Chapter Text

Dipper was exceptionally bored.

Why his parents decided a sudden trip to Seattle would be fun, he had no idea.

He and his twin sister, Mabel, sat in the back of their family's car. They were both occupied with their separate things. Mabel, sitting behind the driver's seat, was texting her friends on the smartphone she got for their birthday last year. She had been whining the entire trip about missing them for two whole weeks while their family was on vacation.

Dipper, on the other hand, was staring out the window, his elbow propping up his head as he watched tall pine trees whip by them. They had been driving through Oregon for a few hours now. Dipper couldn't help but admire the beautiful scenery of the Oregon forest. He couldn't help but wonder what kind of woodland creatures lurked there. Still, he was bored.

He decided that he could possibly read an e-book on the phone he had also gotten for their most recent birthday, the screen already cracked despite that. He pulled it out, only just realizing how sweaty his hands were.

"Ugh!" he groaned, before yelling to his parents, "Hey, can we turn down the temperature in here? It's super hot!"

"Well you are wearing a trapper hat and a jacket in June, kid," his father remarked, turning his head to look at Dipper from the driver's seat.

Dipper rolled his eyes, tore off his hat, then struggled to remove his jacket. Mabel had focused her attention on him while he did.

"I've been meaning to ask you where you got that hat," she told him. "I was just thinking about it the other day."

Dipper looked down at the hat, suddenly just as confused as his sister.

"Uh," he started. "I actually don’t remember."

"Well, you wear it all the time," his mother called from the seat in front of him, "so it must be important!"

"Yeah..." he said, his voice trailing off as he stared down at it. "Eh, I probably just got it at a thrift store or something."

 It still bugged him, but after a bit, he decided to disregard it, and turned his head back towards the window. It was dark outside, which wasn't a surprise considering they had been driving all day. Ahead of them, they were just about to enter a mountain pass. He guessed they were about to lose service, and it was confirmed when—

"Poop!" Mabel remarked from next to him. "No more service!"

"Well, I guess you'll have to find another way to entertain yourself!" their father teased from his seat. "Look out the window! Count the trees or something!"

"Count the trees?" Mabel groaned in disbelief.

"Your father's right! You kids have been spending way too much time on your devices lately!" their mother chimed in. "That's what we get for keeping you two cooped up at home the last few summers. We should have sent you off to a camp or something."

"Hey! I've been looking out the window, like, this whole time!" Dipper argued, gesturing to the window next to him.

"How about you watch for animals for me, Mabel," their dad said, looking in his rear view mirror at her. "It's dark and I'm getting tired, so I won't be able to—"

"Honey!" their mom suddenly shrieked. "Moose!"

Their dad finally looked ahead of him. Mabel and Dipper leaned into the middle to see a huge moose standing in the middle of the road. If they ran into it, the car would surely be more damaged than the moose. 

Their dad shouted and tried to slam on his brakes and swerve the car at the same time. In two seconds flat, the car had flung off the road and was rolling over itself. Dipper couldn't tell what was happening as the car broke into terrified screams and his head was whipping around with the car's endless motion. Broken glass was flying and so were items that hadn’t been secured. The world was literally spinning and causing an uneasy dizziness. Everything was going so fast, Dipper couldn’t process any of it.

It was pure chaos.

Finally, the car came to a stop. It had completely flipped over, and when Dipper slowly opened his eyes, panting and clutching his seatbelt, he was hanging upside down.

He groaned, lightheaded, and slowly turned to look at Mabel. She was wide-eyed and her head spun when she noticed Dipper looking at her.

"Kids—" they heard their mom groan quietly. Dipper looked to the front of the car, where the airbags had gone off. His dad was seemingly unconscious and his mom looked close to it.

"Mom!" the kids screamed in sync.

"You two—" she coughed "need to go, ugh, get help —"

"But you and Dad are—!" Dipper started.

"Don't worry about us," she assured, coughing again. "Go to the road, or— cough —find a house with a phone."

The twins struggled to safely remove their seatbelts without falling on their heads as they obeyed and argued with their mother at the same time.

"But, Mom," Mabel tried again once the two of them were safely unbuckled, "We can't just leave you here!"

"It'll be worse for all of us if you don't," she tried reasoning. "Just go! "

The two finally listened and continued struggling to crawl out the broken windows. Once they were finally out, they both sprung themselves to their feet.

Dipper leaned back on the car for a split second, breathing hard and heavy, feeling lightheaded. He spotted his hat and jacket on the ground, tugged them on as he felt a light wind brush over him, and then ran to the other side of the car where he saw Mabel already dashing up the hill to the road.

Quickly, he sprinted after her, ignoring his pounding headache and faltering balance. His brain was screaming at him to 'hurry, his parents were dying'. 

When he finally made it up to the road their car had just been on, he found Mabel paused and panting, looking for a way to go.

"Look!" Dipper pointed to a road branching off from the main highway. "There's probably houses or something over there!"

"Come on!" Mabel urged, and Dipper could tell she sounded worried. The two sprinted to the off-shooting road, the late night chill settling eerily over them.

"There's lights up ahead!" Mabel called from ahead of him. "I think it's a town!"

Dipper tried to breathe out a confirmation that he heard her, but he was quickly losing his breath and becoming dizzier, falling farther behind her. He paused, only shortly, to clutch a part of his forehead that was throbbing particularly hard, only to bring his hand down to find it covered in blood.

He almost yelled for Mabel to stop right then, but he decided it was unimportant. The faster they found a phone or hospital, the faster he could be helped along with his parents.

So instead he called, "Mabel! Wait up!"

She didn't hear him, so he sped up. They passed right under two towering cliffs and onto a road with trees towering over them. Dipper noticed a sign they passed that led to another off-shooting road, but Mabel was following the lights, and those were still up ahead.

The further they ran, and the more tired Dipper became, the more civilization seemed to reach them. Lamp posts began to sprout up, a curb began to form.

Then suddenly, they were in a town. 

An eerily quiet town.

The first thing Dipper noticed was how different it was to where they lived in California. In Piedmont, no matter if the sun went to sleep, the streets never did. However, this town seemed to be completely asleep during the night. It was eerily quiet.

"There's a hospital sign leading this way!" Mabel called behind her again. Dipper lifted his head to see her pointing at a sign at least 50 feet ahead of him. Mabel kept sprinting relentlessly ahead as Dipper was tempted to call to her about how he was about to pass out.

He finally turned the corner to see her again, still far ahead.

But there was the hospital.

It was smaller than a Californian hospital, but had a big, bright sign shining, "24 Hour Emergency Room".

He was relieved to see it, and forced himself to drag on just until the end of the road.

Watching Mabel ahead of him, he saw a group of kids that looked just older than he and Mabel emerge from a small alleyway. Mabel clearly wasn't paying attention, and ran right into one who was wearing a backwards cap. His sister didn't pay the person a second glance and just kept sprinting.

Dipper shortly came up on them as they were all yelling at Mabel, dodged them, and yelled as he ran past, "Sorry!"

He focused back ahead of him before yelling at Mabel scoldingly, "Mabel! Slow down!"

She ignored him, of course, and before he knew it, she was bursting into the doors of the small hospital. He followed shortly behind.

"Hi! How can I help you kids—" the secretary at the front desk started before being interrupted.

"Our Dad crashed the car and our parents are dying!" Mabel yelled, slamming her hands down on the front desk as Dipper quickly approached.

"Woah! Woah!" the secretary urged in a comforting tone. "Slow down, sweetie! Where are they?"

"Off the road just outside of town!" Mabel explained in a very concerned tone.

Dipper, on the other hand, clutched his head again, beginning to sway. He leaned on the desk with his free hand, breathing hard.

"Alright, we can send an ambulance to go look for them," the woman told Mabel, still in a comforting tone, as she typed something into the computer in front of her. Dipper's focus was beginning to fade in and out.

"We can go, too!" Mabel tried, and Dipper wanted to agree but was afraid he would pass out. "We can help the ambulance people find where the car crashed faster!"

"Sweetie, I think we need to get your brother into a room quick," the woman said, Mabel finally giving her brother attention.

"Oh my gosh! Dipper!" she shrieked when she noticed the blood dripping down his face.

"No, no," Dipper breathed, slurring his words together. "I'm— I'm fine..."

The lady at the desk suddenly pressed a button to a microphone on her desk.

"We need an ambulance stat and three beds prepared," she said into it. "If I could get a nurse to the front, that'd be great!"

"Is there anything else you can tell me?" the lady asked, and Dipper could feel himself drifting out of consciousness. "Medical-wise?"

"My brother takes daily medications—"

And then Dipper blacked out.

_____________________________

He woke up again not too much later. 

There was a nurse still in the room patching him up, but he was glad to see that there were no awful IVs connected to him or all-out medical equipment. Just bandages and a small, simple heart rate monitor.

Dipper knew he wasn't out for too long because the nurse told him that his sister and the ambulance were still out getting his parents. The nurse also informed him that he only had a few cuts and passed out because of the exhaustion, motion sickness, and slight blood loss combined.

After the nurse finished patching him up, she handed him his hat and jacket and told him he was free to wait outside for his family. He collected his items, adorned them, and stepped outside the room right as a few paramedics were rushing past him pushing rolling beds.

He winced as he saw his parents laying on them, oxygen tubes hooked up to their faces and doctors screaming orders at nurses to collect items and such. His parents were both out cold, cuts and blood covering them from head to toe.

Mabel came running by not long after, looking as concerned as Dipper felt.

"You're okay?" she asked, running up to him.

"Yeah," he said bluntly. "I told you I was fine."

"Yeah, and then you proceeded to pass out right in front of me!" she retorted, continuing to speed walk past him and down the hallway.

"The nurse said I was fine," he explained, following after her. "She said it was a combination of exhaustion, dizziness, and minor blood loss. Also known as: nothing too serious."

"Okay, whatever," Mabel grunted.

The two tried to follow the doctors and nurses to where they had taken the twins' parents, but a nurse stopped them, telling them that they couldn't enter the procedure room and to wait outside. Mabel groaned and trudged over to a nearby chair, sitting down with her legs and arms crossed, bouncing her foot nervously up and down.

"How long were you guys out there?" Dipper asked slowly, taking a seat next to his sister.

"I couldn't say," she responded. "The paramedics had to get Mom and Dad out of the car. It didn't look that easy."

Dipper nodded, slowly turning to look away from Mabel. He tried to think of what he could say to get her mind off this.

"What happened to the car, then?" he asked, before adding, "Like, did they leave it there with all the stuff?"

"Oh yeah," Mabel remarked, clearly having remembered something. "Apparently the hospital can't send Mom and Dad to a different hospital — for some reason — and they have to at least keep them overnight. The car is also wrecked, but not totaled so it can be fixed. So the hospital is setting us up at a nearby bed and breakfast. They're getting all our luggage there and then sending our car off to the shop."

"Wow," Dipper breathed. "That's gonna be a really expensive bill." 

"Well, it might not be too bad—"

"Mabel, our parents are staying in the hospital, being treated for an unknown amount of time, I was treated for, we are staying — again for an unknown amount of time — at a hotel, and our car is being fixed up!" Dipper retorted. "There is no way that's not gonna be too bad!"

"I figure Mom and Dad wouldn't care as long as we're safe," Mabel tried.

"Speaking of which, the hospital doesn't care if we are completely unattended until our parents are released?" Dipper asked, a little suspicious. "Like, they didn't even try to contact any family or anything?"

"They didn't ask about emergency contacts," Mabel responded. "They probably will! They were probably just busy with getting our parents to safety!"

"You're probably right," Dipper said, disregarding it.

"Like I always am."

"Whatever you say—"

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"Nothing."

Dipper assumed the conversation stopped there. The two fell into silence, Mabel pulling out her phone to busy herself. Dipper had a thought about how he was glad it didn't get destroyed during the crash, then wondered where his phone had ended up.

"Hey! I have service!" Mabel remarked, typing quickly on her screen. "Do you think any of my friends would still be up?"

Dipper flipped over his wrist to check his watch.

2:47 AM

"Only if they're insane," he said, crossing his arms and leaning back in his chair, only just realizing how tired he was. He closed his eyes, thinking maybe he could get just a minute or two of sleep.

"Ha!" Mabel chimed suddenly from beside him, making him jump. "Addie is still awake!"

"I literally do not care," Dipper groaned, his eyes still shut.

He thought maybe that was the end of it. Stupidly. Right as he became comfortable again, he heard quick footsteps treading down the hallway, seemingly getting closer to him and Mabel.

He cracked open his eyes and brought his legs closer to him so they weren't stretching into the hallway. Beside him, Mabel didn't even look up from her phone.

The person coming towards them was a taller girl. She looked just a bit older than the twins, with fiery, red hair pulled into a loose, messy bun and a blue and white cap fitted backwards on her head.

Oh crap, Dipper thought to himself, sitting up straighter and uncrossing his arms. That’s the person Mabel ran into.

"Pst! Mabel!" he hissed at her, grabbing her attention. "I think you pissed someone off!"

"What? What are you talking about?" she asked, putting her phone down.

"The person you totally ran into is coming towards us!" he hissed again, hoping that he was wrong and the girl was just here visiting a patient or something.

"Oh…”

She then proceeded to lean forward and look past Dipper and at the girl. Dipper, on the other hand, was trying his best to not even let the girl see his face. That is, until—

"What the heck are you two doing here?" he heard her ask them, slightly scoldingly but almost like she was teasing at the same time.

Dipper slowly turned, confusion definitely evident on his face. She had stopped, sure enough, right in front of the twins, her hands on her hips as if she was a mother grounding her misbehaving children.

"Listen lady, I'm sorry I ran into you, but I was in a rush because our parents were dying in a car accident and we needed to get to the hospital—" Mabel started, before being cut off.

"Oh, cut it out, Mabel!" the girl said like she had known Mabel forever, when she was, in fact, a complete stranger to the twins. At least, to Dipper she was. "You two don't contact anyone for two whole years and now you come running into town in the middle of the night pretending you don't know me?"

Dipper furrowed his eyebrows, completely lost. He looked over at Mabel, giving her a look that said, 'do you have any idea what this weirdo is on about?'.

When Mabel finally looked back at him, he mouthed 'Do you know her?', wondering if this was a super obscure person that Mabel had talked to one time and became best friends with. Mabel shook her head slowly at him, clearly just as confused as he was.

"Wait," the girl said hesitantly. "You two are Dipper and Mabel Pines, right?"

Dipper whipped his head around to look at her, then Mabel, then back at her. At this point he was just freaked out, because, seriously? What was going on?

"Uh," Mabel started, again confused. "Yes?"

"Oh good! I thought for a second that I just started yelling at some random kids!" the girl laughed, clutching her heart to feign relief.

"I'm sorry," Dipper finally spoke up. "Do we know you?"

The girl's face fell, before she nervously smiled and laughed.

"Uh, you're joking, right?" she asked, sounding almost offended.

The twins stared blankly at her, then her smile completely fell.

"It's me, guys!" she went on, gesturing to herself. "Wendy? Wendy Corduroy?"

"It's not," Mabel started as Dipper shook his head along with her, "It's not ringin' a bell, dude."

"You can't be serious," Wendy went on, getting seemingly frustrated. "You guys spent an entire summer here with me! I was at your 13th birthday party! Dipper is wearing my hat!"

"Psh, that's crazy talk!" Mabel laughed, waving her hand to emphasize her words. "We have never been away from home for summer break! In fact, our parents were just complaining about how they never get us out of the house!"

"Yeah, that's why they were taking us to camp in a cabin in Seattle," Dipper groaned as he added on.

"Oh really, then what about your hat, Dipper?" Wendy pressed further. "At the end of the summer, you and I switched hats! The one I have on right now is yours and the one you're wearing is mine!"

Dipper stared down in contemplation. This girl — Wendy — sounded really convincing, except that Dipper had no memory of her or trading hats at the end of a summer vacation. The way she was talking made it sound like she had been best friends with Dipper, which was even weirder.

Dipper has never had good friends.

"Nah, we were just talking about this!" Mabel chimed as Dipper stared, brows furrowed, at the tile floor. "Dipper said he got that hat at a thrift store or something!"

"No! He didn't!" Wendy insisted, clearly getting more frustrated. And slightly concerned the way Dipper interpreted it. "Come on , you guys! You have to remember me!"

"Alright, listen you—!" Mabel started, getting defensive, before her phone started ringing.

Dipper leaned over to look at the caller ID. It was Abbie. Or Annie. Or whatever her name was. Dipper rolled his eyes and slouched in his chair, crossing his arms.

"If you'll excuse me," Mabel shot at Wendy, non-verbally telling her to leave, " I have to take this!"

Wendy made a huffy noise before crossing her arms and walking off towards the main entrance of the hospital. Dipper caught a quick glance of the look on her face. She looked confused with a mix of frustration and concern. It made Dipper wonder what in the world was going on.

He stared back down at the tile, trying to tune out Mabel's conversation with her snotty friend, the gears turning in his head.

What is this place?

Chapter Text

“Yeah, so we wrecked the car and now I’m stuck in this weird town!” Mabel chatted away to her friend on the phone, Dipper trying his hardest not to torture himself with listening to their conversation. “Yeah, no! My parents are in the emergency room right now! We don’t know how long they’ll be out!”

“Oh my God!” Dipper heard Mabel’s friend say. “That must be awful being stuck with your brother! I would literally never want to be alone in the same room as him for more than two seconds!”

“Haha, yeah!” Mabel agreed, laughing.

Dipper flinched at those words. He was getting used to it, though. Mabel progressively becoming friends with people who hated him more and more. Snidey comments about how lame he was.

He turned away from Mabel, resting his elbow on the arm of his chair and propping up his head with his hand. He focused even more on tuning out Mabel’s conversation. His mind, evidently, drew back to Wendy, who had left just moments ago.

He thought back to the hat she was wearing that she claimed was his. Blue and white with a blue tree on the front of it. Well, back, considering she was wearing it backwards. He did used to wear a cap similar to that one before he switched to his trapper hat. But that hat had been brown with a star on it.

Then he thought back to how genuine she seemed. She somehow knew the twins. Whether Dipper and Mabel liked it or not. It might’ve been internet stalking or evil spirits. Who knows? Maybe Wendy did just genuinely meet the twins at some point and Dipper and Mabel couldn’t remember it.

Whatever it was, Dipper was going to figure it out.

For now, though, in the present, a lady from down the hall was calling to the twins.

Dipper, who was already staring in that direction, focused on her. She was a police officer and looked quite young, meaning she was probably inexperienced.

“Good evening, you two,” she said as she approached. Mabel said a quick farewell to her friend before also turning her attention to the officer. “I am your police escort. I will be taking you to where you’re staying tonight!”

“Oh great!” Mabel exclaimed as she stood from her chair and stretched. “I am pooped !”

“We’ve already unloaded all the luggage we retrieved in your room,” the officer went on, “and your car has been sent to the nearby auto repair shop. Oh, and I was asked to give you these. We found them at the crash site.”

The lady held out three phones for Dipper to take. He perked up, standing with Mabel, and took the phones out of the officer’s hand. Luckily, none of them looked too bad. He found his, which had a new crack in the screen, and pocketed it, keeping his parents’ phones in his hand.

After that, the twins were escorted out of the hospital and into the back of a police car. Dipper was glad to say that the first time he was riding in the back of a police car, it was because he was being escorted to a hotel instead of a county jail. He and Mabel buckled in, each taking a different spot than usual of Mabel behind the passenger and Dipper behind the driver. Then, the car was off.

They drove down the main stretch of the town, the street Mabel and Dipper had run down earlier, the town still eerily quiet. Dipper had more time to observe; however, and took advantage of it. This town was a stereotypical small town. All the rundown businesses were pushed together and displayed towards the street. None of them seemed to be chain businesses, and they all had that charm of a small town shop.

At one point, they drove right past the group of kids from earlier, who were now meandering at the base of a lamp post. Dipper had his chin resting at the base of his window, and watched as the red-headed girl was seemingly telling a story to her friends, the light illuminating them enough that Dipper could see their faces and expressions.

Then, she stopped talking, letting the conversation drift to her friends, and noticed the police car. She and Dipper made eye contact, and Dipper almost ducked his head down. But, strangely, he didn’t feel the need to. Instead, he lifted his hand and gave her a small wave.

She stared back, seemingly confused, but eventually returned the wave as the car turned onto another street.

Dipper then lifted his head from the window and turned to face the front of the car. Mabel was back on her phone, but gave him the time of day to ask, “Who’d you wave at?”

“Oh, uh—” he started. “The, uh, girl from earlier. Wendy .”

“Ew. Why?” Mabel asked, still not looking up from her phone. “That girl was freaky!”

“I don’t know,” he responded. “We just made eye contact and it felt like I needed to acknowledge her?”

“Dipper, listen,” she started, finally looking up from her phone, “I get you don’t have any friends, but that doesn’t mean you should jump on any opportunity you get. Especially not creepy lumberjack stalkers who will probably kill you with an ax.”

“It was just a wave, Mabel. It’s not that deep!” he retorted, crossing his arms. “Besides, I didn’t get serial killer vibes from that girl. She seemed kinda — well — genuine .”

“Okay, whatever,” she said, turning back to her phone. “Just don’t come crying to me when there’s a bunch of hicks chasing you with rifles and axes.”

Dipper rolled his eyes and turned back to the window, right as they were pulling into the parking lot of a very log-cabin-ish inn.

The officer escorted them inside and to their room, handing them their keys and leaving them with her phone number in case they needed to contact her. Finally, the twins entered their room, their luggage all piled against one wall and two, queen-sized beds against the other wall.

“This is like a stereotypical lumberjack hotel,” Mabel remarked as she entered, seemingly disgusted.

“It’s…” Dipper started, “homey.”

“Sure, if you like it when the woods throw up on your house,” Mabel retorted, plopping down on her proclaimed bed, closest to the window, and pulling out her phone again.

The walls were a typical log-cabin wall, and the curtains and bedding adorned a matching, red plaid. A deer head hung on the wall above the TV where it sat on a table. Paintings of mountains and woods hung all around the room. To make it short, it wasn’t like any typical Californian hotel room.

“At least we have a bathroom,” Dipper started, trying to be optimistic, “and a TV, and a microwave, and a—”

“Okay, I get it!” Mabel snapped, not looking up from her phone. “Be grateful for what you have! Yada yada! I would just never decorate like this ever !”

Dipper rolled his eyes, going to find his duffel bag. He dug through it until he found his pajamas.

“I’m gonna go change,” he told Mabel, before also grabbing his toothbrush, “and brush my teeth!”

Mabel made a sound of confirmation before Dipper left for the bathroom. He was true to his word, doing his usual bedtime routine, and came out of the bathroom a few minutes later, seeing that Mabel had also changed into her pajamas.

“Bathroom’s free,” he said, throwing his dirty clothes on top of his duffel bag. He saw, out of the corner of his eye, Mabel get up from her bed and leave for the bathroom, cosmetics bag in hand.

Dipper then opened an outer pocket of his bag and pulled out several orange bottles that rattled when he moved them. He trudged over to his bed, plastic capsules and water bottle in hand, and set them down on the side of the nightstand closest to his side of the bed.

Then he swallowed down the respective doses of each medication. One pill for insomnia. One pill for anxiety. And a few others. He didn’t like to acknowledge the fact he had to take those ones.

Mabel finally came out of the bathroom when Dipper was settling into bed.

“Get your drugs yet?” she teased as she made her way back to her bed.

“Don’t say it like that,” Dipper complained, taking his hat off and hanging it on the bed post above him. “You make it sound like I’m a druggie or something. But, yes. I did take my medications . Although, I think I might have to skip tomorrow morning’s because I took these ones so late.”

“Why didn’t you just skip tonight’s, genius?” she taunted, plugging her phone charger into the outlet above the nightstand.

“Because I kinda wanted to sleep tonight,” Dipper retorted, pulling his blankets further over him and rolling over to face away from Mabel.

“Oh yeah. I forgot you needed drugs just to go to sleep,” she teased again, laughing at her own joke.

Dipper said nothing. He twisted around, turned off the lamp on his side of the nightstand, and rolled back over to close his eyes.

“Goodnight to you, too, grumpy ,” he heard Mabel snicker.

…

“Goodnight,” he grumbled.

______________________

The incessant blaring of Dipper’s phone is what woke him up hours later. He groaned as his ringtone kept sounding from where he plugged his phone in on the nightstand. He groggily propped himself up on his elbow and reached over to unplug his phone. 

The caller ID showed that it was none other than his sister calling him, who he hadn’t even realized was gone. Although, to be fair, he had only woken up two seconds ago.

Laying back down and rubbing his eyes, he answered the phone with a tired, “What do you want?”

“ Good morning to you, too, stinker, ” Mabel chimed from the other end. “ I was just here at the grocery store and was wondering if you wanted anything for breakfast. ”

“There’s free breakfast here !” he responded, slightly confused and the morning voice still hitting hard.

“ There is? ” Mabel asked, and Dipper rolled his eyes, dragging his hand down his face.

“It said so on the little welcome paper they gave us!” 

“ Oh, well, I didn’t read that, ” she said as if it was obvious. “ Okay, well that’s— Oh! There’s also some people here that are asking for you! ”

“ Why are they asking for me?” Dipper questioned, waving his hand around to emphasize the question even though no one could see him.

“ I don’t know! They’re just asking for you!”

“I am…” Dipper stared down at himself, still in his pajamas, the blankets still pulled over him, and his hair presumably a mess. “ Not presentable.”

“ Well, then, get yourself out of bed, take a shower, do all your weird boy biz, and get yourself over here! ”

Dipper groaned, tired and slightly annoyed.

“Tell them I’m dead,” he moaned, his hand draped over his eyes to block the light shining from the room’s window. 

He heard his sister let out a breath from the other line. Then the phone presumably got further away from her face and he could hear her say, “ He’s dead. Apparently. ”

There were a few more moments where Dipper could hear a conversation but couldn’t make out the words. He squeezed his eyes together then opened them again, thinking that could wash away some of the tiredness.

“ Yeah, they’re not buying it, Dip, ” Mabel finally said into the phone, then muttered sarcastically, “ I wonder why— ”

Dipper lifted his arm from his face, staring absent-mindedly at the ceiling. After a few seconds, he lifted his phone to see it, and promptly pressed the button to hang up. He set his phone back on the nightstand and turned on his side to get more sleep, before his phone started ringing again.

He twisted over, saw Mabel was calling him again, declined the call, and silenced his phone. Then he twisted back over, pulled the blanket more over him, and shut his eyes.

It did not take long for him to fall back asleep.

______________________

Dipper woke up again due to an unknown projectile to the head. He flinched and groaned, squinting his eyes open.

“I’ve tried to call you, like, 50 times!” Mabel snapped at him as he saw her enter the room. “What the heck! Where were you?”

“I was asleep?” Dipper retorted, the morning voice hitting again, as he slowly tried to sit up. “I didn’t think the random people at the grocery store would miss me that much!”

“Dipper! I went into the store and, like, a million people started talking to me! I wouldn’t mind, usually, but it became creepy after a few people!” she explained, coming over to retrieve the bag of potato chips she had thrown at Dipper’s head. 

“You know I do worse in social situations than you do, Mabel!” Dipper retorted, fully sitting up and rubbing his eyes. “Plus, I didn’t know where the grocery store was and I was half-asleep when you called me!” 

“You totally ditched me, Dip!” she snapped, ignoring what he said.

“Maybe you should’ve woken me up before you left!” Dipper argued, throwing the blanket off him and stretching his legs. “Then you could’ve found out we didn’t even need to go to the store to get breakfast!”

Mabel scoffed and threw her grocery bags onto her bed.

“Whatever! Here, I got some donuts.” Mabel pulled a box of powdered donuts out of one of the bags and held it out for Dipper to take one.

“Thanks.”

They both sat there, eating donuts in awkward silence for a while.

“This town is creepy,” Mabel finally said, clearly uncomfortable by the silence.

“Eh, I don’t think it’s that bad,” Dipper disagreed, taking another bite out of his donut. “It’s just quieter than Piedmont.”

“I meant the people, Dip,” Mabel said. “That weird chick from the hospital last night, the hospital people not asking for emergency contacts, the many encounters I had at the grocery store.”

“Maybe they’re just mistaking us for someone else,” Dipper tried.

“Oh yeah, because there’s another Mabel and Dipper Pines in the world,” Mabel scoffed, rolling her eyes.

“Hey, you never know.”

They fell into another silence. Dipper finished his donut, wiped off his hands, and wandered back over to his extra bag to retrieve his dream journal. He went to sit back down on his bed and saw as Mabel’s eyes followed him.

“What’s that?” she asked. “Your diary?”

“It’s my dream journal,” Dipper groaned, plopping onto his bed and clicking his pen. “I thought you knew about this.”

“Psh, no. You have so many ‘professional-recommended’ book things that I’ve stopped keeping track!”

“Well, Dr. Sanchez told me to keep one as part of the insomnia treatment,” Dipper explained, beginning to write down. In reality, it was mostly because of a recurring nightmare that he’d been having for a while now, but he didn’t want Mabel to know about that.

“Oh, what’d you dream about last night, then?” Mabel started, in a teasing tone that Dipper recognized far too well. “Kissing aliens?”

“You wouldn’t care,” Dipper grumbled, trying to ignore his sister.

“Oh, come on!” she groaned, falling exaggeratedly back on her bed. “I’m your sister ! You have to tell me!”

“I don’t have to tell you anything ,” Dipper retorted, continuing to write.

“Right, and I didn’t have to buy you donuts!” Mabel shot back.

Dipper stopped writing and looked up at Mabel, giving her an annoyed glare. She smirked at him knowingly.

“It was just about school stuff. It doesn’t matter,” he mumbled, looking away from her.

“Well, I had a dream about Ethan ,” Mabel sighed, throwing her hand to her forehead like a damsel in distress. Although Dipper was glad the conversation shifted away from his dream, he rolled his eyes at the mention of Ethan.

“Ew, why are you even interested in that guy?” Dipper remarked, going back to his writing. “He’s not even attractive and he’s a jerk.”

“I can like who I like,” Mabel retorted. “And obviously you have a different taste in men than I do, because Ethan is so dreamy.”

Dipper rolled his eyes. At both of Mabel’s remarks.

“Strange that it’s hard to find him dreamy when he’s shoving you into a locker one day and stealing your sketchbook the next.”

“Oh, is this about the one time that—”

“Yeah, it is,” Dipper snapped quickly.

They fell back into silence after that. And didn’t really talk to each other for a while.

A few hours went by where the two were just finding ways to entertain themselves. Mabel was texting, talking on the phone, watching the TV. Dipper was drawing, writing in his journal, playing his guitar. That is, after he freaked out because he hadn’t checked on it for a while after they crashed. It was okay, thankfully.

“Hey, Mabel,” he said after he had been messing with some chords, “Look what I learned to play on my guitar!”

“Dipper, you wonder why people think you’re a loser,” Mabel snickered, not looking up from her phone.

“What is that supposed to mean?” Dipper asked, plucking some strings in the guitar.

“The band that wrote that song?” Mabel said, as if it was obvious. “They're, like, stereotypical dork music.”

“They have great songs,” Dipper retorted, looking up at his sister. “Maybe if you listened to them, you’d actually like it.”

“And risk people thinking I like loser music?” Mabel asked sarcastically. “No way.”

“Whatever,” Dipper said, dropping the subject. 

A beat of silence passed, except for the plucking of guitar strings.

“Man, I am starving !” Mabel finally said. “We should go get dinner somewhere.”

“Dinner? We haven’t even had lunch yet.”

“Dude, we woke up at, like, 11,” Mabel pointed out. “Breakfast was lunch.”

“Wait really?” Dipper asked, bringing his wrist and watch to where he could see them. “Holy crap! Since when was it five?”

“Since 37 minutes ago,” Mabel retorted sarcastically. “Anyways, I saw a cool-looking restaurant when I was out. It’s shaped like an actual log!”

“Alright, but do we have the means to pay for it?” Dipper asked, standing up and setting his guitar into the open case on his bed.

“Yeah, I have Mom and Dad’s credit cards,” Mabel said, also standing from her bed and walking over to the TV stand where she had set their parents’ wallets. “They loaded them up for our trip! They’d want us to use this money!”

“Yeah, I mean, that’s fair,” Dipper agreed. “Alright, just let me get dressed and then we can leave.”

Mabel nodded and Dipper grabbed a set of clean clothes, heading off to the bathroom to get dressed into the cuffed jeans and NASA crewneck he picked out. He did, ruffled up his hair when he looked in the mirror, then headed back into the hotel room, where Mabel was ready to go.

“Let’s head out!” Mabel exclaimed, fastening her purse across her chest and grabbing one of the keys to the room. The two left the room and made their way to the main entrance of the hotel.

“Wait,” Mabel said quickly, throwing her arm out to block Dipper’s way to the door. “If any more people come up and talk to us like they’re our besties, I will just run straight back to our hotel room.”

“You’re not just gonna leave me with the strangers,” Dipper retorted, grabbing Mabel’s arm and throwing it away from him.

“ You left me alone at the grocery store!”

“Uh, no. I never came with you to the grocery store. You left me in the hotel room.”

“The technicalities don’t matter,” Mabel said, waving her hand around as she went to exit the building, holding the door open for her brother. “The point is, I cannot handle one more —”

“Hey! You two!”

Mabel quickly shot a look at her brother before turning away in an attempt to escape into the hotel. Dipper abruptly grabbed her arm and dragged her back towards him against her protesting.

Mabel groaned and turned back around to face the person who had called after them. Dipper also turned to see the same girl with red hair walking towards them…

Along with the rest of her teenage horde from last night.

“Hey, listen,” the girl — Wendy — started, sounding out of breath as if she was running to catch up to the twins. “I think we got off on the wrong foot.”

“You think?” Mabel snapped, putting her hands on her hips. “You yelled at us right after we got in a car crash!”

“Yeah, okay. I know I can come off as a little aggressive sometimes,” Wendy reasoned, obviously trying to get on Dipper and Mabel’s good side.

“Wendy, what the heck are we doing—” one of her friends, a taller boy with dark hair and brooding vibes, started before Wendy held her hand up to stop him from talking.

“We were thinking we could show you guys a cool hang out spot! As a ‘welcome to town’!”

“If you’re about to suggest a few planks of wood you’ve labeled as a treehouse, I think my brother and I will pass,” Mabel shot, clearly wanting nothing more than to go back to their hotel room and order takeout.

“No, no,” Wendy said, laughing. “We were thinking more, a haunted convenience store!”

A few beats of silence followed Wendy’s grand announcement. Dipper stared dumbly, continuously trying to figure out what was going on. Beside him, he could sense Mabel’s disgust festering within her.

“That’s—” Dipper started.

“The stupidest thing I’ve ever heard!” Mabel continued, throwing her hands out in disbelief. “Listen, Willow!”

“Wendy,” Dipper corrected.

“ Wendy ! We appreciate your kind gesture ,” Mabel’s voice was dripping with sarcasm, “but we don’t associate ourselves with creepy stalkers!”

“Mabel,” Dipper scolded, grabbing his sister’s arm and turning them to face away from the other teenagers. “C’mon. We could at least give it a chance. I mean, she sounds like she’s trying to make it up to us!”

“If you want to go with them and get murdered in the woods, then I won’t stop you, Dipper,” Mabel shot, folding her arms across her chest. “Just don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“They’re not gonna—”

But Mabel was already turning back around to face the group. 

“We would love to,” she started, putting on her fake smile as easily as she puts on mascara, “but I promised my friends that I would call and chat tonight. My brother would be happy to, though!”

“What!” Dipper yelped, whipping his head to look at Mabel with his brows furrowed.

“Bye! Love you bro! Be back by 10!” Mabel called, blowing exaggerated kisses as she retreated back into the hotel, leaving Dipper standing dumbfounded in front of the group of teenagers.

Slowly, he turned to look at the teens. He let out an awkward laugh and smiled nervously as he rubbed his arm, hoping they would drop the idea of him coming if he acted uninterested enough.

“Great!” Wendy exclaimed, disregarding Dipper’s obvious discomfort. She reached forward and grabbed his arm, dragging him to follow the group. They started for an old minivan that was parked farther down the street and Mabel’s words about murder echoed in Dipper’s head.

“So, why is the squirt coming along?” the same emo guy who had spoken before asked Wendy, almost as if Dipper was out of earshot.

“Dipper, this is Robbie,” Wendy started, disregarding Robbie’s question.

“Why are you introducing us—” another one of the boys had started asking — he had blond hair and was taller than Robbie — before Wendy quickly smacked her hand over his mouth.

“Remember what I was telling you guys last night ?” Wendy asked, the group stopping to give her attention. Wendy flashed an obviously fake smile at Dipper and he stared back at her unamused.

