Chapter Text
Where…. Where am I?
Cold. It was so cold. A biting, almost painful cold permeated the air, seeping into Dipper's bones despite the layers he felt he should have been wearing. He shivered, his breath clouding instantly in a thick plume. Dipper's eyes slowly opened, heavy and gritty, taking in the desolate, overwhelming scene before him. An immense, unbroken forest stretched in every conceivable direction, a wall of black, skeletal trees whose branches clawed at the moonless sky. The silence was profound, broken only by the faint, eerie creak of wood in the distance. He didn't recognize his immediate location—a small, rocky clearing—nor the specific species of pine dominating the landscape, but a primal, oddly comforting part of his subconscious knew instantly this was a dream.
Yet, the frigid air clung to him with a terrifying, realistic intensity, a relentless, suffocating embrace that felt far too real for a mere nocturnal vision. He pushed himself to sit up, noticing the dew-soaked ground beneath him, and looked skyward. High above the forest canopy, the only source of illumination was a full, perfectly circular moon. But it was wrong. Horribly, disturbingly wrong. Instead of the pale, serene glow he expected, the celestial body was a stark, glossy black sphere with a brilliant white '8' emblazoned squarely in the center, an astronomical anomaly that strangely resembled a cosmic 8-ball, silently mocking his disorientation. The sight sent a fresh wave of dread through him, confirming that this was no ordinary dream—it was a manifestation of something tied directly to the strangeness he had sought to escape.
.Dipper trekked through the dense, unforgiving forest, a chill that seemed to emanate from the very heart of the woods seeping into his bones. Each step he took felt monumental, a struggle against an invisible, oppressive weight that grew heavier with every meter he covered. It was as if the ground itself had turned against him, the soft earth giving way and clutching at his worn sneakers, creating a sensation chillingly similar to walking through quicksand.
The cold was merciless, a biting, relentless air that stung his exposed skin and made his lungs ache with every shallow breath. The wind, a howling, disorienting force, whipped through the towering pines, carrying with it a symphony of unsettling creaks and groans that echoed around him. It didn't just move the trees; it seemed to push him, throwing him slightly off balance, forcing him to lean into the gale just to stay upright.
The trees themselves were overwhelming, a black and green maze that consumed the sky. They stood shoulder-to-shoulder, their thick, gnarled trunks blurring into a suffocating wall of nature. The sheer density of the forest was a sensory assault. He couldn't focus on any one thing—the relentless cold, the shrieking wind, the endless, looming silhouettes of the pines—all of it merged into a single, terrifying overload. His mind struggled to process the torrent of stimuli. He felt a profound, alarming disorientation; his internal compass had spun completely out of control, and he genuinely couldn't tell up from down, nor left from right in the deepening gloom. He was lost, and the forest knew it.
But the smell of the forest was familiar.
A wave of potent nostalgia, bittersweet and overwhelming, crashed over him, a powerful tide pulling him back into the golden haze of his adolescence. Each incoming wave carried with it a distinct, vivid memory. He remembered the boundless, almost desperate energy of his youth, running endlessly through the dense, whispering woods behind his childhood home, the sun dappling through the canopy overhead. He could feel again the stinging brush of branches and the sudden, sharp snag of twigs on his worn-out clothes, small, insignificant injuries that were immediately forgotten in the sheer joy of motion.
There was the sound, too—the breathless, uninhibited laughter that echoed in the clear summer air, shared with friends whose faces now seemed softer, less defined by time. That laughter was the soundtrack to those long, perfect days, a spontaneous expression of a happiness that felt absolute and permanent. And then there were the Summer crushes, fleeting but intense infatuations that felt like the most important thing in the world at the time.
He felt so profoundly free then. It was a visceral sensation, a lightness in his chest as if the weight of the future and the complexity of adulthood simply didn't exist. He truly believed, with an innocent, unwavering conviction, that he could do anything, that the world was an open book waiting for his adventurous hand to write its pages. Now, standing here years later, the contrast with his current life—measured, responsible, and a little confining—made the ache of remembrance all the sharper. He yearned for that effortless sense of possibility that only the endless Summers of youth could provide.
But he knew it wasn’t real. The nostalgia shattered instantly once he realized it, as he felt a sudden dread in his chest. His brain went into overdrive as his legs began to run. Running through the endless and dark forest.
His heart was beating out of his chest like a drum, his legs aching as he was running from the invisible force that he felt was behind him.
The trees around him began to blur, becoming streaks of green and black. His throat was dry, his stomach was lurching. He felt as if he was going to vomit at any moment.
