest began to split apart, “…tell Mabel… the boys… tell them… I’m sorry… tell them… I love them…”

It took three strides to reach him, but by the time she had, his fingers had begun crumbling into sand. Leaf grabbed the front of Dipper’s shirt and the skin around her eyes seemed to split and yield to the unknowable thing beneath.

“This doesn’t belong to you,” she growled. There was a sickening crunch as she tore off his left arm. It came away whole but crumbled into dust leaving a small vial filled with gold ink in her grasp. Dipper screamed in shock but his vocal chords were quickly turning to dust.

In one swooping motion she pulled him up by the front of his shirt and onto his feet. Black sand dusted off him and Dipper found himself whole again, well, albeit missing an arm. He stumbled as she released him attempting to cope with the whiplash of having been violently dislodged from the jaws of death.

“W-what…?” he grabbed at his shoulder but found no blood at the site where his arm used to be. It didn’t even hurt, which was disconcerting in a different sort of way.

“You stole this, remember?” she asked, waving the little bottle in front of him, “doesn’t belong to you.”

She made the bottle vanish in a burst of fractal flames before unwinding the bandage around her left hand.

“What’s happening? What are you doing now?” he asked as his legs wobbled and he fell back to his knees.

“Something crude and primitive,” she said with barely hidden disdain as she revealed a deep gash on her palm. 

She clenched her fingers and blood dripped from the wound. It was darker than what blood should have been or perhaps it was simply the light of the crimson sun. Her blood stained fingers then began to draw something on the ground.

“I thought- you said I was supposed to die,” he stammered as he watched her finish a strange sigil. He flinched when her attention snapped to him.

“Do you want to die or do you want to save your family? Because I’m up for either and killing you is a whole lot easier than this.”

“You mean, it’s possible? But you said it wouldn’t bring them back.”

“Don’t misquote me. I said killing a little boy won’t bring them back, because -spoiler alert- I don’t approve of human sacrifice. It’s ineffective and wasteful! And it wouldn’t have brought them back!” she responded as she stood up and the sigil glowed a deep violet, “However, there are always loopholes if you know where to look.”

“And you, you would know, right?”

A beam of light shot up out of the symbols and straight to the sky before widening into a trapezoidal doorway. Leaf turned and gave Dipper a smirk, her midnight eyes making her look like a piece of the night sky had taken physical form.

“I know everything , Pine Tree. Now come on,” she smirked and grabbed the man by the wrist before leaping into the door.

Leaf knew exactly what she was doing. She had introduced a new variable into the equation that had cracked possibility wide open and they were going to sneak in through the fault lines. As they tumbled into the void beyond the door something like wind whoosh all around them and they plummeted into the abyss. It was chaos. Pure chaos. Only chaos could twist and rethread the strands of reality, only chaos could take a dead-end and punch a hole in the wall to make an exit. Chaos burned down the old to make way for something new and chaos always felt exhilarating. 

Dipper screamed and Leaf joined in joyfully as they swerved and dodged bursts of light. The wind currents picked up and they swelled all around them, cascading like a breaking wave while Leaf laughed like a madwoman. Finally she pulled sharply to the right and he spotted the faint outline of a doorway leading to a metal floor far below. All at once Dipper noted their speed.

“Leaf. We might want to slow down,” he said as their trajectory shifted and aimed exactly for the doorway, “Leaf, we’re going too fast.”

She heard him, yes, but she was too lost in the sensation of falling. Oh she would pay dearly for this later but right now, in this moment, she felt nothing but a wild and wicked glee.

“Leaf. Leaf! LEAF WE’RE GOING TO CRASH!”

They punched through the doorway and Dipper’s eyes scrunched shut but the impact never came. Gravity it seemed had rearranged itself and what he had thought was the ground was actually the ceiling. They had come up and out of a portal on the floor to a slightly bouncy arrival. While Leaf had landed on her feet, Dipper flopped on the ground like a dying fish. After far too long a scramble, he finally stood up.

“What was that?!” he demanded and very nearly tipped over again but was stopped when she reached out to steady him.

“Your center of balance is going to be off what with your missing arm and all,” Leaf replied offhandedly and he noted her glamour had rippled back in place.

“Not that! I mean what the hell was that… about…?” he trailed off as he looked around and realized where they were. 

It was his basement lab, but that was impossible. The Mystery Shack had been obliterated, sub-basement and all. This place should be little more than a smoking crater and yet here it was, a little dusty, but pristine. A trembling hand reached out to touch the photograph on his desk: twin boys on a school trip, one wore a red beanie with a fish symbol and made a cocky face, the other smiled shyly behind a pair of glasses clutching a book to his chest.

“You never said how Sixer died,” Leaf stated as she hopped on his workbench to take a seat.

“You know everything, why don’t you tell me?” he asked, picking up the photo and staring at it sadly. “He was always so brave, they both were, but Ford… Sixer always pushed himself too hard. He was a genius and he felt the weight of that on his shoulders every day. He took on too much. He was just a kid, he should have been allowed to be just a kid. He shouldn’t have been out there all alone. He never should have been put in a position where he felt he needed to save me. He came to the Fearamid, he made it all the way to the top… and Bill… Bill was waiting… I begged him… I pleaded with him not to hurt Ford… and he laughed… he laughed the entire time…”

Leaf watched as old festering wounds split open once more.

“I never got the chance to tell him how proud I was of him,” he whispered.

The soft poignant moment was interrupted by the sound of running footsteps overhead and the muffled sound of children’s laughter. Dipper looked startled by the sound before turning to Leaf for an explanation. She stifled a yawn as weariness finally caught up with her.

“You asked where we were. Dimension R3L4T1V-T, your home dimension. I would say, oh, about two weeks before Weirdmageddon give or take a day,” the yawn won out and she stretched, coincidentally using the motion to pick up a certain rift containment unit off the shelf. “Right, well this isn’t precarious at all…”

She began to tinker with it as Dipper finally found his voice.

“I’m- I’m really back. They’re upstairs now alive, alive and well…” he put the photograph down and stared at the ceiling in wonder before turning to Leaf, “I-I don’t understand. You said we were a Bad Ending. You said-”

“I know what I said,” she groused as the rift began giving her trouble, “but you pointed out a glaring oversight. Out of the twelve good endings, none of the Dippers looked like you. It’s only fair that we get one version of Sad Old Man Dipper that learns his lesson and becomes a better brother and uncle.”

There was a hiss followed by a tinny pop and the bubble around the rift was now tinted violet. Inside, the tears in reality had been stitched together tightly and sealed. She offered the newly reinforced bauble to him.

“I don’t know what to say. Thank you-” he went to take it but she pulled it back out of his reach.

“This isn’t free,” Leaf informed him while giving him a meaningful look, “everything has a price. Something like this would have cost you something very dear. Your arm was a down payment, I will cover the rest, and you will pay me back in installments. I expect you to work off your debt most diligently.”

“I understand,” Dipper stood up, determined to see this through. 

Leaf handed him the rift and leaned back.

“I’ll send you detailed instructions later, but you can start by making up with your sister upstairs. You wanted a second chance to show you could be more than a Bad Ending, here it is. Prove me wrong,” she challenged him, her legs swinging childishly from her perch.

“I can do that,” Dipper smiled as he watched the rift slowly heal itself, taking with it all the nightmares and pain it would have caused. 

Something warm bloomed in his heart and he realized it was joy. For the first time in months, Dipper felt alive again. A second chance. A chance to get it right this time. A chance to do better, to be better. He wouldn’t waste it and he would never forget the person who made it possible.

“Do you want to meet them?” 

His question reverberated in an empty room. He looked around to see he was alone. Leaf was gone, leaving only her zodiac burned into the wood of the table beneath the settling dust motes as proof she had ever been there. Dipper clutched the sealed rift to his heart and stared at the symbol as though to commit it to memory: A spiral with an empty zodiac wheel save for a sword in the top-most house. 

His benefactor, his muse, his protector…

“Thank you, truly,” he murmured before placing the containment unit back on the shelf. 

Without a second thought he hurried upstairs, half worried that it might all disappear should he delay a moment longer. He found himself checking to see if this truly was his old home. The boards on the staircase creaked the same as always. 

The vending machine opened with a grating metal sound the same as always. 

The light and smells of the Shack wafted into his nose. 

He could hear Mabel making breakfast in the kitchen singing along to her god-awful synth music. 

He peered out into the gift shop and a pair of identical smiling faces were there to greet him.

“Grunkle Dipper! You’re back!”

Chapter Text

The ‘Muse’ is not an artistic mystery, but a mathematical equation.

The gift are those ideas you think of as you drift to sleep.

The giver is that one you think of when you first awake.

Mabel sat in the tiny dinette of Stan’s RV where they’d been sleeping ever since the incident with the Neverwere. It had been a week since Leaf had held out her hand and taken Old Dipper away; a week since they'd climbed out of the basement battered and bruised but alive; a week since Stan had yelled at Ford about getting into trouble without waiting for him.

It had been a week without Leaf. 

At first, Mabel had believed she was still in town. There were signs that something was finishing her tasks. Mayor Cutebiker had received his event planning packet and several important businessmen had been seen entering and leaving city hall. Preston Northwest was loudly telling anyone who would listen that his fortunes had shifted and he was planning on building another, more splendid manor. All in all, the work Leaf had promised continued to get done, but she herself was nowhere to be found.

The PRISM office remained closed, and Leaf’s apartment was empty. Any attempt to locate her had failed and both Stan and Ford expressly forbid them from attempting to break into her home a third time. Stan went as far as to ground both kids to keep them out of trouble until the Shack reopened. Dipper had protested but, for once, even Ford had agreed it was for the best.

And so Mabel and her brother remained confined to the RV when not completing chores.

It wasn't the first time the Shack had been destroyed. Zombies had done quite a number in the place a year ago and it had bounced back easily enough. This was only marginally worse, but for some reason Mabel couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. Something bigger than Zombies and Neverweres had taken Leaf away, maybe for good.

She stared at the small black business card listing a contact phone and email. Her small hands clutched a cellphone as she dialed a number for what felt like the thousandth time.

“Hello, you’ve reached PRISM Consulting. Our representatives are unable to answer the phone right now, but if you leave your name and message…”

Mabel groaned as it went straight to voicemail.

“Oh, Mabel sweetie, is that you?”

“Yes Phyllis,” she sighed in disappointment. 

The first day she’d realized Leaf’s voicemail was sentient had been exciting. It was the same day Mabel learned that calling sixty times in a three-hour period was enough to give even a living computer program cause for concern. Now, the novelty of it had worn off and it just felt like another failed attempt to reach the person she wanted to talk to the most.

“I’m sorry dear, Ms. Leaf is still out. Try her again tomorrow.”

“Is she ever coming back?” Mabel’s voice wavered on the edge of breaking.

There was a long pause on the other line as a creature made of ones and zeroes tried to figure out a way to be kind.

“I’m sure whatever is keeping her away is very important.”

“She doesn’t want to talk to me, does she?”

There was a longer silence as faint electronic ripples echoed in the background.

“I do not believe that to be the case. Ms. Leaf is simply attending to matters out of range from the network. I’m sure she will contact you as soon as possible.”

“Ok, thanks anyway.”

“Take care, dear.”

Mabel hung up then flopped herself over the small table looking miserable. Construction noises banged on outside and she turned her head to peer out the dirty window. Stan was in the parking lot yelling at some poor inspector over delays. Yellow tape cordoned off entry to the Mystery Shack, and large red signs with the words
‘CONDEMNED’ were posted on every window.

Thankfully Soos and Melody lived off-site and so the only disruption they felt was Soos’ emotional distress at having to see the Shack in such a state. Ford and Old Man McGucket were working late nights to repair the lower labs without the contractors finding out. She saw little of either considering they arrived after dusk and rushed off to McGucket Manor at daybreak before the first workers arrived. 

Everything seemed to have slowed to a crawl as though she were a bug trapped in molasses. The adults were busy in their own world and she felt adrift in the wind.

“No answer?” Dipper’s voice interrupted her depressing thoughts.

“Nope.”

“Grunkle Stan still yelling at that guy?”

“Yep.”

Dipper stood there awkwardly rubbing his arm as though unsure what to say. 

Things had been tense since he’d woken up and everyone seemed to have an opinion on what had gone wrong. Grunkle Stan blamed Leaf for the entire ordeal arguing that she had destroyed the Shack and then left them holding the bag for the repairs. The few times they’d spoken with Ford he had made it seem as though this was all Leaf’s fault for not keeping her dangerous items properly contained. Each time Mabel made a face as though she wanted to say something but instead walked away. 

Each time Dipper felt guilt pool in the pit of his stomach.

“Mabel, you know, I’ve been meaning to tell you-”

“How are you feeling?” she asked, avoiding the conversation and grabbing his hands to look at his fingers.

“What? I-I’m fine,” he said, pulling away from her. The black dye on his fingertips had faded to the point where any discoloration was barely visible.

“No nightmares or black gunk anywhere?”

“Mabel, I know what you’re doing,” he frowned, “I’m trying to talk to you. Please, can we talk?”

Mabel slumped back down on the table as though she were being asked to do something painful. He didn’t wait for more of a response before diving right into it.

“It’s just- I don’t remember anything that happened and every time I ask, everyone changes the subject or tells me not to worry about it. I know we did something. I know I did something. I know it got out of control enough to destroy the Shack but every time I ask for details nobody is willing to say anything.”

“Dipper, it was just a bad explosion. Are you having nightmares-” 

“There! That right there! You all do this! You refuse to answer the question and then ask me something weirdly specific!” he pointed a finger accusingly at Mabel, “Grunkle Stan asks me if my hands are ok, Grunkle Ford keeps staring at my arm asking if it hurts, and you keep expecting me to have nightmares!”

Mabel looked guilty throughout as she stared at her phone. He put a hand on her arm and she finally met his eyes.

“Mabel, everyone keeps telling me it isn’t my fault, but no one tells me what it is. And every time someone blames Leaf I feel like they’re saying it because it’s convenient. It’s like she’s not here to defend herself so everyone’s putting the blame on her to protect me. Mabel, you’re my sister, please. Please tell me what I did,” he begged.

Mabel gave a deep sigh and sat up. It was foolish to believe they could keep it from Dipper forever, but it felt so big and complicated to explain. She opted to begin at the beginning and she patted the seat next to hers.

“So, there’s this thing called a Neverwere…”

Ford attempted to rub the sleep from his eyes to no avail. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a proper rest. Ever since the destruction of most of his lab, he’d been working with Fiddleford to salvage what they could. Structurally speaking the basement was not in any danger of collapse. However, if a construction worker were to stumble blindly into his lab, there would be a lot of uncomfortable questions to answer. And so they’ve been working nights to remove any incriminating evidence before the construction began.

“Stanford we’ve gotten most of it out already, I don’t think it’s necessary to keep diggin’ through that rubble,” Fiddleford said eyeing the dark circles under his friend’s eyes. “When’s the last time you got proper shut-eye?”

“I’m fine,” he insisted as he tugged off his gloves.

“I’m not entirely sure you are. You’re workin’ to get all these things out at night and during the day you’ve been holed up in that library or sneakin’ off without a word.” 

“I am not sneaking off.”

“Oh so you gon’ tell me what you were doing in town yesterday then?” Fiddleford’s eyes narrowed as Ford ducked his head to avoid eye contact. Fiddleford’s frown deepened. “You went to look for her, didn't ya? That consultant lady.”

Ford remained silent as he stubbornly refused to look at his friend. It bothered him that Fiddleford had figured him out so quickly after taking so many precautions not to be seen. It bothered him even more that Fiddleford knew he’d searched for answers at Leaf’s door. 

He had made no secret of what he thought of that particular consultant. She was opportunistic, sharp-eyed, and greedy. She was a soulless corporate shell in search of monetary gain. There was no wonder or genuine curiosity in her approach. Everything could be negotiated. Everything was transactional. Everything was for sale.

If she hadn’t been so careless with her things none of this would have happened. If she had kept the pen locked away, the kids would have never gotten to it. If she hadn’t gotten Mabel tangled up in her nonsense, they never would have been in danger.

Everything was her fault.

The longer she stayed away, the more Ford found himself resenting her. It was too close a reminder of a time when his false muse abandoned him for weeks at a time. It was the same feeling of trapped helplessness as though he was a doll kept in a box waiting for his owner to come back and play with him. It wouldn’t matter how much he called out. Even if he were desperate, even if he were about to die, Leaf was not going to appear until she felt like it. Just like Bill.

They really are the same type of creature. 

There was nothing to do now but wait, and he hated her for it.

“Ford, listen, I asked around, even had Tate take a look,” Fiddleford pressed on, “she ain’t been back. The place is deserted. Heck, no one’s seen her since-”

“Did you analyze the quartz I brought you?” Ford asked, changing the subject as he checked the settings on his goggles. Ford’s stubbornness outlasted Fiddleford’s concern.

“Yes, it’s stable,” he sighed, “I was able to produce a workin’ lens.”

“Have you looked though it?” Ford asked and finally turned to look at his friend who nodded. “Can I see it?”

“Yeah about that. I’ll be honest with ya Stanford, this feels like somethin’ we should leave well enough alone. It’s one thing to mess with physics and atoms. This ‘Potential’ stuff, we ain’t got a handle on it. It doesn’t behave like a particle or energy or anything in between. None of our instruments can even pick it up. And if it can turn a human into that thing we saw…” he trailed off shaking his head.

He knew Fiddleford was right. The man could play the mad engineer with the best of them, but there were things in this world that required a healthy respect. Ford had ignored him once before to his own detriment and he’d vowed not to make the same mistake again.