“Wow, you’re great at being unsuspicious, aren’t you?” he said, not trying to hide his sarcasm.

That comment earned him a surprising amount of shocked faces. He cocked an eyebrow.

“I’m sorry, did I offend you?”

“No, it’s just—” Wendy started, then stopped herself. “Um, anyways. These are my friends. You’ve met Robbie. Then there’s Lee, Nate, Thompson, and Tambry.”

Dipper got a flash of deja vu at Wendy’s words, but shook it off. He didn’t expect to remember any of the people’s names, but it was a… sorta nice gesture, at least.

“Hi. I’m Dipper,” he introduced monotonously, feeling like he had to. He raised his hand quickly and lowered it again in a lazy attempt at a wave.

The group stared dumbly at him. The girl Wendy had introduced as Tambry — with dyed blue hair and goth-ish clothes — loudly chewed on a piece of gum.

“Well, it was better than his first one. I’ll give him that,” Robbie said, turning back to go to the car.

“What is that supposed to mean?” Dipper questioned, putting his free hand on his hip.

“Robbie!” Wendy quickly scolded before Robbie could say anything. He threw his hands up defensively then pulled open the door to the front seat of the minivan. Everyone else seemed to file into the vehicle on auto, as if they had gotten into the car in this order a million times. The boy named Nate stood aside and gestured for Wendy to get into the car.

“Oh, I’ll sit in the back with Dipper, Nate,” she said quickly, holding up the hand that was still gripping Dipper’s arm.

Dipper turned to look at the minivan, something nagging at him to just retreat to the safety of his hotel room like Mabel had. But it was almost like there was another voice urging him to go on. Almost a sense of familiarity with these people.

Wendy seemed to sense Dipper’s hesitance.

“Hey, man, are you alright? You look like you don’t wanna come.”

“Geez, it’s almost like I’m being kidnapped or something,” he replied, putting back on his facade of simply not caring about anything.

“You’re not being kidnapped,” Wendy started. Dipper held up his arm, raising hers as well as she was still gripping his forearm, and raised his eyebrows at her. She quickly let go.

“Listen, dude. I promise you’ll have fun!”

“Psh, you can’t promise anything. You don't even know me!”

Wendy’s face fell, but she quickly shook it off. Dipper decided to disregard it for now.

“Just trust me, Dipper!” she said, and Dipper caught a flicker in her eyes. He wasn’t one to trust easily, or at all in most cases, but she seemed easy to trust.

He slowly nodded his head, then said, “Okay, fine.”

Wendy gave him a sincere smile, then held her arms out as a gesture for him to climb into the back of the minivan. He did, trying not to accidentally touch anyone occupying the other seats.

It was only a few moments before the car was driving off towards the outskirts of town.

Chapter Text

The drive to the “haunted” convenience store didn’t take too long. It was a small town, after all. When Dipper saw it come into view, the only thing he thought of was that it was just old and run down. The teens were most likely telling him it was haunted just to scare him. He could tell. He was used to getting pranked.

The car came to a stop and the conversation the others were having faded away. Everyone began filing out of the car, and when Dipper began crawling out, he noticed Wendy was holding out her hand to help him out. He didn’t take it. He didn’t need the help.

“The famous Dusk 2 Dawn,” she started when everyone moved to stand in front of the tall fence meant to keep intruders out.

“Two old people died in there,” Robbie went on, the tone of his voice insinuating that he was obviously trying to scare Dipper.

“They don’t really like teenagers, so we have to make sure to be respectful of them,” Wendy continued, shooting a glare at Robbie.

“This is so dumb,” Dipper mumbled under his breath, rolling his eyes.

The group then marched forward, starting to climb up the fence. Dipper stayed where he was, in disbelief. He turned his head to find the large gate chained together and padlocked, then rolled his eyes again and marched forward with the rest of the group to begin climbing.

He scaled the fence with ease, then at the top he twisted around and climbed back down the other side. When he hopped off and turned around to face everyone, he was again met with shocked faces, to which he threw his hands up defensively.

“I’m sorry? Was I not allowed to climb over the fence?” he snapped.

“Why are you actually capable of doing things?” Robbie shot at him.

“Excuse me?” Dipper shot back, crossing his arms.

“Guys! Please!” Wendy yelled, stepping between the boys. “Robbie! I swear I will punch you if you say another word!”

“I’m just saying what we’re all thinking!” he defended.

“Gee, I’m so glad you’re all thinking about how incapable I am!” Dipper snapped. “It’s a fence! Why would I not be able to climb it?”

“Anyways!” Wendy yelled again, absent-mindedly placing her hand on Dipper’s shoulder. “Let’s head inside! You’ll have plenty of time to hate each other in there!”

Dipper rolled his eyes yet again, thinking they might roll away by the end of the night. He followed the others to the front door of the store. He watched as Robbie messed with the handles of the door, only for it to remain shut.

“You guys hang out here all the time, but you can’t open the door?” he called from the back of the group, making a passive jab at Robbie.

“If you’re gonna be snarky about it, then you try it!” Robbie retorted, throwing down his hands in defeat. 

Dipper muttered an ‘oh my God’ under his breath, then wandered away from the group, looking for something small but heavy. He could pick the lock, but he didn’t have a bobby pin or paper clip, so that wouldn’t work. He would have to resort to brute force.

When he returned to the others, large-ish rock in hand, they were all inspecting the door, clearly trying to figure out how to open it. Dipper shoved his way to the front of the group and to the door. In one swift motion, he held the rock up then slammed it down and forward into the glass of the door. In his peripheral vision, he saw everyone around him flinch as the glass shattered. He then dropped the rock back onto the ground and reached through the hole he had made to fiddle with the lock from the inside.

When the lock clicked, Dipper pulled the door open and stepped into the store, broken glass crunching under his sneakers. He started wandering around, the others taking a few seconds to follow him inside. He didn’t bother to turn around and face them.

“How did you know to do that?” Wendy asked, catching up to Dipper and forcefully turning him around to face her.

“Breaking into haunted convenience stores is my favorite pass-time,” Dipper said sarcastically before Wendy quickly slapped her hand over his mouth. His eyes widened as he stared down at her hand.

“Dude, you can’t say stuff like that!” she exclaimed worriedly. “The ghosts don’t like it!”

“The ghosts don’t like hearing about crimes?” he asked when Wendy dropped her hand from his mouth.

“No, they don’t like sarcasm ,” she further explained.

“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Whatever! Just try not to make any more sarcastic remarks!”

“Yeah! Or else the ghosts will possess your body and make you do an Irish jig!” Lee called from a few feet away, apparently having been eavesdropping on Dipper and Wendy’s conversation.

“ What ,” Dipper said, giving an annoyed look at Lee.

“ Whatever! ” Wendy repeated. “Let’s not worry about that right now! Look around! There’s a ton of stuff just up for the taking!”

Dipper wandered over to a nearby shelf and grabbed a chocolate bar, turning it over in his hand.

“Alright! Food that expired a thousand years ago! What a score!” He flashed an over-obvious smile at Wendy.

“Dipper. I am being one thousand percent serious. Cut it out with the sarcasm.”

“Okay, alright, fine,” Dipper groaned, wandering away from Wendy to check out the rest of the store.

Everything was coated with a thick layer of dust and the store was filled with a smell Dipper couldn’t quite place. Apparently, someone had found the breaker and turned on the electricity which surprisingly still worked. Suddenly everything was illuminated for Dipper to see, neon signs were glowing, and the food machines had turned on. Around him, everyone was digging into the ancient food. He was still really reluctant to touch anything. 

To avoid talking to anyone, he continued to wander. He inspected magazines that were decades old and video games that would be considered relics and popular food items still with the original designs. There was even a bunch of popsicles and ice cream that were magically still frozen. 

As he was staring down a freezer full of still-frozen ice, he could sense someone join him at his side.

“Having fun yet?” Wendy asked him. He didn’t bother looking at her.

“How is this ice still in frozen cubes?” he asked, furrowing his eyebrows.

“Eh,” she paused for a moment, contemplating it as well. “I’ll choose not to question it.”

“I was thinking,” Dipper started, crossing his arms and still not looking at Wendy, “maybe you guys saw ghosts or whatever here as a side effect of eating an unhealthy amount of ancient, expired food. I mean, really? How good can this stuff even be anymore?”

There was a beat of silence before Wendy started chuckling and then laughing. Dipper finally turned towards her, surprised at the reaction. It wasn’t long before he started quietly laughing, too.

“It’s not that bad if you don’t think about the expiration date,” Wendy explained after she stopped laughing.

A small smile fell onto Dipper’s face and he turned back to the freezer.

“Uh, speaking of food, Mabel and I were about to eat dinner before I came here. I should probably see how she’s doing.” With his words, he pulled his phone out of his pocket so he could text his sister.

“Wait, you might not want to text at all while we’re in here,” Wendy said quickly, pushing the hand that was holding the phone farther away from Dipper.

“Uh, why not?” he asked, confused.

“The ghosts might get pissed and trap you inside the TV,” she explained, like she was completely serious.

Dipper blinked and stared at her.

“You know, the more you talk, the more I’m convinced you made these ghosts up,” Dipper teased, crossing his arms and pocketing his phone.

“I promise you I didn’t!” Wendy started. “Look, I can show you where they died!”

Sooner than he could protest, Wendy was grabbing Dipper’s wrist again and leading him over to a corner in the front of the store. Somehow, the rest of the group had followed them over.

“This is where the owners were murdered!” Lee said exaggeratedly, a smile on his face.

Dipper stared down at the outlines of two bodies. The chalk was somehow barely unfaded. The outlines were both right next to each other as well.

“They weren’t murdered,” he stated, crossing his arms, annoyed to be around everyone again. Especially Robbie.

“How could you possibly know that?” Robbie shot.

Dipper pointed to parts of the outlines, beginning to explain.

“First of all, there isn’t any blood. If it was a stab wound or gunshot wound, there would be brown splatters of blood everywhere. If there had been blood, I doubt it would’ve been cleaned, considering nothing else in here has even been cleaned. They also died in the same spot, so they couldn’t have been strangled if it was only one murderer. One of them would have booked it and called the police. If there were two murderers, they could have both been strangled simultaneously, but there would’ve been a struggle and it’s highly unlikely they both would’ve ended up in the same spot. The murderers could have staged it and dragged the bodies over here, but there would be scuff marks all along the floor. My guess is that they were either both poisoned — which seems too premeditated for the murder of two convenience store owners — or something provoked a heart failure in both of them at the same time. Like a loud bang or something.”

A few beats of silence passed as Dipper watched everyone stare at the two outlines in contemplation.

“Or you guys could have come in here earlier and drawn these outlines yourself,” Dipper continued accusingly. “The chalk lines do look pretty fresh…”

“You’re accusing us of setting this up!” Robbie snapped, putting his hands on his hips. “What? As an elaborate prank, or something?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I’m doing.”

“You little —!”

“Dipper’s right,” Wendy said quickly, still looking at the outlines. “Not about the prank. The owners of the store both had a heart attack at the same time. They had banned teenagers from the store, so a group of them went outside the storefront and started deliberately aggravating them.”

“So what? The shock-factor was a group of teens rapping and break-dancing?” Dipper questioned in disbelief.

“Well, yeah.”

“How would you possibly know that, Wendy?” Robbie repeated, now turning his annoyance towards her.

“The ghosts told me.”

“And you didn’t tell any of us about this?” Tambry asked, looking up from her phone.

“I didn’t think it mattered,” Wendy stated. “Not since we said we would never come back here again.”

“Wait, you guys decided to never come here again?” Dipper started. “Because of what? What happened here?”

“The ghosts, dude,” Lee said.

“They were out to get us,” Robbie went on.

“I got trapped in the dance machine,” Thompson whined.

Dipper stared at them, dumbfounded, before pushing them out of the way and beginning to march back to the door.

“Mabel was right,” he grumbled. “This is stupid. Have fun with your made-up ghosts! I’m leaving.”

The group started protesting as he grabbed the handle of the door to shove it open and leave. 

Except that the door didn’t budge.

He pushed again, the door staying shut. He went to unlock it, thinking maybe someone had thought it would be funny to lock everyone in here, but the lock disappeared as he reached for it.

“What the—”

He stepped cautiously away from the door as the glass he had broken flew out from under his feet and the pieces mended themselves together in the door frame.

“Uh…” he started, then whipped his head around to look back at the others. “What’s going on?”

“They’re here,” Wendy muttered, looking around worriedly.

“You cannot be serious!” Dipper snapped, marching towards her. “Newsflash! Ghosts aren’t real!”

“Dipper, they’re listening! You can’t say that!”

Dipper opened his mouth to argue, but a huge, thunderous voice echoed through the store. The others exclaimed in terror, several of them clutching each other. Dipper took several steps back in horror as items from the shelves started floating and whipping about the store. Dipper ran for the door and attempted to rip it open again, without success. He spun around, terror shooting down his spine.

“ Is this real enough for you? ”

Just then, a bag of chips came hurtling through the air directly towards Wendy’s head. She ducked just in time, but the others took it as a sign to run and hide. Dipper, on the other hand, was pinning himself against the door, frozen in fear. 

A pack of cookies was thrown out of the twister and towards Dipper this time. He ducked, then dove behind the nearest shelf to get away from the chaos long enough to process everything. He started breathing quickly as the lights flickered around him. Surely this couldn’t be happening right now. It had to be a nightmare.

Strangely enough, though, he felt like he had a dream just like this before.

He took a deep breath, his therapy sessions replaying in his mind. If this was a nightmare and he couldn’t wake up, the next best thing to do was calm himself and either get his dream self away from the current situation or fight the ghost.

He took another deep breath, his heartbeat beginning to slow. He tried to start thinking of nice, happy things. His bedroom, his bed, his books. Nothing was working, so this obviously wasn’t a dream. But still, he figured he would take Dr. Sanchez’s advice. Seeing as there was no possible way he could remove himself from the situation, he had to fight the ghost.

Suddenly, his heart rate was accelerating again. He couldn’t fight the ghost! He’s only ever dealt with stuff like this in his head where he couldn’t be hurt! This was very real and he was very not able to fight. His countless beatings from school bullies was proof enough of that.

He threw his head back against the shelf, tears pricking at his eyes as he started breathing faster again. Everything was loud in his ears and the lights were flashing and there were ghosts trying to kill him because they hated teenagers and—

“Dipper!” he heard barely, to the side of him. Still in panic, he strained to open his eyes and look to his side to see Wendy crawling over to him.

He tried to make a sound to acknowledge her presence but all that came out was a huffy breath.

“Are you okay?” she whispered, sitting next to him and placing a reassuring hand on Dipper’s shoulder.

“I— I’m so sorry,” Dipper responded softly, nervously. “I— I was being stupid. I should’ve believed you. Now I’ve got us stuck in this stupid store with—”

“Hey, hey.” Wendy grabbed Dipper’s other shoulder and twisted him to face her. “I should be the one apologizing. I shouldn’t have pressured you so much to come here. I guess I was just obsessed with— well, with— ugh — I just wanted to prove that I wasn’t a creepy liar.”

Dipper stared at her. He hyper focused on the grip Wendy had on both his shoulders and on the strange familiarity and comfort it gave. He focused on how her being so close didn’t make him nervous and uncomfortable like people usually do. A feeling of safety enveloped him, even as candy bars and soda cans whipped furiously past them.

“I— uh,” he started. “You said you’ve faced these ghosts before. That you’ve talked with them. They obviously let you out, but how—”

“It was different last time,” Wendy said quickly and her hands fell from Dipper’s shoulders. “We had a kid with us. The ghosts hate teenagers, but he wasn’t even thirteen yet so he convinced them to let us go.”

“Well, even if he was a kid there must’ve been some way that he convinced the ghosts to let you guys go, too,” Dipper started, his brain suddenly running with ideas. “Maybe if we convince the ghosts to at least talk to us then—”

“Eh, I don’t think you’d like how the kid was able to—”

“Wendy!” someone else suddenly hissed from around the corner. Dipper groaned. It was Robbie. “ What are you doing?”

“We’re trying to figure out how to get out of here!” Wendy explained as Robbie crawled over to them.

“What do you mean? Just throw the squirt out there and he can tell them he’s not a teenager!” Robbie suggested and Dipper furrowed his brows.

“But I am a teenager!” he hissed.

“Ah—!” Robbie cursed and threw his head back against the shelf.

“Robbie, can’t you grow up for two seconds—” Wendy started but was interrupted by a loud crash as the shelf they were hiding behind was blown to pieces. Before Dipper could process what was happening, Wendy dove onto him and pushed him out of the way. Dipper twisted over onto his hands and knees as he felt Wendy’s arms protectively on his back and head and shielding him from the debris of the shelf.

The same roaring voice boomed above them again.

“ You dare speak of being a teenager in our store! ”

Dipper felt Wendy turn her head towards the voice. He tried to do the same, but Wendy had him pinned in a safe position.

“Listen! He didn’t mean any harm by it! We didn’t mean to disturb you!” Wendy shouted over the noise, and Dipper cupped his hands over his ears.

“ You should’ve thought of that before you broke into our store! ”

Just then, the weight keeping Dipper pinned lifted off him. He shot his head up to find that Wendy was floating in the air. She was struggling to fight the invisible force, and when Dipper reached out to grab her, her body disintegrated into thin air.

“Wendy!” Dipper cried before pushing himself against the wall. His arms shot to cover his face as debris flew towards him and he curled up defensively. He peeled his eyes open in an attempt to assess the situation before his anxiety took over him again. Robbie was hiding behind the part of the shelf that hadn’t been blown to smithereens and was looking Dipper’s way. He looked just as terrified as Dipper felt to have seen Wendy disappear.

He looked back towards the center of the store. A huge, terrifying, monstrous apparition was starting to form in the midst of the product twister. Dipper never thought he would be this scared of a balding, old man before, but here he was. The ghost’s voice boomed through the store, his attention was not directed towards where Dipper was curled up against the wall.

“ We warned you never to return and stupidity overtook your judgment! How typical of you adolescents: putting your lives at risk for the sake of a short adrenaline rush! ”

The image of Wendy’s body disintegrating before him played through Dipper’s head. The words fight the ghost, fight the ghost, fight the ghost rang over and over. Suddenly, he wasn’t so afraid of what might happen to him.

As the ghost’s attention was turned away from him, Dipper slowly inched his hand toward a metal pipe that had flown onto the ground next to him. He gathered himself to his feet, not daring to take his eyes off the ghost; although, he could see Robbie in his peripheral vision waving his arms around in protest.

“Hey ghost!” Dipper shouted, his stomach dropping as the old man’s flaming, red eyes fixed onto him. He wielded the pipe in front of him defensively, trying his hardest not to look as afraid as he felt. “Let her go !”

Before waiting for the ghost’s response, Dipper was bolting towards the twister of expired snack foods, raising the metal pipe above his head. As he made it to the center, he swung the pipe down at the ghost, but his grip faltered as an unseen force lifted him off the ground. The force from the swing lunged his upper body forward, and he ended up flipping in midair and hanging upside down as he could feel his body being lifted closer to the ghost.

The pipe fell from his grip as he hung. He felt his arms constrict to his chest and he couldn’t move them. He hated the fact that he couldn’t see the ghost as a result of the flip and kicked his feet helplessly in the air.

He was suddenly whipped around to see the ghost. Or rather, so that the ghost could see him . Dipper could feel the blood rushing to his head as he saw the ghost’s hand make a fist and pull something closer to him. At the same time, Dipper was brought closer to the ghost. His facade was starting to fail, his worries growing deeper as his breaths became more shallow.

The ghost’s face tightened, an expression Dipper couldn’t quite place. Dipper cocked an eyebrow as the ghost studied him, the fury seeming to leave his eyes.

“ I… know you, ” it said quietly. Dipper almost protested but it felt like the air was being taken from his lungs, along with his words.

Nothing else was said when gravity suddenly seemed to have an effect on Dipper again. The light from the apparition faded and the grip he felt around his chest was suddenly gone. He fell to the floor, thankfully not on his head, as the twister of snack foods started falling around him as well. He heard the sound of the bell ring. He supposed the door had finally opened.

He started gathering himself to his feet, breathing heavily, when Wendy appeared in front of him. Her eyes widened in worry, as though she had just been taken.

“Oh my gosh! You’re okay!” Dipper exclaimed, rushing over to help her off the ground.

“What happened?” she asked quickly. “Where are the ghosts?”

“I dunno! They just disappeared!” Dipper answered, just as confused as Wendy.

“The kid just charged towards the ghost like some sort of maniac!” Robbie’s voice said from behind them. Wendy’s other friends started reappearing from their hiding places around the store. “He, like, scared them off or something!”

“I didn’t scare him off,” Dipper said bluntly, although he would’ve appreciated feeling like he had that much power. “The ghost, like, grabbed me and, like, recognized me or something. Then he just disappeared!”

“Whatever happened,” Tambry suddenly piped in, “we should be grateful it did, move on, and get the hell out of here!”

Heads nodded in agreement and before he knew it, Dipper was being grabbed by Wendy again and shoved quickly out the open door.

As soon as the last person exited, the door slammed shut, the ‘open’ sign flipping around by itself to display ‘close’ instead.

“Okay, this time can we actually agree to never come back here again?” Robbie asked, although Dipper was fairly certain that it was a rhetorical question because the answer felt obvious.

“Oh man!” Wendy suddenly exclaimed as everyone had begun filing back into the van.

“What? What’s wrong?” Dipper asked quickly, his head whipping all around him.

“Dude, you were gonna go get dinner before I abducted you!” Wendy said, giving Dipper a smile. “I totally feel bad now. Can I treat you to anything?”

“Uh, no that’s fine,” Dipper assured. “I’m sure my sister has some takeout or something back at the hotel. I’ll be fine!”

“Okay, how about lunch tomorrow then,” she pestered. “I can show you and Mabel around town some! We can grab food at Greasy’s. It’s great there!”

“Uh, sure, I guess,” Dipper said as he climbed into the back of the car. “Just as long as we don’t almost get killed again.”

“Ha, don’t worry! I won’t make that mistake again!” The car started driving off as she continued. “We don’t even have to do anything too exciting! We can just let our brains melt, y’know? I love just doing dumb stuff with friends!”

“Yeah,” Dipper said softly, then turned to the window, a small smile forming on his face as he quietly said, “ friends .”

Chapter Text

“Mabel, are you ready to go?” Dipper asked as he came out of the bathroom, a clean outfit adorned. 

“Go where?” she asked. Dipper turned to look at her. She was still laying on her bed, kicking her feet and smiling at her phone as she texted someone. Probably Ethan .

“I told you last night,” Dipper started, suddenly agitated. “Someone is gonna show us around town today. She’s treating us to lunch, too!”

“Oh my God ,” Mabel groaned, rolling onto her back and finally looking at Dipper. “Don’t tell me it’s that Wendy girl again. What are you? In love with her or something?”

“No, she’s just trying to welcome us and be our friend. You know, if you  actually tried to get to know her, you’d probably get along!”

“Eh, she’s not my type,” Mabel said, rolling back onto her stomach and typing on her phone screen again. 

“Whatever,” Dipper groaned, grabbing his messenger bag and phone and going to open the door. “But you’ll have to figure out lunch for yourself.”

He shut the door behind him and pulled out his phone. He and Wendy had exchanged numbers last night before he was dropped off at the hotel. His screen displayed a text from her number, telling him that she was outside the hotel.

Sure enough, he exited through the front doors and she was waiting in the parking lot.

The sound of the doors shutting must’ve caught her attention and she looked up at Dipper. He gave her a wave and rushed towards her.

“Where’s Mabel?” she asked, looking behind Dipper at the hotel doors.

“Oh, she was… busy,” Dipper lied, messing with the strap of his bag hanging on his shoulder.

“No, she wasn’t—”

“No, she wasn’t.”

“Whatever!” Wendy exclaimed, standing straighter and starting away from the hotel. “That just means she has to miss out on ‘Wendy Corduroy’s Tour of Gravity Falls Extravaganza’!”

“Gravity Falls?” Dipper asked, suddenly realizing he never actually knew what the name of this town was. “That’s a… strange name. How can gravity fall? I mean, it’s a concept, it’s not physical. And gravity can’t have an effect on itself.”

“Eh, a strange name for a strange town.” Wendy shrugged. They started down the sidewalk, back towards the main strip of the town. “It’s quieter here during the summer. There’s not much to do around here. I mean, we have an arcade, laser tag, mini golf, all that jazz.”

“That doesn’t sound like ‘not much to do’,” Dipper said. “My sister loves mini golf, though! At least, she used to, when we were younger.”

“Ah, we should totally get a group together and go!” Wendy suggested. “Maybe that would get her out of that hotel room!”

“Pft, maybe ,” Dipper laughed, then said, “She just thinks it’s creepy here. I’m sure she’ll warm up at some point.”

“Hopefully,” Wendy said, “Because she’s— I mean— from what I’ve heard , she’s super fun to be with.”

Dipper snickered and smiled up at Wendy.

“You know, you and your friends aren’t that good at hiding the fact that you think you’ve met us before.”

“Well— uh— you two are just so familiar that it feels like we do know you, I guess.”

“Alright, then tell me,” Dipper started, looking away from Wendy, “who’s the Dipper Pines that you know?”

“Well,” Wendy paused for a moment. Dipper assumed she was trying to think of something to say. “Well, he was a huge nerd. He was obsessed with paranormal stuff and solving mysteries. I mean, you couldn’t leave him alone for two seconds before he was running off into the woods after some monster—”

“Monster?” Dipper interrupted. “So not only are there old ghosts here, but monsters, too?”

“Pft, yeah!” Wendy laughed. “Anyways, my Dipper was always trying to find something exciting to do. He was like a little puppy sometimes, if you can imagine that. But I honestly think he was one of the coolest people I knew. And he used to have the biggest crush— I mean— he was probably my best friend.”

“Is that why you feel obligated to hang out with me?” Dipper asked teasingly.

“Well, maybe,” Wendy answered. “But you’re still cool. Doesn’t matter if you’re my Dipper or not.”

“Well, good, because that doesn’t sound like me at all.”

“Really?” Wendy asked. “Then what are you like?”

“Well, I am a huge nerd, I guess,” he started, running through Wendy's description in his head, “but I’m definitely not the type to just run into danger. I think most things are best left alone. I don’t need to know more than what I’m supposed to, and I definitely don’t go around looking for mysteries. I’m also not the type to really even have friends, y’know? I’m more like, stereotypical nerd instead of cool nerd.”

To his surprise, Wendy just burst out into laughter next to him. Dipper stopped walking and stared dumbly at her.

“What?”

“No, it’s nothing,” Wendy said. “It’s just, you’re totally contradicting yourself, dude. You’re not the type to run into danger, but running in and swinging a pipe at a ghost is completely fine?”

“Okay, well that was different—”

“No it’s not, man.”

“We were already in danger, and the ghosts took you! I was just—”

“Okay, yeah. Whatever you say, man.” She laughed and continued walking. “Oh! And you don’t like solving mysteries but looking at two chalk outlines for five seconds tells you the entire story of how they both died?”

“Okay, I said I don’t go looking for mysteries! I still like watching true crime shows, and stuff—”

“I think you just have a warped perception of yourself, Dipper.”

“Oh, because your description of this random dude is actually who I am?”

“Maybe!”

“What are you suggesting?”

“I’m not suggesting anything—”

“Oh really? Because it sounds like you’re suggesting that you know me better than I do after knowing me for one day.”

“Maybe because I do—”

“You don’t.”

“Maybe you just don’t remember who you are—”

“I don’t remember? Oh because I actually am this guy but the government wiped my mind just to mess with me? Is mind erasing possible here, too?”

“Well yeah, actually. There are memory erasing devices here. Just talk to Old Man—”

“No, but if you’re right,” Dipper interrupted, “then my memories would have been replaced, not wiped. I think I would remember— or not remember— if an entire summer was erased from my mind. You said you were at my 13th birthday party? Well, I remember that just fine. We were in California and my sister and I each invited some friends over and we just played games at my house!” 

“I thought you weren’t the type to have friends,” Wendy said, smirking.

“I’m not!” Dipper assured her. “Not now! I used to have friends—”

“Ah! So it is possible that you were my best friend!”

“No! Because I’m obviously not your Dipper! Also, are we gonna ignore the fact that your best friend was a 12-year-old? How old were you when you two were friends?”

“I was 15.”

“Oh my God, you’re lame !” Dipper laughed, teasing. “Your best friend was an actual child !”

“Is it still lame if you were the one I was friends with?”

“Yeah, that makes you even more lame actually—”

“Oh, look! We’re here,” Wendy said quickly, obviously trying to change the subject. She grabbed Dipper’s shoulder and twisted him to see a very small diner that had the appearance of a log. “Welcome to Greasy’s Diner: a staple in the community of Gravity Falls!”

She started pushing Dipper towards the entrance. There were stairs up to the old door. The whole place looked run down, actually. That small town charm once again, Dipper thought.

“Hey, my sister said she saw this place yesterday,” he remarked as the two marched up the stairs. Wendy reached forward and pulled the door open for him.

“Well, yeah. It’s a pretty noticeable restaurant. And aside from the Mystery Shack, which is where I work, it’s a number one hangout around here!”

When they entered, the overwhelming smell of burger and fry grease wafted through the air. There were quite a few people in here, at the wooden bar to one side and in the booths on the other side. There were two waiters walking around. One of which, who was carrying a tray, seemed to notice Wendy and came over to the two of them.

“Hey Wendy!” she greeted, flipping her long hair off her shoulder. Dipper remarked in his head that the color was way too blonde to be completely natural. She looked at Dipper, a look of surprise widening her eyes just slightly. Dipper couldn’t exactly tell what she was surprised about, though. “You brought a newcomer? We don’t get visitors very often anymore.”

“He and his family got in a car accident early yesterday morning,” Wendy explained. Dipper honestly couldn’t decide if he was grateful or not for Wendy talking for him. “I just thought I’d show him around, since they don’t know how long they’ll be here.”

“Well, welcome to Greasy’s Diner!” the girl exclaimed, using her shoulders to gesture behind her. Understandable, seeing as her hands were occupied holding a tray of dirty dishes. “What’s your name, cutie?”

Dipper felt his cheeks start warming up as he started fidgeting with his fingers. He tried to say a word, but his voice came out really high-pitched. He coughed, clearing his throat before trying again, saying, “Uh— my name is Dipper. Nice to meet you—”

He stuck out his hand for the waitress to shake, but before he could even finish his sentence, the tray slipped out of her fingers and crashed very loudly to the ground, shattered glass scattering across the wood floor. He and Wendy jumped back, obviously startled, and Dipper retreated his hand back to himself.

“Oh my gosh!” the waitress said quickly, dropping to her knees, trying to scrounge together the pieces of broken glass. “I’m so sorry! I don’t know what came over me!”

A shaky giggle left her mouth as she continued trying to clean up the mess. Dipper then dropped to his knees. He was going to try to help her, but she shot to her feet.

“Uh, I’ll go get something to clean this up! You two can pick a seat and the other waiter will be with you shortly!” With that, she rushed off, very obviously trying not to meet Dipper’s eyes. He regathered himself to his feet, staring dumbfounded in the direction of where the waitress had left.

“Does that… usually happen here?” he asked Wendy slowly.

“What? The flirting or the broken dishes?” Wendy asked in return, snickering as she referred to the completely unexpected pick-up line. Or pet name. Dipper didn’t know what to call it: he’d never really been flirted with before.

“Uh, both, I guess?”

“No, I’ve never seen her like that before,” Wendy answered, laughing again. “Don’t worry though! She’s actually a very competent waitress!”

“Let me guess,” Dipper started as Wendy motioned to find a table, “She knew this other Dipper who seems to be so popular?”

“Well, yeah. Everyone knows him,” Wendy answered, gesturing to Dipper a table that was free.

“Is that why everyone’s staring?” Dipper remarked under his breath, staring into Wendy’s eyes as he tried to avoid meeting anyone else’s.

“Well a tray of plates did just shatter onto the ground, Dipper,” Wendy said, obviously trying to deflect from why everyone was actually staring holes into Dipper’s head.

Dipper pulled out his phone, trying to ignore the burning stares, and tried to find anyone to text. When he looked back up at Wendy, she was grinning like an idiot at him, and everyone had strangely gone back to their business. Dipper could tell they were sneaking glances his way, though.

Eventually the other waiter came by and let Dipper and Wendy order their food. Luckily everything on the menu was fairly cheap. Compared to restaurants back in California, that is. Dipper wanted to make sure he wasn’t costing Wendy too much money. He ended up ordering a small burger with a side of fries.

The waiter finally left with their order, and Dipper was suddenly bored. He pulled out his phone again and was surprised to see someone had actually texted him. He smiled unknowingly when he read the contact name, and was quickly typing a response.

“Dude, what’s up?” Wendy asked. He looked up at her and hid his phone further under the table. “You’re blushing like crazy, haha!”

“What?” Dipper practically shrieked and moved to pull his shirt up over his face. “No, I’m not!”

“Yes you are, dude!” Wendy said, laughing. “Who are you texting?”

“That’s none of your business!” Dipper said quickly, and then, “Uh, the weather sure is nice today, right? It’s not as hot here as it is back home—”

“Woah, okay. Now I need to know!” Wendy propped her head up on her hands and leaned closer to him. “Go on! Spill!”

“It’s no one!” Dipper cried defensively. “Just someone from the band I’m in.”

“Woah, woah,” Wendy interrupted. “You’re in a band?”

“Uh, yeah,” Dipper said, glad the topic had shifted away from the person texting him. “I play the drums. I’m not that good, but I was the only person they could find that could play drums and was willing to join.”

“Okay, so you must have a type in this band,” Wendy started, going full-on detective mode. “Who is it? Pianist, lead singer, lead guitarist, bassist—”

Dipper quickly darted his eyes away from her’s. It was a big mistake, obviously. 

“Aha! Bassist!” Wendy stated proudly, then quickly pulled out her phone and started typing on the screen. “What did you say the name of your band was again?”

“I didn’t!” Dipper cried, suddenly very worried. “And you won’t find out in a million years!”

“You doubt a girl’s ability to internet stalk,” Wendy said nonchalantly, continuing to type on her phone. “You live in Piedmont, right?”

“No, I—” Dipper started. “How do you know that?”

“Do you happen to go to Piedmont High School—?”

“Okay!” Dipper half-shrieked, quickly pushing Wendy’s hands down and covering the screen of her phone. “We were just texting because we do guitar lessons together! I obviously can’t go do them right now, so we were just coordinating.”

“Right, because coordinating leaves you blushing like that,” Wendy said, smirking. “You do guitar, too?”

“A little bit, yeah,” he answered, glad again that the subject was shifting away from the apparent blushing and why he was doing it. “I’m not very good. I’ve only been taking lessons for a couple months.”

“Is this bassist the only reason you started taking lessons?” Wendy teased, tapping her fingers on themselves.

“No, I—” he said quickly. “Well, maybe …”

Their food was brought out right then and Dipper hurriedly started stuffing his mouth with it before he could be questioned any more. It was good. It tasted like it was actually made instead of manufactured. 

The two of them finished their meal, thankfully without any more talk of Dipper’s life back home, and then they continued on their way. Wendy showed Dipper all of the— apparently— best hangout spots in town. He honestly didn’t know if he could trust that considering the convenience store last night was supposed to be a great hangout spot.

The ‘Tour Extravaganza’ consisted of many places Dipper wouldn’t even consider going to hang out at back in Piedmont. There was the cemetery— which was apparently where Robbie lived— the arcade Wendy had talked about earlier, the theater, the town hall, the huge house atop the hill which the founder of the town lived in.

They eventually made their way to Wendy’s favorite spot. They had to take the offshooting road closer to the edge of town that Dipper remembered making a mental note of when he and Mabel were running through the town. 

It was a log cabin tucked back in the woods that had advertising signs hanging all over and was obviously some sort of tourist scam. It wasn’t busy at all, though. Dipper remembered the waitress saying something about how the town didn’t get visitors very often anymore . Maybe this place used to be all hustle and bustle, but now there was only one pick-up truck in the parking lot.

“This is where I work!” Wendy remarked, gesturing proudly to the run-down building.

“The… ‘Mystery Hack’?” Dipper asked, reading the large sign attached to the roof.

“It’s Shack. Mystery Shack. We can just never get the ‘S’ to stay on the sign,” Wendy said quickly and almost rehearsed.

It felt like a place from Dipper’s dreams. Or nightmares maybe. It seemed like the type of place to be killed by an ax murderer in.

