Earth, August 2nd, 2012
Dipper kept a log in his notebook. It was all in code, just in case it fell into the wrong hands. He was recording how many bottles appeared under the porch each day. He had a system. He marked the bottles he already found with a tiny dot of ink on the inside of their caps, so he would know which were new and which were old. Then he kept track of the things that happened the night before he checked and saw how that corresponded to the number of new bottles.
It had only been a few days. He didn't have enough data to establish a pattern yet, but he hypothesized that the better the day went, the less bottles Stan would go through.
Today, he had a feeling there would be more bottles.
"We need to talk to them eventually, kid."
Dipper struggled against a burgeoning sense of doom and breathlessness as he clenched and unclenched his hands on the kitchen table. Stan put instant macaroni in front of him, steam curling up and fogging the fork. Dipper's stomach turned at the thought of eating, but Stan sat down across from him and squinted expectantly, so Dipper forced himself to spoon some of the glop into his mouth.
"So what do you want me to tell your parents? Ball's in your court."
The macaroni congealed in his throat and sank slowly to his stomach. It was easy to dodge his parents for now. Heck, it would be easy to dodge them all the way until their birthday. They trusted Stan to keep them updated if something bad happened, and they weren't the type to cling tightly. They wouldn't call until his and Mabel's birthday.
But they would expect Mabel to be sending letters. They would expect him to come home to California. They would expect him to be with Mabel.
Everyone in the Shack spent their entire evening after work dealing with the portal downstairs, including Wendy and Soos. Every time they turned around, they found more damage, and they were the only workers. McGucket couldn't help them with more than the theory, since he started babbling madly when Dipper even suggested coming to the Shack. They couldn't risk bringing more people into the secret, so Dipper had to tell all of Mabel's friends that she had suddenly gotten sick and went back home even when their help could have been useful. (He didn't know if he could ghost Candy and Grenda forever.) They were on their own, and the portal wasn't anywhere near being fixed. It definitely wouldn't be fixed before he had to go back to California.
Stan had that carefully guarded expression on his face that kept Dipper from seeing what was going on in his head, but Dipper could hazard a guess.
Stan knew people better than he did, and even Dipper knew what would happen if his parents found out that Mabel fell through an interdimensional portal on Stan's watch. They wouldn't believe them. They would think that Mabel disappeared or died instead. They would take back Dipper and cut off all contact with Stan. Maybe they would even try to have Stan arrested. Either way, Stan would lose what family he had left (after Dipper cost him the chance to get his twin back), and Dipper wouldn't be able to work on the portal and save Mabel.
"We can't tell them the truth," Dipper said. "We have to convince them Mabel is still here and to let us stay in Gravity Falls."
Stan nodded, his mouth a grim line. Dipper pushed his macaroni around in its Styrofoam bowl, but he could barely stomach the thought of continuing to eat.
"How's your impression of your sister?" Stan said.
"I…" Dipper's throat shriveled, but he forced himself to take a deep breath, pitching his voice high, imagining little bubbles of sparkles and happiness popping in his throat, and smiling like he would die if he didn't. "Who do you think you're talking to, Grunkle Stan? I think it's super!"
The imaginary bubbles exploded and sent shattered glass all over the inside of his neck, and Dipper was left queasy with a dirty taste in his mouth. Stan jerked back, like he had to flee the sudden burst of perkiness that had been sorely absent from the Shack.
"Ugh," Stan shook himself out like he had been touched by a ghost. "Your impression is just fine, kid. Too fine. Yeugh."
Dipper cleared his throat to get rid of Mabel's voice. "Fine enough to fool my parents?"
Stan paused, squinting at Dipper. "Well… I guess we'll find out."
Now that Dipper was paying attention, he could see that Stan's eyes were bloodshot, that spidery broken capillaries stood stark on his too-red nose. If Stan noticed him staring, he didn't let onto it. Instead, he sighed, pulling off his glasses and examining them for smudges. "Are you sure this is the road you want to go down, kid?"
