Height Difference

In kitchens, in closets, and hallways all across America there were marks on the walls, charting the growth of the denizen children over the years. The Pines residence on the outskirts of Gravity Falls was no exception, only Dipper Pines hadn't expected to still be keeping track once his kids became teenagers… But normal kind of flies straight out the window when you have twins who could tend to get a bit competitive with each other. When the tape measure results weren't satisfactory for the unfortunate loser, to the homemade growth chart they went. After marking both his kids at the crown of their heads, it was time to go back to the tape… And the results remained the same.

"Sorry Greg… Looks like Amy's still a quarter of an inch taller…"

"Yes, I knew it!" the mini version of her mother squealed as she pumped her arms, while her brother groaned in frustration and annoyance. "Alpha-Twin baby!"

"Well, I'm still older…"

"Oh, by like five minutes!"

"Okay, that's enough you two!" Dipper reprimanded, wanting to stop the argument before it could escalate. Thankfully, this wasn't something he had to do often. Greg and Amy were every bit as close as he and Mabel were when they were kids, so getting along was rarely an issue for them. Over the past several days however, Greg in particular seemed to be stuck in an unusually dour mood. "Amy, there's no need to rub it in… Your brother's one growth spurt away from catching back up to you."

"Well, not today he isn't…" Amy started to slowly back out of the kitchen. As she reached the exit, she pointed at her brother who was still glaring at her and mouthed 'Alpha-Twin' before disappearing. Greg groaned in displeasure, and his father couldn't help but laugh. The situation was so reminiscent of a similar occurrence with his own sister. Of course they were a couple of years younger than his children were now, but the similarities were still striking.

Dipper never ceased to be amazed by his kids. Visually, they were their parents made over, the only noticeable difference being the color swapped eyes. Greg inherited his mother's emerald-green, while Amy's were chocolate brown like her dad. Greg also had his mother's nose, which Dipper was personally thankful for, knowing his son wouldn't be cursed to live life with the infamous Pines honker.

Personality wise, that was a different story. They were both perfect little mixes of their parents. Amy was spirited just like her mother and definitely possessed that trademark Corduroy flair. At the same time, she inherited her father's intelligence and fascination with the paranormal field and all things weird… Especially the scientific side of things. Her brother was every bit as 'all in' with the family business as Amy, only Greg was more interested in the adventurous side of the job… He'd leave all the sciencey and research stuff to his father and sister. Like his mother, Greg was laid-back, athletic, and strong as a bull… Very deceptively strong for someone his size, the flippin' Corduroy coming out of him in that respect. Like his father, he was kind-hearted, curious, and could occasionally struggle with self-confidence issues. The boy was quite intelligent himself, but unfortunately inherited his mother's lethargic streak, especially when it came to schoolwork. He also possessed that Corduroy hot-headed streak, especially when someone threatened his family and friends, and especially his sister. Just ask the poor jerk who decided to put his hand somewhere on Amy's body that it wasn't wanted.. A hand that swiftly wound up broken in several places. A broken hand that led to a broken jaw when the boy's father had the nerve to show up on the Pines doorstep and confronted Wendy, trying to blame the twins for the incident. It was funny how fast any potential legal action got dropped when the asshole was too embarrassed to admit publicly that he got his ass laid out by a woman.

"Don't let it bother you Greg… Corduroy woman are tall, and Pines men tend to grow a little slower… By the time your adults, you'll probably be quite a bit taller than Amy."

"That's not really what bothers me Dad… It's more the fact that she just won't shut up about it! And it's not just Amy… I'm smaller than all our cousins too…"

"Yeah, I heard they've been giving you a hard time… You need to stop fighting with your cousins though Greg. I know that's how you earn respect on the Corduroy side of the family, but your mother and I would rather you not resort to violence unless you have no other choice."

"It's not like my uncles ever try to stop us… They just get mad at their kids for getting beaten up by the shrimp!"

