Thankyou to all my readers so far! 11 follows already, and I've only done one chapter, wow! Thankyou to BooBear4997, MrZealous21701 and LimitlessHorizons for your reviews. I'll answer any questions left in the reviews at the end of each chapter, so if you want to ask questions about the fic or anything in it, just keep your eyes peeled! In the mean time, enjoy this chapter!

Although her parents had initially enforced it, Pacifica now went for morning jogs on her own will. She enjoyed the feeling of her light sports clothes, the wind against her skin, the sun shining down on her as she ran. It was an escape, mainly; she would jog when she was upset or disappointed or just needed to get away from her parents. She had managed to entirely avoid punishment for her actions two nights ago by sleeping through the whole day. Luckily, the butlers were on her side and managed to persuade her parents that she was unwell after the party. God bless them.

For some reason, when she woke up late the night before, after napping through most of the previous day to recover, her room was in a mess. The furniture, the ornaments, even her bed looked like they had been tossed around. The doors had been locked so the butlers couldn't have come in to fix anything, but she let them in once the sun had risen to fix everything up, while she went out for a run. The butlers hadn't explained why the furniture had moved, and Pacifica didn't wait to find out. She wanted to get out of the house before her parents were awake enough to stop her.

She stopped to take a sip of water from the water bottle she'd been carrying and noticed that the town was in chaos too. How did I not notice this before? she thought, screwing the lid back onto the bottle and continuing to run. She passed cars that were parked crookedly, the asphalt of the road was cracked in some places, some of the buildings were damaged. It looked like there had been an earthquake… but how had Pacifica not felt it? She was on the second story of a house on top of a hill – logicaly, she would've woken up to it. Perhaps she was just so out of it, too exhausted from the night before from spending too much time up with –

'Ouch!'

Pacifica felt herself being pushed back into the ground . Her clothes did a particularly bad job of protecting her as she fell – she felt the skin on her elbows burn as they hit the pavement. Another thud sounded in front of her. She rubbed her head, looking to see who it was.

'Dipper!' she said, getting up. Dipper had fallen on his side, and he was struggling to move on his arm.

'Pacifica?' he asked, trying to push himself up, but he fell back down onto his wrist. She came over and grabbed his good arm, pulling him up.

'Are you OK?' she asked. Dipper shook his hand loosely and winced with pain.

'I'm fine, it's just a little sting,' he said, taking his wrist in his other hand and massaging it gently. Pacifica sat down on a park bench and gestured for Dipper to sit next to him. Once he joined her on the seat, she carefully took his wrist and looked it over. Dipper had never thought Pacifica could be caring for others – she only seemed to care about herself. She really must've turned over a leaf at the party; she was a completely changed person.

'It's sprained, Dipper,' she said, giving him back his arm. Dipper shook his head and started to get up.

'I'll be fine,' he said again. This time Pacifica got up and put a hand on his shoulder, stopping him. When he turned around, he met a very cross but anxious expression plastered on her face.

'No, you won't Dipper, we need to get you to a hospital.'

o00o

Dipper had never been to the Gravity Falls Hospital before. It wasn't overly big, and as such the waiting room ended up having more people in it at any given time then it should. People hurt themselves in weird ways all the time in this town, so Dipper's sprainked wrist seemed rather tame. Dipper tried to avert his eyes from the man with a miniature crocodile gnawing on his ear, watching the seconds tick by on the clock.

'Why did you bump into me anyway?' asked Pacifica, sitting next to him and sipping water from her bottle, 'it doesn't seem like something you would do.'

'I... I had a bad day yesterday,' he said, lowering his head. Pacifica frowned.

'What happened?' she asked, shifting a little closer to him.

'Well, you know how gravity went haywire yesterday,' he asked. Pacifica looked oddly at him.

'Is that why all the furniture in my room was messed up?' she replied. Dipper just nodded.

'Yeah, probably. How did you not notice?'

Pacifica looked away and blushed a little, 'I was asleep all of yesterday,' she said. Dipper let out a chuckle.

'I'm not surprised,' he said, 'Anyway, the reason that gravity stopped working is because my uncle secretly had a giant portal in the basement of the Mystery Shack and he was powering it up to bring his brother back, who was actually the author of the journal that I used to save us from the ghost the other night…'

Pacifica blinked. What was that? Had she caught any of that? She decided to let him continue his story.

