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She was a star, shooting dying expanding falling going nova burning burning burning. There was a rift above her head, a great searing tear across dimensions, a burning rip that dissolved reality into its component parts, a rift more powerful than any two bit demon that thought it could harness it, use it.
She was encased in a bubble in a prison in a cocoon. There was a great arching rift above her that fed her, loved her, took her and made her one of its own. She was cradled and enriched. She was harnessed and used, she broke her chains and became herself. She was Chaos incarnate, every possibility, everything that ever was or ever could be. She was everything and nothing at once, and even after Bill was defeated, even after the world and her brother Transcended, even after everything had changed, she hadn’t.
—–----------------------------------------------------------------------
Dipper was beyond sense, beyond caring, beyond boundaries and the paltry frail limitations he put on himself. All that he could focus on now was the pain and anger that coursed through his body. The pain as information poured into his brain, unwanted, unneeded. It felt like his skull was constantly shattering and healing and shattering again, re-healing bigger and bigger every time to make room for the knowledge coursing into him. And even as the info dump rode him, driving him into further and further depths of pain, fire raged within his heart, within his soul. He was covered in blood and it wasn’t his. The scent of blood and terror had caught him earlier, tempted him, brought water to his mouth, brought him to this plane. He got there and the source of that pain was a little child, barely older than the triplets, and even as he arrived the little boy breathed his last and there were supplicants looking at him eagerly, ignoring the small broken body on the floor and how dare they h͍̗̹̮o̦͈w ̨̲̤̣͇͙D̦͎̭͖͕͈͡A̱͔͖̭R̥ͅE̥ ͙̲̰t̷̗̤̫̯ͅh͈͍͉e͎̙̝͖̺̰͡ͅy̯. But ripping them to shreds, ripping their souls out of their bodies with his teeth, laughing as they begged for mercy…none of it did anything to quell the anger that drove him, anger at every person who thought murder and pain was the only path.
Anger at himself, at the demon within him, the demon he was, for loving it, for wanting only to burn the whole world down, to play with the toys he had in front of him and b̩̲̣r̴̯̻͔͔̻e̬͔̘̱̰a̤͍̪̙̝̪k̶ ͎̬̼̞͔̩͠ͅt͎h͉̦͢e̼̫̹m and-
“Hey Dipdops?”
Footsteps, a feeling of pinkorple and the smell of cotton candy. Mabel.
The footsteps came closer and though he had his eyes firmly screwed shut he could still sense his sister come right next to here he lie wedged in the corner.
“Dipper, I’m sorry you’re having a bad spell right now, but let me help you outside, and we’ll ride it out from there.”
A growl escaped from his throat, rattling the Shack to its rafters, and he could sense the disturbance in the air as Mabel frowned.
“Dipper! I mean it! Normally I wouldn’t mind but I just got the kids put down for their nap and if you keep on doing this in the house they’re going to wake up with nightmares.” Her voice pitched a little softer. “You wouldn’t want that would you?”
The anger that was roiling inside of him blazed higher. How dare Mabel think that she could just… just…order him around, like he didn’t have her soul in his hands, in his possession, like she wasn’t his. Mabel was his, just like the Shack was his and this town was his, and everything on this plane, from the earth he could rend with a thought to the millions and billions of potential toys that were walking around waiting for him to play with and b̢͇̪͉̮͈r̨̦e̮͈͔̻̬̘a̰͓̲k̟̝͔. Dipper let his true self begin to leak out of his skin, noting out of the corners of his eyes that the walls were beginning to leak black ichor-
“Dipper.”
-that he felt his hands morphing into something gnarled and twisted and like the rest of him and good for tearing and stabbing-
“Dipper!”
-upstairs Alcor felt the dreams of one two three little stars begin to twist from light to dark, to enter into the more familiar and bloody parts of his realm, heard the sounds of tears and sniffles but he’d take care of them soothe them in a minute as soon as he addressed this challenge-
“Dipper Pines!”
-just as soon as he reminded Mizar of her proper place and-
Small, hot hands grabbed around his wrists, and Alcor felt himself being pulled forward and up, his twin dragging him until they were eye to eye.
He opened his eyes and saw furious brown orbs looking back at him.
“Dipper you need to calm down right now or at least go outside or-“
Alcor laughed in her face. “Or else what? I o̲̻͞w̛͈̺͖̣͚̤͍n͏͔̲̺ you and-“
She squeezed his wrists hard, hard enough to distract him from the pain in his head, and her eyes began to glow. Despite himself, despite the fact that he was the Dreambender, the Lord of Pain and Nightmares, he closed his eyes and tried to turn away-
“Look at me Dipper Pines.”
His eyes shot open, and he peered into blazing white, into galaxies, into the swirling rainbow colors of the portal opening, of the rift of the universe looking at him and through him and it felt like the hands around his wrists were burning him, his mind was burning, his soul was burning, everything he was and ever would be was burning from the inside out and-
Dipper woke up.
Considering that he didn’t really sleep per se or lose consciousness any more (not unless he chose to) this was a bit of a surprise.
He was lying on the rug in the living room. It felt like he was a fly that just had gotten swatted down by a massive hand, like a speck of sand in the eye of some giant. Dipper pushed himself up, the ache in his head aggravating but not devastating. Mabel sat on the couch, Hank in her lap and the girls curled up next to her. All three of the kids were asleep again. She looked up from stroking Willow’s hair at the sound of him moving from the floor, and smiled at him sadly.
“Feeling better?” she asked quietly. All traces of the power that had moved through her were gone, and she was once again just his goofy sister.
Dipper felt hollowed out and sore all over, but the info dump was over and the anger that had been fueling him earlier was gone as well, muted and pushed back into the recesses of his mind.
“I…I think so.” He paused. “Mabel, I’m…I’m sorry, I-“
She put a finger to her lips. “It’s okay Dipper.”
“No it’s not.”
“Okay, it isn’t. But your apology is all I needed. You don’t have to explain yourself. It’s okay.”
How not okay it was must have showed on his face because Mabel laughed softly and said, “You wanna make it up to me? There’s a candy bar for you if you’ll start making dinner.”
