Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The idea lodges itself into Wirt’s head at the funeral, burrows under the surface and lurks like a pile of bare-white bones. 

He doesn’t say it aloud for days, weeks, a month, but the sheer hit-you-over-the-head, wallop-you-with-a-tire-iron-and-drag-you-into-the-bushes emptiness of his house echoes it back to him whenever he thinks he’s buried it down for good. The words slip out easily one day, casually, as if they hadn’t been choking him for weeks and weeks and weeks. 

“Kids,” says Wirt, “what do you think about moving?”

Dipper’s head darts up from his journal. “Moving?” he asks. “Like, houses?”

Wirt’s kids haven't been the same since the diagnosis, since the treatment failed, since the funeral. They hide it from him, or try to at least, but Wirt sees. They roam around their own home like ghosts. There are so many ghosts in this house.  

“Towns,” he corrects. “States.”

Mabel’s brow furrows. “You want to move?”

“There’s not much for us in Piedmont, is there? I can write anywhere, and you kids don’t seem that attached to the high school here. Most of your friends are in Gravity Falls anyway, and the change of pace would do us all some good--”

His twins, his kids, his pair-of-retail-clones, his Two Terribles--

“Why would you call my children bluebirds, Wirt?” says Beatrice, wrinkling her nose as she tweaks theirs. “That’s terrible”

-- bolt upright. 

“You mean we’re moving to--” says Mabel.

“--Gravity Falls?” finishes Dipper. 

“If you want to. I just thought that the change would do us all some good. The small town would probably be good for my writing, anyway, and their school can’t be any worse than the one here.”

Mabel beams. She has her mother’s smile. 

“I have to call our grunkles,” she babbles, practically radiating joy off her--nope, that’s light. How did she get glitter in her teeth? Does Wirt even want to know? “Everyone is going to be so excited. Dipper, c’mon! ”

“Wait,” Wirt says to an empty room, the hammering of his kids’ footsteps rattling in the air, “Grunkles?”

… 

“Grunkle Stan!” 

Mabel throws the door wide with all the force of a war-hardened soldier, God bless her. There’s no hope for Wirt’s security deposit. There has never been hope for Wirt’s security deposit. Wirt’s dreams of a security deposit went up in a cloud of ash and glitter when the twins were still cherubic toddlers with the Devil alive in their hearts. 

“Oof,” says Uncle Stan, catching her cleanly. “Hey there, pumpkin.”

Mabel sniffles slightly. “We missed you,” she says. “Dipper and me both.”

“I missed you kids too, munchkin,” he says, and he ruffles her hair. “I’m sorry we weren’t here for the funeral. We were out of range for months, and by the time we got the message, well--” He scratches the back of his head.

“It’s alright,” Dipper says, shuffling his feet. He crams his hands in his pockets and looks at ground. “You couldn’t have helped it.”

Stan looks at him, at Wirt’s fifteen-year-old son with scabby knees and a tired bent to a head eternally shrouded in a fur-lined cap, and he rolls his eyes. 

“Come ‘ere, kid,” he says, grabbing him by the collar.

Dipper’s eyes widen. 

“Aw,” Mabel cooes, practically glowing at the sight of--nope, no, that’s glitter again, Wirt reevaluates the necessity of an intervention--her brother swamped in his great uncle’s arms. She yanks her phone from her pocket. “Photo op!”

“Mabel,” complains Dipper, making absolutely no effort to squirm his way out. “Dad.”

“I absolutely approve of your sister’s actions.” He turns to Mabel. “Get extra copies for my album.”

Mabel squeals. 

Waddles, for his part, squeals with her. This is less surprising in no small part due to the fact that he is a pig, but Wirt feels this fact is still of note. Because that pig is always squealing.

Always. At all hours. In his once-pigless home. 

Stan releases Dipper, grumbling in a creaky, ancient-old-man-with-a-reputation way. “That’s enough from me, kid,” he says, and cuffs him around the ear. “Go do your nerd things with my brother. He has some new doll or whatever to show you.”

A comedy, in three parts:

Wirt furrows his brow.

Stanford Pines’s eyes widen. He begins to cough extremely hard, extremely loud.

And another Stanford Pines rounds the back of the car.

“Doll?” one Stanford Pines says to the other. “We find an ancient relic from a civilization thought to be mythical, and you call it a doll?”

“You gotta call a spade a spade, is what I say.”

“Grunkle Ford,” Dipper greets, utterly oblivious to his father’s mounting confusion. “We missed you.”

“Dipper m’boy,” the other, second Stanford Pines says, slinging an arm around Wirt’s son and pulling him close. “It’s good to see you again.”

Dipper says something then, mutters it into his great uncle’s coat where Wirt can’t hear, something low and fraught and containing more emotion than Wirt’s been able to pry from his son in months. 

Other-Stanford’s grip tightens. 

“I know,” he says. “I know.”

Dipper shudders then, and Wirt thinks that, for one moment, he may finally cry.

Pulling back, Dipper says, “Thanks for coming to help move us. It means a lot.” 

“We’re just happy to have you in Gravity Falls year-round,” says the other-Stanford. “It’ll be good to spend more time with you kids, now that Stan and I are retiring.”

“Why is that, anyway?” Dipper asks. “You love treasure hunting.”

“Eh, the beaches in the Arctic are cold and there’s no babes in Siberia, anyway,” says the first-Stanford. “Besides, we miss that crummy old town. You kids are just a bonus.”

“Aw, Grunkle Stan, you love us,” says Mabel.

“Are you kiddin’ me? Nothing but a pair of nuisances, the lot of you.”

Wirt opens his mouth. Wirt closes his mouth again.

He had, in fact, been doing this for several minutes. He thinks a bug flew in his mouth in that time, or maybe some glitter.

He knew it was a mistake to let Greg buy Mabel an industrial-sized bucket of glitter for her birthday this year. Wirt had to sign a damn liability form for anyone to let it come into his house, and a waiver stating he alone was responsible for any irreversible damage to respiratory tracts or the environment. The delivery man had been sweating in the middle of January when he dropped it off. Wirt’s pretty certain it’s only previous use had been for environmental warfare and Build-A-Bear workshops. 

“Stanford,” he says, looking at one Stanford, and then the other. “Ford. Stanford,” he says, looking at Stanford #2. He looks at Stanford #1. “Stanford. Stan. Stan ley. I. I. You’re dead. ”

Mabel’s jaw drops. “We didn’t tell you.”

Dipper shifts uncomfortably. “Um.” 

“Why am I the one that’s dead?” Stanley Pines, a man who is literally certified as dead, complains. “Maybe he’s the dead one.”

“I was never dead, Stan.”

“Well neither was I.”

“Not according to the state of Oregon.”

“Like that’s important.”

“I went to your funeral,” says Wirt. “When I was like, 9. Everyone was there. You were there.” 

He turns to the actual Stanford Pines. “You weren’t.” 

Uncle Stan shrugs. “So my brother disappeared on a research expedition for a while and I borrowed his identity in the meantime. It’s all among family.” He hammers Wirt on his back. “Now get in there and give your long-lost Uncle Ford a big hug.”

“I,” says Wirt, and closes his mouth. He opens it again. “I have so many problems with what you just said.”

“Yeesh,” says Uncle Stan. “You know, you’re hardly one to talk, kid. You had me making an entire fake identity, what, the second time we ever spoke? A good one, too. You should be careful where you toss that rock in this great big glass house.”

“Dad, you had a fake ID?” asks Dipper. 

“Can we get fake IDs?” says Mabel.

“Definitely not,” Wirt says quickly. “That--that was different.” He coughs. 

Everyone very carefully studies the grass on the off-chance that, perhaps, a hole would conveniently open up beneath them and swallow them all into the yawning earth. Or something.

“So,” says Wirt, still coughing, “is there anything else you forgot to tell me about Gravity Falls?”

Everyone very studiously does not make eye contact. 

“Um. No. Definitely not,” says Dipper, also coughing.

… 

The truth lifts Wirt up and drags him down again. It hangs around his neck like an albatross, whispers in his ear they don’t know they don’t know they don’t know what’s out there and you know you remember and you can’t forget, never never never and you’re the pilgrim, you’re of the forest, you belong to it, you can’t leave, come back, come back, come back. 

It whispers:

Do you remember the woods, Wirt? 

Do you remember the trees?

The Unknown stays with him, lives in him, follows him from the shadows at the edges of his vision. Wirt is the pilgrim and there is no pilgrim without a holy land of which to wander in dogged pursuit. The truth rails at him in a persistent act of flagellation, self-inflicted only in the sense that he hadn’t been able to shed it with the water of the lake. 

It’s like this: 

He hadn’t been able to forget, which means he’s stuck remembering. He is the pilgrim and an identity is not a thing that can be sloughed off. 

What’s a pilgrim without faith?

What’s a faithful without preaching? 

He has the truth, he carries it in his arms, and he thinks it might be a little bit easier to step the path if there were more to carry it. He tells the world the truth. He does it in a way that ensures no one would believe him. 

Wirt Pines turns nineteen the day his first poem is published. 

It is titled “The Bluebird.”

… 

“There’s a lot of traffic,” Wirt says, peering out the window curiously. “I thought this was supposed to be one of those walk-everywhere, we-still-use-a-horse-and-buggy-on-special-occasions small towns.”

Stan lurches in his seat. “Is it Pioneer Days already? Kids! Get the pepper spray! They’re not gonna take me alive!”

“Calm down, Stanley,” scolds Stanford. “I haven’t seen a single covered wagon since coming here.” He frowns. “Is that a parade?”

Dipper, strewn across the backseat, his head plopped unceremoniously in Mabel’s lap, jerks up. “Parade?” 

They’ve seemed paranoid lately, more so than usual. Their move to Gravity Falls had sent them into an ecstatic frenzy the night it had been decided, but rapidly crashed into a nervous fear by the next morning. Nothing he’s done has managed to pry their troubles out of them, and Wirt finds himself rapidly approaching a state of panic.

There’s something wrong with them. There has been since they were twelve, but it’s worse than ever lately. Wirt feels like something’s about to burst, but he’s not quite sure what.

“There’s a marching band,” says Wirt. “And floats. And big balloons of people.”

Leaning forward in his seat, he cranes his neck, trying to get a better glimpse. There are balloons tied to the cars further down, bobbing, haphazard things, with patchwork spots and distorted features. They flap madly in the wind as the cars veer around corners, up and down, and up and down. He can’t quite seem to make them out.

“There can’t be a parade,” says Dipper, his voice oddly worried. “There’s no celebration going on today. I know all the festivals of Gravity Falls, and there isn’t supposed to be one today.”

“Well, maybe they came up with a new one.”

“Someone would have told me if they did, Dad. Wendy or Soos or--”

Dipper stops. 

“Mabel,” he says, his voice utterly level, “How many people did you call to tell we were moving back today?”

“Um, not that many,” says Mabel, her eyebrows pinched and her head tilting down. “Just Grenda and Candy and Pacifica and Soos and Wendy and Robbie and Tambry and Thompson and Lee and Nate and Lazy Susan and Sheriff Blubs and Deputy Durland and Mayor Tate and Old Man McGucket and--”

“Everyone. You told everyone.”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

“Hey, Grunkle Ford,” says Dipper, leaning forward in his seat. “This traffic is pretty slow. Maybe you should practice that fancy driving you learned while you were living in the, uh, Amazon for, uh, your research. Yeah. The Amazon.”

“That’s a good idea Dipper,” says apparently-not-dead Uncle Ford. He sounds worried, Wirt thinks. “It may be best to speed things up a little, for the moment.”

“No, let’s stay and watch for a little while,” says Wirt, craning his neck to look. “There’s no rush. It’s even kind of a nice coincidence, for our first day here. Like a welcome party.”

“You have no idea,” mutters Mabel.

“Oh look,” says Dipper, despairing. “The balloons are getting closer.”

Wirt squints. “What are they even of? Kids, have you seen my glasses?”

“Nope,” says Mabel, popping the ‘p.’ “They must be gone forever. No point watching a parade you can’t even see. Grunkle Ford, take us to the eye doctor instead.”

“Optometrist.”

“That too.”

“I’m certain I packed them. The floats are almost in front of us anyway.”

Behind him, Wirt’s kids make eye contact. 

Dipper nods.

Mabel nods back.

Launching herself forward, Mabel surges between Ford and Wirt, a puff of glitter sparkling in her wake. 

“Hey Dad! Dad, look over there! It must be important because I’m pointing and shouting really loud!”

“Mabel, sit back and buckle up this instant,” scolds Wirt. “You could get hurt.” 

He glances back. 

Dipper mutters something, low and distant.

And Wirt’s ears pop.

“What was that, Dipper?” he asks after a moment, blinking slowly. “I didn’t quite catch that.” 

“I, uh, didn’t say anything. Nothing important from over here. Um. Yeah.”

“You’re laughing nervously.”

“I’m not laughing,” Dipper protests. “And nervously? Pssh. Why would I be nervous?”

Uncle Stan buries his face in his hands.

“Allllllrrrrriiiigggghhhhttt. Mabel, what is it that you wanted to show me?”

“I…. thought I saw the badger and the snake that are madly in love. They wander the town scaring small children and medium-sized adults. But, uh, it was just a, uh, stick.”

Wirt nods slowly.

“Right. Well then. Um. Let me know if you see them again.”

“Will do, Dad.”

Distantly, Wirt notices that Stan and Ford seem to be vibrating on either side of him. He rapidly gains an intimate awareness of just how tightly packed their rental truck is. 

He shrugs, and turns back to the parade. 

Faintly, he thinks he can still see the neon pink and dark blue of the balloons, nothing but fading pinpricks of color in a pale grey sky. The townsfolk scratch their heads around a suddenly-empty parade float. 

“What happened to the balloons?”

“A, uh, big gust of wind tore them free and blew them away,” says Uncle Stan. “Very suddenly. All while your back was turned. Well, these things happen all the time. Nothing suspicious about that.”

“That’s… an oddly specific way of wording it.”

“Well, we should hurry,” says Uncle Ford, wrenching the car onto a sideroad, and also the sidewalk. “We want to beat the movers, don’t we?”

Wirt’s fingernails dig into the linoleum seat, and he thinks he sees his life pass before his eyes. And also maybe a few pedestrians. 

“Maybe you should slow-- lookout!”

“You, uh, might want to close your eyes for this part, Dad,” says Dipper. “The, uh, Amazon had very different rules for driving.”

“Oh relax, Dipper. They had perfectly safe motor regulations there,” says Uncle Ford, careening through the narrow streets at 90 miles per hour. 

He glances back. “In fact--”

“Road,” Wirt chokes out. “Road, road, road--”

Uncle Stan grins. “Welcome to Gravity Falls.”

… 

Two weeks after the twins arrive back from their first summer at Gravity Falls, Wirt stuffs himself into the coat closet and calls Greg. 

There had been… discrepancies. 

Odd things. Things that shouldn’t bother him. Nightmares. What kid doesn’t have nightmares, right? All kids have nightmares. Nightmares are a normal thing. And jumpiness. Kids can be jumpy normally, right? Little shits like his twins, their default should probably be jumpy. They’re always up to some new scam or another. After spending the summer with his uncle of all people, those scams have probably graduated from an underground sticker-and-glitter-pen black market to like, tax evasion and rigging mayoral elections. 

And wouldn’t that be a lovely problem to have? Tax evasion? Wirt is rooting for tax evasion.

But he can’t shake it. His twins step out the bus circle, they meet his and Beatrice’s eyes from across the car park, and Wirt thinks, My kids just walked out of hell. 

Beatrice knows it, too. She goes stiff as a board at his side, and her hand grasps at Wirt’s, and she pastes on a blinding smile that’s a better lie than Wirt ever told. They give them kisses and bundle them into the car, and Wirt spends a solid five minutes gaping at the squealing pink behemoth he’s supposed to feed and house now.  

Beatrice pats him on the arm, tells him it’s his own fault for nixing the dog idea, and orders him to shut his trap before he catches flies. And they’re off. Driving home like there’s nothing wrong in the world. 

Wirt opens his mouth and asks, “How was your summer, bluebirds?”

The look Beatrice gives him suggests that Wirt has already irreparably ravaged whatever plan she had formulated to get the truth out of them. 

“It was fine,” says Dipper, and that’s all they ever say. 

It was fine. They had a nice time. Mabel got a pig, and a grappling hook, and Dipper got a new passion for dead languages and a massive crush on a girl named Wendy. Mabel got a punch to the arm for the last bit. 

It’s the most illicit information Beatrice and Wirt can wheedle out of them. 

They try the twins together. They try them apart. They try asking them casually and they try begging them to tell them anything, anything at all. 

It was fine. It was fine. Why are they being so weird about this? Everything’s fine. They’re not jumpy. They’re acting how they always do. Mom and Dad are the weird ones, why are they always hovering now? 

Yes, keep the light on when we sleep. Just. Just keep the light on. 

Whatever happened, they can’t get a rise out of them. They’re locked down, strictly secret, and they don’t want Beatrice and Wirt to know a damn thing about the summer past a couple of boat trips and free pancakes they got one time. 

One time, Wirt kneels before their spot on the couch and says, “Mabel, Dipper, I swear to God, whatever happened, we’ll help you. Just talk to us, and we’ll handle it, okay? You won’t ever have to go back to Gravity Falls again.”

It takes them three days to calm the kids down from the hysteria that unleashes, and even then, Wirt sees a new caution in their eyes. If they were locked down before, they’re at Fort Knox levels of security now. 

Beatrice finds the highest-rated child trauma specialist in the city. She books the earliest available appointment and doesn’t tell the kids where they’re going until they’re already in the parking lot. 

The therapist gets as far as, “Dipper, Mabel, it’s so nice to meet you. You can call me Bill--” before the twins simultaneously excuse themselves to the bathroom and then launch themselves out of a window.  

When Wirt calls Uncle Stan, he gets a voicemail that says, “Hi, you’ve reached Stan Pines. I can’t come to the phone right now because I’m off chasing a lifetime of crushed dreams suddenly given new life. I will be out of cell service for the next three to eight business months. Don’t leave a message, because I won’t care. Sixer, if you don’t stop touching my pack, you’re gonna suddenly find yourself with a normal number of finge--”

Beep. 

He’s at the end of his rope. He doesn’t have a rope. He never had a rope. He is not a person who handles high stress scenarios with any measure of grace or pose. 

So he does what he does whenever he gets particularly overwhelmed, and he calls Greg. 

The entire thing comes spilling out in a flood, the odd looks on their faces, the nightmares, the jumpiness that never calms and the persistent sense that something happened that changed his twins on a fundamental level. There’s a wall, now. If Wirt could just get over it, then maybe… 

Things happened on the other sides of walls. You understood in a way you couldn’t once you glimpsed the other end. 

Greg listens to it all, silent, patient, calm. Greg had grown up to be as reliable as a rock and as patient as can be, and never once lost his odd little flare. You wanted to tell Greg everything. He had an honest spirit. 

“Wirt, that sounds familiar,” Greg tells him, gently. “After what happened when we were kids, the way we were…”

“No,” says Wirt, firm as he can. “No, they couldn’t have--no. It’s not that.”

“It’s something weird though, and they won’t talk about it. We did the exact same thing to Mom and Dad, after. Maybe they--”

“I’d know if my kids died, Greg,” snaps Wirt, and he slams the phone shut. 

… 

People do not live in the forest of Gravity Falls. The forest is treated as a homegrown demarcation, a boundary line more efficient than any fence. Neighborhoods stop where the trees begin. 

The only one who lives beyond is the Pines family. The Pines belong in the woods. 

“We gave Soos the Mystery Shack,” explains Uncle Stan, and he tears a dusty white sheet from the windowpane. “He’s moved in, set up shop with that gal of his. Ford and I built this place before that second summer the kids came down.”

“You built this place?”

The log cabin sits soundly in the forest, stout and secure in a glade not far from the Mystery Shack itself. It’s sturdy, the base ground solidly in stone and every last window reinforced with steel. 

Briefly, Wirt worries about the animals in the area. There had been scratches in the stone, gouges in the wood, like something with curving scythes for claws had tried to tear their way in. And if it tried to get in the house, then it could still be in the woods, waiting. 

And Wirt knows his kids. If there’s trouble in the woods, they’ll find it, usually at the most inconvenient moment while committing the most property damage possible. 

But that’s impossible, Wirt decides. There’s no animal in the world with claws that big, and certainly none in the Pacific Northwest. Australia, maybe. Probably in Australia.

But not here.

“Better than dealing with the real estate office,” Uncle Stan grunts, sneezing into the dusty light. 

Wirt clears his throat. “Uh. Yeah. They’re not that good here, are they?”

Uncle Stan peers at him curiously. “They give you some kind of trouble?”

“It’s more that they were weird,” Wirt explains, folding a sheet neatly into squares. “I thought that we’d be able to find some listings, maybe have some tours of the neighborhood scheduled, but they kept trying to redirect me to a construction company and then only sent me a list of weird old abandoned cabins in the woods when I insisted I wanted to buy, not build.” He tilts his head. “Maybe that was because of you and Uncle Ford.”

Turning, Uncle Stan shuffles to the couch, yanking the covering off with an uneasy flourish. “How so?”

“They said that the Pines family always lived in the woods, away from town. Refused to consider anything else the second they heard my name. Said it was best for everyone if the Pines kept their space.”

Uncle Stan launches into another fit of coughs, but Wirt doesn’t think it’s from the dust. “Well, you know Ford--”

“--I don’t, actually--”

“--crazy experiments, wacky light shows, mad scientist type stuff. Better off in the woods than in the town.”

“But I’m not a scientist; I’m a poet. There’s a bit of a difference.”

“Eh, the kids love the woods more than the town, anyway. Besides, the area may be good for your work. Commune with nature and all that. You wrote a bunch about that kind of thing in your early stuff, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, maybe,” Wirt says, staring out the window. He looks at the woods, at the trees, all awash red and green and gold in the setting sun, and he thinks of claws, of teeth, of eyes that glow and songs that echo in your ears no matter how far you flee, and he says, “I don’t like the forest, much.”

… 

Wirt writes “The Woodsman,” “The Bell,” “The Schoolhouse” and “The Mill.” He writes “The Gnome and the Elephant,” “The Edelwood Tree,” “The Dark Lantern.” He writes of wolves, of witches, of iridescent eyes that stalk the night and of stolen horses that want to steal. He fills his journals with frantic, scrabbling words in hopes that they’ll stop ricocheting in his ears, pours out truth disguised as a fable, a lie, and he thinks that maybe, if enough people think it, it’ll become true.

At the bottom of each poem there is a signature, a farewell and a warning and a truth all in one.

It reads:

beware the beast

… 

Out of all of Gravity Falls’ inhabitants, Wirt has only met one apart from his own uncle. Soos Ramirez finds his way to their house the Christmas following the twins’ first summer. In the weeks leading up to the holiday season, Dipper and Mabel had come to them both with more genuine excitement than they’d wrought from either of them in months. 

“Please,” Mabel begs, and that damn pig is in his lap, that pig that chewed up every one of his ties and is the only thing left to make Mabel laugh. “Soos’s abuelita won a cruise and Melody can’t take him with her because her parents are terrible and he’s going to be all alone for Christmas. He needs to be with family! We have to invite him.”

“Please,” Dipper adds. “He can sleep in my bed.”

“And Dipper can sleep in my bed.”

“And we’ll take care of everything. Please?”

And then they smile. Really, genuinely smile, for the first time since Gravity Falls. Because of Gravity Falls. 

They cave. They can’t help doing anything else. Besides, they figure, maybe now that they have an actual inhabitant of Gravity Falls, they might get some answers. 

The first night, Beatrice and him corner him when he’s already happily lodged on their futon. 

“Mr. and Mrs. Pines. I am so honored that you invited me for your Christmas.” He makes an uncomfortable amount of eye contact. “So. Honored.” 

“We’re honored to have you with us, Soos,” Beatrice says, and the look settles on her face, the one that makes men hang themselves with their own words in courtrooms and still tricks Wirt into losing arguments after almost fifteen years of marriage. “But we were hoping to talk to you about last summer.”

Soos’s eyes shift uneasily. “Um. Okay.”

And he proceeds to tell them absolutely nothing. 

Oh, he tells them of the Mystery Shack, of a grunkle that loves them more than anything and a day on a lake. He tells them of a small town that loves his kids and a small town his kids love. But it’s not what they want.

“That’s wonderful,” says Wirt, impatiently, and Beatrice glowers at him. Wirt glowers back. For some reason, Beatrice counts him as a liability to her evil plans, or whatever. Apparently, he lacks “sense” and “people skills.” 

