O Hai! New chapter! Hooray! I'm sorry I take so long and this is so short, I'm so super busy that I have little time to write (I'll be free from some commitments in a few weeks and that should make things easier).
Happy Easter to my Christian friends, happy normal Sunday to the rest of you!
I do not own Gravity Falls (Don't know if I put that in chapters before this but I am definitely not Alex Hirsch, and you should be glad that I'm not).
Please enjoy! And review. I NEED IDEAS PLEASE. PLEASE PLEASE.
PLEASE.
Sadness was a feeling nearly foreign to Mabel Pines, but in the past day she had become all too familiar with it. Sadness was the look in her Grunkle Stan's eyes as he begged her to listen to him, to trust him. Sadness was her tears as they refracted the light from the portal, suspended in midair. Sadness was the look on Dipper's face in the moments between desperation and anger. Sadness was the heavy, sucking black abyss that had found a seemingly permanent home in her chest.
Waddles didn't understand sadness, as human as Mabel liked to think he was. He would wander over to her, concerned, and root his head under her hand as she rubbed his ears absentmindedly. She knew that he was worried about her, but she wished he would leave her alone. She missed Dipper, and wanted him to be worried about her. She was worried about him. She needed to talk to him. Where was he? Was he okay? Mabel knew her brother, and she knew how irrational he could be if he got upset or excited, like the time in the fourth grade when he'd received a detention for fighting another boy who teased him about the bruise on his cheek. It wasn't the teasing that had made Dipper angry. It was the context. He was teased and picked on all the time, but he was very sensitive about family matters.
Mabel sighed and curled up in a ball on her bed. She had hardly left it since Stan's twin brother had emerged from the portal, and was hoping that she wouldn't have to. She didn't know why, but she was almost angry at Stan for keeping his brother from his niece and nephew. She trusted her grunkle, this much was clear, but she had thought that in Gravity Falls, she had finally found a place where she could be told the truth. Clearly, she had never been farther from it. She had thought that Stan was just a little off, just a little like Dipper (who definitely took after him), just a bit stubborn, egotistical, with skewed morals. But he had kept everything from them. That was what made her mad. Not the situation with the portal and the fake ID's and the car accident itself, but the fact that it had been kept from her.
In fact, there was still so much she didn't know. Immediately after his arrival from the portal, Stan's twin had retreated to the magic carpet room, which had at one time belonged to him. That explained the untouched calendar, the dusty furniture – the room was like a time capsule, forever locked in 1982. While time went on for the rest of the world, its time had stopped. It was the same, the same as it had been thirty years ago when Stan's brother was lost in the portal.
When Stan's twin had left, Mabel had retreated to the room that she shared with her brother. She wanted to talk to Dipper about what she had chosen and why, but he had been gone. She had waited for him, and waited, but he had not returned. Her hopes that he had only left to mull things over slowly dimmed – he often went off alone when he got upset, but never in this type of situation. She wondered if he was going to come back at all, and so far he hadn't.
"Mabel, sweetie, please come downstairs," Grunkle Stan called as he knocked at the door for the fifth time that morning.
"I don't wanna," Mabel protested sullenly.
"You have to."
"I won't."
"I know we're all confused, but can we talk this over? I have Stanley downstairs and he wants to talk to you as well. We want to explain."
"Not without Dipper."
"We might have to talk without your brother," Stan replied. Mabel sighed and gave in to the realization that no one knew where Dipper was or when he would return, if he would return at all.
"Okay." Not bothering to change clothes (she was still in the same sweater and skirt she had worn the night before), Mabel opened the door and looked up at her great uncle. It was only moments before her eyes welled up and she rushed into his arms, wailing.
Taken by surprise, Grunkle Stan awkwardly wrapped his arms around his niece. "It's okay, sweetie. We're going to explain everything. Come with me," he murmured in an uncharacteristically soft voice. Mabel hiccuped and nodded, taking his hand and allowing him to lead her down the stairs.
Stan's twin, Stanley, was seated at the kitchen table, his back to the pair as they entered the room. He looked up from his cup of coffee, which he had been examining intensely, and smiled softly when he saw Mabel. "Hi, sweetie," he greeted her in a way that suggested that they had known each other for years before this moment. "Wow. I can't believe you're actually here. That you're alive. I can't believe it's been thirty years, and that you exist. I never met you until now, my own granddaughter."
