Hey guys ! I just wanted to let you know beforehand that this is a translation for a story I've initially written in French, so if you can read it, it's got the same title ! Which is another way of begging you to forgive any awkward grammar or weird sentences, it's been a while since I've last written something in English but. I tried. Hope you'll enjoy it !

I don't own the characters, nor any of that. Just my little plot.

The kid hated hospitals. The white walls, the white floor, white ceiling, white sheets, white blouses and pallid skin of the patients walking down the halls aimlessly when they weren't bed-ridden. He hated hospitals. This sentence echoed over and over in his head, like a mantra of sorts to hold on to. He kept repeating it as the words slowly lost their substance, stupid letters thrown there for his mind to dwell on. He needed something to keep it busy. Dipper had watched time fly on his watch, lost in the scraps of disjointed conversations wavering around him. He'd tried to comfort himself. He asked questions -every one of them welcomed by hesitant silences, way more threatening than the technical jargon the doctors had excused themselves with once or twice. They'd left a bitter aftertaste on his tongue. He'd never thought quiet could be so deafening. For someone who'd faced danger head-on so many times in his short life, being told to wait, arms crossed on an uncomfortable chair shouldn't have been so hard.

Maybe he just missed Mabel's exasperating blabber. Maybe he was just worried. Maybe it was this place that made him nauseous, or just a gut-feeling. Maybe he was just being paranoid. Maybe all those faces weren't so grim.

"She's going to be fine, Dipper."

Or maybe he was just being delusional as ever.

"She's going to be fine", he recited, his words strangled by the knot around his throat. "Everything's going to…"

"Dipper!"

"Ford, Stan!"

A smile lit up Dipper's exhausted face as a wave of relief carried away the heavy weight that had crushed his chest until now. If someone could do anything, it was his Grunkles. And why would that be, a cynical voice whispered at the back of his head. What exactly do you want them to do? Will they clap their fingers and suddenly make everything work? What a misplaced, selfish trust you got. Dipper shook his head and sent the voice's statement off. He needed their support too badly to lend an ear to this cruel a logic.

Ford and Stan looked old as the world itself: as wise as it for one, and as unbreakable for the other. It had been about a year since he had last seen them, as he and Mabel got back to Gravity Falls. Their Grunkles had stopped by the Mystery Shack just so they could see them both. The thought of a latent fear that would make his blood curdle in his veins had haunted Dipper. He would have had the right to be scared as the bus had passed the old wooden sign by, for thousands of good reasons. He had imagined many things on their long ride: how the sinister trees would sneer at them, the dismal warnings hissed by weird-looking stones. But none of that had happened. Because everyone was there to welcome him, because Mabel was there too, and above all because his Grunkles were by their side.

And they always made everything work, one way or another.

"What the fuck happened?"

"I…"

Dipper stared at the ground with a frown, mouth agape. What had exactly happened anyway? The scene kept playing in his head, burnt in specs of red and panic on his retinas: play, rewind, play again. His grumpy mood that morning, and his sister running, arms open to the world, jumping over each crack on the sidewalk. "Try smiling a bit", she said. "It's not like there's anything you can do against a tornado of joy! Whooosh!", and Mabel was spinning and laughing and all of a sudden-

"She…"

"Don't worry, kid. Everything's going to be okay."

Dipper nodded. He wanted to believe Stan, and if it meant ignoring the worried accent in the man's voice with superb, then so be it. He would hold his breath and bury his head in the ground for as long as it would take.

"Where are your parents?"

"Inside", Dipper answered, gesturing toward the wall to his left.

It didn't look like much, a touch of white on an equally white landscape. A mere double door, with nothing special to it. And yet when he glanced at it, Dipper wanted to run away as fast as he could. It didn't matter where. He'd have considered any place he could hide in without having to face that door a safe haven. Behind it were his parents. Behind it was his sister, and probably a doctor lost in a monologue Dipper was sure he wouldn't like.

"They told me not to disturb. I did try to eavesdrop a bit", he confessed. "But…"

"As if anyone was going to keep me away from my niece", Stan muttered between gritted teeth. "Screw them and whatever they have to say. Ford, you…"

"Stay with the kid, yes. Don't worry", Ford answered a bit louder to cover the definitive slam of the door.

He usually rolled his eyes with a frustrated frown when people bestowed him with such a nickname. He was fifteen, almost sixteen now and, no matter how much his legs would refuse to grow and contest that, he wasn't a kid anymore. But there were still moments when being a kid wasn't so bad. Ford sat in a chair that seemed to creak under his large stature next to Dipper's own seat. The old man, lost for words, could only put his hand on his nephew's shoulder. The brunette didn't hold it against him: feelings were rarely voiced out loud in this family -except for Mabel. He managed to raise a flimsy smile to reassure him. A bit wavering, a bit fake in the corners, but that was the best he could come up with.

"I don't understand. We did so many things back in Gravity Falls, all of them risky, all of them stupid. But there, we were just… Walking. There were no monsters, no danger, no nothing, Grunkle Ford. It was just a normal day. A boring one. So why has she…"

"Accidents don't need monsters to happen, Dipper. We came as soon as your mother called. And I'm sure Mabel will be fine."

Dipper clenched his fists, as if tightening his grasp on thin air could hold back his tears. No one would ever rely on a kid who could only conjure a faltering bravery. He was man enough to be on par with the rest of them. He was strong enough.

"Did they say something?"

