Archive of Our Own

“She’s not waking up.”

Ford turned away from the window she’d been watching out of at the sound of Dipper's voice, one of her favourite molecular disrupters held ready to fire. Across the living room, she saw Stanley stop in his pacing, looking down at the armchair and the small figure lying draped across it. 

Mabel’s eyes were shut, her breathing shallow, her limbs lifeless as they had been since the older Pines twins had found her and her brother in the woods. 

Ford tried to shake off the shivering sense of wrongness that seeing the normally vibrant and exuberant girl lying so still and quiet sent through her. They were behind the barrier now, Bill couldn’t touch them - for now, at least. Mabel would be all right until all of this was taken care of.

Dipper, crouched by Mabel’s side, looked up and shot a pleading glance in Ford’s direction. “There has to be something we can do, right? If Bill did something to her -”

“Then it will be reversed when we send him back to his own forsaken realm,” Ford said. Even though she knew that this was the right thing to do, that the fate of a single person couldn't be put above the world, the words still tasted bitter in her mouth. “Dipper, I know this is difficult -”

“But we’ll get her back,” Stan interrupted, meeting Ford’s eyes over Dipper’s head with a challenging stare before he knelt down and placed a hand on Dipper’s shoulder. “No talking geometry’s gonna keep your sister down for long, right?”

Ford couldn’t see Dipper’s face when he looked up at Stan, but there was a new note of hopefulness in Dipper’s voice as he said, “I guess not. She did beat Bill twice already, she’s not going to -”

He stopped short, holding himself perfectly still for an instant before unfreezing into action. “Wait, I think I know how we can help Mabel! Great-Aunt Ford? Can I have Journal Three back, please?”

“Of course,” Ford said, drawing the book from her coat and casting one last distrustful look out the window before she crossed the room to hand it to Dipper. The boy didn’t even meet her eyes, grabbing the journal and flipping hungrily through its pages, eyes darting as he searched. Ford tried to guess what he was looking for, but found herself drawing a blank - for all the reacquainting herself she’d done with her own writings, thirty years was still thirty years, and there were a lot of oddities catalogued within those three books. “What are you looking for?”

Dipper didn't look up or stop flipping pages. "It's in here, we used it to kick Bill out of Stan's mind that one time -"

"Kicked who out of my what now?" Stan straightened up, casting a last fond look in Mabel's direction before a thundercloud crossed his face. "You two fought this...glorified yield sign? Mabel beat this thing? Twice?"

"Both of us, actually. And Soos." Dipper didn't notice the incredulous look Stan turned in his direction, but if the situation had been less dire, Ford would have been struggling not to laugh. "Here it is!"

Dipper dropped to his knees, spreading the open journal out on the floor. The strange yellow-red light from outside cast weird shadows across the pages, making the illustrations almost seem to dance. Ford only had to make out the words 'Inceptionus Nolanus overratus' in her own handwriting before she was shaking her head. "This is - you and your sister used this?"

"And Soos," Dipper repeated, sounding a little less certain this time. “If Bill did something to Mabel to keep her asleep, then I should be able to go in, find whatever it is, and fix it. Right? I - I know we have to stop Bill before things go too far, but - Mabel needs help, and I can do this.”

“You did say you defeated Bill this way once already." Ford knew she should bite her tongue, but she couldn't help but add, "And you’re still...sane?”

Dipper paused, in the middle of reading the instructions under his breath, looking up in alarm. “I think so?” Both hands came up to the sides of his head, touching his temples gingerly for a moment before he grabbed the band of his cap in both hands, tugging it down over his ears. “I didn’t - that didn’t let Bill in, did it? I didn’t know, there wasn’t anything else we could do -”

Ford chose to ignore the stare Stan fixed her with, kneeling down to put herself on eye level with Dipper. She reached acoss the open journal to put a hand on Dipper’s shoulder, stopping him in the middle of his litany of worries. “Dipper, you didn’t do anything wrong. I was - surprised. Mindscape manipulation is a delicate art, and can backfire all too easily. And for you and your sister - and Soos - to defeat Bill Cipher on his own turf...”

Dipper looked up from the page to meet Ford’s eyes, and Ford gave him the best approximation of a reassuring smile that she could manage under the circumstances. “That’s truly remarkable.”

The smile Dipper gave Ford in return was miniscule, nearly nonexistent, but it looked genuine. She gave his shoulder a short squeeze, before straightening up again. “And if you say you can do it again, then I trust that you'll bring your sister back safe.”

...

Stanley caught her on the way out of the living room, just outside the door. Ford spun at the feeling of an unexpected hand wrapped around her wrist, nearly pinning Stan against the wall by the throat before either of them had a chance to process what was happening.

Stan let go of Ford’s wrist, and she took a step back. “Stanley, you startled me. Tell me, you do keep a stock of candles around here somewhere, don’t you?”

“Yeah, sure,” Stan said, a little too loudly. “Got some emergency candles in the kitchen here, I’ll just show you -”

“Nevermind, I can find them. The children shouldn’t be left alone,” Ford started, and Stan pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger.

“Poindexter, I am trying to talk to you.”

“So, talk.”

“Not where the kids can hear.”

“I highly doubt Mabel can hear anything. If I know anything about Bill Cipher, he’s locked her away somewhere in the depths of her own mind where - ow!”

Stan had grabbed her wrist again, and yanked Ford through the door into the kitchen. She was all too aware of how close he came to pushing her up against the wall of knives behind her. 

"That triangle thing I beat up earlier. That's this...'Bill Cipher' you told me about? The one you were so panicked about coming back that you sent our twelve-year-old great-niece off with a crossbow and a 'good luck' to fight a unicorn?"

"In my defence, Stanley, I didn't intend for her to fight the unicorns -"

"Yeah? Then what was the crossbow for?" Stan took a step back, holding up a hand, palm out, as he shook his head. “Look. I know you think those two can handle this, and yeah, they’re made of some pretty tough stuff. But they're still just kids!" Stan scratched the back of his neck, glancing briefly down to his left. “I just wanna make sure you’re not putting too much on them.”

“Are you certain you’re not simply underestimating their abilities?” Ford asked, then sighed. That had come out much more bitterly than she’d anticipated. “Stanley, I know you want to keep the children safe -”

“You got that right.”

“But right now, none of us are safe.”

Stan raised an eyebrow. “Thought that was the whole point of all this unicorn magic baloney?”

“Yes. But -” Ford pinched the bridge of her nose, just above her glasses, hoping to banish the dull headache that was beginning to build there. “With Bill loose in our dimension, it’s a temporary measure at best. And - he has an enormous pride, and a long memory. After what you did -”

Stan’s expression didn’t change. “So, some bigshot’s got it out for me. Can’t imagine what that’s like.” He rolled his eyes, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Stanley, you don’t understand! After an insult like that, Bill will be enraged, and he’ll take it out on anyone who crosses his path. We have to stop him, send him back, before he has a chance to hurt anyone else, or -” She broke off, watching Stan’s eyes for any sign of understanding. She’d hoped, after what he’d just done to Bill - but no. Just as he had proven thirty years ago, so long as he was taken care of, her brother didn’t care if the world burned around him.

Stan’s eyes flicked towards the kitchen door, out towards the living room, and his hard expression wavered. “So what? He can’t get at us in here, right? Dipper and Mabel aren’t gonna get hurt. As long as we all stay inside the Shack -”

“It won’t hold forever,” Ford said, trying to swallow her disappointment. “Sooner or later, Bill always finds a way in. He’ll - trick someone, break something - he’s clever, and ancient, and very, very angry. The Shack isn’t safe.”

She took a breath, steadying herself. Echoes of decades-old mistakes still rang in her ears, nearly drowning out her own voice as she said, dully, “So long as Bill Cipher has access to our dimension, none of us are safe.”

There was silence for a moment, overwhelming silence amidst muted sounds of chaos from somewhere outside. Something sick and twisting curdled in the pit of Ford’s stomach at the faint, distant screams and sirens.

Then Stan said, “All right, how do we send him back?”

