Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Returning to Gravity Falls summer after summer never got any less exciting than the first time Dipper had ever visited.

Sure, after every year, he got a little older. He discovered a few more of the unsolved mysteries that had drawn him in the first summer he’d been. He had less things to do, and he had the terrible memories of what had happened eight days before his thirteenth birthday to contend with. 

But he loved it. He loved that tiny, hidden, magical place more than anything else in the world-

“Dipper!” A raucous female voice snapped him out of his thoughts, and he sat up so fast that he nearly knocked his now very beat-up, multi-patched pine tree cap right off. He took it off to straighten it, running his fingers through his hair and shaking it out of his eyes, while the owner of the voice waved her hands around erratically, in some rendition of a personalised set of jazz-hands.

“Mabel-” Dipper began, before she spoke right overtop of him. The bus they were on was slowing to a stop, he noticed, which she pointed out for him immediately.

“We’re here! We’re here, we’re here, we’re here!” Mabel sang, throwing a hand towards the windows of the bus before bending down to grab her luggage. She’d stuck so many stickers over the thing that it hardly even resembled a suitcase anymore. “Gravity Falls! It is-”

“-good to be back.” Dipper smiled, glancing out the window one last time before he picked up his own things and followed his sister off of the bus. As usual when coming back after a year, there were plenty of feelings to be felt and plenty of memories to resurface. Walking through that path in the woods towards the Mystery Shack always reminded Dipper of the first day three years ago. He could see signs he’d hung up back then, standing the test of time and staying defiantly nailed to the trees he’d attached them to. He could enjoy that same warm, summer wind he’d become accustomed to, and could feel eyes on his back, watching his every move.

Wait.

He flinched and looked over his shoulder, expecting to see someone standing right behind him. Nothing there. A quick glance to his right and left proved the same.

Perhaps he was still a bit paranoid after those… events that first year he’d visited.

Those events. Weirdmageddon. It had a name. That’s what Dipper’s therapist had told him, after she’d noticed his tendency to avoid saying it. It does more harm to avoid your problems than to face them head-on and show them that you’re stronger, she’d said. Still, he could barely bring himself to think of the things that he’d seen during those few days- actually, time had had no meaning, and it had really only been two minutes outside of the Weirdness Magnetism Bubble that surrounded the Falls- his entire world had been flipped upside-down. 

He was still shocked that nothing had leaked into the public. The government presence in Gravity Falls the following few days after Weirdmageddon hadn’t even been photographed and posted online for the rest of the world to see; as little as most residents of the Falls trusted the government, they sure had done a good job at making sure nothing- absolutely nothing- got out about the almost-apocalypse that was near-unleashed upon the entire rest of the world. 

Him and Mabel had then been appointed therapists by the officials that had overseen their leave and told to never speak a word about the end of the world to another soul, apart from them. 

And as far as Dipper knew? Neither him nor his sister had done anything to break the rules that had been set for them. Their parents barely even knew the whole story, just that some big accident had happened during their first visit to Gravity Falls and they’d need to go to therapy for it, at least until they were of age. It had been a hard sell to get their parents to agree to another visit the following summer, and then another one, and another… but they’d managed.

Even though he was in therapy, Dipper didn’t feel like a single thing he’d experienced had been resolved. He still had nightmares almost every time he fell asleep- not even naps were safe- and he caught himself becoming sweaty and shaky and out-of-breath every time he thought too long about those excruciating two minutes.

It was happening right now. He could feel his legs becoming wobbly as he followed Mabel to the Mystery Shack- he needed to change his train of thought before it spiraled into a full-blown panic attack. 

They were turning seventeen this year. That was exciting. One year away from adulthood, Dipper thought. One year until I can just move here.  

Sure, Dipper’s biggest dream was to have his own ghost-hunting show- it had been that since he was something like ten years old- but his second-biggest was to actually live in Gravity Falls. He wouldn’t have to say goodbye to it every summer, wouldn’t have to bid all of his budding research farewell for a year… he could actually explore the remaining mysteries of the Falls at his own pace. He wouldn’t have to be restricted to seventy days a year. Maybe special things happened in the winter, or the fall! He could learn all of that when he could just move in. He was sure Soos wouldn’t mind putting him up in the Mystery Shack. Mabel, though- surely she understood that they couldn’t live together forever. Or maybe she’d just follow him and move into Gravity Falls too. He didn’t know.

“Dipper? Dipper! Wake up!” Mabel snapped her fingers beneath his nose.

“Huh-? Oh!” Dipper shook his head, snapping himself out of his thoughts for the second time today. He sure was spacing out a lot. Maybe he hadn’t slept enough the night before. “Sorry, I- I didn’t even realise we were here! Wow-”

The Mystery Shack didn’t look too different from when their Grunkle Stan had been running it. It was still the same old tourist trap that it had always been, now with a bit more of a Soos-like flair to it. Dipper didn’t even really know what that meant, but it was clear with the kinds of things written on the newest signs pointing to the place. Cool stuff this way, dude! was one that stood out to Dipper, because it made him laugh. Soos was a great manager. He did a good job standing in for Stan and Ford while they were off at sea.

“Are you ready to enter a world of mystery- dude? ” Mabel giggled, pointing to another sign as she read its text in a deep, documentary-type voice. Dipper raised his eyebrows and grinned, pointing to yet another sign.

“Come say hello to Questiony the Question Mark!” 

Mabel laughed, clapping her hands a couple times. “I always forget about Questiony! Jeesh, he must be proud of that one. We’d better follow the sign, though!”