“I know, old friend,” Ford nodded, “believe me when I say, I’m not trying to meddle with unknown powers this time around. However, as you said, there are forces at work here, but we don’t even have the tools to observe them. I was hoping this lens could upgrade our spectrometer and it could at least show us what was happening..”

Fiddleford gave his friend a fond smile. The man was incorrigible. Truth be told, they both were.

“I did ya one better, let me see your whatchamacallits,” he said pointing at the goggles.

McGuckit’s clever fingers then popped open the viewer’s circuitry and removed a capsule filled with several tiny refracting lenses. He then reached into his pocket to extract a plastic case the size of matchbox containing a translucent lens tinted a smoky gray color about the diameter of a pea. With a few puffs of a soldering rod the goggles were upgraded to now filter out a new section of the invisible spectrum. Fiddleford handed the pair back to Ford who immediately tested the new setting. 

The world flickered into view in shades of gray. The orange beams of the setting sun appeared a dull white but he could see a few splotches of color around the room mostly centered around the collection of relics and specimens he had extracted from his lab. Ford then glanced down at his hand and he could perceive the purple cracks on his fingers and the faint gold outline of his body. He was glad to see the violet crisscrossing lines were fading and rubbing off as his body recovered. There was another click and he looked up to see Fiddleford fitting his own glass green goggles with a second quartz lens. 

Fiddleford’s entire being was tinted a faint dark-red, the color of merlot, as opposed to his own vivid gold. Did the differences in intensity mean something?

All at once Ford wanted to run outside with his field journal and document the different colors. Did the hue have any specific meaning? Was one born with the color, or did the tint develop over time? Could it be changed by life events? Regarding nature vs. nurture, was there a genetic link? Did children inherit their parents’ color? Where was Tate? He needed to test his hypothesis!

Fiddleford’s hand suddenly grabbed Ford by the wrist. His friend’s face looked startled as though he’d just witnessed something disturbing, and it was then that Ford realized he could see the damage. The old engineer’s brow furrowed as he rolled up Ford’s coat and sweater sleeve to reveal the violet pattern that made his skin look like fractured porcelain.

“This is where it latched on, wasn’t it? That thing… that Neverwere creature.”

It was such a simple and earnest question it took Ford a moment to properly formulate a response. It felt self-serving to focus on something so insignificant as his collection of scars (and quickly fading scars at that). His first instinct was to ignore the attention, but the look on his friend’s face made it impossible to sidestep the question.

“Yeah, it, uh, its grip on this dimension was fading so it fed on me to stabilize his presence. But that’s not important right now-”

“ Jesus , Stanford, you nearly died! I’d say that’s pretty flippin’ important!” Fiddleford frowned, tightening his grip on Ford’s wrist for a moment before reluctantly letting go. “Does it hurt?”

Ford blinked owlishly in confusion. Clearly his own discomfort or lack thereof had never crossed his mind. As far as his list of priorities went, his own physical ailments were somewhere near the bottom if included at all. A part of him wanted to snidely point out that almost dying was not dying and there was no need to make a fuss. Another part of him looked at his friend’s expression and felt something akin to shame.

“No. It doesn’t hurt. I got patched up so it’s fine,” he reassured him.

“Does your family know you got hurt?”

Ford sighed as he pulled off his goggles and made a show of checking something in his satchel. Somehow he knew it was all going to loop back around to this.

“Stanford, have you told them?”

“And why would I do that?” he asked, irritation bleeding into his voice, “What would it do other than raise Stan’s blood pressure and make the kids worry? And all for nothing! I didn’t die! I’m not in any pain! I’m perfectly fine!”

“Are you?”

He flinched as though Fiddleford had jabbed him in the eye. 

There was no reason for him not to be fine. Everything had worked out perfectly! Sure, he had about a million unanswered questions and the entire ordeal had been too terrifying to mull over for longer than ten seconds, but of course he was fine! He had to be fine! Like Stan had said, people depended on him, he couldn’t afford to fall to pieces over things that almost happened!

Nevermind that his family was expecting answers from him and he was still no closer to explaining what had happened other than “Space Botulism”. Nevermind that he felt as though a door had been thrown open and Bill's corpse was clawing its way out of his grave. Nevermind that there were great cosmic forces at play all around him and his response to that was to have his friend make quaint little eyeglasses so they could see the colors of their impending doom…

Don’t think about that.

His stomach churned as he clamped down on any internal dissent. He couldn't lose his grip. He just couldn't.

Ford took a deep breath.

He didn’t feel lost and unmoored. He wasn’t blindly seeking answers because the unknown was driving him mad. He wasn’t avoiding sleep because he was afraid his dreams would lead him back to that black abyss and that cruel inhuman eye. He wasn’t afraid of being caught unprepared again and being functionally useless in a crisis. He wasn’t dreading a conversation with Dipper in which he would have to explain why after a whole week, he hadn't told him what had really happened.

Just don’t think about it.

A wave of nausea soon followed, proving he had succeeded in suppressing the negative emotions. He took a cleansing breath before quickly closing up his bag.

“Yes. I feel fine,” he said and Fiddleford stared at him skeptically. Ford didn’t wait for any follow up questions as he grabbed the goggles and shouldered the bag.

“Where are ya goin’ now?”

“Field test. Don’t wait up.”

“Dammit, Ford, I ain’t yer mama but you gotta rest! You’re not a young man anymore!” 

Ford noted his friend’s concern but did not answer as he rushed out of the manor. More than anything he wanted to be alone with his thoughts, away from the distraction of social expectations. He wasn’t running away from scrutiny, but he’d also had enough of Fiddleford’s prying.

No. That was unfair. His friend was probably the only one who understood what he was going through. In his own way, Fiddleford was trying to get him to open up and be honest with his family. But how could he do that when the end result would be additional distress on everyone else, and for what? To make himself feel better?

“Men don’t cry, you suck it up and get over it.”

His father’s words echoed in his head like a mantra. In spite of everything he had gone through, those words still rang true. They’d kept him alive for 30 years, they could keep him alive a little longer. 

Ford kept walking past the estate grounds and well into the woods. He wasn’t running away, but the welcoming darkness of the forest at dusk was better than sitting in a room with his thoughts. Here there were sounds even in the stillness. Or at least, there should have been. He paused as he looked around and noticed the woods were silent. There was no chirping of insects or nocturnal creatures stirring. The place seemed abandoned.

He slipped on his goggles and attempted to find the source for the unnatural silence. There was nothing on sonar, nothing in infrared, or ultraviolet… His fingers trembled as he shifted his settings to filter for Potential. The world around him exploded in a kaleidoscope of colors. Streaks of violet, orange, green, crimson, gold, and electric blue flowed around him as though he were standing in the middle of a river. The flow wound around the trees and into the distance. Everywhere, the current brushed up against a tree or a bush, its foliage became greener and it looked more alive. The ground and stones beneath his feet sparkled as though doused with glitter and polished to a sheen.

Ford looked down at himself and saw he too was affected by the stream. The faint glow he had seen under his skin at the manor had bloomed into a bright golden aura. He was sure his light could be seen for miles, provided someone or something could see this far into the spectrum. The purple crisscrossing lines on his arm now looked like webbing that melded and kept his shape without bleeding into the gold beneath. It was breathtakingly beautiful.

As he crossed the river of potential straight to the other side, Ford observed how his bright light faded the moment he was outside its flow. Here, beyond its rushing streaks of light, crickets chirped and the ribbit of singing frogs filled the night. It was as though the fauna knew the river was there and kept to its banks.

“Amazing,” he breathed as he watched the course of the river winding through the forest. 

In the far bank he spotted a land orca. The creature was violent and ill-tempered by nature, but here it was basking in the shallows making blissful clicks as it began to glow with a pale white light. Ford wondered if there were any other anomalies that could sense the flow of Potential if not see it outright.

A yipping sound caught his attention followed by the sound of bluegrass music. Further ahead were about a half dozen or so killbillies strumming instruments and running in and out of the river as though it were a watering hole. The energy in the current stood their hair on end and caused their sharp pointed teeth to glow in various shades of white. 

Ford found himself smiling and looking around in awe in spite of the danger.

He had stumbled into something that began to resemble a water hole and it had revealed even more mysteries for him to solve. So much of his field had been cracked open. So much was now open to exploration and all of it thanks to a bit of quartz. Well, not so much quartz as it was glass refined and repurposed from a piece of Leaf’s broken pen.

But nobody needs to know that.

Ford had spent a good day and a half studying the properties of the glass pen before choosing a piece to recast as a lens. He’d given it to Fiddleford without an explanation regarding its source. Not that it mattered now. Leaf had been gone for days and she probably wouldn't notice any missing pieces of the broken pen anyway.

All in the name of science.

He followed the course of the river, giving the killbillies a wide berth, but feeling pleased with his discovery. He pulled out a new field journal and began jotting a list of every anomaly he could spot along the way. The moon was shining brightly overhead by the time he reached the edge of a canyon, but rather than pour down into the crags below, the river of potential flowed straight across, forming a sort of bridge and winding through the forest on the other side.

It was from this great height that he saw the entirety of Gravity Falls and all around it various tributaries of that same colorful stream flowed and vanished only to reappear elsewhere. It felt as though the town were a great big heart pumping bursts of color through the forest in a slow and steady pulse. For a moment Ford looked on, lost in the wonder of it and finding himself unable to put words to paper. It made him feel so small and yet connected to the grander whole.

His grandiose thoughts were interrupted by a crackle of violet energy that made the river flicker. At first Ford believed it had been an error with his hardware, but the energy flickered again and the entire river blinked in and out of existence. He put his journal down and focused on the landscape trying to pinpoint the source of the fluctuation.

Just then there was a gust of air that went against the wind and Ford ducked as something like a falling meteorite lit up the night sky with a pale indigo light as it flickered in and out of sight. Its smoky trail looked like a dotted line in the spaces when it had blipped out of reality only to return. He saw it land in the outskirts of town without a sound, but the impact jarred the rivers off their course. The clouds overhead were pushed away forming a cloudless circle of night sky directly above the impact zone. 

And then he saw it.

A thin smear of black streaked across the sky wrapping and coiling around the remains of the meteorite’s trail. It swallowed the stardust and smoke flitting in and out of reality and leaving a thin jagged line like a papercut. The wound bled black and he saw it drip onto the trees near where he stood. The sickening void-black substance was unlike anything he had ever seen. It was different from the rippling ferro-fluid of the Neverwhere. This was viscous like tar and smelled of rot. 

Ford felt his heart race as he saw the goop actively drain the pine needles of their potential and absorb it into itself burning a hole through the canopy until the branch died. It then splattered onto the ground still draining the color into itself and Ford stepped away. He could feel a darkness in the substance that reached out as though to sink its hooks into his brain and consume him. 

It didn’t stop with trees. The gunk had fallen on animals, insects, even the stones themselves and each one was being actively drained as though some horrendous vacuum had manifested in tangible form. A tiny screech caught his attention and he saw an eye bat blinded by a gob of that ooze flapping weakly before crashing to the ground.

Ford’s breath quickened and looked around and saw the trail of death that thing had left in its wake. The light changed and he yanked off the goggles in a moment of panic thinking some of it had gotten on him. He looked around and saw that it was merely the clouds blotting out part of the sky.

The night was peaceful, lit up by the light of the moon. But Ford knew it was a lie. That hairline crack was still up there. The ooze was still all around him. He was simply blind to the danger. He took a moment to settle his thoughts. Whatever happened out here, he would have to approach it logically. He couldn’t panic.

Before he settled on what to do there was a crash in the undergrowth and he turned to see a group of bright orange scamp fires rushing through the woods. One of them ran up to the little eye bat and crouched. From its back rose a troupe of pale green will-o'-wisps which surrounded the injured creature.

Ford slipped on the goggles and he saw the scampfire’s flames filled with multicolored potential from the river. The will-o'-wisps were funneling threads of light into the little eye-bat. The tar became an ashen charcoal color before turning into a clear gel. The little bat shook off the slime and flapped off into the night as the wisps fluttered in a pleased little pirouette before returning to ride on the scampfire’s back. The fiery little spider crackled before walking up to Ford and sniffing his shoe. Ford automatically sank to one knee and offered his hand to the creature.

“That was amazing. Have you always been able to do that?” he asked but received no answer as the scampfire lost interest and headed back into the woods searching for more victims. Ford wondered if he should follow but as he glanced up to look at his surroundings, he froze. 

The forest was filled with will-o'-wisp.

They flickered groggily through the trees like bright erratic fireflies, their whispers carried in the wind. The pale points of light fluctuated from yellow to green to blue as they emerged from their loams, awoken by the skittering scampfires. All at once the whispers fell silent and although they had no eyes, Ford sensed their attention focus on the valley below. He then saw their light slowly bleed into a violet hue before rushing forward like floodwaters overwhelming a dam. They surged past him past him and over the edge of the cliff. Ford shielded himself from the onslaught and turned to see lights turning on all over the valley and moving as one towards the same spot: the meteorite’s impact point. 

Something dangerous had arrived.

He spotted bursts of light arcing out like jolts of electricity only for them to curl back into its origin point. It was too far from where he was standing, and far too close to town. The quickest way to get there was a sheer drop of about three hundred feet. The safest way would be to circle back around to the manor and borrowing a car to travel down the winding road back towards town.

Gritting his teeth he dug into his bag and brought out Mabel’s old grappling hook. He wasn’t sure the thing was still safe to use, but he didn’t have time to go the long way around. He unwound a large portion of it before securing the hook on a nearby tree. As he rappelled down the cliff he looked down to see the points of light had all turned a deep violet and they were gathering around the coils of energy.

He reached the base of the cliff and leapt down before running towards the electrical (?) surge. His goggles showed him how the lights flickered with each flare up but the lack of sound accompanying it made the phenomena seem phantom and eerie. Like lightning without thunder.

As he grew closer he was accompanied by a flurry of wil-o-wisps that lit the way. Scampfires were also congregating in large numbers, he heard their skittering in the undergrowth and spotted their light through the trees. The closer he got to the impact zone, the more it seemed that the fiery spiders were standing guard like sentries keeping other creatures at bay. Eventually a pair blocked Ford’s path. Try as he might, the little creatures refused to let him continue. 

A surge of power arched up over the tree tops and curled into the night sky. 

He stepped back and nearly fell as he tripped over a mass of fungi positively radiating potential. He observed his surroundings and realized it was one of many concentric fairy rings containing whatever was happening. He was fascinated by the forest’s resilience and mechanisms for preserving the ecosystem. The coil of power arched back down and struck something that released a wave of energy.

Almost immediately the flames on the scampfire’s back flared up and the gathered wisps merged into a wall of living flame. Ford stumbled back and looked up to see the fire itself was keeping bits of the corrosive tar from spreading. He was too far to see what was happening at the meteorite’s crater, but he was close enough to hear a pained scream in the distance.

Finally, the fiery barrier faded enough for Ford to tempt fate. He braced himself before running head first into the thinnest agglomeration of wisps. He raised his arms to ward off most of the flames but still found himself needing to stop, drop and roll the moment he landed on the other side. He heard angry whispers behind him, but his theory that they would not abandon their post to follow him proved to be true. He quickly got to his feet before running towards the anomaly.

The first thing that struck him was the smell. It permeated the air overtaking the scent of pine. 

Ions, heated metal, and…

Blood.

His fingers had inadvertently brushed against a blackberry thicket and come away red. Something had left a bloody trail through the forest. Through the goggles he saw the blood pulsing with a fading purple light. Purple potential matching the color on his left arm…

“Ms. Leaf! Are you alright?” he called out as he hurried forward, pushing past the treeline only to stop short.

He knew the kind of damage to expect from a meteorite crash. He knew what an impact crater was supposed to look like but this defied the laws of physics.

There before him was a relatively untouched glade and a massive zodiac wheel had been burned into the ground. The ring glowed with a bright violet light but what the goggles showed made any words he might have uttered die on his lips. The zodiac extended up and around the entire glade like a massive gyroscope spinning in seemingly sporadic patterns and burning its image into the ground with each cycle. The external rings were empty of symbols save for one. No, that wasn’t entirely right. From this angle, at this distance, Ford could tell the symbols were still there, they were simply not lit up. All had gone dark save for the sword.  

As he processed this third dimensional version of the zodiac wheel he noticed the pattern taking up the space at its core. He recognized it from Fiddleford’s private library. It was the same design on the cover of the purple tome: Trace Trompe-loeil, the Muse of Power.

Lights flickered and Ford realized there was something or someone trapped within the shield. Black tar spattered against the inner walls of the zodiac bubble and dripped down as a humanoid figure stumbled to its feet.

“Issat… issat all you got?” the slurring words sounded defiant and he knew that voice. It was Leaf trapped within the zodiac. As though to respond the blob of darkness metastasized into something bigger that loomed high overhead. Manic laughter echoed faintly in the wind. “Oh… fuck you, Bill.”

He saw Leaf’s silhouette spit out a mouthful of blood before straightening up and facing the sludge head on.

“Eoi crgcek gyly c knujyxir rujjry bujav,” she jeered before the thing latched on and slammed her to the ground.

“Leaf!” Ford yelled as he watched in helpless dread as the ooze smothered her. 

The zodiac crackled with energy in response and he had to avert his eyes from the blinding light. The quick motion knocked the goggles off his face and he found himself back in a calm and peaceful night. He blinked and turned to face the meadow but saw none of the spectacular displays of power that he knew were there beyond the visible spectrum. Here there was only the faintly glowing outline of the zodiac etched into the ground and at its center was Leaf, collapsed and seemingly having a seizure.

Once again he was caught in uncertainty. Should he help her? Could he help her? Or would his interference only make things worse?

