WARNINGS: Implied self-harm (very obvious but not graphic), somewhat disturbing imagery of deaths that don't actually happen, mentioned animal death. Also, I'm not really sure how to explain it, but I think this may be triggering for people with OCD or similar disorders. This sounds worse than it is, but the story itself is kind of dark.
Mabel isn't like her brother. Dipper thinks, and thinks, and thinks. All he does is think.
But Mabel never does.
Dipper's mind goes 24/7. He can't stop.
Mabel always just says "oh, I never thought of that," and then starts on some tangent about glitter or kittens or rainbows.
Dipper considers the possibilities and worries, but Mabel doesn't worry. It's easy for Mabel to sleep at night, but Dipper can never shut his brain down.
Mabel is different, because she doesn't compute every possibility, or calculate every outcome. An eternal optimist, she never thinks about the bad that could happen, even when told about it point-blank.
And that's okay, because they make a great team. The very best.
Dipper looks, and looks, and looks, and Mabel leaps. Mabel pulls him off the cliff at top speed and saves the day with her grappling hook and glitter and a grin.
Dipper thinks of everything, and Mabel doesn't think.
Only, that's also wrong.
Mabel never dreams, except when she does. She dreams of lots of things.
Mabel dreams of standing on a log that spans a chasm, somewhere deep inside of a winter wonderland. She looks down, and sees houses made out of ice, and looks up, and sees the clear blue sky. It's always the same, and she never does anything except stand on the log and look at the snapshot in time, snow sparkling in the sun.
Mabel dreams of a river with crimson stones at the bottom, where a deer leans down to drink. It doesn't have any teeth, and its eyes watch her like it's expecting something.
But mostly, Mabel dreams of burning. She's a shooting star, and she's falling, so fast that her clothes and hair and skin catch fire. Mabel is burning up, until there's nothing left but the flame, streaking across the sky.
Someone makes a wish.
Mabel doesn't let it bother her.
Everyone says that Mabel doesn't think. She doesn't have filter, and just spits out whatever's on her mind. Some gibberish about Duck-tective and friendship and pink.
Mabel thinks.
She imagines herself lying in a grave, six feet underground. The dirt that surrounds her is warm, but it's soft like a pillow. It envelops her, seeping into her body. It's not a bad feeling. The decomposers come, and Mabel is turned into the soil, bit by bit, one with nature at last.
She imagines herself in the water. It fills her nose and mouth, and Mabel drifts. Her hair billows, brown locks fanning out in the crystal blue. No sound, no fear. She drowns, and it's peaceful, almost.
She imagines herself bleeding, covered in scarlet red. It's a beautiful color, though not one for knitting into sweaters. It stains her skin, and her hair, and Mabel can feel herself going numb until there's nothing left to bleed.
But Mabel never says any of that. She knits friendship sweaters and ties bows in her hair and sheds glitter like a cat shedding its hair.
Mabel likes cats. Back in fourth grade, her friend Lily had one. Lily's cat was named Rust. Every time Mabel caught a glimpse of it, she could see Rust withering away until he melted into the shadows, curling up in a corner to die. Rust was cute, though, so Mabel never stopped looking.
Once, Mabel had been talking. She was wearing a glittery sweater and a glittery headband and glittery shoes. And she was smiling. But Lily was looking at her strangely.
"What?" Mabel had asked.
"Nothing," Lily replied.
"No, go on!" Mabel insisted.
"Well…promise you won't be upset, Mabel, 'cos you're a really good friend and I don't want you to be upset," Lily said. Mabel promised, pinky and all. "You creep me out sometimes, Mabel," Lily whispered.
Mabel doesn't understand. Other people might find the things she imagines scary, but she just finds them normal, comforting. And she doesn't even talk about them, because then they'll think there's something wrong with her. Maybe she hasn't been hiding what she sees well enough.
She adds more glitter. Glitter hides everything.
Dipper thinks, but Mabel thinks as well.
Dipper is constantly worried he's got some sort of disease, some cancer or mental degeneration or that thing they had an assembly about at school where you can't move.
Mabel knows she doesn't. She's not sure how she's going to die, but she imagines that she'll dream it up. She may have already dreamed it up, and her dreams aren't scary. Just there.
When Mabel is in sixth grade, Lily comes into first period English sobbing because her cat got old and sick and crawled off into the shadows to die. Mabel remembers what she imagined.
And then she goes off to Gravity Falls, and has wonderful adventures, and takes her place on the Cipher wheel.
Shooting Star.
Mabel dreams of burning, and it makes sense, oh, it makes so much sense now.
She doesn't let it get to her. Now, she's certain that she'll go out in a blaze of glory, a beautiful explosion. And when it happens, it will be just like her dreams. Nothing to worry about.
There comes a week when Mabel burns in her sleep for seven days straight. But instead of a comet's fury, red-orange flames surround her. They char her skin black and it peels away until Mabel is ash. And the dreams aren't scary. In fact, she wakes up with a strange feeling of peace.
But Mabel knows she is going to die. She is going to burn, and it's going to be soon, and all she can think of is that she's sixteen and doesn't want to go just yet.
She dreams of burning again, and it's getting closer. Mabel can feel it.
Dipper's reading some book about time travel, and he says out loud "why don't they just trick it?" He explains how so many time paradoxes could be fixed if the protagonists just made it look like the thing they saw happened, so that the timeline wouldn't have to change.
Mabel doesn't understand, not really, but she gets an idea.
Just a little bit. Just enough to trick the dreams, so that she burns, but she's still there to live.
The dreams continue, but Mabel doesn't die in fire.
And then Dipper finds her, and she pleads with him not to tell her parents. Mabel doesn't explain to him about the dreams. She's still Mabel, even after he saw this, still cheerful, happy Mabel with the sweaters and the glitter and Waddles the pig. Mabel can be salvaged now, but not if she tells her brother about the fire in her dreams, not if she lets the perfect girl burn.
Mabel promises she'll stop. She doesn't want to die, but she listens, because she thinks that in her dreams, at least it didn't hurt.
The next day, a match doesn't fall in the wastepaper basket and set fire to Mabel's drawings of Duck-tective. The house doesn't burn down. The family doesn't die.
The dreams stop. Well, not completely. Mabel still dreams about deaths, still imagines the deaths, but not as intensely as the past month. One day, she'll burn, but not now, not yet.
Mabel thinks. Mabel dreams.
Somewhere out in the cold vacuum of space, a dirty chunk of ice misses the Earth by a fraction of degree and hurtles around the sun for another pass.