Dipper could no longer look at her. Not without feeling like he was going to puke.
The Stans had shared an emotional reunion; secrets had been spilled along with tears, and Dipper merely sat by and watched it all.
Mabel took to their grandfather instantly, and though Dipper should have been happy to find the author and their long-lost grandpa, all he could feel was disgust.
She hadn't listened to him; after twelve years of trusting one another, of looking out for each other, of having each other's backs, she had taken the word of a proven con man above that of her twin.
Dipper never thought that he could truly hate a person, but as he lay on his summer bed, staring at the recently-repaired ceiling, all he could feel was seething rage.
Stan (the new Stan, not the man with thirty identities and no real ties to anyone) tried to talk to him once. Dipper had ignored Mabel's pleas for forgiveness and understanding yet again. and she had run crying out the door.
Great, just what he needed. To be fair, he tolerated Stanley (he refused to call him Grandpa) more than anyone else right now, but that didn't mean he was enthralled by his company.
"Look, kid, twins shouldn't be fighting like this. You need to have each other's backs, now more than ever."
"Your book told me not to trust anyone," the boy replied. "And I didn't listen. I should have listened. She obviously doesn't trust me, so why should I ever return the favor?"
The ragged man turned and looked away for a long, long moment. They sat in silence, sitting on the too-small bed in the broken down room. A breeze drifted through the cracks of the boarded windows. Dipper shivered.
"When I wrote that," the man began, "Stan and I had a fallout. We were fighting over some...pretty crazy things. I told him I hated him, that I never wanted to see his face again. I thought he didn't understand me, and to not have your own twin understand hurts so much."
Dipper understood that sentiment.
"But I was wrong."
He shifted uncomfortably and looked down at his hands, folded neatly in his lap. Stanley was poised in all the ways that Stan was not. Dipper would have found this fascinating, had he been in a better state of mind. As it stood, all Dipper could see was a broken old man trying to cheer up a kid with stupid words.
"He loves me. He risked everything for me, after all of the awful things I said to him. He risked tearing the entire universe apart for me. And if that isn't love, I don't know what is."
Stanley looked at him now, eyes so similar to Stan's, to their father, to Mabel's and his own that he felt as if he were looking at the very roots of his family tree, boring into his. Dipper wanted to blink and look away. Instead he held the gaze.
"You can't love someone without trust, Dipper. And I know your sister loves you very much. Don't tell me she wouldn't do the same for you."
With that the stranger left Dipper to stew in his own thoughts.
That night, Dipper dreamed.
He dreamed of digging too deep, of discovering things not meant to be discovered, despite the warnings of his other half. He dreamed of deals with demons, of near-death experiences, of dragging the unwilling down with him. He dreamed of a device that could give him all the knowledge he'd ever craved and then some.
He dreamed of a girl, the mirror image of himself, screaming at him to stop.
And then his dreams took a different turn.
Instead of the inquisitive one experiencing a fate worse than death, the demon offered a compromise.
"Shooting stars need to fall eventually, right?" the demon laughed, and she was pulled into the void.
Dipper woke in a cold sweat, grating laughter and her screams pulsing in his ears. He scrubbed the tears from his cheeks, chest heaving, heart racing.
She lay in a shaking lump on her bed. He had watched her cry herself to sleep often these days, his silent treatment wearing on her more and more.
He had never felt so horrible.
Dipper slowly crossed the creaky floor. She stopped sobbing when he stepped on a creaky floorboard, though she still shuddered occasionally. She glanced over her shoulder at him, eyes red and watery, cheeks stained with tears.
"Dipper?" she croaked, and her voice sounded so broken, cracked as if she had been screaming, sucked into a portal, lost for thirty long years as he toiled and worked to bring her back.
Or, if history repeated itself, croaked as a broken woman threw away nearly everything, put the entire world at risk just for the chance of bringing her beloved brother back. Even if he'd dug his own grave despite her warnings.
Dipper enveloped her in a hug. Her breath caught.
"I'm sorry," he murmured, and the tears spilled down his cheeks. "I'm so, so sorry, Mabel."
She cried with him, for all that was lost and found, for all that could have been and wasn't, for all the warnings ignored and trust broken and mysteries solved. The twins, battered and bruised and confused and lost, still had each other.
And they cried.