'… and then when Stan wanted to keep the portal open even though I thought it could've brought the whole house and even the world down on top of us, Mabel chose to trust Stan… even though we… we didn't even know if he was our great-uncle… and she just…'

Dipper got up and ran out of the waiting room just before he started to cry. Pacifica felt an instant need to help him, to cheer him up, despite the fact that she'd never needed to stop a boy from crying before. She didn't know that boys were meant to cry. Were they? In any case, she got up, shouted something at the woman at the desk about coming back later and chased after him.

o00o

'Oh no, I've lost him,' she said, running through the streets of town. She stopped next to a pâtisserie to catch her breath. The cakes that were on display looked delicious, but she couldn't stop for long. She had to find Dipper. Something about Mabel betraying him. Pacifica just couldn't stand to see him cry.

The cakes sniffled.

Wait, no, cakes can't breathe. She looked towards an alley up ahead and walked over to it, peering around the corner.

There was Dipper, dirty and sad, sitting on the ground next to a dumpster and cradling his injured arm on his lap. Usually, she wouldn't go anyway near someone like that. When she for walks, sometimes she would pass that old loony guy – what was his name? Nugget? Mucket? – looking through some garbage can for food, and she would quicken her pac, trying to avoid any possible infections. But, for some reason, she wanted to comfort him, no matter how dirty he was. She walked into the alley and sat down on the ground next to him.

'Hey,' she said. Dipper pulled his legs into his chest, hiding his face. Pacifica smiled sadly at him.

'Look, Dipper, I don't know what you're going through right now – I've never had any siblings and my parents are such big liars that I've never trusted them anyway, but I just want you to know that I'm here for you.'

Dipper's sobs echoed through the alleyway. Pacifica shuffled a little closer to him. She could literally feel the dirt collecting on her shorts, but she didn't care. She almost welcomed it.

'I know how important your relationship with Mabel is to you Dipper, but I've got your back. I believe you Dipper.'

At this Dipper raised his head and started bawling his eyes out. He put his hands on his face to muffle the sound, albeit with little effect. Pacifica put a hand on his knee.

'Shhh…' she said, calming him down. After a few minutes, his crying died down.

'Breathe,' she said. Dipper took a couple of deep breaths and his composure returned to him. He dried up his eyes and looked at Pacifica. She was smiling at him. He could feel his cheeks stinging from the tears, his face and eyes were red and his hair was a mess.

'Thanks, Pac…' he started, before pausing to take another breath. Pacifica waited for him.

'Paci…' he said again, before starting to laugh. Her name had too many syllables, and he was still recovering from the breakdown before.

'Paz?' asked Pacifica, joining in with his laughter. Dipper nodded and stood up.

'Yeah, Paz,' he said, looking down at her. She looked so out of place, sitting in the dirt and grime of an alleyway. Then again, he probably looked the same, 'that's your new nickname. Pacifica is too long.'

'I like it!' she replied, getting up and standing in front of him.

'Thanks for cheering me up, Paz.'

'No problem, Dip,' she replied, smirking. Dipper laughed once again but was cut off by her throwing herself at him and pulling him into a hug. Dipper frowned a little and waited for her to back away like that night at the mansion, but she squeezed him tighter. Woah, this is genuine… Dipper thought. He closed his eyes and hugged her back, making sure to be careful with his wrist. He was glad she wasn't wearing her expensive clothes, otherwise he would've been worried about dirtying them. Her hair smelled of lavender mixed in with the musty scent of the alleyway. After a few more seconds she pulled back and put her hands on her hips.

'You're not going to offer me any money?' he remarked. She punched him lightly in the arm.

'Of course not, doofus, were allowed to hug, we're friends now.'

Dipper smiled at her. She actually looked kind of cool when she was a little dirty, her hair decorated with flecks of brown and her tank top and shorts looking greyer than they should be. Her cheeks were a little red, but Dipper couldn't remember when she had cried. She turned away and pointed back towards the road.

'We should get back to the hospital, they'll be expecting you,' she said.

'Yeah, right,' he replied as they walked out of the alleyway and into the light of day.

Thankyou for reading! Please follow or favorite if you're enjoying the story so far. Reviews are also much appreciated, as they help me to improve the story and write what people want to hear!

Now, to follow up some reviews…

BooBear4997, thankyou for your suggestions – as you may notice I implemented the 'cute nickname' idea you proposed into this chapter – hope you like it!

LimitlessHorizons – thankyou for another positive review, and I'm glad you're enjoying my writing, I'm really encouraged by your support =) Also, I use apostrophe's in my stories rather than quotation marks because in a lot of the books I read, apostrophes are used instead of quotation marks for speech, and to be frank, I can't be bothered holding the Shift key down every time I want to say someone is talking – it's a habit now, I guess.

Also thanks to MrZealous21701, I'm glad you're enjoying the story, and thanks for your review!

I'll see you all soon with a new chapter. Don't forget to check out my other fic, Make a Living ( s/11227626/1/Make-A-Living). Peace xo