Chapter Text
When Mabel arrived at the playground, she was genuinely surprised to see that the park was completely desolate except for her. She knew that the place was old, and a bit run-down, and in the years Mabel had been gone newer, shinier playgrounds had been popped up around town, but it was such a nice summer day and this particular playground was obviously still the best. The plastic tops of the slides were shaped like castles, and there were leprechauns and fairies and merpeople painted onto the sides of the wooden towers and the place had the highest monkey bars ever - so high they probably broke twelve safety regulations and it was sort of hard not to imagine some overprotective soccer mom writing the city to complain about how they posed a 'potential danger,' but they were so big and so high that if you went on them and closed your eyes, it felt like mountain climbing.
But when Mabel looked at the monkey bars, they didn't seem as high as she remembered. She didn't try to go on them.
The wind blew in her hair, and she sat down on one of the big kid swings and closed her eyes, wrapping her fingers around the metal chains. When she breathed in, the park smelled like pine and paint. It smelled like being a kid again.
It smelled like running around the Darville park, trying to tag her brother Dipper, who seemed wholly uninterested in her game but still played along with her anyway, partly because their mom was watching and partly because Dipper was Dipper.
It smelled like fourth grade, or some day in fifth grade, and she couldn't remember the date of it but she could remember that it was spring and it was one of the last days with her dad, and he took her to the park and Mabel pouted all the way there because at this point the park was almost baby stuff but she stopped pouting when he started pushing her on the swings and she screamed like there was no tomorrow.
It smelled like her first day of middle school, when she was wearing those scratchy pants and that stupid lace-y top that her mom had been picked out for her and she was so nervous that she almost threw up at lunch (the fact that it was spaghetti day at the cafeteria and Mabel had decided a few days before she was too cool for brown-bagged lunches might have also been responsible for that) and afterward instead of going straight home she had gotten off of the bus at the playground and stared at it and thought to herself "goodbye".
She wished that she hadn't said goodbye to it so soon. Middle school was not the time to say goodbye. That time was now.
Mabel traced abstract shapes in the wood chips with the toe of her shoe. The park was silent, except for the sound of wind blowing and the wind chimes of a house in the distance. Mabel didn't like it. She wished that there were children here, running around and being loud and make believing that they were cats (like Mabel used to) or detectives (like Dipper used to) or something else entirely while the mothers and the fathers talked on their phones and attempted to watch their screaming children and rolled their eyes when kids ran by without realizing that those kids were in different, magical world.
She closed her eyes without a real reason, waiting for something to break the silence. The phone in her skirt pocket complied about 2 minutes later.
She dug in for it and tapped the power button. Her screen showcased a preview of a text from Dipper:
"Where are you? Mom wants us to"
She didn't even bother clicking through the full message. Mabel knew it was time to go.
- - - - -
The park was a very short walk from Mabel's house, but when she got there, Dipper was already pacing their front porch.
"Where in God's name have you been?" Dipper demanded as soon as she came within earshot. He raised his wrist and pointed to his watch angrily. "We have less than an hour to load your car, Mabel! Mom and Grunkle Stan have been waiting for at least thirty minutes and I'm pretty sure Mom is in there crying right now and I'm trying to comfort her but it is HARD, Mabel, it is hard because my sister decided to go AWOL on one of the most important days of her lives to run off to wherever the hell -"
"I was at the park," Mabel said.
Dipper blinked. "The park."
"Do you know that park we used to go to all the time when we were kids? The one with the really awesome wood structure and the super high monkey bars and the giant Newton's cradle that you used to be obsessed with?"
Dipper's brows furrowed. "Why were you there?"
"Because it felt right?" she offered, knowing that attempting to make Dipper understand would probably be futile.
Dipper's expression did not change.
Mabel sighed. "Haven't you ever...isn't there anywhere in this town that you just felt like you had to say goodbye to? Like your bedroom or a classroom at school or something? And you go in when it's all empty and silent except it doesn't feel empty to you, it feels like the silence is full of memories, and you just....you need to see it one last time before you go?"
She was almost sure she could see a flicker of recognition in Dipper's eyes. But as soon as it was there, it was gone, and he turned and slammed the screen door on his way back into the house.
There was a time when her brother would have known what she was talking about. Dipper used to understand things like that - understand that sometimes you have to do what your feelings are telling you to do without any logic backing you up. She had seen him do just that during that one summer they spent in Gravity Falls.
But that was years ago. They were just kids then. They had believed they saw monsters and magic in the forest of Gravity Falls, Oregon, but when they got home, Dipper had become a different person. He started blathering on about colleges and grades non-stop until the day they had graduated. Dipper was a smart boy - his GPA proved as much - but sometimes Mabel wondered if he had forgotten how to use those smarts in his little world of bubble sheets and study guides.
Mabel and Dipper didn't talk about that summer. Not very much, anyway. It was just a stupid summer in a stupid town when they were stupid twelve year olds. But it hadn't really left Mabel, and Mabel could tell that it hadn't really left Dipper, either, no matter how much he pretended it had.
