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Most adults - and Dipper - figured they knew all the important stuff. Mabel was an expert in many things that may not have been scientifically important, but were useful to know.
She knew which spot to scratch Waddles when he bumped her hand. She knew not to trust anyone whose hair was bigger than his head. And she knew that Grunkle Stan, no matter how sneaky he thought he was, actually really liked her.
And unfortunately, she shuddered to admit, she was the only expert in the world on Dipper. Her annoying, dorky brother who couldn’t seem to make friends back home like Mabel could, who could somehow concentrate in school the way she never could, and who knew her better than any of their closest friends. Somehow the nerd she’d been stuck with since birth was the only person she could glance at and he would immediately understand her.
So it bugged her that she hadn’t noticed anything was wrong at the premiere of “Glove Story”. She thought he was being his weird puberty self; sweaty, smelly and sleep deprived - and totally over possessive of his dumb journal. The fact that he leant it to her at all (well, he hadn’t really given his permission, now did he), while fixating on something else, was practically unheard of. He’d done that long before this summer, where he would focus on only one thing for weeks at a time and avoided sleeping and eating.
So it was a nice change of pace and character when he said he wanted to play a part in her show.
Until he had to tell her with his disembodied puppet self that it wasn’t him at all , but the creepy, one-eyed triangle from Stan’s mind. Apparently staying with Grunkle Stan all summer hadn’t taught him anything about sketchy deals and con artists. Dipper, too desperate and sleep deprived to actually understand the fine print, made a mistake.
Because she hadn’t been there.
Would that have changed anything? If she’d kept her promise, would she have been able to slow him down enough to make him see how bad it sounded?
But that was the point. She hadn't been there. And he got hurt.
You didn’t seem to have a problem taking it for your own play. Or ditching him when he needed you.
She didn't like the squirmy, heavy feeling in her stomach those words gave her.
Your fault .
She rolled over and squinted at the lump of sheets across the room.
Oregon was humid in the summer, a far cry from the dry heat of Piedmont. The layer of damp air seemed so heavy you could almost swim through it during the day. But at night, when the oppressive heat finally lifted, it was almost nice. If they cracked open the window, and left the squeaky old fan running, their attic could be their home.
In hindsight, they could’ve just asked Grunkle Stan to move both their beds to the empty room downstairs with the rug. It might have been cooler down there, with less stains on the ceiling, but she remembered what her Grunkle grumbled out the first day they arrived, when Dipper pointed out the patches in the ceiling, the splinters, the heat, and the goat on his bed.
“Eh. Builds character.”
That was fine with her. She was already built just fine, thank you very much. She hoped Dipper got built into less of a nerd.
And he had. This summer was building him into someone that kids back home could maybe someday respect. He could hold an axe, he knew how to punch, and he got a really cool, 15/10 hottie to be his friend (after hopelessly obsessing over her like a weirdo).
But something like this - this being possessed by a demon - was not so much character building, as it was force-feeding him nightmares to make sure he’d never sleep again.
Speaking of which.
Dipper had left his bed nearly fifteen minutes ago. This late, that was too long for a midnight pee. He could have been going outside, but that didn’t seem likely.
He'd been acting weird since the opera. Not not himself. No, he was very much acting like himself, but with too many Dipperisms.
He couldn't sit still, not even to sit down and read, which he loved to do. He'd worked the gift shop shift for two days straight and hadn't complained once.
He hadn't combed his hair in a few days. Not like he combed it much at all, but Mabel had a sneaking suspicion that he was avoiding anything to do with taking care of himself.
But the one that bothered Mabel the most, was that he hadn't left her side once. He tried to act cool about it, but Mabel knew he was following her and Grunkle Stan. Sticking close to them in a way that he hadn't done all summer. Whenever she left a room he followed. Not even to talk, just to watch her knit or paint or play with Waddles, which was weird .
And today, when she'd had enough of this, she pulled out the big guns, thinking for sure he'd cave and finally leave her alone, and put on Dream Boy High 4: Homecoming 4 U. But he sat through the whole thing.
Given how he’d been acting for the last few days, it couldn’t hurt to check on him.
Mabel kicked her blanket to the end of the mattress and sat up. Time to build some character.