“We need to know what really happened to them, though,” insists Wirt. “They haven’t been sleeping properly since they came back, and they’ve been having trouble in school. We know something happened, and we want to know what.”

Soos straightens. 

“The little dudes have been having trouble?” he demands. “They didn’t tell anyone that.”

“We can’t help them without knowing what’s wrong,” says Beatrice. “We were hoping you could help us with that.”

Soos nods. “You got it, Mrs. Pines. I won’t let you down.” 

“That’s not what we meant--”

Soos tells them nothing, but he talks to the twins the next day, and then the day after that, and then the day after that. Wirt and Beatrice never find out what they discuss, but everyone involved cries. Including Soos.

Mostly Soos. 

The twins go back to the therapist after the holidays. They call him William. And, slowly but surely, they start to get a little better. They’re not the same after Gravity Falls. Never the same. But they aren’t as bad, and for that, Wirt has a special place in his heart for Soos Ramirez. 

“SOOS!”

But he would love it if he were absolutely anywhere else at the moment. 

It’s nothing against Soos. It’s against the sound coming out of his daughter’s mouth, which has reached a pitch that should only be audible to dogs and small, shifty-eyed animals, but is rather one that God deigned humans to suffer as well. 

“--omigosh omigosh it’s so pretty I can’t believe it when did this happen omigosh omigosh omigosh--”

Wirt turns.

His twins have attached themselves soundly to Soos, each one tucked securely into either side. Dipper punches Soos companionably on the arm, madly grinning, and then plugs his ears with a wince. Mabel, for her part, has already captured a victim in her glitter-crusted hands, and does not seem to be keen on letting go any time soon.

Wirt limps his way over.

“Soos,” he greets, smiling. “And this must be Melody. It’s been awhile.”

“Mr. Pines sir!” Soos says, eagerly shaking both his hands. “We are all like, so excited that you have decided to move these little dudes to Gravity Falls permanently.” He leans forward until he’s uncomfortably close. “So. Excited.”

“I’m excited,” Wirt says, carefully extracting his hands with a wince. “I can’t wait to see more of the town my kids love so much.”

Ah, awkward silence his old friend. 

Wirt clears his throat, “So what’s all the excitement about?”

Mabel shrieks.

“Soos and Melody are getting married,” Mabel screams, and a puff of glitter explodes from each sleeve. God bless her, Wirt should have never okay’d that theatre effects course. “This is the best day of my life.”

Dipper tilts his head. “What about that day where you won an entire ice cream cake at that crafts fair, ate it in under four minutes, and turned your entire mouth pink and purple?”

“You did what?” says Wirt.

“So. Much. Better,” replies Mabel. 

Shaking his head slightly, Wirt says, “Congratulations, you two. I’m so happy for you.”

“Thank you, Mr. Pines. It means a lot coming from you. You and Mrs. Pines are like, relationship goals.”

Tension begins to wrap around Wirt’s smile like tree roots. He nods amiably. Dipper coughs.

Wincing, Soos says, “I’m sorry for your loss, Mr. Pines, little Pines. Mrs. Pines was a good lady.”

Wirt smiles, and he says, “She really was.”

… 

When Wirt is nineteen years old, he meets his wife for the second first time. 

He’s wearing a suit, grey and wool with gold buttons that gleamy dully in the sun. It belonged Wirt’s grandfather and it shows, and Wirt hates it with everything in him. His mother had insisted, though, begged him to dress up for meeting his publisher earlier in the day, and Wirt had acquiesced just to make the fighting stop. He regrets it every time he looks in the mirror.

He looks like he belongs in the Unknown. It worries him, because a part of him still suspects it’s true

He walks by the lake’s edge, the check for his first poem in his pocket and his journal in his hand, looks at the dark, languid waves, the light of the quarter-moon glinting dangerously off the knife-edged crests, and he hears, come back, come back, come back.

I will, he thinks. but not yet.

The grass beneath his feet is bright and green, lush in a way that nothing in the Unknown ever was. The colors had almost been overly-saturated there, everything dark and mossy like fertile black earth. 

Sometimes, when Wirt closes his eyes for too long, when he opens them again and can’t remember if he ever left, he looks for the bright. He looks for the sun.

Then he knows. Only then. 

He breaks his gaze away from the water, his eyes skipping back to the shore, and there’s something red in between.

Wirt’s journal drops to the grass.

“Hey!” he calls, his feet already skidding down the muddy bank. “Are you okay?”

The girl more marches than swims, stumbling through the water with a stubborn grit Wirt has only seen once before. Her hair, long and sunset-red, plasters across her face like an octopus, and her sky-blue dress tries to drag her back beneath like said octopus’s bigger, meaner cousin. 

Wirt pauses before plunging into the water.

(comebackcomebackcomeback)

His shoes enter the muddy lake bed with a squelch.

It’s not winter but the water still chills him to the bone, and his ridiculous suit retains water like a sponge. He swims through the lake, to the girl, and he very carefully keeps his head above the waves.

comebackcomebackcomeback, sings the lake beneath. come back, back to the Unknown, you’re of it, from it, you don’t belong anywhere else.

Gritting his teeth, Wirt plunges his arms through the water, and he spits, not yet.

He reaches the girl when she’s halfway to shore.

“Let me help you,” he chokes out, spray lashing at his mouth.

“I’m fine,” she says, still trying to stomp through a solid twenty feet of water.

“Oh, I can see that.” Wirt rolls his eyes. “Just let me help. Drowning is not fun, I can tell you that.”

“You’re going to drown us both if you don’t— hey!”

Grabbing her by the waist, Wirt begins to drag her back to shore.

“I don’t need your help!”

“And I don’t need you to drag us both underwater! Do you even know how to swim?”

“You’re the one who’s going to drag us both under! Why don’t you just take your help and shove it up your— gurrrpke.”

Wirt begins to drown. The girl goes down with him.

They push back up towards the moonlight together, the water dancing in their eyes farther and farther away. They break the surface gasping, coughing, and they shake their heads as one.

“Swim now,” says the girl, and she sounds so familiar. “Fight later.”

“Agreed.” 

They tumble onto semi-solid mud in a pile, choking and gasping all the while. Wirt’s fingers squelch deeper into the mud, and he thinks he feels something swim around his ankle. He shudders.

He hates the water. He hates the woods.

“Well, let’s never do that again,” says Wirt, spluttering.

“Agreed,” says the girl, wiping her tangled hair, all splayed across her face like a spiderweb, out of her eyes with a muddy hand. 

Taking her hand in his, Wirt begins to yank them both to their feet. 

She looks at him. She freezes.

She says: “Wirt?” 

“Do I know you?” he asks, and then he stops as well. 

He says: “Beatrice?”

Beatrice nods. 

Wirt drops her.

“Wirt.”  

“Sorry!” Wirt exclaims, jumping forward. He moves to grab her again, but Beatrice simply glares at him. He immediately retreats. “Sorry, I, uh, just didn’t expect to see you. Here. And not a bluebird. I mean, I guess you wouldn’t be a bluebird anymore, what with the scissors and all, but, um. How are you here again?”

Blinking slowly, Beatrice says, “I don’t know. I don’t remember how I got in the water.”

“That makes sense,” Wirt says. “At least, I think it does. I didn’t remember entering the Unknown; I was just suddenly in the woods, and lost, and I didn’t realize it until after. I guess it would work the same way, you know. Backwards.”

She peers around him. “Where is ‘backwards,’ exactly?”

“What? Oh, uh, Piedmont. Piedmont, California.” 

“What’s ‘California?’”

“That... is a much harder question to answer. But don’t worry, because Greg and I will help you find a way back home. It’s only fair, after all you did for us. Minus the, uh, whole, ‘trying to enslave us to a witch’ thing. That part kind of sucked.” 

Beatrice gives him a tired look. Wirt squirms. 

“Greg?” she says after a moment. “He’s okay?”

“Oh, yeah, definitely. He’s doing really great.”

“Does he… remember me?”

Ducking his head, Wirt nods. “He remembers you. Misses you. We talk about it, sometimes. About the Unknown.” 

Beatrice nods as well. “That’s, uh, good. That he remembers.”

Clearing his throat, Wirt says, “Well, let’s get out of this lake. My parents live up the road from here; you can borrow some of my mom’s clothes for now, and you can stay at my apartment until we figure out how to get you home.”

He holds out his hand.

She takes it.

… 

Wendy comes next.

Wirt has heard plenty of Wendy before. She was, apparently, the coolest person on the face of planet earth, and if there was a chance to be anyone other than yourself, you should pick Wendy Corduroy. For a solid month after coming back, Dipper had a stutter and a blush whenever she came up, and it was a fun, brutal family game to tease him over it, because no family is complete without noticing a weakness and targeting it like a violent predator. He grew out of it before the next summer came to pass, much to Mabel’s dismay. Still, Wirt gets a fair load of gushing praise for Wendy every time Gravity Falls comes up.

The fact that she decides to come in through the window instead of the door throws him for a moment, however. 

“Hey, little dudes,” she says, casually sliding the window closed behind her like it’s the most natural thing in the world. “Welcome back!”

Wirt stares for a moment, decides that if this was a home invasion there’d be more screaming involved, and he sets his box on the kitchen table.

“Wendy!” Dipper says, beaming, and he looks happier in that moment than he’s been in weeks. “How’s it going?”

Wendy pulls him into a half-hug, then snatches his cap from his head before settling her own down in its place.

“Pretty good,” she says. “Kinda sad I’ll be losing that hat for good now.”

Dipper pulls the pine tree hat lower over his face. “It is pretty cool.”

“Eh, I’m happier to have you guys back.” She shifts awkwardly, rubbing the back of her neck. “The circumstances could be better, though. I’m sorry for your loss, Dipper.”

Dipper ducks his head. “Thanks, Wendy.”

Someone coughs.

“Well,” says Mabel, “if my dorky little brother is done hugging you, that means it’s my turn.”

“Hey, Mabel!” says Wendy, and she wraps her in a hug. Then, she releases her, and turns to the others. “Mr. Pines,” she says, nodding to Uncle Stanley. “Mr. Pines Part Two,” she says, nodding to Uncle Stanford. She looks at Wirt, then scratches the back of her head before holding out a hand. “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

“Wirt Pines,” says Wirt, taking her hand with a smile. “And you’re the famous Wendy.”

“Famous, huh?”

Wendy bumps Dipper’s shoulder with hers, smiling smugly.

Dipper splutters. “Wha--I--Mabel’s the one always talking about our friends here--I--don’t--”

Wendy laughs.

“What’s this about the hats?” asks Wirt after a moment. “You know, I think that’s the first time I’ve seen Dipper without his fur-skin in three years.”

Everyone freezes. 

“... Was it something I said?”

“Oh my gosh, Mr. Pines,” says Wendy, utterly thrown, “you don’t know.”

“... I don’t know what?”

“The hat,” says Mabel, her voice carrying the reverence usually reserved for craft conventions and industrial-sized buckets of sprinkles. “Dipper’s hat. His pine tree hat.”

“I have literally never seen that hat before in my life, sweetheart.”

“Dipper’s kinda famous for his pine tree hat around here,” says Wendy, and Dipper’s cheeks flush scarlet. “It’s like his symbol or something. You know, like the Superman ‘S’ or the Bat Signal, only, you know, less cool.”

Dipper clears his throat awkwardly. “I’m always wearing it when I’m here. I guess I never thought about the fact that you never saw it.”

“Ah.” Wirt nods, and for a moment, he feels oddly bereft. “Well, I’m glad I get to see it now.”

He’s starting to expect awkward silences now.

“You kids seem popular around here,” he tries. “Iconic hats, lots of friends--it’s nice.”

Wendy’s eyes widen.

“Um,” she says. “About that.”

She eyes Wirt nervously.

“Everyone’s really excited to see you guys,” she says with all the transparency of a melted car tire. “Um. They’re really--happy--you two are finally moving down here.”

“Uh, yeah.” Dipper coughs nervously. “We noticed.”

“Just brace yourselves,” she warns. “We told everyone to restrain themselves, but you know how Gravity Falls can be. Remember how they used to get about Little Gideon? Just. Expect a lot of visitors.”

Huh, Wirt thinks, watching as both Stanford and Stanley excuse themselves, sweating profusely. That’s not suspicious at all. 

“I think it’s nice that your friends want to visit,” says Wirt. “I can’t wait to get to know this place.”

“So,” says Wendy. “How much did the little dudes tell you about their summers here?”

“Oh, I don’t know. They told me about the friends they made, some of the things they did. Why?”

“Right.” Wendy nods. “Um. I have to leave immediately.”

“Immediately?”

“Yep,” she says, jerking the window open and climbing out. “I, um, I just remembered, I left my stove on. Bye, guys. It was nice to meet you, Mr. Pines.”

Well, that isn’t suspicious at all. 

“She was nice,” says Wirt, after a moment.

Dipper jerks violently. “Um, yeah! She’s really nice.”

“It’s a shame about her stove, though.”

Dipper laughs nervously. “Right. Total shame. That.”

It’s embarrassing, Wirt decides. He was way better at hiding things when he was their age. 

“You know,” Wirt says, making eye contact with Mabel over his son’s head and winking, “she looks a bit like your mother.”

Dipper squints at them. “This stopped being funny when I was thirteen.”

“No, Dad is right, I think so too,” says Mabel. “I think so too.”

“I’m going to live in the woods and you’ll never see me again.”

“Same hair,” lists Wirt. “She carries herself the same way, too. Like you don’t want to mess with her.”

“Well, you don’t want to mess with Wendy,” says Dipper. “She’s scary.”

“So was your mother,” says Wirt, and he shrugs. 

Dipper buries his face in his hands. “I hate you both.”

“I can live with that,” says Wirt, glancing at Mabel.

“Yeah, me too.” 

“Just. Ugh. Stop.”

“All right, all right,” Wirt says. “We’ll stop.”

“For now,” adds Mabel.

Dipper groans.

“So, about these people that are coming. How much is a lot?” 

“Um,” says Mabel.

… 

The thing about Beatrice and Wirt was that putting them together was like tying two stubborn old goats together, pointing them in opposite directions, and lighting a firecracker between them. 

They did not cooperate. 

In Greg’s opinion, whatever Creator there ever was made Wirt, looked at him slightly askance, checked their notes again, and decided that something went terribly wrong and they should probably do precisely the opposite in the next try. 

And thus came Beatrice. Gloriously disturbed in the exact opposite manner. 

Wirt waffles; Beatrice likes action. By the time Wirt has made a decision, Beatrice has already created four problems and fixed three. Beatrice was cunning and made hard decisions and Wirt more liked to sit in the grass and ponder for a moment. 

They balanced each other. They were both so terrible at the world, is the thing. Beatrice, in her defence, spent much less time in it than Wirt. Wirt just never got the hang of things. Beatrice, meanwhile, had gotten a fairly good grasp on it by the end. She just thought it was dumb as hell and she’d be doing things her way. 

 God, Wirt misses her. She’d have burnt this damn town to the ground for giving her trouble. It would have made a terrible mess but between the two of them, they always found a middle ground. 

She was always ready for things sooner than he was. She was always able to find an answer to things sooner, even if it was the wrong one. They made terrible messes between the two of them, but they were always good at cleaning the other’s up. 

He wishes she were here. He thinks she could fix this better than he ever could. 

But she’s already home. She did that first too.

… 

Wirt has never seen this much food in his life. 

They’re stacked on every available surface, casserole dishes and pie tins. They had arrived with a quick succession of knocks on the door not long after the moving truck left, along with a veritable parade of people, some of whom had still been in their actual parade outfits. 

At this rate, Wirt thinks, they’ll have received the entire town by nightfall.

“You kids sure are popular, aren’t you?” Wirt says, slipping up next to his twins. “Everyone wants to come say hello.”

Dipper and Mabel jump in unison.

Frowning, Wirt tilts his head. 

He’ll call Greg tonight, Wirt decides. If there’s anyone who can find out what’s wrong with his kids, it’s him. 

“Well, you know small towns,” Dipper says quickly.”Everyone’s really neighborly.” 

“And Grunkles Ford and Stan are old,” Mabel adds. “Really, really old. Ancient. If the neighborhood doesn’t feed them, they’ll starve.”

Wirt stares at his kids. 

His kids stare back.

“.... Okay,” Wirt says. “It’s nice of them, anyway.” 

He’d sent his kids to live with a con-man for three summers straight, Wirt thinks. The least his kids could have done was learn how to lie convincingly. 

But what were they lying about?

… 

“I’ll telling you Greg,” says Wirt, shouldering his bedroom door closed. “Something’s off about this place. Almost everyone in the town came to welcome us today, and they all started clamming up halfway into a conversation as if they said too much. And the woods.” Wirt shudders. “I always feel as if I’m being watched in the woods.”

“You already knew something was off about Gravity Falls,” Greg points out. “And you always feel that way in the woods.”

“This is different. With other woods, it’s just paranoia. Here it feels like…”  

“The Beast,” Greg finishes, hushed. “But the Beast is gone; we both heard the Huntsman kill him. And--and it can’t be the Unknown there. It’s not possible.”

“It feels like the Unknown. I can’t explain it, but it does.”

“You don’t have a house yet, right?”

“Right,” says Wirt. “I’m going down to the realtor’s office tomorrow to see if we can sort something out, but for now we’re staying with Uncle Ford and Uncle Stan.”

“... we have an Uncle Ford and an Uncle Stan?”

“Right.” Wirt sighs. He explains.

Greg huffs. “No one told me that Uncle Stanley was still alive.”

“He’s not your Uncle Stanley. And it wasn’t your kids who were living with him.”

“Did Dipper and Mabel really not tell you?” 

“Nope,” Wirt pinches his nose. “This is all tied back to that summer when they were twelve, I can feel it.”

“They were never the same after that,” agrees Greg. “But you never found out what happened. What makes you think you’ll find it now?”

“I don’t see what my other options are. I’ve got two kids downstairs watching Ducktective with a man who’s supposed to be dead, and another man who’s supposed to be the other man.”

“You don’t have to stay there, you know,” says Greg. “You could leave Gravity Falls.”

“But we just moved up here.”

“You don’t have a house yet. You can work from anywhere, and it’s summer, so you have a good amount of time to find a new school for the kids. Why did you even go there in the first place? You hate the woods.”

Wirt bites his lip.

It’s an incredibly attractive idea, he’s not going to lie. He could take his kids away from Gravity Falls, where everyone knows them but no one will say why, from the not-dead Grunkles and the forest that watches its occupants. He could leave, maybe go stay with Greg for a while. 

There’s a clatter of footsteps behind him, a hammering up the stairs that bubbles with shouts, and then the door slams open behind him. 

Wirt is immediately tackled from both sides.

“I got him first!” says Mabel, latching onto his left side with all the force of a small army. “Mabel for the win!”

“What? No way!” says Dipper, snaking his arm under Wirt’s right. “I got Dad first. Right, Dad?”

“Um,” says Wirt, cradling the phone precariously in his hands. “Why do you have me?”

“Dad, you have to come downstairs,” Dipper says, his face somber. “We’re playing Dungeons, Dungeons, and more Dungeons, and you have to be on my team.”

“No, you have to be on the cool team, with me and Grunkle Stan,” says Mabel. “Team Rainbow Kitten Sparkles for the win!”

“Grunkle Ford has been planning a campaign for us since last summer,” says Dipper, tugging him out the door. “We’re two rival questing groups battling it out for the same bounty. It’s Grunkle Ford and me against Mabel and Grunkle Stan, and you have to join my team.”

“Dad’s gonna join my team,” says Mabel. “And we’ll lead our forces to victory!”

“Mabel, for the last time, you don’t get forces. You’re a bard. You get a lute.”

“Eh, I can work with that.”

“Dipper,” Uncle Ford calls, appearing at the bottom of the stairs. “Come down and talk strategy. It’s time to crush--I mean, have a friendly game amongst family.”

“Sweetheart,” says Uncle Stan, walking up beside him. “Come down here and help your Grunkle Stan grind these nerds into the dust. We got a point to make.”

“Coming!” 

His twins turn to him expectantly. 

“Are you coming, Dad?” Dipper asks hopefully.

Wirt smiles. “I’ll be right down,” he promises. “I just have to say goodbye to Greg.”

“Oh, hi, Uncle Greg!” Mabel calls, staring at the phone. “I can’t talk right now, I have to go utterly destroy Dipper’s will to live. Love you!”

“Hi, Uncle Greg! Mabel’s going to lose and I’m going to laugh when I beat her. Love you!”

Wirt waits until they thunder back down the stairs, laughing all the while, before he raises the phone to his ear once more.

“I have to make this work, Greg,” he says. “I have to.”

… 

Wirt grunts as he drags himself up the roof access. He got old, somewhere along the time. It was a terrible crime he’s still looking for the perpetrator of. One day he was walking along, young and agile, and the next--bang. Old. His knee clicks when he bends it and he once got excited about a good coupon. 

Devastating. 

Dipper blinks at him. “Dad? What are you doing up here?”

“I wanted to see where you got off to. May I?” 

Dipper blinks again, then nods to the spot next to him. “Sure.”

His knee pops again when he lowers himself into seated position, the traitor. Might as well make a deposit on the retirement home now. 

“You got a nice little place, huh?” says Wirt, glancing around with interest. 

Dipper has a telescope set up to the side, and a nice little area with a lawn chair and a cooler. There’s a chest with blankets and spare pens, and on Dipper’s lap, he already has his journal open. 

When he sees Wirt looking, he immediately shuts it.

The journals came to be not long after the first summer. Dipper went out one day and put three weeks worth of allowance towards a sturdy leather one, dyed a dark, deep blue. He stenciled the Big Dipper on the front himself with Mabel’s gold paints and proceeded to scribble all sorts of odd things in it that he never saw fit to explain to either of them. Dead languages, sections of old manuscripts penned by raving lunatics in ages where they thought leeches were a thing you should put on your body, that sort of thing. 

It got worse when Beatrice got sick. He drew into himself entirely in a way Mabel never did. He locked himself away with his journal and spent hours and hours writing in it with a frantic, nigh-religious fervor. 

When she died, he just. Stopped. Everything. He shut down in a way Wirt has never seen before, and he’d give anything to stop from happening again. This is the first time he’s seen him with his journal since the hospital. 

“What are you writing?”

“Uh, constellation stuff.” There’s a couple old looking books open at Dipper’s side. He knocks those closed too. “It’s boring.”

“I like constellations,” lies Wirt. He hates the outdoors. He hates anything tangentially related to the outdoors. He hates being reminded the outside is a thing that exists. “Tell me about it.”

“Uh, okay.” He nods to the sky. “There’s, uh, some unique constellation formations this summer. People used to think that was important.”

“Important how?”

“Magical?” Dipper scratches the back of his head. “Things happen when the sun, moon, or stars act differently. It affects a lot--babies being born, crops, waves, that sort of thing. People used to think the moon looking a certain way or the stars being in a certain arrangement could even open portals between worlds.”

The woods of Gravity Falls are so dark this time of night. They shudder in the space beyond the house, rustling in the warm summer breeze. When Wirt looks at them, he can almost see the glow of the Beast’s eyes. 

“What do you think?”

Dipper looks startled, suddenly. “About what?”

“Stars. The moon. Can it do all that?”

He doesn’t meet Wirt’s eyes. “You’re asking me if I think the stars are going to open a magical portal to another world in Gravity Falls?”

“Well, no,” says Wirt. “I didn’t ask that.”

“Good. Because that’d be ridiculous.”

“Huh.” 

It was always night, in the Unknown, except when it wasn’t. It never made any sense, the shift of the day. Wirt never remembered the sun rising. He never remembered the sun set. It followed no predictable pattern, no rule, and Wirt hadn’t realized how odd that was until he was out of it. 

Like waking up from a dream. You suddenly realize how little sense it had made. 

“You know you can tell me anything, Dip. Right?”

Dipper smiles at him, pained, thin. He doesn’t reply. 

Chapter Text

“Hey Wirt,” says Beatrice, her back facing him. “Do you think we die?”

“Um,” says Wirt, which he thinks is an appropriate thing to say to deep, existential questions at three in the morning. “Yes? I mean, there’s pretty significant evidence we do.”

“We only think we do,” insists Beatrice. She’s tucked up in his bed; she’s been bunking with him ever since the lake spat her out, and it’s almost like a prolonged sleep over with a lot of bickering. His mom threw a fit when she found out Beatrice was staying in his apartment, but Wirt couldn’t bring himself to care. You don’t fight a witch with someone and leave them on the streets. “What if--what if there’s never an end? What if it’s just… going on to the next place?”