The weight in his voice left Dipper with an awful sense of foreboding. Then again, 'awful sense of foreboding' described most of the things he'd felt in the last week. (He wished Mabel was here to tease him for it.) "What do you mean?"
"I mean that this means living a lie. You lie to your folks, you pretend to be your sister, you don't visit any family, and you don't know when you can do anything else. Take it from the man who's been impersonating his twin for thirty years: it's exhausting."
Stan shook his head as he started cleaning his glasses, looking down at them rather than anything else. Dipper pushed his macaroni around, but he didn't eat anything. Thirty years pretending to be someone he wasn't was beyond his comprehension. Grunkle Stan must have been so lonely, a voice that sounded like Mabel said in his head. "Now Stanford was a hermit and I hadn't spoken to my family in ten years. Pretending to be Mabel will be harder on you, and I don't know how long we can pull the wool over your parents' eyes. Are you sure you want to do this?"
He wondered what that would be like. Living away from his parents, dodging visits, pretending to be Mabel on the phone, forging her letters, lying to all of Gravity Falls about where she went… It would be hard. He could guess that much.
"When you had to pretend to be Stanford, you were alone." If Mabel were here, she would hold Stan's hand or give him a hug or something. But Dipper wasn't Mabel, and he couldn't do that. Instead, he just poured his feelings into his voice, struggling to make eye contact while his grunkle cleaned his glasses. "But I've got you. I've got you, Wendy, Soos… heck, I even have Pacifica and McGucket. You're my family too. We can do this as a team."
Stan looked at Dipper from the corner of his eye, his frown softening. Dipper managed to give him a small smile. "So… you want to help drill me on my Mabel impression?"
"Impression nothing. I'll drill you on how to lie and talk your folks into letting you stay here." Stan waved his hand at the macaroni. "But finish your dinner first. I told you that you gotta eat."
Amusement bubbled gently in Dipper's gut. Not enough to make him laugh, but it made his smile feel less forced. "I don't see you eating."
Stan shrugged, leaning back in his chair. "I'm fat and old. I don't need food."
"No, no, if we're a team, then you have to eat too." Dipper didn't touch his macaroni. Instead, he propped his chin on his hands and smirked. "I'm waiting."
"Ugh, this is why I never go soft on you. You get smug." Stan grumbled as he eased out of his seat and rumbled through the kitchen, grabbing another microwavable macaroni container, and Dipper's next few bites went down easier.
The next morning, Dipper didn't find any new bottles under the porch.
Earth, August 3rd, 2012
"Maybe we should say we're sick and can't make it back to California," Dipper said as he screwed a heating coil to a fixing that would attach to the inside of the portal. He and Stan sat in the kitchen, the pot on the stove set to boil soon while they both brainstormed about their most immediate problem: convincing his parents to let him and 'Mabel' stay in Gravity Falls. Considering it would mean leaving the fancy private school Dipper and Mabel attended in Piedmont, it would require something big.
"Your parents would come to visit you in a heartbeat," Stan grunted as he cut out little paper dolls to glue onto construction paper. When the two of them settled down to work on their separate projects, they both agreed that Stan's copious forgery experience would make him best suited for making a 'letter from Mabel' to send to her and Dipper's parents, and Dipper could proofread it for the appropriate level of Mabelness.
"Uh…" Dipper grinded his teeth in frustration as a screw bowed under the force of his screwdriver. "I don't know why they would let me stay unless there was a huge educational opportunity."
"Then tell them there's a huge educational opportunity. Like say there's a really fancy private school that wants to take you in for free, or maybe some egghead doctor wants to take you on as an apprentice." Stan grimaced at a mangled paper Dipper before tearing it up and tracing another. "Easy."
"What?" Dipper dropped a screw as he sputtered. "But… they'd check up on that! Make phone calls, look it up online, get paperwork!"