"Not for a while. But there was so much blood everywhere."

The dark stains on his shirt had long since dried. Mabel's clothes would be ruined too. She'd put so much effort in that hand-knitted sweater.

"And when they first arrived, they all had that look… They were running all over."

"Fast action and pessimism are part of their job requirements. It doesn't mean they're panicking. Nor that there's no hope."

"They did mention… Something about her head. Maybe her lungs too, and…"

Words staggered past his lips like sobs. They'd mentioned something about her head, something else about her lungs, a bunch of restless ants: mechanical motions, mechanical nods, every word at its rightful place, every second put to its rightful purpose, and they'd let him tag along. He'd waited for hours with his parents. When they'd followed the doctor into that room, time seemed to linger hesitantly. Long seconds succeeding short ones then turning into worthless minutes that could as well have been years, for all the boy knew. Still, he felt calmer now that Ford was here. He simply wished he could fall asleep and wake up in his bed -because then Maben would have jumped on his bed and sung one of her stupid songs. Maybe he would have sung along, too. And if they decided to go out in the morning, he'd keep that reckless idiot safe. He'd be in a good mood, so that she wouldn't feel the need to cheer him up. He'd walk on the right side of the pavement. He'd do all that, and this nightmare would be nothing more than nonsense on the back of a paranoid brother.

Loud voices on the other side of the door cut Ford's answer. Dipper was almost thankful for Stan's dubious politeness. Swearwords weren't as bad an omen as desperate cries. He could picture walls shrieking under his Grunkle's stentorian voice. Hell, he thought, Death itself would have crawled away from here to avoid that man. He stiffened and clenched his fists, cursing his traitorous legs that wouldn't take him close enough to eavesdrop.

"You can go to hell, you and your damned statistics! This kid could get run over by a tank and get out of it unscratched! As if a goddamn car would…"

He couldn't get what the muffled voices' answers. The boy's heart skipped a bit when the door slammed open, false note on the hectic staccato it played -bang, bang, bang.

"Shit!"

Dipper's parents had fallen asleep, their face tired in the faint glow stemming from the monitors. The boy hoped exhaustion would keep the dreams at bay for a while. Slight movements however cracked their blank mask of slumber from times to times. He averted his gaze, staring at the ground for a while. Stan's footsteps had faded through the hallway, drowned out by the regular beep that plagued the room. Ford was sitting beside him, staring into space or at some distant thing only he could see.

"Grunkle Ford?"

"What is it, kid?"

"It was a lie, right? What they said about Mabel. She's definitely going to wake up, right?"

"Doctors say a lot of things. You can never tell what might…"

"But they meant it. It wasn't some… Pessimistic talk so that we wouldn't get our hopes up."

"It's too early for them to be sure of anything."

"They sounded sure enough."

His own voice sounded foreign and misplaced. It reminded Dipper of the soft-spoken words in waiting rooms, of the deathly silence in churches.

"They can't do anything helpful at all", he reluctantly asserted, knowing all to well that he couldn't ignore things he'd just put words on.

Dipper waited for an answer that wouldn't come. Genius or not, Ford couldn't come up with any word that wouldn't have weighed far too heavily on his nephew's shoulders. Dipper knew he should have hold his tongue.

But his Grunkles always made everything work, one way or another.

"What about you? There must be something you can do. A machine of sorts, or a formula, or…"

"There isn't, Dipper. I can stitch up a wound, hunt demons, create portals when given time. But what you're asking me isn't part of it."

"But there must be something we could do. Like… The time machine, we could use that!"

"It was destroyed. And the Time Baby's disappeared. That won't work."

"Something else then! Why not…"

"Dipper."

"But Mabel can't die!"

His heart sunk at this end of the sentence. Mabel couldn't go like that. Not when they'd lived through so many things. Not when they'd just been playing in the street. Not like this, and not right now.

"We have to wait."

"Just leave me alone."

Ford froze, and although Dipper regretted it immediately, he couldn't take it back. It wasn't his uncle's fault. It was selfish, and he was well-aware of that. But it didn't keep the blames and accusations from growing in his chest and, when they'd burst eventually, there would be no words of apology among them. He promised himself to find some later on, but at that moment, he only buried his head in the blanket that covered his sleeping sister. He didn't want to see any more wrinkles on Ford's face.

"I'll go get some coffee", he said, gently closing the door behind him.

The room suddenly felt void to Dipper, even with his parents and Mabel. Her hair had been cut short, catheters and bandages all over her face. 'We have to wait'. Ford was right. A knot tied the kid's throat. He wasn't ready to give up yet. A thousand thoughts crushed against the echo of Ford's voice but, no matter how fierce, they could not break it nor prove the old man wrong. 'We have to keep fighting honey, okay? We've got to be strong for your sister' -his mother's puffed face and swollen eyes.

He didn't want to see her cry either.

No goblin army nor any ghost could help him now.

"We could turn back time. A dimensional thing…"

Even Ford couldn't do it. Not in time at least. Not before it was-

"Mabel…"

His whispers faded into the pleasant lethargy that takes over souls before dreams take them away. Half-asleep, Dipper kept on listing every false solution, every useless trick, every incantation and desperate prayer his numb mind could conjure. The very last ones died on his lips as he closed his eyes.

"We have to wait", he muttered in a sleepy, hoarse tone.

They had to wait.

"Not necessarily. Well well well, glad you thought of me, kid!"