The scent of blood grew stronger and he saw something dark spilling from her eyes, lips, and nose. Impulse overrode all common sense and he ran into the meadow, stepping onto the outer ring of the zodiac. Almost immediately he felt the air knocked out of him and he staggered to regain his balance. There beneath his feet, in what had once been an empty slot of the zodiac, the symbol of the six-fingered hand appeared as though drawn by an invisible hand. 

The symbol, his symbol, burned gold and it mingled with the rest of the wheel. He fumbled for his goggles and managed to see as the last bit of golden light washed over the bubble before it burst and released Leaf.

She lay there gasping for air as the zodiac dissolved. The gunk that had overwhelmed her was nowhere to be found. Ford didn’t understand exactly what happened, but whatever he did seemed to have helped. The ordeal was over.

“Are you alright?” he asked, not sure whether he should touch her.

Leaf tried to get to her feet, but halfway through her legs buckled and she fell to her knees. It had been a courageous effort, but the stress won out and she hunched over in pain. Her form flickered and jolted like a poorly synced hologram giving voice to a discomfort she had tried to keep silent. For a moment Ford was worried something had gone terribly wrong.

“Ms. Leaf?”

His hand reached out to touch her shoulder to steady her as she swayed. She looked as though she might tip over at the slightest touch. 

“Are you feeling oka-”

She retched violently and Ford jolted in surprise. It was something he should have expected considering that, as far as he could tell, she had been waterboarded with the black sludge. Who knew how much of it she had been forced to ingest?

The glitching grew worse as her body purged itself of blood and a clear viscous substance. It was the same sort of slime the tar had become once the wil-o-wisps had neutralized it. The motion set off another series of flickering and it was then Ford noticed the shimmering iridescence at the edges of her form. It was the sign of failing glamour.

He fought the urge to look through the goggles once more and instead, gently held her hair away from her face.

“It’s over now… it’s over…” he murmured though whether it was to reassure her or himself was certainly up to interpretation. 

As she coughed out the last of it, Ford’s eyes settled on the smoldering remains of the zodiac and noted things that were missing from the design of the tapestry in the McGucket’s private library. This close to it, he could see the details of the wheel and the spiral at its center. Most of the design had gone dark, only the sword and his own golden six fingered hand remained.

Leaf’s shivered and he immediately held her to keep her from collapsing. He looked down and saw her bruised face, covered in blood and gore. There were cuts along her cheekbones, her lip was split, and her eyes were drooping closed. 

Guilt settled like a weight on his chest. He had spent so much of the past few days hating her, or at the very least convincing himself that he did, it never crossed his mind that perhaps there was a valid reason she hadn’t returned. Had she been fighting this thing all along?

“Ms. Leaf? Can you hear me?” he asked as he shifted and pulled a shop rag from his bag. She blinked slowly as he wiped away the blood from her face in slow, hesitant motions.

“Tell it t’me straight, doc. Issit somethin’ I ate?” she quipped groggily.

Something about her deprecating attempt to make him smile made him feel worse. She was making jokes. She could have died, she was seriously injured and she was making jokes. He found himself at a loss as to what to say so he replied with the only thing that came to mind.

“I’m not that kind of doctor, although someone once told me we needed to stop meeting like this.” He saw her crack a smile. The reaction made him irrationally pleased and he gave her a small smile of his own.

“You’re funny…” she laughed and winced, “s’rry… just hafta… hafta catch my breath…”

“It’s okay, take your time,” he reassured her before glancing at the sword glyph to ensure it was still smoldering. For some reason he felt as though the pulsing glow was somehow connected to her heartbeat. 

“‘Kay. I got like… one request… mebbe a suggest’n or two…” she mumbled , “can you be a dear ‘n pop my shoulder back in place?”

“Your shoulder? Oh!” he exclaimed as he saw that her left arm was indeed hanging oddly at her side. “I didn’t realize, I should probably get you to a hospital.”

“No hospitals.”

“Ms. Leaf, you are seriously hurt.”

“I’m fine,” she said, waving off his concerns.

“You are not fine! You fell out of the sky and fought off what I can only assume was some kind of alien. You could be poisoned or have internal bleeding or something might have ruptured!”

“A hospital isn’t gonna fix it,” she pointed out, “mostly human, remember?”

Ford scowled but it soon dissolved into a worried frown. “Is there someone I can call? Friends or family perhaps?”

Leaf’s eyes were focused on the stars overhead but her brow scrunched in annoyance. 

“You want me to call my mom and tell her the kids are being mean so she’ll pick me up?” she drawled sarcastically. “If my arm weren’t a noodle I’d smack you.”

In spite of her flippant response, Ford sensed that there was no one to call. He couldn’t explain how he knew, but something about the intonation of her words made it seem as though she wouldn’t be here in the forest alone if there was anyone to call. It wasn’t a surprise per se. Lots of people were on their own, most of them by choice. He spent a good ten years avoiding his own father and there were times when jumping through another portal seemed a lot more tolerable than having to explain himself to Filbrick Pines.

“Listen, Dr. Pines, if you can’t do it, it's fine. I’ll do it myself.” She had taken his disapproving silence to mean that he was squeamish at the thought of popping her shoulder back in place.

“I can do it,” he replied in a quiet voice as he lay her back down and grabbed her arm as though to test its range, “it’s only that… well it’ll be painful. Are you sure you wouldn’t rather go to a medical professional?”

“No, it’s fine, just don’t tell me when you’re gonna do it. Surprise me! Just say you’re gonna do it at the count of three but jam it in at two so that way… AH! MOTHERF-” her yelp quickly turned into a cough. 

“Sorry! Was that-? Are you alright?” Ford had taken her advice to heart and popped her arm back in its socket without warning. Her pained yowl had him immediately second guessing his choices, but his fretting was unnecessary as Leaf gave a delirious sort of giggle.

“You sure know how to follow directions…”

He sat next to her, hands on his knees, unsure of what to say next. Leaf’s clarity seemed to have dissolved back into a fog but she was still looking at him intently. She then reached out and clumsily grabbed his wrist. At first Ford believed she was looking at his damaged arm but she had in fact grabbed the wrong one.

“Your hand,” she stared at it as though bewildered, “how long’ve you had six fingers?”

Ford blinked in confusion. “My entire life.”

“Even when we met?”

“Even then,” he replied all the while fighting the urge to yank his hand away.

Suddenly she began to laugh and an all too familiar sickening cold and hot sensation washed over him. After all these years he never quite mastered how to stay impassive when faced with mockery. He could feel his face heating up.

“Is there a problem?”

“No. ‘M just stupid,” she chuckled, wincing from the pain. She released him from her grasp and stared back up at the stars, “hadn’t noticed your fingers.”

Ford’s eyes narrowed and he wondered if she were making fun of him. “You’re kidding.”

“M’not. I’m just bad at noticing details.”

Details?

Ford stared at his hand. That extra finger had defined him for as long as he could remember. The world had never allowed him to forget it and she hadn’t noticed? It was ridiculous in a way that made him feel like she was lying. That had to be the only explanation. She was clearly so perceptive and yet he was expected to believe his one defining feature had been overlooked? His fingers instinctively curled into a fist as though to hide away from her scrutiny.

“I don’t believe you,” he said, his voice becoming cold and withdrawn. 

Leaf stared at him as though trying to figure something out but she was clearly still too addled to properly form a conclusion.

“I am though, very, very stupid. Always looking at the bigger picture so I trip on my own shoelaces,” she turned her head and stared back at the stars. “Can’t ever see what’s right in front of my face… just stumbling through the muldiver- multli- mulver-”

“Multiverse?”

“Yes. That. Bungling the obvious like an idiot… Getting involved just ‘cos I can… Getting my ass handed to me because I never learned to keep my own gods damned hands out of a running blender…” Her annoyance faded and in its stead Ford saw a profound emptiness, “...all the little details add up. They’re going to get me killed someday… won’t that be a sight?”

Ford didn’t want to give much credence to someone rambling in pain, but the words lingered like an oracle’s warning. What had she been doing this past week? What would have happened if he hadn’t found her? 

If for some quirk of fate he hadn’t followed the stream of potential or watched her fall, what would have become of her? Perhaps she would have been able to fend off the creature without his help, but then what? Would she have just laid in this muddy field all night? Would she have been able to fix her own shoulder or drag herself home? Would she have appeared days later pretending nothing had gone wrong?

Even now she acted unfazed, cracking jokes without an ounce of fear.

Just how many times has this happened to her?

“You’re not stupid,” he corrected her, “but you may have a concussion. We should get you home. Can you stand?”

“I think the plan is to stay put here until my legs work again.”

That wasn’t happening. Without a word, Ford scooped her up before getting to his feet. Leaf was momentarily left speechless and Ford offered no explanation before selecting the shortest path back to town. It was some time before the shock wore off and Leaf found her voice.

“So gallant. Whoever said chivalry is dead?”

“I believe it was Edmund Burke.”

“He was just angry because they cut off the Queen of France,” she countered and Ford stopped short. Her words short circuited something in his brain and he looked at her confused, “you know, because he said that after Marie Antoinette-”

“Yes, I know. It just caught me by surprise,” he said as he pressed on. “I wasn’t expecting you to be familiar with his work.”

“I’m a Dealer, haven’t you heard? Society is indeed a contract,” she responded and this time the corner of Ford’s lips twitched as though remembering how to smile.

“That was… terrible.”

“What did you expect? The man never once made a good joke. He was consistent like that.”

“Stop!” he protested at the bad joke but he couldn’t stop smiling. 

He was used to Stan and the kids hearing his quips as one would hear background noise. Yes, they often picked up on context clues, but never once had they ever responded to his sarcastic intellectual humor in kind. That same oddly pleased sensation from before returned and he had a difficulty identifying what it was.

Before he could get too far lost in his thoughts, they came upon the road. The scant lights of the town shimmered from in between the pine trees. By the time he arrived at the familiar red brick coiled in ivy, Leaf seemed to be drifting off to sleep. 

“You need to stay awake. You could have a concussion.”

“It’s fine, I’ll sleep it off.”

He frowned. “That isn’t funny.”

“Picky, picky…”

It was infinitely easier to use the front door than it was to scramble onto her balcony and attempt to break in. He didn’t question why the doors were suddenly unlocked and helpfully opened for them before closing behind them. He didn’t question why the lights suddenly turned on the moment they walked into her apartment. After watching the skies torn open and rivers flowing with potential, a house recognizing its owner seemed relatively tame.

Leaf looked around blearily and only then seemed to notice where she was. “You actually brought me home?”

"I wasn’t going to simply leave you out there," he huffed before standing in the middle of her living room unsure as to where to go.

“Bedroom is that way. No, wait. I need… I need the thing.”

“What thing?”

“The… thing… white sparkle thing.”

Ford gave her a blank stare but no further explanation was given. He was caught between assuming she was delirious and taking her request seriously.

“Right, bedroom first,” he stated before going to lay her down on her bed. 

The thing turned out to be a satin spar made of selenite locked away in an emergency kit. The crystal reminded Ford of a white ribbon of freshly-pulled salt water taffy, dusted with crystallized sugar. It sparkled so enticingly that if he were a child, he would have been tempted to bite into it. 

His fingers closed around it and he felt a cooling energy wash over him. He inhaled sharply and his nose caught a whiff of tea leaves, juniper, and cedar. His skin felt clean, the dirt and grime had vanished from his clothes. Even his boots looked freshly scrubbed and devoid of mud.

It seemed Leaf was in possession of a cleansing crystal that actually… well, cleansed. He could certainly see how something like this would come in handy. 

Leaf was dozing when he gently nudged her awake before letting the crystal wash away the grime and blood in a ripple of energy. The scent was different when it was activated by her. He smelled lemon blossoms, lily of the valley, blackberries, and sandalwood. How had it known to do that? Was it sentient? He pushed away the thoughts recalling how interacting with Leaf would leave him with more questions than answers.

“Don’t fall asleep,” Ford sighed wearily as he took the crystal from her hand and noted it was stained red with traces of her blood. So the crystal could cleanse, but not heal. 

He set aside the gemstone only for an intricate tapestry on the opposite wall to catch his eye. It was similar to the one found in Fiddleford’s library only this one seemed older and woven by a far more skilled hand. His Greek was rusty but he was able to make out ‘From Arachne With Love’ embroidered on the fabric’s lower right corner. The Zodiac sparkled with silver and gold thread as tiny stars glittered throughout the piece. At its center was a series of fractal coils that seemed to go on forever depicting Trace Trompe-loeil and on the outer ring once again the sword stood alone…

No, that wasn’t right. It wasn’t just a sword.

It’s a xiphos.

His eyes widened as the information set off a cascade of neurons that filled in so many blanks. For days he had worked under the assumption that Leaf was the same type of creature as Bill. He had assumed she was some variation of the Muse motif. That she was a trickster. A charlatan. A fickle deity. Only now did it all make sense! He looked down at the woman next to him, his eyes flooding with something akin to wonder. 

“How did I not see it before? It’s a xiphos. A leaf -blade sword,” he said with an astonished laugh, “It’s you. The Xiphos is you!”

“Ta-dah…” Leaf replied unenthusiastically.

“All this time I thought you weren’t- You never said- I thought you were Trace, or one of her crooks,” he admitted. 

Leaf’s eyes had been closed but she opened them to stare at his face. Her eyes were muddled and dazed but she gave him a smile as though he’d told a joke.

“I’ve been called worse.”

Emboldened by her amusement he tested the waters.

“But you’re not, are you? You don’t work for Trace. You’re like…” 

You’re like me.

It took all of his self control not to say it. Even now he knew admitting such a thing required more trust than he was currently capable of. 

“When we first met, you said something to the effect of if you look into the weird, the weird looks back.”

“Who did you summon?” Leaf asked with such clarity that he flinched and his first instinct was to hide.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Only someone who’s done the same would know. You don’t seem the type to shy away from danger.”

There was an odd comfort in her words. They were devoid of judgment, fear, and most of all pity. Here with her, the past was just a statement of fact. Perhaps it was because Leaf as good as admitted she had summoned a muse herself. Perhaps it was because he felt there was someone else in this world who knew the burden of such an action. Whatever the reason, in that moment all the baggage that came with Ford’s choices evaporated.

“You summoned Trace,” he whispered.

“And you summoned Bill.”

They stared at each other as a comfortable silence settled between them. His shoulders slumped as though he had been forced to carry a great weight, but at long last he could put it down. For the first time in memory, Ford felt seen. At long last, someone else understood.

You’re just like me.

“You used the Zodiac to defeat Trace,” Ford said, motioning to the tapestry on the wall.

“And you didn’t.”

“You were the xiphos…”

“And you the six fingered hand…”

“Leaf.”

“Sixer.”

“Dealer.”

“Dumbass.”

Ford snorted and found himself laughing. Stars! How long had it been? Not since he’d left the boat. Not since his return to Gravity Falls. Not since the nightmares had made him fear closing his eyes. Relief, hysterics, insomnia, whatever the cause, it felt so good to laugh!

You’re just like me.

“I suppose I stepped into that one,” he said, wiping a tear from his eye. “I have so many questions about, well, about everything! How did you even encounter a being like that? The zodiac, what are its properties? How did you use it to defeat Trace?”

“What’s there to know?” she asked as though she were bored with the conversation, “You hold hands in a circle and then Care Bear Stare the monster away.”

Obviously that wasn’t going to appease him, but there was a look of discomfort in her eyes that he was all too familiar with. Leaf clearly didn’t like talking about it which left Ford grasping at that fleeting connection without getting a proper response in return. He wanted to push her, to cross that line and demand answers. Posterity and etiquette be damned, he needed to know! How could she dangle that promise of a shared experience only to shut down the moment he wanted more? 

His eyes settled on her left hand and how it was bleeding through the bandages. It was the same wound from week ago but it looked larger than before.

Disjointed memories came to him; of the Neverwhere, of the putrid tar, of Dipper’s pale face and Mabel’s tears, of feeling hopeless, of a light in the darkness, warmth chasing off the ice, of chocolate, kindness, and pastel stars… 

He again felt that strange sensation telling him he had forgotten something important. It was a vaguely foreboding sense that told him he had asked for too much and was now demanding more. Ford paused and chose his next words words carefully.

“Did this happen because we asked you to spare the Neverwere? The darkness, this cut, is this the price?”

Leaf didn’t respond right away, her gaze seemed to be fixed on something a thousand miles away.

“Price is what you’re willing to pay. Price is the end of a transaction, it doesn’t exist without something to barter,” she finally responded, “To make something out of nothing the word you’re looking for is cost. That is what someone gives up to cut a new path.”

“A new path. Such as, making a new happy ending where one didn’t exist?”

“Everything incurs a cost… whether we want to pay it or not. A good Dealer creates new possibilities and sells them at a higher price than what they cost to make.”

“You haven’t charged us for what you’ve done, have you?”

She turned her head and shifted her focus to his face. Ford found himself unable to look away from that cold, empty stare. Too late did he recall warnings about trying to settle accounts with the fae. He hadn’t thought things through and now by bringing attention to the lapse, she would be forced to address it. Or so he gathered. 

Leaf then sighed and closed her eyes before leaning back onto the pillows. “I would very much like a moth.”

“A moth?” he repeated, unsure he had heard her correctly. 

“Yes. An interesting one in a shadow box for my collection.”

“It- that can't possibly cover the cost of what you did.”

“I never said I was a good Dealer, but I try to be a considerate one… don’t spread that around.”

Ford sat with the knowledge for a moment before reaching out to touch her left hand. She didn’t pull away and let him examine her palm. The wound was still there, fresh and bloody as though she’d only just sliced it open. It made no sense. His own injuries had faded but hers didn’t seem to have healed at all if anything the wound looked inflamed and larger than before. 

A deep sense of unfairness filled him. 

Everybody lived. Everybody got to be happy. Everybody was safe…

Except for her. 

The universe had taken its due and she refused to pass it on to them.

