Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Is everything clean? Did you get rid of that weird sludge at the bottom of the sink?”

“For the last time, Stanley, every inch of this house is spotless.”

A likely story. Stan’s boots clattered on the hardwood. He burst into the kitchen and leaned over the sink. Turned out Ford was right, though - no furry-green afterimages of anything at all, moving or unmoving. Stan swore the mass had wriggled on its own before Ford hosed it down the drain into oblivion. Eugh.

Stan shuddered. “You better not come back,” he demanded of the seemingly-empty sink drain, and then he returned to the front room. He patted down his front pockets. There was a piece of lint on his button-down. He flicked it off. “Eh. Get outta here.”

A muffled laugh.

“What do ya want?” He looked up, seeing Ford standing there with a hand over his mouth. Looking all dumb and nerdy in his turtleneck.

“Oh, nothing,” Ford responded. “You’re just unusually worried for someone who, and I quote, ‘wouldn’t give a shit if a monster ate their bus on the way here.’”

“Ah, shut up.” Stan dragged a hand over his face. “I mighta been exaggerating a little.”

Ford gave him a look.

“Ugh, okay, a lot.” Stan shoved his hands in his pockets and resumed his nervous pacing. “We just haven’t seen them in, like, a decade. Forgive me if I’m a little nervous, Sixer.”

“I understand, trust me. I’m also a bit hesitant about this whole idea.” Ford scratched his chin. “A whole summer? It’s - a lot.”

“Yeah, it is.” Stan suddenly felt warm in his long sleeves. A thought came to him unbidden of just not answering the door. Letting the kids find their way back on the bus home without even meeting their great uncles. “What if we’re accidentally terrible to them?” His voice rising, he swiveled around and put his hands on Ford’s shoulders, gripping tightly. “I don’t wanna mess up a kid, Ford.”

There didn’t seem to be the same worry in Ford’s eyes. He patted one of Stan’s tense hands with a soft smile. “It’s alright. You’re better than that, and you know that.”

“But what if I don’t actually know that?”

Air escaped Ford’s nose. He seemed to be holding back his ‘you’re an idiot’ face. “Stan, you’ve known Soos for years. Please tell me all the ways you’ve ‘accidentally’ messed that kid up.”

Well. Stan didn’t have an answer for that. Sure, he had worries, but they were just that: worries. Stan still had a hard time showing that he had a heart, but he definitely found ways to show it for that weird gopher boy. He treated him as best he could and Soos always seemed so happy and carefree.

“Well - I, I don’t think I messed him up, but -”

“Us two had a pretty good example on how not to treat children, Stanley. Believe me when I say that we may be oblivious and rash sometimes, but we won’t do to these kids what he did to us.”

Stan blinked rapidly, throat constricting. He finally let Ford go and dropped his hands to his side. “Why did we agree to this again.” Maybe Ford would give a real answer.

Ford just shrugged and made an ‘I dunno’ sound. “Family?”

Stan sighed. “Right. Family.” He glanced at the front door, and then at his watch. “I’m actually excited. Don’t tell the little rascals that, though.”

Ford looked around the room, at how they had all but murdered this house into shape for the twins’ visit. All the sweeping disturbed such a high volume of years-old dust that Stan had sneezed enough to convince himself that he’d caught a cold. “I won’t tell them anything,” Ford agreed arbitrarily.

Knock, knock, knock.

“Oh! That must be them.” Ford gave Stan a peculiar look both caring and aggressive, then bounded over and opened the front door. Aw jeez. Stan was barely ready.

There they were. Two small children.

The one nervous-lookin' kid, Mason - he went by Dipper now, right? - played with his hands. His sister Mabel was practically vibrating in place. Dipper cleared his throat. “Uh, hi!” He peered around the parts of the room he could see, interested and clearly trying to hide it. Tells were all over his face. Stan could teach him to hide those for sure.

"I -" Ford started.

"Hi! Omigosh!" The girl named Mabel rushed inside, bouncy unkempt curls following her like an afterthought. Or a comet tail. Her brother said her name, but she ignored it. "I'm Mabel! Oh, but you knew that already." She wheeled her blindingly bedazzled luggage inside. "Where should I dump my sweater stash!?"

Dipper sighed. "Did you seriously only pack your sweaters?" He smacked a hand to his face in the way only a practiced sibling could.

Stan was frozen in place.

Mabel was so fucking shiny. Where did all the glitter come from? How did she get it in her teeth? You know what, who cares. That kid didn’t need to justify that to him. The random smatterings of glitter and tinsel strings suited her. And Dipper’s mannerisms, his slight shift from foot to foot, the curiosity in his eyes… they all reminded him of a certain someone. He was gangly and awkward and extremely ready to learn.

Oh god. They were adorable.

Unlike Stan, Ford had more than one functioning brain cell at a time, so he leaned down and shook Mabel's hand. "Greetings, Mabel! I'm Stanford, your great uncle. My brother and I were there when you two were born, but you probably don’t remember us."

"Hi, yes! Our mom told us about you guys." She shook his hand enthusiastically. "Wow, you really do have six fingers. That's a full finger friendlier than normal!"

That shocked joyful laughter out of Ford.

Meanwhile, Stan wasn’t really sure what to say to the boy twin. “Uh, hey. You’re Dipper, right?”

“Yeah! Yeah, I am.” The poor kid’s voice cracked in the middle. Stan still remembered what that was like.

“Nice to meet ya, Dipper, I’m Stanley. You probably know that though. I, uh, I won’t shake your hand.” That would just be weird. Stan only shook hands when he was paying someone or someone was paying him. He would rather not have any monetary transactions with this preteen beyond paying for his food.

“That’s fine by me.” The boy wiped his hands on his shorts. Probably sweaty as all hell. Stan did not miss the wonderful joys of growing up.

“Good, good.” Stan put his hands on his hips and drew himself upwards. “You two gremlins want a tour of the house?” He used a hand to shield his mouth from his brother’s line of sight and stage-whisper to the kids with a lilt of conspiracy. “Ford’ll even show you the science-y murder basement.”

“Whoa, what kinda murder?” Mabel stuck her tongue out. Stan wasn’t sure if that was meant to show that she was uncomfortable, or if she just wanted her tongue to be outside of her mouth.

“He will?” Dipper’s eyes lit up.

“Stanley, please do not tell the children that I murder people in our basement.” Ford shook his head. “It is a perfectly normal scientific lair that I buried three stories below ground.” He paused. “Would you like to start there?”

Dipper jumped up and down. “Ooh, yes please!”

Mabel was less enthused, but she still agreed. “Grunkle Ford, are there dead things in jars down there?”

Ford blinked at the shortening Mabel had used. “Grun - What? No.” He led them through a side storage room to the basement door. He paused with his hand upon the worn brass doorknob. “Well, actually, there might be some deceased specimens. I thought I got rid of - nevermind, anyways, here we go.”

Yep. There were probably a few glassy-eyed dissected creatures down there just waiting for the unsuspecting eyes of children. Leave it to Ford to not clean up his unorthodox workspace for a pair of 12 year olds. But, eh, they’ll be alright. Stan saw a dead rat floating in a bucket once, and he was younger than them. They’ll probably think the animal experiments are cool.

“Get a load ‘a this guy. What a nerd,” Stan joked good-naturedly to the young twins, who both let out some laughter. He then climbed down the creaky old stairs a bit faster and caught up to his brother. Ford was leading the way down multiple flights. “Careful, Ford, it’s dark in here,” he warned mischievously. “I might, I dunno, accidentally push you down the stairs.”

“Ha, not if I get you first, knucklehead.” Ford shoulder-checked him lightly. Stan bumped into the wall with a startled laugh.

“Are we playing what I think we’re playing?” Mabel asked. From behind him, Stan heard a distinctive “ow, Mabel!” shout-whispered by Dipper, followed by a few thumps and the sound of Mabel fumbling into the opposite wall.

“Alright kids, no one actually fall down these stairs, please,” Ford cautioned. The elevator was in sight. “Stan and I have both done that before and it is not fun in the least.”

The roughhousing ceased and the four of them entered the sleek elevator cabin. Together, they descended down into the earth.

The elevator doors opened on a now-familiar sight for Stan - the massive room that was essentially a Ford-nado. It was split into two factions though, for specific Ford-nado functions.

The right side was wholly committed to Ford’s academic research. Papers both yellowed with age and white-fresh lay about all over the place, though loosely contained to a corner that housed two sad filing cabinets which could never hope to hold all of the files around them. Accompanying the looseleaf was a large old-fashioned chalkboard with - of all things - a color-coordinated chalk holder.

A well-used desk held a reading lamp, a few scholarly journals, and Ford’s ancient laptop that he bought off of Fiddleford a decade and a half ago to celebrate their friend’s success in the field. Stan wasn’t surprised in the least that it was still running. That was where Ford wrote his papers and worked towards publishing more research in the field of ‘weirdology’ (which he innovated). He’s been wildly successful. And along with all of this were the bookshelves that blended seamlessly into the background, as if they were always meant to be the backdrop to Ford’s mess.

The left side was a breeding ground for Ford’s pet projects. Machines, equipment, plants and animals both alive and dead amassed in an interesting amalgamation of weirdness. The lighting on this side was gentler compared to the harsh LEDs on the left, probably to help the plants out or something like that. A workbench scattered with tools sat next to a cabinet stuffed to the brim with completed personal research journals, all reflecting light off their gold-leaf hand cutouts.

Ford has taken a break from academics to focus on just enjoying his projects, so the left side was seeing more use as of late. Stan was, in all honesty, happy to see it.

Ford stepped out of the elevator - Stan following - with a beckoning hand motion. “Please, come in!

“Whoa.” Dipper’s face was one of shock and wonder. “Great-uncle Stanford, this is amazing!”

Mabel was similarly enthralled. She immediately rushed to the racks of plants. “These plants are beautiful!” And they were. There were rows upon rows of multicolor flora, red-tinged and purple-tipped and pink-flowered. There was more biodiversity in the basement than the entirety of their hometowns, Stan figured.

“Wait -” Ford bolted towards Mabel and tugged her small hands away from the sick-yellow leaves of an overflowing vine plant. “Don’t touch that.”

Dipper’s head turned on a swivel. He nearly dropped the ring-bound academic journal he had picked up. “Why? Does it kill you!?”

“What? No.” Ford gently pushed Mabel away from the plant rack. “It would just make you itch for a very, very long time. And force you to speak in limericks until the itch goes away.”

“Yeesh. I’d rather be dead at that point,” Stan said. “I remember when you first found that thing.” He shuddered at the memory. So many bad limericks Ford came up with in attempts to achieve basic communication.

“Well, now that I’m done presenting my work for the moment, I’m going to have a lot more free time to find weird plants around here.”

“Haven’t you been working in Gravity Falls for decades, Great-uncle Stanford?” Dipper came over. His hands thankfully refrained from touching any mysterious plants. “Is there still stuff to find out about this place?”

Ford got that look on his face that only appeared when he was about to impress somebody. “Believe me, my boy, the weirdness in this town never stops growing. We’re in a hotspot of odd activity. This is why I founded weirdology, actually - to see where it’s all coming from.”

Stan snorted. Like he figured, it worked on Dipper. The kid was absolutely starstruck. “Hah, if you make that face for much longer it’ll stay that way, you know.”

Regardless of Stan’s jokes, he could clearly see that the twins were impressed. Mabel kept running back and forth between the plants and the open dissections still pinned against a work table, and Dipper had taken to perusing the spines along the bookshelf. They loved it.

Good. Ford’s worked hard for all this.

Once that leg of the tour was finished, Stan corralled the kids back on the main floor. He showed them to the kitchen (“Don’t cook stuff in here ‘till I show you how that old, gross stove works”), Ford’s office (“only go in here if you want to see Ford asleep. Or get him to bite your head off”), Stan’s room (“don’t go in here”), Ford’s room (“please bug him while he’s sleeping in here, it would be hilarious”) and the living room (“all-access, unless The Duchess Approves is on, in which case the TV belongs to me and me only”).

“And, now that you’ve seen Ford’s workplace, wanna visit my diner?” Stan wiggled his fingers in their faces like he had just said something scary. Ford stifled a bark of laughter.

“Ooh, mysterious places that have food in them!” Mabel exclaimed.

Dipper was less impressed. He raised an eyebrow. “Grunkle Stan, you work at a diner?”

Hey. Children weren’t allowed to judge him. And this one judgement sort of stabbed at his heart. Yeah, he worked at a diner. So what? Right? “More than that, kiddo.” Stan swept his hand through the air. With starry eyes, he announced, “I own the diner.”

“Gasp!” Mabel grabbed Dipper’s arm and shook him wildly. “Dipper! Free pancakes!”

“Ha, that’s right, you two. All-you-can-eat.” His profits were doing pretty good and he hadn’t had to hold onto money that tightly for maybe a decade now. Right after the owners of the Dusk 2 Dawn were stricken with double heart attacks, Stan tried to continue the line with a reopening schtick called Dusk 3 Dawn, but it didn’t exactly pan out - the new business name wasn’t as catchy as the original, and no one wanted to go to the convenience store people died at. That was when he started working at the diner and saving up to buy the place, so money had been a bit tight at one point, but not anymore. He could afford to give these little demons some free diner food every once in a while.

Oh no. They’ve already infiltrated his heart. Who was he kidding? He would give them free stacks of pancakes any day of the week.

“Alright, then, pile into the car, kiddos. And Ford.”

“Actually, I count as a ‘kiddo’,” Ford deadpanned.

Stan was dressed sharp in his maroon button-down, slacks, and nice boots to make a good first impression, maybe, but it was also what he wore to work. He took off today for these kids, but he still wanted to put on his work clothes for the diner - maybe it was just a comforting thing to do. Hell, he was probably even more nervous for today than he thought. No matter, though, since soon they would be on his turf. And by turf he meant the small-town food business scene. ...That could sound sad, but Stan chose for it not to be.

It wasn’t sad. Stan connected with people and enjoyed his day-to-day and it wasn’t sad, damn it, even if other people thought it was.

Everyone jumped into his old reliable El Diablo. “Hey, Mabel, this stain on the middle seat looks kinda like a tree,” Dipper said from the back seat. As Stan turned the key in the ignition and his ancient vehicle roared to life, he smiled at the sound of Mabel going “no way, you’re right!”

Stan backed out of the driveway. “Did ya bring your wallet, Sixer?”

“Stan,” Ford simply said.

“Ha! I know. I haven’t charged you at that place since ‘97. I’m just yankin’ your chain.” He slapped the wheel like he had made some wonderful joke. What a joy to bug his brother. It was the simple things, really.

He peeled out and onto the road that would take them to the main street of Gravity Falls.

They were going to Greasy’s Diner.

The car bumped along into a small ghost of a parking lot that’s become very familiar to Stan over the years. They pulled in. The sight of the redwood log diner ran a jolt through Stan that urged him to bustle in and start working. Ew. He had today off, darn it.

The signage was weather-worn and a few of the outside bulbs had blown out. It was kinda cheap-looking, but it was clean, and it was his. He had gotten over being self-conscious about his business a long time ago. Well. He thought he had.

“Well! We’re here!” Stan climbed out of the car and his family followed suit.

“I love weird-looking local businesses!” Mabel jumped up and down as they entered the establishment.

Stan was cheerful at the sight of the yucky old booths in the diner. “Ya know, this place was originally built on top of the remains of a train wreck!”

“Is that… structurally sound?” Dipper questioned.

Ford shrugged in an unusual display of nonchalance. “No one’s died in here yet.”

“Here’s the menu!” Stan gestured to the hand-painted menu boards hanging above the counter. “We’ve also got, uh, these old-fashioned booths, and -” he made a face when he saw the Manliness Tester sequestered in the back, past all the seating. It was here when he started running the place and he hasn’t found the time to get rid of it. Dumb hunk of junk. “- and we also host a monthly pancake-eating contest, which is pretty neat if you ask me.”

Dipper tugged on Ford’s sleeve. “Great Uncle Ford, not that I mind the diner, but, um, when can I - I mean we - go see your lab again?”

“Soon enough, if you wish,” Ford shrugged. “Why? Did you leave something down there?”

“No, but it was just a little more…” he paused. “Exciting?”

“I’m not sure I follow. Maybe Stan will let you take a look at the new stovetops he just installed - now that’s exciting!”

“Um.”

Someone rushed to the cook window at the sound of voices. “Sweet, Mr. Pines, you brought Dr. Pines! And little dudes!”

It was Soos, the cook. He had just wandered in one day and clung to Stan for some reason. What was Stan gonna do, say no to him? The kid asked for a job, and so he’s had one for some years now. Not as a cook at first, but now he was practically runnin’ the joint.

“Yep!” Stan put his hands on his hips. “Soos, meet our niblings. Dipper and Mabel, meet my head cook.”

Soos swiveled his head around and, seeing that the place was dead, he left the kitchen and joined the Pines, taking particular interest in the younger twins. “Hey dudes! I work for Mr. Pines. He’s like, the best guy ever. Low-five!” The twin children gave him two quiet low-fives. “Aw yeah.”

“Whoa, Stan, I thought you had off today?”

That was Wendy, one of only a few waitresses. She was walking to the back with an armful of plates and stopped to chat, running one hand through her fiery ponytail. While waitresses used to be required to wear aprons here, Stan couldn’t bring himself to strictly enforce a dress code, so she was allowed her family trademark flannel atop her shirt and black pants.

“He does,” Ford answered. “We’re just here to show our niece and nephew around. It’s nice to see you, Wendy.”

“Oh yeah, that’s right!” She turned to the kids. “You’re staying the summer, right? We’ll have to hang out sometime, I’ll show you around.” She extended one foot. “My hands aren’t free. Foot-bump?”

“Yeah, foot-bump!” Mabel cheered, smacking her foot into Wendy’s non-slips. Dipper laughed along and gave her a ‘foot-bump’ too.

“Cool. See you dudes around.” With that, Wendy disappeared into the back with her stack of dishes.

A distinct burning smell began to waft through the air. Stan sniffed. “Uh, Soos, your hash browns.” He pointed to the kitchen, which was emitting a worrying amount of smoke considering the diner was built inside of a tree.

“Oh dip! Thanks, Mr. Pines!” Soos grabbed a nearby fire extinguisher, slid over the counter, and kicked open the kitchen door, quickly followed by the spray of white fire-snuffing clouds.

The Pines family blinked at the swinging kitchen door.

“I am shocked that you keep him on the payroll,” Ford said.

“What, he’s like, my only son. I gotta give him something. Besides, he's actually pretty capable.”

Mabel gasped. “Soos is your son?”

Stan winked. “Maybe he is, maybe he isn’t.”

Ford said, “I assure you that Soos is not related to Stan by blood.”

“But is he related by familial bonding?” Dipper asked.

Stan backed off. “Alright, alright, yer crowding me. Am I gonna get the space I need to order your free pancakes or what?”

Mabel threw her hands in the air. “Sprinkles, please!”

Sprinkles were a fickle item at the diner. Either they were in stock in worrying and copious amounts, or the back was woefully bare of them for months. Either way, Stan would go out and buy some right now if he needed to. Anything for this little girl.

And all things considered, pancakes were a pretty good way to start the summer.

Chapter Text

It was nice to have the little kiddos running around.

Stan and Ford weren’t lonely. They had their work relationships and their own friend circles and of course, each other. But the young set of twins brought an extra spark into the home… even if it was in the form of messes to clean up and broken furniture to repair. Seriously, how many times could one kid fuck up one armchair? Just sit in it like a normal person, yeesh.

Stan waltzed behind the counter, punched open the register, and started counting out cash. He hummed a little tune to himself. It was an easy Tuesday at the diner, and now that everything was cleaned up after the dinner rush, he was done for the day. All he had to do now was tally everything up.

“Hi Grunkle Stan!”

Stan yelped like a child and dropped a stack of money, scattering tens and twenties all over the floor. Mother of God, that was so very loud! “Shit!” He looked up at Dipper and Mabel, who were undoubtedly two children. “I mean, uh, shoot. Nope, I don’t swear. I’m a good man.” He leaned down to gather up the lost cash. “Cheese and rice, how the, uh, heck did you two get in here so quietly?”

Mabel giggled and poked her own cheeks. “We have our ways.” Dipper nodded smugly beside her.

Yeah, okay. Stan stood with the recovered wad of bills in hand and dusted down his button-down. “I thought you two were at the house?”

“We were, but we saw this commercial on TV -” Mabel started.

Dipper patted his hands excitedly against the countertop. “Yeah, and apparently there’s a psychic in -”

“- there’s a psychic in town!”

“Oh, that Lil’ Gideon business, huh?” Stan wracked his brain as he wrote down the till total and closed up shop. He remembered seeing the commercial once or twice. It seemed like a big waste of time, filled with some patriotic pandering and obvious hoaxes, and the little kid’s voice got on his nerves.

“It starts in like, ten minutes,” Dipper informed him. The two kids trailed him out of the diner.

Mabel grabbed his arm. “Can we go see it, Grunkle Stan?”

Kids never asked their parents for permission when he was a kid. Hell, him and Ford didn’t even tell his parents where they would be going half the time. Not that they had a worrying social life - or much of one at all. “Sure, why not? How much is it?”

“Eight a ticket.”

Stan whistled. “There better be food there.”

Dipper thought for a moment. “I think there is?”

“Well, why don’t we all get in the car, kidnap Ford, and go to this thing?” Stan opened his driver side door. He didn’t have anything else to do that evening, and it might be fun to go to some low-stakes carnival-esque bullshit with these kids.

That was how they found themselves sitting in a tent that was entirely too glittery, with an audience that was entirely too pliant. They were swooning before anything had even started. Poor suckers were getting fleeced.

Mabel already dropped her bag of popcorn twice in excitement. She kept eating it though, even though it had touched the floor. Atta girl, build that immune system. Dipper was just looking around the tent at the streamers, the wooden stage... the repairman that looked oddly like Soos…?

“How much did you pay for these tickets again?” Ford whispered to Stan as Gideon was introduced.

Stan shrugged. “I got it covered, don’t worry about it.”

The main event was soon underway. And, good gracious, that young child up on stage used entirely too much hair gel. His hair glistened stiffly under the show lights. It actually hurt Stan’s eyes. The worst part was when the psychic pulled Mabel into the schtick by guessing on her name. It blew Mabel’s mind.

Stan rolled his eyes. “Sweetheart, it’s a scam. Your name is on your sweater,” he told her.

“Aw, c’mon, just have a little fun!” She countered, which, well, that was a fair point. These things were supposed to suck, but in a fun way. And it sure was entertaining, at the very least.

“Ma would really get a kick out of this,” Ford laughed to Stan, who smiled in response. She would, wouldn’t she? All context clues and vague charm used to rip money out of these people’s pockets. It was practically her calling card.

Wow, a lot of people were standing up right now. Guess they enjoyed the show. It was alright - not enough for some sorta standing ovation.

Oh. Now Stan was standing too? Huh. He sure as hell didn’t remember wanting to do that. Either his mind was leaving him, or something suspicious was going on. To be honest, probably not a good sign either way. This felt a little too weird.

“Hey, Ford -” Stan started.

“Wait a minute,” Ford said to himself, mirth having left him. He hadn’t heard Stan. He was instead focusing on the singing boy on stage. “I recognize that amulet.”

“Wait, what?” Dipper leaned over to look at Ford.

“Amulet?” Mabel repeated.

Stan blinked. “Okay, wait -”

But his brother was already forcing himself away from the seats (easier said than done - what exactly was going on here?) and marching to the stage. He planted himself directly in front of the performance, blocking the audience’s view and looking up at Gideon.

“Unhand that artifact, Gideon! Before you hurt someone, or yourself!” Ford commanded, shocking the tent into silence.

God damnit, this was supposed to be low-stakes. Maybe they should’ve stayed home.

The boy instinctively clutched the bolo tie at his throat. “Huh? What?” Gideon stammered. “I dunno what you’re talkin’ about, sir.” His hand tightened protectively.

“You might not, but I can explain, if you just let me,” Ford assured, palms upward in a soothing gesture.

“You’re a crazy kook,” Gideon muttered to himself. Who knew a child could sound so evil? The kid made a discreet hand motion. On cue, two tall, imposing men in black appeared from the curtains and stomped towards Ford.

Nope, not today. Stan wrenched himself from the grip of whatever held him by the benches. “Stay there, kids!” He ran up and tackled one of the body guards. “Ford! Grab the magic thing!”

“On it!” Ford started towards Gideon, ready to jump onto the stage. Except he didn’t make it. The other guard had slammed into Ford, pushing him to the ground with a loud crash.

Yeah, they should’ve stayed home. They would be feeling this for at least a week. And how were they supposed to get the -

Stan stole a glance at Gideon. To his surprise, Dipper and Mabel were already up on stage with him, arguing with him about something. Didn’t Stan tell them to stay put? Overactive kids.

Wait one fucking minute. Did Dipper just punch the lights out of that short white-haired little rascal?

“STOP!”

The commotion ceased. The last few audience members were trickling out after the fighting had started, but they stopped in their tracks. The guard roughing Stan up paused with his fist half-raised in the air. Ford’s assailant released his grip on him. Dipper and Mabel froze, colored red with embarrassment.

The one who had shouted for a ceasefire was Gideon’s dad - that tubby, greedy car dealership owner, Stan realized.

Bud Gleeful ran up to his son. “You okay, Gideon?”

Gideon rubbed his bruising cheek with an angry scowl on his face. “Yes! but what about my -”

“Whatever you’ve lost, the cleanup crew will find it when we take down the tent, okay? We gotta leave.” He picked up his son with both hands. “Bye, y’all!” He shouted to what little remained of the audience over the temper tantrum erupting from the boy in his arms. “Come back next week!”

And then he was gone.

The security guards looked at each other, shrugged, and abandoned their victims to follow their employer through the back of the tent.

The leftover Gravity Falls townspeople milled like stray cattle. A few glanced at the Pines family “Are you all good?” One person asked. Probably Susan from the diner. She was always a sweetie.

“Sure!” Stan shouted from his useful vantage point sprawled out on the ground. He gave a thumbs up for good measure. He would get up. Just give him a second. He hadn’t tackled a guy like that in ages.

With that glowing assurance, the last of the audience filed out of the tent. One person stole some merch on their way out.

With a groan, he sat up. “Fuck, Ford, what’s that thing the kid had?” Don’t get him wrong. He absolutely trusted his brother’s judgement on the morality of that so-called ‘amulet,’ enough so to jump into the fray without much of an explanation, but still… an explanation of any sort would be much appreciated. An anxious thought blindsided him. “Wait,” he gasped, “The kids!”

Stan ran over to the stage. Dipper and Mabel were talking amongst themselves. He looked them over. There was a bruise on Dipper’s elbow. Was that there before? What about those red bumps on them both - oh, those were just mosquito bites. “Are you two hurt? You’re not hurt, are you?”

“It’s okay, Grunkle Stan, we’re fine!” Mabel smiled, all braces. She sounded so proud when she announced, “Dipper punched him!”

“Ha, yeah, I did,” Dipper laughed, embarrassed, rubbing his arm. “I dunno, great-uncle Ford jumped out of his seat so fast, it seemed important to help, and then Gideon was acting really weird and creepy when we got there.” He made a face.

Mabel shuddered. “He wanted to stroke my hair!”

Hell, that warranted punching for sure. “Hah, way to go, you two!” He offered a solid thumbs up. “Fighting’ back!”

“And look what we got!” Mabel took her hands out of her sweater pocket. Why was she wearing sweaters in summer, wasn’t she warm as hell? Now that Stan thought about it, she’s been wearing sweaters since she got here. In her small palm glowed an eerie emerald gem attached to a loose bolo tie string. Gold aiguillettes glinted with the amulet as Mabel tilted the artifact back and forth under the show lights.

“Huh, would you look at that.” Stan grinned. “Ford, get your butt over here, Dipper and Mabel snagged the magic bolo!”

“You did?!” Ford rushed over. The old dinosaur must’ve finally gotten his ass off the ground. “Are you both alright? That was extremely dangerous!”

“What? How?” Mabel asked.

“Can I see the amulet?” Ford held out his hand in a question. “Thank you for getting it, you two. I appreciate your efforts.”

Mabel safely deposited the amulet in his waiting hand, worry tugging her lips into a frown.

“I’ll explain,” Ford assured. Then he looked around at the abandoned tent. “But we should probably go home first.”

“This is not any regular old emerald.” Ford carefully held the bolo tie still at the kitchen table as the family crowded around to peer at it. With bent chain nose pliers he pulled back the metal prongs keeping the green gem in place. It slid out easily with a faint hum. Ford threw the bolo tie in the trash and lifted up the emerald amulet with one gloved hand. The domed surface was an almost glassy green, but it contained a deeper, ever-shifting forest-green that morphed and twisted endlessly. “I’m glad you dragged me to this, Stanley, or else I would not have known that someone had found this thing.”

“Ah, shut up, you weren’t dragged.”

“Ha, just messing with you. I appreciate the invite.” Ford smiled, but it quickly dropped from his face as he wrapped himself up in examining the artifact.

“So what is it?” Dipper asked, excited.

Mabel added, “Can it control your mind?!”

Ford halted for a worrying second. “Well. Not exactly.” He slid the glowing amulet into a cloth drawstring bag and pulled it shut tight. “This particular item is very dangerous. I came upon it decades ago, but I hid it because it was too powerful. It gives the wielder telekinesis and will-bending powers.”

Something in Stan squirmed at the thought of someone else taking actions for him, even innocent ones. “Like when we all stood up like puppets. Eugh.”

“Yes, exactly. However, it corrupts its user over time. Their heart eventually blackens.”

Mabel made a distraught noise. “Their soul!?”

“Well, I guess you could say that. It twists their morals and amplifies greed. But it also literally blackens their heart, not completely unlike the effect of smoking on the lungs. It’s a health hazard, Mabel.” Ford peered at the drawstring bag in his hand. “Gideon’s hair is already completely whitened, meaning he’s been using it for some time now. It would be amazing if Gideon lived to be twenty.”

Deafening silence descended upon the kitchen table.

“Anyway,” Ford continued. “I made sure to bury this where no one could find it, but somehow Gideon must have discovered it.”

“Wait a minute,” Stan said. “Is this the same place you buried those truth teeth?” Oh god, the truth teeth. Stan and Ford were generally open to each other, but some things were meant to be private. Yikes.

“I believe it’s nearby. Why?”

Stan facepalmed. “Ford, that’s where they built that new elementary school.”

“Oh, shit.” Ford’s eyes widened. “I mean, uh, shucks.” He shook his head. “I hope those truth teeth are still buried. We might want to check up on that.”

Dipper perked up. “Can we come with you?”

Stan and Ford looked at each other and shrugged. “Sure, why not?” Stan agreed.

Ford held out the bag away from his body with a grimace. “But first, I have to put this in my lab so that I can run tests.”

The woods were a familiar part of home now, but Stan knew that you still had to be careful in them. Stan and Ford led the way for the kids to make sure they didn't run into something dangerous.

"Why did they build this elementary school so close to the woods?" Dipper asked as they travelled along a trail that was nothing more than packed dirt. Mabel had picked some pretty, non-poisonous, non-sentient flowers (Ford had checked) along the way, and Dipper had consistently dodged her efforts to tuck one under his star hat.

"I'm not really sure," Ford answered. "I wrote the school board many letters about the possible dangers of the location."

"Yeah, I dunno how well-received those letters were," Stan said.

"Well, nothing we can do about that now." Ford stopped suddenly, stalling the train of people behind him. He pulled out one of his oldest journals - the ink faded and the maroon cover peeling away - and flipped it open to the page about the amulet. "Looks like I hid them right about… here.”

“Ford, this looks just like any other patch of grass.”

“No, I believe I’m correct.” He snapped his journal shut. “Stanley, the shovel, please?"

Stan passed it to him. "Have at it, sixer."

The curve of the shovel met tough soil held tightly together by surrounding tree roots. A few piles of old earth were upturned. "This is definitely the spot, I recognize these roots now." The shovel hit a solid object. Ford reached down and pulled out a small wooden chest. He wiped soil crumbs off the top. "Yep, this is it! Now let's take this back to the lab before another child runs amok with a magical item."

“What do truth teeth do?” Mabel asked as she began to thread a flower crown. She always seemed to be doing something with her hands. Yesterday night, she brought her knitting to their evening TV-watching session, and Stan doesn’t think he’s ever seen a sweater come into existence so fast.

“Exactly what it sounds like they do,” Ford answered. He had the case tucked protectively under one arm as he steered the group towards home. “Whoever wears these teeth are compelled to tell nothing but the truth, without even realizing it. It’s not something to mess around with -”

“Oh, oh, Grunkle Stan!” Mabel turned to her other grunkle on a dime. “Can you put the teeth on? Pretty please?”

Good god, no. “I would rather not, sweetie. What do ya think I have, a mysterious past?” He forced a chuckle.

“Well, our parents apparently didn’t know a ton about you,” Dipper commented innocently. Mischievous kid. “All they told us was that you own a diner up here.”

“Hey, that’s not true. They also know that I have a brother and that I was born in 1950-something. That’s two things. Three, if you count the diner.” They also probably knew about the whole ‘getting kicked out of the house at 17’ fiasco, but honestly, it’d be nice if that stayed in the past. Regardless, Stan was happy to just live in the woods with his brother and see the extended family once a year. And Ma, if she was there without Dad. He didn’t need to go around bothering his young relatives about his life.

Dipper shrugged. “That’s more like one thing, if you don’t count the diner and you also leave out your extremely vague birth year.”

Ford cracked up. “I like Dipper. He’s got - what’s the name for it?”

Stan raised an eyebrow. “Sass?”

“Yes, that’s the one.”

“Anyways,” Stan coughed, “I’m just not all that interesting. There’s not a lot to know about me!” He knocked Mabel’s shoulder lightly with his hand. “Honey, what would you wanna pry outta me anyways?”

“I just wanted to make you tell me if you like Susan from the diner,” Mabel admitted with no remorse. “‘Cause if you do, I’m on a matching spree all throughout town!” She threw her hands in the air, tossing the flower crown behind her.

“You’ve been here for two days and you’re already analyzing relationships?” Ford muttered. He peered through the woods at the shape of their home becoming visible through the trees.

Meanwhile, Stan sucked air through his teeth. “We tried dating once and it fell flat. That’s somethin’ I could tell ya without truth teeth.” It had been even more awkward and questionable since they worked together. Was never meant to be, really. Though she’s still a good friend. When she’s out of town he cat-sits for her sometimes.

“Aw, shoot.” Mabel snapped her fingers. “I’ll just have to find someone else for you!”

Children were really persistent, huh. Or maybe just these ones were. “Please don’t.”

“But I -”

“Okay, we’re here,” Ford interrupted, not unkindly.

“Oh, would you look at that, the house!” Stan dramatized, making a show of discovering the stairs leading up to the porch. “Now we can all go inside and I can make some dinner, huh? Ford, you better lock up those truth teeth, they’re giving me the heebie jeebies.”

“On it,” Ford said.

Thank goodness. Don’t want those hanging around where two nosy kids can get a hold of them.

Chapter Text

“I-it’s alright, Gideon! We can just get you a new one!”

“No!” A loud crash as the living room table flipped over. A stack of magazines slapped onto the carpet and a cup of water toppled to the ground. The liquid spread into the carpet, darkening its fibers. “You can’t buy that sorta thing! You have to find it, it has to choose you!”

Bud Gleeful raised his hands in a placating gesture as his wife cowered behind him. “Now, Gideon, you know what we said about throwin’ furniture in the house.”

Gideon seethed, his hands clenched tightly around a sofa cushion. “I don’t care!” He tossed a pillow full-speed. It paffed into his mother’s blank face and fell to the floor. “Gah! I’ve had it with you two. Stay down here and think about what you’ve done.”

“Gideon, wait -”

He could barely hear his father through the roaring in his ears. His heartbeat and the clack of his shoes against the stairs drowned out anything either of those two might’ve said. The house shook with how hard he slammed his door. He sat on his bed and crossed his arms. This was ridiculous! The sole item that guaranteed the Tent’s success was stolen, and this was his parents’ response? If he still had his amulet, he could cause some real havoc down there and his parents would listen to him - but the amulet was the reason he had to throw a tantrum in the first place.

Now he can’t even wreck any of the furniture in his room. Now all he can do is have a normal kid tantrum.

Gideon flopped over and planted his face in his pillow, his stiff hair crinkling. He took a deep breath and screamed. He kicked his feet and punched his fists against the bed. Surely his parents could hear it. Surely they’d be up here at least trying to make amends by now with ice cream or something. They usually would.

His parents were predictable. He’d long since figured out how to work them. Bud was very agreeable, moreso if he got something out of an agreement - that'd usually be a cut of the profits, or getting Gideon to stop destroying the house. Once Gideon got that down, it was easy to parade him around like a puppet for showrunner tasks like promotion and advertising. His mother wasn’t as malleable, though; good thing she was scared of him. If she was a little more brave, he would run into problems with her, but as things stood, she just kept the house sparkling clean and kept out of things.

When Gideon was all screamed out, he fell still. He could hear them moving downstairs. No stair creaks, no turns of his doorknob.

How dare they? This was stupid. He’d just have to come up with a plan himself. That Pines family would rue the very day they set foot inside his Tent. He’d get them back for this! Even Mabel. The poor girl would've been on his good side if she hadn’t swiped the amulet off of him. What a shame.

The angry furrow in his brow started to give him a headache. His limbs felt a bit heavier. In his performance suit, with his hair still styled and gelled, Gideon drifted off into sleep.

In a blink, he stood in a parking lot full of cars.

Weird. He wasn’t a vivid dreamer, but the breeze touched his skin, and the sun warmed him.

He peered around. One car’s bumper was barely attached, whereas another car bore a large dent on its driver-side door. Come to think of it, all of them looked to be damaged in some way. And wasn’t the sky supposed to be blue? Instead, it hummed slightly on the greener side. The air felt like tiny needles pressing on his face.

Ain’t this a lucid dream? Where’s his adoring fans? If he was gonna be in control of a dream he could at least make it nice.

Right on cue, a group of faceless townspeople manifested to his left. Unintelligible shouts of encouragement and cheers came from the general masses.