Wirt turns over to face her. “I don’t follow.”

“You drowned, right?” says Beatrice, because she could always be trusted to handle things with tact and care. “You nearly died. But you didn’t. You just went to the Unknown.”

“So?”

“So, the Unknown was the next place for you. But for me, it was my first place. What if--what if that’s all that life is? Just eternally going on to the next place? And--and maybe in the Unknown, maybe when you die there you don’t, you just go to wherever’s the next place.”

“I’m going back to the Unknown,” Wirt tells her. There’s a heaviness to the words. Wirt’s never let them rest in the air before. “This place--it’s temporary for me. When it ends… the Unknown’s going to take me back.”

“I think life happens in circles,” says Beatrice. “We can always doubleback.”

Something about the way she says it gives him pause. “Beatrice, are you not going back to the Unknown?”

“I am,” she says, with every ounce of certainty that Wirt did. “I’m supposed to. But I don’t know if I’m supposed to go back yet.”

…

It’s not that Wirt hates the woods per se. It’s just that he hates being in them and remembering they exist and remembering he is a thing that exists with them, and them in general, per se. 

That’s not quite it. 

Once upon a time, Wirt woke up in the Unknown, and there were branches on his limbs, tangled in his hair, and when he ripped them off, he had the stumbling, shaky thud of his heart telling him with utmost certainty that he was on the verge of becoming something else. He is of the Unknown, he belongs to it, it made him part of itself and it made itself in his image, and his departure was not so much an escape as a granted leave. 

Sometimes, Wirt looks at his wrists with the certainty that inside is oozing, oily black. 

And what’s even worse is, he doesn’t think it’s a bad thing. 

It’s the reminder, mostly. The thought that this isn’t the Unknown. That he isn’t home, and that home will take him back one day. Which isn’t an unwelcome thought, but it is unwelcome that it’s not an unwelcome thought. 

It’s like this:

The Unknown released him, set him back into this world, did it of its own free will, but Wirt was no longer a citizen of this place. The Unknown had taken him as one of its own, transmogrified him, made him its denizen, and that didn’t change just because Wirt left its woods. And Wirt knew this, felt it in his bones, in the black tar of his blood. He returned on a visitor’s visa, and when that time ran out, he’d be sent back to his home.

The woods of this world, the woods away from the Unknown, they’re like wandering a grocery store in a foreign country, looking at brands of food that would never be found on your home shelf. It’s the constant, subtle reminder that your home is a world away and this place is only temporary, it’s only packaging to be torn. 

Wirt stares at the woods of this world through the window. He thinks of home. 

His kids aren’t there. No one is. Stan and Ford had taken off together, off to do something that involved rope and comically large sacks and a steampunk-noir cosplay style gun, and they had frozen when they saw Wirt nursing a cup of coffee in the kitchen and muttered something about raccoons before fleeing into the woods. Dipper had been out the door not long after, journal under his arm and cap firmly on his head, and had barely stopped to say goodbye before darting into the early morning sun. Mabel hadn’t come downstairs yet, but Wirt isn’t surprised. She deserves to sleep in. 

He sticks his head into the twin’s room at 9:30. Asleep. 

At 10:30, he sets about making pancakes, and expects her to pounce on him at any moment. She seems to have a sixth sense about pancakes, his daughter. He once tried to eat them when he thought he was home alone, and she jumped down the staircase and landed less than an inch from him. His life flashed before his eyes. He made promises to God. He wondered about the last time he updated his will. 

Sometimes, he wonders if he should have crushed their dreams more as children. His kids are too confident and worldly and do things like leap down the stairs in pursuit of pancakes. He should have given them more anxiety out of sheer self preservation. 

You can measure the time between when Wirt begins making pancakes and when Mabel appears in seconds, not minutes. It’s a law more constant than gravity: Where there are pancakes, there must also be Mabel.

She doesn’t come down.

Which is fine. She’s probably still tired. No one would dare eat pancakes without her anyway. He’ll go for a walk and she’ll have eaten the entire plate by the time he returns. 

Approximately five steps into his walk, he remembers that he hates the woods and also walking through them, and wonders why he ever thought this was a good idea.

Oh well. He’s committed now. Better to face a half hour of existential dysphoria than the awkwardness of returning one minute after he left.

The trees, he thinks, pulling his arms tight. They aren’t edelwood. They don’t even look anything like them. And the sun is bright and cheerful and there, and the grass is green, and there’s no sentient animal showing up to clobber him with a tuba. These woods are nothing like the Unknown.

So why do they remind him so much of it?

Something scuttles through the bushes on his left.

Wirt stops dead in his tracks.

For a second, he thought he saw...

Nope. Nope. Absolutely not. He will not go after the strange noise in the woods. He will not be that one white girl in every horror movie ever. Wirt has done his time being chased by monsters through the wilderness, please and thank you, and he’s not about to get mauled by a bear in some random Oregonian woods. Are there bears in Oregon? Does it matter? That didn’t look like a bear. That very much didn’t look like a bear. Or, well, it did, but only if someone like. Took multiple bears. And glued them together. And then stuck a “Babba The World Tour: Disco Never Dies <3” hat on the main head and taught it how to walk with the aura of someone that watched French films for fun and went to wine tastings on the weekend. 

But that’s only Wirt’s initial impression.

He sighs. Oh great.

It’s not that Wirt’s trying to have the relative life expectancy of a Homecoming Queen on Halloween night in a Hitchcock film. Really, it’s not. And usually he walks away from the murder sounds in isolated woods where no one can hear him scream. 

It’s just that his kids haven’t been the same since they set foot in this town, and if he wants to know why, that means he needs to start investigating.

Oh God, he’s going to end up on Dateline, isn't he? And all they’ll be able to say about him is “Yes, Wirt was an excellent poet, but he was also a total idiot who walked straight up to a serial killer wearing bearskins in an area where no one could hear him scream. He will be dearly missed.”

Who gets the kids then? Greg is supposed to get custody, Wirt knows, but his house isn’t well suited for kids at the moment and their grunkles have spent extended periods of time as their sole guardians. Greg hasn’t ever raised kids before. Not to mention the fact that Uncle Stan and Uncle Ford have actual, physical custody of the moment, and the kids seem to want to live with them, besides. Would that be enough to contest the will? 

But on the other hand, one of them is legally dead, and the other one isn’t allowed on airplanes or in most states. Are they even allowed to be around kids? Wirt doesn’t know. Should he call his lawyer about figuring out custody stuff just in case?

“Dad?”

Spinning, Wirt finds Dipper staring at him with a confused frown and a tilted head.

“What are you doing out here? There’s no path in this part of the woods.”

There’s no bears, either, Wirt finds. He’s been following nothing for at least five minutes.

“I’m just, you know. Communing. With nature. Yeah. That.”

Dipper’s frown deepens. “You hate nature.”

“You know, you’re absolutely right. Which way is away from nature?”

“Come on,” Dipper says, jerking his head slightly before he turns on his heel. “I’ll lead you back to the cabin.”

Wirt follows him gratefully.

He has great kids. The best kids. Wonderful kids. This is the exact reason why people should have kids. They’re so useful. 

“So why are you off the path?”

“I never follow the path,” says Dipper. “I don’t need it.”

“Know these woods pretty well, huh?”

A ghost of a smile touches Dipper’s lips. “Pretty well,” he says, like it’s his own private joke. “You should be careful though, Dad. It’s easy to get lost.”

Wirt gulps.

Greg, he says, looking up at the trees. I think we’re lost. 

“We wouldn’t want that,” he says.

“I’m surprised Mabel let you come out here on your own,” continues Dipper, hopping professionally over logs and rocks. “Usually she’s all for joining you whenever you go for a walk.”

“She’s sleeping in today, it seems. How late was she up last night anyway?”

Frowning, Dipper says, “She went to bed early.”

“Huh?”

“Even earlier than I did, but I didn’t sleep much last night. I thought she’d be up hours ago.”

“She didn’t get up for pancakes, either,” muses Wirt, and he shoves his hands in his pockets.

Dipper falls off the log.

“Mabel didn’t get up for pancakes?” he demands, stopping dead in his tracks.

Wirt looks at Dipper.

Dipper looks Wirt.

They book it. 

Dipper skids into the cabin, Wirt directly on his heels. He ducks into the kitchen, boots leaving muddy shadows in their wake, and stops cold before the stove. A stack of pancakes sits atop it, tall and whole. Wirt turns and heads up the stairs without a word.

Ford meets him at the top. “Mabel’s in Sweater Town. Stan’s with her now, but she won’t come out.”

“I got her,” says Wirt, and he slips into the room.

“--and then I’ll sell your brother to the gnomes as their mail-order bride--”

“Hi, Stan,” says Wirt. “How’s it going?”

“Um,” says Uncle Stan. “I was just trying to cheer Mabel here up.”

“You guys don’t have to do this,” says Mabel, muffled by her sweater. “I’m fine. You probably have stuff to do anyway.”

Wirt nods to Stan.

Reluctantly, Uncle Stan rises, squeezing Mabel’s be-sweatered arm as he stands. 

“I’ll be out back helping Ford if you need anything, sweetheart.”

Then, rubbing the back of his neck, he walks out the door and turns the corner, Dipper appearing in the doorframe in his wake.

Wirt takes his place next to Mabel.

“Hey, Mabel Syrup,” he says, tweaking her hand slightly. “How’s the weather in Sweater Town?”

“Stormy.” 

“Any forecast for sun?”

“Nope.”

“Huh, that’s too bad. I was hoping you could join me for an outing in Pancake Town.”

Mabel peaks out her head just enough to look at him flatly.

“Don’t pander to me, Dad. It’s just embarrassing for both of us.”

Then, she burrows back down.

Wirt rocks back slightly. “Oh.”

“You can go back downstairs, you know; you don’t have to feel bad. It’s just. Today.”

“And what’s today?”

Mabel groans, wrapping her sweater-covered arms over her sweater-covered head. “It’s silly,” she mutters.

“Silliness? In my family?”

Mabel sniffles. “Haha.”

“I won’t think it’s silly,” promises Wirt. 

“... Today is the day that that dating show has its season premiere. You know, the one with the guy dating all those girls on the island.”

“ You mean One Guy Dates Twenty Girls on an Island?”

“That’s the one.” Mabel nods. She pops her head out again with a resigned sigh, her hair pricking up at the ends. “Mom and I used to watch it every Monday. We would knit and make caramel corn and mock the contestants.”

Wirt looks down. “And you can’t, this time.”

“It’s stupid. We didn’t even like the show that much.” She looks down at her hands, then pushes the wayward hair out of her face with a choked sob. “I just miss Mom.”

“I know, pumpkin,” says Wirt, wrapping his arms around her shoulders. “I do too.”

Over Mabel’s head, his eyes meet Dipper’s.

Wirt nods. 

Dipper nods back.

Then, Wirt wriggles his arm beneath Mabel’s knees and scoops her into his arms and into the air.

Mabel squawks. “Dad!”

“Grab your sister’s stuff, Dip,” says Wirt, lugging her towards the stairs. Did he get old? When did he get old? This was so much easier when she was a baby and was like, the size of a bag of rice. “She’s only got a few hours to teach our sorry butts how to knit before the show starts, and she’s going to need every last one of them.”

“You guys don’t have to do this,” says Mabel, her face pressed into her hands as he lugs her down the stairs with his rickety-old-man body. Oh God, he’s old. He shouldn’t have become a poet; he should have gone into… construction… or something. Something that would have given him abs. An ab. Anything. “Really. Dad, you must have so much to do, and Dipper, you’ve been planning today for weeks. Go have fun without me.”

“Do you hear something, Dipper?” Wirt wonders aloud. “I’m hearing this odd chirping sound. Like a little bluebird. It doesn’t make much sense, though.”

“No sense,” agrees Dipper, his arms laden with plastic bags of yarn, pairs of long needles sticking wantonly out the ends. He jerks one stray handle, then almost falls down the stairs. Wirt should be concerned about that, right? He could lose an eye. Wirt should get on making sure his kids have eyes. It’s just. He doesn’t have that many hands left. He’ll be fine, right? Right. 

Gratefully, Wirt stops at the bottom of the stairs, huffing a breath before he turns and heads to the couch. He dumps his firstborn there with no ceremony whatsoever. 

“Maybe I should have carried Mabel,” says Dipper, dumping the bags at the foot of the couch.

“I could do it fine,” he says, wheezing, because his body has betrayed him. 

“Dipper’s right, Dad,” says Mabel. “He has like, muscles now. It’s the weirdest thing ever.”

“Hey!”

Dipper did get muscles at some point down the line, and Wirt still has no idea how it happened. One day he just looked up and saw him doing one-armed push ups over a book about theoretical physics. He didn’t even know that Dipper had biceps before that. His son has surpassed him in strength, which, granted, isn’t that hard to do, but Wirt still finds this fact to be incredibly unfair. Not enough-to-motivate-him-to-do-a-push-up unfair, but still unfair. 

“Ungrateful children. Just. Show me the yarn.”

Dipper snorts, plopping himself on the couch next to Mabel. Wirt sits next to them both.

Mabel bursts into tears.

The lesson doesn’t start for another half hour--they’re too busy calming her down again. But when it does, Wirt’s daughter is smiling.

It’s something, at least. 

As he predicted, it takes Mable many hours to teach her idiot relations. The Pines boys aren’t very good with pointy things. They have some kind of primitive skill disposed towards stabbing themselves. But Mabel’s gifted and has a patience found in none of their genetic histories, and she teaches them well. At the end, Wirt is well on his way to making what, he assumes, is a colander. Probably. It’s got the holes for it, at least.

Behind them, there’s the creak of a door and a gust of brisk Oregan air. 

“Shut the door, Grunkle Ford,” Dipper says, not turning around. “You’ll let something in.”

The door creaks shut again.

“Marybella-Dean is gonna win,” says Mabel with certainty, happily cramming a fistful of caramel corn down her throat. “She’s got all the same interests as Jaxxon.”

“No way. She’s sweet, but she’s already cried at least twice. She doesn’t have the fighting spirit to last. But Everlee-Jade looks like she would shiv a man for half a grapefruit. She’s the kind of girl who would throw herself down the stairs to keep someone else from going on the solo date.” Dipper looks down at his knitting and frowns. The needles are suspended in a tangled weave. “I think I’m doing something wrong.”

Wirt cranes his neck to see the Stans enter the living space, shaking the leaves off their hair as they walk. Uncle Stan shrugs out of his coat, looks at the TV, looks at Wirt, and raises an eyebrow.

“Uh, hey there,” he says with care, then edges closer to his brother. “What’s going on?”

“I’m going to stab something,” mutters Wirt, trying to wrench his needles back into place. Why are they upside down? How are they upside down?

“So is Everlee-Jade,” says Dipper.

In the corner of his eye, Wirt sees Ford take something out of his pocket. He frowns. Is that a water gun?

“I think Stan is a bit surprised to see you knitting, Dipper,” says Ford, edging around the couch. “You always seemed to be more interested in the, uh, manlier pursuits.”

“People who feel the need to label their activities as manly are simply insecure in themselves.”

“Wendy told you to shut it about the manliness thing, didn’t she, kid?” says Stan.

Dipper deflates. “Yes.”

“Oh thank Moses.”

Ford pockets his water gun again.

“Dad and Dipper are watching the show I used to watch with Mom,” explains Mabel. 

Stan and Ford exchange a glance. 

“Is that so, pumpkin?”

“Is this why you were in Sweater Town?”

“Yeah.” Mabel nudges Dipper with her foot and leans on Wirt’s shoulder. “It’s nice knitting with someone again.”

Stan sighs. He scratches his head. “All right, scoot over.”

Dipper scoots obligingly.

 “You too, Grunkle Stan?” says Mabel, perking up.

“Don’t go gooey-eyed on me, kid. I’m always looking for a marketable skill.”

Mabel goes gooey-eyed. 

Ford settles down next to Wirt.

“This shouldn’t be too hard,” he says decisively. “I once spent four months enslaved in a textiles factory run by a warlord; this doesn't look too different.”

Wirt frowns. “Wait, what?”

“Anywho,” says Ford. “Dipper, show me how to use this”--he frowns at the needles in his hand--“primitive weapon.”

“Do I look like I have them figured out?” demands Dipper. His arms have joined his needles in the twist of thread. “Someone help.”

“What are we watching?” says Stan, frowning.

“Infidelity,” replies Wirt, then promptly stabs himself in the hand.

Everlee-Jade bursts into tears, somehow knocking the entire cabana over in the process. Jaxxon looks over from where he had been hovering dramatically over Krystann’s papercut. 

“Ha, people manipulating each other on TV! I can get behind this! Princess, pass me some of that yarn.”

“Pink or glitter pink?”

Stan frowns. “Do I look like an amateur to you? Glitter pink.”

“Stanley, that’s a very ambitious yarn for your first attempt,” warns Ford. “Perhaps you should--”

“Perhaps you should be careful about telling me what to do before my foot ends up lodged in the seat of your pants. Perhaps.”

“No fighting around the knitting needles,” says Dipper. “There’s too high of a risk of getting stabbed already.”

Should Wirt break this up? This seems like something Wirt should break up.

He doesn’t.

Because his kids are happy, and their shoulders are not tense and their hands are not shaking and their smiles are not fake. They’re happy, they’re at home, and maybe, just maybe, Wirt can be too.

… 

“Some of my brothers didn’t come home,” says Beatrice. “They said it was time for them to move on and then just… left. That it was time, and the Unknown told them.”

Wirt frowns. “You said you didn’t know how you ended up in the lake.”

“I don’t,” says Beatrice. “But before… I heard singing in the woods. And… I think I already knew that it was time to go somewhere else.”

… 

Later, Wirt asks Dipper what he’s been planning for weeks, and Dipper freezes like he caught him with one hand in the cookie jar, only the cookie jar has like, state secrets instead of cookies. He asks him what he’s talking about. 

He cocks his head. “You know, what Mabel said, about planning this day for weeks?”

“Weeks?” He scratches the back of his head. “I don’t know about weeks.”

“Neither do I,” says Wirt. “I’m just repeating what your sister said.”

“It’s nothing,” says Dipper. “Just, uh. Star stuff.”

“The formation thing? That’s happening?”

“Right around now, yeah.” He taps his hand absentmindedly against the cover of his journal. “I was gonna, uh, find a place in the woods. A viewing sight. That. Yeah. You’re not going to see formations like this again for thousands of years. Might as well get a good spot.” 

He stares out the window, half-chewing on his lip. Almost without thinking, he slings his backpack on his back and takes a step towards the door. 

“Actually, I’m going to--”

“If you wanted I could--”

“--go.”

The door slams.

“--come with you,” finishes Wirt, with a sigh.

… 

Beatrice and Wirt wait until Greg leaves school the next day before they tell him that Beatrice is staying for a bit longer than they thought. It’s relieving, in a way, because they didn’t really had a plan for sending her back past “drown her in lake,” which Wirt insisted on removing from the Whiteboard O’ Ideas before someone saw it and arrested them. 

Greg bounces up to them after the final bell, and they manage to get all the way through a trip to the ice cream shop before Beatrice clears her throat. “Greg, we’ve been talking.”

“That’s good,” chirps Greg, chocolate sauce smeared across his face. God bless him, he wouldn’t know how to change if someone tried to force him at gunpoint. “Mom says you two must be doing a lot of”--he draws quotation marks in the air--“talking, but she always sounds really mad when she says it and always uses the air marks. I don’t know why she’s so mad.”

Wirt’s going to drown himself.

“Okay… Whatever,” says Beatrice, plainly bewildered. “I need to go back to the Unknown.”

“We all do,” says Greg. “But I don’t think we have a plan past cement shoes.”

“No one is drowning anyone in the lake,” says Wirt, firmly.

“I don’t need to go back yet,” says Beatrice, exasperated. “I think this is my next place. I’m… going to stay for a while.”

Greg squints at them over the corpse of his ice cream sundae. “Didn’t we already decide that?”

“Uh…” She exchanges a glance with Wirt. “No? No, we didn’t.”

“We did,” insists Greg. “You both started acting like you were gonna be here forever. We already decided.”

“What,” says Wirt. He blows a long gust of air out his nose. “We haven’t--we’re not…” 

“You did,” says Greg, promptly. “You just are bad at figuring things out.”

“We just decided this,” says Beatrice. “Just now. Last night.”

“Oh, what are are we gonna do with these friends o’ mine,” sighs Greg, and he pulls Jason Funderburker out of his front overall pocket so he can look him directly in the eyes. “They don’t seem to know anything.”

Beatrice pinches the bridge of her nose. “Greg--”

“I wonder when they’re going to figure out they’re dating.”

“Greg.”

… 

“--not tell him ?”

Wirt pauses at the top step.

The house is dark, night seeping through the window panes with all manner of unholy howls, and Wirt had thought himself the only one awake. He had thought they’d all be asleep at this hour. Apparently, though, he’s just the only one not downstairs.

Dipper replies, then, but Wirt can’t quite make out the words. He hears him babble, though, the pleading way he always does when he’s trying to get out of trouble. 

(“he gets it from you, Wirt,” Beatrice tells him, her long red hair falling back, back, back. “you always used to do that when we were kids.”)

“You don’t know how Dad is,” says Mabel, sniffling, and Wirt takes a hesitant step back. Is this--about him? “He’s weird about this kind of stuff. And we love Gravity Falls, and you, and everything else about this town. We didn’t want to risk him not letting us come back.”

“He… notice something...” Uncle Ford’s voice hisses. 

“Sure as hell noticed Ford,” says Uncle Stan, snorting.

“What…. supposed… say?” says Dipper. 

“I don’t know, the truth?”

“If we told Mom and Dad, they’d either believe us, or they wouldn’t.” And then Mabel, his sunshine-girl who was born with a laugh, begins to cry. “I don’t know which is worse.”

Uncle Stan sounds tired. “Well, someone has to figure out how to explain it to him now. Because as it is, your dad doesn’t know you kids at all.”

If it were Beatrice, she’d already be at the bottom of the stairs. She’d creep down on silent feet so she could be dramatically standing behind them without a sound when she confronts them. She’d sit them all down and demand answers, and no one would get an ounce of sleep until she had them.

Wirt turns around. 

He goes back to his room. 

Beatrice had always been the braver of the pair. The bolder. The one who took risks. Sometimes, though, those risks landed her with a pair of wings and a beak. Wirt balanced her in the same way she balanced him. She would push him into action; he would grab her by the arm and tell her that breaking Betty Armstrong’s nose was a good way to not get invited back to the PTA bake sale. Between the two of them, they usually managed to find the right mix, the way to get results without ruining it all. 

Without her, Wirt feels off-step. Uncomfortable. Overbalanced. Like he might fall, like he might fail. And he feels, in his bones, that this thing with his children is a fragile thing. Something he might ruin if he isn’t careful. 

He’s so worried he’ll break it all. 

…

“Dad?” asks Mabel, and the house is cold and dark around them. “When did you fall in love with Mom?”

Wirt lies in the bed that he once shared with Beatrice, watching as the ceiling fan rotates idly overhead. His twins curl into him, one on each side, both feeling so much smaller than they did that morning. Mabel hasn’t stopped crying since they left the hospital. Dipper hasn’t started.

This is what falling in love is like, as Wirt remembers it, as he had done it:

Falling in love is drowning in a lake, cold and dark and deadly. It’s walking in a forest that does not exist. 

You don’t realize it, the falling part. You don’t remember hitting the water; you don’t even know that you’re drowning. It’s tumbling, it’s tripping, but the world is spinning so fast and the water is so cold that you don’t even realize that you’re already submerged.

Falling in love is walking on a path that you don’t remember starting. It’s looking at the leaves, looking at the trees, and suddenly realizing, “Greg, I think we’re lost.” 

You’re already in the woods by the time you recognize what’s happened. You’re hopelessly, inexorably lost, trees behind you and trees ahead, and for a while, you don’t mind. Because there’s someone with you, someone guiding you, a singular bluebird of hope, and you’d follow them through fire if it meant you got to stay with them for just a little while longer. 

You don’t realize it, the falling part. It feels too much like flying. 

You only know you’ve fallen after you hit the ground.

“I don’t know,” says Wirt. “I think I did it by accident.”

… 

Beatrice is a Presence no matter where she is. She’s sharp and loud and says what she means, in as plain and cutting English as she can. She’s heard of pulling punches, once and at great distance, and only paid it enough mind to call the fool voicing the suggestion a weak bitch. 

