Skip the A/Ns if you're just interested in the story.

A/N: Hello!

After an extended period (uh, an entire year), I've returned with another fic for the undoubtedly hungry for content Gravity Falls fandom! I apologise for my absence the last lapse of time, but if anyone who has stuck here-and-there with my works has come to know, I have something of a consistent schedule when it comes to being inconsistent. Nevertheless, after being swamped by school (thesis projects, graduation, and all that annoying stuff), I've managed to work this piece in the backburner and I think it came out pretty all right for wandering readers, both old and new.

I've separated this story into two parts, so for anyone reading on publication day, know that the second part will come up exactly three days after this first one (and let me tell you, part two is pretty WILD). Unlike other times when I've set deadlines for my stuff, I'll actually keep this one since the second chapter is geared up and I just want to do the hot thing other fic writers are doing and brew some anticipation!

And for any astute readers out there wondering for mixups in my style, due notice should be laid out that I write the dialogue in American English (because the show takes place in America) and my prose in British English. This has been true for all my writing but I just, uh, forgot to say it. Sorry!

Disclaimer: Attempts at dissecting correlating themes to main characters on a level that may be distressing for some (guilt, insignificance, implied neglect, and others). Also followed up by significant angst. Read at your own discretion. Gravity Falls belongs to Alex Hirsch.

Never had the soft rustle of the leaves from the nearby trees been as lulling to his ear as today.

He glanced at the tall pole of the bus stop sign, the one he'd leant and waited at during each rainy, foggy, snowy, sunny day he'd gone to school or travelled around the country. Back then... it was a simpler time. A bygone bliss, when all that mattered was the promise of a new day and grasping for that sweet pocket of air from the vast sea of riddles he'd drowned in through all joy and all sorrow—the answer to silence every lingering fear; yes, that was it. Yet said fondness which moved his lips into a smile so effortlessly was also one that had no merit in the deliberation the crossroads ahead had put him in. Now, a different bus would ferry him to his destination—to lands unknown far away where he could forget, to a brighter day where he could thrive without quarrel, and to waters shallow where he didn't have to be so lost.

Sack and ticket in hand, he gazed at the red sunset, yielding to the vibrant rays of warmth which soothed his skin, and his thoughts to the chance of dwelling once more over the possibilities he had imagined in the great beyond.

Part of him dared not look behind—back to what he would be so carelessly throwing aside. In order to move on and grow as a person, he argued, one had to hoist the debilitating anchor of the past with a relentless and unyielding resolve that left no room for hesitation to sprout; everything that mattered and everything that would ever matter lay forth, only to be unfurled in the grasp of his will and the reach of his mind.

He just had to board the bus.

"Wait!" a familiar voice—too young to be of someone his age—called. Akin to a parent hearing the piercing cry of their newborn during the night, it birthed a slew of conflicting emotions within him. A plea so close, so familiar, so daunting to that signature mirror of the past that it'd nearly made him want to relish in the peaceful slumber again, like all the others who still chased after the faded mirage when death's shadow loomed above them.

Others like her…

He didn't turn around. He couldn't give in to the temptation of what should have remained but a sweet memory, even when the light footsteps became ever louder and he felt the gentle tug of a small arm at his sleeve.

"And so you're just gonna leave?" she asked, her voice laden with unmasked trepidation. "A-And you're gonna act like everything'll just stay the same, is that it?"

He had to say something, even if he knew words could never really justify what he'd be doing. He bobbed his head sideways, their eyes meeting over the calm breeze which blew in their hair. Towering over his sister, he only allowed himself a moment of peace to behold her innocence before the time finally came to face reality head-on.

He knelt to her, taking her by the arms and saying, "Listen to me. I love you, even if what I'm doing now looks like I don't. You're my best friend in the whole damn world and nothing will ever change that." He noted the features of a faint smile on her expression, and it made what he had to do next harder than it should've been. "But this—this is just such an amazing chance for me to grow and meet new people. I can finally become what I've always dreamt of being! And it's not like it's gonna last forever. I mean, we can call a-and keep in touch." He saw her expression, and with it the façade of collectedness she'd kept up, gracelessly fall; truly, even she knew he'd only been making hollow promises. "We… we can still make it work."

"The struggle for compromise is a fight lost before it's even begun," the voice—with its distinctly wretched, high-pitched timbre—echoed in his head. He fervently shook his head, expecting to find its personification lurking somewhere in a far-out crevice of the world. Instead, he felt it passing exactly through him and materialising from his very body, in the murky silhouette of his far younger self no less. In all its untethered malevolence, the demon roamed around them, wrapping its flaky arms over the shoulders of his young sister and remaining completely unaffected by the forces which had bound the universe together. He'd have given anything to exorcise it—or whatever it was others did when it came to annihilating such beings—just for tainting her with its sickening touch. Yet he couldn't, as the grip over his own rebellious thoughts narrowed and tightened from the shadow's very presence. "You know you have to leave that stupid past behind and pursue your future. And you think it's so very hard, I know. But if you ever want to become the genius you were always meant to be, you just have to board the bus and all your problems will go away..."