Then finally, he made it to a clearing. A cliffside, overlooking a beautiful and vast lake. The ‘8’ ball moon was shining brighter than ever. The stars twinkled in the night sky. It was peaceful here. Calming.
Dipper took a moment to catch his breath, looking behind him to see if anything was following him, only to be met with silence.
He sighed in relief, as he looked upon the calm, blue lake. The cold was no longer relentless, now a cool and crisp breeze.
We’ll meet again…
Eerie, distorted music, a sound both sickeningly sweet and deeply unsettling, drifted through the dense, twilight-shadowed trees of the forest. It instantly shattered the fragile peace Dipper had managed to find in the quiet woods, a peace he rarely felt and desperately clung to. The sound wasn't a melody so much as a fractured, warbling nightmare, like an old music box drowning in static.
A jolt of pure, adrenalized fear shot through him, a familiar, unwelcome sensation. His hands instantly clenched into fists, and he executed a quick, almost panicked spin, his boots crunching loudly on the underbrush. His eyes, wide and darting, frantically scanned the gloom, searching for the source of the insidious auditory assault. The sound seemed to be coming from everywhere and nowhere at once, a ghostly auditory illusion echoing off the towering pines. Every shadow seemed to deepen, and every rustle of leaves was magnified into a potential threat by the oppressive, wrongness of the music.
Don’t know where…
There it was again. Dipper was ultimately freaked. The voice that was singing, it sounded familiar. Familiar, yet unfamiliar at the same time. Honestly, it sounded like his voice. But it couldn’t be.
No. It couldn’t be.
Don’t know when…
Dipper slowly rotated, his boots grinding against the loose earth near the precipice. His gaze was drawn reluctantly, yet inexorably, back toward the sprawling, dizzying chasm that fell away from the open cliffside. But it wasn't the breathtaking, vertiginous drop that arrested his breath—it was what stood at the edge, a sight that clawed at the periphery of his sanity.
He was met with an unholy, sickening sight that made the world tilt on its axis and the air grow cold: The statue.
It was a crude, stone effigy, instantly recognizable, and sickeningly familiar. A morbid monument to his deepest, most traumatic memory. The statue of his worst nightmare. Cold, gray, and silent, yet radiating a palpable malice that seemed to leach the warmth from the sun. The sight of it brought a surge of raw, animal terror that he'd thought he had long since compartmentalized. The oppressive weight of its presence was a cruel joke, a permanent, physical reminder of that summer and the impossible, apocalyptic struggle. It was the stony representation of that psychopathic, triangular, eldritch being—the nightmare entity who had almost ended the world, who had invaded his mind and threatened everything he held dear. The very air around the inert rock seemed to hum with residual, unseen power, reminding Dipper that even in defeat and petrification, the malice of Bill Cipher remained, his outstretched arm awaiting a handshake.
Dipper stared at it, his eyes unmoving. His face was a mix of curiosity and dread. He didn’t know what to do. Should he wait and see what happens? Destroy it? Run away? So many options, yet so little time.
He turns around, opting to walk away, wanting this nightmare to end. Suddenly, he stops in his tracks. He looks at the statue once more, feeling a strange sensation wash over him.
He slowly approaches it, each footstep getting heavier as he gets closer, the stone beneath his worn boots pulling at him with a magnetic, awful attraction he couldn't fight. His heart hammered a frantic rhythm of dread against his ribs, his arm reaching out in an autonomous movement as a force far older and darker than he could comprehend took the reins, guiding him like a puppet.
The air felt thick and charged, and as he neared the statue, its cyclopean eye, a shimmering black orb, began to glow with a searing, malevolent orange, the light of a star dying violently, which illuminated its jagged contours. The wind escalated into a cyclonic vortex, thunder cracked overhead with the sound of the sky being torn, and the small lake below became violently agitated, waves smashing against the cliff in furious, rhythmic assaults, as if nature itself was recoiling and begging him to stop, yet the trance was absolute, the pull irresistible, sealing his fate by the unholy light pouring from that terrible, watchful eye.
His hand accepted the statue’s handshake, his hand wrapping around the stone hand. Then everything stopped. The wind, the thunder, the crashing waves. Everything came to a standstill.
Dipper looked around, expecting something, anything to happen. But nothing came. He sighed in relief, as he began to pull away.
But it wouldn’t budge. His hand was stuck. He or his hand couldn’t seem to let go of Bill. He began violently thrashing, desperately trying to pull away, as he heard laughter in the air.
That laugh.
That poisonous, evil laugh.
You’re mine now, Pinetree.
Suddenly, the statue began to produce a blue flame, slowly spreading over it. Dipper’s heart sank. What the hell did he do? Why did he shake his hand? How stupid could he be?