“Oh, hey, folks! Here to see the world-famous Tent of Telepathy?” Gideon winked. This dream’ll cheer him up. He imagined that this huddled group of low-lives would then lift him up right there and parade him like some sorta crowd-surfin’ rock star. Wouldn’t that be fun?

The mass advanced. Before Gideon knew it, he was lifted into the air, just like he wanted.

Gideon blinked. “Oh, whoa, hey y’all - careful there -”

Then they started moving. Where were they going?

He squinted in the direction that they were all taking him. Was that… the Tent? It looked… broken-into. And kinda gross, and dirtied, and stained.

Before he knew it, the crowd deposited him on the dirt ground. He coughed and wiped at his eyes. “Hey, hold on a -” He opened his eyes. The entire crowd was gone like they had never been there. The entrance to the tent flapped openly, untouched. “Huh?”

“NICE SCAM, KID. REALLY! IT’S GENIUS.”

“What -” Gideon whipped around. There was his familiar stage - shiny and new, unlike the ratty, used tent. Something sat at his father’s piano. Something yellow, and straight-lined, and one-eyed. “What scam?”

“OH, YOU KNOW.” The thing leaned back in the piano stool and waved its hand. “THE WHOLE ‘USING REAL MAGIC TO CONVINCE PEOPLE ABOUT FAKE MAGIC’ THING. SEEMS LIKE YOU’RE REALLY RAKING IN THE DOUGH! OR WERE, ANYWAYS.” It plucked out the beginning of a song on the piano keys, and its one eye squinted. “YEESH, DOES POPS EVER TUNE THIS THING? OR IS YOUR MIND JUST EXTREMELY WARPED FROM YOUR ABUSE OF ARCANE HORRORS?” It laughed like nails against a chalkboard. “JUST KIDDING!”

“That was a joke?” Gideon stuttered. What kinda joke was that?

“IF YOU WANTED THAT TO BE A JOKE, THEN SURE!” The triangle floating up and out of its chair. “NICE TO MEET YOU, GIDEON. NAME’S BILL CIPHER. I HEARD YOU’RE IN A BIT OF A CRISIS.”

Gideon was in quite the pickle. He tentatively approached this monster. “I am! That darn family stole my amulet! The Pines family!”

“OH YEAH, I KNOW ALL ABOUT THAT.” An image of all four of those damned Pines flashed upon Bill’s angular body. “AND YOUR AMULET, HUH?”

“Yeah!” Gideon’s nails dug into his palms. “What if they destroyed it? I gotta get it back!”

“THAT SOUNDS LIKE QUITE A PROBLEM, SHORTSTACK. HOWEVER, I DO KNOW THAT THE AMULET IS SAFE AND SOUND.” This time, the thing became a window that showed Gideon a large, dark room, and a locked safe embedded in a wall of concrete. The picture blinked away, replaced by the flicker of Bill’s neon yellow. “LEMME TELL YOU SOMETHING, KID: I CAN HELP YOU OUT.”

“You can?” The green in the air fizzed along Gideon’s taste buds. He needed his amulet like plants needed water. His very mind craved it.

“SURE! I HAPPEN TO KNOW STANFORD PINES PRETTY WELL.”

“Well, can you tell ‘em to gimme what’s rightfully mine?” He spat.

“SEE, THAT’S THE RUB. TURNS OUT OL’ FORDSIE DOESN’T ‘LIKE’ OR ‘TRUST’ ME,” Bill airquoted. “HE’S PUT UP DEFENSES IN BOTH BODY AND MIND. I CAN’T JUST WALTZ IN LIKE I OWN THE PLACE.” It snapped its fingers. “BUT! I HAVE AN IDEA TO GET AROUND THAT. AND IF I HELP YOU GET YOUR AMULET BACK, YOU’LL JUST HAVE TO LET ME BORROW IT FOR A BIT AND THEN I’LL RETURN IT SAFE AND SOUND. WE’LL WORK OUT THE DETAILS LATER.”

That was all Gideon had to hear. Anticipation flooded him at the thought of wielding that power again. “I’ll do whatever it takes, you freak o’ nature!”

“THAT’S MUSIC TO MY NON-EXISTENT EARS!” A long, spindly hand extended out to Gideon. It ignited in cold blue flames that danced and sputtered. “WELL?”

He stared at the shifting fire. There was no way he could say no. He doused his hand in the flames and grasped hands with Bill. “Deal.”

“Aw, look, Grunkle Stan’s so happy to be ringing up customers!” Mabel smiled. She kicked her feet against the underside of the booth she sat in. Across from her, Dipper flipped a page in his notebook.

“Mabel, I think that’s just what Grunkle Stan looks like all the time.”

“Like a happy dude?”

“Yeah, happy that he’s raking in money,” he snorted.

“But - what about how he’s talking to that Susan lady? Look!” She pointed.

“Mabel, don’t point at people,” Dipper reprimanded like it was a routine event. Regardless, he looked over. Stan was cozy with the waitress that stood with him at the counter. They talked easily, Susan laughing about something that neither Dipper nor Mabel could hear. “Wow, they’re, like, super friendly.”

“I knoooow,” Mabel groaned. “That’s why I wish they had worked out!” She fished her own palm-sized spiral notebook out of her sweater pockets. It was already open to a creased page littered with names and heart doodles. Some names were crossed out, while others were connected to each other by a line. She blew a strand of hair out of her face. “I guess it just wasn’t meant to be.”

“Hey, even if they’re not dating, it’s good to have friends, right?”

“Yeah, you’re right.” She ran a thumb over her notebook’s pencil scribblings. “And I still have plenty of people to matchmake!” She suddenly leaned over the table and poked her brother’s nose. “Like you!”

“Hey!” Dipper laughed and waved her away. “What do you mean, me? I-I don’t even like anybody, that would be silly, we’ve been here less than a week. Me? Like people? Of course not.” His laugh weakened.

Clatter erupted from the kitchen. “I’ll get it, Mr. Pines!”

Mabel and Dipper looked over. That redheaded girl, Wendy, had pushed the kitchen doors open and picked up a few dishwasher racks that had fallen to the floor. She stood up, carrying them all under her arms and shaking her head to get her ponytail back in place.

Dipper had fallen suspiciously silent.

Mabel kicked his shin under the table.

“Ow!”

“That’s for lying to me, bro-bro!” She triumphed.

“Okay, I-I like her!” Dipper hunched in on himself. “But I don’t know what to do about it. I mean, she’s so cool - I’m pretty sure she knows how to chop down trees?” He flipped to a new page in his notebook. “This calls for an itemized list.”

“What, no!” Mabel whined. “No lists! What else is even in that notebook of yours anyways? Just a bunch of lists of stuff you don’t do?”

“Ha, of course not!” Dipper paused. “That’s only half of the pages.”

“Ooh, what’s the other half?”

He looked down at his beat-up notebook, and back up at Stan, who was still chatting animatedly with Susan as he pressed buttons on a calculator. “Can we talk about this somewhere else?”

Mabel tossed another rock into the lake.

“Don’t you need flatter ones to make them skip?” Dipper asked.

“Yeah,” she replied. “I just like watching them splash.”

“Oh, neat.” Dipper flipped his notebook open. Its pages curled slightly from being stuffed haphazardly into a bookbag. “Anyways, with my notebook, I’ve just been kinda... cataloguing this summer?”

“Oh, like I’ve been doing with scrapbooking!”

“Sure! But with less photos and no gnome-ish beard hair.” He shuddered.

“What? Gnomes rooting through our trash is a treasured memory that I wanted to immortalize!”

“How can it be a treasured memory? It happened two hours ago, your brain hasn’t even processed it yet.” He showed her pages of notes and doodles. “But like I said, this is just notes and stuff.”

“On what? How come you couldn’t show me in the diner?”

“Well…” Dipper sounded sheepish. He turned past a few pages of store names and to-do lists to one spread of pages in particular. The header section read, in scratchy ballpoint, great uncles.

“You have secrets written down about them!?” Mabel gasped.

“No, no -” he waved a hand. “Most of this is actually mundane stuff, like when their birthday is, and what their work schedule is like so that we know where to find them - oh,” he pointed to a little doodle of a coffee machine diagram, “there’s also how they take their coffee.”

Mabel shot him a questioning look.

Dipper shrugged. “Great Uncle Ford’s been asking me to make him coffee sometimes and I keep forgetting how to use the coffee machine. But look.” He pointed to boxes of scrawled notes on one page, and then emptier boxes on the other. “See how much more stuff I have written down for Stanford? For Stanley’s, it’s like he barely even exists. We don’t even know if he went to college!” And Dipper wasn’t mad about that. He just wished he knew more, but Stan seemed… very private. For some reason their side of the family practically had Ford’s life history tattooed on the backs of their eyelids - graduated years early, earned a plethora of PhDs, went straight to work on pioneering a new field of scientific study and travelling internationally for his academics. Meanwhile, their Grunkle Stan was tacked on the end as someone that lives with Ford and runs a diner. And that’s it. As if his entire life Stan was doing those two things. But that can’t be true, right?

“Don’t you have to go to college to run a restaurant?” Mabel questioned. “Or am I thinking of doctors?”

Dipper made an ‘I dunno’ sound. “But still, our parents really know nothing about him. All I have here is when he started running the diner and when he was born. Everything between that is a mystery.” He shut his wrangled notebook and looked around. Wind whispered through the tall pines, but otherwise the lake was quiet and empty. “And you know how our aunt used to talk about him being a - y’know!”

“A big ol’ lovebug?”

“A criminal!” Dipper shout-whispered. A grifter, a crook, a good-for-nothing.

“Oh, yeah, but doesn’t Aunt Amy gossip all the time?”

“Yeah, but… I dunno.” He picked up a rock and tossed it into the water. It plopped in seamlessly. “We know so much more about Ford than Stan. It just feels a little weird, that’s all.”

“Huh. I guess so.” Mabel stared out at the gently lapping waves. “But he’s nice and really cares about his job and his brother, doesn’t he?” Grunkle Stan enthusiastically endorsed her need for sprinkles by ordering a summer’s supply for the diner, and he colored coloring pages with her, and he didn’t call her silly, and that was just in the week or so they’ve been there! And he was really good at coloring. Grunkle Ford was too, but he usually made the unicorns look like gross monsters.

“Yeah… and he knows some awesome card tricks.” Stan had taught some of them to Dipper. It was pretty great, to be honest. They had lost an entire evening to watching the way the cards shifted perfectly when Grunkle Stan shuffled them.

“He does know some awesome card tricks!”

“Yeah. He’s… he’s cool! They both are.” To say that Stanford’s lab was enthralling would be a massive understatement. Dipper wanted to look at everything in there and never leave. “I’m just wondering if there’s something we don’t know about Stan that maybe we should.”

Mabel hummed in contemplation. “Wanna see who can throw these rocks the furthest?”

“Eh, why not?” Dipper stood, pocketed his notebook in his vest, and dusted off his shorts. Mabel joined him with a handful of small rocks she had dug out of the dirt. He grabbed his own. They wound up their arms and started swinging rocks into the water, watching them sink down into the dark depths.

Chapter Text

The diner was a quiet 6-am gray. Old wood and soft worn upholstering slept behind the closed blinds of Greasy’s. Orange sunrise had yet to disturb the night blanket over Gravity Falls.

“Oh my gosh Grunkle Stan, open the door!”

The sun had no role in waking up the diner today - it seemed that Mabel had taken on that job herself.

Stan laughed quietly. “Don’t wake the whole town, kid. I’m on it.” He fished out his keys, felt their familiar shape digging into his palm. Diners were an early business - many were even 24 hours, 7 days a week, but no way in hell would Stan put himself or his employees through that. If the people of Gravity Falls really needed some heart-stopping grub at 2 in the morning, they could go to the gas station. Stan needed sleep eventually. He yawned and jabbed the key into the front door. With a twist and a click, he jiggled the handle roughly and the door opened.

“Is the door okay?” Mabel asked, taking care to whisper this time.

“There’s a trick to it.” He really needed to replace the knob eventually, but it wasn’t urgent. If less people understood how to open the door, less people could rob the place, so that’s a plus. The floorboards creaked under his feet like they did every morning six days a week. What was different, though, was the smaller pitter-patter of Mabel’s flats behind him.

“Soos’ll be getting here any minute,” he informed her as they headed behind the counter. “The man’s relentless. I keep tellin’ him to take a day off, but I think he actually thrives off workin’ here.”

“Why not? It seems great to me!” Mabel enthused.

Her innocent charm had an easy way of lighting up his mood. He smiled at her and ruffled her hair, tangling some strands beneath her headband. “That’s enough flattery from you, pumpkin.”

“Grunkle Stan!” She laughed, reaching up small hands to push his away and fix her hair. Her handknit rust-red sweater sported a stack of pancakes and a syrup bottle. Stan could’ve sworn that he saw her working on that sweater just yesterday. She was scary-fast with those knitting needles.

“Alright, come back here with me. You wanted a day workin’ the diner, and you’ll get it.”

“Yessir!”

They entered the kitchen, where Stan hit on all the lights for the store, barring the OPEN sign. He tugged open the industrial fridge. “Let’s see what we got, huh?” Together they inspected the cornered lines of containers and boxes inside. “If Wendy and Soos put the dates on these right, the first thing at reach here is the oldest we’ve got. FIFO an’ all that.”

“Fih-fo?”

“First in, first out. Basically, use stuff in order. Just don’t let junk rot. ‘S expensive.”

“Oh!”

He walked her through the rest of the kitchen (“you are not usin’ the knives.” “aw, why not?”) until Soos showed up and started enthusiastically teaching her how to properly do dishes, which gave Stan a chance to prepare the diner lobby.

By 7, bright light poured into the diner as Stan pulled up the blinds, squinting in the harsh morning sun. Considering Soos was excitedly explaining to Mabel how to use the sinks for fifteen entire minutes, it was a pretty timely opening. Stan flicked on the OPEN sign. Ready for business.

Behind him, Soos’s chipper voice wafted over from the kitchen: “And what do you gotta remember, dude?” And Mabel’s determined reply: “Wash, rinse, sanitize!” Honestly, if Soos weren’t so dedicated to the procedures Stan had half-assedly taught, this restaurant would not be so sanitary. He’s a great kid.

Wednesday morning usually dragged along. Not many people were patient enough to get diner food before work or school in the middle of the week. Stan blinked tiredly at the empty parking lot. He had stayed up a tad late watching movies with the kids, but it had definitely been worth it.

“Uh, Mr. Pines, dude?”

Stan turned around. “Yeah, Soos?”

“What’s the special for today?”

Oh, shit, that’s right. Usually if he had neglected to decide on a special, he would slap coffee pancakes on there and be done with it. Susan and him had perfected that recipe while he was still a cook here, and it was well-liked enough for people not to complain. Still, he did have a new employee with him today.

“Mabel, where are ya!”

Mabel scampered out, kitchen doors swinging behind her. Amusedly, Soos had slapped a hair net on her in the spirit of procedure, which was a bit ruined by her sleeves still hanging past her hands. “Yeah, boss!”

“Hey! I don’t got a special today, an’ I was wondering if you have any ideas to wow the pants off your customers while you’re an honorary employee.”

Mabel gasped. “Really? Working at a diner is way funner than my mom made it sound!”

Stan rubbed his neck. “Heh, I try to keep it alright, yeah.”

“She said that she went to college so that she wouldn’t work at diners an’ stuff the rest of her life.”

He stiffened. “Okay, you can stop talking now.”

Soos snapped his fingers. “Wait, you like sprinkles, right, little dude?”

“Is that even a question?!” Mabel shouted. “Omigosh, that’s right, Grunkle Stan bought all those sprinkles!” She turned to the man in question with wide, sparkling eyes.

Maybe not his finest moment, but yes, he did order a summer’s worth of sprinkles specifically for Mabel’s diner orders. Hopefully he bought enough, because for some reason she didn’t just like it in pancakes - she had asked for them on her eggs and toast yesterday.

“What’re you thinkin’, sweetie?”

“Extra double-sprinkle pancakes with strawberry syrup and whipped cream!”

Stan let the order formulate in his head. He nodded slowly. “Alright, okay, I can see it. Sounds like it needs a cherry on top, though.”

“Grunkle Stan.” She stepped forward and patted his arm with both hands. “You are a genius.”

It seemed that Dipper was sleeping in a bit late today. Ford was never that type of kid, always up at the crack of dawn and eager to think or do. On the flip side, if it wasn’t a boat-working day, Stanley would be face-down in his bunk till noon when they were kids. As Ford tinkered with something at the kitchen counter, he smiled. The quiet of the house mirrored the kind he’d gotten as a kid when he read a library book while his brother slept nearby. It was sweet.

Around 11:00, Ford heard footsteps and creaks above him. They had set the twins up in the attic for the summer, since the most that Ford and Stan used the space for was meager storage. Most of Ford’s things were stored in the basement anyways.

Dipper came crashing down the stairs, clutching his golden hat upon his head so that it didn’t fly away. A well-used spiral notebook was crushed to his chest, strips of perforated paper sticking out, the spiral wire bent and beginning to roll up out of the notebook holes. “Hi Great Uncle Ford!”

Ford smiled at him. The child was the quintessential picture of curiosity. So similar to himself, right down to anomalies; he still remembered the distinct dots of that birthmark on the boy’s forehead. Thankfully Ford was here to keep Dipper from following his curiosity to danger. Sometimes he wondered if Stanley and him needed more supervision as children - but, no matter. At least these kids weren’t going to chase after the Jersey Devil without safety measures, not least because they weren’t in Jersey. “Good morning, Dipper. How are you doing?”

“Good. Um. What are you doing?”

Across the counter were strewn bits and pieces of the coffee machine. “Ah. Just messing about. Trying to see if I can improve on the coffee machine, maybe make it brew faster. But I’ll put all of it back when I’m done.”

“Why?”

Ford lifted a small plastic component and screwed it back in place. “Stanley would like the coffee maker to be familiar to him, I imagine.” While Ford has taken time to improve a few things around the house - their generator, their lighting, their energy use - for the most part he didn’t permanently experiment on a joint-use object without permission.

Behind him, a chair squeaked, and a cereal bowl plunked onto the table.

“But wouldn’t he like it to be better?”

The computer chip for the coffee maker slipped easily back into place. “Maybe. But I don’t just mess about willy nilly. We both live here, after all. If he also wants it to change, I’ll change it. But for now…” He shrugged and fiddled with his mini screwdriver. “Routine trumps unnecessary change, I’ll say. Especially if he doesn’t agree to it.”

A spoon scraped against the porcelain bowl. The kitchen clock ticked as Ford quietly returned the coffee maker components and Dipper ate his Cheerios. As Ford snapped the side casing back on the maker, Dipper chugged the milk from his bowl.

“Where’s Mabel?” Dipper asked.

Mabel. That kid was a bright one. Weird, too. All the good Pines were. “She’s shadowing Stan at the diner today, remember?”

“Oh, right.” Dipper looked down at his notebook with a line of concern on his face. “Um. Can I shadow you, then, Great Uncle Ford?”

Someone who enjoyed his research - in his own family, no less! Weirdology becoming a Pines profession would be heartwarming, indeed. Ford shook away his daydreaming thoughts. He wasn’t about to inoculate this child with the disturbingly weird, the dangerously abnormal. Still, he could help Dipper see and understand weirdness in general. That shouldn’t be too bad. “Of course, my boy! Although, I wasn’t planning on anything exciting -”

“That’s okay! I just wanna see what you do.”

“Well, sure. I was just going to continue documenting plants - although, I have been thinking about a short expedition recently.”

“Really!?” Dipper coughed, and leveled the cracks in his voice. “I mean - really?”

Every tree in these woods has imprinted itself in Ford’s mind over many, many years. And still, things changed. Sometimes trees would get up and move. Sometimes entire sections of the forest would rearrange or disappear. Yes, Ford knew these woods, except for when he didn’t, and that was motivation enough to keep studying this town.

They hiked deep into the forest along an old path. The path used to lead to the Gnome Forest, but it inexplicably didn’t anymore, which Ford had no qualms with. The species never formed a counterattack after the whole ‘Queen Fiddleford’ business, unless gnomes rummaging through trash counted as an attack. Ford was more than happy to remain ignored and forgotten by the gnome people.

That whole affair had been harrowing and frightening for all involved in the moment, but now Ford could look back on it and smile, maybe even laugh. They were all so young at the time. Decades later, the sting of those memories - the gnome fight, Rico’s goons - soothed down into not much more than stories and remnant stranger-danger anxiety. Ford kept a pocket knife on his person for a reason.

“You holding up alright, my boy?”

Dipper wheezed next to him, sweating. “Yep! Never better.” He shouldered his backpack.

“Good!” Ford said, but he knowingly passed the water bottle to him anyways. “It’s hot enough out here without all the physical activity. Feel free to take your hat off - no worries about ticks. A colleague and I have confirmed that the ticks in these woods have long since died off.” Earthly nature didn’t always last in Gravity Falls, their adaptations not enough to stop weirdness from usurping their place.

“I’m good,” Dipper insisted, despite the fact that sweat glistened on his face, no doubt wetting his brow and ears.

Ford huffed as they traversed a small hill. “Well, the only reason I’m wearing gloves is to collect the specimen,” he explained. “Otherwise I wouldn’t bother. Why make it harder on yourself?” He had long since gotten past the urge to cover up his hands in everyday life.

Dipper worried his bottom lip with his teeth. “Um - okay.” He swiped off his hat to wipe his forehead free of sweat, mussing his hair and briefly exposing his birthmark to the air. Only a few seconds passed before he secured the hat firmly on his head again, pressing thick brown hair down against his scalp, but it was something.

Ford smiled at him. “We’re almost at the mushroom enclave, so don’t worry. It’s funny -” he laughs. “It must have been three decades ago now that Stanley, my friend Fiddleford, and I were getting into big trouble along this very path.”

“Wait - who’s Fiddleford?”

“An old friend of mine. We met at college. Actually, you might have met him - I could’ve sworn I brought him along for a visit when you were very young, but I doubt you remember.”

“Huh.”

“Anyways, he was here to help me with something..” and he would not say what. Dipper didn’t need to concern himself with such a terrible and dangerous being. That was exactly the type of weirdness that he wanted to keep Dipper away from. “And of course we ended up angering the gnomes.”

“What, like the entire race?” Dipper joked.

“Yes, actually,” Ford replied seriously. “I’m surprised Fiddleford and Stanley survived. They were being chased, while I went on ahead.”

“What can gnomes do? Hold onto your pant legs or something?”

“They can combine to form larger-than-life replicas of monsters and beasts.”

Dipper blinked. “That sounds horrifying.”

“I didn’t get to see it, but I’m sure it was. I was told they had formed a wolf at the time. But, the best part is -” Ford laughed through his words. “It was all because we tricked them into thinking that Fiddleford was going to be their next queen!”

“What?!” Dipper laughed incredulously. “No way!”

“Yes way, indeed... I hope I said that right.” What a traumatizing time. Now they could laugh, though. “We were trying to get something out of them - it was a complicated situation - and Fiddleford was our bribe.” He shook his head. “It was a damn risky move. Stanley’s idea. But, well, it worked in the end.”

“What - was Grunkle Stan just going to leave Fiddleford with the gnomes?”

“What? No. He was the one that got Fiddleford back in the first place.”

Dipper fell silent for a moment. “Did Grunkle Stan always live in Gravity Falls?”

“Oh, absolutely not. I moved here first, actually.”

“Then what -”

“Wait - don’t take another step.” He slowed to a stop and peered at old foliage. “It would be a shame if we were to crush our specimens.”

Dipper bumped into Ford’s elbow. “Huh?”

Ford kneeled down. With a gloved hand, he brushed seasons of leaf-fall away from the ground. Little by little, a purplish glow shone through gaps in the dead leaves. “Yes! This is it. Come look.”

As Dipper crouched beside him, Ford produced a plastic bag. He revealed the luminescent mushrooms and carefully plucked them by their short, wide stems. Shining blue dust crumbled off as he placed the purple fungi in the plastic bag. “I wanted to collect a few of these. Last time I studied them, they were blue.”

“But now they’re purple?”

“Precisely.” He shook the plastic bag and dropped his gloves in there with the specimens. The bag was sealed with a clamp and placed securely in his own backpack.

“Why?”

“Perhaps a change in the local environment, but I’m not quite sure.” Ford grinned at the stars in Dipper’s eyes. “And my boy, we’re going to figure it out.”

It was late afternoon when Dipper and Ford returned home. Stan and Mabel would be back in the evening. Until then, they were free to descend into the basement and get to work.

Ford wrapped his arm around Dipper’s shoulders to usher him to the porch steps. “We have a lot to look at with these specimens! We’re lucky we managed to collect such undamaged ones.”

“Glad we didn’t step on them,” Dipper laughed.

Ford was prepared with a returning quip - but it died in his mouth. He stopped. “Dipper…” he breathed. “Did you leave the door open?”

The porch door left the back hall subject to the elements, all three of its locks undone. It sat open innocently, providing a thin crack of a window into the dark and supposedly-empty home.

“No, I locked it behind me,” the child murmured.

Stan’s car wasn’t here. Perhaps Mabel came home early, but she knew the policy on closing doors - gotta keep the cool air in and the mutated wasps out. Maybe she had forgotten, but… whatever it was, this scene drove a tingle up Ford’s spine.

It was probably just Mabel or another perfectly plausible explanation. Still Ford threw his arm out to keep Dipper back. “Stay behind me.” He hadn’t survived years of life-threatening field research by assuming the best.

He rubbed a finger along the pocket knife in his jacket pocket. Wordlessly, he slid it out.

The porch steps creaked and groaned loudly in the silence.

Ford and Dipper slipped inside.

Chapter Text

“Yeah! I knit all my sweaters myself. I usually get yarn all over the place, but it’s fun!”

“Oh, well that’s just wonderful, young lady.” The older woman at the counter smiled at Mabel and handed her the cash for her meal.

Mabel beamed, put away the money, and leaned across the counter to hand her the change. “Thanks!”

The customer took a closer look at Mabel’s current wearable art piece. “You’re quite an adept knitter, too. What do you say about stopping in at the library on a Saturday sometime? We have a knitting circle.”

Knit stuff with a bunch of old ladies? Count Mabel in! “Ma’am,” she assured, “that sounds amazing and I will definitely be there this Saturday.”

“Great! I always love giving people my patterns.” The woman put away her wallet and waved. “See you Saturday, my dear!”

“Saturday for certain!” Mabel waved back enthusiastically. It felt great to befriend adorable old people. And they’re gonna swap patterns! Mabel really lucked out on cashier duty. She got to convince people to leave bigger tips and walk away with a new friend.

“Are you seriously going to go to the library to knit with old women?”

The voice was unfamiliar, and Mabel turned to it. At a stool further down the counter sat a platinum-blond girl with dangling hoop earrings and fun, dramatic eyeshadow. She examined her nails as if bored.

“Well, yeah. She invited me!” Mabel explained with optimism.

“Pff. Weirdo.”

Mabel faltered. “Huh?”

The girl ignored her. She was holding her flashy flip phone up to her ear. “Brenda, are you here yet? I’m getting the creeps. Why’d you decide to meet up in such a dingy place anyways? I know you like their fries, that’s not what I asked…”

Up until this point, Mabel considered herself fairly charming. Even if some of her teachers didn’t like her extremely insistent friendliness, she won most of them over sooner or later. It’s just in her personality - an unstoppable love machine! And when she said unstoppable, she meant it. Maybe it was more off-putting than she realized... But what the heck was up with that girl? Did she have a vendetta against old ladies or something?

“Yeah. Yeah. No, we’re on our way.” Stan snapped his own phone shut behind Mabel, emerging from the kitchen. “Mabel, why’re you staring at that girl? I hope I don’t gotta give you and Dipper the puberty talk. I feel like your parents should be the ones to do that.”

“What?” Mabel shook herself back to the diner, to the chill of the counter laminate under her hands and the chatter of late-afternoon meals, and Stan’s words caught up to her. “No, Grunkle Stan, we’re good!” She insisted.

“Well, good. Uh. Take off your hairnet, we gotta go.”

“What?” Mabel wrenched the hairnet off and dropped the tangled mess on a shelf behind the counter. “Is the diner closing early?”

Grunkle Stan rubbed his neck. “No, ah, it’s not that.”

Why did he suddenly look nervous? Mabel didn’t like that. “Grunkle Stan, what’s wrong?”

He sighed and cast a troubled look at his closed phone. “I don’t wanna scare ya, but Ford just called. Turns out someone broke into the house. Dunno what he took yet, if anything. I’m gonna drop you and Dipper off at Soos’s abuelita’s place until we know the guy ain’t there anymore.”

“Or girl.”

“Yeah, or girl. I’ve known quite a few girl thieves.” He squinted at his watch. “Alright, Soos, you good for the night?” He called.

Soos threw him a thumbs up through the kitchen window. “I got you, dude! Wendy’s gonna be here any minute now to cover.”

“Good man.” Stan straightened and slipped his phone into his pants pocket. “Let’s go.”

They climbed into Grunkle Stan’s old red car. Mabel buckled in in the front seat, already becoming familiar to the faint smell of diner food and cigarette smoke that had embedded itself into the weathered seating. She picked at the little hole that something had burned into the side of her seat and stretched out her legs to tuck her toes below the glove compartment. The car was starting to grow on her.

Stan shifted into reverse and deftly maneuvered out of the parking lot. “Sweetie, can you reach under your seat for me?”

“Sure.” She awkwardly searched under her seat with her fingertips. They curled around something smooth and wooden.

“S’ a baseball bat. Just pull it out for me, will ya?”

Wordlessly, Mabel did just that. She let it lean against her lap, touching the floor, as her Grunkle blew speed limits on the race home.

“Do you children like oatmeal cookies?”

“Oh, yes please!” Mabel cheered at the same time as Dipper just nodded with a hesitant smile. They watched her head into the kitchen and loudly take out a baking pan.

Soos’ abuelita was super nice. She was calm and cleanly and smelled like mint, and wore the cutest apron with a little pink heart on it. Mabel figured she must be a great grandma. No matter how hard Mabel looked, there were only pictures of Soos and Abuelita in the living room, so maybe for Soos Abuelita had to be a great Mamá too.

“Ugh, Mabel, I don’t like this,” Dipper groaned, flopping onto his back against the plain carpet.

“Aw, Dipdop, it’ll be okay.” Mabel gently punched his shoulder. “You didn’t even see anything while you were still at the house!”

“We saw the entire fork drawer emptied onto the kitchen floor,” he deadpanned.

“Well, yeah, but maybe it was just an animal that wandered in or something.”

“An animal that can skillfully break three locks?” Dipper narrowed his eyes at the ceiling.

Right, the lock chains had been clipped. She just shrugged. “Maybe it’s a smart animal.” She toyed with her sleeves. “How come you got to go in anyways? I didn’t get to see the spooky crime scene.”

“Ford was fine with me going in with him, but then Stan came and made me leave.” He crossed his arms.

“Oh.” Mabel missed that part. She had been waiting in the car while Stan got Dipper. “I think he just wants us to be safe.”

“Yeah, I know. But… what if that isn’t it?”

“Come on, you don’t really believe Aunt Amy, of all people?” She reached up to the couch behind her and chucked a pillow at him playfully.

Dipper laughed into the soft impact of the pillow. He grabbed it and tossed it back to her. “I don’t think so, but it makes me kind of uncomfortable, like - what is he hiding and why did it make our family think of him so badly?” He looked down at the carpet. “Also, I feel uncomfortable just leaving them in the house with some sort of burglar afoot. We don’t even know if they called the police or not.”

“Wait.” Mabel squinted. “We were told to stay here, bro-bro.”

“Okay, but aren’t you just a little bit curious? And what if they need our help? What if Ford and Stan are in trouble?”

Oh gosh, what if they were in trouble? A wild fantasy ran through her head of multiple unspecified government men in black, breaking in and stealing all the cool old-person trinkets in their Grunkles’ house. She stood, and with one breath, exhaled: “Okay we need to go help them right now.” She blinked. “So we just gotta tell Abuelita we’re going -”

Dipper shook his head and whispered to her a plan.

This seemed fun at the time, but now it was just creepy. The window to the now-closed back door yawned open like a creature’s maw. The lights weren’t on inside, and it had since gotten dark.

Mabel hesitated.

Dipper bumped into her. “Careful not to step on the creaky boards.”

She nodded and carefully placed her hand on the handle. Slowly, without breathing, the door was very cautiously opened. It made barely a sound. Thank goodness the door hadn’t been re-locked. Dipper and Mabel crept inside, careful to silently close the door behind them. They didn’t want the burning glow of the overhead lights, so they tracked the floor with light from the moon and from in-room lamps that had already been on. From what Mabel could tell, the forks that had been dumped willy-nilly were all thrown into the sink. Moonlight shone silver on their prongs.

Voices came crawling through the walls.

Dipper and Mabel froze by the doorway exiting the kitchen. The voices came closer. As they neared, Dipper and Mabel could pick out the gravelly and articulate tones of their Grunkles. Together, they sighed in relief for only a moment, then stiffened up as the two men passed the kitchen doorway. Thankfully, they weren’t heading in. It sounded like they were going into the living room.

“What are they -” Mabel started.

“Shh!”

The young twins fell silent and strained their ears.

“...just don’t understand how someone could know where it is, much less steal it. The lab is multiple floors underground, for Pete’s sake!” Came Ford’s worried, rushing voice.

But what was even stolen? Mabel leaned out to hear better.

“Did they take anything else from your lab?” There was Stan. He sounded more stern and serious than Mabel had ever heard from him before. Just hours ago he was cracking up with Soos about a mishap in the kitchen. Her shoulders curled inward.

“I’m… not sure. It was a mess down there.” A pregnant pause. “When I was checking the drawers, I realized that a notebook was gone, but - Stan, it was incredibly old. I only remembered it even existed when I saw its empty spot. I don’t remember if I threw it out or if someone took it. Who knows what I actually did with it.” He sighed.

“Hey, it’s alright, Sixer.” Some scuffling of shoes on hardwood flooring. “Who the hell would know how to get down to your lab in the first place?”

Although the door to the basement was just that - a door - the elevator system wasn’t exactly intuitive, and there wasn’t a big red sign reading ‘lab on this floor in this location’, which was why Mabel got lost trying to bring Great Uncle Ford breakfast yesterday. Those pancakes made it to him eventually, though!

“Well, maybe the kids -”

Mabel and Dipper both sent each other worried glances.

“- but I highly doubt they would want that Amulet.”

The Amulet! The young twins’ eyes widened.

“And if for some reason it fell into their hands… we have to help them. They’re great kids. I don’t want them to get hurt.” A stronger, stressed sigh. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe we shouldn’t have taken them on for the summer.” He laughed weakly. “What do we know about children? I have deadly plants in my basement!”

The words sank Mabel’s heart. How could Ford think that? They were having a great summer here so far! Looking at Dipper, he was sharing the same feelings as her.

“Hey,” Stan firmly interjected. “We’re both dumb and vaguely not child-safe, okay?” That made both men laugh. Oh thank goodness. “But we’ll be dumb together.” Another thoughtful moment. “Wouldn’t that Gideon twerp wanna get that Amulet?”

“Yes, but how could he have possibly known anything at all about the lab? The only other -” Ford sucked in a shocked breath. “Oh, no.”

“What? What’s happening?”

“This is going to sound extreme - but I know one other being that had intimate knowledge of my lab, and how to access it…” Inaudible murmurs to himself. “But - how?! We have a unicorn hair border around the house! I check it every two years!”

Mabel’s head spun. What the heck were these two talking about? She turned to her brother and mouthed excitedly: ‘unicorns!’

“Oh, fuck no. That asshole?” Wow, Stan had a pottymouth.

“It’s a possibility. It’s been decades… I thought Bill had forgotten about us, in all honesty.”

Who?

“I hope so. But just in case he didn’t… I think it’s a good reason not to call the cops on this one.”

“Stan, the police here are extremely incompetent and love you.”

“Eh, old habits die hard. But hey, I know what’ll cheer both of us up.”

“Alcohol?” Ford muttered, like a true defeatist.

Stan barked out a laugh. “Jeez! No, you know I got rid of all the stuff in the house when the kids showed up. Nah, I was gonna put on some coffee.”

Dipper and Mabel shared one like-minded look and scrambled. They didn’t scramble fast enough.

Mabel bumped face-first into Grunkle Stan’s stomach as he flipped on the kitchen lightswitch. Busted.

“Whoa! What the hey are you gremlins doin’ here?”

“Are those the kids?” Ford called from the living room.

“Yeah!” Stan shouted back. “You’re supposed to be at Abuelita’s. What happened?” He raised the arm that held some old rolled-up papers, but lowered it just as quickly, fingers twitching and face flickering - unreadable.

“Ummm…” Mabel said thoughtfully.

Dipper shifted from foot to foot. He refused to meet Stan’s eyes. “We told her we were going to bed early and stuffed some pillows under the blankets on her couch.”

Stan smacked his face with a hand. “I have to call her right now.” He reached over to the landline on the counter. “María is a very kind and intelligent woman - don’t think she was gonna fall for that all night.” Someone picked up on the other line, and Stan began speaking to her in quiet Spanish.

Mabel’s stomach twisted. They had messed up, huh?

“What were you two thinking?”

That was Ford, hair fluffed into oblivion from panicked tugging and carding through it. He looked tired, and held several notebooks under his arm, as well as the baseball bat that had been in Stan’s car.

“But…” Dipper’s voice became stronger. “You literally let me go in with you at first!”

“I know! And I was wrong to do that. Stan reamed me for that,” Ford mumbled, “And he was right to. Listen…” He dropped everything on the floor and put a hand on each child’s shoulder. “You may be capable of discovery, of learning about these woods, of exploring… but you are still children. It is my job to protect you from these things.”

“But nothing bad really happened at the house....” Mabel half-questioned.

“I know. But it could have.” He sighed. “You need to understand… these woods are not normal woods. It was entirely possible at the time that Dipper or I had left that door open, but I should have exercised much more caution with you around. I know very well what this place is capable of.”

Mabel blinked timidly. The darkness outside took on a dangerous color. “O-okay, Great Uncle Ford.” And Dipper echoed her.

“So.” Dipper cleared his throat. Some feet away, the phone clicked into its receiver. “Who’s Bill?”

