Author's Note: Hello! Thank you for looking at my first GF story, but a fair warning before you proceed. I don't have a definite plan for this story and have hardly thought beyond a chapter or two, so read at your own risk, but thank you very much for the faith if you do continue. If you don't then have a nice day!

Edit: Found the plot! :D

This fic was partially inspired by a short comic by watermelowne on Deviantart.

A walk in the forest to calm the nerves. That's what the big idea had been behind her wandering the woods for the past hour. It was either that or Sweater Town, but Mabel preferred the smell of the woods to that of her own sweat on the hot day. While Mabel wouldn't say the walk had hurt per se, it wasn't really making her feel any better. It wasn't even her wedding.

Months ago she'd gotten the news that Wendy was engaged. She'd kept in touch with the older woman over the years and she as well as her brother still considered the redhead a close friend. It was hard not to after all they had been through so many years ago, going on adventures guided by their Uncle Ford's journal. Thankfully by now Dipper had moved on (years ago, actually) and was now in a two year plus relationship. And where was Mabel?

"Dumped. Again," she ruminated with a sigh. And right before she'd come to Gravity Falls for Wendy's big day.

She'd taken these break ups so much harder in her teens and early twenties. Every guy she met could be the one and she still firmly held this belief, but she had been so much more giving with her heart back then that it had hurt so much more when things didn't work out. Dipper had spent many a night comforting her and tried to kick the ass of whomever broke her heart with varying success (he'd gotten a little more muscle in their later years to be fair). Mabel could hardly believe he put up with her at times, but he never shrugged her off. No matter how many times she was sobbing over lost love, he never turned her away when it would be so easy to disregard her feelings over one out of countless broken relationships.

This was how Mabel decided she needed to change. Even if Dipper would always be there for her, she needed to try to make changes for herself. Despite how her brother would firmly deny it, Mabel couldn't deny that her luck with love could at least partly be her fault. Not that there was anything wrong with her (she was nice, fun and adorable!). But even she realized that she went into relationships way in over her head.

So she'd tried to take it slower. She had. She didn't try to make cute nicknames for her boyfriend until they were dating at least two weeks. She'd waited at least a day after the first date to make another instead of before the first one was concluded. Inviting the guy to her place was reserved only for those she'd made out with. Twice. On different days. And she'd stopped introducing herself as their future daughter-in-law whenever she met the family. She still brought the dating scrapbooks though.

But even that didn't prove fruitful. Consulting dating tips, getting advice from her friends and even talking to Dipper about what guys like (a very awkward conversation he'd recall if you asked him) didn't make anything change. So she'd decided that love would find her. And it did. Or she thought it did until he'd told her that, as people, they were "just too different." Mabel had actually liked that about them, but apparently that was one-sided.

In retrospect, she didn't love him. That was her only consolation. And as Dipper had put it "I think you just might be too in love with the idea of love." He made a fair point. But at the age of twenty-six it felt like she should be in the prime of her love life. And having lost Waddles a year ago, she went home to an empty apartment and felt more lonely than ever.

At least she'd mellowed out over the years and wasn't quite as hyperactive as she used to be. In hindsight that was what really scared away a lot of guys. Looking back, it was the hormones. Or her Mabel juice. Probably both.

"Maybe I'll have luck at the wedding." She tried to keep herself optimistic as always. There were sure to be plenty of single guys there, maybe around her age if she was lucky. It was a wedding for Wendy after all, who would have friends around her own age, not a wedding for Old Man McGucket.

It was odd how easily she could see the crazed old scientist wearing a wedding dress. She'd probably seen it at one point in her lifetime with the down spiral of his sanity, but was only now unfortunately dredging up the old, suppressed memories of it.

A blur of white caught her attention. A rabbit scurried away like it'd just realized it had come across a den of wolves and the next moment a flock of birds fled from a nearby tree. All became quiet in the forest that was usually laden with the trickling sounds of nature.

Her face held a hard stare at the source of the disturbance. "Bill…"

It wasn't the first time she had come across the stone remains of the powerful, quick-witted dream demon. Their second summer visiting Gravity Falls, she'd discovered it while on a walk with Waddles. She'd been fearful at first, thinking the moment she spotted it the murderous triangle would come to life and come after her and her family for revenge. But then she'd came across it again and again during her walks. Even when she was sure that she had taken a route that would avoid the statue altogether, she came face to face with the empty shell.

