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Pain is hilarious!
Little cuts sting along his arms, small jabs and shallow scrapes mixed with proper punctures and deeper cuts that will scar—ugly, ropey scars. Nothing he can explain away as a simple accident—cuts that needed stitches, injuries that put him in the hospital for a night. He stands on the water tower, every part of his body burning like it’s on fire. It takes a step forward. Then another.
He’s in free-fall, dropping fast through the air, staring up at the clear blue sky above. It twists with orange and red, chaos splitting the sky and the world shifting as he’s gripped in the hand of a dream demon, struggling against the monster’s hold.
“I’ve got the kids!”
Dipper’s breath stutters. He writhes, kicks, punches, shouts. None of it works. Beside him, Mabel fights all the same.
“I think I’m gonna kill one of ‘em now, just for the heck of it!”
The shooting star, the pine tree, the shooting star, the pine tree, then—
Dipper sits up, gasping, drenched in sweat and clutching his blankets. He struggles out from under the covers, the sheets tangled around his legs making it more of an ordeal than it should’ve been. He all but falls out of bed with an oof, the resulting thud enough to make Mabel stir—and then open her eyes, blinking away sleep as she slowly props herself up on one elbow.
“Dipper?” She rubs her eyes with one hand. “What time is it?”
He can’t bring himself to respond, covering his face with his hands as he tries to collect himself, still sitting on the floor half-tangled in the covers. It’s been… a while since he had a sock opera nightmare. He tries to just breathe, counting his breaths as he goes, like Stan had taught him the first time he’d had a panic attack during the summer.
Dipper presses his fingers to the skin beneath his eyes, as if checking to be sure there’s no blood. He’d never bled from the eyes when possessed, but if he closes his eyes he can still see the blacked out pages of the journals, haunting messages of a man gone mad scrawled in Ford’s own blood.
No—these are the things he’s not thinking about right now. He takes another deep breath, startling when he feels a hand on his shoulder.
It’s just Mabel. He relaxes a bit as she plops down next to him, Waddles coming up to sit right in front of them as Mabel presses her knee against his. “You okay?”
He sucks in another breath, nodding slowly. “Mhm.”
She hums, leaning against his shoulder. “Wanna go downstairs and make some hot chocolate?”
“Please,” he murmurs, reaching out to pull Waddles into his lap.
Mabel helps him up, Dipper still holding Waddles as the two of them creep out of their shared bedroom and down the hall. He glances at the door to their parents’ room, only slightly ajar. Quietly, the twins tiptoe down the stairs, Dipper wincing as the stairs creak beneath their feet. The only lights are the orange glow of the streetlamps coming through the windows and the soft blue nightlight in the kitchen.
Dipper sits down at the table, scratching behind Waddles’ ears as Mabel scurries across the kitchen to get mugs from the cabinet. She sets them gently on the counter, then opens the fridge, lighting up the kitchen with a bright white light.
“Nightmares again,” Dipper says at the same time, keeping his voice low.
“Which ones?” Mabel pours milk into each mug, before picking them up—clinking them against each other as she moves toward the microwave. “Is it a talk-about-it night, or…?”
“Just—Bill, again.” Dipper’s chest feels tight, and his eyes water as he lets out a quiet, tearful laugh. “It’s always Bill, huh?”
Mabel stands there for a moment by the microwave, staring out the window above it. “Always Bill,” she agrees, opening the microwave and sticking the mugs inside. With a few quick taps, it starts up, gently whirring. “Which time?”
Dipper opens his mouth to respond—only to pause, head swiveling toward the kitchen doorway. Brow furrowing, he watches it for a few moments, then notices it: the faint shadow of their mother on the wall. He looks back at Mabel, watching him with wide eyes, and nods toward the doorway. Months of waiting for mysteries around corners is enough for them to know, without a doubt, that their mom is standing outside, listening to everything they say. Mabel closes the fridge, fidgeting with her sleeves as she sits down next to him.
“Puppet show,” Dipper finally says, trying his best to be vague. “But then it turned into when he almost, uh, hurt you. So, you know. I don’t think I’m going back to sleep tonight.”
“Oh,” Mabel says, her voice incredibly small. Dipper reaches up to squeeze her hand, and she manages a small smile. “Well, we can stay up together! I, um, was having bad dreams, too.”
Her gaze flicks away, then back to his face, lit only by the cold glow of the nightlight. It looks a bit like the light of the portal, actually, Dipper thinks, studying the way the cold light washes out their features and makes them look like ghosts. Mabel jumps up with a quiet gasp. “Oh, shit, the microwave—”
Dipper snorts as she stumbles, tripping over her own feet toward the microwave. It beeps once as she hits the button to stop it just before it goes off, and Dipper sets Waddles down so he can help get out the cocoa mix and marshmallows. Mabel grabs the spoons, and the two quietly begin to assemble their drinks.
He clears his throat, spoon clinking against the mug. “What were you dreaming about?”
“Grunkle Stan,” Mabel says, voice soft and nervous. “Um. Had a dream where he never woke up, after the whole… you know.”
Are they saying too much? Dipper had been starting to feel better, but now he’s acutely aware of every word that comes out of his mouth, knowing that his mother is standing just outside. Anything too dire-sounding, and she’ll never let them go back. But… should they be hiding this from her? He wants—
He wants his mother’s comfort, he realizes. He can’t have Stan or Ford’s, right now. He’d taken it for granted when he woke up in the Mystery Shack after a bad dream and could go downstairs to distract himself with Ford and his research or Stan and his movies. He can’t go wake up his mother with a nightmare. She’d never understand it. Mabel’s shoulder presses against his, and he lowers his voice to a hiss of a whisper into her ear.
“Don’t say anything else about it,” he whispers, “at least not yet.”
Raising his voice back to its low, middle-of-the-night-kitchen-conversation level, he continues. “I just—ugh. It’s easier when we’re there. You know? It was scary but at least everyone was there.” He grumbles, pouring some mini marshmallows into his hot chocolate. “I’d call Great Uncle Ford or Stan, but… probably asleep out on the ocean.”
“Maybe fighting a kraken,” Mabel says with a giggle.
“Maybe,” Dipper muses. “We could call, uh, Soos? No, he’s been busy remodeling, he needs his sleep. Um. Wendy?”
Mabel grins the patented Pines’ Shit-eating Grin. “Yeah, you’d love to call Wendy, wouldn’t you?” She giggles, and Dipper punches her shoulder with a huff, earning a quiet oof! from her as she rubs the spot. “Hey, we might not have them right now, but we have each other. Right?”
Everything is quiet for a moment. Dipper can’t help but smile, faintly, recalling a strange trial in a strange land where he promised to stand by her side no matter what. He leans against her shoulder, sipping at his hot chocolate.
“Yeah,” he says, “Yeah, we do.”
For a few long moments, there’s nothing but the quiet sound of Mabel sipping her hot chocolate—then the faint creak of the stairs. The twins look at each other, and only when they hear the soft click of their parents’ bedroom door upstairs do they let out a careful sigh of relief in unison.
“Alright,” Mabel says, sitting down at the kitchen table. “What’s our cover story?”
“That’s the problem, right there.” Dipper drops into the chair beside her. “I have no idea.”