Chapter Text

“Well, if everything pans out, he’s someone you two shouldn’t have to worry about,” Stan grumbled. He walked over to the coffee machine and pulled out the pot with more force than necessary. The faucet creaked on and water began to fill the pot. Really, what were these kids thinking?! Too curious for their own good. Ford’s a high-profile guy, a world-renowned scientist, so anyone who breaks into their house is likely to be dangerous. Did Ford even think of that before he let Dipper into the house with him?!

Deep breath. They already talked that out. It was alright now.

“I - Stanley, I think it might be a good idea to be forthcoming here. If there’s a chance that he’s back…”

Stan blinked at the feeling of wetness. The faucet was still running, and water was spilling over onto his clenched hand. With a sigh, he turned off the faucet and spilled excess out the pot.

“Who’s ‘he’?!” Dipper exclaimed, exasperated.

God damn it. If he were that kid, he’d be annoyed too, being kept outta the loop. Stan dumped the water in the coffee machine and scooped coffee into the filter. “Dipper, it’s complicated. Ford - as much as I don’t wanna believe it, you might be right. I mean, maybe Gideon or some random guy figured out how to get downstairs and knew where the Amulet was. But I don’t think that’s the case.” He hadn’t survived years of life-threatening homelessness and bad crowds by assuming the best. It’s been a long, long time since he’d felt in danger, but he hadn’t lost his instincts. “Regardless of whether or not it was Bill - hell, who’s to say there’s not some other omnipotent guy walkin’ around handing out information - I want you kids to know about him. To know to avoid things like him.”

That was how they ended up at the kitchen table, Ford heading the family meeting with a notepad and a pencil. Never one to miss out on theatrics, Ford did not speak as he drew a triangle with an eye and limbs.

“Cool doodle, Grunkle Ford!” Mabel said.

“This is no doodle, Mabel,” Ford corrected grimly. He held up the notepad and showed the drawing to both children. “This is a being named Bill Cipher. I met him not long after I moved to Gravity Falls. He told me he was a muse for my work… but that was a ruse for something more sinister. Thankfully, with Stanley’s help, I saw his true nature.”

The summary was succinct and to-the-point, but it hadn't always been that way. So many years ago, after everything had gone down, it took months for Ford to fully articulate what had happened. To fully understand for himself. Stan was proud of Ford, for him having put the work in so long ago; it made this conversation deceptively simple.

“What was he?” Dipper asked.

“A dream demon using me for his own impure intentions. I’m not sure what he truly wanted, but it had something to do with interdimensional theory becoming reality. It’s good I saw sense when I did. I don’t know what would’ve happened if I hadn’t.”

Stan made grave eye contact with the two children. “It doesn’t matter if it’s Bill or some kid in your class, if someone tries to belittle you or get you away from your friends, don’t listen to ‘em. Okay? People like Bill are manipulative. They know how to use you or hurt you in order to get what they want. Even if they sound nice, make you feel important, trust your gut about ‘em.”

Ford nodded. “Exactly. His compliments were laced with barbs at my friends and family. If something like this -” he pointed at Bill with his pen - “ever approaches you, in dreams or out of them, come to us, alright? Do not try to engage.”

Dipper and Mabel made noises of agreement. Stan could only hope that they understood what Stan and Ford were trying to tell them.

Dipper turned to Stan with a sharp eye. “Grunkle Stan, is that why you came to Gravity Falls? To help Great Uncle Ford with Bill?”

Yeesh. Stan rubbed his neck. “Um. Well...”

The family’s general consensus on Stan wasn’t lost on him. His father’s opinions of him had spread like wildfire in the near-decade that found Stan lost and floundering. After he had popped up again and put down roots, seemed to be holding a steady job, it got a bit better. From snippets of conversation Ford thought he hadn’t heard, though, his standing was still a mixed bag. He didn’t want these kids going back to their parents and telling them that all the rumors about Stan were true - the whispers of former penniless grifters and criminals, of piggybacking on his brother’s success. Yeah, he was content with the past now, but not the kind of content in which he would let his reputation in the family collapse completely.

Many times, Ford had asked him why he wouldn’t reconnect with their older relatives - why he only talked to their parents once a year and had trouble keeping up with Shermie’s family. A lot of burns have healed with time, but Stan wasn’t sure when he would ever manage to make hand contact with the active stovetop that was their close family again.

And, to be fair: ‘actually, I came to Gravity Falls because I was about to experience the horrifying consequences of a huge drug trafficking fuck-up and didn’t have food or a roof over my head’ was a little heavy for a light-hearted summer trip. No matter how he turned it - ‘I was down on my luck,’ ‘I needed help.’ It just enforced what Dipper and Mabel must’ve been told about his leeching nature and incompetence. It might be selfish, but Stan would keep the truth hidden for the rest of his life if it kept him in these kids’ good graces.

Ford saved him. “No, but everything fell into place in my favor. When I needed his help, Stanley was there.” He smiled at Stan, who returned the gesture. He could always count on Ford nowadays.

“What are we gonna do about the magic Amulet thing?” Mabel piped up.

A stern and somber look wiped the laughter lines off Ford’s face. “Hmm. Well. I suppose for a start, we could confront the Gleefuls on the matter. Maybe a house visit?”

It was extremely easy to figure out the Gleeful's address. They didn’t even need a directory; Susan just flat-out told them. How she knew that information was a mystery Stan didn’t care much about. Susan might as well be omnipotent herself, with her vast knowledge about desserts and local businesses and town gossip. That’s pretty much three categories of essential knowledge right there.

They rolled up to the neat, comfortable home and exited the car to take a look at where the Gleefuls live.

Well. It was where they had lived.

Stan and Ford stared wide-eyed at the bold red lettering of the SOLD picket sign standing proudly in the front lawn.

“Sweet Moses! They sold their fu - flippin’ house!?”

“I… suppose they did.” Morning dew wet Ford’s shoes as he inspected the SOLD sign. “There isn’t even a real estate agency attributed to this. This is possibly the most generic SOLD sign I have ever seen.”

While Ford stared at white-painted wood, Stan took out his phone. “Hey, Susan. Yeah. Did you know that the Gleefuls just up and moved?” No. Which was impressive, because Susan typically knew everything around here practically before it even happened. “Thanks anyways. How’s the diner? Oh, that’s great. Yup. Appreciate your help.” He tucked his phone away and watched Ford come back across the yard.

“Well, I suppose we’ll just have to keep an eye out for Gideon or the Amulet. Otherwise, I have no idea who could have possibly taken the damn thing.”

“Yeah, it’s weird for sure. Susan didn’t know they had moved, and she usually has two fingers on the pulse of this entire town.” Stan sighed. “Well. I guess we should call the police about it now.”

“Sure, but… it’s quite the leap to assume that they’ll be able to find anything.”

“What, no evidence?”

Ford shook his head. “I don’t think that will be the problem, exactly...”

Sheriff Blubs pushed up the brim of his uniform hat with his ballpoint pen and gestured to the papers and objects strewn all over the floor. “Well, I can tell ya that this certainly is a mess.”

Nearby, Deputy Durland was using the powder from the fingerprinting kit to draw war paint on his own cheeks. “A real crime, Blubs! Never thought we’d see the day!”

For a moment there, Blubs was actually inspecting the locker that had been broken into, examining the frantic clawing and scratch-marks in the metal. But at Durland’s excitement he turned to his partner and put a heartwarming hand on his shoulder. “The real crime here is how damn precious you are, Durland.”

“Aww.”

Ford and Stan watched passively from the other side of the locker space in the lab. Stan wordlessly produced a twenty from his wallet and passed it to Ford, who gladly took it.

“Told you they would be incompetent, knucklehead,” Ford said.

Stan responded with “Yeah, figures.” He sighed. “Back to the diner it is.”

“See you tonight. Have a good shift.”’

He clapped a hand on Ford’s shoulder. “Good luck with your research today, Sixer.” And he left the lab.

The diner door chimed. It was Stan coming in from the rain. The lunch rush was just settling down, although the rain had already stifled it a bit anyways. Dipper shot up in his booth, thankful to have a distraction from Mabel’s “true love notebook” which she had been describing in excruciating detail. “Hey Grunkle Stan!”

Stan visibly perked up and came over to their seats. “Hey, kiddos! Havin’ fun haunting my place of work?”

“I love being a restaurant ghost!” Mabel exclaimed, complete with ghostly noises and the waving of her arms so that her sweater sleeves flopped back and forth. Dipper cracked up laughing.

“Ha, you’re the friendliest ghost I’ve ever met, pumpkin.”

“Have you seen ghosts?” The words practically fell out of Dipper’s mouth.

“Yeah, but not since my old bosses kicked the bucket.” He waved the topic away as if that piece of information wasn’t vastly interesting. “Lemme know what you kids want for dinner later and I’ll give it to ya, free of charge, of course.” With that, he headed for the kitchen.

“Wait, Grunkle Stan!” Dipper called after him. “Did the police find anything?”

When Stan turned back around, he wore a perfect expression of exasperation. “If those knuckleheads could find less than nothing, that’s what they did. Oh well. Me and Ford got our eyes on it, don’t worry.” He swiveled back around and disappeared into the back of the diner with a greeting that Dipper couldn’t quite hear. “Susan! Are those new cat earrings?” The kitchen doors swung shut behind him.

Well, that was that.

Dipper sunk down into his seat, clutching excitedly to his pencil and scrawling on one college-rule page. “Mabel, did you hear that?! He saw his old bosses’ ghosts.”

“Dipper, I wasn’t finished!” She flipped through the pages of her own notebook, rushing past glittery penmanship and liberal highlighter usage. Dipper found that Mabel never used highlighters to actually understand her homework and notes, but if she had a chance to plaster her school highlighters all over her latest creative effort, she absolutely would. “Shabam!” Outstretched in her hands was a spread titled DIPPER AND WENDY - ROMANCE OF A LIFETIME?!?!?!?

Dipper put his head in his hands. “Oh, no.”

“Doesn’t it look really neat with the color-coded key and all the boxes? I even used a ruler! Grenda showed me how to make it look nice.”

Mabel had met Candy and Grenda at the diner yesterday morning, and if someone didn’t know that, they’d think the girls had known each other for years. Dipper still winced at the memory of the decibels that Mabel and her new friends could reach together - nevermind that she always had the easiest time making friends, while he was stuck wandering town or kicking his feet at a diner booth.

“It looks really nice, but - I’ve never even hung out with Wendy before. Don’t you think ‘romance of a lifetime’ is a little… out there?”

Mabel shook her head. “Of course not! ‘Summer vacation diner meet-cute’ is a recipe for success! I did the math!”

Well, there had been a graph of some sort on there. Although all the points on the dot-graph were hearts, and Dipper was pretty sure that the x and y axes weren’t labelled.

“I mean - I’d love to even just be friends, but…”

“Then just go up to her and tell her that! Ask her to hang out!”

Dipper sighed at Mabel’s bright eagerness. She approached every situation with all-encompassing optimism, sometimes to a fault. Where he saw a shadowy path ahead, she never failed to think that there were just roses and rainbows. “I dunno. Maybe I should…?”

“Yes! Do it!” She started chanting. “Dipp-er! Dipp-er! Dipp-er!”

She was so loud. Dipper cast a worried glance to Wendy from across the diner. “Keep it down!”

“Sorry.” Her voice fell to a whisper. “Dipp-er, Dipp-er!”

Long, deep inhale; even longer exhale. This was the summer that he would enter adulthood, marked by his bar mitzvah, the start of a new school grade, and a whole host of new challenges in his life that should be met. He puffed out his chest. This was going to be one of them. He slid out of the booth, resolution borne out of sheer anxious will. “Okay. I’m doing this.”

Mabel repeatedly smacked her hands palm-down on the table. “Yeah, bro-bro!” Her whoops of encouragement quieted as Dipper walked away from their booth and towards the counter, where Wendy was manning the cash register. Was the width of the diner always this long? It felt like forever and no time at all before he was standing right in front of her. Freckles dotted across her nose and cheeks, her burning-red hair yellowed from the overhead diner lamps.

“Um, hi Wendy.” He waved one hand awkwardly. “I -”

“Oh, hey! You’re Dipper, right?” She effortlessly twirled her pen from finger to finger. It flicked back and forth across the top of her hand in a mesmerizing pattern. “Stan’s nephew.”

“Yeah!” She remembered him?! “I was wondering if -”

“Wait, dude, hop on over to this side of the counter.”

What? “Oh - um, I’m not sure Grunkle Stan wants me back there.”

“Come on, you’re not gonna let that old fossil stop you, are you?” Her words didn’t hold any actual malice about Stan. She leaned in. “Between me and you, he’s actually a big softie anyways. The guy probably won’t care.”

Dipper nodded, suddenly struck with a spike of gratitude that his hat covered his forehead. “Okay. Um.” Hopping over a counter. He could do this. “I might need a boost though.”

She laughed lightly. “I didn’t mean literally!”

“Oh!” He flushed warmly at the same time as his hands took on an uncomfortably familiar claminess. “I knew that.” He scurried over to the counter door and slipped behind the register. Self-consciously, he wiped his sweaty hands on his shorts. “W-what’s up?”

“So.” She pointed her pen towards a booth whose occupants were inaudible. The booth held a very put-together young blonde girl and a snarky-looking brunette, both of which had covered their faces liberally in professional-grade makeup. “Those two have been arguing about what they ordered for like, ten years.” Between the two girls sat an untouched family-sized platter of the diner’s all-day breakfast item. “What do you think they’re saying?”

“Um.” He squinted at the scene before them. The blonde was yelling, face scrunched in frustration. She pointed at the platter and jumped in disgust when one of her manicured nails touched a sausage link. Dipper adopted a falsetto and mimicked the blonde. “I can’t believe you ordered sausage!” He scrambled for a name. “P-Paulette, we just can’t be friends anymore if you don’t follow my nutritionist’s strict diet of leafy greens and kale juice.”

Wendy laughed along. A lazy tilting tone was her voice for the other girl, who was now gesturing at the booth she was in with both hands. “But Marianne, I have werewolf genes! I need the protein!”

“Werewolves?!” Dipper broke character with a snort. “Haha, what?”

Wendy broke too, leaning with her arm on the counter. “Yeah, man. They exist.”

“That sounds wrong to me, but I don’t know enough about Gravity Falls to dispute it,” Dipper laughed.

“I can take you on a trip into the woods if you want, dude. Show you all the spooky werewolf stomping grounds I found.”

“Whoa. Sounds dangerous.”

She nodded sagely. “I’d say it is. I have off Saturday, and my friends and I are gonna goof off in the forest for a while anyways. Cool dudes welcome.”

“Cool dudes?” He had stars in his eyes. He was a cool dude.

“Totally! Also, ‘cool dudes’ is gender-neutral. Invite your sister too if you want!”

Dipper was sucked out of his admiration. He shrank back a little. “I dunno if she’ll want to. But, I mean, I’ll ask!”

“Sure! Either way, we’re meeting at the abandoned convenience store on Saturday at noon, so you’ll know where to find me.” She picked up her pen again and pointed it at another target, an elderly couple that seemed to have a hard time hearing each other. “Now tell me: what’re these old lovebirds saying to each other?”

Gosh, Mabel was definitely going to want to come on a forest-y werewolf hunt with him. Maybe he didn’t have to tell her about it. Dipper shook off the worries for now - he would cross that bridge when he got to it on Saturday. Turning back to Wendy, he grinned bright as the sun as they made up another story together.

Chapter Text

Come Saturday, fog settled thick into the pines and smothered the little town of Gravity Falls. Dipper blinked awake to the old wood of the slanted attic rafters. Soft sunlight struggled in through the low fog. With a groan, he pulled himself up and swung his feet over the edge of the bed. He glanced over. Mabel was still sleeping.

It was only nine in the morning. Dipper accidentally woke up early for once, and he had nothing lined up until noon, giving him plenty of time to freak out about said activity lined up at noon. Great! Cool!

Another look over - Mabel just snuggled deeper into her fuzzy heart-shaped pillow.

He carefully crept across the room, turned the doorknob slowly, and kept the attic door from squeaking as much as possible when he exited.

Taking conscious, creak-free steps down the stairs, Dipper emerged into the hallway and went into the kitchen, fully intending to grab some cereal and try to kill some time eating that.

“Good morning, Dipper! Nice to see you awake.”

“Oh, g’morning, Grunkle Ford.” Dipper paused and rubbed some sleepiness out of his eyes. “I mean, Great Uncle Ford.”

“It doesn’t really matter to me, my boy. Want some breakfast?”

Now that Great Uncle Ford mentioned it, the kitchen did smell vaguely like food. Dipper sniffed the air and hummed gratefully. “Are you making eggs and bacon? I-I’d love some.”

“Great!” He slid sizzling eggs and bacon onto his own plate and turned back to his stovetop pan, cracking another couple of eggs and adding some more bacon. “Stanley may be the better cook by far, but I can still put together some sort of meal.” He pushed the eggs around with a spatula. “When I remember to, anyways.”

Dipper could relate to that. There were a lot of times when he was working on a video project or reading a particularly good book and he just left reality as a whole, only breaching the surface again when Mabel would nudge him out of it with a snack or a drink. “Does Grunkle Stan help you with that too?”

Ford laughed. “I suppose you also have trouble remembering those things?” He smiled as he loaded up Dipper’s plate. “Stan’s always been a great help in that way. He’s very particular about food - whether we have enough of it, whether we have everything we need to cook up a real meal. I’d probably starve without him.” Both plates now done, he brought them over to the kitchen table.

“Has he always liked cooking and stuff?” That would make a lot of sense - maybe Grunkle Stan always wanted to own a diner. The plate Ford brought to Dipper smelled amazing, and his stomach rumbled.

To Dipper’s surprise, Ford shook his head. “He didn’t even like cooking until -” he shrugged and sat down beside Dipper with his own food. “Well, I guess until he needed to do it. He eventually grew to love it. The diner was more of an accidental thing. He became an employee there and soon enough, he was owning the place.”

“Huh. Good for him.”

“It is. I’m quite proud of him.” He and Dipper began to dig in. “Do you have any plans today, Dipper?”

Dipper swallowed a piece of egg. “Uh, actually, I -”

A crash and a series of unnervingly loud creaks interrupted them. Mabel barrelled her way down the stairs, giant glittery tote bag accompanying her. She was wearing a new sweater, one that sported a yarn ball design on it, and her mile-wide smile showed off her braces. “Hey, Dipdop! I’m going to the library today to knit with old ladies, wanna come along and read dusty old books?”

Oh. Oh man. He was so geared up to figure out how to tell Mabel about his plans and he never even considered the possibility that she might’ve already had plans too. They both thought the other wouldn’t have anything to do - that they would automatically want to come along. Like always.

“Well,” Ford commented with a touch of humor, “looks like you have plans now.”

Wait. “No, actually. I, um. I’m gonna hang out with Wendy today.” Dipper dropped his fork to his plate with a clatter. He rubbed his arm awkwardly. Why was he so itchy?

Mabel’s ever-present smile faltered, but her charm quickly recovered. “Oh. Okay. That’s - that’s great!” She left her tote, which was evidently full of yarn and knitting needles and wrinkled papers of hand-written patterns, by the doorway. “You’re gonna have a great time!” Was that hurt in her eyes? Why would she be hurt about something she didn’t even tell him about in advance?

“We’re gonna go into the woods and do some creepy exploring if you want to come with us instead,” Dipper tentatively offered.

“Nah,” she declined. “Sorry, I’m just - really excited for this knitting circle. I’ll join you next time?”

Dipper deflated just a little bit. “Uh, okay, have fun at the library.”

“Would you like some eggs and bacon, Mabel?” Ford asked, seemingly oblivious to the room’s atmosphere.

She shook her head and rushed over to the cereal cabinet, pulling out some sort of Lucky-Charms-esque sugar monstrosity. “Thanks but no thanks, Grunkle Ford! I’m gonna need some real fuel for this knitting extravaganza.” Because apparently protein-heavy food just wasn’t going to cut it. After preparing her breakfast, she disappeared into the living room, followed by the bright cheery sounds of a Saturday morning cartoon.

Aw man. Dipper put his head in his hands and muttered under his breath. “Why was that so awkward?”

Across the table, Ford gently put his own fork down. For a second, Dipper thought that his Grunkle was going to launch into some sort of speech, but instead he just gathered their empty plates and said, “When are you leaving to meet up with Wendy?”

“Um. A little bit before noon?”

Ford dumped the plates in the sink and checked his watch. “It's around 9:30. Would you like to kill some time by accompanying me downstairs?”

Please. Anything to distract Dipper from the bundle of nerves and anxiety that his body was hell-bent on becoming. “Yes, please!” He got up and called out to the living room: “Mabel, we’re going downstairs!” No response. He cast a last worried glance towards the living room, but just followed Ford down the dark series of staircases that led to the basement labs.

“I want to check up on that mushroom species,” Ford explained as they made their way to his plant-filled personal lab. “They seem to be taking to the dirt well, even though it’s not their native weirdsol. The mushroom heads are still purple in hue, though, so we’ll see if that’ll change.”

“Weirdsol?”

Ford absolutely lit up at the simple question. “Weirdsol, my boy, is a classification of soil that, as far as I know, is completely unique to Gravity Falls. I’ve tried to fit the soils of our forest into even the broadest preexisting USDA classifications, but its nature and characteristics simply cannot be categorized. The USDA has been ignoring my letters about adding a 13th soil order to the taxonomy, though.” He sounded a bit bitter about that. “Jokes on them, though; I’ll just construct my own soil classification system that’s so much better that they’ll have no choice but to adopt it.”

“Huh.” Science could apparently be fueled by spite. Who knew? They approached the controlled planting space, where purple mushrooms were peeking up brightly out of the soil. The funghis’ bioluminescence painted their enclosure in purplish-blue tones. “How did you even find Gravity Falls in the first place?”

Ford handed Dipper a small ziplock bag and asked him to hold it open. He slipped on some gloves, opened the enclosure, and sliced off a piece of mushroom. “Well, I had many subjects of study. My research in college took me into many fields - engineering, physics, chemistry - but I found that what I desired to uncover the most was natural and supernatural mutation.” He dropped a few slices of mushroom into the ziplock bag, quietly thanking Dipper and taking the bag from him. “I documented cases of such ‘weirdness’ and learned that Gravity Falls was their epicenter.”

“What? Why?”

“A little something called the Unified Theory of Weirdness! Which I... don’t fully understand yet, but I’m getting terribly close.” The two of them approached a workbench, where Ford pulled out some blank microscope slides and got to work on placing the slices of mushroom on them. Dipper watched on in rapt interest, feeling a bit stupid for just standing around.

“Can I do one?”

“Of course,” Ford smiled. He passed Dipper some gloves and a pair of small forceps.

“Mabel never wants to do this stuff with me. She always says it’s boring.” Dipper pulled on the six-fingered gloves - they were way too big. Clumsily, he reached into the bag with the forceps and pulled out a thin slice of mushroom.

“It probably is boring - for her, I mean. She just finds different things interesting. Make sure to lay the specimen flat on the slide.”

Hand shaking slightly, Dipper laid the slice down on the rectangular piece of plastic. “Hey, I did it!”

“That you did! Good job.” Ford produced a pack of thin protective plastic sheets from somewhere along the complete mess of a workbench. “We have to lay these down on top so that the specimen doesn’t fall off the slide.” He demonstrated by securing one atop his own microscope slide. “See?”

“Yeah!” Dipper grabbed one for his own slide. Offhanded, he said, “I don’t understand why Mabel would rather wanna go sit in a circle and knit with a bunch of strangers instead of explore the woods.”

Ford kept an eye on Dipper’s motions. “Well, it’s completely alright for you two to like different things. Stanley and I used to struggle with the same thing. It started small, but it grew into a troubling problem, because we didn’t talk to each other about our worries. If we had just talked -” He shook his head. “No matter. It’s in the past.”

“What is?” Dipper wavered with his grip on the protective covering.

“I would tell you, but I would rather have Stanley present for the full story.” Ford shook off the memory, leaving Dipper a bit disappointed. “You and Mabel probably haven’t spent much time apart, have you?”

He shook his head.

“I understand. Stan and I were the same at your age. It will seem strange to grow apart in some ways. But it’s fine to do that. Plans can change; you’ll still be twins no matter what.”

The words tumbled around in his mind. It seemed like heavy advice for the one bout of awkwardness they had had at breakfast. But Great Uncle Ford sounded like he was speaking directly from experience. Maybe he was thinking past Dipper and Mabel’s awkward encounter into their future, extrapolating based on his own life and seeing the potential for something bad. Did his grunkles have a falling-out about this sort of thing - about paths diverging?

Even if it seemed a little extreme, Great Uncle Ford was a genius, and more than that, his words showed that he cared a lot about Dipper and his sister. And even though he didn’t realize it at first, maybe Dipper actually needed the advice; a little bit of his anxiety stopped churning about in his stomach, which was a good indicator. “Thanks, Grunkle Ford,” Dipper said, with a hesitant upturn of his lips.

“Of course. Now finish up that slide, and then we’ll get a few more done.”

“Oh, yeah.” He was still holding the thin film. Bringing it closer to the slide, he realized that his hands were shaking again. Ugh. It sucked when that happened. “Do I just lay it on, like-”

“Yep, just ensure that you cover the whole slice with it.”

Sure, Dipper could do that. No problem. He leaned closer, holding his breath, and the film moved closer to the microscope slide. Almost there - but then the forceps in his shaky hands bumped the slide, and it and the mushroom slice slipped off onto the floor with a clatter.

Dipper stared wide-eyed at his mistake. “Oh my gosh. I’m so sorry, Great Uncle Ford, I -”

A warm, solid arm settled across his shoulders. “Breathe, Dipper. It’s alright. There’s plenty more slides and mushroom samples where that came from.” He didn’t sound mad at all. Why wasn’t he mad? “Mistakes are alright.”

“Okay. Alright.” He let out a nervous breath and helped Ford clean up the mess.

So this was the old convenience store.

Even in broad daylight it was a bit unsettling to look at, caged in by a chain-link fence and completely dark inside. The property was uncomfortably close to the woods, surrounded by countless trees and securely tucked away from the rest of the town.

“Isn’t it creepy?”

“Ahh!” Dipper practically leapt into the air. He spun around. It was just her. “Oh! Hey, Wendy!” He sweated uncomfortably, eyes scanning, but no one was here with her. “W-where are your friends?”

Wendy walked up with a shrug. “Eh, they’re not here yet.” She didn’t look much different off the clock, still sporting a well-loved flannel, but her hair was down and partially covered by a lumberjack hat. She looked so cool. “Checking out the old Dusk 2 Dawn?”

“Yeah.” He turned back to the ominous building curiously. “I can’t believe Stan used to work here.”

“Yeah!” Wendy laughed. “He always has crazy stories about this place.” She bumped his shoulder with a closed fist. “Dude, we should go in.”

The first thought he could formulate was no, absolutely not. “Um. Are you sure? I dunno if that building is still up to code,” he weakly chuckled, but Wendy was already approaching the fence. He sighed and simply followed her. “Okay.”

“Come on, man, I’ll give you a boost.” Before he could so much as protest, she hefted him up easily by the waist and pushed him up towards the sky.

“Whoa, whoa -” For an embarrassing moment his arms flailed, but then he caught onto cold chain-link beneath his fingers. He dug the tips of his shoes into the diamond openings between wire. “Okay, I think I’m good, lemme go.” She did, her hands leaving his vest. Okay. He could do this. Yeah. He held the fence in a death grip and inched up until he could grab onto the top of it. Now he was on top of the fence.

Oh, god. He was on top of a fence.

“How’s the weather up there?” Wendy called.

He couldn’t let her laugh at him. He had to jump down. He had to.

One by one, his fingers uncurled from the bar at the top of the fence. He swung a leg over, wincing at the chain-link diamonds digging into his thighs. Just leave the fence and jump off -

The ground came to meet him a lot faster than he thought it would.

“Dude, you okay?” Wendy shouted, concerned. The fence rattled loudly behind him. Dipper couldn’t see as his vision was currently consumed by dirt (the weirdsol kind?), but that must’ve been the sound of her scaling the fence much faster and more efficiently than he had. Awesome.

“I’m okay,” he croaked, blinking dust out of his eyes. When he stood, little shards of rock fell down from where they had embedded in his knees. Mistakes are alright. It’s okay. Honestly, this was kind of cool. He’d never jumped a fence before.

“Oh, awesome,” Wendy said in relief, jogging up to him. “I was worried about how I'd explain to the old Stan bros that you fuckin’ died.”

Dipper laughed. “Hey, that wouldn’t’ve killed me.”

“You never know!”

They walked up to the abandoned store’s glassy doors. Dipper tried the handle. Surprisingly, the store was unlocked. The fact sent a shiver down his spine, but Wendy and him easily slipped in anyways.

“Lights don’t work,” Wendy commented, flipping a switch up and down uselessly.

“Huh.” Dipper was busy taking in the store’s interior. It was like a time capsule to the past. All the old food was gone, but the displays remained. He’s pretty sure that Fun Dip isn’t allowed in the U.S. anymore.

On the far wall hung a good number of picture frames. Most were empty now, but there remained a series of frames showing off a familiar face. Employee of the month: Stanley Pines, Dec. 1982. Employee of the month, Stanley Pines, Jan. 1983. Employee of the month, Stanley Pines… Wow, they had loved him here. His grunkle was much younger in these photos, with tired but bright eyes. He had much longer and richer hair, too - was that a mullet?

Peering over the counter, Dipper yelped in a decidedly unmanly fashion.

“What? What did you find?” Wendy ran over, boots echoing on old dusty tiles.

Dipper just pointed wordlessly at the chalk outlines of bodies drawn against the tile.

“Holy shit,” she breathed. “This was where the owners died.”

“Wha - did someone kill them?” Suddenly, Stan’s admittance of seeing his old bosses’ ghosts darkened into a more sinister picture.

“Nah, dude, they both had heart attacks. Some sorta freak reaction.”

Oh thank god. Dipper was about to have a heart attack of his own. He wrestled his breathing under control. “It’s a shame the ghosts are all taken care of. It would’ve been so cool to see them.”

“Oh yeah, Stan was telling me about that! That was crazy. Apparently him and his brother talked the poor dead couple down and helped them, like, leave this earth.”

“Really?” Dipper’s eyes widened. Maybe it was a good thing that the store was so silent and devoid of life. Great Uncle Ford had told him about his ghost ranking system, and Dipper had no idea what category the store owners fell under.

They did a little more poking around and found nothing of interest. Wendy told him that she saw one of her friends outside, so they soon left the Dusk 2 Dawn, but not before Dipper grabbed one of the Employee of the Month photos and slipped it into his backpack.

“Hey, kiddo, it’s okay. You’re separate people that need their own space. So what if he went off exploring with another friend? You had fun at the library, didn’t ya?” Grunkle Stan took a sip of his Pitt Cola.

Mabel nodded reluctantly, unable to enjoy the cool breeze that was blowing through as they sat on the back porch. She did really have fun today - she came back with some new patterns and even some yarn that Bethany, the lady who invited her, gave her as a gift. The nice man that ran the library was there too and brought them all drinks. But Mabel’s good mood soured by the time she got back home.

The rainbow loop of thread in her hands twisted around fruitlessly. She was trying to do the solo Cat’s Cradle, but she kept missing one of the steps and ending up with a sad-sack cradle that no cat would want to hang out in. “All the old ladies were really, really nice. Grunkle Stan, would you wanna date an old lady knitter?” Her usual cheer was absent from her typical matchmaking talk. Her heart wasn’t in it right now. Ugh. Why did Dipper’s plans make Mabel sad? She hadn’t even known they were happening. Maybe that’s why?

Regardless, the fact was that she was grumpy. She was in a grump-slump.

“Uh, I’d have to meet anyone before I decided to date ‘em, pumpkin.”

She sighed. Why did Dipper wanna ditch her? “Sorry I’m all mopey. I just dunno why Dipper didn’t wanna come hang out with me. We always do that. I thought he had wanted to see the library. Now I feel like poop.”

Her Grunkle peacefully watched the line where the forest met the house’s property. “Why do ya feel like poop? Things change, that’s all.”

“Well, they shouldn’t.” She pulled her hands apart as far as she could with the infinite string looped around her fingers, and the thread dug into her skin. “Why would he hang out in the woods with some random teenagers instead of hanging out with some random old people and me?” It wasn’t fair.

“Hey. Look at me, Mabel.”

Mabel didn’t want to drop the tense facsimile of a Cat’s Cradle that was taut in her hands, but she couldn’t pull it tight forever. She slowly lowered her hands and turned to look at him.

“Dipper might wanna do stuff without you. You might wanna do stuff without him. But that doesn’t mean that either of you are leaving each other behind.” His eyes were serious.

Leaving each other behind. Was that why Mabel felt like poop?

Yeah. It was. It was, and she hadn’t even known it.

The string slipped off of her fingers completely and curled up formless into her lap. This wasn't really just about what happened this morning, was it? She pulled her knees up close to her chest, sinking into her chair. “But what if he is? He’s just so dang smart! He’s doing cooler, better things than me already. He’s taking harder classes than me next year and going exploring and spending all his time in Grunkle Ford’s lab, and I’m just goofing around doing silly stuff like - like stupid knitting circles and scrapbooking -”

“C’mere.”

Stan had gotten up. Big, warm arms wrapped around Mabel, and suddenly her face was resting on Grunkle Stan’s shoulder. She nestled her cheek into the fabric of his shirt and didn’t cry, but it was a close thing. His voice rumbled in his chest when he spoke.

“Both of you kids are brilliant in your own way, you hear me? Dipper likes things like mysteries, and film, and school. You like art and socializing and goofin’ off - in a good way! None of that makes either of you better than the other.” He gently let go of her to kneel down in front of her chair and keep eye-level. “You wanna know what my dad said to me?”

‘What did he say?” Mabel and Dipper never met their grandfather. Their family didn’t talk about him much, especially not after the funeral, other than mentioning his old Pawn shop in Jersey. Would her grandfather turn out to be a wise old man that gave Stan advice that would be passed down through generations?

“He once told me that I was just a useless add-on to Ford. He just wanted to get rid of me.”

W-what? Mabel’s heart sank into her feet. “He… your dad said that?”

“Yeah, Mabel, he did.” He smiled at her, bittersweet. It was something that didn’t hurt anymore. But it had hurt once. “My family praised Ford for his smarts and wrote me off for basically not bein’ him. But it’s not a competition. Not between me an’ Ford, and not between you and Dipper. My brother became a huge scientist, and I’m proud of him for that! Meanwhile, I didn’t go to college or any of that, but I own a restaurant and have friends and I’m happy. That’s the important part.”

She sniffed. “Not stupid school.”

“Hey, education’s important,” he protested, but there was a laugh in there. “But… yeah. Mabel, school isn’t going to be a be-all end-all. It definitely wasn’t for me. An’ you and Dipper, you’re always gonna be different. Don’t let it separate you.”

This time, it was Mabel who hugged him. “Grunkle Stan? I don’t think you’re silly for not doing what Grunkle Ford or Dipper do. I didn’t - it wasn’t supposed to sound like that. I was just -”

A large hand rested on her head, atop her headband, messing up her hair just a bit. “Talking about yourself, I know. I get it. Don’t - don’t talk about yourself like that. Who told you that the stuff you do is silly?”

She pulled back with a shrug and wiped her eyes with a sweater sleeve. “I dunno. There’s this girl at the diner who laughs at me sometimes…” That pretty girl with the blonde hair and makeup kept showing up at the diner with her equally pretty friend, and Mabel had caught them looking at her a few times. Whenever they were in speaking distance to Mabel, the blonde whispered something in her friend’s ear, or just straight-up called Mabel out for something she was wearing or doing.

“Mabel, I own the diner. I can kick out whoever I want. You know what - more than that. What’s her name? She’ll learn not to make fun of you.” He dug a hand in his pants pocket and pulled out… brass knuckles?

“Wait -” She giggled even though she had been on the verge of tears just moments prior. “Don’t beat anyone up! She’s my age!”

Stan made a show of not caring. He shrugged nonchalantly. “I’ve been arrested for worse than punchin’ out a twelve year old.”

“No!”

He laughed loud and strong, slipping the brass knuckles back into his pocket. “Ha! I won’t actually go punchin’ children. Don’t worry. But if this girl keeps bothering you, let me know, okay?”

She nodded, smiling softly. “Okay, Grunkle Stan. Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.” He opened the back door (which was newly fortified with better locks) and they both went inside.

“Do we still have moose tracks ice cream in the freezer?”

“Huh.” Stan put a hand on his chin. “Well, if we do, we won’t have it for long, how about that?”

Yes! Mabel ran to get two pairs of bowls and spoons, while Stan pulled open the freezer. She smiled to herself. She already felt a lot better.

Chapter Text

Commercials were usually a pain to sit through regardless, but this one was just spiteful. Unfortunately, Ford’s eyes were glued to the screen as a familiar voice taunted him from the television.

“Back against all odds, and now on an Oregon tour, but wait, don’t miss us just yet! Our first stop is the sweet old town of Gravity Falls. Folks, you’re all familiar with it, you all love it: The Tent of Telepathy!” Onscreen, that sad white-haired child released a bevy of doves that soared into the air. At the center of his bolo tie was the Amulet, shining almost unnaturally under harsh blown-out lighting. It was clasped in new wiring and spruced up with a newer, fancier bolo tie.

So, Gideon did have the Amulet. And his family was greedy enough to return to Gravity Falls since they knew they had an audience there. Ah, the follies of capitalism. Surely the Gleefuls must also know that he and Stanley aren’t stupid. At this point it’s obvious who broke into their home.

“Stanley!” Ford shouted.

“Yeah?” From somewhere in the kitchen came the clattering of cookware. “I’m kinda in the middle of dinner, Ford! You know I can’t hear through walls.”

Rolling his eyes fondly, Ford left his chair in the living room and entered the kitchen. At the stovetop, Stanley was putting together some kind of chicken stir-fry that smelled amazing - Ford shook his head. He couldn’t let that distract him. “Did you hear that commercial?”

Stan barked out a laugh. “Pal, if I can’t hear you yellin’ a room away, I sure as hell couldn’t hear that.”

