Gravity Falls: In For a Penny
As a genuine small-town diner, Greasy's Diner (We Serve Food!) stayed open late. Even after the dinner rush ended, a steady stream of any number of loggers, lumberjacks, bikers, and passing-through truckers worked well past evening and would pay handsomely for anything even resembling food. And since the disbandment of the Blind-Eye Society — though few outside the Pines family knew that was the cause — the food had gotten much better than "resembling".
The long hours allowed any who needed hot food before a good night's sleep to stuff themselves silly and spend time with good company.
That was also what made it very attractive to the still-somewhat-new, yet surprisingly competent, Mayor Tyler Cutebiker. A majority of nights would find him entering the diner in his trademark combination of suit jacket with cut-off shorts, cowboy boots and cap for a nice breakfast-for-dinner.
This particular night, the mayor checked his watch as he slipped into a booth to find it an even ten at night. Whew, a half hour until closing! That was a little too close to playing with fire. Lazy Susan kept the place open late, but ever since the summer she'd become notoriously strict about those hours. No new orders were placed after ten-fifteen and the doors were locked at closing on the dot.
Anyone who stayed after helped clean up the lobby. The warning sign was posted just under the open hours on the diner door. And while Tyler would enjoy helping any of his constituents, it was only Monday. He needed a good night's sleep this early in the work week.
"Good evening, Mister Mayor." A young woman's voice jerked the biker-turned-mayor out of his brief musings. He looked up and smiled at the sight of his secretly favorite waitress.
"Good evenin' there, Miss Penny," he replied cordially.
Penny was a young lady, no older than fourteen, with platinum blonde hair tied in a large bun at the back of her head and deep blue eyes, as well as a charming smile that showed even, pearly-white teeth. As always, she was dressed in the diner's uniform of a pink, collared work shirt with jeans and good shoes, a pencil placed behind her ear.
"The usual, Mister Mayor?" Penny asked with a faint grin.
Mayor Tyler pursed his lips as he considered the menu, tapping at his lower lip as he did. And, as always, he settled on his usual of a full meatlover's breakfast. Despite his tiny frame, the former-biker could put away food to rival anyone in town. It was a ritual that the girl found comforting in a way. She wrote out the order and smiled as she turned it in behind the counter.
After bringing the mayor his customary coffee, turned almost white with the added cream and sugar, Penny headed into the kitchen to continue cleaning up. Lazy Susan was hard at work scrubbing the fittingly greasy pans and dishes while their cook quickly put together the mayor's order. As Penny dried a large pan, the cook rang the bell with a call of "Order up!" and a teasing wink at Penny.
"Better eat quick, Mister Mayor," Penny warned. "You know what happens …" her voice went teasingly grave, "after hours."
Tyler nodded before digging in. Penny glanced to the side to see a few lumberjacks making themselves scarce in fear of Lazy Susan's policy, their payment left on the table and their dishes neatly stacked. She giggled as she collected the dishes and deposited the money in the register, carefully counting out the extra for the tip jar.
With half his meal in a to-go box, Mayor Tyler tipped his hat and slipped out of the restaurant just as Penny was about to lock the door. "You're a gem, Miss Penny!" he shouted, knowing full-well that she had waited a few moments to let him out scot-free. With a satisfying click the door was locked and clean-up began in earnest.
A solid twenty minutes later, everything was scrubbed down to shining from the kitchen to the lobby to the tables and booths. No more dirty dishes left in the sinks for the morrow or broken eggs left on the kitchen floor.
After a final inspection with her sharp, single functioning eye, Susan clocked everyone out and let them go home. The cook said his goodbyes without looking back, but Penny never left. Out of the back door to the diner stepped a girl her age, with the same piercing blue eyes and long blonde hair, now loose, but dressed in a fashionable purple ensemble.
Rather than "Penny", out stepped Pacifica Northwest.
"Sweet dreams, Susan," Pacifica said with her usual dignified (bordering on haughty) air, nowadays tempered with familiarity and genuine fondness.
"G'night, 'Penny'," Susan replied. She lifted her drooping eyelid in her trademark "wink." Pacifica chuckled and made herself scarce, heading for the timely arrival of her driver. Oh, sure, the Northwests had hit a huge financial snag after her father's "investment" in Weirdmageddon, but that had only really sunk them to "very wealthy" rather than "stupidly rich".
As she loaded herself into the sleek sedan, greeting her driver as Mabel had taught her was good manners, she settled in and looked back at the railcar-turned-diner, thinking about how she had ended up there.
After the twins had headed back to their home in Piedmont, California, things had started to settle in the wake of Weirdmageddon. People had gotten back to their jobs and hobbies, school had started back only a few days after the twins had left for home, and the townspeople slowly began to move past the horrors they had all witnessed, thanks in part to the "Never Mind All That" Act.
But some things lingered after the terrifying four-day event. Group therapy meetings had popped up all over town, given lenience from NMAT as long as they remained private affairs. Some lived in mild denial over the whole thing, while others took it as a sign to change their outlooks on life.