She grabbed her stuffed unicorn, careful not to squeeze it too hard, and slipped out of bed. Waddles gave some sleepy snorts, and curled in tighter against her pillow.
She snuck down the stairs to the main hall of the shack, careful to avoid the creaky spot outside Grunkle Stan’s room, and she saw the dim light framing the doorway of the bathroom.
The closer she got, she could hear the sink running. She was surprised Stan hadn’t woken up from the sound of wasted water. The man could hear a dime drop on the front lawn.
She tucked the unicorn under her arm and rested her forehead against the door with a hollow thump.
“Dip dop?”
A gasp. “Mabel?”
She yawned. “No it’s your other twin, goofus.”
The water shut off, and a second later the door creaked open. He was wearing the same shirt he’d been wearing for the past month. It had faded to a gross grayish pink color, and was somehow still classified as a shirt despite the fact that it could probably stand up on its own by now.
He kept his left hand, the one with the splint, pressed close to his chest. His hair stuck up in different directions, and made him look even more disturbed.
He squinted around, eyes darting.
She waved a hand in front of his face. “Earth to Dipper.”
He started, and shook his head. Once he focused on her, he just stared, his fingers tightening around the door frame.
“You okay?” she said with a wobbly smile.
His face scrunched up. He left the door open and turned back to the mirror above the sink. He stared at his reflection and pulled down his lower eyelid. “There’s something wrong with me,” he mumbled.
Mabel glanced down the hall to make sure Stan’s door was still shut, then squeezed through the door and shut it behind her.
Dippin’ Sauce had dipped too far, into the sauce, so to speak.
“Well sure,” she shrugged. “But we’ll find you someone. There’s a million Wendies - ”
“No!” He raked both hands through his hair, fingers catching on tangles and ripping them out.
“No, there’s something I can fee - I know it’s wro-ong.” His voice cracked. He wiped a hand over his mouth. “It’s like he’s still - and he’s gonna… gonna - ”
He curled his fingers into his hair and hunched in on himself.
He looked terrible. Nearly as bad as last Friday.
“I looked, but they’re normal, but-but that could be what he wants me to think. If he’s in my head he’s…” He whirled around. “Look at my eyes!”
Mabel blinked and took a step back. Both eyes were bloodshot either from lack of sleep or him pulling at the skin around them. And he had dark shadows that gave his whole face a haunted mask look. But they were still his eyes. They weren’t that awful yellow, that slit pupil of something far more Other, than anything remotely human.
How had she not seen it? And that horrifying grin that stretched his face apart. That was the real haunted mask.
This was just her brother's face. Her very, very exhausted brother.
“Yeah. Yeah they’re normal.” She poked his cheek, and he jerked away. “Two googly eyes that need some sleep.”
He shook his head. “I can’t. That’s how it ha-appened. That’s what the Author said -”
It took every ounce of character building self she had not to roll her eyes into the fourth dimension. Author this, Author that. Forget Wendy. Dipper’s one true love was the jerkface that was even more paranoid than him.
She pressed her fingertips together and sighed. “Well Mabel says it’s time to shut your yaps and go to bed.”
But he wasn’t listening. Didn’t even seem to hear her.
He was fidgeting and twitching, that stage of no sleep where he thought if he stayed moving, he could stay awake. He’d surpassed chewing on his shirt.
Mabel puffed a strand of hair out of her face and thrust out the purple unicorn. Dipper took it without seeming to realize what he was doing and hugged it to his chest. “Buy my forty-two accessories!” it chimed.
He wrinkled his nose and ran his fingers through the polyester mane. Mabel used both hands on his shoulders to sit him down on the edge of the tub.
He looked up at her, exhausted beyond the point of words, and she understood him. It weirded people out, she knew. That she and Dip could just give a look and know what they were thinking. If it was a super power, she wished it could have been something cooler. Like a Mabel Touch. All she had to do was touch something and make it Mabel-er. Like that Meebus guy who made gold.
She squeezed his shoulders. “I believe you. I was there.”
Eventually.
He squeezed the unicorn again, and shut his eyes. His shoulders slumped in relief.
“Invest in friendship!”
Mabel grabbed a relatively clean washcloth and held it under the tap until her fingers ached from the cold. She wrung it out enough that it wouldn’t soak his shirt, before folding it in half and slapping it on the back of his sweaty neck. He jumped, but other than squeezing the unicorn again, didn’t move.