And it’s easy, living with her. She doesn’t move out. No one even gives it thought. She makes her way into Wirt’s life and Wirt didn’t even have to make room, there was already a space there, and it was already in her shape. Making her a part of his life… it’s easy. 

They bicker insistently. 

They snipe about the place the keys go, the way the dishes are stacked, the way Wirt takes off his boots. They snipe at each other and they dig in their heels and they do it like it’s fun, like it’s a game, like they’re in a boxing match that neither wants to end. 

Wirt publishes more poems. Beatrice had pushed him into it. 

They do things together. They get groceries and fill up the car; they go for walks by the lake and talk about home. They read the newspaper and eat breakfast and squabble over the crossword.

And one moment, Wirt wakes up, and he realizes that he never wants to sit at a kitchen table that doesn’t have Beatrice on the other end. He wants to tease her about her feuds and be teased about the way he ties his laces. He wants to bicker until they’re old and grey and their bones pop, and he wants to bicker when they go home too. 

His forehead hits the table. 

“Oh my God,” he says. “We’re dating.”

Beatrice squints at him. “You’re just figuring that out?”

… 

They go out for pancakes the next morning.

Dipper and Mabel practically vibrate as they drag him along the road, smiling brighter than they had the day before. Stan and Ford walk behind them, shoulder to shoulder, and neither of them give any indication of the secrets his children hold.

Assholes. 

It’s just. They’re Wirt’s kids. They had tried so hard to have kids, Beatrice and him, and when the twins finally came, they had sworn they’d be there for everything. Anything. 

“I just,” Wirt remembers saying, half-delirious with exhaustion, a twin on his chest--he hasn’t the vaguest inclination as to which one--as he stares blearily up from his bed, “I want to be the kind of dad that kids come to. With anything. Like, I didn’t go to my dad after the Unknown, you know? Because I thought ‘Wow, that’s crazy! No way he’d ever believe that!’ And also, like, trauma. But I want my kids to have the kind of dad that they can go to with this kind of stuff. Unknown kind of stuff. You know what I mean?” He glanced at Beatrice to make sure she knew what he meant.

“Hrrgh,” Beatrice had said, nearly comatose with the Other Twin cradled on her chest. 

And, well, Wirt hadn’t anticipated any Unknown-level secrets. He hadn’t planned for any. They were more of a vague concept than anything else. So he doesn’t really know how to handle these secretive… secrets. At all.

Except Stan and Ford do, apparently, and have no trouble keeping them. 

Wirt watches them out of the corner of his eye. They don’t flinch in the slightest. 

“Here we are,” declares Mabel, more hopping than stopping. “A cultural icon.”

“Greasy’s,” says Wirt, his eyebrows pinching down. 

“They only say it because it’s true!”

“Oh. Wonderful.”

Smiling, Dipper drags him through the door, and his sister helps him. They are noticed immediately. 

“Well, well, well,” says the sheriff, glancing up from his coffee, “if it isn’t the Pines family?”

Mabel waves. “Hi Sheriff Blubs! This is my dad!”

Wirt smiles, then holds out a hand. “I’m Wirt Pines. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” 

“Oh, we know,” says Sheriff Blubs, accepting his hand. “Mabel keeps us updated on her blog.”

Wirt raises an eyebrow. “You read Cloudy with a Chance of Glitter?”

“We all do,” says the deputy sitting beside him. “We’re also friends on Facepage.”

Wirt blinks. “Oh. I didn’t realize my daughter knew the local law enforcement so well.”

Sheriff Blubs chuckles. “Everyone knows the Pines family. We were all excited to hear our very own mons--”

And then Uncle Stan begins to cough all over them. 

“Sorry,” he says, hammering a hand on his chest, “I just-- hhhurgh-- just got something in my-- chrru-- my throat there.” He grabs Sheriff Blubs arm and leans on it heavily. He coughs some more, with all the passion and skill of a middle schooler acting out Juliet’s death scene. “It’s almost like I can’t-- hhhhheeerrrhh-- can’t say anything.”

“Stanley, are you okay?” says Uncle Ford, coming up behind his brother, the picture of concern. He rubs his back earnestly. “Breathe, Stan. Breathe.”

Uncle Stan coughs some more. He also manages to elbow his brother in the gut as he does it. 

“We’d better sit down,” says Ford, a pained smile on his lips. “Stan isn’t as young as he used to be. The years have been unkind to him.”

“We’re the same age, you ugly fossil.”

“Sometimes he says things without even knowing what he means. It’s been very hard for the family.”

Ford leads Stan to a booth in the back. Stan grumbles and stumbles dramatically, grabbing Ford’s shirt in a tight fist for emphasis. 

Wirt frowns. He’d thought they’d be better at acting. Isn’t one of them supposed to be a literal con man? Isn’t the other one supposed to be some kind of genius? Shameful.

Dipper clears his throat loudly and with emphasis. The entire diner pretends not to eavesdrop. 

“Hey, Sheriff Blubs,” he says, so loud and so obvious. God, they raised terrible liars, didn’t he? It has to be his fault; their mom was a fantastic liar. She put actors to shame. They should have taught them to lie. This is just embarrassing for everyone. “We’re so excited for you to meet our dad. We’re excited for everyone in Gravity Falls to meet our dad. He hasn’t seen or heard much about Gravity Falls, so we can’t wait to show him around and let him get the swing of the place.”

Sheriff Blubs visibly tenses. So does the rest of the diner.

“Ah.” Sheriff Blubs nods firmly. “Right. We will leave you to introduce your father to the city, won’t we, Deputy Durland?”

“We sure will,” says Deputy Durland, and he looks like he’s trying to wink at Dipper, only he does it with both eyes, so it just seems like he’s blinking really hard. 

Wirt squints confusedly. 

Everyone else busies themselves with things other than Wirt’s family, and they do it in a loud, officious manner so that Wirt is sure to know it. 

Mabel more shoves than leads him back to the booth. Sighing slightly, Wirt resolves himself to the fact that that’s the most clues he’s liable to get. He’s wrong.

“Here we are,” says a woman with one eye shut, and she settles a towering stack of pancakes in the center of the table. “Pancakes all around.”

“I’m sorry, we, uh, we didn’t order,” Wirt tells her.

“It’s always pancakes for the Pines family,” says the woman. 

Stan spears the one Mabel had been nyooming for. “Keep ‘em coming, Lazy Susan.”

Mabel sticks out her tongue. Stan chomps down on the pancake.

And it gets weirder. Because they eat an army’s worth of pancakes, and she won’t let Wirt pay for them. 

… 

“I need some muscle,” Wirt hisses into his phone, crammed into the alley behind the diner. “I need some muscle immediately.” 

“Wirt, progress takes time, and you should love your body how it is,” lectures Greg. “Have you been following the Get Shreddded workout video I sent you from YouTube?”

“What?” Wirt blinks. “No.”

“You’ll only make progress if you do a little every day.”

“Emotional muscle. I need emotional muscle.”

“Oh. Like, to make people sad, or…”

“Stan and Ford are hiding secrets about my progeny and if I have to directly ask what is wrong with them I will literally die.” He sucks in a hard, deep breath. “Please come help.”

“I mean, I have some vacation time…”

“I will love you forever if you spend it with me and my demon spawn in this woodland hellscape.”

“Sure. Sounds like fun.”

“Oh thank God.”

The conversation ends soon after, Greg promising to come down as soon as he can get the leave cleared with his work, and Wirt sags against the diner wall in relief. He misses Greg. It’ll be nice to have someone here in the same boat as him. 

Right when he’s about to head back inside, there’s a clatter at the end of the alley. 

He frowns, staring at the knocked over cans next to the dumpster. There had been a shift of movement, a flash of color, just in the corner of his eye. Not a squirrel, or a dog, or anything else that would be messing around the dumpster.

It looked almost like a person. But it was too small for that. 

He takes a step closer. 

Behind him, the door to Granny’s slams open. “You get lost?” barks Uncle Stan.

“What?” Wirt startles. “No! No.”

Uncle Stan squints at him. “You said you were going to the bathroom.”

“I… I did. I did say that.”

“This isn’t a bathroom.”

“It is not.”

“We all watched you pass the bathroom door and go out the back. It was weird.”

“I. I bet it was.”

When he looks back at the cans, there’s nothing there. 

… 

Three years after Beatrice comes to stay, Wirt gets in his car, buckles up, and drives the entire span of California, all the way up to Oregon. He pulls off at a diner just over the state line, and he waits. 

Uncle Stan doesn’t show up until three and a half hours after his promised time. Then, right when Wirt is getting ready to give up, a car with a half-off bumper coughs its way into the parking lot and somehow manages to park across three spots. Stan Pines lurches out, gives the bumper a solid kick, and swears as it drops off entirely. 

Wirt watches him through the window. So does the waitress. 

A moment later, Uncle Stan enters with the jingle of the door, and he gives Wirt’s hand a solid pump from across the table. Then, he slides into the booth himself, sending the waitress a flirtatious but weird-old-man smile. 

“Black coffee,” he says. “Bring the whole pot.”

It is six in the afternoon. 

“Look at you,” says Stan, turning back to him. “Shermie’s boy, all grown up!”

Wirt gives him a smile. “Hey, Uncle Stan.”

Wirt’s only seen his Uncle Stan once before, at his brother’s funeral. That was entirely due to the fact that Stan was not allowed to be in the state that Wirt had spent his entire life, for “legal reasons.” Shermie said he wasn’t himself. That losing Stanley had changed him, and that they should give him space. 

He had also said a few other things. About the business he had gotten up to since his brother died. Some of the crimes he knew how to commit. 

“So, what’s this mysterious job you couldn’t talk about over the phone?”

“Well, there’s no easy way of saying it,” says Wirt, folding his hands before him on the table. “You, uh, you know Beatrice?”

He immediately receives a jarring slap to the shoulder. Stan chortles. “That girl of yours, eh? You two still going steady?”

Wirt rubs his shoulder, slightly winded. “We’re, uh, getting married, actually.”

Stan immediately raps his hands against the table in delight. “Congratulations! Hey, we gotta celebrate. Round of beers for the table!”

“We don’t sell that,” says the waitress, looking incredibly tired. 

“Your mama must be pleased,” says Stan. “Heard she was fuming at you ‘living in sin’ and all.”

“It’s, uh, it’s a bit more complicated than that. You see, uh. Beatrice doesn’t actually… have… any proof of her own existence.”

“Huh.” Stan stares at him. He looks suddenly uncomfortable. “This ain’t one of those mail order situations, is it?”

“What?” Wirt startles. “No. She just… lost. Every proof of her existence. And we have no way of getting it.”

Stan stares at him for a moment longer. “Uh huh.” 

“And, uh. I heard you could. Procure some?” Wirt winces. “Um. Some that looks real.”

“Did you really decide to commit identity fraud in the center of a Happy Egg Diner?”

Well, when he says it like that, it sounds ill-planned.

“It’s really not as bad as it sounds,” says Wirt, weakly. “It’s complicated.”

“Eh.” After a moment, he shrugs. “Okay. You’re paying for my ink cartridges, though.”

“What?” He blinks. He thought it’d be harder than that. “Really?”

“You’re family, kid.” All of a sudden, he squints. “You’re not wearing a wire, are you?”

“No.”

Stan stares at him for a moment longer. He nods towards Wirt’s shirt. 

Really? With a sigh, Wirt pulls up his shirt enough to show he’s not wired. Stan seems satisfied by it. 

“I’ll fix it up for you and that gal of yours. Consider it a wedding present.”

“I have money.”

“Normally, I’d have already took you for all you’re worth,” says Stan, seriously. “But family… you never know when you’re going to lose it. You gotta take care of it when you got it, understand?”

He looks sad, all of a sudden, and all at once, Wirt remembers that they buried his brother around this time of year. Winter, he’s certain. Maybe this month? The anniversary must be soon. 

“Tell you what,” says Stan, folding his hands before him. “I’ll handle this issue for you and the missues. Finally get your mama to stop going on about the impropriety of it. And if you end up getting some kids down the line just… don’t forget to send ‘em round to see their ol’ Grunkle Stan.”  

… 

Wirt decides he needs to get proactive about this. Aggressive. This is a problem, because he’s good at neither proactiveness nor aggressiveness. He really has to diversify his skill set for this one. 

He gets up at the ass crack of dawn and waits for Dipper to come downstairs. 

Mabel seems to be warming up to the idea of him being here. She’s let him go on walks with her, taken him around town, and introduced him to what he assumes is the entire population of this town and the town over. The residents of this town are seeming to accept him, though every time he asks them anything about the twin’s first summer, they mutter something about mayoral ordinances and walk away quickly. Even the Stans, traitors as they are, seem to be relaxing about Wirt being here. He nearly got Ford to explain a few of his weird statements, once or twice, before Ford wandered off with his eyes locked to his phone, muttering about “new readings” and “potential catastrophes,” which sounded bad. 

Dipper is avoiding him like the plague. 

It’s not exactly unusual. Dipper’s been avoiding him since the diagnosis. He’s been avoiding him since the move. He is an extremely unsubtle child, and he gets that from Wirt. 

When he sees Wirt, he freezes dead away. “Dad? What are you doing up?”

“I was hoping to catch you,” says Wirt. “I was wondering if you wanted to have a guy’s day.”

“A guy’s day?” He sounds confused. “Why?”

“Do we need a reason?”

Dipper shifts uncomfortably. “I guess not.”

“We can do anything you want.” He waves his hands vaguely. “I don’t want to mess up your plans.”

“Yeah. Uh. The thing is, I’m, uh, really busy, and there’s something I just… I’m already doing it with Grunkle Ford, you know, and he’s gonna meet me and...”

“We could do tomorrow,” says WIrt. “Or later today. Or…”

“Yeah,” says Dipper, already inching out the door. “We’ll get it on the books.”

Wirt gets up and follows him. “Dip, wait.”

“Yeah?”

“Is something wrong?” 

He looks cagey, all of a sudden. “Why would you think something’s wrong?”

“You’ve been acting off. All of you, really, but you especially.”

“I’m not acting off,” lies Dipper. 

“Look, I heard what you guys were saying the other night.”

Dipper freezes. “You what?” 

“Not the details, but I know you’re not telling me something.” He takes a step closer. “And--look, I don’t care about the secrets. I mean, I do, but they’re not what’s important to me. I just want you guys to be okay. Whatever it is, I won’t be mad.”

“We are okay, Dad,” says Dipper, earnestly. “I promise.”

“No, you’re not, I can tell. There’s something off with you; there has been since your mom, and I know--”

Something in Dipper’s face shutters. “I mean, am I supposed to be okay after that?”

Wirt stops. 

The conversation is over. He can feel it. He tripped the wire to shut Dipper down and he’s going to bolt, and Wirt’s going to lose him if it keeps up like this. Whatever’s closed will stay closed and he won’t be able to fix it. 

“No,” he says, gently. “Of course not.”

“Yeah, I’m really busy today,” he says, turning back to the door. “Another day, okay?”

“Did I hurt you?” blurts Wirt, before Dipper can make it out. 

Dipper pauses. “What? What are you talking about?”

“Did I hurt you, Dip?” He takes a step closer. “That’s the only thing that makes sense in my mind. Just--whatever I did, whatever I did to push you away, I’ll do whatever it takes to fix it.”

“You didn’t do anything,” says Dipper, as if it were obvious. “That’s not--that’s not it at all.”

“But it’s something.”

“Not that you did,” he promises, and then he’s gone. 

… 

A few days before Greg comes to visit, Mabel and Dipper start a feud. Wirt knows because they issued a formal memo to the occupants of the house, from the desk of Mabel and Dipper, to issue notice that the nations of Mabel and Dipper were now at war and would be until terms of peace can be agreed upon. 

Wirt did not buy them this stationary. He does not know who made them this stationary. It’s high-quality paper and scented with pine.

He texts them that they need a family meeting, because he, an adult, professional man, has no stationary of his own with which to inform them, and feels oddly lacking in this respect. Should he… ask them for personalized stationary recommendations? Is that a priority here?

They separately stomp into the living room and resolutely do not look at the other. 

“Hey, bluebirds,” says Wirt, still feeling off step from the lack of formal stationary. “We gonna talk about what the fight’s about?”

God, please let it be about Mabel’s upcoming sleepover. Please let it be something normal like that. 

“No,” says Dipper.

At the same time, Mabel says, “Dipper’s just being a jealous dumb butt.”

Dipper wheels on her. “Mabel’s being dumb and not taking my advice!”

Oh, so they do want to talk about it.

She wheels on him. “You’re just mad that Zielach picked me instead of you!”

“Why?” demands Dipper, throwing his hands in the air. “Why would I be mad at that? He’s a total weirdo, Mabel!”

Oh, what’s that? A concerning parenting thing that suddenly has Wirt’s full attention? Heart palpitations, his old friend. 

“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” says Wirt, raising his hands. “Who is Zielach?”

The twins suddenly look cagey. 

“He’s a… tourist. Yeah, a tourist,” says Dipper.

So definitely not a tourist then. 

“And why is he picking your sister?”

“Because I’m a sparkling gem of a person, Dad.”

“I know that, glitter bomb,” says Wirt. “But like, for what?” 

“To romance,” says Mabel, as if he were an idiot. 

Oh, God, this again. Wirt’s with it. Wirt’s hip. Wirt’s the father of two teenagers and knows that they date. He’s not concerned by dating. Dating is a normal part of growing up. He’s not about to come down like a vengeful god on any of their--usually extremely short-lived--relationships. He is, however, aware of the fact that Mabel and Dipper both have an unfortunate tendency for falling hard and falling fast for some… weird kids. Special kids. Kids who Wirt would rather see in a juvenile penitentiary program than in his living room. 

When that happens, they usually wait five minutes for Mabel or Dipper to burn out the relationship themselves. They have, frankly, terrible taste in romantic partners, and an absolutely excellent sense for clocking the other’s partner as a creep. Usually, by the time Beatrice or Wirt became aware of the problem, either the other twin has chased them off or the first twin has realized they deserved better and dumped their romantic interest in a public and humiliating fashion. If that doesn’t work, they alternate taking the Offending Twin out for an ice cream chat about standards and acceptable manners of behavior in the living rooms of your date’s parents and what red flags that may or may not raise. 

This is a stage one problem. The other twin has been activated to fight off the invader like a virus. 

Should he skip to Stage Three: Intervention? Or will that trigger their stubbornness? That’s the problem: Both he and Beatrice were as stubborn as could be, and the twins got every ounce of their combined genetic force of stubbornness. He has to play this carefully or they’ll just dig in.  

“So, Dipper, why do you not want this… Zielach to date your sister?”

“Because he’s the weirdest person I have ever met,” says Dipper, emphatically. 

“He’s romantic!” argues Mabel. 

“No, he’s got the disposition of a serial killer!”

“Is he a serial killer?” cuts in Wirt.

“Probably not,” says his twins, in unison. 

What. What does that mean. 

“You don’t have to worry,” says Mabel, sniffing delicately, and she tosses her hair over her shoulder. “Zielach isn’t in town for much longer. We’re going to have to break up soon anyway. Our love is already star-crossed.”

Oh, Wirt has long learned to not underestimate the amount of property damage his twins can commit in a short period of time. 

“Fine,” says Dipper, turning to stomp out of the room. “Date a lunatic for all I care. Don’t expect me to come running when he tries to make you his Gnome Queen.” 

“He’s not even a gnome!” snaps Mabel, stomping out after him. “Don’t paint him with that brush!”

The door slams. 

Wirt sits there, staring at the opposing wall. 

What. What does that mean. 

… 

The next day, Wirt finds out what it means. 

He’s on a grocery run. His twins are in the syrup aisle, as the retrieval of syrup brands is only the holiest of pilgrimages. He is considering the nutritional potential of oat milk versus two percent. He is trying to be a good father who cares about the things that go into his children’s bodies, and staunchly ignoring the ungodly amount of syrup they consume. A guy with stark white hair who otherwise looks around his kid’s age stomps up to him, bedecked in a midnight blue velvet cape with a solid gold insignia on a chain. He has incredibly angry eyebrows. 

“Peasant!” he says, snapping his fingers at Wirt, here, in this Aisles of Smiles Grab n’ Go Mini Mart. 

Wirt slowly sets the oat milk in his basket.

“I am looking for the object of my affection,” says the kid, still looking incredibly angry. “You will track them for me.”

Wirt squints at him. “Do you have parents here?”

Wow, his eyebrows somehow got even more angry. He opens his mouth, presumably to express anger in proportion to his eyebrows, but before he can say anything, Dipper pops up from the next aisle over. 

“Dad!” he says, looking nervous. 

The kid immediately swivels his gaze away to look resolutely at the almond milk section. Should Wirt have gotten almond milk? Should that have been a consideration?

“Dipper,” he says, levelly.

“God, you absolute freak,” says Dipper, at full volume, out loud, to his face. Ah, there’s Beatrice’s influence in his upbringing. “What are you even doing here?”

Oh, so this is Zielach. 

Oh, so this is Zielach. 

This makes so much sense. 

“I am here to court,” says Zielach, still staring at the almond milk with all the intense focus of a hardened detective. Does he suspect the almond milk of war crimes? Why is he looking at the almond milk?

“Too bad, man, leave immediately.”

“I would like to request a formal meeting of courtship,” he says, loudly, and still to the almond milk. 

“Go away,” says Dipper, emphatically. 

His jaw tightens. He seems to be waiting for something. Maybe it has to do with almond milk, but Wirt doubts it. 

Mabel pops up from the aisle over. “Oh, Zielach,” she says, twirling a finger in her hair. “Fancy seeing you here.”

Oh, honey. 

Oh, no. 

She can do so much better than that. 

He relaxes, finally turning away from the almond milk to face Mabel. “I am here to request a formal meeting of courtship.” 

“Absolutely,” chirps Mabel.

His eye darts to Dipper briefly before immediately darting back to Mabel. “There must be a chaperone.”

Mabel crinkles her nose. “Ew.”

“Oh, yeah, actually, there should be,” says Dipper, immediately, giving Zielach the stink eye. “Someone should be monitoring every second of this.”

“It has been decided,” declares Zielach, because every damn thing that comes out of this kid’s mouth seems to be a declaration. “We shall away.”

Oh, this is a kid with problems. So many problems, God bless him. And Wirt gets it, he serenaded his first girlfriend with a mixtape of oboe music he performed himself and then got so anxious about this fact that he fled the cops, fell in a lake, almost died, and met what he assumes was a literal demon in a quest for self-discovery. Being a kid is rough. You cope in weird ways. He still questions the almond milk. 

“Fine,” huffs Mabel. She grabs Zielach by the arm and drags him out. “We will meet you outside, Dipper.”

They leave. Zielach dramatically flaps his cape on his way out. 

Should he have stopped that? He feels like he should have stopped that.

Wirt and Dipper watch them leave in a damning silence. 

“He’s a cosplayer,” says Dipper, with absolutely no preamble. “A really, really intense cosplayer.”

It’s fine. Like, weird, super weird, he should get a therapist, but Wirt wandered another world dressed as a gnome for like, a literally incalculable time. He’s way more concerned about the almond milk thing. 

“He’ s a bit… Um.” How does he, an adult man, call a child a total freak? How does he reasonably do that? “Um.”

Dipper looks at him resolutely. “I swear to God, Dad, I will get rid of him.”

Wirt nods solidly. “Godspeed, Dipper.”

… 

The twins belong to the Unknown. It occurs to Wirt in an odd, detached sort of way as he leans over their bassinet. Above them, a glass bluebird mobile turns in slow circles, sending shards of blue light spilling across their blankets. Mabel cooes at the light, tracks it with her eyes, and Dipper reaches towards the mobile with a meaty, uncoordinated fist. 

And Wirt thinks, Oh, the woods sent you.

Once the thought occurs to him, he can’t shake it again. It’s as certain as gravity, as light, as the turn of the world and his own sense of home. Wirt and Beatrice both belong to the Unknown. They are here on time that isn’t so much as borrowed as granted, and when they leave, they’ll go home. 

When Dipper and Mabel leave, they’ll go back to the Unknown too. It’s their home, after all. 

It sparks in his chest, and Wirt doesn’t know if it’s anticipation or nervousness. There’s a magic in the air, in this, in creation away from existence. This is not their world, but they were born in it regardless, have carved their own place in it and burrowed in, but they would never be of it. 

Pilgrims. In a foreign land. 

… 

 Dipper crinkles his nose at the sight of his sister’s preparations.

