Chapter Text
“Give me that Journal!”
“Never!”
Dipper picked himself up off the ground, looking at the double Wendy’s fighting. Each one had a grip on the Journal, and were rolling over each other. He had only looked away for a moment, and yet he already had completely lost track of who was who. He saw the two get to their feet, playing tug of war with the book.
“Give it back, it belongs to Dipper!” one of the Wendy’s shouted, before turning to the boy. “Hit her with the ax!”
Dipper looked down at his hand, realizing he was still holding Wendy’s ax. He looked back up at the two, eyes darting back and forth between them.
“Don’t listen to her, Dipper!” the other Wendy shouted.
“She’s the Shapeshifter!” the first yelled.
Dipper kept looking between them. He couldn’t tell which was which, and he couldn’t get this wrong. How could he-? Wait. The Wendy on his right staggered. Her knee, the injured knee! Dipper looked at the other Wendy. Sure enough, that Wendy was putting all her weight on her supposedly injured knee. Of course! The Shapeshifter couldn’t see the wound, he didn’t know Wendy’s knee had been cut! That meant the one on the left…
“Take this!” Dipper shouted as he threw the ax at the Wendy on his right.
The Wendy he’d thrown the ax at suddenly got a malicious smile, and Dipper’s blood ran cold.
That Wendy broke their stalemate, grabbed the ax out of the air, and with inhuman speed, swung the ax right into the other Wendy’s gut.
The Wendy holding the ax began laughing in a deep, slightly distorted voice that definitely wasn’t the redhead’s as she pulled the ax out of her opponent’s stomach. To Dipper’s horror, bright red blood began gushing out of the wound.
The Shapeshifter vanished from Dipper’s mind as he took a step forward, then another. He saw Wendy, his best friend, the girl that he’d fallen in love with, clutching her stomach, trying in vain to close the gash.
“... Wendy?” Dipper spoke, barely able to muster the words.
Wendy’s gaze fell on him, but she didn’t see him. She stared past Dipper, past everything, as she felt her blood, her heat, her life itself all flow out of her. She couldn’t understand what had happened to her, what was still happening. She just limply held her wound, stared at nothing, and felt her body grow frail and cold.
Dipper watched, disbelieving as his best friend fell to the ground in front of him, dead.
“No…”
The boy stumbled back, as though the sight was physically pushing back. Dipper felt sick. His skin was clammy and his whole body was trembling.
“It can’t be…”
It was like all Dipper could do was step back. As though he could somehow walk away from the horror he’d seen. The horror that he had allowed to happen.
‘How could I have gotten it wrong? ’ Dipper thought, his desperate mind running in circles. ‘I couldn’t have been wrong. I threw it at Wendy. I threw it at Wendy. I know I did. Why wasn’t it her? It was her. It had to have been. She was going to catch it. Why didn’t she catch it? It was her. It had to be. I know that was her. How was it-? ’
Dipper suddenly realized something. He was still alive. He had been out of it for long enough that he should be dead. The Shapeshifter had plenty of time to attack him. Dipper should have been dead. Wendy should have been the one to catch the ax. None of this made any sense.
Unless…?
“This…” Dipper said. “This isn’t real.”
“Is that so?”
Dipper froze. There was a familiar cold air behind him where the voice came from. Slowly, Dipper forced himself to turn around. He was right next to the cryo tubes. When had he gotten so close? What would he see in the tube?
As it turned out, he saw himself.
“You think this isn’t real?” asked the Shapeshifter taking Dipper’s form. “That it’s only a bad dream?”
Dipper watched as his double laughed. The Shapeshifter was slowly being frozen in place, but it didn’t stop Dipper’s dark reflection from pressing up against the glass and giving a sadistic smile.
“Face it, kid,” the Shapes-
Dipper was suddenly bombarded with images of Mabel, dead, slumped over with blood flowing from her nose and staining her shirt.
-hifter said. “You can’t even protect your loved ones.”
Despite not being the one in the cryo tube, Dipper felt like he was the one being encased in ice. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe.
“So what’s the difference between this dream and reality!?”
“SHUT UP!!!”
Dipper did the only thing he could. The only thing he ever did. He threw a punch right at the Shapeshifter’s face. It didn’t matter that there was glass in the way. He just needed to make him stop talking.
When the punch hit the glass, it cracked. Pieces fell apart, the whole thing slowly breaking down. Dipper felt only a moment of relief before he noticed something. The glass no longer seemed like part of the cryo tube. Instead of being curved and see through it was flat, and almost looked like…
Dipper’s eye widened.
Like a mirror.
As more glass chipped and fell away, Dipper felt one of his eyes go dark. As he stood there, trying to process the horrors that he had seen, he got one last one.
Dipper was still as a statue as his right eye shattered like the glass he had punched, the cracks spreading out from there.
… ekaW pu…
Dipper shot up. He gripped his face as the tears started welling in his eyes. His heart was racing faster than it ever had after a track meet. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t stop trembling.
As Dipper sat there on his bed in the Mystery Shack attic, he experienced true terror.
Everything could have gone so wrong. He was certain at the time that he’d figured it all out. After all, he was “the smart one” of the group. Of course he’d be able to tell his best friend apart from an evil Shapeshifter impersonating her, right?
But what if he had been wrong? What if Wendy had… gotten hurt? It would have been his fault. He’d freeze up and die, and then Mabel and Soos would have been…
Somewhere along the line, Dipper had become the leader of their group. He was the one who did all the investigating, he spearheaded the missions, he was arguably the strongest out of them. Really, he should have expected that he would become the de facto leader. It was obvious in hindsight.
Dipper let out a shuddering sob.
Why? Why did he have to be the leader? He was just a kid. Leaders were responsible not just for themselves, but for their allies. Leaders held the lives of their friends in their hands. Dipper had held that responsibility when they went into the bunker. He knew it would be dangerous. He knew that they could all get hurt, or worse. And he put everyone in danger because he was too scared to admit his crush to Wendy. What kind of a leader does that?
Dipper wiped his eyes, slowly getting his heart rate down. He gripped his sheets and aggressively laid back down, as if he could force himself to go into a peaceful sleep.
Evidently, his enthusiastic slamming of his head onto his pillow created loud enough rustling to stir Mabel. She blinked her bleary eyes, looking around to see what had caused the noise. She saw her brother, laying in his bed on the other side of the room, wrapped up in his blankets like a burrito. She gained a sad frown. Dipper only ever slept like that for one reason.
“Dipper,” she spoke quietly, “are you alright?”
The bundle of sheets hardly moved. “I’m fine.”
Mabel didn’t believe him. “You had a nightmare?”
“No.”
“Do you want me to bring you some warm milk?”
“NO.”
Mabel gave him a moment. “... Hugs?”
“... yes.”
Soon Mabel was on Dipper’s bed, sitting next to her brother still wrapped up like a blanket burrito. She wrapped him in a big hug, and Dipper sniffled. As the fear from the nightmare passed, Dipper took comfort in reality. Things could have gone very wrong, but they didn’t. Wendy was fine. Mabel was fine. Soos was… well, Soos.
For the first time that night, Dipper breathed easy.
He was okay too. They were all fine. They all got out of there alive. In fact, Dipper supposed that he got them all out of there alive. After all, like it or not, he was their leader.
Mabel smiled, feeling her brother relax. “There, there, you big cry baby.”
Dipper sniffled again. “Don’t call me a cry baby…”
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