A small, beat down sedan sped between pine trees, slices of sun and shadow playing across the worn-down surface of the car. Dipper Pines drummed softly on the steering wheel with one hand while another reached into the worn pocket of his coat. He flipped out a lighter and held it to the dangling cigarette in his lips. His eyes darted to his sister's back in the seat next to him, her frizzy hair tumbling wildly with the bouncy road. Dipper cracked the window, careful to be quiet. He much preferred his sister this way, unconscious, than he did awake.
Mabel's eyes flickered beneath her lids as she dreamed, the cool of the window on her forehead seeping into her mind, turning her dreams cool as marble. She felt her footsteps echoing on the stone, searched the cool grey world for a flash of yellow. She grinned without humor.
"Just because you don't show up doesn't mean you're not here, genius." The floor beneath became tile, triangles. She rolled her eyes. "Yeah, I get it." She felt him taunting her; then, unbidden, memories reflected in the marble. Flying, floating, the earth upturned. She felt herself caught turning slowly, trance-like, in front of a new universe. She felt herself let go. Mabel shut her eyes, put acid in her words.
"That is enough, Bill." She waited for a response. Nothing, then a whisper at her sleeve. The scent of pine trees and smoke. Her eyes opened, not to stone but to flames, a forest burning. She remembered a brand in the sky, heard the screaming. Those aren't people anymore, nothing that afraid is human. Arms around her, her family-a flash of hope. She wished she remembered more, wished that the memories in her mind could fight what she constructed for herself. How it had to have happened-how Stan had blamed Ford, had gotten too close. How Ford only had to push once. She drifted, swimming in tar.
Then again, maybe just the black was better. Maybe just the smell of cigarettes and pine.
Cigarettes.
Mabel's eyelids flew open and she sat upright immediately, eyes adjusting to the road in front of her. She glanced quickly at Dipper, caught his eyes flashing back to the road as if he hadn't been looking. She frowned.
"Mom would cry if she saw you smoking." He sniffed, blowing smoke more in the car than out of it. Mabel rolled down her window.
"She would cry if she saw a lot of things, Mabel." His leg jerked irritably, the car jumping forward. He reached for the radio, cigarette ash threatening to tumble from the white paper. He fumbled until he found NPR. "Leave me alone about what she'd cry about, you're lucky you still have an excuse to get out for the summer." He turned the dial up, a nasal drone filling the car. Mabel rolled her window back up.
The cigarette ash fell onto Dipper's collar.
"You only listen to NPR here." Dipper glared at her, and Mabel shrugged, a bitter restlessness needing this, needing to break the tension of the stiff, polite, silent road trip. She felt her face grow hot as she rambled on. "I'm just saying, you know you do, you know you only listen to this stupid station when we're here, because Ford does. You do it to impress him." Dipper's jaw set, knuckles white on the steering wheel. Wild recklessness drove her. "You're still trying to convince him you're not like Stan aren't you?"
The brakes slammed; the beat up car, Stan's beat up car, slamming to a stop. Dipper punched the radio, plunging the car into icy silence. His shaking hands lit another cigarette as a truck drove by, rubbernecking. He took a deep pull, then shut his eyes, and Mabel felt sick when she saw a steady stream of tears fall from his eyes. Dipper drove on, crying.
Nice one, fallen star.
The rest of the drive passed in silence, trees flashing by in rows of straight pine, infinitely repeating into the woods beyond. As they drew closer, Mabel began the familiar ritual of counting signs of the incident. Each year it took longer, but the knot in her stomach tightened bit by bit as they drew closer to Gravity falls. Burnt trees, strange debris, the litter of traumatized society. Every ounce of destruction settled like a weight, a peaked roof above her head, a trap.
Once they passed the outer ring, and began to wind through town, the town perked up, an eclectic mix of new and old buildings, a cheery enthusiasm from every neighbor, and a few innocuous spots where the eye seemed to drift with a sense of unease. A few heads turned as the familiar car coughed through town, a few mutters floated by, but mostly the town kept quiet. It tended to be the best choice of action when it came to deal with the Pine Twins.
Dipper drove on, any trace of the scared kid he'd been earlier wiped away to the faithful mutter of talk radio. The car drove on, into a grey, frozen forest. The trees twisted, animalistic, frozen in tormented, surreal shapes. The branches reached for them. Mabel and Dipper stared forward, unknowingly united in their need to ignore the grasping hands of the tortured trees. Unknowingly divided in that only one could see them moving again. But Mabel stayed silent, her mind whirling with mental notes. Her thoughts didn't still until they reached the Mystery Shack.
The years had not been kind to the shack. Stan's advertisements remained, the language now warped and unsettling, the colors bleached and sick. What once had been charming disarray had turned to an air of abandonment and malaise, seven years pulling splinters from the boards and crabgrass to the earth. Mabel stretched her way out of the car, worn converse scratching the gritty drive. Dipper had already popped the trunk, shouldering his bags and slouching toward the house. Mabel knew he would still put his clothing in the bedroom upstairs, the one they used to share, out of habit. He never slept there anymore, spending his nights on the couch or a cot in the basement, staying up all hours with Ford, stopping in for a change of clothes before another four days' absence. She wouldn't mind as much, if she had anywhere to go.
Three weeks until Candy and Grenda get back at. Hold out until then. Mabel sighed, grabbing her pack and duffle, the faded rose fabric a memory of when she was far more optimistic. She strode toward the house, feeling the familiar twinge as she crossed the faithful unicorn hair boundary. The house loomed colorless above her. Mabel sympathized.
She swung open the entrance to the Mystery Shack, passed the now-empty gift shop at a clip, and started to climb the creaking steps to her bedroom. From the depths of the house she heard Ford call out sleepily.
"Dipper?" She sped up, and quickly found herself bouncing into the wall, catching ahold of Dipper as he teetered against the rail. He straightened and jerked his jacket away, the rough denim scratching her fingers. He stomped away towards Ford, and her apologies died in her throat.
She felt Bill revel in the tension.
"Shut up." The gloating feeling grew hotter. "Please, Bill. I get it." And though she knew it was only a ploy, Mabel couldn't help but feel flattered when the feeling went away.
After she heard the familiar ritualistic tromp of feet down the basement stairs, Mabel crept downstairs to the kitchen, braced for the worst. The tile, covered in a stubborn layer of grime, thudded rather than clicked, and each surface seemed covered in something, whether a dish, a stain, or some horrific creation Mabel couldn't comprehend. She crossed to the fridge and opened it, hoping the cool air would give an illusion of clean. Instead, stagnant air greeted her, along with a few reeking bottles of condiments. She crossed, muttering and found the fridge unplugged, a thick orange cable in its place. She followed it to the living room, powering a tiny hotplate amid the clutter, pointlessly glowing cherry red.
Bill's cackling felt like sand in every crack of her skin. She hated herself for agreeing with him, hated Ford for the pitiful disarray. Skin jumping, she viciously switched the plugs, attacking the grime of the kitchen with fervor. Only when the kitchen gleamed did she leave, grabbing her pack and the rusty but serviceable bike that was dumped there three years prior. She pedaled towards town, hell bent on a purpose. Ford may be able to survive off sheer pride, but Mabel needed to eat.