Ford blinked at her twin. “I beg your pardon?”

“This...Bill guy. You said the kids aren’t safe as long as he has access to our dimension. So how do we kick him out?”

Ford blinked a few times more, unable to quite believe what she was hearing. The thought broke upon her like a cold wave that this could all be - a trick, a dream, she could be trapped right now in some illusion of Bill’s making where things went right for a change - 

“Hello? Poindexter? You’re supposed to be the expert here, don’t tell me you don’t know.” There was an edge to Stanley’s chuckle, a sliver of real fear in the joke. Ford gave herself a sharp mental shake, focusing on Stan’s face. 

“Well, ideally we would have stopped him before he gained a physical form -”

“Yeah, that helps no one.”

Ford broke off to scowl at her brother, but he looked about as grim as she felt. She brushed the comment aside, mentally tallying her defenses. They were starting to look disturbingly thin on the ground. “Brainwave encryption wouldn’t help us now even if the device was still operational. The Shack is protected, but only until Bill figures out a way around it, and we can’t exactly mobilize that protection. He destroyed my quantum destabilizer after I used it to free Mabel...”

“So what you’re saying is you got nothing.”

“Not...exactly.” Ford pulled a pen from her coat pocket, looking around. “Have you got a piece of blank paper around here somewhere?”

Stan looked blankly on as she scrawled the familiar wheel on the back of an old shopping list. It didn't take long to draw; she'd memorised each of the symbols and their order long ago, arming herself, preparing herself. Not that they were easy to forget when they were etched -

"What's this thing?" Stan asked, and Ford wrenched her thoughts back to the present. 

"A prophecy." She sighed. "I can tell that the only reason you haven't made a smart-alecky comment yet is because you can't decide on just one. Please, spare us both."

Stan snorted, crossing his arms. 

There was a crash from somewhere outside, uncomfortably close to the Shack, and both twins spun towards the sound, Ford with her blaster raised and Stan with his fists clenched. When a few tense minutes passed without anything happening, they both wound slowly down.

"Right. So. This...'prophecy'." Stan wagged two fingers on each hand in the air while he said 'prophecy', a gesture that Ford didn't recognise but could instantly tell was sarcastic. "How's this thing supposed to work?"

"Each of these symbols represents a person," Ford said, tapping her pen against the wheel. "They could be literal, or figurative - each of them has to be here in Gravity Falls somewhere, or else Bill couldn't be, but beyond that..."

She tried not to meet Stanley's eyes. "It's a slim hope, I know, but it's the best one we have right now."

"And punching Bill real hard ain't gonna cut it?" Stan gave a weak smile at the look on Ford’s face."Yeah, yeah, I know."

"Believe me, I would love nothing more," Ford growled, under her breath. "If I had access to the technology to rebuild my quantum destabiliser -" She clenched her right hand into a fist, and Stan gave her a knowing nod.

"So we find these rubes, get 'em together, and then...?"

"That's all." Ford couldn't help a smile at the way Stan's eyebrows rose. "We gather these ten together, and if all goes according to plan, they can activate the wheel and seal Bill out of this dimension. It sounds much simpler than it will be, I'm afraid."

"Eh, maybe not," Stan said, with exaggerated nonchalance, cleaning out an ear with his pinky. "Live here for thirty years, you get to know people, whether you wanna or not. Gimme a look at those symbols."

Ford had barely handed over the shopping list before Stan was already pointing at one of the segments of the wheel. "That's the pine tree on that hat Dipper's always wearing, isn't it? And - hey, Mabel's got a sweater with a shooting star just like that."

There was a single, perfect pause, the silence deafening as Ford looked up and met Stan's eyes. 

Then the whole room lit up in purple as a crash from somewhere overhead broke the silence, glowing charms and sigils flaring to life around the perimeter wall. Despite its cocoon of protective magic, the Shack still shook under the impact, and Ford had to grab onto the stove to keep from being knocked off her feet.

The floor had barely stopped shaking before Stan had a box down from the shelf above the sink and was pressing it into Ford's hands. "Come on! Sounds like we don't got time to lose."

"It's 'don't have’ -” Ford started, but Stan was already gone. Another booming impact from overhead and flare from the barrier sent her hurrying after him. 

Dipper had already started to set things up in the living room, a circle marked out around the armchair Mabel was lying in with paper streamers and some kind of...stringy substance that was light and fragile and faintly sticky when Ford touched it. Dipper grabbed the box Stan had pushed into Ford's arms, pulling out white pillar candles one but one and setting them up around the circle. "Okay, here's the plan. I'm going to go into Mabel's mindscape, find her -"

"Good. But you aren't going alone," Ford interjected. As the look of single-minded, terrified determination that Dipper had been wearing cracked open in relief, she found herself forced to admit that Stanley had been correct on at least one count. 

They’re still kids.

“Okay,” Dipper repeated, and though the determination was still heavy in his voice, he sounded calmer, steadier. He glanced back over his shoulder at Stanley. "Grunkle Stan?"

Stan looked up from the candle he was lighting and shook his head. "Nah, sorry, kid. I'll leave the mind-magic stuff to Ford."

Another blow from overhead rocked the Shack, setting a few candles wobbling precariously, and Stan added, "And somebody's gotta make sure this place don't burn to the ground while you're gone. Just..." He glanced over at Mabel's still form again, then back to Dipper, with a smile that perhaps only Ford knew well enough to tell for the lie it was. "Bring yourself and that sister of yours - and that sister of mine - back in one piece."

Dipper nodded, managing a small smile of his own before he turned back to face Mabel. He picked up the journal with one hand and reached up to rest the other against Mabel's forehead, almost as if he were taking her temperature during a fever, or trying to soothe her in the grips of a nightmare. Ford copied the gesture, trying to breathe normally, to think only about what they might find in Mabel's mind and how best to prepare for it, and not about what she was about to do for the first time in thirty long years.

But despite her best efforts, as soon as Dipper started to chant and the all-too-familiar fuzziness of sinking into the mindscape started to overtake her, Ford found herself gripped with panic. All at once it was like she'd been plunged over her head into icy water, paralysis setting in as she fought to bring herself back under control. This wasn't - this wasn't going to be like last time. Bill Cipher wasn't in control here, she was. This was happening on her terms, she knew the mindscape now, knew how to manipulate it and how to survive it. She was older and wiser and so much stronger, and just the faintest reminder of all the time she'd spent here with Bill, at Bill's mercy, of all of his power and what awful things he'd done with it, shouldn't be enough to make Ford suddenly, desperately certain she was drowning -

Through the dizzying, numbing, freefall sensation of sliding out from under the thumb of physical reality, Ford thought she saw Dipper turn glowing blue eyes in her direction, shooting her a small, scared, but still reassuring smile.

Then everything went white.

...

It was dark.

Ford opened her eyes, but the darkness persisted. She'd expected many things from Mabel's mindscape. Darkness hadn't been one of them. 

She tried to sit up, and smacked her head - hard - against something that let out a low, metallic clonk. The pain wasn't quite right, in the odd way of pain in the mindscape - she'd experienced it often enough to grow familiar with the way it seemed to turn up in immediate memory rather than actually being experienced. Still, she hissed out an 'ouch' regardless, largely due to force of habit, and stopped.

That hadn't sounded like her voice.

Ford tried again to sit up, this time holding out a hand to ensure she didn't crack her head again. Her fingers found the edge of whatever was hanging over her face, and she shuffled forward, out from under the overhang, into the light.

The third thing she noticed was that she was surrounded by control panels, knobs and dials and switches and relays and glowing screens covered in green text. The second thing she noticed was that her centre of gravity had shifted, as she tried to push herself to her feet, and there was a familiar-unfamiliar weight on her chest, things she hadn’t felt since the last time she’d visited the mindscape and Bill - anyway.

The first thing she noticed, though, was her lab assistant - her friend - Fiddleford McGucket, looking as though he’d aged the thirty years since she’d last seen him gracefully rather than traumatically, smiling as he reached down to offer Ford a hand. 