"They should know better than to mess with Wendy's son. Just don't get too down about a quarter of an inch. Amy's going to keep poking you if she knows it's bothering you."

Dipper was well aware that his son was enough like him that a few encouraging words would hardly be enough to break through his self-doubt. His current issues cut a lot deeper than a marginal height difference between him and his sister.

Having done all he could for the time being, Dipper headed towards the living room where his wife was parked on the couch reading a magazine. Dipper stopped in the hallway and did something he'd done at least once every day since they'd first gotten married, and just stared at her for a minute. His daily ritual just to assure himself all this was actually real. If you had told that lovesick kid that had first met Wendy two decades before that this would be his life one day, he probably would've lied and told you he believed it. Sometimes dreams really did come true.

Wendy's eyes lifted above her magazine ever so slightly to catch her husband's stare. "What?" she asked playfully before she returned her attention to her magazine. It's not like she minded his gaze. In fact, for a woman who had just stared down forty, knowing your husband of fifteen years still looked at you the same way he did when he was a lovestruck kid was well… Very much appreciated.

Dipper's response was to walk over to the couch and claim the seat next to her.

"So what's the verdict?"

"Amy won by about a quarter of an inch… Seriously, if we shaved Amy's head, they'd still be the same height."

"Well that's not good," Wendy sighed, deciding she was no longer interested in her reading material. "Greg's been havin' some serious self-esteem issues lately, and this isn't going to help."

"I've noticed," Dipper sighed, as he ran his hand through his, thankfully, still fully intact hair. "That kid inherits one thing from me, and it has to be that…"

"He takes after you in a lot more ways than you think Dip… It probably explains why I'm a little extra protective of him… He reminds an awful lot of an awkward kid I used to know."

"More protective of him than Amy?"

"Never had a reason to worry about Amy in that sense. She's always been outgoin' and feisty. It's a differen't kind of worry with her… Like if she doesn't slow down, she's gona go nuclear and take half of Oregon with her."

Dipper had a good laugh at that. "Sounds about right… We have one kid who needs help coming out of his shell, and another who constantly needs to be reigned in."

"Sounds familiar doesn't it?" Dipper merely smirked at the comparison to him and his own twin. Wendy took the opportunity to claim her favorite pillow, Dipper, by laying her head on his shoulder. "I blame you, you know. Aren't you the one that told me twins are supposed to skip a generation?"

"Yeah, but that old adage is purely a myth with no scientific basis. It was more of wishful thinking on my part."

"Hey, I didn't mind… I wanted two, a boy and a girl preferably, and I got both in one go! It was one hell of a pregnancy, but at least I only had to go through it once."

"Do you ever regret stopping after the twins were born?"

Wendy had to think that one over for a moment. "Havin' more kids crossed my mind from time to time but… No, I think we made the right decision. Considerin' the chaotic nature of our lives at times, it probably would've been irresponsible for us to have more than two. Besides, as bizarre as our little family, I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world."

Dipper hummed in total agreement.

Gregory Pines' brooding hadn't made it past the kitchen quite yet, when his sister returned to torment him. "Hey short-stuff! Still busy sulking?"

"If that's all you have to say, why don't you just get lost?! It's a frickin' quarter inch, why do you keep going on about it!"

"Hey, you're the one that got all pissy about it! What the hell is wrong with you anyway?! You used to be fun and would actually fight back… Nowadays you're all moody and pouty all the damn time!"