Wendy showed him inside, into the gift shop. The shelves were stacked with classic Pacific Northwest memorabilia. Like sasquatch and mountains and all that crap. There was a, Dipper would probably describe it as scary, statue standing in the corner of the room of a demented, old man in a fez hat and suit leaning on an 8-ball cane. 

“Yo, Soos!” Wendy called to an unknown room of the building. “I’m back! Also, we have a visitor!”

Wendy gestured at Dipper to stay in this room as she ran off to find this Soos guy. Dipper took it as an opportunity to look around at the shop items. He started at the front desk. A beaten up register sat on it with a ‘Please’ sticker on the back of it, facing customers. When he was closer to the shelves, he saw Mystery Shack snowglobes and bobble heads that were presumably the same man as the one in the statue. There were posters, t-shirts with question marks on them, shrunken heads. When he finally made it full circle and back to the door, he saw a shelf filled with the same hat Wendy was wearing.

“Aha!” he called loudly, not completely sure if Wendy could actually hear him or not. “I knew I never gave you that hat! You just got it from here and wear it around as an advertisement for this place or something!”

He picked one off the shelf and placed it on top of his head, wandering over to the mirror right next to the shelf and pretending to admire himself. He heard footsteps somewhere behind him and turned around just as Wendy and a larger man entered the room.

“How do I look?” he asked coyly, overdramatically presenting the hat he was wearing.

Without a word, the larger man— Dipper noted he was wearing the same outfit as the statue but looked nothing like the man in the statue— made a sound, fainted, and collapsed on the floor. Wendy yelped and Dipper quickly rushed over.

“Oh my gosh!” he cried, dropping to his knees. “Should we call the police or something?”

“No, no!” Wendy assured him quickly, also dropping to the ground and starting to shake the man awake. “Don’t worry about it! This happens more than you’d think. Soos! Soos, wake up!”

The man— Soos’s eyes slowly started to flutter open. He was obviously out of it for a few seconds, but when he came to, he made direct eye contact with Dipper. Soos gasped and, before Dipper could process it, Soos’s arms were wrapped tightly around him and his face planted right into Soos’s chest. He tried to squirm free, but it was no use.

“Soos! Remember what I told you?” Wendy scolded, although the sound was muffled to Dipper.

It was a couple more seconds before Dipper was released. He sat up quickly and took a deep breath after nearly being suffocated to death.

“Sorry dawg,” the man called Soos said, sitting up and sticking out his hand for Dipper to shake.

Dipper did take Soos’s hand, shaking it politely and saying, “It’s okay. I think I’m starting to get used to it.”

The three of them gathered themselves to their feet. Dipper assumed he should return the hat back to where it was on the shelf, so he crossed the room to do that, setting it neatly down where it belonged.

“So, what exactly is this place?” he asked, turning back to face Wendy and Soos.

Soos cleared his throat and threw his arms out dramatically, saying, “Welcome to… the Mystery Shack! Where the wonders, mysteries, and ‘freaks’ of Gravity Falls are displayed for all to see!”

“Freaks, huh? Is that why that thing is here?” Dipper asked, pointing to the statue in the corner of the room.

Dipper watched as Wendy and Soos both exchanged glances, before bursting into laughter. Dipper followed suit after a bit. It was nice. The laughter felt familiar to him.

“We can give you a tour if you want,” Wendy suggested, folding her arms and leaning on the doorframe next to her. “On the house! That’s not an offer given lightly, I might add.”

“Ah, so I’m special,” Dipper joked. “What is this tour called? ‘Wendy Corduroy’s Tour of the Mystery Shack Extravaganza’?”

“Uh, yeah sure,” she said, giving Dipper a laugh then gesturing for him to follow them.

They wandered through the halls of the Shack, Dipper “admiring” all the obviously man-made attractions that lined the walls. A couple mentionable ones were the mermaid— which was just a monkey carcass or something literally stapled to the tail of a fish— and the “Sascrotch”. It was a sasquatch statue with a pair of underwear on. Which, why did this sasquatch need underwear when others didn’t? Didn’t all sasquatches have crotches? Why would he need underwear if fur was just going to cover him anyways?

He said as much to Wendy and Soos. 

Just as the tour was wrapping up, Dipper felt his phone start buzzing from inside his pocket. He fished it out and saw Mabel was calling him. Quickly, he excused himself from the conversation and answered the call.

“Hey, Mabel. What’s up?”

“ Dip, where are you? You’ve been gone forever! ” Mabel whined from her end of the line.

“I’m getting a VIP tour of the tourist attraction on the edge of town,” he bragged, turning away from Wendy and Soos who seemed to be anxiously watching him.

“ Well, can you come back to the hotel? I’m lonely! ”

“You could just call one of your friends,” Dipper remarked snidely, “Or Ethan . Or— here’s a bright idea— you could join me!”

“ I already called all of them! ” Mabel complained.

“Even Ethan ?” Dipper asked, almost protectively. He did not want to know what the two of them might have talked about alone in the hotel room, but at the same time he felt like he needed to know. Like, seriously? What was Ethan talking to his sister about?

“ Yes! ” Mabel answered, and Dipper’s fist tightened around his phone. “ And I don’t really want to join you, y’know? These people still creep me out! ”

“You can’t stay in that hotel room forever, Mabel!” Dipper argued, putting his free hand on his hip.

“ Or I… could— ”

“No! Okay, you know what?” Dipper snapped. “I will be back at the hotel in 15 minutes. You will be showered and dressed and whatever else, and then we will come back here and you won’t complain.”

“ Dipper, that’s not fair— ”

“I don’t care, Mabel! These people are really nice and I think you would really enjoy some of the things in here!”

“ Dipper, I don’t want to— ”

“So, you’ll be ready in 15 minutes?”

The line was quiet for a moment, and Dipper imagined Mabel rolling her eyes, tearing her phone away from her ear, and flipping off his caller ID.

“ Yeah, sure. Whatever. ”

“Okay, cool. See you then!”

He promptly pressed the button to end the conversation and turned back to Wendy and Soos.

“Sorry, my sister’s kind of an a— I mean— she can be really… frustrating sometimes.”

Soos and Wendy’s eyebrows both shot up simultaneously as they processed what Dipper said, or rather, didn’t say. Dipper was surprised, honestly. Didn’t everyone talk about their siblings like that sometimes?

“Anyways, I have to go pick her up! Maybe this time you can properly meet her, Wendy. I promise she’s not always like this.”

“Oh! We could come with you Dipper!” Wendy suggested quickly, and Soos nodded his head in agreement. “Just because you still don’t know your way around town that well.”

“Yeah sure,” Dipper agreed. “I was probably going to ask you to come anyways…”

He laughed, then went back to the gift shop to retrieve his messenger bag where he left it. He checked his watch one more time before the three of them headed out the door and back to his hotel.

Chapter Text

“ Are they really back? ”

Dipper heard the faint voice from a distance, echoing through the black void of his mind.

“ I didn’t think so at first, but then I followed him around and he put on that hat… ”

“Hello?” Dipper called out. His body seemed to materialize underneath him and he took it as a sign to trudge forward into the mist.

“ He was… unmistakable… ”

“Hello!” Dipper called again, louder this time, his voice echoing in the void.

Dipper has had weird dreams before, but this voice felt almost alive . Like it was an invader using his brain as a rest area. Was it talking about him ?

“ I can’t let them get too close to anyone. It could ruin everything. ”

“Who are you?” The words seemed to tear through his throat, but he was left with no remnant of feeling it.

Far away in the distance, a bright light broke through the dark. Dipper squinted his eyes at it, trying to figure out what it was.

“ Oh… Pine Tree. How nice of you to join me— ”

Dipper’s eyes suddenly tore open, and he was back in the dark hotel room. His chest was moving rapidly. Strange , he thought. That didn’t feel like a nightmare.

Mabel was still asleep in her bed, blankets piled high on top of her. From the soft breaths she was making, Dipper figured she was in a deep sleep. He slowly sat up, pushing his blankets aside, and reached for the switch of his bedside lamp.

No matter how small you think the dream might be, Dr. Sanchez’s words relayed in his mind, you should write down every single detail. You never know what might be important to your subconscious.

So he wrote down every detail. Everything he could remember and everything he could make note of.

That voice… it seemed familiar. Familiar in the way Wendy’s touch was? Or how he looked in the mirror when he put that hat on? Or even the smell of Soos’s suit?

No, it’s not that. More like a… primal instinct . Like how the human race as a whole is conditioned to be fearful of certain things, even if someone has never faced danger with them. Like large animals or heights or venomous creatures or uncanny valley.

Uncanny valley. That’s it. At least, it was the closest description Dipper could think of for this familiarity.

He also felt like that voice had been in his dreams before. He couldn’t name any specific time when he heard a voice. It just seemed like the type of voice to be in a dream.

Or a nightmare. 

The nightmares he’s had. That’s where he’s heard it.

They started a little under a year ago. Right before his 14th birthday. At first, they were calm. Confusing, but calm nonetheless. He appeared in a large labyrinth. The walls were made of dark brick. The floors were the same. He would appear there and simply wander.

The maze seemed endless, with hallways that defied gravity and structures that defied the laws of physics. He would wander and wander and wander until he eventually woke up.

When school started, the dreams started getting worse. He started appearing in a huge room, presumably the main hall of the wacked up building, with the aforementioned hallways shooting out of the sides of this room. On one wall hung torn banners with melting faces on them. At the head of the room was a throne big enough for a giant. The first time Dipper got close to it, he realized it was made from stone people. Their faces were frozen in terror. Dipper never got close to that throne again.

It was when the… issues started that the dreams turned into nightmares. At first, it was just a bellowing voice, echoing down the twisting halls of the labyrinth. Then the voice started getting closer. Then the voice had a body. A huge, terrifying, eldritch horror of a body. Dipper didn’t run away the first night that thing actually appeared. He ran every night after that.

The nightmares started becoming frequent. It got to the point where Dipper would appear there and just achingly wait to wake up. Morning couldn’t come sooner; although, most of the time he would awake in the middle of the night and would refuse to go back to sleep.

He would wake up only a few different ways. When he was caught, when he was caught then killed, when he escaped and fell to his death, or the rare and painful times when his sister was there with him and he was forced to watch her die.

Those nights were the worst.

Those nights, he would shoot out of bed, cold sweat dripping down his face as he tried not to scream out loud. His chest would heave. His hands would shake. Tears would stream down his cheeks as he tried to wake up completely. He would eventually throw his blankets off him and rush out of his room. He would creep into the hallway, in the dead of night, and slowly open his sister’s door. Just to make sure she was lying there in her bed. Alive .

The voice though. In those dreams, it never said anything. Maybe it did, but it sounded like gibberish in Dipper’s head. It echoed and bellowed and overwhelmed Dipper’s ears. It was completely incomprehensible.

So why was this new voice completely distinct? Who was it talking to? Who was it talking about?

This dream was completely different from any dream Dipper ever had. He made sure to make note of it in his journal.

He finished writing his last sentence, placing a satisfying, ink period at the end of the final line. The journal was shut and placed back on the bedside table. A yawn stretched at Dipper’s mouth and he figured he should go back to sleep, considering it wasn’t even three in the morning yet.

He flipped the switch of the lamp back off and climbed back under the covers. It luckily didn’t take long for him to go back to sleep.

His eyes quickly became heavy. He couldn’t tell when he switched from lucidity to unconsciousness. The hotel’s blankets were really comfortable, though. That’s what he was thinking about before he fell asleep.

Everything became black, and his consciousness slowly faded back into the depths of his mind. His body was the first thing to appear. Then all around him were dark bricks.

No… he thought, staring at the banners with the melting faces hanging on the walls. No, please. I was doing so good…

Chapter Text

Mabel woke up after Dipper did. He didn’t hear her sit up in her bed. He didn’t feel her watching him across the room.

“Um, Dipper,” she said slowly. Dipper didn’t bother to turn his full attention to her. “What are you doing?”

He continued foraging through his parents’ bags as he responded. 

“I’m looking for a map.”

“Uh, why?” Mabel asked. “Are you leaving? Can I come with you?”

“No, I’m not leaving,” Dipper said bluntly. “A little before the crash, Dad said that we wouldn’t hit another town for hours . There were no signs on the highway that said anything about a ‘Gravity Falls’, but it’s clearly right off the highway. So I looked up Gravity Falls on my phone this morning, and guess what?”

“I don’t think I even want to know—”

“ Nothing ,” Dipper continued, unzipping a pocket of their father’s travel bag. “So I’m trying to find a physical road map to see if maybe there’s something about Gravity Falls on it, but as far as I can tell, this town doesn’t exist .”

“What do you mean, ‘doesn’t exist’?” Mabel asked. Dipper felt the floor shift behind him as she walked over and knelt on the floor beside him. “Dipper, that’s insane. I mean, we’re in the town right now.”

“I know! That’s why it’s weird!” Dipper exclaimed as he kept digging through the bag.

Mabel slowly reached out in front of him and pulled an atlas from the bag. Weird. Dipper had sworn he looked there already.

“Dipper, how much sleep did you get last night?” Mabel asked slowly. Knowingly.

“I got enough sleep,” he answered, swiping the atlas from her hands and hurrying to open it to Oregon state. He started scanning through the section as soon as he got there. “Anyways, not only could I not find this town on the maps, but there is no history of it anywhere . No dates, no mentions, no obscure Wikipedia page—”

“Did you take your meds last night, Dipper,” Mabel asked. Dipper could feel her watching him as he frantically skimmed through different maps of Oregon.

“Yes.”

“Did you take your meds this morning?”

“ Yes .”

“Did you stay up too late?”

“I went to bed at the same time you did.”

“How long have you been up?”

“Like, four or five hours, maybe?”

“Four or five hours!” Mabel scolded. “Dipper! It’s only eight!”

Dipper snapped out of his trance to look up at the alarm clock sitting on the nightstand. Its bright red numbers read 8:13 . 

“Dipper,” Mabel said, slowly pulling the atlas out of Dipper’s hands. “You need to go back to bed.”

“Mabel, you don’t understand,” Dipper protested, although he didn’t move to take the atlas back. “I can’t sleep until I find some evidence that this town exists! I’ve tried looking up schools and restaurants and stores. The map on my phone has nothing . It registers our location as the middle of the woods with nothing around us for miles!”

“Okay! Dipper ,” Mabel snapped, “I will look through this stupid map for Gravity Falls, and I will check the map on my phone while you sleep. You’re probably just too tired to properly think and your brain is making stuff up for you.”

“That’s not—”

“I know it’s probably not how it works, Dipper. But I know how you get when you don’t get enough sleep, and you need to go back to bed.”

“Fine,” Dipper said.

“Okay, good—”

“Right after we go to the library,” he continued, getting to his feet and going to pull some clothes out of his bag.

“ Dipper !” Mabel scolded, standing up to follow him.

“ Mabel ,” Dipper responded, in the same tone. “If anywhere’s going to have information about the history of this town, it’s gonna be the library.”

“Can’t it wait until after you get some sleep?” Mabel asked.

“Possibly not!” Dipper argued, shutting himself in the bathroom to get changed. “What if Mom and Dad get better right now and we’re forced to leave? What if we leave and we can never come back because the town really doesn’t exist? I will never be able to find out more about it again and eventually, I’ll convince myself that this whole visit never actually happened. I would either completely forget all about it, or I would never be able to rest and I would drive myself insane!”

“You’re already driving yourself insane, Dipper!” Mabel retorted from the other side of the bathroom door.

“I can sleep in the car,” Dipper continued, finishing dressing himself and leaving the bathroom, “when we leave town.”

He quickly shoved his feet into his shoes without bothering to tie them. He grabbed his messenger bag and went to open the door and leave, but—

“Wait, I’ll come with you,” Mabel groaned in defeat.

“Really?” Dipper asked, perking up.

“So I can make sure you don’t hurt yourself,” Mabel said, going to grab clothes out of her bag. “And I might as well see what this dinky town has to offer. The library might be fun…”

Dipper smiled at her as she trudged into the bathroom and shut the door behind her. He waited patiently for his sister as she got ready, occasionally checking his phone. She finally came out, wearing clothes that definitely said she didn’t care if she was presentable or not, and slipped on her shoes, tying them aggravatingly slowly.

Finally, they were out the door and heading down the street. Dipper continued skimming through pages of the atlas, which he had swiped while Mabel was in the bathroom, as they walked. Occasionally, he would feel Mabel grab his arm and pull him to her side. He didn’t bother to find out why as he was much too preoccupied.

They were stopped a few times along the way. Mabel would stop everytime and make light conversation, which Dipper knew she was only doing to annoy him. Someone would greet the two, Mabel would grab the back of Dipper’s shirt and yank him back so he wouldn’t continue without her, and she would plaster on a fake smile to talk to whoever it was like they were besties.

Eventually they made it to the library. Dipper rushed in, tugging his sister along behind him, and started foraging through the shelves for any piece of information he could.

“You can only pick out two books,” Mabel commanded, following him around half-heartedly. “You don’t need any more than that.”

“But those two books might not have everything I’m looking for!” Dipper whined, walking up and down every aisle.

“Dipper,” Mabel said, in the tone that said he should stop and listen to her. So he did. Finally.

She gave him an exhausted look and pointed to a table in the back corner of the building. There was a small pile of books on display with a sign in the middle of them. Gravity Falls History.

Dipper perked up and rushed over to the table, disregarding his sister. He started digging through the pile as if he was a dog digging for treasure in a poor, old lady’s yard. He eventually found two that looked interesting and spun around, trying to find his sister so they could leave.

He hadn’t even realized she left him, so he wandered around until he found her flipping through magazines with boy bands and male celebrities on the covers.

“Mabel,” he said, tugging at the hem of her shirt to get her attention, “I found some books. We can leave now.”

“Hang on! I get to pick out something too!”

So he waited as she slowly flipped through pages of the teen girl magazines, not as patiently this time. He bounced up and down on his feet and tapped his fingers on the covers of his books and spun around anxiously as she turned each page deliberately at the pace a snail would.

After a few minutes, she closed the magazine she had just finished skimming through and said, “Yeah, none of these look really interesting.”

Dipper groaned and grabbed her wrist, pulling her along to the front desk where a librarian was looking through a book with a bored expression on her face. Without meaning to, Dipper slammed his books down in front of her, startling her.

“Well, hello there!” she greeted with a midwestern accent. “Is this all you two will be checking out today?”

Dipper hurriedly nodded his head and motioned for her to start checking them out. She did, then held her hand out and asked for a library card.

Dipper’s face fell. He forgot that you needed a library card to check books out at the library.

Luckily, Mabel stepped forward, pulling a wallet out of her pocket.

“Um, we’re actually just visiting town for a little bit and we don’t have library cards. Would it be alright if we just put it on a credit card or something?” She plucked a card from the wallet, and Dipper recognized it as their parents’.

The librarian looked down at the card, then a smile broke across her face and she fell into a soft laughter.

“Oh nonsense!” she said after a bit of laughing. “I’ll let you check them out, just make sure to bring them back, yeah?”

The twins gave each other a look with wide eyes, then Dipper turned back to the librarian and nodded his head at a speed that might give him whiplash. The librarian finished putting the books in a paper bag then handed it to Dipper. He quickly took it, thanked her, and pulled Mabel out of the building with him.

“Tell me again why you’re suddenly obsessed with figuring this out?” Mabel asked as Dipper began flipping through pages of one of the books.

“I don’t know,” he said honestly. “I guess after Wendy showed me around, it piqued my interest so I went to look it up. Then nothing showed up on my phone and I remembered driving the other day and—”

“Oh speaking of which,” Mabel interrupted quickly, “don’t you think we should visit Mom and Dad sometime today? I feel like we should check on them.”

“Oh my God,” Dipper exclaimed, exasperated, finally tearing his eyes away from his book and halting in his tracks.

“You forgot about them, didn’t you?”

“Just momentarily…”

“Oh my God!” Mabel laughed.

“Okay, well, we’ll check on them today.”

“That’s actually hilarious. I can’t believe you forgot about our parents.”

The conversation thankfully died down and their walk continued. Dipper still wasn’t paying much attention until Mabel said something then was tugging him away from the sidewalk.

“What?” he asked, not having heard what she said.

“I said we should stop for some breakfast here,” she repeated, annoyed.

Dipper looked up and saw the log-shaped restaurant he went to yesterday. He would’ve objected to the breakfast offer, considering there was breakfast at the hotel, but he enjoyed the food he ate from there yesterday.

The two went in and were sat by the waiter who served Dipper and Wendy yesterday. He looked around for the blonde one who dropped the tray, but she didn’t seem to be in the dining area.

They were given water and then they ordered some food, then finally Dipper began to flip through his book in peace.

The history was typical for any town in the Pacific Northwest. It was founded by the pioneers on the Oregon Trail and whatnot during the 1800s.

“This book says Gravity Falls was founded by one Nathaniel Northwest,” Dipper remarked to Mabel. He wasn’t actually expecting her to listen. “Imagine having the last name ‘Northwest’.”

“That book’s not accurate,” a voice that didn’t belong to Mabel said. He looked up quickly and saw the blonde waitress standing next to the twins’ booth.

“Oh, hi,” he said quickly, shutting his book.

“What do you mean, not accurate?” Mabel asked. So she had been listening.

“The town was actually founded by Sir Lord Trembley or something like that, but the government tried to erase him from the history of the United States so they chose the local village idiot to act as the founder,” she explained.

“Because the government cared so much about the founder of a random town in the middle of nowhere?” Dipper asked.

“Well, he was also the 8 ½ president,” she said.

“That doesn’t sound real at all,” Mabel said, turning her attention from the conversation to her phone.

“Believe me, I didn’t want to think that that whole government conspiracy was real,” she said, laughing. “Oh, and sorry we didn’t get to meet properly yesterday. I’m Pacifica. Northwest.”

She stuck out her hand at Dipper. He took it, his eyes flicking to the book in front of him.

“Pacifica?” he asked. “What? Did your parents hate you or something?”

“Bold words from someone who’s name is ‘Dipper’.”

“Hey, it’s not my real name,” he said quickly.

“Oh?” she asked, sounding genuinely surprised.

“Yeah, his real name is—” Mabel started, but Dipper sent a sharp glare to her.

“So anyways,” he said, trying to change the subject, “you’re descended from…”

His words trailed off as he tapped on the book in front of him.

“That’s right!” she said, crossing her arms. “And y’know, my great great grandfather is still considered the founder? The conspiracy was never leaked.”

“How did it even get out at all?” he asked.

“There were these people a couple years ago who snuffed it out,” she explained. “It was actually just to get revenge on me, so I don’t think they ever told anyone else.”

“Seems like a lot just to get revenge on one person,” he said, picking up his glass of water and taking a sip.

“I don’t blame them,” she said, solemnly. “I wasn’t the best person. Someone had to humble me.”

“Says the waitress in a run-down diner in the middle of nowhere,” Mabel remarked, not caring enough to look away from her phone.

Dipper thought he saw Pacifica’s eye twitch, but instead of retorting, she took a quick breath and said, “My family used to be one of the richest probably in the world. Then my dad made a stupid decision and we lost most of our wealth, so I took up working here.”

“What a life story,” Mabel said sarcastically. “Must be tearing your heart apart to work among peasants.”

“It’s been nice,” Pacifica said. She had that smile that Mabel would give people so often. “I didn’t like it at first but I enjoy getting to know the regulars.”

“I don’t care,” Mabel said flatly, sinking deeper into her chair.

Dipper watched Pacifica’s eye obviously twitch and her fist tighten around her apron. But she was clearly trying to keep a smile on her face.

“Mabel, can’t you try to be nice,” Dipper scolded, crossing his arms.

His sister finally sat up and leaned across the table. She cupped one hand around her mouth so Pacifica couldn’t see it and whispered, “I’m sorry if I get agitated when a random waitress tells me her whole life story when I literally didn’t ask.”

“She’s just trying to be nice,” Dipper whispered back, also leaning forward as the two exchanged hushed words. “And you were assuming things about her. She was just clarifying.”

“All I’m saying is that it seems too personal for people she just met,” Mabel hissed, then leaned back again and pulled out her phone.

A moment passed as the waitress stood there obviously trying not to lash out at Dipper’s sister. He leaned back against his seat, a deep sigh escaping his mouth.

“Sorry about her,” he said loudly, making it obvious that he was annoyed with Mabel.

“It’s fine. Um—” She took a step back from the booth. “I think your food will be done soon. I’ll bring it out for you.”

“Thank you,” Dipper confirmed. Pacifica nodded and started off.

“I don’t understand why you’re trying to make friends with everyone,” Mabel said when the waitress was out of sight. “Where was this Dipper when we were at school at home?”

“It’s different there,” Dipper said. “They all know a certain version of me and they all treat me like I’m a disease or a parasite. These people think they know at least some version of me so they’re trying to be my friend. It’s nice.”

“Dipper, listen. Coming from someone who, I would argue, is better at making friends than you, you have to learn who you should be friends with. Yes, it’s nice when people are friendly to you, but you need to learn how to pick out the bad ones or else you could befriend a psychopath.”

“Oh, as if your friends are so great—” he started retorting, but Mabel’s phone started ringing in her hand and her full attention turned to it.

She picked up with a sickly high-pitched greeting to one of her brat friends and Dipper was forgotten about. Like always. 

He retreated to the guaranteed company of his book as his sister’s conversation continued on. Something about a new boyfriend. He was starting to think that was all girls could ever talk about. Either that or they just picked up and dropped boyfriends like they were pieces of gum that wore out and needed to be replaced over time.

Not long after, Pacifica came back out with the food. It happened to be right as Mabel’s friend loudly said some sick innuendo about this new boy’s body. 

Dipper’s jaw dropped because, what the heck.

He stared down his sister as she laughed into her phone speaker. He saw Pacifica slowly hold her hand up to her mouth before walking away and he suddenly felt very embarrassed to be in the same booth as Mabel Pines.

When he finally caught his sister’s attention, she glared at him and mouthed ‘what?’. He mouthed back something like ‘what the hell?’, but Mabel just made a shrugging gesture. 

“Do you know how loud your phone is?” he hissed, talking so quietly it was still as if he was mouthing words.

Mabel’s eyes became very wide just then. She slapped her hand over her mouth as her friend continued chattering away. Her cheeks began to turn red and she was suddenly saying quick goodbyes to her friend and finally hanging up.

“How much did you hear?” she hissed right after her phone was put away. 

“More than I ever needed to,” Dipper said bluntly, picking up his utensils and beginning to dig into his food. “Oh and the waitress heard something too.”

“Oh my God, that’s so embarrassing,” Mabel muttered, leaning onto the table with her elbows and covering her face with her hands.

“Tell me about it,” Dipper mumbled. Mabel looked up with a glare, before picking a tater tot from her plate and pelting it at her brother’s head.

After a long silence between the two, the ambience of a small town diner in the early morning becoming comforting, Dipper asked, “So was she talking about one of her interests or yours?”

Mabel only looked up and rolled her eyes exaggeratedly.

“I don’t have to answer that.”

Chapter Text

“Hey, Dipstick. Didn’t anyone tell you not to draw during class?”

“Class has barely even started,” Dipper retorted, using the front cover of his sketchbook to shield his drawing from peering eyes. 

“Is that an excuse to distract yourself from learning?” Ethan asked mockingly, the immature boys around the two of them snickering.

“Maybe you should be worried about your own learning,” Dipper muttered under his breath, his pencil continuing to scratch at his paper.

He didn’t see Ethan’s reaction, but he heard quiet ‘ooh’s’ around them.

“What are you even drawing that’s so important?” Ethan asked quickly, snatching Dipper’s sketchbook from him before he could process it. An immature show of dominance.

“Hey! Give it back!” Dipper snapped, standing from his seat and reaching out to reclaim his precious drawings. Ethan, about a foot taller than him, waved it around in the air tauntingly.

“Oh wow, look at these crazy monsters! Is this your girlfriend?” Ethan taunted further, pointing out the pyramid monster with outstretched limbs and one huge eye in the center of its head.

“I said give it back, asshole!” Dipper yelled before he could stop himself. 

Of course it was at exactly the wrong moment. It always was. 

The teacher walked in just then, hearing and seeing nothing but Ethan holding Dipper’s sketchbook captive and Dipper yelling obscenities at him for it.

“Ethan! Mason!” she scolded quickly, hurrying to the back of the room towards her desk. “It’s always something with you two! Office! Now!”

She pointed a crooked finger towards the door she just hailed from. Ethan groaned, complaining as if this wasn’t his fault, and threw Dipper’s sketchbook back onto his desk. 

Dipper looked towards the back of the room, locking eyes with his sister. She sat silently at her desk, sending a pitying look his way.

He sighed, throwing his books into his messenger bag and following Ethan out of the room.

_______________________

“I’m heading out,” Dipper said to his sister, hoisting his messenger bag over his shoulder.

“Where are you going?” she asked, not actually seeming interested.

“Library,” he responded, opening the door. “I need more books.”

“Have fun,” Mabel said flatly, typing rapidly into her phone.

He sighed, losing the small hope that maybe she would want to come with him. 

You’re an idiot , he thought to himself as he walked out of the hotel. Wanting to spend time with your sister? How stupid.

The early morning breeze blew through the town. It felt nice. Serene. The sun was casting long shadows from where it hung on the eastern horizon. Dipper was starting to appreciate the beauty of this place.

_______________________

They weren’t even halfway down the hall before Ethan was yanking the front of Dipper’s shirt and throwing him against the wall of lockers.

“You think that stupid trick of yours was funny?” Ethan hissed, getting too close for comfort.

“What trick?” Dipper asked. He knew he shouldn’t have. He never played a trick. Ethan just needed someone to blame for his stupid mistakes.

“‘Maybe you should focus on your own learning’?” he snapped, slamming Dipper against the lockers again.

“Oh, you mean reminding you that you’re an idiot?” he asked. Although, he became the idiot when he asked it.

Ethan’s face twisted into an ugly glare. He yanked on Dipper’s shirt again and Dipper was suddenly being shoved uncomfortably into the nearest unlocked locker. Would he protest? No. That would probably just make it worse.

“Shoving nerds into lockers? Real original,” a voice called from down the hall.

It was Mabel.

Ethan tore his attention away from Dipper.

“Stay out of this,” he said, his tone much lighter than it had been when Dipper was sure he was about to threaten his life.

“That’s so stereotypical bully, Ethan,” Mabel continued. Her voice was getting closer. “Just leave him before you get in more trouble.”

Ethan looked quickly back to Dipper, then Mabel, then back to Dipper as his face twisted more and more. Finally he grunted, before pulling Dipper harshly forward, forcing him to fall forward onto the ground.

When Mabel helped her brother up, Ethan was already gone.

“Are you okay?” Mabel asked. Dipper swatted her hand away.

“I’m fine,” he snapped, repositioning his bag on his shoulder.

“Dipper—”

“I’m saved now, Mabel. You can feel good about yourself again. Go back to class.”

“Dipper, please, I—”

“If you’re not gonna help me in there then don’t bother to help me out here!”

“Dipper, you don’t understand. I—”

“No! I get it. It’s too embarrassing for you to help me when your reputation is on the line!”

“That’s not—!”

“Just leave me alone, Mabel.”

He turned from her. He could feel her stoic glare boring into the back of his head. He started down the hall, then finally heard her footsteps retreating back to the classroom.

_______________________

When Dipper entered the library again, he decided he would rather stay there all day than go back to listening to his sister’s inappropriate conversations back in the hotel room.

It was a nice library. He didn’t really look around when he was there with his sister the previous day. The main floor where he was felt like an antique chest holding ancient treasures rather than a genuine library. Or at least the ones back home.

He found a few books he wanted to read then wandered upstairs. This was definitely the section designated for kids, seeing as the shelves were filled with more fiction, the colors were vibrant, and satirical posters hung on the walls.

He parked himself on a comfortable seat next to a window. There was hardly anyone here. It was peaceful.

As he began to read, he realized how tired he still was from his lack of sleep. 

He’d had the nightmare again last night. His consciousness woke up in that place and a pit in his stomach developed. His eyes tore open after the inevitable ending and he refused to return to the labyrinth again.

He distracted himself with his phone all morning. His sketchbook. His journal. Anything that would keep him awake. When Mabel woke up, he pretended to be asleep so she wouldn’t force him into an afternoon nap like she had yesterday.

Consequently, his eyes became heavier and heavier with the growing exhaustion. He narrowed in on the page in front of him, but the words started blurring together and merging into nonsensical sentences.

He continued trying to reposition himself, bounce his leg up and down, do anything active that would keep him awake. Against his efforts, he drifted off. 

Achingly, he tore his eyes open again. He couldn’t fall asleep here! He was in the middle of the public library!

“Tired?” a voice behind him asked, and he jumped, startled.

“What?” he asked, now sufficiently awake from the spike in his heart rate. He spun around quickly, slamming his book shut.

“You look tired,” a person said. He looked about Dipper’s age, maybe older. He had dirty blond hair, amber eyes, bright yellow clothing. Dipper usually wouldn’t make a remark on it, but the colors on him just seemed so vivid compared to everything else.

“I’m not,” Dipper denied quickly, sitting up straighter and pulling his book closer to him.

“The bags under your eyes would suggest otherwise,” he said, gesturing to Dipper’s entire person.

“Well, I’m not,” Dipper snapped, turning away, flustered. “Why would you care anyways?”

“I’m just concerned for a fellow citizen’s well-being. You should probably go home. Get some rest.”

His voice had a knowing tone. As if this has happened before. Maybe it was just the strange sense of deja vu Dipper was experiencing talking.

“No,” he said firmly, leaning forward onto the table in front of him and opening his book back up.

There was silence, but Dipper could still feel the person’s watching eyes. He tried to ignore the feeling and continue reading, but his gaze was practically boring into the back of Dipper’s head.

Dipper finally sighed and spun back around to face him. He noted the look on his face. It was less bewildered than how the rest of the town looked at him. He looked more calm. And again, knowing .

“What do you want?” Dipper asked flatly, just trying to get rid of him.

“I think you should be asking what you want.”

Dipper rolled his eyes. He didn’t have time for riddles. He went to turn back around, until—

“I hear they keep the valuable stuff under the shelves.”

Dipper paused. Valuable? In a library?

“What do you mean, valuable?” he asked.

“The information. They keep the most valuable information away from peering eyes. They hide them under the shelves. Downstairs.”

A breath escaped Dipper’s mouth. “Well, why don’t you just check it out then? If you care so much.”

“I just figure it would be stuff you’re looking for,” he said, his demeanor ever unchanging. “You know; history, theories, answers .”

“What kind of answers?”

One of his eyebrows quirked at Dipper. A smirk twisted up the corner of his mouth. It felt like Dipper was a fish being caught on a hook. The sharp point had finally pierced his skin.

“The ones you’re looking for.”

Dipper rolled his eyes again. He didn’t have time for this. He turned back towards his book.

“You don’t even know what I’m looking for.”

Another silence, but still the feeling of a watchful gaze.

“Under the shelves,” he repeated. “If you find what you’re looking for, come back here and we can talk.”

“Whatever,” Dipper groaned, thoroughly done with this conversation and this creepy guy. He didn’t turn back around, but he felt the other’s presence leave and he was grateful for the solitude.

Back in the company of his book, he felt himself grow tired again. He thought he’d gotten past this, but the words on the pages started bouncing around and his limbs grew heavy. Then he was asleep again.

He didn't know how long he’d stayed asleep there, but when he woke up, the library was still practically empty of patrons. He figured it might be best to leave and return to his sister and the safety of their hotel room.

But when he went downstairs, the stranger’s words ran through his head. About the valuable books.

He rolled his eyes. Surely he wouldn’t take advice from this random guy in the library. 

But the words tugged on him. Valuable books with answers? Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to at least give it a shot.

So in an act of impulse that would surely be embarrassing if he were caught, he started wandering the shelves on the main level,  only looking suspiciously low. There were multiple times when he crawled down on hands and knees trying to find these books that seemed to be growing more and more mythical by the second.

His efforts proved futile. He sighed, humiliated to have believed someone who couldn’t even give the names of the books he was talking about.

Now thoroughly upset with the stranger and with himself, he exasperatedly began putting his books away. He returned to all the sections where he had retrieved them, counted with the decimal system, reshelved them according to alphabetical order by author.

It was when he was in the very back corner of the library, about to leave for good, that a speck of light in the corner of his vision caught his attention.

He stopped, praying that maybe it was just a speck of dust flying through the air. But when he stepped back, he saw the golden light flicker again.

Slowly he turned to more properly find what had so successfully captured his attention. His heart dropped when he saw a golden reflection. Underneath the shelf.

As he sank to his hands and knees, he hoped that this wasn’t just a trick of his mind. A prank that his exhaustion was playing on him to get revenge. At the same time, he hoped it was. He hoped the stranger was completely wrong so he would never have to think of their encounter again.