Ford reached up and took it as soon as her brain caught up to her eyes. It took her a moment to find her balance, and she had to work to smother the sudden tight ache compressing her ribcage. It had been thirty years since she’d stopped denying herself, of course she’d manifest here in the form that felt most right. But it had been far too long since - since she’d last had to contend with how it changed her relationship with gravity. 

And it had been just as long - but felt like longer - since she’d last seen Fiddleford McGucket smile.

"Fiddleford?" she asked, trying to turn her thoughts away from the years of unpleasant memories trying to pounce on her, and stopped. Before, every time she'd shifted shape in the mindscape, her voice had at least remained constant. But this - whatever was coming out of her mouth was higher, lighter. Not wrong, exactly, more perfectly congruous with her - her current shape, closer to the voice she always half-expected to hear whenever she spoke...but certainly strange. At least she still had all of her digits. "What's going on? Where are we?"

McGucket fixed her with a worried look. "Just how hard didya hit your head there, Ford?"

"Not - not hard enough to produce a concussion, certainly. I'll be fine in a few minutes," Ford said, brushing aside her assistant's concern. Now that she was starting to get her bearings, the room looked much more familiar - if she wasn't mistaken, it was her own basement lab, though the trappings seemed much more recently updated than in the waking world. It was baffling. Why would Mabel of all people have something like this in her mindscape?

McGucket took Ford's elbow and steered her towards the office chair sitting by the square foot of open desk space between glowing screens and humming boxes. "I'd really feel better if you sat a spell. That musta been a nasty crack t'scramble you up like that."

"Nonsense, I'm feeling perfectly well. What was I doing under there anyway?" Ford tried to pull away, biting back a curse when she nearly tripped over the office chair.

Judging by the look he shot her as he gently pressed her into the chair, McGucket was anything but convinced she was all right. "What's the last thing you remember?"

Ford shook her head, and the sheer familiarity of the fond but exasperated smile McGucket turned in her direction sent a shard of pure guilt lancing through her. "Typical Ford Pines. You know, you can't take care of anyone else if you don't take care of yourself." He whipped open a drawer, rummaging around until he pulled out a slim black flashlight, and shone it into first one, then the other of Ford's eyes. "Hm, pupillary response's good... You know, we don't have t'do this today. Tate's got th' whole week, he can come by any afternoon, and I reckon the portal could use a while longer to charge up anyway -"

Ford was on her feet so fast that the chair spun away and bashed against an array. "That - that thing is still operational?"

"Well I sure hope so, since it only took us twenty years t'get it working right!" There was clear worry under the joking tone in Fiddleford's voice as he asked, "You remember that, don't you? It's been a right old pain in the unmentionables from day one, but I never saw you more tickled pink than th' first time we got it running."

"The first time?" Ford demanded, taking as deep a breath as she could manage and trying to beat back the fear with reason. This wasn't real, was a construct of Mabel's mind. And clearly, this world hadn't ended yet. She could afford to calm down, find out what exactly was going on here and what it had to do with Mabel. "How many times -"

McGucket was still looking at her like he expected her to explode. "Twelve successful interdimensionary bridges, now. First few were a bit hairy, but we've finally got that gravity thing mostly under control. Tate was coming by t'watch when we opened it up today, he always takes an interest in everwhat we get up to here -"

"Because he looks up to his father," Ford said. Even in her new, strange voice, the words sounded leaden. 

Fiddleford turned away, though Ford could tell he was smiling. "Aw, well, I know I spend too much time up here in th' lab, and he's more one for hiking and fishing and -"

"Trust me."

Ford hadn't thought it would be possible for her assistant to look any prouder, but somehow McGucket managed it. "Speaking of, weren't you inviting Dipper t'observe today too? Said you wanted to give him his first taste of interdimensional travel. Don't think he'll be too torn up if that gets put on hold a few days, if you ain't feeling right -"

"Never mind that," Ford snapped. She'd lost focus, allowed herself to become distracted by curiosity and sentiment. She had to keep her mind on her mission; Mabel's life might depend on it. Along with however countless many millions of lives were in danger with every moment Bill was allowed to remain in their dimension... "I need to talk to Dipper. Have you seen him? Or Mabel?"

McGucket squinted at her. "Last I saw Dipper, he was fetching th' toolkit so you could fix that circuitamajigger you were examining. Who's Mabel?"

Ford blinked.

"Mabel Pines?" she managed, after a moment to collect herself. "Dipper's twin sister? My great-niece?"

From the way Fiddleford's eyes narrowed, Ford could tell he was wondering, again, just how hard she'd hit her head.

"Right," he started, carefully. "You just sit tight here a few, and I'll go see if I can't find Dipper and - uh - 'Mabel'."

He pressed Ford back into the office chair despite her protests, taking a few cautious steps backwards with his hands outstretched like he expected Ford to topple over and need to be caught. Ford crossed her arms, raising an eyebrow, and McGucket shot her a nervous grin before he took off through the door into the lab proper.

Ford waited only a few seconds before getting to her feet. Within three steps she had regained her handle on her balance, and strode with renewed confidence over to the elevator. It was astounding, how quickly it came back, how even after thirty long years, it took no time at all for her to settle into her own familiar form. She'd made a kind of peace with herself, with her body, over the years she'd spent just trying to stay alive - after all, it had been her greatest and often only ally. But there had always been the awareness of what was missing. And being here - being herself again, after so long, after she'd thought she might never get another chance - was like breathing an enormous sigh of relief from head to toe.

She hit the button to take the elevator to the main floor, with only a flicker of hesitation when she realised she had no idea what to expect once she got there. But this was, after all, the mindscape. Ford held out a hand, imagining the reassuring weight of a blaster settling into it, and waited for it to materialise.

And waited.

She grew quickly more worried as her efforts to conjure weaponry, to reverse the direction of the elevator, even simply to change her clothes (which were remarkably similar to what she'd been wearing in the waking world, not at all what she would've expected from the imagination of someone like Mabel) all failed, one by one. At last, Ford stabbed the button for the middle level of the basement. If this world was going to remain so stubbornly fixed in the semblance of her home, then her study should be on this level. And, failing all else, Ford knew she'd have some kind of weaponry there.

The key to her study was right in her pocket, on a ring with several other keys Ford didn't recognise. The door didn't squeal with age and rust when she pushed it open, but swept silently inwards on oiled hinges.

Ford stared. 

She barely recognised the room in front of her, and yet, she still knew on sight that this place was hers. The brainwave-encryption device she'd poured so much frantic energy into, the sheets hiding monument after monument to her downfall, the years of dust and neglect - all of that was gone. Instead, the room was lined with wall upon wall of brass-bound bookshelves, filled to bursting with books, odd artifacts, bits of machinery that quietly hummed and whirred and clicked and gave off a soft, bluish light that contrasted with the warm glow filling the room. A massive chalkboard covered the far wall, where the encryption device had been, reaching up to the ceiling and covered in densely-packed equations and schematics. The desk that sat in front of it was wide and mahogany and claw-footed, with more than enough space to spread out notes and supplies or specimens or experiments (a few deep scores and scorch marks along its surface stood in testimonial to this), and the matching office chair was wine-coloured leather and overstuffed. Overhead, painted stars spilled across a midnight-blue ceiling, picking out familiar constellations, a model solar system made of what looked like semi-precious stones spinning on gold rings dangling from its very centre. The room seemed to wrap itself around her, fitting her as perfectly as the body she'd found herself in did, as though it had only been waiting for her to arrive to be complete.

There was a shelf near Ford's head entirely filled with red leather spines and goldtone findings. She eased out the book nearest to her, took in the six-fingered hand stamped in gold foil on the cover, the black '18' inked in its centre.

She slipped the book back into place, feeling dazed as she ventured further into the room and stopped to examine the frames standing on another shelf. Her own face, the face she'd first seen in a mirror in the mindscape, beamed out at her from the cover of a Scientific Illustrated. Both she and Fiddleford stood flanking the portal, smiles of genuine pride and accomplishment on each of their faces, under a boldface white title calling their invention 'revolutionary'. 