It was no doubt an attribute to the weirdness of Gravity Falls, but, just as she always did, Mabel had found the good of an otherwise creepy situation. It reminded her that Bill was gone. Though his body seemed to hold some sort of strange repellent for all things natural, it was nothing more than an oddly-shaped piece of stone now.

Mabel had been angry at first when she found it. She'd turned on her heel to leave every time she met the isosceles monster's face. He had tried to destroy her family and the world. He had tricked her and many others countless times with evil intentions.

But then she had become curious. She would sit and stare at it for longer than she liked to admit, thinking over all that she had been through because of him. Even then, after long staring matches, she expected he might come alive and jump at her at any moment, as if he was trying to lull her into a false sense of security only to get a scare out of her. It would've been tame compared to when she'd first seen him pull teeth from a deer's mouth when he was summoned by Gideon. That's just the kind of demon Bill was. He wanted a show, whether he was the star or he made someone else perform. Either way, he was always calling the shots.

But nothing ever happened and she'd long since forgotten about her visits. She'd never told anyone either. Why worry about someone who was gone? Her family would surely want to destroy it just for good measure. While she could admit their paranoia was founded at times, something just couldn't let her desecrate what was equivalent to someone's grave. Even if that someone was literally a demon who had terrorized the people she loved.

Dipper called her too soft sometimes. Too forgiving. Too good. While she'd been obsessed with being a good person in the past, she'd eventually realized that being a good person wasn't about what other people thought about you, but what you saw in yourself. She didn't do things for other people, but for herself and her own integrity. Did that make her selfish at the same time? Her head was starting to hurt.

Mabel did what she feared to do as a child all those years ago and approached the only lingering evidence of Bill left in the town besides the inhabitant's memories. The brunette didn't feel anger or resentment or satisfaction. The hatred that was a burning inferno years ago was now nothing more than tepid cinders, the heat and feeling long gone.

She did not forgive him. No, she would never excuse the danger her family had been put in. But neither did she feel animosity towards him. Rather, she felt pity. He had lived so long and known so much, but he was so ignorant to such simple things. He didn't truly understand the things that made life worth living, his only thoughts ever being more than destruction, partying and manipulation. How he had become the way he was would likely be inconceivable to her, but that didn't stop her from having wanted to try if erasing him from existence hadn't been their only option.

"I wish we understood you more." Mabel bent over with her hands behind her back, observing how little vegetation had grown over the stone body for how long it had sat there, embedded in the ground. Thirteen years and it should have been overgrown with greenery, but the thin vines had barely climbed it.

Her hand hovered over his hat and trailed down, over the single arm that stuck out of the ground, always maintaining an inch of distance between them. It reminded her much of the Greek statues she had once seen in a museum long before she'd encountered the live wax statues in the Mystery Shack. She had marveled at what stories they could tell and what the models might have been like, posing for the artist at time. Only, she knew for a fact this "model" had been a triangular jerkwad.

Her hand then lingered over that of the statue's and she frowned, noting his four fingers. It was like he was from a cartoon (of course, it made a little more sense with him being from the second dimension). She placed her hand over his, getting Tarzan flashbacks as she made contact with the cold stone, and wiggled her left out pinkie that didn't have a match on his hand with a giggle. To think, she really used to be afraid of-

Crack!

Mabel hissed in a gasp through her teeth when she felt the stone at her middle finger give way and shot back to watch it fall to the grass almost silently. She hadn't even been pressing that hard.

"Oh crap," she muttered, bending down to pick up the fragmented piece. It was a clean break. Maybe there had been a crack on it that she hadn't seen before.

It wasn't like this was some piece of modern art that she'd be held accountable for ruining, but she still didn't condone the idea of vandalizing graves. Not even Bill's!

"Uh… um…" She tried to fit to the finger back on, really wishing she had her glue gun on her. She brought it everywhere she was a kid (no telling when sequins or fake jewels would fall off).

She furrowed a brow and bit her lip, trying to think of a way to reattach it as she held it in her hand.

Then the world went blank before she blinked and an endless landscape of grey filled her vision.

Her breath hitched and she took a step back despite seeming to simply exist in the nothingness where there was no ground, sky, up, down or any direction at all.

"Well, well, well, if it isn't a shooting star. Better make a wish fast before it's gone."