“It was Gideon’s psychic fraudery. From the looks of things, he has the Amulet again.”

In the midst of cooking dinner, Stanley stilled. “Shit. Really?”

“Unfortunately.”

“Yikes. Called it.” Stan continued pushing around a sizzling mixture in a pan. “S’ bad news. Using that thing isn’t healthy for him, right?”

“No, it’s not.” Ford sat down at the kitchen table with a sigh. “But this has larger implications than that child. How did he even get in, much less know where it was?”

“Maybe his dad helped him clip the locks?” He didn’t sound too sure about that theory. With a soft click, he put a lid on the pan and grabbed some plates. “Seems tall enough.”

“Yes, perhaps… but I still have questions.”

“Like?”

He thought about that. The scene didn’t settle right in his mind. Something was off about it. “The lab was a mess when we got there. You saw it; the workbenches were in complete disarray.”

“You mean, how they usually are?”

Ford coughed. “If you’ll let me continue… there was also a fair amount of papers strewn about - and not how they ‘usually are,’ I have a system - but when it came to the small safes, only one was broken into, and ferociously, at that. Only the safe holding the Amulet was touched. As if the intruder knew exactly where to look.”

“Lucky guess?” Stan shrugged, unconvincing. He plated the finished stir-fry and turned to his brother, who was currently trying not to implode into an anxious-ridden pile of dust. “Listen, Ford… it doesn’t sound good, I know. But, maybe we can show up at the kid’s dumb psychic tent again and, I dunno, someone can give ‘im another punch.”

Ugh. His mouth twisted into a frown. He appreciated Stanley’s attempts at calming his nerves, but it was hard to be grateful in the midst of a harrowing situation like this. “I would rather there be no more children-punching. Honestly, I would rather this just hadn’t happened.”

“Yeah, me too. It sucks, but the truth is that someone broke in and got that Amulet back to Gideon. We just gotta figure out how the hell it got back to him.”

“I - you’re right,” Ford conceded. He hunched his shoulders. The realm of possibilities was endless, especially in Gravity Falls, but for some reason he found himself fixating on only one of those vast answers. “And if it is Bill -”

“Hey, you better still have that dream-enterin’ spell kickin’ around somewhere.” He pointed at Ford with the business end of his plastic spatula. “‘Cause I’m ready to fight that ugly nightmare all over again.”

Despite himself, Ford cracked a smile. Stanley knew how to get him to do that. “I’ll have to take a look at the old journals, but I know it’s around here somewhere. We - we can definitely take him again.”

“That’s the spirit.” Stan gathered up plates in his arms and shouted up the stairs. “Kids! Dinner!”

That wily demon ended up practically harmless after he and Stan had quite literally punched him out. Sure, Ford maintained a unicorn barrier and exercised extreme caution, but he was hopeful - no, confident, even - that if Bill ever decided to interfere with their lives again, they could once again drive him out. Even better, since this time they already knew that Bill was a manipulative conman. No one would be falling for his tricks in this household. Not while Ford had a say in things.

The kids clattered down the steps and erupted into the kitchen, where Stan had put out plates for them. Their shining, youthful faces pushed Ford’s little smile into a grin.

He picked up a fork and speared a piece of perfectly-cooked chicken. Yes, he thought, things were going to turn out just fine.

The kids had gone off to bed. Well, presumably that was the case, but Ford would bet that they were staying up late, reading or making art or any other number of things that Stan and he used to do in the slight hours of summer nights. The house was quiet again, save the occasional creak and groan of an aging building.

Warm lamplight engulfed Ford as he turned a crisp page. It was reading for enjoyment instead of knowledge, something that Stan had convinced him to take up as of late. Stanley was always more one for storytelling, but Ford found himself enjoying the mental act of imagining the story in his mind and losing himself in a tale. When had he last sat down with some good fiction?

On the sofa, at Ford’s right, Stan was focusing with needle and thread in hand. He was patching up a pair of jeans that had gotten a bit too holey for comfort. Years ago, Ford would be reminding him that they had the money to just replace what would become overused, but now he just accepted his brother’s quirks, seeing as they weren’t harmful and comforted Stanley in some way.

“Have you tried that new embroidery thread yet?” Ford asked comfortably.

Stan grunted. “Do I look like I’m embroidering right now?”

Okay, a little on-edge. Ford didn’t know why, exactly. “Well, no, but seeing as you’re holding a sewing needle, I thought that perhaps I could mention something tangentially related. I believe it is called ‘making conversation’ -”

“Fuck!” He had pricked his thumb. “Jeez. Ugh, sorry, Ford. I didn’t mean to be an asshole.”

Ford acquiesced, just happy that his teasing had gotten Stan to realize his grumpiness. “Something on your mind?”

“I mean -” Stan slipped the needle into the denim of the jeans so as not to lose it. “I guess. Uh, you remember last week when we found the kids sneakin’ around in the kitchen?”

“Yes?”

“When I’d found them, I had those notes all rolled-up in my hand. And I wasn’t gonna do it or anything!” Stan gestured nervously with his hands. “But for a second there, my first thought was to hit the kids with ‘em. Not hard, just a bop on the head. But it was still my knee-jerk reaction. I mean… How shitty is that?”

Their father did much worse, besides physically tossing Stanley out on the street. Ford was spared the brunt of it, but that wasn’t something in which he found cause for celebration. He could see how their upbringing would influence Stan’s interactions with the niblings. Still, ‘better than Dad’ was a pretty low bar when it came to the treatment of children, but in Ford’s opinion, Stan was soaring way above that pathetic line.

“Hmm. When you make a mistake, my initial reaction is to hit you, but I manage to refrain most of the time.”

“Aw, come on, Ford, I’m serious. I don’t wanna hurt them.”

“I don’t think that you would’ve done much to them with some old papers.”

Stan just glared at him, completely sidestepping the snarky bait.

He bookmarked his page and quietly shut his novel. “Stan, I know you’re worried. It’s not that I’m being flippant because I don’t care. It’s just…” He fiddled with his book. “I know how much you care about those kids, and I don’t really see a reason for excessive concern about something you didn’t do.”

His brother was silent, gripping the old jeans that still sat in his lap.

“Listen, Stanley. You think about your actions before and after the fact - when it counts, anyways - and if you ever did something to hurt those two, I know you would immediately rectify it.” Ford’s face softened. “That already makes you better than Dad, no matter what part of his influence -” he waved a hand in the air to call on a word - “lingers.”

“Well... I guess you’re right.” Stan’s fingers loosened around the denim, but he still had a sort of sad look to him. “But I’m not going to raise any sort of hand at them. Even if it were somethin’ soft. I don’t wanna be like that.” Something in him was drifting, and it made Ford’s heart sink.

He wasn’t always sure how to help Stanley. They’ve known each other for so long, but some things would never be as easy as breathing. Ford just slipped his finger between the bookmarked pages of his book and opened it back up. “Wanna hear a funny passage I found in this book I’m reading?”

“Yeah. Sure.” Thankfully he took up his needle again. “Thanks, Sixer.”

Ford began reading out the words on the page. He could only hope it soothed his brother somewhat. And by the tension slowly leaving Stanley’s face, it seemed to work.

That cursed Tent was back and better than ever before, adorned with glittering ribbons and showing off a brand new dye-job that made it an even purer blue.

“Let’s get this over with,” Ford sighed. There was less of a crowd outside the tent than last time, perhaps because people didn’t want to get caught up in another spectacle… as in the one that the Pines had caused last time.

Beside him, Stan cracked his knuckles. “Right.”

The two of them filed through the ticket line. Wendy was keeping an eye on the kids at the diner in the meantime; Dipper and Mabel didn’t need to be bothered by this psychic child again. Once Ford and Stan made it to the front, though, a security guard dressed in all-black stepped up. “Sorry, you two. Can’t let you in.”

“Really?” Stan scoffed. “Who says?”

The intimidating man jerked a thumb over to a poster pasted on the side of the tent that read “DO NOT SERVE THE PINES FAMILY,” accompanied by a grainy image of the four of them causing mayhem on security footage and a too-cheerful headshot of Gideon giving a thumbs up.

“Oh. Yeah, that makes sense,” Stan shrugged.

Ford facepalmed. “What my brother is trying to say is that, ah…” Blanking on words, he traded glances with his brother. Then he pointed over the security guard’s shoulder. “Hey, what’s that?”

“Huh?”

In the split second after the man turned around, Stan swung out a fist. It made a solid connection. The guard fell back with a thump.

Ford blinked at the man, took a deep breath, and grabbed Stan’s arm. “Alright, we have to move.” As murmurs began to overtake the crowd outside, he and Stanley ran through the tent flaps and past the audience that was already seated. “Gideon!” Ford shouted, just hoping that the boy would hear him from wherever he was. “We have to speak with you!”

“No! It’s mine!”

It was Gideon, having emerged from behind the curtain, running a comb upwards through his thick, shiny hair. By his throat dangled the bolo tie that held the deep green Amulet. He jabbed an angry pointer finger towards the Pines. “I knew you would come here! I have a little advantage that you lumbering idiots don’t.”

“If you knew we were coming, why did your security suck?” Stan goaded.

“Nevermind that,” Ford pressed, “What advantage?”

“You’re outmatched, Pines! Maybe I just wanted the chance to tell you that in-person.” Gideon snapped his fingers, and more security stepped out from behind the curtain. Ford jumped at strong hands that suddenly secured his arms behind his back.

“Wait!” He shouted, partially drowned out by the sound of Stan struggling against the other guard. “How did you know we would come?”

As they were tossed out of the Tent on their asses, Gideon’s high, nasally voice called out after them: “You could say a lil’ birdie told me!”

“Holy shit, we can’t be gettin’ into scuffles anymore.” Stan groaned and rubbed his lower back. “Gimme a minute.” He leaned back in his car seat.

“We have ice packs back at home - ugh.” Ford patted down his dusty pants and examined a scrape on the top of his hand.

“No can do. I gotta go check up on the diner first. And see if the kids wanna go home with us.”

“Stanley, we should probably just head home and get off our feet -”

Stan just gave Ford an immovable look.

“Fine, fine.” It’s been a few decades since they reconciled and Stan was still a stubborn bastard. “But I’m staying in the car.” While Ford kept in shape with plenty of forest expeditions and travel, his body still didn’t like the rough handling that he had gotten from that security guard.

They drove over to the diner in comfortable silence.

While Stan stepped into Greasy’s for a minute, Ford shut his eyes and tried to control his breathing. Gideon’s words were worrying, to say the least, and neither of them got the chance to grab the Amulet or even talk to Gideon about it. If Ford told Gideon’s father that the thing was killing his child, perhaps he would listen, but that would necessitate being able to see him in the first place, and his car dealership had moved out of Gravity Falls with him. Perhaps the Tent made so much more money that Bud wasn’t worried about the income loss? Or maybe he was selling cars somewhere else.

It’s nothing to worry about. They would get this under control, Bill or no Bill. They would figure it out.

A loud clunk startled Ford out of his thoughts, sending his eyes flying open. The driver side door had opened loudly, followed by a stony Stan sliding into the driver’s seat with purpose.

“Whoa, Stanley, is there a problem?”

“Yeah. Wendy told me that the kids weren’t there.”

Well, that wasn't an immediate cause for concern. He and Stanley were free to roam wherever the hell they pleased when they were younger, and while they didn’t give the kids completely open borders, they let them enjoy some freedom too. “Don’t worry, they’re probably just at the lake again, or hanging out with friends.”

For some reason, Stan shook his head. “I had to pester Wendy to tell me, but she said they went into the woods.”

Ford’s heart stopped.

“What?!” He straightened, all pain in his joints forgotten. “Do you know where they could have possibly gone?” The woods were dangerous. They were monstrous, ever-changing, and Ford had explicitly told them not to go in there alone multiple times. Wendy was considered a smart enough chaperone, having known these woods all her life, but apparently she was not trustworthy enough to keep the kids from going there alone.

They were in there alone. That could be harmless or it could be deadly.

Stan threw the car into drive and sped out of the lot. “I have no idea, but we’re gonna find them.”

“When did Grunkle Stan have a mullet?!”

Dipper shrugged and passed the framed photo to his sister. “For a few years, I think. They loved him at that convenience store. He was employee of the month until they died.” He flipped open his raggedy notebook and pressed a pen to paper. Possible criminal past, town loves him, had a falling out with brother? mullet?

Leaves from past autumns crunched underfoot as they meandered through the woods.

“Oh my gosh, I wish he had this beautiful thing now! I could braid it!”

Dipper laughed. “You think he’d let you?”

“Psh, no. That’s what sneak attacks are for.” She dug out some glitter bombs from her pocket to show them off.

He whistled. “Nice.”

“Right? Grunkle Stan helped me get the right ratio of glitter-to-smoke!”

“I’m… not sure whether that’s heart-warming or incriminating.”

“It can be both! Watch this.” A nearby animal made a sound in the underbrush - though when its head popped up from the leaves, it turned out to be a gnome. Mabel threw a glitter bomb full-speed in its direction. With a frightening hiss, the weapon poofed glittery smoke into the air.

Unfortunately, said gnome had popped up pretty close to Dipper and Mabel.

“Mabel...!” Dipper pulled his shirt collar over his mouth. The bomb generously dispersed smoke, and glitter pricked his eyes. He shut them and held out his hands for his sister. “Are you -” Suddenly, he bumped into another body, followed by Mabel’s shout. In the mess of smoke and sparkling glitter they tripped into each other and tipped over, tumbling off the raised path and down a hill.

Leaves and sticks and twigs crushed under their rolling bodies. They couldn’t do much but shout until they finally thumped to a stop.

Dipper got off the ground first, coughing so hard he thought he would throw up. Was glitter supposed to feel sharp when you swallowed it? “Oh man.” He took in deep lungfuls of air and rested his hands on his knees for a moment.

“Um. Dipper?”

His sister’s unusually timid tone made him shoot up. Mabel was up now too, but pointing at something nearby. They had landed in a small clearing, it seems. “What the heck is this?”

He followed her pointer finger to a tall pile in the middle of the clearing. It looked like… a junkyard? But a really small one. There were plenty of metal scraps and bars. Some electrical wiring and computer chips. The piled-high items were all gathered under a makeshift tent of some kind - four poles and a tarp stretched across the top.

“I have absolutely no idea.”

Together, they tentatively approached the pile. “Is someone building something?” Dipper hypothesised. He felt around in his vest pocket for his journal.

Oh no. His journal! It must’ve been tossed out of his hands in the commotion. “Oh my gosh, Mabel, we gotta find my notebook -” he turned to his sister. “Wait - you’re bleeding!

“What -” She looked down at herself and found a smear of blood on her palm. “Ahhh!”

He rushed over. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, but -” She held out the framed photograph from the convenience store. “Aw man.” In the fall she had automatically clutched it close to her. Small shards of glass tipped out of the frame, and most of the glass was already gone, leaving the photo out in the open. Now that Dipper noticed, there were little twinkles of glass upon the dirt surrounding them. The thing must’ve shattered in the fall.

“That’s okay, there were literally dozens of photos like that. We can always grab another one.” He reached out to her bloodied palm. “Let me look.”

Mabel sniffled a bit, but let him approach. He pulled up her sleeves, which hadn’t been much protection against slices of glass during a rough fall. Thin scratches, none too deep, littered her forearms. “We gotta clean these,” he said.

“Okay. We just gotta find your journal before we get out of here.” At his look of protest, she hastened, “Your stuff is important too!”

Usually Mabel would agree to go home without a second thought, whether he had his journal or not. Dipper raised an eyebrow. “Dude, you’re bleeding.”

“It’s not that bad! They’re not really bleeding anymore -”

Their squabbling was interrupted by a shuffling sound much louder than a gnome’s footsteps. Suddenly, the forest hushed. Dipper and Mabel exchanged wordless looks and scrambled behind the thick trunk of a tree.

A large, lumbering man entered the clearing with a strange metal box of sorts heavy on his back. He walked oddly, as if he were unfamiliar with his feet, and dropped the box onto the pile by simply letting it slide off his back in a decidedly alien manner. Dipper squinted. The man looked familiar. If Dipper had his journal, he would be able to reference his notes on the townspeople. But as things were, his journal was god-knows-where among the bushes and vines.

“Manly Dan?” Mabel whispered.

Oh. That’s who that was.

Wait.

“Wendy’s dad?!” Dipper whispered back. Oh, great.

Apparently his whisper wasn’t quiet enough. Manly Dan lifted his head and peered in their direction, almost like he could somehow see them through the tree trunk. It might’ve been the harshening sunlight as the afternoon waned, probably a trick of the light, but his eyes seemed to glint yellow.

A shiver ran down his spine. “Mabel, I think there’s something wrong with him.” Maybe he was sick, or affected by some sort of weirdness. “I think we should leave.”

“You sure?” She rubbed her scratched-up arm nervously. “Maybe he needs our help -”

“FUNNY MEETING YOU HERE!”

Oh, great.

The voice… that wasn’t Manly Dan’s voice. It was his vocal chords, but the sounds came out all wrong. The tall man swayed over to their tree trunk. Before Dipper could will his feet to move, the man wearing Manly Dan’s face peered around the trunk and found their hiding spot. His eyes were unnaturally wide, a sour yellow that chilled Dipper to the bone.

“I COULD’VE SWORN THOSE SAD OLD GRUNKLES OF YOURS TOLD YOU NOT TO GO INTO THE WOODS ALONE.”

“How do you know that?” Mabel chirped in innocent friendliness that Dipper hoped was fake.

“OH, I KNOW LOTS OF THINGS!” His eyes blinked just slightly out of sync. “LIKE HOW MAYBE YOU SHOULDN’T TRUST YOUR GRUNKLES SO MUCH.”

Whatever Dipper thought about that, he swallowed enough courage to shout, “Who are you? We know you’re not Manly Dan!”

“AREN’T I? I’M WEARING HIS SKINSUIT AND EVERYTHING! I HAVE A DAUGHTER AND, I DUNNO, TEN SONS,” the creature approximated.

Mabel grimaced, and stepped in with falsified cheer. “We were just, uh, on our way home and got lost! We’re sorry we interrupted you with your… metal tarp-y thing. We’ll be on our way, right, Dipper?”

“Um. Right.”

“SURE. YOU KIDS DO THAT. ALTHOUGH…” He leaned down, slitted pupils unnervingly close. “YOU PROBABLY SHOULDN’T TELL YOUR GRUNKLES ABOUT THIS.”

“Why not?” Dipper countered.

“WELL, THEY’D PROBABLY BE PRETTY UPSET THAT YOU TWO BROKE THE RULES AND CAME OUT HERE ON YOUR OWN. BESIDES, WHY SHOULD YOU TELL THEM ANYTHING WHEN THEY DON’T TELL YOU ANYTHING?” At Mabel’s confused look, the thing added, “PINE TREE OVER HERE KNOWS WHAT I’M TALKING ABOUT.” It shrugged like a man who had only heard of a shrug and never done one before. “BUT REGARDLESS, I WON’T TELL ON YOU IF YOU DON’T TELL ON ME.”

“And what if we do?” His heart was practically in his throat. Beside him Mabel was stock-still. They could hear sounds, creatures running, larger footfalls in the background, and Dipper wished that he and Mabel could join them.

The creature’s eyes widened even more. “WELL -” And with a crack and a fist to the head, Manly Dan’s form collapsed to the ground.

“Grunkle Stan?!” Mabel gasped.

It was Stan, in all his weird glory, fists clenched around brass knuckles. Were those illegal in Oregon? Great Uncle Ford was close behind, his trenchcoat flapping behind him.

“How did you guys -” but before Dipper could finish, Grunkle Stan grabbed his arm and pulled him back up the hill they had fallen down.

“Come on, we shouldn’t stick around,” was all Stan said.

Reluctantly, Dipper glanced behind him to see Ford guiding Mabel up as well. His journal was lost to the wildlife now. They all briskly returned to the path and did not speak, even when the house broke into visibility through the trees.

Chapter Text

“Do you two have no self-preservation?!” Great Uncle Stanford threw out his hands wildly in shocked emphasis. Behind his anger laid an overwhelming fear.

“‘Course not,” Stan grumbled beside him, arms crossed. “We didn’t when we were kids.”

Dipper and Mabel winced. “We’re sorry, Grunkle Ford,” Mabel tried, knowing that it wouldn’t help much.

Grunkle Stan pinched the bridge of his nose. “Why were you two even goin’ out there in the first place? We can take you out there whenever you want, and we know a lot more about those woods than you do.”

“Yeah… we know.” Dipper deflated. “We wanted to do some exploring, and you guys were out, so…”

Ford shook his head. “That doesn’t matter. Who knows what would’ve happened if we hadn’t shown up?”

At the reminder of that creepy encounter in the woods, Mabel hugged her arms a little tighter around herself, feeling rough yarn scratch against the scabs on her skin. Maybe she should’ve used a softer yarn for this sweater. “What was wrong with Manly Dan? He wasn’t acting like his loud, manly self.”

At this, Ford paused, softening a bit. “I’m not entirely sure.” His countenance darkened worryingly. “Although, Bill is known to be able to possess people. I only caught a glimpse, but Manly Dan’s eyes were unnervingly similar.”

Mabel had paid full attention during their family meeting about this Bill guy. Of course she had! But it was hard to take something seriously when it didn’t seem like a tangible threat. To know that they could’ve just been inches away from the weird triangle demon that filled Grunkle Ford with such fear…

“But it’s okay, right? He wouldn’t follow us here,” Dipper insisted. “Right?”

Ford finally sank down into a kitchen chair. Instead of answering his question, he said, “What exactly was ‘Manly Dan’ doing out there before he saw you?”

Mabel tugged on her sweater sleeve and hissed softly at the way threads pulled at the little scratches on her arm.

Stan immediately caught onto that. “Sweetie, are you hurt?”

“Nope! Just got a little scratched up when we fell down that hill.” She tried to reposition her sleeves so that they fell more comfortably. “No biggie.”

Dipper kicked her in the shin. “Yes biggie, you got glass all over yourself!”

“How did you -” Stan sighed, seeming to consider it a lost cause. “Nevermind. Come with me. Dipper’ll tell Ford all about your idiotic adventure while I get you patched up.” He put a hand on her shoulder and steered her into the living room, where he made a practiced beeline to a large first-aid kit sitting by the window. Together, they sat down on the couch and he plopped the kit in his lap. “You gotta have one of these babies around when you live with Ford.”

Her lips turned up a bit. “Haha, Dipper said that about me once.” He had joked that the first aid kid in their house was really a Mabel-aid kit.

Stan laughed and popped the kit open, finding what he needed with ease. “Some of us Pines tend to be more accident-prone than others.”

“I’m always running into screen doors.” She wielded it like a badge of honor, trying to ignore the way it felt warmer in the room and drier in her mouth. “I got my braces stuck in the one that leads out to the porch this week!”

“Yeah, Ford told me about that one.” He pulled out a pair of tweezers and some disinfectant. “Said that getting the wire to unhook from your braces was like dealing with a younger me. Nevermind that he just as often smashed his thumb with a hammer or somethin’ when we were kids.” Everything prepared, he held out his hands expectedly. “Alright, kiddo, where’d this glass get into?”

Um. She sweated. “I - uh - good question!” Man, she was a bad liar. When Stan spoke, she looked away, biting the inside of her cheek.

“Whoa, Mabel, no matter what you’re worried about, I won’t be mad. I just wanna make sure you’re all clean and glass-free. Getting glass anywhere is no fun, trust me.” He grimaced. “Remind me to tell you about where we grew up sometime.”

“Um.” She pulled hesitantly on her sleeves, flinching as they caught on the beginning of scabs. Finally she had both sleeves up as far as they could go. “It got on my arms.”

“Okay.” Stan calmly picked up the tweezers. “I see a couple bits of glass. I’m gonna get them out, okay?”

She nodded and watched as he expertly removed the few pieces of glass that had remained, dropping them on a paper towel nearby. He then set to the task of washing her wounds.

“Where’d you get this one, pumpkin?” He pointed to an unrelated pinkish line that was almost completely healed.

That was an easy one. “Oh, yeah, I caught my arm on a branch while me and Dipper were walking around town.”

“An’ this burn?” It was a small, straight-lined thing, not anything extreme.

She laughed at the memory. “I was trying to show Grunkle Ford how to make my favorite pancakes and accidentally bumped my arm into the pan. That was pretty silly of me.”

“Done stuff like that plenty of times.” He dried off her arms with a towel and gestured casually to a set of scratches older than the ones from the glass. They were straighter and more measured, closer together. “How ‘bout these?”

That was when her throat dried up completely. She really was a bad liar.

“Mabel.”

Tears blurred her vision beyond recognition, turning the first aid kit and her Grunkle’s face into a smear of white-peach-gray. Her bottom lip trembled despite the way her teeth dug into her cheek like her life depended on it. When she opened her mouth to say words, nothing came out.

He patiently waited.

“I -” She started off wobbly. “I’m not really sure why I did it, I’ve only done it a couple times, I swear. It’s just - some stuff was really getting to me, it - t-those are kinda old. My parents know, but -”

“Okay,” Stan said. He was taking it so calmly. Why wasn’t Grunkle Stan freaking out? “It’s okay, sweetie. I get it. C’mere.” She moved the kit over and scooted into the crook of Stan’s side, sniffling to herself. He rubbed her shoulder. “I’ve been there.”

She hiccuped. “Y-you have?”

“Yeah. If you ask me, we got something going on in our family.” He shrugged. “What’re you doin’ that for?”

“Um… It only happened when I was really stressed out and couldn’t - couldn’t really talk about it?”

“Why not?” In a flat tone, he asked, “Are your parents assholes? I haven’t seen them in a while.”

“No, no, I just… I’m supposed to be all cheery and whenever I have problems they aren’t as serious as Dipper’s. I know that’s not true, but I guess it was how I felt.” She kicked her feet against the couch and looked down at her scuffed knees. “Sorry. I was just being dramatic.”

“What’s wrong with bein’ dramatic? You got a right to be dramatic. Hell, I’ve made a career of it. Gotta talk up the diner somehow. But listen. You have a right to feel however you feel, and you don’t gotta punish yourself about it. Even if you make mistakes. Especially if you make mistakes.” He shook his head. “I know that one from experience.”

She swallowed and asked in a small voice, “Grunkle Stan, what kind of mistakes did you make that you thought you needed to punish yourself over?”

He just laughed. “That list’ll do nothin’ but bore you to death. I just want you to promise me somethin’, sweetie.” He looked into her eyes. “If you feel the need to do this to yourself ever again, for any reason at all, even if you think it’s insignificant or silly, call me, okay? At any time. I’ll pick up. Talkin’ to a grumpy old man is at least better than havin’ your feelings bottle up and come out in bad ways.”

“Okay, Grunkle Stan.” She leaned forward and wrapped her arms around his middle. It was safe. “I promise.”

“And then you and Grunkle Stan showed up,” Dipper finished, sitting meekly in his seat as Great Uncle Ford listened intently. “How did you guys find us?”

“Oh, just a simple ‘tracking and following’ spell. Of course, that could be dangerous if it fell into the wrong hands, and I try not to depend on it for much other than finding my missing socks, but I figured using it in this instance was perfectly acceptable.” He fixed Dipper with a look. “We were very worried, Dipper. What could’ve possibly possessed you two to go out there on your own?” He paused. “Poor choice of words. I apologize.”

It seemed pretty dumb in hindsight. Dipper was no scientist, his sister even less so. “I just wanted to explore and find some stuff out for myself. It would’ve been -” cool is not the right word, Dipper, what are you, a child? - “interesting to maybe even discover something new about the woods.” And maybe impress Grunkle Ford with it, but he wouldn’t say that out loud.

“You’re curious,” Ford nodded. “I would’ve done the same at your age.”

“Really?” He brightened.

“Yes. But I also didn’t have guardians that cared about where I would go when I left the house.” He put a hand on Dipper’s shoulder. “Stan and I don’t want to limit you and Mabel. We trust you within the boundaries of this town. But there are some things you simply cannot risk.”

“Yeah. You’re right.” He took a deep breath. This was stupid of them. They went into the woods and wandered right into what seemed to be a demon, all because of his ridiculous urge to impress people. He and Mabel had just made up, too. This was the first thing they had done together since the whole Saturday debacle and all he did was get them into trouble and lose his notebook. “Man, I’m stupid.”

“No, you’re not,” Ford said, surprisingly firm. “Curiosity is natural. It’s why I live here in the first place. You just have to be careful when pursuing it. That’s something I learned firsthand.” Ford leaned back in his chair and pushed up his glasses. “Now, what did you say Manly Dan was carrying?”

If Dipper had his journal with him, he would’ve been able to document the experience immediately, retaining all the details, but he had lost it, and his memory wavered. Did the big metal thing look more like a microwave or more a big computer? What was etched onto its side? He shook his head. “I’m sorry, I don’t remember.” There was something in Ford’s cautiousness that Dipper got stuck on. It was something he would love to write down to add to his tentative ‘Grunkle Info List’ as Mabel called it, but of course his entire collection of notes had been lost along with his notebook.

“That’s alright. If we’re smart about it, we can probably visit the site again without running into anyone.” He stopped, scrutinizing Dipper’s face. “Is something bothering you, my boy? I’m - I apologize for raising my voice earlier. I was just worried about your safety.”

“No, it’s okay, you were right about that!” He rubbed his arm. “It’s just - I lost my notebook back there and it’s full of a bunch of stuff that I really didn’t want to lose.” Now he had to start all over again from memory or even from scratch. That thing went everywhere with him. What was he supposed to do? He apparently couldn’t even remember Manly Dan’s name without it.

“I see. I’ve lost notes before. I’ve even destroyed them myself.”

“What?” He almost laughed.

“Yes! Accidentally… some fire may have been involved. I unfortunately spent the rest of that summer re-collecting data.” He scratched his chin. “Thank goodness for computers. Paper is much too flammable. But still, I managed to get back everything I had lost. And even if I hadn’t, I could just do it all again even better than before.”

“Yeah, I guess that’s true.” But Dipper couldn’t bring himself to crack a smile.

“What’s still bothering you about it?”

There was a lot in that book. Theories, lists, concerns... Aw man, his coffee-maker instructions were in there. His Grunkles would think he’s stupid for never memorizing how to use that thing. “I use it for a lot of stuff. I feel like… if I can’t keep everything in order in there, I won’t be able to do it right or-or remember stuff right.” Not to mention the aforementioned ‘grunkle list’. It seemed like he was getting closer to figuring everything out, and then the whole thing was ripped out from under him. He chewed his cheek in anxiety.

“Dipper, you don’t need a notebook to ‘get things right’.” Then Ford’s eyes gained a certain twinkle. “Want to hear about a particularly interesting experiment of mine?”

He perked up just a bit. “What was it?”

With a not-insignificant amount of flair, Ford announced, “In the summer of 1980, I spent most of my free time building a body-swapping carpet.”

“A what?”

“Yes, yes, it was cutting-edge. However, it was also dangerous; I didn’t test it well. To switch bodies, you had to build up static and come into contact with the other person. My brother and I accidentally did just that before I even knew if it was safe for humans.”

“That sounds awful, honestly.”

“It was very awkward at first,” he agreed. “We figured out how to fix everything, but afterwards I agreed to destroy the rug. It was too dangerous to keep around.”

“Destroy it? But you spent so much time on it…”

“I know. And that’s why I couldn’t bring myself to do so at first. But Stan reminded me that the things I make aren’t what I am. If I so wanted, I could build it again when I knew how to make it safer. Destroying a symbol of my intelligence wouldn’t mar my worth. A mere object isn’t everything.” He smiled. “I suppose what I’m trying to say is that you may have lost that notebook to the wilderness, but that doesn’t mean much. You can always start another notebook. No matter what, you’re doing just fine.”

Really?

Dipper took a deep breath, stepping back from his spiraling thoughts. If Great Uncle Ford said that losing it wasn’t the end of the world, it must be true. “Thanks, Grunkle Ford.” A steady hand patted his shoulder.

“Of course,” Ford responded warmly. “I have plenty of experience with these things. And besides, you did manage to find something new in those woods. Now we know that someone’s putting together a dump site.”

Yeah. Dipper actually smiled. He did find something, didn’t he?

Intelligence isn’t everything. Mistakes are okay. That was the mantra Dipper replayed over and over as he punched Wendy’s number into the old house phone.

After they had essentially gotten reamed last night, Mabel was subdued, and Dipper knew why that would be. She hadn’t wanted to talk about it, but she was still smiling with a happiness that reached her eyes, and went out to relax with her friends today, which relieved Dipper somewhat. Well. Relieved him about Mabel, but not about what he was about to do.

He pushed down the urge to slam the phone into the receiver and write an itemized list or pace or pull his hair out. He didn’t need to be meticulous about this. He didn’t need to analyze it like a math problem or scribble down endless theories. Somewhere in the woods, a gnome was probably gnawing on his ‘how to ask Wendy out’ page right now, but that was okay. He didn’t actually need it. He didn’t.

They would hang out at the arcade in town - not that they could even leave town since Great Uncle Ford put two magical tracking items on Dipper and Mabel that looked suspiciously like ankle bracelets. Dipper would restrain himself from following a carefully concocted plan, he would just ‘be himself’ (whatever Mabel meant by that), ask her out, and whatever follows… it’ll be okay.

“She told me she’s too old for me.” Dipper groaned, almost face-planting into the tomatoes on the cutting board, only stopped by Grunkle Stan’s quick hand.

“Jeez, careful, kid, there’s a knife on that.” Stan drew back and continued dumping dry noodles into a pot on the stovetop. “Start dicing those tomatoes, why don’t you?”

“Um.” The wooden grain of the cutting board suddenly became much more intimidating. “I’ve never done this before.”

“Alright then, I can show you.” Stan walked over and lined up the knife with the side of a tomato, keeping the tips of his fingers away from the blade. “Watch how I hold the knife. Start out with slices.” As slices of tomato flopped onto the cutting board, Stan tsked. “So Wendy rejected you, huh. You can’t do much about bein’ young.”

“Could I have even done anything if she said no for any other reason?”

Stan inspected his tomato slices and cut them again into smaller pieces. “Are you sure she wasn’t hypnotized?”

“What?! Why would she be hypnotized? Should we be worried?” Dipper paused when the kitchen knife was placed in his unwilling hands. Gingerly, he picked up a plump tomato and set it beneath the knife. How was he supposed to do this again?

“Nah, I think I woulda noticed if she was hypnotized. The only guy that would even do that is the Valentinos’ kid,” Stan commented to himself, seemingly uninterested in providing context. “Hey, kid, don’t be scared of the tomato. It won’t hurt you. An’ curl your fingers away from the knife. Don’t wanna lose ‘em.”

The tooth of the knife sat atop the tomato’s rubbery skin. Nervously, Dipper pulled his fingers away from the blade and sawed downwards, carving out a jagged, messy tomato slice. “Oh. This is harder than it looks.”

“I’m sure you’ll get it. Just keep working at it. It’ll taste good even if it ends up lookin’ like you stepped on it.” Stan stepped back to the oven and stirred, and the wooden spoon made hollow sounds as it bumped against the edges of the pot. “But yeah, a girl got hypnotized and left me once. Maybe an outside force like that made Wendy reject ya, but I doubt it.”

Dipper squinted, taking offense. Honestly, he had never imagined Grunkle Stan going out with anybody, even though Mabel waved around her matchmaking list like it was her job. His image of Grunkle Stan this summer was one of a busy restaurant owner who had little time for such things.

Stan glanced over and raised his hands placatingly. “Okay, that sounded bad. I mean to say that you’re a great kid. Really! But she’s goin’ through high school right now and you aren’t there yet. You’re just at different places. Sometimes it happens.”

Yeah. Fair. Dipper acquiesced. That sounded really reasonable. The tomato wasn’t cooperating with the way Dipper held the knife, and his slices were a bit uneven. “Ugh, I just - I probably made things weird. What if she doesn’t even want to be friends anymore?”

“Did she say that?”

“No…” His shoulders hunched. “She said she’d see me around next time I went to the diner.”

“Then what the heck’s the problem, that’s good news!” While the noodles cooked, Stan tore open a bag of lettuce and dumped it into a salad bowl. “You can still get along just fine after dropping something like that on her. I did it. Me an’ him are still close friends.”

That was… surprisingly emotionally mature. “How’d you get over it?”

“Well, he visited pretty often, especially to help Ford with projects and junk, so we just kinda talked our way past the awkwardness - though there wasn’t much of that to begin with. Honestly, we became even better friends after I stopped bein’ all weird around him.”

Something nagged at him. “Grunkle Stan, did you ask out Fiddleford?”

“Ha!” A clatter as he propped up a colander over the sink. “You’ve got Ford’s brains, I swear.”

“But I thought he was married?”

“Key word: was. Divorced now, but still sees his family plenty. I told him how I felt a couple years after he an’ his wife separated, he respectfully declined, and now every time he visits we’re laughin’ it up out back with a couple of Pitt Colas.” He shrugged and checked on the noodles. “Things have a way of workin’ out, Dipper. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.” His knife sank through the tomato and made an easy, neat slice. “Hey, I did it!”

“Well, would ya look at that?” Stan leaned over and gave him a thumbs up. “Knew ya’d get it.”

Dipper’s face warmed with pride, and he shot Stan a quick smile as he cut up the tomatoes some more, even though it was hampered somewhat by a little voice that seemed to come out of nowhere.

Why should you tell your grunkles anything when they don’t tell you anything?

“Why would we listen to that evil dude? He’s evil, Dipper.”

“I know that’s what we’ve been told, I just…” He shrugged. “What if he’s evil and also right?” A thread stuck out on the comforter of his bed. He worried it between his fingers and stared at the old, worn floorboards.

Clacking noises stopped as Mabel paused her knitting. “But shouldn’t we trust them? They’ve been nothing but nice and fun this entire time.”

“That doesn’t mean they’re not hiding anything. I mean… don’t you ever wonder what’s up with Great Uncle Ford? It’s pretty obvious that you shouldn’t work with demons. So what exactly happened with Bill?”

“He probably just made a mistake…” She hunched over her knitted and purled rows, fixing where she accidentally dropped a stitch. “That’s forgivable.”