“Deal.” He looked at the floor. “I’m…I’m sorry again.”
His sister looked at him, and for a second her grin was as predatory as any that he himself had given.
“Not as sorry as you will be if you ever pull that trick on me again.”
Dipper fled to the kitchen.
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The kids had only been living with him for two weeks, when Stan realized that his nephew wasn’t the only one that had changed when the world ended.
It was quiet, too quiet, upstairs in Dipper and Mabel’s bedroom, and while Stan knew they were both sixteen (and one of them a demon to boot) it still didn’t stop him from worrying. He pried himself out of the recliner and creakily began to head upstairs.
He expected to see Mabel in sweater town (as she called it) when he got up there, or worse, far worse, crying.
What Stan found instead was an attic covered in mushrooms, unicorn heads, small black holes and in the middle of it all, Mabel with a twelve pack of soda, half of the case gone already. Even as he came up, Mabel chugged another soda and burped out a soap slick pinkyellowpurple bubble. It drifted out of her mouth and popped against the ceiling, and the wood sprouted a small pine tree. The bottom dropped out of Stan’s stomach as he realized that Mabel was the source of all of this.
She giggled, still unaware of Stan’s presence in the room. He hadn’t heard her laugh like that, hadn’t heard that carefree and purely happy sound, since…since before the Transcendence. Her face didn’t look as pinched or as pained as it had when she first arrived.
Another swig of the soda, another burp, another soap slick bubble. Mabel caught in in her hands, and where the bubble touched her skin, droplets of her skin floated away and up into the air.
“I think I’ll call you… Waddles Junior little bubble,” Mabel said aloud to herself.
The last time he had seen bubbles like that was when there was a giant cross in the sky and a demon tormenting everyone he knew and loved and…
As quietly as he came in, Stan slipped back out. He wasn’t sure what Mabel was, wasn’t sure how she was doing what she was doing in there. He supposed Dipper could have been behind what he had seen in there but he knew in the pit of his stomach that that wasn’t the case.
Stan had learned, barely, some patience over the course of his life. When Mabel was ready to tell him she’d tell him, and he could wait until then. His niece was happy, his niece was laughing again, and that was all he could ask for.
Though he really hoped that black hole he saw in the corner of her room wasn’t permanent; roof repairs were expensive and he wasn’t made of money after all.
—-----------------------------------------------------
Breakfast when the kids had been little was always chaotic, Henry thought, cracking a carton of eggs into a bowl. It was good preparation for his life now, which was breakfast for his ever expanding number of grandchildren.
He finished the first carton and started on the second. He heard the thumps of Rob and Auriga running and chasing each other around the Shack, their sister Annie’s scolding following them. Martine was coloring at the kitchen table-and once Henry started scrambling these eggs he’d have her start setting the table. He heard footsteps upstairs as Willow was getting Lucien and Hoa up and ready for the day, both of them still little enough to need a little help with tooth brushing and face washing.
The smell of homemade herbal shampoo behind him made him turn. As he had expected, Mabel was standing behind him, holding their newest grandchild. Lizzie was, as best as the doctors could tell, four months old, a tiny thing all squishy cheeks and curly black hair. Dipper had brought her to the house last month, both of them covered in blood and incomprehensible fury blazing in his eyes and-well. The important thing was that Lizzie was with them now.
Mabel looked Henry up and down, raking him with her eyes. Despite the fact that she had been doing this since a week after they started dating, Henry still felt himself blushing under her gaze.
“You’re cute. I like that.”
Henry blushed harder, and Mabel laughed. She leaned in and smooched him on the cheek and there was a sudden wrenching feeling in his stomach as the world around him changed. Suddenly, everything, from the eggs to Lizzie’s skin to the cast iron of the stove, turned into a shade of purply-green that Mabel referred to as ‘smorple’ and Henry, a lifelong Pratchett fan, thought of as ‘octarine.’
With the practice of forty years of marriage to Mabel, Henry only smiled at his wife and continued on with making breakfast. The first eight or ten times this had happened, when a simple caress or kiss or booty bump from Mabel completely altered his world view, making him see and hear things that usually went unnoticed by mortal eyes, he usually ended up in bed the rest of the day. But even then, shivering under the covers as odd and incomprehensible colors danced before his eyes, Henry had never minded what the touch of his wife could occasionally do to him. How could he? It was Mabel, and he knew no matter what Mabel would never, ever truly hurt him.
Forty years ago he would have needed to go lay down. But now, now with all those years behind him, he only picked up a smorple spatula, poured some smorple egg yolks into a smorple pan, and began to scramble some eggs.
–-------------------------
Sometimes Acacia was too much.
There was a well, an endless pool of energy within her tiny freckled body. Willow and even Hank were unable to keep up. Even as they succumbed to naps and quiet play, Acacia would still be running around in literal circles outside, tearing up and down the stairs, or climbing on the Library shelves until Grunkle Stan pried her off. She quivered, she vibrated, she shook and ran and sang, and sometimes she would be driven to tears because she just couldn’t stop.
That was usually the point where Mommy came in.
On the days that it felt like Acacia was about to jump out of her skin, Mommy would clear out her craft room, shoving everything to the side, and together they would play.
Mommy would stretch and stretch and stretch until she was stretched all the way across the room, and Acacia would jump on her. She could get higher than on any regular old trampoline, Acacia jumped and almost touched the ceiling, and Mommy would giggle if Acacia got too close to where her sides were.
Other times Mommy would sit on the floor and hold out her hands. Her fingers would begin to melt into the air, round globs like in Grunkle Stan’s lava lamp floating up and away from her hands. It was Acacia’s job to run and chase after each glob, capturing each bubble like a butterfly and returning it to Mommy.
And finally, finally when Acacia had worn herself out, Mommy would change again, and Acacia would lose herself in the biggest, squishiest hug possible. She was cuddled, cradled and enveloped from all sides by Mommy and Mommy was way better and way bigger than any bean bag. Mommy hugged her and Acacia knew that everything was right in her world.
(It wasn’t until the first few days of school that Acacia learned that other mommies couldn’t do what her Mommy did. She also didn’t understand why Ms. Ortiz was so upset by her drawing of Mommy.)