Beside the cover, in a much older-looking frame, was a faded photograph of a much younger Ford with inadvisably long hair and a carefully clean-shaven face, in cap and gown, holding up a piece of paper printed with scrollwork and elegant typeface, and beaming to rival the sun. Her father and mother stood to either side, her mother caught in the middle of a sob that, judging by the trails of mascara pouring down her cheeks, looked like it might actually be real, her father with the nearest thing to a genuine smile she'd ever seen him wear on his face. And - and Stanley, in an ill-fitting suit, one arm wrapped around Ford's shoulders and the other gesturing to her, with a smile just as big and proud as the one Ford herself was wearing on the magazine cover next to it.

A hollow weight settled at the base of Ford's throat.

The piece of paper she'd been holding up in the photograph was in the third and final frame. Ford lifted it down from the shelf, in order to read the careful calligraphy more easily. Somehow, she wasn't surprised by what she saw, as though she'd known from the moment she stepped into this room what it would say.

It was a diploma, bearing the name 'Ford Lisa Pines', from West Coast Tech.

Carefully, Ford placed the frame back on the shelf. She took a step back, fixing her glasses more securely on her nose and trying to steady herself, focus on the logic that she knew wouldn't blind her. None of this was real. It was a construct of Mabel's imagination and possibly Bill's magic, nothing more, nothing less. It didn't mean anything. 

She wondered, for a moment, whether this was how Bill was keeping Mabel trapped, by putting her into a world that provided everything she could ever dream of, a world she wouldn't want to leave, before shaking the thought off. Regardless of how Bill was keeping Mabel trapped, she had to be rescued. And for that, Ford would need some kind of defences.

Luckily, the person who owned this study, however different their pasts might have been, was still Ford Pines.

There was very little ornamentation on the desk in front of the chalkboard - the better to clear a usable space, Ford was sure, and also because all of her curiosities had been moved to the shelves. But there was a desk lamp with a green shade, an inkwell, and a framed photograph of Dipper and Stanley, Dipper laughing as Stan pulled him into a headlock. Mabel, Ford noticed with a lurching feeling in the pit of her stomach, wasn't in it.

She reached across the desk and tipped the photograph over, flat against the desk with its face up, and with a ghastly moan, the chalkboard slid ponderously up into the ceiling. Behind it, a space about four feet high and six feet long opened up, revealing a cache of interesting trinkets and devices that Ford itched to sit down and examine in greater detail.

She fought down the urge, instead pulling two old-fashioned ∆6~ -model antimatter pistols from the heap and checking the bars to be sure they were fully charged before tucking them both away inside her coat. She'd give one to Dipper when she found him, but until then, having more defences than fewer had never been a losing strategy during her years between dimensions. Nothing else in the pile stood out as recognisably usable as a weapon, but Ford pocketed a ball of silvery wire that at least looked like it might make a decent garrote in a pinch.

She couldn't help one last look back at the study as she turned to leave. Ford knew it was pointless - none of this was real, and the past was in the past. She had to focus now on making sure that there was a future to look forward to. 

Still, looking back at all the evidence of a life well-lived, she couldn't help the tiniest twinge of regret that she couldn't stay.

Ford started to turn back toward the door, but was pulled up short once more, this time with fear driving a cold lance through her chest. It was gone as soon as she'd seen it, nothing more than a flicker in the corner of her eye, but for that barest sliver of a second as she turned, she was certain she'd seen a reflection of Bill Cipher's single eye flash across the glass in the three picture frames.

Ford didn't look back again as she hurried out of the study and back into the elevator, heading for the main floor and - hopefully - Dipper and Mabel.

...

Ford pushed open the basement door with almost exaggerated caution, poking the muzzle of her antimatter pistol through the opening before she dared to look out.

The gift shop was nearly identical to the one out in the waking world. Ford noticed a shelf of snowglobes featuring the inverted triangle of the portal, but otherwise, everything seemed to be exactly as Stanley kept it. Even the handyman - Soos - was sweeping the bare boards of the floor like always, humming a mindless ditty about - of course - sweeping the floor. The only thing out of the ordinary about him was the fact that he had Stanley's fez perched on his head.

He started when Ford pushed the basement door open the rest of the way and stepped out, before relaxing with an easy grin and a quick wave. "Morning, Dr. Mrs. Pines. Did some interdimensional whatsamahooey get loose on you again?"

"No, Soos, not this time." Ford cast a wary eye over the gift shop, squinting suspiciously at a rack of Mr. Mystery bobbleheads with their tiny eyepatches and single uncovered eyes. "Have you seen Dipper or Mabel?"

"Yeah, uh, Dipper went outside with Wendy a while ago, lady dood. Dunno about Mabel, though." He scratched his head under the fez. "Is that, like, the goat, or..."

"What? No!" Ford shook her head, slamming the basement door behind her. "Mabel Pines? My great-niece?"

Soos' frown deepened. "Hey now, not cool talking about Dipper like that. He's just as much of a man as me." He paused, reflecting. "Actually, he's kinda more of a man than me, heh. Think they threw him some kinda party about it or something?"

"No, that's not what I - Mabel? Dipper's twin sister?"

Soos' squint was now so narrow that Ford wondered if he could actually see anything at all. Then he snapped his fingers, an expression of golden-retriever delight replacing his previous confusion. "Oh, right! You mean that girl-Dipper from that dimension ziggity-whatever? That was a weird week when she was here, dood. They kept finishing each other's sentences and I'm pretty sure they abducted me to use as bait for aliens."

"That's not -" Ford started, trying to picture Mabel, in earnestness, finishing Dipper's sentences without taking them in an unexpected direction or doing a silly voice. "No. And - wait a second. Dipper's only twelve, how could he have had his -"

She was interrupted by a jingle and a clatter of chimes as the gift shop door swung open, admitting Wendy in a flurry of red hair and laughter, saying something back over her shoulder to someone."Work? Here? Hah, no way, man. I just hang around because Stan's fun to bug and sometimes Dr. Pines blows stuff up." She paused a moment to let whoever she was talking to catch up, her voice dropping in volume as she added, "Plus, y'know, there's a cool guy I like hanging out with who just happens to live here."

Dipper stepped through the door after her, cheeks tinted pink and one hand scratching the back of his neck as he turned his face towards the floor, grinning. "I, uh..." He looked up, and his expression froze at the sight of Ford standing by the vending machine. "Great-aunt Ford?"

He sounded almost uncertain, but Ford could understand his confusion. She was feeling an echo of it herself. If this was the grandnephew she'd brought with her from the waking world, then this place had changed him as much as it had her. Dipper wasn't just taller, he looked older, in small but important ways. He looked at least as old as Wendy, with the beginnings of a fine reddish scruff along his squarer jaw and broader shoulders under his red flannel shirt. 

The wary look in his eyes was completely familiar, though, and Ford took a breath and asked, "Any sign of Mabel?"

"Oh dude. You too?" Wendy asked, glancing over at Soos. "You ever heard of this 'Mabel'?"

Soos shrugged. "I thought maybe it was the goat."

Wendy turned back to Dipper, a teasing note in her voice as she said, "Did you guys mess with the timestream again and, like, accidentally erase somebody?"

"I hope not," Dipper said, looking a little nauseous as he looked up at Ford. "We looked all over the yard and the trails, but no sign of her. But - that's not that weird, right? Stan wasn't there when we went into his mind, I only ran into him in a memory..."

Ford let out a long exhale. This could still be one of the denizens of this delusion masquerading as Dipper in order to get her to let her guard down, but Ford doubted it somehow. Bill might be that cruel, but this wasn't entirely his domain. After all, it was Mabel's mind. "Stanley always did love to dwell in the past." A thought struck her, and Ford asked, "Dipper, is there any place in particular in the Shack that Mabel loves? Anywhere she'd choose to go if she was upset?"

"The attic," Dipper said instantly. "Or - I dunno, the living room? I mean, the attic's our room, but - we kind of just had a fight up there...and we've spent a lot of time this summer hanging out in the living room with our friends and Grunkle Stan and..." He shrugged. It occurred to Ford that he still sounded young, though his voice cracked considerably less than usual.

