"...This isn't so bad, huh, Dipper?" Mabel said at last. "I mean, Great Uncle Stanford's kinda weird, but hey, we're both pretty weird too, right? And his house has so much cool stuff in it! I think we're gonna like it here."
"...Maybe." Dipper just lay down in the middle of the bed, and curled up with his back to her.
Mabel's bright smile faded away, and she let out a small sigh. Clearly Operation Stay-Cheerful-To-Keep-Dipper-Happy wasn't working like she'd hoped it would. But he didn't want to talk either, and she was rapidly running out of ideas.
Hopefully things will be different here.
After a few minutes Tate returned, carrying a wooden tray that had a large loaf of bread, a knife, and two bowls of stew onboard, along with two wooden cups of water. He set the tray on the floor between their beds, then straightened up.
"Put that on the dumbwaiter when you're done."
Mabel blinked. "...The what?"
Tate paused. "Oh. Right. Sorry. C'mere and I'll show you."
Mabel looked over at Dipper to see if he wanted to see the dumb waiter (that didn't seem like a very nice way to describe whoever that was) too, but he didn't even look up, so she just followed Tate out to the foot of the stairs.
Tate gestured to a sort of wooden cupboard set in the wall with a crank next to it, and opened the door. Inside, to her surprise, Mabel saw a lot of ropes, and a little wooden platform thingy.
"Just put the tray on that, and then turn the crank ta the right, and that'll send it back downstairs."
"Whoa, neat!" Mabel praised.
"Yup. My dad designed it." A note of pride entered his voice as he spoke. Then, as an afterthought, he added, "Turn it the other way ta bring the platform back up. But either way, remember: turn it slowly. Ya don't wanna strain the ropes too much."
Mabel nodded. "Right is up, left is down, turn it slow or it all falls down. Got it."
Tate gave her an approving nod, and then headed for the stairs.
To her relief, when Mabel came back Dipper was sitting on the floor and using the knife to cut a couple of slices of bread. She sat down across from him, and he passed her one of the slices, before picking up one of the bowls and getting started eating. It was the first time he'd done so without being prompted in weeks.
It was a very good stew, with big juicy chunks of meat in it, and a bunch of vegetables that Mabel enjoyed more than she usually did. Neither of them talked much, more absorbed in enjoying the meal.
When they finished, Mabel took the tray back to the dumbwaiter (why the heck did they call it that?) and turned the crank, watching with delight as the tray slowly disappeared into the darkness. When it wouldn't go any further, she saw, down at the bottom of the shaft, a flicker of light suddenly appear, before a pair of hands (she thought maybe they were Tate's) reached in and grabbed the tray, and the light disappeared again.
So cool.
"So," she asked when she returned to their room, "you wanna go explore the house?"
Dipper shook his head. "Not right now, sorry. I...kinda just wanna go to sleep."
Part of Mabel wanted to drag him out of the room regardless, see if that would shake him out of his shell a little. The brother she knew would have leaped at the chance to go check out all the weird stuff their great uncle (ugh, that was too long to say all the time-she'd have to figure out a way to shorten it) and his crazy friend had around here.
Instead, she sighed again. "Okay. Maybe tomorrow?"
"Yeah. Maybe." And, barely taking the time to take off his shoes, vest and hat, Dipper crawled under the blankets and bundled himself up until he looked more like a caterpillar than a twelve-year-old boy.
It wasn't that dark out, but Mabel changed into her nightdress and climbed into her own bed.
"Night, Dipper," she said softly once she was settled under the covers.
"Night, Mabel."
Before long they were both asleep.
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
The plague had passed through their town without mercy, seeming to have no set pattern in who it infected or who it spared. Strong, healthy young people; weak, frail old people; children-anyone could catch the disease. Not even the rabbi, the holiest man in town, managed to escape it.
Within days of its arrival Dipper and Mabel's mother, father and grandfather were all dying, and even Mabel had developed some symptoms, but she'd been one of the lucky ones, and was able to fight them off. Dipper suspected her spirit was simply too stubborn to let itself be taken away by the plague.
But not him.
For some reason, Dipper hadn't gotten sick at all.
It felt like the world's cruellest joke. Compared to Mabel, he was always the one who got sick. Heck, when they were first born he'd had the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck, and it was only by the barest stroke of fortune that he'd managed to survive. But now, when everyone else was dying in droves around him and his own sister was briefly ill, Dipper hadn't been touched.
