Approximately an hour ago, I reached a great milestone. I am on 100 peoples' favorite author list. This makes me so indescribably happy I can't even tell you. So in celebration and as a thank you to all my amazing readers, I sat down and wrote this little fluff piece in about a half hour. It's really late, and I'm not even sure it's entirely coherent. But I like it anyway. I hope you do too.
Stan laid in bed, wide awake and staring up at the ceiling. He had so much eating away at his mind. So much had happened over the last several hours and every time he thought sleep might be a possibility some other seed of worry took root in his mind that chased it away.
Stanford was back. That was hard to take in, after thirty years without his twin brother. Thirty years of guilt and desperation, teaching himself complex physics and reconstructing the same portal that had taken Ford from him to begin with.
Stanford was still pissed at him. He supposed he could understand that, but after those thirty years of hard work to bring him back, a small part of him had been hoping Ford could find it within the recesses of his heart to forgive him. No such luck.
Dipper didn't trust him. That hit hard. As distant as he tried to be from any sentimentality, Stan did love those kids to death. He knew he wasn't the best role model. He knew he wasn't the greatest at taking care of them sometimes. But damn it if he hadn't tried his hardest to do what was best for them, for their whole family. And he supposed he'd screwed it up again. He'd kept secrets and lied, and in doing so he'd lost Dipper's trust.
But in contrast, there was Mabel to think about. Mabel, that sweet and innocent girl who had risked everything to prove that she trusted him completely. Even after the lies and the deceit. To be honest, he couldn't believe he hadn't corrupted her over the last couple months. If things had gone wrong, she could have died. She could have been sucked into the portal, never to be seen in their plane of reality again.
If they'd gone really wrong, the world could have been destroyed.
But still she'd trusted him. She'd let go of the button that could have shut down everything and made his last thirty years of hard work void.
The guilt was killing him. Sure, a lot of things had gone right. Almost everything had gone right. But so much had gone wrong, too. And Stan wasn't certain he'd ever be able to repair the damage. Dipper was going to have horrendous trust issues. Mabel had probably been traumatized. Ford was… well, different. Colder. Stan didn't know if he'd ever find out what his brother had been up to. He wasn't sure he even wanted to know.
He heard the sound of soft footsteps on the stairs. One of the kids was up, but it was impossible to tell which. He didn't want to go find out, for fear that whichever of the kids it was, they wouldn't want to see him. Maybe they were just up for a glass of water or something and would head back up to bed soon.
Stan didn't expect the soft knock on his door when it came, before the handle turned and whichever of the kids it was slowly pushed open the door. "Grunkle Stan?" Mabel's hoarse, whispered voice filled the room. "Are you awake?"
Stan sat up immediately, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. "Mabel? What's going on?" he asked urgently. His nerves were on edge. What if the events of the last few hours had been enough to make one of the twins do something stupid? "You okay?"
She crept to his bed and Stan leaned over to turn on the lamp sitting on his bedside table. He looked over his niece as light flooded the room. She was rubbing her arm, looking nervous and sad. Stan feared the worst. "Is your brother okay?" he asked.
"Dipper's fine," Mabel mumbled. "He's asleep."
Stan relaxed. "Okay. That's… that's good," he sighed, holding his head. He was too old for all this tension. He took a glance at his clock, surprised to see how much time he'd spent lying in bed simply worrying. It was already nearly 2 a.m. "What are you doing up, sweetie?"
Mabel bit her lip, her gaze on the floor. "I can't sleep," she whispered. "I just… I can't stop thinking about everything."
"Oh," Stan let out a long breath. He'd known she was more similar to him than Dipper was, but this was uncanny. "Do you want to, er, talk about it?" he asked. He was no good at this kind of stuff. Heart-to-hearts weren't really his forte. But for Mabel, he was willing to try.
She nodded and crawled up onto his bed, sitting next to her great uncle. "Everything's different now," she said sadly. "Dipper wouldn't stop talking about the author before he finally went to sleep, and Great Uncle Ford is living here now too, right? I… I liked the way things were before. I liked it when it was just you and Dipper and Waddles and me in the Mystery Shack. I liked… I liked setting off fireworks and throwing water balloons and having fun. But now… things are serious, aren't they?"
Stan sighed. Mabel was freakily perceptive. She may have been a kid, but she knew what was what. "Yeah," he said honestly. "Things are going to be different now."
He wasn't surprised when Mabel's eyes teared up. "Grunkle Stan, I did the right thing, didn't I?" she asked thickly, wiping at her eyes in an attempt to stop the waterworks before they started. It wasn't working very well. "I mean... everything happened so fast. I didn't know what to do. When Great Uncle Ford came through that portal thing I thought it was okay, but… but Dipper's still mad." Tears started rolling down her cheeks. "Dipper's mad," she cried, balling her hands into fists, her fingernails digging into her palms. "I think he thinks that I betrayed him." She looked pleadingly up at her great uncle. "Did I do the right thing?"
"Hey," Stan said gently. His heart hurt watching her beat herself up. "Hey. Come here." He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her into a hug, and she cried into his shirt. "It's okay, Kid."
"Is it?" he heard her mumble through scattered sobs, and he sighed deeply.
"Mabel, sweetie… I can't tell you if you did the right thing, exactly, because all that crap… well, it's relative."
"That doesn't help!" she cried. Stan felt her starting to tremble. Oh, god. He was no good at this. At this rate he was only going to screw her up more.
"You brought my brother back," he told her, holding her just a little tighter. Was this how to be reassuring? It had been a few decades since he'd really tried to comfort anyone. "You trusted in your family. You did what you thought was right," he said. "I don't know about you, but I think you did the right thing."
She sniffled and pulled away, looking up at her great uncle with puffy red eyes. "Really?"
"Really," Stan said, patting her shoulder. "Don't worry about Dipper, Kid. He'll come around." He wasn't 100% certain that was true, but he certainly hoped it was. He didn't like to see the kids fight. It made him afraid they'd fall out like he and Stanford had done so long ago.
Mabel nodded, wiping at her eyes. "Okay."
"That's my girl," Stan smiled reassuringly. "Now, it's late, Kid. You need to get some sleep."
She bit the inside of her cheek. "Grunkle Stan? Can I… uh… can I sleep in here with you tonight?" she asked, so quietly Stan almost didn't hear her.
He hadn't been expecting that. This had never happened before. But he didn't really have a good reason to tell her no. "Um… sure. I guess."
She cracked a tiny smile and at once crawled under his covers, curling up on the side nearest to the window. "Good night, Grunkle Stan," she mumbled, shutting her eyes.
It was nice to see her smile, at least. Stan felt the corners of his lips twitch up into one of his own, and he turned the light off and laid back down, reaching out a hand to rest it on Mabel's shoulder. Somehow, having her there was comforting to him. Maybe he had needed her tonight as much as she had needed him. "Goodnight, Kid," he sighed.
It didn't take very long at all for the pair to fall into sleep.
Everything would be different in the morning. But they'd be alright.
Please review, and thank you so much for reading!