“The black slime that you were fighting, that was the cost?”

“More like an unpaid credit card. Odious debt spiked with nightmares, nothin’ like a brush with Bill to remind me I’m an idiot…” she mumbled and winced as Ford’s grip tightened at the mention of Bill. The glamour flickered again in response to the pain and he released his hold as though repelled by the sight. All of a sudden he didn’t know what to do with his hands.

“Bill is dead,” he said, wishing his voice sounded more certain.

“Yes. And no. Your Bill is deader than most, but there are others out there… his variants…”

“Variants?” he asked and immediately connected the dots, “Oh. You ran into one of Bill’s paers .”

“More like punched him right in the eye and robbed him.” She seemed so proud of the fact that Ford smiled in spite of himself. 

“I wish I could have seen it. I imagine that made him angry.”

“He makes me angry…” Leaf grumbled as she watched Ford hide his hands from her. “Why do you do that?”

Ford followed Leaf’s gaze to notice she was looking at the odd positioning of his hands. He grimaced but soon realized there was no malice in the question. Of course she wasn’t going to ignore the obvious now that she was finally aware of it. It made him feel foolish for pretending otherwise, but then, he was the one being dishonest with her and pretending he couldn’t see her slipping mask.

“I imagine, for the same reason you wear glamour,” he ventured, eyeing her cautious of her reaction.

Leaf’s eyes narrowed and there was a distinct understanding of what he had said. If she wanted Ford to show his hand (quite literally), Leaf would have to show hers first. It was a gamble, one that he wasn’t sure would work.

“Promise you won’t scream.”

Ford’s breath hitched as she acquiesced and he had to school his features into something other than eagerness. He had to prove to her he was trustworthy and not -as Stan would put it- some random creep that wanted to take a piece of her hair for his collection. Although, if she was amenable to providing him samples, he wouldn’t turn them down.

“I am not so easily put off by the unusual, Ms. Leaf.”

“That isn’t what I asked,” she scowled. Wording, Ford was beginning to realize, wording was important. He would have to look up his notes on Fae law when he got back but for now he was determined to get it right.

“I promise. I won’t scream.”

She gritted her teeth as she stared at the ceiling, her features scrunched in annoyance, but the glamour soon shimmered and vanished. Her fingertips were midnight blue, her face seemed to have split apart at the seams and revealed a darkness underneath. It was as though she had been wearing a mask and it had burned away by the creature beneath leaving only traces behind. The edges of the human portions of her skin were blackened in a curled pattern, but it was her eyes what struck him. 

Her iris and sclera were ink-black and fractured into coils of silver and gold. Her pupils were twin stars that peered out surrounded by a fractal that seemed to power her core. The more he looked the more he could see: nebulae, red giants, comets, and silvery white dwarfs… She was a vast, impossibly powerful creature masquerading in the shell of a feeble human.

“Oh. You’re made of stardust,” he breathed as his blue eyes widened and sparkled with delight.

She didn’t move but as Ford became accustomed to her features he noted they were tight and grimacing in pain. The cuts and bruises looked so much worse beneath the illusion. They darkened her face and skin, like blighted patches of void in the night sky. She was bleeding through her clothes, and those scrapes on her cheekbone and brow now looked more like burns. 

“You’re- you’re hurt!” he stammered which in retrospect was an inane sentence. Of course she was hurt, she’d been hurt from the moment he’d found her. For whatever reason it seemed to matter more now. “I-I have to stop the bleeding. I have to-”

His trembling fingers found themselves in her hand but he was sure he hadn’t been to one to reach out. Ford’s mind was still so caught up in his fascination and impulse to help, he hadn't noticed how her gaze had softened at his reaction. He hadn’t screamed. She had shown him the monster under her skin and he had moved closer to it, unafraid.

He stared mutely as she brought his hand to her lips and kissed his knuckles as though she were a knight, and he an innocent maiden.

“Silly man, you’re made of stardust of too.”

He felt his face heat up a deep scarlet but he had no response. His mind, always inundated with thoughts and ideas, had suddenly blissfully grown still. She was vast, she was powerful, she was…

Beautiful.

And he couldn’t for the life of him figure out why he hadn’t noticed before.

Chapter Text

It had started with a chill. 

Ford had been captivated by the kiss but the spell was soon broken when he noticed her shivering. He tentatively placed a hand on her forehead and, sure enough, she was burning up. Her movements were slow and lethargic like a wind-up doll running out of power.

One thing was obvious, Leaf’s condition had been more serious than she had let on. 

Yes, that was clearly why she was acting this way. Under normal circumstances she never would have taken his hand like that and- A blush cut off his thoughts and he shook his head to clear it. Leaf would not be interested in him that way if she was in her right state of mind.

The trembling grew worse and the pattern in her eyes grew fuzzy and unfocused. 

“Stay awake. Ms. Leaf, you have to stay awake.”

She replied something incoherent and as her eyes fluttered closed. Try as he might, Ford couldn’t wake her and she lay amidst the covers with a strange sheen over her skin which he quickly identified as cold sweat. A sick feeling settled in the pit of his stomach as he came to terms with the situation. He was alone with an unconscious being made up of fractal stars. 

What was he supposed to do? Where should he go?

Leaf was right, he couldn’t just show up to the local hospital with her looking like this, but she needed medical attention. He watched as the shivering continued and dark memories of traversing the multiverse resurfaced. He had been to peaceful dimensions yes, but the places that would welcome an outcast like him were not inherently kind. He had traversed glittering citadels with vicious slums that ran deeper than the spires overhead. They were cold, grim places where death was simply another cost of doing business. 

Battlefields and bloodshed he could dodge and avoid, but how did you escape a knife in the dark? How can you plan for a deal going wrong? How could he make demands of people who held all the cards?

There were good people in the multiverse; kind souls that sheltered him. And there was the tragedy of it all. Goodness was not enough to save them.

How many times had he watched one of his companions die? How many times had he seen fragile humanoids, who had done nothing but offer him a cup of proper water, shatter into mangled corpses under a barrage of artillery without being able to help? How many times had he seen a strange creature, so infinitely kind and elegantly inhuman, grow still and move no more? 

It wouldn’t happen again. He wouldn’t let it happen again.

I have twelve funging PhDs, don't I?

Leaf was hurt, and he would fix it. 

The tangle of social interactions could wait, right now he needed to focus on getting her medical aid. He always did better with a task and at least this was something he was somewhat familiar with. 

First thing on the list, getting that fever under control.

Ford moved quickly, shuffling the coat off Leaf before reaching for the hunting knife on his belt. The wounds underneath needed treatment, this was the only way. He very carefully cut away her bloodstained clothing to reveal even more dark blue skin sparkling with stars in swirling patterns. Her form was still vaguely human, but her fingertips had twisted into pointed claws and her limbs elongated just enough to be uncanny. In spite of himself, Ford couldn’t help but stare at the figure before him and he felt his face heating up once again.

Get a grip. This is purely for medical reasons.

He tossed the torn clothes aside and they landed with a disconcerting wet plop. The cloth soaked in her blood. It was then that he noticed the cuts were accompanied by burn marks. The dark color of her skin made it difficult to see at first glance, but there were marks all over her body like someone had taken a fiery knife to a canvas. Once he could identify it, he kept seeing more and more of them. 

Stem the bleeding.

That, at least, was something Ford was well acquainted with. He fumbled over the contents of the first aid kit, recognizing several items that were not of this dimension and setting aside the ones whose purpose was unknown. His hands remained steady as he meticulously cleaned each open wound, applied antiseptic, and bandaged them with clean gauze. The process was simple enough, he’d done it to himself hundreds of times albeit he had never cared enough to try to be gentle.

Her broken ribs posed an entirely new problem but it was probably contributing to her shallow breathing. His own experience with bruised ribs had meant weeks of managing the pain and making sure his ribcage was tightly bound as he hopped around dimensions. He had to assume she had similar enough bone structure for the same treatment to apply.

Once he carefully finished wrapping her torso in gauze he glanced at her left hand. The wound was loosely bandaged with tattered cloth which he slowly removed. There was more than just the sharp ugly slice across her palm. Now that he could see her hand properly, he noticed her knuckles had been torn open as though she had tried to smash them into something hard and unyielding. The pattern was all too familiar. 

He glanced at his own hand and saw the faint scar on the back of his left hand noting their similarity. On impulse he checked the back of her other hand and once again found the pattern matched his own faint scarring. The wounds were identical to his own scars. 

What does this mean?

He gave her bandages a second look and spotted quite a few injuries in the same spots where he himself had old scars. They were the marks left behind by Bill before he fell through the portal, back when he was trapped alone in his cabin amidst the snow.

All of a sudden, Ford felt the need to put space between himself and the woman in the bed. He jerked away from her and used his crimson stained fingers as a pretext to flee to the bathroom. He didn’t know what to think. His heart was pounding as though he had once again caught a glimpse of something he shouldn’t have; some uncomfortable truth in the underpinning of the universe. 

Paranoia was creeping up in the back of his mind. He wished he hadn’t seen those reminders of when he was lost and alone. He wished the sun would rise and chase away all of the shadows. He wished Leaf would wake up and say something glib to make him feel better. 

What am I doing?

Ford took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes with cold water to chase off his selfish thoughts. He stared at his reflection in the mirror for a moment before giving a startled jump. The room had been white in a pleasantly vintage, porcelain tile and simple backsplash sort of way. Now, every surface was filled with mosaics and swirling patterns of ultraviolet. The hand-blown glass of the lights overhead were tinted a pleasantly cool Fordtramarine.

Leaf can see colors outside the visible spectrum.

For whatever reason, that was the one thing that proved to be too much. He fumbled for a nearby towel before pressing it to his face a little too firmly. He wanted to scream but the pressure of the cloth against his eyes helped calm him down. His brain felt muddled and wrung dry. Three days without sleep was probably not helping, but he couldn’t lose it like this. He had to stop and think things through.

There was a time he would have been delighted at the thought of someone else being able to share his vision of the world. Even if it was a product of Bill’s generosity, what could be more innocent than color? He’d been a fool and trusted it completely forgetting that all of Bill’s gifts came at a cost.

Only when he was on the brink of having a mental break had he learned that seeing colors that weren’t meant to be perceived strained the human mind. Prolonged exposure to his favorite impossible hues was used by some species as an interrogation method and a sure way to induce psychotic breaks. After that, he had coated his glasses in polarizing film to simulate human eyesight and keep himself sane.

Is she mad? Am I?

The mirror didn’t answer and Ford gave a tired sigh before slipping the glasses back on. He only opened his eyes once the world was safely filtered through muted whites and grays once more. The action was meant to be calming but even so, he could feel a pressure building in the back of his mind. 

He was in over his head again.

I need to call Stanley.

His brother would know what to do. At the very least, he could provide a fresh set of eyes. Stan would help him figure out if he was doing the right thing or if they should start running to get the guns. Regardless, he was in no state to make decisions like this right now. He had to get Stan.

It was at that moment that he realized he didn’t have his phone on him. 

Don’t panic. There has to be one around here.

There was not. 

In spite of Leaf’s charmingly timeless decor, the apartment seemed to lack a phone line. He considered rummaging through her things to see if he could find a cellphone but only then remembered that even if he could find one that survived a fall through the stratosphere, the things were usually locked. Well that was just wonderful, wasn’t it? 

He stood in the middle of her apartment bemoaning his own forgetfulness for a good minute before shrugging off the growing exhaustion and deciding to trek back to the Shack. He crossed the apartment ready to leave through the back door when the lights flickered. Ford hesitated, his hand resting on the half-opened door sensing something was off.

The lights flickered once again before shutting down.

It was one of those things that had no meaning. Power outages during the summer weren’t odd, fluctuating electricity was normal. This could just be the sentient home sensing he was leaving and shutting down power to conserve energy. It didn’t mean anything.

The pressure in the back of his mind grew and with it came a bone-deep sense of dread. Instinct made him turn away from the door and glance at the dark hallway. Something was very wrong.

Ford rushed to the bedroom. 

He pushed open the door to see Leaf still in bed, but in the dim light something was clearly different. Her skin looked more charcoal black than blue and the stars that were shimmering so brightly before, appeared dulled. Then, one by one, he saw the tiny points falter before being snuffed out.

“Ms. Leaf!” he called out as he grasped her hand and found it ice-cold.

Not again…

Memories of death and darkness bled into his mind. It was happening again. She was fading in front of him and there was nothing he could do. He grabbed onto her shoulders and shook her in a desperate attempt to wake her.

“Please, wake up!”

It wasn’t fair. Nothing about any of this felt fair. Someone this powerful wasn’t supposed to be this small. She could grapple a Neverwhere! She could change the course of fate! She wasn’t supposed to be this fragile!

“Please… I only just found you…”

His vision blurred as a new sort of desperation set in. Just as he felt despair settle in a gold light bubbled forth and pooled in his hands. Beneath his fingertips, Leaf’s gray skin had lit up with stars. He stared, unable to comprehend what manner of physics or biology he was witnessing at play. He traced an experimental path down her arm until he could grasp her hand. Points of light followed making it seem like his fingertips were trailing pixie dust fading out as soon as the touch had moved on.

The stars stay lit as long as we’re in physical contact. 

Ford was too tired to hypothesize the why. Answers would have to wait until he didn’t feel so frazzled. All that mattered was that the universe had cast him a lifeline and he wouldn’t make the mistake of letting go. Just this once, he could keep the darkness at bay.

He would gladly hold Leaf’s hand for as long as he had to if it meant the starlight continued to shine.

Ford was missing. 

They’d figured it out the first night when he’d failed to show up at the Mystery Shack and Fiddleford had called to tell them Ford had left his phone at the mansion. They half expected him to show up later that morning, but as the hours passed a sense of unease settled over all of them. Finally Stan had stormed out of the tiny RV and snapped at the twins to stay put. 

They, of course, disobeyed him immediately.

Their efforts were in vain. Neither Stan nor the kids could find a trace of Ford. It was like he had just+ been swallowed up by the forest. None of the resident spookums seemed inclined to help them either. All the creatures were in a sour mood and complaining about some kind of power outage before telling them to buzz off. 

That was five days ago.

Stan was growing restless. He was keeping it together in front of the kids well enough, reassuring them that Ford would turn up sooner or later. His thoughts shifted from promising to keep a closer eye on his idiot brother to fearing the man might be in real trouble, only to cycle back to all the ways he would beat the shit out of Ford for making him worry. He had to be okay, he just had to…

“GRUNKLE STAN!” Dipper’s voice jarred him out of his thoughts.

“What is it, kid?”

“Wendy found Mabel's grappling hook!”

“And?”

“Grunkle Ford took it for safe-keeping. It looks like he used to climb down one of the cliffs outside of the Northwest estate. We might be able to find out what-”

Stan hadn’t waited for a full explanation, before he’d grabbed his keys and was already storming towards his car. Dipper had to run to catch up and jump in the passenger’s seat.

“I’m going to kill him. And if he’s dead, I’m gonna bring him back to life and kill him again,” he muttered under his breath as Dipper gave his Grunkle a sidelong glance.

“There must be a good reason why he left…” Dipper ventured but that was quickly shut down by a glare from Stan.

“Kid, I don’t care if he’s healing blind orphans. You don’t leave for days without tellin’ people where you’re going!” he huffed, “When we get back, I’m grounding him along with the two of you!”

“Can you do that?”

“Watch me.”

Leaf was well acquainted with pain. Psychological, emotional, physical… her experiences ran the gamut but she had never been much of a masochist. At least, not in the traditional sense. In her opinion, pain was something to be endured and she disliked the sensation. That isn’t to say she was brittle or fragile. Truth be told, there was surprisingly little that could genuinely hurt her anymore, the pain was just another futile exercise in unpleasantness. So why was it she once again found herself unconscious and gritting her teeth to bear it? 

As though to answer, Ford's smiling face flickered in her thoughts.

That's right. 

This all happened because she was an idiot.

Leaf didn’t fight the pull of exhaustion and effortlessly fell away into the abyss. If she went deep enough away, she could muffle the pain behind ice cold nothingness. Far away where everything felt numb, there she could think properly and take stock of the damage.

It certainly looked bad.

Bill had added his own twist on the impact, but most of the destruction was simply the universe taking its due. She had overstepped her boundaries in a pointless show of compassion and had a collection of injuries to show for it. Honestly, who was she trying to impress? Anyone who had witnessed that little silly stunt would think she enjoyed bashing her head against the wall.

It would be easy to blame Bill but… Well, meddling always came at a price, the only thing Bill had done was give the thing shotgun physics. This was her own fault.

That little cheat code with the Neverwere and Dr. Dipper had landed her three broken ribs. Then there was the dimensional skip, more temporal distortions, breach of contract, obstruction of death, soul prisage, liminal bleeding, spatial breakage, misappropriation of Potential, even more temporal distortions… 

The Axolotl might grin and look the other way, but Time Baby was surely throwing a tantrum over it.

Hence the pain.

Idly she wondered if this time the damage would be extensive enough to kill her. If anything could manage to take her out, it was probably this. However, a cursory glance at her injuries showed that none of them were life threatening. Agonizing and inconvenient? Yes. Deadly? Not even close.

How disappointing.

Leaf was only half-joking. There was a comfort in the familiar notion that everything and everyone eventually came to an end. It would be rather nice to have death find her in the comfort of her bed instead of in a battlefield. A peaceful end… that's all anyone could ever hope for, wasn't it?

She drifted in the darkness longing for dreams to materialize and fill the nothingness. They would never come. Yet another thing she’d lost in the exchange between mortality and the eternal.

‘Mostly human’ was not human enough to dream. 

Dealers had little use for dreams. Those little bursts of inspiration were reserved for more malleable creatures that could continue to change and grow throughout their lifetime. Leaf was already everything she would ever be. 

