Dipper & Wendy vs The Future
Part Twenty Five
On an early moonlit morning in Gravity Falls, the twin daughters of Wendy and Mason Pines were born. After several hours of intense labor, the ginger woman delivered Pacifica Kathleen Pines into the world at 2:07am; shortly followed by her sister Mabel Elise Pines at 2:11am. While glad that the extremely painful pregnancy had drawn to conclusion, part of the young woman had grown used to her situation. The couple was extremely grateful that both girls appeared to be healthy and happy as they rested in the hospital room. "I can't believe it… Two perfect little girls…" Wendy commented as Mabel let out a small yawn; Pacifica already fast asleep. "I know… It's like everything else in the world doesn't matter… Because I'm looking at my whole world right now…" Dipper replied as he caressed the face of his lover before leaning in for a kiss. Pacifica had been swaddled in a purple blanket, as it was her namesake's favorite color; Mabel adorned in bright pink for the same reason. The new parents were grateful that the duo could easily be told apart by their hair color, as they both sported hazel eyes and identical looks. Pacifica had inherited her father's chestnut mane, while Mabel sported the signature auburn hair of the Corduroy clan.
Wendy was glad that she had read up on what happens after the birth of a child, as she wanted to be with the girls for the first few minutes directly after delivering them. The twins had rested on her alabaster skin and the new mother's emerald eyes had looked into the hazel gazes of her daughters; a moment that would live with her for all eternity. Eventually, the babies were cleaned and wrapped up, allowing the nurses to stitch the mother in her most sensitive of areas. Dipper, who was not as familiar with the post birth procedures, had feared for a fleeting moment that his lover was in some sort of trouble. All was explained to the concerned man and the children were soon returned to the now recovering woman. Upon Wendy's insistence, the room she had delivered in sported a full fold out bed for Dipper to rest with her and their daughters. About an hour after the birth, both mother and children had fallen asleep. Unable to join them, partially due to drinking a few too many energy drinks to stay awake and not miss the moment his life changed, the brown haired man got up from the bed and exited the room.
Wandering the hallways of the hospital, Dipper took note of how calm the medical center was at this time of the night. Finding a map on the wall, the twenty year old began his trek to get a bit of fresh air. Entering a staircase that he wasn't quite sure he was supposed to use, he headed for the roof of the building. After about five minutes and two floors, the new father reached his destination and opened the heavy metal door. Much to his relief, opening the door did not trigger an alarm, which would have been all that he needed at that particular moment. Looking up, the chestnut haired man took note of the full moon. It bathed the Earth below in a brilliant light that made it much easier to navigate the gravel covered roof of the hospital. The faint orange glow of a cigarette and outline of a scrub clad person appeared as he rounded the brick corner of the entrance. Having gone through a whole range of emotions in the previous day, all he wanted to do is relax in peace and quiet. At the same time, he didn't want to frighten the worker he shared the roof with and had hoped to strike up a conversation.
Leaning against a metal railing that lined the perimeter of the building, he turned and looked at the person next to him. Clad in light blue scrubs, it was clear that she was some sort of nurse. "How's it going?" Dipper asked as she took a drag from the cigarette. "Eh… You think by now I'd be used to seeing someone take their last breath and slip into the never ending unknown we so lovingly call death… But nope… Still gets to me every single time… In a twisted kind of way, I envy them" she mused in a sullen tone before placing the stick of tobacco back between her lips and taking a deep breath; inhaling the calming smoke. "I-I'm sorry to hear that… I-I'm Dipper, by the way…" the brown haired man replied. "No you're not… Dipper's over there…" the blonde woman said as she pointed skyward to the left of the full moon, towards the Big Dipper constellation. The new father chuckled at the comment and thought that he should clarify his name. "Actually… It's right here…" he retorted as he pulled his bangs back and revealed his birthmark. "Huh… That's pretty cool… I'm Cassandra… So… Come to hospital rooftops and strike up random conversations often?" the scrub clad woman inquired. "Nah… I just needed some fresh air…" he quipped. Cassandra took yet another drag from the cigarette before replying. "Everything alright?" she asked with a bit of genuine concern; wondering why a young and attractive man would be on the rooftop of a hospital at three in the morning. "Yeah! Great in fact! My wife just gave birth to our twin daughters about an hour ago… They were resting and I'm all wound up from pounding energy drinks, so here I am…" Dipper replied as he gazed down on the town he called his home. A bit of disappointment came over the young nurse as she realized that yet another promising man had been claimed in the small town. "Congrats! That's awesome! A-About the kids and all, I mean… Not the whole being wired in the middle of the night deal…" the blonde woman said; trying to hide her slight disappointment as she began to fish in the pockets of her pants for something.
