Chapter Text
The day that Drephl and his twin brother Frihl Shims were born was completely normal.
The sun shone, it was a bit cloudy, people went to work, and came home after a long day.
The fact that it was also the last day Alcor answered summons for decades is a total coincidence, of course.
Frihl was a loud, boisterous boy; the type to take charge when playing and gather his own little gang of 5 year olds to take exploring in the forest, someone who sometimes played a little too rough and drove their father mad with his general energy and excitability.
His twin brother Drephl, in contrast, was quiet. Shy, withdrawn, even antisocial according to some. He’d rather watch his mother’s Death Ball games on the television than climb trees; given the choice between biking and staying inside reading, he’d always pick the latter.
Of course, this did not mean he never went outside; often enough, Frihl dragged him out on an adventure, usually accompanied by his little troop.
Drephl, however, did not have any friends, as long as you didn’t count his twin. This was not for lack of trying, for every time he did go outside, he did his best to participate, to follow what the others were doing, to play with them according to their rules and help them with anything he could.
But it didn’t make up for his awkwardness, for the gross way he picked at and bit his skin, for never knowing what to say and always doing something wrong, something weird, something to make the others rather pick someone else to play with.
Something that meant the only one happy to see him was his brother.
Their father was a writer, an illustrator for the books the teachers at the Park read them during story time.
Grand stories of princesses and towers and dragons, of fairies and elves and a thousand other magical things recounted to them while they went to sleep.
Stories of love, stories of crushes and marriage and happiness forever.
Of holding hands with your one true love.
Frihl loved them. Obsessed with one day finding his own prince charming like the people in the stories, with hearing their dad recount the story of how he met their mother, squealing and blushing and fantasizing about it all.
Drephl wanted to hear other stories, because those ones were boring and Frihl was annoying about them and dad just told him he’d get it later.
He didn’t want to get it. He didn’t want to wait until he was older.
He wished he’d stay a kid forever if it meant none of that would happen to him.
During the summer, just a few days before their 6th birthday, their mom came home for a visit. She dropped her bags at the front door and called for them, the board game abandoned as the twins rushed to her in screaming excitement, little arms wrapping around her waist while she patted their heads.
They would talk about her job, about the games she’d won and the places she’d been, the drama in the changing rooms and the secrets hidden from the media.
Dad would hum in the kitchen while cooking dinner as Frihl regaled her with the stories of his adventures, Drephl content to sit on her lap and rest his ear where her heart beat, present and real and alive, not just a face on the television.
And when the food was made and they gathered at the table, all four chairs finally occupied by people, Drephl picked up his knife and fork to eat-
Stab her in the eye
-only to drop them back on the table, hurrying to hide his hands underneath and grip at his pants in blind panic.
Images of the fork in her eye flashed in his mind, the squishy thing broken apart and blood spurting out where the prongs went in,
“Dreph? Dreph, are you fine?” dad asked him, putting his conversation on hold to focus on Drephl,
the screams of her pain echoing in his mind, the tears that would fall even as her pupil stopped working and
just like Frihl and mom. Mom, who looked at him (dead eyed, eyes he’d stab, bleeding eyes, stop, look away, don’t look at me, stop it) uncertainly, furrowed eyebrows and scrunched nose, staring at him like he was a rabid animal about to go crazy,
the eye is shredded into little pieces by the fork, pushed deeper and deeper-
Drephl ran away, chair skidding and heart beating.
Frihl and Drephl went to the woods with mom while dad got the house decorated for their birthday party, walking along a well-trodded path along the Bubble’s border.
(A party where the only one celebrated would be Frihl. A party where only his friends would be there, a party where Drephl sat in the corner looking at his picture book, a party where even dad would forget to include him.)
(At least there was candy. There was always candy. The candy was the real present, Drephl thought.)
Drephl didn’t like the forest, though. Mosquitoes bit him and the other kids looked at him with disgust when he forgot to focus on spitting the skin out instead of eating it. He wished they’d gone somewhere else.
But he was with mom, so it was fine. Mom was home, and not on the television, and she looked at him and smiled, so it was fine.
(She smiled at him the special way she only did for him and Frihl, the way she never did on TV. She smiled with a little quirk of her lips, her eyes opened full and with so much love it drowned out the light in them.)
(She didn’t smile at dad. Not like the stories dad told of how they met, of their dates and proposal, would suggest she should.)
After mom left, taken away by the sprawling subways beneath their feet, they discovered she had failed to log off or child-lock her account.
And so, while dad was out shopping, the twins took their chance and browsed the adults section.
Frihl told Drephl that he wouldn’t dare watch any of them. Drephl said that Frihl was such a baby he’d get scared and wet himself. Frihl pushed Drephl on the shoulder and called him a coward, and so, a horror movie was quickly picked at random.
Drephl ended up being the winner, as Frihl hid alternatingly under the blankets or in Drephl’s shoulder for just about the entire movie.
Frihl would never forget the scene he’d risked a glance at, a living puppet drawing the eye out of a girl’s socket, stretching it out and out before snapping it off with a pair of scissors, the screaming echoing in his nightmares for months afterward.
He especially wouldn’t forget the ridicule Drephl gave him, being called a wuss and a baby for many years afterward, because Drephl didn’t have any issues with the gore, didn’t even think it was that intense in comparison to the things he and Ghali would watch.
(But that’s getting too far ahead, isn’t it?)
A year later, playing hide and seek with dad, Drephl discovered one of mom’s books in the closet of their room.
They had only just started learning how to read, so most of its contents flew over his head with the big complicated words filling its pages, but the little he did understand, he was fascinated by.
Game forgotten, he immersed himself in the pages of the journal, in the pictures of a place called “Gravity Falls”.
His dad happily read the journal to him, sounding out the words he didn’t know and explaining the history of it all.
The transcendence, when magic came to the world; starting in this little town.
It was the personal journal of a Gravity Falls resident, translated to modern language. It was part of mom’s research into the culture and place where her sport was created, its history tightly woven with the apocalypse that had unfolded there.
If ever Drephl succumbed to the “love” his family spoke of, it would be to that time, to that story; when the world was full of mystery and the wizards and gnomes he’d grown up with were a new discovery to its residents.
Frihl joined them, as they read through it.
But while Drephl poured over and read about the magic and the creatures brought to the light,
Frihl would rather hear about what life was like before it all.
Just months before they would all leave for school, when their lessons at the Park took up more time in the day than playing did, Sahmil and him were paired up for an art project.
It was going well; they split up the work, and silently did their parts. Drephl glued and Sahmil cut.
And then,
“Eww!”
Drephl flinched, his hand flying out of his mouth, swallowing the piece of skin on his tongue as quickly as he could.
“That’s so gross!”
People were looking at them now. This wasn’t new,
(Frihl’s friends avoided touching his hands, dad scolded him, Frihl was the only one who didn’t care,)
but his skin felt too tight and he wanted it out and he wanted them to stop looking at him like they could see through him,
“Why would you do that? That’s so weird!”
stop it, stop it, he can’t, it’s not his choice, stop it, he’s not a freak, he’s not weird, stop looking at him stop talking,
She was too close, sitting right next to him, looking at him like he was a disgusting animal, and he just needed space,
And when he reached towards her, to push her away, to close her eyes, to push himself away, she yelped and flinched back and he,
saw her hands coming at him, in panic and flailing and trying to create space, and grabbed on the closest one and bit down.