Things had been different when Bill was around. Every night, he had a habit of singing lullabies and unwinding the coils of existence. His gift was to allow for even more possibilities than what reality granted.

She had dreamt back when Bill was still around.

Back when everyone was still around…

Never did get around to the grieving part did I?

Sorrow, loss, regret… they were all such useless emotions that got in the way of getting things done. 

And there was always something that needed to get done. 

Leaf’s work was never over, there would always be important things to attend, always something else that needed her attention. So Leaf kept putting it off until all that grief dissolved like mist under the morning sun. She kept pushing forward until a heavy numbness had formed around the pain like a callous.

Grieving is useless anyway. Crying never solved anything. It won't bring them back. You know this.

Gods how she hated being trapped in her own mind. It brought out the bleakest thoughts and they didn't even have the decency to be creative. Nothing like reruns of her worst hits to bore her in oblivion.

That's all this was, a never ending cycle of her trying to fill an insatiable void. It was a perpetual search for the one piece that would fix everything forever and stop the emptiness. Just one more. She just needed to find one more.

And if it’s gone? 

Leaf forced herself to consider the reality that she might actually fail. With this final zodiac's fuck-up she didn't know if it was even possible to stabilize reality anymore. She didn't even know if her version of Bill was properly dead. The window of opportunity might no longer exist.

Leave a loose end like that and it'll turn into a noose around your neck.

Thoughts of running away pricked at the corner of her thoughts. It wasn’t as if anything or anyone could stop her. How simple would it be for her to find a nice welcoming dimension to run off to. How easy would it be to find herself a nice warm place and an easily impressionable boy to settle down with. She could forget the dark and maybe even remember how to be happy. 

Even if you did it would last for all of a week before you'd ruin it. And I'm being generous, this last one only lasted three days.

Her lips curled into a self deprecating smile. She couldn’t run away from what she was. Sooner or later the people around her would catch a glimpse of the creature behind the mask. When they saw what was not meant for mortal eyes, they would be dazzled and be left all the worst for it. How did someone go on living a normal life with that crippling half-sight? Wouldn’t it have been more merciful to remain in the dark? 

Derwyn was lost to greed, Arachne was felled by hubris, ambition took Asphodelus, and Hypatia…

My Stargazer. How I tried to save you, but you wouldn’t listen.

Idealism killed Hypatia. She made the mistake of believing people inherently good and refused Leaf’s offer to walk away. In the end Leaf had made her choose between her city or eternity. Alexandria or the stars! Hypatia chose poorly. She was so blinded by the supposed better angels of humanity, she never saw the mob coming until it felled her carriage.

“My Fractal, may you someday know what it’s like to love something so dearly that you would gladly die to protect it.”

Hypatia’s parting words rang out like a curse. They still haunted Leaf along with her own bitter response.

“I will not sit here and argue with someone on whether or not the moon exists! Axolotl spare me from partaking in your madness.”

And it was a madness. To give up one’s life for something that refused to be saved, something that was meant to burn, it was insanity of the highest order. There was such a thing as being optimistic to the point of willful ignorance. She could indulge Hypatia’s egalitarian sense of morality, her silly ideals on the role of a philosopher in a society, but Leaf drew the line at throwing her lot behind a doomed endeavor.

Her disillusionment with Hypatia ran deep. Her Stargazer was meant to be special. She was meant to see past these mortal trappings, she was supposed to understand! Leaf couldn’t be accused of walking away, Hypatia had abandoned her first!

My search should have ended with you. It should have been you.

Ah, but that was so long ago that Leaf’s resentment had long since cooled, leaving behind only the dregs of her regret. 

She had been unfair to Hypatia expecting her to see the futility of trying to rescue a dying world that didn’t want to be saved. Hypatia couldn’t have known the destruction was inevitable. She couldn’t have understood that her world was going to end and a new one, of inferior quality, would be built on the ashes. The noble Stargazer couldn’t have fathomed that evil men triumphed every day, grew fat and content, and died of old age in their warm and comfortable beds.

Hypatia couldn’t have known there was no such thing as honor, goodness, or justice in the universe. Those were the infantile little make-believe terms created by humans to feel better about the uncaring cosmos. Good never won for long. Evil was rarely punished. Hypatia’s murderers certainly hadn’t been. If anything the men were rewarded with power and influence beyond their wildest dreams.

The Great Library fell by their hand, what made you think you could stand against them? 

There were times when Leaf wondered what Hypatia thought when she watched the pagan temples being razed to the ground. Had she felt an inkling of the danger lurking within her Alexandria? Was she blind, truly believing herself untouchable, or did she manage to glean the malice in the eyes of the lesser men that envied her position?

Did you ever regret it as I do?

Intervening would have broken the Laws of Possibility but maybe, if Leaf hadn’t been so hurt by the rejection, if her judgment hadn’t been so clouded with rage…

I left you at the mercy of your city to prove a point. Perhaps, I didn’t love you at all.

Leaf hadn’t always been like this.

Or at least, she had to believe at some point in her life she’d been better. It had to have been back before she’d encountered the zodiacs; back when she was human. She had loved properly once, and been loved in return… hadn’t she?

What happened then to the people that had actually loved her? The ones who would fight tooth and nail for her? 

BOOLO1YX …

The hazy static where their names had once been stung like a slap to the face.

They had loved her. Perhaps they still did. Could love survive being redacted out of existence or was it erased along with the rest? Could anything survive that? If they knew this would happen from the very beginning, would they have chosen to do things differently?

It just goes on and on doesn’t it?

Everyone she showed interest in either lived long enough to become the worst version of themselves, or died trying to change what couldn’t be changed, or burned themselves out of reality while reaching to meet her in eternity. Her existence burned them to ash, like trying to embrace the sun.

Leaf couldn’t save any of them. 

As much as she tried, the happy endings eluded her like wild rabbits leaping into the gaping maw of oblivion. 

Her very presence could do so much harm to fragile mortals and she was doing it again. Here she was being irresponsible and tampering with their lives as though she could flout the consequences. As though any of them would come out of this unscathed.

Leaf felt the contradicting forces straining within her. 

Cruel yet compassionate. Unforgiving yet gentle. Vindictive yet sheltering. Obstinate yet soothing.

Leaf had shielded Mabel from the consequences of her actions with the same decisiveness she had executed Derwyn. She forgave Bill’s cruelty, rescued Asphodelus from his folly, and saved what remained of Arachne. Yet she abandoned Hypatia for the sin of being greatly loved, and failing to live up to the equally great expectations that came with it.

Her patience had limits, and her mercy vanished faster than the morning fog. She was light and shadow, salvation and wrath. Balance in every sense of the word. Cold. Clinical. Cruel. Leaf refused to explain herself to anyone and rebuffed any who attempted to interpret the reasons behind her actions. She gave no excuses and accepted none in return.

Jheselbraum simply called her fickle and perhaps she was right.

Too late to save Bill, forced to cull Derwyn, couldn’t guide Arachne, used by Asphodelus, rejected by Hypatia, severed from BOOLO1YX.

Was she aiming to add Mabel and Ford to the list? How long until they too failed her? Would they survive Leaf’s abandonment after they inevitably disappointed her? Why was she doing this to them?

Who else had to die before she learned to stay away for good?

Great, now I’ve made myself depressed. I really am shit company aren't I?

Leaf tried to clear her mind of the troubling thoughts and leaned into the abyss. It was better not to think. The cold would snuff out the noise, just like it drowned out the pain. She didn’t have to dwell on her disappointments if she let the darkness in.

The frost slowly sapped away her energy as she remained adrift, falling deeper into the nothingness as it wore at her consciousness. Soon the last of it would crumble, the stars within her would fade, and she could reach a dreamless state. If she fell far enough away maybe she would hibernate forever.

She didn’t know for how long she drifted in the peaceful nothingness. It must not have been very long because she was jolted back into consciousness without much effort.

“Please…”

Something called to her and a strange warmth was curled around her. The voice echoing in the dark slowed her descent. A soft golden light sparked the stars on her shoulders back to life and refused to let her go. The light then slipped down her arms and bloomed until she felt it holding her hands. 

Another summons? So soon? Can’t I rest a little while longer before you drag me back on stage?

“Please… I’ve only just found you…”

The light pulled her up away from the nothingness guiding back to the surface. It seemed so intent on bringing her back, Leaf didn't have the strength to fight it. Like a marionette scooped up by its strings, she felt herself lifted out of the dark corners of her mindscape. She braced herself expecting pain, but found it had been muted such that most of it had vanished as she slept.

She blinked through gummy eyes as her senses came back online. The lights in the room had been dimmed, the scent of herbal antiseptic filled her nose, and someone was calling her name. She was in her bed, which was an odd place to wake up in considering her excursions usually landed her in some desolate field or muddy ditch. Was that why nothing hurt quite as much as it should?

A trembling hand dabbed her forehead with a cool wet cloth. Someone else was there with her. As the world came into focus she counted six fingers.

You again… you should have run away. Why is it so hard to avoid you?

Leaf blinked slowly as she realized she was covered in bandages. That weird crushing sensation was actually strips of gauze tightly wound around her torso. Ford had taken the time to treat her wounds and bind her broken ribs. That was why it didn’t hurt to breathe anymore. That was why she could think clearly instead of having to filter out 40 different kinds of pain. 

“Leaf…” he breathed and relief filled his pale blue eyes.

He had stayed and taken care of her as though she hadn't just shown him how inhuman she truly was. She was the embodiment of every nightmare imagined by a mortal mind; a dark omen foretelling his doom, and still this little fool came closer. He had the audacity to touch the fading starlight on her skin and look like he had been crying over it. 

The man just did not have enough sense to let sleeping monsters lie.

I would devour you. 

I could.

It would be so easy.

And still he didn’t so much as flinch as her claws twitched and reached for him. The man endeared himself to the universe and Leaf was powerless to resist.

Remarkable little idiot…

“Doctor Pines,” Leaf sighed as her dark claws sparkled with faint points of light and settled over his trembling fingers. 

Hubris wouldn’t break him, neither would ambition, nor greed. He was too bold, too brave to succumb to such small flaws. What she sensed from him was not idealism or optimism but something darker and harder-won. It was an impulse far beyond mere curiosity. 

His hand closed around her talons as if holding it brought him comfort and Leaf recognized the full range of emotion in those tired blue eyes. 

The battlescarred feeling within him was wonder. There on display was Ford's capacity for exhilarating joy tempered by a deep sorrow. The man was willful enough to look into her fractured eyes and not get lost in them. He was fearless enough to reach into the void and welcomed her monstrous touch. 

He held the promise of someone who would eagerly reach for eternity if she let him… and she so wanted to let him.

Is it you, Sixer? Are you the last piece?

Stan grit his teeth as he blew past every stop sign and crosswalk in his path. Dipper noticed how tightly he gripped the steering wheel even as the car lurched and swerved around the curves on the road. There was always this intangible barrier between Dipper and Stan. The boy didn’t doubt the old man loved him, but there were always those rough edges that flared up when push came to shove. He couldn’t admit to Stan that he was scared, or that he had been up all night worrying, not when Stan was on the defensive. 

Dipper was still too young to fully understand the depths of his grunkle’s emotional traumas, but he knew enough to know it was all tangled up in the old-timey notion of masculinity and being a man. There were very few up sides to being forced into family therapy after their parent’s ‘trial separation’, but at the very least Dipper had learned that expressing emotion was healthy. Even negative emotions had their place and shouldn’t be bottled up and left to fester.

“You know, Grunkle Stan… It’s okay to say you’re worried about him.”

“I’m not,” Stan lied, “I’m angry that after everything we’ve gone through, my idiot brother still manages to find new ways to be an inconsiderate jerk!”

Apparently anger was the only emotion he allowed himself to have, and Stan could seethe with the best of them. Dipper pressed his lips together and backed off. There it was again, the weird barrier that kept them from fully connecting. The hundreds of little quirks and generational differences piled up and pushed them out of sync.

Mabel was better at slipping past it than Dipper ever could. Maybe it was because she was a girl. Maybe it was because Dipper never had to try this hard with Ford.

Maybe he was wrong and Stan really was just angry.

“Well, I’m worried about him,” he admitted softly before staring out of the window and feeling a sick anxious feeling in the pit of his stomach.

The quiet response made Stan flinch and he gripped the steering wheel tighter. He wanted to say something comforting but the words stuck in his throat. He couldn’t fall apart, not in front of the kids. Stan needed to be strong for them and if he acknowledged the dread chasing him down he would have to admit the possibility that Ford was in serious trouble.

The smug bastard is gonna be fine… he has to be fine.

They drove the rest of the way out of town in silence with only the sound of the gravel road breaking up the stillness. As they veered onto the well-paved private road leading up to the estate, Wendy and her crew waved them down. Thomson was still alive and only a little scratched up, meaning that whatever they had discovered was relatively safe.

“Yo! Over here! You guys aren’t gonna believe what we found!” Wendy called out.

Stan parked the car on the side of the road and followed the teenages into the woods. Now there was a normal and not at all ominous sounding sentence. What the teens had found was a portion of the woods that seemed scorched. Several branches and shrubs were ash gray and crumbled at the slightest touch. That in itself was not strange but when Stan’s hand brushed against a rock, the scorched marks dissolved into fine ash. Solid granite didn’t burn, or at least it wasn’t supposed to. He followed mutely, not really listening to their chatter as he pushed through the underbrush to find the edge of a cliff.

“Hey, you thought those rocks were weird, check this out! Glass tree,” Wendy pointed to a tree whose branches seemed to have been partially eaten through, but some crystalline growth had sprouted around the wounds and kept them attached. Around the base of the tree was the grappling hook.

“He was here,” Stan said, pushing past them and peering over the lip of the cliff to the sheer fall only for him to immediately regret it and inch back towards the treeline. 

“If I had to guess, dude was here when all the scorch biz went down and used the rope to escape,” Wendy explained.

“Or knowing him, to get a better look,” Stan scowled, inching away from what was clearly the edge of the world.

“There’s nothing interesting down there,” she said, grabbing one of the tree’s branches so she could lean precariously over the edge and get a better look.

“Then maybe it wasn’t down there, maybe it was a shortcut!” he insisted and Wendy got a curious look in her eye. “Ugh, he could be anywhere.”

“Sounds like you’re gonna need a tracker,” she grinned, “you’re lucky I’m here.”

“Not a chance.”

“Aw c’mon Stan, I’ll even do it for cheap,” she smirked, “five bucks now, another five onced we’ve gagged, bagged, and tagged your man.”

“Kid I’ll give you five right now if you never say those words to me again,” Stan scowled at her.

“Deal! I’ll throw in the tracking for free,” she said with a knowing grin.

After some grumbling, Stan reached into his jacket and handed her a five dollar bill. All the while, Wendy’s confident smirk never left her face.

“So what now?” he humphed.

“Now we climb!” she cheerfully replied and Stan looked at her as though she’d asked him to throw himself off the ledge.

“It’s perfectly safe, Grunkle Stan!” Dipper said in what Stan felt was a little too cheerful a tone.

“And how would you know? What are you, some kind of rope expert now?” he huffed, “Just because my idiot brother jumped off a cliff, it doesn’t mean I gotta do it.”

“GUYS WHAT’S THE HOLD UP, UP THERE?!” Mabel’s unmistakable voice called out from the bottom of the drop.

“We already climbed up and down the rope a bunch of times. It’s safe,” Wendy shrugged before calling down, “STAN’S BEING A BIG CHICKEN ABOUT HEIGHTS AGAIN!”

“What? I am not!” Stan protested.

“I THOUGHT WE WORKED THROUGH THAT!” Mabel replied.

“WELL IT STOPPED WORKING! I’M GOING TO TELL HIM TO GO AROUND SO HE DOESN’T BREAK HIS WEAK OLD MAN BONES!”

“OKAY! WE’LL SCOUT AHEAD! I THINK THERE MAY BE A BEAR HERE AND I WANT TO POKE IT WITH A STICK!”

“What? Mabel sweetie, that's not a good idea!”

“HE SAID GO AHEAD! HE’S TOO SCARED TO CLIMB DOWN ANYWAY HE MIGHT HAVE AN ACCIDENT!”

“Alright! Alright! I’m goin'! I'm goin'!” Stan bellowed, shoving aside one of Wendy's friends before grabbing the rope.

For what must have been the tenth time that day, Stan grit his teeth and vowed to deck Ford the moment he had him in his sights.

Leaf sat up on the bed and the covers slid down to reveal she was essentially only wearing bandages. That made her stare and for a moment she believed the universe had glitched away her clothes. Leaf supposed the socially correct response was to be scandalized over the fact that Ford had gotten a full view of her body while she was unconscious. Fortunately for both of them, she was too old and too well-traveled to adhere to strict social norms. He didn’t seem like the sort of person that would try anything uncouth so the only discomfort she truly felt was the cool air on her bare skin. 

Right that wouldn’t do.

She snapped her fingers to summon an outfit, but, rather than comply, her power sparked weakly like a faulty lighter. How in the hell had the whole town run out of fuel. The memory of what she had done to contain the damage of her arrival made her shoulders slump. Of course, most of the Potential energy in and around Gravity Falls had been depleted by her zodiac. It would take weeks for the currents to replenish the area and in the meantime the entire place would be in energy conservation mode. Leaf realized she would have to limit what she manifested, but surely there were at least some dregs of power leftover for a shirt. 

It took a few more tries but eventually the clothing materialized with a ripple of light.

“Much better,” she sighed as she felt the comfortable oversized cotton tee and fleece pants against her skin. 

She felt like herself again. 

Refreshed! 

Renewed! 