"But I don't want that!" she protested, almost as though hearing and answering to the allures of the parasitic monstrosity which lurked behind her. "I don't want to try and make it work! I want everything to go back to the way it was—like when we were young again!" More semblances of times passed, and more salt poured over an already grievous wound. "I want to show you a way for both of us to go on and live here."

The demon loosened its grip over her and fazed out of sight, much to his comforting assumption that it had somehow been banished from this realm. He shook his head—that didn't matter now—and shifted his attention to the one who looked on in dire need of an answer. Her inclinations had almost sounded akin to the benignly naïve notions of life born from a child's vibrant imagination, though now the otherwise beguiling simplicity had sounded so enticing—deceptively so even. An image of when they hadn't left the most frivolous of scruples unspoken because of the trust they shared, the warmth of a place to call home... it'd almost made him act upon the urge to glance back at those happy memories, just to see her point (if there had been any in the first place).

His instincts told him otherwise and he quickly gulped it down with a swift lurch forward towards the pavement, inching closer and closer to where the doors of the bus would very soon greet him. If he were to press on with what could have been seen as an unyielding determination and fire in his heart, however much faking so hurt both of them, there was no knowing of the right path. Maybe she was right. Maybe there could be some way to get the best of both worlds. He could—

"I don't know..." he found himself muttering not of his own volition, facing the vast road ahead once more. The freedom beckoned to him as it did to many intrepid souls his age. But where they yearned to purely quench their thirst for independence by virtue of its existence, he on the other hand... "What about changing the world? Or finding others like me? Just throw all that away?"

He felt her hand wrapping around his own and heard her sweet chirp, "As long as we can find some way to stick together, it doesn't matter what happens. Don't worry, I know where to go." There was the timid tremor in her hand vibrating throughout the hold they'd bound themselves to, and the presence of a most veiled uncertainty in her wavering speech, ironically, became ever glaring. "You and I will find our way and you'll still get to fulfill your dreams. Just trust me."

He bit his lip. With the walls closing around further and further, he had led himself to yet another dead end out of the labyrinth of choices he was trapped in. Was this harrowing puzzle—this manifestation of improbabilities—the well of his rue or simply the byproduct of a vehement vengeance brought upon from whichever almighty deity he had so involuntarily displeased? To hear her pleas and aimlessly ponder whether salvation, like the one she'd promised, had a place in this vile world after all? For the reprieve from his burden to almost seem a wretched choice between lesser evils and callous extremes?

"Fool!" the voice seethed, undoubtedly aware of his growing doubt. Its dark vessel reappeared between the two and glared at him. "You'd have already gone through with your plan but you know it'll hurt her fragile little feelings! You want it and you can't keep holding yourself back because of her!"

"N-No, I'm not..." he stuttered, trying to maintain his composure and not give in. He had to—for her sake. "I'm not holding myself back, I..."

The hellspawn chuckled, ambling over to him while parading a devilish smile. "Oh, yes. That's what you tell yourself, right? Blaming those around you, blaming me—it makes you feel better, doesn't it?" It continued chortling with pompous glee and passed right through his body, laughter soon ringing throughout the whole world. "Don't worry, I won't judge you. I'd never do that." He felt its cruel essence wrapping around him—body, mind, and soul all as if seeping to its whim. "You're perfect just the way you are, and even if you think we're enemies, well..."

He tried to ignore the repugnant allusion in spite of knowing he couldn't withstand that parasite's temptations much longer—truly, its clandestine nature had irked him for far too long. With each and every ploy, it grew its influence and now he almost couldn't hold his own anymore; just the idea of being like that monster was as frightening as it was close to the truth. He just had to keep looking ahead and leave the past behind—all of it—so that he could preserve whatever was left at this point. That was the plan.

He turned to meet her eyes again, and he longed for it to be the last time. "I have to do this," he said with as little inflexion in his rhetoric as he could muster. "I… I have to live my own life and be my own person. It's not your fault." He bit his lip and nearly lost the will to continue. The words were easy to utter; he couldn't say the same when it came to witnessing her enveloping frown and the grim realisation washing over her. "It's just growing apart and changing. And I'm sorry but… we can't do anything about it."

Not sparing a moment for doubt to overtake him, he let out a tired sigh. And as he peered over the suburban vastness with a stout glare, from the corner of his eye, he could see the tiniest flicker of hope his sister had held onto being washed clean. She buried her face in her hands and turned her back towards him and he couldn't help but puff at the cruel irony of it; there really was no better sign that he had made up his mind than the harrowing aftermath of his earnest farewell.

The deafening silence between them felt as though it lasted an eternity. It would've eaten him up had she not looked back at him and exclaimed, "No… No, that's not true! You can be all those things you just said and not leave everything behind!" Her voice boomed with a torrent of anger, confusion, and sorrow. It hurt to hear such a gentle spirit be driven to such spite so flagrantly, but he was well aware it would only pain him further to look her in those desolate eyes. "And… and you know that." The sudden shift in her mien came as a surprise to him. Her gaze went over to the right again, arms loosening at the sight. "You can decide to love me or hate me. You can decide to abandon me." She stared at the sidewalk, and he caught a glimpse of her eye—the only one he could spot from out that thin veneer of hair—twitch. "And you can decide to be the worst brother in the world."