The statue, once a symbol of the bizarre and the magical, now pulsed with a malevolent, searing energy as the flame fully consumed it. Like a ravenous beast, the inferno lunged, its tendrils of incandescent heat immediately grasping at Dipper. A primal, agonizing scream tore itself from his lungs as the fire made contact, beginning to sear his flesh with unimaginable intensity. The heat wasn't just hot; it was absolute, a consuming force that promised nothing but obliteration.
The flame intensified, growing brighter and hotter with every millisecond, a dazzling, terrible white-hot light that cast sharp, dancing shadows on the surrounding rock. It moved with sickening purpose, snaking up his arms, the thin cotton of his t-shirt vaporizing instantly, leaving the skin beneath exposed to the direct assault. The agony became systemic as the fire climbed his torso, then wrapped itself around his legs. His denim jeans, thick as they were, offered no resistance, shriveling and turning to ash that fused with the rapidly charring skin beneath.
In the midst of this torturous incineration, a chorus of laughter, loud, echoing, and utterly devoid of mercy, swelled around him. It was the sound of ultimate triumph, the soundtrack to his destruction. Dipper could feel his own life force being violated, his blood beginning to boil beneath the surface of his skin, a sickening internal pressure building. His peripheral nerves, the very conduits of pain, were being burnt into black, useless strands, yet the pain only multiplied, shifting from sharp, localized agony to a dull, all-encompassing throb of systemic failure.
Finally, with a terrifying, blinding flare, the fire engulfed his head. His entire body was now a beacon of agonizing light, trapped within a prison of the most elemental destruction.
The unbearable temperature turned his delicate ocular tissue to liquid, his eyes melting out of their sockets in two sickening, hissing streams. The hair on his head—once thick, now sparse—sizzled away in puffs of smoke that smelled of sulfur and burnt keratin. Inside his mouth, the heat was so intense and immediate that he could feel his tongue cooking, seizing up and hardening against his palate. The final, desperate sounds of his screaming were abruptly choked off, not by willpower, but by sheer physical ruin. His throat and vocal chords, the instruments of his suffering cries, had been incinerated, leaving him in a state of absolute, silent agony—a burning statue, completely and horribly alone in the fire.
“.....per.”
You and I, Pinetree, we’re gonna have a hell of a time.
“....pper.”
You should’ve known, kid.
“...ipper.”
I always come back.
“Dipper?!”
June 12, 2016
One Week Into Summer Vacation
Dipper shot up in his bed in a cold sweat. Heart pounding, his throat dry. His vision was a bit blurry, only seeing a blob of pink and a brown mass of curls. As his vision returned to normal, it revealed that the mass was his sister, Mabel. He stood over him with a face of concern.
“Everything okay, bro-bro?”
Dipper looked at her. He waved off her concern, as he laid back down and turned over. “Yeah, I’m fine. Don’t worry about it.”
Mabel no longer had a face of concern. “Dude, you looked like you were having a seizure.”
Dipper turned around to witness his sister on the floor, reenacting what he could only assume was his state during his slumber.
Dipper rolled his eyes, turning back over, but Mabel wasn’t having that. Her eyes shining with excitement, jumped on top of Dipper, positioning herself on his lap. Dipper groaned, as he looked up to see his sister, with a massive grin on her face.
“Come on Dipper, get up! Today’s the day!”
“What day?” Dipper asked, his mind still on his nightmare. The trees. Bill. The feeling. What did it mean? Was it real? Was he really experiencing that?
Mabel gripped his shoulders, as he shook him out of his introspection. “THE day, Dipper. Don’t tell me you forgot.”
His sister’s infectious energy was the only thing that kept him sane these days. A small smile formed, as he gave her a playful shove. “Duh, of course not.”
Mabel giggled, as she jumped off Dipper and ran out the room, not before shouting out; “First one at the table, has dibs on shotgun!”
Dipper practically leaped out of bed, running out the door. “Not fair, you didn’t even give me a chance!”
“Life is full of disappointments, Mason.”
His first name? Now that was just cruel. Dipper sprinted after Mabel, able to reach her just before she went down the stairs. Both began fighting and stumbling their way down the stairs, a chaotic tangle of limbs and laughter. They landed in a heap on the entryway rug.
Dipper shot up, but Mabel immediately pulled the rug out from underneath, making him trip.
“Not cool Mabel!”
Mabel stuck her tongue out in a triumphant flash of pink, her sneakers squeaking on the hardwood floor as she sprinted into the dining room, a flurry of pigtails and sheer exhilaration. She skidded to a halt by the table, breathless but utterly victorious.
