2 September 2012 – Sunday
They trip downstairs, Dipper's hand on Mabel's arm while his other brushes the wards, powering them with their combined energies. Mabel tries not to look at anything except his fingers wrapped a full circle around her wrist, overlapping at the tips. She concentrates on the difference of their skin – hers calloused, his smooth, both too pale and thin, veins dark and blue. She tries not to look at her sweater except where it bunches around his hand. It's solid there. Fabric, not static.
She tries not to look at the walls, a wavering ribbon of creams and pinks, or the shifting sand masquerading as the floor. In theory, in her faded memories, there's carpeting upstairs and hardwood downstairs, but nothing here looks real. It doesn't even have the decency to be consistent in its unreality, flickering from one nauseating illusion to the next. Not here, where what magic remains is untrained, unharnessed.
She especially doesn't look at the spitting miasma of purple and green lurking at the kitchen door, but she walks through it, eyes squeezed shut, when Dipper tugs at her. It doesn't stop the sound. It never stops the sound, but neither does covering her ears because it's all an illusion. Not real.
Wendy mentioned once the word hallucination and Dipper's quiet rage cut the power to three quarters of Gravity Falls.
Their parents are yelling. They're very quiet about it, mouths sewn shut and faces set in mild annoyance. She can see it, though. The wards curl around them at the wrists, ankles, and neck, chaining them down, but she can hear them yelling anyway. The walls buckle under the strain, leaking, oozing. Green and pale and murky, it bleeds, building up and dripping plunk, plunk, plunk, thick and viscous to the floor. Electricity splinters across the windows, sparking scarlet.
"Would either of you care to explain why the backyard is on fire?" Miffed. She can barely hear the words under the shrieking, screaming, shouting outrage, worry, fear that the wards keep shackled. Brighter and brighter and darker and darker they pulse.
Their wax-figure parents melt under the light of it. The weight of it.
Dipper responds, "The backyard isn't on fire. It burned out hours ago," and she can hear him just fine. Like his hand on her wrist, a warm, solid presence, his voice is real, remains real, and cuts though that which is unreal with ease. He's careful not to pull more power from her despite the contact. Their parents aren't threats. Not even as the Dad-figure buffets at them, face contorted into something pink-gray and squished, and the Mom-figure sprouts limbs like a tree, arms and fingers pointing every which way.
Mabel turns from the leaf litter billowing against Dipper's actuality, each petal razor blades where they bite into her skin, and burrows against her brother's shoulder. His free hand is trapped behind his back, magic frothing pale blue from inside his fist. It smells like peppermint. Soothing. She's not sure if he does it on purpose, he probably doesn't, but his pure magic is almost always peppermint. And it's not just her. Unlike most everything else she experiences now, the others have commented on the scent too. Soos, actually. In a moment of calm three nights after they came home, the entire family eating pancakes for dinner in Ford's lab, Soos mentioned it.
Until then they'd been tentative in talking about how much the twins had charged but this, the mention of peppermint magic, was simple and easily confirmed by the others. Dipper hadn't noticed before then. Mabel hadn't felt the need to actually tell him when they were elsewhere. She figured he knew seeing as none of the various trackers set upon them found then because of peppermint magic. Mabel had checked. Each tracker she took down was thoroughly interrogated before she gave them to her brother.
He knows now, though, so she doesn't know why he hasn't suppressed the scent. He could. It's his magic.
"Do not yell at Mabel ever again," Dipper snarls, lips pulled back from teeth, eyes edging blue with power. They yelled at her? She thought the wards would keep them too passive for that. She'd been so concentrated on Dipper's silence that the screaming couldn't reach her, let alone physical sound. The illusions, sometimes, and not nearly often enough in her opinion, can't touch her through the defense of Dipper's reality.
He continues speaking, voice rumbling over her skin. "We needed to be rid of some things and fire was the safest way to accomplish that. It was a very controlled burn. Nothing as dangerous as the squirrels at home."
Home. He said it aloud. Mabel turns wide eyes on her brother. They've been avoiding calling Gravity Falls home out loud. It is dangerous to do so. If other people, those unaware especially, learn just how attached the twins are to their great uncle's home, there might be inquiries. Questions. The twins can't afford questions.
Uncle Ford and Grunkle Stan can't afford questions.
Dipper winces.
She risks a glance; their parents are melting, oozing and sticking all over the floor. The Mom-figure waves desperate limbs. The Dad-figure is sort of puce, sputtering and boiling as he comes undone. Nausea knocks her mind approximately three feet to the left. The world skews into a high-pitched whining, and black and white blocks, tilting whenever she blinks. She blinks? She thinks she does. She can't tell. But her stomach makes its home in her throat and her knees are jello and her spine attempts to rip its way out of her spleen and –
Everything pauses.
They're up in their room.
Dipper is solid and real, a comforting warms, an island of color that eases back the contrast. He's holding her hands, speaking gentle nonsense words as his voice slowly filters through the static. He's not glowing anymore, but the peppermint scent lingers. His sphere of influence expands to encompass the entire room until only the ward-lines are bright. Possibly real. Possibly not. It doesn't matter.
"I want to go home," she whispers and folds into his hug. He nods against her hair.
The alarm clock blinks 9:24 PM. How long has she been out of it? Dipper's hands are shaking, his eye brimming with guilt. It's an expression, though, and not slushy ocean waves and hail – that's Grunkle Stan. Anger and guilt and grief. She knows what that looks like. Learned it quickly enough, learned how it turned the floors and the Shack slick with ice. Grunkle Stan learned too. His relief tastes like sunshine and spring water.
Things make to much more sense at the Shack. The illusions are – not consistent. They share traits though. Grunkle Stan is water, always water. Wendy usually relates to insects: her anger stings and her pain swarms like gnats or ants. Soos is stone but sounds of slot machines. Or maybe the destruction of a construction site.
Ford is the only one who remains clear, for the most part. The marble wings weighing down his shoulders are the only indication of her perception turning sideways.
"We're grounded," Dipper says, edging across the mental gap between them. Grounded for a week, and even after that they're supposed to be home by four with homework finished by six, and in bed by nine for the rest of the month. No friends or phones or tv during that time, either. No dinner tonight.
"The wards worked," she confirms.
It's obvious, really. They're not in the car, or in a hospital. She knows full well what it looks like when she can't escape the illusions. She's seen it in Dipper's head, watched it on the security cameras at the Shack. Color abandons her skin. Her muscles lock. She'll sway, eyes unfocused and darting around. Sometimes, if it's bad enough, she'll attack.
It wasn't bad enough this time. She just went blank.
Grateful, she sinks into the link until they are them, no longer separate. Shared space and shared thoughts, their breathing synced. They fall, not asleep, but into the wards and monitor them for the remainder of the night.