"Then you get someone to back you up on those phone calls and fake a website and forms." Stan licked a papercut like he had just suggested Dipper go to the store. "It's called a con, kid."
"But… what if they want to call more people to verify the story?" Dipper's voice cracked. He blushed when Stan smirked.
"Then you get more people to back you up. Forge some letters, grease some palms, no big deal." Stan waved his bleeding finger with a wink. "But the best way to do it is to just convince them they don't have to look it up in the first place." Stan carefully glued the paper Dipper next to a paper Mabel on construction paper drawn with Mabel's forged handwriting, complete with little hearts to dot the I's.
"I…" Dipper swallowed, squeezing his heating coil. "I don't know if I'm a good enough liar to pull that off."
"Liar—" Stan's laugh sounded more like a bark than a laugh. "You don't need to be a good liar. Your parents don't need a good lie, just one outrageous enough that they don't think you'd lie about it."
Stan turned his Mabel letter for Dipper to look at. "Well, what do you think?"
It was childish the way Mabel would make it. Clunky crayon work, round faces, lots of color. It still felt wrong.
"You forgot the glitter."
Stan looked at his letter and frowned. "Darn, you're right. How could I forget that?"
As Stan uncapped a bottle of glitter (which would surely be all over the kitchen for months to come), someone knocked on the front door.
"Go see who it is. If it's the cops, I'm not home," said Stan.
"I know the drill," said Dipper as he reluctantly left his heating coil and slid out of his seat. As he walked out, there was the clatter of a glitter bottle and a made up swear from Stan, and Dipper picked up the pace to avoid getting caught in whatever it was.
"Sorry," Dipper said as he got to the front door. "The Mystery Shack is closed for the—" A familiar girl wrapped in scarves and sunglasses to hide her face greeted him on the porch. "Pacifica?"
"Don't say my name too loudly," she hissed softly before sliding into the Shack. When she passed by, Dipper could smell just enough champagne and floral perfume to remind him how musky the Shack was. "You know I'm not supposed to be here."
"I don't think your parents have spies in the woods," Dipper said as he quickly wiped his hands, blackened with grease and glitter, on his pants and wondered what kind of twelve-year-old girl wore perfume. (Or was it perfume? Maybe she just smelled like champagne and flowers naturally.)
"You never know," Pacifica huffed as she took off her sunglasses. She had eyeshadow on. Why did she always wear so much makeup? She looked completely wrong in the Shack with her perfume and makeup and fancy clothes and Dipper couldn't get his hands clean.
"Why are you here if you're so nervous about it? Is there something you need?" Dipper asked, trying to keep any general irritation out of his voice. Pacifica was doing the entire Pines family a huge favor by funding them, and the least Dipper could do in return was be nice when she came around.
"Nothing I need." Pacifica kept glancing around and shifting in place, like she was struggling to maintain her typical cool girl persona but she didn't know how to deal with her surroundings. Dipper could understand that. The Shack was a wreck compared to Northwest Mansion. Even he and Mabel needed a little time to get used to it. "I'm here to warn you about something."
"Warn us?" The last time Pacifica showed up unannounced at their home, Dipper turned into a tree. Now she was coming in secret to their house to warn them in person about something possibly more dangerous than an angry lumberjack ghost, and he did not need this in his life right now. He fixed his jaw and took a deep breath. "Is someone tapping your phones? Is that why you needed to come in person?"
"What? No." Immediately, she frowned and waved her hand. "Well, actually yes, but it's just my parents. They're always recording my calls to make sure I'm not embarrassing the family or talking to people I shouldn't be. That's not the point."
Dipper furrowed his brow, but Pacifica plowed on.
"It's probably no big deal. You had some problems with that fake psychic, Gideon Gleeful, right?"
"Gideon?"
Dipper wasn't sure what he was expecting, but Gideon wasn't it. He shoved his hands in his pockets (getting his palms clean was a lost cause). "Yeah, he left us homeless, chased us with a giant robot, and we got him arrested. What about him?" Gideon was still in prison, right?
