It shouldn't've been like this.
Dipper drew his knees closer to his chest, pressing himself further into the tiny cave he'd scrambled into in the woods. It was in the midst of a rather dense clump of trees, so the eyebats weren't able to get to him. It was deep enough that when the wind blew it didn't hit him, so he his hands weren't slowly going numb from it. It was shaded by the leafy canopy made by the trees, so the sun wouldn't expose him. He was safe, but it wasn't right.
The sky wasn't supposed to rip open. Time wasn't supposed to have stopped. None of this should've happened. If he'd only thought for one second about anything he did this wouldn't've happened. He never should have let go of his backpack. He should have made actual chase after Mabel instead of letting the tightness in his chest that had gripped him when she ran away stop him. He should've considered how she'd feel. His stupid, his obliviousness… maybe the universe had been right to separate him from Grunkle Ford; he was useless.
The wind blew harshly, whistling, scattering a pair of leaves (Thank god) that weren't affected by the weirdness wave. Dipper shivered, despite the protection of his alcove, and took a shaky breath. He'd just have to find Ford. Ford knew Bill's weakness; if he could find him Bill wouldn't win. He'd save the world.
But would that even work?
Part of Dipper shook its head miserably. It wouldn't work. Ford had no resources. The Journals were gone. He'd told his uncle, what, a few hours earlier that he'd follow him to the ends of the earth. But he was already at the end of the Earth. It was all around him; the water tower was alive, like those monster-pianos in kids shows that were actually monsters; he was pretty sure he'd seen one of Bud Gleeful's cars go full transformer and start walking around while he fled into forest; The journals had been burned in front of his eyes. And Mabel… jesus, where was she?
Out of all of this, Dipper wanted Mabel to be safe. She was stubborn and callous at times but she'd try to make light of the situation. Try to give him confidence or just crack some type of pun. Maybe just hold his hand and say it would be okay. As it stood, though, the only person who could hold his hand was himself, and he hated Dipper Pines. Not to mention the massive burn on his good hand. Whatever had stopped him from slugging Bill in his massive, stupid eye had given him a nasty shock as well. It stung, but Dipper felt so numb he barely noticed it, if he was honest. It was inconsequential.
How would he even get out of this? Scratch Ford not having resources, he didn't have anything; no food, no water, heck - for all he knew Bill's friends didn't need air so even oxygen wasn't a given. Dipper hugged his knees closer to him, flinching as a gust of wind made a bit of the leaf canopy above him flutter to the ground. Great, he thought. Now my ceiling is disintegrating too.
The pre-teen bit his lip, shaking his head resloutley. No. He had to stay positive. He had to. He could find food; Gravity Falls was an american town after all, he just had to be careful to to get bitten by any rabid cans. He didn't need the journals; what the weirdness wave (or possible waves, he realized with mild horror) created wouldn't be in the journals to begin with. Bill's weirdness spanned an entire dimension, not just what the minor rifts in space-time let loose. He'd just need to make his way down to Ford's lab. He'd done plenty of wandering on mystery hunts with… with…
"You think he's… close?" a voice asked. It was a deep, dumb-sounding baritone that Dipper identified as 8-Ball, that goblin-thing Bill had. Then another responded, sounding nasaly and annoyed.
"He totally is," Teeth answered (Somehow) with a snorting sound. "Just in the middle of this giant forest."
"So he is!" 8-Ball exclaimed, and Dipper heard a sigh (Again, how?).
"And Bill says I'm stupid," Teeth grumbled. Then Dipper heard a low, rumbling growl.
"What was that?" Teeth's voice was sharp. "Did we get a living stomach of that wave?"
"Stomach's not good eating," 8-Ball said miserably.