Out of all the subtle changes that had arisen, the Northwest family's new financial situation had been one of the most obvious, just about equal to the overnight rags-to-riches story of the town kook, Fiddleford McGucket.
After selling their ancestral home to reclaim liquid cash, they had resettled in a smaller, but still rather large, two-story stone house on the other side of the town — one of several properties they owned around the valley just because they could, though the rest had been also sold to better their finances. The staff had been drastically reduced to the butler, Hamish, a single maid, two cooks, and a crew of lawn workers. McGucket had been generous enough to allow them to take whatever furniture they wanted from the mansion that could fit in their new house.
After the move-in, Preston had thrown himself into their remaining businesses, such as the mudflap factory and Northwest Realty to begin "returning them to their rightful place in society". Because of this, he was rarely home anymore, leaving at the crack of dawn and returning late at night. When he was home, he was either in his office or in bed to rest up for the next day of work.
Priscilla had taken up similar goals, though in a different manner. She'd taken up writing her memoirs, centered around her experiences marrying into high-society. Pacitifca had been surprised, bordering on shocked, to learn that her mother had earned a degree in writing before marrying Preston. She had even published a few books on flower arrangement and the history of fashion in the early days of their marriage.
Her current project was bolstered by the fact that she had an ear for gossip and scandalous stories. At Pacifica's request, she had taken the liberty of changing names in her recollections, though Pacifica had carefully worded her request to appeal to avoiding provable backlash from her acquaintances rather than any ethical reasons.
It was thanks to her father's obsession and her mother's tentative approval that Pacifica had been able to get her job at Greasy's. Though, in all honesty, it was thanks to the Pines twins that she had even thought to get a job. She video chatted with the twins once a week, and Dipper had been the one to drop the idea when Pacifica had mentioned having so little to do besides schoolwork.
It had been a rough adjustment at first. Though striving to turn her attitude toward life and in general around, thirteen years of elitism and selfishness were hard to unlearn. And the idea of serving others was nearly as unfamiliar as sharing had been before the mini-golf incident. Ironically, it had been her lifetime of hiding her true feelings behind a mask that got her through the first few weeks, of wearing a false smile and honeyed words from years of exposure to high societal standards.
Over time, though, her smiles at work had grown from false to genuine. She learned more than how to navigate crowded dining rooms, how to write shorthand for orders, and diner lingo. She had learned to take pride in a hard day's work, in receiving a paycheck that she had earned instead of it being handed to her, in counting out tips from grateful customers, and in receiving honest compliments from diner patrons. Even in the simple joy of making someone's life easier through a simple act of kindness.
Pacifica was shaken from her musings by the car slowing at the front door to her home. She opened the door for herself, even that small gesture something relatively new, and thanked her driver before heading inside. As she made her way up the stairs to the second floor, Pacifica froze at the sound of her parents' voices. Their light was on and the door partly open, and Pacifica's morbid curiosity got the best of her. She peeked in for a moment and saw, to her horror, her parents cuddling with clearly only their bedsheets for cover, whispering to each other and giggling.
She stifled a gag and quietly made her way to her room. One thing that she never would have seen coming was her parents' marriage being reaffirmed by their new life, rather than torn asunder as she had secretly feared. Her mother, in an uncharacteristic display of both motherly intuition and genuine compassion, had assured her in private that she and Preston had had a mutual respect and even caring going into their marriage. Yes, he had won her in a boat show, but that had been a date. One that had led to, if not love, than at least something like it.
Pacifica closed the door to her room and tossed the bag containing her work clothes onto an armchair by her bed. She removed her shoes, sighing in relief as she dug her toes into the fluffy rug that covered the floor, before undressing and showering. As per her usual, she took great care in her beauty routine — shampoo and conditioner for her hair, specialized soap for her skin, specific care for her teeth, and so on — before retiring to bed.
Before she turned off her bedside lamp, Pacifica took a picture frame on her bedside and brushed her fingers over it. It was a picture of "Mystery Twins" that Mabel had sent from Piedmont a few weeks ago. It showed the duo side-hugging and smiling at the camera, Mabel flashing a peace sign and Dipper rubbing the back of his head in an adorably awkward way. The most striking thing, though, was the lack of the trapper hat he'd traded his pine tree cap with Wendy, showing his curls and even his birthmark.
Pacifica rubbed a thumb over the picture depicting her first real friend and the boy she'd slowly realized she'd lost her heart to.
Though she'd been petty and spiteful to Mabel from the moment they met, the odd girl had been kinder to her than anyone else she had ever met — even with that impressive string of not-untrue insults at the mini-golf course. She'd even risked her life to save Pacifica from the little golfball people. If that wasn't the ideal of a great friend, what could be?