He reached timidly under the old wooden shelf, feeling around for anything out of the ordinary.

His heart spiked when he felt an old, dusty cover that would hold a book forgotten for years and hidden away from peering eyes.

His hand tightened around it, dragged it out from its supposed home. It was heavier than a typical book and felt as if it might disintegrate if he held it the wrong way.

When he finally laid eyes on the dust-blanketed red cover, a breath of relief escaped his mouth. Or perhaps it was disbelief. He blew a puff of air across the book, the thick layer of dust escaping from its hold on the old leather.

A golden hand was the only title adoring the book. The large number ‘3’ written in the center of it. Quickly, Dipper spun it around in his hands inspecting it for anything that might invalidate the stranger’s words, but there was nothing. There wasn’t even an official library sticker.

Too intrigued to sit here and examine the book in public, Dipper quickly shoved the book into his messenger bag. If the book has no library sticker, then he doesn’t need to check it out, right?

His heart pounded as he waved to the librarian while exiting the front doors, the stolen book hidden safely away in his bag. As he walked down the street, there were so many things going through his mind. But the only thought he could make out was—

I never got that person’s name …

Chapter Text

Wendy was still working when Dipper entered the gift shop of the tourist attraction. Her friends were there too, all talking around the check-out counter.

Wendy perked up when her eyes landed on Dipper at the door.

“Oh, hey Dipper!” she greeted, sitting up from where she had been leaning back in her chair. Everyone else’s eyes landed on Dipper, and he began to shrink back from the attention. 

“Hey,” he mumbled, tightening his grip around the strap of his bag, the leather book seeming to burn his leg where his bag was resting against it.

“What’s up?” Wendy asked, propping her head up with her hand.

“You look tired,” Robbie said, matter-of-factly.

“I’m not,” he denied quickly, his gaze focused on Wendy. “I need to tell you something.”

“Just me?” she asked, beginning to stand up. Dipper nodded. “Alright, come here.”

She led him away from the group and into another room. It smelled like a grandpa, specifically Dipper’s grandpa strangely. There was a worn down yellow chair with a skull-turned-side-table next to it. The TV was still an old box TV, and the carpet had the texture of matted dog fur.

“What’s up?” Wendy asked again, more seriously.

“Have you ever been outside this town?” Dipper asked. Wendy raised one eyebrow at him, but then sighed.

“I have,” she said, almost nostalgically. “My dad used to take my brothers and me camping near Mt. Hood all the time, but I haven’t left town in almost two years.”

“Has anyone else?” 

“Not that I know of, no.”

A breath escaped Dipper’s mouth. Wendy was gonna think he was crazy after this. Maybe he was. He honestly didn’t think he could trust himself anymore at this point.

“This is gonna sound insane,” he started, “but Gravity Falls and everyone in it doesn’t exist…”

Wendy’s brows furrowed.

“What? What do you mean ‘doesn’t exist’?”

“I mean, there is no such thing as Gravity Falls,” Dipper continued, relaying all the information he’d gathered over the past day through his head. “No maps, no history, no social medias—”

“Wait, Dipper. Stop. That’s crazy!”

“I know. I know. But I have been going insane over this since yesterday morning. I’ve read close to five different books in the Gravity Falls library about the history of this place and compared town maps to maps on my phone and the atlas my parents brought on our trip. This town simply doesn’t exist anywhere outside of itself.”

The look in Wendy’s eyes darkened. Dipper hoped she would understand what he’s saying.

“So then I used my phone to look up different people in town, and nothing comes up!”

“But you have my phone number!”

“Yes, I realized that. So I thought maybe your phone still registers as a phone but in terms of the internet, no one here exists.”

A solemn look clouded Wendy’s eyes. She shifted between her feet.

“How could that be possible?” she asked, not looking Dipper in the eyes.

“At first I thought that maybe I died or went into a coma or something along with my parents and this whole place is the in-between of life and death,” he started, glad that she was willing to listen. “But I don’t think so. I think this is something bigger than that.”

“Do you think that maybe our town used to exist but then it was somehow erased?” she asked.

“What do you mean ‘erased’?”

“Like, is it possible that it was taken off every map and all history of it was replaced and every memory that took place here was wiped from the minds of everyone on Earth?”

She put emphasis on the last part and Dipper folded his arms.

“I know what you’re getting at,” Dipper started. “Wendy, I have never been here! Not once in my life!”

“Maybe that’s just what you think!” Wendy argued, standing up straighter. “Maybe we were all wiped from your mind and replaced! Come on Dipper! There are too many similarities between you and the person we knew for it to be a coincidence!”

“It is just a coincidence!” Dipper snapped, surprising himself and probably Wendy as well. “I don’t have friends, okay? I’m not some awesome sleuthy person and I am not a popular person anywhere ! Whoever this person was? It’s not me!”

“Dipper, please, I—”

“Forget it,” Dipper said, pushing past Wendy and moving as if he was on autopilot to the front door. 

“Dipper, wait—”

But he had already opened, exited, and slammed that door behind him, holding the bag at his side protectively. 

It wasn’t until he had made it a considerable way down the road back to town that he realized Wendy never told him there was a door right there.

_______________________

When Dipper made it back to the main strip of town, he realized he didn’t want to be there all that much. He thought and thought of places he might be able to go to read his mysterious book in peace, but he couldn’t think of anywhere.

So that’s why he was now trudging through the eerily familiar woods. He slapped branches aside, his frustration growing. He was upset that everything here seemed so familiar to him. He was upset that everyone thought he was someone he wasn’t. He was upset that nothing in this place was making any sense to him.

Angry that he couldn’t even escape from his thoughts, he pulled the thick, red book out of his messenger bag. Maybe it could distract him.

He held it in front of him, thumbing the old pages and trying to find a good spot to randomly open to. That same feeling of familiarity burned onto the pad of his thumb, and he grew upset again.

But he pushed on. Instead of opening randomly, he just flipped the cover open. 

Property of Stanford Pines

Pines? He thought, and that anger came again. He didn’t want Wendy to be right. He looked at the name again. He’d definitely heard it somewhere.

Dad’s uncles, he concluded. That’s right. The ones who visited a few months ago. One of them was named Stanford. What was the other’s name again? It was similar…

Stanley. I remember it now. Mabel made a snarky comment about how uncreative our great grandfather was for naming his twin sons practically the same .

He continued reading the next page.

June 18. It’s hard to believe it’s been six years since I began researching the strange and won’drous secrets of Gravity Falls, Oregon.

Great. So now there was a direct connection between Dipper’s family and this town. But wait. This is the first author of any book that mentioned this town who also exists outside of it. He looked up the authors of all the other books and not a single one of them came up anywhere.

So this town had to have existed somewhere, he concluded. Finally, some confirmation that this isn’t just an alternate universe or whacky coma dream. 

But why would my dad’s uncle have been here? Why would he have been researching it?

He continued reading. There were stories of Stanford and his research partner and the life-threatening situations they got themselves into. There were detailed drawings and descriptions of the strangest creatures Dipper had ever seen. There were concerning pages that seemed to be written by someone else with brownish blood stained on them. There were—

Chills rushed down Dipper’s body as he flipped the page. His heart seemed to stop as he eyed the thing looking back at him on the page. His breath hitched as he drew his finger along the lines.

Bill Cipher

It was the monster from his nightmare.

In this drawing, it looked much less menacing and much more two-dimensional. In his nightmares, it was always a giant pyramid with countless limbs and sharpened teeth and a flopping tongue. It would crawl after him with an anger that simply wasn’t present in this drawing.

Bill can’t be trusted

Do not summon at all costs

How could this thing be here in this book? Better yet, how could this thing have been in Dipper’s dreams? With each passing day the possibility of him having been here at some point in time became more and more possible, but then why couldn’t Dipper remember anything about it? He had to trust his own memories, not just some feeling he had about a creepy town in the middle of nowhere—

His thoughts were interrupted suddenly when he heard twigs snap from somewhere around him.

“Hello?” he called. At some point while he was reading, he had stopped to lean against a tree because he thought this was a quiet and undisturbed area. It didn't seem like that anymore.

No one answered him. Or rather nothing answered him. He really couldn't be sure if this thing was human or not at this point.

“Hello!” he called again, louder. When everything around him seemed to come to a hushed silence, he timidly gathered himself to his feet

It felt like something was watching him. He couldn’t tell if it felt eerie or not. He slowly inserted his book back into his bag, trying to be as quiet as possible. He made a move to back out of the clearing and—

A tiny creature suddenly jumped out of the shrubs towards him. He jumped and screamed, the creature noticing him and screaming too. Before he could get a better look at it, he was bolting back towards town. Or at least where he thought it was.

He didn’t make it far before something landed on his back, knocking him forward and making him fall face first into the dirt and shrubbery of the forest.

The thing got off his back and he twisted over quickly, breathing hard. He tried pushing himself away from the thing now staring at him, but it was difficult with the amount of sticks and plants in his way.

The thing was crawling towards him now. It had little overalls, a bushy beard, and a pointy red hat.

“Are you—-” he started. “Are you a gnome ?”

He recalled reading about it in the book. Although the drawing was much more appealing than what was snarling at him now. 

What did the book say its weakness was again? he thought, trying to find a way out of this predicament. Leaf blowers? Where can I find a leaf blower?

“What do you mean, ‘are you a gnome’?” the thing bit. “What else would I be? A unicorn?”

“Well, you just look so— well, you don’t look like a nice gnome,” Dipper argued, because it was really the only reason he would think this thing is not a gnome.

“Oh, like those pansy garden gnomes?” the thing snapped, then its eyes widened. “Wait a minute! I know you!”

Dipper internally groaned, but shook his head furiously at the gnome. He couldn’t even escape this false identity among the forest monsters?

“Oh, don’t try to get out of this one, boy!” the thing argued. “We gnomes never forget! And you still owe us a queen!”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Dipper asked, genuinely confused. But this gnome was still crawling closer with every inch Dipper seemed to back away. It was almost embarrassing how afraid Dipper felt right now.

“Oh, come on!” the gnome yelled. “Don’t play dumb with me, human! You won’t get out of it this time—”

“Dipper!” a voice suddenly called from a distance.

It was Mabel.

Dipper whipped his head around to look towards the source of the sound, a wave of relief washing over him.

“Dipper! Where are you?” she called again, seeming to grow more and more agitated.

Dipper turned back to face the gnome, who’s eyes were widened almost in fear. Mabel called her brother’s name again, and the creature made a yelpy sound before scampering off into some nearby bushes.

Dipper sat up, his breathing finally evening out. He stared into the bushes, trying to process what had just happened. After only a few seconds, he heard footsteps rushing towards where he sat.

“Dipper!” Mabel snapped, and he felt her grabbing his elbow and pulling him to his feet. “Where the heck have you been! I’ve been wandering all over town looking for you!”

He accepted his sister’s help and brushed himself off when he was finally standing again.

“Really?” he asked.

“You didn’t come back to the hotel in forever so I went to the library and the librarian said you were there reading for an hour or two and she said she went upstairs to put away books one time and you were sleeping and muttering nonsense so then I got worried about you and I went back to the hotel and then to the diner and then to that old cabin with the fake attractions and the Wendy girl and her friends were there and they said you looked exhausted and Wendy said you guys talked and then you stormed off into town so I had to go back to town where I had to just start asking random people if they’d seen you until finally someone said they saw you start wandering this way into the woods!”

Dipper progressively looked further and further down as his sister berated him and relayed her entire morning to him. She was obviously upset, and he genuinely couldn’t shove any blame onto someone else because, in all fairness, this was entirely his fault.

“Seriously, Dipper? What were you thinking?” Mabel finally said before taking a breath. “Just wandering into the freaking woods without telling me and while you're obviously still sleep-deprived! What were you even doing out here?”

“I am not sleep-deprived!” Dipper denied, although he was clearly lying.

“No! Don’t pull that crap with me right now, mister!” Mabel snapped, then grabbed her brother by the wrist. “We’re going back to the hotel whether you like it or not! I don’t know what’s gotten into you since we got here!”

“Nothing’s gotten into me—” Dipper tried to protest as Mabel started dragging him in the direction she came from.

“Oh really?” Mabel cut him off. “‘Nothing’s gotten into you’ my butt !”

She berated him the entire walk back to the hotel.

Chapter Text

Against Dipper’s better judgment, he didn’t tell his sister about the book. 

She would just call him crazy. Or the book crazy. Or their dad’s uncle crazy.

He also never told her about the gnome in the forest. Since she found him in the woods several days ago, she had been under the impression that he fell asleep and was startled awake by her yelling.

Those several days he spent analyzing every inch of this mysterious book. All the entries his dad’s uncle left. All the entries of some mysterious other author left in blue ink. Even some occasional entries left in pink.

It was somewhat disappointing, because most of the drawings and some names were smudged or blurred beyond the point of recognition. Although, it only happened after the blue ink author began leaving entries.

In fact, some of the blue and pink entries contained drawings and names of people he recognized. Like Wendy and Soos and even Pacifica. But anytime the author left their name or even a drawing of themself, Dipper could never clearly make out the writing.

Bill Cipher was mentioned several times throughout as well. The most unsettling thing Dipper found in the whole book was a note supposedly written by Bill Cipher that was taped in. Not only did it mention how he was going to stage the suicide of whoever he was possessing and threaten someone else as well, but it called the possessee “Pine Tree”.

It was what that thing in his dream said. Or maybe called him . 

At first he wasn’t sure. He thought it was just his brain attempting to make associations because he was so confused. But then he went back to check his dream journal, and sure enough, those were the exact words the voice had used.

Was Dipper actually in this book? He didn’t want to believe it. He thought that maybe there were a million people called “Pine Tree”, or maybe the thing in his dream wasn’t actually referring to him.

He decided to leave it at that and move on. In any case, if this “Pine Tree” was him, then that would mean he was possessed at some point by something that literally almost killed him, and he didn’t want to believe that.

Aside from that terrifying mess, he was certain he now had confirmation that the voice in his dream was also the monster from his nightmares. But why was he dreaming of this thing even before he knew it existed within the reality of this town? Again, he found his thoughts drifting to the eerie possibility of having been here before, but he quickly slapped himself mentally.

No , he stopped himself, upset yet again that he could even consider that his own memories were lying to him. There is no possible way that I could have ever been here. No way. 

In other matters, he and Mabel also continued gallivanting around town for the days since he found the book. Well, Mabel when Dipper could get her to come with him. He, at least, started hanging out at the Mystery Shack almost every day. He ended up apologizing to Wendy for snapping at her and she promised not to bring up the subject of his memories again.

Although he couldn't tell her that the possibility of her suggestion was becoming more and more real from every angle he looked at it.

He started becoming closer to Soos, who felt like an uncle or older brother to him. He ended up meeting his fiancée, Melody, who seemed to complete the whole “aunt and uncle” deal.

With the time, he became less and less aware of the fact that his parents were comatose in the hospital. Maybe less that he wasn’t aware of them and more that he didn’t notice their absence as much as he thought he would.

Mabel ended up having to tell him about their conditions every time she visited them. With every visit, she expressed her discomfort for going to see them in the hospital, but ultimately she didn’t make her brother go with or without her. She never pushed him to.

Dipper steered away from the woods ever since the gnome encounter. He figured that if even the smallest, most seemingly helpless creatures were out to get this other version of himself, then he didn’t want to know what the more terrifying creatures thought of him.

On this hot day, the twins were on their way to the Mystery Shack. Dipper had wanted to go. Mabel didn’t necessarily want to, but she was finally starting to become sick of staying cooped up in the hotel room. Dipper was grateful for her company.

As they were walking though, they were stopped by a kid who couldn’t have been older than they were. At first, Mabel was the one who stopped. Dipper was distracted reading from a library book when Mabel shoved her arm out to stop him in his tracks.

Dipper looked up and saw the guy. He was shorter with an upturned nose, freckled cheeks, and neatly combed white hair. Dipper’s eyes narrowed.

This was Gideon Gleeful, according to his red book. There were a few entries about him by the blue author that described the psychotic crap this kid pulled on whoever wrote the blue entries. The book said blatantly that he was a creep.

But this kid in front of them didn’t seem like a creep. Maybe he did by the way he was staring dumbly at the twins without speaking, but he certainly didn’t seem like the maniacal sociopath that the book described him to be.

“I’m sorry, can we help you?” Mabel asked, looking almost disgusted by this grandpa-kid practically gawking at her.

“Uh— I, uh… hmm,” Gideon blubbered out. Dipper almost started introducing Gideon himself, but he was trying to not let people know he had a book with an account of practically every person in town.

“Okay,” Mabel muttered, before grabbing her brother’s arm and pushing past Gideon to continue down the sidewalk.

“Wait!” Gideon called quickly. “Wait.”

Mabel groaned and stopped in her tracks before turning back around. Dipper turned with her.

“I— I’m Gideon,” he finally said with a thick southern accent, his fingers rapidly fidgeting with the hem of his shirt. “I heard there were… visitors in town!”

He sounded hesitant when he said it. The way Dipper interpreted it, it sounded more like Gideon heard the Pines twins were in town and needed to see for himself if they really didn’t remember him. That was how everyone seemed to act around Dipper, anyway.

“You’re not gonna like,” Dipper started before he could stop himself, the words of his book echoing through his mind, “try to kill us or something, are you?”

He regretted it as soon as he said it. He watched as Gideon’s eyes widened and he flushed a furious shade of red. Next to him, Mabel raised an eyebrow.

“I don’t know where you would have heard something like that,” Gideon said through gritted teeth and a forced smile, his fists clenching at his sides, “but I would never try to murder anyone.”

Dipper’s eyes narrowed. He shot a glance over to Mabel. She was already looking at him with a look that said “this kid has definitely tried to kill someone before”.

“Well, anyways!” Mabel said quickly before the kid could even have a chance to start hating them more. “I’m Mabel, and this is my brother Dipper. Sorry about him. He can’t keep his thoughts quiet sometimes. It was nice meeting you, but we were just heading out to the—”

“I was just wondering if you’d want to maybe hang out with me sometime!” Gideon blurted, before Mabel could turn her and her brother away again. The request was obviously targeted at Mabel, so Dipper kept quiet.

“Oh, um…” Mabel started. “Well, I’m super busy most of the time, so…”

“I promise it would be fast!” Gideon assured. “We just never have visitors anymore, so it would be like a breath of fresh air… For me…”

A breath of air puffed out of Mabel’s mouth. She clearly didn’t want to hang out with this kid, and Dipper could tell she was about to say no.

Despite what the book said about Gideon, Dipper couldn’t help but feel bad for him. So, right as Mabel was opening her mouth to reject him, Dipper elbowed her and cleared his throat.

She shot him an annoyed look and he just raised his eyebrows at her. She rolled her eyes, but finally turned back to Gideon.

“Yeah, okay,” she said. “But it’s not gonna be like a date or anything, right? Because I’m kind of… taken.”

What .

Dipper’s eyes flicked swiftly over to his sister, where she was already nervously glancing at him.

“Mabel, what—”

“I’ll tell you later,” she hissed at him out the side of her mouth.

Dipper rolled his eyes and groaned. Ethan .

“Oh no of course!” Gideon said quickly, ignoring the twins’ interaction. “No, no— it definitely wouldn’t be a date! Just a friendly thing!”

“Okay,” Mabel said definitively.

Gideon beamed from ear to ear, nodded, and turned to continue in the opposite direction of the twins. Mabel grabbed Dipper’s elbow and turned the both of them around to continue on their way.

As soon as they were out of earshot of anyone, Dipper glared at his sister and hissed, “You’re taken ?”

“Dipper, it’s not that big of a deal!” she started defensively, avoiding her brother’s eyes. “Plus, we’re not even really official yet! I was just saying it to get that kid off my back.”

“Is it Ethan?” Dipper asked, biting the name.

“Yes, okay! It’s Ethan! Sue me!” she snapped, obviously sensing her brother’s seething anger towards the notion.

“Are you serious?” Dipper went on, recalling every bad thing that Ethan ever did to him. “He’s like ‘stereotypical bully’! Remember?”

“He got better when you were gone, Dipper,” Mabel defended. Dipper’s eyes shot away. “He really changed! He’s told me multiple times how sorry he is for treating you like that!”

“Okay, but he hasn’t apologized to me, Mabel! If he was really sorry, then he would have.”

“It takes time, Dipper! He’s taking baby steps! He’ll work his way up to verbally apologizing to you and maybe eventually you two can be friends!”

Dipper huffed and pulled his arm from Mabel’s grip.

“I can’t believe you’re defending him.”

“I’m not defending him!” Mabel snapped. “There is no excuse for how he treated you, but he’s improved since then! People can change, Dipper!”

“Yeah obviously,” Dipper bit. “People can go from being your best friend to dating your middle school and high school bully!”

Mabel shrieked a noise like ‘ugh’ and increased her speed to be slightly ahead of her brother. Dipper willingly stayed behind.

They didn’t talk the entire way to the Mystery Shack. It was easy not to, since they both found company in something else. Mabel had her phone and Dipper had his book. They didn’t need each other.

When they got to the Shack, the tension had settled down a little bit. Right before they entered, they gave each other half-hearted apologies just so they could act normal in front of everyone else.

Wendy’s friends were in the gift shop this time, unlike the other times the twins came together. Mabel still hadn’t even been properly introduced to all of them. After Wendy gave all of their names again, Dipper pulled her aside to quietly inform her on his deducted interrelationships of everyone in the group.

Wendy and Robbie were exes. Robbie and Tambry had been on and off dating for about two years, but were currently together. Wendy and Tambry were childhood best friends. Nate and Lee were also childhood best friends, but also probably secretly dating. And Thompson was the punching bag, but also the glue of the group.

“And they told you all this?” Mabel whispered.

“No, they’re just kinda obvious about it,” Dipper answered.

The group fell back into their conversation. Mabel stayed off to the side, typing away at her phone. Dipper hung awkwardly on the outskirts of the circle. 

He listened intently to every word. He paid attention to the way they all spoke and how it felt like he’s heard them say these things a million times before.

It was agitating.

But as the conversation progressed, he kept itching to tell them about the book. To tell someone. The book and its knowledge were like hot coals settled deep within his stomach. He thought that maybe if he coughed hard enough that they would come up his throat and out his mouth. So then who was holding his mouth shut?

None of them would understand, he kept telling himself. So I have to find someone who will understand.

Wait a minute …

The memory of when he found the book suddenly came to him. The creepy guy in the library. He’d told Dipper that if he found what he was looking for to come find him again.

He didn’t really want to, but whenever he thought about telling Wendy or Soos or Mabel about his book, his stomach started twisting into knots.

So he slipped away from the conversation and snuck into a different room. It didn’t seem like anyone noticed him leaving. That was good.

He wandered into the back room Wendy brought him to the time he snapped at her. The one with the chair that smelled like his grandpa. There was the door that led outside.

He started making his way towards it, but halted in his tracks as soon as he stepped into the front hall. What was it that stopped him? A creak in the floorboards? A sound in another room?

The stairs next to him.

He turned to look up them. The mildew and cobwebs decorating the walls and ceiling seemed to call out to him.

I don’t want to intrude , he thought as he took a slow step towards the base of the stairs. Something was tugging at him.

He remembered Wendy saying that Soos and his fiancée were out right now. Maybe if Dipper snooped around, no one would have to know.

He ascended the stairs.

They were loud and felt at points that they wouldn’t support his body weight, and he hated the fact that it was comforting.

He felt like he was wandering, but at the same time, he knew his body had a destination in mind. Getting there was kind of a blur, however. Eventually, he was standing in front of an old wooden door, and he knew he had to open it.

The door, just like the stairs, creaked as he pushed it open. The room he found was filled with dust, the sun shining in through the triangular window and catching on the particles floating gently in the open space of the room. There were two beds pushed against opposite sides of the room, with the window in between them. The bed frames held mattresses that were completely empty, of sheets and blankets and pillows and anything else that someone might keep on their bed. Much like the rest of the Shack, cobwebs were gathering in any open corner of the room. Old pens and papers were scattered across the floor, as if cleaning them up wasn’t worth the trouble.

Dipper took slow steps into the room, taking every detail of it in. It felt like tracing over a picture that he’d already traced over a million times before, to the point where his pen had made deep indents in the paper.

He wandered over to the bed on the left, running his hand over the dust-ridden mattress, trying to imagine the body that could’ve slept here before in a different lifetime. As empty as the mattresses were, they seemed to be filled with life, a life that Dipper might have dreamed of having.

Exhaustion began tugging at his eyelids again, and he blinked slowly as he stared at the bed in front of him, before violently shaking his head in an effort to wake himself up.

“Forget about me?” a voice said behind him, and he jumped, screaming a sort of yelpy sound as he spun around, fearing he had been caught.

But instead of Soos or Wendy, or even his sister, he laid eyes on the guy from the library who had told him about the red book. He furrowed his brows.

“What are you doing here?” 

“I was just making sure you hadn’t forgotten about me,” the guy said, his yellow shirt shining so brightly in the sunlight that it almost hurt to look at. “You found what you were looking for, I take it?”

“You’re the one who told me to look for it,” Dipper pointed out, his bag burning against his side again. He moved to clutch it tighter and move it behind his leg almost protectively. “And I meant what are you doing here ? You can’t just break into people’s houses.”

“And neither should you, yet here we are!” He smirked and snickered, gesturing all around him. Dipper shuffled his feet uncomfortably.

“I didn’t break in.”

“Well, you’re wandering around a house that isn’t yours,” the guy pointed out, holding his hands behind his back. “That’s basically the same.”

“No it’s not.”

“Whatever,” he said, acting as if he wanted to move on from the subject. “You found the journal, yes?”

“Journal?” Dipper asked. “If you mean the weird, red book with the handprint on it, then—”

“I want to see it,” the guy said, holding his hands out. He didn’t step forward though, almost as if he was trapped in the sunlight being cast in from the window.

Dipper said nothing, but moved his bag even further behind him. He found it strange, this feeling of unease. Moments ago, he thought the only person he could go to was the stranger. But now that he was in front of him, he felt like he couldn’t trust him.

“Oh come on,” the guy said, annoyed. “I’m the only person who’s tried giving you some semblance of answers. The least you could do is show me the journal that you wouldn’t have found without my guidance.”

“Answers?” Dipper furrowed his brows. “What answers? This stupid book has just made me more confused than I was before! And if you wanted to see it so bad, then why didn’t you just take it from the library yourself!”

He thought he saw the guy’s eye twitch. He glared at Dipper, before closing his eyes and taking a deep breath.

“Listen, P—” he took another breath. “Listen. I’ll let you in on a little secret.”

Dipper looked at him with a raised brow, but didn’t object to listening to him.

“I’m… something like a ghost. What you see before you is just an apparition, just a way for me to communicate. My real body is tied to one place and is unable to roam far from it. I knew that book was in the library, because I saw it being dumped there years ago. I just couldn’t go there to take it myself.”

The guy paused, perhaps waiting for Dipper to jump in with something to say. When Dipper didn’t say anything, he continued.

“So I needed someone to help me,” he said, then gestured to Dipper with a charming smile on his face. “A like-minded individual, if you will. Someone else who could feel that something… was off about this town.”

Dipper’s glare softened. Finally, his worries and concerns were being validated. Here was someone else who could tell that this town was not all it looked to be on the surface. He stayed silent, inviting the stranger to keep talking.

“You came along,” he said, continuing to smile, “the first outsider in two years! And as I observed you, I could tell that you could be the one to help me find answers about this place.”

“But this book doesn’t have any answers,” Dipper finally interjected. “It’s just confusing nonsense about random monsters half the time, and a personal diary the other half.”

“That’s because you’re not seeing all the angles,” the stranger said coolly, leaning forward. “If we work together to decipher it, then—”

Loud pounding suddenly echoed through the room, and the guy started fading away.

“Wh— what’s—” Dipper started, before being cut off.

“My real body is in the woods!” the guy started saying quickly. “I live in a small house, you’ll know it when you see it!”

“But I—” 

And suddenly Dipper’s eyes were tearing open and he was collapsed on the floor, his head laying on the bed he had been observing with his arms beneath it like pillows.

“Dipper, what are you doing up here?” Mabel was yelling worriedly at him. Her hands were gripping his shoulders. She had been shaking him awake.

Dipper lifted his head, his brows furrowed in confusion. He whipped around to look at where the sun was shining in through the window.

“Where did he—” he started to say, looking for the person who had just been there with him a second ago, but now there was no sign of him.

“Dipper, I’m getting really worried about you!” Mabel started, getting to her feet and hooking her hands under Dipper’s elbow to help him up. He did so, not taking his eyes off the ray of sunlight. “First you’re wandering around the woods and falling asleep, and now you’re wandering around someone’s house and collapsing on their unused beds? Come on, we’re going back to the hotel!”

She grabbed Dipper’s elbow and started pulling him out of the room behind her. 

“Wait, I have to go to the—” he started, but she cut him off again.

“No you don’t have to go anywhere!” She stopped in her tracks and whipped around to face him. Dipper looked at her, only just noticing Wendy and her friends standing in the doorway. “Dipper, you have to get some sleep! You’re going crazy! This is exactly how it started when you—”

She stopped herself abruptly, almost too late, seeming to suddenly remember that they weren’t alone. Her grip on Dipper’s arm faltered.

Dipper’s gaze shot to the floor. He clutched his free hand on the strap of his bag. Suddenly his sister’s words were starting to get through to him.

“Yeah, okay,” he said quietly, almost in a whisper. “You’re right. We should probably…”

His words trailed off. He refused still to lift his eyes from the floor. Mabel’s hand fell from his arm to his hand and she folded her’s into his, squeezing tightly in a silent transaction of words. An apology, maybe.

He didn’t have time to think on it as she led him out of the room, apologizing quickly to Wendy for any trouble they might have caused.

They didn’t exchange any words on the entire walk back, but Mabel held Dipper’s hand so tightly that her knuckles seemed to lose their hue, and guilt started washing over Dipper’s entire body. Maybe the same feeling was visiting Mabel, he couldn’t tell. He could never tell anymore.

When they got back to their hotel room, Mabel’s tenseness seemed to wash away. Dipper didn’t argue with her anymore, changing into comfier clothes and climbing into his temporary bed.

Mabel sat on her’s, right across from him, typing into her phone, seemingly back to normal. It was still earlier in the day, not even noon yet. If Dipper returned to that place and returned to that monster, he would wake up and Mabel could still be right there. Maybe she would see how terrified he was. Maybe she would ask him what’s wrong. Maybe he could finally talk to her about it. Maybe someone could finally understand.

No, she wouldn’t care , Dipper thought, as he rolled onto his side, his back facing his sister. She never cares anymore .

That was the last thought he had before drifting off to sleep.

Chapter Text

Dipper would’ve taken the labyrinth over the place he ended up in.

“Mr. Pines, this is the third time this week you’ve been in my office,” the counselor spoke as Dipper slouched deeper into the chair across from her. “What was it this time?”

“I cussed at another student,” Dipper droned on, upset that he had to explain it. “He stole my sketchbook and started flashing it around to the whole class.”

The counselor sighed, spinning around in her chair to face her computer.

“Your grades have been slipping recently, and you’ve been falling asleep in most of your classes,” she said as she observed his records, “which is not normal for you, Mas—”

“Dipper,” Dipper corrected quickly.

“Right, yes,” she apologized. “Sorry, the school doesn’t keep preferred names on file, so I keep forgetting.”

Dipper crossed his arms and leaned back more.

“Well, I’m obligated to ask,” she went on, clicking something on her screen then turning to face Dipper again. “Because this behavior is so abnormal, is there anything going on at home? Anything bothering you lately?”

Dipper’s gaze dropped to the floor. Of course there was something going on, but no one would understand. No one would take him seriously. Oh, I’m sorry I’ve been failing all my classes recently! I’ve been refusing to sleep because of an illuminati monster that keeps killing me in my dreams!

He sighed, still refusing to make eye contact.

“My parents have been fighting a lot recently,” he admitted, because it wasn’t necessarily a lie. “I just haven’t been sleeping well.”

“I figured it was something like that,” the counselor muttered, turning back to her computer and typing something into it. “Obviously I and the school can’t do anything about familial matters, so all I can do is ask you to just keep trying to get sleep. Try some stress reducing activities. Take a walk in the park, hang out with friends, read a book. Just try to get those grades back up and stay out of trouble. If we have one more issue, it will result in a phone call home along with more detention.”

Dipper tapped his foot against the floor.

“Right,” he said.

“Right,” the counselor repeated, nodding her head. “Okay, get back to class, you’ve missed enough already. And be sure to report to detention after school in room 301.”

“Okay,” he breathed, before picking his bag up off the floor and heading out of the room.

After school ended, he went to room 301 as instructed, and dread filled him when he saw Ethan sitting in there as well. Ethan had turned when he heard someone entering and his face twisted into an ugly sneer when he saw who it was.

“Well, if it isn’t the little twerp who got me dumped in here,” he hissed in a whisper that wasn’t well-concealed from the detention monitor.

“Mr. Brown!” the monitor scolded, and Ethan spun towards the front of the room. “You will refrain from talking and get as much work done as you can while you are in this room! Understood?”

“Yes, Mr. Capthuck,” Ethan groaned, picking his pencil off his desk and slouching in his seat.

Dipper wandered over to the desk that was as far away from Ethan as it could get. Still, a glare and finger-to-the-neck was sent his way.

Detention went by slowly. It was so slow that even the detention monitor fell asleep. Ethan took that as an opportunity to leave, but Dipper stayed to finish out his time and avoid further punishment.

When the clock finally pointed its hands at the time to end Dipper’s sentence, he packed up his stuff to leave, Mr. Capthuck waking up slightly to scold him until he saw the time and dismissed him instead.

Dipper started making his way to the main entrance, ready to finally go home and secure himself in his room, when he heard a dreadful voice echoing down some hallway.

He followed it, against his better judgment, knowing that if Ethan were to catch him eavesdropping it would be the end of him. But Ethan’s voice wasn’t the only one he heard.

There were two of Ethan’s jockey (although Dipper prefers the term “jerky”) friends, and then another timid, high-pitched voice.

When Dipper finally found the dark hallway, he peeked ever-so-slightly around the corner for just a glance. The kid must’ve been a freshman. He was shorter than Dipper and just as scrawny with messy hair and glasses.

So Ethan apparently had a type. A stereotypical nerd for a stereotypical bully.

Ethan was confronting the poor kid about something to do with homework. Something about how the stuff he copied didn’t have all the right answers and he ended up failing an assignment because of it. The kid stuttered some sort of defense, but ultimately couldn’t get anything coherent out of his chattering teeth.

Dipper pulled out his phone quickly, thinking that if he could record Ethan and his goons landing punches on this kid, then the admin would finally believe his claims against the school’s football star.

Yeah, he knew “snitches get stitches”. But he didn’t care because snitches could also get Ethan Brown suspended, and that was worth some stitches.

His camera was peeking around the corner, recording something that sounded like the kid getting thrown against the nearest wall. Dipper flinched, knowing all too well what that felt like. But if he were to intervene, then both of them would get beat up and he wouldn’t get any evidence. 

This was for the best, he told himself.

But just as Ethan’s steps were pounding around, Dipper’s grip faltered, and the phone slipped out of his hand.

Faster than he thought his instinct’s could kick in, he was picking his phone off the ground and bolting away from the scene. It was too late, though. He could hear the accusatory voices of the jerk jocks yelling about who was there, then thundering footsteps pounding in his direction.

He didn’t know what to do. He was dead if he was caught, and he was nowhere near as fast as Ethan Brown and the other kids from the football team. 

He was much smarter than them, though.

He couldn’t lose them if he ran towards any of the main exits of the school, they were too far away. But room 301 wasn’t too far, and he recalled one of the windows being open. Mr. Capthuck would probably be gone already, too, so he wouldn’t have to disturb him.

He bolted into the room, shutting and locking the door behind him to stall for time, then was climbing out of the window and onto the nearest tree faster than he could think of all the ways it could go wrong. He heard pounding on the classroom door, then it stopped. Maybe Ethan remembered the open window too, and was already rushing out of the building. Dipper hoped not.

He braced his arms on the branch supporting him before swinging his body down and hanging for a second, letting go and then falling to the ground. He tripped on impact, and a shockwave pulsed through his legs, but he quickly gathered himself to his feet and hurried in the direction of his house.

With any luck, he would lose Ethan and the goons. At least, he hoped so as he hobbled away, limping after the drop from the tree.

It wasn’t long before he could hear that all-too-familiar voice yelling from behind him.

He cursed and spun around, seeing the trio stampeding in his direction.

“You can’t run and you can’t hide, Pines!” Ethan shouted. “Get back here, twerp!”