"I got a tip that he's plotting to rob my family." She crossed her arms, thrusting her hip to one side like the idea someone would even bother to try to burgle her was equally amusing and offensive. "He noticed Mabel is missing."
"He… how?" His stomach twisted. Mabel had been gone long enough that everyone was noticing, even Gideon.
"He's in prison, not underground. You can still hear about what's going on there," Pacifica said in a clipped tone that made Dipper want to shake her a little. What would she know about prison, anyway? "Obviously he'll never be able to steal something from the Northwests, but I wanted to give you a heads up. It sounds like he was trying to steal something to help him get to you guys."
"Like break out of prison?" Dipper took a deep breath, doing his best to quell a growing sense of impending doom in his chest. They didn't need this. They didn't need to deal with Gideon. More than anything, Dipper didn't need to deal with one of his attacks of suffocation and floating out of his body when Pacifica was right there.
"I don't know. My tip didn't tell me everything. But I'm going to keep an eye on it and so should you." Her perfectly plucked brow (what kid gets her eyebrows plucked) furrowed. She dug her fingers in her coat sleeve. "Are you okay?"
Damn it. She noticed. "I, uh, could you give me a minute?" He didn't wait before he rushed away, away from Pacifica, away from her stupid makeup and champagne and the news she brought with her.
He ended up in a glitter-covered kitchen. He wanted to go to the forest or the utility closet, but instead, he just grabbed the edge of the sink and started mumbling under his breath. Recitations, pieces of prayers from temple, nubs of poetry he learned in class, scraps of song lyrics. Breathe, recite, think about the next word, the next bit to say.
The chair creaked behind him. Stan. Right, he was here, working on the letter. Dipper had to stop, had to calm down or Stan would need to drink more, but that just made his heart thud faster and the recitations fritz.
A warm, meaty hand rested on his shoulder.
"Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu, melekh ha'olam…" Stan's voice rolled over the words like grit. It wasn't a prayer in his mouth, but it was familiar, every bit as mundane to him as gravel under feet.
Dipper squeezed the side of the sink and leaned his head against Stan's side. "Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu, melekh ha'olam."
"Got it, kid." Dipper most certainly didn't have it, and he could tell Stan didn't either. Their tongues slid on sounds that should be hard, punched the syllables that should be soft, halfway Anglicized a language mostly foreign to both of them, but the accuracy and meaning and tradition never mattered. What always mattered was that the words were said with family.
"Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu, melekh ha'olam. Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu, melekh ha'olam." Dipper repeated it with his grunkle over and over until it didn't feel like the world would end and he could pry his hands from the sink.
"There you go. No big deal, right?" His grunkle squeezed his shoulder before letting him go. "Now go explain to your friend that you didn't ditch her."
He briefly considered correcting Stan, telling him that Pacifica wasn't his friend, but it didn't seem worth it. Even when his heart wasn't beating itself against his ribcage, it felt like all his energy had been scooped out, leaving nothing but hollow bones. "Right." He had no idea how long he left Pacifica hanging, but he could take a deep breath and dab sweat from his face before going back to the front hall. "Pacifica?"
Pacifica wasn't there. Maybe she left already? The idea was vaguely disappointing as Dipper stuck his head outside to check the porch. "Pacifica?"
"Hey, Dipper."
Dipper jumped when she talked behind him. When did she get there? She was frowning at him, but it wasn't one of the mean frowns she'd sometimes direct at Mabel or their family when she was acting snotty. It was one of those softer frowns he saw when they were fighting that ghost together.
"Sorry, I just… I was looking for you and I got lost." She started tugging on the finger of her glove, but then she stopped, deliberately putting her hands down at her sides. "Are you…" She shook her head, and that infuriating cool girl persona wavered. "I, uh, I'm trying to get a phone my parents don't know about so I can call people they don't like. If I do, I'll call you up and give you the number, okay?"