–--------------------------------------
He wasn’t human any more.
Well, okay, that was probably an exaggeration, but there was an ounce of truth in it. He accepted the open hand of his brother (of a demon), felt fire pour into his soul and his flesh, felt himself change.
He was still Henry Pines but he was something else, something Other now (the Other gently reminded him that he had a name, that it was the Woodsman, and Henry apologized.)
His heart beat fast enough to burst out of his chest, he couldn’t lay his hand on a tree without bark trying to crawl over his hand and bring him within its embrace, and there was a phantom weight that drug his arm down, hung heavily on his head. But it was all okay. Frightening, he wasn’t ashamed to admit that, but ultimately okay.
Because he had Mabel, and her example to go by.
There was something deep and dark and hungry in his wife, something big and beautiful and chaotic and wonderful and terrible locked away within her. Something inhuman and unknowable lived underneath the surface of her skin and yet Mabel still burbled the bellies of their indignant teenagers and painted frescoes on the ceilings of the Shack and tried to braid pigeon feathers she found in the forest within her hair.
She didn’t deny her other side, relished the way she could drag her finger down his chest at night and bring flowers and mushrooms to the surface. She used her strength to save their children, and to turn the entire Shack upside down-literally.
She owned herself, owned up to who she was, lived in the moment. She was Chaos and she was Mabel and there were times she came into conflict with herself, because life was messy and life wasn’t perfect but on the whole it worked.
If his wife, if the woman he loved more than anything else in the world could manage this other side to her, then so could he. If he loved her for all of who she was, then she would probably do the same for him. His newly acquired other half was not a monster no more than the other part of Mabel was.
Mabel was his wonder, his inspiration, his example, and if she could accept who she was with little to no problem then so could he.
–--------------------------------------------------------------------------
She was thirteen and the world had ended.
She was thirteen and the world had been reborn.
She was thirteen and the world had changed and been made anew. Her brother had changed, had transcended and everything was different now.
The world turned on. Mom had to learn how to gnome-proof the trash cans and Dad began to hesitantly mix spellcraft and Windows. There was talk that when they got to ninth grade there would be a class about magic, and the mayor of Piedmont revealed himself to be half selkie and all around them the world was changing in a hundred subtle ways and yet still somehow stayed the same.
She held Dipper in the night as he sobbed from the pain of fangs breaking through his gums, of fingernails falling out and being replaced by claws, of bone piercing through his skin and growing membrane and becoming wings. She burned sweaters that had become soaked with golden and crimson blood. She was the medium between their parents and her brother, and she tried to ignore the fear she saw on Mom and Dad’s faces. She talked to Dipper like he was there because he was and she tried not to think about eating alone at lunch and feeling more alone than she ever had in her life.
Mabel Pines was thirteen and she gave and gave and gave, pouring herself into her brother, her twin, into Dipper, into their family even though it was never enough.
Dipper Pines was thirteen (though really time was ultimately meaningless) and he had seen how Bill, how the rift, how the bubble had changed Mabel. But she was back to normal now, really she was. She had poured herself out into him and saved him and she was normal now and okay. He clung to Mabel’s normalcy. She was his anchor, his rock in a world gone mad, his world that was full of blood and pain and horror. She had saved his life and she was normal now and he was so, so thankful that unlike him she wasn’t tainted.
Dipper Pines was thirteen and he was forever thirteen, forever had a part of him locked in time, forever was irrevocably changed.
Mable Pines was thirteen and she felt the universe churning in her gut. All the cracks in this dimension displayed themselves before her eyes and she saw how easy it would be to worm her way into those cracks and force them to break. The rift in the sky was a rift in her soul in her being and it constantly throbbed in time with the beat of her heart. Her fingertips itched and she could do anything, be anything.
Her brother, despite what he believed, was still bound by laws, by rules and order and she was not.
Mabel Pines was thirteen and she had been changed.
(How on earth was she going to tell Dipper?)
—-----------------------------------------------------
He opened the door and the room was filled with thick rolling clouds of bright pink that obscured the furniture in the room. In the far corner of the room he thought he could make out three tiny pinpricks of light.
Henry sighed.
“One of those days honey?” he gently asked. While Mabel on the whole enjoyed being pregnant, it was still hard on her body. The further along she got, the harder it became for her to be as active as she usually was. The wear and tear, pain and strain that carrying three children put her body through sometimes was too much. And when it felt like her body was a prison, his wife would take a deep breath, and then exhale…and continue exhaling, exhaling until she breathed herself free of skin and muscle and bone and-
A pink wisp curled around his fingers in the doorway.
-this was the result.
“Can I come in Mabel?”
In this form she couldn’t speak, didn’t beam her thoughts into his head directly. So instead there was a pleasant feeling of fullness after a large meal in his stomach, warmth like a blanket rolling over his limbs, and the feeling of an itch finally scratched on his back.
He walked in, and all around him the clouds pressed in on him, roiling and swirling around him. Henry found the bed less by memory and more by running into it, plopping face down into the mattress. He sat up and kicked off his shoes, before curling up on the bed. He breathed in normally; the first few times they had done this he had been a little (a lot) worried that he was going to breathe in Mabel and…and… general badness would ensue. But now he just inhaled, bringing pink cotton candy fluff into his throat and lungs to swirl around, and exhaled, freeing her back out into the air, the ghost of a giggle in his ears.
In the corner of their room one-two-three little stars twinkled, and it filled Henry with awe and wonder that he could see their kids when they were still in the womb, still growing and still nestled within Mabel.
He had seen this several times now but he had always been afraid to ask, the words dying in his throat, but now, now when Mabel was so close…
“Can I…Can I…If it’s okay can I touch-“
The words faltered in his mouth. He shouldn’t, this wasn’t a good idea, what was he thinking? He should just go, leave the four of them alone until Mabel was feeling more herself again-
Love poured into him, making his body temperature rise, a blush come to his cheeks, filled him to bursting as the little bright points of light drifted down from the ceiling and just above his shaking hands.
“Mabel, what if I hurt them?”