For the three seconds it took for him to hear those five words, breathing had never felt so godforsaken hard.

The scene shifted right before his eyes. No longer was he in his own body but just a witness to what was occurring—an impartial spectator. He watched as dusk became night and the bus appeared over the previously infinite horizon. Only now was its arrival heralded by the distant whirring of an engine, and only now was the real deception being unravelled. With sights etched on the fast-approaching vehicle, he didn't even notice scenery around him crumbling to dust and his sense of orientation slipping through his mental grasp until it had been too late. This was exactly what he had fought so hard to prevent, his mind now raced—he just wished to leave and be done with it, not destroy what had been in his wake. Though his ill-conceived arrogance had held his tongue from saying it when it mattered, he needed that little bit of closure more than anything and had he only listened to his sister then maybe things could have been far, far different.

Anything else than what was happening now, he silently pleaded.

Hearing the violent hiss of the bus and the clanging of metal doors: the curtain call was nearing! In the haze of what little time was left before the inevitable had come to pass, he felt his want finally give in as he instinctively reared his head back—to what had come before—and with no qualms for the possible consequences which might have accompanied in doing so. He had to see. He had to know if it was still—

There was nothing. The girl he had treasured so much and tried to protect so hard strode with a meek despondency through the ruins of a once-happy childhood. What little sound escaped her whitened lips he traced to the silent lullaby which rang in her cage of solipsism—the final whispers of a dead land.

The demon emerged from its far nether and circled next to him. He felt its very will burrowing in his thoughts, and the voice murmuring, "You see now: she was right. You can be everything that she says. But truth be told, I think you already are."

No. No, he didn't want to believe those venomous lies it'd weaved nor be a slave to the woes of similar detestability. Even if going back were futile, even if his own body worked against him and he could do little but passively watch while he boarded the vehicle, there still had to be some deal to make, some last-minute save, or just something—anything—he could do. The life he'd set out for was only a tiny, insignificant speck in comparison to what he would give just to go back and spend one more day with her. To hell with the plan, to hell with 'destiny'—it'd all been a trick either way, and in the one shot he had at life, to waste it such was no more than a plain mockery of that forlorn hope he had set out with.

Yet within the pit of his despair, a switch clicked somewhere. True as it was that his body had been stripped from his control, his voice was still intact. He called out to his sibling in a desperate attempt, trying to wade through the mist and the endless distractions which stood between them. And when it reached her and she actually began to face in his direction, a previously distant and weak flame rekindled within his heart. It wasn't too late! There was some justice left in this vain, forsaken world after all!

He was met with a pair of sunken and lifeless eyes.

"P-Please," she begged, the stinging reminder that his regret had come a moment too late, "don't forget me."

"I… I won't! I won't, I promise!" No matter how much he tried to shout and scream, she couldn't hear him, not when all that was left was a shallow husk of her former self.

She vanished right before him in a thick cloud of smoke, suffusing with the rest of the blur. And he realised: only then had he truly made his decision, as he was whisked away by the cold hand of his newfound purgatory. In the fog of people, where he had yearned to find painless vindication for his attachment to the past, he could only recount that look of utter apathy which enclosed in itself more suffering than any 'redemption' he could have sought after now. Before, a seraphim—now, a murky mirror for every insult, every mistake, every hidden tear, every flinch of pain he had ever inflicted; hence, there was no burning rage to be fuelled, because that shadow left stranded on the desolate wasteland was not his sister anymore, nor he—her brother.

The bus continued its course. His new fate was sealed, and a premonition for a future of anguish beset him as reality crumbled to this pitiful new world—a world of the singular, never-ending journey towards a place that had never existed.

The faded mirage...

"Right when he had hope, he was met with desperation."

"It wasn't meant to be like this. I should've stayed there. I should've protected her and if I'd just—" His voice was gone.

"Hush now," the demon soothed, remaining seated next to him.

They rode without a word for a time, a mechanical hum overtaking even the sounds of tired breathing. Had it been feasible in any stretch of the imagination in the first place, he knew there was little to be gained in a folly, indulgent attempt at revenge after all that fiend had toyed with his life. No more retaliation could be made in the forgotten dark. And alas, all that was left and all which was allotted to him was the odious ability to stare blankly through the window at the wide scenery—drab panorama after drab panorama.

"You've changed," it continued. He felt his legs shaking, wanting to give way and escape. The demon placed a small hand on his thigh, seemingly aware of his desire and silencing it. "And no matter how much you want to ignore it or how much you want to keep it bottled up, we made the decision. Together."