"Well, that's what happens when somebody's constantly on your case all the time! What about you? You used to have my back, and now it's just insult after insult or constantly reminding me about everything I hate about myself… Like I don't get enough of that already at school, or from the rest of the family…"

Amy was taken aback, feeling just guilty enough that she couldn't come up with a snappy comeback. "Well… Why didn't you tell me it was bothering you so much?… I would've laid off…"

"I did tell you Amy… You don't listen… You never listen!" Feeling drained, Greg threw his body against the wall, feeling rather rotten himself… Like that was anything new. "I'm sorry… I don't know what's been wrong with me lately! I feel like there's so much pressure on me, even though absolutely no one's trying to put any on me… It has me feeling anxious and agitated over everything… Not to mention that I can't seem to get the smell of sweat off my body no matter how much deodorant or soap I use… So much sweating…"

"Yeah man, it's called puberty and it sucks… I can't explain the pressure thing though. Mom and Dad have always been fair with us I think…"

"Mom and Dad aren't the problem… It's trying to live up to them in everybody else's eyes… I also can't believe I got upset that you started puberty before me… Now I'd give anything if these hormones would just F off!"

Amy fought back a snicker. "So… If I agree to lighten up on the teasing and you agree to act less like a jerk, do you think we could go back to normal? I kind of miss my side-kick hangin' around."

Greg smiled despite the side-kick crack. "Sure… I'd like that too…"

Amy responded with her usual exuberance, snatching up her brother in a hug. Greg, being a bit more reserved, returned the embrace sheepishly. Once she finally pulled apart from him, she cleared her throat, remembering the actual reason she'd been seeking him out to begin with. "Hey Greg, I needed to talk to you about something… You remember how a few days back we… Kind of borrowed Dad's time tape?"

"Borrowed is a generous term, but yeah, of course I remember. Why?"

"Well… Do you remember why we went back in time?"

Truth be told Greg tried hard not to think about that night since their ill-advised trip through time. Maybe that was the reason he was drawing a blank? "I… Don't remember…"

"Neither do I, and it's freaking me out dude! We know we went back in time, but if we have no memory as to the reasons why we did, that means we had to of changed something that wiped those memories right out of our minds! Like none of it ever happened! What did we do Greg?"

"I don't know Amy… This is exactly why I was against time travel! You change one thing, and there's no telling how you might alter the future."

"Well, we definitely altered it somehow, we just have no idea how or why… What if we did something horrible? What if people don't exist now because we thought it'd be fun to play time traveler?…"

"Well, let's calm down and try thinking about this rationally for a second… What did we do while we were in the past? I remember you leaving a box in a cave…. Everything before and after that is foggy though…"

"Yeah, I remember that too… And something about a note…." Amy's heart sank into her stomach. "I don't know why, but I feel like it had something to do with Mom and Dad… Oh God, you don't think we did something stupid and now they're going to wind up getting divorced because of it?!"

"That… Seems a bit farfetched to me…" Greg took a peek down the hall into the living room where he could clearly see his parents making out on the couch. "Yeah, they're at each other's throats but not in the way you're suggesting."

"Yeah, that is crazy isn't it?" Amy laughed, feeling some relief. "I mean seriously, you'd think at their age they'd take a night off once-in-a-while. I wasn't kiddin' when I asked for those noise canceling headphones for Christmas."

"I can hear Mom from all the way across the house," Greg cringed, his mind filled with images of the future therapy sessions he'd undoubtedly need. "I… May have brought it up to her once about how loud she is… You know, hoping she might take a hint on how it makes us uncomfortable."

Amy grimaced at the thought herself. "How did she respond to that?"

Greg sighed and hung his head. "She laughed at me…"

"That settles it… If we ever go back in time again, it'll be to make sure this conversation never happened…. If it wasn't about Mom and Dad, then why the hell would we have gone back in time? What could we have done to change the future so drastically that we can barely remember why we even went back to the past in the first place?!…. Like, five days ago!"

"I dunno Amy… We might just need to accept that we never will."

"But I can't do that! It'll be like havin' an itch in my brain I can never scratch for the rest of my life!" Amy racked that itchy brain for ideas, maybe even memories… Any hint as to what had happened during their trip to the past. "Wait… Barbas!"

"Barbas?"

"A being from Babylonian folklore that possess unrivaled knowledge and wisdom. If you summon Barbas he's supposedly able to answer any question you pose of him…" Amy grabbed her brother by the wrist. "Let's go! We don't all the items I need to summon him here, but I know where we can get them!"