“But what about Grunkle Stan? He literally doesn’t have a past. Like, I can’t find out anything.” Dipper sighed and flopped onto his back, readjusting when one of his summer reading books dug into his shoulder. “If I still had my journal I’d be able to show you what I found, which was pretty much nothing. I know he and Ford had some sort of falling out ages ago, and sometimes he jokes about getting arrested. I dunno, Mabel, it just makes me worry.”

“Well, you worry too much.” She stuck out her tongue.

“You worry too much.” He sat up and tossed a fluffy pillow at her. It soared across the divide between their beds and smacked her in the face.

“Ahh! The fibers got in my mouth! Pleh,” she spat. She was wiping her tongue free of fluff when she responded. “I’m just not sure. Maybe they don’t tell us stuff for a reason.”

“I guess. I wish I knew why though.”

Mabel hummed and picked her knitting back up, hesitating for a moment. “I’m sorry again about Wendy, Dipper. I was so sure about it being a huge summer romance for you.”

“That’s okay.” He shook his head. “I wanted to ask her out. I think it was really good for me to do that even though it didn’t work. Just maybe don’t force it so strongly next time?” He gave her a reassuring smile. “But I appreciate how supportive you are.”

“Of course!” She crowed. “Supportive Mabel, that’s me! But yeah… maybe I should lay off on the matchmaking stuff.”

“Grunkle Stan gave me some good advice, actually. He said that things have a way of working out. Apparently he asked out a guy once and they’re still really good friends. So maybe Wendy won’t hate my guts -”

“Gasp!” Mabel shot upright, her knitting falling to the ground. “Grunkle Stan likes guys?”

“I mean, I think he also likes girls, but -”

“Oh my gosh! Double the opportunities. This means my matchmaking table is incomplete! I have to add more columns.”

Dipper raised his eyebrow. “I thought you just said you were gonna give matchmaking a rest?”

“For you, my wonderful brother who asked me to stop? Yeah! But I know for a fact that Grunkle Stan’s a lovable, weird old man and I need to get him a date. He won’t tell me who he likes, but I’ll strike gold eventually!” She scrambled for her own notebook and started flipping through colorful, glittery pages.

“Mabel?”

“Yeah?” She had grabbed a pen from somewhere within the tangled web of her bedsheets, and was now scribbling across a sheet of paper.

“Are you sure you’re… okay? After -” Dipper gestured to his arms, and she seemed to know what he meant instantly.

“Yeah, I am.” Her writing stopped. “Grunkle Stan saw. I mean, he had to if he was going to get glass out of my arms. But he was really, really understanding. And he said I could talk to him whenever.”

“Good! That’s good.”

“It is. Maybe I can finally break out my t-shirt stash. I love my sweaters, but they are so warm.”

Dipper accidentally pulled an errant thread off of the blanket entirely. “You know you can talk to me, too, right?”

“Yeah, I know.” She smiled at him, all braces. “Thanks, Dipdop.”

“‘Course.” He rubbed his chin. “You know, we could both get the truth we want out of Grunkle Stan with a certain artifact.”

“Those poisonous-looking mushrooms you guys are hoarding in the basement?”

“What? No.” As the idea took form, he couldn’t help but feel that he was the one that struck gold here. He snapped his fingers. “The truth teeth.”

Chapter Text

“Good morning, Grunkle Stan!”

What? Where -

Stanley sat up, rubbing his eyes. “Shut up, Ford, I’m awake,” he mumbled. He must’ve fallen asleep in the living room, if the crick in his back and the TV droning away on silent were any indication. And in front of the television was not Ford, but instead two grinning niblings. “J - cheese and rice, what are you two doin’ up so early?” According to his watch, it was five in the morning. Mabel and Dipper usually didn’t come downstairs until eight.

“We just wanted to get a headstart on the morning!” Mabel cheered with a can-do attitude. Stan could believe that. She looked chipper and awake, whereas Dipper was his usual jittery four-hours-of-sleep self.

“Ha, bag check for Dipper’s eyes!” Stan laughed. At Dipper’s scowl, he nudged his shoulder. “I’m just jokin’, kiddo. I only tease ya ‘cause it might toughen you up, get you to learn to take yourself less seriously.” He stopped with a frown. “Huh. That was blatantly honest of me. And why does my mouth feel like bees?”

“Bees?” Dipper echoed with confusion. He looked sweatier than usual, which was a feat.

“Ummm, maybe you ate a bee!” Mabel shouted, louder than she had any right to be.

Stanley shook his head to rid himself of that buzzing feeling in his mouth, but it still tasted weirdly metallic. Maybe it’s just because he fell asleep with his teeth in too many nights in a row. “Nah, I don’t think so. Hah, I saw a dog do that once, though.” He reached blindly until his fingers fumbled against his glasses, and he slid them on. Wow. These kids looked even more nervous now that he could actually see their faces.

“Are - are you allergic to anything, Grunkle Stan? Maybe it’s that,” Dipper offered.

The words on the tip of Stanley’s tongue were something snarky like ‘yeah, I’m allergic to you two,’ but what came out instead was “I dunno, I used to be allergic to strawberries as a kid, but I think I outgrew that.”

What the hell? That wasn’t what he was going to say. Screw this, he needed coffee before his brain could work.

“Why’re you two crowding me?” Stanley waved his hand to shoo the kids away. He managed to climb out of the chair despite his protesting joints. “Take notes, kids. Age ain’t kind. Someday you’ll be too old to do stuff like sleep in chairs.”

And Stan padded into the kitchen, oblivious to the hesitant, anticipatory looks on the kids’ faces.

Regardless, they followed him in. Mabel pulled out a cereal box, while Dipper tried not to fall asleep and faceplant on the kitchen table. Stanley started up a stove burner and cracked some eggs into a pan.

“Hey, Grunkle Stan?”

He just grunted at Mabel.

The girl fiddled with the pages of a notebook she had procured out of nowhere. Where had she been keeping that thing? “Can you take a look at this important chart I made and tell me if there’s anyone on there that you would consider dating?”

“I don’t really want to,” Stan responded bluntly, but Mabel was already flipping to the page in question.

The notebook snapped open to a considerable spread. The top read Grunkle Stan’s Luv Chart, which he absolutely hated. In pink and purple highlighter, columns denoted various members of the Gravity Falls population.

“Pleasepleaseplease tell me if you’ve ever had a crush on any of these people! It’s for science!”

For some reason, Stan felt compelled to indulge her. He reluctantly turned away from his eggs and went down the list of glitter-pen names. “No, no, no, no, maybe, no, you already know I dated her before and it didn’t work out, no, eh, maybe, I don’t know that guy, no, and there’s no way in hell I’m dating the Multibear. Now leave me to my eggs because I get irrationally angry before I eat in the morning an’ I don’t like makin’ you two sad.” Maybe the eggs would help with that weird taste in his mouth. The buzzing seemed to have gone away, though, which was a plus.

Behind Stan, he heard Dipper open his mouth and take a breath.

Instead, it was Ford who spoke, erupting way too bright-eyed and bushy-tailed into the kitchen. “Good morning, folks. There are many more people in here than usual at, uh…” He checked the time. “Five in the morning. Oh, I thought it was midnight...”

Whatever Dipper was about to say didn’t come to light. Stan shrugged and finished cooking his breakfast.

Work was, well, strange, to say the least.

Stan was the charmer of the town - or he tried to be. If he wasn’t known for being kind, he was still known for being a decent businessman. Today, however, customers kept coming up to him to complain about his ‘attitude’ and his ‘meanness.’ And to be honest, he was being a bit more candid than usual. Every time he tried to apologize to save the customer-business relationship, though, an even more dismissive thought left his mouth, when it shouldn’t have escaped the confines of his brain to begin with.

Even Soos dared to approach him and ask if something was wrong, which was pretty serious. The kid usually didn’t like questioning a single thing Stan did.

“Are you sure nothing’s up, boss?”

“Ah, don’t worry, Soos,” Wendy interjected in-between the clanking of the dish bin in her arms. “Stan’s just finally embracing his image as a mean old dude.” She shrugged, resigned. “This sort of thing happens later in life.”

“Hey!” Stan protested. “Who’re you calling old? I only look older than my brother ‘cause of a series of debilitating health decisions I made in my early 20s.” He paused, gripping the scheduling clipboard tight. “Uh. Ignore that last part.”

“Actually…” Wendy rubbed her chin. Her brow furrowed in consideration. “Can I ask you something?”

“No,” Stan said.

Regardless, Wendy continued. “Have you ever done anything illegal?”

“You want a list?” And for some reason, Stan was automatically reaching for his pen to start writing on top of the scheduling chart. What the hell was he doing today? Soos ran up and snatched the clipboard and pen away before Stan could get anything down.

At this point, something lit up behind Soos’ eyes too. “Um… Mr. Pines, what was the real reason you closed up shop early last week?”

“Well, I told you it was to get caught up on billing, but I actually had a doctor’s appointment for a really embarrassing rash.” Oh, what the - “Why did I tell you that?”

Soos and Wendy’s faces screwed up in disgust.

Wendy dropped the dish bin next to the sink with a series of clangs. She leaned in, eyes sparkling with interest. “What do you do with the store’s earnings after the day is done?”

“I count out the register and keep all the cash stuffed in a safe in my house.”

Soos immediately jumped in. “Stan, do you love me?”

“Like a weird, gopherish son,” Stan agreed solemnly.

Soos and Wendy traded glances.

“Let’s bring you home, Mr. Pines,” Wendy decided.

When Stanford heard a knock on the door, he didn’t expect to see his brother and two diner employees on the other side.

“Is everything alright?” Ford asked, eyeing the way the two teenagers were carefully guiding Stanley into the main hall. The sight of Wendy was like a shock to his heart - he was still contemplating how to tell her about his father’s possible demon dealings, or if that was even his place. Stanley, for his part, seemed perfectly coherent and capable, or at least present enough to object to the way he was being handled.

Stanley raised his hands in the air. “If you’re done bein’ weird, I’m gonna go get changed into my pajamas.” With that, he disappeared deeper into the house. Ford watched his receding back with concern.

“Um, we’re not sure,” Wendy confessed. “We think something’s up with Stan.”

“Yeah, Dr. Pines.” Soos was messing with his hands, clearly unnerved. “He’s being really… I dunno, direct?”

“Yeah.” Wendy nodded. “The entire time at the diner today, he kept telling our rude customers really mean shit. Like, he’s my hero for that, but he doesn’t usually go so far as to point out that someone’s haircut looks like the culmination of a lifelong series of mistakes.”

Ford winced. “True, that doesn’t sound like him. I’d assume he usually likes keeping business.”

“Exactly. And then he told the truth for like, every crazy question we asked him, no matter what it was.”

“He almost wrote down a list of crimes, dude,” Soos whispered dramatically.

Oh, for… Every detail was an unnerving brush stroke adding to the image taking form. Ford didn’t like the implications of these events, but he was never one to deny the facts. “I think I know what this is.”

“Is it brain damage?!”

Soos looked to be on the verge of tears, so Ford was quick to assuage him. “No, no, absolutely not. I think someone got ahold of a magical artifact and used it to get Stan to tell the truth about something.” No wonder it worked; the teeth self-produce a glamour that takes on the shape of the wearer’s original teeth. Whatever might have felt off about those teeth, Stan wouldn’t have noticed that they weren’t the ones he was wearing when he went to bed.

“Who would’ve done that sort of thing?” Wendy asked. “We know Stan’s kinda shady sometimes, but… man.”

“Well, I think I know who could have done this.” The young twins were the only other people in the world who knew the location of the . He wasn’t sure why they had felt the need to dig them up, but the kids’ emotional immaturity could possibly blind them from the full scope of the moral issues with such an action... “However, I don’t want to make any assumptions before I’m sure.”

Not to mention that if Ford were right, this would be a hard conversation to have, just like many other conversations that have been had this summer. Who knew children were so complicated? No wonder Dad took shortcuts in raising us, came a dark thought. He shook his head. “Don’t worry. Whoever did this, I’ll take care of Stan. I have plenty of experience with this artifact.”

Soos practically deflated with relief.

Wendy nodded again, grateful. “Thanks. We appreciate it.”

These older children seemed to really care about Stanley. Despite the evening’s confusion, Ford smiled. “Of course.” In an odd turn of events, he suddenly remembered that children and young adults needed safe trips to and from places. Contrary to Stan’s belief, it looked like Ford retained something from the childcare books he read after all. “Do you two have a ride home?”

“Don’t worry, dude, I drove us here.” Soos gave a thumbs up. “I’ll get Wendy back to her place. Mr. Pines’s car is back at the diner, though.”

“No worries. Thank you for letting me know about all this.”

Once the door was shut, Ford sighed. What the hell had Mabel and Dipper gotten themselves into this time? Still, he wouldn’t get them down here just yet. He needed to confirm his suspicions about those damn truth teeth.

“Stanley! Are you done up there?” He called up the stairs.

“I’m comin’, don’t get your panties in a bunch!” Footfalls and creaking wood announced Stan’s PJ-clad arrival. He returned to the main hall, arms crossed. “What’re you yelling for?”

“Open your mouth, Stanley.”

“What, why?!”

“Trust me.”

Stan truly did trust him, so despite the suspicious look in his eye, he opened his mouth. Ford squinted. The glamour was convincing, but… “Please remove your dentures.”

“Fine, they’ve been feeling weird today anyways.” His brother dislodged the teeth from his mouth and let them fall into his hands. They both looked down at the spit-covered pair of dentures.

The glamour faded with a faint hum, leaving behind the yellowed bone and hollow gums of the truth teeth.

Everything immediately slotted into place. Stan smacked his face with his free hand. “God fucking damnit.”

“That’s a good assessment of things, yes.”

“No wonder my mouth felt like an allergic reaction this morning. Where the hell are my dentures?” He lisped. “I paid good money for those!”

“Unfortunately, I think I know who to ask about that.”

“Ummm… it was Dipper’s idea?” Mabel tried, nervously kicking her feet back and forth against the side of her bed.

Beside her, Dipper frowned. “Wha - don’t pin this all on me, you were complicit!”

“Dipper’s right,” Ford agreed. “You are an accomplice, Mabel.”

“Don’t look too proud there, Dipper,” Stan deadpanned, and the ghost of a satisfied smile fell off the boy’s face.

“I just don’t understand what you two would want to know so bad that you couldn’t just ask about,” Ford said. When he and Stanley agreed to take in the twins for the summer, he didn’t know that he would come to adopt Ma’s ‘not mad, just disappointed’ tone.

“Every time I asked Grunkle Stan who he liked, he wouldn’t tell me,” came Mabel’s simple response. “That’s not an excuse, I know,” she murmured, looking away.

Ford almost rolled his eyes at the ‘problem’, if it could be called one. He remembered being young, sticking his nose into things that weren’t his business and caring about things that didn’t truly matter in the long run. It was interesting, though, that she went to such complicated measures to solve her dilemma. However, she had said that it was originally Dipper’s idea, so what did the boy seek to accomplish…?

“And you, Dipper?” He asked.

Dipper’s head shot up. He glanced at his sister. His sister glanced back.

“Your sister already fessed up,” Stan grumbled. “I wanna know what your part was in this.”

“Um… I came up with the idea of using the truth teeth because…” The boy screwed his eyes shut. “I wanted to know if the rumors were true.”

Ford’s brow wrinkled. “What rumors?”

“I could think of five different ones about me right now,” Stan commented. “But I’d rather hear about it from you, kid.”

Dipper wiped his sweaty palms on his shorts. “You - um. Our family talks about you sometimes. About - about your past. And I just…” He shrugged and clammed up.

“Do you know about those rumors?” Mabel piped up, her voice small.

Ford’s heart sank. He had hoped that the children had escaped some of the family’s ideas and theories. Stan was understandably reticent about the nature of his early adulthood, but the trail of arrest warrants and sham products he left behind didn’t paint a pretty picture. Their father spoke ill of Stan till his dying breath, and even though Filbrick wasn’t known for his kindness, that sort of thing lingers.

“Rumors like what.” There was a steely edge to Stan’s voice.

“Stanley, I don’t think we should -”

“Ford, it’s fine. I already know the family doesn’t think all that highly of me. I just wanna hear whatever they’ve been tellin’ Dipper.” Stan gestured to the boy in question. “So tell me.”

“Aunt Amy says you killed a guy,” Mabel cut in.

Stan was so surprised that he snorted despite himself. “Aunt Amy’s full of sh - shtuff.”

“Um… some other people said that you got arrested a lot when you were younger, for theft, and for more… serious things. And you were on the run from something. I can’t find anything out about you.” Dipper swallowed. “And I just wanted to know the truth!” He picked at the hem of his shirt. “I just wanna know if I can trust you.”

Stan sighed. “Kid, you can absolutely trust me. One-hundred percent.” He raised a finger. “But! I ain’t gonna spill about that time in my life. It sucked, and I didn’t like it, and it’s over now. The end.”

“But -”

“Dipper, this is serious,” Ford interrupted. “Stanley doesn’t owe people information he’s not willing to talk about.” He glanced over to his brother, who looked grateful. “He’s gone against the law a few times, true, but that says nothing about his character and everything about the circumstances at the time. And that’s all you’re going to get from either one of us unless Stanley wants to share. You’re just going to have to trust us.”

“Seriously?” Dipper bit the inside of his cheek. “Grunkle Stan, it’s like you didn’t even exist for like, a decade. That doesn’t just happen! You gotta know how shady that looks.”

“Yeah, I know,” Stan muttered. “Listen, kid. Maybe someday I’ll tell you two all about it, but I’m not…” He rubbed the back of his neck and looked away. “I’m just not comfortable with it, alright? It’s pretty damn personal. So.”

“I -” The young boy flushed, frustrated. “Okay, then how about you, Great Uncle Ford?”

Ford blinked. “Me?” As far as he could tell, it was never the plan to get him to wear the truth teeth. Where was this coming from? Had he been keeping any secrets lately? No matter how hard he wracked his brain, the only piece of information he remembered holding back from anyone was the fact that Manly Dan was in some sort of pact with Bill, and the kids obviously knew that already.

“I know you said Bill manipulated you, but I’m still confused. I mean, if you knew what Bill was aiming to do, why didn’t it seem bad to you? You don’t just fall in with a demon by accident!”

Well, that's quite enough of that.

Ford stood. “Children, I understand where you’re coming from.” At Dipper’s face, he insisted. “I do! My brother and I hatched quite a few… questionable plans growing up. Sometimes they worked out, but that didn’t mean they were all good ideas.” He took a deep breath. “Stanley and I have told you what we could, but we are not going to be forced into divulging painful details. We’ve equipped you with the knowledge you need should you ever encounter Bill again, in any way, shape, or form. If you want to know more, or talk more about things…” He gestured down to the truth teeth, which sat in their box once more in Stanley’s lap. “This is not the trustworthy, truthful, or proper way to do it.”

Mabel nodded meekly. Dipper just crossed his arms and huffed. It was funny how much he looked like Stanley in that moment. Ford didn’t laugh, though - he was more concerned with Stanley himself. He briefly touched his brother’s shoulder.

Stanley nodded minutely, and stood as well, taking the truth teeth box with him. “Kids,” He started. “I know it’s hard, not having all the answers. But sometimes you just gotta, y’know, respect the line people draw in the sand. Just ‘cause we have things we’d rather leave behind, doesn’t mean we’re hiding anything.” Gravely, he said, “You can trust me. I swear.”

“I know, Grunkle Stan,” Mabel answered.

Dipper just looked down at his feet.

The Grunkles grounded the twins for the weekend. When they left the attic bedroom, though, neither of them felt very positive about the talk that they just had.

“Are you alright, Stanley?”

Stan clenched and unclenched his fists, but otherwise seemed calm. “Yeah… yeah, I’m fine. But who cares, what about you? Can’t believe Dipper would dare to imply that you and Bill were in cahoots,” he rumbled angrily. “Jeez, I just wanna punch something.”

“Technically, it was cahoots,” Ford corrected, “although very one-sided cahoots. Is it possible to be ‘in cahoots’ when one half of the cahootery has no idea what’s truly going on?”

“The cahootery?!” Stan wheezed with laughter. Thankful that his distraction had worked, Ford smiled.

“Well, sure, but be careful. We only got one microfiche reader, and I don’t think I’ve seen anyone use it for the past twenty years ‘cept for the cops.” The old guy at the library counter adjusted his circular glasses.

“What, to solve cases?” To think that a cop would be using this very same machine to conduct research just like Dipper was doing now… it was pretty cool, to be honest.

“Whoa!” Mabel gasped. “We’re touching the same film stuff as murderer-solvers?!”

The man’s mustache twitched in amusement. “No, nothing like that. The boys over at GFPD just like to scour the newspaper microfilm reels for crosswords they ain’t solved yet.”

Oh. That was… less exciting.

Dipper thanked the man and they headed off to the library’s microfiche room - wherever that was. It only took ten minutes of futzing around to stumble into a dusty, ill-visited room stuffed floor-to-ceiling with stacks and stacks of little drawers that reminded him of old post office boxes. Placed wherever they could fit were large oak desks. Only one of them had anything on it: a dinosaur of a computer-monitor-type-dealy sitting on top of extra equipment that must help the monitor display microfilm.

“Hey, knew it wouldn’t take us that long.” Dipper smiled, hands on his hips.

Mabel gestured out to the broad expanse of cabinets and drawers. “Yeah! Now we just have to find relevant stuff in here, somehow.”

The vast collection of drawers upon drawers suddenly loomed in closer, more daunting and claustrophobic. Dipper’s shoulders sagged slightly. “Oh, right.” He punched his palm with a closed fist. “Well, they must have some kind of organization system in here. Gravity Falls might be weird, but their library still follows Dewey, so this can’t be too bad.”

Mabel nodded, her star earrings swinging along as her eyes roamed the dusty, dirty lines of drawer handles. She tapped her chin. “I know we already went over this, but… are you sure we need to do this? I mean, maybe some stuff should stay buried.”

Dipper hummed. “Mm, nope. I think there’s information to be found here, and if it’s public domain, we have the right to see it.”

“Well, I guess that’s true. If anyone can do this sort of thing, the Grunks can’t be mad at us!” She clapped her hands together, cheerful disposition returned. “It’s okay, though. Them grounding us just means that we get to be here on a Monday instead of a weekend, so I get to say hi to all the adorable old people that hang out at the library during the day!”

“Um, I think some of those people might be homeless.”

“They can be both!”

“Oh, right, I didn’t think of that…” Dipper walked deeper into the room, running his fingers along the faces of the microfilm drawers and reading their headings. “Financial, Engineering, Written Correspondence… Oh! Newspapers! Mabel, I found them!”

“Aw, man,” Mabel bemoaned. When he looked over, he saw his sister peering forlornly into a drawer in the History section. “I wanted to check out these extremely redacted documents about the possibility of an eight-and-a-halfth president!” She giggled. “I bet you, like, the entire thing is blacked out.”

“Wait, what?” He shook his head. “No, we have to keep on track. Maybe we can look at that later?” It sounded interesting, though - that didn’t seem real, but then why would the library hold redacted documents about it? He shrugged off the thought and fingered through reels of microfilm that held newspaper issues. They were labeled by date. All of them. So, so many of them…

Screw it. Dipper grabbed the whole 1980 box. It seemed like a good place to start. Besides, it was hard for him to picture anything much earlier than that. Either Grunkle Stan came to Gravity Falls around then, or Dipper couldn’t conceptualize the ‘70s, but either way, it was a starting point.

He and Mabel rushed over to the microfiche reader, popped the first reel in, and scanned through for anything important.

And then they scanned through another.

And then another.

Dipper could feel Mabel’s boredom like a cloud pressing in. “Gah, Mabel, you’re shedding your feelings again.”

“I can’t help it!” She cried, leaning backwards over the back of her oak chair. “This is terrible! I thought it would be crazy news stories like robberies and scandals, but it’s just the same woman’s cats getting rescued by the fire department over and over again.”

True; there did seem to be a different picture in almost every issue of a youthful Susan smiling next to a firefighter holding a spooked cat. The cat was different a few times, too. Dipper shrugged. “I guess this is what counts as news when your town population stays below ten thousand.”

“Yeah, I guess. But it sucks.” Mabel slid out of her chair onto the scratchy carpeting, her floppy sweater sleeves snagging on the edges of the chair. She groaned as if mortally wounded, and said something that was muffled by the underside of the microfiche reader table.

“What?”

“I said, I’m gonna go talk to the lady who runs the knitting circle.”

“Oh, okay. Have fun.” He gave her a thumbs up. She dutifully returned it despite her attitude.

She grumbled something incoherent and slinked out of the room without getting up from the carpet, which was going to be an unfortunate sight for anyone who happened to be in the hallway outside. Oh well. Dipper turned back to his task.

Shink, snap, click. Nothing. Shink, snap, click. Still nothing.

By the time he got halfway through the year’s worth of newspapers, Dipper’s chin was slipping off his hand. He yawned. Since he had been grounded all weekend, he took the time to finish up his summer reading, which meant his sleep schedule was even worse than usual. The magnified text began to blur. People only use this room once a century, so what’s the harm of a nap, he figured, and soon enough, his head was resting on his arms. Just a quick nap, and then back to work.

Dipper immediately opened his eyes.

Well, the nap didn’t have to be that quick. It was like he hadn’t slept at all.

And… well… this wasn’t the library. Heck, he wasn’t even indoors anymore.

The familiar smell of pines hit him. Secretive evergreens towered all around, making up a huge forest.

“Mabel?” He called out. No response from the shadows.

It was colder here. Wasn’t it supposed to be summer? He shoved his hands into his vest pockets and peered around. This looked kind of like the forest surrounding Gravity Falls, but… it couldn’t be. For one, he and Mabel weren’t allowed in here alone. But the trees were also taller. Their sticks were more arched and twisted.

He looked behind him. Oh. There was a path. And if he squinted hard enough down the path, he could make out an indistinct shack. There was something shining and shimmering about it, like some kind of - oh. Oh! Maybe that’s the unicorn hair barrier that Great Uncle Ford told them about.

A shiver ran down his spine. That meant...

Dipper was outside of the barrier.

“FUNNY MEETING YOU HERE, KID!”

“Ahhh!” Dipper’s neck ached from how hard he whipped his head back around, just to see… a triangle. A really bright triangle.

Oh no.

Instinctively, Dipper stepped backwards. Countless layers of ancient pine needles shifted underfoot. “I know who you are, Bill!” Was his voice wavering? It shouldn’t waver!

“HAHA, YOU’RE SHARP, LIL’ PINES! MOST KIDS YOUR AGE WOULD’VE FORGOTTEN THEIR CRUSTY OLD UNCLE’S DRAWING THE SECOND THEY LOOKED AWAY.” Bill twirled his void-black cane. “BUT YOU’RE SMART. YOU REMEMBER THESE THINGS.”

“Um. I guess.” Dipper chanced another glance behind him. The path was gone. That was… probably bad.

“YOU REMEMBER LOTS OF THINGS!” Bill continued, waving a hand in the air. Memories popped into existence above him like opening doors. “LIKE WHEN STANLEY’S BOSSES DIED WHILE HE WAS THE ONLY OTHER EMPLOYEE! OR LIKE HOW TEN YEARS OF HIS LIFE ARE MYSTERIOUSLY MISSING FROM MOST PUBLIC RECORDS!”

Dipper curled his arms around himself in an attempt at warmth. “W-what does that have to do with you?”

Bill snapped his fingers - it was deafening - and then pointed a finger gun at him. “I’M SURE THAT OL’ FORDSY’S LESS-THAN-GLOWING ACCOUNT OF ME INCLUDED THE FACT THAT I REMEMBER LOTS TOO. AFTER ALL, WITHOUT MY VAST KNOWLEDGE, HOW COULD HE HAVE EVER DREAMED OF COMPLETING AN INTERDIMENSIONAL PORTAL?”

A what!?

“He wanted to make that!?”

“SURE! HE WAS VERY OPEN TO THE IDEA. EXCITED, EVEN. A SHAME THAT THE IDEA NEVER GOT OFF THE GROUND.”

Was it bad to ask a demon questions? “Why? What happened?”

“WELL, A CERTAIN SOMEONE SHOWED UP, BY THE NAME OF STANLEY PINES. OR, WELL, THAT WAS WHO HE WAS BY THE TIME HE GOT TO GRAVITY FALLS.” Bill waved a hand, and suddenly they were both thrust upwards into the stratosphere.

Dipper kept his eyes shut, but when there was no more noise, he opened them to the void of space. It was dotted with stars and entire galaxies in all the colors of the rainbow. Where there wasn’t blackness or searing light, there were little trinkets and miscellanea floating around. He spotted a few dozen notebooks - his notebooks - along with his camcorder, a tuning valve from his sousaphone, a few bottles of valve oil, and a few books and DVDs. It was a scattered museum of Dipper’s life thus far. He could keep picking out items, but instead he turned to the thing that brought him here.

Bill was leaning against, of all things, a traditional chalkboard. Dipper hadn’t seen one of those since elementary school. The surface was littered with white equations and variables that he couldn’t hope to untangle on his own - some in an unfamiliar script, and some in the neat, looping handwriting of his Great Uncle Ford.

The demon of the hour grabbed one edge of the board with his thin, creepy fingers and sent it for a spin. Clouds of old, old dust floated off. “WELL! I HAVEN’T SEEN THIS BAD BOY IN A WHILE.” He sneezed with his eyeball. Dipper looked away and tried not to throw up. Never one to care about what others thought, Bill simply conjured up a chalkboard eraser and continued. “THIS WAS THE START OF SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL. CALCULATIONS TO CONNECT ALL UNIVERSES. IT WOULD’VE BEEN INCREDIBLE! DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY WEIRD FRIENDS I HAVE? YOUR UNCLE COULD’VE BEEN SET ON STUDY MATERIAL FOR LIFE!”

Dipper didn’t want to listen to this guy anymore. It was like nails on a chalkboard, but for some reason, he was glued to the spot.

“BUT THEN STANLEY SHOWED UP.” The creature unceremoniously dragged the eraser across the board, clearing what looked to be at least months of mind-breaking labor. “HE HAD NOWHERE TO GO AFTER A LIFE OF CRIME, AND OF COURSE, FORDSY TOOK HIM IN.” Real anger flashed in Bill’s expression. “AND LITTLE BY LITTLE -” An erased equation here, a destroyed theorem there - “OUR WORK WAS UNDONE.”

And now the chalkboard was empty.

“YOUR UNCLE COULD’VE BEEN A PIONEER IN INTERDIMENSIONAL STUDY. HE COULD’VE CHANGED THE WORLD. BUT THANKS TO HIS BROTHER, THAT NEVER HAPPENED.”

Grunkle Stan… interrupted Grunkle Ford’s work? “But…” Dipper peered at the empty span of the chalkboard. He shook his head free of the thoughts Bill was piecing together. “They both seem okay. They seem happy.” And didn’t Grunkle Ford turn out to be a scientific pioneer anyways?

“HUMANS CAN ADJUST TO A LOT,” Bill shrugged. “YOU’RE SQUISHY, YET RESILIENT! WHAT ARE A FEW BROKEN DREAMS ALONG THE WAY?”

“I… I don’t understand.” Dipper frowned. What was this guy’s angle? Suddenly, something Ford once said came to mind. His compliments were laced with barbs… “W-what do you want?” Whether it’s true or not, there’s got to be a reason for this. There’s got to be something Bill wants from him.

“WELL!” Bill seemed overjoyed at the question. He clapped - another ethereal ear-splitting sound - and the chalkboard disappeared. “LET ME TELL YOU SOMETHING, DIPPER. YOU’RE A SMART KID. OTHER PEOPLE, EVEN YOUR OWN SISTER, HAVE FALLEN VICTIM TO STANLEY’S FRONT. STANFORD’S NO USE ANYMORE; HIS WIT’S BEEN DULLED BY ACQUIESCENCE TO THAT BUFFOON. NOWADAYS HE JUST PUTTERS AROUND THE WOODS AND PRETENDS HE’S DONE SOMETHING USEFUL FOR THE WORLD. BUT YOU?” The end of his cane almost brushed Dipper’s nose when he pointed. “YOU’VE GOT POTENTIAL.”

“Oh, really? I mean - thanks?” Dipper’s brain was working overtime. Where did this guy get off, running his whole family through the mud?! Sure, they had their problems, but Dipper would never have presented them like that. But… he couldn’t lash out; he needed to keep Bill talking. He needed to hear Bill’s goal. What was his goal? He did seem pretty angry about the portal work getting destroyed. “So you’re saying I could… help pick up where my uncle left off?

“SEE WHAT I MEAN? THIS KID’S A GENIUS!” Bill crowed.

Oh thank goodness. Dipper figured that was what Bill was leading up to, but in the end he still felt like he was guessing. Resisting the urge to wipe sweat off his brow (if this is a dream, how come his body still betrays him?), he managed to stand up straighter and nod, as if considering things. “You think so?”

“I KNOW SO!” A ragged old notebook that Dipper didn’t recognize appeared in Bill’s hand via a burst of blue flame. “LISTEN, KID. THIS IS ALL I HAVE LEFT OF OUR WORK. I NEED A LITTLE MORE HELP BEFORE I CAN PUT TOGETHER ANOTHER GATEWAY.”

Wasn’t Ford missing a notebook after the amulet got stolen?

“Oh. Um. Are you sure I can help with that? I’m kind of… not the best at science.” Dipper hunched his shoulders.

“ARE YOU KIDDING? YOU’RE BRIGHT! AND I DON’T NEED YOU ON THE TECHNICAL SIDE OF THINGS ANYWAYS. I’M WORKING ON THAT. BUT I DO NEED SOMEONE CLEVER LIKE YOU TO HELP PULL ALL THE PIECES TOGETHER.” Bill shrugged nonchalantly. “THOSE OLD FARTS’ HOUSE STILL HAS THE MOST VALUABLE INFORMATION, AND I CAN’T GET IN THERE MYSELF, AFTER ALL! ONE OF MY LATEST PEERS WAS USEFUL UP TO A POINT... BUT I THINK YOU HAVE STAYING POWER.”

Dipper could see how this demon could butter someone up into doing evil deeds for him. This way, the creature was almost personable. Despite the otherworldly din of Bill’s voice, his words caught perfectly on insecurities and doubts. Guilt flooded Dipper’s veins. He bit his inner lip, worrying the flesh between his teeth. It seemed that he owed Grunkle Ford an apology. How could he have ever suspected that Ford could have willingly done anything bad with this… thing?

Okay. Dipper had an idea. His only experience with acting was one season of theater back in 6th grade, but he still had to try.

“You know what, you’re right!” He said, hands on hips. “I don’t know why I keep getting treated like a little kid! I can handle a lot of things.”

“EXACTLY, PINE TREE! THIS IS YOUR CHANCE TO PROVE THEM ALL WRONG. YOUR GRUNKLES, YOUR CLASSMATES, YOUR SISTER… YOU HELP BRING ABOUT A NEW ERA OF SCIENCE, AND GLORY IS YOURS!”

“Glory, huh? That does sound pretty good…” Dipper readjusted his gold star hat. Why’d he call me Pine Tree? “Better than being told I’m too young or too curious.” It wasn’t too hard to channel bitterness there. He only had to hope it was convincing.

“TELL YOU WHAT.” Bill clapped, and the space whirling around them disappeared. They had returned to the woods, sitting down calmly on a soft layer of dead pine needles. Bill crossed his legs and remained at eye-level. “YOU HELP ME ACHIEVE MY GOAL OF CONNECTING THE DIMENSIONS, I HELP YOU ACHIEVE YOUR GOAL OF BEING TAKEN SERIOUSLY AND BECOMING WHAT YOUR WASHED-UP UNCLE WISHED HE COULD’VE BEEN.” Bright-hot blue flame erupted around Bill’s outstretched hand; Dipper jumped at the sudden chill. “WHAT DO YA SAY? DEAL?”

There was a fork in the road.

If Dipper shook this eldritch horror’s hand, a few things would probably happen. Dipper would get a lot of information about Bill’s inside schemes. He would start aiding and abetting in whatever Bill was constructing behind closed doors. He would owe something of himself to this thing. And overall he would earn valuable information to tell his family, to help bring Bill down.

There was a tiny thought that piped up, unwanted - and what if his grunkles were lying, and Bill was a force for good? What then?

But… but he pictured Mabel’s trusting, open face, and Stan’s late-night romcom binges, and the stars Ford got in his eyes just by dissecting simple plants. And he knew there and then that that wasn’t a possibility.

The other prong on the fork: Dipper denied the deal. W-what would that do? It was the safer option, for sure. No debts or owes. No getting tangled up in Bill’s nebulous plans. But he would also have way less information on Bill - and all he wanted, all he craved, was to know.

If I do this for the sake of taking Bill down, Ford and Stan might finally realize I’m more than just a clueless kid…

Wait, that… that was just playing right into Bill’s manipulation! Perhaps not exactly how Bill pictured, but still, Dipper almost believed part of Bill’s stories.

Okay, don’t hyperventilate, Dipper.

“WELL?” Bill waved his burning fingers.

Dipper chose the third prong.

“W-Well… I want to believe you,” he insisted. “But, how do I know you’re for real? This could just be some sort of plot. You could totally drop out on your end of the deal.” He shrugged, as if resigned.

“I ASSURE YOU, PINE TREE, I NEVER BACK OUT. MEATSACKS HAVE BACKED OUT ON ME, BUT I’VE NEVER DONE THE SAME.”

“Okay. But that’s just your word,” Dipper pointed out. “Maybe I’d take the deal if I trusted you, but…”

“HA, TRUE! SMART KID.” Bill rubbed his nonexistent chin. “HOW ABOUT THIS - I GIVE YOU SOME INFORMATION YOU’VE BEEN LOOKING FOR. THAT WAY, YOU KNOW I’M LEGIT.” He held up one crooked finger. “BUT! IN EXCHANGE, MEET ME A WEEK FROM NOW. THEN YOU’LL HAVE HAD A WEEK TO THINK ABOUT THE DEAL, AND WE CAN DISCUSS. BUT DON’T PONDER TOO LONG.” His face twisted into a grotesque clock, and he bellowed, “TIME’S A-TICKING!”

Thud!

Dipper’s eyes shot open.