Per its character, the demon disappeared after uttering its haunting words. Yet its departure gave way for a change, and through the stained glass he witnessed a slew of images flash in continuous motion. They were vestiges of what had come to pass from his mistake—colourful and vivid to an extent he never could have imagined, the first one he recognised detailing endless nights spent poring over textbooks in the confines of a vastly precarious study. And with the illusion of leisurely social escapades and other 'distractions' flying by his solitude, the scene culminated in a vibrant ceremony heralded by his valedictorian self, receiving all the accolades one with a near-perfect GPA at the most prestigious school in the country could so seamlessly pretend to find happiness in. Then, life took on its course, and he worked and worked without rest, mind scraping through every source of knowledge with an exertion those of lesser capability could have only looked on with curious envy or undisclosed contempt. At the height of his achievements, when he was on the cusp of advancing mankind to those previously unfathomable heights he had always dreamt of reaching, the echo of the triumphant moment was still as vapid and dull as the rest.

"Right when he had everyone, he had no one."

The order of the fragments began to alter, and he ascertained that each consecutive one he had viewed became shorter in length. Adding to the destructiveness that permeated his current chaos, his perception of time (or whatever was left of it) became jaded as well, while the static and the voice—all he could hear. He was old now, a renowned expert in his field, name even reaching the footnotes of books future generations would salivate over during boring lectures. Had any glazed over the succinct excerpts of his memoirs, there was no questioning it: a man of esteemed fortitude and valour, having accomplished so much... yet so little. Loneliness—in all the glory, in all the academia, in all the strife—that was what persisted throughout the remainder of his dreary years.

He tried to pull away, to do anything that could end this violent whiplash of regret and sorrow. But no matter the vain attempts he made, static overlapped with the searing image of the last moment of his life and rendered it indistinguishable. Death itself did not prove a release from what awaited him.

So his tale had ended.

And he was back in his metal prison, facing the long blur.

"Right when he had everything, he had nothing."

Although numbness devoured his form and his eyes danced around the blank canvas with profound emptiness, he felt a few other synapses in his brain fire at that cursed speech—there it was, he thought, that wretched creature who dared mimic her by remaining close to him, where she'd always been. He veered his sights over to the shadow, channelling whatever scorn and disdain he could into his actions, and beheld it inching closer to him.

But… the demon didn't do the same. Or anything of the sort, in fact. This time, he hadn't even caught a hint of ridicule from the otherwise malignant entity. It just kept getting closer. And closer. Until—

He felt himself being drawn into a tight embrace. In that one moment, he experienced an almost familiar sincerity and love coursing through him—a love he would have burnt the whole world down just to have shared with the one he cared for again.

And for as wrong as it was for the two to be encased in a clasp stronger than what forces of nature permitted, the demon held on to him through the unstoppable flurry of tears he'd felt creeping over his eyes. He had no idea why he was crying or why his body had been thrust from its usual state of total rigidity at all. Maybe because crying was the only thing he could do; perhaps the only thing he was allowed to do. Or maybe it was because some divine scale had tipped in such a way that for this moment—just a brief instant—his pathos would overcome the horrendous shackles and he would gain some control back.

He had no idea.

"Right when he had life, he was met with death."

Sensing those icy tendrils wrapping everywhere around him, a murmur of a pitiful resistance escaped his mouth—oh, how much it hurt to be right. His weak sobs, coupled with the small whimpers from the demon, in all their varying pitch and sound, became one over the soft rumble of the bus.

"And that's the kicker, kid… you and me, we're one and the same."

Darkness again.

But he could move.

Where was he? Wait, no, was she all right? Had that vermin already gained the upper hand? It couldn't have. He had to be there before it struck again and now that he was freed from its control, he finally could! His eyes darted in all directions to find any trace of it, to find her.

It took a few embarrassing seconds for Dipper to realise he was in his bed and not in a hyper-realistic dream like he had deceived himself into believing. Right, it was the last day before he and Mabel were set to leave Gravity Falls and they'd have to go back pretending they slogged through another uneventful summer. Bill was gone, the world had been saved, and everyone was okay. He was safe here. He was safe.

Assuring himself of that allowed his otherwise rapid heartbeat to slow down, yet even the shimmer of clarity which broke through his bleary delirium soon relented to the difficulty with which he drew each consecutive breath of air. If only it had been plausible to ward off, for at least a second, the aftereffects of his horrible dream—without a doubt the worst one he had ever had.

Who was he kidding? Dipper had never got off easy when it came to any of this.

Ignoring the itchiness and the sweat which had stained part of his clothes, Dipper cupped his face in his hands and tried to contain the encompassing paroxysm of dread within the reach of his closed palms. He was fully aware of how ragged and unnatural his breathing was, but he just had to revel in this one moment of ignorance and let everything flow outward before anything else. He'd had night terrors before, of course—they were a given. But nothing had ever been as visceral as what he experienced those… those...

How long had it been since he had woken up?

Dipper veered his focus over to the small alarm clock which sat on the rough wooden nightstand. Seeing it display a blood-red 3 AM sent a cold shiver down his spine, eyes instinctively darting over to Mabel's bed. He prayed he somehow hadn't woken her up and that he wouldn't have to explain his late-night bout of mania to her, as he had usually done whenever he was so abruptly roused from his sleep.

One look at her empty bed was enough to quell those fears.