"Amy wait!" he cried as he struggled to keep up with his sister. Whenever she got her mind set to a task, there was very little one could do to stop her from completing it. "You're not seriously going to try to summon… This is like, a benign friendly spirit right?"

"Uh, sure…" Amy lied. He was nothing she didn't think she could handle.

Thirty minutes later, the Twins arrived on the premises of the Mystery Shack. It was technically after hours, but both teens were in possession of a key to the building, seeing as the business was within the family after all.

"Shouldn't we at least check with Aunt Mabel first?" Greg asked in concern as he and his sister walked into the Shack's storeroom, formerly Ford's hidden bedroom.

"Aunt Mabes would be cool with it! I just need to borrow a few things… Let's see, a few séance candles… A crow's skull… Some gypsy salt…"

While Greg nervously watched his sister 'shop' he didn't notice the looming presence of a dark figure slowly approaching. Smoke suddenly filled the room and from within, a menacing cloaked figure appeared before the teens. "Who dares trespass on the sacred grounds of the shack of mysteries?!"

Neither child reacted as the cloaked figured would've liked them too. Maybe her voice wasn't spooky enough? Amy hadn't even bothered to turn around, as she continued to rummage through the Shack's backstock in search of what she needed. Greg at least had the decency to acknowledge her presence. "Hi Aunt Mabel."

"Really, that's it?" the woman pouted as she removed her hood, revealing an older version of the face Greg was wearing. "Not even a little jump?"

Without turning around, Amy commented, "We were actually chased one time by a cloaked creature that could literally kill a person with a single touch… Basically the mythical description of Death himself. It takes a little more than a loud boo to scare us."

"We are a bit desensitized," Greg agreed, much more tactfully than his sister.

"Well shoot… What's going on here anyway? You guys wouldn't normally sneak around the Mystery Shack without permission unless you were up to something… Anything you little hooligans would like to share?"

"Uh…" Greg sputtered sheepishly as he rubbed at the back of his head. Amy had finally finished her rummaging and looked a bit embarrassed in her own right.

"Come on guys, this is your Aunt Mabel here! You two can tell me anything." It was true, Mabel was often the sounding board for the younger pair of twins during those sensitive moments when taking things to their parents just wasn't an option. They knew they could trust Mabel not to rat them out unless she genuinely felt their safety was in danger.

Greg looked towards his sister for guidance, only to get nudged in the ribs with her elbow. "You explain it to her, you're her favorite!"

"I don't have a favorite Amy… Though the position may be open for the first one of you who wants to tell me what's going on!"

As expected, Greg was the first to break down. "Well… You see… We may have borrowed Dad's time tape to travel back in time for reasons we can't remember because whatever we did in the past changed the future enough to wipe our memories, and now we're trying to summon a creature from Babylonian folklore who can hopefully tell us what the hell we did in the past and how it affected the future! We just needed to borrow a couple of things to complete the summoning ritual…"

Mabel blinked, then her attention shifted to Amy. "What he said."

Mabel looked back at her nephew and blinked again before smiling brightly. "Okay!"

"Oh hey, Dipper! I almost forgot, take a look at this!"

Wendy handed her husband a sheet a paper which he quickly looked over. "It looks like a poem…"

"Yup. Amy wrote it."

"Amy writes poetry now?"

"Apparently. She's not half bad is she?"

"No, not at all… We've got some talented kids there Wendy…" Dipper smiled proudly… That smiled quickly morphed into a frown. He was suffering from an odd sense of Déjà vu. In particular, something about the way Amy wrote her L's really bothered him. "I've seen this somewhere before…"

"You have? Oh crap, did she steal a poem from somewhere?"

"No, not that… I recognize the handwriting…"

"Of course you do dork!" Wendy snorted. "It's your daughter's! You've been lookin' at it for over a decade now!"