He didn't know if it was a miracle or a sign that he was secretly a witch (like some of the people in town had whispered to each other when they thought he couldn't hear) or something else altogether...but he hated it.
He and Mabel hadn't even gotten to see their family's bodies one last time before they were taken away, because the corpses could sometimes still spread disease.
But he kept getting this image in his head of what would have happened if they'd been allowed to see them: that his parents and grandfather would open their cold dead eyes, one by one, and slowly sit up and look at him, and ask, "Why didn't you get sick instead of us?"
Dipper opened his eyes with a gasp, and tried to struggle his way out of the entangling sheets.
For a second he lay there in a state of disoriented bewilderment as he registered that this was not his bed, this was not his house, what had happened-
Then he remembered.
Traveling all the way to this little town, Gravity Falls.
Meeting their uncle, and his odd friend who created monsters out of metal.
This was his and Mabel's home now.
Slowly he sat up, and put a hand over his racing heart, taking a few deep breaths, and (though he didn't want to acknowledge it) scrubbing at his eyes with his other hand.
After a moment he glanced over at Mabel.
She was still peacefully asleep, snoring in fact, with one arm flung up over her forehead.
The sight helped him to relax, and ignore the ever-present sick feeling in his gut at least a little.
He was just lying down to try and go back to sleep, when his nerves were all set alight again by a horrifying noise.
A long, drawn-out roar that echoed from somewhere in the depths of the forest, and sounded like it came from something big.
Holy Moses, what was that?!
Dipper sat up again, and after a moment of indecision tiptoed over to the window and pushed it open, peering frantically out at the forest.
There was no sign of whatever had made the noise. He wasn't sure if that made things better or worse.
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
Ford was also awake, making a herculean attempt at organizing some of his research, because he tended to just end up tossing what he wrote down and whatever sketches he drew anywhere that was close enough. Fiddleford kept telling him he should try putting them all in a book or something, but somehow he never could get around to doing it.
He jerked upright from where he was kneeling on the floor, gathering scattered papers, when he heard the noise, and glanced uneasily out the window at the moonlit landscape.
Mercifully, he didn't have to hear that horrible roaring every night. But whenever he did...it brought on another one of his headaches.
The front of his head would throb, and for just a moment a few indistinct images and sounds would float their way across his mind, disappearing before he could try to make sense of them.
It frustrated him to no end, not least because they always came with a feeling.
Like-like something terrible had happened, but he didn't know what it was.
Ford clutched his forehead, massaging it with the tips of his fingers, until the pain receded enough for him to stand.
What had he been…?
Oh, yes. The handful of papers clutched in his hand.
Ford carried them upstairs to his study, and placed them on his already-overflowing desk.
So far things with the children weren't going too badly, he reflected as he began sorting them into piles of observations vs. sketches. They seemed to have accepted his rules readily enough, and neither of them had been overly perturbed by his hands. Mabel was more exuberant than he was expecting, while Dipper was far more reticent, but it wasn't that odd, he supposed. They just had different personalities, not unlike him and-
And-
His head ached again, and he had to stop and drink some water.
Ford forgot whatever it was he'd been thinking about, and lost himself in his work until he fell asleep from exhaustion.
In the morning, he was concerned to see that Dipper didn't look like he had slept well; his eyes had dark bags underneath them, and his hair was sticking up all over like he'd been tossing and turning for most of the night.
Mabel, on the other hand, looked as fresh as a daisy, and beamed at Ford as he sat down at the table across from them.
"Good morning, Grunkle Ford!"
"Good morning, Mab-" He stopped short. "I beg your pardon?"
She bounced a little in her seat. "I figure it's easier than saying Great Uncle Stanford all the time. Just take 'great' and 'uncle' and smush 'em together-" she moved her hands together to demonstrate- "and Ford for short." Then her eyebrows did a little concerned frown. "...Unless you prefer being called Stan, maybe?"
Ford shook his head. "No-Ford is what I prefer to be called. Thank you."
The enormous smile returned. "That settles it! Grunkle Ford it is!"
Ford wondered why his heart was doing that funny thing in his chest. It felt like a good thing. Either way, though, the smile he offered her was less awkward or unsure than his previous ones had been.
My conscience: Detective Jigsaw, why are you being so mean to Dipper? Why did you make things so unnecessarily tragic for him in a story that's already tragic?
Me: Because it suited me, mwahahahahahaha.
...Sometimes I worry about myself.