Bill had taken Mabel. Dipper was sure of it. His body flooded with adrenaline, but as he was unable to put it to good use at the moment, all it did was make him shake uncontrollably. He couldn't just make a beeline for the Fearamid and demand his sister back, as much as he'd like to. He'd reloaded his shotgun on the fly before going out to search for Gideon, but he didn't even have his satchel that contained his knife and spare ammo. Not to mention he needed to get his eye patched up, and get at least a little rest after his fight earlier.
He was staring at the dirt, lost in thought, when a hand clamping down on his shoulder startled him into the automatic response Ford had drilled into him for hand-to-hand conflict. He grabbed the offending arm and yanked it (and the body connected to it) close to his side, then knelt down, the perpetrator's momentum sending them tumbling over his shoulder.
"Fuck sake, Dipper, what the hell?!"
"Oh shit." Dipper's cheeks were hot as he leaned down to help his friend back to his feet. "I was—I didn't—sorry, Gid."
"Jesus, I'm just glad your shotgun was holstered," Gideon muttered, brushing his hair out of his eyes.
Dipper swallowed, and shifted his feet uncomfortably. He was glad of that particular fact as well. "Did—were you saying something to me? If so, I didn't hear it."
Gideon shook his head, crossing his arms over his chest. "I swear, you get more like Ford every day."
Dipper stared at his feet, unsure if that was a compliment or an insult. Based on Ford's behavior lately, it was probably an insult.
"What I said," Gideon continued, "was we need to get back to the UFO and tell Ford what happened."
Dipper considered that for a moment, then shook his head. "No."
Gideon frowned, his blue eyes narrowed. "No? Why not?"
"Remember his reaction to the news of Melody and Soos having a baby?" Dipper said, his voice hard. "His first instinct was to abort it. Mabel was near death when we froze her." Saying the words made his chest ache, but it was the truth. "Do you really think Ford would want us to go after her? Especially when she's probably kept under lock and key in the Fearamid? He's more focused on keeping the last of us who are functionally alive, well...functional."
Gideon's mouth was a tight line as he considered Dipper's words. Finally, he gave a small nod. "You make a good point. What should we do, then? We don't even know how long Bill's had Mabel, or if she's even—" he paused and swallowed hard, then asked again, "What should we do?"
Dipper sighed, and ran a hand through his hair. Motioning toward the UFO, he said, "Let's talk about it on the way back."
/
"OUCH! OW, owowowowow!" Dipper cried through clenched teeth, as Pacifica cleaned out the wound over his eye with iodine. Dipper sat on his bed, Pacifica's first aid kit spread out next to him, while she crouched in front of him. Gideon stood in the doorway, keeping an eye out for the adults.
She pulled back and raised an eyebrow at him. "Hold still, you big baby. You're just lucky this doesn't need stitches." She poured some iodine on a clean cotton swab, and dabbed it at the wound. "Now what's this big secret you had to tell me about?"
Dipper looked to Gideon, who glanced out into the hallway, then ducked his head back inside and nodded. No one else was nearby.
"Bill kidnapped Mabel," Dipper said, without any preamble.
Pacifica inhaled sharply, her mouth agape, but Dipper continued on, afraid he'd break down if he had to stop and answer questions.
"While I was fighting the giant Hand, Gideon went to grab the cryo-tube schematics for Ford from his lab. He wanted to see Mabel, but when he entered the back of the facility, he realized that Mabel was gone. And not just her—the whole cryo-stasis tube she'd been frozen in was gone. Nobody but Bill could have done it."
Pacifica's hands were trembling as she unwrapped a butterfly bandage. "Have you told Ford, yet?"
Dipper shook his head, then muttered a quiet "Sorry," as Pacifica put her hands on either side of his face so he'd be still. As she applied the bandage, Dipper tried to explain his reasoning.
"I know Ford cares about Mabel, but there's no way he'd approve of me going—" he raised his eyes at the cough that came from the direction of the doorway. "Sorry, me and Gideon going to the Fearamid tonight to do recon, so we can eventually attempt a rescue mission. Which is what we intend to do."
Pacifica smoothed the bandage down over his wound, then pulled her hands back and looked Dipper in the eye. "You realize you're probably going to get yourselves killed," she said, matter-of-factly.
