This fic is dedicated to my friend, who goes by rosalyndablack on tumblr and rana2001 on here. It takes place in her Walk the Same Woods AU (link to the AU basics on my profile). Anyway, it's a three-way crossover between Over the Garden Wall, the Gravity Falls Transcendence AU, and the Little Match Girl. Not all of these are apparent at first, but come into play sooner or later. Chapters are posted to my tumblr before they'll be posted here, so if you really like the story, I encourage you to check out my tumblr.
This story will update weekly.
Anyway, hope you enjoy!
When the brothers had made it out of the Unknown, Wirt had started going crazy. Or at least, that's what his parents called it.
Honestly, you'd think nearly getting turned into a tree by a menacing shadow monster and watching your brother's life almost end right in front of you would give you the right to be a little bit paranoid. So what if he found himself unable to sleep in the dark for fear the Beast would materialize from the blackness? So what if he couldn't stand the sight of oak trees anymore because of how similar the leaves were to those on the Edelwood trees, or had a curious affinity for blue birds? He'd survived, and he was still here.
Their parents tried to get Greg to stop talking about it, shushing or interrupting him when he brought it up. They weren't worried about Gregory being crazy – he wasn't paranoid, he was still as happy as ever. They didn't want him to turn out like Wirt had, or make his brother's paranoia worse with his constant talk of monsters and beasts and lanterns.
Wirt started dating Sara. He really liked her, he did, and now he could see that she liked him too and had for a while, but he couldn't help feeling that his paranoia was driving her away. He started trying to hide it, to hide the way he flinched at the feeling of bark against his skin, the way he couldn't stand the shadows and the dark.
They broke up a year after they started dating.
"I feel like you're not the same Wirt you used to be," Sara said. "I get that the accident changed things for you, and I don't know if I'm the right person for you anymore."
(That was what they called the brothers' trip to the Unknown: the accident—only acknowledging the side of things that they saw, the boys nearly drowning, not their journey in the Unknown.)
He understood. He knew he wasn't the same person either.
He got better at hiding his paranoia over the years, until it surprised even him to see him react to the things he did. He finished high school, went to college. He got a degree in computer programming, planned to enter that ever-growing market and never have to deal with anything outdoors that would remind him of the Unknown ever ever again.
He met a girl his sophomore year. Her father had PTSD from fighting in some war; she was used to dealing with and loving people who were irreparably broken inside, who would always flinch at things others couldn't understand. She understood when he didn't want to go on walks in the park or to see scary movies. She took him to the beach and the amusement park and NASCAR races instead.
On the day they graduated, Wirt proposed to her. She said yes.
The two of them moved to Piedmont, California, where she'd grown up. They'd cut down the oak tree in the front yard as soon as they could, replaced all the trees on the property with a lovely flower garden. Wirt worked managing a computer system for a major company, sometimes driving into work, and on days he couldn't manage that, working from home. His wife worked teaching elementary school.
They lived happily like this for a few years, and that's when she told him.
She was pregnant, with twins.
Wirt hadn't talked with his parents much, because of what they'd done to him, not believing him and treating him like he was crazy. Still, he told them, and they responded with the typical happiness, and apparently spread the word to the rest of the family, because the next thing Wirt knew, his Uncle Stan was calling him to chat. At first it was all about the babies—ultrasound had shown one boy and one girl—but it shifted away to other topics eventually; first just the normal stuff, how was life in Piedmont and his job and were he and his wife getting along, but then he asked about the Unknown. With those words, too, not calling it the accident like the rest of the family had.
Stan listened when Wirt told him about the Unknown. Stan listened when Wirt called him in a panic, freaking out because that tree he saw on his drive home had a face on it and oh god it was an Edelwood tree, it had to be. Stan didn't brush off Wirt's words like his parents had.
The two of them actually got close in the months leading up to the twins' birth. After the rush to the hospital that led to Wirt and his wife welcoming the twins to the world a couple weeks early, Wirt even called Stan to let him know before his own parents, and Stan was there the next day to help.
Despite being born early, the twins were perfectly healthy, if entirely too small. The girl, Mabel, was the first to be born, and the larger of the two, while the boy, Stan, was smaller, with a curiously defined birthmark of the Big Dipper on his forehead.
"Maybe this can be a turning point," Wirt's wife said, the night the twins were born. "Maybe having the kids will help you deal with your anxiety,"
"Maybe," Wirt said. He would be spending a lot of time with the kids, after all; after his wife had recovered enough to go back to work, she would, and Wirt would work from home from now on and look after the kids.
For once, everything played out as perfectly as Wirt had planned it. His wife went back to work and he became the main caretaker for the kids, and it did help somewhat, though mostly because when you're keeping tabs on two wiggling, squirming babies twenty-four hours a day you don't have time to notice the eerie shapes of the shadows outside your windows. It was a quiet, peaceful life, and there was nothing Wirt would have liked better.