Chapter Text
"Loose grip on gravity falls,
sky blinding, crumbling walls,
river sweep away my memories of
children’s things…”
- CocoRosie
***
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GET it OUT Get IT out GET it OUT Get IT out GET it OUT Get IT out GET it OUT Get IT out GET it OUT Get IT out GET it OUT Get IT out GET it OUT Get IT out GET it OUT Get IT out -
I̷̡̠͕̝̝͉͖͘͝͡ͅ want IT fucking Ģ̴̤̟̤̺͚̜͔͚͇̙̹̫ͅͅONE̶̻̺̤̻̤̞͖̤̟̲̰̦̰̩͝
30 seconds
It had seemed his fall would go on for an eternity, so the ultimate landing is awfully more jarring for it. Sensation does not so much return to him as come crashing in, like a dislocation being yanked back into position.
For a moment or two he is perfectly content to just lie there on the floor, waiting for the panic and pulsatile tinnitus to subside. He tries to take deep breaths to speed this process. They catch in his throat. He tastes stomach acid.
A sluggish parade of realizations follow one after the other. The incessant pull of gravity is keeping him anchored to the ground (a fact for which he is grateful at the moment). Breathing is non-negotiable. What he can see of the world has been drastically limited to that which lies just before his eyes.
These facts initially refuse to add up into more meaningful information; each simply strikes him as absurd. He'd laugh if he weren't so winded.
Nonetheless his eyes refocus, staring up from where he's fallen, and find a familiar pitched ceiling. Sure it's been quite some time, but he's spent more than enough sleepless nights looking up at that to burn it into memory.
It takes him a heartbeat (he has one of those?) to put it all together and bolt upright, in spite of his body's protesting.
The world is dark outside the window of the attic bedroom, but there's a lamp on the desk below doing its best to provide decent illumination for him. Enough to read by comfortably, judging by the book lying on the floor beside him, pages splayed from his tumble out of bed.
Concerning the Curious Case of the Mysterious Disappearance of the Lost Secret Society by Jenkins W. Jenkins. He vaguely remembers that one being a little disappointing, the identity of the ultimate villain of the piece too predictable.
But more importantly, it shouldn't be here.
None of the usual detritus of his childhood summers currently cluttering up the room should (and oh wow, he wasn't this messy back then, was he?). Everything about this situation is wrong, in fact.
He finally scrambles up to his feet, stumbling over to take a look in the standing mirror on the other side of the room to confirm his suspicions. Not only is he corporeal, but a completely ordinary human visage greets his eyes, not a pointed ear or twitching shadow to be found.
And not only is he human, but he appears so much younger. The age he'd been his last summer of life, no doubt; that elusive true form of his unfortunate cultists didn't take too seriously. He's even wearing the outfit he had had on when It happened, the same shorts and jacket he once wore practically every day. Apparently he'd fallen asleep without having gotten to changing into his pajamas.
He doesn't know what else he was expecting to see. He feels he had already known as much, with the kind of groundless certainty only felt in dreams.
He makes a face in the mirror to be doubly sure. No fangs.
Stretches an eyelid. Nothing abnormal about the eyes either.
Attempts to summon blue flame, curl the shadows into terrifying shapes and set them upon the lamplight. Nothing.
He hazards a sideways glance to see how the version of himself from alt-uni 518 is taking this; maybe he knows what's going on (he knows that's "cheating", but he is a demon after all). All he sees is the open closet door and the dirty clothes piled inside. Yeah, that was a bit of a long shot at this point.
He casts his mind back to what he was doing just before he... what, exactly? Fell asleep? Fell out of bed?
<…>
It was... there was something...
Something important...
Just there. He can nearly touch it.
<…>
He decides he does not want to think about it right now. It is giving him a migraine. Later.
Instead he explores, takes inventory. This was That Summer, sure, but he needs more than that. He needs an explanation.
The board above his bed on which he'd once organized clues is missing. The many, many cameras he'd bought and his collection of "photographic evidence", only a tenth of which actually featured anything supernatural, also missing.
He lifts his pillow, discovers no journal.
There has to be something here that can help him get his bearings. Something to set his watch to, keep a lid on any panic that might resurface once the disorientation ran its course.
He ventures downstairs as quietly as he can manage, trying not to step on or lean against anything that might creak. A difficult feat in this old place. He checks out a certain vending machine, inputs a certain code. When nothing happens, he puts his ear near the wall and knocks as loudly as he dares. Not even a tell-tale hollow space behind it.