After locating her pack of cigarettes from the tight pocket of her scrubs, she opened it and removed a pair. "Well… I know it's usually, like, customary to smoke a cigar when you welcome a kid into the world, but all I've got are these…" she said as she handed one to the new father. "Th-Thanks…" he said as he hesitantly took the cancer stick from the nurse. While he had never smoked before in his life, he didn't want to be rude and turn down the gesture. Removing a cheap green lighter from her pocket, she flicked it and held the flame to the end of her companion's cigarette. Placing the now lit stick between his lips, he drew a deep breath and inhaled the smoke. Cassandra looked on in amazement as it was about the longest drag she had ever seen someone take in her life. Dipper felt sick to his stomach and began to cough as the large plume of smoke escaped into the moonlit early morning sky. "Dude… Ya okay over there?" she asked to the new father as he hacked and coughed; doubled over with his hands on his knees. Suddenly a realization had come over the twenty-six year old woman; he had probably never smoked before. "Yeah!... That's good flavor… I tell ya what…" Dipper said between coughs as he turned to face the scrub clad nurse. "Whatever you say, man…" she said with a chuckle.
The hazel eyed man was about to take another drag when Cassandra grabbed it out from between his lips and threw it to the ground; grinding it into the loose gravel of the rooftop with her sneaker. "What was that for?" Dipper asked with a confused tone of voice. "Look… I know you're not a smoker… In fact… I bet that was your first cigarette ever…" the blonde said in her laid back voice. "Y-Yeah… I know… I'm lame…" he said with a bit of defeat dripping from his comment. "I don't think you're lame…" she said as she returned to her spot on the cool metal railing. "You don't?" the confused man asked. "Nah… I mean… Smoking doesn't make you cool… I should know. Besides… You have a wife and kids… Sounds like you have life all figured out…" the nurse said in a somewhat sullen tone. "No… Not really… Just kinda taking it as it comes…" he replied as he joined Cassandra. "Coulda fooled me…" she said as she finished off her second cigarette; stomping it into the ground in a similar fashion to the one Dipper had attempted to smoke. "I'm sorry if I bugged you on your break or whatever…" the new father apologized. "It's fine… I actually kinda wanted someone to talk to…" the scrub clad woman admitted. "I've been going through a lot of shit lately… And I kinda came up here to get away from it all…" Cassandra continued. "I-I'm sorry to hear that…" Dipper replied. "Yeah… It's just been a lot to take lately… But you know what? I'm glad you showed up when you did…" the blonde added. She struggled whether or not disclose just what she had been mere minutes away from doing before the chestnut haired man joined her on the roof. "And why would that be?" asked Dipper, trying to figure out why his presence was so welcome on an early Friday morning.
"I was thinking of jumping… Just ending it all… I'm just so miserable… I didn't want life to turn out like this, ya know?" the young woman said as she began to openly weep; clutching the metal railing with all her might as a debate as to throw herself over it raged in her mind. "Look… Cassandra… I-I don't know you very well… B-But you seem like a smart woman… I know that life isn't always fair… It isn't always what we expected it to be, bu-" he began before being cut off by the emotional woman. "What would you know about life not being fair!?" she shot back in an angry tone. "A lot more than you would think just by looking at me…" Dipper said in a somewhat annoyed voice as he looked the distraught woman in her eyes. "A few years ago… A person I at one time considered a friend shot and killed both my twin sister and my girlfriend… My wife has tried to kill herself twice that I know of… SO I KNOW ABOUT LIFE NOT ALWAYS BEING FUCKING FAIR!" he shouted at the blonde woman. Dipper Pines was not a man who was known to lose his temper very often, but the insinuation that he hadn't suffered in his life was a red line that Cassandra had unknowingly crossed. "IF YOU WANNA FUCKING JUMP, THEN DO IT! But ya know what? Ya know what? I WENT THROUGH SOME TERRIBLE SHIT AND I'M STILL HERE! MY WIFE IS RIDDLED WITH GUILT! EVERY. SINGLE. FUCKING. DAY. AND YET SHE'S STILL HERE!" he continued to berate the scrub clad blonde. "HERE! Take this!" the brown haired man said as he reached into his pocket and removed a well-worn leather wallet from it. Opening it up, he took a white business card and threw it at the woman, who leaned precariously over the side of the building. Stepping back from the railing, she knelt down and picked up the small card. 'Dr. Claire Bourdais, M.D. Program Director Gravity Falls Regional Medical Center Psychology Department' it displayed in a blue ink; a smiling picture of the brunette woman in the bottom left corner.
