Growing Differently
A Gravity Falls Oneshot
First, it happened sometime at a dinner party when Dipper and Mabel are five, a kindergarten graduation dinner actually. The ones they had without realizing that there were 12 or more years of real school before graduating became necessary. Mom and Dad were there, each having to put a yellow label saying 'Dipper's and Mabel's Mom and Dad'—which really took a lot of space—Dipper was also there, sitting beside his parents with a mock diploma on his left hand and a spoonful of pudding on his right. But Mabel was nowhere to be seen. She said earlier that she was just about to meet some friends across the room.
"I never could stand a party like this…" Dad sighed with a heavy breath. "Why on earth that you would make a graduation ceremony for six year olds?"
"I'm not sure dear," Mom replied after sipping her punch. "At least this is better than PTA meetings. With their husband around, I'm sure that the mothers are restraining themselves from gossiping—and cockily sharing cupcake recipes…"
The boy didn't really pay attention to what was his parents were talking about. All that was buzzing through his head was his oversized funny hat that kept falling down and the chocolate pudding that was not really good, and he already took a large serving of it. But then he noticed something. A women, not too old but also not too young, approached the table. She was nowhere near Dipper's database of people, which was really telling something since he was really good at remembering faces. She was quite tall with a light tone and short hair that was knotted to a lazy bun. His best guess was one of the kids' parent or a kindergarten staff that he barely saw.
"Umm, I don't know how to ask you guys is… but… is Mabel really Dipper's twin sister?" That was not a really polite way to start a conversation, or at least, that was Dipper thought. The parents responded that out of the blue question with jumbled looks on their faces. Dad was actually the more confused one while Mom was giving more of an 'excuse me?' look.
"What are you talking about?" The mother suddenly sounded very irritated. "Of course she is our daughter."
"Well as far as I examine, Dipper seemed to be a normal kid, quite, obedient, knows his common courtesy. While Mabel…"
While Mom was about to release a counter argument that could somehow be notified would be really harassing, Dad already gestured her to calm down and let him handle the situation. "Well, having twins don't mean having two kids with exactly the same personality. Dipper is Dipper, and Mabel is Mabel. They are both different. Sure she is more difficult to handle than the boy—
"—but we love her anyway…" The mother finished the sentence. The asker then stood silent for a while before gesturing a sorry and took off.
"What was that about?" Dad asked while giving a chuckle.
"Whatever it was, I'm not sure that people shouldn't ask something like that." The mother replied, "I don't even know here, do you know her dear?" She asked the boy who was sitting beside her.
Dipper just shrugged and kept eating his substandard pudding.
"Well, I think that I should go get Mabel, it is getting late." He stood up from his chair and started to look around the seemingly crowded hall, but before he even found her he heard a loud crash and a breaking sound which made everybody stand surprised. The accompanying music stopped and everyone seemed to be looking at the punch table. There, both of the parents saw a girl, toga drenched in strawberry soda, with a shattered glass bowl next to her.
"Mabel!" Both of the parents screamed as they ran to the scene.
Yeah, she was difficult to handle.
The second time it happened was just a few months later. The parents thought that the twins should stop taking baths together early. Actually, Dipper was the one who suggested the idea since the school finally taught him about the concept of boys and girls. The parents agreed to the motion and felt that it should be the time to start separating them bit by bit. So that day, the mother scheduled a bath for Mabel first before Dipper.
"Mabel, it is bath time sweetheart…" The mother approached the girl that is scribbling a crayon over a blank sheet of paper.
"Sure thing mom," she said cheerfully. "Come on Dipper…" She gestured to the boy that was also drawing next to her.
"No Dipper will take a bath after you…" the mother said.
"But we always have baths together… why Dipper can't have a bath with me..? We already promised to play Cruise Ship Terror with me being a lifeguard and Dipper being a kraken…"
"Because Dipper was getting embarrassed with it and I think that you should too…" Mom replied with a sigh. "Besides, I think that you both are old enough to have a bath by yourself."
"But we are twins…"
"That doesn't mean we have to do all things together…" Dipper finally piped in, which made Mabel somewhat startled with disbelieve that for once, her own brother was not backing up her.
"No, I don't want to!" With that, the girl that almost broke into tears took off upstairs. Both of Dipper and his mother was kind of surprised with that. Though that they shouldn't be. Mabel did that all the times…
"Mabel, she's so difficult…" The mother groaned in respond to the girl's tantrum and Dipper looked at her sympathetically. "Unlike you… it is weird that you are not like her at all Dipper… it is like that you are not her twin." The boy just replied with a smile as the mother tousled his hair. "Who am I kidding? Well, I should find your sister, why don't you have a bath first dear?" With that, the mother stood up and Dipper made his way to the bathroom for a cold bath.