He steps outside, sees nothing out of place about the shack and its surroundings from what he can perceive in the darkness (you know, it'd been a standard trick to pull on his more selfish summoners when he was too lazy to do real damage, stealing all the light from the room and listening to their pulses quicken, watching them scramble around in abject terror; gotta say, it isn't nearly so funny being burdened with the weakness again himself).
He walks out a ways, once more unsure what it is he expects to find. Perhaps the edge that proved this to be some odd floating island of recollection deep in the mindscape (not that it would explain his vanished powers). Whatever it is, he is disappointed.
...
There is a lump beneath the covers in the bed across from his. It's been there this entire time, really, it's just becoming more difficult to disregard. He avoids turning his eyes that direction as he returns to his (old) bed to lie down. The lump is just another thing wrong with this picture, for more reasons than one. That same force keeping him from lingering too long on the events of the recent past steers him violently away from contemplating the consequences of his recently departed sister's presence here.
His mind rushes to put together what few pieces he does have, but there are far too many holes in the puzzle to see a definite picture forming. Doesn't help that none of the old sources he'd had to work with when he was alive are anywhere to be found. The vast ocean of knowledge in which he was suspended that he once referred to as "ALL THE SECRETS OF THE UNIVERSE", always leaking in without warning whenever he reflexively took a breath (psychically speaking of course, but no not quite), this too was gone; he could no longer sense it sitting ominously just there, beyond his immediate consciousness.
For the first time in years, unanswered questions whizz around in his head like bees, just as difficult to swat away. How could he be here of all times and places? An alternate timeline perhaps? But then where is the version of himself who lives here? Was this part of a dare, a deal? He couldn't think of many powers great enough to banish him outright.
He does not get much further than that. Lying down to think was a bad idea. His eyelids weigh more than he thought possible for things so small and he realizes just how tired he really feels. It's like he hasn't slept in days. To be fair, it's been much longer than that.
Maybe if he just goes back to sleep, all this will fade away again like the dreams he knows as a demon he is incapable of experiencing.
This is the last coherent thought of Dipper Pines before unconsciousness.
.-- .- -.- . / ..- .--.
“Sure you don’t need to see a doctor?” Mabel asks. <for the seventh time>
“Why, so they can hand him two ibuprofen and send him right back home to get some rest?” Stan grunts groggily from his chair, not bothering to open his eyes. Stan, who should be the one being harassed into going to the hospital. Dipper saw the size of the gash across his forehead when the old man changed his bandages this morning. <he hadn’t been as near to the magical explosion as Dipper had been>
“I’m fine, Mabel. Really,” Dipper assures his sister <for the seventh time>, trying hard not to stare at the growing cloud of orange <worry> enveloping her. He wonders if his own fears are so obvious, wonders if that's why she keeps asking.
He doesn't want to know what would happen if he was taken to the hospital. Luckily, no one can force him; he was the only one caught in the blast not to sustain major injury. Visible injury, that is.
Ice clear spikes of useless terror pierce through his heart and shatter into lingering splinters every time he thinks about what sort of damage the colors or the interference buzzing away in his ears could be indicating. He gets these... flashes... too, can feel another one coming up right now, they always build like waves before they crash down over him (holding his breath doesn't help, he's tried). Never retains any of what he sees, goes too quickly to understand, and then it's draining out of him again like water through a sieve. Too real to be nightmares, too nonsensical to be imagined. Impossible to ignore.
<not enough space> <making room>
This... whatever it is. It has to wear off sometime, right? <…> No need to tell anyone just yet. They'd just worry about it. And they've worried enough for now, let them be relieved a little longer. <she waited up all night for him to come back> <she hadn’t known for certain he ever would come back> <but she wasn’t going to say goodnight to an empty bed>
Mabel frowns and continues petting a snoozing Waddles, unconvinced. <no different from the last six times> <no different from the next four> How long until she asks again?
<12 minutes>
<"It's yours now.">
<incorrect>
<you will have to swallow it first>
6 hours
The lump beneath the covers doesn’t stay still for long. It never does.
It shakes him and he growls in complaint, throwing an arm up to shield his eyes in denial of the morning light. He is just noting faintly that he doesn’t sound as menacing as usual when the shape barrels into him, snapping him back into his present predicament.
“Dipper if we don’t get downstairs RIGHT NOW Grunkle Stan’s gonna get to the good cereal first!”
...
After a little more impatient coaxing from his sister, Dipper follows her down the stairs, entering the kitchen just in time to witness a young Stan (well, young in Dipper’s view at least) pouring the last few pentagram shapes into a bowl of milk.
“Nooooooooo...” Mabel whispers, making a show of falling to the floor and beating it softly with a fist in defeat, eyes downcast.
“You know the rules, you two. You snooze, you lose,” Stan mumbles through a mouth full of Golden Penta-Grahams.