Dipper quickly came to his senses and ran as best as he could down the alleyway directly next to him. He spotted a tall chain link fence at the end of it. Maybe he could lose Ethan there.

He started climbing it, slotting his feet into the holes and ascending at a speed he prayed was fast enough to get away. Those prayers must’ve gone unheard.

His ankle was suddenly grabbed and he was pulled down and thrown to the ground. He cursed as his head hit the hard dirt and black spots danced around his vision.

“How much did you hear, Pines?” Ethan was immediately sneering, kicking a foot into Dipper’s side and knocking the air out of his lungs.

Dipper coughed roughly and wrapped his arms around his chest. He couldn’t even answer if he tried, seeing as all the air had escaped his body with Ethan’s kick.

Still, Ethan kicked him again at the silence. 

“Answer me, dweeb!”

“I— I—” Dipper tried, his voice coming out as breathy and hoarse.

Ethan didn’t give him any more time than that before he slammed his foot down on Dipper’s shoulder to pin him to the ground. He leaned down and grabbed Dipper’s jaw, forcing Dipper to look at his ugly face.

“You just wanted to be a little spy for fun, huh? Just trying to find anything to get me in trouble for?”

“As if I have to try,” Dipper sneered. That earned him a punch to the face.

He tried to bring a hand up to hold the part of his face that Ethan slugged, but it was suddenly being grabbed and pinned down by one of the goons.

“You think you’re so high and mighty, don’t you!” Ethan accused, his grip on Dipper’s jaw tightening, and his foot putting more pressure on Dipper’s shoulder. Dipper drew in a sharp breath and squeezed his eyes shut, trying not to scream out. “But you’re just a pest that needs to be shown its place! Maybe a good ol’ squashing will finally teach you not to put your nose where it doesn’t belong?”

Then he suddenly lifted his foot, only to slam it back down again, Dipper crying out against his best efforts. Before he could get used to the pain, Ethan was twisting his hand into the front of Dipper’s shirt and yanking him off the ground. Dipper knew what was coming next.

Of course, he was then slammed against the brick wall next to them and Ethan, for some sick form of pleasure, landed a few punches into Dipper’s chest and abdominal area. Dipper couldn’t even curl up on himself, feeling like he would hurl if one more hit came his way.

Luckily, or unluckily depending on how you look at it, one of the goons spoke up quickly about a discovery he made.

“Ethan check it out!”

Ethan’s fist halted in the air and he turned around. Dipper craned his neck so that he, too, could see what was happening.

The goon was holding up Dipper’s cell phone, which must’ve fallen out of his pocket when he was yanked from the fence. The video that he had just recorded was playing, showing the trio beating up the poor kid from before.

Dipper cursed inside his head. He had forgotten to turn his phone off after he picked it up off the floor?

“The dweeb got some evidence,” the goon continued, rewinding to video to watch it over again. Then he threw the device in Ethan’s direction and Dipper winced.

Ethan caught it, then was immediately waving it around tauntingly.

“Thought you were finally gonna get away with it, huh?” Ethan snickered, pinching Dipper’s phone between his thumb and index finger and letting it dangle. “Well, it’s a good thing these things are so breakable—”

He made a move that looked like he was gonna drop it, but then Dipper was crying out.

“Wait! No!” he half-shrieked. “I’ll delete it, I swear! Just don’t break it!”

Ethan looked from Dipper to the phone, then shoved it into his hands.

“Fine, but I have to watch you do it.”

Dipper nodded hurriedly. It was one thing to let himself get broken, but when his cell phone was brand new and his parents had spent so much money on it, he knew his parents would be a little less forgiving about it. He shakily pressed the trash button underneath the video and confirmed its deletion, then shut off the phone and moved to slot it back into his pocket.

“Not so fast!” Ethan shot, grabbing Dipper’s wrist and pulling it back up. “Delete it from the trash, too! I’m not stupid!”

“Coulda fooled me,” Dipper bit before he could stop himself. Ethan quickly raised his fist again and Dipper was hurriedly saying, “Okay, okay!”

He unlocked his phone again and navigated to the trash album of his gallery, emptying the entirety of it, and then flashing the empty album to Ethan and his goons to verify that the video was gone.

Ethan smirked and snickered, before slapping the phone out of Dipper’s hand and to the floor. Dipper shouted a protest, but Ethan was already kicking the device away from them.

“What the hell?” Dipper yelled. Then again, he probably should’ve known that Ethan wouldn’t have stayed true to his word.

“God, you’re such a wimp.” Ethan laughed, then threw another punch into Dipper’s face. Dipper tried to reach up and grab the arm that was pinning him to the wall and pull it off him, but his efforts proved futile. “You fold so fast! You really should try putting up a fight!”

“Maybe if you weren’t so pathetic,” Dipper started, “you would pick on someone who could match your strength and then it would feel like an actual fight!”

Ethan squinted his eyes in confusion, clearly not understanding what Dipper was trying to say. Behind him, Dipper could see the goons starting to root through his bag.

“Are you insulting me?” Ethan asked, almost genuinely.

“Well, I was trying to, but I forgot you were too stupid to understand anything!” Dipper sneered. He was past the point of caring what happened to him anymore.

Ethan understood that insult perfectly fine. It earned Dipper a few more punches before he was being thrown to the ground again. He tried curling up to protect his head as Ethan kicked at him mercilessly.

“Maybe you should learn not to say stupid stuff when your sister’s not around to save you!” Ethan started, not taking a break in his beating.

Suddenly arms were hooking themselves under Dipper’s and he was being lifted slightly off the ground, just enough so he couldn’t protect himself anymore.

Ethan was still standing in front of him, so it must’ve been one of the goons— or both of them— that was holding him.

Ethan sent his foot hard into Dipper’s chest, causing him to cry out, and then punched him one final time before he nodded at whoever was holding him. Dipper was dropped like a sack of potatoes, but he tried to keep himself sitting up. He bent his legs towards him and clutched one arm around his midsection and used the other to prop himself up.

“What a waste of space,” he could hear Ethan laugh to his friends as they patted each other on the back for a job well done, and left Dipper gasping for air on the ground in the alleyway.

He took in a sharp breath and winced, holding himself tighter and trying to recollect himself. He looked at his surroundings to survey the damage. His phone was a few feet away from him on the ground. The contents of his messenger bag had been strewn all over the alleyway. His sketchbook was one of the items. Some of its pages had been torn out and crumpled. It was left lying open on the drawing of the pyramid monster, with several tears going through it like bloody gashes on skin.

Dipper’s trapper hat was lying next to him. It must’ve fallen off when Ethan had made Dipper into a human soccer ball. He slowly reached for it and pulled it to his chest, clutching it tightly like it was the only friend he had left, and not knowing why.

It took a few minutes, but Dipper collected all of his things and stuffed them haphazardly into his bag. He picked his phone off the ground, finding that the screen was newly cracked. Luckily that was the extent of the damage.

Finally, he pulled the hood of his jacket over his head, clutched his hat tightly against him, and emerged from the alleyway to make his way home.

He plugged earbuds into his phone and ears and listened to music, keeping his head low, the entire way home. The walk felt like it took too long yet not long enough at the same time. The whole way, he was planning how he would escape quickly to his room without having to confront his family about his bloodied and bruised face.

When he finally got there, he was surprised to see a car in the driveway that he didn’t recognize. Judging from the license plate, it looked to be a rental vehicle. He didn’t know who was here, but hopefully the visitors would distract his parents from him.

He marched up the front steps and walked into the house. Immediately he could hear his mother talking to someone in the dining room, which thankfully was out of sight from the front door. Dipper quickly hung his hat on the hook behind the door, and creeped it shut.

He practically ran for the stairs right in front of him, but the door closing was too loud to go unnoticed by his mother, and the conversation in the dining room suddenly ceased.

“Dipper, sweetie, is that you?” She didn’t wait for an answer before she was reprimanding him. “We have some family visiting. Will you stay down here?”

“I— uh,” he called back to her, already halfway up the stairs. He was afraid she’d come into the living room to talk to him, so he kept his head lowered. “I have some homework to get done!”

“You can get it done later, Dipper!” she called back. Dipper rolled his eyes. “Dad’s uncles came all this way just to see us! The least you can do is say hi!”

“Well, I have stuff to do, Mom!” he yelled back, desperate to be away from this conversation and locked in the safe confines of his room. “I can’t—”

“Hey, where’s your sister? She hasn’t come home yet,” his father was suddenly cutting in.

“How should I know?” Dipper answered, more bite in his tone than he expected, his agitation growing.

Before either of his parents could say anything else, he was pounding quickly up the stairs. He could hear his mom call after him, but he didn’t care anymore.

“Di— Mason Pines! You get down here this—”

But he slammed his bedroom door shut before he could hear the rest of what she had to say. He twisted the lock on his door, threw his bag onto his bed, then sat down at his electronic drum set that he bought at a garage sale a few months ago.

If they really want me down there so bad, he thought as he fastened the headphones to his ears, then they’ll break down my door and drag me down the stairs.

Then he was pounding out the drum part to some song he found, trying to drown out his thoughts and get the unending anger out of his system, some part of him hoping that everyone downstairs could hear the drum through the ceiling.

A couple hours passed in which Dipper found anything to busy himself. He tried to tape pieces of his sketchbook back together. He tried to read a book without staring blankly at the same page as he spaced out. He even tried to get some homework done, but he couldn’t concentrate no matter how hard he tried.

Eventually a knock came at his door.

“Dipper!” Mabel, surprisingly enough, called from the hallway. “It’s time for dinner!”

“Okay,” he groaned, laying back on his bed and tossing a pen up in the air over and over. “I’ll be down in a second.”

“Mom said to come down now—”

“Okay! I’m coming!” Dipper snapped, sitting up in his bed. He heard Mabel breathe something, then her footsteps retreated down the hallway.

He cursed at himself and held his head in his hands. It was so frustrating to be so angry, even at his sister. Then again, he couldn’t help that she was so aggravating lately.

He pulled himself out of bed, his eyes locking on the small mirror on the wall across from him. He grimaced at his darkened and slightly swollen eye, the blood crusting around his nose, and his reddened cheek. He suddenly realized that what he should’ve been doing this whole time was figuring out some way to conceal the remnants of a fight from his face.

He quickly unlocked his door and rushed for the bathroom across the hall. He tried washing his face the best he could. The most he could do was get rid of all the dried blood. 

Maybe I could steal Mabel’s makeup, he thought, starting to rummage through the drawers in the bathroom. We have basically the same skin color, I could cover everything up.

It was no use, though. His sister must’ve kept all of her stuff in her room, and if she were to find Dipper rummaging through her stuff, she would probably leave him worse than Ethan did.

He sighed. He would just have to go downstairs and hope no one drew attention to his practically broken face.

When he started making his way down the stairs, he could smell meatloaf and hear his parents and two other voices in the dining room. At the bottom of the stairs, he grabbed the railing and lazily spun himself around to make his way into the kitchen and dining room.

He tried keeping his head as low as possible. It was awkward enough whenever his parents would see him like this. Now there were random relatives, too? Why’d they have to come today?

He sat down next to Mabel and saw a plate had already been dished up for him. He started poking at the food with his fork, not sure how much of an appetite he had, but knowing he should probably eat.

His dad finished what he was saying to his uncles before Dipper could see him turn towards his son in his peripheral. He saw his dad make a sort of flinchy motion before loudly exclaiming, “Dipper, what did you do to your face?”

Suddenly Dipper felt eyes on him and he fought the urge to roll his eyes. Instead he kept them fixed on his food as he made up a lie.

“I tripped,” he said with a flat voice. “Some kid spilled water on the stairs and I slipped on it.”

He could feel his sister glaring at him. She must’ve figured out what actually happened.

“We’ll talk about this later,” his mom half-whispered at him from across the table, cupping her hand around her mouth.

Dipper looked up at her quickly before retreating his gaze back to his food.

His dad, probably in an effort to cut the tension, loudly cleared his throat.

“So, Dipper, these are my uncles Stanley and Stanford!”

Dipper lifted his head to see his dad gesturing to the two old men at the other side of the table. They were smiling awkwardly, seemingly studying him and Mabel, and Dipper wondered for a second if his parents were going to sell him and his sister to these two fossils.

Not being able to get the thought out of his head, he started thinking that maybe it was because neither of his parents wanted the kids when they eventually divorced, so this was the alternative.

“Wait, those are your full names?” Mabel asked. “Your parents practically gave you both the same name?”

“It was our dad actually,” one of them said. Dipper hadn’t actually caught which one was Stanley and which one was Stanford. This one had a rugged voice, but spoke in such a way that said he’d lived a million lifetimes in countless universes. “Our mother and father didn’t know they were having twins, but our dad liked the name ‘Stan’.”

“Oh, so he was just too lazy to think of another name,” Mabel remarked.

The other uncle laughed boisterously. He had the laugh of someone who had been smoking cigarettes since they were five-years-old.

Dipper didn’t make a comment on the fact that he and Mabel also had practically the same name. He didn’t think his parents would take the implication well, considering what Mabel had just said.

“Well, anyways,” the smoker lungs one continued, “you two don’t even have to worry about our full names! You can call us Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford!”

The other uncle gave his brother a look and quickly hissed out a ‘Stanley!’. Dipper didn’t know what he would’ve been scolding his brother for, but at least now he knew which was which.

Still, he couldn’t dismiss what “Grunkle Stan” had just said.

“Grunkle?” he asked, raising one eyebrow at the man.

“It’s the short version for great-uncle!” Stanley explained. “You know how much of a mouthful it is to say the whole thing. So I came up with ‘Grunkle’ to make it easier!”

“How thoughtful of you Uncle Stanley!” Dipper’s dad chirped from next to him, provoking a proud grin from Stanley.

“So kids,” their mother suddenly chimed in. “You both were late getting home today. Dad’s uncles were looking forward to getting to meet you guys. Where were you?”

There was a hesitance from both Dipper and Mabel. Dipper didn’t know why Mabel was hesitating, but he was thinking of something to say other than “detention”.

“Library,” they both said in sync, then promptly whipped their heads around to give each other a puzzled look.

“Oh you were both at the library, huh?” their mother said knowingly. “And yet when you both got home, you had no idea where the other was?”

They then both whipped around to look at their mother. 

“We were at—” Dipper started.

“Different libraries,” Mabel continued, both of them nodding.

“I was at the school library,” Dipper continued. “Studying.”

“And I was with my friends at the public library,” Mabel said. “Also studying.”

There was a pause in which their parents considered believing the two of them. Finally their dad spoke up.

“Well, it’s a good thing you were both studying considering the grade reports the school sent us today.”

That elicited a groan out of both Dipper and Mabel. Dipper returned his attention to poking his meatloaf with his fork. He was already harped on once today about his grades, he didn’t need it again. Especially in front of strangers.

“Honey,” their mother said, no sweetness in her tone. “Can we not talk about this right now?”

“Darling,” their father said, mimicking his wife’s tone. “If we don’t talk about it right now, then they’re going to keep finding excuses not to talk about it.” 

At that moment, Dipper could hear Mabel’s pig trudging down the stairs. He thought it was great. Waddles— that was the pig’s name— would eat anything that was handed to him, and Dipper had finally decided that the food on his plate did not look appealing.

“This is not a conversation to be had in front of guests,” his mother hissed back to her husband, her words getting quieter but filled with more malice.

“Oh there you go again,” their dad started, changing the subject. “Always needing to have the facade of a perfect family!”

At this point, Waddles had made it to the dining room. He always showed up when he smelled food, and he was heading for Mabel, but Dipper sneakily held a handful of food under the table. He heard an ‘oink!’ as the food was then eaten out of his hand. Then Mabel nudged her brother in a ‘stop feeding my pig your unwanted food!’ way.

“Why do you always need to start something?” their mom retorted. “Can’t we just have a nice dinner without you talking about bad report cards and starting arguments with your wife and children? Is that too much to ask?”

“Anyways!” Mabel interrupted loudly, clapping her hands together then reaching down to scratch her pig's head as he snorted contentedly. “Great Uncle Stan and Ford were telling us what they’ve been doing for the past year! It sure sounded interesting!”

More interesting than this conversation, Dipper knew Mabel was itching to add on.

“Oh yes!” Stanford exclaimed, dropping his fork onto his plate to also clap his hands together. “For about the past year, we’ve been sailing all over the Atlantic Ocean in search of paranormal creatures of epic proportions! In fact, this time last year, we were sailing through the Bermuda Triangle!”

“Don’t believe anything you hear about it,” Stanley quickly interjected before anyone could ask any questions. “No monsters. Just a bunch of rocks and storms. The biggest problem we had there was just massive interference with our radios and comms systems.”

“Paranormal creatures?” Dipper asked, unamused.

“That’s right!” Stanford exclaimed. “Sirens, krakens, the like!”

“I mean, like, no offense,” he started, “but you’ve spent the past year sailing around searching for things that don’t actually have any scientific evidence of existing?”

“Well, there can’t be evidence until someone finds it first!” Stanley countered energetically. “And we decided that we’re gonna be those someones!”

Dipper gave a quick look at Mabel and saw she was already returning it. If they were being sold to these guys, Dipper was not excited to be in the custody of two lunatics who were using their retirement fund to search for urban legends.

“So what brought you over to the Pacific?” their mother asked, looking like she hadn’t fully recovered from the embarrassment of the earlier argument.

“We just simply weren’t finding any more readings to investigate over in the Atlantic,” Stanford explained. “So we thought we’d come over here to see if there were any leads we could follow.”

“We thought we’d come to visit because I happened to remember you folks live in this area!” Stanley continued. “And there are lots of marinas here!”

“Oh right!” their mother said. “I forgot you came to visit after the twins were born!”

“They did?” Mabel asked.

“Just me!” Stanley said. “Ford here was on his own adventure at that time, but not me! Good ol’ Grunkle Stan! You two have grown so much since I last saw you, by the way!”

“Yeah, surprisingly, babies grow to be much bigger after 14 years,” Dipper said flatly.

“Heh, yeah,” Stanley laughed. Was that a hint of sadness in his tone?

“Remind me again where you two lived before you started sailing?” Their mother asked.

“Oh, just the-middle-of-nowhere, Oregon,” Stanley answered. “You wouldn’t know the town.”

“Well, if you ever move back, I’m sure we’d love to come visit!” their mother continued. “The kids have only ever known the city and sometimes I think a middle-of-nowhere town could be a good change of pace for them!”

“What are you talking about? The kids love the city!” their dad finally chimed in.

“That’s because they’ve only ever known the city, sweetie.” There was that tone again. “A change of pace could be good for them”

Good for me, was probably what she meant.

“They don’t need a change of pace! They’re happy here!”

I’m happy here, is what he actually said.

Dipper didn’t want to hear his parents start arguing, so he quickly stood from his chair to take his leave.

“Uh, uh, uh,” his dad said quickly. “You are not going anywhere young man. We still need to have a conversation about your performance in school.”

“What conversation is there to have?” Dipper asked. 

Fine, he thought, if you’re going to bring this up in front of guests, I will make you regret it.

“‘You’re failing most of your classes, young man, and instead of helping you, I’m gonna yell at you until you fix your damn problems,’” he said, lowering his voice to mock his father’s tone.

“Dipper! Watch your language!” his mother scolded quickly, throwing her fork down.

“Watch your tone, Dipper!” his father scolded as well.

“Oh, I need to watch my tone, but starting stupid arguments in front of guests is perfectly acceptable to you?”

“I don’t like this attitude, young man,” he said, standing up from his seat as well.

“You don’t like it now, but when I got home from school and talked to Mom the same way, it was fine, right?”

“Okay, maybe your mother was right. Let’s save this conversation for later.”

“God, you’re such a hypocrite!” Dipper half-shrieked, pushing his chair out so he could escape from the room. 

“Dipper! Sit down right now!” his mother finally butt in, moving to stand from her chair.

“Make me!” he yelled, already rushing up the stairs.

He slammed his bedroom door shut. He could hear his father yelling up the stairs that he was grounded. He half-hoped that they would come stampeding after him, just like Ethan had earlier that day. Even if he would end up being punished, he wished he was worth the effort to be chased after.

Dipper sank to the floor, leaning against his bed and hugging his knees against his chest. He was suddenly sobbing into his knees, tears streaming down his cheeks and seeping into his clothes.

Why am I being like this? He thought. Why am I causing so many problems?

He thought of his fight earlier that day. He thought of detention. He thought of when he yelled at Mabel to leave him alone. He thought of when he yelled at his mom earlier that day.

And now he’s probably severed ties with his parents forever because he thought that if he could cause more of a commotion than they did, then they would see how ridiculous they were being.

Maybe it worked. Maybe it didn’t. Maybe he just ran away to let Mabel get berated or let their guests get kicked out because of his parent’s fury.

All you do is make everything worse , he thought suddenly. You make Dad’s life worse. You make Mom’s life worse. You make Mabel’s life worse. You even make your own life worse! It’s like you’re obsessed with being unhappy!

Why are you so unhappy?

Why are you so awful?

Why can’t you stop being a problem?

Why are you such a waste of space?

Dipper drew in a sharp breath. That’s what Ethan had called him, and he was right.

You’re such a waste of space…

Dipper stared down at his hands. They were shaking. The knees of his pants were soaked with tears. His throat hurt from sobs tearing through it.

And no one cared.

His dad didn’t come up. His mom didn’t come up.

Mabel didn’t even come to check on him. 

He cried again. She was the only person in the world he wanted right now, and she didn’t even care.

You’re just a waste of space.

All he wanted was for her to come knock on his door, give him a hug, and cheer him up in some stupid way like she usually did.

You should just stop wasting space.

He froze.

“Tomorrow,” he whispered to himself, clenching his fists around the fabric of his sleeves. “Tomorrow, I will…”

And then he woke up.

Chapter Text

“Dipper?” Mabel asked, shaking her brother awake.

He had been sleeping just fine for an hour or two, but when he started sniffling, Mabel got concerned. When she got up to check on him, she saw tears running down his cheeks. That’s when she decided to wake him.

He stirred a bit at first, but when he finally opened his eyes and saw Mabel standing there, he seemed to calm down.

“Are you okay bro?” Mabel asked. “You were crying just now.”

“Y-yeah,” he said, wiping the wetness from his cheeks. “Just a bad dream.”

“About what?”

“Nothing.”

Mabel hadn’t expected him to answer. He hadn’t confided in her in what felt like years. She wished he would sometimes, because he clearly needed someone to talk to.

His therapist, she thought.

He hadn’t had a session in over a week. That was probably why he was acting so weird.

“Hey, I think maybe we need to get home,” Mabel said softly, sitting back down on her bed as her brother sat up in his. “I think this change in environment is messing with you too much. I don’t like it.”

Dipper didn’t respond at first.

“Hey, do you remember Dad’s uncles? The ones who visited around when school started?” he finally asked.

Mabel dug through her memories. She did remember. Although the memory was overshadowed by other events that took place around then, it was still there.

“Yeah, I remember,” she told her brother. “What were their names again?”

“Stanley and Stanford,” Dipper remarked. 

“What about them?”

Dipper let out a puff of air.

“I think this is the town they used to live in.”

Mabel raised an eyebrow. No way that was possible. It would be too much of a coincidence.

“What makes you say that?”

“Stanley said something about ‘middle-of-nowhere, Oregon’ and about how we wouldn’t know the town.”

“I feel like that could be literally anywhere in Oregon,” Mabel countered. “I barely even know what the capital of this state is.”

“Salem,” Dipper said quickly.

“Whatever. That doesn’t mean any—”

“That statue,” he said. “The statue in the Mystery Shack.”

He didn’t continue, so Mabel pressed on.

“What about it?”

“It looks kinda like Stanley, doesn’t it?”

“I don’t know, Dipper,” Mabel said, not liking where this conversation was going. “They stayed for like one day. How am I supposed to remember what he looks like?”

“Maybe we could go ask who it’s supposed to be—”

“No. No. ” Mabel stood from her bed and pushed her brother so he was laying back down in his bed. “Since you’re so obsessed with it for some reason, I will go and ask about the stupid statue. But you are going to stay here and rest. Promise?”

Dipper’s gaze shot from his sister to the door, then back to his sister. Finally, he nodded, and Mabel breathed a sigh of relief.

“Okay, I’ll be back in a bit,” she said, shoving her feet into her shoes. “Text me if you need anything.”

“Thanks Mabel,” Dipper said dejectedly. He sounded exhausted, and not just a tired exhausted. It made Mabel wonder what he was dreaming about. Why he was crying.

He asked about Dad’s uncles, Mabel thought. Maybe he was dreaming of that day.

Mabel didn’t ever try to remember that time, but suddenly the memory came flooding back.

“I just don’t understand what’s gotten into that kid,” her dad said after they’d all heard Dipper’s door slam shut.

“Well maybe if you two weren’t so busy fighting all the freaking time, you’d know!” Mabel lashed out, slamming her fists down onto the table, not caring about what the two guests thought. 

“Now, Mabel—” her dad started, but she didn’t stick around long enough to hear what he said. She was bolting out the front door.

She wanted more than anything to go check on her brother, but the words he’d said earlier that day rang through her head.

“Just leave me alone, Mabel!”

She was probably the last person her brother would want to see…

Mabel shook her head furiously. She didn’t want the memory to continue. She didn’t want to remind herself of everything she did wrong.

She felt her phone buzz over and over as she walked to the run-down tourist attraction that her brother seemed to be hanging around a lot lately. She didn’t check who was texting her, she wanted to be hyper-focused on the task at hand so she could get back to the hotel room as quickly as possible.

Still, she found her thoughts wandering.

Ethan Brown had first started hanging out with her shortly after Dipper left.

“I heard what happened with your brother,” he had said, putting a comforting hand on Mabel’s shoulder. “I can’t help but feel like it’s partially my fault. Just let me know if you need anything.”

At first Mabel had smacked his hand off her. She wanted to scream in his face and shove him away so he’d trip over desks and bump his head and cry out in pain. But all she could muster was…

“It is your fault. Don’t you dare think I’ll forgive you just like that!”

She thought he’d leave her alone after that, but he didn’t. Well, he did for the first little while. In fact, he left everyone alone. That first week was the quietest he’d ever been in his life.

He became sweeter, nicer, more helpful. Mabel really didn’t want to forgive him, but she couldn’t deny how much he changed. Since her brother left, she never once caught Ethan shoving another person into a locker again. And word around the school was that no one else had caught him doing things like that either.

Then they started hanging out. Ethan was funny and popular and at first, Mabel was ashamed to say that he made her blush more than she liked.

And then the other night they were talking on the phone and he confessed that he missed her and she confessed she missed him, too. More than she wanted to.

And then those words…

“Mabel,” he’d said, and Mabel could hear his breath hitch over the phone. “I— uh. I think I miss you so much because I’ve— uh— never liked anyone as much as I like you…”

At first, Mabel promptly ended the call and screamed into her pillow like the giggly, boy crazy, teenage girl that she was. Then she hurriedly called him back and confessed that maybe she liked him a little bit, too.

He’d wanted to make it official right then and there. Mabel wasn’t ready for that, though. She used the excuse that she wanted to go on an actual, in-person date before becoming boyfriend and girlfriend, but she knew that it was actually because she didn’t want to rush into a relationship that quickly. Luckily, Ethan agreed half-heartedly.

Dipper just doesn’t know the new him, yet, she kept telling herself, remembering his reaction to finding out earlier that day. I’m sure they’ll warm up to each other eventually.

Finally, she made it to the run-down tourist trap. She hated to admit that she liked the vibes of this place. Like even though it was the crappiest building she’d ever seen, it felt nostalgic in a way. She would never admit that to Dipper after constantly ragging on everything in this town, though.

When she stepped into the gift shop, the red-headed girl Wendy that Dipper was so weirdly obsessed with was sitting on the floor in a circle with her friends. Mabel didn’t know if they were playing a game or just having a conversation, but it halted when they heard the bells jingle on the door as Mabel walked in.

Wendy looked up and gave Mabel a bright smile when she noticed her. Surprisingly, all of the others gave her a smile, too. She didn’t know why. From what she noticed, Dipper didn’t even get smiles from all of them.

“Hey Mabel!” Wendy exclaimed, quickly gathering herself to her feet.

“Hey, um, Wendy…” Mabel half-groaned. “Um, sorry again about my brother earlier. He can get a little weird sometimes. He has some sleeping problems and they get worse when he gets obsessed with things.”

“No worries!” Wendy chirped. “I had a friend before who was like that! I’m used to it.”

Mabel raised an eyebrow. Really? She was used to people wandering around houses and falling asleep on the dusty beds like some sort of Snow White. Wendy was too tall to be one of the seven dwarves.

Remembering what she came here for, Mabel pointed to the statue in the corner of the room.

“Um, so, who’s that supposed to be?” she asked, making her way over to it.

“Oh that?” Wendy said. Her friends continued their own conversation as she joined Mabel. “That’s the original owner of the place. Soos idolizes the guy. Basically considers him his father.”

“Huh,” Mabel hummed as she poked at the disfigured human. “My brother thought it looked a little like our dad’s uncle.”

Suddenly the room went silent. Mabel twisted around to see Wendy studying her weirdly and her friends on the ground were looking at her with shock in their eyes.

“What?” she asked, fearing she said the wrong thing and would now promptly be murdered by these people. She’d tried her best to avoid being alone with anyone in this town after she’d been telling her friends about the weird things happening and they’d warned her that she would probably be axe-murdered by these people.

“Your dad’s uncle?” Wendy asked, her voice shaking a bit.

“Yeah,” Mabel started slowly. “My dad’s two uncles visited us about a month after school started last year. Crap, I keep forgetting what their names were…”

“Stan?” Wendy offered.

“That’s it!” Mabel exclaimed, poking her head. “He wanted us to call him this weird thing. ‘Grunkle’ I think it was? How’d you know his name?”

“That’s who the statue is supposed to be,” Wendy said slowly. She looked almost on the verge of tears.

“Wait, actually?” Mabel started. “Oh great. That means I have to go tell Dipper he was right. Did the two of them used to live here? In this town?”

“Uh— uh, yeah,” Wendy confirmed. “They left about two years ago, though.”

“Dipper remembered something about how our Great Uncle Stan said they used to live in a small town in Oregon somewhere. He thought maybe it was this town, but I thought there was actually no way. That’s way too much of a coincidence, right? Crashing in the one random town that our dad’s uncles used to live in?”

“Heh— uh yeah,” Wendy stuttered. “Uh, speaking of them, do you know how they are? Stan used to be mine and Soos’s boss, but we haven’t heard from them in a while. We were starting to get worried something happened to them.”

“Well, I mean,” Mabel started, “they were completely fine when they visited. They told us about how they’d finished sailing around the Atlantic Ocean or whatever and now they were wanting to explore the Pacific. I guess, they text my dad sometimes just to check in and they sent a card when—”

Mabel froze. She’d started rambling on without realizing what she almost brought up. Wendy gave her a look.

“When what?”

“When Christmas!” Mabel said quickly. “When Christmas happened, and also New Years! They sent us a card then!”

“Alright,” Wendy said. “I’m glad to know they’re doing okay.”

“Well anyways!” Mabel started, clapping her hands together. “I should get going. Dipper will be glad to know that his theory was correct and maybe the crazy voices in his head will be appeased for a little bit.”

Wendy seemed more solemn than she did when Mabel first got there, as if she was staring longingly into the distance, waiting for something to appear on the horizon.

“Um, thanks for your help,” Mabel said to her, before giving her and the others a wave and starting the trek back to the hotel.

She figured she should check the texts she had been receiving from her friends, but she felt like maybe she should just enjoy the outdoors for a little bit. It wasn’t a long walk anyway, and she didn’t need her phone to be an excuse not to talk to people at the moment. Her parents were always getting on her case lately about how often she used the device. There were multiple times when they threatened to take it from her because she was on it so much. And there were multiple times when they carried through with the threats.

She thought that since they were half dead in a hospital in the middle of nowhere, the least she could do was try to carry out their wishes.

It was mid-afternoon at this point. The sun was high in the sky and was beating down hotter than it had been this morning. Mabel was fine with it, though. On the days in Piedmont when it wasn’t foggy or overcast, the sun could get really hot. She had more than a few nasty sunburns from that sun. This one wasn’t nearly as bad.

About half-way back to the hotel, she spotted two girls that kept glancing her way. She was getting used to glances like that in this town. She would tell her friends about it and they’d drill it into her head not to go befriending any randos because they all sounded like murderers.

But unlike everyone else, these two girls didn’t come up and introduce themselves. Mabel had been bracing for it, but she made it past them without them coming up to her. It was like they were just studying her. Maybe they had been contemplating an introduction, but decided otherwise.

In any case, Mabel now couldn’t stop thinking about them. She halted in her tracks and, despite all her friends’ warnings ringing in her head, turned around and started walking towards the two girls. 

She could see the shock in their eyes. They both glanced at each other before standing up to come closer to Mabel.

“Hey, sorry we were staring,” the shorter girl started. She had glasses and jet black hair and when she spoke, she had what sounded like a Korean accent. “We didn’t mean anything by it. You just look like one of our old friends.”

“I’ve been getting that a lot in this town,” Mabel said, then stuck out her hand. “Hi. I’m Mabel. My family crashed here maybe a week ago and my brother and I have been staying in a hotel over that way. For some reason, everyone in this town thinks we’re two other people that have been here before, so I’m starting to not think the staring and stuff is creepy anymore.”

The two girls stared at her dumbly as she rambled on her explanation with her hand stuck out for them to shake. After a moment of silence, the taller girl with auburn hair gripped Mabel’s hand firmly and shook it energetically.

“I’m Grenda, and this is Candy!” she exclaimed loudly, with a voice that seemed like it should be too deep for a teenage girl. “It’s really nice to meet you! No one ever visits our town anymore.”

“So I’ve heard,” Mabel said. Grenda finally let go of her hand, and it ached a little. Candy then grabbed her hand more gently.

“Thank you for coming to talk to us,” she said, finally letting Mabel have her hand back. “We know it’s probably weird for a bunch of strangers to think you’re someone else. We just…”

Her words trailed off, but Mabel could hear and see the sadness and longing in the two girls' faces.

“You miss her,” Mabel finished. “I get it. I miss my friends back home a lot right now.”

She thought of Dipper, who was hopefully back in the hotel room getting some rest. She didn’t want to leave him alone for long. But then she thought of how he had elbowed her when the Gideon kid asked her to hang out sometime, and how he was practically begging her to get to know some of the people in this town.

“Hey, um,” she started, before she could stop herself. “Are you two free right now? Would you wanna maybe hang out for a bit?”

Candy and Grenda shot each other a look. Maybe they were suspicious of Mabel, or just shocked that she was asking. But despite that, they beamed at her.

“We’d love to!” Candy exclaimed.

“Of course we’re free!” Grenda remarked, the two girls speaking over each other.

“Great!” Mabel smiled, rocking forward on her toes. “Uh, maybe you could show me around?”

“Oh, we love showing people around!” Grenda agreed, gesturing behind her with one arm. “Right this way, madam.”

Mabel smiled and started following the two girls, the many warnings her friends from home had given her fading away from her mind like a dandelion in the wind.

Chapter Text

Mabel had to admit that Candy and Grenda were a lot of fun. They were a lot different from Mabel’s friends back home. They didn’t care about how their hair looked or how perfect their makeup was or even if their outfits looked just like everyone else’s.

By all means, Mabel didn’t mean any of that as an insult. In fact, Candy and Grenda both rocked their own looks. That was just the thing though; it was their looks. Not anybody else’s.

Sometimes Mabel felt like she was a different person. Like obviously she continues growing up and stuff, but she didn’t remember the last time she actually felt like herself. 

Just before she and Dipper graduated the eighth grade, there was this big conference thing where everyone who was going to their high school attended. There were a lot of people Mabel had never met before, so she went wandering around trying to introduce herself and ensure she would have friends come freshman year.

She happened to get an in with the popular girls, which was lucky and unlucky in a way. Yeah she loved hanging out with them and she kinda liked being popular and having boys like her wherever she went, but…

There were times when Mabel felt like no matter what she did, she wouldn’t be enough for them. When she first befriended them, they gave her lots of advice to be more popular and lovable.

Don’t be quite as loud. Some people find it annoying.

There are some interests that should be kept a secret.

If you want people to envy your outfits, maybe don’t wear sweaters that were knitted by your grandma.

Headbands are for kids. Try tying your hair up or pinning it back with a bobby pin instead.

It’s not like their advice didn’t work. Mabel was popular and people enjoyed being around her. She was just starting to come to terms with the fact that being a teenager meant constantly being insecure, and anyone who was popular were just the ones who hid those insecurities the best.