"Oh yeah, man! Stan's always on our backs about hogging the TV," Wendy chimed in, with a smile in Dipper's direction that seemed to magically transform him into a beetroot. "And, I dunno, we hang out on the roof all the time. If you've got some kind of alternate-timeline twin, maybe she does too?"

"All right," Ford said, looking from Wendy to Dipper and his red cheeks. "Well, my joints are not as young as they once were. I'll let you two take the roof while I check inside."

"Gotcha, doc," Wendy said, with a wink, grabbing Dipper's hand and pulling him along towards a curtain in the corner of the shop that turned out to hide a ladder. "C'mon, Dip!"

Dipper gave a nervous laugh, following in her wake.

Soos leaned his broom against the counter as they started up the ladder. "You need a hand, Dr. Mrs. Pines? My dad's coming by to take me and Melody out for lunch, but I got a couple minutes."

"I'll be all right, I think," Ford said, smiling and hefting her antimatter pistol. "Don't want you to miss lunch with your father."

The smile Soos gave her in response as he picked his broom back up was enormous. "Thanks, lady dood. Yell if you need me, kay?"

...

The living room was deserted, and largely unchanged, though Ford noticed that the television set looked newer, and the single armchair had been shuffled over to make room for an equally well-loved couch. Again, there were no signs of Mabel - no glitter in the carpet or tiny plastic animals hiding in the couch cushions, no bits of brightly-coloured craft paper peeking out from under the stack of magazines on the dinosaur skull that served as an end table. The photos on the TV cabinet were mostly of Dipper, Stan, and Ford, with one snap of Stan looking startled as Soos flung both arms around him, and what looked like a Christmas card family portrait featuring Fiddleford and his wife in festive sweaters and Tate in a pair of reindeer antlers. Again, Mabel was conspicuously absent from all of them.

Ford continued on.

The stairs creaked underfoot, as old staircases were wont to do, but none of them were broken, and thankfully none of them decided to break under Ford as she climbed. She reached the top of the stairs and started for the flight leading up to the attic - and paused.

A little way down the hall, the door to her brother's room was ajar.

Surely it couldn't hurt to take just a quick look? It seemed very odd that Soos and Wendy and even Fiddleford were here, but the man who had, even Ford had to admit, made the Mystery Shack what it was, was almost as scarce as Mabel. And if anyone here would remember Mabel, then surely it would be Stanley? After all, the two of them were close...

Ford walked slowly away from the attic stairs, taking care not to step on any of the floorboards that she knew creaked. She reached the door, and raised her pistol, slowly nudging the door all the way open.

She gasped in horror at what she saw inside.

"Ugh. Stanley, have you ever once cleaned this room in the thirty years you had my house to yourself?" Ford muttered as she picked her way between piles of clothing (clean or dirty, she couldn't tell), dirty dishes (some of which seemed to be well on their way towards the incubation of a new species), bits of trash, and other assorted detritus that littered the floor. "Is there even a carpet in here anymore? Because I can't see it."

There was no response from the vaguely human-shaped lump on the bed. Ford gave it a shove where she judged the shoulder must be, only to discover it was only a lump of comforter and blankets. Her brother wasn't here.

Ford turned to leave, but something, some shifting reflection or sixth sense, made her look up at the wall beside the bed. It was plastered with photos, and it struck Ford that she'd never seen this much of a photographic record in the real Mystery Shack - didn't Mabel keep a scrapbook? Was this her influence on her own internal world finally showing through?

She took a step closer, but even in the dark, it was instantly clear that Mabel wasn't to be found in any of these pictures. Many of the photographs looked older than Mabel was, a few in frames, most only pinned to the wall with thumbtacks. Somehow they looked no less loved, no less treasured, than the carefully, if cheaply, framed ones.

Nearly every photo featured Stan, smiling like Ford hadn't seen him smile since they were seventeen, surrounded by familiar faces. Ford herself was in most of them, at her twin's side year after year, milestone after milestone, growing into herself in a way she had only really been able to dream of doing until just a few short weeks ago. Here, there was high school graduation, both of the twins in oversized black robes and waving their mortarboards triumphantly in the air. Here, beside the same photo of Ford's graduation as the one from her basement study, were pictures of Stan in the blue of a trade school Ford vaguely remembered having a campus downtown from her dream school, proudly shaking the hand of a man in academic robes and mugging for the camera, Stan holding up his certificate with one hand as their father wrapped an arm around his shoulders and their mother tried to wipe a smudge off the lapel of his suit, Stan and Shermie giving each other rabbit ears, Ford in a surprisingly fetching yellow frock raising a toast to her brother as both of their parents beamed with obvious pride. 

A memory of Stan's voice, raised in anger, whispered through the back of Ford's mind. "And if you don't think Dad woulda thrown you out in a heartbeat if he'd ever caught you in a dress, then you're blinder than me, cataracts and all."

Ford tried to silence the voice, turning to survey a different set of photos. Here, Stan and Ford cut the ribbon on what proclaimed itself to be the ‘Twin Pines Phenomenology Research Centre and Gift Shop’, Fiddleford and his young wife, as well as a woman who closely resembled Stan's high-school crush, Carla McCorkle, among the crowd of applauding onlookers. Here, the twins chased something unfortunately blurred in the shot into the woods, were chased back out of the woods again by the same creature, a jittery close-up on a mouthful of fangs. 

Here - Ford had to swallow hard around the lump she hadn’t realised had settled in her throat - here, Stan and Ford in the middle of a stormy sea, with what looked like a seventeenth-century Spanish treasure chest between them and a ghostly ship on the horizon behind them, the name of their old rowboat daubed along the prow of their small boat.

She turned away from that photo, taking a step back to take in the whole wall - Soos’ birthdays and graduation, community barbecues in the front yard of the Shack, Wendy making faces behind Fiddleford’s back, a baby Dipper in Stan’s arms. Dipper, Ford noticed, was featured in almost as many of the photos as she herself was, here in a lab coat and goggles that were almost comically oversized for his face, there in a fishing hat and vest and pulling away from the flopping, asphyxiating fish he’d obviously just caught in clear horror, here fast asleep facedown in his plate of Stancakes, there aiming what looked like a plasma rifle into the teeth of an Albertasaurus, here with a hand Ford strongly suspected belonged to Stan pulling the brim of his hat down over his eyes...

Ford took a step back, looking around her at the dingy mess that was Stanley’s room. It was startlingly similar to the glimpses she’d caught of her brother’s bedroom in the waking world.

She flashed back to the short conversations she’d had with Soos, Wendy, Fiddleford. They’d all seemed...happy. Ford didn’t know much about Soos or Wendy, but she was fairly sure she’d never heard Soos mention a father, and Wendy definitely worked at the Mystery Shack. And if there was one thing Ford knew for certain, it was that the Fiddleford McGucket in reality - if he was even still alive - would have wanted nothing more than what the Fiddleford McGucket in this world had. Even Dipper had seemed happier, and - Ford glanced down at herself briefly before looking back up at the wall of pictures. 

Knowing Stanley, Ford would have expected that his perfect life would have consisted of a fortune to be spent as lavishly as he pleased, wild parties, fast living, beautiful women, and the absolute freedom to go wherever he wished, do whatever he wanted, with no responsibilities to anyone. No ties to anyone.

Staring up at the wall of photographs, it struck Ford that maybe she didn’t really know her twin at all.

...

This detour had been fruitless, Ford decided, as she shut the door to Stanley's room behind her. She considered, for a moment, Dipper's mention of memories, but decided against trying any more doors. Everything else so far had kept up the semblance of the Mystery Shack; there was no reason to believe that any of the rooms along the hall would be any different.

There was yet one place that Ford hadn't inspected, though her hope of finding Mabel there was quickly dwindling. But as soon as she set her foot on the bottom step of the attic stairs, Dipper came puffing down the hall, skidding to a stop just before he would have crashed into Ford from behind.