Mabel looks up at her Great Uncle accusingly. He swallows. “Hey, it’s not like it’s my fault they’re sacri-licious.”
Although he can’t yet be sure what he’s dealing with, Dipper swears if this turns out to be some sort of trick, the perpetrator is going to pay dearly for dangling this is front of him, the likeness of those who’d once been his two favorite people in the world.
Outwardly he smiles, says, “Mabel it’s alright, I’ll just make us something. I mean it is my fault we got down here so late, right?”
Mabel continues to sulk on the floor, hair covering her eyes now, lying face down. Stan can barely contain his laughter.
“Look, no offense kid, but I don’t think you offering to make macaroni for breakfast is gonna get her hopes up too high,” Stan says, risking a sip of coffee.
Dipper bristles a little at that. “I can totally make breakfast.” And he had. Loads of times. He strides to the refrigerator, determined to prove a point.
6 hours, 10 minutes
Dipper stirs the pasta on the stove while his sister continues to pout at the table. It’d taken a couple minutes to work out a way to pick her up and sit her there, but at least now she isn’t on the floor.
Okay, he knew for a fact he could make peanut butter and banana french toast pancakes, that he’d made them before. So why when he’d gone to actually do so couldn’t he remember exactly how to go about it, what to do first? Must just not have everything he needs. That was it, had to be.
12 hours
His sister is watching him in that way that means she is expecting an explanation. He offers none, pretending to be too invested in his search to notice her staring. Tiger Fist coming back from the commercial break distracts her again soon enough, mercifully granting him yet another extension before the inevitable interrogation.
The date on the newspaper is early; they had been staying with their Great Uncle Stan for little more than a week. Dipper had looked over every page twice. No mention of anything remotely supernatural beyond the usual ridiculous theories; the weirdest thing he discovers is an ad for whiskey toothpaste where he’d expected the ad for the upcoming Tent of Telepathy.
This is going to be tougher than he thought.
14 hours
Mabel Pines finally speaks up when she catches him clearing space in their bedroom. "Bro, are you seriously so bored here you're going to clean?"
Dipper ignores her to step out of the room, returning in no time with an armful of blank paper from the busted copier in Stan’s office (which, to his disappointment, had appeared to be utterly ordinary). He begins carefully laying down the overlapping pieces.
"Maybe you were right, there is something spooky going on here. You can't hear or see me, so maybe I'm turning into a ghost?" she suggests, gesticulating for dramatic effect. Dipper smiles at that despite himself as he starts to draw the foundations of his summoning circle.
It isn't effortless as it should be. Before, he simply Knew what was needed, no matter how complex the circle grew over the years as his power increased. Now he pauses every few minutes to put a hand to his chin and look over the whole thing contemplatively. Was that right? What order did the symbols go in again?
"Just tell me what kind of nerd thing this is, I promise I won't laugh that hard."
"Summoning circle," he answers honestly, as though it were unremarkable, frowning at his wavy lines. He wasn’t the best artist, granted, but it should practically draw itself.
"Oooooh, that's a new one. Whatsit for?" she asks, eyes on the project now, adopting a similar thoughtful pose to her twin.
Dipper shrugs. He hasn't looked up. "Science. Testing a theory and all that."
"You know, my hands are a lot steadier than yours."
...
"You kids wanna eat out tonight?" Stan says, poking his head through the doorway. His clothes are singed, still smoking even, and his eyes are watering behind his glasses. He coughs twice before continuing. "Had a little accident in the kitchen working on my new smoke bombs, gotta air out the place."
The twins look up at their great uncle from drawing a pine tree and shooting star respectively, the final symbols in the elaborate summoning circle now spanning the room's available floor space, candles at every juncture.
A brief pause follows, during which everyone stares at one another. Dipper fishes for the words to break it, but every half-formed explanation he comes up with dies on his tongue before it can be voiced. Can't be sure what's safe.
Then Stan lowers his voice. "Listen, you guys uh, need somethin' for that, take the goat. Little pest's been after my hat for years, nobody'd miss 'im. I'm gonna go start the car."
16 hours
The diner looks much the same. There’s syrup stains on the corner of the table from when they’d been serving breakfast and the nearly inaudible sound system has been playing “What doesn’t kill you” on repeat since they came in (it has Dipper feeling nostalgic, in an irritated sort of way).
The waitress doesn’t know a Lazy Susan.
She knows a Sufficiently Hard-working Susan, her mother, but she doesn’t work here.
Dipper jots a few things down on a napkin for the purposes of his investigation. Then the food arrives and Stan tells him to stow it.