For a little, Dipper thought he had still been dreaming. His gut kicked in faster than he liked and shut that possibility down; no doubt, it wasn't that strange for Mabel to have wandered off somewhere during the night. Whatever the case was, he deemed it better to make light of his predicament rather than ignore it (getting some fresh air and clearing his own thoughts might have helped, perhaps). Moreover, to give in to that urge seemed most appropriate because, contrary to all he had expected to occur after waking up and beyond any heap of logic he often prided himself on acting as his decision-maker, no manner of exhaustion or tiredness beset his body. It was certainly a peculiar languor, for in the slow convalescence he'd always undergone following his nightmares never had he felt this energetic; no, he had always just plopped back to sleep with a confused and frightened rationale mulling over the possibility of another potential nightly disruption.

With a careless swipe of his hand, he tossed the blankets aside and sat up. Given the pervading scent his nose caught on while he was stretching out his body, some minuscule fraction of decorum pondered the idea of showering, but he was aware it would have just furthered his aversion towards the idea of going back to bed.

And that left only one other sensible alternative...

Though Dipper had never been fond of prying into others' affairs, he believed he could forego his principles this once and use the opportunity of finding Mabel to push the nightmare somewhere in the backburner—a place where its torrentuous bellows would be of little relevance; a way to distract himself, yes. Once again scanning her side of the room and the luggage which lay in evident disarray (and that was saying something), he drew up some theories regarding her disappearance. An unsolicited visit to the bathroom or an unquenched thirst needing to be filled: those possibilities etched at him. Knowing there was no other way of determining the truth other than venturing further into the shack (and the silence of the room having begun to gnaw on his suspicion), Dipper manoeuvred over his belongings and exited the bedroom.

As he strode through the expansive corridor of the house, something about the entire circumstance masked an unnatural overtone. The uncanny feeling that something omnipotent was watching befell Dipper, and it grew with each shaky step he took. He had traversed the Mystery Shack in the cloak of ebony dark many times before, but now it felt even quieter and more lifeless than usual, not even the sounds of the usual crickets outside making themselves known to his ears through the half-opened window at the other end of the corridor.

An eerily familiar picture for an eerily recent memory.

Shaking away the exuberance of his imagination, he hastily descended the stairs and found himself in the vicinity of the kitchen, but not without eyeing the silhouette of similar height lurking inside first.

"Mabel?" he voiced his supposition in the darkness, entering through the wooden door frame and flicking the light on.

The figure, which had clearly been his sister, turned around, eyes wide with a surprise quickly dispersed by an inviting placidity.

"Oh. Hi, bro-bro," she greeted. "Ya scared me there."

"S-Sorry." Dipper waved apologetically before laying further eyes on her. Like himself, she was in pyjamas, which meant she hadn't any specific plans for the night nor that her awakening had been voluntary. Truthfully, he had the right to be suspicious; the same conclusions couldn't have been drawn when it came to the certain secretive dealings of a certain great-uncle during a significant part of their summer.

He studied her face, noting the bags under her eyes. It made him better envision his own appearance in his usual, sleep-deprived nature—not that he couldn't have visualised a clearer form, since a mirror was all that had ever been necessary for that. It didn't matter, though, for surely only a cruel, undoubtedly otherworldly malice could keep Mabel up while also eliciting such intangible ponderings in him.

Too long had gone without a word spoken. That implored Dipper to ask, "You up too?"

"Yeah..."

He bit his lip before finding the courage to continue. "Bad dream?"

She pouted. "That obvious?"

"Pretty much." A sigh escaped Dipper. "We're in the same boat, then." He sat next to her. "The eye bags are such a dead giveaway, by the way."

Mabel sneered, saying, "Now you know why I can spot whenever you've sat up until 3 AM writing about Mudmen or whatever in the Journal!"

"Hey, no fair!" Dipper protested, half-smiling. "I had a severed mud arm from a Mud Lurker that was gonna melt into nothing by the next day! I had to record its properties! Erm, even if it did stain a lotta stuff in the room..."

"Blah-blah, all I hear is nerd excuses. Nerdscuses!"

Albeit under the pretence of Dipper's somewhat unamused eye-rolling, the two shared a weak laugh. It was hastily suffused with silence, that of a far stranger character than Dipper liked.

Part of him began, in the hardened shell of his ruminations, to wonder what she had dreamt about and of the similarities an experience like hers might have had with his own vivid one. Dipper didn't let his eagerness get the better of him though, for he knew that asking directly would put the onus on him to regale his story. Suffice to say, that was something he was not at all keen on.

"Guess sleep's off the table, huh?" he muttered, fiddling with his brunette bangs.

"Ugh, totally," Mabel said, face drooping on the table. "Been awake too long and had too much sugar already."

"Yeah, me too." He blinked. "Wait, except the sugar part—what'd you eat or, uh, drink, anyway?"

She gestured to the kitchen sink filled with three separate empty glasses bearing evident Mabel Juice tracings. Of course, Mabel, being the drink's creator, knew better than anyone that such a volatile beverage had to be drunk from different containers each time it'd been served lest one risked choking on multiple plastic paraphernalia instead of the intended (and guaranteed!) count of one.

"Wow." He stifled his amusement as best he could under the veneer of innocuous surprise. "That's impressive, sis."