"What on - Dipper, how did you -" 

"Came in through the window. Please tell me you found Mabel? This place is too weird." Dipper tugged at the brim of his hat, looking back down the hall in the direction he'd come. "This is supposed to be Mabel's mindscape, so where is she? It's almost like she has to be in some totally other world, or like she was never real to begin with -"

"That's it!" Ford managed to resist the urge to grab Dipper by the shoulders. "Dipper, that's exactly it! I can't believe I didn't think of it sooner. We've been all over this place, and all along the answer was right under our noses." She grinned, pointing down at the floor. "Or should I say, under our feet?"

"What?" Dipper looked blank for a moment, before a wide smile of realisation slowly dawned across his face. " 'Some totally different world'. The portal!"

"Come on, there's no time to waste!" Ford turned and started for the stairs back down to the main floor, Dipper close on her heels.

She was halfway down the stairs when she nearly collided with Dipper, running up from the first floor. Ford grabbed onto the banister to halt her momentum as she came to a stop, looking down into the wide and frightened eyes of the grandnephew she'd thought was following right behind her. "Dipper? How did you get down there?"

"Great-aunt Ford!" Dipper gasped, pointing back over Ford's shoulder towards the top of the stairs. "That's not me!"

Ford pulled her antimatter pistol out, staring hard at the eyes of the Dipper in front of her. His pupils looked normal, but then, so had the other Dipper's. And this was still the mindscape, after all, shapeshifting here could be perfect -

There was a burst of laughter from behind Ford, up at the top of the stairs, Dipper's surprised chuckle quickly rising into an awful, familiar, staccato cackle. "WOW, YOU ACTUALLY FELL FOR IT! JEEZ, SIXER, THE ONLY THING BIGGER THAN YOUR BRAIN IS YOUR EGO!"

"You," Ford snarled, spinning and firing in the direction of the rising laughter in one smooth motion. The greyed-out, Dipper-shaped thing at the top of the stairs laughed with Bill Cipher's voice again as it folded over backwards to avoid the glowing black bolt, letting it splash against the wall behind it. The wall vanished with a dreadful tearing sound, a warm summer breeze wafting in through the resulting hole. Ford lined up for another shot as the thing snapped back upright like a rubber band and winked one glowing yellow eye in her direction.

"Bill!" Dipper shouted. "Wait, you were out there in the real world, how can you be here?"

“That’s not Bill,” Ford growled, drawing the other antimatter pistol from her coat and firing off two quick shots at the thing at the top of the stairs. At least one should have struck it square in the chest, but instead it split down the middle like an amoeba, one yellow eye glowing in each half before they reformed, one into the semblance of Soos, one into Wendy. “That’s just the spell he left behind to keep Mabel trapped, it’s not really him.”

Both of the grey figures at the top of the steps threw back their heads and let out Bill’s awful, grating laugh in unison. “JUST KEEP TELLING YOURSELF THAT!”

Ford gritted her teeth and took aim again, shifting slightly so that she was between the two laughing shapes at the top of the stairs and Dipper. If this thing, this little piece of Bill, could shift shape, split apart and change its form, its size, even its number at will, then she was going to have to come up with something cleverer than pistols to bring it down.

The creature seemed to be reading her mind, the greyscale mirror images of the Mystery Shack’s employees both falling together into one again with a horrible squelching as it laughed with a malformed mouth. “IT’S SO CUTE HOW YOU THINK YOU CAN HURT ME! DID YOU FORGET WHERE WE ARE?”

The final word landed with concussive force, like a blast from a sonic cannon, rattling the windowpanes and setting the floorboards dancing. It was only when Dipper yelped that Ford realised the floor wasn’t just shaking from the sound – the stairs were disintegrating below them, steps coming apart at the seams and falling away into a greyish nothingness that had already engulfed the lower floor. And the decay was rapidly speeding towards them.

Ford had to grab Dipper by the back of his shirt when the step he’d been standing on started to fall apart, pulling him up beside her. The pistol she’d been holding slipped from her grasp as she reached out to catch him, tumbling away after the boards of the rapidly deconstructing stairs. She muttered a curse in a language that wasn’t English as the stair currently supporting both her and Dipper’s weight began to bow alarmingly.

“Start climbing,” she told Dipper sharply, raising her remaining pistol and trying to picture it transforming into a bazooka. No such luck – it seemed that, even with his facade of perfection shattered, Bill still held absolute power over this place. “I'll provide cover.”

“Are you sure? I mean, that thing makes the Shapeshifter look cuddly and friendly!”

“I'll think of something! Just move!”

Dipper started up the stairs, Ford following close behind him and firing over his shoulder, forcing the Bill-fragment to splinter itself into more and more grey figures to avoid her shots. She was nearing the top of the stairs when it struck her that the grey figures weren’t advancing on her and Dipper at all. Instead, they’d spread out around the floor above, encircling the stairs and flanking the two of them. Yellow eyes glowed in a host of familiar, silver-screen faces, friends and foes alike, their mouths all twisted in jeering laughter. Ford picked out the hated face of her childhood bully side by side with Mabel’s friends, Fiddleford rubbing elbows with someone who could only be Shermy’s son, Dipper and Mabel’s father. They didn’t seem to be doing much more than pointing and laughing – and blocking the way to the attic stairs.

Ford raised her remaining pistol again, gripping the stock with both hands and trying to keep an eye on the crowd all around them as she climbed. The decay had started to slow, but the stairs were still ominously weak under her feet, and she knew it was only a matter of time before she and Dipper were both herded into the ring above or forced to face the fall into nothingness. Unless she could think of something fast, and when even imagination didn’t have its usual potency and her resources were rapidly dwindling – what use were twelve PhDs when her grandnephew was about to suffer what was most likely to manifest as absolute brain-death because she couldn’t think fast enough on her feet to get them out of this?

It was desperation as much as any real faith in the firearm that made her take aim at the single, winking eye of one of the figures at the top of the stairs, the one that had chosen to take the shape of her brother, and pull the trigger. And, as Ford had almost expected, instead of the familiar black-glowing bolt tearing out of the muzzle, a bright red flag unfurled.

In cartoonish, blocky letters, it said, “BANG!”

This time, the curse Ford uttered was clear and recent English.

Dipper turned to her, his eyes widening at the sight of the useless pistol as another step crumbled away behind them. “Great-aunt Ford? What do we do?”

Ford threw the pistol with its cheery, jokey message in the general direction of the ranks of Bill-fragments, unsurprised when it burst apart into a shower of silvery ash before it even reached the railing. She reached into the depths of her coat for the ball of wire she’d picked up in the study, prepared at least to go down fighting, and stopped cold when she touched, not cold metal, but something soft and slightly scratchy that gave under her grip. “What...?”

She’d expected Dipper’s face to fall when, instead of another weapon, Ford drew a ball of multicoloured yarn from an inside pocket of her coat. She didn’t expect him to light up like a man laying eyes on water for the first time after ten days in the desert.

“Mabel!” Dipper said, excitedly, grabbing the ball of yarn from Ford, nearly tripping over the next step with his eyes glued to the little dot of colour in the middle of the sea of grey. “She’s still here!”

The rush of relief that swept over Ford was instantly transformed to cold terror when the stair vanished from underneath her feet. She fell, grasping out for something, anything, and caught hold of Dipper’s forearm as he reached down to catch her. Momentum arrested, she jerked to a halt, heart hammering in her throat and head spinning, all too aware of the way the void beneath her feet sucked at her, dragging her down.

Dipper pulled, trying to heave Ford back up onto the stairs, but the step that was supporting his weight gave an ominous shriek and, even from her precarious position, Ford could feel it sink. Dipper froze, breathing hard, grasping at Ford’s sleeve with his left hand even as he cradled the ball of yarn in his right. He met Ford’s eyes, and she could tell that they were both thinking the same thing – he couldn’t pull her up if he didn’t let go of the yarn.

Cackling laughter erupted all around the top of the stairs, the crowd of Bill-fragments bursting out in chorus like some demented laugh track. Their voices all spoke in deafening unison. “WELL WELL WELL, PINE TREE, WHAT’LL IT BE? YOUR HERO OR YOUR SISTER?”