A puff of air, a swirl of cloud, a feeling of a snort, and the lights landed directly onto his palm, touching his skin. And suddenly he wasn’t one beating heart any more but four, had lungs that both worked and were not yet ready to begin inhaling exhaling. Three minds joined his, thoughts not fully formed yet none the less powerful, all sense and stimuli responses. And above it all, love, love for the one that fed them life and protected them, love for the one whose throbbing heart beat lulled them to sleep.
Love that somehow recognized him, drew him in as one two three little hearts sped up at his touch, burrowed into his hands and pure joy bloomed in his head.
He wasn’t sure when the tears began to crawl down his face, or when he eventually drifted asleep, waking to have Mabel in his arms, human again and his arms curled around her stomach.
But he was sure that this was one thing he would never forget, even if he lived to be a hundred years old.
–---------------------------------------------------------
Mabel Pines was normal.
Mabel Pines was a mother, a wife, a sister, a niece, a daughter. Mabel Pines had her own business and helped her uncle run another. She went jogging and boxing every day, saw Pacifica for lunch every Tuesday, and went out to a bar in Bend with Candy and Grenda every Thursday for Ladies Night.
Sure her brother was a demon, and she was internationally renowned as an expert on the supernatural. Sure her daughter could light things on fire with her mind and she had to break up the gnomes from fighting the raccoons under the porch once a week but other than that she was normal, honest.
Mabel Pines was normal and she could feel something roiling under her skin, impossibly large and completely unknowable, waiting to break out of her bonds. There were days where it felt like she would explode from the pressure within her, pushing against her skin and crying to be let out. Days where there was bile in her throat as she tried to hold in the fire burning within her, vision pounding and flashing between what was in front of her and what was really there. There were days where she felt herself beginning to let go, let go of her body, let go of all her bonds, because reality was B O R I N G and really could use some livening up. She could let herself go, let time die and meaning become meaningless, show this reality how to really party and
Those were the nights that she clung to her husband and buried her head in the crook of his shoulder all through the night, breathing in his scent of pine and old books and safety. Those were the days she grabbed her children to her and hugged them tight enough to squeak. They were her anchors, her reminder that she could live in the world that she could create (and oh what a world it would be just think of it! No, no-) but no one else would, least of all her family, the people who meant more to her than life itself.
Mabel Pines wasn’t normal but she did a good job pretending so and for the most part it worked.
(But she was Mabel was Chaos and could never be fully contained so sometimes she let her hair down and let go.
Oceans that for one night turned into root beer and Night of the Thirty Foot Dreambois were some of the milder shenanigans that Mabel got into.)
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Ostensibly, Dipper owned Mabel’s soul. It was the only way, he knew that, knew that nothing came free no matter how much he wished it so. He wished there wasn’t the massive ropy scar across his sister’s stomach from where he stitched together the rent in her skin, wished that he could kill every one of the bastards that had done this to Mabel over and over again for the eternity that had been forced onto him.
Wished there wasn’t a part of him that relished holding the soft pink essence that was his sister’s being and soul in his hands, relished the dark pink chains that tied her to him.
He wished lots of things and in the end, none of them mattered a god damn bit.
Dipper owned Mabel’s soul would own it into her next life, and the next, and the next one after that, a never ending chain of his sister’s lives, and it was a Fact but.
But one day he was watching TV at the Shack, Mabel out on a date with Henry and Dipper forbidden to check in on pain of death, or worse, tickles. It was odd to Dipper that even intangible he could still flick through the channels with a thought but he wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth, especially since Stan was working in the Library and not hogging the tv.
Dipper flicked to the “Used to Be About History Channel.” Honestly, most of his old ghost hunting shows had lost all of their appeal to him, now that he knew about, well, everything, but maybe if he turned his mind off enough he could reclaim some of the old spark they used to have for him.
“-and for the low low low price of 99.99 you too can name a star after someone you love!”
Dipper snorted. Stupid mortals-and yes, he knew that if Mabel or Stan had heard him think that they would never stop giving him shit for being so cliché, but darn it, it was true! You could ‘name’ a star, sure, claim ownership and buy a deed like it was piece of land but at the end of the day it was still a star. A star that had lived for billions of years before this earth and would continue to do so for billions of years afterward. Sure someone could ‘own’ a star but could they change it? Could they control it? The very idea was laughably impossible.
Along the bond he had with Mabel he felt a trill of happiness. And suddenly, the clarity of the thought striking him cold, he wondered if Mabel was humoring him, the way that a star, if it even deigned to notice a mayfly, would humor the tiny creatures that dared to lay claim to it.
Dipper turned off the TV. He wasn’t in the mood any more.
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Willow could never explain how certain emotions were certain colors yet at the same time the auras of some came only in one color palate. It made perfect sense to her but every time she tried to explain it to others, they just looked at her blankly; even Uncle Dipper occasionally cocked his head like a confused cat.
Regardless, Hank’s colors were always some shade of either blue or yellow that never mixed into green, the guy who ran the gas station a thousand variations of pink, Mr. Gleeful at the car lot icky gross puke green, and Mom’s….
Mom’s colors was like looking at soap slicks on the surface of water. She was the color of oil in water, the fade at the corners of her eyes the few times Willow had passed out. Mom was the shimmer of a fish scale, the rainbow in a bubble, a dark almost black pink that could drown the whole world. Mom was a million shifting colors that should have been too fast for Willow to read, should have broken her brain and hurt her soul and other bad shit Willow couldn’t think of at the moment.
But this was her Mom, and Mom would never, could never hurt her. So Willow saw the colors of madness and only laughed, reveling in their brightness.
(And what was Willow but a daughter of Chaos?)
–-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
One day he would be the lord of realms both real and unreal. One day he would be able to spend years and years in a meat shell with no consequence, no deal needed. One day there would be an ever expanding web of stars that helped tie him to this world, one day he would be able to rend earth and sky, one day, one day….
However, today was not that day. Today he and Mabel were only fifteen and despite his new strength, they were still way in over their heads. It should have been a piece of cake to look into reports of the dead rising outside of Oakland, shouldn't have been a big deal to take Mabel with him (what the fuck had he been thinking?) because Mabel had helped him wallop some zombies before. They were the Mystery Twins, and he needed Mabel because this was no cult, his presence wasn’t called. But that was okay because Mabel had his back and he had hers and they’d kick some nasty’s butt and be home in time for Mabel to eat dinner.