"That's not quite what I meant… I'll be right back…"

Dipper left Wendy alone on the couch for ten anxious minutes before he finally returned to the living room, holding Amy's poem in one hand, and a familiar yellow note in the other.

"Isn't that the note from back when we found my mother's necklace?"

"Yes." Dipper handed his wife both sheets of paper. "Hold these side by side and tell me if you notice anything peculiar."

Wendy did as instructed, and almost immediately recognized what her husband was getting at. She just wasn't quite willing to admit yet. "Well… I guess the writing looks kind of alike…"

"No Wendy… It's the exact same handwriting. Who else do you know who writes most of her capital letters in traditional penmanship and then completes the word in cursive? Do you see the way she loops her L's?… I can't believe I haven't recognized this before now Wendy, but Amy wrote this note…"

"But how?"

"Obviously Amy talked Greg into showing her where I hid the time tape Blendin gave me… Or she just had him get it for her himself."

"You entrusted Greg with the location of the time tape but not Amy?…" Wendy paused, remembering who exactly it was they were talking about. "Never mind, stupid question."

"This would explain how the author seemed to know so much secret information about us… Because it was written by our own daughter!"

"And to think, we thought it was our future selves tryin' to mess with us," Wendy grinned. "I guess reality wasn't that far off though was it?"

"Apparently not… The question is, what do we do with this information?"

"I don't know Dip… If she did write this, in a small way, she's part of the reason we ever got together in the first place. How are we supposed to act upset with her over something like that?"

"I agree, but at the same time, we can't have the kids traveling through time whenever they damn well feel like it either. We need to at least confront her about this, and see what Amy has to say for herself."

Wendy was in total agreement, and the couple immediately went up to Amy's room to have a little chat with their only daughter. A knock on the door that went unanswered and one barge in later, they found Amy's room empty. Overhearing some interesting noises emanating from their son's room, they walked down the hall towards his room and listened at the door to music that sounded an awful like… Chanting? Wendy and Dipper gave each other concerned looks before Dipper decided to hell with announcing themselves and threw the bedroom door open. Now, Dipper wasn't sure what he was expecting, but it certainly wasn't the sight of his daughter holding a less than holy looking book in her hands… Or both of his children kneeling within a white circle surrounded by candles, and a star with a few points too many. Needless to say, Dipper's jaw was hanging open as were both of his kids upon being caught.

Amy was quick to stammer out, "This isn't what it looks like, I swear it!"

Dipper picked his jaw up off the floor, any good humor me might've held before all but evaporated. "You two… Downstairs, NOW!"

While Wendy stared disapprovingly at her very intimidated children, Dipper was busy reading his sister the riot act over the phone. "How could you let the kids take spirit summoning supplies from the Shack Mabel?! No, they were not trying to summon some cute critter from the Babylonian era, they were trying to summon a demon from the third layer of hell!.. Yes… Again!"

Dipper was still bickering with his sister when he left the room. Wendy cast a stern gaze towards her children. "Neither of you move a muscle! We'll be right back." Neither child dared to even consider defying their mother. Greg took her instructions a tad more literally judging from his rigid posture.

Dipper was off the phone by the time Wendy caught up with him, her husband now busy pacing and rubbing at the back of his neck anxiously.

"Well Dip… How do you want to handle this?"

"I don't know… I mean, what parent hasn't had to deal with finding out their kids tried to conjure a demon and may have possibly altered time in the span of just a few minutes?"

"I must've missed that chapter in those parenting books… Look Dip, these are our kids, and probably a bit too much like us for their own good. We both knew that when they got themselves into trouble, it was gona be a little differen't than when normal kids do."

"Amy should be smarter than this though! I definitely thought Greg was more responsible than this, but obviously his sister has his ear more than we do…"

"Wasn't that true with you and Mabel when you were kids though? Isn't that just part of being Twins?"