Dipper was never quite sure what to do with her like this, when she showed the slivers of personhood underneath her haughty exterior. It was… nice. When she opened up to him at the party and agreed to help Mabel without any questions, it was all nice.
But he didn't know how to deal with it. "So you can keep in touch over Gideon and the portal?"
She smoothed out her skirt. The haughtiness slid over her face just as easily as Mr. Mystery sliding on Stan's. "So we can keep in touch. Or we can talk. Whatever."
Pacifica pushed on her sunglasses and wrapped her hair in her scarf and just like that she was lost again. "I need to go back home before my parents notice I'm gone. Keep me updated."
"Sure." Dipper knew she couldn't stay anyway.
She brushed past him as she left.
Champagne lingered in the air.
Dimension ?, Day ?, 2012
Mabel's scream echoed through the entire jungle. Ford jumped so hard that the trap he was setting snapped over his hand, provoking a curse as he threw it to the ground and started looking around wildly.
"Mabel?"
He raced towards the scream. The sky was turning purple as the sun set, and the jungle was coming alive. Animals of all sorts, from fuzzy to scaly, were rushing through the brush and climbing the trees, crowding on the branches and snapping at each other for space.
There was something wrong. All different species shouldn't have the same behavior.
"MABEL!" He cupped his hand around his mouth as he yelled. "MABEL!"
"Grunkle Ford!"
He shot towards his name, shoving bushes and tangled vines from his face until he could see her. Her gloves were stained gold and she was trying to climb a tree as a veritable river of animals shoved her out of the way, streaming up the bark and through the canopy. She had her hands on the lowest hanging branch, but she couldn't get a foothold on the trunk, the animals running by too quickly.
"Mabel—" Ford caught one of her feet and pushed her up. She pulled herself onto the branch, kicking her feet in the air and narrowly avoiding kicking him in the face as she wiggled up. She didn't even make the animals pause. They started running over her back, scrambling to find space, even when she pulled herself up so she could sit on the bark, still they ran over her lap and legs.
"Grunkle Ford, what's happening?" She looked so scared and that just made the panic beat harder at the back of Ford's throat. He clasped his hands over her knee, trying to soothe her but mostly just reassuring himself that she was still okay.
"I don't know, but something has agitated the entire jungle. It's best if we just do what they do." He grabbed onto the branch himself, but it creaked ominously and Mabel squeaked as she dug her fingers in the bark. Ford immediately let it go. "Mabel, get to the next branch up right now."
"But what about—"
"The sooner you do, the sooner I can try to climb. Now!"
Mabel still had two-headed squirrels running over her lap when she got to her feet. They popped off of her, falling to the spongey jungle floor, and they shrieked before running up another tree. The carnivorous plants under Ford's feet were starting to vibrate. Mabel tried to grab onto the trunk of the tree, but snakes slid over her hands and mice tried to slip under them, and she couldn't get a grip. She shook her hands off and leapt instead.
Ford's stomach dropped. Mabel slammed her face into the next branch, and her braces crunched against the bark, but she had a grip and she was wiggling onto it even as a chinchilla-like thing ran over her head.
The carnivorous tubes were starting to shudder and stretch wide open, and Ford wasn't interested in staying to see what they did. He grasped onto the lowest branch and swung onto it, lizards scrambling out from under him and narrowly avoiding being crushed. The branch creaked and shook, but it didn't bow or break, and Mabel was smiling at him from her higher branch with a bloodied mouth and she was okay.
Golden syrup erupted from the tubes on the ground, filling up the entire jungle floor and releasing an awful sweetness that made Ford's head spin. It turned a richer gold than before, like honey, scent doubling in strength until Ford's eyes watered. The animals were still now, lined up on the branches. (Also, they were lined up in his and Mabel's laps and shoulders. Also head, in the case of one daring two-headed squirrel that made a nest in Mabel's braids.)