18 hours
Dipper draws a line through the header 'Displacement Theory' in his new spiral notebook, the one onto which he’d traced an outline of his hand as a joke to himself. This wasn’t going to be fixed as easily as summoning himself, it seems. It doesn't help that this iteration of Gravity Falls might as well be named Boring, Oregon; not so much as a fairy repeatedly slamming itself into the nearest light source to be found all day. At least they wouldn't have to worry about unfriendly gnomes trying to steal their kidneys in their sleep.
He glances at the timer on his wrist that he, uh, borrowed from Stan's office earlier and dutifully takes down the time. Either he's slipping up or all this goes beyond a mere illusion; he's sure he would have noticed some spacial or temporal anomaly by now. No flux in the gravity, nobody clipping through any walls. There's a lot of detail to the clutter and peeling wallpaper around the shack, too; he's managed to sketch a lot of the place and periodically visits to check whether everything is still exactly where it'd been. Tough to make something that maintains this level of realistic consistency, he should know. He'll give it another day before he crosses that page out, just to be thorough.
The 'Discrepancies' page is next to be updated. Section 3: Vending Machine. '3 - C - B - 1 - A' goes in the Input column, 'Gelatin Skeletons' under Results.
Moves on to 'Personal Evaluation'. Oh boy. He's been holding off on this one. 'How does he feel?' Normal mostly. Normal's weird. Can't remember the last time he had a body. Man, he's exhausted. And why? Hardly done anything to it yet. Wishes he could return the 'things take actual effort' part of the experience.
Doesn't write any of that down though. That's not what the question meant, he was stalling. Doesn't feel any different, honestly; no more 'human' than before, if human is a feeling to begin with. Beginning to doubt it. Wouldn't be inconsistent; he hadn't felt anything when he changed back then neither. Unless pain counts. Been forever and a day, but his breath hitches just thinking about it. Tastes copper. He turns the page, switches gears immediately; he knows how to cope with mistakes like that.
He starts a new page to brainstorm what spells might still work with S.A. levels as low as they appear to be, gets as far as the header before Mabel challenges him to a game of Monotony and calls dibs on the thimble as she sets up the board.
He looks from the game to the makeshift journal, then back. He ultimately sets the notebook aside and hops down to claim the hat as his game piece (was there any doubt?).
It isn’t as if he’s in a hurry here, right? No not at all. One game can't hurt.
.-- .- -.- . / ..- .--.
“Dipper, google something for me.”
“It’s not google," he says automatically, knowing how much good it would do. As natural as his fledgling powers felt to him, he doesn’t trust that feeling.
“How long would my cardboard boat last in the race tomorrow?” Mabel asks, gesturing to her entry with obvious pride. It was just the size for her, constructed primarily from old corrugated mailing boxes she’d discovered piled near the dumpster. It had a googly-eyed sea serpent at the prow and she wore a cartoonish viking helmet and cardboard shield to match it.
He glances at it over the top of his book and instantly knows this to be a mistake. He feels the word vomit coming, can feel it start to set his teeth tingling like he’s been chewing raw toothpaste. <the boat would start to leak in 343 seconds> <the boat would start to sink in 494 seconds> <the boat would be submerged in 562 seconds> <the boat would be devoured whole by the - >
Mabel quickly raises her hands. “Woah bro, tmi.”
Had he said some of that out loud? Whoops.
“Guess it still needs work, no big deal. I bet Soos will know how to fix it up, boats aren’t that different from golf carts right? They both like, take you places.” She turns to leave. He grabs her arm.
Dipper had been five feet away, but now he is close. Very close.
And his eyes are bright. Very bright.
They don’t quite focus as they meet hers.
His nails dig in painfully, but do not draw blood.
“Hold ̡ųp͡, I ̢ju͡s̡t h́a͢d͟ ̶th́e co̧o̕le͢st i͠d͞ea.́”
<<at this rate> you are going to hurt yourself>
<you <don't> <won't> believe that <but it is true>>
30 hours
Dipper is standing in the shower, motionless, with his face turned into the stream so that the freezing water pounds directly against his eyelids. He wonders how you’re supposed to tell when the shower’s finished. He is pretty sure he is doing this correctly.
He can hear Mabel banging on the door, but she isn’t getting in here until he’s figured this out. She’s always teasing that he needs to shower more, well, wish granted.
32 hours
Revisits 'Discrepancies'.
The third journal isn't where it was. There wasn't even a hidden compartment for it to be stashed in.
Adds a note on a whim: possible human error. (Ha.) He hadn't been completely confident he had the right spot. May be misremembering where he found it all that time ago. Misremembering a lot lately (might warrant its own entry? demon to human, there's gotta be side-effects). He'd mapped out where the hatch was in the journal itself before, of course, but that fact isn't proving particularly useful right about now.