Mabel brushed off his remark and combed through her hair in a tired motion. "How can both of us be up, though?" She leant back in her chair (a bit too much for Dipper's liking) and balanced on its two legs. "This never happened back home!"

Dipper couldn't resist chuckling. "Yeah, because I was the only one who ever had nightmares and always woke you up." He shook his head. "I guess we can never really catch a break. Even when it's our last day here for... God knows how long."

Mabel seemed flustered, having broken off eye contact with Dipper and having averted her gaze.

"Okay, our last day for now," Dipper murmured, the ostensive cue given by his sister to goad him into correcting his brash assessment proving challenging to ignore. "Didn't mean it like that."

He wasn't lying.

It wasn't that he wanted to imply that he didn't wish to come back to the town next year—he, of all people, craved the next opportunity he'd get to board the bus to Gravity Falls and just do something as mundane as watch a coconut eating contest between Mabel and Soos while dissecting a Beartilope with the multiverse's smartest person three feet next to him, all in the elaborate gift shop of the world's best worst tourist trap. Yet even with the warmth of that dumb, beautiful image paving the way for emotion to act in reason's stead, part of Dipper really wasn't sure it would be like that. Not with everything they'd lived through. He wasn't sure there could be a 'happily ever after' in the quiet aftermath for any of them.

Mabel nodded, seeming to shake off the momentary stupor which had caused the tonal standstill of their conversation. That gave way to a pang of relief from Dipper.

"We're probably making up for all the energy we totally wasted this summer, huh?" she suggested, lurching forward again (much to the dissipation of Dipper's paranoia).

"Well, my money could be on that for now, but only because I still don't see a single logical reason for this to have happened out of the blue. I mean, think about it, isn't it—"

"Pretty weird, eh?" a growly voice coming from their Dipper and Mabel's asked. They both turned to confirm the identity of the speaker at the door frame.

"Grunkle Stan?" the two voices piped up in unison, conflated by fluctuations of incredulity.

"The one and only! I heard the racket you two were makin' and it woke me up," he stated, the fact that he was clad in his boxer shorts and tank-top adding at least some credence to his explanation. "Now, what the heck are you two nutcases doing up this late?"

"Nightmares..."

Stan hesitated for a little, the tiniest flinch which had seeped over his expression vanishing in an instant.

"Oh. 'Msorry to hear that."

"Dipper too," she said on his behalf. "Neither of us can go back to bed, and just me saying that makes it sound totally bonkers."

Stan furrowed his brows, the two longing gazes directed towards him as though allowing him to gather his bearings before swiftly declaring, "Now, if I were the responsible grunkle, I would'a sent you two knuckleheads 'ta bed already. But responsible grunkles don't see the potential in late-night misadventures!" He cackled with unbridled glee. "The night always makes things more fun! Crime included!"

"Well, we're kinda riding the... uh, bus tomorrow so it's not like we can't sleep there anyway," Dipper mentioned, stammering once he remembered the vehicle. He cursed his brain and its insistence on forming arbitrary connections to uncomfortable subject matter out of pure irrelevancies.

"Hey, yeah!" Mabel exclaimed, the brief wave of despondency which beguiled her having washed away. "I was thinking of doing that even without staying up all night, but now I can do both in one! It's like, 'Get two sleeps for the price of one'!" She waved her hands in imitation of a commercial tagline.

"I don't think sleep debt works that way," Dipper pointed out, the timid grin perking on his lips notwithstanding.

He was caught unprepared by the Pitt Cola which had materialised in front of him and on the table by the grace of one uncannily burly arm. Stan's inclination for serving refreshments didn't appear to impact Mabel, though, who had continued explaining her elaborate plan of avoiding any potential chance for her and Dipper oversleeping for their departure in the afternoon. Nonetheless, she accepted the drink once handed to her and began to sip it with a slow, almost sullen indulgence.

Which was… weird.

Something didn't sit right with Dipper. Again. And even if he had been resuscitated from the psychological equivalent of a Rube Goldberg machine only twenty minutes ago and definitely wasn't in the right state of mind to play body language expert, he knew something was bothering his sister just by the small inflexions in her mannerisms; it didn't take a genius to deduce it had something to do with what she'd actually dreamt. Dipper could just tell, and the specific details—be their origin linked to pathological twin sense or a more primal gut feeling—were on the tip of his tongue, so closely lining up...

Dipper pinched himself. Not again, he inwardly seethed. Not again would he lose himself in chasing 'what his gut told him', even if he couldn't swallow away the irking feeling like he'd often done out of respect for people's privacy. That was, without a doubt, the one part of him which could never accept the given reality—his reality—as it were and made him ever keen on solving whichever mystery he was wholly convinced lurked beneath the thin veil of pseudo-factuality. And now, however deafeningly calming it was to be around the people he cared for and however determined his efforts for self-control might have been day after day, the little grey devil in his head never could learn the simple trick of just shutting up.

Dare he thought, everything just seemed fake in light of what had brought them together in this kitchen under most conspicuous circumstances.

"You okay, sweetheart?" Stan asked, catching both Dipper and, as it seemed, Mabel's attention. As he had hoped, he wasn't the only one to have noticed what was off.