He felt that from this moment, he would have to play kraken all by himself.
The third person asking the question of some sort was Grunkle Stan, at their first summer in Gravity Falls. Dipper and Stan were on their way home from bowling. It had been a busy day and it seemed that both of them barely had energy even to start their first bowl. But the twins are at each other's throats right now and it seemed to be a good idea for them to be separated, to cool things down a bit. Wendy had taken Mabel for a sleepover and Stan took Dipper bowling for the Thursday night. But it seemed not to be working since the boy was still giving his uncle cold shoulder all the way home.
"Twins aren't supposed to be like that, are they?" The old man asked, in a sluggish manner, the twelve year-old sitting in the passenger seat. The ride was somewhat long and boring and if it wasn't just for the sake of breaking silence and try to let the kid blow down his steam; Grunkle Stan would never start a conversation. He might not have any experience about kids but it appeared that letting them talk would make their problems fade out.
"What do you mean?" The boy replied without looking away from his view of passing pine trees, although occasionally, with his eyes focused close enough, he could really saw his sad reflection on the slightly opaque window. Whichever he was watching, it seemed to be more entertaining than answering to his obnoxious great uncle.
"Well it is just a question that is in my mind," the Grunkle continued with a chuckle, "You and Mabel… are not exactly what I expect from twins. I thought that you both will be a mirror to each other, having the exact same mind, agreeing to everything. Either you'll be one heck of a kid like Mabel, or Mabel will be one lousy wimp like you. I'm not sure that twins go separate ways… and after what I saw at the gift shop earlier today… well, what was that about?"
"I really don't want to talk about it…"
"Are you still mad about your sister?"
"No, I'm now mad about myself, I really regret being really angry to her back then… screaming dumb words over a dumb problem…" Dipper finally leaked his. "Sometimes, she keeps getting on my nerves, and keeps fiddling with it until… I scream… yell at her, and… and at times like that… I really question am I really related to her? We're like oil and water at most times…"
"Well which one of you was adopted?" The Grunkle said in a manner of the woman the boy met seven years ago, but it seemed to be more kind of a playful banter instead of a question.
"Both of us maybe…" Dipper chuckled, finally gained the atmosphere the Grunkle tried to give him. "I too, took part in one of her schemes and pranks back when we were younger. Mom and Dad used to scream a lot back at home, joking that they should return us to the foster home where they found us."
"Well, maybe they are not kidding." Stan laughed a little while receiving a playful punch on the shoulder from his company, which lead to a small stumble in the drive. Both of them are quiet afterwards, for a couple minutes until Stan took another liberty of breaking another silence.
"Still, that was one amazing sister you have, Dipper," the Grunkle said. "She's nice and lovable… and really cares about you…"
"Yeah, I know…" Dipper sighed as he plopped down to his seat again, but at least with less burden of guilt in his heart.
"Do you want me to stop at Wendy's house before going home, just so you can say sorry to your sister early?" Grunkle Stan inquired as he made another rough turn.
"That would be alright…"
The fourth inquirer of these situations was Dipper himself.
On the roof of the Mystery Shack at the second summer they spent in Gravity Falls. A really loud party was going on downstairs and Dipper felt that he couldn't take anymore loud music and overly-sweetened diluted soda. The skies were clear and the stars could be seen without the obscurity of city smog, something that he certainly didn't miss back home. And what was the icing on the cake was the quietness that was overwhelming yet tranquil. That was, at least, before Mabel decided to barge into the roof.
"Hey Dipper," Mabel yelled at him from the roof chute. "There is a party going on and you seemed to have a silent one on your own, why don't you come inside? Waddles is giving Candy a piggy-back ride… or a human-back ride… I'm not sure…"
Dipper sighed at the sudden change in the atmosphere, "Nah, I'll be sick if I need to listen another stupid karaoke song by Ampersandra…" His voice was unwilling, but his hands gestured Mabel to take a seat next to her.
Mabel, with her soda in hand, accepted the invitation, crawled out, and sat beside Dipper. "What are you thinking about?"
"Nah, I don't think much…" Dipper replied without looking at his sister. He still fixed his gaze to the skies, wishing that there would be a UFO zipped through and abducted him from his train of thoughts, or at least, a shooting star…
"Come on, I know my brother way better than that…" The girl punched his brother on the shoulder. "I know when you got to your thoughtful, and transendical-ly state…"
"Well, it just, I have been thinking…" Dipper finally realized that he couldn't lie to the person he mostly truthful to. "We are twins, right?"