Ford leaned his back against the trunk of the tree, struggling to keep his head clear when everything smelled like a two-bit perfume store mixed with a zoo. "Did you get hurt?" he said, looking up at his niece, who wiggled to mirror him and put her back on the trunk, provoking cranky chitters from the animals that sat around her. Unlike him, she was reaching to pet all of them.
"I'm okay." She wiped her mouth on her sleeve before reaching to touch a snake coiled at her knees. The snake hissed, wiggling away from her hands, and that just made her deflate. "Just a little cut, no biggy."
"And your leg?"
She pulled up the leg of her white leather pants, showing him white bandages running up and down her shin and calf. He couldn't see any blood soaking through, so at least they had that. "It's okey-dokey down there."
The leaves above them thrashed. A bird shrieked. The animals around Mabel jumped to attention and ran over her legs and shoulders to get to the trunk.
A beast with eight legs and clawed feet dropped onto her branch, an entire bird snapping into pieces in its snarl of teeth. Its six eyes fixed on Mabel.
Ford tried to scramble to his feet, but his branch swayed and he had to catch himself on the trunk as lizards snapped at his ankles. He grabbed at his holster, pulling out a gun, but they were too close together. He could hit Mabel if he fired. "Mabel!"
Mabel punched the spider beast in the face.
The thing recoiled, hissing and swallowing the bird. There was just enough space between the beast and Mabel. Ford aimed his gun and fired.
Blood spurted from the beast's face and it howled. Mabel screamed and covered her eyes. The thing wobbled on the branch, half its jaw falling on the wood with a clunk as it tore from the rest of its head. One leg slid on the blood, and it fell off the branch into the liquid below.
Ford didn't have time to stare at Mabel before the beast's scream deafened him. They both slapped their hands over their ears as the thing thrashed on the jungle floor, partially submerged in the golden syrup and dissolving. Its skin peeled back and pieces of flesh floated away and into the greedy tubed plants.
"Oh…" Mabel looked green. Ford forced his eyes away from the dying thing.
"Don't look." If she vomited, she could dehydrate herself, and she needed all the water she had. They didn't know how long they would have to be up here.
"I think the whole jungle eats people," she said, trying to look at him instead. She was pressed against the trunk again, sitting on a branch just a mite too thin to be comfortable, and creatures were pouring over her shoulders, chest, and lap to line up on the branch now that the danger was gone. Her eyes were glassy and it looked like she might like a hug, but Ford was too far away. He couldn't give her one. "I found teeth in this tree's fruit."
The screaming of the beast cut off with a whimper and a sticky blub. Ford took a steadying breath. "Keep your eyes on me. As soon as this is over, we're going to find a portal and we're going to leave this place."
"Hmhmm." She forced her mouth in a grim line, but there was strain in the corners of her eyes. Then they overflowed and tears ran down her nose onto the sparkling chinchilla in her lap. The chinchilla didn't seem to mind terribly, but Ford's chest hurt, like someone was sliding a knife through it. Was this heartbreak?
Ford had learned quickly that his niece responded very well to touch and casual affection. He couldn't give it to her right now, and it hurt. What else did she respond to when she was unhappy?
"What are you grateful for?" Ford tried to force a smile. He didn't do too well. "I'm having trouble thinking of much."
She took a deep, shuddering breath, and started to pet the animals around her again as she sniffled. They all avoided her hands, climbing to her back and clinging to the fabric of her clothes to avoid them entirely. She checked her hands, and in the light, her gloves gleamed with the lighter gold the fluid was before. Mabel shuddered, making an unhappy keening noise before wiping her gloves on her pants. The fact that none of her clothes were degrading made him want to go back to the ice planet to thank Anise.
She took a deep breath, more tears tracking her face. Her gloves clean, she reached for the animals again. This time, they didn't run. "Then you're not being very creative. I'm grateful for the animals around me."
A two-headed squirrel settled on Ford's shoulder. He didn't try to pet it. "They're cute in their own way, I suppose. I'm grateful for them too."
