Sharing a Life

Once Dipper was safely home and everyone was asleep, Mabel came out to talk to Lebam, who was hiding in the woods.

"So, who are you really? How come you look like me?" Mabel asked.

"You didn't know that Gideon was a dark wizard, did you?" asked Lebam. "I'm your mirror doppelganger. He pulled me out of a mirror world, I think. I started out thinking I was you; I have all your memories up to where Gideon and I... I mean Gideon and you, were sitting on his warehouse roof and you had just agreed to a date."

"What's your name?" asked Mabel.

"It should be Mabel Pines, but Gideon called me Lebam Senip. I'll go along with that," said Lebam.

"What's been going on between you and Gideon?" Mabel asked.

"Nothing, fortunately," said Lebam with a shudder. "He had me locked in his warehouse. He can magically force me to obey his commands, too, but he wanted to save himself for you. I was just 'backup'. But tonight he was going to take me, after he killed Dipper. So I escaped."

"He was really going to kill Dipper?" asked Mabel. "What a creepozoid."

"Yes," said Lebam. "He lured Dipper out with a fake message from Toby Determined, saying Toby wanted to interview him for the paper. Gideon told me all about it; he was even going to use me somehow to make Dipper's dying moments worse."

"How did you get away?" asked Mabel.

"I can pick locks with hairpins, just like you," said Lebam. "Once I got away I headed to the house, hoping to catch Dipper along the way and warn him. But I missed him, so I borrowed your bike and rode back to the warehouse. I was just in time to save Dipper."

Lebam described how she had tricked Gideon into believing she still wanted to be makeover buddies, grabbed his amulet, thrown the amulet to Dipper, saved both of them from a deadly fall, and then destroyed the amulet.

"This is so cool," Mabel said. "You're like the identical sister I never had but I sometimes wished Dipper had been. Thank you for saving him."

"You're welcome," said Lebam.

Mabel gave Lebam a big hug.

"What will you do now?" Mabel asked. "Go back to the mirror world?"

"I don't know how to go back," Lebam said. "I guess I'll have to go away somewhere and try to start a new life."

"Stay here with us," said Mabel. "You can share my life. We'll swap places and fool everyone. It'll be super duper fun."

"I love super duper fun. But only if you can keep me a secret," said Lebam. "If not, Gideon will try to get me again, or your Grunkle Stan will want to use me for a sideshow."

"You got it, twin sister," said Mabel.

Lebam said, "I'd like to have a place to sleep inside. There's a wolf that prowls the yard at night."

"You saw it?" asked Mabel.

"I smell it," said Lebam. "Can't you? It marked its territory on the totem pole."

"I can't smell anything," said Mabel. "Your sense of smell must be keener than mine."

"It probably comes of being part llama," said Lebam.

You're part llama? Cool! I wish I could be part llama, too," said Mabel.

"It has its points," said Lebam. "Anyway, what about that storage closet in the attic, right near the top of the stairs? I could sleep in there."

"I'll share some of my blankets with you," said Mabel.

"Don't worry about it. My copy of your memories tells me there are a bunch of coats on hangers in there. I can take some down and sleep on them," said Lebam.

"Tomorrow we can start trading places," said Mabel.

"I'll need a little time to practice before I trust myself with fooling Dipper," said Lebam.

"What's to practice? You're just like me," said Mabel.

"Not quite. Are you right handed?" asked Lebam.

"Yes, I'm right-handed," said Mabel. "I throw really well with my right, but when I throw with my left I usually miss."

"I'm left-handed," said Lebam. "I tossed Gideon's bolo tie to Dipper with my left hand tonight, but I think he was too much in shock to notice."

They sneaked inside and got Lebam bedded down in the closet for the night.

Lebam lay low and slept most of the next day, recovering from her ordeal as Gideon's prisoner.

Gompers went up on the roof in the morning, looking for a symbol to associate with Wendy. He found her private break area with a cooler, a place she visited every working day. He nosed the cooler box open, and found an empty ice bag floating in half-melted ice. Click. "Ice" was a new symbol on the Ring for Wendy.

Later, when Robbie came over, Gompers saw a heart symbol on Robbie's dark hoodie. Click. Now there was a symbol for Robbie, the "Stitched Heart." Another couple complete.

Mabel, Dipper, Wendy, and her teen friends staged a raid on the "Dusk 2 Dawn" convenience store that evening, which would have ended their lives except for Dipper and his "Lamby Lamby Dance." (His shepherding memories as Domiclese had leaked through into a love for lambs in his childhood. This lead his mother to create a lamb costume for him and to teach him a song and dance routine about lambs and grazing.)

Mabel came to visit Lebam that night after the others were asleep. Mabel looked exhausted.

"What's that sweet stuff I smell on you?" Lebam asked.

"Smile Dip," said Mabel. "We raided an abandoned convenience store with Wendy and her friends."

"Do you have more? I want some," said Lebam.

"No. It's evil stuff," said Mabel. "I pigged out on it so much that never want to eat it again."

"No fair! I want to pig out too," said Lebam.

"It's banned, past its expiration date, and it will give you hallucinations," said Mabel.

"Now I really want it," said Lebam. "Where's the convenience store? I want to go raid it now on your bike."

"If you must," said Mabel. "Watch out for the ghosts."

"You met ghosts, too?" asked Lebam. "I'm definitely doing this."

"Just tell them you're not a teenager and you should be all right."

Lebam biked out to the Dusk 2 Dawn store. The owner ghosts were friendly.

"May I please have a big box of Smile Dip to take home?" she asked them.

"I'd rather not give out our merchandise for free," said Ma Duskerton.

"We really enjoyed that Lamby Lamby dance your brother did for us," said Pa Duskerton. "Can you do it too?"

"Dancing is Dipper's thing, but I can sing. I'll sing the second verse. Dipper and I used to giggle over that part when we were younger, but now he usually skips it," said Lebam.

"When you're grazing on the grassy-grassy,
Yum-yum! Yum-yum!
Be sure that you don't get too gassy-gassy,
Burp-burp! Burp-burp!"

"Delightful," said Ma.

"You've earned your Smile Dip," said Pa.

Lebam went to the display. "Oh, it's almost all gone."

"No problem, with our ghostly convenience-store powers," said Pa.

He gestured and a small stack of full Smile Dip boxes appeared in front of Lebam.

"Thank you!" Lebam said.

She loaded the boxes onto her bike basket, holding them steady with her chin as she rode back to the house.

"I'm gonna get so sick," she thought.

After capturing an image of the Question Mark for Soos the next day (just because he was always around), Gompers had a complete Ring. (The Fez Symbol, Glasses, and Six-Fingers were already there). The control program in Gompers transmitted the complete set of symbols back in time to before Bill first showed them to McGucket.

"I saw ten symbols, all righty," McGucket said.

"Good, now we have complete information," said the being. "Two of the symbols are for two brothers, the Pine twins Stanford and Stanley. We need to get both of them here."

Everything went as before... and everything was in place except for the last missing Journal. Bill still didn't know where to find it. He kept looking outside Gravity Falls.