After Stan's visit, Mabel forced herself to finish her sweater with a tremble in her lip. Not only did the fact that Stan leaving affect her attitude, but it also affected her knitting as well. She'd lost count of how many times she had to unweave bits of the sweater because of tiny errors she hadn't even noticed she had made until a few layers in.

It was these little mishappenings that seemed to frustrate her even more. As if Stan's announcement was the beginning of a chain of bad luck.

She didn't want Stan to leave. She wanted him with her- where she was, so he could protect her like he always did.

Mabel's eyebrows furrowed, one reason being her concentration on the knitting needles and another on a realization of frustration.

"He wouldn't have to go if it weren't for Grunkle Ford. He's the one kicking him out." She thought. As soon as the thought came, it quickly subsided as a pang of guilt throbbed at Mabel's heart. Shame rose over her as she she chided her ill-mannered way of thinking. It hurt her to even think that way towards her Grunkle. That was the last thing she wanted.

Mabel sighed- throwing her half-finished sweater to the side of her bed, for she grew weary of meddling with it. Too much was on her mind anyway.

Mabel climbed out of her bed. The ground was cold as usual, unlike how it was in the summer, but it's not like it affected her much. Her socks were as thick as a stocking, so no type of winter temperature could reach her feet even if it wanted to.

Mabel quickly glanced to the side of the room her brother slept on. None of Dipper's belongings were there, except for his shoes. Most of his things were probably in the room he used to sleep in downstairs. Still, the vacancy of the area seemed so foreign to Mabel's eyes. Not to mention her side of the room. She was so accustomed to the colorful posters she had ripped out of pre-teen magazines and taped to the ceiling. But all that took their places were dust-covered planks of wood.

She quickly brushed her reminiscing thoughts before heading out of the room. "I wonder if Dipper's done taking to Ford." Mabel thought. He'd been gone for at most half an hour, so chances are, yes. But she had figured he'd have come back and inform her about what Ford had said. Maybe, he was using the restroom, or maybe the invisible wizard that lived in the shack's closests trapped him in one of them and wouldn't let him out. Who knew. So Mabel went out to see if she could find him. After all, Stan did ask her to deliver his message, if he hadn't already done so himself.

A frown took shape of the girl's lips once more. Even the thought about it dampened her mood.

Mabel stepped down the attic stairs. They weren't as creaky as she had thought they'd be- considering the ones back home shrieked in a melody of creaks with the slightest tap of a foot.

As she neared the bottom of the staircase, she quickly realized Dipper's figure slumped at the last set; leaning his back against the railing. There he was. But why didn't he come talk to her? Unless it was bad news.

"Whatcha doing, bro?" Mabel said as she stood just behind her brother. He didn't respond. In fact, he seemed to have completely ignored Mabel. "Dipper?" Mabel spoke up with a hint of worry. Thoughts of what he was so gloom about flooded into Mabel's conscience. Maybe she'd packed too much of a punch on the time machine and now it was unfixable. Maybe Ford wasn't able to figure it out. The suspense was killing her!

Dipper finally seemed to react to Mabel's presence as he picked up his head to look back at his sister. His eyes looked stale; dried of the glimmer it had possessed before he left the room with the time machine in his hands and a grin on his face. "Oh. Hey Mabel." He finally responded.

"What's wrong, Dip?" Mabel nervously asked; almost too afraid to hear the answer. If his response was that they weren't going to be able to go home then she might as well cover her ears and scream, because she didn't want to hear it. She refused to hear it. Mabel climbed down the remaining steps and sat to the right of her brother. "This isn't about the time machine, is it?"

"No." Dipper vaguely spoke.

A sudden relief flooded over Mabel's body as she released a breath she wasn't aware she was holding in. "Thank goodness." She smiled. "What'd he say? Can he fix it?"

"He said..." Dipper paused. "He said it's fixable."

"Whoo!" Mabel explained as she pretended to wipe sweat from her forehead- like in the cartoons. "I thought I, like, messed up our chances or something. For a second I thought we were never gonna get back."

Mabel beamed an enthusiastic smile towards Dipper, expecting him to do the same, but he only looked away. Mabel's smile faded. The more she thought about it, shouldn't Dipper be more happy about going home? Then a thought struck her. "Oh. You've heard about Grunkle Stan, then. Haven't you?" She concluded.

Dipper stared at the floorboards for a moment of silence as Mabel waited for any type of response. Dipper nodded his head 'yes' with two affirmative nods. Mabel looked down as she shared her brother's grief. "But that's not it." He spoke. Dipper slowly picked up his left arm from his side so Mabel could see. She stared; horrified at what she saw. Dipper's wrist was coated in red paint of what she immediately assumed was blood. The iron smell radiating from his arm only confirmed Mabel's assumption.

"D-Dipper! Is that your-" Mabel began as she reached for her brother's arm, but he retracted from her touch as if she were going to hurt him. She eyed him at his movements; surprised he'd acted so hesitant to her. Many situations crossed Mabel's mind as she thought of possibilities of why Dipper was in this condition.

"No. It's not my blood... I don't think."

"Well then whose is it? Where'd it come from?"

"Ford."

"Is he hurt?"

"I don't know." Dipper squealed-unsure of himself. He glanced up to Mabel as a mix of emotions swam across his face. She was able to identify a battle of fear and uncertainty, or perhaps thought, in his chocolate colored eyes.

Mabel frowned as she looked down at his arm. She didn't like the blood. Even the smell made her cringe. Before, she never had to deal with it as much. Sure, she had the occaional 'boo-boo' but it was never too severe. Until the time accident, she never thought she could hate the thought of blood as much as she did now.