But Candy and Grenda weren’t like that. They wore their favorite bands on their shirts and decorated their water bottles with goofy stickers and plastered their bags with pins that said ‘I LIKE THESE CRINGE THINGS AND YOU BETTER DEAL WITH IT’. 

They seemed so confident in themselves that Mabel envied it a little. Why couldn’t she be content with who she was the way that these two were?

Mabel tried to shake the thoughts from her head. She should be actually enjoying herself rather than still thinking about the flaws in her character.

The three of them were at the diner again. The one where Mabel had kind of acted rudely towards the waitress serving them. Maybe she should apologize for it, but at this point, she felt like it would be too awkward.

“Greasy’s has the best milkshakes ever!” Candy explained to Mabel as they picked out a booth. “And I’m not just saying that because I’ve hardly ever traveled before.”

“Well, I have!” Grenda started. “I had this boyfriend who’s an Austrian baron, and he flew me out to his palace this one time. Even I think that Greasy’s tops those milkshakes!”

“Australia, huh?” Mabel asked, not actually believing the story. “What, do they make their milkshakes from kangaroo milk or something?”

Candy and Grenda both looked at each other before snickering softly.

“What? No kangaroo milkshakes?” Mabel asked, also laughing a little.

“I wish!” Grenda exclaimed. “But he was from Austria not Australia .”

“Ah, I see where the confusion is now,” Mabel said.

They all laughed, not noticing the waitress coming up to them until she coughed to get their attention. 

The three girls turned to look at her as she flashed a friendly smile at them.

“Hey Candy! Grenda!” She paused, her smile dropping a bit, and monotonously mumbled, “Mabel.”

“Hey Pacifica!” Grenda exclaimed loudly.

“We heard about the whole tray-drop fiasco,” Candy said, smirking mischievously at Pacifica.

“Oh, um—” Pacifica whimpered, her cheeks turning a shade of red comparable to the ketchup bottles on the tables. “You heard about the whole thing?”

“Oh yeah~” Grenda grinned, resting her head on her hand, leaning over, and quirking her brows up at the waitress in a teasing way. “ All of it.”

“Wait, what?” Mabel asked pointedly.

“We never expected you to have the hots for—” Candy started, before Pacifica started laughing loudly and very nervously.

“AHA HA HA!” Her eyebrows were twisted and her grip on her pencil was white. “If you finish that sentence, Candy Chiu, I will stab this pencil straight through your throat!”

Pacifica continued laughing nervously, as if she was joking, but considering the way she was glaring at Candy and Grenda and pointing the tip of her writing utensil at them, Mabel fully expected her to carry through with the threat. Candy and Grenda only kept on smirking knowingly at her.

“Anyways!” Pacifica chimed cheerily. “What can I get you guys today?”

“Oh, Candy and I want our regulars!” Grenda started. “What flavor of milkshake do you want, Mabel?”

“Oh, well,” Mabel suddenly hurried to grab the menu right in front of her, realizing she hadn’t looked at it. “Does the strawberry one come with sprinkles and whipped cream on top?”

Pacifica shrugged.

“All of them do if you want,” she explained.

“I’ll take a strawberry milkshake then,” Mabel said. “With extra whipped cream and sprinkles, please!”

Pacifica scribbled the order down quickly and then rushed off to presumably send it to the kitchen.

“So what was all that about?” Mabel asked when she couldn’t see the waitress anymore. “Who does she have a crush on? What tray fiasco?”

Grenda opened her mouth to speak, but Candy immediately held her hand up to stop her.

“Sorry Mabel, but it’s against girl code to tell another girl’s crush without her knowing,” Candy said. “I don’t know if Pacifica would want you to know.”

Mabel furrowed her brows. She was going to get that crush one way or another. Pacifica seemed similar to her friends back home, and she knew how they worked.

“I know,” Mabel started, interlocking her fingers with each other as if she was an evil genius concocting a master plan. “I can have all of you over tonight for a slumber party. Make Pacifica warm up to me with flattery and snacks and games. We’ll all wear our pajamas and wrap ourselves in blankets so that she feels a sense of security and safety. Then someone will suggest we play Truth or Dare, and who are we to say no? When Pacifica least expects, I’ll ask her who she has a crush on. Even she’s not above the rules of Truth or Dare! She’ll have to tell me!”

Mabel struggled not to laugh out loud in an evil manner. She couldn’t let Pacifica know she was hatching this plan.

Candy and Grenda started laughing at that moment, though. It wasn’t an evil laugh, like the one Mabel was currently holding down.

“From what we’d heard,” Candy said after the two of them calmed down a little bit, “you were uninterested in this town and everyone in it!”

Mabel could feel herself smiling.

“Well, that was before I found out there was girl talk to be had,” she explained. “Believe me, I’m still super creeped out, but it’s way harder to have girl talk over the phone than you think it is. This’ll be much better for my mental health.”

“Wait, so you’re serious?” Grenda asked, her eyebrows furrowed.

“About what?” Mabel asked back. 

Just then, Pacifica came back and started setting old-fashioned-looking milkshakes down on the table. A chocolate one for Grenda, a cookies and cream one for Candy, and a gorgeous strawberry one toppled high with whipped cream and rainbow sprinkles for Mabel.

“There you go, ladies!” Pacifica chimed, tucking her tray underneath her arm. “Enjoy!”

“Wait, Pacifica!” Mabel reached her hand out, trying to get the waitress's attention before she fled back to the kitchen. Luckily, Pacifica paused in her tracks and turned back around to face the three girls.

“Yes?” she asked, still giving Mabel that fake smile.

“Um, so listen,” Mabel started, tapping the pads of her index fingers against each other. “I’m having a little sleepover slash get-together tonight and I was wondering if you’d come!”

“A sleepover?” Pacifica asked nervously, taking a step closer to the booth. “Who all’s gonna be there?”

“Candy and Grenda!” Mabel exclaimed, gesturing to the friends sitting across from her. “They told me they’d be there!”

“We did?” the two asked in unison. Mabel continued despite their confusion.

“Oh, and I guess my brother will be there, too, but he’s asleep so he shouldn’t bother us,” she said. “So what d’ya say?”

Candy and Grenda seemed to experience a mood swing since their previous question. They both perked up and started waving their hands furiously at Pacifica, their eyes wide.

“Oh, yes! It’ll be the most fun ever!” Candy exclaimed.

“Candy and I can swing by to grab you after work!” Grenda went on. “We can even break into your house and get your stuff for you!”

Pacifica laughed nervously, a light tint of red dusting her cheeks.

“Heh, I don’t know. I don’t get off until super late, you wouldn’t even want me there by then.”

“It won’t be the same without you, Pacifica!” Grenda practically yelled, more desperately this time.

“You’re gonna break our poor Mabel’s heart?” Candy wept, gripping Pacifica’s forearm and tugging her closer.

“Okay! Okay!” Pacifica ushered her hand to quiet them down as she looked around the restaurant nervously. “Sheesh, I’ll come. Just stop scaring away all the customers.”

“Awesome!” Mabel chimed. “So what time do you get off work?”

“Oh, uh. It’s not ‘til like eight or something.” Pacifica waved her hand back and forth.

“Eight?” Mabel asked. “Psh, that’s not even late!”

Pacifica laughed nervously, mumbling something about eight being super close to bedtime through gritted teeth.

“Well anyway,” she said clearly this time, “I guess I’ll be there!”

She turned around to leave again, before Mabel, again, stopped her.

“Oh, I should probably get your number then so I can text you the details!”

Pacifica huffed, fishing a phone out of the pocket of her apron.

“Fine, but I should probably get back to work.”

She started reading off her phone number to Mabel, Mabel typing it away in her phone as a new contact labeled ‘Pacifica (waitress)’. As soon as she typed the last number; however, a slot appeared with an already-saved contact. 

“Huh, weird,” Mabel said aloud.

“What?” Candy asked.

“It says I already have a contact with this number,” Mabel explained. “Eh, whatever. I’ll just delete that one and save Pacifica’s number instead.”

_____________________________________

The hours fled by as Mabel, Candy, and Grenda found things to do before their impromptu slumber party. That included a trip to the store to stock up on more junk foods than they could eat and would probably be sick on in the morning.

Finally, Mabel brought them back to her hotel room. She’d honestly been avoiding it because she was afraid of waking her brother up, but at this point she figured he’d been sleeping so long that it would be fine if he were to wake up for a few minutes.

She fumbled with her key to the room. Candy and Grenda were shushing each other, plastic grocery bags rustling at their sides. Finally, the lock clicked and Mabel eased the door open, listening intently for a sign that Dipper was still in the room and still asleep.

Luckily she could hear the gentle rhythm of her brother’s breathing indicating that he was, in fact, asleep. Ever since they were little, he’d always been a quiet sleeper. He didn’t toss and turn, causing blankets to twist or unravel around him like Mabel did. He didn’t snore or talk in his sleep, again like Mabel did sometimes. Still, it was a quiet kind of sleep that Mabel knew how to listen for and pick out in a crowd. Not that she ever had to do that, but it was still a comfort to know that if she ever went blind and then was locked in a room with a thousand people who were all sleeping, she’d be able to find Dipper.

She opened the door all the way and motioned to her companions to follow her inside. They did, giggling quietly all the way like they were back in middle school and sneaking into their house in the middle of the night trying not to wake their parents up.

Mabel pointed Candy and Grenda to her bed, indicating to leave the snacks there before she paused at the foot of Dipper’s bed.

“Dipper?” she whispered.

No response.

“Dipper!” she hissed, testing how loud she could get without her brother waking up.

Still nothing.

“Bro?” she finally said in a normal voice. Her brother stayed asleep. She nodded then turned to her friends and said quietly, “Okay, we should be good guys.”

“Thanks again for inviting us over, Mabel!” Grenda said. It was weird to hear her speak quietly.

“Don’t flatter yourselves,” Mabel said jokingly with a smirk. “I only invited you so I could get the info from Pacifica and complete my mission.”

“Ah yes,” Candy affirmed, returning the smirk, “the top secret mission.”

“Speaking of Pacifica,” Grenda started, “Candy, what time is it?”

Candy flipped over her wrist to check her watch.

“8:21,” she said. “That means Pacifica should be here any minute now.”

It was just a few minutes later when there came a knocking on the hotel room door. All three girls shot over, trying to be the one to open it first. 

Mabel won, yanking the handle and pulling the door open to find Pacifica in a lavender, silk pajama set with a bag slung over her shoulder and a pillow and blanket tucked under her other arm.

“Come in! Come in!” Mabel urged, her voice still quiet. “Try not to be too loud though.”

Pacifica nodded and followed the three into the room. Mabel studied her as she eyed the snacks, pillows, and stuffies on Mabel’s bed. She kept sneaking nervous glances over at where Dipper was wrapped completely in his blankets and facing away from Mabel’s bed.

“Don’t worry about him,” Mabel assured her. “He shouldn’t wake up as long as we don’t do, like, karaoke or anything.”

She snickered, suddenly remembering a story about an instance just like that.

“We actually used to share a room,” Mabel started as the three other girls started sitting down on the bed, “before we both hit like puberty and stuff. Sometimes I’d have friends over and we’d stay up all night going crazy and Dipper’d get really mad and leave to sleep on the couch downstairs because we were too loud.”

“And that assures us, how?” Pacifica asked, quirking an eyebrow.

“Oh, it doesn’t, it was just a funny story I remembered,” Mabel explained. “Dipper’s actually a pretty heavy sleeper, especially when he’s this exhausted. My friends and I were just really loud.”

Candy and Grenda gave each other that bittersweet look again, as if Mabel’s story conjured a bad memory of sorts. Mabel furrowed her brows, upset that her reminiscing to her new friends typically conjured this look from them. She didn’t want to make them upset.

So, she shook her head, put on her people-ing smile, and clapped her hands together.

“So, what should we do first?” she asked the girls. “Two truths and a lie? Braid train? Painting each other’s nails? Doing each other’s makeup?”

Fortunately, the good vibes returned. Hours slipped away as the four girls did girly, sleepover things. It felt nice for Mabel to not worry about her hair or her clothes or what she was saying literally the entire time. Sleepovers with her friends back home could get really exhausting in that way.

Finally, Mabel suggested the holy game of Truth or Dare. Candy and Grenda both already knew this was coming and nodded emphatically. Pacifica, fortunately, agreed without hesitation.

Grenda held up her hand.

“I’ll start!” she volunteered, then pointed a finger straight at Mabel. “Mabel! Truth or Dare?”

“Uh, truth,” Mabel said quickly, comfortable where she was and not in the mood to be dared to go outside in her pajamas and kiss the first person she sees (and yes, she had been dared to do that before) or something.

Grenda tapped a finger on her chin before asking, “What’s one of the most embarrassing things about yourself that you’ve never told any of your friends before?”

Mabel grimaced. What could she pick? There were so many embarrassing things about herself that she had to hide just to remain popular. Finally, she decided on one of the things she missed the most about her old self.

“Okay, this might sound stupid,” she started. “I used to knit sweaters all the time and wear a different one, like, every single day, but when I got to high school, one of my friends told me that if I wanted anyone to like me then I shouldn’t wear sweaters that my grandma made for me. All my other friends started teasing me for it, so I stopped wearing my sweaters and I never told them that I was actually the one who would make them.”

She let out a laugh she’d felt like she’d been holding in since the end of eighth grade. She could feel her face burning, but it felt like a relief and also a bit hilarious at the same time to finally say it out loud.

When she looked back at her friends, she expected to see them smirking at her or snickering from the second-hand embarrassment of Mabel’s secret. But they only looked sad. Mabel’s face fell.

“What’s wrong?” Mabel asked. “I thought it was funny, wasn’t it? My friends all think the sweaters I made were knit by my grandma?”

“But your friends basically bullied you for something you really loved,” Candy said quietly. “You don’t like making sweaters anymore?”

“No, I do still!” Mabel assured. “I made one for Dipper when he—”

She paused, then took a breath, and carried on, hoping her friends wouldn’t notice.

“You see, he was gone on a trip for, like, two months, so I made a ‘welcome home’ sweater that I could wear and I made him a sweater with an alien face on it for when he got back. I still like knitting, there’s just never really a time for me to wear sweaters anymore. And my friends aren’t bullies, they just really care about me and don’t want to see me be embarrassed by anything.”

The three girls traded a look. Mabel couldn’t figure out what they were trying to say to each other. Maybe that Mabel was lying? Maybe that Mabel’s friends were real trash bags for making fun of Mabel’s sweaters? Mabel didn’t like it.

“Well, anyways!” she clapped her hands together. “It’s my turn now.”

She didn’t want to ask Pacifica about her crush right off the bat, so her gaze landed on Candy.

“Candy! Truth or Dare?”

Candy hesitated before picking dare. Mabel made her call a random person in her contact list to tell them that there was a giant grasshopper right outside their house. Candy ended up calling some random kid from school, who surprisingly picked up and was in a state of panic before realizing that Candy was pranking them.

The game continued on, the dares eventually fading altogether as everyone lost the energy for it and were seemingly content with a big secret-sharing session.

Mabel, at one point, was asked if she was interested in anyone. Eager to share without being immediately shot down (thanks, Dipper), she went on a tangent about Ethan for about five minutes, pulling up pictures and sharing stories about how charming and nice he was. Her new friends agreed that he was cute and that he sounded nice enough. They congratulated her on her situationship.

Finally, Mabel asked Pacifica the question she’d been waiting to ask her all night long.

“Who…” she said slowly, to build anticipation, “do you have a crush on?”

Pacifica immediately tensed up. Her eyes shot to meet Mabel’s and her face turned bright pink.

“I choose dare!” she quickly revised, even though she had clearly just chosen truth.

“Fine,” Mabel relented, donning a smirk. “I dare you to tell me who you have a crush on!”

Pacifica half shrieked, her eyebrows twisting in anger and fear. Her voice somehow got quieter and louder at the same time, like she was whisper-yelling.

“Ugh! Pick a different question! I don’t want that one!”

“You have to answer, Pacifica,” Candy sang teasingly.

“It’s the rules!” Grenda chimed in.

“No!” Pacifica sobbed, clutching her pillow tighter against her.

“Hey, I told my crush!” Mabel pointed out.

“That’s different!” Pacifica argued. “Your’s is, like, an actual two-way ‘might happen’ thing! Mine? I’m not even actually sure if it’s a crush or not. Just something that sorta sprouted up recently.”

She groaned again and buried her face in her pillow.

“Is it… someone I know?” Mabel pressed, hoping to get any information that she could.

Pacifica was quiet for a beat.

“No,” she said firmly, not looking up from her cushy sanctuary.

“Then why does it even matter?” Mabel pointed out.

“Because Candy and Grenda are sitting right there!” Pacifica shot back, lifting her head and gesturing emphatically to the two girls.

“We already know,” Candy said smugly.

“No you don’t!” Pacifica hissed through gritted teeth. She glared at Candy and Grenda as if to say, ‘help me out here or I’ll bite your heads off’.

The three of them continued to argue, Pacifica mostly in shrieky-whispers. Mabel’s attention, however, was stolen by quick, shallow breathing coming from somewhere behind her.

She twisted around to find her brother curling tighter in on himself. His chest was moving up and down rapidly, his breathing getting louder.

Mabel quietly hopped off the bed without saying anything to her friends. She crossed the space between her and her brother’s beds and set a gentle hand on Dipper’s shoulder. 

“Dipper?” she asked softly, shaking him gently. Although he was already trembling enough. “Dipper, you okay?”

She shook him one more time and his eyes suddenly shot open with a sharp gasp. He twisted around to meet Mabel’s eyes. She set her other hand on his other shoulder and tugged him closer.

“Hey bro, it’s okay, it was just a dream,” she started assuring after seeing her brother's eyes filled with panic and terror. 

Dipper braced himself on his elbows, his breath evening out as he blinked slowly. Finally, when he seemed to register that he was in the hotel room with Mabel standing right next to him, he calmed down.

He lifted himself into a sitting position and rubbed his eyes with one hand.

“Sorry,” he said quietly, his shoulders rising and falling at a normal pace now.

Mabel nodded, her hands falling to her sides. 

“What…” she started after a few beats, “were you dreaming about?”

“Nothing,” Dipper groaned, averting his eyes.

Mabel furrowed her brows, before the corners of her lips twisted into a mischievous smile.

“You know, you could join our game of Truth or Dare,” Mabel suggested, turning so that her brother could see her friends sitting on her bed. “Then you’ll have to tell us!”

Dipper leaned forward, his face contorting as he registered the other people in the hotel room. Mabel studied his gaze, knowing pretty much exactly what was running through his head.

His face twisted as he noticed three girls in the room, two of which he had never met as far as Mabel knew. His eyes flicked down as he registered the words ‘Truth or Dare’, and connected it to the three girls, and then to a slumber party. Then his eyes narrowed in a ‘my sister had a sleepover and I was sleeping through it? Impossible.’.

“In fact,” Mabel started, tired of the silence, “Pacifica here was just about to tell us who she had a crush on!”

“Was not!” Pacifica hissed, her face burning as she buried her mouth into her pillow.

“You can’t argue with the rules of Truth or Dare,” Mabel said smugly, crossing her arms.

“That’s okay,” Dipper finally said quietly, holding his hand up. “I don’t want to intrude. I think— I think I need to get some fresh air.”

A wave of disappointment washed over Mabel. Her face fell as Dipper pulled his blankets aside and strode over to the door, shoving his feet into his untied shoes.

“Tie your shoes!” Mabel called as the door shut behind him.

After a beat, Mabel turned back to her friends, who’s eyes were all fixed on the door.

“Is he… okay?” Candy asked carefully.

Mabel shrugged.

“I don’t know. I’m—”

She didn’t finish the sentence out loud. What would she say? Worried? Concerned? Afraid? These were practically strangers. She didn’t need to drag them into her sibling drama.

“Now Pacifica!” she chimed, flipping the happy switch in her brain to ‘on’. “About that crush?”

“Over my dead body!” Pacifica shrieked, actually shrieked this time, now that the sleeping Dipper was out of the room.

They continued arguing like that until they eventually all got tired and crashed on Mabel’s bed.

Chapter Text

The labyrinth had never felt as alive as it did tonight.

When Dipper appeared in the main room, everything was the same as it always was. The giant throne made of stone people. The twisting pathways branching off in every direction. The large tapestries unfurling to reveal melting faces frozen in horror.

Except that some of the faces weren’t melting anymore. Some of them were recognizable.

Dipper saw Wendy’s face, and Soos’s. Robbie’s and Pacifica’s, even Gideon, who he had just met earlier that day. There was only one banner that remained who’s face he couldn’t quite place, but the banners became that much scarier just because he knew the people that adorned them.

The monster started saying things, too. After he got over the initial shock of actual faces on the tapestries, he bolted, remembering what typically arrived not long after he did. As soon as he made it to one of the hallways, he could hear the booming voice echoing after him, but it was saying stuff like “corpses” and “kill” and “disassemble”.

There were other voices that called after him as well. He couldn’t quite hear them over the sound of the monster, but they sounded so familiar and comforting. But they were also terrified. Terrified of what? Dipper didn’t know, but it strangely didn’t sound like they were afraid of the monster itself.

As the monster got closer and closer to him, Dipper felt like he was shrinking. His legs turned to jelly and his lungs turned to lead. He shrieked as the giant hand wrapped around his chest, and as it lifted him and the huge eye bore into his soul, he felt as if he was 12 years old again. Small, weak, terrified.

His heart pounded as he hit and punched and tried to pull himself out of the creature’s grip. It would only tighten. It crawled back to the main room faster than it ever had before. It presented Dipper like a prize, saying something to someone. Dipper couldn’t tell. His vision was going fuzzy and the monster’s voice echoed in his ears so loud that he couldn’t understand anything.

Then it held up its hand, ready to snap. Dipper knew what this meant. His death was coming. The fingers would click and Dipper's lungs would stop working, his heart would stop beating, his vision would go dark. He watched anxiously, gasping and trembling, knowing there was nothing he could do.

And then he woke up. He found Mabel grabbing his shoulders and telling him he was okay. Only when he realized that he was back in his bed did he allow himself to relax.

But then he noticed that he and his sister were not alone, so he quickly retreated from the room so he could gather his bearings alone, without any eyes on him.

That’s where he was now. Sitting in a grassy lawn outside the hotel, his knees brought to his chest with his arms wrapped around them. He was staring into the starry sky, letting the breeze wash over him.

He had no idea what time it was. He didn’t catch a glimpse of the clock before he left, he didn’t grab his watch, and he forgot his phone on the nightstand. 

The only things he’d bothered to grab were his shoes and his messenger bag with the old journal inside it.

He didn’t know why he had grabbed it. He’d noticed it hanging by the door right as he walked out and figured ‘why not?’ before tearing it off its hook.

He hadn’t even bothered to get the book out. He was content enough staring up at a night sky with more stars than he’d ever seen before, identifying every constellation he knew. Pegasus, Perseus, Draco, the Big Dipper (of course).

He sighed, almost wanting to go back to the hotel room, but not wanting to deal with Mabel and her friends and their girl talk. He was glad that Mabel was making friends, though, despite how weird their situation was.

For some reason, that thought reminded Dipper of the stranger from the library and the attic of the Mystery Shack.

My real body is in the woods…

Dipper’s brows furrowed. Surely it would be insane to go wandering through the woods in the middle of the night without a phone or flashlight or watch or anything.

But then again, Mabel was distracted with her friends, any peering eyes were shut tight and dreaming, and hopefully the creatures in the woods weren’t nocturnal.

Dipper nodded and gathered himself to his feet, his decision finalized. He had spent enough time out here now that his eyes were sufficiently adjusted to the darkness, plus the moon was quite bright tonight. He would be fine.

Just in and out, he told himself as he began stumbling through the forest. If anything feels weird, you don’t even have to go inside, you can just run back and find Mabel again.

It was much harder to see in the woods at night than Dipper had anticipated. He kept tripping on branches and roots and bushes. He fell and got more scrapes than he’d like to admit to anyone. And honestly, he wasn’t really sure where he was supposed to be going.

“He said I’d know it when I see it,” Dipper grumbled to himself. “What the crap is that supposed to mean? No directions, no address, no ‘turn left at the 43rd tree!’.”

Dipper rolled his eyes, but he was too committed at this point to turn around and admit to Mabel and her friends that he had been stumbling blindly around the woods for half an hour, or however long it had been since he left.

Eventually, he saw a faint glow in the distance. At first he thought it might’ve been a firefly or something, but it looked too similar to the glow of a house light. He bee-lined for it, still continuing to trip over anything that crossed his path.

A small cabin came into view. It seemed to emanate an awful gut-wrenching feeling that braided Dipper’s guts together more than Mabel braided her hair.

“This must be it,” Dipper whispered, then walked up to the door.

His fist was landing on it in soft knocks before he had time to think that maybe this was a serial killer’s house, and then he heard footsteps walking towards him.

The door opened, and there was the annoying stranger. Wide awake. Yellow shirt. Piercing-into-your-soul eyes. Everything.

His eyes widened, and then he smirked at Dipper, his eyes flicking down to where Dipper’s hand was clutching onto the strap of his bag.

“I knew you’d get here eventually,” he said, opening the door more and gesturing for Dipper to come inside. “Took you long enough.”

Dipper’s feet were planted firmly on the ground. 

“It wasn’t even a full day,” Dipper argued.

“But every minute we waste is another minute we aren’t getting the information we need, correct?”

Dipper huffed.

“My sister was making me sleep,” he explained. “She was, like, getting worried and stuff.”

“And you let her convince you to sleep?” He sounded aghast, with a hand over his heart and everything. “You do realize that the greatest geniuses in the world would purposely lose sleep because their brains functioned at higher efficiency when they were sleep deprived, right? And you let her take that depravity away from you?”

Dipper made this disgusted sort of face that he didn’t mean to. Was this guy being for real right now?

“Are you serious?” he asked.

“Serious as a playground on a summer’s day!”

“That’s not serious at all.”

“ Relatively speaking.”

“To what?”

“We’re getting away from the point here,” the guy said, waving his hands as if physically brushing away the subject. “Please, come in. We have a lot to talk about don’t we? And as I said, we’re wasting precious minutes.”

The guy turned away to supposedly lead Dipper into the house. But Dipper’s brows furrowed even more, his lips pressing together, as his brain screamed at him to not set one foot into the house.

You can leave if you want , his brain repeated. He might murder you if you go in there.

Yeah but he might murder me if I run, too, a different part of his brain argued.

Fair point, the first part argued back.

“Are you coming?” 

Dipper hadn’t realized that the dude had noticed him staring contemplatively into the doorway.

“I’m still debating.”

How’s this, the first part of his brain started, we go in, scope out the situation, maybe grab a weapon, preferably a gun because he seems like the type to have one, and then we make a run for it.

Yes, yes. I like this plan.

“Okay,” Dipper whispered as he walked slowly into the old cabin.

The guy nodded and shut the door behind Dipper. Dipper half expected him to twist the lock, pull out a gun, and shoot Dipper dead before he had anything to do about it. Luckily, he did nothing of the sorts and led Dipper further into the house to a room with a run down couch.

“You never told me your name,” Dipper started, the guy sitting down on the couch, taking up as much space as he could with his legs spread and his arms draped out over the back.

“Do I need to?” 

“Well, I’d like to call you something else in my internal dialogue other than ‘random guy from the library’,” Dipper retorted.

Random Guy from the Library sighed and started picking something out of his teeth.

“Why not call me William?” he said, flicking away the object that he had apparently dislodged from between his teeth. “That’s easy enough for your brain to remember, isn’t it?”

Odd choice of words, Dipper thought.

“You say that as if your name isn’t actually William,” Dipper pointed out.

“It’s not,” he said. “But that’s what you can call me.”

“Alright,” Dipper grumbled, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

“William” gestured to the spot on the couch next to him.

“Come on, why not make yourself comfortable? I won’t bite.”

I’m not afraid of biting, Dipper thought. I’m just afraid of murder.

“No thanks,” Dipper said instead. “I shouldn’t stay long anyway. My sister will get worried. It is the middle of the night, after all, and I did leave without telling her.”

“You’re really gonna put your sister above the secrets of the universe?” William asked, leaning forward and propping his elbows on his knees.

“The secrets of the universe?” Dipper repeated, shifting between his feet again.

William straightened and looked all around him as if checking for eavesdroppers. Dipper was certain it was for show considering they were out in the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night.

“Listen, I’ve never told this to anyone, but…” William paused, leaned forward, cupped his hand over his mouth, and whispered, “that journal that you have there in your bag, holds instructions to a device that will give us access to countless other worlds…”

Dipper narrowed his eyes. With every moment, he was getting more and more skeptical.

“And what exactly makes me so special, huh?” he asked. “ Why are you telling me this and no one else?”

William jumped back in his seat as if he was stunned.

“What makes you special?” he repeated. “Why, Dipper Pines, your quest for knowledge makes you special. Your thirst for answers, your insatiability for adventure and mystery, your ability to comprehend what no one else can. That’s what makes you special! No one else in this town has caught my attention in the past few years, but you were here for, what, a week? Two? I told you this before. You’re the only one who has been so desperate for answers on why this town is the way it is. I was inspired by your need, your drive . I simply had to help you!”

Dipper shifted uncomfortably again. All the things William was saying were supposed to be flattering, right? Dipper didn’t feel flattered. Or complimented. He just felt like the pit in his stomach was digging itself deeper and deeper, trying to escape his body and drill into the floor underneath him. He studied William’s smile. It was like William was waiting for a reaction. Waiting for Dipper to fall into the trap. 

What trap was he placing?

When Dipper didn’t respond, didn’t even pretend to feel complimented or charmed, William’s smile fell. He sighed and sunk back into the couch. Then he nodded and hoisted himself up, turning to enter another room.

“Follow,” he ordered. Dipper, sensing that William was disappointed, did not want to disappoint him further and did as he was asked.

He followed William into a small kitchen. The lights were dim and the curtains over the couple of windows were pulled open. A small plate full of cookies sat on the kitchen island. They looked fresh and warm and they caused Dipper’s stomach to start complaining from the lack of food he just realized he’d had all day long.

“You clearly still don’t trust me,” William started explaining, pulling out a stool and parking himself on it.

“Why would I?” Dipper asked. He found it ridiculous that William couldn’t fathom why Dipper may not trust him. Does the word ‘stranger’ ring any bells?

William didn’t respond. His attention was on the plate of cookies. He leaned on his elbows and lazily picked one off the plate.

“Cookie?” he asked, holding the pastry out to Dipper who was still standing awkwardly near the doorway.

Dipper narrowed his eyes.

It’s probably poisoned. Or maybe it has some sleeping drug in it. Either way, that cookie will probably kill me.

William, seeming to hear Dipper’s thoughts, sighed and took a big bite out of the cookie. Bits of crumbs and melted chocolate clung to his lips and Dipper felt a pang of aching in his stomach again. William finished it in a couple more bites, then stared at the ceiling, wove his hand around in circles around the plate, picked another one up without looking, and ate that one, too.

Dipper sucked his bottom lip between his teeth. Clearly, that was William displaying how not poisoned or drugged the cookies were.

“I guess… it wouldn’t hurt to have one…” Dipper murmured, meandering over to the other side of the island.

William chose another one from the plate to eat as Dipper hovered his hand over it. Maybe he was trying to find the one with the most chocolate chips in it, or maybe he was still hesitant about the whole thing and trying to decide which one looked the least drugged.

Finally, he picked one, feeling William’s boring gaze on him, and drew it slowly to his mouth.

It tasted just as good as it looked. It was warm and gooey and soft and crispy and it seemed to melt in Dipper’s mouth. He could practically feel his pupils dilate as he stared longingly at the cookie in his hand, then he scarfed it down. 

He didn’t notice William smirking proudly at him until he was reaching for another one off the plate. He looked like he might’ve succeeded at something, but as far as Dipper was concerned, the success only went as far as having made delicious pastries. 

He wolfed down the second cookie, considering whether or not he should take a third one, when William finally spoke up.

“They good?” he asked in an almost playful tone.

Dipper nodded slowly, his eyes narrowing again at William, as he drew the third cookie to his lips.

“That’s good,” William hummed, propping his head on his interlocked hands and cocking it to the side. “That means you’ll have sweet dreams about them, doesn’t it?”

What? Dipper thought. What an odd thing to say…

But suddenly, he could feel his head spinning. The cookie in his hand, with one bite taken out of it, suddenly got closer and then farther, then closer and farther. He tried to look back at William, but his image was splitting into two and going out of focus. His legs started going weak and he stumbled backwards, trying to stabilize himself as best as he could, holding his empty hand up against his forehead.

He was swaying as he looked back at where the blurred image of William was. He looked like he was smirking again. Dipper tried to glare, but he didn’t know if the message came across or not.

“ Nighty night ~” he could hear William’s voice echoing inside his head as his vision started going dark.

And then he collapsed.

Chapter Text

The sound of a conversation woke Mabel up from her short nap. She started stirring and slowly sat up, rubbing her eyes.

Candy and Grenda were engaged in a quiet conversation at the head of the bed. Pacifica was still sitting up and clutching her pillow against her chest at the foot of the bed, but her head was bobbing as she nodded off occasionally.

“Ugh, sorry guys,” she groaned, her voice laced with sleep. “I can’t believe I fell asleep. What time is it?”

The two fully conscious girls seemed to startle a bit when Mabel spoke, but they quickly regathered themselves.

“A little after 3,” Candy answered after checking her phone.

Mabel hummed a confirmation then turned to survey the room. Dipper’s bed was still empty, which was probably fine. Mabel knew how much he disliked sharing a room with her while she was having a sleepover. He was probably just biding his time outside. He slept long enough through the day that Mabel wasn’t as worried.

Still her eyes lingered on his side of the room. Eventually they landed on the couple of books piled up on Dipper’s side of the nightstand. Her eyes lit up with an idea.

“Hey do you guys wanna snoop through my brother’s stuff with me?” she asked quietly. Maybe her brother was in the bathroom and she didn’t realize it or something.

Candy and Grenda passed a look between each other. Grenda looked pleased with the idea, but Candy seemed hesitant.

“Isn’t that kinda invasive?” she asked, turning back to Mabel.

“Oh come on,” Mabel said, waving her hand. “Everyone knows brothers aren’t allowed to keep secrets from their sisters, and I am long overdue for some of his secrets.”

“Well okay.” Candy shrugged. “Just don’t tell him we were a part of this.”

Mabel bit her bottom lip in an eager smile and hopped off the bed to look through which of the books she should grab. Eventually she decided on the sketchbook he got for their last birthday. Who knew what cool drawings were in here?

She plopped back down on the bed and laid the sketchbook out in front of her. Grenda leaned in eagerly, and apparently Candy’s curiosity also got the better of her, because so did she. Pacifica, however, had seemed to officially drift off to sleep.

Mabel’s bottom lip was still pinched between her teeth as she flipped through the first couple of pages.

It was all pretty typical sketchbook stuff. Drawings she recognized as self portraits. People she recognized as members of the band Dipper was in. Just the normal stuff, except that every page seemed to be ripped and torn in some way, with pieces of worn tape holding them together.

Then the drawings started getting weird. First there were these weird tapestries, but the faces on them looked like they were literally melting, their hands clawing away at their skin.

Then there were multiple sketches of this huge room with a small figure stuck in the middle of it, a giant throne towering over the person.

Mabel’s stomach seemed to lurch when she turned the next page. This page, too, was torn. But its tears seemed to rip through the creature staring back at her like a bear’s claw marks, stitched together with the same worn tape.

She didn’t know why the monster made her feel so uneasy. It wasn’t the scariest thing she’d ever seen. It was this pyramid-looking monster with one big eye and mouths on every side of it with sharp teeth and a long tongue hanging out of one of the mouths. It was almost… familiar to Mabel.

She looked up at Candy and Grenda, who’s faces also seemed to go pale at the sight of it.

“What… is that?” Candy asked uneasily.

“I don’t know,” Mabel answered with a small voice.

“Why are all of the drawings torn?” Grenda asked.

Mabel shrugged, but she was afraid she really did know the answer. She finally recognized this as the drawing Dipper was working on the day Ethan stole his sketchbook and showed it to the whole class. That must’ve been why it was familiar. She didn’t want to voice her suspicions to her friends, though, afraid that they might think of her crush— and therefore her — with the same disgust that Dipper regarded him with.

Mabel decided she’d had enough of the scary monster and flipped to the next page.

Immediately, there seemed to be a shift in the mood. It made sense, considering the timeline of events. Still, it was a dramatic change in tone.

There were all these little doodles of smiling people and sunny forests and her brother and herself going on adventures. She flipped one page and found a note that Dipper had left written next to a handful of drawings.

