Hello everyone. Here I have a small fic on Gravity Falls, centered around Wendy Corduroy and her thoughts on Dipper in late second season and afterwards. Please read and review if you feel it's worthy. Anyway, I hope everyone enjoys.

She heard that little tinkling sound inside her head, like a tiny alarm. She instantly knew the moment. Something has changed. Something wasn't right. Dipper Pines lied to her. Casually, between this and then.

"I spent my whole day in the attic, reading Journal number two," - that's what he said. And he did a great job lying, he didn't betray himself with a single word, nor intonation. Almost like if he was saying the truth, but Wendy knew he didn't.

She saw him at the mall earlier that day. He didn't see her - he was far away, and she was stuck in the crowd. Before she could come close enough to at least call his name, he turned around the corner. When Wendy got there, he was nowhere to be seen. She just shrugged then, deciding that he could have his own business at the mall.

Then, in the evening, she came to the Shack to visit her friends and give a quick pick at her workplace - first thing that interested her was how did all that situation with the agents from the other day sort out, and second, she wanted to see how much damage did the Shack suffer that Stan Pines decided to close it for repairing issues. The results didn't disappoint her. The Shack looked like it floated several feet in the air before falling back down, and Dipper assured her that it was exactly what happened. Then he told her the story of two Stans, and in his narration it actually sounded a lot more connected and logical than when Soos told her the same tale. Finally, just by the by, she asked him what was he doing the whole day, while work was out of options.

"I spent my whole day in the attic, reading Journal number two," - Dipper said, sounding very exited. Of course he would, for more than a month he was obsessed with the third Journal, and now he has met the Author, who lended him the second Journal, and naturally he would read it to the end in one sitting. Except he didn't.

'I saw you in the mall today,' - almost slipped off Wendy's tongue, but at the last moment she decided not to say it. She decided instead to observe the situation, wait and think, and the more thinking she did, the more complicated it became. She had enough time for it, since Dipper started an ample description of the second Journal, listing all the fantastic mysteries he has read about in it, periodically sliding off to telling about his newfound gruncle Ford, the Author, and how cool he was, et cetera, et cetera. All Wendy had to do was to insert comments like 'No way, dude!' or 'That's crazy!'. Constant background talking didn't interrupt her thinking, as she was used to it, growing up with three younger brother.

"Wendy, what's wrong? You're not interested, I guess?" - he asked finally. It turns out the act she put up was not as good as she thought. He saw through it and realized that her thought were distant.

"Uh, sorry, dude, I'm just a little tired, you know?" - she pretended.

"I see," - he sighed. - "I'll let you know if I find something really exciting in the Journal. Something that we can go for to have another mystery hunt."

'Boy, he's a great actor.' - Wendy thought. - 'He seems really agitated about the Journal, and about sharing it with me. And when he saw that I'm indifferent about the Journal, his disappointment looked genuine, too. I'd have never caught him lying if I didn't know for sure he is. But I know he did something else, so why so much talk about the Journal anyway?'

"Yeah, dude, that's a good idea," - she said. - "Keep me posted if you come across anything impressive in this book of yours. I'll be going now."

In the yard in front of the Shack she saw Mable taming her pet pig. An idea came across Wendy's head. Never hurts to double check on your suspicions.

"Hey, Mabes!"

"Hi, Wen-wen!"

"How's it going?"

"Awesome!" - Mabel yelled excitedly.

"Figures. OK, what were you doing today, having a free day to spend with your reunited family?"

"Oh, I wish my gruncles thought that they are reunited," - Mabel downed. - "They don't seem to get along with each other."

"Yeah, I already get it. So, what were you doing, anyway?"

"What wasn't I doing?" - Mabel experienced another of her instant mood switches, and was cheerful again. - "We played with Waddles, hang out with Gruncle Stan who told me and Soos more about his childhood and youth, Candy and Grenda came by and I told them about Gruncle Ford and stuff, I knitted a sweater. That's it, I suppose."

"What, your brother was just reading in the attic the whole time, and you didn't go bother him once? C'mon, that's not like you actually," - saying this Wendy aimed to fish out some information on whether Mabel knew about her brother leaving the Shack for some time.

