So this is my first attempt at Gravity Falls fan fiction. I really wanted to write something about after Weirdmageddon because I felt like the trauma of what happened was really overlooked at the end - they would definitely have some form of PTSD - THEY WERE TWELVE. Plus Bill's last words got me thinking about loop holes n stuff. So this happened.
Enjoy :)
*Disclaimer* - I don't own Gravity Falls, because if I did then Season 2 wouldn't be the last season, and we would have had Human!Bill and Possessed!Mabel by now.
All chapter titles from 'The Grand Finale' by Set It Off.
He plants his feet, remaining still:
When the bus finally screeches to a halt in California, Dipper feels suddenly, inexplicably, nervous. He's spent the last few months away from his parents, away from anyone he knows. He's spent the past few months running for his life on a daily basis, and everyone in Gravity Falls knows it. Everyone in Gravity Falls understands it.
His parents have no idea what he's been through, and he knows that both he and Mabel have been changed by their experiences. It won't take them long to notice the difference, will it? And what could they possibly say to explain it? It's not like anyone will believe them.
He wishes that he could just stay on the bus, wait until it turns around and heads back to Gravity Falls. But he can't. Through the windows of the bus he can just make out the shape of his parents' car. There are people waiting for him and Mabel here in California, people who miss them.
Groaning, he nudges Mabel, who fell asleep with her head on his shoulder not long into the journey. She stretches, managing to hit him in the face in the process, and startling Waddles, who lets out an indignant, high pitched squeal which immediately shocks any remnants of sleep from their systems.
Dipper pretends not to notice the flickering look of disappointment he sees on Mabel's face when she recognises California outside the window. And the answering flicker of hope inside him that maybe, just maybe, he's not alone in this.
He never has been, he reminds himself. If there's anything Gravity Falls has taught him, its that he's always had Mabel - they've always had each other.
"Come on, kids!" the bus driver calls from the front. "This is your stop."
Mabel turns to him. "What do we say?" she asks quietly. Dipper doesn't have to ask to know what she's talking about.
"You heard what Mayor Tyler said," he replies, attempting a smile. "'Never mind all that.'"
Waddles squeals in agreement, drawing a giggle from Mabel, who looks so much happier than she did a few seconds ago. He finds himself intensely jealous of Mabel's positivity sometimes.
They race each other down the length of the bus, almost falling into a tangled heap as they bound down the steps into the burnt orange evening.
And there are their parents. Standing, waiting for them on the roadside. A wave of emotion hits Dipper full force in the face, and before he knows it Mabel has dragged him by the hand over to them and they're in a huge family hug. Its not even awkward.
He realises then, just how much he missed parents. He wasn't even sure he would ever see them again, and the fact that they're alive and well, and untouched by the weirdness and horror of Gravity Falls, is more relief than Dipper has ever felt.
"Dipper, Mabel, we missed you so much!" his mother, Elizabeth, seems on the verge of tears, bringing back that embarrassment Dipper usually feels.
A hand slips into his, squeezing tightly. Mabel's reassurance is all he needs.
And then-
"Honey, why are you holding a pig?"
Dipper can't help but burst out laughing.
Despite all the happiness and relief at seeing each other, they're already arguing by the time night falls.
"Mabel, you can't sleep in Dipper's bed!" Elizabeth snaps. "You have your own room."
Mabel is standing adamantly on Dipper's bed, while he himself sits in the corner by his desk, trying to stay out of the argument - much like his father, who seems to have had the same idea and is standing back in the doorway.
"Why not? I did it in Gravity Falls."
"This sort of behaviour was acceptable when you two were younger - but now you're teenagers, and you two are sleeping in your own rooms."
"I'll sleep on the floor then," Mabel decides, and she promptly curls up on the floor.
"Mabel Pines, stop this right now. You're lucky we allowed you to keep the pig, young lady. We can easily take him to live on a farm."
"Mom, that's not fair." Dipper stands up, deciding to intervene before things go any further. He walks over to sit by Mabel. "It's just, we slept in the same room every day of summer, we're really used to it. Can't we do it for, like, one night?"
Although Mabel threatens multiple times to retreat into sweater town, and Dipper gives what he believes is a perfectly logical argument, their parents don't budge, and Mabel ends up back in her own bedroom.
Dipper spends the rest of the night staring at the ceiling. Without the comforting steady breathing of his sister on the other side of the room, everything feels strangely empty and eerie. Every vaguely triangular shape is an effigy of Bill Cipher, every shadow hints at the presence of a monster. This room is now totally unfamiliar to him, despite being his home for the past thirteen years.
It feels strange to walk around without the comforting weight of Journal #3 in his backpack, and without Waddles tucked safely under Mabel's arm, so Dipper finds himself hyper-vigilant all the time.
"Calm down, Dip-Dip," Mabel says cheerfully as they're chilling in his room the next day. "Nothing's going to jump out and attack us. This isn't Gravity Falls."