He had not so much walked down the stairs as bodily threw himself down them four steps at a time, and Wirt’s heart nearly stopped before he remembered that his children had transformed their noodle-armed preteen selves into some kind of ridiculously agile paradigm of health and could both do such things without dying. Still, he panicked just a little bit when he came crashing to the ground. On principle.

Hurriedly, Wirt lowers his hand covering his heart like that of a beleaguered debutante before his son can see.

Dipper makes a noise of disgust.

Right. Yes. The sleepover.

Dipper hates sleepovers.

When he was younger, it was more on principle than anything else. There were Girls there and he was a Manly Man(-child) who could not Bear to be in such a close proximity with Girls. He was simply too Manly, and also like, eight. Mabel got her sleepovers anyway. And then when he got older, it was more due to the fact that Mabel had realized that she could corral her friends into tackling her brother and forcibly giving him a makeover. Mabel got her sleepovers restrained to the house, a lecture on common courtesy and gaining consent before doing anything, and Dipper got to go camping in the backyard. And then he started some insane workout regime called “The Manotaur Lifestyle” and came back to school after one summer with biceps where he once had twiggy arms and a row of edgy scars across his arm from, apparently, a biking accident. Mabel’s sleepovers became infinitely more popular, and so did Dipper’s camping tent, coincidentally. Wirt had been woken up more than once by the sound of his teenage son fearfully squealing like Waddles as he kicked some gooey-eyed, thirteen-year-old trespasser out of his tent at two in the morning. 

So yes, it’s fairly safe to say that Dipper abhors sleepovers. In fact, he hates them almost as much as Mabel loves them, but not as much as he loves his sister. Mabel continues to get her sleepovers.

Dipper has his pine tree cap securely fastened on his head and his journal under his arm, and Wirt can always tell when his kids are about to run off until all hours. He can also always manage to disrupt their plans if he so wishes, and he so wishes.

“Hey, bud,” says Wirt, dropping an arm around his shoulders and squeezing. “Preparing for the invasion?”

Dipper scowls, yanking his cap lower. “There’s going to be so many of them,” he says, something akin to horror in his voice. 

Wirt nods slowly. “Your sister has been asking for a girls’ night for a while.”

“A girls’ night. Plus me. Because we share a room. Great.”

A plan unfolds in Wirt’s mind like a jack-in-the-box: suddenly, violently, and with no small degree of horror. He needs to talk to his son; he knows how he has to do it.

But God, the how is terrible.

“What about that guys’ night?” he asks. “We could do it the same night as Mabel’s sleepover. Maybe we could go camping.”

Dipper eyes him skeptically. “You hate camping.”

“But you don’t,” counters Wirt. “You probably know all the best spots, I’d bet.”

“Well, there is this one spot Grunkle Ford took me to once,” says Dipper, because he and Ford probably have tons of father-son bonding time and sing Kumbaya around the campfire as they exchange thoughts about new branches of science that they invented together. “But you don’t have to go if you don’t want to.”

“I want to,” lies Wirt. And, “I think I’m getting into this whole woodsy-camping thing,” he continues to lie. “It’s growing on me.”

“If you’re sure,” says Dipper, doubtful.

“I’m sure.”

“Then I’ll get the gear together.” Dipper blinks, then smiles tentatively. “I’m, uh, looking forward to it.”

It sounds like a lie.

Wirt watches him retreat, wringing his hands from the nerves. He swallows one breath, and then another.

Waddles squeals at him scornfully.

“Oh, don’t you start,” says Wirt, annoyed, and he leaves.

… 

The woods will be fine, he tells himself. He’s a grown adult, father to two fifteen year olds. He is an established professional. He once fought a witch. He can handle a little bit of camping.

He cannot, Wirt decides, staring at the camping supplies lying innocuously by the door. There’s no tent there, because it’s summer and that means that it’s so much better to simply lie exposed to the wilderness as you stare up at the naked sky and think about how you’re metaphysically incorrect in the current plane of existence

“Dad?” says Dipper. “Everything okay?”

Wirt pastes on a smile. “Of course, Dip. I’m excited! Once Mabel’s friends have arrived and settled in, we can go.”

“You’re looking a little green,” notes Uncle Stan, because of course he does. Cradling a bowl of popcorn in one hand and a beer in the other, he steps out of the kitchen, raises a hand to scratch the side of his head, then frowns. “Sure you don’t want my brother to go with you? He’s into this roughing it crap too.”

Of course he is, because he’s into everything Dipper is. He’s a perfect, genius scientist who can do just as many pull ups as his nephew and loves living on minimal supplies for weeks on end and probably thinks of Dipper as a son, to boot. And one day he can adopt Dipper and Stan can adopt Mabel, and they’ll be one of those big, happy families who have perfect communication and cute matching Christmas sweaters. Wirt can be that one weird relative that they invite to Thanksgiving out of a begrudging sense of familial obligation, and maybe he’ll get a Christmas card once every few years.

“We’ll be fine,” says Wirt, peevish. Then, almost as a challenge, he says, “Are you sure you’ll be okay with the girls?”

Stan snorts. “This ain’t my first rodeo, Shakespeare. Don’t you worry about me.”

“Are you and Grunkle Ford going to do something?” blurts Dipper, his eyes darting between them anxiously. 

“Ah. Yes.” Uncle Stan coughs to a suspicious degree. “We’re watching a, uh, television program. About, um, cars. And weapons. And war! Yeah, war.”

“.... Well okay,” says Dipper, after a moment.

The doorbell rings. Absolutely everyone is grateful for this fact. 

“They’re here,” screeches Mabel, her feet audibly slamming against the upstairs floor. She stops at the top of the stairs, screws her face up in a way that has Wirt frowning, and tenses slightly. 

Then, she throws herself down the stairs.

Wirt’s heart stops then and there.

He stumbles forward, images of his daughter falling and his daughter dying wavering across his mind. She’s going to crack her head on the ground and bleed out and die. She’ll leave them for the Unknown long before she’s meant to, and Beatrice will kill him again the second he joins her. 

The door to the left of the staircase--Ford’s workshop--creaks open, and Ford steps out. In less time than it takes Wirt to blink, he shoulder-rolls forward, leaps to his feet, and snatches Mabel from the air.

“Mabel,” Ford scolds, cradling his daughter like a sixty-plus man ninja-diving to catch one hundred and ten pounds of flying female is the most casual thing in the world. “How many times have I told you to walk down the stairs? Or at least to skip fewer steps?”

“Eh,” says Mabel, like flinging one’s body from potentially deadly heights is the most casual thing in the world. “I would have stuck the landing.”

“I’d rather not test that out,” says Ford, delicately, settling her on her feet. Wirt could kiss him in that moment.

“You stick the landing whenever you do it,” Mabel points out. 

Wirt could kill him in that moment.

The doorbell rings again.

Scrambling past her gaping father, Mabel skids to the door with a beaming smile. Sheflings the door open.

Instantly, every single boy in the house covers their ears.

Wirt can’t make out much from the scrambled miasma of noise, their voices high enough to break glass. He gets a few bare words of “Candy” and “Mabel” and “Grenda” and “ GUUUURRRRRLLLLLL,” at which point he begins to pray for sudden deafness. Dipper winces at his shoulder, his lips pinching downward, but he looks more weary than irritated.

“Mabel,” he groans, when the screaming stops. “They’re two feet away from you. You don’t have to scream.”

Mabel sticks a tongue out at her brother. “You’re just jealous.” 

“Of permanent hearing loss? No thanks.”

“It’s very nice to have you girls here,” says Wirt, rubbing his temple with one hand. 

There’s a thud.

“Hey, Pacifica,” Dipper says, his voice vaguely teasing. “Slumming it with us peasants tonight?”

In the doorway there stands a girl with long, long hair, blonde and blow dried and coiffed like a princess’s. There’s a top of the line, designer bag with a brand new, never-opened sleeping bag strapped professionally to the top at her side, splayed across the dusty porch with a carelessness that could make someone cringe. She stares at Wirt, and her mouth opens and closes like a fish.

“Pacifica?” asks Dipper, frowning slightly, and his brows pinch. He waves his hand in front of her face. “Pacifica. Earth to Pacifica. Is anyone home in there?”

Her mouth opens and closes, opens and closes.

Oh, it would be a terrible start to the night if there’s somehow already a traumatized child. This is a thing he could be concerned about and addressing.  “Is everything all right?” says Wirt, taking half a step forward.

Pacifica closes her mouth. She opens her mouth.

“You’re Jason Funderberker,” she says, and she bursts into tears. 

… 

Let it be known: Wirt has no idea how to deal with a crying child.

He never did, really. It drove Beatrice to the point of throttling him, how useless he is whenever anyone under the age of eighteen begins to cry. And over the age of eighteen, for that matter. He’s just basically useless whenever anyone cries. His go-to comfort method is to pat them awkwardly on the back of their head and say, “There there” and “It will be alright,” in the most stilted, unconvincing tone to ever be uttered on the face of God’s green earth. And that’s with the people he knows.

“Um,” Wirt says, seated on the couch next to the strange girl who immediately burst into tears at the sight of his face. “There there. It will be alright.”

He pats her shoulder twice for good measure. 

She cries harder.

Well, he’s out of ideas.

Stan had froze at the sight of The Pacifica Northwest--the “The” is absolutely necessary, Wirt had been informed, by a stranger in the bread aisle of the minimart, which he is considering no longer going to--sobbing like her dog had died, coughed once, rubbed the back of his neck, and corralled the non-sobbing children into the kitchen with a “Hey kids! Wanna change the refrigerator light? Ha ha, sure you do,” and just never came back. Ford had led Wirt and Pacifica into the living area, gestured helplessly at the couch, and promptly abandoned them both.

Wirt’s entire family is useless.  

“I’m sorry,” she gasps, now weeping into a pillow. Her mascara leaks down her cheeks and into the fabric. Wirt can’t find it within himself to care. “I’m so sorry , Mr. Funderberker. I just--I never thought--”

She sets off into another string of howling sobs. 

“Don’t be sorry,” says Wirt, raising his hand to pat her shoulder again, thinking better of it, and lowering it again. “And, uh, it’s Pines actually. Jason Funderberker was just a pseudonym. Uh, a bit of an inside joke for me and my brother.”

Sniffling, Pacifica peers up at him through raccoon-rimmed eyes. She hastily rubs the back of her hand across her tear-streaked face, and it comes off smeared with a gooey, deep black. The mascara smears down her lids and across her cheek, streaky and broken, and Wirt pulls a handkerchief from his pocket. He hands it to her with a small, weak smile.

“You’re Dipper and Mabel’s dad,” she says, dabbing at the corners of her eyes.

“And you’re one of Dipper and Mabel’s best friends. It’s nice to officially meet you.”

Her cheeks stain red. “They said I was one of their best friends?”

Cocking his head, Wirt says, “They talk about you all the time. Why wouldn’t they?”

Pacifica shakes her head. “I’m sorry for crying on you, Mr. Pines.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ve been warned that my face can scare some children.”

“What?” Pacifica starts violently. “Oh no! I just--It’s just that--I never thought I’d get to ever meet you!”

“Huh?”

“You never do book signings.” She sits straighter. “You never do interviews. You never do public appearances. You didn’t even release your picture on the book jacket until the tenth anniversary edition of Over the Garden Wall. I--I’ve read all your work. I’ve been your biggest fan for ages--I”--she bites her lip--“sorry.”

“Don’t apologize,” says Dipper, plopping himself unceremoniously on the armchair across from them. Wirt blinks, then wonders when he came in. “When I first met Grunkle Ford, I was so starstruck that I almost had a panic attack.”

“You did have a panic attack,” Mabel reminds him, not so much sitting as launching herself into the chair beside. God, where did she come from? She looks at Pacifica. “He fangirled for like, three weeks straight afterwards. It was so annoying.” She runs a hand through her hair with a frown. “Grunkle Stan needs to stop making us do manual labor every time I have friends over. Candy and Grenda are like, chopping wood out back.”

Well, Wirt has so many more reasons to be confused right now. 

He settles for just shelving it for now, partly because he’s bound to get even more reasons in like, the next ten minutes and it’s easier to deal with it all at once, and partly because The Pacifica Northwest has just punched his son in the arm, and he should probably deal with that.

“How could you not tell me?” she hisses, clenching her teeth.

Dipper yelps. “Tell you what?” He rubs his shoulder with a grimace. “You punch really hard.”

“That your father is Jason Funderberker.”

“I told you he was a poet!”

“You didn’t say he was Jason Funderberker!”

“It never came up?”

Pacifica gapes at him. “Jason Funderberker- -your father, who is literally Jason freaking Funderberker-- is considered the greatest poet of the century. Hell, he’s considered one of the greatest poets of all time .”

“Um,” says Wirt, “I wouldn’t say greatest--” 

“He revolutionized modern poetry as we know it,” continues Pacifica, looking as if she might hit Dipper again. “His premiere work singlehandedly defined the industry for the next few decades. How could you not tell me?”

“I wouldn’t say revolutionized--”

Dipper shrugs. “That wasn’t really a big part of our lives? Over the Garden Wall was published way before we were born, and Dad always made sure that his job was kept separate from the family. Like, yeah, we would always see him writing and stuff growing up, and he writes us poems every Christmas, which is cool, but Jason Funderberker? We never really talked about it like that. It was always just Dad’s poems.”

“Yeah,” Mabel chimes in, absentmindedly braiding her hair in front of her face. “Jason Funderberker was always just some dude who they wouldn’t shut up about in English class--”

“Thanks, sweetheart.”

“--Dad was right at home and would write me a poem about pancakes and then make me pancakes. He’s way cooler than Jason Funderberker.”

Wirt blinks with suspiciously shiny eyes. He tries to clear his throat subtly, then fails. He is not going to cry because his kids think he’s cooler than someone who is also him. He’s not. 

Pacifica’s still looks like a stalled computer. “I--but--”

“He’d give you his autograph, you know,” says Dipper, pointedly. “If you asked.”

“Jason Funderberker doesn’t give autographs. He never has.”

“I didn’t like strangers coming up to me when I was trying to wrangle twin toddlers,” says Wirt, shooting his kids a look. They simultaneously pull an identical face that is about as innocent as a mug shot. “I liked it even less when I was a nineteen-year-old kid who only went to a publisher because he lost a bet with his little brother. I’d be happy to sign something for a friend of Dipper and Mabel’s.” 

Wirt is suddenly struck by the realization that the only time he had ever given an autograph was when his mom made him sign the copies she then handed out to a nebulous cloud of indifferent aunts and uncles. His mom had dictated the dedications herself, because Wirt, a published author, could not be trusted to do them right, and then stood over him like a vulture the whole time, saying, “I told you not to publish under such a silly name. What will Aunt Bertha think?” 

Wirt, at the time, did not give a flying hoot about what Aunt Bertha thought, and still doesn’t, coincidentally. He hasn’t seen her since his wedding, where she pinched his cheek once, handed him a hot sauce-stained gift certificate to Radio Hut for $1.37, and disappeared for three hours, at which point she was caught having an affair with the photographer in a janitor’s closet. When they went to tell her husband, they found him with a caterer in the back of his van. Beatrice and Wirt did not invite them to Dipper and Mabel’s first birthday, or anything else, for that matter. 

“That is, if you want,” Wirt hastily adds, remembering Uncle Willy peering down at one of the first copies of Over the Garden Wall as he said, “Who is this Jason Funderberker and why do I give a rat’s ass about him? Only spineless, weak sons-of-bitches write poetry anyway.”

Uncle Willy would go on to sell his copy for a ludicrous amount of money, as it turns out. Wirt remembers opening his newspaper on the fifth anniversary of his publication to see an article proclaiming that a rare first edition of his book had showcased at an auction, and fetched an absurd price because it was the only known signed copy in existence. Wirt stopped inviting Uncle Willy to family functions too. 

Pacifica turns white. “Wait right here,” she squeaks. “I’ll be right back.”

She sprints from the room like it’s on fire.  

“Well,” says Wirt, after a moment, “she seems nice.”

“She is,” says Mabel.

“Yep.”

Pacifica half runs, half stumbles back into the room, fighting her backpack for custody of a book. 

“I, uh, have my copy,” she explains, passing it nervously from one hand to the other. “With me.”

Dipper pinches his brow. “Do you carry that around with you everywhere?”

Pacifica very noticeably does not reply.

Carefully, Wirt accepts the book with one hand, groping for a pen with the other. His eyes fall into the upper right hand corner. 

An ink blotch. Just like the ones that had been caused when his fountain pen erupted all over his stack of books while his mother said, “--Bertha think?”

Wirt blinks. With quick, curious fingers, he turns to the dedication page.

“I, uh, not there actually--”

Thank you for supporting me on this
exciting new enterprise.
Love,
Jason Funderberker

“Uncle Willy’s copy,” Wirt murmurs. He looks up. “This was sold. Ages ago.”

Pacifica turns red. “Yeah. Um. My dad had our butler track down the guy who had it and buy it off of him. It was a Christmas gift. I was, uh, a huge fan.”

Wirt quickly reassesses how stupid rich she must be. “Do you still want the signature?”

“Yes, please! But not there.” 

She hops from one foot to another for a second, reaches out her hands and then retracts them, before eventually taking the book like it’s an active bomb. She opens it to where the red silk ribbon marks the page.

“Can you sign it with your real name?” she blurts, handing it back to him. She twists her arms around herself. “I won’t tell anyone, I just... Could you?”

“Of course.”

Wirt grew up with books, grew up with stories. He sprouted between the stacks in the library, yanking this book or that off too-tall shelves. He knows the look of a well-loved book. He knows the look of a story that means something.

The page Pacifica turns to is far more worn than the rest of the copy, the thick, heavy paper worn soft where the rest are crisp, yellowed where the rest are clean and white. At the bottom, there is a set of lines with the words faded a shade lighter than the rest of the poem, and Wirt imagines a young, grasping Pacifica shrouded in darkness and covers, a penlight balanced between her teeth as she runs her fingers over the words. 

But there will come a day--
You can see it dawning now--
An hour
A moment
An age
Where the bell will ring
And where the bell will break. 

-- Beware the Beast

“Do you ever read something and it’s everything you ever needed to hear?” Pacifica asks him anxiously, twisting her hands over and over and over again. 

Wirt smiles. He scribbles a dedication directly above the title, and signs his name directly below.

“I know exactly what you mean,” he says, and he snaps the book closed.

… 

“Well,” Wirt says when nobody’s crying and they’ve wrangled the axe away from Grenda. “We’ve had a bit of a late start, I’ll admit. Are you ready to go?”

“Yep,” Dipper says, pulling his fingers through his backpack straps. “Where’s Grunkle Stan and Grunkle Ford?”

“Watching their, um”--Wirt racks his brain--“cars, weapons, and war show.” He frowns. “Will they be okay with the girls? I know they’ve done this before, but the girls probably weren’t sobbing profusely when that happened. Also, Ford gave Grenda a battle axe to chop wood with, which concerns me on numerous levels.”

“I think they’ll be fine,” says Dipper, frowning. “They’re good with Mabel, and Mabel and her friends won’t need much watching anyway.”

“We should let them know we’re going, at least,” says Wirt, and he walks over to the entrance to the living room. 

He stops. 

Ford and Stan sit side by side on the couch, eating ice cream directly from the carton and bundled under a ginormous blanket that Wirt recognizes as one of Mabel’s knits. They look like they’re on the verge of murdering one another with Rocky Road encrusted spoons. 

“You’re missing the point, Sixer,” growls Stan, thrusting a spoon vigorously at the flickering television screen. A chunk of marshmallow flicks off and hits Wirt’s forehead. “He had his chance at the cotillion.” 

“I admit, Count Lionel made a mistake, but he’s obviously come to rectify that. This is a sign that he’s finally in touch with his own emotions. He deserves another chance.”

“He had his chance! He had so many chances! This was supposed to be her wedding day.”

“She doesn’t truly love Count Reginald!”

Stan shoves out of his chair in disgust and stalks away. “I didn’t show you this just so you could hurt me!”

“Lionel was her first love, Stanley!”

Wirt silently backs out of the room.

“They’ll be fine,” he says, and he rapidly maneuvers his son out of the house.

… 

The campsite is not as bad as Wirt had expected. It’s worse, in fact, and Wirt halfway expects that the woods around them are on the verge of gaining sentience and eating them alive. 

It’s not the Unknown. Wirt can feel it in the tug of his stomach, in the pull towards where he belongs, that this is not the Unknown. But it’s… closer to it, somehow. A short distance away. 

The thought occurs to him in a rush. 

This isn’t the Unknown. But it’s like it. And maybe it can claim people, take them the way that the Unknown took him. 

He sets up the packs and rolls, gets the fire pit ready, and the thought squats in the back of his mind like a toad. This is like the Unknown. It took his children. 

At the edges of the campsite, Dipper bustles around, doing something Wirt can’t see. Right when he’s about to ask, his ears pop. His ears pop. His ears pop. 

Dipper straightens, seemingly satisfied with whatever he’s doing, and comes back over. He plops himself down at Wirt’s left, busying himself with poking at the fire pit, moving around kindling and sticks. 

Wirt groans. “We forgot the lighter kit. I knew there was something.”

“I can probably get it going with some rocks,” muses Dipper. “Ford taught me how.” 

Of course he did. 

Dipper walks a few steps away, looking for suitable fire starters. He seems a bit more unguarded. A bit more relaxed.

“So, uh how’s the star formations going, bud?”

Wow, he made his kid go tense so fast. He’s so good at this. 

“It’s fine,” says Dipper, not taking his eyes off his search. “Just stars.”

“That’s nice.”

“It’s not going to be going on for much longer.”

“Oh.” Wirt blinks. “Well, I hope it was fun while it lasted.”

Dipper shrugs. He doesn’t reply. 

“Do the stars have anything to do with how weird the rest of the town is?”

His head snaps up. “What? What do you mean?”

“I can tell there’s something weird about the town, Dip,” says Wirt, pointedly. “It’s kind of hard to miss. I see things.”

Shoulders slumping, Dipper nods. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess it would be hard to miss.”

“You all knew?” A nod. “And you weren’t going to tell me anything.”

“Mabel wanted to,” admits Dipper. “When we first came. Ford and Stan thought we should have done it ages ago.”

There’s a sinking feeling in Wirt’s stomach. “But you didn’t.”

Dipper hangs his head. He nods. 

“Why?”

“I don’t know.” He scuffs the ground with his shoe. 

“I won’t be mad with--whatever you tell me.”

“You don’t know that.” He swipes at one cheek roughly. His voice is thick. “Not really. Not until you know everything.”

“I do know,” says Wirt, firmly. “I love you and your sister more than anything. Your mom loved you and your sister more than anything. It won’t matter to me.”

All at once, Dipper’s shoulders shudder inwards, and a sob catches in his throat. Wirt stands, wraps his arms around him and pulls him to his chest, and he feels his son shake, shake, shake. 

“Did you ever really mess something up?” says Dipper, his face still crushed into Wirt’s shoulder. “Like, really, really mess something up.”

“Only like, every day, bud.”

“No, like really mess something up. And--and you can’t fix it no matter how hard you tried, and it’s someone else who had to pay for it.”

Wirt thinks of Greg, half-taken into the tree. He’s never asked him if he also thinks his blood has turned black. He’s scared of the answer. 

“Yes,” he says, honestly.

“I didn't want to tell you everything,” confesses Dipper. “Not yet. It’s just--so much has been happening and I just. Couldn’t take the look on your face when you knew everything.”

“Well, I could always turn around.”

Dipper smacks him with the flat of his hand, but he’s laughing, watery and weak. “Stop.”

“Do you really think I’ll care, Dip?” asks Wirt, dragging a hand through his hair. “Because I don’t think I will.”

Although, he may kill the Stans when this is over. Oh, send your kids to Gravity Falls. Fresh air and nature. We won’t send them back with any trauma at all!

“I don’t know. I care.” 

“Well, you could tell me a little at a time. How about that?”

Dipper hesitates. And, for a moment, Wirt thinks he’s about to tell him something. 

“Can we just have fun tonight?” he asks. “I--there’s a lot happening right now. That wasn’t a lie. And it’s nothing bad and it’s nothing you need to be worried about; it’s stuff I do all the time and I’m good at it. It’s almost done. But it’s just… I just want to have it all handled before we worry about the talk we need to have.”

Wirt searches his face. “That long of a talk, huh?”

“The longest we’ve ever had.”

“You promise nothing you’re up to is dangerous?”

Dipper cracks a smile. “It’s only as dangerous as Gravity Falls ever is.”

Wirt has no idea what that means. 

“I’ll get the fire started,” says Dipper, pulling away. “And we can just… have fun? Yeah?”