Dipper shrugged. "If I can't save Mabel, I really don't have any reason to keep living anyway. And Gideon—well, I told him what we plan is a long shot, but he's determined to go with me, so..."
Pacifica frowned and crossed her arms over her chest. "You don't really mean that, do you? That you'd have no reason to keep living? What about the rest of us?"
"Well, I mean... no offense to the rest of you," Dipper said with a shrug, unable to meet her critical stare, "but I already lost Wendy, and that was bad enough. If I lose Mabel, too? I can't—I don't think I'd be able to handle it."
A small noise that sounded like a frustrated cat growling emanated from Pacifica's throat. "Fine, then. I'm coming with. Lord knows you two can't be trusted to keep yourselves alive if you end up in need of a combat medic."
Dipper's eyes shot up in surprise, and he found himself meeting her level, blue gaze. "But you could get hurt—" he began.
Pacifica rolled her eyes and flapped a hand at him. "I'm just as tough as either of you—and I can properly suture a wound, tie a tourniquet, and set a broken bone."
"She kinda has a point," Gideon said quietly from his post over by the door. "I mean, in a live-fire situation, I'd want Pacifica to be keeping me patched up, rather than you, Dip." He blushed and looked at his feet. "No offense intended. I know I'd be a fuck-up as a combat medic, as well."
Dipper flopped back on his bed, his hands behind his head. "Fine. Whatever. Pacifica can come with us. We should probably all try to get some shut-eye as soon as dinner is over. I want to head out under cover of night. 0200 okay with both of you?"
Pacifica nodded, and Gideon mumbled in agreement.
"Great. That's settled. Now get out," Dipper said abruptly. He flopped onto his side his on his bed, facing the wall, and closed his eyes. "I need a nap. I'll see you at dinner."
/
Try as he might, Dipper was unable to fall asleep prior to dinner. Once at the table, he ate a few bites of stew. Then, feeling bone-weary, he excused himself from the meal early, claiming a headache. It wasn't exactly a lie—the giant hand had knocked him around pretty good during their fight earlier. However, Dipper's main reason for leaving the table early was that he hoped to catch a bit of extra shut-eye before having to get up and sneak into the Fearamid.
To his frustration, sleep continued to elude him. He kept picturing his sister pale and frozen, her hand up against the glass of her cryo tube. That was how she had looked the last time Dipper had seen her. Her eyes were shut against the cold, and her cheeks were gaunt from the weight she'd lost due to her illness, but a small smile had played at her blue-tinged lips. Just before they had closed the tube, she'd hugged her brother, and whispered in his ear, "See you on the other side, Bro-bro."
Dipper swallowed, his throat tight, and his eyes burning. "I'm coming for you, Mabes," he whispered, as his eyes watered over and a tears began to roll down the sides of his face and into his ears, before dripping down to saturate his pillowcase. He took a deep, shaky breath, and closed his eyes.
"Dipper?"
"Mabel?" He opened his eyes and blinked slowly, confused.
"Wha-no, it's Pacifica. You said you wanted to leave at 0200, right?"
Dipper sat up in bed and blinked rapidly, wiping the crusty remains of tears from his cheeks. "Sorry, Paz. I was dreaming, I guess." He didn't really feel like he'd slept at all. He'd closed his eyes, and it was as if no time had passed before Pacifica said his name.
He stood up and cast a glance at his old digital clock, which read 1:57. He'd forgotten to even set an alarm.
"Are you and Gideon all ready to head out?" Dipper asked, squinting at Pacifica's silhouette in his doorway.
The silhouette nodded. "Gid's waiting at the ladder." Pacifica paused for a moment, before asking gently, "Are you okay, Dipper? Do you need to talk ab—"
"I'm good," Dipper said brusquely, cutting her off. He crossed the room and pulled his shotgun from its mount on the wall, settling it into its holster, which he'd actually put on before he tried to sleep. Then he picked up his pre-packed satchel and slung it over his shoulder. "Let's go."