“Dipper, let me go!” Ford shouted over the rising laughter, as the step Dipper was leaning against gave a thunderous crack and sagged, threatening to give way. “You have to get Mabel out!”

“No way!” Dipper squeezed one eye shut in concentration, his hand around Ford’s arm tightening like a vise. “This is Mabel’s mindscape, and she’s still here, changing things! Which means -”

He hefted the ball of yarn in his right hand, like a pitcher lining up to throw.

“She’s more powerful than you,” Dipper said, to the crowd gathered around the stairs, and threw the ball of yarn at the nearest yellow-eyed, greyscale figure.

The ball flew, unfurling a single trailing strand of rainbow behind it, in a perfect high arc. It soared over the banister, and bonked into the side of the grey figure’s head before bouncing off and falling to the floor, where it rolled to a stop.

The fragments of Bill gathered around the stairs all looked down at the ball of yarn in unison, before all of their baleful yellow gazes suddenly snapped back onto Dipper. There was triumph in their multitudinous voice as they said, “WHAT WAS THAT SUPPOSED TO -”

The yarn ball exploded.

Thick, coiling chains of crochet smothered some of the greyscale figures. Long, multicoloured strands cat’s-cradled others, bound them to the banister encircling the stairs, or to each other. More than one flailed and screamed as the yarn knitted it into a cocoon, the screams growing muffled as the cocoon knitted itself over the Bill-fragment’s face.

Dipper reached down, grabbing Ford’s left hand with his right. Even with the stairs creaking and swaying under their combined weight, she already felt steadier. “I don’t think I can pull you up, but if I kind of swing you side to side, I think I can swing you up onto the stairs.”

“Excellent thinking, use gravity to your advantage instead of against you,” Ford babbled, digging six fingers into the flannel of Dipper’s sleeve on one side and squeezing his hand on the other, praying neither of them slipped. “Dipper...how did you know that that would work?”

A small smile crossed Dipper’s face. “I didn’t. But -” The smile grew. “I trust Mabel. Come on, you gotta swing if this is going to work.”

There was a moment when Ford was sure that she was going to fall, go tumbling into that grey nothingness that was somehow even more frightening than the closing white ring of the portal had once been. Then she was collapsing onto creaking wood, the strain in her shoulders easing as she slowly, carefully uncurled her fingers from Dipper’s hands. They felt cramped, clawed, and Ford would have liked to have stayed there a moment, catch her breath and let feeling flow back into her limbs and appendages, but there was still screaming from overhead and the stairs wobbling precariously underneath her. She pushed herself to her feet, leaning heavily on the banister and worrying about the way it swayed in its sockets. “We have to get to the attic. Bill’s spell seemed very determined to keep us away from it. Mabel must be there.”

“Maybe we should hurry?” Dipper said, pointing up at the place where the ball of yarn had landed. Thick webs of knit had already started to envelop the banister, and were already creeping up the walls. “Come on!”

They ran up the few remaining steps, Dipper in the lead and Ford following not far behind, watching their backs for any further surprises. The yarn had almost completely engulfed all of the fragments Bill had left behind; all that remained of them was a heaving, struggling sea of knit, with the occasional greyscale limb or glowing yellow eye bursting through. Not all of them looked even remotely human. Ford kicked at a few that grabbed at her ankles as they ran, and tried to ignore the way the yarn sometimes went crunch underfoot.

Knitted patterns were already creeping up the attic stairs at an astonishing pace by the time Dipper and Ford reached them. The railings were shrouded with neon cabling, crochet squares in the shapes of flowers and starbursts carpeting the steps. Dipper took the stairs two at a time, the yarn racing faster than his feet as he pounded towards the door to the attic room he and his sister shared, and the yarn that was already starting to knit it closed. “Mabel!”

Ford reached the top of the stairs just as Dipper tore away the cozy that had woven itself around the doorknob and ripped the door open. It took a few tries, the thick weave over the top of the door resisting his pulls, but finally he forced it open, the yarn shrivelling away into something brown and withered around its ragged edges. Even as it engulfed floor, walls, and ceiling of the space outside the attic room in an enormous, bright, multicoloured sweater, the yarn didn’t touch the room on the other side of the door.

After the explosion of riotous colour of the yarn bomb, after seeing glimpses of everyone else’s versions of perfection, after – in all honesty – simply knowing Mabel for more than five seconds, it came as a surprise to Ford to walk into the attic room and find that nothing had changed. No extra sparkle or shine, nothing glossed over or prettied up, just bare, splintery wood and two beds, a handful of posters and notebooks and craft supplies, one side of the room clearly Dipper’s and one side clearly Mabel’s.

And in the middle of Mabel’s bed sat Mabel herself, curled up so that her sunset-patterned sweater covered her knees and her chin up to her nose, flipping through a bright pink scrapbook. Bubble letters across the front spelled out the words “Summer Memories”.

“Mabel!” Dipper cheered, throwing himself forward into the attic room and running to his sister’s side. Ford followed more cautiously, hanging back as Mabel looked up from her scrapbook at the sound of her brother’s voice, watching as the shock on Mabel’s face turned to hurt. “That was amazing, you totally demolished Bill’s spell -”

“Why did you have to make me ruin it?” she demanded, and Dipper stopped in his tracks.

“Mabel, we’re here to rescue you! Bill -”

“Maybe I don’t need rescuing!” Mabel shut the scrapbook with a sharp snap, turning to face her brother. Seeing her nose-to-nose with Dipper sent a pang shooting through Ford, the sudden realisation of how much of the change this place had forced on Dipper was an illusion, how young both twins really were. “Did you stop and think that maybe this is what I want?”

“What? Mabel, you’re in a coma out in the real world! Bill put you in some kind of bubble, and even after Great-aunt Ford popped it you wouldn’t wake up. I know this place makes it seem like things are perfect, but none of this is real -”

“So what?”

Dipper stopped, resembling nothing so much as a deer caught in headlights. Ford didn’t blame him. She’d never heard, never expected to hear, so much bitterness, so much anger and despair, in bright, bubbly Mabel’s voice.

“So what? Mabel, you...” Dipper’s face fell. “You’d really rather stay trapped in a fantasy world than come back and grow up with me in the real one?”

Mabel bit her lower lip, before sinking down to hide it in the collar of her sweater again. “Maybe I don’t want to grow up so much anymore. And what are you talking about, ‘with you’? You were leaving. Why do you care what I do?”

“You’re my twin sister, Mabel! Of course I care!” Dipper sat back on his heels, looking straight into Mabel’s eyes. “And – nobody out there even knew you existed. Why would you want to be alone?”

“I don’t, okay?” Mabel let one of the sleeves of her sweater flop over her hand, rubbing her eyes with it. “But this was the only way to make it all work out. I tried everything!” she said, sharply, when Dipper opened his mouth. “I tried everything. But the only way to keep summer perfect forever and make everybody happy...”

She abruptly yanked her knees back up under her sweater, wrapping her arms around them. Her voice was muffled by the collar of her sweater when she said, “The only way it works is without me.”

“Mabel, that’s not true! This is just one of Bill’s tricks!”

“Is it really, Dipper?” Mabel reached one floppy sweater-covered hand over and grabbed the discarded scrapbook, flipping it open to stare wistfully down at a page Ford couldn’t see. Her voice was almost inaudible. “If I wasn’t there, then there wouldn’t be anything keeping you from staying in Gravity Falls with Grunkle Stan and Grauntie Ford, from chasing monsters and mysteries and growing up and – and maybe you should just let me sleep.” The sigh that she breathed rang in the warm quiet of the attic. “Then there wouldn’t be anything holding you back.”

“You really think that?”

Mabel glanced up as Dipper straightened up, but didn’t uncurl from her small ball of knitwear as he sat down on the bed beside her. Ford couldn’t see the expression on Mabel’s face, it was turned away from the door, but she saw the look Dipper turned in Mabel’s direction with a strange twinge in her chest.