Her line of thought shifted a bit and her cheeks pinked at the memory of Dipper comforting her in the hidden room during the ghost attack and in that burlap sack in the Crawlspace, even when both times he'd had every reason to shun her. He was nothing like the image she had ever expected to fall for — classically handsome, rich, snobbish, and either an idiot or cruelly cunning — and everything she now knew she wanted. He was genuine, honest, kind, and fiercely intelligent. Not to mention kind of a dork.
As she placed the frame back on her bedside table and turned off the lamp, she couldn't help but notice that Dipper's jawline in the picture seemed a bit sharper than last summer.
Twenty Years Later
Pacifica hummed to herself as she finished up the stitching on a new blouse design, a sky blue piece with dark purple leaves flying from the lower hem to the upper right sleeve. She smiled, not for the first time, at the thought that she would have joined her sister-in-law's online craft-and-clothing business, even just as a designer.
She had just finished snipping the last thread when there was a knock at the bedroom door. She glanced at the clock on the nightstand; it was far too early for Dipper to be done working. "Come in," she called. The door opened to let in a little girl with long, honey-blonde hair done up in twin pigtails, her husband's chocolate eyes, and her own petite nose.
"Atlanta?" Pacifica asked, genuinely surprised. Her daughter may have favored her in appearance, but she inherited much of her personality from the twins, with Dipper's reserved intellect balanced by a love of activity from Mabel that created a proud tomboy. Normally, she would be outside playing or roaming the trees around the house until sunset.
"Mom?" Atlanta asked. "Can we talk for a second?"
"Of course, sweetie," Pacifica said with a smile, patting the side of the bed next to her. "Is everything alright?"
"Mmhmm, everything's okay," Atlanta said, taking a seat next to her mom and leaning back to rest on the comforter. "I was just wondering something."
"Wondering what?" Pacifica asked, deliberately putting her sewing aside. She preferred to give her children her utmost attention when they came to her, unlike her own parents.
"Where did my middle name come from?" she asked. "I asked dad about my first name, and he said I was named after a great mythical huntress. And that it pairs with your name as an ocean."
Pacifica chuckled at that. She and Dipper had flipped a coin to see who would choose Atlanta's first and middle names, and he'd lucked out. And it was just like her dorky love to choose a name with layered meanings. "So you want to know where 'Penelope' came from?"
"Uh-huh," Atlanta replied. "I looked through Auntie Mabel's family scrapbooks and couldn't find any Penelope Pines. And I'm pretty sure you wouldn't name me after anyone in your side of the family." Pacifica felt her jaw tighten for a moment and mentally agreed. She would never name her children after a Northwest. "So where did my middle name come from?" Atlanta asked.
Pacifica smiled and pulled her little girl into her lap. At eight years old, nearly nine, she was happy that her little Atlanta wouldn't push her away quite yet. "Has your dad or Auntie Mabel told you about what I was like when I was your age?"
"Grunkle Stan has," Atlanta confirmed. "He says you were a no-good, rotten brat."
Pacifica sighed heavily. "I'm sure he did. And he wasn't wrong."
"But Auntie Mabel says you were confused-mean instead of real-mean," Atlanta added with a smile.
Pacifica gave a sad smile at that. Typical Mabel. "Well, I was a spoiled brat when I was young. The Northwests were super rich back then and my parents taught me that money and status are everything. And since we had both, they said it meant we were better than everyone else. I just assumed that was right." She laughed softly.
"Then I met the Pines twins. Mabel was friendly to me for no reason than it was who she was and didn't back down for a popular girl. And Dipper … he didn't let me get away with anything. It's because of him that I found out the Northwests were built on lies." By this point, Pacifica was talking as much to herself as her daughter, and Atlanta tapped her arm to break her out of the memories.
"Anyway, after Weirdmageddon the Northwests lost a lot of their money. My father sold a lot of property to earn cash and we moved to a smaller house. And your dad suggested I get a job to try and understand normal people." She smiled. "I got a job at Greasy's Diner. And I had this crazy idea to come up with a fake name, one that wasn't tied to money or Northwests. My waitress name tag read 'Penny,' because my initials back then were P.E.N. and it was something goofy like your Auntie Mabel would do.
"So when it came time to name you … I just wanted you to have that name. A name that, to me, represented becoming a better person."
Atlanta's eyes were shining as she looked up at her mother, who was holding back tears. Atlanta twisted in her mother's grasp and hugged her. "Thanks, Momma," she whispered. "I think you became a great person. And an awesome mom."
As Pacifica returned the hug, tears streaming down her face, neither mother nor daughter noticed Dipper recording the scene on his phone. He'd send it to Mabel and their Grunkles later for posterity, but for now he wanted to commit it to memory.
This story grew from a collection of my own interpretations of post-canon. Alex Hirsch has confirmed that he thinks Pacifica got a job at Greasy's and thinks of the pines twins often. This was my take on how things would spin out.
And Atlanta Penelope Pines is my own next-gen creation. Atlanta is the name of a hero huntress in Greek mythology, and it ties in thematically with 'Pacifica' which means 'peaceful' and lent its name to the ocean.
If you liked this, leave a review! And may your inspiration flow freely!