/
The Fearamid still hovered in the air, looking entirely too heavy to be allowed. Dipper, Gideon, and Pacifica gazed up at it from their hiding place among the trees. It actually looked quite beautiful, surrounded by starlight—or at least it would have if the three teens didn't know that inside the structure lived an insane dream demon and his cadre of monstrous minions. Dipper knew, however, that his sister was also being held captive somewhere in there, and he was willing to do anything to get her back.
"So what's your plan for getting us up there?" Pacifica whispered, jolting Dipper out of his thoughts with a poke to his ribs.
"And for that matter, how in the hell are we gonna get down?" Gideon spoke up quietly before Dipper could answer her. "I'm starting to reckon that's probably something we shoulda talked through before hiking all the way out here."
"Oh, ye of little faith." Dipper held a hand to his heart in mock hurt. "Do you really think I'd trek us all this way in the middle of the night without a plan in place to get us in and out of the Fearamid safely?"
Pacifica raised her hand. "Actually, I did ask what your plan was," she said, then inclined her head toward Gideon. "Our Albino Emo here's the doubting Thomas."
Despite the seriousness of what they were about to do, Dipper had to hold back a laugh at Pacifica's new nickname for Gideon. She often surprised him with her quick wit—something he'd never really noticed about her before they'd been forced by circumstance to live in such close proximity.
Gideon, however, wasn't as amused. "I'll have you know that I'm not technically an albino—my hair is white because of a rare case of complete cranial poliosis. And I'll thank you to leave my music taste out of this. I have a lot of emotions, okay?" He said the last bit behind a small smile, before turning his attention from Pacifica to Dipper. "But seriously, if you have a plan, let's hear it."
"Your hair has polio?" Pacifica asked before Dipper even had time to inhale a breath with which to speak. "How does one even contract polio of the hair?"
"Ugh, shoulda not said anything," Gideon muttered. "Not polio. Poliosis. It's the medical term for when—"
"Look, now's not the time for this discussion, as fascinating as your hair's backstory is, Gid. We only have a few more hours of darkness in which to do our recon, and I'd like to make use of as much of it as possible." Dipper shrugged his satchel off his shoulder and opened it, pulling out two gun-shaped items. "This is my plan: Mabel's old grappling hook for ingress, and for egress, I 'borrowed' Ford's bubble gun."
Gideon narrowed his eyes at the bubble gun, clearly confused. Before he had the chance to ask his question, however, Dipper answered it.
"Not bubble gum—bubble gun," he explained, emphasizing the n. "It's an old prototype of Ford's that I helped him test. Without going into all the mechanics that make it work, I'll just say this: we use it to form a bubble around ourselves, and jump off the Fearamid. The bubble will slow our descent and cushion our landing. In theory."
"Uh," Pacifica giggled nervously. "In theory?"
Dipper shrugged and tucked the bubble gun back into his satchel, before slinging the bag over his shoulder again. "We never tested it from anything as high up as the Fearamid. It worked from the water tower, though."
"Oh, well if it worked from the water tower..." Pacifica said faintly. In the moonlight filtering through the dead and rotting forest canopy, she appeared to have turned an unflattering shade of green.
Dipper pretended not to notice her sudden hue shift, and started walking slowly toward the clearing below the Fearamid, motioning for Gideon and Pacifica to follow him.
"Aw, is the princess scared of heights?" Gideon asked in a quiet, sing-song tone, as they fell in line behind Dipper.
Pacifica huffed. "Consider it my one flaw. And it isn't really even the height that bothers me, so much as the fall, followed by the bone-shattering impact of the sudden deceleration, leading to ruptured organs and, oh yeah, death, that come after the height."
Dipper didn't turn to see Gideon's reaction to Pacifica's words, but the low mumble of "Good descriptive skills," made him imagine that Gideon was now as green as Pacifica had looked only moments ago.
Dipper grinned to himself and shook his head. He would've been willing to walk into hell alone to save Mabel, but it didn't hurt to have these two dorks with him to watch his back.
/
The three teens stood on a ledge at the base of the Fearamid, as Dipper wound the thin cord around the grappling gun, before tucking it back into his satchel.
"Ugh, how thoughtful of you to not mention the climbing part," Pacifica muttered, massaging her biceps. She glanced downward, gulped, and quickly took a step back further on the ledge.
"I don't think that was part of the plan, Paz," Gideon said, wiping the sheen of sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. "It wasn't part of the plan, right Dip?"