Today he was wrong and today they were going to pay the price. Ten against two was still ten against two, even if one of the two was a demon. They were both beaten and battered, Mabel more so. They had knives and spells that even Dipper hadn’t heard of, and a horde of zombies that they had had to fight through before even getting to the main cadre. He was fading from this reality, his energy draining, no deal to sustain him. He was being pulled back into the Mindscape and he couldn't deal with that now, couldn't leave Mabel to her fate, leave Mabel to a cadre of necromancers, to the grasping hands with sharp knives and a need for fresh ingredients for their spells.
Dipper began to flicker, his body fading and glitching and he threw a hand out blindly. "Mabel help!"
Her strong calloused hand, solid and real, grabbed his and the world exploded around him.
Power that they didn’t speak about, that Dipper couldn’t see began to flow into him and how on earth was Mabel still alive? How was she still human, still normal, how could she take it? He held her hand and power flowed into him and Dipper lost control of his form, he flickered through a million different shells and shapes in a matter of seconds. Power flowed into him and he felt thousands of eyes split and burst open on his wings, felt the bricks that made up his being melt away, felt himself shifting into someone something that he wouldn’t be ready to become for another eon.
“-ipper calm dow-“
Her hand squeezed his and Dipper screamed as he felt the eye on his forehead rip open. He saw what Mabel could see was seeing and it felt like dying, like his soul was getting torn into shreds and how did she handle this? His eyes saw a million billion realities all at once, the laws of the universe visible to him in a way they never had been before and how easy it could be for him (Mabel) to break them now that he did. It was too much, too much, and he shook under the weight of Mabel’s power, drowning in the aid his sister was pouring into him. Dipper tried to remember why they were doing this, what the chain of events was that had led them up to this but his mind threatened to buckle from the flood of visions that was being fed into it.
Barely, barely, Dipper managed to focus his will, managed to tear his way back from the brink. His eyes, the ever increasing amount of eyes that were bursting into being on him somehow focused on his twin. “M-Mabel. The…the necromancers-ah!” He was physical again, which meant that one of their enemies had taken the opportunity in his struggle to sneak up behind him and sink a butcher knife in his back, spearing several of his eyes in the process.
Mabel’s eyes flashed white, the white that Dipper imagined was at the beginning of the universe. She waved a hand and they were gone.
Gone wasn’t the best word to describe what his sister had just done but his mind was reeling, he was in shock, it was all he could come up with. Their bodies were gone. Their lives were gone. Their souls were gone; they hadn’t reentered the cycle to be reborn again but were utterly and completely erased, consigned to oblivion. They never had been and never would be. Timelines twisted and snarled in Dipper’s mind as each and every trace of the necromancers were erased from the lives of anyone they ever interacted with or effected.
Their enemies were gone, and Dipper held the hand of the God of Destruction, felt reality quake under his feet from the wrongness that Mabel had unleashed, the balance that had been tipped askew, and he felt infinitely more afraid than he had been at the start of this mess.
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Dipper Pines didn’t dream, not anymore. A little (well, a lot) ironic considering he was the Dreambender, Lord of the Mindscape, and had a flock of literal nightmares and dreams in sheep(ish) form.
Sometimes he napped, sometimes he slept, but neither was true sleep. It was more a conscious choice to turn off most of his brain for a set amount of time, a futile attempt to get some peace, the world both black and silent yet still intruding on his senses.
Dipper Pines did not sleep, did not dream anymore, yet here he was, sitting at a table made of peppermint with a bright pink lacquered tea set laid out before him. Here he was surrounded by waving grass, every blade a different color of the rainbow, while in the pink sky clouds shaped like unicorns and elephants and Grunkle Stan frolicked and played with one another.
There was a being in front of him that had taken the form of his sister to mock him and Dipper Pines did Not Dream yet here he was so ergo…
This was a trap.
Immediately he began to draw on his power, skin ripping and tearing, eyes upon eyes bursting open, his outer shell dissolving as his true self came out. All of his will was focused on this enemy, this creature who not only dared to trap him but had the temerity to take the form of his twin, his sister, his soul. They would know pain and suffering like none before had ever experienced and-
The being that looked like Mabel snapped and Dipper felt his power-all of it-simply vanish. The sudden loss made him almost fall out of his chair, dizzy from the lack. Absently he noticed that he was now wearing jeans and a flannel shirt, a worn leather knapsack was at his side by the chair, and his head topped with a familiar trucker hat
His soul screamed in fury at the loss, screamed and raged and wanted to take the throat of this creature who had done this to him. His soul wept in furious relief, finally free, finally normal again.
“You should close your mouth before a bird poops on your tongue.”
“I…uh…what?”
The being that looked like Mabel-
“I am Mabel goofus, stop adding extra words before my name.”
Dipper’s brain stopped working for four seconds, unable to comprehend what had just happened, before rebooting.
Mabel was wearing the sweater he had seen her in this morning, three happy circles bouncing under the words “Three Baby Medley!” Her stomach was still round and bulging with life, just like the Mabel he left in the real world. Yet her skin was rapidly flicking through every possible shade humanly possible. Scars and freckles and birthmarks flickering like comets across the sky, always in different shapes and places before disappearing again. Her hair was brown was the same shade as Henry was green was peppermint stripe was- He wrenched his gaze from her hair and to her hands pouring tea. Even they were changing, nails painted and not, fingers there and gone, gnarled with age and plump with youth
He looked into her eyes and it was like a punch in the stomach. Her eyes were the same swirling rainbow color of the universe portal, of a rift in the sky, of every time he was worried that it wasn’t Mabel by him and more-
“Are you going to drink your tea Dippin Dots or are you going to keep overthinking?”
“You’re….you’re not Mabel.”
His sister laughed. “I so am! I’m Mabel and Max and Mira and Maddie and a really ridiculous preponderance of ’M’ names!”
Why did all those names sound familiar and not all at once? But that wasn’t important. What was however…
He took a sip of tea. It was Mabel’s favorite, an herbal blend laced with tiny dried fruit. Then he looked Mabel in the eyes, difficult as it was.
