AN: Sooo… Y'know, just read this first. Decided I couldn't wait until later tonight.

Thank you to the guest who said it was the best fit they've ever read. That nearly made me cry. :,)

Song for this chapter: Forever Young by Alphaville

"Hey Grunkle Ford?"

"Yes, sweetie?"

"Can we make some kind of markers or memorials for Eins, Zwei, and Drei?"

Mabel's voice was soft and sad. So, so sad, Stanford Pines observed. And he knew why, he felt it himself. His home, their home felt so much more empty without the three brothers around, talking and laughing and eating meals with them… And Ford had known them their whole lives. He'd heard Eins say his first garbled sentence, unable to even speak English until the man had recorded an entry with him. It had been the same with Zwei and Drei. They were…

They had been…

His children, in a way, a product of magic and science, yes, but… Family.

"Of course, Mabel," he answered quietly. Ford heard a muffled sob and turned to see Dipper's shoulders shaking, face hidden in a mystery novel. It was the first night after the last day of Weirdmaggeddon. The apocalypse had ended about nine hours earlier, but it was now midnight and no one could sleep.

Dipper was hit the hardest. His eyes were haunted, filled with a look Ford had only seen on himself, due to all his portal travels.

It was the look of someone who had seen their family die.

Which is exactly what had happened to the poor boy. He peered up from his book with those wide, tear-stained eyes, then choked out, "I want to help." His right hand unconsciously fingered the twisted metal ring on his wrist. Ford had recognized it immediately.

"We need to do it as soon as possible," Dipper continued, scrubbing at his eyes with a forearm. "Tonight. C'mon, Mabel, let's go make them." He pushed his chair out with a more irritating noise than the entire Pines family had heard all night. Ford flinched.

"Can I maybe make one for Eins?" came a voice from the doorway. Stanley. "I mean… We were friends… Family for thirty years. We took care of each other. Please let me do this for him." Damn it he looked just as bad as Dipper.

"Of course, Grunkle Stan," Mabel said quietly. "Let's go get some wood."

And now Ford could only watch as his three family members left the room to make three wooden monuments. What could he do? He had left the brothers, had frozen and buried two of them and practically abandoned and given away the other. They said they forgave him, but… Did he really deserve it?

So he let the three with real ties to those kids make the monuments.

Four hours later, the four Pines found themselves trekking through the woods at dawn, carefully carrying a wooden structure. It consisted of three vertical planks of wood, slightly rounded at the top like fence posts, a horizontal plank that connected them all.

Stan had made Eins' plank. He'd found his own woodburning kit and let the kids carefully use it too. The first part of the monument read '1' and the dates of the years he had been alive. Near the base, there was a small inscription of Stan's zodiac symbol, a sign that this was him paying his last respects to the first brother.

Mabel had inscribed the next plank for Zwei. She remembered Zwei giving her advice on how to flirt, how funny he'd been. How he'd protected his little brother like Mabel had done for Dipper. His plank was very similar to Eins', except with a 2 and a different creation date and a shooting star at the base.

No one had even needed to say that Dipper was to make Drei's plank. His hands had shaken badly but somehow he had been able to get the inscriptions burned into the wood in his normal writing. And, of course, the plank contained a 3, the dates, and a pine tree at the bottom.

Then… They had given Ford the honor of inscribing the cross plank.

Brothers, friends, family.

The woods were dark, though the sky was finally getting that pre-dawn green tint to it, where the stars seem to shine ever brighter before being blown out.

Then…

Then…

Stan stopped dead, flashlight trembling, no, whole body trembling actually.

"What?" Ford hissed, already shoving Dipper and Mabel behind him and yanking out his gun. "What is it?"

Stan could only lift his flashlight hand and raise one finger to point. Illuminated there on the ground was a large lump of rusty reddish cloth. For a second, he didn't know what he was looking at. But one split second later…

"DREI!" Dipper didn't care about his squeaky shriek, he just barreled out from behind his sister and pelted to the lump. Stan followed too, running and getting down on his knees next to the bundle, leaving Ford to the mercy of the moonlight.

But then a pair of glow-in-the-dark eyes blinked open, and Ford saw two more pairs still lidded and glowing faintly, and he rushed over as well.

The brothers were alive.

"Drei, oh Drei I thought… You died but somehow you're back and I missed you so much!" Dipper was squeezing the life out of Drei, who was clinging to him. "Dip! Oh goshes I am so glads to see you! Thoughts I would never sees you again!"

Now Eins and Zwei were waking up, and each was embraced by Stan and Mabel, respectively. And all of a sudden, almost everyone was crying. Eins had a hand covering half his face as he sobbed incoherently in relief, and Stan had tears silently dripping down his cheeks. Zwei was biting his lip, though his eyes were sparkling as he tried not to cry, and Mabel's face was buried in his chest. And Dipper and Drei were echoing each other, half laughing and half crying, each wrapping the other in a bear hug.

Then Stan pulled the other brothers and his niece and nephew into his hug. "Drei, kiddo," he murmured. "Zwei. Am I glad to see you three."

"How?" It was the first word Ford said. "How are you alive?" His voice cracked, like his throat was closing up.

Eins's eyes finally met Ford's and he let out a slightly hysterical laugh. "Well, first, it hurt like hell."

Hell indeed, fire and demons and all.

"And then… Nothing. For a long time. Like being frozen," said Zwei in a voice similarly strangled by emotion.

"Thens… Here," finished Drei, peeking over Dipper's shoulder. "We gots losts in dark and had to rests."

"We were coming to put up a monument for you guys," said Mabel in a teary voice. "We wanted to do it tonight…"

"Yeah," Dipper said in a scratchy voice. "It seemed really important we do it tonight."

Eins smiled and leaned over, ruffling Dipper's hair since his hat had fallen off.

Ford was still standing there, at a complete loss for what to say or do. His heart was racing and he was relieved, but he still felt insanely guilty. But then he saw Drei wriggle, prompting Dipper to let go. The youngest and littlest of the construct brothers, the incomplete one, the one he had upset when he first came out of the portal… Drei walked over to Ford.

And hugged him around the middle. "Creator join groups hug too," he said quietly, then pulled Ford over to the group. He got down and was immediately accepted into the pile. Eins, Zwei, and Drei still weren't mad at him. And he'd gotten them killed.

It seemed remarkable. But amazingly good. He was their father, their Creator. That's all they needed from him.

On the way back to the Shack, the monument to the brothers would be quietly dropped into the Bottomless Pit; the mood would grow somber for a moment as the seven watch the wood spiral off into the dark. There would be a feeling of closure, peace, as they returned to their home. There would be consequences for the brothers, of course, but their family would be there to help.

But that is all in the future. For now, the group remained huddled there in a moonlit clearing until it was moonlit no more, feeling rather than seeing the dawn break.

It was a better day than any of them had ever expected to wake up to.

AN: In the published Journal 3, it's stated as [canon] that all 3 journals were reformed and found in the woods, unchanged, after Weirdmaggeddon ended! So the journal brothers come back to life, thankfully. ;) I hope I tricked some of you, ehehehe…

The actual passage from the journal: "Dipper here! I can't believe I'm holding this book in my hands. I saw Bill burn all 3 journals right in front of me! But this morning, Soos found the journals lying in the woods, unharmed. Apparently, defeating Bill didn't just de-weird the town, it also restored many of the things he destroyed-including the journals!"

Anyways Drei's Birthday Special is coming up on June 18th, which is when the next chapter will be released! I hope you guys will like it! :D You'll have to wait a while, but in that time I'll be writing it and hopefully making it awesome!