Dr. Sanchez told me I should “make” a safe place to go to when I start having the nightmares again. It’s hard for me to visualize it in my head, so I figured I should draw it so I can dream about it better.

Mabel’s eyes flicked over to the characters that Dipper “created” for his “safe place”. There were so many of them, and each was labeled with a different TV stereotype.

The first was a large, round man with a peach fuzz moustache and beard who wore a cap on top of his head. Lovable handyman/ teddy bear.

Next was a girl with long hair, a checkered shirt, muddy boots, and a hat similar to the one Dipper wore all the time. Badass lumberjack girl.

Below her was a group of five teens. An emo guy with hair covering part of his face. Two guy best friends giving each other headlocks. A gothy girl holding her phone in front of her. A larger guy with a soft smile on his face. The cool older teens.

She turned the page and was looking down at two characters who were shockingly similar to the two girls sitting across from her right now. A short girl with black hair, glasses, and a striped shirt. A taller girl showcasing her muscles with her air pulled into a ponytail. Sister’s weird but lovable best friends.

Mabel’s face was starting to twist in confusion the more drawings she saw. All these characters that seemed to come from Dipper’s head; weren’t they all strangely similar to all the people they had met in Gravity Falls?

She turned the page and found a girl with long, light-colored hair that covered her forehead in straight-cut bangs. There were two different drawings of her. One in a simple outfit: A short dress, leggings, furry boots, a belt, a jacket, and hoop earrings. The other was one of her in a long, almost silky dress. She was twirling around, staring at the floor with peacefully shut eyes, showing off her shoes with diamonds on the toes. One of her gloved hands was grabbing the dress. Reformed rich/mean girl.

Mabel’s eyes flicked to Pacifica, who was still snoozing away with her face buried into her pillow. Then she looked up at Candy and Grenda, who were also eyeing the drawings with a puzzled look.

She decided not to say anything and turned the page again.

This one was a man in a suit and a fez hat very similar to the one Soos wore all the time when she would visit the Mystery Shack. He held a cane with an 8 ball attached to the top. His glasses were big and square, and his nose was large and round. Old guy who definitely should not be taking care of children, but they love him a lot anyway.

There was a man next to him with an identical face, glasses included. He wore a turtleneck sweater and a long trench coat. Really awesome scientist/ alien bounty hunter old guy.

Mabel’s heart seemed to jump when she turned the next page. There in front of her was a detailed drawing of a sunny forest with mushrooms and rocks and little glowing lights. A younger version of Dipper— wearing a cap, cargo shorts, and a big vest— was standing in the middle with his back turned. There was a big smile on his face as he showcased a map or something with an eagerness that Mabel recognized a little too well. On a rock in front of him sat the person he was showing it to.

It was Mabel.

A younger version of her, too, she wore a big, handmade sweater with her signature shooting star on it. A headband was holding her long hair out of her face. She was resting her chin on the animal she was clutching against her chest: Waddles. 

And she was simply beaming at her brother.

Mabel couldn’t tell what was happening inside her chest. Was this how Dipper saw her, or was this how he wanted to see her? She didn’t know.

There was no caption on this drawing, as if Dipper didn’t even feel the need to caption it for himself. Mabel wondered what he would have written though. “The Pines Twins”, “Siblings with an unbreakable bond”, “a time I wish I could go back to”, “something I’ll never have again”?

Whatever it would have been, Dipper was able to capture both of them in a way where they looked genuinely happy, and it made Mabel’s heart ache.

She decided she’d had enough of this drawing as well, and turned the page to find that the drawings had reverted back to what they looked like at the beginning of the sketchbook: Just normal sketchbook drawings.

There were; however, a lot more drawings of one of the members from Dipper’s band. Mabel decided not to comment on it. She was positive that was a Dipper secret that shouldn’t be shared quite yet.

“I had no idea he was such a good artist!” Grenda remarked after a bit. Clearly the shock of all the familiar characters had worn off. Or she was just trying to change the subject.

“Yeah,” Mabel said, finding that the drawings were thinning out. She must be getting close to the most recent ones. “He’s always liked observing his surroundings and making notes of them. He used to pretend he was, like, a super official scientist guy who would make an important discovery one day, haha!”

Eventually she found the last drawing. It looked like it was Dipper, but it was the back of his head, and he was staring out the car window into a forest that was bursting with fantastical creatures.

Then she shut it, let go of a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding, and looked back up at her friends.

Sister’s weird but lovable best friends.

She shook the thought out of her head.

“We probably… shouldn’t look through any more of his stuff,” Mabel decided, tapping her hands on her knees.

“Agreed,” Candy and Grenda both said in sync.

So Mabel got up to return the sketchbook where Dipper had originally left it. As she put it down, she was reminded again that Dipper had still not returned. Earlier, she wasn’t worried, but now some gut-wrenching feeling was tugging on her.

“Where is that stinker anyway?” Mabel finally asked, turning back to her friends. They both shrugged and looked at each other, worry seeming to knot their faces together as well.

It was right at that moment when a big thud sounded against the door. All three girls jumped and twisted around to face it. Another thud landed. And then it sounded like a body fell against it.

“Dipper?” Mabel called out, and she was suddenly rushing towards the door.

Sure enough, there was Dipper collapsed on the ground when she opened it. He was trying to brace himself with his arms but they were clearly shaking and he was on the verge of collapsing even more. Mabel hurriedly bent down and scooped her arms under his shoulders so she could tug him into the room.

“Dipper, what’s wrong?” She knelt down in front of him and tried to grab his shoulders so he could look at her, but his head just fell against his chest. She grabbed his cheek and forced him to look up. His face was pale and he looked like he was about to throw up. Then he made a sound like he was about to throw up, so Mabel rushed to drag him into the bathroom.

“I don’t— I’m not—” he tried protesting, before he promptly emptied the contents of his stomach into the toilet bowl. His clammy hands clutched either side of the porcelain as he started dry heaving. Mabel realized that there hadn’t been much content to empty from his stomach.

“Dipper! What happened?” she demanded, grabbing his shoulder again.

He started muttering incoherently at her. She could only make out every other word.

“Woods… Cookies… Bill —”

“Dipper, I can’t understand you!” She was starting to shake, too. Panic was settling into her bones. 

Then she heard footsteps behind her. She turned to find all three girls standing in the doorway to the bathroom. Worry was making their eyes wide as they looked at where Dipper was practically burying his head into the toilet bowl.

“I don’t— I don’t know—” Mabel could feel herself start to cry, and she tried to force the tears down. “I don’t know what’s wrong —”

“We should take him to the hospital—” Pacifica started, but then Mabel cut her off. 

“ No !” she practically shrieked, jumping to her feet. Then she took a breath. “No. We already have enough of a bill piling up with both our parents there. We’re not gonna add to it.”

It was a pathetic excuse and she knew it. But they were not going to take him to the hospital. It would just make things worse.

“Well, we should probably take him to an adult or something,” Grenda countered.

“What about the Mystery Shack?” Candy suggested. “I’m sure Melody or maybe even Soos would know what to do!”

“I can’t drag him all the way there by myself!” Mabel argued. “It would probably be best to just leave him here to rest.”

“Of course you won’t do it yourself, Mabel! We’ll help you,” Pacifica retorted. “And besides, he looks like he’s been drugged. I don’t think our junky candy will necessarily help him right now. He needs some food and water!”

Before Mabel could argue any more, the four of them were hurrying through the dark of the night toward the tourist attraction. Dipper’s arms were draped over Mabel’s and Pacifica’s shoulders, since they were the most similar in height. His feet were dragging behind them and his chin was resting on his chest. He was muttering more incomprehensible nonsense.

Candy and Grenda hurried ahead of them so they could see if knocking on the door would wake anyone up, so it was just the two girls dragging Mabel’s brother between them.

“It’s okay, Dipper, you’ll be alright,” Mabel could hear Pacifica saying quietly as they sped walk. Mabel was just staring straight ahead, trying not to think about what might happen if Dipper didn’t get help soon.

Eventually, the Shack came into view. Candy and Grenda were still trying to get a response at the door by the time Mabel and Pacifica were trying to help Dipper up the first step.

Finally the door swung open.

“Guys?” Mabel heard Wendy’s voice asking. “What is going on? It’s the middle of the—”

“What are you doing here?” asked Candy. The trio was working their way up the second step now. “Where are Soos and Melody?”

“I’m house sitting,” Wendy explained begrudgingly. “They’re out camping. What is—”

And then Dipper tripped and the girls lost hold of him. He fell onto his hands and knees with just enough strength not to break his teeth on the last step.

“Woah!” Wendy seemed to have noticed them. She was suddenly rushing forward and scooping Dipper into her arms. “Okay, someone explain right now!”

“We don’t know!” Pacifica half-shrieked. “He was gone and then he just came back like this!”

“We didn’t know where else to go,” Candy chimed in. “We thought Melody or Soos could help!”

“You didn’t think to take him to the hospital?” Wendy was lifting Dipper onto his feet and bracing him on her shoulder.

“We’re not taking him to the hospital!” Mabel finally cut in, more bite in her tone than she intended.

Wendy looked around at the other girls, an eyebrow raised as if asking a question about Mabel’s outburst. Candy and Grenda shook their heads. Then Pacifica shrugged.

“Poor people problems,” she said, as if that was her answer to most things.

Wendy shrugged in turn, then turned and led everyone into the house. They followed after her like they were lost puppies and watched as she dumped Dipper onto an old yellow chair. 

Mabel had only been in this room briefly when she had gone looking for Dipper earlier that day, but now that she was standing in it, the thought couldn’t escape her that the smell or something reminded her of her grandparents’ house.

“Okay, Grenda, you go grab a bowl from the kitchen,” Wendy started ordering as she knelt in front of Dipper and started inspecting his eyes and his forehead. “Candy, you go get some water. Pacifica. Crackers or something.”

The three nodded and ran off to the kitchen.

“And me?” Mabel asked, finding it awkward to be in here with just Wendy while she was taking care of her brother for her.

“You can tell me what that was about,” Wendy said, still forcing Dipper’s eyelids open while he groaned and clutched his stomach.

Mabel shifted uncomfortably.

“What what was about?”

“You know what,” Wendy said. “You know that taking him to the hospital would be best. Why are you refusing it?”

Mabel turned to look away, a huff escaping her mouth.

“It’s none of your business,” she said quietly. “Just trust me when I say it’s best if we don’t rely on them.”

Wendy was quiet for a moment.

“You don’t trust them because your parents are still in a coma?”

“No, no. That’s not—”

“You don’t trust them because they’re small town?”

“That’s not what—”

“You don’t—”

“Just DROP it, okay!” Mabel suddenly lashed out. Wendy didn’t look scared at the outburst. She just stared at Mabel with this sort of pitying look. Mabel couldn’t stand it.

Candy, Grenda, and Pacifica came back before Wendy could say anything else about it.

Wendy took the bowl and shoved it into Dipper’s arms, who clutched it tightly and leaned over it like he was about to start dry heaving again. Then she took the water and tried to get him to drink some, but he looked like he was nauseous just from the thought of it.

“Dipper, you have to get something in your system,” she tried to urge, but he just ducked his head lower.

“Do you think he was drugged or something?” Grenda asked.

“I mean, it sure seems like it, but I don’t know what drug would be causing all this,” Wendy explained.

“What? You take drugs all the time or something?” Mabel bit.

“I’m almost done with high school,” Wendy retorted. “I haven’t done drugs, but I’ve seen my fair share, okay?”

Mabel rolled her eyes and marched over to the other side of the room. Why was she acting like this? It’s not Wendy’s fault Dipper’s in this condition. She’s just helping.

“What other symptoms have you guys noticed?” Wendy asked, turning to try and force water down Dipper’s throat again.

“Well, he can’t really walk at all,” Pacifica said, “although he managed to make it back to the hotel room. But he can’t even stand up anymore!”

“He threw up a couple times as soon as he did get back,” Candy added.

Dipper mumbled something then, and Wendy turned her attention to him.

“What’d you say, Dipper?”

“Cookies…” he mumbled, the word slurring like his mouth was still full of the pastry.

“Cookies?” Wendy asked.

“He gave me cookies,” Dipper continued, his head bobbing up and down. “They made me sleepy…”

“ Who gave you cookies?” Wendy pressed, grabbing Dipper’s shoulder.

“I— uh,” he groaned, like trying to think about it was giving him a headache. “I… can’t… remember…”

Suddenly he was giggling.

“Just like I can’t remember all of you ,” he said, his words accompanied by quiet laughs. Then his head lulled to the side as he lost control of his neck muscles.

“Hey, hey!” Wendy grabbed his shoulders and shook him gently. “Dipper, don’t go to sleep, okay. It might be bad.”

He groaned and lifted his head slightly, his eyelids just barely cracking open.

“Listen, is there anything you can remember about the guy who gave you the cookies?” Wendy pressed further.

Dipper squeezed his eyes shut in concentration.

“He wanted…” he started quietly, “he wanted my book …”

“What book?”

“My book,” Dipper repeated as if that was all the answer there was. “I got it, though. He doesn’t have it.”

Suddenly he sat up straighter— well, as straight as he could. His eyes went wide as he started patting himself down.

“Where is it? Where’s my book?” he asked frantically, looking like he was about to try and get up to go looking for it.

Wendy pushed him down and turned to look at the girls in expectance. They all three shrugged, so Mabel finally stepped into the conversation.

“Was it in your bag, Dipper?” she asked. “You had it with you when you got to the hotel, but we left it there.”

Dipper slumped back into the chair, a sigh of relief escaping his mouth.

“As long as he doesn’t have it,” he muttered as he let his eyes shut again.

“Dipper! Don’t go to sleep!” Wendy urged again and snapped her fingers in front of his face.

“M’tired though,” he whined, his words slurring together again. Then he chuckled softly. “Like— when Mabel’s— puppet show…”

“ What are you talking about?” Mabel demanded, exasperated at just how out of it her brother was.

Instead of answering, his head started bobbing again. Wendy pulled him forward to sit him up more.

“Okay, Dipper ,” she started, loud and clear so he could understand her, “if you can drink this glass of water and eat five crackers, you can go to sleep. I promise .”

Mabel had a thought that Wendy must’ve had younger brothers or something, because Mabel would talk to Dipper like that sometimes, too.

He seemed to perk up at the idea and finally reached for the glass of water that had been discarded on the side table. He missed it, like, three times before Wendy picked it up and pushed it into his hand. Thankfully, he was able to hold it up to his mouth by himself and take small sips.

Seemingly satisfied with her work, Wendy stood from her perch and turned to the four girls.

“Why don’t you guys just stay here tonight?” she asked, rubbing her eyes with the thumb and pointer finger on one of her hands.

“Oh, no, that’s okay—” Mabel tried to start saying before Wendy interrupted her.

“I don’t want you guys to have to carry him all the way back to your hotel,” she explained, crossing her arms. “And I’m sure you don’t want to leave him here alone. I don’t mind if you all stay and I’m sure Soos and Melody wouldn’t either.”

A look seemed to pass through Candy, Grenda, and Pacifica before they all looked over at Mabel, who’s eyebrows were pinched together.

“She has a point,” Pacifica said slowly. Mabel could hear the exhaustion tugging at her words. Maybe it would be too much work to make the journey back to the hotel.

“Is it okay with you, Mabel?” Candy asked gently.

Mabel’s expression softened. She could feel the exhaustion start to tug at her as well.

“I guess… it couldn’t hurt,” she agreed quietly, forcing her gaze away from the group.

Wendy smiled and nodded proudly at herself. Then she directed everyone to find extra blankets and pillows so they could set up makeshift beds on the floor.

Mabel begrudgingly did as she was told. When she wandered back to the TV room with her supplies bundled in her arms, she could hear a quiet conversation being exchanged between Dipper and Wendy. She poked her head around the corner to watch.

“Do you remember anything else?” Wendy was asking quietly. She was leaning against the arm of the chair looking down at Dipper. Mabel had a feeling she wasn’t asking about the cookie guy.

“Just bits and pieces…” Dipper said back. His voice was scratchy from when he was retching earlier. There was a half-eaten cracker pinched between his fingers.

“Well, maybe I’ll have to track down this guy and get his cookie recipe,” she said, chuckling. 

Dipper laughed softly before gagging and tensing up. He leaned over the bowl as if he was about to puke again, but it didn’t happen. Wendy patted him comfortingly on the back. 

“I honestly don’t know what could be doing this to you,” she said. She hesitated before she added on, “I… have done drugs. It was just one time, though. But it was WAY different than what’s happening to you right now.”

“Just don’t tell your sister that,” she added quickly.

“Don’t worry. I won’t,” Dipper said, laughing.

“You promise? Your lips are sealed?”

Dipper looked up at her and made a motion like he was zipping his lips shut, locking them, and flicking the key away. Strangely, Wendy’s face fell, a forlonging look caught in her eyes. Then she turned away from Dipper, her gaze falling to the floor.

“You won’t remember any of this when this stuff wears off, will you?” she asked softly.

Dipper’s gaze fell too. His eyebrows pinched together like he was in pain.

“No…” he answered, almost too quiet for Mabel to hear. “I don’t think I will.”

Wendy ripped her eyes away from the floor, turning her head away even more. Mabel thought she caught the start of tears forming in her eyes.

After another moment of silence, she turned back, ruffled the hair on top of Dipper’s head, and stood up from the arm of the chair.

“Try to get some sleep, okay?” she said affectionately. Dipper nodded slowly and then Wendy exited through the door on the other side of the TV room.

Mabel waited a moment before she entered the room. Their conversation confused her, or maybe Wendy was just humoring Dipper and his high weirdness.

Finally, she stepped in. Dipper noticed and looked in her direction.

“Hey Dipper,” she greeted quietly. “I brought you a blanket.”

She handed it to him and lifted the bowl from his lap so he could wrap it over himself. Then she gave the bowl back. 

She watched as he let his head fall onto the arm of the chair, his eyes already half-closed. Then she nodded and knelt to the floor to start making up her bed.

“Mabel,” Dipper said quietly. Mabel sat up and looked at him.

“What?”

He took a short breath.

“I’m sorry…”

Mabel felt a pang in her chest. He could’ve died and he was apologizing to her? For what? Running off or something. She guessed, it did stress her out a lot…

“I forgive you,” she responded. “Just don’t run off like that again, okay?”

Dipper tore his gaze away from her, his eyes slightly narrowed.

“Right,” he said, as if unsatisfied with her answer.

She wondered if he wanted to say anything else. She waited, but nothing more came.

And then all she heard was the quiet breathing that indicated he was asleep.

Chapter Text

Dipper’s head was so foggy. 

He didn’t know how long he’d been asleep for, but he could tell that whatever was in the cookies was still having a huge effect on him.

He tried to pry his eyes open, but they were so heavy that they kept closing. When he did try to focus on anything, he had to use all his strength just to smash the split images into one distinguishable picture.

The effort made the taste of the tainted cookies try to climb back up Dipper’s throat. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to force the contents of his stomach back down into his stomach.

Dipper figured he’d try moving. He could tell he was laying down, but that’s as far as his perception went. It would be a challenge to work against gravity to lift his head, but it was his best option.

He tensed all the muscles in his neck in an attempt to get them to move his big, stupid, head . His efforts proved futile. He groaned in exasperation as he relaxed back against the floor.

“Ah, you’re waking up—” Dipper could hear a voice say, but it was overlapping itself and echoing and it was hard for him to understand it.

He tried opening his eyes again. Luckily, the lids weren’t as heavy anymore, but he still couldn’t get a clear picture of anything.

“You have a nice nap?” the voice was back again. It was closer and slightly clearer. Dipper tried to turn his head so he could find the source, but the effort exhausted him and he was panting without even making any progress.

Maybe speaking would work? He attempted it, but his
“words” came out as nothing more than breaths and groans.

“Don’t hurt yourself now, Pine Tree,” the voice said. “The effect of those cookies that you loved oh-so-much shouldn’t be wearing off for another 12 hours or so!”

Pine Tree.

Pine Tree.

Bill.

Finally, Dipper was able to let his head fall in the direction of Bill’s voice. He could make out his silhouette on the other side of the room. It didn’t look like Bill was facing him. Then again, Dipper couldn’t see straight for the life of him.

“How are you…” he started, finally finding his voice, “how are you alive ?”

It was the only question he could muster, considering his brain felt like a tangled bundle of dried-out spaghetti noodles.

Bill chuckled.

“Oh so the barrier between your fake memories and your real ones has faded.” Dipper’s eyes strained as he tried to focus on the figure getting closer. “I figured the spell might do something like that. But don’t worry! It’ll come back when the spell wears off. Typically all manifestations of my power recently have had some negative side effect like that. I isolate the entirety of Gravity Falls from the rest of the world and the only scrap of my physical being gets stuck there as well! I conjure cookies with the sole purpose of incapacitating you and you briefly get back all the memories that I purposely took away from you!”

Barriers? Manifestations? Incapaci-whatever? Dipper wasn’t even sure if those were the words he said. He wasn’t even sure if they were words . They were still reverberating around his skull like a microphone too close to its own speaker.

“Are you…” Dipper mustered up some more words, his voice weak. “Are you gonna kill me now—”

“Oh, Pine Tree! I wouldn’t dream of it!” Bill chimed. “Well, actually, I do dream about it sometimes, but it’s pretty low on my to-do list right now. Now, I’m still deciding how high torture is on the list, so I’ll get back to you on that.”

No killing? That was weird. Then again, Bill was weird, so maybe this was… normal?

“Why… not…”

Bill laughed again.

“Because you ,” he poked Dipper on the nose, causing him to flinch, “are my ticket to global domination!”

A blink traveled between Dipper’s eyes. His left eye was starting to stay shut again and he moved every muscle in his face trying to get it back open. His neck was losing its strength too, trying to keep Dipper’s head turned towards Bill, and his head started bobbing.

“I’ll save you the words,” Bill decided. “You see, last time, the only thing standing between me and success was a giant barrier keeping me trapped in this awful town.”

Dipper decided to let his eyes rest so he could divert power to his neck. He turned his head slowly so it was facing back towards the ceiling, then decided to listen to the rest of Bill’s “villain-monologue-where-he-gives-away-his-entire-plan”. He couldn’t really do anything else, anyway.

“Your dear Uncle Fordsy was perfectly capable of giving me that stupid equation so I could spread my destruction, but apparently he has this thing called morals , and he didn’t want to join me OR help me! Can you believe it?”

Dipper honestly didn’t know if he could or not. Wait. Was it a rhetorical question?

“But this time, I have you as a bargaining chip,” Bill chirped. Dipper tried to open his eyes to at least pretend he knew what that meant. “Sixer will HAVE to give me that equation now!”

Not seeming to notice that Dipper couldn’t really understand, Bill continued, “Ideally, I would have Shooting Star, too. But just you will have to do for now. You were always Ford’s favorite anyway.”

“Ford doesn’t have favorites,” Dipper found himself arguing through gritted teeth.

“You keep telling yourself that!” Bill retorted cheerily. “I can understand why you would be his favorite, though. You two are very similar! What, with the no-impulse-control and poor-judgement-in-character.”

“So anyway, I’m just gonna keep you locked away here while I’m finishing up the portal, and then I’ll have everything I need to put an end to this pathetic Earth!”

“P—portal?”

“Right. Yes. The portal. The reason I had you retrieve that journal for me.”

Dipper suddenly panicked and jolted, trying to find the bag that had been attached to him when he passed out. He couldn’t feel anything, and he didn’t know if it was because he was still numb or if the bag wasn’t there anymore.

“If you’re trying to find it, it’s not there anymore~” Bill sang. “Don’t you think that was the first thing I grabbed when you took a snooze? The journal’s sitting on that table over there, far away from your reach!”

Dipper let his hand fall limply to the ground, inhaling a sharp breath. Great. The one thing he was supposed to keep Bill from getting. Even without his memories, ke knew Bill shouldn’t have the journal.

“I can understand now why it took Stanley 30 years to fix that portal,” Bill whined, sounding like just saying Stan’s name left a bad taste in his mouth. “I managed to find the other two journals in the woods, but some idiot mortal found number 3 before I could. Let me tell you, Pine Tree: Fordsy did not make it easy to build that thing without all the instructions. So I’ve just been forced to watch my precious book gather dust under a random shelf like it’s completely obsolete. That’s where you came in, of course. Man! You were even more gullible than that time I tricked you into letting me use your body for a day!”

“And yet you had to drug me because I wouldn’t hand it over,” Dipper bit. It wasn’t much of a defense, considering Dipper was stupid enough to eat the cookies, but he didn’t want Bill to successfully manipulate him. That is what he excelled at.

Bill did nothing but laugh quietly, almost tauntingly. Then he stood up, starting to walk away.

“Well, you go back to sleep, Pine Tree,” he started, as if talking to a child, “by the time you wake up, you’ll be locked up all nice and secure! Who knows? Maybe I’ll even have the portal done by then!”

Bill’s figure got farther away. 

“Oh! I just thought of something!” Bill was loud and clear enough for Dipper to hear. “Do you think Sixer would hate it more if I sever one of  your arms, or one of your legs ? Eh, I’ll let you decide when the spell wears off!” 

Dipper gagged and the cookies he was fighting so hard to keep down threatened to come out his mouth again. He managed to swallow them down. The effort made him nauseous. It was a never ending cycle.

It made him want nothing more than to stop wasting his energy and close his eyes and nod off to that wonderful world of sleep just like Bill had told him to…

No, you have to stay awake.

Dipper pried his eyes open as best he could. The voices were back.

But I can’t even do anything. I can hardly even keep my eyes open.

This is a fair argument; however, if you go to sleep, the entire world dies.

Well, why would you say something like that?

Because it’s true.

Ugh! Whatever. I don’t even have to listen to you!

Don’t you slam the door on me, young man—!

Dipper turned away so he didn’t have to listen anymore. Fortunately, it worked. Still, he couldn’t get the thought out of his head. It took all his energy just to keep his eyes open.

After who knows how long (probably everyone but Dipper) Bill scoffed and the sound of a book shutting echoed through the room. Or maybe just through Dipper’s head.

“Ugh, this stupid body and its stupid limitations,” Bill complained, just barely loud enough for Dipper to hear. Dipper found enough energy to twist his neck and look in Bill’s direction. 

“I have to go use the bathroom,” Bill announced, clearly intending for Dipper to hear this time. “You don’t go anywhere now!”

That was supposed to be a joke, Dipper was sure, considering it took all his concentration just to wiggle his toes. Also the fact that Bill was laughing while he said it. Yeah, it was probably a joke.

However, going anywhere but here was currently at the top of Dipper’s list of priorities. Next on the list was getting the journal back. Maybe that should be the first?

Okay, first was getting the journal back. Second was going anywhere but here. Third was taking a nap. Fourth was—

Wait, maybe he should switch those two as well.

Okay . Third was getting back to Mabel and maybe telling someone what was going on (Candy, Grenda, and Pacifica were still there, right? They’d know what Dipper is talking about). Fourth was taking a nap. Maybe he’d add a burger as his fifth priority. Or maybe spaghetti. Mmm.

Actually, scratch the fifth one. The idea of food made his stomach lurch.

Are you done yet?

Yeah, yeah. I’ll get up now.

Dipper used all his strength to try and move his arms. It worked. He threw his right arm over to his left and twisted around, trying to roll onto his stomach.

Man now I know why those babies had such a hard time rolling over.

He bent his right leg up and propped it under himself as he finally rolled over successfully. Now he was on his hands and knees, albeit very shaky and not sturdy at all.

Just… give me… a second.

He panted, trying to catch his breath. The ground was starting to sway underneath him and the floor and his hands were shifting in and out of focus. If he thought the headache he had while he was lying down was a killer, this one was ten times worse.

A second? Seconds is all we have until Bill comes back. What’s he gonna think when he comes in here and finds you like this?

That I look stupid and pathetic.

Well that, too. But he’ll also realize he underestimated the limits of the human body and he’ll lock you up right away and then you won’t have another chance to escape and everyone on Earth is condemned to another Weirdmaggadon.

God, that sounds like a nightmare.

It literally is your nightmare. The one that’s been tormenting you for the past year.

Oh no! You’re right!

I usually am! Now stop wasting time and get that journal!

Dipper exhaled, filled with a newfound resolution. He grabbed the kitchen island, bracing himself against it, as he pulled his wobbly legs underneath him.

He successfully stood up, before promptly collapsing onto the kitchen island. He was still on his feet though.

The ground now felt like the surface of the ocean in the middle of a storm. His head was spinning and everywhere he looked, the scene would spin like he was attached to one of those giant spinning wheels that people threw knives at. Really it was just a whole lot of spinning, but everything was spinning in opposite directions.

The table was right there. Or maybe it was ten feet away. Maybe a mile? He couldn’t tell. He pushed himself further upright, his knees starting to buckle underneath the weight of his body.

Maybe I can just… throw myself forward and grab one of the chairs?

What chairs?

The chairs. Like every table has chairs around it.

Alright, that sounds like a good enough plan.

Dipper grabbed the other end of the island, pulling himself forward so he could get as close to the table as possible while still being able to anchor himself on the island. The only problem was that the longer he stood, the more the ground started to sway. And he was starting to sway with it.

Finally, he threw himself forward. His right hand didn’t catch onto anything, but his left managed to grab hold of something. He seized it with all his might and pulled himself forward, practically dragging his legs behind him.

He had made it to the table. Panting profusely, he lifted his right knee onto the chair he had grabbed ahold of to save himself at least some of the effort of standing. He propped his right elbow onto the table as well and started swiveling his head in search of the journal. 

There it was. Gleaming six-fingered hand and all. And his bag was laying on the table right next to it.

He practically fell forward in his attempt to reach it, but his hand landed right on top of the old, dusty cover. He tugged it closer to him before reaching forward again to grab his bag.

It was a struggle consisting of his bag tangling up on itself, but he was able to shove the journal inside and hoist the bag onto his shoulder.

Now it was just a matter of escaping.

Remember, Bill’s physical body couldn’t appear at the Shack or at the library, so he must be tied to this place.

Yes, but what is the boundary? How far do I have to go so he doesn’t reach me?

I don’t know. Maybe we’ll just have to rely on the dark of the night to cover us and stall him until we can get far enough from him.

Dipper straightened as another wave of nausea crashed over him. He could see the door leading outside, but it kept stretching farther and farther away, its image splitting into two just like everything else seemed to be doing.

He seemed to find his footing as he lifted himself off the chair. He stumbled down the hallway, trying to remember how long it had been when he first came through it. He kept leaning on anything he passed, the island, the walls, the door frames, before pushing himself off as a kind of speed boost of sorts.

How long has it been since he left?

I dunno. I can’t make sense of anything in here.

Well how long do you think we have until he’s back?

Who’s to say?

It’s starting to sound like you don’t care if I make it out of here or not!

Of course I care! Just stop asking me questions that I don’t know the answer to!

Finally the door was in front of him. Dipper practically fell onto the handle. It twisted and opened since Dipper was already leaning against it, and he stumbled outside.

Oh crap, he thought as he clutched the door to keep himself stable. Stairs.

But there was no time to be careful. At least, he thought there was no time. Actually, maybe he was hallucinating all this and he was still laying on the kitchen floor. No, the ground wouldn’t be moving as much as it was right now if he was laying down.

He launched himself forward, trying to grab ahold of the railing, but he missed. His ankle rolled as he stepped on the very edge of the top step and he couldn’t do anything to stop himself from collapsing forward and tumbling down all three of the steps.

He ate the dirt, quite literally, and groaned in pain as he tried to stabilize his hands underneath him. There was no way Bill wouldn’t have heard that. He was going to come barreling after him any second now.

Dipper clenched a handful of grass in his fist, trying to drag himself into the woods where it was possible he could lose Bill.

What are you doing? Get up and run!

You think I can run right now? I can hardly even crawl!

All you have to do is get out of reach, then you can rest. But right now, you have to use every bit of strength you have left!

The voices started to merge together and blend with more voices that started yelling inside his head. He gathered himself to his hands and knees, but the swaying was almost too much to bear. He couldn’t tell what was vertical and what was horizontal and which sounds were real and which sounds were fake.

He achingly lifted his head. The trees were stretching out in front of him and melting into the puddle of stars in the sky. Glowing eyes seemed to start appearing in the darkness, but they circled around and split into two and merged into one like the wax inside a lava lamp.

Dipper grunted.

All I have to do is reach Mabel, he told himself. It seemed to be the right thing to say in order to get his little amount of adrenaline pumping.

He wobbled his way to his feet. Afraid of how long it would take to crash without anything to anchor himself onto.

Just get to the trees.

He nodded to himself and unceremoniously started walking into the woods. It was more like falling forward and catching himself over and over again, but he was moving at least.

Just as he was about to grab hold of a tree, he heard Bill’s voice echoing inside his head. 

It was quiet, but it was angry.

Dipper finally reached a tree and braced himself against it before twisting around to see the melty shadow that he assumed was Bill appear in the open doorway of the cabin.

Another wave of adrenaline rushed through him. He turned back around and started stumbling from tree to tree, hoping that it would be enough to lose Bill in the darkness.

He could hear Bill’s echoey voice yelling all around him. Things like ‘get back here’ and ‘twerp’ and ‘pathetic meatsack’, but Dipper didn’t really know what all those things meant. He just knew his heart was pounding and his head was aching and his legs were turning into jelly with every passing moment.

That was when the hand landed on his shoulder.

The force of it, albeit very little, sent Dipper falling forward to the ground, a yelpy sound escaping him. 

He cried out as his left knee landed on a rock, but quickly swallowed down the pain so he could twist onto his back.

There was Bill. It looked like he was straining to reach Dipper, which was odd considering they were right next to each other. Dipper panted, his elbows keeping him propped up as Bill stretched his arm as far as he could, an invisible barrier seeming to keep him back.

The barrier, Dipper thought, a wave of utter relief washing over him. I made it.

Bill cursed and grumbled and hissed as he pointlessly tried crossing over the mysterious force keeping him tied to the cabin. Dipper stared up at him, bewildered, his chest still heaving.

Then his eyes flicked down to his foot, which was stretched out right next to Bill’s.

Bill seemed to catch Dipper’s gaze, because at the same moment Dipper moved to pull his leg closer to him, Bill was doubling over and grabbing ahold of Dipper’s foot.

Dipper twisted around again and clutched onto a root that was sticking out of the ground, trying to pull himself from Bill’s grasp.

“Let! Me! Go! ” he cried, his grip on the root tightening.

“You’re mine !” Bill cried back, tugging on Dipper’s foot so hard he was afraid he might just yank the whole thing off.

Hey, that gives me an idea.

Oh great, you’re back.

Dude, just let him pull your shoe off!

Dipper’s eyes widened just slightly.

That’s actually not a terrible idea.

Have I ever led you astray before? No. I have not yet had a terrible idea.

So Dipper started trying to wiggle his foot out of his shoe, while pulling himself away at the same time, which was easy considering it was already untied. Bill didn’t seem to notice. 

Dipper was able to successfully wriggle his heel out, and at that same moment, Bill pulled it all the way off. The force he was using caused the shoe to fly back and land itself right in Bill’s face.

Bill howled as Dipper ripped his leg out of Bill’s territory. He twisted around again and caught Bill’s glare of fury, a look he recognized too well.

“Get back here!” Bill shrieked, but Dipper was already speed crawling away, taking advantage of the adrenaline pumping through his body.

He started fading in and out through every event that followed. He knew he made it back to the hotel after a while of tripping his way through the forest, but getting there and everything after getting there was a blur.

He started slipping into dreams. Weird dreams. Weird, drug -induced dreams that he couldn’t quite make sense of.

A bus dropped him off in a sea of monsters. A giant made out of gnomes. A bear with heads protruding from every part of its body. A giant robot with glowing eyes that clutched his sister in its hand. And more, but they all seemed to melt together and combine into a horrifying mass of destruction.

They came crashing down on him, and he was able to throw his hands up in time so they wouldn’t crush him to bits. When he opened his eyes, he stood in front of a giant moon. 

Well, it was the moon, but it had turned into an eye. A long slit of a pupil like a cat might have. It stared down at him, casting a spotlight, and a hideous laugh started echoing from all around him.

He covered his ears, trying to block out the noise. But the noise turned to applause and when he looked around himself, he was standing on a stage.

The same laugh pierced through the air from behind him and Dipper turned around. Standing high on the catwalk above him, was himself . 

But he had those same slitted eyes and a manic smile. He held the red book in his hands, holding a lighter up to it.

Dipper tried to lunge forward to save his book, but it burst into flames, the slitted-eye version of himself cackling and the audience roaring in approval.

Then he dropped the flaming book, and took a step off the catwalk, letting his body fall forward with his arms stretched out.