“Yeah, he’s probably waiting at the door. Come on.” Dipper fluffed up his bangs, then let Mabel snatch his hand away and lead him up to the front porch of the Shack. It was going to be a good summer… probably. Things always had a habit of going south in Gravity Falls.

Chapter Text

Dipper didn’t sleep well that night. It wasn’t like he was historically a good sleeper- quite the opposite, actually, especially ever since Weirdmageddon- but tonight was especially long. He felt like he was lying awake in bed for aeons. Minutes slugged by like hours, and hours felt like weeks. Every five minutes, something interrupted his futile attempts to fall asleep. He needed to pee. He was thirsty. He saw the shadows move in the corner. Mabel was snoring too loudly.

It was agonising.

He tossed and turned, taking alternative glances at the ceiling and the walls. He kicked his blankets off, then pulled them back over himself, then threw them onto the floor again. Nothing was working. He could not sleep.

When he looked back over at the clock on his nightstand, it read that it was one in the morning. He’d only been trying to sleep for three hours.

He gave up. He climbed out of bed, stretching and running a clammy hand through his hair. He pulled on a pair of socks, then slipped his shoes on and walked downstairs. What bad could a nighttime walk do? He already couldn’t sleep. Maybe a little fresh air was what he needed.

He slid out the door and into the night.

The air felt wonderful. A warm, crisp, evening summer breeze blew his bangs out of his face. It smelled like grass and growing leaves, like being twelve again and having hay fever. It was great.

Dipper continued to walk, straying off the path and into the woods. He knew that forest like it was his own forehead. He’d been in it more times than he could count, searching for whatever new thing he’d scrounged up in the Journal that day.

The Journals.

The originals had been burnt to ash during Weirdmageddon. They were gone. Luckily, Stan had photocopied them all- each and every page- and their knowledge was saved.

Dipper was thankful for that.

The Journals were something he thought about a lot. He’d never gotten the chance to read the first or second ones in their entirety. He never discovered what new things were hiding in the pages, what odd cryptids and strange creatures lurked in the ink.

He was so deep in thought that he didn’t seem to notice the trees winding the opposite way they usually went.

I would have found so much more if I had my own photocopies, Dipper thought to himself, fidgeting with a strand of his blonde hair and following the mirrored landmarks that he thought he knew. It was too dark to see how each tree became more desaturated the further he walked into the woods; how each tree became a little paler, gained odder-looking marks, how the pine needles shifted into leaves.

It wasn’t for a few minutes that he actually noticed much of anything. He looked up ahead again, eye going wide at what he saw.

Birch trees. How had he walked into a birch forest? He’d been deep in evergreens just moments ago. He didn’t even know there was a birch part of the forest in Gravity Falls. How had that even happened? Were they planted there purposefully? There were a multitude of confused thoughts rushing through his head all at once. Too many to count. Too many to process.

He shook his head, walking closer to one of the striped trees to lean against it and catch his bearings. He wasn’t lost, he thought to himself, anxiously twisting the triangle-shaped cufflinks attached to his sleeve. He-

The what?

My what?

Dipper blinked, holding his hands out. Those were not his hands. His skin was not that tan, he never wore rings or painted his nails, and he certainly hadn’t taken a moment to put on a fancy dress shirt for a middle-of-the-night walk. He looked around at himself, nearly jumping out of the skin he was in; his body was not his body, plain and simple. He was tall, for one, dressed up like he was attending some Northwest-esque party. He was wearing heeled boots- high heels? He would never- and a cape.

And why was his outfit so yellow?

He stepped backwards, searching for somewhere to escape from. This was not where he was meant to be, nor was it who- he didn’t know if he’d encountered some sort of shapeshifting creature, or if he was hallucinating, or if-

The statue.

There it was, looking at him the same as it had that day three years ago. It held its hand out, waiting for some unfortunate soul to come and shake it. Would that result in reincarnation? Was it simply the way his body had been frozen? What if it meant nothing at all?

And Dipper was very sure there had never been birch trees around that statue.

Still, he stepped towards it, reaching out a hand. He never would have done that- he was not that stupid- but he wasn’t quite himself, either.

“Unfortunate.” Dipper heard himself say, in an echoing, sarcastic voice that didn’t belong to him. “They got all of my worst angles.”

He held out a hand and snapped his fingers. The statue crumbled to blue dust.

With that, he sat up, gasping and clawing at the sheets. The sun was shining in through the triangle-shaped window and onto his face, making him feel uncomfortably warm. His blankets were thrown on the ground, he was drenched in sweat, his pillow had somehow ended up at his feet, and his shirt was pulled up almost over his head.

Had he had a nightmare?

He sat up far too quickly, watching the room spin a little and gripping onto his shorts. That was an incredibly odd dream, even for him. It was slipping from his mind even now, but he could recall tiny pieces.

That had been Bill’s voice. That had been Bill’s statue being destroyed.

Dipper felt sick.

He got up, checking his body over. He pinched himself once or twice. It was absolutely him, yet he still felt as if something were beneath his skin- like he’d stepped out of it temporarily, laid down on the forest floor, and then climbed back inside with all of the dirt and pine needles still stuck to his flesh.

He felt uneven and as if he still were not himself.

Even so, he shook his head and rubbed his arms. Mabel had already gotten up, and his clock read eleven in the morning. He’d slept in, and no doubt she was already planning fun things to do for the day.

He put the nightmare from his thoughts and headed down the stairs.

His summer would not be ruined by his own stupid brain, twisting the memories of things that had been gone for three years.