"You can never be too careful, Mabel," he reminds her. "What if the destruction of Weirdmageddon had side effects? We have no idea how the barrier of weirdness around Gravity Falls actually works."
"Nothing's come after us yet, though. That's what I call a record. Did we ever get a day off from the weirdness?"
"We lived in a tourist trap with a pig and an interdimensional portal, Mabel. Of course not."
"What're you doing?"
Dipper has collected on the floor a number of things. A pot of chalk, the empty journal Mabel gave him for his birthday, a series of pens, and the hastily scrawled instructions Ford had handed him just as they were getting on the bus.
"I'm warding my room."
"Against what?"
"Against - hey!"
Mabel snatches the instructions from the floor and scans through them, a frown slowly appearing on her face.
"Dipper, most of these are for Bill."
"I know." He snatches the paper back without much resistance from his sister, and turns to start sketching the sigils on the wall by his bed in chalk.
"He's dead, Dipper."
"I know."
"So why are you doing this?"
"Because it was too easy!" he shouts. Mabel visibly recoils at his outburst, but he barely notices.
"Easy?" Mabel replies incredulously. "Grunkle Stan lost his memory! We were in hell for seven days. Everyone in the town was turned into a chair. How is any of that too easy?"
"Grunkle Stan regained his memory, Mabel. If he can come back, what's to say Bill can't too? When we erased his mind, we only erased Stanley Pines. That doesn't mean anything actually happened to Bill. We have no idea what actually happened. Also, no one died. For all of the hell Bill put us through, not one person in the entire town was killed. Doesn't that seem at all easy to you?"
"Me, Dipper. I was supposed to die."
Silence.
Mabel bursts into tears.
Dipper throws his arms around his sister before his brain can think up a logical reason as to why that might be a bad idea. Mabel burrows into his jacket, her arms around his waist. They sit like that for a long time, just holding each other. Mabel's tears soak through Dipper's t-shirt, but he doesn't care.
Eenie, meenie, miney, YOU.
For a second, the black silhouette of a shooting star flashes in Dipper's vision, the flood of red light blotting out any sight of the rest of the room. He shakes his head to clear it, but Bill's laugh still seems to echo in his ears.
Mabel had been less than a second away from dying. Dipper's body begins to shiver as he realises just how close he came to losing his twin sister. He can see Bill's fingers meeting, about to click - if Ford had called out just a few milliseconds later, it wouldn't be Mabel's grieving form he held. More like her lifeless corpse.
So they sit there, together. Shaking, grieving, crying, holding each other for comfort, as if they will never let go. Not wanting to let go.
So they don't.
That evening Dipper stays up, filling in his journal with as much information as he can - beginning with Bill Cipher. He works by torchlight when his parents turn out the lights, feeling safe enough to turn his back to the shadows now that the sigils are warding his room. He put up posters on his walls to hide them to prevent his parents from asking suspicious questions. He warded Mabel's room too that afternoon, drawing them on the floorboards and hiding them under her rainbow rug.
He's just cutting out a pine tree from gold paper to stick on the front of the journal when he hears Mabel's screams.
On instinct he drops everything and barrels out of his room, across the landing and into her room. It shakes him to realise how accustomed he has become to responding instantly to that sound.
He scans the room for threats, but there's nothing he can see to be an imminent danger. Mabel, on the other hand, is lying in her bed. She is asleep, but her body is writhing and twisting, tangling up in her sheets as her face screws up and she screams out in fear.
"Mabel!" he yells, kneeling beside her. He tries to shake her awake, but that only seems to fuel her terror. "Mabel, wake up! It's just a dream. Bill's gone, we're not in Gravity Falls anymore. Weirdmageddon is over. Stan and Ford are both safe. Please, Mabel, I need you to wake up."
He's half sobbing by the end of his appeal to her, but he hardly notices, because all of a sudden Mabel shoots up from her bed, panting, her eyes wild and terrified. She lashes out at the first thing she sees - Dipper - and he takes the pummeling until she calms down enough to see that its him.
"Dipper!" she cries out, throwing herself at him. "Dipper, it was awful. I dreamed that Bill was about to kill you, and he clicked his fingers and Grunkle Ford didn't say anything and you were just...there, not moving, and I couldn't believe it but you were dead and I-"
Her voice trails off into choked sobs; for the second time that day Dipper hugs his sister like she's his last lifeline to sanity, and she does the same.
There's a creak of floorboards at the doorway to Mabel's room, and both are instantly alert, snapping to look. Their parents stand in the doorway looking shell-shocked, half terrified and half confused.
The next day Mabel's bed is moved into Dipper's room.
Please review! Also I'm British, and whilst I've tried to put in American terms, I can't get everything - so if I've anglicised anything please feel free to let me know in the comments.
I'm in the process of writing Chapter 2, so you guys may even get the next update in less than a week *shocked expressions all round*. Ikr! I'm feeling so inspired right now it's great :D