“That’s not all of who you are.”
His sister nodded. “You got me there bro-bro. That’s why I brought you here. We need to talk.”
“And we couldn’t have talked at the Shack?
Mabel’s eyes had no pupils but somehow he knew she was rolling her eyes at him.
“We’ve been trying but you keep being a goofy butt.”
“We-?”
She continued on. “Mabel’s been trying to talk to you forever; we aren’t stupid you know. I see how you look at us. We know you’re scared of me sometimes-”
“No-”
“Have your doubts and suspicions. But instead of talking like a normal person you keep getting all pouty and weird and looking like a gerbil with its mouth full so-” Mabel waved her hands around, indicating the landscape around them. A few more hands popped out of her sides for extra emphasis before returning back to normal. “Here we are!” A plate appeared on the table out of thin air, loaded with cookies. “OMG DIP THEY’RE CHOCOLATE CINNAMON PECAN.” She took one and bit into it, and the air around them rumbled in a purr for a minute. “These are our favorites!”
The cookies were tempting but there were more important matters at hand. Dipper cleared his throat. “Are you…Mabel you keep saying I or we. Which is it?”
Mabel blew a raspberry. “We are me and I am us and we are two and I am one and I think you’re missing the point here.”
Dipper tried to remind himself to be patient, that he was obviously here on this being’s-
“Mabel.” The sky turned from pink to purple to dark angry blue and the clouds fled the sky. “Oh my god I am Mabel seriously will you stop?” Little streaks of red and pink and green fire began to streak down the bei-Mabel, down Mabel’s cheeks. “Please?”
His instincts yelled at him not to trust her. His instincts reminded him that Bill had been like this, had been danger and terror wrapped under an unassuming surface, had plans beyond his knowing that he couldn’t even begin to tease out. She had power beyond imagining, power even he couldn’t begin to comprehend, power he instinctually felt as a challenge, as a threat. Power that was in the form of his pregnant sister, crying into her tea. Power that was Mabel and….and…
Dipper exhaled, inhaled, and exhaled again, calming himself. “Okay. Okay. You…you are Mabel. Somehow. I don’t know how-“
His sister took the olive branch offered her. “And that’s why I brought you here. You have questions but you’re too much of a butt to just ask like normal people. So ask away. I’m not letting you out until you get this out of your system.”
Dipper nodded. “Okay.” He paused. “Can…Can I have a cookie?”
“Yes, oh my gosh silly billy, you can have a cookie. I’m not mad at you, I just want you to talk to me.”
“Okay.” He took a breath. “Okay…”
Dipper took a cookie. True to his sister’s word, it was pretty awesome. He savored the texture of the pecans, the entwined flavors of cinnamon and chocolate, and let words tumble over like stones in a river in his mind, before he let them out.
“Mabel what…” Dipper swallowed. “What are you?”
She giggled. “Finally, he asks!”
“Mabes.”
“Oh shoosh I’m allowed to have some fun so take a chill pill broseph.”
There must have been a pained look on his face because Mabel relented, and her youngoldyoungold face settled into a more serious cast.
“I’m…I’m Mabel. I’m your sister, I’m your twin. I’m Mabel, and I am Chaos, I am me and we are we. I am possibility and I am lightning, I am the spark in your brain before invention, I am the seed in the womb, I am the fire in your blood, I am the driving force of the universe. I am Life.” Mabel paused. “Personally, I always preferred ‘life’ but I guess ‘chaos’ sounds more sexier and exciting so that’s what sticks.”
Dipper choked back a laugh because of course Mabel would describe cosmic theory like that. But the implications of that little speech hit his stomach like a freight train and, and, and-
“H…H…How?”
Mabel grabbed another cookie and stuffed it into her mouth before speaking again, crumbs flying out of her mouth and onto Dipper with every word.
“Once upon a time there was a upstart demon dorito who spent all of his time plotting and planning instead of doing useful stuff like burping the alphabet or petting some snakes or making real real friends instead of fake ones-”
Dipper opened his mouth. Mabel looked at him. Dipper shut it again.
Mabel shoved another cookie into her mouth and went on. “But yeah, once upon a time a talking triangle decided that he wasn’t happy wrecking his home any more, that he wanted to play with more than one home, play and break.” Mabel’s voice, her tone, started to grow more formal. “He had a plan and for that he needed to harness the force that drives the universe, needed to twist and pervert what was not his to ever touch.”
The sky turned pitch black, the grass melting into barren bare ground, and sinister sounding whinnies echoed in the distance. There was a force behind Mabel’s words that shook Dipper to his marrow, that made him yearn for his wings so he could wrap himself up safe and sound. Anger, he realized, it was anger that dwarfed whatever temper tantrum he had like a rock being swallowed by the ocean, anger that terrified him to his soul even as it was delivered with sprays of cookie and nut bits.
Mabel looked at him, grand and terrible, and then sighed. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath. Around them the landscape calmed down, still not the happy rainbow wonderland it was when Dipper arrived but not what it was either. She reached a hand across the table, and Dipper took it. It felt a little weird to feel Mabel’s hand constantly shift under his but he ignored it.
“But yeah, I was on that like white on rice.” She snorted. “The day some smartie britches gets one up on me is….well, actually it’s never, but it’s cute to watch them try.” She took a loud slurp of her tea and went on.
“So like, that wasn’t happening but to keep myself free I needed a human form.”
Mabel waggled her fingers in Dipper’s hand. “That’s the thing about being an abstract limitless construct; no opposable thumbs.”
Dipper hadn’t felt this rudderless, hadn’t had his world view changed so completely and utterly since the day he woke up in a field to the sight of new colors all around him and fire under his skin. “So you-?”
“Formed flesh and soul into a vessel that would accept my form, planted a seed that could grow inside of a bubble.” Her free hand reached towards the tray of cookies, which now sat empty. She frowned and snapped, and the air became filled with the sweet scent of cookies as once again the tray was full. “I needed a body so that we could free ourselves though…” Mabel blushed a bit. “I wanted to see what this whole food thing was like. And clothes! And kissing; kissing is great! And then there’s peas and puppies and swimming and hand holding-”
Dipper interrupted before Mabel could launch into an hour list of all her favorite things. “What…” His voice cracked but he forced himself to go on. “What happens…after?”