“Mabel. Do you really think you’re holding me back?”

“I -” For the first time since Ford had met her, Mabel seemed not to know what to say. “I don’t know.”

“You’re not,” Ford said, and instantly regretted it as both twins turned to look at her.

She coughed into one fist, clearing her throat before she dared try to speak again. “Mabel, I’ve done you a disservice, and I owe you an apology. I...may have allowed my history with my own brother to colour my perception.” The image of a photograph tacked lovingly to a wall of treasured memories, Stan gesturing so proudly towards Ford and her diploma, threatened to rise before her eyes, but Ford fought it down. She’d done enough damage already by thinking of Dipper and Mabel as Ford and Stan Mk II. “If anything I’ve said or done made you feel like you were unwelcome, or -” she met Dipper’s eyes for the length of a heartbeat, feeling the word suffocating stretch through the space between them “- holding your brother back, then – Mabel, I’m – I’m so sorry.”

The words hovered in the silence that followed like bricks suspended by a temporary lapse in gravity.

Finally, Mabel drew a deep breath, before slowly letting it out. “Thanks, Grauntie Ford,” she said, still uncharacteristically quiet. “But...”

“Mabel.” Dipper reached over and put a hand over Mabel’s sweater-clad one, smiling when she looked back over at him. “Look, when I said that summer has to end, I didn’t mean that everything that made it good has to end too.”

Disbelief warred with hope in Mabel’s voice when she said, warily, “What do you mean?”

Dipper looked across the room, towards the painting of a sailing ship on the high seas that hung just above his own bed. “You said some things on Summerween that I still haven’t forgotten about. About how our childhood’s almost over. And I guess I was rushing it a little. But...” He gave a nervous laugh. “Mostly I was rushing because I was scared you were going to leave me behind.”

“Haha, what?” Mabel laughed, though it sounded thick and choked.

“I mean it! You were so pumped for – boys, and high school, and friends, and makeup, and...I don’t know, giant hamster balls...” Dipper gave a shout of surprised laughter when Mabel shoved him with both hands. “You seemed so ready, like you really knew what you were doing, and I guess I just didn’t want to get left behind. And I didn’t realise that maybe you were feeling the same way.”

“But you’re always the one who wants to be so grown up!” Mabel looked down at her toes poking out from under her sweater, giving them a little wiggle. “And – you’re finally getting it. If – if this apprenticeship thing is what you want...” She glanced up at Ford, shooting her a small smile, and Ford managed one back. “Then we’ll make it work.”

“I don’t want to make it work,” Dipper said.

Ford had to blink a few times to be sure that she was seeing correctly, that it wasn’t just the strange damp blur around the edges around her vision. Dipper seemed to be shrinking before her eyes, the years this place had added scrolling away until he was the same Dipper as always. “You’re my sister. You’re the one person I know I can always count on. And whatever the future’s bringing for us...you won’t have to face it alone.”

Mabel’s voice was so small and soft that Ford had to strain to hear it. “You really mean it?”

In answer, Dipper held his arms wide. “Awkward sibling hug?”

Mabel hesitated only a moment before she flung herself at him, wrapping her arms around his middle and knocking them both back onto the bed. Muffled though it was by the collar of her sweater and Dipper’s vest, Ford thought she heard Mabel say, “Sincere sibling hug.”

The triangular window between the beds flared an angry yellow, a furious eye blinking open in its centre, but it was too late. The world around them was already dissolving into white light.

...

Ford’s skull throbbed.

She straightened up with a groan, noticing with a mixture of dismay and relief that she was back in her own body, and looked around the living room.

The candles around the circle had gone out, though a faint hint of smoke still hovered on the air. Dipper and Mabel were both sitting up slowly as well, Dipper rubbing his head and Mabel blinking first one eye, then the other, like she couldn’t quite believe she was awake. As soon as she laid eyes on Dipper, she tumbled off the armchair and flopped onto him in a hug that knocked him flat on his back. Laughter filled the room and, for a moment, drowned out the distant sound of screams.

“Ow! Mabel, your elbow’s in my stomach – thanks, that’s better -”

“That was real, right?” Mabel said, not bothering to remove her face from her brother’s shoulder. “You really meant all that stuff, that wasn’t just – Bill! Ugh! He tricked me into giving him that snowglobe thing -”

She sat bolt upright, her eyes going wide in horror. “Ohmigosh! I gave Bill that snowglobe thing!”

“Mabel, it’s okay,” Dipper said, but Mabel’s gaze found Ford.

“I’m so sorry, I didn’t know it was him, he told me it would just make a time bubble so we could have a little more summer -”

“Mabel.” Ford tried to keep her voice level, even, steady. “It’s all right. Bill tricks people, it’s what he does. It’s not your fault.” 

“But -” Mabel’s lower lip was quivering, and Ford held up both hands, like Mabel was something fragile teetering on the edge of a high ledge and about to fall if Ford didn’t catch her. “He smashed it, and then – I didn’t see what happened, but he seemed really happy – Grauntie Ford, what did I do?”

“It’s not your fault,” Ford repeated. “Bill has been working on opening a rift between his world and ours for literally millennia. You were just unfortunate enough to be the piece he chose to make his final move.” She felt her own upper lip curl at the thought of hours spent discussing chess strategy over mindscape tea, always the perfect temperature, never the same taste twice – “He thinks he’s already won the game, but we’re going to show him how wrong he is.”

Dipper seemed to speak for both of the twins when he asked, “How are we supposed to do that?”

Ford looked from Dipper to Mabel, at the two small, expectant faces looking up at her, waiting for her to produce the answer, and swallowed, hard, before mustering up a smile. “It’s fairly simple, actually. There is a prophecy that says a certain group of people, once gathered together, have the power to banish Bill and all his chaos back to the realm from whence he came. I told Stanley -”

She broke off. “Where is Stanley? He should be here, he said he’d be watching to make sure the place didn’t burn down.”

“Good question.” Mabel’s brow furrowed, and she raised both hands to her mouth in a makeshift megaphone. “Grunkle Staaaaaaaaan! It’s me! Mabel! I’m awake! Get over here and prepare to get hugged!”

The only response from the rest of the Shack was echoing silence.

“Is it just me, or is it weirdly quiet in here?” Dipper asked, looking up at the ceiling.

“It’s not just you,” Ford said, looking around warily herself and carefully getting to her feet. She hadn’t survived thirty years in a series of increasingly perilous dimensions without developing a keen sense of danger, and right now alarm bells were pealing in the back of her mind. It didn’t take long to place the source of the disconcerting silence. “Whatever was trying to break through the barrier has stopped.”

“Wait, that unicorn-hair barrier around the Shack? Something was trying to get in?” Mabel canted her head to one side, a realisation clearly crossing her face before she said, slowly, “It couldn’t have got Grunkle Stan, right?”

“Not so long as the barrier held, and he didn’t go outside of it.”

The words were barely out of Ford’s mouth before Mabel was tearing past towards the door, brandishing her ever-present grappling hook. Dipper and Ford met each other’s eyes, Dipper barely managing to stumble out, “She doesn’t know about Weirdmageddon -” before they were both following hot on Mabel’s heels.

They needn’t have worried. Mabel had stopped before stepping off of the front porch, the grappling hook dangling loosely in her grip as she stared out at the yard.

Ford thought at first that the sickly luminous rift in the yellow sky had caught Mabel’s attention and brought her to such an abrupt halt, or perhaps the massive black pyramid that squatted in midair, in defiance of all natural laws, in front of it. It hadn’t been there the last time she’d looked outside. Bill had been busy.

She was distracted enough by this new, unpleasant addition to the horizon that it wasn’t until Dipper said, “Oh no,” that Ford realised just what had actually stopped her great-niece in her tracks.

Burned into the grass before the Shack, nearly as long as the Shack was wide, was a massive, one-eyed triangle. The ends of some of the grass were still flickering with little blue flames, slowly eating their way out of their neat formation and into the rest of the yard.

Lying discarded in the dead centre of the triangle’s single eye, right where the pupil should be, was Stanley’s fez.