"Well… Yeah I guess that is true but… Wait, are you actually trying to defend what they did?"

"Nope, just tryin' to see it from their point-of-view and tryin' to understand it… Like I always wished our elders would've done for us back in our day."

"Maybe…" Dipper sighed conceding to her point. "What did you have in mind then?"

"Simple… We hear 'em out, let them explain their side of the story, and then we ground them 'til their twenty-five."

"Sounds good to me."

Amy and Greg waited nervously next to the fireplace when their parents finally reentered the living room. Wendy stood off to the side with her arms crossed while Dipper took the lead as he usually did when the kids shenanigans were supernatural in nature. "Okay, here's what's going to happen… You guys are going to explain to us, step for step, just what the hell you two have been up too… Both the attempted summoning and the time travel…"

Amy tensed and turned red. "You know about that?!"

"Yes… We do." Dipper gave his son a disappointed look, which immediately prompted the boy to lower his head in shame. Amy watched the entire wordless exchange and just couldn't stand it.

"It's not his fault!" Amy yelped drawing his father's attention to her. "It was all me! It was my idea to summon Barbas, I'm the one who pestered Greg into taking the time-tape! If anybody should be in trouble here it's me! I was behind all of it!"

"We know…" Dipper deadpanned to Amy's slight confusion. "Your Mother and I are well aware of who the mastermind behind your little stunts usual is. That doesn't change the fact that he willingly goes along with you, so that's on him. Maybe you should consider that next time before you recruit him into your schemes."

Sighing, Dipper rubbed at the bridge of his nose before continuing. "Let's start from the beginning… Why did you guys take the time tape out of the safe? Why did you go back in time, and what exactly did you do?"

"Uh…" The twins exchanged looks, both looking completely flustered. After all, this was a question they quite literally had no concrete answers for. Greg decided to voice that problem for the pair. "We don't know."

Dipper somehow found a way to scowl even harder. "What do you mean you don't know?"

"What he means is, we can't remember… We know we took the time tape, and we remember going back in time… We just can't remember why or what we did there for the life of us."

Dipper's hand returned to the bridge of his nose. "Which can only mean one thing… Whatever you two did altered the timeline, and your futures, enough that whatever you intended to change effectively never happened, resulting in the events of that trip slowly being erased from your memoires. Odds are, in another week or two, you won't even remember ever going."

"I got scared when I couldn't remember the reason for the trip," Amy confessed. "I was afraid that maybe we did something bad, and I started losin' my mind worrying over what that might be… That's when I got the idea to summon Barbas… Hoping that if he was real, he might be able to remind us of what we forgot…"

"So, you somehow decided summoning a demon to recover a lost memory was a logical solution!"

"It was the only solution!"

"Messing around with beings from the other side is never a solution Amy!" Dipper screamed. He actually screamed at one of his kids for the first time in his life, and they both reacted with the expected amount of shock. "Especially with this town's history with this sort of thing!"

Wendy walked over and put a hand on Dipper' shoulder. "Clam down hon… Take a deep breath before you continue. I'm sure they get the point without you shouting at 'em."

"No Wendy, I don't think they do get the point," Dipper sighed. "And that might be our fault… My fault at the very least. When you two took an interest in our work when you were young, I didn't think twice about letting you guys into that world… Maybe that was a mistake. I've normalized you guys to the paranormal world to a point that my daughter equates summoning ghosts and demons to be as natural as any normal person calling an Uber to give them a ride the mall! The fact that you two are so disconnected with what's normal and what's abnormal means we've failed somewhere as parents."

"But dad, I do understand that some of the decision I make aren't exactly normal… But I'm also confident you taught me well enough that I can handle pretty much anything that might go wrong!"

"No, you can't handle everything Amy, and that's part of the problem! One of your reckless decisions led you to make another one with potentially worse consequences than the first… This isn't even the first time we've caught you doing something like this Amy!"