"Wait...you're...my grandpa?"
"Yeah, Mabel. Your dad's dad."
"Oh." Mabel said shortly, pausing in the doorway to take in this information. This was her grandpa. The one who had abandoned her father at seven years old, who had, her father had claimed, turned him into the man he was today. This was the man that had left his wife, Grandma Mabel, to fend for herself in raising her father and his sister.
"Come sit down, Mabel," Grunkle Stan directed her to a seat across from Stanley. She sat down and Stanford sat down between them, on another side of the table. Mabel looked expectantly at her grandfather.
"I like your sweater," Stanley complimented the girl after a moment. Then: "what year were you born?"
"2000," Mabel replied. She had always loved how her birthday was exactly on the two-thousandth calender year, and that she would never forget how old she was because her age would always correspond with the last three digits of the year (in case she ever turned a hundred years old and forgot).
"You're twelve," Stanley realized. "Wow. I'm so sorry."
"For what?" Mabel tilted her head in confusion.
"For missing it. The first twelve years of your life. And your father growing up. My research got in the way of my family life. I missed him getting older, graduating from high school, getting a girlfriend. I missed him marrying your mother. I saw a picture of her. She's beautiful. I missed the birth of you two twins, our successors. The mystery twins version two." he giggled a little at this, which Mabel thought was cute. "And I missed all of the years I could have spent with your grandmother. She was a beautiful soul. You're the spitting image of her, too."
"Then he told you?" Mabel indicated Grunkle Stan, who was sitting quietly, letting the two get to know each other.
"Yes," Stanley replied solemnly, looking down at his coffee again. Mabel pitied him. What must it be like to miss thirty years? To miss so much happening, to come back to realize that your wife is dead and then meet your niece, twelve years old, who looked just like her. "He caught me up with the times. A lot's happened."
"Yes," Grunkle Stan spoke for the first time. "So much. And I never stopped trying to bring you back."
"Stanford told me that you're the reason that I'm here at all," Stanley remembered. "Thank you so much."
"I don't really want to talk about it," Mabel said. She was still confused about Dipper and didn't want to talk about anything until he returned. It seemed like betrayal to do it otherwise. Besides, she felt almost guilty about her choice; it was surely part of what had upset her brother so much. She tried to change the subject. "Aren't Soos and Wendy going to be here soon for work?"
"Mabel," Grunkle Stan looked at her meaningfully, "nothing will make sense until we talk a little bit about what happened. Can we please talk about it? It will really help you."
"But Soos..."
"It's a Sunday, Mabel."
"I don't mind talking about it," Mabel admitted quietly. "I just feel bad doing it without Dipper. He's spent all summer trying to figure this out, and it would be mean for me to do it without him."
"Sweetie, I don't know when Dipper is coming back. I think it will be good for you to hear about this, and you might need to in order to forgive me."
"But what if he doesn't come back?" Mabel asked, looking up with concern in her eyes. "What if he's gone? What if something happened to him?"
"Mabel, he'll be okay," Grunkle Stan reassured her gruffly. "He's just throwing a temper tantrum. I saw him run off this morning – he came back here overnight but ran off at dawn. He's still nearby, and he's still okay."
Mabel sighed in relief. Dipper was fine. He was just upset. He had run off before; usually, if he got into an argument with their father, he would disappear. Sometimes he'd leave for hours on end and pace the clearing near their house, thinking things over and cooling off. One time he was gone overnight, causing their mother to nearly have a panic attack, but he had always come back.
"I'm glad," Mabel replied. "I was worried that he would do something stupid," she admitted.
"Is it okay for me to tell you about the portal now?" Stanley asked.
"Yes," Mabel consented. "I would love to hear about it."
A quick note: I am very much using headcanons and personal speculation for a lot of this because obviously Gravity Falls is taking a little break right now after Not What He Seems, so this is going to be a little off in the future when more show happens. But I hope it can be enjoyed now.
Thanks for reading! ONCE AGAIN: MY MUSE IS ON A LOOONNGGG VACATION OR SOMETHING AND I CAN'T SEEM TO THINK OF ANYTHING, SO PLEASE HELP ME KNOW WHERE THIS IS GOING TO END UP.
Thank you to Gam919, Monsterhighcleoaddict, and Blind-Eyephone for reviewing!
Have a great day,
-Squeeb100