“Yeah,” agrees Wirt, after a moment. “That sounds good.”

These woods are not the Unknown. But they have eyes just as it did, and Wirt can feel them now, peaking through the trees. 

It feels like the Beast. Watching them with iridescent eyes. 

All at once, Wirt’s ears pop, and when he turns around, Dipper already has the fire coaxed into its fullest height.

Chapter Text

The night before Greg arrives, another notice is released that the nations of Dipper and Mabel are now at peace. The dispute has been resolved and peacetime reparations have been released in the form of a packet of new glitter markers for Mabel and a “deeply haunted” antique clock from the 18th century for Dipper. Terms of the peace agreement include “never talking about this again, oh my God, what a disaster,” and they would appreciate it if the terms of their treaty would be summarily accepted and respected by all neighboring nations. To sum up, please, never bring this up ever again, oh my God, what an absolute nightmare. 

It’s released on different stationery. This one is maple scented. It has a shimmering gold wax seal in its bottom left corner and has been notarized by someone called Tad Strange. 

Wirt did not buy them this. He did not buy them any of this. 

… 

Greg arrives with a solid knock at the door and a huge, crowing shout in the front entrance in lieu of greeting. He accepts Wirt’s hug with an even stronger one of his own, half-lifting Wirt off his feet with the movement. Greg grew up big, and he grew up strong, and he grew up ready to envelop anyone into a hug. He always arrives in a big way. 

He also arrived six hours early.

“And you must be Greg,” says Uncle Ford, holding out a hand to shake. “I’ve heard a lot of great things about you.”

Greg envelops him into a firm, jostling hug. Greg never changes as a person. 

“Oh, um…” Uncle Ford sounds winded. “Well. We weren’t expecting you for another six hours. The twins are still out, I’m afraid.”

Greg beams. “I made great time on the freeway.”

It is a three hour drive. 

“Well, we’re happy to have you. I--the house isn’t quite ready yet, we thought we’d have more time, but--”

He waves him down. “I totally understand. When I have guests coming over, I always want every second before they arrive. You know, clean the house, water the plants, hide my secrets, walk my dogs…” 

He trails off with a laugh. 

Uncle Ford also laughs. Distinctly uncomfortable. “What?”

“Walk my dogs,” chirups Greg. “I have three.”

“Right, right, I just thought… Never mind.”

“Oh! Yes, hiding secrets. Always important to do that before guests come! Never know what information you might have that should have been disclosed to legal guardians ages ago!”

He laughs again. Companionable. Uncle Ford also laughs. Nervous. There is an uncomfortable amount of eye contact. 

Slapping him on the arm, Greg says, “Where’s Uncle Stan? I wanted to spend all day with you both.”

“Yes, that, well. Wouldn’t you rather spend time with dear Wirt--”

Greg crams his arm into the crook of Uncle Ford’s elbow. “Let’s go find him together.” And he drags him off. 

He winks solidly at Wirt on their way out the door. 

God, he loves his brother. 

… 

Wirt realizes that Beatrice is going to die when she starts talking about going home. 

She lies in a crisp white hospital bed, yet another operation having sapped away her strength, her red hair utterly withered away. 

Wirt sits at her side, slouched in yet another hard, plastic chair in a long line of hard, plastic chairs. His twins sit across from him, curled into one another’s sides, sleeping uneasily.

At first, Wirt doesn’t notice when she wakes up. 

“Hey,” he says, sliding closer. Her eyes are open, sharp and distant. She’s looking at something he can’t see. “You’re awake.”

“Wirt,” she says. “I miss home.”

“We’ll go home soon,” he assures her, and he folds her hand in both of his. “The doctor said that if this treatment worked, you had a good chance of going into full remission. We’ll all be back soon, all four of us.”

“I can see it,” she says, and she smiles. “I’m going back home.”

Wirt feels the world drop out from under him.

“Doctor?” he calls, his voice hoarse. “Doctor?”

“It’s beautiful,” she says, talking faster. “I remember.”

“Hey,” he says urgently, scooting closer. “We’re going back there together, remember? You and me. We’re not leaving each other behind. Not again.”

“It’s not so scary anymore,” she says, soft and fading. “I wonder why we ever thought it was?”

Wirt lunges for the alarm. “Kids,” he chokes out, tears spilling down his cheeks. “Kids, wake up.”

Dipper startles first. “Dad? What’s wrong?”

He looks at Wirt.

He looks at Beatrice.

“No,” he says. “No, no, Mom--”

“I’m going back home,” Beatrice says again. She smiles. 

“Mommy?” asks Mabel, sounding small. “Mom, Mom stay. Mom, stay .” 

“We made a deal,” says Wirt, begging. “We made a deal. Stay here, with me. Just a little while longer.”

“I can fix this,” he hears Dipper say, almost to himself. “I can fix this.”

He starts to babble then, words Wirt has never heard before in languages he didn’t know existed. No matter how hard he tries, he can’t seem to focus on what exactly his son says.

His ears pop. His ears pop. His ears pop.

She closes her eyes then, looking so incredibly, unspeakably happy, and she says, “I love you.”

Her heart rate monitor sounds as flat as a grave.

… 

When Wirt leaves the house, he feels oddly light. Happy. Content. 

There’s a certainty to it. A positivity deep in his chest. He’s going to know what happened to his kids soon. Dipper will tell him. The Stans will crack. It’s going to be out in the air, exposed, open, and they can finally exorcise this awful-something between them all. They can go forward. This limbo Wirt’s been trapped in since that first summer will be over. For the first time in a long time, he feels at peace. 

At the edge of the property waits the woods, green and bright in the summer sun. They don’t look like the Unknown. 

He steps inside. They’re just woods. Just… trees. He’s been projecting his past onto them, pretending like each grove is the memory of what has passed, the knowledge of what’s to come. 

They’re just woods, he thinks, half-marvelling at the greenery around him. And there’s nothing to be wary of in the woods. 

Behind him, there’s the snap of a tree branch. 

Oh, how Wirt loves to be proven immediately wrong. It’s as constant as gravity. He’ll think an optimistic thought and the universe will immediately rally together to prove him wrong. At least he knows what to expect, which is to not expect anything. 

Might as well turn around. Find out what fresh hell this is. 

Angry eyebrow kid stands a scant few feet behind him, his face drawn in cartoonish rage. In his hand, there is a drawn sword with blade as black as midnight, with star-pricks of red shining throughout its face. Behind him waits four men on stark white steeds, bows taunt and arrows notched, all pointing directly at Wirt. 

Oh, okay, they’re doing this now. 

“Hey, Zielach…” says Wirt, with no enthusiasm. He glances at the men behind him. “Are those… also… cosplayers?”

He is immediately clocked on the head with the hilt of the sword. 

Oh, okay. They’re doing this now. 

… 

“No, no, no…” mutters Zielach, pacing the forest floor. He tears the thick parchment in his hands to shreds. “No, no. It’s all wrong.” His head snaps up. “What rhymes with ‘brave’?” 

“Cave, knave, glave--”

“You are a fool.” He sniffs delicately. “Rave.”

“Do not use that.”

“You know nothing, peasant.”

Wirt looks heavenward for strength. “You know, not all poetry has to rhyme.” 

“You know nothing, peasant.”

“Only a poet. Professional one. For over twenty years. Only won the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for extraordinary lifetime achievement. And the Walt Whitman Award. And a Pulitzer.” He bangs his head idly against the bars of his cage. “Some might even say one of the greatest of our generation.”

“Humans are petty and stupid and short-lived,” says Zielach, snidely. Oh, so not human then. Fantastic. He loves learning these new things in life-threatening circumstances. “Few of you are worth the breath in your lungs.”

Wirt had come to in a cage of black brass, gilded and bejeweled and suspended from a knotted, twining tree the color of bleached bone. In the grove beneath him waited Zielach and his men, pacing the span of the clearing with an alert, twitching gaze. 

The clearing itself was not in Gravity Falls. Not fully. The forest of the Falls bled together with a forest of a much darker, eldritch design, the colors blurring and warping like water colors. Wirts hangs over the exact threshold between worlds, the ground beneath him a hellish swirl of cheerful green and aching, oozing black. 

Oh, no, Dad, the stars can’t open any portals. That’d be ridiculous. There are absolutely no portals to hell worlds that you have to be worried about. None at all. This is just a random cosplaying tourist who needs professional help to work through his many problems. 

His kids are so grounded. They are so grounded. 

“I’m just saying, man, I really don’t know why else you’d want me here,” says Wirt, cracking his back. Oh, God, he’s so old. He can’t do magic kidnappings anymore. This is elder abuse. “It’s kind of like, the only thing I can help you with here.” 

Zielach has spent the entire time composing terrible poetry. 

The. 

Entire. 

Time. 

“Ha! As always, you prove your own ignorance, peasant.” Which like, hurtful. He has a name. Zielach wheels on him. “Did you think that I would be bested so easily? Did you think my resolve so weak that mere words could drive me off? I have bathed in the blood of enemies of far mightier means! There is no trial too treacherous, no obstacle too large. I shall not be bested by a mere man.”

He claps, turning on his heel to resume his pacing. “Now, in the next verse, I need to express my abilities as a provider. My willingness to weave a garden of bone and brass for my heirs to play in.”

“Oh my God,” mutters Wirt. 

In the distance, there’s a faint whine coming ever-closer, growing from the part of the forest belonging to the Falls. Not a minute later, the Stans golf cart screeches into view, slamming to a stop not two feet from the divide in the forest. 

Mabel is at the wheel. Dipper is at her side. 

“Give us our Dad back, you dumb dork!” shouts Mabel, as she climbs from the cart. 

Oh no. Oh no. This is Beatrice’s contribution to their genetic material. This is the part of their family that gets turned into bluebirds. 

“Kids!” snaps Wirt. “Back in the golf cart. Now!”

“Don’t worry, Dad, it’ll be alright!” Dipper replies, not taking his eyes of Zielach. “We’ve got this.”

“Pines Family,” says Zielach, tilting his chin in regal composure. He looks staunchly at Mabel. He does not so much as spare Dipper a glance. “Have you yet come to your senses?”

“We have,” says Mabel, taking a step forward. There’s a steely look in her eyes. “Yes, Zielach. I will marry you.”

Oh absolutely not. First off, nope, they are not adding a child bride situation to their family line. Secondly, Wirt knows that look in his daughter’s eye. He’s going to have to dig a shallow grave before the day is out and swear both of his kids to secrecy about the murder Mabel’s about to commit. He’s not capable enough to be covering up murders. Damn, he needs the Stans to help. They look like they’ve individually covered up a few. 

Zielach jerks back with a sneer. “You? You? I have no desire to marry you.” 

This makes Mabel falter. “Um. You proposed?” 

“Yes. To the object of my affection. The love most dear to my heart. Through you, his chaperone.” 

“What?” says Mabel.

“What?” says Wirt.

“What,” says Dipper. 

“From the moment I first laid eyes upon my love, I knew we were meant to be,” he says, stoically. “I abided by the rules of courtship, but I can restrain myself no longer. I long to gaze upon my most dearest’s beauty. I long to have my cherished’s name on my tongue. Um.” He rifles through his pockets, coming up with scraps of parchment. “Um, my beloved’s depths of strength are matched only by my own reserves of bravery. I could find no such qualities elsewhere, not even in a”--he falters--“Rave. Ery.” The parchment is tossed to the ground. “There will be time for poetry later. I will compose them in blood for only my love’s eyes to bear witness. Is my proposal accepted?”

Dipper buries his face in his hands. “Oh my God. Oh my God.”

Zielach’s eyes flicker between Mabel and his guards. “Is that a good sign?” 

“The pet names were you flirting with my brother by proxy?” asks Mabel, aghast. “I thought you were trying to be cute.”

His hand twitches towards his sword. “Is my proposal of marriage accepted?”

“Oh my God,” says Dipper. 

Zielach stares at Mabel. He’s waiting for her response. 

Mabel, for her part, is flickering her eyes uneasily between her brother and Zielach. “Right. Um. About that… See, the thing is…”

Wirt knows his kids. Whatever plan they have, it’s being derailed. They need Mabel to be the distraction. They need her brother to be free to pull the next step. 

“Hey, um, excuse me,” calls Wirt, waving slightly through the bars of his cage. “Hi.” 

Zielach’s head snaps upwards, annoyed. “What?”

“Yeah, hi, hello. I’m Dipper’s father.”

“I am aware.”

“Oh. Were you aware that in our culture, all proposals of marriage have to go through the father?” He looks pointedly at Mabel. “I think this is a simple matter of a cultural mix up.”

Mabel catches on quickly. “It is! I mean, it is. I can’t accept your proposal on Dipper’s behalf, Zielach. It has to go through my father.”

Zielach jolts, his eyes flying wide. “Oh my--in my kingdom, it goes through the first introduced family member, but--oh no matter.” He claps. “Guards. Release my beloved’s father at once.”

The cage makes a slow, rattling descent. 

Wirt plans it out in his head. The cage is going to unlock. He is going to step out, and it is going to be composed, and he’s going to brush himself off, and that’s going to be composed too. Strike an intimidating figure. Do it right. 

Except the muscle spasm hits him while he’s still trying to clamber to his feet, and his knee sort of crumples and he sort of tilts to the side, and everyone watches in haunting silence as he tries to yank himself up by the corner of the cage. 

Zielach snaps his fingers towards two of the guards, and the guards step forward, arms reached out to help him up. He waves them off. 

“Are you sure?” says the guard closest. “I could--”

“No, no--”

“It’s just, muscle cramps are so common after suspension in the Gilded Cage--”

“No, no, really, I’m almost up--”

“It’s no trouble, really--”

He drags himself to his feet. The guards step back. Brushing himself off, he clears his throat, trying to reclaim what ounce of dignity he has left. 

There is a haunting silence. 

“Now,” says Wirt, clearing his throat again, this time with more purpose. “You want to marry my son.”

Zielach goes ramrod straight. “Yes.”

“Well, this is a very serious manner,” says Wirt, severely. “It’s my responsibility to make certain he makes a proper match.”

Puffing himself up, Zielach says, “There is no match more proper than I.”

“Yes, well.” He folds his arms. “I understand that there have been some cultural difficulties so far. In our culture, you must go through the father. It’s absolutely prohibited to do anything else.” 

As if. If Beatrice didn’t kill him, the twins would. 

Zielach opens his mouth in a rush, but Wirt just holds up his hand. “But, of course, I understand that these things happen. What’s important is that there are no misunderstandings going forward.” Then, he turns, looking pointedly at the guards. “In our culture, this is a private meeting. Family only.”

One of the guards immediately steps forward, mouth open in protest. 

“Of course,” says Zielach, snapping a hand in his direction. “My guards will leave us.” He gives them a severe look. “The only thing that could possibly be in danger at this junction is my proposal, and we mustn’t have that.”

That’s right, cosplayers. Just a middle aged poet with bad joints. You all just watched the embarrassing exit from the Gilded Cage. Go on and back up now. 

After a moment, the guard assents with a nod. “We shall retreat to a reasonable distance.”

The footsteps recede into the distance. When Wirt is reasonably certain they’re gone, he turns back to Zielach. “So. Zielach,” he says, severely, steepling his fingers before his face. “What is it that you do?” 

He seems to falter at this. “Do?”

“What are your job prospects? I can’t exactly let my son marry just anyone. I have to know they can provide for him.”

Immediately, he puffs up. “I am the crown prince of the Shadowed Realms,” he declares, imperiously. “I have conquered nations which make your world seem like a mere village. There are an innumerable shackled of my enemies to provide for his every need.”

Why can Wirt never have normal problems?

“Huh,” he hears himself say, faintly. “That’s, uh. That have good job security?”

“I am the only heir to the throne. I have slain all others.”

“Huh.” He nods. “So. Pretty solid position then.”

Zielach stares at him impatiently. Wirt claps once. “Well, looks like we really can’t expect a better match for Dipper here.”

“Um,” says Dipper. He darts his eyes between them. “Dad?”

“I was gonna try to find a nice tenured professor for you, but it looks like you can’t get a better match than, uh. This. Situation.” He shakes his head gravely. “I, uh, can’t beat the garden of blood and brass--”

“Bones and brass.”

“Pardon me, bones and brass for your heirs.”

“Heirs?” echoes Dipper, every single stage of grief passing before his eyes.

Zielach spins, thrilled. “We shall be wed before nightfall,” he declares, sweeping his cape from his shoulders and settling it around Dipper’s shoulders. 

“That sure is soon, isn’t it, Dad?” says Mabel, meaningfully. 

Wirt hums his agreement. He’s not watching this anymore. His eyes are scanning the forest floor for what he spotted from the cage. “Young love,” he says, agreeably. “Never want to wait with that.”

“A kiss, I think,” says Zielach. “From my beloved.”

There it is. 

Wirt picks up the tree branch. 

… 

The woods wait for Wirt.

They lurk in his mind, in his thoughts, always always always. He thinks of the woods, of the trees, and he thinks i’m coming, i’m coming, i’m coming, but not yet.

Death waits for everyone. Wirt’s just a little more aware of it than everyone else.

This is what Wirt knows:

One day, he will tumble back over the garden wall. One day, he will walk in the woods, in the Unknown, and he won’t say, “Greg, I think we’re lost.”

Instead, he will walk in the woods, sharp orange leaves beneath his feet and a song echoing through the trees, and Beatrice will be there. He will smile, and so will she.

“Wirt,” Beatrice will say.

And, “Beatrice,” Wirt will say. “I’m home.”

And they’ll walk. And they’ll wait. And one day, his kids will come, and they’ll take his hand amongst the trees and the pumpkins and the leaves. Beatrice will laugh and Mabel will cry and Wirt will pull them all close and hold them tight. 

“We waited,” Beatrice will say. 

“We came,” Dipper will say, and then they’ll go off together, into the Unknown. 

That day, Wirt thinks, hoisting a tree branch above his head, is not today.

… 

Dipper’s eyes are wide.

Wirt knows this because he can see them again. Once, they were obstructed, because an especially prickish prince who thinks he has the right to demand a kiss from Wirt’s son just because he’s “an immortal, unstoppable being,” and “sits upon a throne of skull and bone, bathing in the blood of all who dare defy him” had been blocking it with his abnormally large, plainly whackable head. Now, however, they are clearly visible, because said prince is currently an unconscious puddle on the ground, and does not seem to be getting up in the foreseeable future. 

Wirt steps over the body. He unties that ridiculous cape from around his son’s shoulders, dumping it on Prince Blood-of-my-Enemies. 

“Kids,” he says, utterly calm, “get in the golf cart.”

“Yes, Dad.”

“Yes, Dad.”

Wirt climbs into the driver’s seat. He checks his mirrors. 

“Everyone buckled up?” 

“Yep.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Good,” he says, and he floors it.

… 

“Um, Dad?” Dipper says, craning his neck behind them. “The soldiers noticed you beat up their prince.”

Glancing in the rearview, Wirt swears. He thinks it’s the best way to convey his feelings, at the moment. 

The soldiers, ridiculous cloaks flapping majestically behind them, ride towards them on steeds as white as starlight, as pale as death. They hold swords lynched tight on their belt, and bows drawn in their hands.

It helps, though, that they keep trying to ride in a line, the idiots. Sure, it’s the more cinematic shot, but the path is also stupidly narrow, barely allowing the cart to pass, let alone five horses riding in tandem. They only serve to slow each other down, something which Wirt very much appreciates. 

“Dipper,” Mabel says, twisting around in her seat, “I think now would be a good time to break out the dandelions.”

“Dandelions?” asks Wirt.

The cart rattles dangerously as he rumbles over rocks and branches. He hates the woods, he hates the woods, oh God he hates the woods so much. 

Dipper nods. “I think so too. Cover fire?”

“Cover fire?” asks Wirt.

“On it,” says Mabel, unbuckling her seatbelt. 

She cranes herself over the seat, digging through the back of the cart and coming back up with a crossbow in her grip. She kneels solidly in the rocking cart, one foot on the floor, one knee on the seat, and she grounds the bow solidly in the crook of her shoulder.

She breathes in. She breathes out. 

The first shot hits the left guard square in the helmet, slamming him backwards off his horse and into the trees beside. The horse thunders on without him, its rider left rubbing his head on the mossy forest floor, thoroughly stunned. 

Wirt watches it all in the rearview mirror. “Good shot, sweetheart,” he says proudly, veering between two twisting trees. “Aim for the guard in the center next, okay? He’ll trip up the people around him on his way down.”

Mabel beams, loading another round in her bow. “Sure thing, Dad!”

“Dipper, bud, how’s the, uh, dandelions coming?” 

“Almost there, Dad,” he says, flipping through his journal at a lightning rate. “The incantation is--ah! Got it. Mabel, scooch over.”

“I’m in the middle of something, bro,” she says, releasing another volley of arrows. Another thud rings out behind them. 

“I need the space or you’ll get hit,” says Dipper, elbowing in next to her. “Now scooch.” 

“I need the space or you’ll get hit,” protests Mabel, elbowing back as she loads another arrow. “Release the dandelions on the other side.”

“I need a direct line of wind!”

“Well so do I!”

“Kids,” Wirt snaps, wrenching the golf cart around a sharp turn. “No fighting when we’re running for our lives! Now share the wind! Mabel, scooch over for your brother. Dipper, do not elbow your sister while she’s handling weaponry.”

“Yes, Dad,” Dipper and Mabel chorus. 

Mabel scooches. Dipper begins to speak.

And Wirt’s ears pop. 

Dipper blows softly on the dandelion in his grip, gently, like he’s making a wish. The seeds drift lightly in the wind, floating from the golf cart in an idle breeze. 

They begin to grow.

Wirt nearly crashes the golf cart, watching as they stretch tall and wide as any tree, landing firmly in the ground between cart and soldiers. They grow larger as they root in the earth, bright yellow blooms craning through the trees and to the sun as roots rumble in the ground, warring for space in the narrow forest path.

There, where there had once been a bright, clear path with leaves and grass and good, strong trees, green stalks twist and tangle together in a dark mass, so densely woven that not even sunlight passes through. 

The patch of dandelions, a sunny yellow far, far above their heads, looks like a grove of baobab trees.

“Wow,” breathes Wirt.

Dipper swings back down in his seat easily. His eyes widen.

“Dad, watch out!”

Wirt wretches his eyes back to the road.

He hadn’t noticed the turn ahead of him, so focused on the magic--actual magic-- being performed behind. Trees loom ahead of him, dark and twisted and gnarled like an edelweiss-- Wirt, Greg says, pale and weak, I did it. I defeated the Beast--a nd he knows that he will never be able to turn in time.

He lets go of the wheel.

He pulls his kids into his arms. He shoves his body between them and the trees.

And Dipper mutters something that he can’t quite make out. 

Wirt’s ears pop.

The cart careens sideways, almost parallel with the ground--or, it would be, if the ground was where it was supposed to be.

It slopes upwards, curves high like a racetrack on a turn, bending to meet the wheels of the cart. The car rattles unsteadily beneath them, zipping along faster than any golf cart Wirt has ever been in, and continues surely onto the path.

“Dad,” says Mabel, slightly muffled by his protective but ultimately superfluous arm. Her arms have snaked beneath his, gripping the wheel by the bottom as she handles it narrowly between rocks and roots. “Take the wheel. Those guys are gonna get around the dandelions eventually, and I need to shoot them.”

“Oh,” says Wirt, feeling slightly foolish. “Right.” He nods. “Well done, Dipper, Mabel.”

Mabel beams. Dipper ducks his head, blushing.

“Head to the house,” says Dipper. “We’ve got protections around it. These guys can’t get past the boundary line.”

“Um,” says Mabel, “the protections may be down right now.”

“Unless the protections are down right now,” concludes Dipper, groaning. “Mabel, why are the protections down right now?”

“Grunkle Ford and I invited the manotaurs over for pilate night, and the manotaurs didn’t want you to know because you and the Multibear have that weird rivalry with them, so Grunkle Ford lowered the protections himself. Except not everyone has magic reserves to throw around like you, and he was too tired to put them back up again so we decided to wait instead of telling you and the protections are very much not up right now.”

“Mabel! Are you kidding me right now?”

“Don’t blame this on me. If you and the Multibear would just get over yourselves and stop being so mean to the manotaurs, we would have asked you to put the protections back up! And we would have invited you to pilate night.”

“Mabel, for the last time, I’m not going to hang out with the manotaurs. They tried to make me kill the Multibear! And they have horrible tastes in music. You’re supposed to be on my side in this feud.”

Wirt blinks. He blinks again. “Okay,” he says, still blinking. “There’s a lot to unpack there. Let’s not. What do we have to do to raise the protections?”