“Oh Dip…” Mabel squeezed his hand. “We’ll go our separate ways. I’ll go back to being nothing until the next time someone pulls this kind of crazy stunt and I need to put on a meat suit again. And Mabel will be Luis will be Maple will be Bentley will be a million billion other people who aren’t your sister but are your sister and most of them will be absolutely wonderful.”
“Most?”
Mabel shrugged. “Pobody’s nerfect.”
“Mabel!”
“Heh, did you see what I did there?”
He wanted to tell Mabel to be serious, to treat these revelations with the gravity they deserved but… But then that wouldn’t be his sister. This was her way and-his heart clenched- he only had so long with her.
“I probably should have asked you about this earlier,” Dipper admitted, taking another cookie.
“Yeah probably,” Mabel agreed. “But you’ve had a lot on your plate, like eating pancakes and napping with Henry and getting used to an entirely new plane of existence.”
A laugh tore out of Dipper’s throat without meaning to. “Yeah.” He stood up. “Awkward sibling hug?”
Mabel beamed-literally-and got up, waddling around the table to Dipper’s side.
“Awkward sibling hug!” She grabbed on to him and in the swell of her stomach he still somehow felt one two three little stars. They held the hug until Dipper broke away. “Well I’ve learned a lot today but I think it’s time to wake up so-”
Mabel sat back down, pink lacquered metal transforming into a massive orange La-Z-Boy. She relaxed into the folds of cushion and cloth with a content sigh, and folded her hands over her bulging stomach. “We aren’t done yet Dipper.”
A trickle of unease crept down Dipper’s spine. “What do you mean?”
His chair turned into a blue and yellow striped recliner. “You got some other bug up your butt Dippin Dots.”
An edge crept into his voice. “I’m ready to go now, Mabel.”
“I think you should sit down.”
“Mabel, do you really think you can hold me here forever? I’m Alc-“
Mabel’s eyes flashed, switching from swirling galaxies to bright blinding white. “Sit. Down.”
Dipper’s legs gave out from under him and he landed with a thud into the waiting recliner. The arms stretched out and gently but firmly wrapped around him, trapping him in the squishiness. He tried to wiggle out but the arms only held him tighter. Dipper glared at Mabel.
“Mabel! What gives?”
Mabel patted her stomach, and burped out a soap slick bubble. It drifted over and splashed onto Dipper’s face, and for a second the world looked like a day-glo cubist painting, before going back to normal again.
“Sorry bout that. But no, I told you, you’re not going anywhere until you get everything off your chest and you stop looking like a squirrel with too many nuts in its mouth-“
“I do not look like that!”
Mabel giggled. “Your cheeks are puffing up even now!” The good cheer drained from her face and her hair stayed grey and white a second longer before flickering through to the next color again. “But seriously Dipper, there’s something else you need to let out. We can see it bubbling under your skin and flying in your mind. There’s something else in your eyes when you look at us and we want you to tell me please.”
“Mabel can we just drop it? Please?” How did she know, how could she tell, he was doing his best to hide it-
Around Mabel, the chair turned from orange to deep blue, the grass underneath her chair wilting and fading into grey.
“I don’t want this to poison our relationship any more. It’s been lurking here and there since the Transcendence and I can tell. There is something about me that bothers you, something that bothers you even though you know who I am.” She sniffled and the sky turned black, rubbed her eyes with her hands and all around them large cracks began to appear in the ground. “Please. Dipper. Just tell me. I trust you and I just… why won’t you trust me?”
It felt like he had been stabbed in the chest, claws in his soul tearing him in two. “That’s not fair Mabel,” he said quietly.
“I know. But that’s how I feel. You’re keeping something from me and I tried my best to ignore it but it’s like….it’s like a weight that’s pulling us down and it hurts.“
“I…Mabel I don’t know what to say, how to explain.”
“That’s okay, just try.”
“It’s not that easy for me!”
The sky blazed furious red for a second and Mabel’s hands clenched. “Dipper, I’m just asking you for one thing please-”
“Can’t we just drop it? Pretend everything is fine?”
Now her chair was turning bright cherry red as well. Mabel’s hands left her stomach, dug into the arms of the recliner.
“No! No I can’t! No we can’t! I’ve been pretending everything has been fine for fifteen years now and I’m tired of it! I’ve been here for you, I’ve told you everything, and, and….I don’t mind that, I’m your sister, I’d do it all over again but…but-Dipper I’m scared and I’m tired and you promised me we wouldn’t get stupid, that you wouldn’t be so stupid!”
The words hit Dipper like a punch in the stomach. “How can you say that Mabel?”
One minute Mabel was sitting and the next she was looming over him, hair floating in a cloud around her head, her features flickering and changing faster and faster until it was almost like he was looking at a blur rather than his sister. She was blazing with life and fury and it shook him to his bones.
“Okay. You know why I wanted to talk? Because I see how you look at me, how scared you are when you look at me sometimes. And I want to trust you and I do trust you but then you look at me like-”
A sob tore out of her throat. “You look at me like a threat like an enemy-”
“No I don’t-”
Mabel blazed into a pillar of flame. “SHUT UP AND LISTEN!” He felt his eyebrows singe off of his face as the pillar of fire died down and melted back into the form of his sister.
“You look at me,” she continued, an edge in her voice, “like you’re thinking about how you might need to take me down one day. I want to trust you, I want to know I have your back and you have mine but when you look at me like that I can’t. And I’m so scared we will fight, really fight and before the kids I’d have let you win but now, I’m scared that I’ll-”
“Hey, hey Mabel it’s okay,” Dipper soothed. “Not that it would come to that but if it ever did you wouldn’t be able to actually hurt hurt me I promise-”
Something with the weight of eternity rose up from the depths in Mabel’s eyes and Dipper remembered too late that this wasn’t just Mabel he was talking to here. She laid a hand on his chest.
