I was so excited about all the positive response to this story! Good to knwo people enjoy this mash-up. Here's Chapter 2 for you - I hope you enjoy it!


Stan stared at Mabel through his rearview mirror as they headed out of Pennsylvania. She was curled up in the backseat, still wearing his jacket and staring out the window with her wings carefully draped on the seat next to her. Her mouth was set in a hard line and she was absentmindedly turning what looked like a tape measurer over in her hands. She hadn't spoken a word since she crawled into his car, and as Stan drove north towards New York he started to worry that what he was doing counted as kidnapping.

"So, uh, Mabel," he said, and her eyes flicked up to look at his reflection in the rearview mirror. "You from Philadelphia?"

She shook her head, still unsmiling. "California."

Jesus. She'd gotten all the way across the country, then. Things must have been really bad for her to get so far from home all alone like she was. "Wow. That's a long way away."

"You have no idea," she mumbled, stuffing the tape measurer into her front sweater pocket and sighing heavily. A long way away and 35 years too far, she thought, swallowing hard. She didn't want to start crying again, but she felt like she still had so many tears left in her. Even though she had found Stan, he wasn't her Grunkle – yet – and she couldn't tell him anything. He had no idea who she was. Though she already knew the answer, she asked anyway, "What about you? Are you from Philadelphia?"

He made a scathing noise. "Absolutely not. I move around a lot. Been up and down the East Coast tons of times. Nah, I'm from Jersey. Much better than Pennsylvania."

Mabel nodded distractedly, resting her cheek in one palm. "What were you doing in Philadelphia?"

"I could ask you the same question," Stan retorted. He didn't want to tell the kid Philadelphia was a good city for gamblers, especially a player like himself who kept a pair of loaded dice on his person at all times and could count cards with ease. Since he wasn't allowed back in New Jersey, he couldn't try his luck in Atlantic City anymore, which was a real shame.

Mabel shrugged and wrapped his jacket a little tighter around her shoulders. "I'm not really sure how I ended up here. I just… did."

Maybe she was sneaking on trains without a clue of where they were headed, Stan wondered. Either way, he was a little impressed with her guts. It took a lot to venture so far from home, especially as young as she was. Which reminded him… "How old are you, Kid?"

"I'm twelve."

Stan whistled. She was younger than he'd thought. He wasn't qualified for this. He shouldn't be taking care of a kid. He could barely take care of himself. Maybe he should find child services and hand her over. They'd probably take her back where she came from, and she'd probably be better off.

Except that she'd sounded really upset when she'd mentioned home, and how she couldn't go back. He guessed things had to be nightmarish if she'd gotten nearly three thousand miles away from home. She had to be running from some seriously messed up stuff.

And Stan had little trust for the system. No, he'd figure it out, he decided. He knew how it was to be alone in the world, and abandoned. Mabel was a whole heck of a lot younger than he was when he'd found himself on his own, too. He couldn't leave her alone.

He watched the girl in his backseat yawn and snuggle up next to the window, shutting her eyes and drifting quickly into sleep. "Huh," he mumbled under his breath. "Looks like I've gained a sidekick."

Mabel did not sleep easy. She was haunted by her fears of never getting home and seeing Dipper or Great Uncle Ford or Grunkle Stan as he was in her timeline again. Bill Cipher floated through her dreams, taunting her for such a stupid mistake. And at the culmination of her nightmares, she replayed the fight she'd had that had landed her in her mess, relived Dipper yelling angrily at her until in a moment of blind fury she had wrenched the time machine away from him and fallen backwards, landing on top of it. And then everything was a mess of swirling lights and colors and twisted faces, and she was entirely alone –

And she woke up, gasping for breath with tears staining her cheeks. She panicked for a moment because she was not in her bed in the attic of the Mystery Shack, and everything came crashing back down on her when she realized she was still in the backseat of Stan's car, the Diablo she knew so well but was just at the moment in much better condition than she was used to. The car was no longer moving, and as she stared out the window she could surmise they were parked in a dark lot, though she couldn't begin to guess exactly where. In the front seat, Stan had his head tilted against the back of the seat and was snoring softly, wrapped in his wings for some modicum of warmth.

All Mabel's worries began twisting in her gut, making her feel like she wanted to throw up. How would she get back to Gravity Falls, and back to her own time? Could she get back, or was she doomed to remain in her past forever? What would she tell Stan? Could she stick around with him forever? But eventually she would have to leave him, wouldn't she, so she didn't screw up the future too badly?

