Nobody is above Pacifica Northwest. She's known that since she was a very small girl, because her parents have made sure she does.
Pacifica doesn't remember when the lesson started, but it must have been long before the first memory she has of it, because it had a very definite order to it by then.
The memory starts like this - her father is walking in front of her. She is in the arms of a butler, carried like a precious jewel (sans velvet cushion). Her mother walks behind her father.
They walk into one of the parlors, where the Northwest coat of arms hangs on a wall. It's silver.
Her father walks up to the gleaming shield and taps it with a finger, delicately, like someone taps a thing just to hear the soft ding of nail against metal and not to tap it just to see what it's made of (they're Northwests, of course it's a precious metal). Then he turns towards the bay windows, their red draperies thrown open, and stands with his hands behind his back as his mother takes her place to his right and the butler stands half a step behind him, on his left.
"You are a Northwest, Pacifica Elise. This means a lot of things. But the most important thing is this: you are above everyone else."
And as the three of them look out over Gravity Falls, a little valley of tiny houses down below their walls, Pacifica believes him.
(The butler does not see. He is holding Pacifica aloft in front of him.)
Pacifica doesn't remember when the bell began either. As far as she's concerned, it's existed since the beginning of time.
As far as she's concerned, she's been afraid of it since the beginning of time too.
It's like the monsters in the dark, the Hide-Behind and all others, the all-too-real ones that stalk the forests and homes of Gravity Falls at all hours that nobody wants to know about. They have no end, and no beginning. They just are.
The earliest appearance of the bell is another memory, one that feels like it was an old routine by then too. She's standing in the mud of the rosebushes behind Northwest manor. There's mud in her hair, mud in her dress, mud in the seat of her white flowery underwear beneath the dress. Littered in the small swamp at her feet is her precious toy tea set, and there's a dish overturned, a mud pie flattened when she sent the little blue plate flying in her rush to get to her feet.
Her mother is not there, but her father is (and that is worse). He must have seen her through the windows, the all-seeing eyes of Northwest manor, and now he stands behind the railing of the terrace, looking at her; he won't come down, she knows.
He doesn't even speak. He doesn't need to: he simply reaches into his pocket. And when his arm is extended and he rings the bell, her stomach, already in tight coils, turns cold with terror and the promise of a something, something, she can't remember, but it's terrible, horrible, it's the end of the world…
There are brown, irregular prints on the pristine white stairs up to the Garden Foyer as she climbs them, towards her father, towards the terror. She just can't stop shaking.
At school, children are in awe of her. A few of them even approach her, moths to a flame, but she has been long since paired with the two richest (after her of course), Camille and Tamara. They've been brought around to her birthday parties by their parents and sanctioned as companions by Pacifica's parents for years. They treat her right, walking half a step behind her, liking what she likes and disliking what she dislikes. Or at least what they think she likes and dislikes.
Pacifica isn't really sure what they like. Or dislike. Or what they feel at all.
She loves school, though. The class work and the homework aren't great and she would rather have eight periods of Math than go to English once, but everyone knows who Pacifica Northwest is. For once it's her saying what's right and what isn't, who's in, who's out. Left hand under or over when switching knives, bone white versus snow white, nothing matters here except what she says. She is briefly, perfectly free.
(She hates, hates, hates the school bell).
With time, Pacifica begins to understand what her parents want, and she sees less of the bell. She makes them proud instead sometimes, like when she wears the right chartreuse to the Summer ball without her mother setting her right, or when her grades are alright (her mother is a high school dropout, her father went to college, but he very well might not have with the Northwest inheritance to back him if his businesses fail).
She picks up golf and, at eleven, the club feels so right in her hands it might be an extension of her. Her father puts a hand on her shoulder as they both look on at her final hole in one, and she wonders if this is what it feels like to be happy.
That December, on her massively attended twelfth birthday party, she quietly wishes for things to stay the same, always.
They arrive on the second week of summer. Pacifica is aware of them because people don't often come to Gravity Falls (they tend to leave, in fact), and because her parents decided to cancel the annual family vacation to Europe for 'political reasons', so she's bored out of her mind. They're out shopping and someone whispers about the 'Pine twins', so she turns: she takes a look at the girl's hand-knit sweater and the boy's bulky vest and writes them off as textbook rejects.
She's only even at the Mystery Shack the night of that stupid party because there is a crown to be won and a Northwest never loses. And they're there too.
The girl is a mess. Pacifica hasn't been around Mabel Pines for five minutes before she quietly wonders if she was raised by wolverines. And somehow it almost works, because everyone is eating up her lack of refinement and cheering and clapping, and that is when stealing the crown from Mabel becomes a matter of personal pride.
Sheer…lack of control can't beat a pure pedigree. It just can't, so she doesn't let it.
She doesn't see the other twin that night (what was his name even? Flipper?) and she sincerely doesn't care.
After Pioneer Day, she will never, ever forget Dipper Pines.
Her father says it doesn't matter: whoever their ancestor, founder or not, they've got political connections inside and out of the country, and enough money to buy the Pines' ramshackle hut of a home five times over.
It doesn't change anything. It shouldn't change anything.
But it does to Pacifica.