Will try out spells next (should be innate).
Note: change timestamp format. He might be here a while.
34 hours (getting to it)
Mabel teases him for dozing off on the couch during the "Best Part!!!" of the episode, but he can't help it. He hasn't been able to sleep, like really truly sleep, for 95 years.
He doesn't understand why he didn't do it more often when he was alive, naps kick ass.
.-- .- -.- . / ..- .--.
“Oh,” Dipper whispers, and he feels his stubborn grip on reality loosen by another finger. <about time he realized>
“Dude, don’t look now, but you’re phasin’ through the car.” His sister’s voice never fails to reach him when he spaces out, happens so often these days. <still too much> <requires a powerful will to wield>
He looks down to find this is indeed the case; his body <projection> has sunk down partially through the worn material of the seat. Dipper tries to find some purchase with which to pull himself up, but his hands pass through the car door and seat in front of him without resistance.
“Okay...” Dipper mutters, because it's not okay and he doesn't know where to begin to address that.
There’s a thump as the trunk is closed; their parents have finished transferring their luggage from Angel’s <not her name <her name is not important>> car.
[He hasn’t stopped thinking about that moment since they’d met her earlier.
Angel tapping on the window not minutes (seconds?) after they’d broken down on the side of the road (had they even fully come to a stop?). The warmth of her expression as she shouted a greeting over the roar of the wind. The way their car shook as trucks and RVs swept past not three feet from them. The way Angel did not shake, did not even spare a backward glance for the danger.
“You guys need some help?”]
Serendipity, right?
But that doesn’t fit the punch in the gut he’d gotten when her eyes briefly met his. It was more like
<fingers reaching through just as the elevator door is closing> <bus pulling up just as the rain begins to fall>
<winning numbers comprised of loved ones’ birthdays> <”Haven’t seen you in years!”>
<fingers snapping, “Yeah, that was it…”> <long lost loose-ends brought together>
<the right answer circled at the last second> <”What are the odds?”>
And then Mabel had said...
had said, just a moment ago...
<"Wow, she's like, an angel! Don't you think?">
Mabel reaches a finger out to poke him. <<"For science."> she's thinking <"Or um, at least whatever science word they call 'studying magic' now.">> It makes contact easily enough.
“Ow.”
“That hurt?” she asks.
“No, just wasn’t expecting it,” he answers.
She offers her hand then, and he takes it, lets her pull him up and out of the seat. He bobs in the air just above it now, ignoring an entirely different aspect of physics, but he feels better <dignified> nonetheless. Less... disoriented? Grateful that someone's here to ground him while he rides out this sudden out-of-body experience thing.
<stuck like this <for> now> <there's no 'un-knowing' it> Oh. Oh no. But then. How had he - ? <he could only stay physical before because he hadn't known> <magic at rest> <no putting out that fire now that it's stoked> <the arrow of time faces toward entropy>
Outside, their parents are talking to Angel about something, but he cannot hear it. <wrapping up> <thanking her profusely> <less than five minutes> <he needs to tell Mabel now> He isn't sure whether that's due to normal reasons (because they're inside the car, too far away) or on him (because the demon shit keeps distracting him). <the latter>
“Are you like, doing this on purpose?” Mabel gestures vaguely to all of her brother. <not referring to the spacing out> <referring to the intangibility> <she's wondering if he's practicing a spell> "Cuz if you know how to go ghost, I wanna try, don't hold out on me."
Should he start from the beginning, tell her he's the one who caused the breakdown because he's nervous about going back home? <<no need> she already knows> <she is not ready to leave either>
“No. It’s just… I uh... sort of figured out what I am just now.” <Not Angel>
“A huge dork?”
“A demon.”
