Chapter Text
Blurry sunshine filled Mabel's eyes, and a hand on her shoulder was shaking her awake, and she was swaying a bit as she tried to recognize the fact she was sitting. Her brother's voice was in her ears, but it slipped through her conscious mind. "What?" Mabel groaned, turning to see Dipper and for a second she felt like she was still dreaming, but then she remembered how Wendy had given him her trapper hat. "It's our stop," he repeated, his voice now loud in her skull. "We're home?" Mabel asked, looking into his eyes. Beneath her the bus lurched to a slow stop, Waddles snorting from where he was asleep, his weight heavy on her feet, and Dipper nodded. "Yeah," he said. "I guess we are." "Oh," Mabel said. She turned to look out the window, and sure enough, the trees of Gravity Falls weren't there. She sighed, and reached down to pat Waddles on the head. "I'm not ready for this yet," she muttered just loud enough for her twin to hear. The floor of the bus began to blur, but Dipper squeezed her shoulder.
"Hey," he said, "we managed to stop the literal end of the world. As long as we're together, we'll make it through anything." Mabel fixed her eyes at a gum wrapper on the dirty floor, her eyes hot with tears waiting to slide down her cheeks. Waddles started to wake up, rolling over and off of her shoes, then immediately starting to chew on a nearby bus seat. The few other passengers were all filing off. "Okay?" Dipper asked. After a slow inhale, Mabel reached out and grabbed the handle of her suitcase before looking back up at him. "Okay." She echoed, and they stood up. "C'mere," Mabel said to her pig as Dipper grabbed his suitcase, and Waddles walked over to her. "I think I see Mom's car," Dipper said, his nose nearly touching the glass. Leaning down next to him, Mabel found the familiar deep blue of their mom's car, and the small pink duck in the windshield looked back at her. "That's Mom," Mabel confirmed.
"Are you two getting your pig out of here or not?" The bus driver shouted, twisting in his seat to glare at them. Turning to face his sister, Dipper met her eyes. "Ready?" He asked, and Mabel shrugged. "Enough," she said. The pool of dread forming in her stomach didn't grow lesser as she led the way up the row of seats, but the footsteps shadowing her made Mabel a little bit braver, but she stepped down the stairs and into the sunlight.