“We have a ward stone,” explains Dipper. “We keep it in the basement.”

“We have a basement?”

“I need to go down to the basement and activate the ward stone,” continues Dipper. “I can’t do it from anywhere else.”

“So we get to the house before them,” says Wirt, veering through the path with a newfound reckless abandon. “And you go down to the basement and do your stuff before they show up and kill us. Sound like a plan?”

Mabel shrugs. “Yeah, okay.”

Nodding, Dipper says, “Sounds good to me.”

“Good.”

“You’re taking this pretty well,” notes Mabel, tilting her head. “You know, Dipper doing magic, me with a crossbow, manotaurs, multibears, a fae prince from another dimension falling madly in love with Dipper and trying to drag him off to be his princess--”

“Mabel.”

“You know, the whole,” she says, waving her arms for emphasis, “schtick. We thought you’d be freaking out right about now.”

“Well, I do have a lot of questions,” says Wirt, grimly, and the cart bursts into a clearing. It is, thankfully, the right clearing; their house lies innocuously on the other end. Wonderful. Wirt had been secretly worried that he was going in the wrong direction for a good five minutes. “The existence of magic and other realms… aren’t… actually… some of them.”

“What?”

Wirt shrugs. “I kind of already knew about that? Like, not in Gravity Falls specifically, but in general? I’ve known since like. The 80s.” 

Dipper and Mabel splutter.

“Questions will have to wait,” says Wirt, hurriedly, his eyes darting back to the mirrors.

Six newly dazed, horseless fae, led by Prince Jerkface himself, stumble into the clearing. Prince Can’t-Rhyme points at the cart, shouting.

Two of them raise their bows.

Wirt screeches to a stop at the porch, shoving the kids out ahead of him.

“Inside,” he snaps, wrapping himself around his twins as they rush up the steps. “Inside inside inside inside--”

There’s the twang of a bow.

Dipper mutters something. Wirt’s ears pop.

“Dipper,” says Wirt, as a soft, decidedly non-deadly tulip hits his back with a gentle thump, right where his heart should be, “I absolutely love whatever it is you’re doing. Keep it up.”

Mabel shoulders the door open, yanking them in before slamming it closed again. 

“I got the windows,” pants Dipper, flipping open a stone that Wirt most definitely thought was just part of the wall and pressing the button beneath.

Steel plates slam down over glass, locking into place with a professional ease.

Wirt stares. “I have been living in this house for two months.”

“We’ll show you all its tricks later,” says Mabel. “Dipper, the basement.”

“On it!”

The door nearly jolts out of its frame.

“Kids, we’ve got company,” says Wirt, rushing to the door. 

It rattles again, harder. The handle begins to turn.

Wirt grabs the knob and braces it closed.

The next slam nearly knocks him to the ground.

“Dad!”

Mabel rushes to his left, and Dipper to his right. They force the door closed.

“Mabel,” grunts Dipper, his shoulder lodged soundly against the heavy wooden frame, “your stupid boyfriend is gonna break down the door before I can raise the protections.”

“My boyfriend?” says Mabel, snapping him a glare. “ Uh-uh. You’re the one he’s all weak in the knees over! This is your boyfriend.”

“Yeah, well, we didn’t know that!” Another crash. Another. Another. “He only ever talked to you! I told you he was creepy ages ago, and it took him proposing to take me seriously! Again! If you had just listened to me, this wouldn’t be happening!”

“Kids,” Wirt grits out, feeling the next crash rattle through his skull and into his teeth, “what did I say about fighting when people are trying to kill us?”

“You were always jealous of me and Zielach,” shouts Mabel. “Maybe you wanted this to happen!”

“I wanted Zielach to kidnap Dad, put him in a cage, and try and force me into spending eternity with him?” says Dipper, incredulous. “Mabel, that doesn’t make any sense!”

“... I don’t know! Maybe! You always hate every guy that I date! How was I supposed to know that this one was a creep?”

“Kids. Not. The. Time.”

“Because they’re always creeps!” snaps Dipper, bracing himself as another rattle shakes the frame. “Always. Norman was five gnomes in a sweatshirt who proposed to you on the second date and then kidnapped you when you said no! Gideon pressured you into a relationship, and then tried to kill me when you broke up with him! Mermando told you he was getting married over letter! Gabe only liked you for your puppet show, and then made out with his own hands! Seriously! Half your exes have tried to kill us, and that guy was somehow the biggest dodged bullet of the bunch! Are you not seeing a pattern here? Everyone you date is a creep!”

Mabel splutters.

“You’re so great Mabel,” says Dipper, earnestly, as his One True Love tries to force himself into his heart, and also their house. “You’re smart, and funny, and nice, and any guy would be lucky to have you! So why do you keep wasting your time on such losers?”

“Aw, Dippin-dot,” croones Mabel, and she tosses her arms around her brother. “That’s so sweet.”

“Door,” Wirt and Dipper say in unison. “Door.”

“Oh!” Mabel straightens. “Right, sorry.”

The next attack splits a crack down the center of the door.

Wirt swears.

“Go away!” shouts Mabel, punching the door back. “We’re having an important family bonding moment in here!”

Wirt frowns. “Is he saying something? It sounds like he’s saying something.”

“I think”--Dipper furrows his brow--“I think he’s reciting bad poetry. While he tries to break down the door.”

Mabel and Dipper shudder. 

“He’s worse than Gabe,” says Mabel, gravely. “We actually found one worse than Gabe.”

Dipper nods. “I… am not proud of this relationship. I mean, I didn’t even know I was in it, but I’m still not proud.”

“Neither of you are allowed to date until you are thirty.”

“Um, hey guys,” says Greg ,from behind them. “Uncle Ford and Uncle Stan were just showing me y’all’s power tools.” He takes a long look at the storm blinds, the rattling door, and the three of them braced against it. “Whatcha doin’?”

“Grounding my kids for life,” grouses Wirt. “Get over here and help us keep the door closed. Dipper, go do your stuff in the basement.”

Dipper nods. “Hi, Uncle Greg. Good to see you.”

“Hey, Dippin Dot,” says Greg, and he ruffles his hair as he passes. “Good to see you too.”

“Greg! Now!”

“Ah,” says Uncle Ford, infuriatingly calm, slipping into the place Dipper left vacant. Greg shoulders his way in besides Mabel. “I see we’re under attack.”

“Yup,” says Wirt. He can play this game too.

“Stan is going to get our weapons. And Dipper will take care of the boundary in a jiffy. He’s very talented, your son. He has the strongest affinity for magic that I’ve ever seen, and that’s saying quite a bit.”

“Wonderful.” He grunts, feeling a bruise beginning to form where the door slams against his shoulder again. Another crack forms.

“Might I inquire who’s attacking us?”

“Zielach,” Wirt says. “Prince. Fae. Terrible at poetry. Worse with relationships.”

Ford blinks. “Prince Zielach? Of the Shadowed Realms? Whatever did you do to anger him?”

Wirt grunts. The door cracks. “Heard of him?”

“He’s the mad son of a tyrant. I spent a brief period in his kingdom, and I heard many tales of his cruelty. It’s said he actually bathes in the blood of his enemies. Thinks it gives him a nice, clear complexion.”

“He mentioned.” His skin care routine was the third verse of his poems. Crack. Crack. Crack. “Anything else?”

“Well,” says Ford, scratching the back of his neck. “He can’t assume the throne until he marries, but he’s beheaded every suitor his parents have sent him. He’s very particular in his choice of consort, it seems, but that’s all the gossip I heard. I can’t imagine how that will help us here.”

“After this, Grunkle Ford,” snaps Mabel, “you are going to sit down and write out a list of every. last. lunatic you’ve met, ever. And what their type is!”

“... type?” 

“Zielach is a jerk who thinks Dipper is incredibly dateable,” says Mabel. “He wants to drag him back to his shadow realms or whatever and raise a big, happy family together. Dipper didn’t even know they were dating. Dad hit him with a tree branch while his back was turned. He wants to kill us now, and probably still marry Dipper, I don’t know.”

Greg nods appreciatively. “Ah, a tree branch. Classic.”

Wirt’s ears pop.

There’s a zap, and a scream.

Wirt slides to the ground, groaning. “You kids,” he says, rubbing his shoulder. “Never dating. Thirty.”

Mabel scratches the back of her head. “Yeah, that’s fair.”

Dipper sprints up the secret staircase they apparently have, because Wirt had been incredibly naive in assuming that Stan’s stuffed ant-o-jack-a-bear is not, in fact, hiding a secret staircase to a secret basement. 

“The protections are up,” he says, pushing the button to retract the storm blinds. “There’s nothing they can do to get in now. Are they still out there?”

The steel rolls up to reveal a red-faced, enraged Zielach standing way too close to the window.

Silently, Dipper pushes the button to roll the storm shields back down. 

“They’re still out there,” he says.

“We can’t stay inside forever,” says Mabel. “We have to do something.”

“The gateway between realms doesn’t close for days,” mutters Dipper, beginning to pace. “We could survive a siege for that long, but the town couldn’t. They have to be back over by the time the moon reaches its zenith, or they’ll be stranded for the next three thousand years. They won’t be content just waiting us out; they’ll try to force us out.” He looks up. “We have to stop them. Now. Before they start attacking the town.”

“Right,” says Uncle Ford, glancing at Wirt and Greg uneasily. “Right, we have to, um.” He glances back at Dipper. “How much do they know?”

Wirt sighs, and straightens.

God, he wishes Beatrice was here. She would have just gorily murdered one of the Stans ages ago and gotten her answers out of the survivor. She was always the more productive of the pair.

“All right,” he announces, clapping his hands. “That’s it. It’s time for a Bluebird Promise.”

… 

When the twins are first born, Wirt buys a bluebird mobile and hangs it above their crib. The bluebirds are crafted of a crystalline blue glass, pale and bright, and when the sun hits them just so, they send shards of light scattering across the room.

Beatrice looks at the mobile flatly.

“I swear to God, Wirt,” she says.

… 

“A Bluebird Promise is for when we all need to work together, but we’re too scared of getting in trouble to do it,” Mabel explains, sandwiched between her brother and her uncle at the kitchen table. “Dad says that we all have to give up all our information before we get each other in trouble, and then he gives Mom a funny look, and then Mom scrunches up her face and says that we won’t get in trouble for anything we tell them during a Bluebird Promise, and then we all work together to fix the problem.”

“That’s exactly right, sweetie,” says Wirt. He crosses his arms and glares down at his uncles. 

At least one of them should have been present while his kids were galavanting off in horrible relationship after horrible relationship. He and Beatrice had a system. They were constantly vigilant. He’s not exactly sure which one of them, but when he is, he’s going to punch them. Hopefully Stan. Uncle Stan may have been a boxer, but Uncle Ford looks like he’s been in more fights. Wirt likes his odds better with Uncle Stan. 

“We… can explain,” says Uncle Ford, glancing uneasily at Stan. “We would have explained sooner, but, well, it’s a lot to take in. We didn’t know how you would handle it.”

“We didn’t want you to take the twins from us,” sighs Uncle Stan. “That first summer was rough, not gonna lie, and the summers after it weren’t exactly walks in the parks. We wanted to, you know, ease you into the truth.”

“The truth is currently trying to force my son into marriage,” says Wirt, pointedly. “Spill. Now.”

There’s a pregnant pause.

“Eh, that’ll take too long.” Uncle Stan shrugs. “I’ll sum up: My brother got stuck in an alternate dimension for thirty years. I stole his identity to try to get him back. Your kids showed up, took one look at the town, and became monster hunters. We save the world once or twice every summer, and now the diner gives us free pancakes.”

Wirt blinks. “Um. Okay. Anything else?”

“Dipper’s a witch,” Mabel informs him solemnly. 

Dipper makes a disgruntled noise.

“Well, you are. He was always doing magic stuff with that journal, but we always thought everyone could do that, if they knew how. But then I tried and I couldn’t and Ford found out and he freaked because Dipper’s like, super powerful and can do stuff that he shouldn’t be able to and now Dipper keeps floating in his sleep.”

“Mabel’s a badass,” says Dipper. “She’s really good with a crossbow and sword and I’m pretty sure she can kill people with her bare hands.”

Wirt nods curtly. “Anything else?”

“... I think that’s most of it?”

He nods again. “Okay. Good. I’m going to sit down now.”

Collapsing heavily into his chair, he nods again.

“We’re sorry we didn’t tell you and Mom,” says Mabel, sniffling. “We were just so scared you’d never let us go back to Gravity Falls if we did, and we love it here.” She gives him a watery smile. “We love it here, Dad. We love living with our Grunkles. We love Gravity Falls, and monster hunting, and magic, and Soos and Wendy and everyone else. We didn’t want to lose it.”

Dipper won’t meet his eyes. “It’s my fault that we never told you,” he says. “I told Mabel not to. I didn’t think you’d believe us even if we told you, and I was scared you’d never let us come back if you did.”

Wirt closes his eyes. 

“I understand,” he says. “I wish you had told me, but I understand why you didn’t.”

Dipper looks up. “Really?”

“Really,” Wirt sighs. “I understand too well, actually.”

Mabel gives him a look that she stole from her mother. “The 80s, Dad?”

“That’s where we have to confess,” says Greg, shifting uncomfortably. “It’s a long story.”

“Sum it up here, people,” says Uncle Stan. “We’ve got only a few hours until Wirt’s giving away Dipper at his wedding.”

“Okay, um, Wirt and I fell off a wall, almost died, ended up in another dimension or maybe it was the afterlife? We hit a woodsman on the back of his head and stole a horse, and we both almost got turned into trees. Oh, and your dad met your mom there, too. She was a bluebird. She didn’t get out of there until later, though.” He taps his chin thoughtfully. “I think that’s it, though.”

“Um,” says Uncle Stan. “What?”

“I’ll… explain later,” says Wirt. “The point is we’re on the level. Now, how do we get rid of Zielach?”

“Well, it won’t be easy,” Uncle Ford says, rubbing the back of his neck. “His family has been trying to find him a suitor for over a century--”

“Which is a super creepy age gap, I would like to point out,” says Wirt. 

“--so they have a lot invested in getting Dipper back to their realm, and once he’s there, they just have to wait until the rift between words closes again, and his only escape will close with it. There are many different branches of the fae throughout the multiverse, but none as deadly as those from the Shadow Realm. We can’t match them force for force without losing.”

“So, the brute strength method is out,” says Dipper. “Conning him it is. Grunkle Stan, whatcha got?”

Uncle Stan shrugs. “I need to know more about my target before I can con them. How’d you even get the little freak interested in you in the first place?”

Dipper throws his hands in the air. “I have no idea. I never even realized he was interested in me.”

“Well, how’d you meet?”

“Um.” Dipper scratches the back of his head. “I was poking around the interdimensional rift while it was still settling and then all of a sudden it settled and he just like, walked out, and I decided to introduce myself but he started to spout some Shakespearean crap and pulled a sword, and then I said he didn’t have to be a dick about it and turned his sword into a flower, andmaybethrewhimintoatreeidontreallyremember, and then he got all weird and nice and apologized for starting off on the wrong foot and asked if he could get to know me better and I thought, hey! Cool! Alternate dimension cosplayer dude! Let’s find out what other worlds are like! Only he was jerk about like, everything, and I spent all day trying to ditch him but then Mabel showed up and he got all weird and started talking about courtship and true love and never once setting his gaze upon such unadulterated beauty in all the multiverse, only he only ever addressed her in this creepy third person ‘my love’ and ‘my darling’ and ‘my glorious sun,’ and he never even so much as looked at me after that so he was definitely talking to her. Only then he like, proposed to her, and then got all weird when she said no and kidnapped Dad. And we went to rescue him, only then suddenly it was me Zielach wanted to marry and not Mabel. And I’m still very confused about all of this.”

There is a long silence.

“So what I’m getting from this is that you gave him a flower,” says Uncle Stan.

“That’s not the point,” Dipper huffs.

“The point,” says Uncle Ford, pinching the bridge of his nose, “is that other dimensions have very different ideas of courtship. The fae hold a very large emphasis on strength. Being powerful, whether magically or otherwise, is a very, uh, attractive quality for them. Zielach is an incredibly strong entity; his magical skill is only matched by his prowess in battle. Every suitor he received likely had been trained in battle as well, but would have maintained a deference to him that he would have perceived as weak.” Ford gives Dipper a flat look. “You called him a dick. He must have been enthralled by you.”

Dipper’s face scrunches up, disturbed. “I am never dating anyone ever again.”

Wirt crosses his arms. “You most definitely are not,” he agrees. 

“Okay, but he still proposed to Mabel,” argues Dipper. “That part doesn’t make sense.”

Ford shrugs. “I didn’t stay long enough in the Shadow Realm to find out about their exact courtship rituals, but in many dimensions, it was expected that marriage proposals would only go through a proxy. You introduced Mabel as your sister, yes? She became a familial link he could negotiate the marriage contract with. And when he flirted with her, he only referred to her in third person? He was likely flirting with you. It’s considered impolite in some realms to even gaze upon the object of your desire, once the courtship has commenced. He was courting you, by proxy. Mabel’s rejection acted as your rejection, and that’s what infuriated him. He likely wasn’t expecting a no.”

“And I’m guessing he won’t take one now,” says Uncle Stan, groaning.

“There’s an infinitesimal chance that he will, yes.”

“Ooohhh!” Greg says, bolting upright. “I’ve got it! He’s mad because Dipper won’t marry him, right? Well, we need him to get over their relationship so that he’ll go back home. How does anyone get over a bad breakup?”

“I’ll get the rom-coms,” says Mabel, nodding excitedly. “Grunkle Stan, you get the ice cream. Dipper, get my sparkliest nail polish. Dad--”

“I don’t think that’s quite what Uncle Greg was getting at, pumpkin,” says Wirt. “Why don’t we let him finish?”

“He needs a rebound.” 

“A rebound?” says Dipper, skeptical. “You want to set him up on a date?”

“But it can’t be just any date,” says Wirt, frowning. “He wants to marry Dipper, and I doubt he’ll go home without a new consort. Where are we going to find someone crazy enough to marry a bloodthirsty prince on the first date, and then move with him to his shadow kingdom forever?”

In unison, everyone at the table looks at Dipper and Mabel.

… 

“It’s not fair,” complains Mabel, hugging her list protectively to her chest. “Why do I have to show my list first? It’s Dipper’s cray-cray boyfriend.”

“He’s not my--” Dipper stops, then groans. “We’ll show our list at the same time, okay?”

Mabel nods. “Okay. One.”

“Two.”

“Three.”

Then, as one, they slap down a crisp white sheet labeled Summer Romances.

Wirt and the Stans exchange a look.

An understanding passes between them.

Immediately, they crowd forward, memorizing as many names as possible. For reasons. Which absolutely do not include broken kneecaps.

“What about Gideon?” says Dipper, his finger tracing down Mabel’s list. “He’s weird and likes power. He’d be happy as the ruler of a kingdom.”

“Nah, he doesn’t have an amulet anymore. His magic’s super weak without it, which means he’s not Zielach’s type.” She glances up at Dipper. “You dated that siren who lives in the sewers?”

Blushing, Dipper says, “Alana’s really nice! She only lives in the sewers because the Gobblewonker won’t let her live in the lake.”

“Did we date the same werewolf?” says Mabel, incredulous. 

“What? No way! You dated Marcus?”

“Weird, clingy, sweaty Marcus? Somehow managed to rip off his shirt every five minutes?”

“Ugh,” Dipper says, burying his face in his hands. “I forgot he used to do that. He was weird.”

Mabel nods. “He was cute for like, the first five minutes. Then he just got so needy. Like, I know you can bench press a tree, congrats. Why are you waking me up at two in the morning to show me?”

“Did he do that weird I-watch-you-while-you-sleep thing to you too?” asks Dipper. “I dumped him after that. Like, physically. Into the lake.”

“Oh, yeah, that was so weird. I pepper sprayed him once by accident, because he was like, following me in the woods and I got freaked out and thought he was a murderer. Kinda wish I did it on purpose now.”

An awkward pause.

“June,” says Dipper, quickly.

“July,” says Mabel, at the same time.

They stare at each other for a moment.

“I dump Marcus and he immediately turns around and dates my sister?” fumes Dipper. “I told him to stay away from me and my family!”

“I was a rebound?” says Mabel, aghast. She looks at Dipper. “You’re the stone cold bitch who broke his heart?”

Dipper throws his hands in the air. “He was insane! He took me to look at wedding cakes on the second date! I thought we were just going out for coffee! I spent the rest of our relationship trying to figure out how to break up with him!”

Wirt stares daggers and Ford and Stan.

Uncle Ford begins to surreptitiously check his gun. Uncle Stan slips on his brass knuckles.

“You forgot addresses,” says Greg, helpfully. “We can’t see if these guys will date Zielach without an address, can we?”

“Marcus is your man,” says Dipper, shaking his head. “Man, if we pull this off, we’ll be getting rid of two weird, clingy birds with one stone.”

“We should still have the addresses on the list,” insists Uncle Stan.

“For posterity,” agrees Uncle Ford.

“Um, how exactly are we pulling this off?” says Dipper. “He still seems pretty convinced that I’m going to marry him. He’s not about to start dating around.”

Greg looks at Mabel.

Mabel looks at Greg.

An unholy pact is formed. 

“Leave that to us,” says Mabel.

… 

Marcus,

I love you. I’ve always loved you. I was frightened by the passion I felt for you, and I pushed you away. Can you ever take me back? If you don’t, I’ll just die. Let’s elope. 

Meet me at the Mystery Shack.

Love,

Mabel

… 

Zielach,

I’ve run away from my family. They can’t keep us apart any longer. I love you, and I want to marry you. Meet me at the Mystery Shack.

Love,

Dipper

… 

Greg giggles as Dipper brushes neon pink glitter paint along his spine, his face pinched in careful concentration.

“Any harm anyone does you will be returned upon them tenfold,” he tells Greg. “But don’t take any risks, anyway. Zielach has magic, but it’s different than mine. I don’t know how they’ll clash if it comes down to a fight.”

“Interesting,” says Greg, nodding appreciatively. “And pretty.”

Dipper’s face twists. “All we had to work with here was some of Mabel’s old craft stuff. I should have grabbed more supplies before we left the house.”

Because they had managed to leave the house, despite said house currently being under siege by knock-off Edward Cullen. Through the secret tunnel connecting their house to the Mystery Shack. Which they apparently have.

Wirt has been living in that house for two months. 

“That’s very impressive,” says Wirt. “Where’d you learn how to do that?’

Dipper startles violently. 

Swearing, he wipes away the paint splatter, carefully redrawing the line from the base of Greg’s neck to the small of his back. “Uh, Dad. How long have you been there for?” 

“Just a few minutes,” Wirt says, stepping closer. “Can we talk?”

“I, uh, I dunno if we have time. I have to contact the gnomes and see if they were able to deliver the love notes, I have to finish the protections on Uncle Greg and I haven’t even begun the protections over Soos yet--”

“It’ll only take a few minutes,” Wirt promises. 

Dipper nods reluctantly. “Uncle Greg, will you go ask Mabel to use the hair dryer to help the paint dry quicker? I have to add more sigils when these are done.”

“Okay,” Greg says, looking at Wirt seriously. 

Wirt smiles humorlessly, and nods. Greg leaves, but Dipper doesn’t turn to face him.

Still kneeling, he busies himself with the paint, shuffling them between one hand and the other in an attempt to look occupied. 

“What’s up?” he says, clearing his throat. “Is something wrong?”

“I was about to ask you the same thing,” says Wirt, eyeing his son carefully. “You’ve been avoiding me since, well, since before we moved to Gravity Falls, come to think of it. But it’s been worse today.”

Dipper doesn’t meet his eyes. “I’m not avoiding you.” 

“The Bluebird Promise is still ongoing, bud. If something’s wrong, tell me now, before we go to outright war with a literal warrior prince. Which is something I never thought I’d do, but...”

“Aren’t you… mad at me?” 

“For getting a stalker? That’s not your fault, Dip. It never was.”

“No,” Dipper bites out painfully. “Because I didn’t save Mom.”

Wirt stills.

“What happened to your mom was not your fault,” he says, soft and gentle. “She was sick.”

Dipper snorts.

“Do you know what Grunkle Ford said, when he discovered my magic?” says Dipper, looking anywhere but at Wirt. “That he had never seen anything like it. He explained it to me, see. Most magic in this part of the multiverse is weak. The magic itself is there, but no one can access it, so using it died out pretty quick. It’s like, genetically speaking, we all have a dam blocking our ability to use it, and sometimes the dam is weaker in some people, but it’s there, and it still blocks almost all of it.”