Dipper took his place, and he was falling toward the ground, but it was an inky darkness that swallowed him whole. He landed with a thud onto dirt ground.

He looked all around him and he was trapped in a cavern with caves indented in parts of the huge place. In front of him was a tube. A light blue gas was pouring into it.

And there he was again. Dipper was staring at another version of himself. This one wasn’t wearing a suit like the last. In fact, he wore an outfit that was shockingly similar to one that Dipper wore all the time as a 12-year-old.

This younger Dipper pounded his fists on the glass of the tube as ice traveled up his body.

“This is the last form you will ever take!” 

The words echoed through Dipper’s head as his younger self froze completely, horror frozen on his face.

Then Dipper looked down and saw the wood sneaking up his feet and his legs.

He was in a different place again: a mansion. Blood dripped from the mouths of taxidermy animals. People were screaming and fire was closing in on them.

Dipper couldn’t move because he was turning to wood , and the fire would swallow him up in two seconds. A horrifying blue man with a flaming beard appeared before him and he laughed as Dipper struggled.

Dipper called out for help, but none came. Then he froze in the same position his younger self had, horror etched onto his wooden face as the flames engulfed him.

The world spun and he was in a different place now. A swirling circle of a blackness dotted with stars was in the middle of a huge, metal contraption. Mabel floated right in front of it, but Dipper was pinned to the wall.

He tried to call out to her. Tell her to shut it off. Tears were flowing from her eyes. She let go of the button she was holding, and the swirling mass erupted, a flash of light shrouding the room.

Dipper found himself falling. He was falling through a hellish landscape, then through a brightly-colored children’s land, then through a labyrinth constructed of dark bricks.

Oh no.

But this time he landed right in the palm of the monster. Mabel was next to him, and his heart sank even further.

“I think I’ll kill one of them now! Just for the heck of it!”

The creature's eye flashed a spotlight that shined down on the twins. It flickered between a pine tree, then a shooting star, then a pine tree…

“Eeny… meeny… miny…”

It landed on the shooting star.

“You!”

“Mabel!” Dipper cried out, but then everything went black.

He was standing in the darkness, an orange bottle with his mother’s name printed on it in one hand, a handful of small, white beads in the other.

His stomach lurched. The beads shifted into tiny bugs, squirming against his skin.

Stop. Stop. Stop.

Without willing it to, his hand was lifting the bugs closer to his mouth. He tried dropping the bottle and clutching his wrist to throw the bugs from his hold, but they clung to his skin, then scurried into his mouth.

They were climbing down his throat. Dipper wanted to cough, to throw up, to cut open his stomach and scrape the bugs off his insides.

Instead, he collapsed, a feeling of weightlessness encompassing him as he floated through the black void.

Then he ripped his eyes open and he was sitting on the roof of his house, his open window behind him casting light into the quiet night.

Dipper was just watching the sky. There were so few stars to look at, but he still liked to look at them anyway. Especially after the day he just had.

That was when he heard the front door creaking open and he saw someone step off the porch and onto the walk leading up to the house.

It was Dad’s uncle, Stanley.

It’s a memory, Dipper thought. A real one. The drugs must be wearing off.

Dipper watched as the old man pulled a box out of his pocket. He selected a short, white stick— a cigarette— pocketed the box, then pulled a lighter out.

It took him a try or two to get a flame going, then he held it under the cigarette, let some of the paper burn away, and turned to look out into the night.

“You know that’s bad for you, right?” Dipper said loudly, making Stanley jump and twist around.

“What?” Stanley asked, definitely startled. He twisted around, still trying to find where Dipper’s voice had come from.

“Smoking,” Dipper said, waving his hand lazily to gesture to the cigarette now pinched between the man’s two fingers. “S’not good for you. Will probably kill you one day.”

Stanley’s eyes caught on Dipper, then he turned away briefly to breathe out a sigh of relief.

“Well, geez, kid, with the heart attack you just gave me, I might’ve just died today .”

The old man laughed. A remnant of his boisterous laugh still remained in the quiet chuckle that left his mouth. Dipper found himself smiling.

“So then what are you doing out here in the dead of the night?” Stanley asked, looking up at Dipper. He sucked in a breath out of the small stick then pulled it out of his mouth and blew out the remaining smoke.

“Just…” Dipper tried to think of an excuse, then just shrugged his shoulders and said, “Y’know.”

“Nah, I don’t think I do, actually,” Stanley said teasingly. He breathed in more of his cigarette. “Would you mind informing me?”

Dipper rolled his eyes, but he found himself in a semi-light-hearted mood with this old stranger.

“You want the truth, or you want what I keep telling everyone?” Dipper offered.

The man chuckled again, turning towards the street as his shoulders bounced with his laugh.

“How about option 2? Let’s see how believable your story really is, huh?”

Dipper raised his eyebrows. He was offering this guy the truth and he didn’t take it? Then again, would Dipper really have given it, or was he just bluffing. 

In any case, Dipper turned and started reciting a crude version of the story he’d had written in his head for so long.

“Parents are fighting,” he explained. “It’s stressing me out. Can’t sleep.”

Dipper turned back toward Stanley to find one arm crossed over his torso and the other holding the cigarette back up to his lips. He was staring at the sky, almost in contemplation.

“S’a good base,” Stanley started, crossing his other arm over his chest. “Every good lie is based on a truth, but you need to add to it. Make people feel real empathetic towards you. How’s about: ‘my parents are fighting, but they are redirecting some of their anger towards each other onto me, so it’s becoming difficult for me to feel peaceful and comfortable when I’m at home because nothing I do seems to be enough to pacify them’?”

Dipper’s eyes widened. It seemed that in Stanley’s attempt to give him a more believable lie, he had read Dipper to filth. Maybe that’s what he was trying to do, though. Maybe this was just a ploy to get Dipper to admit that that “lie” was hardly even a lie.

“See, if you give people enough information about the wrong thing, especially if it isn’t a lie,” Stanley continued, “it’ll redirect them away from focusing on what the real problem is.”

Dipper let his shoulders drop. So Stanley had known that he was right. Well, whatever. It’s not like Dipper was going to confide even more in this stranger.

“So what is the truth, then?” Stanley asked.

Dipper furrowed his brows.

“You wouldn’t believe me,” he grumbled, his shoulders tensing.

“Is that your go-to answer for that question, too?” Stanley asked, laughing.

“Well, no, considering no one’s ever made it this far before.”

“Well, how do you know if no one will believe you if you haven’t told anyone? Why don’t you try a crazy old man, huh?”

Dipper rolled his eyes. This guy just wouldn’t give up, would he? He exhaled.

“Oh well, I would ,” Dipper started, knowing full well he wouldn’t, “but, see, I don’t really want to yell it out for everyone to hear, and you’re just so far away that I would have to do that!”

Dipper shrugged unapologetically.

“Well, why don’t I just come up through your bedroom—”

“Door’s locked,” Dipper interrupted. “Sorry, I guess it’ll just have to wait until another time.”

Dipper knew there wouldn’t be another time. And if there was, it probably wouldn’t be for another 14 years when all of these issues were obsolete. Check and mate.

Dipper watched as Stanley pushed his lips together, his brows furrowing as he swung around to survey his surroundings. His eyes lit up when they landed on the big tree right next to the house. It was the tree that Dipper used to sneak out sometimes. And he knew Mabel would leave through his bedroom window and use it as well. There was no way an old guy at least 60 years old would be able to—

Is what Dipper would  be thinking if he wasn’t watching said old guy hoist himself onto the lowest branch and climb his way to the part of the tree that stretched onto the roof covering the front porch.

Okay, in all fairness, Dipper didn’t realize that Stanley was bringing old man acrobatics to the chess match, or else Dipper wouldn’t have thought he had won already.

Stanley crawled over to where Dipper was sitting, and Dipper was too baffled to even scoot farther away from the crazy old man as he plopped himself down right next to Dipper. He clutched his abdomen and panted loudly, looking out into the distance like Dipper had been doing before Stanley came outside.

It took a little bit for Stanley to regather himself. A few times, he seemed to try and say something, but it just came out in a disgruntled huff of staggered breathing.

Finally he asked, “So… how’s about it, then?”

Dipper breathed out a small puff of air, too. He looked back into the night. Now there was no excuse not to tell Stanley, plus he had put all that effort in just to get up here.

“It’s just…” Dipper started, his voice very quiet. “It’s just this weird nightmare I’ve been having every night.”

Stanley didn’t say anything. Maybe he was waiting for Dipper to continue? Dipper didn’t really want to, but again, he weirdly felt like he owed Stanley this explanation.

“A monster chases me and kills me and stuff. Y’know, typical nightmare things,” Dipper said nonchalantly, waving his hand. “But it happens every time I go to sleep. So I’ve just… stopped going to sleep.”

Dipper decided that was a good spot to end the story. He waited for a response. For Stanley to say something else about how he needed to make up a better lie. But Stanley said nothing of the sort. Maybe he believed him.

“I don’t know,” Dipper groaned, exasperated, turning away. “It’s stupid, I know! It’s a stupid reason to be lashing out at everyone and for my grades to be so bad and for me to be feeling this way about everything! I know it’s stupid!”

“I didn’t say it was stupid,” Stanley defended.

“You were thinking it, though!” Dipper retorted, knowing that probably wasn’t true. “And, I don’t know, maybe it is some weird manifestation of my real life worries or something, but it’s still such a stupid reason for me to be having such a bad time with everything.”

“What kinds of things are you feeling?” Stanley asked, his gravelly voice strangely comforting.

“I don’t know,” Dipper repeated, his voice low.

Stanley sighed. There was a long beat of silence. Maybe he thought it’d break Dipper into confessing what his feelings were, but Dipper really didn’t know or quite understand them. Maybe he just didn’t want to admit what they were out loud, or even to himself . Maybe he just didn’t want to admit how bad they really were.

Nevertheless, Dipper wouldn’t relent. This guy wouldn’t get another confession of any sort out of him.

“Y’know kid,” Stanley said suddenly, his voice soft. “There was a long time when I thought I was useless and good for nothing and that no one would ever want me around because all I’d ever be was a problem.”

Dipper felt a twinge of guilt twist in his gut. Why was Stanley telling him this? Why did he think it would help Dipper? Was he accusing Dipper of feeling that way? What right did he have to make conclusions like that?

“There were a lot of times where I thought it’d be better if I wasn’t around,” Stanley continued. “It’s an awful thing for anyone to feel, but it’s especially bad when you think even your own family doesn’t want you.”

Dipper tensed up, pulling his knees closer to his chest, and turned his head completely away from the old man.

“But then,” Stanley took a deep breath. “Then these kids came into my life. They were a couple of nuisances, but even so, I couldn’t ever imagine leaving them when I knew that they needed me just as much as I needed them.”

Stanley didn’t continue, which left Dipper wondering where these kids were now. Stanley and Stanford had been sailing around for what? A whole year? Why hadn’t they taken the kids with them? Had they visited at all? Why was this the first Stanley or Stanford had mentioned them? 

“What happened to them?” Dipper asked quietly.

Stanley sighed again.

“Oh, they’re… gone,” Stanley said, sadness tugging at his voice.

“Oh…” Dipper felt bad for asking. “I— I'm sorry—”

“No, no,” Stanley assured him. “They just left. And it's— it's been long enough that I'm not sure they even remember me, heh.”

“Oh,” Dipper said quietly. 

“What I'm trying to say, kid,” Stanley went on, clearly wanting to change the subject, “is that there are people who want you— who need you around. Even if you don't think so. You shouldn’t take them for granted.”

“What does this have to do with—” Dipper started, feeling strangely irritated.

“You shouldn't feel like you have to hide stuff like this,” Stanley explained. “I’m sure there are so many people who are willing to listen to you talk about your feelings before there’s not another chance to. I’m sure your sister would—”

“Mabel doesn't care,” Dipper snapped.

“Really? Because that's not the impression I got,” Stanley argued. “Maybe she just forgot how to show you she cares.”

Dipper grunted, not convinced. He folded his arms on top of his knees then rested his chin on them. He didn’t like what Stanley was insinuating. He didn’t like how much focus was on his stupid feelings . He didn’t like Stanley’s confidence in being able to fix him. He didn’t need fixing.

“Maybe if you tell her about this nightmare you’re having,” the man continued, “she can think up a way for you to fight it. Then you’ll be able to sleep, right?”

“No, she wouldn’t care!” Dipper insisted, sitting up straighter. 

“You don’t know that—”

“No! You don’t know us !” Dipper argued, bracing his hands on the roof so he could lift himself to his feet. “You don’t know her , you don’t know me, you don’t know how I’m feeling . Stop pretending like you do!”

“Now, wait kid, I—”

“Forget it,” Dipper grumbled. He was already climbing back into his bedroom, closing the window and the curtains behind him, too busy to notice the old man’s pained expression as he left him there on the roof.

The scene started fading away, like watercolor paints spilling into water. The liquid started surrounding him. Dipper could feel himself floating, seeming to get closer and closer to the surface.

His face broke through the waves, and then his eyes were peeling open, bright sunlight breaking into the cracks. He flinched, the brightness hurting after so long with his eyes closed while in his drugged-up dream state.

There was a blurry face right in front of his, and he jumped backward, only to be met with a cushy surface behind him.

“Hey, hey, it’s okay, you’re okay,” someone was saying, but he couldn’t quite place the voice. “Sorry, I was just checking on you. How are you doing?”

Dipper still gripped the arms of the chair he was in tightly. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to eliminate the blur, before opening them just a crack. The face finally came into view, but he still had trouble recognizing who it was. Maybe the drugs hadn’t worn off all the way after all.

Then, finally, the name came to him.

“Melody?” he asked. His voice scraped like sandpaper along his throat. 

“That’s me!” Melody chimed. She pressed a cold, soft hand onto Dipper’s forehead. He flinched briefly, before leaning into her touch. The cold felt nice against his burning, aching head. “Ah, feels like you’ve still got a nasty fever.”

“You’re telling me,” Dipper rasped, his grip on the chair finally relaxing. “Where… am I?”

“You don’t remember?” Melody asked, to which Dipper shook his head as much as he could handle without his brain bouncing around his skull. “Wow, I guess they really weren’t exaggerating how bad it was.”

“They?” Dipper asked.

Before Melody could respond, the door across the room swung open and a large figure appeared in the empty space.

“Hey, Melody, I—” another voice said, and Dipper recognized it almost immediately, “Oh, dude! You’re awake! How are you feeling?”

“Soos?” Dipper asked. Was he in the Mystery Shack? He didn’t remember coming here. In fact, he wasn’t even sure what the last thing he remembered was .

“Might wanna keep it down, Soos,” Melody said gently as she turned towards him, still perched down in front of Dipper. “He’s probably still got a nasty fever. Do you know where the thermometer is?”

“Can’t remember, but I’m sure there’s one in the kitchen somewhere!” Soos answered.

“I don’t know if a meat thermometer will work, Soos,” Melody said.

“Well, if it measures meat, and people are made of meat, then logically speaking, it should measure people meat!” Soos concluded. “Plus, Dipper could probably do with some food, and there’s food in the kitchen!”

“Fair enough,” Melody said, then turned back toward Dipper. “You feeling up for some lunch?”

Dipper felt suddenly ravenous at the mention of food. He was suddenly aware of how much his stomach ached. When was the last time he ate?

He nodded, accepting Melody’s help from off the chair. A wave of dizziness passed over him when he was to his feet. Stars speckled his eyes and he felt light-headed and unbalanced, but he pushed through and made the trek into the kitchen.

He could hear multiple other voices when they entered the hallway. Still disoriented, he couldn’t say who any of the voices belonged to. Soos and Melody walked slowly alongside him, exchanging concerned glances whenever Dipper would stumble and then pause to catch his breath.

Finally they made it. The smell of food was almost overwhelming and Dipper’s stomach complained at the scent with no taste to couple with it. From the doorway, he saw three girls. One was Wendy, and the other two were girls he had not met before, but thought he remembered seeing with Mabel in the hotel room before he left for the woods.

What came after that? Dipper asked himself. I went to the woods to find that guy. Ugh, what was his name? What did we talk about? What happened there?

He remembered getting to the cabin and seeing the guy from the library and the attic, and vaguely remembered cookies being the thing that messed him up so much, but couldn’t figure out anything other than that. 

“Oh, hey, Dipper!” Wendy chirped, suddenly noticing Dipper, Soos, and Melody standing in the doorway. “You got all your senses yet?”

“No,” Dipper groaned. Soos went farther into the kitchen and gestured for Dipper to take a seat at the table, before grabbing a plate and beginning to pile it with food.

“Fair enough,” Wendy said as Dipper dragged himself to the table and slumped into a chair. “Whatever those drugs were really did a number on you.”

“We were really worried,” one of the other girls said. She had jet black hair and sported glasses. “You were throwing up and you couldn’t even walk!”

“Oh, uh,” Dipper tried not to feel embarrassed at having so many strangers see him in such a vulnerable situation. “Uh, who are you again?”

The girl pinched her eyebrows tighter together and squeezed her lips shut, before turning to look at the other girl. She had auburn hair and was taller than even Dipper was.

“I’m Grenda!” that girl said. “That’s Candy. We were having a sleepover with your sister last night!”

“Uh yeah, I remember that,” Dipper said. “I just didn’t get your names last night, sorry.”

The two girls nodded. All three of them shared a pained look, as if offended by the very fact that Dipper had not met them before.

“Do you, uh—” Wendy started quietly, “do you remember anything else from last night?”

Dipper squeezed his eyes shut, trying to sift through his memories again, but nothing else budged. 

“Not really,” he answered. “Just the guy and the— uh— cookies, I think?”

Wendy’s face fell, then she shook her head and put on a concerned, but stern look. 

“Do you remember what you were doing with that guy? Like how you got to wherever he was?”

Dipper figured no one in this room would appreciate it if he said he actively went seeking out this guy because his apparition appeared to him in two separate places asking him to meet up so they could uncover the secrets of Gravity Falls. They’d probably kill him if they knew he went trekking through the woods in the middle of the night without his cell phone to go to a stranger’s remote cabin where no one could hear him scream.

“Not really,” was all Dipper said. No one would question his faulty memory. “I vaguely remember what the cabin looked like and stuff, but I definitely wouldn’t be able to find it again.”

There. Now as far as everyone else was concerned, Dipper was probably kidnapped out of the hotel parking lot, drugged, and managed to escape.

A plate of food was then practically dropped right in front of Dipper. It held a hot dog, a pile of chips, an assortment of fruit, and macaroni and cheese. 

Dipper’s eyes widened and he sat up. His stomach complained once more and he scooped up his fork to start shoveling the food into his dry mouth.

“Enjoy dude!” Soos chirped, then took a spot at the table.

“Hey, but take it easy, okay?” Melody insisted, setting a pitcher of water and a stack of cups onto the table before also taking a seat. “You may not be able to keep all that down if you scarf it down too fast.”

Dipper painstakingly obliged, selecting a grape to test whether he’d immediately throw it up or not. It stayed down and tasted amazing on his sandpaper tongue, so he started selecting more fruits to eat up.

“So, what exactly happened last night?” he asked, figuring an explanation would be good while he ate.

“We’re still not entirely sure,” Wendy groaned, folding her arms and leaning back in her chair.

“You were gone for a few hours,” Candy started, poking at the plate of food she had in front of her. “Then you came back and couldn’t stand up and you were puking so we thought we’d take you to an adult so they could help you.”

“We thought the Mystery Shack would be the best place so we went there,” Grenda added. “But when we got here, we found—”

“Me,” Wendy cut in. “I was house sitting for Soos and Melody while they were camping. But we were able to get you situated just fine. We got you some water and a couple of crackers, but you were dead set on just going to sleep. We thought it’d be best for everyone to stay here instead of you all making the trip back to your hotel, so we set up camp.”

“Wendy called us this morning to let us know what happened and that you had all spent the night here,” Melody added. “Of course we were fine with it, but we wanted to come back just to make sure everyone was okay. Plus, Soos was getting squeamish out there anyway.”

“Spiders kept getting into the tent, Melody,” Soos defended, tensing up. “I don’t even know how! I made sure to cover all the holes with my extra socks!”

Melody snickered, then ate a bite of fruit.

Dipper again felt embarrassed at having caused so many people so much trouble. It didn’t matter that they were worried about him. They had still put in so much effort just to make sure he was okay. And after he, what? Willingly went to a stranger’s cabin in the middle of the woods and then ate his suspicious cookies? God, he was such a mess.

He tried out a chip, the saltiness tasting good, then looked back up, noticing that there were people missing.

“Uh, where are Mabel and Pacifica?” he asked, remembering that Pacifica was also at the sleepover.

“Pacifica had to leave to get ready for work a little while ago!” Grenda explained. “And Mabel’s outside. I think she had to take a call?”

“You may want to let her know you’re okay,” Wendy urged gently, leaning forward and giving Dipper a very older sisterly look.

Dipper nodded and scooped up his plate, hoping that Mabel wouldn’t object to his company.

He made his way to the door and slowly pushed it open.

“I said I wanted to be left alone,” Mabel’s voice was immediately scolding. She was sitting on the top step of the porch, a plate of food on her lap, looking out into the peaceful forest.

Great. So much for her wanting his company.

“Just needed some fresh air?” Dipper asked.

Mabel whipped around at hearing his voice. Her eyes were wide, and her body tense. Then she relaxed and scooted more to one side of the staircase, even though there was plenty of room already. Dipper knew it was an invitation.

He took the offer and slowly lowered himself down next to her, his plate set to the side of him.

“You feeling better?” Mabel asked after a moment of silence.

“Well, I don’t really know, considering I don’t remember a thing,” Dipper started, breathing out a laugh. “I feel pretty cruddy right now, though."

At that, Mabel shoved her hand onto Dipper’s forehead. Her face twisted into a sympathetic expression before she pulled away and looked back out at the trees.

“I was really worried about you, Dip,” she said, her voice quiet.

“I know. I’m— I’m sorry. I was being stupid and reckless and not thinking about how other people may be forced to deal with the consequences of my actions.”

“Dipper, it’s not really your fault,” Mabel argued, even though she didn’t really know the whole story. “You didn’t choose to get drugged or kidnapped or whatever might have happened. I was just worried when you came back all messed up and stuff.”

Dipper knew how that might have been for Mabel, for her to see him like that. He suddenly felt very awful, imagining the thoughts that might have been racing through her head the whole time.

“I’m sorry,” Dipper whispered.

“I know,” Mabel said. “You told me last night.”

Dipper snickered. He wished he could figure out what else he might’ve said last night. Was it anything incriminating? Or embarrassing? Definitely embarrassing. Another wave of humiliation rushed over him, but he tried to ignore it.

“Dipper,” Mabel started again, “just promise me you’ll stop obsessing over this weird thing you’ve convinced yourself exists. It’s driving you crazy, and I thought making sure you got sleep would stop you before it became a huge problem, but then last night happened. I’m sure that it’s connected to whatever is going on with all the books and ranting and lack of sleep and… just— maybe letting go of all the questions will make you stop.”

Dipper exhaled slowly, feeling light-headed again.

“I don’t know if I’ll be able to just stop researching and stuff,” Dipper admitted, “but I’ll make sure it doesn’t get out of hand again. I’ll keep it on the back burner, I promise.”

“Good.” Mabel smiled softly at him. “Now, eat your food. I’m worried that if you skip one more meal, I might start seeing your ribs through your skin, which is something I can do without, thank you!”

Dipper returned the smile, picked his plate up into his lap, and scooped his hot dog into his hand. Mabel was already holding hers out at him. He held his forward and they lightly tapped them together. He imagined a “clink!” like they were teacups instead of strange sticks of mystery meat in a bun. Then they both bit out a chunk of their dogs and admired the beautiful summer afternoon as they ate the rest of their food.

Chapter Text

“So this is the mini golf course?”

Dipper eyed the large wooden door scattered with tiny holes, a sign hanging on it that looked like it had been chopped in half and stapled back together.

“Has it ever been… maintained… at all?” he asked, turning to look at Wendy and Grenda and Candy.

“Well, I guess it almost looks the same as it did when I came here as a kid,” Wendy remarked, squinting her eyes at the rundown entrance. “So I’m gonna go with ‘no’.”

“Awesome,” Dipper breathed, wondering what kind of ecosystems might be growing in humid corners or decorative moats.

“Doesn’t matter,” Mabel exclaimed proudly, shouldering her bag of mini golfing equipment and marching towards the towering doors. “I’ll dominate it either way.”

The group followed closely behind Mabel. It was just the twins, Wendy, Candy, and Grenda. Dipper was glad for it, though he wasn’t sure what kind of image he exuded hanging out with a bunch of girls. Although considering the only other guys he might hang out with were Soos— who was working—, Robbie— who hated him—, and maybe that Gideon kid— who was a creep—, he figured the girls were better than nothing.

“So this is everyone who’s coming?” he asked anyway as the group made their way through the large entrance.

“Actually, I texted Pacifica a little bit ago because I remembered she’s like a pro at mini golf or something—” Candy said, holding her phone in front of her to check for a response.

“I heard she’s nationally ranked!” Grenda bragged in a… sorta gossipy tone?

“Anyway,” Candy continued. “She hasn’t texted back yet, but other than that, this should be everyone.”

“I hope she comes,” Mabel said in a stoic voice, surveying the mini golf course like she might survey a battlefield. “It will be one more opponent to crush.”

With that, she punched the palm of her hand, then wandered off to find the first hole.

Dipper hadn’t seen Pacifica since the whole “cookie” thing a few days ago. He was worried how he might’ve acted towards her and if it warranted her thinking he was weird or something. Wendy, Mabel, Candy, and Grenda have been able to keep feeding him small details about things he said or did during his memory gap, and it didn’t seem too bad. Still, he felt like there were things they were keeping from him. Especially Wendy, who had been acting strangely towards him since the event.

The group found the first hole, which was dragon themed, and decided on their play order. Mabel volunteered to go last since ‘you always save the best for last’. Dipper volunteered to be the scorekeeper, although Candy and Grenda insisted that not keeping score made the game more fun. They got a dirty look from Mabel for that comment.

The first hole went by just fine. Wendy scored a 5, Candy a 4, and Grenda a 5. Dipper scored a 7, which wasn’t unusual for him; although, he could’ve sworn the ball moved completely in the opposite direction after already coming to a complete stop a few times.

The real kicker of the first hole was that Mabel scored a 3. It seemed to be a pretty straight-forward hole— one that Mabel could’ve easily scored a hole-in-one on— but her ball seemed to roll over bumps that weren’t visible initially and throw off her putt. She chalked it up to being out of practice.

On their way to the second hole, Mabel, being peeved, insisted that she go first this time. She was muttering techniques and stuff to herself, getting quieter as Dipper lagged behind to recheck the score.

“I mean I know it’s been a couple years,” he muttered to himself, tapping his pencil on his chin, “but would she really be that out of practice…”

He continued walking slowly as he stared at the numbers, then heard running footsteps coming from behind him.

He turned and saw Pacifica booking it towards their group.

“Pacifica?” he asked, now fully stopped. She had her hair in a ponytail like when she was at work and wore a visor and complete country club golfing outfit, a glittery, hot pink golf club clenched tightly in her hand. As decked out and prepared as she was (she even had a hot pink golf bag) she wore an expression that was a mix of determined and irritated.

“You!” she pointed a finger at Dipper. “Stay close to me.”

Before he could respond, Pacifica was grabbing his wrist and dragging him along to where the rest of the group was.

“Uh, why?” he asked.

She ignored him and instead stopped where the other girls, save Mabel, were standing, saying, “You couldn’t have thought to text me sooner?”

The girls all turned from where they were watching Mabel line up her shot to find Pacifica staring them down.

“Oh, uh,” Candy started. “Sorry, Pacifica, I guess I thought you’d be working today.”

“I was,” Pacifica said.

“So then, why are you here?” Wendy asked. “Shouldn’t you be at work?”

“It was an emergency,” Pacifica responded curtly.

“Alright, now I’ll really show you all how it’s done!” Mabel called, not seeming to notice that the group had shifted their attention away from her.

“Mabel, wait! Stand down!” Pacifica demanded, then marched towards where Mabel was.

“What?” Mabel asked, clearly irritated. “But I just lined up for the perfect shot!”

Pacifica ignored her and marched past Mabel, right on up to the main structure of the hole.

She kicked harshly on the wood a couple times, her shoulders tensed and her grip on her club seeming to tighten.

“Alright, listen here you little nutsacks!” she half-shrieked, jamming a pointed finger against the structure. “My friends and I are here to play ball, whether you like it or not! So help me, if I see any favoring, sabotaging, or trying to murder in any way possible, I will END all of your ENTIRE bloodlines!”

Half the golf course was gawking at Pacifica’s presentation now. She threw a punch onto the structure, turned to walk away, then turned back and yelled, “AND TELL THAT TO ALL YOUR LITTLE FRIENDS, TOO.”

She made her way back down the green with a completely neutral expression, gestured to Mabel to go ahead with her shot, then wandered back over to the group to stand next to Dipper, almost protectively. She crossed her arms and looked in Mabel’s direction to watch her shot.

“Add me to the scorecard,” she said to Dipper, without even looking at him.

He nodded and quickly scribbled her name down.

Mabel stuck out her tongue, wiggled her hips, wound back her club, then hit the ball with all her might. It went flying through all the obstacles, hitting the walls of the green, then plunked itself right into the hole a few yards away from where Mabel was standing.

“Yes!” Mabel shrieked, throwing her club to the ground and pumping her fist in the air. “That’s how it’s done! Eat my victory, you dumb hole!”

Dipper, unsurprised, wrote down a 1 as Mabel’s score for hole 2. Then he looked up and found Wendy, Candy, and Grenda gawking at the display they just witnessed. Pacifica still wore her neutral expression.

Everyone else went after that. Their scores were similar to the last hole, although Dipper did a bit better. Pacifica also ended up getting a hole-in-one. 

They moved from hole to hole, Mabel’s confidence restored. She and Pacifica were competing for first place; although, Dipper wasn’t sure if they knew that considering he was the only one who knew the score. They seemed to just be playing for fun. Well, Pacifica also seemed to be playing out of obligation, for some reason.

It was when they got to the pirate ship hole that things started to turn around. 

Dipper putt first, somehow managing to get his ball into the pirate ship mechanism on the first hit. He’d been watching this hole from afar and was excited to putt it and see which cannon his ball got fired out of.

There was a strangely long time of the group just listening to the gears click and shift from outside the ship. Then finally a puff of smoke was released from one of the cannons, accompanied with Dipper’s ball.

It was the cannon pointing right at his face.

He hardly had any time to react as his golf ball came hurtling toward his face at, like, a thousand miles per hour. He squeezed his eyes shut and winced in anticipation for the blow, but it never came.

He opened his eyes and found that Pacifica had caught the ball right in front of his face. He couldn’t even thank her before she was screaming at the boat.

“Maybe you little BOZOS didn’t hear me earlier,” she hurtled the ball back at the ship, it bouncing right off the wood, “but so help me, if you try to hurt my friends again, I will set FIRE to that stupid boat of yours, and then I’ll buy you a new one just so I can burn THAT one, too!”

She picked another ball off the ground and shot that one at the boat as well.

“Uh, Pacifica,” Grenda asked carefully. “What’s going on?”

“Huh?” Pacifica asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Why are you yelling at the holes?” Mabel asked, her arms folded across her chest.

“Oh, that,” said Pacifica. “Uh, it’s because… I’m pretty sure there are people who control the mechanisms of the holes… and there are always certain people that they target, and if I yell loud enough, the little microphones that are hidden inside will pick up my voice so I can tell the people to stop messing with our shots.”

There was a silent pause, then Dipper burst into laughter. Everyone quickly followed suit, except for Pacifica, Dipper laughing so hard that he was leaning on his club. 

He finally recaught his own breath then looked at Pacifica, who was glaring at him.

“Well, thanks for making sure the people controlling the course don’t try to kill me again,” he teased. “Do you have another ball I could borrow?”

Pacifica raised her eyebrows. 

“Oh yeah!” she fished a sparkly teal ball out of her bag and handed it to him. “Sorry for throwing yours away.”

“Hey, if it means I don’t get hit in the face by it, I don’t care if you throw every golf ball in the course away.”

Pacifica snickered, then Dipper grabbed the ball from Pacifica’s fingers, accidentally brushing them with his own then apologizing and turning to place the new ball down so he could hit it. When he turned to line up for the shot, he caught Wendy raising an eyebrow at Pacifica before he turned his complete attention to the ball.

He ended up scoring a 3 on that hole. Everyone else scored a 2. It was hardly anything to be self conscious over considering he had never been good at mini golf and only played because it meant he got to spend time with Mabel.

Each hole after that got progressively worse. It quickly escalated from minor unluckiness in putts to miniature pencils being shot from tiny windows at high speeds in the group’s direction. But it was strangely only when Dipper, Mabel, and Pacifica were putting. 

They had to keep holding Pacifica back from launching her body onto the structures and beating them up. She weirdly refused to leave, even though it was clear that she hated being there, insisting that she had to stay as a “protector”.

It was when they were at the last hole that the straw finally broke the camel’s back. Everyone had taken their first shot but the three “unlucky” ones, and Mabel was up now.

This hole was a giant Dutch-themed windmill, with a spinning wheel and everything. Mabel waited until just the right moment for the hole to be uncovered before she swung her club at her ball hard.

The ball went flying up the green towards the open hole. Then suddenly, the wheel’s speed accelerated to block it, the motion completely stopped, Mabel’s ball bounced right off it, then came flying back down the green towards them.

“What!” Mabel shrieked, seeming to finally break from all the random unluckiness from all the other holes. “What the heck was that! There’s no freaking way!”

She picked up her ball and flung it at the windmill, the same way Pacifica had thrown Dipper’s at the pirate ship. Then she sent her club flying that way, too.

“I am so DONE with this STUPID mini golf course!” she yelled, marching up the green to retrieve her club before slamming it down a few times on the still-motionless wheel of the windmill with exasperated grunts. “I’ve been patient ALL DAY long, but there is NO WAY that there could be that many coincidences! This stupid hole sabotaged me on purpose! Did you see?!”

Mabel whipped around to the group, waving her hands angrily to gesture at the malfunctioning windmill. They all stared at her, not seeming to want to interject.

Pacifica, who had run off to grab a drink at the encouragement of the group, came back then.

“What’s going on?” she asked Dipper. “Why’s Mabel upset?”

Mabel, who had apparently heard Pacifica, pointed angrily at the motionless windmill.

“The stupid windmill purposely blocked my ball from going in!” she explained. “My shot was literally perfect!”

“What.” The can in Pacifica’s hand was crushed in her tight grip, and she was staring daggers at the inanimate structure.

Oh great, Dipper thought. As if Pacifica needs another excuse to throw hands with a mini golf course.

Before anyone could stop her, and frankly none of them wanted to, Pacifica was marching up the green to help Mabel assault the windmill.

Insults and swears were thrown at the structure, kicks and punches flew, and eventually, one of the blades of the windmill was torn off.

Wendy, Candy, Grenda, and Dipper were all too afraid to intervene. And admittedly, Mabel and Pacifica’s anger was totally justified. If any of them were to step in, they might be torn to pieces the same way the windmill was right now.

A crowd gathered and security was eventually called. After which, their entire group was kicked out on the reasonable count of attacking the holes.

Pacifica and Mabel were both still seething. Mabel was hitting her club against the road over and over again, and Pacifica was pacing back and forth, muttering about all the ways she’d dismember those “little trolls”.

“Hey, the good news is,” Dipper started, surveying his scorecard, “you guys tied for first place! Even with all that stupid stuff, you both were, like, way ahead of the rest of us.”

“Listen.” Pacifica suddenly turned towards Dipper and pointed a finger in his face, ignoring what he said. “You. Me. Mabel. We break into the golf course tonight so we can set fire to every pathetic hole in there.”

“Pretty sure that’s illegal,” Dipper said. “I don’t really want to get arrested in a town I don’t even live in.”

“But those little trolls deserve it!” Pacifica countered.

“Yeah, I’m sure if we told that to the cops, they’d be like, ‘oh, our bad! We didn’t realize they deserved it! Carry on with your arson!’,” Dipper retorted. Pacifica glared at him.

“Well, at least now we can say we got kicked out of a mini golf course!” Wendy exclaimed, trying to lighten the mood. “Dunno ‘bout you guys, but it’s always been on my bucket list!”

“We’re doing bucket list things?” Grenda suddenly perked up. “Can we do one of mine next? I’ve always wanted to trick Lazy Susan into playing Pin the Tail on the Donkey but then actually get her trapped in the museum so I can rob Greasy’s of all their salt!”

“You’re not robbing my job!” Pacifica snapped.