"Hey, what girl hasn't used a Ouija Board to try and contact a Visigoth warlord from the 14th century…"

"Any other girl not named Amy Pines… And thank you for proving my point for me…"

"What exactly are you trying to say Dad?…" Amy stammered nervously.

Dipper really didn't want to do this. He loved involving the kids in their adventures. He especially loved his daughter's enthusiasm for every aspect of the job. But his kids safety needed to come first, so if welcoming them into his bizarre world too early was having a negative effect on their mental development… Wendy watched from the sidelines feeling pings of sympathy for both parties. Sometimes she couldn't decide if Amy was more like her or Dipper… Maybe Dipper with her mother's reckless streak… Not exactly an ideal combination. "Maybe… We need to step back a bit…"

Before Dipper could finish that thought, their conversation got interrupted when a portal suddenly opened in the living room. Dipper's time traveling acquaintance entered the room from the other side. "G-Good evening Pines family."

"Blendin? This is an unexpected visit…" Dipper frowned. "Or is it…"

"My apologizes for b-being late, but I've been made aware of an unauthorized use of the time tape you were entrusted with Dipper Pines… I'm af-fraid, I'm going to need to confiscate the device."

"I understand Blendin. It's probably for the best, since I now know I can't trust the people in my own home not to abuse the privilege." Dipper cast a disapproving glance Gregory's way. The boy stiffened and hung his head. As awful as it felt to have his father angry with him, somehow seeing him look downright disappointed in him was far worse.

Dipper just happened to have the time tape on his person, he had a feeling Blendin might show up at some point, and handed it over. The stammering time traveler thanked the elder Pines and turned back towards his still open portal.

"Mr. Blandin wait!" Amy called out to him desperately, causing the portly man to look in her direction. "You guys can pretty much see everything that's happened throughout time right? Well, you should know why Greg and I went to the past wouldn't you?"

"Perhaps… But I would be unable to share that information either way."

"But… I've gotta know! We didn't do anything horrible to screw up anybody's lives did we?"

"Again, I can't say… But what I can tell you is this… If you had gone back in time and done anything detrimental to the future, w-w-we would've taken care of it before anyone in the present time would've even had the chance to notice the change. O-Otherwise, the changes were so insignificant or non-detrimental that we didn't see any point wasting the manpower fixing the anomaly."

"Oh…" Amy looked extremely relieved. "Well, at least we don't have to worry that we wrecked somebody's future… I still wonder what we could've done though that resulted in our memories slowly getting erased."

"I'm afraid that's all the information I can give you." Blendin coughed into his hand, and then 'accidently' dropped a manilla case folder on the ground. "Of course, if you were somehow able to find a file a careless agent dropped with the case information inside, you might find the answers you're l-looking for. Farewell Pines family!" Blendin disappeared through the portal, and he was gone.

Eyes wide as saucers, Amy lunged for the folder, but wasn't quick enough. Her mother quickly snatched it away before she could get her hands it. "Oh, come on Mom!"

"Sorry sweetheart, but you're in no position to be complain'. You've caused enough problems tryin' to solve this mystery, so your father and I will decide if you deserve the answers or not."

"But Mom! Please, I have to know… Things never would've escalated to his level if I only…"

"Actually, I might have a better idea," Dipper offered reluctantly. "Amy… We might now the reason why you went back in time."

"You do? How?!"

"Dip… Are you sure this a good idea?"

"I don't see how it could hurt at this point. If we'd caught it ourselves sooner, maybe we wouldn't have had to walk in on a demon conjuring in our own home…" Dipper produced a yellow sheet of paper from his pocket and presented it to Amy. "Take a look… Tell me if it looks familiar."

Amy opened and read the note. She was barely two lines in before her eyes widened. "I wrote this didn't I?!"

"Yep. This note, and three others. A bit of a puzzle game that led us to your mother's favorite necklace when we were younger." His thumb pointed towards Wendy, who held the piece of jewelry between her fingers as it dangled from her neck.

