A/N: thien2679 on tumblr asked: Please write about Toby or Bentley or Maddie, we don't have much story about her.
Dipper looked up from his mystery novel when Maddie appeared at his bedroom door. "What's wrong, honey?"
She rubbed her eyes with one hand and shuffled forward, clutching her favorite stuffed animal to her chest. "Can't sleep."
"Do I need to scare the monsters under the bed away again?" Two weeks ago, there had been a literal monster lurking under Maddie's bedframe. It had taken one look at his face, momentarily demonic, and had sunk into the floorboards and out of the house faster than Dipper would have thought an ooze-monster could.
"No. Just can't sleep." Maddie, stuffed kitten in her hand, clambered onto Dipper's bed. He pulled back the sheets beside him, feeling the beginnings of worry tugging at his mind.
"Bad dream? Problems at school? Did somebody say something mean to you?"
She shook her head, curly hair bouncing with the movement. "Not really."
He set down his book on the bedside table and lifted his arm. As she snuggled into his side, he said, "Not really doesn't sound like no. You want to talk about it?"
Humming a negative, she shrugged. Dipper didn't really know what to do with the conflicting answers he was being given, so he just leaned back into the headboard and smoothed her hair.
After a few moments, Maddie reached up and tugged at his hand. He let her take it, and she studied it against hers, tracing the palms and running her fingers up and down his. Finally, she pressed her hand into his palm, the fingers just barely touching the dips between his own, and mumbled something he couldn't hear.
"Maddie, you'll need to speak louder, sweetie," Dipper said.
"Mr. B was talkin' about how adoption means that parents give up their kid, or that they die before they can raise their kid, or that the kid is taken away from them, and Johnny and F'ni looked at me and asked if I was adopted because I don't look like you and then Naome said my parents hated me and they're right, aren't they?"
Dipper pulled Maddie onto his lap and buried his face in her hair, arms deceptively lax around her. He wished he had tracked her birth parents down, wished that he could rip them apart in more ways than one for leaving her in an alley instead of in an actual orphanage, for trying to kill her without doing the deed themselves. Then he inhaled and told himself that they didn't matter; she did.
"Daddy?"
"Technically, they're right," he murmured. "But they're wrong in all the ways that matter."
"Like what?" Maddie asked, and her hands were around his forearms again.
"Well, for starters, I'm your Dad now, and I love you." Dipper said, planting a kiss on her head and pulling back. Maddie leaned back against him and tipped her head up so that she could see his face better. "I love you the most in the whole wide world."
"Even better than Toby?" Maddie whispered, dark eyes wide.
"Well," Dipper said, briefly hesitating. Then he remembered that Toby wasn't around to hear this, and Maddie deserved the truth. "Maybe just a little bit more. It's close to the same, though."
Maddie narrowed her eyes at him. "Well if it's really really close, then I guess."
He rustled her hair. "It's really really close. Promise."
"Okay." Maddie closed her eyes and nestled into Dipper's chest. She tipped onto her side and Dipper just looked down, saw her colors in bright, soft pinks with dashes of calm blue comfort and glowing spots of pale yellow love love love and he loved her so much. He kept his arms around her and just watched her fall asleep, quiet and safe and his.
Then he remembered that if he spent the entire night like this, he was going to get suck a crick in his neck. Slowly, with hands Maddie thought spent days riffling through books and handing pen and paper, he shifted her off of him and onto the bed, head nestled on his favorite pillow. Then, he turned off the bedside lamp and shifted down under the covers, pressing one last kiss to her forehead.
"Goodnight, little star."