The door opening downstairs caught their attention. "Who's that?" Dipper asked. "Maybe it's a pizza guy! Stan probably ordered pizza for our arrival. Let's go see!" Mabel and Dipper rushed to the stairs, Dipper stopping in his tracks as he saw who had come through the door. "Wendy!" Mabel exclaimed. She ran down and gave Wendy a huge hug. "Hey, wow, you're so much taller since the last time I saw you!" Wendy said. Dipper stood at the top of the stairs, feeling a blush creep through his cheeks and ears. Wendy turned and noticed Dipper on the top of the staircase. Her face lit up.
"Dipper! Hey, wow, it's been such a long time!" She smiled. "Y-Yeah... seven years just flies by, doesn't it?" Dipper walked down the stairs, and Wendy gave him a bone-crushing hug. Dipper hoped he wasn't blushing as hard as he thought. When Wendy pulled back she looked Dipper up and down. "Wow, you're finally taller! Look at you!" It was true, Dipper was now a few inches taller than her. "Yeah, seven years gave me a lot of time to grow." Dipper replied. Wendy laughed, and the group went to sit around the dining table to talk. They all caught each other up about their lives in the last few years. At one point the doorbell rang, and Stan got up to get it. Turns out, he actually did order pizza for them, though, Dipper had to get up to pay for it when he noticed Stan trying to pay for it with a crumpled piece of paper labeled 'Stan Buck'.
The group sat around the dining table, eating pizza, drinking soda, making jokes, and talking among each other. It reminded Dipper so much of his last summer there, he couldn't stop smiling. "So you finally got your braces off?" Wendy asked, pointing to Mabel's mouth. "Yeah, I got them off when I was, like, fifteen." Mabel opened her mouth, exposing her braceless teeth. "They're so straight." Ford examined. "Yeah, it felt really weird for a month or two, but then I grew accustomed to it." Mabel explained. "What about you, Dipper?" Wendy said. "When you'd get that tattoo?"
Dipper looked at the tattoo covering his left forearm. It was an ink outline of the cipher wheel, plus a few lines around it. "I got this after high school." Dipper held out his arm for everyone to see. "You never seemed like the type to get a tattoo, why'd you get it?" Wendy asked, sipping some of her soda. "And why the cipher wheel, out of everything you could have chosen?" Ford added. Dipper shrugged. He looked at the tattoo. "I guess I just wanted some reminder of Gravity Falls and that I was apart of something greater, something bigger than myself." Dipper stared intently at one of the symbols on the cipher wheel, the pine tree. His symbol. The one that was on his journal and the baseball cap he wore. The table was silent. Everyone sipped their soda, and ate their pizza in silence, silently willing the memories of the end of their last summer together to not pop up.
"Do you ever wonder what would've happened? You know, with the cipher wheel and all? If it had worked?" Dipper asked, breaking the still silence, and allowing the memories to flood through into everyone's minds.
"Hard to say." Ford replied, his voice cracking as the horrors of Weirdmaggedon flashed through his mind. He cleared his throat. "It could've done anything, but my hypothesis is that it would've created a force strong enough to destroy…-" Ford drifted off, not daring to finish that sentence, saying the name that had haunted his life and their summer. The table was plunged into another moment of heavy silence. "Have there been any...?" Dipper trailed off. "Any sightings?" "No, he's gone, I'm sure. The memory gun did its damage." Ford looked into his soda can. "Yeah… but, didn't we undo the damage? You know, since I have all my memories back?" Stan asked. "Yes, but you saw it yourself Stan. You saw him shatter into nothing, right?" Ford replied quietly. Stan didn't answer and just nodded. Dipper watched his great uncle for a moment, confused by his expression. Usually his upbeat uncle would take any chance to boast about himself. Instead he seemed… sad? Uncomfortable? ...Quiet?
"Alright, I'm just gonna say it." Mabel sighed. "We were all put off by Bill Cipher's demise." The room grew quiet once more, Bill Cipher's name echoing in their heads. "But we have to put it behind us. It's not like Cipher was going to give up, or just stop. It was the only way to save our universe, and all the other alternate universes and parallel dimensions for that matter."
Ford nodded. "I agree. He was unruly, chaotic, impulsive, and manipulative. There was no other way." "Yeah, but, couldn't we have just, I dunno, banished him back to the Nightmare Realm?" Wendy asked. Dipper shook his head. "No, not really, anyway. If we did, he'd just continue to trick us into doing his bidding. He could also just possess someone, we would never be able to trust anyone wearing shades or something covering their eyes." Dipper replied, remembering that anyone possessed by the demon would have yellow eyes with a slanted pupil. "Yeah, but the inter-dimensional rift was destroyed. He would have no way out." Stan added. "True, but there may be other ways that we don't know of." Ford said.
"Welp, this topic is seriously depressing me. Let's talk about something else, okay?" Wendy smiled sadly. "Yeah, I agree. How about we change the subject to… pigs!" Mabel's mouth dropped open. "Mabel, what is it?" Dipper asked, worried. "Waddles! He's in my car! He fell asleep, so when I got here I decided not to wake him up! I have to go get him!" Mabel jumped up from her chair and grabbed her keys by the door. "Dipper, want to come?" She asked, grabbing her coat. "Uh, sure." Dipper stood. They both went outside and jogged to Mabel's car. It was a black convertible with its hood pulled up, and rainbows streaking the sides. Mabel unlocked the car and opened the front passenger seat door. Delighted squealing sounded as a pig jumped down from the car. Waddles was definitely in his later years, but he was still the exuberant pig he was seven years ago when Mabel won him in the Gravity Falls fair held at the Mystery Shack.
"Hey, Waddles." Dipper reached down to pet him. He squealed with excitement. It had been almost five months since he'd last seen him. Mabel picked up Waddles and brought him into the shack. Dipper was going to follow when he heard a twig snap behind him in the forest. He turned quickly and peered into the darkness. The only sound to be heard was crickets and the rustling of the leaves in the slight breeze. Then Dipper saw it. A gnome peering at him from behind a tree. He laughed to himself and went the rest of the way into the shack. Even though it had been years since he had last been there, things still hadn't changed.
Okay, I may need to explain myself about Dipper's tattoo.
I've been basing my designs off of a few images on Google and the image I found of adult Dipper had the tattoo on his left arm. The tattoo will be important sometime in the story, I promise.
Also quick explanation to The Forest Dog: The reason why Mabel was already there was because she had left for Gravity Falls earlier than Dipper by a few hours in her own car. I'm sorry if that was confusing.
This chapter ended up longer than expected, and therefore took longer to write, so I'm sorry for the wait. Chapter 3 should come out sooner, so look forward to that!