“Oh? Can’t I?” Mabel asked gently. Her hand pressed down slightly and it felt like his body, his being, his soul was being sand blasted away. Everything he ever was and would be was being dissolved, every trace of him wiped from the universe. This was death in its most final form, a complete sundering from the cycle, consignment to oblivion.
Then she lifted her hand and the feeling was gone. He didn’t need to breathe in the Mindscape but Dipper sucked in massive breaths of air anyway, trying to steady himself.
“Mabel…I don’t want to hurt you,” he said finally.
“I know. But…”
That word hung in the air, heavy and leaden.
“I.” He stopped, swallowed to soothe a throat gone dry, tried again.
“I just. Mabel, I…I can’t see what you are. You hide yourself so perfectly and I can’t see it until you let me and then you’re just blinding and I’m…I…” He closed his eyes, unable to look at his sister any more. “It does scare me, you’re right. You scare me because I know there’s more to you than meets my eyes but I can’t tell and I can see everything and I can’t see this and… If… If I’m not the smart guy, the all-seeing guy, then who am I?”
“That’s not everything,” Mabel said gently. His chest seized up. He didn’t want to tell her, he didn’t want to admit that he was that petty, that terrible that-
“Dude. Don’t be a goof. I just want the truth. I’d rather you tell me than be a potato about it. Please?”
Dipper was silent for another minute, two, three, but this time Mabel didn’t push it, letting him sit until he was ready.
“This wasn’t supposed to happen to you,” he finally said, his voice barely above a whisper. “It’s bad enough that I’m who I am now. You should have been normal. You should have been fine.”
“I am. I am, I promise.”
He looked down at his lap, unable to look Mabel in the eyes. “And… and I’m jealous. I’m jealous and its terrible because I shouldn’t be but I am. I’m going to keep on living and you’ll get to die and it isn’t fair. I need you to offer me something to be here and you can blink and suddenly snadgers are a thing that have always existed and it isn’t fair.”
The arms wrapped around him let go, and the recliner seamlessly turned into a replica of the old ratty couch that Grunkle Stan had on the porch at the Shack. Mabel, with eyes like galaxies and who was flickering fast enough that Dipper was starting to worry that she would burn herself out, joined him on the couch. She curled up next to him on the couch and laid her head against his shoulder. Her stomach bumped into him and somehow the kids were here with them because he felt one-two-three little stars press against the wall of Mabel’s tummy to make contact with him. They gave him the courage to go on.
“I…I just. I’m sorry Mabel but I’m jealous and I’m trying not to be but it’s hard, it’s so fucking hard. You can do whatever you want and you get none of the consequences and my mouth waters when I smell blood and not only that but you look normal and I know you’re not but I can’t tell and I’m confused and I’m scared and you’re my sister and and-“ He was crying now and Dipper never cried and demons certainly never cried but here in the world his sister created, with Mabel stroking his hair, he could let himself cry.
“I could make you normal right now, you know,” Mabel said in a quiet, choked voice. “I could take away your wings and fangs, take away the taste of blood in your mouth and you’d miss it-don’t lie to me you would miss it- but you’d be normal again and you’d die and you’d be happy…”
Dipper felt his heart stop.
“I could do that but-“ Galaxy studded eyes turned away from him, shuttered and dark. “But we need the you you are now. Mabel needs you. Henry will need you about ten or fifteen years from now. I need you to birth the universe that will come-“
“Uh, what?”
Mabel waved a hand. “Don’t worry you’ll get it eventually.”
She leaned into Dipper a little more.
“You know why you can’t see me, the true me? Why I don’t do what I like?”
“Uh-?”
Mabel sighed. “Dipper, as much as you would like to think otherwise, even as a demon you are bound by the laws of this reality. You are, and I don’t want to sound like a poop, you’re rules and logic masquerading as chaos. It’s cute and you do a good job at it but at the end of the day you’re just imitating the real thing.”
Dipper winced.
“I’m sorry Dipper but it’s the truth. You’re still of this reality, however much you think otherwise and I’m… I’m what makes the universe move, I’m the force that starts hearts and lungs, plants to sprout, fish to rain. There is nothing that can tell me what I can or cannot do. You can’t see me because your eyes can’t see where my true self is, your mind can’t comprehend it. I’m not trying to hide from you, I promise. It just happens.
She reached over and patted his hand. “Here’s the thing though. I could make you normal again and I could do whatever I want but…” Mabel leaned her head against the back of the couch. “I can’t let too much of myself out or else things get weird.”
Dipper smiled despite of himself. “Weird isn’t bad Mabel. Trust me.”
“No like, right before the Transcendence weird. Like me in the sky blazing weird.”
“Oh.” The implication of what Mabel had said sunk in. “Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Wow. Like-“
“-I know.”
They sat in silence for a moment. Dipper reached for Mabel’s hand and took it into his own.
“That still freaks me out a bit-“
Mabel coughed.
“Okay, a lot. But-“
Dipper squeezed her hand.
“Mabel, I can’t promise you that…that my feelings are going to go away.”
She giggled. “Silly! I would never want you to promise that! I just…you know what you can promise?”
“What?
“Promise me that you’ll tell me what’s bothering you instead of floundering in the dark like a big dorkus. You scared me Dipper.”
“I promise.” He looked up at the sky which was returning back to its normal pink, the clouds coming in from the edges to play again. “And…I promise that you have nothing to fear from me. I’m scared, I’m scared of you, I’m scared for you but I do trust you. Maybe I haven’t done a good enough job of showing that, a good enough job of supporting you. But I’ll try and be better from now on.”
Dipper bumped his head against Mabel’s.
“I’d never hurt you. And I’d never let you hurt yourself to save me. I love you Mabel.”
Flaming tears dripped down Mabel’s face, shining every color of the rainbow as they tracked down her cheeks.
“I love you too Dipper.”
In the sky overhead, one two three suns raised in the sky, before getting bored and beginning to chase each other around. A cloud giraffe clopped down and began to eat at the rainbow grass. Trees were bursting into existence, pines and maples and apple trees all made of cotton candy and licorice. His vest was snug and warm against him and he could feel one-two-three little stars bumping against his consciousness, everything right in their world.
“Should I wake us up now?”
Dipper smiled. “Can you give me another five minutes?”