"Wha...?" Mabel mumbled. "I'm fine, Grunkle Stan."

"You sure?"

She rubbed the back of her head. "It's nothing much. Well… just, uh, something about my—"

Mabel's explanation was undercut by the tumult of heavy footsteps; it seemed details would have had to wait as whoever was shuffling amid the house made an obvious intent not to mask their presence. Mumbles and whispers rang through the hallways, giving all the more reason for the three to centre their attention to the point of closest origin. Dipper straightened himself out in anticipation, discerning from the auditory hints that the hidden presence could have either been a humanoid creature of some sort (not that there were that many in Gravity Falls) which had inadvertently climbed through a window or an intruder with foolishly high-strung ambitions for robbing a con artist's house.

Or, more reasonably, the last missing member of the Pines family.

"No, if it wasn't there then..." the strident muffles of Ford resonated in the room, his enveloping tan trenchcoat coming into view first and shrouding parts of his face. He blazed past the entire kitchen while remaining completely ignorant of the trio's very existence, eyes set on a particular appliance. Dipper observed that he'd appeared even more dishevelled than usual. "Where'd I put it…?"

"Great," Stan said, eyes veered towards the one who had begun wildly rummaging through the piece of furniture's compartments. "It's a whole catwalk in 'ere—starving crazy people included!"

"O-Oh!" Stanford shot his head up from the place which had piqued his interest. Catching sight of Dipper first and blinking for a couple of seconds (most likely to ensure the rest of the people in front of him were oh-so-very real), he cleared his throat and quickly shut the fridge door. "Oh dear... um, I wasn't…" He rubbed his eyes before glancing back at the scene before him, "I mean, I, er, didn't expect to find you all here."

"Welcome to the club, Grunkle Ford," Dipper greeted, ignoring his dubious stammer. "The, err... Insomniacs club? Sorry, we didn't settle on a name."

"I like that because now I'm not groggy anymore and I can relate to Dipper at the same time!" Mabel exclaimed, and her eyes danced over to Ford. "Oh, also, our club also has absolutely nothing to offer to newcomers!"

"Except for some good company," Stan corrected, winking. "The rate's five bucks an hour, though." Mabel lightly elbowed him and he crossed his arms. "Hey, I gave him a fair deal!"

Ford cleared his throat. "Right..."

"Why'd ya barge in like that, anyway?" Stan asked before Dipper had the chance to do the same. They all peered at Ford in the wake of an answer.

"Uh… Well, I simply wanted to grab a beverage from the fridge for my research down in the lab."

"And not some special voodoo sleep meds?" Stanley asked, smirking.

"What?" he retorted with startling incredulity. "Why would you think that?" He shot a glance towards the fridge several times. "A-And why would I, hypothetically, put anything like that in a place as insecure as a fridge? Hypothetically, of course."

"Did… did you have a nightmare too, Grunkle Ford?" Mabel pressed with a tinge of what Dipper could construe as apprehension in her speech.

"Huh?" Ford said, crossing his arms. "N-No, sweetheart. I just…"

Stan took a heavy breath, tapping his soda can. "Ya never could be a conman, Poindexter." He huffed. "Or even just a good liar, for that matter. I mean, even you're not that weird to call a glass'a water an 'it' and wonder where 'it' is. You were obviously lookin' for something." He shot an accusatory pinky finger at him, much to Ford's apparent chagrin.

Dipper couldn't help but snicker at his uncle's deductive skills. "He's got you there, Grunkle Ford."

Stanford grumbled and rolled his eyes. "Well, if you insist on me telling you, I simply had a disturbance in my sleep," he explained, occupying the last seat opposite Mabel and next to Stan.

"Things like that are normally caused by nightmares," Dipper said, "unless you have a medical condition or something."

"If you want to play semantics, Dipper, then yes. In my case, they were the cause." Ford curled up his fists together. "But coming back to the matter at hand, that still does not discredit the fact that you all are up as well. And I don't suppose this is an intervention for my own sleep-deprivation habits. If it is, I can already tell you it won't be worth it."

"Don't get whatever's left'a your social skills fizzled up, it ain't. But you got a point: why are we all up right now, anyway?" Stan supplanted, scratching his chin in thought. "What is this, some Gravity Falls weirdness leakin' into our sleep?"

"All things considered, that might be probable," Ford mused, and Dipper motioned his head in agreement. Weirder things had happened before, he reasoned. "The fact that we simultaneously awoke in this period of time and due to a dream-related cause is… questionable, to say the least." He furrowed his brows. "I'd wager there might be a possibility of the Snorealax entering its mating period, yet that only occurs once every half-century and last I observed it was thirty-two years ago."

"Well, then I don't 'spose anyone else's got any other ideas," Stan deduced, fumbling his thumb over the Pitt Cola's tab.

Dipper's mind clicked with an idea that was as vile as it was plausible. But if anything could have led them to some conclusion, it was that or nothing.

"What if..." Dipper trailed off, not wanting to risk the possibility of shedding too much light on his own dream. Impartiality it was, then. "What if it's Bill? He's a dream demon—or at least was a dream demon. Couldn't he do something like this to us…?"