He was - back in the library? It was eerily quiet. He rubbed his head where he had banged it against the side of the microfiche reader in a hasty awakening. The clock hanging in the microfiche room only read 3:11. That entire encounter had only lasted ten minutes… somehow. It felt like at least thirty.

There was still a useless news article plastered across the microfiche reader. When Dipper turned to it, though, he suddenly knew a lot more than he did going into this. No one had told him anything outright, but he still picked through the remaining 1980 reels and grabbed what he instinctively knew was relevant, as well as a few important reels from later years and more widespread newspapers.

No wonder Grunkle Ford worked with this guy, he mused. Demon knowledge is crazy useful.

Shink, snap, click.

“Unknown car crash? With a body inside?! Mysterious grifter?! Oh, wait… wrong article.” He flipped to the next issue. The thick bold lettering on the magnified headlines screamed to him: Local Sandwich Thief Earns Job from those he Robbed. Below was a younger picture of Stanley, smiling toothily at the cash register of what must’ve been the Dusk 2 Dawn back in its heyday.

He knew this already. Did Bill think it was incriminating?

After that, a litany of headlines and second-or-third-page articles constructed a more damning image, though. Things that were seemingly unrelated, or didn’t even mention Gravity Falls at all, made it in. Most of the coverage was local, but some reels were from more widely-circulated papers:

52 People Arrested in Colombia Drug Trafficking Bust

Idaho Scam Artist Disappears Without a Trace

String of Robberies Leaves Police Stumped

The local stuff was a bit less serious:

Brother of Local Scientist Moves In, Being Second Addition to Population in Four Decades

Dusk 2 Dawn Proprietors Deliberately Spooked to Death? Local Ghost Expert Weighs In

Dusk 2 Dawn Closes Its Doors After Handed Off to Stanley Pines

Local Restaurant Owner Fesses up to Offshore Accounts

That last one really threw Dipper for a loop, but it turned out it wasn’t even about Stan. It was actually about the owner of that bougie restaurant, The Club. Thrown together with the rest of the headlines, it had initially looked pretty bad. Did Bill think Dipper was stupid?

Anyways, the image these titles constructed was pretty concerning, but it was just that… a construction. Instead of plainly telling Dipper what had happened in Stan’s past, the ‘all-knowing’ Bill Cipher directed him to some vague and scattered articles that would draw a picture for him. That in itself was pretty telling. Because if Bill was unwilling to tell Dipper the true story himself, what was missing from the picture Dipper was given?

Bill thought Dipper’s own conclusions would be enough to sway him to Bill’s side.

Dipper didn’t realize his hands were shaking until he was clenching them, digging his nails into his palms. The shake was a habit of anxiety that he always hated. People could always tell when he was nervous even when he managed to keep his voice steady. Something serious was up.

“Hey, Dipdop! I was talking to the old guy at the front desk, and - whoa, are you okay?”

Oh, thank goodness, Mabel! It was getting too creepy-crawly in this dark, isolated, dusty back room. That feeling of straying far from the path, far from safety, stuck with him even though he wasn’t in that hazy pine forest anymore. It was a shame there wasn’t a unicorn hair barrier around the whole town.

“Um, actually, Mabel…” Dipper swallowed. He automatically returned the reels to their boxes with nervous hands. “We have to go home. Now.”

Chapter Text

“You saw Bill?! The spooky drawing Bill? The guy who, whenever Grunkle Ford said his name, he seemed like he was gonna throw up?”

“Yes!” Dipper shuddered, rubbing his arms as if it were cold in the middle of the summer.

“And you were like, ‘yeah, let’s meet again’?!” She asked incredulously, mimicking his register.

“Mabel, you’re not helping!” He eked out, throat tight from fear. The sidewalk beneath him was riddled with breaks and hairline fractures, as if someone had picked the whole thing up in their hands and bent the concrete until it broke. He was suddenly hit with a strong compulsion not to step on any of the cracks.

“Agh, you’re right. I’m sorry, Dipper. It’s just - scary!” She was walking ahead of him, and he watched her kick a rock onto the paved road. Then, she turned back to face him. The sun glinted gold off her earrings. “I mean, we were warned about this demon! This demon specifically! Who we don’t know anything about! What do we do?”

“I-I dunno! I really didn’t think this through.”

“Weird! Usually I’m the one who does that.” Mabel hummed. Despite the levity of her comment, her face was tight with worry. This was serious. “You know who’ll know what to do?”

“Who?”

“The Grunkles!” Her enthusiasm faded a bit when she saw his face. “Sorry, Dip, I know you don’t really -”

“No! It’s okay. I think you’re right.” Dipper bit his lip. After getting into so much trouble over the past week, he really wasn’t looking forward to even looking their great-uncles in the eye. “Okay, crazy idea here. What if, I just take a bus back to Piedmont without telling anyone anything about anything.” He wasn’t serious - well, maybe half-serious - but the laugh that came out of Mabel was worth it.

“No! You know how mean all the kids are back home!”

That made Dipper tear his eyes from the cracked sidewalk. It was rare for Mabel to acknowledge that people were mean at all. “Really?” He almost scoffed. “You tried to throw a birthday party for that girl that pushed you into a puddle on the first day of seventh grade.”

“I was trying to cheer her up! She seemed like she had some issues.” She fell back into step with Dipper and stuck her foot out to stop the motion of his own. “You almost stepped on a crack.” At his questioning glance, she shrugged. “I saw you were trying to avoid them. But - just ‘cause I like being a cool rainbow of awesomeness, doesn’t mean I don’t know meanies when I see ‘em! They just need time to become… un-meanies.”

“Is Bill a meanie?” Dipper laughed.

“Worse,” she said, deadly serious. “He’s a monster. That’s not the same at all.”

“Oh.” That was much more intense than he had expected. “He’s pretty ugly, honestly. You’re right.” A thought hit him, and he clapped one hand with a fist. “Oh my gosh. Mabel, he did the grossest thing ever in my dream earlier.”

“Oooh, tell me!” Mabel jumped up and down in excitement.

“He sneezed with his eyelid.”

Mabel was expecting something like that, but she brought her hands to her face in disgust anyways. “Nooo…. That’s not cool at all!”

“Right!”

The atmosphere wasn’t much lighter, but laughing really, really helped. Homes began to thin out, their backgrounds dotted with more and more trees. Soon, the measly sidewalk ended, and the two were trekking across rocks and patchy grass and the occasional gravel driveway. The prospect of a future meeting with Bill weighed heavy on Dipper’s shoulders. It didn’t help that the closer they got to home, the thicker the woods gathered around their trail.

Besides leaves and needles brushing against each other, and the sound of the occasional cicada, they had fallen into a silence that wasn’t exactly comfortable as they neared home. The chirps of the cicadas almost made Dipper smile. He and Mabel freaked out the first time they found a cicada shell around here, but then Great-Uncle Ford explained that something in the town’s soil gave local cicadas twice the usual amount of eyes, legs, and tymbals. It doesn’t really make their chirping louder, just… aptly weird.

Dipper sighed. It hushed the understated background noise of the forest. “I should probably stop trying to do stuff all on my own, huh?”

Mabel fiddled with something in her sweater pockets, chewing on the inside of her cheek. “You’re not planning on keeping this whole ‘meeting Bill’ thing to yourself, are you?”

The wind strengthened, setting branches and pine needles against each other in a loud display of force.

Dipper stared intensely at the browned needles littering their path, inner cogs working.

Worry began to slip into Mabel’s expression. She winced. “Dipper -”

“No! I mean, no, I can’t keep it to myself,” he finally said, hands gripping the straps of his backpack. “I just - can’t. It’s not feasible,” he reasoned reluctantly. “I have to tell the Grunkles. They’re the only ones who even know anything about this.”

Mabel breathed a sigh of relief. “Good. You know I’ll keep secrets for you, Dipdop, but I dunno about this one.” She looked up, away from her brother, to the waving trees. “I hope you don’t, like, think lesser of me.” Her attempted half-laugh isn’t too cheerful.

“What? Why would I think that?”

She shrugged, her feet dragging a bit, tugging a path through the pine needles. “You just… seem so gung-ho about learning everything you can about stuff that’s happening around here. And you really stick to your guns. And I worry just a teensy bit that if you didn’t decide on your own to tell the Grunkles about this, then nothing I said would’ve convinced you. ‘Cause I just -” She waves one arm, sweater sleeve drooping off her hand. “I don’t know, I trust people really easily, and this summer I just wanna hang out with Candy and Grenda at the diner and knit with old ladies at the library…” she trailed off. It was hard to completely stop feeling weird for their differences. She was trying, but that was all she could do.

“Wha - Mabel, I care about what you think!” Dipper lengthens his strides for a moment to once again walk beside her. “Okay, I might be a bit stubborn…”

“A bit?”

He retaliated with a playful punch to her arm. “But that doesn’t have anything to do with what you say to me! Sometimes I just tune everyone out, I guess. I don’t think less of you for doing something different or spending your time differently! I just get… frustrated about some stuff?”

She nodded, starting to smile a little bit. “I know. I’m sorry, Dipper. I don’t want to make you think I don’t care about what you care about, either. Sometimes I’m just worried. I don’t want you to think that you’re all alone. ‘Cause you’ve got a whole lotta Pines on your side!”

In response, a shy smile starts to grow on Dipper’s face. “Well, so do you! So… let’s do this together. All of us, really. Honestly.”

“Yeah?”

Dipper took a deep breath. “Yeah. I think the way Bill moved everything around to fit his narrative kind of made me second-guess some things.” The way those newspaper headlines were strategically plucked still made him frown.

Soon enough, their great uncles’ house loomed up amongst the evergreens. Both worried and relieved, they climbed the creaking steps. To their surprise, the door opened right as Mabel reached for the handle.

“Oh! I wasn’t expecting you two back so soon.” Great-Uncle Ford had the sleeves of his sweater pushed up and a pencil tucked behind each ear. There were graphite smudges all over the side of his right hand. Weird - as far as Dipper could tell, Ford exclusively used ink (both with pens and the occasional ornamental quill). He glanced past the twins’ shoulders to check the sun, as if he hadn’t had the opportunity to look at a clock recently. “Wasn’t your library visit supposed to last a bit longer?”

“Um, yeah.” Mabel rubbed the back of her neck as she entered, Dipper quick behind. “About that…”

“Something really, really bad happened,” Dipper started, panic kick-starting at the mere prospect of telling Ford. He was debating just dropping his bag and sitting down on the ground in the middle of the hallway, but Mabel gently took his arm and kept him afloat.

“What!?” Ford dropped a red colored pencil that Dipper hadn’t even realized was there. It clattered and rolled too loudly on the hardwood. “Are you -”

“We’re not hurt!” Mabel reassured, throwing out a placating gesture with her free hand. If Dipper weren’t freaking out right now, she would’ve kicked him in the shin for saying something so panick-y and non-descriptive. “Dipper might have just, maybe, um… Actually, let’s go to the kitchen table for this!” She decided. The kitchen had stable places to park your butt, like chairs!

To their surprise, Ford threw up his hands. “No!” Dipper and Mabel frowned in confusion, and Ford backtracked. “I mean, ah.” He rubbed his chin with one pencil-smeared hand. “Um… there’s… renovations?”

“What?” The younger twins echoed each other.

“Nevermind! It’s not important for now. Come, let’s go to the living room, and then you can tell me what’s wrong.”

There haven’t been many times in Ford’s life where he could say he literally felt his heart drop. It was usually just a turn of phrase - accurate to describe a feeling, but not necessarily the actual sensation. However, this was one of those times; a rare moment where it seems that the pericardium surrounding his heart just popped, and everything slipped out, flung downward towards his stomach.

Bill was targeting the kids. He was targeting Dipper.

Dipper had only been able to explain that Bill was there before Ford needed to interrupt.

“Wait. I realize you said there was no deal, but -” His mind tripped and scrambled over itself. He wasn’t usually this tongue-tied, but he could forgive himself this one time. The comfortable couch felt a bit less cozy, and he shifted his weight on it. “I - hmm.” If he was not mistaken, when Dan Corduroy was possessed by Bill, the man’s eyes were that sickly yellow that Ford thought he would never have to see again. Logic follows… “Children, let me see your eyes.”

The kids swallowed down their nerves. They seemed to understand the need to comply, which almost automatically ruled Bill out. Silently thankful, Ford leaned in and steadily pulled up each child’s eyelids, one eye at a time. Sclerae were normal on both of them. The check was done with ease, as Ford had plenty of experience examining the eyes of creatures for scientific purposes - but these weren’t creatures. They were Dipper and Mabel. He frowned to himself, ill to his stomach, and pulled away. “All clear,” he murmured.

“Grunkle Ford?” Dipper asked.

Ford would have smiled at the term-shortening under different circumstances. “Yes?”

“How’d you figure out that Bill could possess people? Have - have you been -”

Ford reeled back. “I have not. Actually…” He thought back. “Bill told me about that particular power of his. But it was a last-ditch ploy against us, actually. Stanley and I, we… well, we punched him in the face after that.” It was a triumphant memory, for sure.

Mabel gasped with delight. “Really?” Dipper’s eyes shone unspoken with something similar.

“Yes! But… I’m not sure how exactly we could manage that again.” He shook his head. “We can discuss that later. Right now I need to hear the rest.” His hand dwarfed Dipper’s shoulder. The kids were both so small and young. Ford hoped that they wouldn’t have to deal with Bill the way he and Stanley did. There were doubts about keeping the kids for the summer, but neither he nor Stan expected this. But what could he do except help now that the situation arose? He looked down into Dipper’s face, into his nervous eyes, and tried a calming smile. “You can tell me.”

“Okay. Um…” Dipper took off his hat and worried the brim with his hands, leaving his hair matted and messy. “Well, he told me that you had been thinking of building an interdimensional portal with him.”

“What!” Mabel’s head snapped to Dipper. “You didn’t tell me that!”

“Hmm.” Ford sighed. “It was a possibility, but… nothing more. I saw past his tricks before he could rope me into building something of that caliber for him. Knowing Bill, his motives were less pure than ‘scientific enlightenment,’ or anything else he saw fit to lie to you about.”

“He did mention that! He said something about how he has friends like him that could’ve, I dunno, come over?” Dipper grimaced. “I don’t think anyone would want more Bill Ciphers running around, even just to study.”

“Hah! You’ve got that right, my boy.” The idea brought up decades-old memories. “I will admit, at first I had been blinded by the dazzling idea of other dimensions. I was young and a bit more reckless than I am now... What was his purpose for telling you that?”

“That’s the thing.” Dipper looked down at his hat, and the worn gold star on its front. “He told me that that’s what you were going to do until Grunkle Stan put a stop to your work, but I find it hard to believe. I think he was trying to smear… basically all of you guys. Trying to convince me that I’ve got it all figured out, and you guys don’t.” His fingers tightened angrily around the hat, fingernails getting caught on the stitching on the edge of the rim. “Honestly, with what you and Grunkle Stan told us, the whole thing was so obvious!”

Ford nodded solemnly. “That’s good to hear. I never wanted you to have to use any of our advice, but I’m glad it worked. And I’m very proud of you, Dipper.” He ruffled the boy’s hair - something he rarely got to do, since the hat was usually in the way.

“Y-You are?”

“Of course. You could recognize something at 12 that I couldn’t recognize late into my twenties.” He smiled at Dipper. “I would say that deserves some appreciation!”

“Oh, wow, um… t-thanks!” Dipper swallowed. “He did offer me a deal. I didn’t take it! But -”

“What was the deal for?”

“He thought that I would help him with his plans to build the portal if he got me recognition.” The next part was mumbled, more to himself than the others. “And got me to be treated seriously?”

Oh. That was a desire Ford was all too familiar with, especially at Dipper’s age. Even nowadays, when disbelieving peers (even fellow cryptozoologists) dismissed certain findings, something inside Ford would harshly remember the way it felt when school-age bullies would snark about his interests. It was that urge to be understood, believed, and proven right. The feeling was much more manageable for Ford now, but had never truly been killed.

Plans about bringing the portal to fruition almost made Ford sick to his stomach, but for just a moment that fell to the wayside. He instinctively wrapped his arms tight around Dipper. “Do I make you feel unheard?” He murmured. They both shifted a bit, because Mabel had added her arms to the hug as well.

Dipper was frozen for a moment, but then he gave up and squirmed so that no one’s shoulder was digging into anyone’s face. “No, it’s-it’s okay. Really. It’s fine.” He pulled up to wrap both arms around Ford in a proper hug now. “Sometimes I feel a bit left out of the loop, but.. I get it. And I’d never think it was enough justification to shake Bill’s hand,” he said with disgust.

“Good.” Ford pulled away. His eyes held some combination of regret and caring. “Please, let Stanley and I know if we ever make you feel that way. It is truly not our intention. We may be deliberate about what we say and when we say it, but believe me when I say that we value both of you. Your opinions and your thoughts.” Ford shook his head. “In any case, I assume it’s not a stretch to say that you declined Bill’s offer.” Once all the details were settled here, they would need to come up with a plan, considering that Bill’s overall plan had become a bit more clear.

“Well…” Dipper shuffled. His hat had been a bit crushed between them, and he thrust his hand into the hat to open it back up. “I didn’t say yes.”

Ford narrowed his eyes. That didn’t necessarily sound good. “I’m going to need you to elaborate.”

“I kind of… told him to prove that he’s for real, and now I have to meet him next week to tell him my final decision?” The more Dipper spoke, the more his shoulders hunched up to his ears.

Just the idea of prolonging the issue with Bill… Ford could only grimace.

For a moment, everyone was completely silent.

The front door burst open with a jittering rattle. “Guess who’s home!” Stanley called cheerfully. “You nerds playing that math-y dungeon game yet?” He stuck his head into the kitchen as if expecting them there, and then peered into the living room, where everyone stared wide-eyed at him.

That reminded Ford that the Dungeon Master screen, character sheets, and carefully-planned graph paper environments all lay abandoned on the kitchen table. It was supposed to be a nice surprise. Ford suddenly felt the urge to fidget with his fingers, a nervous habit that he hadn’t indulged in a long time. He didn’t do so now either, but he did clasp his hands tightly in his lap instead. “Hello, Stanley. You might want to sit down for this.”

Thank goodness the work day was over.

Wendy wouldn’t usually turn down extra money, but picking up multiple long shifts in a row was kind of lame for her summer break. A few open days were lined up in her schedule now, though, so now she was fully prepared to kick back. Maybe she’d hang out with Lee and Nate, see what they were up to.

That was for tomorrow, though. It was a bit late for dinner - maybe 9pm or so - but she and her family had waited for the free diner food for tonight. Going plate by plate, she popped everyone’s meal in the microwave. While she waited, she leaned her tired body against the kitchen counter and carefully tugged out her hair tie. Stan was pretty nice to let her take home five people’s worth of food every so often. It really saved her and her dad the strain of getting everything together for her younger brothers, too.

“Thanks for bringing the food home, sweetie,” her dad grumbled as he passed, similarly tired after a long day’s work.

“Mmhm.” She yawned. The microwave dinged, and she took out the last plate. Something had been bothering her lately. Sometimes it was hard to say stuff to her dad’s face - not least because anger was the easiest-expressed emotion in her family, but mostly just because her dad would probably have trouble listening. Still, he was looking tired recently… more than usual. Maybe she should ask...

“Kevin! Marcus! Gus!” Wendy yelled. Soon enough, multiple heavy footfalls sounded through the house. Her brothers all rushed to their respective plates at their small, circular dining table, barely remembering to give their thanks to Wendy. She just smiled and ruffled Gus’s hair, which she knew he hated. He was the youngest, so she got away with more with him. When everyone was settled, she went back into the kitchen, where her dad was pouring himself coffee. Well - attempting to. It was missing the mug and getting all over the floor.

“Um. Dad?”

He jumped, only then realizing what he had been doing, and put the coffee pot down. “Oh, jeez. My bad.”

Wendy just sighed and reached for the mop, which was always close at hand in this household. “It’s okay. But…” She pulled out a bucket and some floor cleaner. “I mean… are you okay, Dad?” It’s been a while since the logging company kept him so late, but recently, he’s been pulling really long hours.

“Whaddya mean, I’m fine!”

A bang, bang, bang sounded at the door.

Wendy frowned. “Who the heck could be over here this late?” If it was Robbie again, she swore she’d just punch the guy, no holds barred. She saw her dad stalk over to the front door, though, and ran up to stop him. “Wait! If it’s Robbie, I want to be the one to punch him, not you, Dad.” She paused. “No offense.”

Her dad just barked a sleepy laugh and lumbered back to his food. “Haha! Go ahead, sweetheart. You’re a Corduroy, all right!”

Rolling her eyes fondly, she approached the door. Truthfully, she knew that her dad would punch whoever was on the other side of the door no matter what, for how late it was and how tired they all were, and she didn’t feel like dealing with that mess. At least if it was some guy lost in the woods, Wendy would give him directions instead of physically sending him halfway through the forest.

When she opened the door, though, it wasn’t Robbie, or even one of the lost tourists that occasionally wandered through. It was her boss, and her boss’s brother.

“Whoa. Hey, Mr. Pines, hey, Dr. Pines. Is something wrong?” Fear suddenly struck her. “Did I forget to drain the sinks again or something?”

“What?” Mr. Pines blinked. “Oh, no, this ain’t about work. Actually, it’s pretty serious. Could ya get your dad?” His face did look kinda grim. A cold shiver ran through Wendy.

“Hey, dad, it’s our neighbors!” She called, trying not to show her nerves in her voice.

“Huh?” Her dad made his way back to the door, a forkful of reheated diner food halfway to his mouth. “If it isn’t the Pines! What brings you here so late?”

“I’ll keep it short,” started Dr. Pines. While Wendy didn’t know him as well as she knew his boss, it was still unusual to see the man so grave. He was a far cry from the eccentric, enthused guy that would present weird local mutant bugs to her elementary school class as a kid. Dr. Pines took one preparatory breath. “What do you know about a being that calls itself Bill Cipher?”

“I can’t believe this! You seriously shook hands with a demon?!”

“Wendy -”

Dan couldn’t get a word in edgewise, though; she barrelled onwards. “That has to be the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard! I don’t care why you did it, did you stop to think for like, a second?!” She was fuming, hands clenched into angry fists. They must have begun this argument on their drive over to the Pines residence, because it started up like a match dropped to gasoline the second everyone had piled in through the doorway.

Across the living room, the Pines and the four younger Corduroys stood awkwardly. Stanley took it upon himself to herd the Corduroy boys into a further room away from their fighting family members, knowing that it always sucked to be a fly on the wall for these conversations, but the rest of the Pines had no such excuse. Besides, Ford still needed desperately to speak to Dan, and until that was possible, there was nothing that could occupy him other than damage control for… this.

He was thankful to have maintained the barrier around their home for so long, because it meant they could protect the Corduroys from further damage here, but Ford hadn’t realized that bringing them into his home was inviting the emotion of the situation as well.

“Wendy, what do you want me to say!” Dan looked down to the wooden plank flooring of the Pines residence. “Would it help if you knew that the guy promised…” Far from the epitome of stereotypical masculinity now, he swallowed roughly, eyes wet. “He promised that he could get your mother back.”

Ford leaned down and whispered to Dipper and Mabel, who were stiff and wide-eyed. “Could you two go join the other Corduroy children?”

“But -” Dipper and Mabel both protested, surely because they each had their own ideas to help.

“Please,” Ford insisted, leaving no room for arguments. “Don’t feel obligated to get involved; this truly is not the place.” It had been a long enough day for these children as-is, and so thankfully, the twins obeyed without another complaint, slinking away down the hall.

Meanwhile, Wendy had become even more red in the face, her freckles getting lost in the heat rising up beneath her skin. “What! No, of course that doesn’t help! You might want Mom back, but we’re all still here! You never think about consequences. You just do stuff and I have to fix it! So what if he promised you, like, all the riches in the world? It’s a fucking demon, Dad! And don’t tell me you didn’t know, because anything that mysteriously shows up, stops time, and asks to shake your hand with fire is literally a demon!” She striked out with her fist and punched the wall panelling in the hallway - not enough to break through by any means, but enough to hurt her knuckles. Her eyes widened, as if she was just now seeing what she was doing, and she deflated.

“Wendy, I’m sorry,” Dan croaked.

He could barely finish when Wendy threw up her hand. She took a deep, practiced breath. “I can’t be here right now.” With that, she travelled deeper into the house, presumably following the path of the other Pines and her younger siblings.

Silence ate the air.

Ford approached Dan slowly. The man was understandably forlorn, dropping heavily onto the living room couch and putting his face in his hands. Ford swallowed. “I’m sorry, Dan. I know that I had a part in putting this in motion.” If he and Stan had not visited all of a sudden for an impromptu confrontation of sorts, the Corduroys could have possibly simply enjoyed their late dinner in peace. But of course, Ford could not leave things be, not after what Dipper told him. The situation with Bill was proving much more dire than he thought, now that he knew the demon’s rekindled desire for the portal. Dan was likely being used for that plot. No, in the end, the disturbance was necessary, but Ford still winced at the fallout.

It looked like Dan had half a mind to kick the coffee table into tiny splinters of wood, but thankfully he abstained. In an uncharacteristic move, he actually exhaled a long sigh free of any curses or biting words. “It’s alright, Stanford. Looks like you n’ your twin know more about this than I do. ‘m in over my head.”

Now that a physical fight seemed less likely, Ford gingerly took a seat on the couch next to him. “It’s alright. I was the same, once, about this Bill creature. And Stan helped me out of it, actually. We’re going to help you now.”

Dan closed his eyes tight to stem any threatening tears. “Should’ve known. I just did what he told me - took naps after my shift, and always woke up sorer than before, missing hours of time. All ‘cause he said -” He shook his head and bit his bottom lip, stopping the flow of words.

Ford wilted just a bit. Dan’s wife had been a true gift to Gravity Falls. The whole town felt the loss when she passed before her time.

He was reticent about physical contact with those he didn’t consider the closest of friends, but this time, he figured it was warranted, and rested a hand on Dan’s shoulder. “No need to explain it to me. Bill is a master manipulator.” He took his hand away and almost regretfully tugged his most recent journal out of its pocket in his windbreaker. These journals - maroon and gold leaf - had been put on pause for a few years, as he had been travelling for the purpose of presenting and facilitating research instead of performing it. However, his return to Gravity Falls signalled a return to his dozens of journals, for better or for worse.

“She was an incredible person, Dan. But no kind of magic really brings someone back from the dead. You can’t focus on that idea anymore. You have your children to think about.” And who knew what Bill would have done in order to fulfill his side of their deal? There were plenty of unsightly options in lieu of true and impossible resurrection. Zombies came to mind. Ford furrowed his brow.

“I know,” Dan sobbed, trying to discreetly sniff.

“I’m sorry. I understand that you’re in pain at the moment,” Ford tried. There was now way to do this well - time was of the essence. The longer they waited, the more time Bill had to trick someone else. There must be a reason Bill didn’t interfere during the trip from the Corduroys back home, but Ford couldn’t discern that quite yet. He picked up a nearby pencil - wincing at the reminder that his preparations for DD&MD were interrupted in the worst of ways - and flipped open to an empty page. “And I apologize, but I need to ask you some questions, if you’re capable of answering them. Any information you can give, even the smallest detail, will be essential.”

Dan wiped roughly at his eyes. “For what?” He wrapped his arms around his knees and leaned forward, looking over at Ford.

A ghost of a smile made it to Ford’s face. “Well, for a plan to stop Bill, of course.”

Chapter Text

An eerie silence almost suffocated the house. Every tick of a clock and creak of a floorboard sounded muffled or strained. This far below ground, there was no faint pattering of rain on the roof, although Ford had heard some of it before he went down to the basement. The sound was usually reassuring, but not tonight. Or today? What time was it again?

Ford ran a hand through his hair automatically. It sprang out in all directions. He only had a few more sheafs of notes to gather, and then it would just be the simple matter of assimilating information - something he’d done hundreds of times before.

You’ve done research before. It’s alright.

That was his mantra as he searched through old filing cabinets and shelving units, flicking through aged papers and pamphlets for any hidden information he could find. It’s not that he thought anything would be there, but it did pay to be thorough. He would rather have a fruitless search than not search at all. And along the way, he did snatch up a copy of that old mind-entering spell, so the effort was worth it.

In the end, he had gathered in his arms two small field note packets that had seen better days, a manilla folder of looseleaf held shut ominously by rather thick twine beaded at the ends, a crisp piece of copier paper folded into a square, and one dusty journal volume with a bold number 3 written on the cover.

The basement stairs groaned under his weight as he ascended, clutching his menagerie of notes to his chest.

Soon enough, everything was spread out across the kitchen table. The light above washed out the collection of papers and lightened their ink. With an almost resigned air, Ford sat down at the table and pulled out his most recent journal. This was where he would compile from these disparate sources everything he knew about Bill.

Dread bit at him, but he did his best to wave it off. It’s been a long, long time since Bill was more than a passing nightmare. The sight of Ford’s old illustrations and notes sent his stomach lurching, but he forged ahead.

As he worked, it remained dark outside, with only the dull drips of rain against the window to signify that time marched forward.

It was when he closed a circle on a relevant diagram in his latest journal that a noise broke the house’s vigil.

“Jeez, Ford, you’re up?”

Ford jumped, and the pen scratched along, running a jagged line across the paper. “Moses, Stanley, you startled me.” He made sure to whisper - no need to wake the Corduroys in the next room.

Stan winced. “Sorry,” he whispered back. “Just surprised to see ya out here.”

Ford hummed. “I didn’t want to do this in the basement.” It seemed a little too isolating.

The faucet turned on. Water smacked the bottom of the sink, but was soon quieted by Stan shoving his empty glass under the stream. As he filled his water, he glanced over at Ford’s work. “Yeah, understandable.” With a squeak, the sink was shut off, and there was once again only the rain.

“What time is it?” Ford asked. He wondered whether it would be worth it to fix the part where the pen broke into the circle.

“2:30 in the morning.”

Distantly, Ford thought that maybe he should be in bed. Instead, he felt around in his pants pockets for his White-Out. “What are you doing up?”

Stan purposefully drank his water. “What’s it look like?”

“Looks like you can’t sleep,” Ford replied, with the start of a knowing smirk. They could both be insomniacs when they wanted to, even though Ford was more prone to it.

“Well, neither can you.”

“Touche.” He uncapped the White-Out with a too-loud pop and began covering up the jagged pen line. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Stan had now entered his peripheral vision, and Ford could see him shrug. “Eh. It’s not too exciting. Same-old.”

Same-old. So he was worrying about something, and it was keeping him awake. “This might be a pointless question, considering the circumstances, but what are you worrying about?”

“Jus’ worried about the kids.” Stan sighed and seated himself across from Ford. “Hate that that stupid fuckin’ triangle is ruining their vacation.”

That was a pretty good summary of both of their feelings on the current situation.

“I want ‘em to be safe,” Stan muttered, practically to himself. He sipped his water. “I keep wakin’ up too early after fallin’ asleep way too late.”

That hadn’t happened in a while. Ford looked up at his brother’s tired face. “Do you think you need to go back on your meds?” They had been prescribed for both anxiety and depression. Stan’s been doing worlds better than when he was first put on them, and went off of them a few years ago of his own accord; they had helped with Stan’s anxiety-fueled insomnia, among other things.

“I dunno. ‘S probably just situational. Once we get this Bill thing sorted out…”

“That might be true. Think about it, though, okay?” He looked back down at his journal and picked his pen back up to detail the symbols within the circle.

“Okay, Doctor Pines.”

There was going to be an equally dry and amusing retort to that, but Ford interrupted himself with a massive yawn. He halted his sketch of a pair of glasses in order to put a hand in front of his mouth.

“Is this Bill business bringing up too much bad stuff for you?” Stan suddenly asked, serious. “Look at ya, all worried about me when you’re up in the middle of the night drawing out demon summoning circles and shit.”

“It’s not a summoning circle.” Ford yawned again.

“Whatever. If I’m thinking about my meds ‘cause of this, you better be thinking about your therapist. Keep an eye on yourself. Okay?”

“I’m not going to see Dr. Jehselbraum for yet another rehashing of old Bill nonsense -”

“Tough shit, we pay her for stuff like that. We both know our brains tell us stupid stories. So just - don’t make it a habit to work for days on end again.”

Ford nodded. He attempted a tired smile. Stan always did care aggressively. “We’ll both look out for each other. How about that?”

“That’s what I like to hear.” Stan emptied his glass of water. “I’m gonna try to get back to bed, okay? Take a nap after this page.” It was certainly a command and not a suggestion.

“Okay, Doctor Pines,” Ford whispered back with a smile as Stan left.

After Ford finished the diagram, he collapsed into sleep in his room, ink-stained hands clutching his pillow.

“Sorry about this, Stanley,” Ford said as he took out his current journal. Behind him, a whiteboard stood on wheels, having been procured from a mysterious location in the house.

“Eh, it’s alright, the diner can handle a day or two of bein’ closed,” Stan shrugged, arms crossed. He and the younger twins sat on a ratty couch that had at some point been dragged into this study-converted-to-storage. The Corduroys were elsewhere in the house; Ford had offered for them to stay for the brainstorming session, but Manly Dan had declined. “I’ve gotta spend some time with my kids,” he had said. “Be there for them.”

Mabel smiled at the blank expanse of whiteboard behind her grunkle. “Are we gonna do some cool Expo marker art, Grunkle Ford? I’m well-versed!”

Ford quirked a smile of his own. “Unfortunately, the whiteboard is just for jotting things down at the moment. Although, once we’re done here, we can absolutely draw on it. For now, though…” He opened his journal and laid it flat on top of a few boxes on the squat coffee table in front of him. Mabel was much more interested in the blank canvas of whiteboard, but managed to stay seated. “Let’s discuss what we know.”

He uncapped a marker and started jotting things down on the whiteboard. “Dan unfortunately did not have much new information. One thing I could glean is that Bill is just as slimy and underhanded as he was decades ago, which is actually good to know. It seems his behavior and tactics haven’t changed.” On the board, he wrote down some general characteristics - manipulative, clever. Below that, he added, working on a dimension-hopper.

He wouldn’t share exactly what Bill said to Dan. It was only Dan’s business to know what Bill had tried on him, and succeeded - Ford was still surprised Dan shared it of his own accord.

“Oh! Is that what that pile of junk is for in the woods?” Dipper piped up. Mabel was glad for it; her brother’s been lost in thought ever since yesterday.

“Good thinking, Dipper. I was wondering that myself, although who knows where Bill thinks he’ll assemble the cursed thing.” Ford drew an arrow from the last point and wrote that thought down as well. He also noted what he said next: “He is not from our world, but wishes to enter it, and can appear in peoples’ dreams unless a barrier is in the way. He needs a vessel to interact with our reality.”

“Poor Dan,” Stan muttered to the room, and it became a bit more somber. “Don’t think we can just punch our way outta this one.”

“I agree.” Ford moved to the right half of the board, which was still empty. “There’s also… this.” And then he meticulously started the outside circles for the Zodiac, that elusive chart.

“What are you drawing? I’ll guess!” Mabel leaned forward in her seat. “A waffle! No - a pancake! With weird-shaped sprinkles!”

“You might just be hungry,” Dipper told her.

“No, no,” Ford said as he finished the symbols. “This is something that has come up through my research on Bill time and time again. Though I can’t quite figure out what it is.” Ford examined his own marker lines with a frown. “I believe that these symbols are either tools for Bill to use for his own ends… or, methods for his destruction.”

“....It has the design of one a’ Mabel’s sweaters on it,” Stan said. He was suddenly pale in the face.

“W-what?” Mabel gasped. “But there are a lot of cartoony star designs out there…” Although it did actually look really similar… She curled in on herself and tucked her chin behind the thick turtleneck of her sweater.

Ford whipped his head around and scrutinized the wheel again. He had noticed long ago the six-fingered hand, but wasn’t worried considering he was pretty obviously used by Bill as a pawn. But now… “Dipper, didn’t you mention he called you ‘Pine Tree’?”

“Um, yeah,” Dipper said. “I - is there - is there a tree on there too?!”

Ford just nodded. Most of the other signs’ true meanings were indecipherable. Just a pair of glasses, or a bag of ice. The stitched heart resembled the hoodie that that Valentino teen always wore. Maybe a coincidence… but probably not.

“If Bill plans to use either of ya, I swear I’ll break all his limbs, being of pure energy be damned,” Stan growled, smacking his open palm with a fist. “That fu-”

“Stan, I know this looks bad, but we might not need to panic! ...Much,” Ford interrupted. “I believe something fundamentally went wrong with the purpose of this chart. The sigil is broken, or the order is off.” The Zodiac once had symbolic weight, a magical hum when Ford had first found it before Stanley arrived in Gravity Falls... but redrawing it now brought forth no such feeling. “Anything that seals or activates magic tends to at least feel warm when being copied. But now this is just a drawing of a circle and some symbols.”

“Are you sure?” Stan said skeptically.

Ford almost laughed. “Of course not! But from my extensive experience I can say that this doesn’t have the power it once did… even if we don’t know what that power was.”

“So… we’re back where we started,” Stan grumbled.

“Wait.” Dipper pointed to the board. “That barrier bit means the barrier around the house, right?”

“Yes,” Ford said. “Why?”

“What if we surrounded the town with one?”

For a moment, the room was so quiet one might be able to hear the gears turning in everyone’s heads.

“Well. That’s not perfect, but it would be a start,” Ford finally judged. He jotted down the idea somewhere below the Zodiac. Surround town with barrier?

“I’m sure the Corduroys would appreciate bein’ able to go home,” Stan added. “I know you hate going there, but…”

“Going where?” Mabel asked.

“Ugh.” Ford practically shivered with disgust. “The unicorn glade.”

Dipper preemptively plugged his ears.

“The what?!” Mabel screamed.

“Mabel!” Stan admonished, gesturing strongly in the direction of the hallway, which led to the living room where the Corduroys were trying to get some well-earned rest.

“Sorry, Grunkle Stan, but I was NOT informed that UNICORNS EXIST!”

“They’re really not all they’re cracked up to be,” Ford reassured, making a ‘quiet down’ gesture with his hands. “At least, not the ones that tend to interact with humans. They’re a bunch of cons.”