"The note… Almost looks like I was trying to get you and mom together… But that doesn't make sense! Why would we do that?"

"Maybe they were getting a divorce before we decided to go back in time?" Greg suggested. "Or maybe they were never even together at all…"

"But that makes even less sense! How would we exist if that were the case?"

While their children argued semantics, Dipper and Wendy gave the other a concerned glance. The thought of a future without the two of them together was horrifying for the both of them.

"There is one way to find out for sure," Amy reminded everyone. "We could… Take a peek in that file."

"Yeah… I guess that would be a possibility…" Wendy studied the envelope in her hand. She had a much better idea of what to do with it. She flung the envelope into the fireplace, taking in quite a bit of satisfaction from watching the file begin to burn in quick order.

"No! What did you do that for Mom?!" her daughter wailed. "Now we'll never know what happened!"

"What does it matter? I'm happy with my life as it is, thank you very much." Wendy wrapped her arm around her confused husband, who upon realizing what Wendy was getting at, smiled and nodded in agreement. "Who cares about some hypothetical future that's never going to happen? I wouldn't trade my life or my family for anything. Are you guys so unhappy that you were hoping for something better?"

"No of course not!" Amy declared empathically, while her brother nodded in agreement.

"Good," Wendy smiled. "Amy, if you're so concerned over whether you changed our lives for the better or not just look at things this way. That first note you wrote helped go a long way in gettin' me and your dad together. Do you really need to know any more than that?"

"No… I guess not." Amy managed a smile of her own, but the wheels were still turning as to how she could spin this situation to her advantage. "Since I may have possibly helped the two of you get together, is that enough not to ground me for the time-travel fiasco?"

"For the time traveling…" Dipper mulled it over. "I guess we can forgive that transgression since everything appears to have turned out for the best… For inviting a servant of Satan into our house, two weeks grounded to your rooms. No video games either and that's starting… Right now!"

"Awe crud," Amy pouted, though neither she nor Greg complained. They were getting off relatively easy and they knew it. As they began the march of shame towards their rooms, Amy turned to her father and asked, "Umm… Dad… About the work stuff…"

"I'll think about it… We might have to come up with some ground rules to make sure nothing like this happens again."

Seemingly satisfied with this answer, Amy smiled and picked up the pace to her room.

"I knew you'd cave on that the second you said it," Wendy teased. "You enjoy havin' your little girl work with you down in the lab too much to give that up."

"I enjoy it the most when the whole family is involved, but yeah… I'd miss my assistant."

"We've got good kids Dipper… Sometimes misguided, maybe a little over excited, and probably too much like us for their own good, but good kids none-the-less."

Yeah… Yeah, we do." Dipper placed a hand atop the crown of Wendy's end and traced it back to his forehead.

"What the heck are you doing?"

"Still have about half an inch on you!"

"Ha, ha… You're really proud of that arentcha?" Wendy smirked affectionally. "Dork…"

End Chapter 7

-I almost… Almost didn't make them twins. Since they were differen't ages in Chapter 1, it was either somehow have them born at the exact same time anyway, or I was going to be messing with their ages to some degree… With neither option being more logical than the other, I decided screw it, their twins. It's a trope for sure, but one I don't mind, and it made sense for this prompt.

As for the slight differences in their personalities from Chapter 1, there's two main reasons for that… One, having a completely different parent with their own unique genetic markers is going to change you fundamentally on some level… The second reason is more creative in nature. If I ever got around to a story involving Wendip kids, this was going to be my vision for those kids. I've noticed a lot of Wendip kid interpretations tend to be on the generic side… Basically exact clones of their representative parent, with the gender's occasionally flipped. That's not the way kids usually work though. Kids are usually mixes of both of their parents, and that's what I wanted to convey with these two. Two kids who were a good mix of both their parents and all of their best and worst traits. Oh, and Chapter 1 was kind of a make up from me for missing the Wendip kids prompt from last year.