"Securing her victory!" she bellowed, pumping a fist in the air.
Dipper trudged in soon after, a picture of teenage angst and physical discomfort. His pride was smarting just as much as the slight bruise forming on his knee.
“And the crowd goes wild! Go Mabel! Go Mabel! Go Mabel!” Mabel chanted, grabbing two spoons and clanking them together like makeshift cymbals.
Dipper, whose shaggy, grown-out brown hair now fell past his shoulders, flipped the massive curtain of it over his eyes in a dramatic gesture of protest. He made his way to his usual seat at the dining table with a pronounced limp.
“Sore loser, much?” Mabel teased, her grin impossibly wide.
“You cheated,” Dipper accused, collapsing into the chair. “Not only did you leave first without even saying what we were doing, you literally pulled the rug out from under me. I was halfway across the hall!” He rubbed his shin ruefully.
“Come on, bro-bro. It’s summer vacation! The rules are looser! And you should’ve known,” she paused, wiggling her eyebrows, “I always win.”
Dipper rolled his eyes so hard he feared they might get stuck. He let the argument drop, turning his attention to the stove, where the aroma of sizzling bacon and pancakes was heavenly. Their mother, Mrs. Pines (who always insisted on being addressed as a 'Mrs.' despite her husband's protests about formality), was meticulously plating breakfast.
“Mabel, I thought we talked about this,” Mrs. Pines said, her voice firm but not unkind, as she slid a plate of golden pancakes and bacon towards Mabel. “You could really hurt Dipper like that, if you keep tripping him over.”
“Oh, come now, dear,” a deeper, more jovial voice chimed in from the doorway. “Mason is a big boy now, he can take it. It builds character.”
Mr. Pines, looking impeccably put-together even in his morning casual clothes, stood framed in the dining room archway, sipping his steaming mug of morning coffee. He gave Dipper a quick, sympathetic wink. Mrs. Pines sighed, the sound barely audible over the clatter of cutlery, as she set Dipper's breakfast down.
“I’m sure he can, but I’d rather not test his durability,” she stated, a slight edge in her voice. “Just because it’s the summer doesn’t mean that you two need to destroy the house. Again.”
“We’re just really excited!” Mabel burst out, already attacking her pancakes with fork and knife.
“It’s been 3 years, 9 months, and 12 days since we’ve been in—” Dipper started, launching into his usual hyper-specific countdown, the exactitude of the number having been drilled into their parents' heads for months.
Mr. Pines cut Dipper off with a knowing, yet exasperated, look, holding up a hand. “Yes, yes. We get it, Mason. You two have been begging us to let you go back there for years now. Since the day you got home, practically.”
Mabel and Dipper exchanged a look of pure, manic joy. They could barely contain their excitement—Mabel more so than the slightly more reserved Dipper, who was vibrating in his seat.
“I’m still not sure if this is a good idea,” Mrs. Pines chirped in, her brow furrowed as she poured herself a cup of coffee. “The last time we sent you there, we gave you over to the wrong Great Uncle.”
“Grunkle Stan is a good guy, Mom. He just made a mistake about his name, that's all. I don’t get why you and Dad don’t like him,” Mabel said, sounding genuinely hurt.
“It’s not that we don’t like him, sweetie, it’s just that he’s a bit… eccentric. To put it mildly,” Mrs. Pines clarified, shaking her head. “I mean, what normal person fakes their own death and assumes the identity of their twin? It's the kind of thing that makes you question a person's life choices and moral compass.”
“It was a bit more complicated than that,” Dipper muttered under his breath, defending the complexity of the Grunkles' relationship. He didn’t elaborate, knowing his parents wouldn't fully grasp the details of interdimensional portals and family feuds.
“Regardless,” Mr. Pines interjected, stepping in as the peacemaker. He placed a hand on his wife’s shoulder. “You guys have been patient, and you’ve worked hard at school. You deserve to visit family. No matter how… untrustworthy they seem.”
The parental resignation was all the permission the twins needed. They ate their breakfast with a focused intensity, practically snarfed it down, much to the surprise and slight disgust of their parents. In less than three minutes, they turned their dishes into the sink with a quick, perfunctory rinse, then launched themselves upstairs to finish packing the last of their things and get ready for the long drive.
Mrs. Pines stood silently at the kitchen counter, staring out the window, facing the lush, green backyard. Her expression, which had been tight with parental worry moments before, gradually became neutral, then distant. Her mind was clearly somewhere else entirely, drifting back to those strange, fragmented phone calls they received that summer three years ago.
“Darling?” Mr. Pines called out softly, stepping closer.