Her entire life has always hinged on how superior the Northwests are. Knowing her great-great-great-grandfather was a manure-digger or whatever doesn't make the mansion vanish or her father's sway with the Arab princes disappear.
But it shakes something loose in her, and whatever it is rattles in her chest like the quarter that's been stuck in her piggy bank since she was five.
It makes the silver look duller. It makes her parents look…smaller.
It's terrifying.
She devotes the following weeks to beating Mabel to the ground, hoping it'll mean something.
She does beat Mabel. Many times, in fact. But Dipper is always there at the end of the day to pick her up off the floor (sometimes literally), not sparing Pacifica even an angry backwards glare as they all walk away to their ramshackle hut, with their overweight Hispanic and their hairy uncle and annoying pig.
(Together).
"Did you win, Pacifica?"
Sergei is missing in action and there is a tear down her skirt at the back. And Mabel Pines did beat her. But she also cheated. And apologized. And gave her a taco, and she didn't want anything for it, and Pacifica isn't sure how to feel about receiving something from someone who isn't above her or below her. It's not a handout, but it's not a gift either. Sha-ring, Mabel had called it.
Pacifica looks at her parents, a perfect home improvement cover shot: Mother in her elegant house dress as she appears to lounge on the Blue Room's settee, Father holding up a rare china cup halfway to his pursed lips.
The little golf ball men could storm the mansion right now, and Mr. and Mrs. Northwest's main concern would still be the outcome of the golf-off rather than their hell-bent desire to kill their daughter.
And truthfully, Pacifica doesn't know who won and who lost. But maybe it counts for something that she showed Dipper that being great-great-great granddaughter to a manure shoveler didn't stop her from being a champion at minigolf.
"Sure. Totally."
Pacifica stands in the parlor – well, in the parlor but just beyond the carpet, because her party shoes are caked in mud. Her legs, blessedly hidden under the voluminous purple skirt of her dress, are shaking.
"-and the carpet was RUINED!" It's her mother bellowing for once. Her father is furious beyond words, knuckles white as they tighten around a tumbler of something golden. His eyes are fixed on the Northwest coat of arms (and firmly away from his daughter).
She's saved their lives, but it counts for nothing, because Northwests are above everyone else, and tonight…
…tonight she stood up to her parents, to the bell, and made them and the townspeople equals.
But even as Pacifica battles the tears and the feeling of hopelessness, she doesn't feel like it's the end of the world. When her mother gets to the part of the rant where she's a disgrace to her name, she imagines Dipper is there beside her, arms crossed and face set.
The angry words wash over her like waves breaking on the sand, stinging but ultimately harmless. Because it is an honor to be a disgrace to the world's worst chain.
Living in the Mystery Shack after the end of the world, where people aren't afraid to touch her and tease her, where nobody minds their manners and everyone laughs loudly because happiness is a luxury, is both the best and the worst thing that has ever happened to her.
Pacifica tells everyone she can't go to wave the Pines goodbye because she's leaving too, off to the Northwest summer home while her father gets back on his feet after the debacle with the Weirdness bonds.
She lied.
She shuts herself up in her Gravity Falls hotel room and stares at the digital clock, just stares as it ticks down the minutes to their departure.
Her mother taps the adjoining door five minutes after the bus has probably left, and Pacifica swears by all that is holy that she will let her have it if the older woman dares enter the room for something inane, like helping her work out blow drying her own hair with the complimentary drier in the bathroom (because Priscilla Northwest is apparently near useless without her army of servants).
But she gives up, and the girl on the bed doesn't move for hours.
That night, Pacifica wears her llama sweater to dinner and ignores her parent's looks and pointed remarks about it. She's always quiet when she's around them, so they can't tell her mind is miles away, sitting in the back on a bus.
(They're probably home by now, though.)
She excuses herself politely to take a walk after dessert, ending up in the plaza with her cheating, animal-slaughtering great-to-the-nth grandfather Nathaniel's statue. Her heart feels raw and uncomfortable.
"Rough night, kid?" Wendy Corduroy is leaning up against the base of the statue. She's missing her lumberjack's hat.
"Kind of."
"Yeah, I get you."
"Did you give him the…"
"Yeah. Five bucks says he wasn't even past the sign when he opened it." Wendy saunters over to where she's sitting and plops down beside her. "Nice sweater."
"Thanks."
"Your look's missing something though."
Pacifica feels something being fitted on her head. A month ago, it would have triggered age-old hairdo protecting reflexes. Now, she waits for a moment before pulling the thing – a cap- off her head.
It's… "Dipper's cap."
"In the flesh."
The cap blurs. Wendy's arm is around her shoulders and the plip plip of her tears on the cap's flap are all she knows for a while. When she's done, Wendy is crouching in front of her, teeth gleaming in the dark as she smiles widely. "He'll be back before you know it. And hey, you're rich. What's stopping you from swinging by Piedmont one of these days?"
She hadn't thought about that.
Wendy has an armful of crying twelve year old before she knows what to do, and Pacifica has only been more glad for an unplanned hug once before.
Nobody is above Pacifica Northwest. She's known that since she was a very small girl, because her parents have made sure she does.
But at twelve she learns that nobody is beneath her either.