"Oh, him. He was so deep in his book, that he didn't even notice when I did a Wet Willy to him. How do you bother someone who wouldn't even react to Wet Willy? To me, it indicates that a person is brain-dead."

"Fair point," - Wendy nodded. - "OK, I'm going home now. Be seeing you."

"Bye, Wendy!"

Later at the cabin, she had a whole evening to try and figure it out. And her conclusions didn't turn out exactly pretty.

She was the one to turn him down when he confessed his feelings to her. She told him that she wanted to stay friends. Can friends keep secrets from each other? Of course they can. She was just a little bit confused, because earlier Dipper never seemed to hold any secrets from her, aside from his crush on her, which was rather obvious anyway. What could now his secret be? It had either something to do with her, or it had absolutely nothing to do with her. The first variant seemed... unlikely. Something to do with her meant he had sort of surprise for her he wanted to prepare beforehand, and for that he needed to visit mall for some reason, and there wasn't any apparent occasion for him to give her any surprises. On top of that, he did it in secret from his family, too. If Mabel knew, she would have either told about it or lied, and Mabel's lies could be seen through from a mile away. So, all in all, variant number one made little sense.

The other variant looked a lot more logical, because if the secret didn't involve her directly, that explained why did he hide it from everyone else. So there was a possibility he read about some particular mystery of Gravity Falls in the second Journal, and he decided to go check on it right away. Alone. In secret from his friends. And he went to the mall for some reasons, although what mysteries could have been connected to the mall, it wasn't even built yet when the Journals were written? So this didn't exactly add up. Or the other possible explanation was that he went out for some very personal cause. Something private, that he wanted to keep secret even from his family. Especially from his family, considering their habit mocking him at every opportunity. And from her as well, naturally. They're just friends, after all. Dipper Pines didn't seem to her the type of guy who would brag about his personal life. Although, you actually do tell your friends about your crushes and your dates. Provided that they are really your friends, that is.

That was totally understandable. That was fine. She was in fact even glad that the boy managed to get over her so quickly, and moved on. She was glad, wasn't she? But somehow somewhere deep inside it didn't feel right.

And something still didn't add up. She felt it, like she was missing something small but significant. She felt it the next day, while the Shack was still closed for repairs, and she didn't have to go to work. She felt it later, when they went to the ridiculous unicorn searching thing with Mabel and her two friends. Dipper didn't go, because he was busy in the Shack with his gruncle Ford. Busy doing what? Something important, probably, but he never told her. Later they went on a road trip with Stan, and, again, Dipper never told her what happened there. It was becoming a habit, and she got used to the idea that things will stay this way until the end of the summer, when Dipper and Mabel leave. That their mutual trust, that once seemed infinite, was depleted. She couldn't help but put in such dramatic form. Well, anyway, people change their mind under pressure of circumstances. Change their hearts, too. It was, again, understandable, but it didn't feel right even the slightest bit.

Then Weirdmageddon started, and she had bigger problems. She knew what happened to her family, her friends - basically everyone she knew and loved. The same stuff could happen to her any minute. Of course, she wasn't going to give up - giving up wasn't her thing, really. So she did what her father had taught her - survived. She decided not to linger on the fact that he himself failed to do so. She survived the best she could, waiting for a chance to do something. Anything.

She set up a trap and used nachos as bait, but so far nothing has fallen into it. She was wondering if nachos were really a good choice for a bait, and considered using Toby Determined as a decoy, but quickly tossed the thought aside. No matter how diverse were the monsters spawned by Weirdmageddon, she doubted that there were any bizarre enough to set their bags on Toby Determined.

Her train of thoughts was interrupted with sounds of activating trap. A moment later, a very familiar voice cried out for help. She looked out of the bush she was hiding in and saw Dipper Pines in his own person, in a miserable state of being trapped by the net and denied even a plate of nachos he clearly wanted to satisfy his hunger with.

Of course, she let him go, and at that moment the boy clearly couldn't contain his feelings - he ran to her and hugged her tightly around the waist - as high as he could reach at the moment. She hugged him back, trying to reassure and comfort her distressed friend.

"It's OK, dude. We have each other now," - she said, and oh just how right it felt!