"Wait, wait," Mabel interjected with blazing speed. "I thought we zapped Bill into oblivion! No—no, that can't be it!"

"Yeah, Mabel's right," Stan agreed. "I think erasing that pest out'a the Mindscape or whatever should've been enough to get rid of it."

Dipper eyed the only person out of the group who hadn't weighed in, and it was the one who had the most authority on the matter.

"Grunkle Ford? Is Bill really gone?"

Ford, upon appearing to register what Dipper meant, was as hollow as the moral code of the entity they were discussing. As if the worst yet equally expected moment had finally come and the one who had always been so prepared for whatever crazy scenarios arose through the tedium was prepared not—that looked to be Ford.

Then, his gaze shot to the floor. He muttered out, "No, I'm afraid... I'm afraid he might not be."

"What?" Stan inquired almost immediately.

Stanford sighed, seemingly through hidden fluster, and began, "Look, there is a possibility—just a possibility—that he might have somehow survived. The memory gun only dispersed him within the Mindscape, like how uranium-235 splits its nucleus during nuclear fission. But that does not mean it obliterated or deleted him entirely from all planes of existence."

"Hol' up," Stanley piped up, Dipper recognising the more stern and serious disposition his face bore. "Are you sayin' that damn triangle might still be in my head or something?"

Ford shifted uncomfortably in his seat and rubbed the back of his head. To say Dipper had been caught off-guard alongside the rest would be an understatement, and he was also questioning if his idol had really been serious. But if Dipper had been hearing those words coming from him, the one person who had engaged with Cipher more than anybody (and who wasn't much of a jokester either), then they had to be true. He could definitely fathom that possibility, although that didn't mean it proved inviting to him or, he suspected, anyone else. Dipper felt vouching on account of his own dream had been enough of a reason for him to assume so.

Stanford conceded, stating, "Look, I didn't want to tell you to avoid instilling needless fear. Plus, it's only a theory." Clearly, he came to realise the tremendous impact of his words after the room was deafened into an abrupt silence. "A-And if it's any consolation, I know how to determine whether there's anything left in Stanley's mind. It would require a comprehensive scan of the brain and the neural pathways to detect any possible anomalies, but it is possible. The Mindscape is not as vast as Bill might have led you all to believe. If he's there, I… I can find him."

Stan scoffed and shook his head. "Oh yeah, nice food for thought—keep wonderin' if you have a demon in your brain until your brother wires ya up to some cuckoo-machine to see 'if it's just a theory'!" He gesticulated, making the most overt air quotes possible. "Just great."

It was no mystery that Dipper's conman great-uncle had been displeased or even mad with this revelation. And he was well in his right to be; after all, his mind was at stake, and it wasn't as if that fact didn't also make Dipper instinctively twitch. That still didn't mean he was completely averse to Ford's actions—Bill was a serious threat and from the way his great-uncle had always delved into the countless deep rabbit holes surrounding the demon with uttermost secrecy, Dipper had no doubts he understood that. Yet in spite of the trust Dipper had in Ford and the potential working in the shadows might have offered, there was no denying that keeping anyone in the dark was the worst course to undergo.

They had learnt their lesson after abiding by a similar methodology with the Rift, after all, Dipper grimly reminisced.

"Why didn't you tell us, Grunkle Ford?" Dipper asked out of a hunger for clarity.

Ford buried his face in his hands and explained, "Like I said, Dipper, it's only a possibility. I'm still not sure if any of this has even a little truth to it or if it's just baseless conjecture. I have drawn most of my conclusions from Fiddleford's recovery and the way his fragmented memories led him to the stable state he is in now."

"You mean a state in which he had all those memories he destroyed back again?" Dipper pressed. "Good and bad?"

Ford slightly lowered his head in confirmation.

"Well, Ford, ya should'a told me—scratch that, all of us—sooner about your 'uncertainty'," Stan noted with a harsh underbite in his tone. "Now we don't know when or how he might be comin' back for revenge."

"I… I'm sorry." His face fell. "I just didn't want to trouble any of you with this. But I didn't want to lie to you either. Not again."

Stan sighed. "Whatever. I feel fine anyway, so the world shouldn't be ending tonight at least. If it's really possible for that thing 'ta still be infesting my head, ya can have a look at me tomorrow." Dipper couldn't miss the slight rolling of his eyes. Classic.

"Yay, we're gonna be killing Bill again..." Mabel trailed off, lightly pumping her fist in the air.

Stan chuckled. "You got that right, pumpkin." He raised a brow. "Is somethin' the matter, Mabel?"

She blinked. "N-No, it's nothing."

"You sure? 'Sfar as I remember before IQ here waltzed in ya had a different story."

Dipper had to quell his surprise (in contrast to Ford, who let his confusion become apparent all over his features). It was no secret that Stan had been the most perceptive of the four, but Dipper found little joy in how long it'd taken for him to determine what Stan was referring to. If anything, the unease originated more from his lack of focus than anything else.

Well, and the one small truth which had been silently reaffirmed again.

There was at least one more Pines there other than Dipper who wasn't saying everything.

Seven is the way.

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