Her mind went to all the time travel movies she'd ever seen, and how people from the future disappeared in the past if they changed their timelines too drastically. She didn't want to disappear, to just not exist. That would be worse than dying.

She fumbled with the zipper on Stan's jacket, jerkily yanking it up to her neck and pulling the hood over the top of her head, trying to shut out the world as she broke down, trying to cry quietly so she wouldn't wake up her future great uncle's sleep. No matter what she thought about, she could see no way any of this situation ended well for her.

After a few minutes of choked sobbing, most of it with her hand clapped over her mouth in a desperate attempt to stifle her whimpers, Mabel jolted when she felt a hand on her knee. She jerked her head up to stare into the concerned expression of a young Stan Pines. "Kid?" he whispered hoarsely. "You okay?"

She felt it was fairly obvious that she wasn't, but for good measure shook her head as her body shuddered with yet another sob.

Stan looked painfully awkward. "You… you wanna come sit up front with me?" he asked, unsure of what else to do. What he wanted to do was go back there and hug the girl, try to assure her things were going to be okay – but he didn't know how well she'd take to that. After all, he was a stranger, right? People could get techy when strangers hugged them.

Mabel nodded and undid her seatbelt before crawling over the seat for the passenger's side. She situated herself so she was curled up with her knees pulled towards her chest. She sniffled and wiped at her eyes. "Sorry," she mumbled, her voice hoarse. "Did I wake you up?"

"Nah," Stan shook his head. "I'm a heavy sleeper. You've got to be louder than that to wake me up." He was lying. He was a very light sleeper. It was a side effect of paranoia. He was, however, fairly certain Mabel hadn't been the cause of his abrupt jerk back to consciousness – it was just how he was. People came after him sometimes. He had to be alert at all times.

Mabel sighed and rested her head against the window. "Okay."

Stan shut his eyes. How did he deal with this? He had never been that great with kids. He didn't know how to connect with them. "Do you wanna talk about it?"

She shook her head, tears welling up in her eyes again. "No," she mumbled, nuzzling her face into the furry hood of his jacket. "I don't."

"Alright." Stan let the conversation end on an awkward note that hung uncomfortably in the air between them.

Mabel broke the silence. "Where are we?"

"Outskirts of New York City," Stan informed her, stretching out an arm. "Drove a couple hours and you were passed out in the backseat. I figured I'd pull over and get some shuteye myself."

"What are we doing in New York?" Mabel asked, gazing out the window. She could see the lights of the city not far away.

"Dunno yet," Stan shrugged. "But it's a big place. Plenty of things to do."

Knowing what Stan was like in the future, Mabel assumed he meant Plenty of people to con, but she didn't say anything about it. Instead she nodded and asked, "What time is it?"

Stan checked his watch, a cheap knick-knack with a cracked face he had nicked off a man he'd found passed out outside a bar a few months back. But it told the time just fine. "About three in the morning," he sighed. He thought it was later than that. "You should get some more sleep, Kid. You had a heck of a day yesterday, didn't you?"

She bit her lip and nodded. "Mm-hm. Yeah…"

Stan watched her warily as she laid down on the seat, her wings tucked neatly behind her and extending slightly into the foot space of the passenger side, rustling with her little motions. Stan sighed and tilted his head against the back of the seat again, and had just shut his eyes when he felt something rest on his leg and flinched. Looking down, he saw Mabel had rested her head on his knee to use as a pillow. "Good night, Stan," she whispered, snuggling up into a ball. She looked so small wearing his jacket. So helpless.

Stan let out a long breath and rested a tentative hand on her shoulder, working out a few tangles at the ends of her hair with his fingers. How long had it been since someone had trusted him like this? Years? She was giving him all the trust she had. He was afraid he'd screw up royally and break it.

But it did feel good, for once, to have a clear goal in his mind. Take care of this kid.

A smile twitching up at the corner of his lips, Stan closed his eyes again and rested his head against his seat, one wing wrapping around his own body and the other moving to protectively cover the girl lying on the seat next to him. "Good night, Mabel," he breathed out, drifting back into sleep within a few minutes.

It had been a long time since he'd slept so soundly.


Have a bit of tentative Stan and Mabel fluff. Next chapter will be happier, I promise. I just felt like Mabel had a lot of stuff to work through (or at least, start to work through. Things are still concerning).

Please review, and thanks for reading!

Watch for Chapter 3!