“Every time we gotta go get more unicorn hair, I bring my brass knuckles jus’ in case I gotta punch it off ‘em. It’s happened more than once.” Stan shrugged.

Mabel had never deflated so fast in her life. “But nice unicorns have to exist! Where else would people get the inspiration for magical unicorn stories about kindness and the power of love?!” Beside her, Dipper patted her back in an effort to console her.

“There’s a grain of truth in myths - but just a grain,” Ford responded. For what it was worth, he was sorry for her, and not just from sympathy. Imagine his dismay when he learned that Nikola Tesla had advocated for eugenics! ...Which was an extreme example, but still, he had experience with disillusionment.

Like with Bill.

Stan scowled. “Ford, you gotta work on your bedside manners. The poor girl looks like her dog just died.”

“Nevermind,” Ford pressed on. “We’ll worry about the unicorns later. Even if we take protective measures, we still have Dipper’s future meeting with Bill to worry about. Now if it were up to me, he would not go at all.”

“But -!” Dipper protested.

“But, I also recognize that this is a very unique opportunity. We could end this soon if we play our cards right and use this meeting to our full advantage. If all we did was put up a barrier around the town, Bill would be free to ruin the lives of even more innocents outside the town.”

“Oh… O-okay. Do you have any ideas, Great-Uncle Ford?” Dipper asked.

Ford paused for a moment, and then started to erase the whiteboard to make room. “First things first. The mindscape - the place where you met Bill - has the ability to be extremely malleable. The more you doubt yourself, however, the less control you have in that realm.”

Mabel smiled. “Like the message of all my favorite shows!”

“You mean the ones with neon colors that sear my eyes?” Stan grumbled.

“Anyways,” Ford continued. “We could possibly… trap him there? Although… he would be stuck in Dipper’s mindscape until we found an alternative.” He wrinkled his nose in disgust. “I would never willingly put you through that, my boy.”

“But I can do it!”

“Nuh-uh,” Mabel protested. She raised one sweater-sleeved hand and flicked Dipper square in the nose. “No doing stuff you know might hurt you!”

“Mabel is right.” Ford lowered his marker from the board to look directly at his niblings. “Martyrdom is not smart. Neither of you will recklessly sacrifice your safety for this plan.” He stared them down for a moment, just to make sure, and then turned back to the board. “So no trapping him in the mindscape, although the general idea of entrapment is sound. If you’re comfortable, Dipper, I could join you for the meeting. You continue to act as if you’re considering a deal, and then once we’re in a good place for it, I can spring some other kind of trap…” He began muttering to himself and filling up the board. “Although my collection of mindscape spells is sparse, I could use them to cut something new together…”

“Hold it, Sixer.” Stan held up a hand to slow his brother. “Did you just say ‘I’? ‘Cause last I checked, we’re all in on this together.”

“It would be safest if I went in alone -”

“No way!” Mabel was standing now, staring Ford down. “We all go or none of us do! I’m not letting Dipper face Bill without me! And didn’t you just say something about staying safe? How is it safe if no one’s around to help you out too?”

Dipper just shrugged with a little smile on his face. “Hey, they both have a point.”

All three dissenters held fiery determination in their eyes. Ford’s gaze flicked between all of them, finding rock-solid stubbornness wherever he looked. He sighed, resigned, but his response was warm. “Alright. I suppose you are all right. We’ll do this together.”

A brand-new notebook bounced up and down along with Dipper’s fidgeting leg. The noise was accompanied by an irregular pattern of pen-clicks. This notebook was much sturdier - properly-bound, with a hardcover outside. Grunkle Stan had said it was his to do whatever he wanted with. Dipper had already felt bad about tarnishing the brand new paper inside with his name and phone number, and he was now clicking his pen into oblivion as it hovered over a fresh sheet.

He thought he knew what anxiety felt like. Well - he did know. He used to be so scared of speaking in class that he would excuse himself to throw up in the bathroom. Their classmates probably didn’t actually know what he sounded like until at least 6th grade. But somehow, that head-swimming, heart-pounding anxiety was acutely different from the kind that held his hand in place right now. The threat that caused his anxiety loomed so large that he was a ship without sails. The world was static except for his racing thoughts.

It was hard to make sense of anything.

Dipper wanted to itemize action plans. He wanted to figure out the minute details of the meeting with Bill. Most of all, he wanted to straighten the tangled line of thoughts blurring in his mind, but he couldn’t.

What were they going to do?

What were they going to do?

“Dip-dop?”

His shaking leg stilled. The notebook hardcover came to rest with one final smack atop his knee. Suddenly he noticed that the crumpled bedsheets beneath him dug into the back of his legs. He looked up at Mabel, who was in the doorway of their room, clutching a few pieces of paper. “Um. Hey.”

“Hey.” She walked closer, her concern clear. “You okay? Grunkle Ford called for you from downstairs and you didn’t come. Which was weird, because last time, you literally fell down the stairs to get to him.”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “I didn’t actually fall down the stairs, just tripped a little…” The empty page taunted him. “I’m just worried. I… I’ve been trying to think of ways we can like, trick Bill, or get back at him, or something, but I’m just…”

“Lost?”

“N-no! Well… yeah.” He tossed the pen onto the bed and fell backwards with a sigh, letting his new notebook slide off his knees onto the floor. “I feel like I’m gonna hurl.” Beside him, he felt Mabel flop onto the bed in a similar manner.

“It’ll be okay. Grunkle Ford and Grunkle Stan are working on it. They got this!”

“Wha - I-I can’t just leave it to them.”

“Why not?” Mabel sat up and looked over at him. “When have they ever let us down?”

He just looked back. “What about that one time Grunkle Ford forgot to pick us up from the minigolf place and we had to get a ride from Pacifica’s weird trainer?”

“Pshaw, that doesn’t count.”

“Or the time Grunkle Stan gave you edible glitter but it was expired -”

“That’s not - listen! They’ll pull through with some great plan, okay?” Mabel sat up fully and started stroking a strand of her hair with both hands. “We’re going to get through this together.”

Inexplicably, the back of his eyes began to burn. His throat tightened around a lump that wasn’t there before. “Mabel, how do you do it?”

“Do what?”

“I can’t just be confident like you.” He tried to swallow, and deliberately did not look at her, because by now she must have noticed his wet eyes. “I can’t just run in like things will be okay. I can’t just… believe in us.” In myself.

“Dipper... C’mere.” She awkwardly wrapped her arms around him, contorting to hug him where he lay. “I’m not just... like that.”

“W-what?” Next to him, she sucked air in through her teeth.

“Everyone thinks I don’t hear peoples’ comments, but I do. I know I’m a little loud and really weird. But I choose to believe me instead of them.” She hugged him a little tighter, sweater sleeves bunching. “I mean, I try. But I get scared and worried too.”

“Are you scared about…”

“About Bill? Duh.” She pulled back and poked him on the nose. It somehow didn’t change the dour mood. “But you heard what Grunkle Ford said. If we don’t believe in ourselves out there, we won’t succeed. We literally have to be confident.” Those papers she had brought in crinkled under her when she shifted her weight on the bed. “So let’s both try, okay?”

Dipper finally looked up at Mabel. For the first time, he noticed her more pronounced eyebags, and her more frazzled hair. Still, she offered him her usual shiny smile.

He took a deep breath. “Okay.”

“Okay!” She pulled him up with her off the bed, and retrieved her wrinkled… character sheet? “Now come on! We all deserve a break, and you’re gonna love this!”

Wait a minute. He had been called downstairs because they were playing DD&MD.

This time, in his haste Dipper nearly did fall down the stairs.

The moon was large tonight. Where its light didn’t reach through the windows, dark shadows stretched across the kitchen floorboards. Stanley scrubbed at his eyes and shuffled deeper into the kitchen in his old slippers, reluctant to flip a light switch and shock his tired eyes. Instead he made his way by memory over to the mug cupboard.

He knew Dipper was worried. The poor kid seemed tight-wound at the best of times, but this whole Bill business was taking a bit of a toll on all of them. Stan had been the one to suggest that Ford DM what he had written for his nerd game campaign. It seemed to lift the kids’ spirits, but… he still felt bad. They shouldn’t have to deal with this.

And of course he was worried about them, but he was also worried about the plan they hadn't finished. It’s been one whole day down and him and Ford were still working things through. They were on a time limit here. Not to mention, Stanley had only one prior experience with entering someone else’s mindscape, and to do it again? Now? On a young kid like Dipper, a kid that didn’t completely trust him?

It was just a lot. Hence the insomnia - an old ‘friend’ that decided to reappear. What could ya do?

He reached into the cupboard and grabbed a mug at random, pushing mugs against each other. Clink-clink.

“Ahhh!”

Stanley jumped. “Fuck!”

He rushed to where he knew the lightswitch would be, and flipped it up. White light blinded him for just a second. His eyes adjusted soon enough, to reveal… just Wendy, sitting at the table with her arms crossed atop it, wide-eyed like a deer in headlights.

She had been sitting in the dark…?

Stan could suddenly breathe again. He pressed a hand to his chest and closed the mug cupboard. “Christ, kid. You scared the shit outta me.”

“You scared the shit out of me,” Wendy whispered back.

“Hey, I’m not the one sitting alone in the dark at one in the morning.”

“Whatever, man.” She drew her crossed arms closer to herself and looked away. There was nothing on the table in front of her, nothing in her hands. The poor girl really had just been sitting in silence. She looked a bit haggard - eyebags like bruises, and a concerning paleness to her skin. The scant moonlight washing over her made it look even worse.

Stan frowned.

Wendy had been the best (or maybe second-best) hire of his career. It certainly wasn’t because of her work ethic - or lack thereof - and her customer service was just alright, but Stanley would be lying if he said he didn’t have a soft spot for her. As the daughter of a family friend, he’d practically watched her grow up from across the woods, and she was a formidable girl. When she needed a job to keep Dan from sending her to logging camp, Stan didn’t even consider saying no.

She was a stubborn kid. A bit irresponsible, a bit cheeky, and wanted to make her own way. He understood that.

He slid into the chair across from her, discarding his empty mug on the table.

Before he could even say anything, she spoke. “Don’t say dumb stuff like ‘it’ll be okay’, or ask me what’s up. Just - don’t.” If looks could kill, the wooden grain on the table would be long-dead by now.

“Uh… alright, if you say so,” Stan replied. She didn’t know what to do with that, so she didn’t say anything else.

The clock on the wall ticked past a few more seconds.

If Wendy didn’t wanna talk, Stan might as well do what he came here for. He grabbed his empty mug and got back up, making his way over to the stovetop and quietly placing a pot there. Pulling open a nearby drawer, he knew where to look to pull out a couple of packets of Swiss Miss hot chocolate mix.

Wendy had apparently been watching this, and eyed the cocoa mix with disdain. “Come on, I don’t need to be coddled or something. I’m not a little kid.”

Stan snorted, not unkindly. He poured milk into the pot and started the flame. “Who said this was for you?”

For several moments, he watched the milk on the stove as he gathered a bag of marshmallows and the cinnamon shaker. It was when he was pulling out a bottle of vanilla extract that Wendy quietly piped up, almost as if to herself: “Could you make some for me too, though?”

He had already added enough milk for two servings, but she didn’t need to know that.

Once their loaded-up mugs of hot chocolate were finished, he set hers in front of her and returned to his seat across the table. They finished their cocoa in complete silence.

Chapter Text

The vast, limitless expanse of space. Cold. Frightening in its openness. Ford was weightless, a feeling he didn’t particularly enjoy, or relate to positive memories. But unlike that terrifying part of his mindscape in which he once defeated Bill, this patch of space had no scrolls, no books or chalkboards or chess pieces. It was just… empty.

Ford peered out into the darkness. Nothing. Just rainbow specks of color that blinked softly in the distance, and swaths of black in-between.

“SIXER! ABOUT TIME YOU SHOWED UP! I’VE BEEN KEEPING THE PLACE WARM FOR YA.”

He shivered. That voice… like nails on a chalkboard. Despite himself, he turned around. Dream or reality, this place was his own mind. He established that decades ago, and would be foolish to forget it.

Bright, searing yellow, blotting out the stars around them. It had been a long time. Ford squinted at Bill to shield his eyes from the burn of neon.

“YOU MIGHT HAVE LEFT ME BEHIND, SIXER, BUT I’M NOT HELPLESS, YOU KNOW!”

“This is impossible. You can’t be in my head. I checked the barrier just last night.” Ford shook his head and clenched his fists. “So this is a dream.”

“SURE, IF YOU WANT TO BELIEVE THAT. IT STILL SCARES YOU, THOUGH, DOESN’T IT! THE POSSIBILITY THAT YOU MISSED A SPOT? MAYBE A LITTLE CRACK?” Bill cackled. Ford drew back, and could finally make out something clutched in Bill’s terrifying night-dark hands. Multiple somethings, actually.

People.

His family.

“Ford. Ford!”

“Gah!” Ford shot up from his desk. The back of his head caught Stanley squarely in the nose.

“Holy sh - moses!” Stanley clutched his face.

“Oh my gosh.” Ford twisted around in his desk chair, his back twinging. “Stanley, are you alright?” He reached out, but Stanley waved his hand away, just hissing in pain and gingerly patting his nose.

“It’s fine, not bleeding or nothin’, but you sure are thickheaded, you know that?”

All concern left Ford’s face and he gave Stanley a flat look. “I was actually worried, you know.”

“Ah, it’s fine.” Stanley waved it away with a hand, and then pointed to a spot on Ford’s face. “You, uh, got something there.”

What? He reached up to his face. A piece of scrap paper peeled off his cheek.

Right. Falling asleep at his desk while taking notes. Something that he actually hadn’t done in a long time. Old habits, and all that. He should try not to do that; at his age, neck pain was getting harder to deal with. He rubbed the skin of his offending cheek and glanced down at the papers littering his desk. They were covered with hypothetical spells that could prove useful in their plan to “catch” Bill. Mindscape magic was no beginner’s topic, that was for sure. Difficult to compose and even more difficult - and dangerous - to test.

“Earth to Poindexter?”

Ah. Right. “Sorry, Stanley. What - what time is it?”

“Around 6am. I dunno how much sleep you got, but…”

“No, you’re right. We should do this now.” It wasn’t smart of Ford to stay up so late. Yes, they were under a time crunch, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t take better care of himself and be a better role model for the kids in the process. More old habits. He’ll be more than grateful for Bill to be out of their lives again, where the bastard belonged.

One step at a time. Right now he just needed to worry about checking on Crash Site Omega and securing the contents within before they fell into more... unsavory hands.

Ford stood and carefully stretched, rubbing his face and sliding his glasses on. “I just need coffee.”

“And supplies,” Stan reminded bluntly.

“Yes, water and food and all that, I know.” He playfully punched Stan’s arm, and laughed when Stan gave just as gentle of a punch back.

After stocking up some bags and shoveling sustenance into their faces (“Can’t we just bring the whole pot of coffee with us?” “No, Ford, not unless you want a repeat of what happened last time”), they were out the door. The trek to the cliffs - to Crash Site Omega - would take a good chunk of time, not to mention the purpose of the trip in the first place, so they blocked out the entire morning to the venture.

Ford slid in the passenger seat and closed the car door. They would be driving until they couldn’t anymore, and then travel the forest trails out to the cliffs. “I hope the children will be alright with Dan for a bit.”

“They got Wendy and a bunch o’ other kids to keep ‘em company,” Stan assured as he pulled out of the driveway. “What could go wrong?”

“Everything is going wrong.”

Wendy dropped her head in her hands. Beside her, Kevin kept getting to the brink of poking her and then pulling away, taunting that he wasn’t actually touching her. Meanwhile, Gus was being ruthlessly chased around the room by Marcus. Mabel was dragging Kevin away, only for the kid to run back and bug Wendy again. Dipper, on the other hand, was tripping over bumps in the rug as he ran after Marcus to try and get him to stop messing with Gus. And the whole time, Dad was just… flipping through the few channels of cable that were available, much like he would do in their own house. The Pines’ living room was already a bit on the cramped side without five other kids and a very large man contributing to some sort of chaos.

“Come on, Kevin, why don’t we play Guns and Stepladders instead?” Mabe tried, fruitlessly shaking a beat-up board game in her hands. The pieces rattled around inside.

Kevin barely spared her a glance from his spot on the couch. “No, thanks.” He slowly brought his finger closer and closer to Wendy’s shoulder.

Ugh.

“Kevin, come on, man, don’t touch me!” Wendy snapped, her arms crossed.

“I’m not!”

Gus started whining from somewhere across the room. “Wendy! Get Marcus to cut it out!”

“No, it’s okay, I got it!” Dipper reassured, despite the fact that he was leaning on his knees and panting for breath. “Just… give me a second.”

This was a disaster. Wendy clenched her fists and curled up tighter into her ball on the couch. “Dad, fucking get them to stop!”

Her dad, who had at first seemed to have lost his hearing altogether, simply admonished, “Hey! No cussin’! ‘Least not in front of kids that aren’t your siblings.” He pressed the up arrow on the remote, and it cycled back to where he had started. He apparently still wasn’t satisfied, since he kept crawling through the channels.

Gus and Marcus bumped into a side table and knocked over a jar containing some kind of pickled creature. It was only saved from exploding open on the living room floor by Dipper, who slid in at the last second and caught it in his arms.

The last straw came at a glacial pace. It was Kevin’s pointer finger, very slowly digging into her arm. She turned to look at Kevin. He just laughed.

With that, Wendy got to her feet and yelled, “Everyone stop!” And they did. Her dad, Marcus and Gus, Dipper and Mabel - they all froze. Even Kevin looked a bit sheepish. It was always like this, wasn’t it? Everyone doing what they wanted until Wendy got home and had to deal with the aftermath. Well, not this time. She didn’t need this. She had said her piece to her dad already. Fuck this. Fuck it.

Dipper brushed off his knees - he must’ve ate carpet at some point. “...Wendy?”

Wendy crossed her arms against her chest. “I’m gonna…” kick your asses? No, she didn’t want to be violent. She’s seen what her dad could do to a house, thanks, and she would rather not be so flippant with her own anger. Make you all get along? Not that, either. It wasn’t her fucking problem! “I’m gonna go make myself hot chocolate.” She could see some of her brothers start to say something. “And none of you are coming with me, and I’m not making you any. I’m out.”

She turned away, her blood rushing in her ears. The world bled away and it was just her in the hallway, and then her in the kitchen. She remembered where the old man had kept the Swiss Miss, and soon enough she had a pot of milk going.

She was staring down into the heating milk when light footsteps came up behind her. God, why couldn’t people just leave her alone?!

But when she turned around, it was Mabel. She didn’t know the girl super well, but she seemed well-meaning. And loud, and prone to destruction and chaos, but Wendy saw those as positives, as long as she wasn’t a Corduroy too.

Mabel rubbed her arm and gave Wendy a sorry look. It wasn’t like her to be particularly cautious, but obviously she was trying some form of tact. “Hey. Are you okay?”

Ugh. What was with Pineses and sticking their noses into people’s wellbeing? Like, Wendy cared about other people and all, but she was never so… attentive to others the way these people seemed to be. Wendy frowned down into her milk. It was almost ready. She grabbed a mug and dumped one packet of hot chocolate powder into it. On second thought, she added another.

She really didn’t want to talk about it, or say anything, but Mabel was still standing there, fiddling with the sleeves of the bright purple sweater that was tied around her waist. It was awkward, and suddenly Wendy felt bad. It’s not Mabel’s fault that they’re all in this mess, or that her dad made a deal with a demon. She bit her tongue and tried not to sound panicked. “...I’m just… annoyed.” The milk was done. She poured it into her mug and stirred with a spoon. Might as well take a seat at the table, so she did, and Mabel - of course - followed suit.

“Is it your brothers? I’m annoyed with Dip-dop all the time!”

The hot chocolate was too hot, and she winced at the patchy feeling of burning her tongue. “Yeah, they’re always bugging me one way or another.” She rubbed her thumb along the handle of the mug. “But it’s not their fault, y’know?” She shrugged. They’re probably processing things the only way they know how, given Dad’s enthusiastic lack of guidance in the face of literally everything that’s ever happened in their lives. They’ve always been rowdy, but after Mom, there wasn’t anyone there to hold things in check anymore. There was just Wendy.

And it sucked.

Mabel was still looking at her across the table with this encouraging look in her eyes. She somehow got silver glitter in her bangs at some point, and there were a few rainbow bandaids littering her person.

Wendy frowned and kicked her feet up on the table. “I’m just sick of being expected to get everyone - including Dad - under control. It’s lame. And like, yeah, I could just let them all do what they want, but then Dad accidentally puts holes in the walls and my brothers totally trash the place.”

“They don’t even help clean up after themselves or something?”

“Not unless I ask them.” She blew on her hot chocolate. “And I don’t want to have to ask them.”

“Ugh. That sucks.” Mabel kicked her legs against the bars of the kitchen chair. She had a look on her face like she was thinking about something. “Hey. Hold out your hand?”

“What?”

“Come on, don’t you trust me?”

“Psh, as far as I can throw you,” she joked, but her heart wasn’t in it. Still, she held out her hand anyways.

“Palm-side down.”

“Okay.”

Mabel pulled up a sheet of stickers that she must’ve had in a pocket somewhere and scrutinized it as if it held the secrets of the universe.

“What are you -”

“Shh! This takes time!” After some silent moments, she lifted up the edge of three different stickers and placed them squarely on the back of Wendy’s hand.

Wendy looked down at her pale hand. There were three holographic stickers with cat graphics and loud, capital text. She read them off. “You’re the cat’s meow. You’re meowtastic. You’re… un-meow-lievable?” She surprised herself when she snorted. “That one’s so bad.”

Mabel grinned, looking satisfied with herself. “Yeah, but it did make you smile. Am I right or am I right?”

“Huh.” Wendy laughed. “I guess it did.” She reached over the table and mussed up Mabel’s bangs, laughing at her protest and at the silvery glitter that drifted down to the table. “You’re alright, kid.” She slumped back into her seat. Weirdly enough, after talking about it and getting some silly stickers, she felt marginally better. “How do you guys do it?”

“Do what?” Mabel was wiping her hand across the table, ostensibly to clear it of glitter, but if Wendy knew her at all, it was probably to get the glitter stuck to her palms.

“Be, like, a functional family. I’ve never seen you guys and your uncles fight.” She raised her eyebrows when Mabel laughed.

“Oh, we totally fight! Or at least, me and Dipper get into trouble. But our grunkles try their best, I think. We try to talk things out.” She looked away and rubbed her arm, fingers catching on the bandaids. “Dipper’s actually talking to your dad right now!”

“Huh?”

Mabel jerked her head in the direction of the living room. They both left the table and peered through the hall, catching a glimpse of Dipper saying something inaudible and her dad nodding, head bowed.

“He was being a total jerk for not listening to you. But that would be when me and Dipper ask someone for help. At least now, anyway.” She smiled sheepishly. “We kinda had to learn not to do stuff on our own.”

“...Oh. Huh.” Wendy had honestly not thought of that. She craned her neck to see a bit better. “Look at that, Dad’s actually listening to someone say more than a sentence.”

“I bet he feels really bad for everything! Come on!” Without a warning, Mabel grabbed Wendy’s hand and dragged them both into the living room.

Wendy protested. “Mabel, wait -”

She was met with her dad, who seemed… subdued.

“Wendy!” He exclaimed. “I, uh… Dipper here was just helpin’ me realize somethin’. I’m…” He took off his logging hat and twisted it in his hands, miraculously not ripping it in half. “I’m so sorry, Wendy. An’ I know that doesn’t mean nothin’ if I don’t back it up. But I will. You told me plain n’ clear how upset you were about how I act, an’ I did it again. I promise, from right here, I’m gonna be better.”

“Um.” Wendy looked around, but the little gremlins and her brothers must’ve snuck off. She tugged listlessly at the bottom of her flannel and looked her dad in the eye. “Honestly, Dad, I dunno. I dunno if I can trust you to actually do better.”

“I… okay. That’s… okay.” He was clearly trying to stop himself from punching a hole in the floor with his bare hands.

“But…” And here Wendy stopped. She thought about the Pines kids, and her boss, and her friends, and her brothers. Maybe this would be worth it. “I mean. I’m willing to see you try?”

Her dad, on the verge of tears, opened his arms.

Wendy raised an eyebrow. “What, are you gonna put me in a headlock?”

“No, no - this’s a hug.”

“Oh. Okay.” She wanted to stay mad. She wanted to keep her anger up because she had been sitting on it for a long, long, time. And it wasn’t like she was suddenly fine with everything. But…

She leaned into her dad and let him pull her into a strong hug. Tears pricked the back of her eyes, and she shut them tight. “I’m just really tired, Dad.” It sounded a lot less cool than she would usually aim to be.

“That’s alright. You go lay down, okay?”

She mumbled into her dad’s chest. “What about -”

“I’ll take care of your brothers. I got a lot of makin’ up to you to do.” He gently pushed her away with both hands eclipsing her shoulders. “If I don’t see ya snoozin’ on a couch somewhere in ten minutes, I’m comin’ after ya.”

“Okay.”

Stan slapped his forehead and loudly proclaimed, "Oh, fuck me." Beside him, Ford muttered a quiet but very strong curse under his breath.

Crash Site Omega had been, for all intents and purposes, violated.

There were tire tread tracks in the torn-up grass, and the tunnel leading down to the alien ship was wide open, letting any curious schmuck wander down there.

Stan had a feeling there wouldn't be anything to find down there, though. Not anymore.

Ford broke his petrification and ran up to the scene, mortified. He peered down the ladder into the darkness. “No one knows about this site! I’ve made sure of it! What the hell happened?” He fumbled with his jacket and took out his magnet gun. Before he could rush down there like a moron, Stanley grabbed his arm and dug his heels into the messied dirt.

“Hold your horses, Sixer. We don’t know what happened here. Or what’s down there. Don’t wanna go rushing in like that.”

“I… I suppose you’re right.” Ford reluctantly took a step back. “What can we do, though?”

Good question. Stanley looked around for a moment. “If I let you go, will you go rushin’ in?”

“No, Stanley. I would hope I have more maturity than to jump down there the second you turn your back,” Ford sniffed.

“Yeah, I’d hope so too.” Nonetheless, he removed his vice grip on his brother’s arm and peered around, finding a sizable rock that would still fit more-or-less in the palm of his hand. He picked up the rock, feeling the rough surface dig into his fingers, and then overhand chucked it into the hole with a “Nyeh!” Better than nothing.

It banged against metal walls and ladder rungs on the way down, until neither of the twins could hear it anymore.

Ford adjusted his glasses. “And what did that accomplish exactly?”

Stan shrugged. “At least now we know something probably isn’t coming up the ladder. ‘S more than we knew before.” Pointless optimism in the face of bad odds hasn’t failed him yet.

“Well… true. Still…” Ford’s mouth was a flat line. “This is… concerning. Fiddleford knows this location, but he’s in Palo Alto.” He subconsciously ran a hand through his wayward hair. “It could not have been him. And the valuables in the ship are very specific and complicated… it could have only been Bill.”

“I’m fucking sick of that guy.” Stan’s fists tightened in his pockets. “Wish we could just punch ‘im again. I’m gettin’ the urge.” He looked down at the torn-up grass. “I’m sorry, Ford.”

“Why are you sorry? You’re not the one that likely stole priceless artifacts,” Ford sighed, defeated.

“Yeah, but I know how much you wanted to share this with the kids.” Dipper would’ve absolutely loved it, too. Ford was going on and on about finding a way to disable the security measures and showing the kids the wonders that laid within. Finding a safer method than a magnetic gun, putting up barriers to stop them from wandering onto unstable ground - practically making it into a museum, just for the chance to show Dipper and Mabel something that Ford had been unable to share with anyone for decades now.

Unlike most of Ford’s research, Ford knew that academics and the world at large weren’t quite ready for a UFO on Earth yet. And Ford probably would never admit it, but Stan knew there was definitely some selfish wish in there to keep Gravity Falls from becoming gouged out by more overeager scientists and mindless tourists than the sleepy town could handle. So it was kept quiet, known by few people.

And now it was torn open.

“It’s… well. It isn’t alright.” Ford rummaged around in his pack, produced two magnet guns, and handed one to his brother. “But I was fully prepared to have to seal this shut if necessary, if we didn’t figure out how to restrict access while we were here.”

“Really? You sure?”

“For everyone’s safety… yes.” Ford quirked a sad smile. “Family first. I don’t care if this ship holds the secrets of the universe… if Bill weren’t able to get his hands on the fuel and data within, then the loss of knowledge would have been worth it to keep the kids safe.” His face slipped into a frown as he contemplated the abandoned open hatch. “Caving this in would have been a true parallel to the Library of Alexandria, but necessary. Well. Not anymore, if it’s been thoughtlessly ransacked already.” His fingers tightened bitterly around the magnet gun.

“Fuck me,” Stan repeated. It felt like the only appropriate thing to say. “We gotta… I mean, shit. This means that Bill…”

“...Likely has materials for an interdimensional portal, even though he’s probably still missing some crucial notes? Yes, sadly.” Ford’s eyes narrowed. “There was a reason Bill felt it necessary to work with me to get a portal project off of the ground. His knowledge is vast, but not quite specific. To complete the math, design the engine…”

“He needs you. Or someone with a similarly large brain, who just doesn’t exist.”

“Ha, ha,” Ford deadpanned. “Stan, if Bill somehow gets me on his side again, just shoot me.”

Whoa. They were not doing that today. “No way. I would rather go down fightin’ that asshole than put a Ford-shaped hole in the universe.” He shuddered. “Why would you even say that? I-I would never do somethin’ like that. I couldn’t.”

Ford scrubbed his face with his free hand. “I… sorry. I’ve been…”

“Lemme guess. Thoughts spiraling?”

“...Perhaps a bit.”

“That’s alright. Talk it out, though.” He clapped his brother on the back and let his hand rest on his shoulder. “Remember that, okay?” The wind running through the valley tugged at Ford’s unkempt hair, and the sunlight fell into his eyes, bruised from lack of sleep. Stanley frowned. “Please.”

Ford leaned in and rested his head on Stan’s shoulder. “You’re right, as always. Thank you, Stanley.”

“Course.” Stan rubbed his shoulder. “Maybe doin’ somethin’ productive about this whole situation will help.” He hefted up his own magnet gun. “How ‘bout we do some snooping and see what that nasty triangle was up to down there?”

“Cataloguing something would definitely improve my mood.” Ford pulled away slowly and shouldered his backpack. “You’re right. Let’s go down there.”

They climbed down together into the metallic, musty darkness.

Chapter Text

“Well, some of the adhesive is gone.” Ford scribbled that down in his journal, checked some of his old documentation of the ship’s layout, and kept walking. “Ah… All of it, actually.” He swung his flashlight across dusty corners that used to be plated with geometric cuts of metal for some unknowable purpose. The metal gone, and the neon pink adhesive that stuck the plates to the dull walls gone too. All scooped out like a hasty surgery. Or an empty ice cream carton.

Mabel was rubbing off on him.

He arced his bloom of light away from the corner and spotted the metal sheets that had once been covered in otherworldly glue, now scraped clean. Beside him, Stan sullenly scanned the base with his own flashlight.

The adhesive was a great loss, certainly not something that present-day Earth would be able to replicate for years - maybe even decades - to come. But that wasn’t Ford’s main concern. There were more concerning resources down here that encouraged Ford to keep the place hidden in the first place. Warp-speed engineering. The remains of alien life forms. Security drones.

Power sources.

The pan-dimensional beings that once ran this ship no doubt had the technological knowledge necessary to, hypothetically, create an interdimensional portal, and the power sources necessary to support such a device. It would be no stretch of the imagination to picture Bill pilfering the great discoveries of this crash site for his own unseemly ends.

But how did he find it in the first place?

Ford slowed down, feet coming to a stop.

If one of Ford’s old notebooks truly did go missing back when Bill took back the amulet… who’s to say what was in it? What of Ford’s knowledge Bill had taken for free, scarcely even trying? Probably laughing, even, at Ford’s carelessness and idiocy? His decades-old complacency?

Was this loss my fault?

A metallic scraping noise scratched at Ford’s ears.

He shouted into the darkness up ahead even as he ran into it, towards Stan’s flashlight beam pointed at the floor. “Stan! What was that? Are you alright?”

“Eh, don’t get your panties in a bunch, Ford. ‘S nothing bad, but I think we know who Bill might’ve gotten help from for this lil’ venture.”

When he came to Stan’s side, Stan was grimacing at something caught beneath his foot. Ford watched as he lifted his foot and his circle of light illuminated it. It was metallic, and powder blue, and bent slightly so that one edge caught the light sharply.

It was a Lil Gideon pin. The child’s face smiled up vacantly at them, folded in on itself in a disfigurement that made the smile that many angles more menacing.

Ford wanted to kick it. But he was a published (if not exactly respected) scientist, so he didn’t. He merely sighed. “Come on. Let’s find out what else Bill’s goon got his hands on.” If it were just Gideon himself, perhaps the child wouldn’t be a very useful puppet. But Gideon wasn’t alone. He had the amulet, and his indulgent parents.

They both delved deeper into the vast, empty shell of the ship.

In the middle of Ford investigating an alien corpse with its digits degraded away from time, Stan let out a small laugh, as if a thought surprised him.

“Hah, remember the first time you took me down here? An’ Fidds practically forced us into climbing gear?”

Ah, yes. At that, Ford also laughed, despite himself. It had been a long while since he thought about that day trip to the cliffs, from one of Fiddleford’s summer visits to Gravity Falls. From Ford’s vantage point now, they all seemed very young at the time; more eager to explore the wreckage than take detailed observations, which was why Ford insisted on bringing Stan to see it in the first place: bare wonder at the sort of thing they could have only dreamed of discovering as kids. Ford had been hoping to make up for lost time back then. The incredulous look on Stan’s face had been more than worth it.

Even though they did end up rappelling down in a sort of buddy system, rather than the efficient and independent method offered by magnet guns. Fiddleford always hated those things.

“Honestly,” Ford smiled, “I felt less secure strapped to you knuckleheads than I did just now on the magnet gun!”

“Hey! I was only jokin’ around when I shook the rope. And we survived!” Stan said.

Ford snorted. “If you were to ask Fiddleford, I believe he would qualify that as a near-death experience.” Then he slowed to a stop.

Up ahead, his flashlight shone upon the fuel docks. All empty. Not entirely a surprise, but disheartening. The ships’ auxiliary fuel sources had lain in stasis for centuries now, and Ford was hoping to reverse-engineer the compound someday. He stepped forward to investigate the empty banks that once held fuel charges, and passed deeper into the mechanical heart of the ship. Here, wires and tubes were further exposed, and if one followed them with their eye, they would see the epicenter: the port that housed the Temporal Displacement Hyperdrive.

It had been wrenched out of its chassis. The only sign that it once had been there were the frayed and twisted tubing and wires - torn, not cut - that once connected the hyperdrive to the ship.

“Stan…”

“What? I stopped paying attention.” Behind Ford, Stan strode forward, stopping at his side. “Oh, shit. That… that isn’t good, is it?”

“A light way of putting it, yes.” Mouth tightened, Ford steadied his flashlight in a loop on his coat and approached the hole torn into the core of the ship. If the adhesive had been a hasty surgery, this was a hasty murder. Fiddleford would be horribly distraught to hear of the treatment received by the only Temporal Displacement Hyperdrive this side of the cosmos.

This had been Ford’s fear, of course. He didn’t know exactly how such a thing would power an interdimensional portal - he hadn’t delved too far into the machinations and technology of such a project before Stanley put a much-needed stop to the whole affair - but purely theoretical conversations with Fiddleford revealed enough to him about the power needed to trans-dimensionally displace entire beings that he knew if anything could make it happen, this was it.

And it was in the hands of Gideon. Of Bill.

Bill, who was currently creating some sort of scrapyard deep in the woods. Hopefully without Dan’s help, resource-gathering was going slower, but they likely could not depend on that to stop things significantly, given what they’re seeing here.

Ford took one last forlorn look at the gutted site and sighed. Then he jumped - it was Stan’s hand, patting his shoulder.

“I’m sorry, Ford.”

Ford bumped his brother’s shoulder with his own. “As am I. But we need to think about other things right now.” He pulled away and reoriented his gear, flashlight back in hand. “I believe we need to pay that scrap site a visit.”

“The one the kids found?” Stan rubbed the back of his neck and took a last look around the hollowed-out facility, flashlight swinging wide. “I’m guessing that whatever used to be in that sci-fi centerpiece over there was no joke,” he grunted.

“Not one bit. It housed the Temporal Displacement Hyperdrive. It must be the driving force for the portal… which means we might not have much time to lose.”

“Alright.” Stan rolled his shoulders and readied his own gear for the climb back out of Crash Site Omega. “Uh. I still got a bat under the passenger seat of my car, if it helps.”

“...I won't say no to that.”

It was Stan’s first impression that they might not need a bat (or a taser, or a magnet gun) at the scrap heap after all. There was no one there. At least, not on sight.

Of course, looks could be deceiving.

He and Ford crested the hill, afternoon sun casting longer shadows, and laid eyes on the scrap heap from between some trees, buried some ways away from the well-trodden path at a lower elevation. The two of them must not be far from where the kids had taken a tumble and practically landed on top of the place.

There wasn’t a very good view from where they were, but Stan for one was reluctant to wander into enemy territory just like that. He had a head on his shoulders, for chrissake.

“It’s difficult to see anything,” Ford huffed. He had lowered himself next to Stan at the edge of the trail where the foliage started to become greedy and unruly. While the lines of trees and bushes leading down to the site lent the both of them discretion, it obscured the contents of the dump as well. Looked like there was more gathered beneath the scratched tarp than there was before, but they would need to get closer if they wanted to figure out what.

Stan wasn’t sure that would be a great idea.

Ford inched forward. Stan threw out an arm to stop him, other hand clenched around his baseball bat.

“What are ya, crazy? Who knows what they’ve got going on over there!” Stan hissed lowly, pushing his brother back slightly. “For all we know, Bill’s made deals with a whole firing squad.”

Ford raised an eyebrow. “We have those in Oregon?”

Stan rolled his eyes and tried not to smile. “Y'know what I mean. Let’s not run in.”