"Shut it! I think it came from over there…" Then Dipper heard rustling. Nearby rustling. Something-is-near-you-you-have-to-move rustling. He tensed, his ever so slightly risen spirits collapsing. Part of him was exasperated that his stomach growling had cost him the perfect hiding spot, while another was terrified, scrambling to put together a plan of what to do. He could make a break for it now and pray, or he could try to wait it out. The former was risky, but he did need food, and moving might get him some. The latter was, if anything, more risky than running from a walking pair of teeth and a goblin monster. Dipper had always been crap at hide and seek. Yeah. Yeah, he'd have to run. Run and run as far away from Teeth and 8 Ball as he could manage. The woods wouldn't work for scavenging, so he'd have to go back into the city. To the outskirts of it, at least. Preferably just the suburbs. Taking a breath as quietly as he could, Dipper schooled his face.
After taking another deep breath, he darted out of his alcove and bolted to his right. He heard sounds of confusion from 8 Ball and Teeth in the distance, but kept putting one foot in front of another. He couldn't stop. Every other thought fell away, leaving him in single-minded bliss as he raced toward the backdoor of a two-story home missing a chimney. He half-vaulted, half-scrambled of the white picket fence around the backyard, which had somehow stayed standing and not started a civil war with the other sections or something. Dipper landed face-first on the ground, spitting out dirt as he desperately rammed into the backdoor.
His bony shoulder throbbed, but he didn't question it as his eyes took in the kitchen he'd so unceremoniously found himself in. The windows were shattered, with miniscule shards of glass reflecting the sunset (That was permanent now) in glints, the only sign that the ground was dangerous. To Dipper's surprise, it looked… normal. Too normal, actually; the tile counters that ran along the walls were fairly clean; the fridge was unopened and without some strange, plasticy arm instead of handles; the cupboards weren't open. Part of him was just deciding it was time to leave when he heard something that froze him to his core.
"He went in the backdoor! Come on, 8 Ball!" Teeth's voice made the Dipper tense so bad he nearly lost his balance. For a second, the youth didn't do anything but turn his gaze to the backdoor. His heart pounded in his chest. His mind had a half a dozen ideas forming, but his limbs didn't want to move.
BANG.
The back door flew open and in came Teeth and 8 Ball, both of whom were wheezing. Teeth looked around, quickly finding Dipper standing there, probably looking pitiful and dim-witted. God, he was an idiot. Why didn't he ever do anything when he was needed? Come on, stupid noodle limbs; do something! Teeth and 8 Ball leered at him as the approached, and Dipper's arms still refused to move. What was happening? He could face down an alien drone with a broken magnet gun but he couldn't even run away when being chased by a pair of walking dentures and goblin? He'd had Ford then, part of him said. When he saved Mabel from the gideon-bot he at least had a target. Oh, man, Mabel… where was she? How could he have failed her like this? He'd sentenced the world to armageddon with his selfishness and carelessness. What kinda person places an actual interdimensional rift next to a door? Why didn't he put it in his jacket?
"You gotta wake up, man!" Teeth said, halting his advances. 8 Ball walked an aditional three paces before stopping and adding,
"You gotta wake up!"
Dipper's eyes snapped open. He could feel cold sweat trickling down his face. His heart pounded in his chest. Above him, a sixteen year-old redhead loomed, a fierce, concerned yet determined look about her. Wendy... Right. It had passed. The world was okay.
The teen blinked hard, then looked around him; he was in the living room of the Shack. The TV was on. He was in Stan's chair. Everything was fine. It was gone. Then he realized he must've just had one of his nightmares. In front of Wendy. Crap. He felt his face flushing as he looked away, praying his friend would say something, because his voice had spirited itself away to the back of his throat. He gulped.
"Dude?" Wendy asked, placing a calloused hand on his shoulder. It was warm and comforting, but her grip was simultaneously uncompromising. Something she must've learned to do from the other times he'd managed to be hit with a nightmare, for then and now he wanted nothing more to sink through Stan's chair and away from the girl over him. "Uh, man, you're giving me the embarassed vibes."