Mrs. Pines blinked, snapping out of her trance. She was pulled back into the mundane reality of their sunlit kitchen. Her gaze fell upon the dirty dishes they’d just left, soaked but not properly washed. The minor annoyance was quickly replaced by something deeper, something colder. Her face became etched with concern, her voice a low murmur that barely reached her husband.
“I’m worried about Dipper.”
Her voice was wrought with concern, doubt, and sadness. Mr. Pines laid a hand on her shoulder, turning her around so he could see her face.
“Mason’s fine.” Mr. Pine said. “He’s always been a bit in his own head sometimes.”
“I don’t think so. Ever since they came home, Dipper’s been… distant.” Mrs. Pines murmured. “This isn’t just a teenager being a teenager. Something happened over there that turned that little boy into-”
Mr. Pines cut her off. His glasses reflected the light coming from the window, catching a sparkle of the afternoon sun. His hair was meticulously styled, yet still maintained a naturally luscious look. His broad shoulders enveloped his wife as he pulled her in for a reassuring hug.
“Honey. Mason has always been… different. We sent him over there because we agreed he didn’t need to see us fighting.” he said gently. “And sure, maybe something did happen, but they barely tell us about what they did over there. Mason’s just going through the motions of being a teenager. He’s figuring things out, so we need to let him.”
They remember the crushing weight of their own failures when they sent the twins away to Gravity Falls. It wasn't a casual summer vacation; it was an exile born of necessity, a desperate bid to shield the twins from the crumbling foundation of their home. For months, their house had been a battleground, the air thick with unspoken resentment and punctuated by the sharp reports of their constant fighting and screaming. Sleep had become a luxury, with one of them—sometimes both—ending their nights relegated to the uncomfortable solitude of the living room couch.
The true breaking point came on a cold, unforgiving night. It began with a low simmer, a minor disagreement over a bill, but it rapidly escalated into a full-blown, catastrophic shouting match. Words, laced with venom and exhaustion, were hurled like stones. Some things they said were undeniably hurtful, spoken in the heat of the moment but carrying the sting of truth. Other accusations they didn't truly mean, regretted the instant they left their lips. And then there were the deeply-rooted truths, the things they did mean, the undeniable problems that had metastasized within their marriage. Amidst the chaos and the desperate need for a cease-fire, Mr. Pines, so frazzled he barely registered the action, ended up making the call. He phoned his, who he thought at the time, was his enigmatic, often-absent Uncle Ford, the brilliant but eccentric scientist, out of sheer desperation. Uncle Ford, who was actually Uncle Stan, recognizing the urgency and the genuine distress in his nephew's voice, immediately offered a lifeline: he would take the twins for the summer at the Mystery Shack. Both parents, utterly defeated, agreed instantly. The kids did not need to be collateral damage, nor did they need to witness the turbulent, ugly dissolution of their family life. Sending them away, they concluded, was the only selfless act left available to them.
The moment the bus pulled away, carrying their children and the promise of a quiet house, the real work began. The silence that followed the engine's roar was deafening, a vacuum where noise used to be. They looked at each other, not as adversaries, but as two people standing in the wreckage of their shared life. They immediately set about the excruciating task of fixing what was so profoundly wrong with their marriage. This wasn't a quick fix; it was a grueling, protracted war of attrition against their own bad habits and deeply ingrained resentments. It involved mandatory, often painful, couples counseling sessions where they were forced to articulate the hurts and misunderstandings they had let fester for years. There was a period of deliberate, structured separation, a necessary space to re-evaluate their individual identities and their role in the partnership. They took time for painful introspection, each re-examining their own contributions to the discord. It was a long, arduous process filled with setbacks and moments of near despair.
But they persevered. Slowly, painstakingly, they began to rebuild. By the time the bus returned, bringing the twins home at the end of that fateful summer, the foundation was stronger, if not yet perfect. Things were better. The screaming had stopped, replaced by quiet, deliberate conversations. The couches were used only for watching movies, not for solitary, angry sleep. And even to this day, years after that transformative summer in Gravity Falls, they are still committed to the work. They know marriage is not a destination, but a continuous journey, and they are still consciously, deliberately working on their issues.
“It’s a transition. It’s a painful one sometimes. We need to trust him, and we need to let him. We have to give him the space to breathe and come to us when he’s ready.” Mr. Pines said.
“Where has the time gone?” Mrs. Pines asked
“Kids grow up, it’s the worst part of having them.”
She sighed, as she planted a kiss on Mr. Pine’s cheek. “Tell me about it.”
Mr. Pines smiled, as he walked out of the kitchen, leaving Mrs. Pines in her own world, once more.