Ford looked on, quite clearly dead on his feet. He was staring at her half expecting her to scream or disappear or do something particularly hurtful like tell him to get out of her house. The dark circles under his eyes had grown bigger since she’d last been awake, his hair was a mess, and he had discarded his coat entirely. He had the look of a man on the brink of working himself to death.

“How long have I been out?” Leaf asked and although the question was mostly rhetorical she hadn’t expected him to look so troubled by it. 

“I-I’m not sure,” he stammered, “You had a fever but then you- you started getting cold. I didn’t know what to do. I thought- I thought-”

Cobalt blue hands that were slightly more human than just moments ago cupped his face and he grew still. Just from the feel of her home and the shifting of time, Leaf could tell it had been at least a few days. Had he slept at all in the meantime? She gently tilted his head so she could look into his tried eyes. He blinked slowly, staring at her through a blend of weariness, burnout, and pain.

“I’m feeling better now,” Leaf said, only slightly concerned by how he seemed to droop under her touch.

“I didn’t want you to go…” he whispered.

She felt a stab of guilt at his words. Ford had genuinely believed she was in danger. Of course he had, why would he believe otherwise? He had no way of knowing she was practically indestructible. He had simply seen her beginning to fade and had feared the worst. His exhausted, sleep-deprived state was no doubt a result of his efforts to bring her out of hibernation.

“You called me back,” she murmured and he ventured a glance up to meet her gaze, “you’ll regret that. I’m gonna be such a nuisance.”

He laughed softly but it sounded tight as though it was a little too close to a sob. He was exhausted well past his limits and clearly overwhelmed. It would have been easy for him to just leave her in bed and let her sort herself out, but he hadn’t done that. Maybe it was out of remorse, or some misplaced sense of decency, but Ford had stayed. More than that, he had found a way to reach into the void and pull her out, not an easy feat for any human.

“Thank you,” she responded as she made up her mind to make it up to him.

“You’re welcome…” he said with a dazed expression on his face but soon found himself caught off balance as Leaf pulled him down onto the bed. He landed with a soft ‘oof’ but didn’t seem inclined to get back up.

“I believe it's time for you to rest.” 

“I have t’call… I have to…” he mumbled in weak protest but his body felt like it was made of lead.

“No excuses, Dr. Pines, you’re in no condition to be walking around.”

“Ford,” he yawned.

“Excuse me?” Leaf asked as she pulled the covers off herself and draped them over him.

“You can call me Ford,” he sighed as his body went slack.

“Well, then it appears I am in your debt, Ford,” Leaf replied, watching as his eyelids grew heavy and closed of their own accord.

“Does this mean you’ll… answer my questions?” his words slurred as his brain finally began to shut down.

“There are better things out there than mere knowledge. Are you sure you want to trade in a favor just for that?” she asked, taking off his glasses and setting them aside.

“Yes.”

His response came swiftly and without the slightest hint of hesitation. Even though he was struggling to remain conscious, he valued answers over anything else. The realization made something warm settle in Leaf’s chest. 

There was something incredibly pure about his request. He could have asked for riches, power, or fame. He could have asked her to bend time once again or rewrite the laws of physics or any number of the selfish little things everyone always asked for. Instead he proved that, at his core, Stanford Pines was curiosity incarnate.

“Then I suppose I must,” she responded and he smiled as he drifted off to sleep.

Leaf lay back on a pile of pillows and stared at the ceiling as she allowed herself the small luxury of feeling close to someone. She had no naive aspirations as to where this might lead. History was the sort of teacher that was unkind when forced to repeat its lessons.

This was just a cruel re-run of the week before. 

She had found one of his younger paers battered and bruised, but still soft, unbroken by the horrors of the world. He was the sort of man that deserved more kindness than what he was ever allotted. She bent the rules and stole him from Bill, if only to preserve a little of that wide-eyed innocence that still thought the entire world a wonder to be discovered. Leaf had rescued that younger version of him and had been momentarily dazzled by all sorts of possible futures. 

The universe soon corrected course and set him on a path that led away from her. Leaf could have fought it. She could have railed against fate and imposed her own will. She could have poured life into those dead paths until they were forced to glow again for her. She could have been selfish as she had with all the others. She could have built the future she wanted and he would have been miserable by the end of it.

It doesn’t matter.

When the powers that be were dead set on something, it was always the mortals that suffered. 

It was a good thing his focus was not on her. Ford's best chance at being happy could only ever exist if she stepped aside. He would forget her as some vague presence in the backdrop of his life. That was all they would ever be, and that was all she would ever ask of him.

The Ford lying next to her probably wouldn’t even give her that. 

Beneath the little remnants of joy, there was trauma, unhealed scars, trust issues, and rage. He was a deep well of Potential capable of horrible and magnificent things. The paths around him were too tangled up to deduce a clear outcome but the cynic in her focused on the shadowy versions that showed Ford’s capacity to hate. 

The likeliest path was that she would be too far beneath his notice to be of any importance. Today was simply an exercise in being a decent human being, it meant nothing. Another path showed her as a presence in the fringes of his life, a resource he consulted when he needed something and discarded when she had nothing else to offer. Their interactions were transactional, fleeting, just like everyone else who ever got it in their heads to summon her. Yet another showed him uncovering the extent of her manipulations and the deep distrust that followed. In that path he was antagonistic and dismissive. 

Every dark path ended with a foreboding sting of pain, a warning that something unpleasant awaited her at the end. There was a strange comfort in knowing history ran in cycles. She had defeated Trace, it made sense then that someone like Ford could destroy her. If nothing else, that alone made him the most unique being in all the multiverse.

Leaf’s lips twisted in a mirthless smile. 

She could take it. She was well acquainted with other people’s hatred. It festered in Derwyn’s eyes, Jheselbraum’s glare, and countless others. She was familiar with it well enough to know that it was better for Ford to experience it now as opposed to later. That hatred would find a place in his cold blue eyes, and she had the resilience to survive it. Even if she couldn’t…

It doesn’t matter.

Leaf shied away from the lighter paths. She didn’t want to look at them, not when she already showed a predisposition to getting attached. Seeing happy endings only made it worse when they vanished into the ether. It was better to resign herself to the reality of the situation and accept her place in the world. That’s what she had been doing for years now and it had worked just fine. Getting what she wanted only hurt people in the end. It was better for everyone she did not hope. 

It was better not to dream.

I Ꞇ do ꗛꕷ n’t matter…

Without warning, Ford’s arm draped over her and he pulled her into a hug. The sudden motion made Leaf tense up and snapped her out of the dark spiral. For the longest time she didn’t move, thinking herself caught red-handed in the middle of a thought crime. She waited for the unpleasant consequences of her actions but they never materialized.

Leaf braved a glance towards Ford and noticed his brow was furrowed as he was plagued by troubling dreams, but he was very much still asleep. Just then, something warm rippled through her veins and drained away all the tension in her body. She felt akin to a scruffed cat. All of her self-destructive thoughts loosened their grip on her mind before fading into mist. 

Leaf shivered feeling lightheaded by the sudden loss of oppressive darkness. All this time she had been stifled but now at long last she was able to take a full lungful of air. Finally she could breathe. 

A sparkling glimmer set patterns on the ceiling of the dimmed room and she saw its source was Ford’s hand resting on her side. His touch made the stars on her skin glow through her clothes and shimmer with a pale gold light. 

This is new.

The light enveloped her in a pleasant warmth she had never experienced before. It was a spot of summer in the middle of a blizzard. It was coming in from the snow to settle next to the wood stove, and only then realizing she had been cold at all. It hurt with the same satisfying ache of stiff, frozen fingers beginning to thaw. It was the tiny pinprick of pins and needles that brought attention to the fact that the numbness had been there in the first place. 

It was the unforgiving winter yielding to spring.

The promise that no matter how bad things got, they would get better in the end.

Ford’s presence drove away all the darkness and left her with a mind full of sunshine.

Logically, Leaf was aware of what was happening. Some disconnected part of her accepted this for what this was: a transfer of Potential energy. It was no great mystery; no feat of improbable magic. It was mundane. It was quantifiable. It could be explained.

Does it always feel like this?

This was the first time someone had chosen to share their energy with her. Providing the Potential usually fell to her. Leaf had gotten so used to tearing off parts of herself to make others whole, she no longer noticed the sting. Yet here was Ford doing something she would never ask of him.

That's why his fingertips were glowing. 

He was pouring own Potential into her skin, wicking away the cold into himself and leaving behind only his warmth. Like a great big circulatory system, Ford had seamlessly forged a connection between the two of them. He had perfectly mimicked the same technique she had used on him to treat his Neverwhere injury.

Through it all, he remained asleep. The realization filled Leaf with a sense of defeat. How could she be expected to resist and look the other way when he surpassed the limits of what should be possible in his sleep? Literally! She’d call it cheating if it weren’t so exceedingly clear this was a manifestation of his uncanny intellect mixed with instinct.

You’re not even trying… I hate that I’m impressed.

The steady flow made her dizzy and she stared at the ceiling wondering what had brought this about. Maybe he didn’t even realize he was doing it. No, there was no ‘maybe’ about it. Of course hadn’t meant to make her feel this way. There was no deeper meaning behind it, he had simply latched on to a warm body in his sleep. This was all a mistake, something triggered in error. 

I need to pull away. I need to get up and leave.

Ford curled up against her and buried his face against her shoulder before settling into a more comfortable position. The motion shorted out her thoughts and she stared at the ceiling feeling brainless but oddly content. Leaf’s fingers brushed through his hair before she could remember why that was a bad idea. Eventually, her touch settled him and she felt his breath even out against her neck. 

The temptation to find meaning in this strong, but that constant influx of warmth drove all anxious thoughts out of her mind. His presence wrapped around her like a warm blanket and rounded off all the sharp edges of the world. This feeling sparked all sorts of wants in Leaf. She wanted to protect him, to keep him safe, to see him smile but most of all she simply wanted to keep him.

Like holding a fistful of gold drawn out of the muck and mire of reality, she wanted to hold on. Oh the terrible things she could do to lay claim to his existence and the even more horrible lengths she would go to maintain it. Leaf understood her selfishness was capable of atrocities. She could watch entire civilizations burn in her quest for control and Ford had the audacity to sigh contentedly in his sleep as though he approved.

How patently unfair of you to do this while I’m trying to do the right thing.

Her fingertips brushed against the knotted scar etched into his scalp she knew was there. Jheselbraum’s handiwork was crude, primitive, but effective. More pain piled on to a soul already brimming with trauma. She liked to believe she would have done better by him but deep down she knew gods were all the same. The more she got what she wanted, the more Ford would suffer. 

Bill had left his marks on Ford’s body, each twisted scar a testament to the demon’s obsession. Jheselbraum had lovingly cut open his scalp and bolted a metal plate to his skull as a sign of her friendship. What new kind of horror would he find in Leaf’s devotion? What new cruelties masquerading as love would she devise for him?

I wouldn’t wish it on you.

There was only one way to break the cycle of abuse.

It took every ounce of her willpower to rest a hand over his and slowly close off the flow of energy. The light flickered and grew dim before fading away entirely. She carefully sealed off any rifts to make sure there would be no further involuntary spills and just like that, their connection was severed. Once it was done, only then did her hand fall away from his.

Ah, but it hurt.

It hurt to turn away from the comfort and the relief he offered. It hurt to push out of the warmth and into the ice once more. It hurt to go back to the darkness having known sunlight.

She shivered uncontrollably as her senses rebelled and for a moment she thought she might pass out. Ford’s arm tightened its hold on her. The motion was enough to anchor her to the present and the trembling soon passed. Through it all, Ford’s embrace remained, and Leaf was glad of it. Her body settled into a new sort of calm. It was not the overpowering bliss of before, but rather a resigned sort of acceptance that came from understanding certain joys were not designed with her in mind.

And it was enough. It would have to be enough. For the time being, she lay there in bed enjoying the stillness of the moment and the peace that came with it. 

It would be over once he woke up. Tomorrow this would all be a dream; another memory only she remembered or cared about. But tomorrow was still ages away. Tonight they lingered over the liminal space that was Leaf’s domain for a moment’s rest. Just for tonight, she could indulge in this fleeting comfort, unintentionally offered but gratefully accepted. 

Tonight Leaf closed her eyes trying to commit to memory the feeling of being held. 

She would allow herself this, and not a drop more.

Chapter Text

It was all a dream, wasn’t it?

This crip air.

This lightness in his chest.

This blessed nothingness.

Darkness coiled around Ford like a thick blanket snuffing out his senses. No, that wasn't accurate. It blotted out his eyesight but there was precious little to see in this void. The shadows curled and shifted all around him whispering like a soft breeze. The scent of citrus blossoms in the distance filled his nose and left the lingering taste of marmalade.

The nothingness was not oppressive. It was calm and soothing like a cool touch after a long day under the blistering sun. Here anything was possible because nothing existed yet. The darkness was primordial beginnings; the origins of creation and its inevitable conclusion. It was the beginning and natural end of all things.

He lived in that gloomy expanse, hewn out of the living night and given form. The currents in the void felt like fine satin against his wings…

He had wings.

Wings and feathery antennae.

He was a moth.

Of course he was a moth, he had always been a moth. An Atlas moth to be precise, pitch black with gilded triangles dotting his wings. Thin ribbands of gold streaked his abdomen ending in a series of eye patterns along his sides. The darkness didn’t frighten him. The void was home.

How odd.

This was the way of things, yet this was perhaps the first time he had raised his head and perceived it to be so. Reality, time, space, and dimension were all neatly layered and only now that he looked beyond did he see himself as he was. Outside of dimensional constraints and physical perceptions, Ford was a moth in the darkness. A flicker of shadow in a moonless night. In a word: insignificant.

He let the currents lift him effortlessly as he spread his velvety wings. His exoskeleton seemed to tighten and strain around his thorax as he clicked happily before closing his wings and tumbling into freefall. He spiraled out of control for a moment before once again opening his wings and slowing his descent.

He fluttered through the nothingness enjoying the feel of pure chaos. He was one of trillions. An infinitesimal speck amongst a flock- No. Amongst an eclipse of moths…

They were fragments of a greater tapestry. 

Mirrors. 

Variants. 

Paers . 

So many different names to describe the same thing. They were the Others. In another time, in another place, they might have been him. Now they fluttered together as unique independent pieces of a whole riding on the churning currents of entropy. Yet, unlike him, they were blind to each other, they couldn’t see the currents or the direction of their movement. They simply existed, trapped in the neverending flow of the darkness.

He might have been like them. He might have been content to tumble through the multiverse ignorant to his surroundings were it not for a flicker of light in the distance and the sound of crashing waves.

The bright sparkle pulsed in a slow steady rhythm calling out to him. Out of instinct he broke from the flow and followed the light. Cutting against the winds he tumbled and pushed through ever closer to the mesmerizing glow. As he approached he saw a massive being made up of trillions of lights glittering like stars strung up in the inky night. They coiled and twisted into each other to form tendrils and frills in a neverending pattern. A fractal. A kaleidoscope of indigo, silver, and gold. 

She was a sea dragon the size of the sky. 

Glaucus atlanticus… Glaucus universum.

If he was a sliver of Void incarnate, this gleaming creature was Light, whole, intact, and massive. He fluttered closer and to his surprise a small tendril coiled towards him allowing him to perch upon what looked like a strand of constellations. A blissful stillness enveloped him, drowning out the constant symphony of chaos. He felt small, meaningless in comparison, but in her presence he knew he was seen, important, special . He belonged here basking in the attention of a being made of starlight.

The peace did not last long. Within the void something stirred and rose up in anger. 

Y̵̝̼̅̀ͮ́Õ̢͓̋̓͊ͧŲ̴͙̪̾͠ D̬́͗Į͔͆D̪͕ͭ̀̂̏͘ T͍HI̢̟ͯ̅ͥS̛̪̟̯̕͘ TO̢͎̞ͪ̓̿ M̫̲ͭ̿ͅȄ̺̜̜̕!͆

Ford knew that voice, broken and twisted by the darkness as it was. That anger and hate was unmistakable and the eyes along his sides pulsed with an ominous glow. The winds of chaos surged and railed against the light seeking to snuff it out, but it found itself too formless and intangible to do any damage.

Y̴̩O̧͙̱͎͆̋͑͞U FR̻̭̥͇̯̻̙̃̒͊͝Ę͔̔̐͑ͨ͒Ë̡̘̿̄̋̅̚̚͝Ḏ̸̡̤̰͔̰͍ͩ̇͞ ME!̻̞̟̄̀͗̏̈́͘ Y̆͊̕͝O̱͉̔ͬU S̹̒̓͒̕͢_̹ͪͤ̏Ḫ̻͒_ͥ̀͠Ȏ̧̯̼̥̌͑͢W̥͉͒̌͋͘̚E̼͆D̛̞̘̭͈̰̩͑̀͜͡ Ṃ̇́͊E Sͬͬͥ͂Ȩ͈̦̫͎͒͛̇͂̚E̻ͬ͐ T̨͎͎̰́̒̂̒͠H̹͇̰ͭͯ̑E͖ S̄͊͘T̴͖͎̋͑̆ͩA͉ͯ̿̀RŚ̵̘̖̀̒͞͝!̢̻̬ͭ̀͛ 

He could feel Bill’s powerless fury as the Light remained unmoved. Held in the cup of her hand as he was, Ford looked down in disdain at the scene. Was this the ‘demon’ Ford had feared for so long? All of his power, his cruelty, his brutality and cruelty, had it been nothing more than a toddler railing against the sky?

How ridiculous.

Bill was clearly a danger to himself and others, but here, where Ford could see the grand scheme of things, the Euclydian wasn’t menacing. Here his presence was barely registered. He held no special place in the Light’s eyes. He wasn’t special like Ford and the knowledge was driving Bill insane. As though violence would get him what he wanted.