Dipper jumped at her voice, finally forcing his eyes up to meet his Wendy's. It was hard, but he forced himself to do it. He wrenched his voice from the back of his throat with considerable effort, stuttering several times before taking a deep breath. He wiped his forehead, sweatifying his hand in the process, and internally muttering. This was his and Wendy's first movie night since he'd gotten back to Gravity Falls; her family had forced her on a fishing trip for the first week of summer, so they'd had to push it to tonight. Now, though…
"S-sorry," he said, voice far more shaky than he wanted it, "It's just a nightmare." Wendy raised a brow for a moment, before her expression softened, darkening on the way.
"About it, right?" her question was rhetorical. Dipper looked at the wall after that, so Wendy sighed, not taking her hand off his shoulder. If there was any time Dipper would start squirming, it was when he was nervous. And when he dreamed about it, that would most definitely happen. It had given them both nightmares in the immediate aftermath, and there had been numerous nights where either her or Dipper had woken up in a half-panic from a night terror and called the other. After all, both of them needed someone around their age who was able to empathize. She squeezed his shoulder.
"It's okay," she told Dipper, "It's over. We beat Bill. He's gone." The thirteen year-old nodded slowly, biting his lip. He shivered, looking down.
"It's my fault," he whispered, so quiet Wendy only just heard it. Some part of her made an exasperated sound. She shook her head resoloutley, narrowing her eyes. As adorably dorky as Dipper was, his tendency to blame himself was the worst she'd ever seen in anyone. It didn't help, either, that over the year he'd learned to brood like Batman. This in particular, though, had been a recurring theme. It was his fault because he chose to become Ford's apprentice and he left his bag out where Mabel could easily grab it yadda yadda. She'd heard it all before, and if she was completely honest, it grated on her a bit.
"You know that's not true, man," Wendy pulled Dipper forward jerkily by the shoulder, forcing him to look at her. "Mabel reacted how she did and you coped with it. She should've taken it better. You don't have to be this perfect smart guy, man. You know that." Dipper nodded again. He looked more three than thirteen, with how he hunched his shoulders and his face was shadowed.
"Yeah," he responded breathily, "I can't control everyone. Mabel made her choice. It's just…" Dipper gestured vaguely around him.
"Coming back?" Wendy's voice was soft. She'd gone through this, too; for most of the year up until about springtime she had serious trouble getting it out of her head. She kept seeing flashes, flinching at sudden movements in the corners of her eyes; looking out the window from boredom wasn't an option until christmas because she wasn't able to keep the apocalyptic sunset she'd lived with for a week out of her eyes. It was only a week, maybe stretching into the next Monday at max, but that hadn't stopped it from haunting her dreams. She wasn't able to go to the mall for weeks after it, either, which brought out a large amount of concern from her friends. Dipper gulped again, shutting his eyes tightly for a moment. When he opened them, they were glistening.
"Yeah." he said.
Wendy pulled him up and out of the chair, so he was standing. Dipper made a startled noise at the sudden movement, but Wendy just hugged him. After a moment, she felt his skinny arms wrap around her back too. Neither teenager said anything for a bit. Dipper just appreciated that Wendy was there; that she was there and wasn't going away. She wasn't going to turn inside out or get weird; she was real, not some figment of Mabelland, and she knew what he was feeling, and that was what mattered. He held on tighter, to the point that it hurt a bit, but Wendy said nothing. To her the technically-a-teen hugging her was a walking miracle; when she was twelve, she was more focused on the boy sitting next to her or the next fishing trip she'd take rather than solving the mysteries of Gravity Falls. What was more, he was a kid who had literally jumped off a cliff, into a giant robot, and then beat up its operator. She wondered briefly how he did it, those stupid, amazing things, but her train of thought was cut off by Dipper's shaky, cracking voice.
"I-I'm not sure why… I haven't had a dream like that in months," he said. Wendy's silence was compassionate, but still slightly expectant.
"Yeah?"