Realizing his outburst was a bit insensitive, he walked over to the upset woman and placed a caring hand on her shoulder. "Look… I-I'm sorry… I-I just don't like people judging me without knowing anything about me…" the brown haired man said in an apologetic tone. "I- It's fine… I-I shouldn't have just assumed you have some sort of perfect life…" the young woman said as sniffled a bit. "Exactly… Just because a person looks happy on the outside doesn't mean that a storm isn't raging right below that façade. My wife is the prime example of that. I've known her for eight years now and for about the first five or so thought she was just this laid back girl. She always seemed so chill and didn't let anything get to her. Little did I know that it was just a front she put up to deal with her family and everything else in her life. She had everyone fooled into thinking that's who she was, but in reality she was constantly stressed out… It finally came to the surface after the robbery… She couldn't hide the guilt of not saving my sister and my girlfriend, so instead of looking weak and seeking help, she tried to kill herself…" Dipper explained as the blonde nurse looked on with amazement at his tale. "That card is for the doctor that saved my wife. If it weren't for her and the rest of her staff, I wouldn't have my soulmate… Or two beautiful daughters…" he continued as the pair rose to their feet. "Look… I'm not trying to tell you what to do or how to live your life… But I think you can get past whatever is bothering you… Claire can help, but you have to want to it too…" he said as he looked into the nurse's sapphire eyes. In a way, she reminded him of his late girlfriend Pacifica. "Thanks… I do want to feel better… I-I'll call her in the morning…" the young woman said as she wrapped the hoodie clad man up in a tight hug and rest her head on his shoulder; tears freely flowing from her eyes. "No problem… Remember… It does get better… You just have to believe it can…" Dipper said as he broke the embrace and headed for the brick entrance to the stairwell.
A thought was nagging at the back of his mind as he was mere feet from the door. Against his better judgement, he decided to ask his question anyway. "Hey Cassandra…" the hazel eyed man asked his rooftop companion. "Yeah?" she replied; looking up from her phone where she was entering the information from the card. "I know this is gonna sound crazy… But are related to the Northwest family in any way?" he inquired. "Y-Yeah… How'd you guess?" the blonde asked as she walked closer to the man who very well may have saved her life. "It's just that my girlfriend was Pacifica Northwest… You look like you could be her older sister or something… That's all…" he quipped. "Well… It's kinda funny that you put it like that… B-Because I am… Well, sort of anyway…" she replied as the nurse looked to the ground. Dipper's face displayed a look of pure shock as he tried to process what had just been said to him. "Well… You see… My mother was a maid for the Northwest family for a few years… Preston and her ended up having an affair… And well, here I am… The bastard Northwest daughter…" she said in a bit of sheepish tone. There were two primary reasons as to why she had kept it a secret from most everyone she knew. The first was that people would assume that she had the money and power that came along with the Northwest blood, but for being the love child of the most powerful man in town, her mother was bought off for a relatively cheap sum. The second was that she would no doubt be judged by the actions of far more scrupulous family and felt it completely unfair.
"Th-That's nuts… I'd say I'm shocked… But nothing the Northwest family does surprises me. Did you know that Preston tried to align with an interdimensional demon to try and survive Weirdmageddon?" he absentmindedly replied, assuming that the illegitimate child of Preston Northwest had experienced the event firsthand. "Wierdma what now?" she asked in a confused tone. "You mean that you weren't here when all that happened?" asked a concerned Dipper, afraid that he had let the proverbial cat out of the bag. "I don't know what you're talking about, but no, I wasn't. You see, my asshole Mom thought that two hundred and fifty thousand dollars would be enough to live some sort of lavish life in Las Vegas… Needless to say that she managed to blow it all in a few years and went back to being a maid… This time in an off the strip casino…" she explained as Dipper listened intently. "I grew up in Vegas… It was a pretty bad situation where I grew up in… It wasn't , like, anything to be sad about or anything but… I pretty much had to raise myself… My mom became an alcoholic and, like, kinda a junkie… But it was just me trying to make my own way…" Cassandra continued. "That sounds horrible… I-I don't know what to say…" the brown haired man replied. "Oh… It gets better… So… The one night that really sticks out to me is this one when I was sixteen years old… I heard my Mom and her boyfriend come in late… I heard them light a few bowls… I heard them crack a few cold ones… I heard them getting a little friendly… And then… CRACK! He struck her over the head with something. I heard a couple other guys come in… A-And I tried to sleep… But I couldn't. I came out the next morning… My Mom zoned out on the couch… Our TV was gone… All our furniture was gone… All my Mom's money from whoring around was gone… I had to get out of there. So, I moved again, this time to Minnesota where my aunt lived. That was pretty much the opposite situation. I loved it there. I had a good life there, until they decided to uproot us and move back here to Gravity Falls about a year and a half ago… Ever since then, I just haven't been happy…" she admitted to the new father. "Well… If you were so happy in Minnesota, why not just move back?" Dipper asked. "If I can ever save up the money, that's what I intend to do… Until then, I guess I'm just stuck here… And I guess that's what made me feel so hopeless… That I'm just going through the motions day in and day out… It just gets old after a while… But I'm going to call this doctor tomorrow and talk to her about it…" the blue scrub clad nurse concluded. "I think that's what you need to do… You just need someone to talk to… For what it's worth, I'm glad I could be that person tonight" Dipper said as he hugged the young woman. "Me too… Me too…" Cassandra said as tears continued to stream down her face.