"Of course we are, a single cell in Mummy's tummy that was—
"—no that is not what I meant…"
The inquiry was not the usual one and Mabel appeared to be clueless of what her brother was saying. So she put her 'whaddaya mean?' look on her face.
The boy gulped air to his throat before starting. "Over the years of growing up with you… how do I say it… there are a lot of people telling me that we are not like twins at all…"
"Well, of course we are twins. Mom even has a picture of both of us on the day we were born… The people saying otherwise must be joking…" Mabel consoled while patting Dipper in the back, which made the boy felt more comfortable than before.
"No, that's not what I'm really thinking about…" Dipper replied as he lowered his gaze to his untied shoelaces that were dangling on the edge of the roof. "Well it also makes me sometimes think that we are not siblings at all. Not like whatever those people say though, it is more like… what if at some point in the future, we would stop being twins?"
Mabel didn't respond at the statement and let Dipper continue.
"What I'm trying to say is, even right now, we basically have fewer and fewer things in common and I also realize that we fight a lot these past few years… Remember last spring, you stopped talking to me for a month because—
"—La-la-la-la-la, you said what? I don't want to hear any of that!" Mabel playfully closed her ears and made obnoxious noises, and much to Dipper's amusement, he laughed a little. "Well that is the point of growing up, and you don't expect me to follow your lead do you?"
"No, I fear that at some point, we'll grow apart."
"No we won't…" the girl assured.
"Yes we will Mabel!" Dipper almost yelled, which was actually okay due to everyone probably drenched in offbeat karaoke music. But both of them could really tell that the pressure of this conversation changed. "We fights, we already have different groups of friends, and we upset of stupid-est of things. It is just a matter of time before another fight blew up between us and next thing you know it we'll stop talking to each other…" Dipper voice died before he finished as he pulled his knees and buried his face into them, but his sister understand him anyway. "I'm sorry that I have to tell that, but I have been thinking it for a quite long time…"
"Well, do you want us to stay like this forever..?"
Dipper only responded with a small yip, not bothering to look up to his sister. So she interpreted it as a yes.
"Listen Dipper," Mabel lifted Dipper's head to level his eyes to hers. "I'm not much of a sister. I often do a lot of things that really irritates you, and sometimes I do it on purpose. And I really hate it when you try to play the older brother and tell me what to do all the times. Sometimes I'm so mad, I even wished for you to just go disappear or something. But deep down, I never mean any of that. Of course we are different. Of course we disagree on simplest of things. We're siblings! It is basically what nature tells us to do…"
Dipper really didn't know where Mabel had picked up this pep talk but it was really working for him. All these time he only acted to look though, he took the role of older brother just because he thought that he was much wiser and therefore was always on Mabel's back to protect her. While in fact, at times like this, he was the one that really needed Mabel to be on his side, and to comfort him. He actually felt really stupid for even thinking about this. Of course that they would always be twins, and best friends, no matter how stupid their fights would be, and no matter how different they become.
"Are you sure that we'll be okay?"
"No matter what Dipp, we just have to learn to grow with it…" The girl put her arms around Dipper as they both stare aimlessly to the night sky. "Learning from what we have trough these years, our adventures and fights, I think that we'll be okay." Dipper finally had the grin on his face, the grin that usually only reserved for Mabel and Mabel only, and the girl thought that as an invitation for an awkward sibling hug, but, for now, it wasn't really awkward since they both know that they needed one.
They both stayed on the roof quietly after that. Though that there would likely no shooting stars, but Dipper got one next to him, and that was actually better than anything he could have wished for.
"Brr… it is getting chilly…" Mabel said as she stood up and pulled her sweater collar up to her mouth as a cold gust of wind flew right through them. "Why don't we go inside? I'll fix you up some tap water if you are not feeling for soda." Dipper just nodded and let the girl lead the way.
"Hey Mabel…"
"Yeah?"
"I'm glad that you are my sister, Mabel…"
"Me too you Dipping Sauce…"
With that, they both climbed down the chute and closed it. And as they would have expected, the party was still in full swing. Soos was clearly dancing his pants off while getting doused with inhumane amount of soda. Wendy was filming the dancing man-child in her camera phone. Candy and Grenda were fighting for the last potato chip in the bowl, which made it fall down to the mouth of a certain pig. The teens were chatting on a corner, Stan counted the admission money and Mabel quickly joined them as nothing happened, as a Mabel would exactly do.
And that what makes a Mabel, well, a Mabel…
"Mabel is Mabel," Dipper said as he stopped chewing his pudding. "And I wouldn't have her in any other way."
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Sorry for any grammar mistakes I failed to notice, reviews are appreciated!