He sighs.

“And in you?” 

“And in me… it’s like I never got a dam at all.There are hierarchies. To magic. The lowest one is the kind most people can access: you get funny feelings when bad things are about to happen, you can tell when it’s about to rain, and sometimes, you get ridiculously, stupidly lucky. It’s the extent of magic, for most people. That’s what Grunkle Stan and Mabel got; it’s probably what you got.

“The next is the ability to manipulate things on a mental level. That’s what Grunkle Ford has, and what Gideon Gleeful has. They can enter dreams or the mindscape with the right spell, access some memories if they build an array, summon demons if they know the incantation. If someone else builds a magical item, they can activate it, if they figure out the proper ritual. This is usually where the hierarchy stops, in this universe.

“Then comes the ability to manipulate objects in the world around you. You can make things float without the aid of an enhancer, defy a few of the laws of motion, move things that already exist within the world. Make a plant bloom sooner than it should. It’s pretty common in some parts of the multiverse, apparently, but nobody’s really supposed to get it, in this realm.”

“But you got it.”

For a moment, Dipper’s hands tighten, and he waits there, entirely still.

Then, he shakes his head.

“There’s another level,” he says. “To the hierarchy.”

“The level that you have,” Wirt says slowly.

“It… doesn’t really happen. To anyone. It pops up maybe every few hundred years, in the realms where almost everyone can use magic. But not here. It’s the ability to manipulate reality. To change things that already exist into totally different things. To bring new things into being entirely.”

“Things like changing arrows into flowers,” says Wirt. “And making dandelion seeds grow to the size of the water tower.”

Dipper nods. He still won’t meet his eyes.

“Grunkle Ford had all these notes from his travels,” he explains, almost pleading. “He wrote down every spell he learned, even though he couldn’t use most of them. He let me read them, but he didn’t even think of telling me that I shouldn’t be able to use them, because nobody should have been able to use them. And I,” he says, a watery, hysterical laugh bubbling at the edges of his voice, “I would just use them. Like it was nothing. I thought everyone could use that kind of magic, if they knew the right words. And then the Mothman kidnapped Grunkle Ford and Grunkle Stan--”

“The Mothman did what now?”

“He owed Grunkle Ford money and didn’t want to pay it.”

“Oh. Right.”

“Well, Mabel and I went after them in the golf cart, and we got in a fight, and the bug spray was not working like, at all, and the fly swatters didn’t work that well either, so I just summoned a giant bug zapper and he flew right into it and just like passed out on our couch for a while after that. And I never really did my magic around Grunkle Ford, I guess, because I figured everyone could do it and he had all these spells so he had to be better than me and I didn’t want to embarrass myself, right? But like, I wasn’t supposed to be able to do that. No one was. But I could.”

“You could,” repeats Wirt, gently. “So maybe, if you could do all that, you could cure cancer too.”

Dipper nods, his fists white on his shorts, and he still will not look up at Wirt.

“You know what I thought when we got the diagnosis?” he says, his voice ugly and thick. “That it wasn’t a big deal. I’d fix it in a week, and Mom would go to her next checkup and it’d just be gone and we’d all pretend it was some kind of fun medical miracle. And--I tried to fix it, I swear to God I tried, but I wasn’t good enough and I--I’m sorry, Dad, Dad, I’m so sorry--”

His breath comes in huge, shuddering, shallow gulps, none of them ever seeming to bring in enough air. He cries messily, loudly, like Wirt did when Beatrice died, like his sister did. Like he didn’t. 

Everyone had told him to back off, after it happened. That kids grieve in different ways. That he needed to give Dipper space, to let him process. 

Bullshit. 

What a complete load of utter bull. shit. 

Because Wirt knows his kids, damnit. He knows how they act, knows when something is wrong. And yeah, he hadn’t guessed “Magical Monster Hunters in Small Oregon Town” or “Stopped the Literal Apocalypse,” but he had still known something was off, just like he knew something had been off with Dipper after Beatrice died.

For months, for months, his son had carried the guilt of his mother’s death on his shoulders like an anvil, and Wirt hadn’t done anything.

Wirt pulls him close.

Wirt holds him tight.

“Listen to me,” he says, carding a hand through Dipper’s hair. “Listen. Is what’s happening right now Mabel’s fault?”

“What?” Dipper jerks backwards, but Wirt keeps his arms around him regardless. “Of course not!”

“Is it your fault?”

“I…” Dipper hesitates.

Wirt stares.

“... No?”

“Right.” Wirt nods, then decides to revisit that on a different night. “Whose fault is it?”

“Zielach’s.”

“Exactly. Because he’s the one who’s attacking us, and he’s the one causing the harm. It’s not our fault, because we’re just the ones who are trying to stop him, and it still won’t be our fault even if we fail to stop him.” Wirt glances at Dipper sharply. “Which we won’t. We’ll win. It’s just. The point stands.”

“I got it, Dad.”

“Good.” Wirt nods again. “So, even though you didn’t stop your mom’s cancer, it still wasn’t your fault. You didn’t cause it, Dip, and you couldn’t have stopped it.”

“But I--”

“Don’t ever think that it was your fault,” says Wirt, softly, fiercely. “I loved your mom. I would have done anything to keep her with us. But… it was time for her to go back to the Unknown.”

“I don’t know,” Dipper says, doubtful.

“Well, I do know. And I know that it’s never been your fault.”

Dipper sniffles slightly. He looks like he may cry again.

“Now,” says Wirt, and he grins, “let’s kick Zielach’s ass.”

… 

“MABEL! DAD SWORE!”

“WHAT? NO WAY! CAN WE SWEAR NOW?”

Wirt sighs.

… 

“There’s no way this is going to work,” mutters Wirt.

Dipper shoves his way in next to him. They kneel at the top of the stairs, side by side, peering into the Mystery Shack proper below. There, down below, stands Marcus, shirtless and oddly glistening, patiently waiting for his bride-to-be to finish “powdering her nose,” which she has been doing for the past thirty-six minutes. 

There are some put on this world to do great things, think great thoughts. There are others who are meant to do presumably something, but rather instead decide to spend their time inserting forks into electrical sockets, and think it’s a grand idea all the while. Marcus belongs in exactly one of these groups, and is missing only a fork and an electrical socket to complete his enrollment. 

“Zielach isn’t going to show,” insists Wirt. “It’s been too long.”

“He’ll come,” says Dipper, flipping through his journal calmly. “They always come.”

Wirt frowns. “But what if--”

The door slams open hard enough to dent the wall. 

“Rude,” mutters Dipper. 

“I AM HERE FOR MY BELOVED,” declares Zielach. At his side, one of his guards blows a trumpet.  

Oh, buddy. Inside noises. 

Marcus stares at him. “Oh hey, man,” he says, after a beat. “Are you also here to get married?”

Zielach seems thrown by this. “Yes?”

Marcus takes in this information with interest. “They must have rebranded to be like one of those wedding chapels. Like in Vegas.”

“I am not getting married here, peasant,” says Zielach, sniffing. “Royal unions must be witnessed by the Unholy Hoard, the highest priests of the darkest magicks. The sacrifices must be performed in the Pit of Darkness and Screams. And my mother has been planning all week. She thinks our colors should be silver and lilac.”

Oh, this guy is ten pounds of crazy in a nine pound sack. Why does this have to be Wirt’s life experience?

“Ah,” says Marcus, nodding amiably. “So is this like, a pre-wedding drinks reception or something?”

Oh, Wirt can’t wait for this. 

“Of course it is,” snaps Zielach, with a toss of his hair. “Do I look like someone whose nuptials would be marked by anything other than the deepest of bliss? Do I look like someone who has to pursue their beloved in a high-speed chase after being rejected by their family?”

Marcus considers him with an honest air. “You kind of have that vibe, not gonna lie.”

This is going swimmingly. 

Before Zielach can commit a gorey and bloody murder in the center of the Mystery Shack, the door at the far end of the room slams open. With great fanfare, Greg struts out, a little white towel draped over one arm and a tray held aloft in the other. Cheap plastic champagne glasses are balanced on top, both filled to the brim with Mabel Juice. 

Oh. So they cancelled this plan and went to poison. 

“Beverages,” announces Greg, proffering the tray. Marcus accepts his with glee. Zielach does the same with confusion. Greg backs out of the room without turning. 

A moment later, Soos comes out, dressed in a t-shirt that looks like a tuxedo. “If you will follow me to the waiting area.”

Zielach stares at him. “I am. Here? For my beloved.”

“Of course, of course, we see that all the time at the Mystery Shack,” says Soos. He reaches into his jeans pocket and pulls out a slip of paper. “Ten percent off in the gift shop for all dramatic professions of love. Not redeemable on days that end in y.”

Stan sniffles slightly. “He’s really coming into himself.”

“That’s a great deal,” says Marcus, God bless him. “My dude, I myself am here for a love profession.”

Soos surreptitiously slips him a coupon. Marcus fist pumps. “I’m gonna get a koozie.”

Zielach stares at him in open disgust. 

Slowly, Soos corralls them to the table arranged in the back, a white tablecloth draped over it and a single lit candle in its center. He leaves them there with the promise that it will be “just a moment’s longer, we at the Mystery Shack pride ourself on the quality of our service,” and then he freaking books it. 

The moment he’s out of the room, the lights dim. 

Marvin Gaye’s Lets Get it On starts to play. 

Marcus seems unbothered. He takes a sip of his Mabel Juice, gags, then takes a sip again. 

“So. You ready for married life?”

Zielach startles. “Of course I am. Peasant. I have known my beloved for a full six and a half days. There is no greater preparation I could take before devoting myself to him for life.”

“Me too, me too.” He takes another sip of Mabel Juice. Gags. “I dated this girl for like, a solid week, you know? Three days. Whatever. And it was only a year ago, and she only like, maced me twice. So. You can say it’s pretty serious.”

For the first time, Zielach seems vaguely interested. “I am unused to your world’s courtship rituals. Was your beloved also unusually… enraged by your very presence?”

“Oh yeah dude. Fully. She told me if I ever so much as looked at her again she’d dangle me upside down by my toes in the wilderness like dry-aged beef. Once she threatened me with a crossbow.”

“Interesting, interesting,” says Zielach, intrigued. “And she has still agreed to marry you?”

Marcus gestures to his abs. “I’ve kind of got it going on, man.”

Zielach makes a noise of agreement. 

“Is this working?” asks Dipper, in a horrid fascination. “Are their crazy energies attracting one another?”

“Well. I expect married life to suit me enormously,” says Zielach, looking staunchly at anywhere other than Marcus’s bare chest. “The wisest of my kingdom’s wizards say that, in my infancy, foul witches came and cursed me with ‘violent tendencies’ and ‘manic depression,’ whatever that is. I expect marital bliss to cure me entirely, of course.”

“Cheers, bro,” says Marcus, raising his now-empty glass. “Nothing like staking your entire mental health on your partner in life.” He goes to take another sip of his Mabel Juice, realizes it’s empty, and then reaches for Zielach’s glass without a moment’s consideration. He slams it back like a shot, downing it in under three seconds. 

Poor kid is going to be dead by nightfall. 

There are five unbroken minutes of silence. 

“Is there… any sign that our beloveds know we’re here?” asks Zielach. 

“Um, this place has pretty killer service, dude. I wouldn’t expect them to not tell them.”

“But you have been here for longer than I have,” points out Zielach. “And your bride-to-be has not yet arrived.”

Marcus shrugs, uncaring. “Gal’s powdering her nose. That probably takes girls what, forty-five minutes, an hour? Eh. Mabel will be here soon.”

“Mabel,” says Zielach, slowly. “Mabel Pines?”

Oh, damn it.

Zielach leaps from his seat. “More machinations. More deceit! Do they think I am to be trifled with?”

“Does your boo know Mabel?” asks Marcus, obviously too illiterate to read the damn room. “Dude, we could have like. One of those joint weddings.”

“Do they not appreciate the depths of my affection?” Zielach paces the breadth of the room like a tiger in a cage. “Do they doubt the horrid extents I will go to in order to show my endless love?”

“Dude, I feel you. I make all these dramatic professions of love and it’s always, ‘How did you get in my bedroom, Marcus,’ and ‘No, really, I locked my windows, how did you get inside,’ and ‘I’m calling the cops, back the fuck off.’ No one appreciates romance anymore.”

“It’s infuriating! To bear your soul only to be rebuffed. Do they not know I would flay my own heart for the barest brush of his hand on mine? Do they not appreciate the extent of my affections?”

“We deserve someone who will appreciate what we put into relationships,” says Marcus, nodding sagely. “We need someone who will return all we give. I think we should try dating again.”

Holy shit, did they somehow round back around to success?

Zielach ponders this gravely. “I think,” he says, after a beat, “that I would much rather burn the town to the ground.”

There’s a pregnant pause. 

“In hindsight, I have no idea why we thought that would work,” says Dipper.

… 

Mabel squirms her way in next to Wirt while Zielach is rallying his men. She tugs at his shirtsleeve urgently. 

“Father,” she says, a maniac gleam in her eye. “Father, Dad, parental unit--”

Bless his kids, they wouldn’t change if God himself came down and asked. “Yes, glitter bomb?”

“Can I swear?” she asks, with extreme gravity. “This feels like a swearing situation.”

Wirt ponders this for a second. “You may have two swears.”

“Excellent.” She shoots Dipper a look. “Meet you all in the golf carts?”

“Yup,” says Dipper, unspooling some kind of weird string with weights on it. “Time to ad lib this.” 

“Fantastic.” 

Then, Wirt’s beautiful, glorious, absolutely insane daughter launches herself out the window. Through glass. 

A moment later,  he hears her shout, “HEY YO FUCKHEADS!”

A moment after that, there is a chorus of screams. 

Dipper and the Stans usher him down the stairs, out the back door, where they proceed to guide Wirt to signature Mystery Shack Battle Ready Golf Carts, which have apparently been sponsored by IKEA, if the branding on the sides is any indication. Dipper, Ford, and Wirt climb into one. Stan, Greg, and Soos climb into the other. Ford screeches by the front long enough to pick up Mabel from where she’s terrorizing the fae. 

And then they’re off, arrows chasing them the whole way. 

Mabel flips them off. “Catch us if you can, bitch,” she crows. 

“So,” says Ford, calmly proceeding with this high speed chase. Out of the corner of his eye, Wirt can see Stan weaving his cart through the trees, screaming bloody murder the whole way. “Plans?”

“Uhh, get them out of our universe,” says Dipper, flipping through his notebook. “Question is how to keep them out.”

“Can’t you just close the stupid rift?” screams Mabel, wrestling with her crossbow on the reload. “Aren’t you both nerds?”

“The stars--”

“You’re really going to let some dumb stars tell you what to do?”

“Um,” says Dipper. “Yes? I can’t change the stars, Mabel!”

“Zielach’s universe sucks. I want a refund.”

Then, she sends a volley of arrows out behind her. One of them clips one of the horses, sending it stumbling. 

“Princess, I’m so sorry, this isn’t your fault,” she shouts, over the wind. 

“Mabel, that's it!” Dipper looks up from his journal, his eyes alight. “Ford, remember what we were theorizing? This is just a matter of chance. It could have opened up to any universe. Why don’t we just switch them out?”

Ford swerves them through a brutal turn. “We have no guarantee the next universe will be any better!”

“Can’t be much worse,” shouts Wirt. 

“I think I might be able to do it,” says Dipper. “What do you think?”

“We won’t be able to close anything until a replacement is open,” says Ford, grimly. “There’s no way that even you can overcome cosmic alignment, Dipper, not even for a moment. There has to be another avenue for the celestial energies before we can cut off any connections.”

“All in favor of risking two connections at once for a chance of closing Zielach’s, say aye,” says Dipper. 

“Aye,” chorus Wirt and Mabel. 

“This isn’t gonna be easy,” says Dipper, grimacing. “Can you guys buy me some time?”

Wirt exchanges a look with Ford. “I think we can manage that.”

They burst into the clearing, the rot and black of Zielach’s world coming into view. Ford slams the golf cart to a halt. A moment later, Stan’s golf cart rolls to a stop next to his. 

“We have a plan?” he demands.

“We’re on distraction, Dipper’s on magic, hopefully we don’t die,” says Ford, pulling a freaking laser gun from his pocket. 

Stan shrugs. “Okay.” And then he slips on a pair of brass knuckles. 

Greg picks up the exact same stick Wirt used to clobber Zielach. Mabel readies her crossbow. Soos kind of shuffles to the back of the crowd and squints. 

Not a second later, Zielach and his men burst from the treeline. 

“I AM HERE FOR MY--”

One of Mabel’s arrows catches him in the shoulder blade immediately. He falls off his horse. 

“STAY AWAY FROM MY BROTHER YOU DUMB FREAK.”

Beautifully put, sweetheart. 

After that, things get very fast very quick. Ford starts to shoot people. Mabel pulls a knife from her boot and starts parrying swords. Greg clobbers people like this was an activity he was expecting on his first day in town. Stan rips the sleeves off his shirt and starts choking out one of Zielach’s guards with a necktie. Wirt feels oddly out of place in his violent and capable family. 

Slowly, they corral them back to their side of the rift, where the grass is black, where their homeland lies. Dipper’s voice rises and falls, undulates under the weight of the magic, and Wirt’s ears pop. Pop. Pop. 

The grass starts to swirl. 

The grass starts to grow. 

It falters, flickering between green and blue and brown and black. Dipper’s voice turns desperate. 

Wirt remembers this. He remembers the hospital room. The panic. 

“Bud,” calls Wirt, his eyes locked on his son. “It’s okay. You know where home is.”

Dipper stops speaking. His eyes lock on Wirt’s, and after a moment, he nods. 

When he starts to speak again, the grass bleeds green and gold in autumnal vibrance. Just like Wirt had remembered it. Just like it had been all those years ago. 

It always seemed more real than the grass of his world, Wirt remembers. More there. He hadn’t realized how two dimensional this world had become until after he already got back. Like poking your finger through a sheet of paper. 

“Dipper, you’ve done it!” shouts Ford, firing off another round of shots. “Quick, close the gate to Zielach’s realm!”

Dipper nods, and his chant starts again, the words twisted, off, slipping through Wirt’s mind like he’s not meant to hear it. The chant grows, swells, and with it grows the pressure in Wirt’s ears. 

“No,” snarls Zielach, surging forward. Before anyone can stop him, he grabs Dipper by the elbow, dragging him over the rapidly closing rift.

“No!” screams Wirt. 

In the distance, there’s another scream. Another voice. 

“Hey! Get the fuck away from my kid.”

And a shining golden pair of scissors lodges in the juncture of Zielach’s neck. 

Another pair of hands wraps around Dipper’s arm and it pulls him free, back across the rift, back into the Unknown. Not a moment later, the rift snaps shut, and Zielach is gone, his world of rot with him. 

Beatrice swipes the blood splatter from Dipper’s face with her thumb. “I have no idea what any of this is,” she announces, and then she drags her fingers through Dipper’s hair, combs it the way she did every morning. “But I have a feeling that when I know, everyone involved will be grounded. Including your father.”

Dipper turns white. 

He stares at Beatrice like she's a haunting. 

“Mom,” says Mabel, tentatively. “Mommy?”

Beatrice beams at her. “Hi, glitter bomb.”

“Mommy.” Mabel hiccups a sob. The crossbow goes tumbling from her fingertips, and she takes a tentative, stumbling step forward. “Mom, you --”

She launches herself at Beatrice, presses herself into her neck, clings to her and buries her fingers into the fabric of her blue, blue dress. She cries and cries and cries, their sunshine daughter, her chest heaving, sobs bubbling from her throat. 

Beatrice hugs her back fiercely. “Oh, baby. I missed you so much.”

For the first time in a long time, she looks healthy. Her skin is flushed, ruddy, and has none of the sickly sallow tincture which marked her final days. Her hair has grown back. She’s put back on all the weight that dropped off when her body was slowly killing itself. 

She’s beautiful. Even more beautiful than Wirt remembers. 

“Mom,” wimpers Dipper. He swipes roughly at one cheek with the back of his hand. His breath catches in his throat. “Mom, Mom, I--Mommy, I’m so sorry--”

“Shh,” says Beatrice, and she pulls him to her chest with one arm, tucks him in next to Mabel and starts to rock. “What do you have to be sorry for? Nothing.”

Dipper sobs into her shoulder. 

Across the glade, Beatrice’s eyes meet Wirt’s. 

And Wirt’s eyes meet Beatrice’s.

Hi, she mouths. 

Wirt can feel tears streaming down his own cheeks. Hi, he mouths back. 

He crosses the space between them and he settles in at the twins’ backs, wrapping his arms around them as tight as he can, pressing his forehead to Beatrice’s. 

And for the first time in a long time, Wirt feels like everything’s going to really, truly be okay.

“Did Mom straight up kill a man just now?” mutters Mabel, still crushed into her mother’s side. 

Wirt feels the laugh bubble up from his chest, tangled in a sob. “You know what, I think it’s best to just leave that ambiguous.”

… 

“I KNEW IT.”

“You did not,” protests Wirt, and immediately receives a smack to his chest for his efforts. 

“I knew it,” insists Beatrice, moving on to abuse his shoulder instead. Elder abuse. “I knew it, I told you, Wirt, I told you that we needed to interrogate the Stans--”

“You didn’t even know there were two Stans!”

“Details,” says Beatrice, waving her hand dismissively. “Point is, if I was there this entire thing would have been handled in like, three days, tops.”

Wirt has to fight back a grin. “Because you would have burned the town to the ground.”

“Because I would have burned the town to the ground,” agrees Beatrice, nodding solidly. “And it would have been effective.” 

They’re collapsed on the grass, legs and limbs tangled together, Beatrice and Wirt and the twins and Greg. Ford wandered off to poke at the new rift to the Unknown not two minutes after Beatrice soundly abused him for not taking proper care of her children. Stan wandered off with him, either to stop something from eating his brother or to encourage something to eat his brother, Wirt wasn’t clear on which one. Soos, meanwhile, has found a bluebird perched on a tree, and is staunchly trying to convince it to talk to him.

The bluebird is on the Gravity Falls side of the rift. Soos does not seem to care. 

At the edge of the clearing, the odd, whirring device that Ford had yanked out of his pocket to poke at various trees starts up a screeching noise. It starts flashing the sort of shade of red that Wirt associates with a nuclear holocaust warning.  

Ford makes a delighted sound. “Oh, this is fascinating.” 

Stan sighs heavily. 

“So, our kid is magic,” says Wirt, jerking his head towards Dipper. “And the other one is like. The terminator. Did you know they could do that?”

Beatrice squints. “You don’t think this has to do with that witch we killed, do you?”

“The what you what,” says Dipper. 

“Oh--you mean--” Wirt blinks. The Unknown has roles for its inhabitants. Positions. Holy orders, decreed, not optionalized. It would build a replacement for that which was taken. “You know, this may have something to do with that witch we killed.”

“Guys, the what you what,” says Mabel. 

“Huh,” says Greg, thoughtfully. “Who’da thunk.”

“You never know what will be relevant down the line,” says Beatrice, just as thoughtful. 

“This is revenge,” groans Dipper, flopping backwards. “And we deserve it.”

Mabel flops down next to him. “You guys kept your secrets for longer, I’d like to point out.”

Throwing his hands up, Wirt says, “We wanted your brains to be fully developed before telling you about the other world that's going to reclaim you when you die, okay? It’s heavy stuff.”

Dipper props himself up on his elbows, peering at the Unknown, at its golden light. 

Wirt can hear it so much clearer now. The singing. Home. 

He never thought to ask whether the twins heard it too. 

“It’s funny,” says Dipper, half to himself. “I--I feel like I’ve been here before, you know? But I couldn’t have been. I would know. Still. It feels like…”

"Home," finishes Mabel.

“We still have a few days before the rift closes, right?” says Wirt, glancing back towards the clear green summer of Gravity Falls. “We could show you around. Show you home.”

Mabel darts a wistful look towards the treeline. “Can we?”

“It’s home,” says Greg, and he stands. “You should come see it.”

“Ford, Stan,” calls Wirt, craning his neck to look at them. “Do you want to come poke more deadly things in the place that metaphysically changed us as children?”

“Do I ever,” says Ford. 

Stan shrugs. “Ain’t like I had plans for the day anyway.”

Wirt slips his hand into Beatrice’s. He slings an arm around Mabel, and watches Beatrice do the same to Dipper.

And they go off together. 

Into the Unknown.