A lot has happened after that. They saved Mabel, they found Stan and their other friends at the Shack, the then twins rallied the crowd to oppose Bill and they brought the fight right to him, and ultimately destroyed him, although almost sacrificing Stanley Pines' mind in process. But in the end it all worked out just fine. Through all these ordeals Wendy almost forgot about her pique with Dipper. So when the day came twins needed to go back home in California, she decided that she wanted to finish their (by 'their' she subconsciously meant 'her and Dipper's'. Mabel unobtrusively took second places in her thoughts) summer on a good note. And no matter how hard she thought, she couldn't come up with anything that would be more pleasant for him than to come back to Gravity Falls again. At the time she didn't want to confess to herself that it was not in a small part an egoistic decision, because she wanted the exact same thing. So she spent some time walking around the town and asking people to sign a small letter to Dipper. She wished there was time to do more, but she only had one full day left between the end of Weirdmageddon and twins' departure. In the end of the day she collected quite a number of signs.

She handed it to Dipper, and exchanged hats with him - something she had in mind for a rather long time. Then the twins moved off. She was sorrowful at the moment, of course, but she coped with it. At least they parted as close friends, and not as just distant buddies, who used to know each other closely, but broke up. That was how she kept comforting herself. Then one day early in October she saw Dipper in Gravity Falls again. The same Dipper as ever - his face, his figure, his clothes. And a blue-white cap on his head. The same one that was on her head.

It was just like the previous time - he was far away and didn't see her. As ill luck would have it, the crowd around her was quite dense, and while she made her way to the clear ground, Dipper was already out of sight. She couldn't find him anywhere around. Something didn't add up severely. This wasn't the time to keep it personal or suspect something, she had to bring it up to real Dipper as soon as possible. Exactly which she did that very evening, appointing a Spyke chat beforehand. Luckily, he agreed right away. They chatted frequently, calling each other from time to time, but Wendy expected a serious talk, so she wanted to be sure Dipper wouldn't be in a hurry.

"Dude, you in Piedmont?" - she asked directly when they started the chat.

"What do you mean?" - he asked with a grain of salt. - "Of course I am, where else am I supposed to be?"

"Well, we have bad news, then. Because today I saw someone who looked exactly like you. Exactly, mate. The same height, same face, even the closings were exactly the same as you wore this summer - shorts, blue vest, pine tree cap. I'd like to think there's a flashmob of your doubles somewhere here in Gravity Falls, but I actually fear it's a Shapeshifter. The Shapeshifter, you know. Because if it was some other random Shapeshifter, it would have no reason to shift into you, and-"

"Wendy," - he cut of her monologue with a slightly embarrassed smile. - "Rest assured - there is a perfectly logical explanation."

He explained. He told her about Stan's old copier and the dance evening at the Mystery Shack, when he wanted to dance with her, but was too scared to ask her to dance himself, so he created more than ten clones of himself to aid him, how those clones later rebelled against him, and he had to fight them, how two clones escaped with Robbie's bicycle to never come back. Wendy just sit back, processing all the information she received. Then it crossed her mind that most likely that one time when she saw him at the mall during summer, it was not him but one of the two surviving clones, and when she thought that he lied to her - he actually didn't. And only when the weight of her false distrust in him was lifted from her shoulders did she realize how heavy it actually was. As if she was now able to breathe fully again, for the first time in more than a month.

"Dipper Pines, you're officially the dorkiest, nerdiest, goofiest guy in the world," - she smiled once he finished his long and complicated story of what he came through trying to ask her for a dance.

"Yeah, I get that a lot," - the guy murmured.

"And ain't no other dork, nerd and goofy that I miss so much," - Wendy happily continued.

His head instantly darted upwards.

"Really?" - he asked.

"Yep," - Corduroy grinned. For some time, they just looked at each other through the monitors. Then Dipper slightly smiled.

"But it's been only a month since we left," - he pointed out.

"Dude, I've known you for two months, but that felt like it lasted a lifetime. Besides, don't tell me you don't miss me."

"I do, Wendy," - he said ardently. - "I miss you, really."

"That makes the two of us," - the girl joyfully concluded.

Again a long silence fell between them. A silence long, but not uncomfortable.

"I'll be back next summer," - he said. - "And then we'll talk more."

"Of course, dude," - she laughed. - "We will."

At that moment Wendy Corduroy seriously suspected that nothing has ever felt this right in her whole life.