As though the stars could be moved by the wind.

Pathetic.

Bill was formless, barely tangible, and he believed he could subdue the sky? It would be funny if it wasn’t so pitiful.

D̛͑͛̓O̎ͩ̅͟͞N'̧́̾T͗ͪ̋͋_ͨ!̮͑͡ͅ D̤̙̝̾ͧO̤̓ͫ͒ͫN͖͖̯̪ͦ'ͧT Y̬Ọ͈̰̆̈̓U͎̝ LͫẢ͇́́ŰG̟ͬH̎ A̪̺͇̋T M̴̖̥̜̥E̙!̤̮ͨ̀͋

Ford could suddenly feel the darkness turn its attention towards him and his paers . It was true, Bill had no physical form, but if there was one thing that remained constant in all dimensions it was that he had puppets. If Bill was a demon in every version of himself, then it was Ford’s lot to be forever a vessel. Poor little insect, he had forgotten, he had been naive.

The wind couldn’t touch the stars but it could crush a moth.

The attention sharpened to a pinpoint before pushing into his tiny brain. Like a burst of molten lava, something deep inside Ford’s head shattered and a gnawing hunger took hold. All thoughts evaporated from his mind save for the deep primal need to bite, rend, and feed.

Only then did he realize he was a moth… and moths had no mouths.

Hunger turned to frustration which then bubbled into white hot rage. He dug his clawed feet into the shimmering skin and he felt her wince in pain. She should have shaken him off. She could have swatted him away easily or crushed him for his insolence, but she didn’t. She refused to punish him for what Bill was making him do. 

That was her mistake to make and he would repay her by tearing open the soft flesh holding him aloft. 

First blood, bright-white, spattered his black wings like a spray of stars. 

More, he wanted more, he needed more…

He tore deeper into her, destroying the delicate patterns and draining the light away to fade into the maw lined by rows of teeth surrounding an eye. Fury, too great to be his own, overtook him and he wanted to obliterate every last speck of light. Violence came so easily to him, that’s what made him the best puppet. 

That’s why Bill always chose him.

Stop.

Another cut, another tear, another laceration slowly killing the glow of warmth that had once welcomed him.

Stop!

The voice, his own voice, cried out desperately but he shook it away, the impulse to destroy was too great. Instead, he wriggled into the open wound like a parasite. He had to drown out the light only then would this hunger be sated. Only then would the emptiness clawing at his insides subside. If he couldn’t consume the light, he would bathe in it until it permeated to his very core.

Stop it! You’re killing her!

He jerked away as he broke free of Bill's control and desperately struggled to crawl away from the damage, but his wings were weighed down with starry blood. The scent of it made him feel sick. Glancing around he saw there were billions of moths still viciously ripping out pieces out of the sky. Billions of his paers destroying the light on behalf of the dark in a futile attempt to make a monster whole.

Streaks of shadow coalesced from the nothingness and began to slowly throttle the starlit being. Exhausted and frightened, Ford could do nothing but watch as the place where he belonged was reduced to tatters… Chaos vanquishing Order.

NO!

His voice ran out like a sonic wave commanding the flurry of wings and antennae surrounding him. It crackled with all the authority of a command and the swarm stopped its attack. The world shifted three steps outside himself and Ford’s vision swam. In that moment he could see, the Void was not Bill. It was not evil, or sadistic, or malicious. 

It simply was. 

It existed as a shapeless primordial force awaiting a strong enough will to command it. The demon was merely usurping the place of power, bending and twisting it to his whims, but the darkness was not meant to be a weapon. When another, worthier voice called, the Void buckled and warped before throwing out Bill’s presence.

As Ford’s consciousness filled the vacuum asserting control, the savagery stopped. 

No longer at the mercy of raw impulse, the night had direction and intent as it surrendered itself: a dominion bound to the will of its ruler. In that moment, infinity poured into Ford’s mind and the fog lifted. At long last, he could grasp eternity. He was still a moth, but his wings were no longer bound by the trappings of his singular form. He was massive, infinite, incomprehensible.

He gained an understanding of the truth of things in ways that Bill’s corruption could never achieve. He wasn’t wind. He wasn’t fury. He wasn’t power or control. If she was Light, he was Darkness.

If she was the stars, he was the void between them.

The seemingly mindless attack of before was a crude mockery of what should have been an intricate ballet. Two impossible beings, so different yet interlaced and indispensable to each other.

Order and Chaos.

Substance and Void.

Light and Darkness.

Reality and Dream.

Everything that could ever be and every impossibility.

Together, at last.

He curled a wing around her and she sank into the embrace. They came together and it sounded like the roar of crashing waves against the shore. Ford couldn’t help but smile. He didn’t need to take her light, she gladly offered it in exchange for the blissful embrace of his darkness. He ran his touch over her tattered form wishing he could stop her pain and watching as wisps of shadow materialized at his command to stem the bleeding.

To know was such a terrible and wonderful burden. To understand his place and fill it threatened to shatter his spirit and weld it back together anew. She had been holding up the world alone and with the imbalance the Void, the Darkness, he had been intent on devouring her.

You could have stopped this. Why didn’t you?

Ĭ ᙏʊꕷꞆ ᖘɌꗞꞆꗛᙅꞆ Ꮍꗞʊ.

I don’t understand, protect me from what?

ᗹᕔLᕔNᙅꗛ ᙏʊꕷꞆ ᗹꗛ ᖘɌꗛꕷꗛɌᕓꗛᗫ.

How is this balance? You’re holding back the chaos by letting it feed on you!

ĬT ᗫꗞꗛꕷN'T MᕔTTꗛR.

Don’t say that! Don't excuse what we’ve done! Of course you matter, look at you! How could you not?

He heard her tired laughter and it made him feel like a child stomping his foot at some perceived injustice. He would have been offended were it not for the fact that she pressed her head against his shoulder as though to hide in his wings. His throat constricted as he saw the inevitable end if things didn’t change.

You're going to break.

ĬT ĬS YꗞUR NᕔTUɌꗛ Tꗞ CꗞNSUMꗛ ᕔND MĬNꗛ Tꗞ Bꗛ CꗞNSUMꗛᗫ.

He felt a weight on his chest all the while realizing he alone could stop the cycle, but knowing that his time was short. Guilt washed over him like ice water. He could see so much now. The future spread out before him like unexplored terrain with marked roads, and his vision could span all of eternity. 

He knew what was to come.

This moment of safety couldn't last, it wouldn’t last. He couldn't offer her anything beyond this fleeting moment of comfort. A few precious seconds of respite would linger and then she would be thrown back into the black abyss.

Why?

ĬT ĬS THꗛ WᕔY ꗞF THꗛ WꗞRLᗫ.

It was such a childish question with an unsatisfying answer. She said it as though that excused everything. As though that was enough to earn forgiveness for what he had done… for what he had yet to do… for what he would do. His eyes were burning, threatening to shed tears, and he couldn’t help but grieve. Glowing fingertips touched his face and he felt a deep shame that it was she who was comforting him and not the other way around.  

It shouldn’t be. 

ĬT ĬS ĬNEVĬTABLE. YꗞU MUST LET Gꗞ.

If I let go I’ll go back to being blind and deaf. All of this will be like it never happened.

YꗞU WILL BURN UP IF YꗞU STAY.

You will break if I leave.

IT IS NOT YOUR BURDEN TO CARRY, LITTLE ONE. 

Do you know what you’re asking me to do?! I won’t remember! You’ll be alone again! You'll be in pain and I won't know! I won't even care!

THIS IS NOT YOUR FAULT.

It is. It’s us. We’re killing you. Please. Please… tell me how I can save you.

She was quiet as though reluctant to speak. He knew without her saying it that she had the answer but would not reveal it. Like an adult protecting a child, she kept it out of his reach.

I WꗞULDN’T WISH IT ꗞN YꗞU.

She said it as though her very presence was a curse upon him and it made him want to cry, kick and scream. He wanted to do something, anything to fight the inevitable. He knew there was a way but he didn’t have enough time to work it out and she refused to tell him. The cost was too high, or perhaps she did not think he meant it. Perhaps she knew he wouldn’t want to go through with it even if he knew. That last thought lingered like acid on his skin.

He wanted to claim otherwise and hold her until she believed him. He couldn’t willingly go, and he couldn’t stay. Resisting was making this more difficult than it had to be, but how could he live with himself if he just left her here? Now that he understood what must be done, now that he could see her, now that he knew his place in the universe, how could he abandon her to be mutilated in the dark?

I don’t want to forget you. Please.

Ĭ WĬLL RꗛMꗛMBꗛR FꗞR THꗛ BꗞTH ꗞF ʊS.

Her touch was impossibly gentle as she made the choice for him. Absolving him from blame to the very end, it was she who placed her hands over his and pulled away from his embrace. It was she who stepped willingly into the chaos. Ford felt the Void slipping from his control the moment their connection was severed. He was regressing back into his fragmented sliver of existence and all complex thoughts were forcibly pushed out of his mind. His vision blurred with tears as he felt the sharpness of his loss like a missing limb.

I’m sorry…

For leaving. 

For not saving her. 

For the apathy and ignorance that would follow.

ꞆዛĬꕷ ᙡᕔꕷ ꗛᙁꗞʊǤዛ.

It wasn't.

Deep in his bones he knew it wasn't but it was all she would ever get from him. As he fell away from the stars his memories grew muddled. Finally the nothingness thrashed free of Ford’s control and surged like a rising tide. It wasted no time and swallowed up the light leaving Ford adrift in the pitch black.

He drifted for a few moments numbed by the sudden grief and feeling as though the wind had been knocked out of him. The tears felt odd, after all, moths didn’t cry. Something bad had happened, something that left the echo of some strange dread in his chest. Perhaps it was an unexpected change in the currents.

Yes, that had to be it. That was why everything felt too oppressive and dark to the point he’d lost his bearings. How odd of him to grow disoriented due to a lack of light. He didn’t mind the eternal night. He was built for it.

He had wings and feathery antennae.

He was a moth. 

He had always been a moth. 

The darkness didn’t frighten him. 

The void was home.

The troubled thoughts slipped out of his mind as he caught a gust of air and fluttered to ride it towards greater heights. Slowly, he retreated into the night and left the sound of crashing waves to fade in the distance.

It was all a dream, wasn’t it?

“Kids! Don’t run off!” Stan called out to the pack of teenagers who had vanished into the woods ahead.

Now more than ever, the old man felt his age creeping up on him. Oh he didn’t doubt that his brainiac twin had repelled off of a cliff and then sprinted three miles back to town, but that didn’t stop Stan from being deeply offended by the entire ordeal. Why couldn’t he have gotten lost somewhere normal like a strip mall or a bar or a stripper bar?

 He could use a drink right around now, preferably an adult one without all these hormonal kids around him.

“Kids!” he yelled as he shoved his way through a thicket, “how many times do I hafta tell you not to run ahead?!”

His tirade was cut short as he stumbled into the gaggle of teens who were staring at the center of the clearing. He shoved aside a surly looking teen to get a better look and there in the mid-morning light, a pattern of concentric circles and empty boxes was burned into the grass. The full scope of the design was easily the size of a house.

“Dudes, are you seeing this?” Wendy asked as she grabbed a stick and poked at it, “It’s like one of those crop circle things you see on TV. Think it’s aliens?”

Dipper was chewing on his pen as he walked along the edges of the scorched ground.

“Why would aliens take Grunkle Ford?” Mabel asked but then seemed to realize who they were talking about. “Well, I mean other than the obvious.” 

Dipper frowned as he grabbed a pebble and tossed it into the first ring. Nothing happened. The marks didn’t glow, no nefarious creatures emerged, strange portals didn’t materialize…

“Kids get away from there, you don’t know if it’s dangerous,” Stan groused, still winded from his morning hike. They, of course, completely ignored him.

“Don’t worry Stan, whatever it is, it’s not active anymore,” Dipper replied as he wandered along the edge of the circle.

“Hey, you don’t know that, kid!”

“Well, there’s only one way to find out!” Mabel said before shoving Thompson into the scorch marks. 

The boy yelped in distress before landing on his back with a dull thud that kicked up little puffs of ash. Everyone stood frozen in place as though waiting for something to happen. After a beat, it became clear  whatever alien or monster had made those marks was long gone. The other teens then began to laugh, as though they hadn't been afraid just a moment ago.

“Excellent use of Thompson, Mabel,” Wendy smiled and gave her a thumbs up.

Now that the marks had proven to be inert, Stan walked past the outer ring towards the charred remains at its center. Something big had fallen from a great height, but unlike a meteor, the impact zone had deep claw marks and was riddled with what could only be described as lightning strikes. Stan’s frown deepened, he knew the signs of a fight when he saw one. Surely Ford wouldn’t be stupid enough to try and take on something this big on his own. It was so damn close to town, it was a miracle no one had noticed.

“Grunkle Stan…” Dipper’s voice called from the far side of the clearing.

As he approached, Stan saw the sigil burned into the ground: a six fingered hand. He took a step back and all of a sudden what he was standing in made a horrible amount of sense. This wasn’t a crop circle. 

It was a zodiac wheel.

“Hey, guys,” Mabel called out as she held up a scrap of cloth, singed along its edges, but covered in a familiar violet paisley pattern.

Anger, deep and ugly, swelled up within Stan. Anger felt good, or at the very least it felt better than the constant uncertainty that had kept clawing at his insides these past few days. Anger meant there was someone to be angry at. And if that witch had hurt her brother, if she was the reason he was missing, there was going to be hell to pay.

The bedroom was still.

Faint echoes of music broke up the silence accompanied by the sound of Ford’s soft snoring. Slivers of sunlight filtered through thick blackout curtains providing dim illumination to the comfortably cool room. Ford sighed and curled up under the warm covers, burying his face into the soft pillow. He inhaled the scent of orange blossoms and blackberries as his mind drifted slowly back to awareness. Ford was not inclined to hurry it along.

Sleep was not something that ever came easily to Ford and he was reluctant to give it up once it found him. 

Between his dealings with the literal nightmare demon and his own internalized guilt, his subconscious had a habit of inflicting him with vivid nightmares. More than once, he’d been shaken awake when his night terrors became too loud for Stan to ignore. He had trouble getting proper sleep ever since he’d returned to Gravity Falls to the point where it had become a problem. 

Tonight had been different. 

His mind was unusually calm, lulled by the soft feel of cotton against his skin and the plush bed supporting his weight. He stretched and found his joints loose and without their usual early morning ache. The ever-present migraine that tormented him to various degrees was now entirely gone, even his tinnitus was blessedly silent. For the first time in years, Ford awoke feeling rested.

Blue eyes opened, not quite focused as he stared at the ceiling.

He wasn’t particularly picky about where he passed out. If he was especially tired, any flat surface would do. However, the only times got a proper REM sleep was when he felt safe enough to let his guard down: on the Stan-O-War II, Dimension 52, and twice on that visit to Piedmont. Even so it had been a long time since he had felt so at ease.

Ford lay in bed, enjoying the novel sensation of not being overwhelmed with stimulation. Even the lighting felt perfect: bright enough to let him know it was morning but soft enough that he might drift off again. The moment he left the bed, the world would bombard him with information and demands, which made him all the more reluctant to leave this newfound haven.

He didn’t know how long he lay there, not quite asleep but certainly not awake, before the scent of food found him. Much like the distant music, it slipped in and gently prodded his sleepy, half-formed thoughts. His stomach growled loudly. The sharp discomfort reminded him that he hadn’t eaten anything in days and out-voted his desire to simply rot in bed. He blinked and sat up ready to call out to Stan almost as an afterthought only to freeze when he realized the sheets were a pale lilac and of much better quality than anything he owned.

This was not his bedroom.

Memories crashed into him as he recalled the Neverwere, the rivers of potential, the will o’ wisps, the scampfires, the black ooze… He fumbled for his glasses and, as he slipped them on, the large tapestry on the wall caught his eye. A streak of sunlight lit up the embroidered symbol depicting a xiphos.

The Leaf-Blade Sword.

He remembered carrying Leaf back to her home. He remembered watching her glamour flicker off to reveal a creature made of starlight. He remembered the scent of blood, darkness and staying by her side in a desperate attempt to keep the stars lit.

A strange, tight feeling settled in his chest. He purposely avoided analyzing those emotions and as though to accommodate his discomfort, Ford’s brain supplied him with the hazy memory of a promise he had extracted from her. Or was it a deal? He hoped it wasn’t the latter. Regardless, there was only one way to find out. 

Ford forced himself out of bed and stumbled down the hallway towards the smell of food and the warm hiss of a vinyl record.

♫ You’re nobody till somebody wants you dead~ ♫

Those were rather morbid lyrics albeit set to a cheerful tune. As he rounded the corner he saw Leaf standing in the kitchen, cracking eggs into a pan. It took him a moment to realise he was actually disappointed at the fact that she looked so human . 

“Good Morning,” Leaf called out as she covered the pan with a lid and wiped her hands on a dishrag. There was a black statue of a cat on her countertop, or at least he thought it was a statue until its head swiveled and turned to look at him with bright jade eyes.

The scene before him felt so mundane that now, under the light of day, he was tempted to believe everything that happened had been a dream. He had been quite sleep deprived, it was a miracle he had been coherent at all. 

He looked away from her and spotted his clothes folded up neatly on the couch, pressed and clean, right next to his equally spotless boots. He absently touched the shirt he was wearing as it dawned on him that what he had on was far more comfortable than an old turtleneck and jeans.

“These clothes, you…”

…undressed me?  

He struggled to get the phrase out. Considering everything he had lived through, he’d have thought all the typical puritanism was out of his system. 

“Yes,” Leaf glanced at him briefly before going back to the stove. “You looked uncomfortable.”