Mabel didn't know how she was able to handle it when Stan had been beaten to the brink of possibly death, if she hadn't intervened. She was just thankful he didn't need hospital care. When she had been cut by the shattered pieces of the stanmobile, she was thankful her sweater covered up the evidence. Well, at least until they scarred over.

Mabel sighed before grabbing Dipper's clean hand and began to drag him down the hallway. She couldn't take that sight any longer. Dipper followed Mabel with no resistance as she led him into the bathroom. Once inside, she took a quick glance of the hall to make sure no one saw them before closing the bathroom door. The last thing they wanted was for Stan to find out.

She grabbed an old rag hanging off of the door knob and ran to the sink- where Dipper was heading towards. Mabel grabbed his bloodied hand and immediately ran it under the faucet. The blood- already dried and crusted onto Dipper's arm- needed more than just running water to come off, so Mabel began to wipe it using the rag.

"I can do this myself you know." Dipper mumbled.

"Well, obviously not if you didn't clean yourself right after. It's all dry and sticky now. " Mabel objected. She knew she was right, although, for once she wished she wasn't.

A dark line resisted her wipes as she grew more irritated with it.

"Ow! Mabel, be careful!" Dipper yelped as he yanked his arm from Mabel's grasp.

"Hold on! It's not coming off."

"That's because it's not blood! It's a bruise."

Mabel's eyes softened as she turned the faucet off. The bruise was wrapped around his whole wrist. The only way he were to get a bruise like that would be if he were in handcuffs or something of the sort.

"Dip?" Mabel paused. "What happened down there?"

Dipper seemed conflicted as he tried to speak. "I was talking to Ford about Stan when he fainted out of nowhere. When I went to help him, he grabbed me and wouldn't let go."

"Where'd the blood come from?"

"His eye." Dipper answered. "It was bleeding like crazy. I didn't know what to do."

"Where is he now?"

Dipper's cheeks flushed in embarrassment at Mabel's question. "I-I left him down there."

"What? You didn't see what was wrong with him? What if he's in danger? He could be bleeding out right now. We need to go-"

Mabel began to head towards the bathroom door before Dipper grabbed her arm; preventing her from taking another step.

"No, Mabel. Something's not right. He did this to me!" He held up his arm, showing his sister the purple mark. "He was yelling warnings at me. It was freaky."

"There's gotta be some type of reasoning behind it? He'd never hurt us."

"I know. That's what's weird. But something about it felt familiar."

Mabel raised her brow. "Familiar?"

"He told me to stay out of something. I think."

Dipper looked back at the incident. At the time, he wasn't processing what Ford was saying. All he could recollect was the pain and the fear. The bloodied eye staring back at him with the glare of a killer. Just the thought made a constant chill run up and down Dipper's spine.

Dipper paused. One eye. The eye. It was so red, and glazed over as if looking directly at Dipper but at the same time straight through him. Veins popping out of the sides of the eye and the iris vibrating with the velocity to shatter anything it touched. Is that even human?

"Mabel?" Dipper asked. "Remember when Bill took over my body?"

Mabel looked to Dipper wondering where he was heading. "Did you not notice that anything was... off?"

Mabel narrowed her eyes to the thought. She'd never really thought about it. Especially in the moment, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. "Not until you showed up as a puppet. He was really good at acting like you. It wasn't until he got desperate-"

"That his colors began to show through his act." Dipper finished.

"You don't think."

"I don't know. It explains this weird feeling, but surely Ford's too smart to fall for Bill's tricks."

"We need go down there." Mabel cautiously reached for her brother's hand; careful so that she didn't hurt him, and led him towards the bathroom exit. "I'll come with you that way- "

Opening the door, Mabel's small body suddenly came to a halt when she clashed into a large and sturdy stature. Mabel stuggled to find her footing again after nearly toppling over and taking her brother with her in tow.

"Oh, sorry kid. Didn't see ya there."

"Grunkle Stan!" Mabel beamed, glad her grunkle hadn't left yet. Dipper cowered behind his sister in an effort to conceal his injury. "You're still here!"

Stan seemed to respond with a hint of embarrassment. "Yeah, I -uh was actually gonna take a leak before I headed out." He looked down to the small figures below him just now realizing her other half was standing beside her. He never realized how similar the two looked. Of course they were twins but that never guaranteed the likeness that they would resemble one another. His brother, for example, could have been completely identical with Stan if it were not for Ford's curly hair opposed to stan's slick hair. And let's not forget his extra finger. Why is it that everything about these kids remind him of himself?

"Listen." Stan sighed. He knelt down to match eye levels with his great grandchildren. Their eyes looked so tired. "I'm glad I met you kids. Take care of each other, okay? My brother's gonna get you guys ho-"

Before another word could escape Stan's mouth a pair of short arms wrapped around his neck with the embrace he so cherished. He let a few moments pass by with the comfort of his niece before realizing the awkward presence of Dipper watching from a small distance. Stan looked up to the hesitant boy and motioned him over to join in the embrace. "Come here kid, I don't bite."

Dipper looked to his sister, locking eyes in a manner to gain communicative attention. He subtly motioned to his arm which he concealed behind his back, to which Mabel nodded. "Stan." Dipper said . "We need your help."

Ay dios mio! I didn't think i'd ever be back if I'm gonna be honest. I keep forgetting this exists, but alas, I'm gonna finish this damned story if its the last thing I do! Forgive the quality of these chapters, I'm running off of steam and my motivation is as non-existent as mullets. coming back but still kinda rare. Enjoy the latest chapter and prepare because this story is a chapter or two until the finale.