There was that flat line Ford made with his mouth when he didn’t quite agree with the way Stan would do things, but he hung back like Stan said.

Down the hill and through the trees, all seemed calm. Tree canopy dappled shadows across the tarp that was stretched between its four poles, and filtered light splashed reflections off of nondescript device hulls poking out from the purview of the makeshift covering. There was hardly even a breeze in the trees. No noises of footsteps or conversation. Truly, it seemed, no one was there. For all passerby knew, this junkyard could just be a former resident’s pet project long abandoned.

“Do you hear that?” Ford asked lowly.

Stan listened. Off in the far distance, the familiar sounds of odd birds and oversized ground animals. But that was it. Nothing nearby, scuttling under the leaves, clambering up a tree. Not even the buzz of bugs, which were always rampant in the wooded summers.

“...I don’t hear anything,” Stan finally said. He knew that Ford must’ve realized too. And whatever that meant, it probably wasn’t good.

“Something must be deterring animals from the site.” Ford was deep in thought, fidgeting with the flashlight stowed away in his coat pocket. “Natural or supernatural, I can’t tell.”

Unbidden, Stan threw a rock, again. It smacked into several trees along the way, but made it relatively close to the junkyard with a thump.

Barely keeping a frightened yelp to himself, Ford threw an arm around Stan’s shoulders and yanked them both flat to the dirt and leaves. “Sweet Moses, Stanley!” he said, quick and frantic. “What if something catches us?! You can’t just throw rocks for every situation!”

Stan tilted his chin up to avoid face-to-plant contact with what very well could be poison oak. “Well I figured, if it helped us once, it could help us again, y’know?!”

“I - hold on -” Ford kept a hand on Stan’s back and peered over the bushline, squinting, listening. “I… don’t think it alerted anything.”

“Then… maybe we could go scope out the place? See if your Warp Drive is in there or somethin’?”

Ford lowered himself back down to Stan’s level, ignoring the misnomer that was clearly meant to poke fun. “Well… if we were to get our hands on that, it would be quite the dent in Bill’s plans. …Alright. Let’s check it out.”

As they rose to standing height and carefully sidestepped into the downhill brush, Stan raised his bat, and Ford a self-made taser that Stan definitely never accidently cooked himself on. At this point, he regretted not bringing one of his guns. He had slipped his brass knuckles on, but melee was no replacement for a bullet. Not like he would’ve shot that punk Gideon if they would’ve come across him! Just… perhaps zombie aliens or something, if the need arose.

In the present, though, they made do with what they had, taking care not to skid on loose dirt and have a repeat of the kids’ fall. Along the way, Stan spotted loose leaves of college-ruled paper tangled in bramble. It was a notebook, water-damaged and dirty, but he recognized it immediately and scooped it up, tucking it away. Dipper went frantic over this thing. Maybe he’d like it back.

As they neared, details made themselves more clear. Piles of junk were separated into collections of sheet metal, Crash Site scraps, and tubing and wiring gutted from microwaves and fridges and other things that had ended up in the Gravity Falls Dump. All gathered from disparate sources and separated out into multiple piles in equal measure. Some of these collections of materials were not piles anymore, but instead formed into cohesive angled structures; shards, almost, that could be pieced together into something more.

The start of the portal.

They found themselves on level ground again and came ever closer, still keeping away from the tarp and junk piles. Ford’s eyes roamed across the scraps and the skeletons of something more, no doubt looking for the Drive. But, evidently, no dice from this distance.

“What… Why is he doing it this way?” Ford murmured to himself.

“Huh?”

“The separate pieces. If he wanted to finish the portal in this location, he could have half the base structure done already. But instead everything is built in parts.”

Before Stan could respond, a deep whirring sounded from beyond the tarp-tent. The rustle of leaves being pushed out of the way, and dropping on each other. Stan and Ford froze. Stan whispered, “What the fuck is that?”

“I don’t know!” Ford whispered back. He now clutched his taser.

Ahead of them, a cold metal sphere rose slowly into the air. Leaves and twigs slid off of its frictionless surface until it was free of its camouflage. An inverted triangle pulsed red in the center, and Ford backed up, eyes widening.

“It’s a security drone! From the ship!”

“What?! What do we do?!” Stan doubted that a fucking bat, of all things, would do anything to a futuristic drone from a society so advanced that its technology was irreplicable on Earth, but he held onto the wooden grip like a lifeline regardless.

“It detects adrenaline! No wonder the rock didn’t wake it up. If we just aren’t scared, it might leave us alone!”

“What?!”

“Deep breaths!” Ford loosened his grip on his taser and slowed his breathing, keeping his eyes on the drone hovering in the air.

Completely reasonable advice in this situation. Sure. Stan’s heart was pounding away in his chest. He tried to stop clutching the bat like a wooden board in the ocean, but it just transferred his nerves elsewhere, and he bit on the inside od his cheek until coppery blood made him pull his tongue away from the side of his mouth.

The drone swept its scanning red eye to Ford, and then Stan, and then it stayed on Stan.

Hell no. Whatever this thing would do to him, it probably would spike Ford’s adrenaline through the roof, and then they’d both be in big trouble. “Fuck this.” Stan pulled his magnet gun out from where he had stuffed it into the bottle holder on his pack. For once his laziness was a good thing, and he hadn’t put it back in Ford’s pack where it belonged.

“What are you doing?” Ford asked, clearly only calm because if he weren’t it would be bad news.

“What, this thing isn’t made of metal?!” He gestured to the security drone, perhaps hysterically.

“Of course it is, that’s not what I’m asking!”

The drone lowered closer, eerily free from the rules of gravity, gaining speed towards Stan.

“Don’t worry, Sixer, I’ve tripped enough breakers to have some ideas!”

“Stanley-!”

Without a moment to think, Stan held the grip on the magnet gun as tight as possible and fired, electricity arcing to the smooth sphere and dragging Stan up to it like a reverse zipline. He shouted when he made impact on the top of the vessel, the intensity pushing the air out of him. His heart still threatened to punch a hole through his ribcage. He was tired, and pissed, and sweaty from all the walking today, and simultaneously chilled cold from the drone’s metal.

The drone bucked like a bull, whipping about in the air and dragging Stan along it. If it were to turn or flip, Stan figured he would break an arm or something with his own weight - no, can’t think about that now - clutching the magnet gun, he smacked it into Pulse mode and mashed his finger on the trigger.

The drone buzzed short, lilted, drifted, fell dead into the underbrush. THUD.

And smack, where Stan clapped down atop the drone like a belly-flopper in a pool. He slid off into the leaves. Ironically, adrenaline was still coursing and kept him from the worst of it, but he knew that soon enough things would start to really ache - and he wasn’t as young as he used to be. That’s gonna bruise like a motherfucker.

“Stanley!” Ford shouted. He darted forward and carefully put Stan on his back. “Are you alright? Are you hurt?”

Stan, eyes clenched shut, drew in air through his teeth. His brain was catching up to the possibilities that could have been if he hadn't stopped that thing. He needed a minute. Or a year. “I think I might’ve bruised a rib on that giant bowling ball.”

“Alright. Don’t get up yet -” he put out a hand to stop Stan from getting up even as Stan tried to lean forward - “how’s your breathing?”

“Fuckin’ hurts,” Stan muttered. Inhaling made the pain worse. He took shorter breaths, instinctually trying to avoid making the ache worse.

“Don’t breathe shallowly.”

Stan glared at him.

Ford was unaffected. “I know it’s not the best feeling, but you should try to breathe normally.” He lifted up Stan’s shirt. “No broken skin. I’m sure that will bruise later, it looked to be a hard fall…” He trailed off, lost in thought.

Stan exhaled air through his nose in a shallow laugh and instantly regretted it. “Yeah, it was. What’s the verdict, doc?”

Ford rearranged his brother’s shirt and gave the rest of him a once-over. “No bleeding. Nothing broken, from what I can tell. A few scratches… perhaps from the twigs on the forest floor. C-can you stand?” He was trying to be calm, but it was clear that the series of events shook him a bit. He and Stan did get into their fair share of misadventures, but it wasn’t often that one of them fell flat on a floating murder orb, so Stan understood.

“Yeah.” Stan coughed and winced. “Yeah, can ya help me up?”

“Of course.” Ford looped his arms around Stan and guided him to his feet. Stan, with Ford’s help, lifted his sad ass out of the dead leaves and pine needles, brushing debris off of his arms and legs as much as he was able when it wasn’t very comfortable to be mobile. Ford brushed a twig off of his shoulder. “Let’s get you back home and get some ice on that.”

They made their way back to the path in decidedly worse spirits than when their expedition started in the early morning. Now the sun was inching slowly towards the horizon again, and Stan had bruised a few ribs, and Bill had a Temporal Displacement Hyperdrive. And they had to walk back to the car.

Well, Stan thought. Could’ve been way worse, I guess.

“I don’t understand how they reprogrammed the drone,” Ford mumbled, flipping a pen that he produced from nowhere between the fingers of his right hand.

“Whuh?” Stan went to reach behind himself to rub at his aching tailbone, but decided against it when the action tugged at bruising skin.

“It is only supposed to activate when it detects intruders to the ship. We certainly weren’t on the ship just now… unless this was an elaborate holodeck system.” Ford made what was clearly an aborted motion to look around for evidence of a holodeck, but reconsidered.

“Maybe they told it the junkyard was the new ship, or something.”

“Yes, but how would they even pull that off? It’s not like they’re -” Then, realization appeared on Ford’s face, less like a dawn and more like a speeding truck, the way it did when he put pieces together and wasn’t particularly pleased about it. “Of course! It must be biometric! Stanley, I’m an ass.”

“I know. And uh, what?” He breathed lightly through his mouth, and then remembered himself and reluctantly took full, stinging breaths.

“I saw - when we were going deeper into the ship, I noted that one of the alien remains had lost its toes and fingers. It had been quite some time since we had been down there, and I merely assumed that this was the body finally moving to a new stage of decomposition - different than our own carbon matter, but what else could it have been? Of course I shouldn’t have assumed. They must have taken the digits for biometric access to the drone’s system! Bill must have some knowledge of their species…” Ford sighed. “No use to us now, of course.”

"Eh, how were you supposed to know?" Stan waved him off. "S'alright if you're not five steps ahead for once."

"I suppose…"

They slowly continued to work their way back. Sound returned to the trees and the forest litter as they got further and further away from the site and its terrorizing security drone.

"I've been thinking," Ford started.

"Uh oh," Stan said.

He shot Stan a look. "...I've been thinking about what we can do with Bill when he's in Dipper's mindscape." He subconsciously tightened his grip on his brother's shoulder. "If we somehow trap him there, that's all well and good, but then he will be in Dipper's mind, and I will not let that happen."

"Yeah, fuck that."

Ford nodded. "So - and this may be hard to pull off - I have been looking through all of my mindscape spells and haven't found what I'm looking for. I'll have to make it myself," he muttered.

"Make what?"

"I believe the best thing would be to make a false mindscape. An external location, if you will. It should be dressed like Dipper's mindscape - " and here he raised one finger - "but the key factor is that it isn't. And then…" he quieted. "We destroy it while Bill is inside."

"Oh." Stan breathed. "How're we gonna do that? Doesn’t a mindscape need - I ‘unno, a mind?"

"That's the thing," Ford sighed. "If my hypothesis is correct, then humans have the most malleable mindscapes, due to our sapience. And I can't connect the mindscape to, say, a rock."

"Uh." Stan scratched his chin with great effort. They were approaching the edge of the woods now, pine fronds parting to reveal asphalt road and a chipped yellow trail fence. "It's not a person, but what about a bug? Would - is that anything?"

"See, that comes back to sapience, and I don't -" Ford stopped in his tracks. Apparently he had snagged a thread of thought, and must see it through. "Well… while bugs and animals are not sapient, they are sentient. They have personalities and react subjectively to events. While their mindscapes are likely more uniform than ours, they probably have some difference between them, implying some sort of unconscious malleability. I will have to run some tests, but…"

Stan snapped his fingers. "If ya do a bug, can it be one of the cockroaches that keep showing up in the basement? Maybe it'll teach those fuckers a lesson."

"Perhaps that would work," Ford answered genuinely. "Although, it would not be a good candidate for destruction after Bill is in its mindscape." He grimaced. They were approaching the clearing behind the house now, trees and animal noises thinning somewhat. "Mabel won't like this plan."

"Eh, she can surprise ya. Maybe she'll want to kill the bug herself."

"Hmm. True."

As they entered the small dirt clearing off the side of the road where Stan had parked his car - relief at last - Stan felt Dipper’s notebook burning a hole in his jacket. He worried it with the free hand that wasn’t holding onto Ford’s shoulders. When he had snatched up the book, he saw that some of the torn pages clearly held notes, extended and scribbled out and connected to each other, about him. The kid was clearly anxious and confused, and struggling with the fact that adults more often than not keep whatever dirty laundry they have under wraps.

Stan silently climbed into the passenger seat, mind turning.

When he and Ford got back home, there was a conversation he needed to have with Dipper.

Chapter Text

They approached the back door and filed through, Stan squabbling with Ford about not handling him with kid gloves even as he coughed. Before he knew it, Ford was throwing up his arms to block Soos of all people from barrelling into Stan.

"Soos!" Stan exclaimed. Maybe he even sounded delighted, sue him. "How are ya? How's the diner?"

"Hey Mr. Pines! Dr. Pines! I -" Soos backed up, hands in the air. "Oh dude, are you okay? What happened?"

"Hello, Soos - long story," Ford said. "Can you grab one of the ice packs from the freezer?"

Soos nodded like he was handed the key to the White House and made a beeline for the kitchen.

"Come on, Ford, I don't need coddling. Just gimme some aspirin and -" Stan took a pained intake of breath, arms hovering protectively around his torso. "Shit, what was that hunk of junk made of?!"

"Foreign metal alloy," Ford replied. "Come on, we're going to the couch."

Reluctantly, Stan let himself be led into the living room, where one of the Corduroy sons was methodically breaking pencils in half on the rug, and Mabel was watching TV beside him. She seemed calm, if you ignored the macaroni box upturned across a piece of construction paper strewn with glitter. She was absorbed in her task, esoterically arranging elbow noodles according to her vision. When Ford and Stan appeared in the doorway, though, she shot up, scattering uncooked pasta across the rug.

"Grunkle Stan! Great-Uncle Ford! How was your mysterious trip?" Ford had decided that they wouldn’t share the destination for their ‘research’ trip just yet, knowing that the twins would never let Stan and him go to an alien ship without them. Mid-bounce, she halted, lowering down on the balls of her feet. Mid-bounce, she halted, lowering down on the balls of her feet. "Is… is Grunkle Stan okay?"

"He'll be alright," Ford reassured. "Ah, no big hugs for a while, though." He guided his brother to the vacant couch and arranged him there, keeping him sat upright with the couch pillows. Stan grumbled as Ford stuffed pillows behind his back, but didn't refuse.

At Mabel's concerned noises, Stan waved a hand. "I'll be fine, pumpkin! Just gotta… ugh… rest." The last word was accompanied by quotations.

Mabel patted his hand in lieu of the bone-crushing hug she clearly wanted to dole out. "Don't worry, Grunkle Stan! I'll bring you cookies and Tylenol and even provide you live entertainment! Have you ever seen a one-woman musical with an accompanying one-woman backing orchestra before?"

"I, uh, can’t say I have."

"Dudes!" Soos barged in bearing a glass of water, an ice pack wrapped in paper towels, and the house's entire suite of first-aid. "I got the goods!"

Ford accepted the multiple first-aid kits with amusement. There wasn’t much to be used from them, but it was the thought that counted. "Thank you, Soos." He handed the ice pack to Stan, who held it to the left side of his ribcage atop his shirt.

"Yeah, thanks, Soos," Stan echoed. "How were you saying the diner was doing?" It had been closed for about a day, but then Soos called up wanting to be there, and a couple more employees needed the pay. Stan couldn’t give them money without making money, so he put Soos in de facto charge of the place.

"Oh, don't even worry about it, bro! There might have been…" he started counting an alarming sum on his fingers. "...some kitchen fires, and like you said, we had to reduce the hours since you and Wen-dog aren't there… but it's all good!"

"Ugh." Stan shifted on the couch in an attempt to get comfortable. "Sorry for leaving you n' Susan with this, kid. I'll be back soon."

"Like I said, don't even worry about it!" He waved off the worry and fixed his hat by the brim. "I just swung by to give Wendy her tips from last week. Soos has got it all under control!” With that proclamation, he made his exit from the living room, followed by the sound of the front door clattering shut.

"He's a good kid," Stan mumbled when Soos was out of earshot.

“You could stand to tell him that, you know,” Ford chided.

“Hey, I don’t want to inflate his ego.”

“Grunkle Stan,” Mabel said, climbing onto the couch beside Stan and kicking her legs. “Does this mean we’re couch buddies now?”

“Eh, I guess? Depends on what you were watching.” A glance at the TV only showed some Owl Trowel commercial. He looked down at the hot-pink construction paper on the glitter-infused rug. Mabel usually reserved macaroni art for strong emotions. He wrapped an arm gingerly around the girl’s shoulders, mindful of his aching ribs. Beside him, a kneeling Ford pulled a bottle of painkillers out of one of the first aid kits on the floor, and shook out a few pills.

“Oh, just some Ducktectives! Reruns though.”

“Here, Stanley.” Ford held out the pills and the water. Stan removed his hand from Mabel’s shoulder and reached to take the glass and pills. It was a measure of his pain that he didn’t try any quips - just tossed the painkillers in his mouth and washed them down, then returned to pressing the ice pack against his ribs.

“Hey, uh… Gumphrey?” Stan called out to the kid scattering pencil corpses across the rug.

“Gus,” Mabel supplied helpfully.

“Yeah, that.”

Gus perked up, abandoning his wanton destruction and turning his head. “Huh?”

Stan was just going to tell him (age-appropriately) to fuck off for a bit, but for whatever reason, Ford cut in. “Do you like bugs, Gus?”

At this, the boy grinned. “Who doesn’t?”

“Indeed. We’ll be having dinner in about an hour, but until then, I have an important mission for you. Could you get your brothers and tell them to join you outside? I would like you to collect as many different bugs - alive - from the yard as you can. With your father to keep an eye on you, of course.” He leaned in with a conspiratorial glint to his eye. “Whoever catches the most is in charge of the TV for the night.”

Gus jumped up eagerly. “Yes!” he screamed, as if he had been waiting for this moment his whole life. “D’you have jars?”

“And nets! Beating trays, too, if you want to just hit a tree and grab what falls out,” Ford added. Stan knew for a fact that they also had insect aspirators, but it was smart not to pass them to the boys, who would more likely than not just end up eating the bugs in their hurry. Ask him how he knew.

“Cool! I was just gonna grab ‘em with my hands!”

“Well, every scientist starts out somewhere!” Ford stood and put his hands on his hips. “How about I show you where we keep the insect-collecting gear, and then you get your brothers and father?”

At the child’s assent, Ford guided the kid out of the room. Stan knew that despite the mission he supplied the children, this was his brother’s way of giving them a little more peace and quiet after their hectic day. He muttered his thanks as Ford left. No doubt he would be back soon to hover like a worried hen.

With that, Stan turned to Mabel, who was projecting high energy, but clearly flagging a bit. Her eyes were trained on the TV, but not quite focused. It made Stan feel bad for instigating the conversation they were about to have, but they were on a time crunch here.

“Mabel, can ya go get your brother?”

Nodding assuredly, Mabel dashed off to do just that.

“Well!” Ford soon came back in, an errant bug-collecting cup forgotten in one hand. “The Corduroys - barring Wendy - are currently out catching insects.”

“You got no idea how much I appreciate that.” Stan wrinkled his nose. “What if they wander outside the barrier?”

At this, Ford looked smug as he sat beside his brother. “See, I thought of that. While they were sleeping last night, I put wards on them so that if they reached within a certain distance of the barrier, they would feel compelled to turn around.”

Yeesh. Stan shuddered. “Sometimes you’re scary, Sixer.”

“It’s borne of necessity, I assure you.”

“Oh, sure, like Reagan’s tie was?”

“At the time, I had loan debt for perhaps six different degrees. Sometimes you make sacrifices.” Ford deposited the extra container on the side table, and noticed that all that remained of Mabel was a mess of macaroni and glue that would no doubt make its way into the carpet. “Oh. Where did she run off to?”

Despite his injury, Stan almost sank bodily into the couch pillows, only stopped by the strong ache that was still prodding his side. “Getting her brother. We gotta have a conversation.” He reached into his jacket and retrieved the Dipper’s notebook. “He’s a lot like you, y’know. Stubborn and more curious than he can handle.” Carefully, he thumbed the notebook open to a spread of scribbled disparate notes, and wordlessly passed it to Ford, who took it in hand.

As he scanned the page, Ford’s brow furrowed, running his eyes over the grasps at information that Dipper could find. Stan’s blip out of history, Ford’s dealings with Bill, a possible fight between them - no indication given on how Dipper pulled that particular needle out of the haystack. There was an abundance circled and punctuated with question marks about Stan in particular. Why did he come to Gravity Falls and enter the public record again? What was he doing before? If the family rumors were true, what else didn’t they know about him?

And, with sharp pen strokes emphasized by repetition, scored on the bottom of Stan’s page: Who is he?

“He’s thorough,” Ford finally murmured.

“Yeah. An’ I know he’s been better with this lately, backing off when we asked. But seein’ it all laid out like that…” Stan looked out the far window to the sunset blazing orange through the pines. “I think maybe I owe the kids an explanation. Even if it won’t sound too good.”

“Stanley…” Ford closed the notebook and placed it in between the both of them on the couch. “Are you sure? I know how much it meant to you that they were coming to us without too much… family baggage.”

Reluctantly, Stan met his brother’s pitying gaze. He knew Ford was just worried for him as always, but sometimes that look still stabbed old prideful wounds of his that made his hackles rise. By now, though, he was experienced in observing the feeling without letting it shake him like a soda can. Instead, he broke their eye contact in favor of the silent movements on the TV. “I tried real hard to keep it outta their summer. Who would want to be stranded at a relative’s place when they learn old business that changes how they see the guy? But, eh… might as well give up the ghost. I’d rather they hear the truth from me than listen to any more of those stories Aunt Amy’s been spinnin’.”

“I suppose that is wise,” Ford conceded. He placed a hand gingerly on Stan’s knee, patted awkwardly, and then retreated. “Would… you like me here?”

“Sure, why not? It’s your business too.”

Ford raised an eyebrow. “We’re going that far back, are we?”

“Unless you don’t want to.” He shrugged with a wince. “But without that, it’s hard for the rest of it to make any kinda sense.”

Suddenly, Ford’s eyes shuttered and his mouth tightened, as if the footnote of the inciting incident would reveal some choice things about himself as well. And maybe it would - Stan knew they were both young and stupid when their bond dropped from high heights and shattered into silence. Stan might have made the initial mistake, but both of their egos did the rest of the work, too proud and sad and stubborn to reach out or admit defeat.

Neither of them were those boys or men anymore, though, and the tension in Ford’s features softened. It was telling to Stan that even though the family painted Ford the heroic victim in the story all these decades later, he had long ago extricated himself from its confines to bridge the gap the myth created. In the end, Ford just nodded, and it was then when twin footfalls down the stairs heralded the children’s arrival.

Dipper and Mabel appeared at the doorway. The girl was running fingers through her hair, and the boy was absent-mindedly clicking a pen.

“Grunkle Stan, Mabel told me you were hurt… Are you okay?” Dipper entered the room haltingly, like he didn’t know what to do with his body.

“It’s nothing, kid.” Stan waved a hand. “Just…” He spared a glance to his brother. All this talk of truth-telling… Goddamnit. “We had a bit of a run-in at that garbage heap out in the woods.”

“A monster?!” Dipper’s eyes went wide, as if both scared and excited by the idea that someone he knew was freshly maimed by beasts that called Gravity Falls home. And then, more frightened: “Bill?”

“Goodness, no! It was no living thing at all, and certainly not Bill. In fact…” Ford paused, weighing his words in a rare show of restraint considering the topic. When he continued, he was quiet, almost wistful. “It came from something I was looking forward to showing you someday.”

“Yeah, and Bill had to go wrecking it.” Stan spat the name like a curse.

“Well, the ship is still there, but… it had been preserved to the standards of an archeologist’s dream, before. Stan’s injury was sustained in a confrontation with its sleeping security system, but bruised ribs, nothing more.”

“Wait, wait - ship?” Mabel put her hand up. “Are we talking a sea-boat-dealy or more of a sky boat?”

Ford looked to Stan for guidance on how to break the existence of aliens and all their accompanying implications, but Stan just crossed his arms loosely and stared evenly back, daring his brother to finish the hole he dug. At Stan’s silent wall, Ford looked back to the kids.

“There is an alien ship under Gravity Falls.”

The children shot up like rockets. Mabel gasped loudly.

“What?! Where?!” Dipper said, and then immediately - “Why hadn’t you told us?”

At this Ford rubbed his neck, seemingly embarrassed by his own sentiment. “Buried in the hill past the oddly-shaped gorge. I had wanted to keep it a surprise. Perhaps for your last week here, to cap off the stay, or maybe for a future visit once you were a bit older. It was something Fiddleford and I hid from the world for good reason. The tech alone…” He shook his head. “I suppose it was foolish to covet such a thing as a trinket to offer you both. But I was truly looking forward to it.”

“Well, we can still go, can’t we?!” Dipper was practically shaking. “It’s still there, right?”

“Hey, that’s a good point, Sixer.” Stan nudged his brother with his foot. “It’s not like they’ve ever seen it any other way. I think an alien ship would pack a punch no matter what.”

Ford’s frown deepened in thought. “I suppose… but it was made clear to us that Bill raided the site for parts, almost certainly for the interdimensional portal. He knows where it is now.” A shadow darkened his features and he shook his head. “Regardless, please put that out of your thoughts for now, children. Stanley and I have to discuss something with you.”

Dipper groaned in plain disappointment.

“Something else?” Mabel said, incredulous. “Other than aliens?”

“Yes,” he confirmed gravely. “Other than aliens.”

Frustrated, the children nevertheless sat down on the carpet in front of their grunkles, momentarily locking wide eyes to communicate something unsaid.

From this perspective looking down at them, despite Stan’s own injury rendering him toothless, the children appeared small and vulnerable. They had interest in their eyes, and concern. He was sure they saw him as a trustworthy guide and protector in this harrowing situation with Bill; a vision that he was loath to break, but he knew that what he was about to confirm might destroy the trust. No matter what Stan portrayed to the kids, it didn’t change the fact that it was all upon a backdrop of his characterization as the black sheep, a topic of discussion and gossip that had no doubt been fed to them. He wasn’t stupid - he knew the only reason their parents let them come here was that Ford’s reputation was more than upstanding, and they saw him as Stan’s mollifying leash.

He had hoped that he would be able to keep himself clawed above the worse reputation that dogged him; that if he could just keep control, he could remain someone else; but if he were being honest, the truth was probably always going to catch up with him eventually.

“So,” Stan started, throat suddenly dry. He was a good liar, but even though he’d been practicing for some time now at being honest, telling the whole truth - no obfuscating or omissions - was always a work in progress. Recent stress pulled those old habits to the forefront of his tired mind, and his hindbrain geared up excuses to wiggle out. Still, he pushed on. “With this upcoming business with Bill, we’re gonna be doing some pretty intense stuff. I want you both to trust me, trust that I’ll keep you safe. And I’ve been thinkin’...” He produced the notebook once more, and heard Dipper’s aborted shout in his throat. The page was still turned to Stan’s, a crude drawing of himself looking up at him with dark eyes. “It’s gotta be confusing to hear all this sh - this stuff and not know what’s true or not. So, I’m just gonna give it to you straight.”

But first, he held the notebook out to Dipper. “Here ya go, kid. We came across it today.”

Dipper took the dirtied book quietly, gripping it with tight fingers and looking unsteadily at Stan, as if he wasn’t sure if he would know him anymore after this. Beside him, Mabel was uncharacteristically silent, hands kneading her skirt.

Well, Stan, you’ve captured your audience.

“The truth is, before I came to Gravity Falls back in the ‘80s, Ford and I hated each other’s guts.” He took a breath in. “When we were in our last year of high school, he made a project that woulda gotten him into a crazy school. Almost did, too. But we were growing apart, interested in different things and not sure how to untangle our lives without hurting each other.” Stan scratched at the stubble on his cheek. “An’ that was when I did somethin’ stupid. The night before the school graded the damn thing, I took out my anger on the table it was on, and I knocked some bit loose.”

“I could have stood to screw that on tighter,” Ford murmured.

Despite the tension, Stan rolled his eyes. “An’ I could’ve stood to tell you something went wrong!” To the kids’ attentive faces he said, not unkindly, “We’ve talked this through a billion times. But anyways… long story short, Ford didn’t get into West Coast Tech. And boy, was Dad mad.”

“He was not a very forgiving man.”

“You could say that again. To him, if Ford made it big, the rest of the family could climb out of the hellhole that was Glass Shard Beach. In his eyes I just burnt away a boatload of money.”

“I was angry after that.” Ford dropped his gaze to his hands. “It didn’t matter to me that Dad was unreasonable; he justified that anger, and I let it.”

“You were also 18, let’s not leave that out. At that age we barely had brains.”

“Yes, well… you were the scapegoat, growing up. In the end he was just confirming his own warped visions, which became my own.”

“Yeah.” Stan waved a hand. “Regardless of his reason, it doesn’t matter. That day, Dad kicked me out of the house.”

“He what?!” Mabel cried. “That’s not what families do!” Her tone turned bitter. “Not good ones.”

Stan almost gave a cynical comment, but Ford just smiled at her and agreed. “You’re right, Mabel. I’ve ended up learning much from my father by unlearning all the things he did.”

“So you guys did have a fight,” Dipper chimed in, subdued, some unseen dots connecting in his mind’s eye. “And it was… really bad.”

“Yep.” Stan bit the inside of his cheek. “After that, I was obsessed with makin’ money. If I just made back what I lost, things would be fixed. Or so I thought. All I needed to do was rake in the goods.” He leaned back on the couch. “An’ when you’re that desperate, you start doing stupid things. Getting into debts and scrapes and, yeah, prison. An’ you’re vulnerable!” He threw one hand up. “I couldn’t even tell ya how many times I was duped into some scheme as the fall guy. I was always chasing the end no matter the means.”

“So… Aunt Amy was wrong, right? You didn’t actually kill someone?” Dipper dropped the question into tense air.

“Nah.” Did he come close? More than once, but there was a difference between the type of honesty he needed to give and the type that would scar the kids for life. “But I’ve been in plenty of fights. Banned from multiple states after my reputation as a scam artist got around - in the beginning I was selling shoddy crap for a quick buck, but it always came back to bite me.”

“In the beginning?” Mabel asked. “So… what happened later?”

Stan’s stomach churned. “Oh, y’know… petty theft, then grand larceny.” Some other things he couldn’t mention to kids. “A few smuggling jobs.” He stopped. “Of drugs, not people. And sometimes dogs. To be clear. Got caught a few times, spent time in a Colombian jail. After I got out, my old boss was hell-bent on making me pay my debts even if I didn’t have the money. At this point, it’d been almost a decade since Dad kicked me out, and I was just digging a pit deeper than ever. I was…” He paused, considering what he would share to paint the picture true. “Homeless. Self-destructive. Back against the wall. I never really had a solid place to stay from the beginning, and anyone who I could call a friend wanted to use me for something. I didn’t have anywhere to turn.”

“What did you do?” Even after everything Stan described, Mabel’s tone was soft and caring, like he was the hero to root for. It twisted something deep in Stan’s chest, and he almost smiled.

“I called Sixer.”

It put some things in context, in hindsight.

No wonder Dipper’s grunkles were so insistent on him and Mabel maintaining their relationship. They must’ve seen the early tells of conflict similar, on a microscopic scale, to the one that rent them apart. Even though he and Mabel were nowhere close to the blow-up they had, it was no mystery why they wanted him and his sister to keep listening to each other, supporting each other.

Because at some point they stopped, and it took away a decade of time.

Dipper worried the tattered cover of the notebook. He thought this moment would be vindictive, a gratifying result of pushing back to be heard instead of dismissed. Now that the struggle had been ceded and the truth was being presented, however, it wasn’t righteousness spreading through his limbs; it was… relief.

In his mind, he had pictured the acquisition of truth as the reward. But once the half-truths and wild stories and mismatched puzzle pieces fell away, they just left Stan - Grunkle Stan - looking down with some mixture of distance and resignation in his eyes.

“So you were on the run?”

At that simple question, Stan huffed. “Yeah, a few times. From the police, but also from more… unsavory types. Eh, the cops are unsavory too, but the point is, I pissed off a lotta people back in the day.”

“But I couldn’t find a single article about it… arrests, or anything.”

“Yeah, probably ‘cause I was using any name but my own.” Stan rubbed his neck. “Made it easier to jump ship, that was for sure. I only started using my name again once I came here and my bosses lost the trail, more or less.”

“Okay.” A beat. “Um. Did you ever use the drugs you… smuggled?”

“Dipper!” Mabel admonished. For context, she added: “Grandma is convinced you deal drugs.”

At that, Stan barked out a laugh. “Ha! I would be making much sweeter cash if I did! And Dipper - yeah, a few times, but what if I did? I don’t anymore. I didn’t do it much then either. My real vice was always smoking.” He shrugged the shoulder of the arm pressing the ice pack to his side. “Don’t do that anymore either.”

“I ensured he quit,” Ford muttered.

The plain answers to questions loaded like spring-traps took Dipper by surprise. Try as he might to find something hidden in the words or posture, Stan was an open book, told by the presumption of disappointment in his face. He wasn’t hiding anything and was ready for whatever consequences ensued.

Stan sighed and broke eye contact. “It’s all old history. But to be honest? I didn’t want you kids to know. You’d be the first family I had that didn’t tuck that in your back pocket going in. I didn’t want it to change things.”

Considering, Dipper turned to Ford. “Great-Uncle Ford, what did you think of all this stuff?”

Surprise at being addressed raised his eyebrows. “Well, I was quite cold to him when he first arrived. I had seen him the way our father saw him - lazy, leeching. But I didn’t realize until then that… well, there were many reasons I was still angry, and none of them had anything to do with his… history. When I learned more about it, I just wanted him to be out of danger.” Now he looked almost sheepish. “I realized our lack of contact was self-imposed, and in that isolation I took our family’s opinions about him as truth - as I had wanted to. And it was a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

The family stewed in retrospection.

“I just have one more question,” Dipper said, queasy. There was one last random piece floating around, and he needed it to be put to rest, even if it was more hearsay than anything.

“Anything, kid,” said Stan earnestly.

“What actually happened to your bosses at the Dusk 2 Dawn?”

“Wha- huh?” For a moment, Stan was shocked into silence. “Is that… do people still talk about that?”

Ford frowned and rubbed his chin. “I didn’t even realize they talked about it at all. I thought I made it clear to our neighbors that the cause of the proprietors’ deaths was verified by posthumous interview before their souls were released to the afterlife.”

“Forget it, I swear half this town has their eyes shut,” Stan handwaved. “And nevermind the fact that the doctors even confirmed it. People were chattering about what the ‘thief employee’ must’ve done to them for weeks. I can forgive ya for wondering. But you can find the autopsy results if you look, and Ford even spoke to them after.”

“I still have a transcription of the interview somewhere in my notes,” Ford offered.

It was what Dipper thought, really, but that last nagging question would have kept his eyes open to the attic ceiling at night, just like the other questions did before. Everything stripped bare, it became plain that he hadn’t wanted the object of the truth, but instead its implications.

Dipper looked up to Grunkle Stan. “I… I just wanted you to be honest. I didn’t want to wonder,” he said, quieter than intended.

In the time that had passed, the sun had slunk away to rest beneath the horizon. The living room was now sparsely lit by side lamps and the leftover glow from the hallway. While his grunkles had descended into shadow, Dipper didn’t feel a shiver climb up his spine.

“Well, wonder no more.” Stan said resolutely. “And if you have any other questions, shoot. I can’t promise I’ll always go into detail - some stuff frankly isn’t worth telling - but I’ll tell you the truth. I swear.” He looked at Mabel. “That goes for you too, sweetie.”

“Okay, Grunkle Stan.” When Dipper looked over to her, one of the side lamps haloing her hair, he was surprised to see the lamplight reflected in unshed tears. “I’m just glad you’re okay now.”

Stan softened at her emotion. “Don’t worry, pumpkin. My life got a lot better after that, especially with this knucklehead in it.” He jabbed a thumb to Ford, who just gave a slight laugh. Then he became grim. “But I, uh, I understand if this changes how you both feel about me. It’s your right.”

“No! Why would it? You’re not a scary guy! You’re our Grunkle Stan,” Mabel insisted. “You teach us card games and make us dinner and watch Ducktectives with us. That’s what matters, not some stuff that happened way before we were even born!” She turned to Dipper. “Right, Dipper?”

Dipper swallowed. Mabel was too trusting; they both knew that. But seeing his grunkle in the diminished light, he couldn’t bring himself to clutch at his convictions any longer. All his questions had been answered, and made sense with what he discovered. It was all he wanted from Stan. What remained was fear of the possible unknown.

“Grunkle Stan…” Dipper chewed the inside of his cheek. He looked to Mabel’s hopeful face, and Ford’s unreadable one, and then to Stan, who seemed like he was tensing in preparation of what judgment may come. Dipper stood up. “Um. Do you want a hug?” Out of his peripheral vision, he saw Mabel stand too.

For a second, Stan blinked, comprehending what just happened, but then a slow smile broke out on his face. “I can’t say no to that,” he laughed shakily, relief evident, and set aside the ice pack he had been nursing. “Just be careful alright? I only got so many ribs.”

They both wrapped their arms carefully around Stan, who placed one heavy arm around them each and pulled them close. Ford reached around the three of them to complete the hug.

“Thanks for telling us,” Mabel muttered against Stan’s shoulder.

“Course.” A weight - Stan’s chin - settled atop Dipper’s gold-star hat. “D’you trust me, kiddo?” He murmured.

“Yeah, Grunkle Stan.” Dipper leaned into the hug and closed his eyes. “I trust you.”