The duo made their way down the stairwell, with Dipper departing on the fourth floor of the hospital; a friendly wave exchanged between the two as Cassandra continued further down. The brown haired man tried as best he could to enter the now dark hospital room; not wanting to wake up his sleeping wife and daughters. Listening to Cassandra's tale of a rough upbringing had worn him out and he could only imagine living such a life. He was about to lay his head to the cool hospital issued pillow when his wife's voice broke the silence of the room. "Needed to step out for a minute, huh?" the redhead inquired. "Yeah… I couldn't sleep between the excitement of the day and all those Pitt Energy drinks I had… So I went to the roof and just kinda hung out…" he replied. "Have you been smoking?" Wendy asked as she took a big sniff of the air around her. "I-I uh… Well… A puff… I wouldn't call it smoking really…" he stuttered as he tried to think about how to explain the past hour of his life to his lover. "Okay… Now I gotta know… What happened up there, man?" she asked in a curious tone of voice, which Dipper gladly welcomed over the angry one he had expected to hear. He began to recall what had gone on between himself and the distraught nurse. Wendy chuckled when she tried to picture an overly polite Dipper trying to take a drag off a cigarette for the first time. Part of her wished she could have seen it just to laugh at the sight. Then he got into the heavy part of the encounter. A stunned Wendy was glad that her husband cared enough to engage the emotionally unstable woman and help her change her mind.
Just when Wendy thought her husband was done, he brought up the nurse's link to the most powerful family in town. "So… Basically, her mom and Preston Northwest had an affair before Pacifica was born and he paid her hush money to pretty much forget about the whole thing…" Dipper summarized. "No fucking way, dude… So… Like, Pacifica had an older sister she never knew about? That's nuts… Just when you think you have those Northwest's figured out, something else comes crawling out of the woodwork…" the ginger woman said with disbelief. He told of the blonde woman's troubled upbringing in Las Vegas and her seemingly happy move to Minnesota, the new mother hanging on every word of his tale as it got more and more intense. "Well… I was gonna tell you about a dream I had where Mabel and Pacifica were crawling around on our floor like little inchworms because they were wrapped up in blankets… But I can't top what you just told me…" she laughed. The pair soon fell fast asleep on an early spring morning in Gravity Falls, Oregon.
Author's Note: So, this chapter kinda went way overboard on what I had planned out, but the story of a secret Northwest love child kinda captured my imagination. I know I kinda glossed over the whole actual birth of the twins, but I haven't gone through it myself and felt I couldn't properly portray what it entailed in my usual manner. That and I'm pretty sure that most of us know what goes on in birth and that it's a long, drawn out process. If I had written it out, chances are it would have been like Wendy's evaluation in Echoes Of A Nearby Future and went on for entirely too long. Don't get me wrong, I'm extremely proud that I went into that much detail and delved into the inner machinations of her mind, but it wouldn't have been as effective here. Also, thanks for the suggestions on the one-shots I've received from several readers. There were some really neat ideas in there when it comes to the Shooting Star Falls AU. Well, I've rambled on enough, so until next time - iKLOT
Shooting Star Falls AU Reading Order:
Underage Discoveries On A Reckless Night: A Shooting Star Falls Prequel
A Shooting Star Falls
Echoes Of A Nearby Future: A Shooting Star Falls Story
Scarred Summer: A Shooting Star Falls Story
The Dark Days of Candy Chiu: A Shooting Star Falls Story
Forever Memories: A Shooting Star Falls Story
Stable Times Or A Wild Ride?: A Shooting Star Falls Story
Grenda's Confession: A Shooting Star Falls Story
Birthday Weirdness In The Rose City: A Shooting Star Falls Story
The Gift Of Forever: A Shooting Star Falls Story
Wendy & Dipper Vs The Future: A Shooting Star Falls Story