"It was about Teeth and 8 Ball," Dipper explained, forcing himself to not choke on the words. "I was hiding in the woods after I tried to punch Bill-"
"You have my eternal respect for that, by the way," Wendy cut in, making Dipper's lips quirk up a bit.
"And chased me into this house. I got in through the backdoor and they followed me inside. They were about to… err…" Dipper swallowed before continuing. "They were about to get me, and then they start telling me to wake up."
"That it?" Wendy asked after a moment. She could feel him nod and, after a second, stepped away. She sniffed around her. "Who burned a chicken?"
Dipper started, looking around bewilderedly, before shaking his head.
"Ah, crap!" he turned to the stairs, getting ready to head upstairs. Wendy followed him up.
"Don't worry," she said quickly. "It's fine. I had a big dinner anyways-"
"It's not that," Dipper cut her off, "Instead of popcorn Stan got this weird brand with like, chicken-breaded kernels or something. I decided to try them out."
"Chicken-breaded?" Wendy asked, feeling the familiar light air returning. Dipper sighed.
"I don't know really. They were five cents cheaper though." Wendy snorted, happy to feel the tension lifting, if just a little bit. She knew Dipper would probably be thinking about that dream over and over again, even as the night went on, so if it took no-name brand weird popcorn to distract his massive introspectionist, she was a-okay with that. Besides, there was always-
"Ugh," Dipper scrunched up his nose. "Man, I am never letting Grunkle Stan decide popcorn again. Smell's like that Stanchen Ford told me about…" he trailed off as he got to the kitchen, pinching the bridge of his nostrils so tight it hurt a bit. Wendy did the same, but frowned.
"'Stanchen?'"
"Oh," Dipper said, then shook his head again. "Right. Grunkle Ford was emailing me while he Stan were off in the Arctic Circle. He said one night Stan made 'Stanchen' - apparently it tasted like his hair and burnt chicken feathers." Wendy laughed, something that made Dipper grin self-consciously. Her laugh really was great. How it managed to make him smile, he didn't know, but he didn't question it. He needed to smile.
"Yeah," he said, his hand coming to scratch the back of his neck, "This is uh… oh god..." Dipper mimed vomiting. The microwave door was splattered with some sickly brown substance he didn't want to know the origin of.
"Dude," Wendy gagged. "I'm making the popcorn next time. What even is that?" Dipper gingerly approached the microwave, placing his hand on the door handle. He was about to throw it open when Wendy stopped him.
"Wait!" she waved her arms desperately, "Don't do that!" Dipper turned around, confused, to see his friend shaking her head, a grin managing to fight its way across her face despite how the reek. "I have a better idea…"
Fifty minutes and four nose plugs later both of them were sitting in the living room, sharing Stan's chair, a box of chipackerz between them. The popcorn was long gone, the bag have been thrown in the trash, inside two heavy-duty ziploc bags. It kept most of the stench in, anyways. They had ground up the kernels and discretly mixed them into Stan's sunscreen. Petty? Yes, both decided, but would it be funny? Definitely.
At about midnight Wendy lost Dipper, who fell off of Stan's chair, startling her a bit, but the youth didn't wake from it. A moment later, she sneakily climbed the stairs to his and Mabel's room, grabbed one of his sister's markers, and set to work. When it was all said and done, she was feeling sleepy as well, and shut the TV off. For a moment the girl questioned whether or not to take Dipper up to his room, but she decided her work, with tireless effort put into not waking him up during it, was too good for him to wake up and get rid of before anyone saw it. With one final glance at the whiskers, monocle, and stash she'd given her friend, she left, hands in her pockets and a wicked grin across her face. He was going to be so pissed in the morning.
I wrote this in about two days on an epiphany: "Jfc Dipper went through an apocalypse how is he so calm in the finale?!"
And thus, this fluff-tastic thing was born.
I don't believe it's too good, really, but feel free to let me know what you think. Any favs, reviews - or anything, really - would make my day. Thanks for reading. - Raging Celiac
