Mabel held tightly onto Dipper's hand as they navigated the narrow and winding paths of the grocery store. Henry was at home with the triplets, but he had given them a rather long list of items to pick up when they went shopping. One or two people kept glancing at the woman who was, as far as they could see, holding onto thin air, but most of the residents of Gravity Falls had long since accepted the unusual circumstances of the Pines twins.
The shopping cart was almost full by the time the two got through with the grocery list and Dipper dragged his twin into the candy aisle.
"Dipper- Dipper, I get it, I was going to come over here anyway."
As her brother's eyes gazed upon the aisle, filled to the brim with all sorts of sweets, he grinned wider than any human could manage and bounced up and down mid-air.
"Wow."
Mabel laughed loudly, her giggle more closely resembling that of a schoolgirl than that of a grown woman. "It has been a while since you've been here, huh? Is this the only reason you came with me?"
Dipper's silence and continued grin was enough to give her an answer.
"Bro-bro, you're ridiculous."
He stuck his tongue out at her, and she reciprocated the gesture.
The demon pointed out the candy that he wanted, which seemed to be almost everything that the shelves of the grocery store had to offer, and Mabel obediently shoveled piles of his desired sweets into the shopping cart until it looked about to burst, shaking her head and smiling the whole time.
The twins were only about halfway through when their expedition was interrupted by a woman and a little girl holding hands and taking up most of the space in the aisle as they quietly squabbled about what candy to get. Mabel could have perhaps squeezed through on her own, if she moved the cart slowly and carefully enough that the candy piled on top of it would not threaten to spill onto the floor dozens at a time, but with Dipper at her side, such a maneuver would be impossible.
Mabel tapped the other woman gently on the shoulder. "I just need to sneak through here for a second."
"Mabel, it's okay, you don't-"
The two strangers turned around. The woman had long dark hair in a tight braid and wore a long white dress, while her daughter's hair was even darker and tied up in pigtails, but made up for her dark hair by wearing a neon green shirt with a rocket ship on it and an orange skirt.
"Oh, I'm sorry, ma'am," the woman replied. "Of course, go right ahead."
She pushed her cart up against the shelves and backed up, then whispered, "Kayla, let the nice lady through." The girl made a face, but scooted backwards obediently.
Mabel nodded and murmured a word of thanks as she inched forward, but when the mother and daughter resumed their former position, she found that Dipper was no longer at her side. She glanced behind her and saw her brother staring at the little girl, his pupils shrunk to mere slits.
"C'mon!" She waved back at him, but he did not break his gaze.
"No. No. No̢!͠" His body shook with every word, and his hands were clenched in fists that filled with blue fire.
Mabel abandoned her shopping cart and ran back over to her brother. "Bro-bro, what's the matter?"
"That girl..."
"What about her?"
"I know that girl. I know that soul. It belonged to a certain E̵d̛ B̨ro̵w͢e͠r."
The girl in question was now standing on her tippy-toes trying to reach a chocolate bar located on a high shelf while her mother was momentarily distracted by a phone call.
It didn't take Mabel long to recall the name; she hadn't been present at the incident in question, but she knew only too well who that man was, what he had tried to do to her children, how close he had brought Willow to... to...
But he hadn't. Henry and Dipper had made sure of that.
"No."
"How dare he- how d̸ar̛e he come back to Gravity Falls after w̸h̢at ̕h̶ę ̕d͟i̕d!"
The girl named Kayla was now being admonished by her mother, who had discovered her plot just as she was hiding the chocolate bar in between cereal boxes and had put it back on an even higher shelf, well out of her daughter's reach.
The lights in the store began to flicker as Dipper began to float upwards and bared his teeth.
"I҉ ͠t͡houg̛h͞t҉ ̛he̛ ͞ha̸ḑ l̴e̢arne̢d͞ h͝i̴s͝ ̕les̴s̵o͝n̴-"
"Dipper, CALM DOWN!"
She hadn't meant to shout her response quite that loudly.
The mother and child stared at her for a moment, the woman opening her mouth to say something but closing it when she thought better of it, the girl scrunching up her face and making a soft noise of discontent before turning back to the shelves and setting her eyes on another forbidden treat.
"It's not him. It's not him, okay?"
The lights stopped flickering, though they were a bit dimmer than they had been before.
"But-"
"You said yourself people change between lifetimes. This little girl-" Mabel waved her hand in the girl's general direction. "-isn't about to hurt us."
The little girl went wide-eyed and looked back at her mother, dropping the gummy worms that she had managed to rescue from the shelf without notice onto the ground. "Why is that lady talking about me?"
As the girl drew nearer, the woman put her arm around her daughter's shoulders. "I don't know, sweetie. I don't know."
Dipper sank back to his sister's level, his feet now a mere inch off the floor, his mouth settling into a deep frown. "You're right, Mabel. I'm sorry. You're right."
"Course I am." Mabel stuck her tongue out, hoping to get her brother to crack a smile, but instead his frown grew even deeper. She continued making faces at him, ranging from touching her thumb to her nose and waggling her fingers to pulling the skin below her eyes down and staring at him, but not one of the gestures could elicit a grin.
The woman and child rushed off to another aisle, the wheels of their shopping cart squeaking loudly as they passed over the white tile floor.
"I just- I, I just thought-"
"It's okay. I get it, Dipdop. Aldork. Dippingsauce. Dippycat. Nothing?" She had been hoping for an eye roll or groan, but her brother just sat down and pulled his knees into his chest and wrapped his arms around them and-
Oh dear. Dipper in the fetal position. Never a good sign.
"Something else going on in that big ole head of yours, bro-bro?"
"If... If he's not the same, that means... that means that you won't be..."
Mabel wrapped her arms around her brother as golden tears worked their way down his cheek.
"Shhh. Stop worrying so much, bro-bro."
"I just-" He took a deep breath, though he hadn't needed to breathe for a long time, and wouldn't need to breathe for far, far longer. "I don't want to lose you, Mabel."
The two embraced for several minutes, Dipper shaking and sniffling, Mabel shushing him and patting him gently, the two taking comfort in one another's presence for as long as they could manage.