And now Dipper was going off to the University of Washington (Honors Program, of course) and Mabel was going off to a small little private college in Oregon called Hubbard College. Mabel's mother was happy for both twins, but Dipper was not only brooding over the fact that he was waitlisted at Stanford, but utterly confused at Mabel's college choice. He was concerned with not only how small it was and the lack of prestige and publicity (until Mabel applied, neither of the twins had heard about it) but the fact that the admissions department was tripping over its own feet to get Mabel to attend. Mabel - who was an admittedly below average student, who hadn't done many extracurriculars outside of yearbook staffing and newspaper editing - had received a scholarship that covered almost full tuition, which was the main reason Mabel had decided to go. The fact that it was about a 30 minute drive from Gravity Falls, Oregon might have played into her decision a little bit as well.
Mabel had begged Dipper to apply, too, especially after it became evident that Mabel was far below U of W's admission standards, but he had refused. And now he and Mabel were going to entirely different colleges in entirely different states, after living underneath the same roof for their entire life. And Dipper was acting surprisingly nonchalant about it - which, if Mabel was being honest with herself, hurt a little bit.
Before Dipper could complete his dramatic drama queen storm out, Mabel pulled open the screen door and grabbed his wrist. "Dipper. Wait."
Dipper turned around to look at Mabel's hand on his wrist, and then at Mabel. "What do you need now, Mabel?" he huffed.
Mabel bit her lip and was surprised to find her eyes becoming a little teary. "Can we not do this?" she asked weakly.
Dipper's annoyed expression softened a little bit once he heard the tone of Mabel's voice. "Not do what?"
"In a few minutes I'm going to load my bags and get into one car and tomorrow you're going to load your bags and get into another and then we're going to go in different directions and never live with each other even again so can you please not be mad at me? Not today. Not on our very last day."
Dipper seemed to process that for a few seconds, then gently pulled his hand out of Mabel's grasp. "Come on, man," he said comfortingly. "You don't need to cry right now."
Mabel gave him a little smile. "I'm not going to, bro."
There was a brief silence in which both twins weren't sure if they should walk into the kitchen or stay standing by the staircase. Then, Mabel said, "I'm really going to miss you."
To her surprise, Dipper pulled her into a hug. Not an awkward sibling hug, either - a genuine brohug. "Promise me you'll be safe at college? I worry about you," Dipper said.
"Oh my God, Dipper. When did you become a middle-aged mother?" Mabel laughed.
"Come on, Mabel. Please? Just...be careful. Don't go out with people you've just met. Don't accept drinks from a stranger. Don't...just....you know. I'm not going to be there to have your back any more."
"I will," Mabel said. "Can you promise me something?"
"What?"
"I know you're disappointing that nothing ever came of the waitlist at Stanford," Mabel started. "Just - and I say this with as much love as I can - try not to be such a tightass, alright? This is college. You need to branch out. Make friends. Studying's all well and good, but...find someone to study with, okay?"
Dipper was silent for a moment. He dropped his arms from Mabel's shoulders, stepped away, and looked her in the eye. "Yeah," he said. "I can try that." He nodded a bit. "You'll call me, right?"
"You know I will, broseph."
He smiled. Mabel smiled back.
Then Dipper turned and walked into the kitchen, and Mabel followed suit.
- - - - -
The second she stepped into the room, she found herself engulfed in a crushing hug from her weeping mother. "Oh my God," Mabel heard her sob out. "My kids are going off to college!"
Mabel did her best to wiggle her arms out from her mother's crushing embrace and wrap them around her mom's shoulders. "It's okay, Mom," Mabel reassured her, gasping a little bit for air. "I'll call you. I'll text you. I'll text you every single day, I promise."
Her mother nodded, and then moved on to give the same tear-filled bone-crushing hug to Dipper.
Mabel glanced over at the kitchen table and was surprised to see Grunkle Stan sitting there, chewing away at one of their mother's chocolate chip cookies. She remembered Dipper mentioning that he had showed up, it wasn't like their great uncle to show up at the kind of events and gatherings where people cried and stuff, and considering he was from their dad's side of the family, it was unusual for their mother to have invited him, anyway. In fact, Mabel couldn't recall meeting him face-to-face ever since she left Gravity Falls.
"Grunkle Stan?" Mabel tried to feign enthusiasm. "What are you, uh, doing here?"
Grunkle Stan swallowed a huge chunk of his cookie. "There's my Mabel!" he yelled, and Mabel thought he was going to get up and hug her, but he obviously had no interest in leaving his chair or his cookie. "Guess which Grunkle is going to be driving you to your fancy new col-lege?"
Mabel turned to her mother. "Are you saying that Grunkle Stan is helping me move in to my dorm room?"
Her mother suddenly looked uncomfortable. "Well..."
"You betcha, kid!" Grunkle Stan let out a laugh and tossed the rest of the cookie into his mouth. "It was your mother's idea. You know, this fancy Hubba Bubba place being so close to Gravity Falls. You can come over and visit the Shack all the time now! So whatsay us four stop our yapping and we all hit the road?"
Mabel exchanged glances with Dipper, then with her mother. "Um..." she started hesitantly, not sure of what else she could say.
"Come on, kiddo!" he said, standing up. "Let's go get your bags."
Mabel stood frozen in the kitchen for a second. Then she glanced at the kitchen wall, blinked rapidly a few times for good measure, and turned to follow her great uncle.