He could feel himself blush. She’d seen-! Well it was difficult to assess just how much she had seen. After all, she was a higher dimensional being he could probably see inside his ribcage if she wanted! All things being fair, he probably shouldn’t kick up such a fuss. After all, he had been the one to undress and bandage her first. Perhaps he had inadvertently rewritten the social boundaries. 

Turn about is fair play. Now we’re even.

And that was all well and good up until he saw the UFO print of his boxers peeking out from the stack of clean laundry. He felt his face heat up and the warmth spread all the way to the tip of his ears. 

It shouldn’t matter! Hell he’d been naked more than once whilst in his travels. For Sagan's sake, some dimensions didn’t even use clothing!

“Breakfast is almost done. You should go wash up.”

He flinched at the sound of her voice, but found there was no mockery or cruelty in her tone. Everything she had said so far was clear and matter of fact. Good. That meant everything was out in the open and he wasn’t treading on any social landmines. Still, conversations were a battlefield best navigated when he wasn’t standing barefoot in loaner pajamas. He needed to gather his thoughts… and his clothes.

That’s exactly what he was doing.

He was not running away.

This is a tactical retreat, he justified himself and as he grabbed his clothes and hurried away to the bathroom.

His clothes didn't appear to be altered or changed. They smelled clean but not harshly so and he noted some of the holes in his jacket had been mended with silver thread. He wondered if she had used a needle and thread or if she had simply waved her hand and made it happen.

Too many questions happening all at once.

Still, Ford found that he felt more in control once he was in his own clothes again. He didn't know why he was so nervous. He'd approached Leaf before and she was hardly intimidating. Overbearing perhaps. Certainly bossy at times, but nothing he would consider fearsome.

Mabel thought the world of her which meant she wasn’t entirely bad. Then again, Stan practically made her out to be an evil witch that caused every misfortune that had befallen them the past week and he had been avoiding Dipper’s company so he had no idea what the boy thought other than the general suspicion he gave everything. Meanwhile Ford… 

Well, if he was being honest with himself, Ford had been entirely too comfortable letting Stan find his villain and run with it. In spite of any proof to the contrary it was simply easier to blame her for everything and anything that had gone wrong.

But had he been angry at her? 

Was it truly anger or something else?

Insecurity? 

Or the fact that he saw too many parallels between her and Bill?

Everything just came back to that monster's betrayal didn't it? It was easier to dislike someone than to admit his latent fear was painting everything as a danger. It was easier to say he hated Leaf rather than admit he was afraid of her and the consequences of their interactions. It was the dread of finding himself dependent on her when she was inevitably going to leave. It was caring about someone or something that did not give him a second thought.

If we mattered to her, she wouldn’t have left.

Was it resentment then?

Yes. That sounded about right. Leaf didn’t care, didn’t need them, she didn’t need anyone. That in itself was dangerous enough but then they had to go and accrue a debt. And they did owe her a great debt. Even if she claimed she was letting it slide, it reeked of an all too familiar exploitation. A smile here, a wink there, and before they knew it, they’d be in too deep to walk away. The disparity made her a stand-in for all the anger he couldn’t vent towards his own deceased tormentor.

Ah, but she wasn’t Bill in this equation was she? She had summoned a demon of her own and made things right. In the war between the supernatural and humanity, she was on the side of humanity! If anything, she was a superior version of Ford. Confident, effective, self-reliant. One that didn’t make her family pay for all of her mistakes. Someone who didn’t need help bringing her devil to heel. 

She was better at this than him.

Was that why this was so hard?

He had met good, powerful creatures in his dimensional travels. Jheselbraum came to mind, yet the two women couldn’t be more different. Jheselbraum was kind, loyal, and warm. Even when conducting her duties as the Oracle, there was always an empathy there behind her words and actions. She was a hero, a type of paladin that Ford aspired to be. Jheselbraum cared for every living thing while Leaf seemed to be more of a neutral broker looking for a chance to line her own pockets.

And yet, functionally, what difference was there between the two? They both put a stop to the chaos. They both pulled him out of the darkness. Was it that he didn’t find Leaf likeable? If that was all there was, what did it say about his judgement? Why was he nervous?

“I didn't want you to go…”

Had he really said that to her? 

Memories of something inhuman made up of stars came unbidden. Fractal eyes had looked at him with tenderness and a clawed hand had touched his face. It was a softness Bill had never given him, yet he found himself craving it. It was the sort of dynamic he had once been deeply enamored with. It was the addictive feeling of being held in high esteem by a dark unfathomable power that struck deeper than Jheselbraum’s implicit care.

It was intensified by the knowledge that Leaf was dangerous because herbivores had no need for sharp teeth. She was indifferent to others. She could kill -would kill- if provoked, but those same talons that could tear apart prey had held him so very carefully as though he were made of the finest bone china. She was mindful of him and the gentleness in her motions stirred something warm inside his chest. 

Her attention was intoxicating and he wanted to hold on to it for as long as possible. He wanted to impress her. He wanted to be the exception to her apathy. He wanted to… He wanted to…

I want to jump out of this window and save myself this whole embarrassing mess.

Gods but it would be easy, wouldn’t it? The frosted glass would slide open fairly quietly and he could slip out unnoticed. He could make up some lie about wandering the woods and losing track of time. Stan would believe it. Maybe he could convince him to take off on the boat with the kids. He’d call it an excursion or an impromptu treasure hunt.

The kids would love a sailing trip! He would promise Mabel a string of siren pearls and Dipper would certainly follow his lead as long as Ford made it seem important. 

It could work.

They’d be in Baja before Leaf realized he was gone.

Ford violently jerked away from his thoughts and opened the faucet to splash water on his face. He wasn’t thinking clearly. Cold water quieted his chaotic mind and centered him. He needed to be logical about this. 

Logically , he wasn’t attracted to Leaf. He barely knew her. For all her interesting composition, she was little more than a faint presence in the fringes of his social circle. His brain was simply falling into old habits and mistakenly assigning affection based on his previous experiences. If anything he was attracted to the new research possibilities she represented.

It’s simple pattern recognition gone awry. I, of course, am aware that it doesn’t mean anything… right?

His reflection stared back and offered no response save for what he already knew.

Leaf watched as he all but fled, the bundle of clothes clutched to his chest. She wondered if he was going to address what happened head on, or pretend it was all a dream. It wasn’t as though she’d made a good first impression. If anything she always felt like Ford tolerated her presence more than anything else. They were distant acquaintances at best, brought together by a girl who was a literal ball of sunshine and who, for some reason, seemed to think Leaf was amazing.

Ford seemed to be quite fearless when faced with monsters. Odds were he wasn’t going to run off to gather a mob. But the odds were just as high that he was mortified by the situation and would escape out the bathroom window.

It wouldn’t be the first time.

Then again, she’d rather prefer the mob than have him stay out of obligation. A mob at least, she had learned to avoid. If he did opt for the bathroom window, she hoped that he would land on something soft 

A tapping at her back door cut off her musings and she opened it to reveal a group of about six gnomes balancing three large reed baskets between them each one covered in a bright red gingham cloth.

“Delivery from Queen April!” one of them piped up. “Where do you want ‘em?”

“You're late,” she said waving at them to enter, “put them on the counter.”

“Not gonna point fingers doll, but we’ve been dealing with the outage thanks to somebody ,” he huffed as they formed a living tower and delivered the baskets with a practiced ease. “It’s takin’ a while to get the roads up and running.”

Leaf lifted the cloth off of each of the baskets revealing that they were filled to the brim with wild mushrooms. She was pleased to see the varieties were sorted. Chantrelles, morels, and at least a dozen black truffles the size of a walnut. Her attention then turned to the third basket filled with perfectly spherical mushrooms and she gave a sidelong look to the gnomes, all of which were avoiding her gaze.

“Care to enlighten me as to what type these are supposed to be?”

“Uh… miniature giant puffballs…”

Leaf gave him a cold stare before turning one over to reveal they were in fact button mushrooms with the stem cut off. Sticking to its side was a sticker with a cartoon mushroom that said ‘Sprott Farm Fresh Produce’.

“Alright, ya got me! The boys and I got a little hungry and we finished off a patch of lobster mushroom, and we were gonna get more but your little lightshow singed all the mushrooms in the forest so we had to improvise!”

“That’s a golf ball, and this… I’m not even going to address,” Leaf stated flatly as she picked up what was clearly a painted rock.

“We took some creative liberties! What is a mushroom anyways? ‘Snot like a human can give you a straight answer!” 

“The deal was twelve baskets of wild culinary mushrooms of Mirror-Glass Perfect Grade and above,” she sighed as a notepad appeared and she scribbled a receipt, “I am giving you credit for two-”

A cacophony of protests broke out as she tore off the receipt and handed it to the gnome leader. 

“Aw c’mon toots!” 

“It’s not our fault the forest is all glopped up!”

“The whole thing is out of sync! At least make it two and a half!” 

“Some of those aren’t even poisonous!”

Leaf was unmoved as she handed them the inferior basket and pointed to the door.

“Either come back with this filled properly or I’ll inform Queen April that she is in breach of contract because of you. Next time, bring proper payment or don’t bring anything at all.”

The gnomes grumbled but took the damaged goods and trudged out the door.

“Our wife is gonna kill us.”

“Ok we just gotta get our stories straight. There was a badger…”

“Ten badgers!”

“I kinda miss when it was just Jeff in charge.”

“If you ask me, that old broad is big enough without eating twelve baskets of mushrooms anyway.”

“Yeah, we did her a favor!”

“Shhhh! She’ll hear you!”

“CALL ME FAT AGAIN AND I’LL BAKE YOU INTO A PIE!” she bellowed after them causing them to flinch and scamper scamper off.

From the corner of the room he heard someone fail to stifle a laugh and she turned to see Ford smiling. Ah, so he hadn’t run off.

Curious.

“They have some gall don’t they? The gnomes I mean,” he said, clearing his throat.

She tilted her head to one side, trying to gauge his mood before deciding to take his smile at face value. He hadn’t fled out the window, and there was no mob on her doorstep. He was taking it all in stride. There may be some hope for him yet.

“I’m tempted to believe their audacity is some kind of adaptive trait otherwise I’d be more offended,” she sighed and he appeared to perk up at that.

“I hypothesized something similar during my observations! A high risk tolerance must pay off more often than not otherwise it’s a miracle they haven’t annoyed themselves into extinction,” he beamed.

“Oh give them time, there’s hope yet,” she sighed as she shook her head and headed back to the kettle. “Do you take tea or coffee?”

Rather than give her an answer right away, Ford suddenly found the floor absolutely fascinating. The awkwardness lingered for a beat longer before he found his voice.

“I… really should be going. My family will be searching for me.”

 It was amazing how such a simple question could cause such distress. 

“I must insist, breakfast is the least I can do for the man who saved my life,” she said, pouring two shots of espresso into a large cup followed by heated milk, and a heaping drizzle of caramel.

“I think we both know that’s not an apt description of last night,” he stated quietly.

“Well, did you intend to save my life?”

“Yes but-”

“Then why quibble over the particulars? You helped me with no thought of treasure or reward or your own safety,” she replied as she added whipped cream to the cup and sprinkled the top with toffee bits before placing it on the counter in front of him. “You are owed a kindness in return.”

The cup in front of Ford looked more like a dessert than anything else and he stared at it intently as though it held the secrets of the multiverse. He then glanced up at the copper espresso machine and his brow furrowed as though he were wondering where the kettle had gone and whether the machine had always been there.

“I, uh, take my coffee black, six sugars.”

“And yet the universe provides a sea salt caramel latte with extra whip,” Leaf mused as though he had posed an interesting hypothesis rather than a fact.

Ford’s steel blue eyes finally met her gaze, trying to read her intent. Ah but the man was clever and he could spot exactly the sort of arrangement she was offering. At last he understood what she was, what she represented.

She was the embodiment of the crossroads. Every possible future condensed into a binary choice and settled before him. 

And he did have a choice, he had earned as much.

There was no version of this where Leaf would decide for him. He could walk away now and keep his current life with everything he knew of the world neatly filed in its proper place. He could choose to remain safe here amongst the knowable and quantifiable. There was no shame in it, after all, one could spend a lifetime sketching this world’s quirks.

There was nothing wrong with sticking with what he knew.

There was nothing wrong with taking his coffee black.

Leaf’s brown eyes flickered with a faint iridescent shimmer and she saw his jaw clench in response.

Then, without uttering another word, Ford raised the cup to his lips and took a sip.

At any given moment, Stan could be found being disgruntled with the world. Life had never been kind to Stan, so he found it useful to keep a healthy dose of rage simmering just below the surface. It suited him just fine, he was never going to turn into a sweet old man unless he turned senile which (if he was being honest) could still be in the cards for him. It wasn’t as though he’d been taking care of his brain even before the mind-wipe. That stint as a failed boxer came to mind, not to mention the years of physical abuse that blurred together and somehow ended with him in a Colombian jail. Working as a drug mule in the 80s had to be one of his stupidest decisions. Although not as humiliating as… wait, had he really been a stripper in Tijuana or did he hallucinate that part?

That wasn’t to say that everything was his fault. 

The world had turned him into a fighter and he was good at it. Even when he lost, he had a knack for not staying down. It was one of his best qualities. It’s what made him perfectly suited to be his family’s first line of defense. His job was to be the brick wall and stop the threat while Ford figured out a way to annihilate it. Ford was the thinker, the ideas man, the one with all the answers. He was the protector who made sure those same answers didn’t get them killed.

At least, he used to be.

Time had a way of humbling a man. This brisk little hike of theirs was taking its toll. Oh the adrenaline was still pumping and he’d get several licks in before his body gave out, but sitting there in the back of his mind was a voice whispering how his back hurt and guesstimating how badly his joints were going to ache tomorrow.

He’d first noticed it on the boat.

It was one thing to lag behind the kids. They were full of energy with their entire life ahead of them! But to see his brother brush things off like they were nothing was a blow to his ego. He’d tried keeping up that first twelve-hour day but it had left him exhausted. He figured it was reasonable to take it easy the next day, only to hear his brother get up at the ass-crack of dawn the next morning and still have the energy to climb up the mast to ‘take readings’. As much as he tries to match Ford’s energy, it was becoming increasingly clear that Stan just couldn’t keep up. It raised the spectre of age in a way that made him not want to think about this anymore!

One day he was going to be too worn out and frail to protect anyone. One day he would wake up and be too tired to chase off the monsters.

Maybe it would be okay. 

Maybe Ford didn’t need his protection anymore. 

Maybe it was time to let Ford protect him.

“Ugh,” he made a face at the thought. He didn’t know which scenario was worse.

Still, he wasn’t stupid. 

Stan knew Ford was hiding things from him, emotional things. He could tell by the way his brother sometimes flinched or became cagey around his work. Ford was bottling everything up in an attempt to give Stan the happy, unproblematic life he’d always wanted. It was painfully obvious the man was twisting himself every which way to keep Stan from getting upset. Meanwhile Stan… well Stan wasn’t good with words.

If it was important, then he shoulda said something.

Why should he get all touchy feely over nothing? If Ford had wanted to talk about it he would! And if he didn’t, well, what’s the problem with that?

What was so wrong about giving a man his space!

What’s the big fucking deal anyway? Nobody ever died of keeping their yaps shut! 

It wasn’t odd that he couldn’t remember Ford ever asking him for help since Weirdmaggeddon. Or the fact that Ford hadn’t been sleeping well since they arrived at Gravity Falls. There was nothing weird about how Ford sometimes got quiet in the middle of an argument and was too quick to apologize. It didn’t make him uncomfortable to see his twin stiffen and stare at him anxiously whenever Stan admitted he couldn’t remember some key moment. It’s not like the man was hyperfixating on the Neverwhere accident and blaming himself over it. Ford hadn’t so much as said a word to even insinuate he felt responsible for anything terrible that happened!

Stan froze, standing at the edge of the forest overlooking the paved road leading to the town as the pieces all slotted into place. 

Shit.

Ford was already protecting him, because of course he was.

I have to be the biggest knucklehead alive!

The aversion to say what was bothering him, the erratic hours, the way he kept himself busy as though he couldn’t stop… as though the moment he rested all of his demons would catch up to him… as though he were carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.

While Stan had stood on the sidelines, mildly inconvenienced by the wrecked Shack, Ford had gone off alone looking for answers. Hell, the man was smart enough to find them! The problem was, this time there hadn’t been anyone there to stop him from getting killed by what he found.

Stan was dense, yes. Stupid? No.

He knew whatever had taken Ford was dangerous and he had to keep the kids away from it no matter the cost.

“Tambry finally got a signal and we called Soos. He’s coming to pick us up, we should probably stay put,” Dipper explained as he stepped out to the side of the road.

“Grunkle Stan. Are you doing alright?” Mabel asked and walked up to him with a concerned look on her face.

“Uh, yeah, about that,” Stan rubbed the back of his neck as he tried his hand at manipulating the two people he loved most in the world, “kids, ah, I’ve been thinkin’ I can’t just go waltzing into places without a plan. Even if Ford is safe we should be prepared.”

“That… is remarkably sound logic Stan,” Dipper said somewhat taken aback.

“Yeah, so I was thinkin’ instead of all of us barging in there and possibly getting us captured in the process. How’s about I go in there first and test the waters? That way, if things really go south, you two can come in and rescue the old geezers?”

“I don’t know…” Mabel frowned and looked up at him skeptically.

“Hey, pumpkin! You said this was on the level so what’s the harm?” Stan said with his best showman smile and he felt a stab of guilt as it worked. “I’ll just go in and scope it out and sneak out. We can even make one of those, whatchacallit, missions! Yeah, like a spy mission!”

Mabel sighed and her shoulders slumped in acceptance.

“Great! I got some walkie talkies we can use!” Dipper piped up.