Like how Bill was. <…>
<that is not how it happened <exactly>>
<he has visited this one too many times <but he does not need to Know <what he already knows <you know>>>>
<he's burnt questions into the fabric of it <brighter than the memory itself <they set off cerulean sparks <even now>>>>
<"What would have happened, if he had never run into Angel? Would he have simply carried on, never knowing what or why he was, for the rest of his life? Would there have been some other trigger? Would he have come apart, as unstable as he was those first few weeks?">
<"Did he know her name back then? Or was it as unimportant to him at the time as it is now?"> <not entirely correct <a name is a marker he could use to find her <non-trivial>>>
<he remembers that feeling of having the wind knocked out of him <over all else here>> <"Had she known what would happen? Did she know what meeting her would awaken in him? She must have, right? So then..."> <"If so...">
<the driver behind his revisiting <"Why?">>
<>
<no answer> <never an answer> <not even silence> <silence would be an answer>
<doesn't stop him trying <doesn't stop him going back <to find something new in the dust <something he must have missed>>>>
<"No answer doesn't mean there won't ever be one.">
<memories aren't toys of course <they break like them all the same>>
<she has <brown> <black> <blonde> <red> hair sometimes>
<she drives a <Civic> <Durango> <Sienna> <Subaru> sometimes>
<she <smiles knowingly> <winks> <waves amiably> <drops the smile> <ignores him altogether> sometimes> <that part is the least consistent>
<all of it too easy <to change> <to imagine>>
<she never talks to him though <only their parents> <that much is always the same> <keeps her eyes on the road mostly <on their blown <shredded> tire<s> before that <unsalvageable <not the only thing here that is>> <vanishes once her good deed is done <as quickly as she appeared>>>>>
<worn smooth as it is from being turned over and over in his mind <he won't miss this one too much>>
<it was lost long ago>
1 day, 13 hours
“Thought you said doing handstands against walls is dumb.”
Dipper attempts to shrug in his current position. He fails.
Mabel joins him in the exercise, hair falling into a heap on the floor. The collar of her oversized sweater, the one featuring the baby giraffe with neon blue spots, slips down to cover half her face, muffling her words. “Betcha I can last longer than you can.”
“I’ll take it.”
He expects her to try and cheat, tickle him or something, but instead she keeps talking.
“What’s the ulterior motive this time, huh? Knowing you, you're probably not doing it for the pretty colors.”
“Trying to jog my memory. You know how you remember things better when you pose like what you were doing at the time?”
“Oh so you’re still on the being a future ghost conspiracy.”
“Demon, actually,” he corrects. “What is it with you and ghosts?”
“Is it working, you think?”
“Not sure. I’m starting to doubt it, I mean I didn’t really have a body at the time anyway.”
“See, that sounds like more of a ghost than a demon.”
“Have you ever met a ghost or a demon, Mabel?”
“Can't say I have.”
“Well there you go.”
Getting a bit light-headed now. They spend a moment concentrating.
“You sure you didn’t just dream the stuff?" Mabel starts again. "I’ve had loads of dreams that felt like they lasted a way long time. Remember that time I had the dream I was a watermelon thief and you were my wisecracking cat sidekick and mom had to stop me from using the bedsheets to climb down from the hotel balcony?” She’s grinning, but Dipper could remember that being amusing to no one else.
“Super sure," he answers, fighting the urge to go into more detail on the unspoken asterisk.
He successfully fails to resist the urge. "I guess it's also possible I could be your Dipper, who's simply contracted the memories of a different Dipper when our realities happened to touch. That happens pretty often, it's the source of a lot of inspiration for this species because their waterlogged brains like to think everything they imagine must’ve been their idea. Yikes! Do you know how many interdimensional copyright law violations humanity’s racked up? Let me tell you, they haven’t invented a number high enough to pay the fine.”
“Is ‘Dipper’s just crazy’ a theory?”
It doesn't get to him; he's planned appropriately for this and doesn't miss a beat. “Yeah, check page 9, it’s grouped together with that other one I mentioned. Just for the sake of completeness, you know.”
Dipper imagines himself striking a victorious pose when Mabel gets up to flip through the notebook on his bed; apparently she’d already forgotten about their bet. He'd remind her later for maximum effect.
“The page that says 'Killjoy Theories'?”
“That’s the one.”
She takes a box of colored pencils out from under her bed and starts drawing pictures in between his notes. Dipper doesn’t make any attempt to stop her, not that one would prove effective. He remembers regretting he hadn’t openly shown more appreciation for the illustrations when his sister was still - Oh would you look at that, time to think about something else.
“I’mma rename these Mabel’s Far Superior Theories. Cuz not to brag or anything, but I have been right every time.”
There's nothing Dipper can say to that, so he lets himself slump to the floor instead. He’s just gonna lie here a minute til the purple goes out of his vision.
Mabel turns a page. Then another. Then flips through them rapidly just to see how many have been written on. “Dude. I haven’t seen you go this serious since those numbers on the boring pages of books conspiracy.”
“See, we’ve been over this, ISBN obviously stands for Incursive Supernatural Beings Network. You know that childrens’ series A Sequence of Inauspicious Happenings? If you write down all their ISBN codes in reverse order, they form a warning in -”
“Aw man, no stop," Mabel groans, falling dramatically back against the bed. "Dipper it’s Summer, I don’t wanna talk about any numbers that aren’t grams of sugar per serving size.”
That's fair.
So they go out for ice cream.