She’d done this for him a few times since they’d come to Gravity Falls. Usually their dad did it back home. He called it, ‘cooling off’. Sometimes Dipper’s twitchy, worried brain overwhelmed him and because thoughts weren’t something he could crumble into a ball and throw away, his body needed a way to know that it didn’t need to worry anymore.
Mabel honestly didn't get it. Thoughts for her varied from moment to moment sometimes in the microseconds. They never stayed with her like they did with Dipper. And she was happy to let them bounce from neuron to neuron, bringing her new ideas and leaving old ones behind.
Dipper just wasn't built that way. Thoughts were like a glue trap for him. He froze on that thought trap, stuck in place and unable to move. He lived in his brain in a way that Mabel just didn't. She enjoyed making the outside world match what was in her head.
Dipper seemed… well, not content to stay in his head, but something close to hesitant acceptance. To keep his thoughts just that: thoughts. And sometimes he couldn't focus on anything else.
They sat on the edge of the tub, droplets plopping to the rust stain around the drain, while Mabel recited all the Our Mini Horse characters. Princess Love-a-corn, Star Stripesn’banners, Dawntreader Breaker, Stompfoot Bighooves…
“But my actual favorite is Fashionista Prancer. She’s a business woman, and a unicorn. What’s not to love?”
She flipped the washcloth over, and Dipper shivered as the cool side made contact. He still had that wild, panicky look in his eye, but at least he was sitting. He wasn’t looking at himself anymore.
She held a hand over her yawn. “Your turn. Tell me about something you like.”
He sniffed and rubbed his eye. “ Tigerfist ?”
That was easy, everyone liked Tigerfist .
“Anything else?”
He drummed his heels against the side of the tub. “I like… Matteo Wagon TM .” The racing car game that Mabel always kicked his butt in. Mabel liked that one too. She could design her wagon however she wanted it to be.
They hadn’t gotten to play since the start of summer. They were supposed to be taking it easy the next couple of days, maybe it would cheer him up to play again.
She looked at the back of the hand holding her stuffed animal. He had to wear the splint a few more days, and she’d switched out the generic bandages on his arms to ones with multiple colors and stars on them. The last time she’d looked, all the cuts - four equally spaced apart puncture marks - along his forearms were scabbed over. They were everywhere.
It was the angriest she’d seen Grunkle Stan all summer, angrier than the zombie incident. Despite Dipper’s insistence that he needed a hospital, Grunkle Stan had everything they needed in an old first aid kit from the 70s, and a bag of frozen peas for the goose egg on the back of his head. Mabel helped Stan make a splint out of a pair of rulers and an Ace bandage.
When he’d taken off the Reverend jacket, and they both saw the crusted smears of red along the white sleeve, Grunkle Stan looked… scary. Which was weird . He wasn’t a scary man, no matter what Dipper said. He was a big ole softy under that crusty old man exterior. It was an act.
But in the kitchen, at that moment, Mabel got it. Because it wasn’t an act. There was no satisfied smile that he’d succeeded in scaring someone to do his bidding, in making them react to him. It wasn’t a show for other people. It was all him.
He gripped Dipper’s arm in a huge fist, high above the cuts, and looked him up and down - the same look he gave tourists to guess how much money they had on them. And what he saw on Dipper made him furious.
Dipper had actually had the nerve to roll his eyes. “It wasn’t me, man.”
Stan raised an eyebrow and must have loosened his grip because Dipper pulled his arm away.
“Don’t you, ‘me man’, me, buster,” he growled. “You think I wouldn’t notice? You think I’m stupid ? Hell, I’ll ship ya back home faster than you can say ‘voluntary commitment’. And I damn well should!”
He crossed his arms, and his eyes flicked between them. He finally glared at Dipper.
“Where’s the book?”
Dipper’s mouth dropped open. “It wasn’t - ”
Stan curled his lip. “It never is.” Something in his voice had sounded familiar. Something annoyed, and bitter, like this was a common reoccurrence. But that didn’t make sense. Stan hadn't even seen the journal until after the Gideon-bot. He said he knew about the town, about how weird it was, and how dangerous it could be, but the weirdness, and what trouble they sometimes got into, wasn't just linked to the journal.