"I'm grateful we're still alive."
"Yes," Ford nodded, still trying to force that reassuring smile but knowing in his heart that she wasn't buying it. "That's also worth being thankful. What else?"
"The sun, the moon, the stars," she started to count off on her fingers. The crying had stopped. Ford breathed a slow sigh of relief. "My arms, my legs, my fingers, and my toes…"
"All excellent things to be thankful for." The world still stank of that horrible overwhelming sweetness. In the distance, the screams of dissolving animals peppered the landscape.
"And I'm grateful I'm with you," Mabel said, threading her fingers in a chinchilla's fur. It didn't run away. "I'm grateful that I got to meet you, and that you don't have to be alone anymore."
There went his heart again. When was the last time he'd ever had a companion? Not for a long time, and never someone who followed him across worlds. His niece dangled over a sea of nauseating digestive fluid, petting aliens and thinking about his happiness. Ford was reminded once again of how wonderfully perfect his niece was. He didn't deserve her.
"I'm grateful to be with you too," he said. "And I'm grateful that I had a chance to meet you, but I wish you could have stayed on Earth. This isn't what I wanted for any family of mine."
"It isn't what any family of yours wanted for you either."
Stanley. She was talking about Stanley. For a moment, he thought about that fateful moment he fell through the portal—the panic, the pleading, the look in Stanley's eyes. It was easy to get angry at his twin for the whole thing, but he knew Stanley never wanted him to suffer this.
That didn't mean Stanley hadn't still royally messed up.
Mabel forced a smile for him. He could tell it was fake because he couldn't see her braces. It was better than the crying, he reasoned. "We just have to wait until Dipper and Grunkle Stan fix the portal and then we'll both be home. Until then, we can keep each other company." She winked, which looked a little sad without the cheerful gleam of her braces. "I gotta say, this has been some serious grunkle-niece bonding time, am I right?"
He wanted to laugh, to say 'yes, this has been great bonding time, but let's think of something a little less intense for when I meet your brother', but he couldn't. The portal would be broken beyond Stan's ability to repair it, and even if he could, Stan and Ford would be long dead before it all came together again. "Mabel…"
"If we're going to be up here a while, you want to swap stories?" She spoke over him, and he had a feeling she knew exactly what he was going to say. Neither of them were ever going to see their twins again. They were all each other had.
The fact stuck in his throat, and he saw no reason to force it on Mabel. She had enough to deal with. She would process the truth of their situation in time. "Stories sound wonderful."
"I can tell you about the time me and Dipper tried to trap the Tooth Fairy."
Ford wouldn't tell her about any stories from home. The ones he had were usually not very happy, and definitely not things he wanted to think about at length. He could tell her about the multiverse, though—talk about whimsical worlds where the breeze smelled like sunshine and people bobbed in the air like dandelion seeds.
And she could tell him about the world they left behind and the people he would never meet. Shermy, his nephew, his niece-in-law, and his grandnephew. She didn't bring up Stanley. He was grateful for that. He was also a little sad for it, too.
Once the digestive fluid was gone, he was going to take her to another world to finish off their jerky together and nap somewhere warm. He'd make sure she was okay.
From world to world, he would make sure she was okay.
No warnings for this chapter.
Thank you to Eregyrn-Falls for betaing this chapter. Also, thank you to everyone who reviewed. Comments, compliments, and critiques are always warmly welcomed.
As you may have noticed, I've been gone for a while. Don't worry; I was just busy with real life stuff, but now it's over and hopefully things don't get too crazy from here on out. This world was also, as many of you asked, inspired by Life of Pi (which is a wonderful book that everyone should read). I mentioned that in my Ao3 comments, but forgot to add it in my FF comments.
For those who don't know, I have a Tumblr called Themadqueenmab. I post unbeta'd ficlets, comissions, fandom reblogs, and writing tips I come across, so if that interests you, feel free to follow.