2 days, 5 hours
Mabel opens the trapdoor to the roof to see what all the noise is about, still rubbing the Sandman’s gift out of her eyes. She is just in time to see her brother lob a novelty snowglobe off the roof. It doesn't travel very far.
“Go on, you cowardly thrice-damned ectoparasites, go on!” he is shouting, voice cracking from the exercise. “But I’ll get the last laugh in the end, you’ll see, ‘cause here’s a freebie for you: the humans win! They rid the earth of your wretched kind not forty years from now! So live it up while you can, scions of Faullck the Flesh Eater, these days are your last! Mark me, I've seen it!”
He starts to laugh, loud and maniacal, only to turn and find her staring. An awkward pause.
Then a hand goes up behind his head as he suddenly becomes enamoured with the dawn sky above. He casually nudges something behind him off the roof with a foot; from the crash she hears, it was probably another snow globe.
“The uh. Ahem! Mosquitoes. They got me good last night,” he mumbles. “The bites on my arm even spell out ‘bewart’. They never could get it right.”
Mabel goes back to bed before he can finish stammering out the excuse.
.-- .- -.- . / ..- .--.
His sister did not seem overly worried in the face of his admission that yes, he kind of maybe felt impelled to make her teacher vomit centipedes every time she opens her mouth.
“See this is good, this is communication.” She gives him a thumbs up.
He returns the gesture with an incredulous look. There isn’t much point in being subtle, guarded, or secretive when only his sister can see him most of the time. “It’s a Bad Thing, isn’t it?”
She shrugs and continues to plait her hair over one shoulder. “You’re overblowin’ it, it’s a perfectly human thing to wonder about stuff like what the inside of someone’s digestive tract might look like hung up for birthday streamers.”
She pauses, considering the drawing she’d been working on. “Hm, you know. That’d probably look way festive actually.”
“BUT!” she continues, and the force of the word nearly makes him jump (or at least, hover a little higher in midair), “Not only would that be gross and smell really bad and make us sick, those thoughts?” She taps her skull. “Go directly into the thought incinerator, never to darken my mindscape again. The end.”
“And if I don’t have a thought incinerator?” Dipper asks, palms up, humoring her.
“Nah I’m pretty sure everyone has built in memory disposals. You’re just being a drama llama.”
“Okay I am like 80% sure you are fucking with me but - “
“Dude, language, there are like children present,” Mabel interrupts, pointing at the stuffed animals over on her bed. He just rolls his eyes.
“Come on bro, you are this big shot demon right? Just exile those tiny thought demons.. “ She makes an arch with one hand and mimes a person walking through with the other. “Straight to tiny thought hell.”
“Language,” he says, a small jerk of his head indicating their impressionable velveteen audience.
She frowns, confused. “What did I say?”
“Hell.”
“Dipper.”
“Sorry. Er. Heck?”
She throws up her hands. “You see that, you see what you did, it is like rubbing off on me. I’m gonna have to wash my mouth out with soap now thanks to you.”
He just grins; she knew how to cheer him up. At least he does until he sees flecks of grey dulling her aura as she exits their room a little too quickly to be casual. She's been trying to hide it, but he can tell making faces like that has been unnerving her since his eyes changed. He reminds himself for the twenty third time to be more careful, he’s gotta make sure to appear as harmless as possible.
She comes back in after making more gargling sounds in the bathroom than likely were necessary for the sake of the joke, now wearing a pair of glittery pink glasses in the shape of the year 2010. She gets out a notepad and pen (topped with a bright yellow smiley face), and tries unsuccessfully to give him a thoughtful, professional look through the 0′s of the glasses.
“Now, tell me all about these intrusive thoughts of yours.”
Dipper, for his part, reclines as best he can in the air, crosses his legs, and threads his fingers together behind his head. “Well, it all started when Mrs. Baker was taking a bite of the apple Marina brought her right. I figured, wouldn’t it just be a riot if I did it just then? It’d be like one of those fairy tales with the cursed apples, and instead of listening to book reports for another hour you guys could suggest funny ways for her to break the spell. Didn’t you want to set her up with Mr. Erskin sometime? You could tell her to try and kiss him, maybe make up a story about how his name means ‘prince’ or something noble like that, and then I’d take back what I did, we could have been a team and -”
“Bro, cool down a sec.” Mabel holds up her hand mirror and he reflexively looks over at it. His eyes have started to glow.
Dipper takes a deep breath and slowly releases it, the light dissipating somewhat in response. “Sorry.”
<still not ready>
“S’ okay. Now then, in my very esteemed and well-educated opinion, you’re just getting wicked bored in class like everyone else.” She takes off the glasses and lays down her pad of paper. Dipper can make out a drawing of a little rabbit in a tuxedo out of the corner of his eye.