Stan knelt, and looked at him very seriously in the eye. More serious than Mabel had ever seen.
“You told me - you promised - that you weren’t gonna use that journal to go lookin’ for trouble. So if it wasn’t about that book, and it wasn’t your fault, then it musta been someone else -” and here he looked knowingly at both of them. “Someone who’s been in charge aya all summer, someone with a lot to lose if this story ain’t straight.” He paused to let that sink in.
He straightened up. “So what’s the story?”
And Dipper looked scared then. Mabel pressed her lips together, and watched wide-eyed as Dipper could barely shake his head, fighting against whatever he was feeling in that moment. The terror of what would happen if someone made assumptions about his injuries, about Stan’s quality of care for the both of them, and the consequences that would follow.
To return to a house that may not have Mom-and-Dad anymore.
“It - I didn't, but..." and he looked at Mabel.
The thing about lies - the good lies, anyway - was that they were always composed of half truths. Like those blackout poems where you took passages in a book or article and made something new from it.
She held his wrist to help him get the words out.
Dipper didn't need to lie to their uncle, just black out some of the unnecessary details.
He hung his head. "It was my fault,” he mumbled at his feet. “But it wasn’t - I didn’t do it on purpose. I fell. A lot. It wasn’t because of the journal.”
He looked hurt. Betrayed by the fact that Stan was using something he cared about against him. He looked helplessly at Mabel. They had promised to be more honest with Stan. He knew about the weird stuff they’d seen, but he had lied to them too, and made Dipper feel crazy because he said none of it was real.
So instead, they kept it all to themselves. Like a lot of things that had happened this summer.
Mabel had learned a lot in Gravity Falls. She learned that adults didn't always know everything, and that it was okay to lie. And sometimes there wasn't always someone there to comfort you, so you had to comfort yourself. A demon hurting her brother made her want the security of an adult who could make all the bad things go away, but that demon had also tried to hurt the only adult looking after them.
Sometimes all you had was each other.
But together, they could get through it.
She took the washcloth away and shifted off the lip of the tub.
“Bedtime.”
He shook his head. “It’s not going to he- e lp,” his voice cracked.
“Let’s just try it the Mabel way. And if the Mabel way doesn’t work, we’ll try it the Dipper way.”
“What way?”
“Where it gets worse and worse until you make another deal with a square demon when you’re too tired to think straight.”
He sighed and hung his head.
“Come on bro-bro. Mabel’s got a plan.”
He followed behind as she led the way back to their room. He sat on his bed and watched her rummage through her bag of yarn projects, tossing knitting needles, stitch counters, different colors of yarn out until she found what she needed.
She'd started this a few days ago with a ball of soft, thick yarn ordinarily used to make blankets. But Mabel found it made the best wearable blanket she called the Comfy (Trademark Mabel Pines). The goal was to make it body length, but right now it only came to her waist.
She tugged out the needle holding the stitches in place and started to unravel her progress.
Mabel pulled out a long string of it and crossed the room to Dipper’s side.
She tied one end around his ankle and then pulled out enough slack so that it touched the ground while she crawled back into her own bed. She tied the other end around her ankle. Just as she'd thought, the yarn was perfect and thick enough that it wasn't cutting off circulation.
Dipper watched all this with quiet gratification. He straightened his knee, holding the yarn over the floor and followed the trail until he found the matching end on Mabel’s ankle. He gave her a tired smile.
Now they would know. If Dipper got up in the middle of the night, either of his own accord or something far more dis cordable, it would wake her.
It wouldn’t happen again because she was with him now, literally connected.
Dipper slid under the covers, the string of yarn disappearing up under his blankets, and turned on his side, Mabel's stuffy tucked under his chin. Mabel did the same, cuddling up to Waddles.
Mabel Pines wasn't as smart as her twin. She didn't know the presidents in order, or how to incorporate variables in algebra. But she knew how to make her brother laugh when he took himself too seriously. She knew how to make lifelong friends with people in less than sixty seconds.
And she knew deep in her heart that out of all those friends, no matter how much she cared about them, there was only one person she would fight a timeless demon for, jump from a moving train for, end the world for.
But that was a problem for the future.