Dipper shook his head. "Looks like the mechanism got stuck. It was supposed to pull us up. Maybe I didn't calculate how much weight it could handle at once? After all, I hadn't taken into account Pacifica being with us."
Gideon snickered at the exact moment Pacifica crossed her arms over her chest and glared daggers at Dipper.
"You did not just call me fat, right, Pines?" The edge in her voice called to mind the spoiled, mean. pre-Weirdmageddon Pacifica.
Dipper sighed. "No, Paz, I didn't call you fat. I meant… you're an extra person I didn't account for when calculating how much the grappling gun could pull. People weigh...stuff. Just—can we drop this and do what we came here to do? I want to find my sister."
Pacifica nodded and glanced down at her feet, looking properly ashamed.
Dipper placed a hand on the wall of the Fearamid, and began walking carefully along the ledge. "If I'm remembering correctly from our last...visit here… there should be an entrance just a little up ahead." A cool breeze ruffled his hair, and brought goosebumps to the back of his neck. He felt ill, and not just because of the walloping he'd received from the giant Hand yesterday morning. He had no idea if they'd be able to find Mabel...or if she was even still alive.
Dipper swallowed past the lump in his throat, and shook his head to clear it. Now was not the time to dwell on emotions. He could have as many emotions as he wanted after he rescued his sister. He saw the opening he'd remembered a few feet in front of him, and held up a hand behind him to make sure Pacifica and Gideon knew to be quiet. Slowly he peered around the edge of the opening, into the cavernous main "throne" room of the Fearamid.
The room was dim, lit by torches on the walls. Where once a throne made of people had stood, there stood a more modest throne, made of what looked like teeth. Next to it, stood a smaller throne of a more traditional appearance, carved out of dark wood, and upholstered with red fabric. The hall was empty, much to Dipper's relief. He waved for Pacifica and Gideon to follow him, and crept slowly around the entrance, sticking close to the wall. Once they were all inside, Dipper felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned and narrowed his eyes at Gideon.
"What?" he hissed.
"Sorry, Dip, it's just, I honestly didn't expect us to even get this far. Do you know where you're going, or are we just wingin' it?"
Dipper shrugged. "Little of column A, little of column B," he whispered. He pointed to a door that looked like it might lead to a hallway. "Just hush and follow me."
"Ow!" Gideon yelped quietly. Dipper smiled to himself as he started toward the door. He was certain Pacifica had just kicked their mutual friend in the leg.
When Dipper reached the door, he pushed it slowly open, praying to any gods listening that Bill kept his hinges well oiled. The gods, it would seem, were not on Dipper's side.
SQUEAK
Dipper winced and stopped pushing with the door barely open—but wide enough for the three of them to slip through sideways.
"Something's not right," he murmured, peering up and down the dimly lit hallway. "Where is everyone? This feels too easy."
"I wasn't going to say anything, but I noticed that too," Pacifica said softly. "No guards or anything…? I highly doubt that Himself and his inter-dimensional band of demon lackeys just all go to bed at the same time, without anyone keeping watch."
"Unless they had some fail-safe reason to think they didn't need guards," Gideon whispered. "If you think he's set a trap, should we maybe turn around and leave?"
Dipper shook his head vehemently. "We've come this far. We know he has Mabel. I have to find her."
"But Dip—" began Gideon.
"We're not leaving," Dipper said, a bit louder than he meant to. He pressed himself against the wall as he heard shuffling footsteps behind a nearby door. "Shit."
"I'm not doing this again, Bill! I know Dipper isn't really here!"
Dipper's face went numb, and his lungs forgot how to breathe. He knew that voice. It was a voice he never expected to hear again. He rushed across the hallway to the door the voice came from behind.
"Dip, don't! It's obviously at trap!" Pacifica called after him.
Dipper ignored her, and pushed the door open. He stood motionless in the open doorway, taking in the figure before him. If this was a trick, it was incredibly realistic.
"Wendy?"
/
/
/
/
Once again, sorry for the (incredibly!) delayed update. I'm working on my master's degree and other stuff, and basically, I write when I can. I hope you enjoyed this. Comments are super appreciated!
XOXO
MPD