“.. Are you sure?” he asks cautiously. He’d like to believe that’s true, but wouldn’t put it past his sister to be downplaying things in order to spare his feelings. And also, he suspected, to keep him from becoming upset again. He didn’t like entertaining the thought she might fear him on some level, but at the same time he found it hard to believe she could be comfortable around him when it’s been weeks and those two bullies still haven’t come back to class.
“Positively sure and surely positive,” she says light-heartedly enough, soothing his reservations. “If it happens again maybe just, uh... hop into somebody’s daydream and make it really cool? You guys could have an imagination flexing contest!”
...
Mrs. Baker just couldn’t understand it. My Brother Sam is Dead could be a little slow, sure, but half her students had gone glass-eyed ten minutes into class time and she hasn’t once been able to switch readers without reannouncing which page they’re on. She hopes she isn’t becoming the new “boring” teacher, but she makes a note to start tomorrow off with a video. Just in case.
<'you' does not promise an 'I'>
<reflect on mirrors>
2 weeks, 1 day, 12 hours
"You taking that umbrella to hide from Wendy?" Mabel asks playfully just before Dipper is about to head off, whispering the name at the end like the teenager was still around to overhear them and not well on her way home for the day.
"What, this?" He brandishes the cheap grey umbrella he pilfered from the gift shop that he’s bringing along in case of argopelters. "No no, just bringing it along in case of rain. Why uh, why would you think that?"
Her only response is to give him a look. He thought he'd done a better job of concealing how uncomfortable Wendy’s behavior made him than that. Her oddly coquettish demeanor had been strange enough to merit devoting a few pages of his makeshift journal to solid character descriptions for him to compare people against in the future in order to detect future anomalies (Note: Wendy is cool. All uncool behavior should be reported 'suspicious'.). It also contributed to the evidence sustaining what he'd dubbed the Childhood Wish Fulfillment Theory.
That was only one of the many entries still in his current list of possible explanations for this mess of course. Alternate Universe Theory, Psychic Burnout Theory, Vague Yet Menacing Government Agency Theory, Time Time Theory, the list goes on. There was Demon World Theory too, of course. He’d exiled it to the very last page, where the cardboard met the paper and he didn’t have to think about it often.
Dipper heads out, knowing he hasn’t convinced Mabel, and indeed putting up the umbrella as he passes Wendy’s place (five minutes later he realizes that could only have made him more conspicuous). It takes him a while, but he finally stops near the fence of a house whose address he briefly opens his notebook to the character section to confirm. He approaches the door nervously and knocks, wondering if this isn’t a bad idea.
A little old woman answers the door. He knows her, can tell that much on sight, even if he isn't sure just how. He’s come to realize there are quite a few people in Gravity Falls who trigger that feeling.
Roughly five minutes later, Dipper scribbles Soos’s name beside Lazy Susan and McGucket in his notebook, adds a note that the guy lives with his father, and heads back to the shack, dejected.
Worst thing is, he can't even say he misses the guy. It's not enough feeling disappointed about not getting to see a dear friend again. When he misses people now, he doesn't see their faces, doesn't hear their voices, doesn't see the time spent together the way he should. He knows what happened in them, knows what they mean to him, but the memories of the events themselves are refusing to come when he calls them, more and more. And knowing alone isn't anything special. He Knows lots of things.
Unnerving.
He could remember a time when he wanted nothing more than to move past the events of Last Summer. Nobody forgets their death, but then most have it easy. Meet death, start fresh; new person, no problem. Dipper had met his death only for it to turn and follow him around like the most loyal of dogs, bounding to the forefront of his thoughts when he and his sister both blew out their birthday candles but only she was another year older.
Now he concentrates as hard as he dares on the details buried deep in the past, digging for something, anything meaningful. It should be easy; it was Soos, for goodness' sake! Holding on for dear life that time the two of them went golf car drag racing with him, what his bear hugs felt like, the way he sounded when he laughed for way too long at one of Dipper's terrible jokes to cheer him up; anything would work. But just what it is he's lost this time eludes him, and not for the first time since he came here.
Dark clouds gather above, as if fueled by his building frustration. It's a good thing he brought an umbrella.
2 weeks, 1 day, 13 hours
It rains. They spend the rest of the afternoon collecting slugs for Mabel’s shell service (she's painted the shells rainbow colors for opening week).
Dipper does not ask his sister why they are doing this. He knows well enough that the why seldom crosses her mind. It isn’t something she needs.
Dipper does take a moment to inform her that snail shells are part of the snail itself and are affixed to their bodies, not serendipitously discovered by lucky slugs. "Oh,” she says. They continue collecting.