Author Note:
AT LAST! AT LONG, LONG LAST! The final chapter!
Once again, HUGE thanks to Callipraxia for editing this and helping me write Mabel's last words. Without her, this chapter would've been halted by writers' block for another month at least. If you haven't checked out her work yet, I would highly recommend it as some of the best Gravity Falls fanfiction I've ever read.
We've come a long way since that fateful moment when Mabel punched Bill Cipher in the eye with a giant fist, but here it is at last: the conclusion to Crater of the Fallen Star!
Dimension GF|46-41'\
The Mystery Shack
August 30
"All we need for this ritual is candles, chalk, and something belonging to the deceased. The more significant the item, the better the connection will be," Ford explained once they were all in the Shack's living room, "I believe one of Mabel's sweaters would suffice, or perhaps her grappling hook. Unless you have any better suggestions, Dipper?"
As he'd done numerous times over the past few days(?), Dipper pulled the largest remaining piece of Mabel from his vest. This time however, he didn't start crying at the mere sight of it, instead simply handing the irregular stone to Great-uncle Ford, who stared at it for a few seconds before apparently realizing what it was.
"You've been carrying this ever since finding out, haven't you?"
Dipper nodded.
"Well… in that case, I couldn't ask for a better point of connection. We can begin the ritual at once."
Ford moved to clear the table in the newly-repaired living room, but was stopped by Stan. "Hold on, Sixer. Don't ya think we should let Dipper recover first? He might not have been lost in that crazy place as long as you, but I'm sure he could still use some food and a good night's sleep. So could we, for that matter." As if on cue, Stan's stomach growled, followed by Ford's.
"Actually, I'm fine… physically, anyway…" Dipper told Stan. "Some of the people I met out there were really nice. I think I slept better last night than I have since before…" before Mabel died sbefore Weirdmaggedon"Before the alien ship."
He couldn't make himself finish that sentence the way he'd been thinking it. Not here in the Mystery Shack, where the memories of Mabel were so thick they may as well have been tangible. The rest of it was true though, even if the reason Dipper felt well-rested and full was due more to the magical healing he'd gotten than the night spent with the Duck family.
"But I think we should do this tomorrow instead."
There was an even more important reason to delay the ghost-summoning ritual than anyone's physical comfort level, though Dipper wasn't entirely surprised that his great-uncles didn't seem to have considered it.
"Mom and Dad," he said in answer to their skeptical looks. "They're family too. They should be here for this."
The elder twins just sat there for several seconds, broken only by their briefly glancing at each other, still dressed as they were for exploring other dimensions. Finally, Ford broke the silence.
"Dipper…" he said, "You know that would mean—"
"Telling them the truth about Gravity Falls," Dipper finished, "Yeah. I know. They deserve to know what really happened to Mabel. I can't lie to Mom and Dad about this, and seeing it for themselves is the only way they might believe it. Plus… it's probably the only way I'll have any chance of seeing you guys again after today."
Dipper knew that argument would persuade them, since he didn't want to be kept from his Grunkles or Gravity Falls or the friends he'd made here either.
Stan finally sagged into his chair and sighed. "Alright, kid. I'll call 'em tonight. Guess you won't be riding the bus home after all."
He then insisted that all three of them take showers on the grounds that they hadn't done so since before the apocalypse, and with the plumbing working again there was no longer any good reason to put it off, "plus we all smell like burnt hair, nightmares, and in your case, kid, poultry for some reason."
Dipper ended up being the first one sent to the shower (after grabbing a change of clothes from the attic). While getting ready, the reason for the "poultry" smell became clear: he was still wearing Huey's shirt, meaning his old one must still be in the Ducks' dimension, along with the memory gun and the photo of Mabel.
It was all muddy and ripped. They probably threw it away before I even woke up. Strange to think that he'd left so many things behind in such a short time, both literally and figuratively.
For most of the summer, Dipper had taken advantage of the relative lack of adult supervision to avoid showers as much as possible, having only taken them when Mabel forced him to by refusing to let him leave the bathroom until he "stopped smelling like gym class." Thinking of Mabel just made Dipper sad again, but this was one occasion on which even he could admit that he stank pretty badly after having lived through first the apocalypse and then a journey through three different dimensions. After peeling off his sweaty, dirt-encrusted clothes and the now-unnecessary bandages dotted across his body, Dipper stepped into the warm cascade. By the time he was done, the water swirling down the drain was dark brown, his skin was a few shades lighter, and he (hopefully) no longer smelled like a duck.
I wonder if there are any universes where I did stay with them…
When Dipper ambled back into the living room to switch places with Stan, Ford was ready with his third journal, having come up with what he thought an excellent way to cheer up his great-nephew (though admittedly, Ford was plenty excited about it himself).
"I've recorded some of my journey through the Multiverse in this Journal, Dipper. So I think it's only fitting that you do the same. How about it?"
Though Ford would be the first to admit he was anything but an expert on feelings, he could certainly recognize the desire to share one's discoveries simmering beneath the other conflicting emotions which Dipper was surely still experiencing.
"But you've already been to… I don't know, probably hundreds of other dimensions!" Dipper protested. "I've only visited two and a half."
"That doesn't matter, my boy," Ford said, placing a hand on the boy's shoulder. He knew for a fact that at least one, possibly two of the dimensions Dipper had visited were of a sort he'd heard tell of but never seen. "I'm sure you still saw plenty of fascinating things."
"Yeah… I think the first two places I visited were both parallel earths. They were way different from here. Neither of them had any humans, but there were still versions of me and Mabel."
"Really?" Ford asked. He'd heard of a few of his alternate selves' exploits over the years, but apparently Fords didn't tend to associate much with each other. Now that he thought of it, that's probably because most knew of the dangers of parallel contact. "What were they like?"
"The ones from the second dimension I landed in were actually really nice!" Dipper answered enthusiastically, "In that universe, I was the oldest, but Mabel wasn't the youngest. I… we… they… Yikes, this is really hard to talk about, isn't it?"
"Yes, the English language doesn't really have words for these things," Ford agreed, "I speak a few that do, but learning those took years. Just make your best effort."
Dipper nodded and continued, his voice beginning to pick up. "My parallel and Mabel's had another brother. They were identical triplets with rhyming names like in an old cartoon or something. Oh, and also they were ducks. Everyone in that universe, or at least everyone I met, was some kind of… bird-person."
"Incredible. Do you think you could sketch them?" Ford asked, pushing the third journal forward.
"Yeah, probably." Dipper took the pen, but then put it down and reached under his chair instead. "I don't need to, though. Just a second." A photograph was pulled from the boy's dirty blue vest and placed on the table.
Ford picked up the photo and adjusted his glasses. It showed Dipper standing with a group of nine avian humanoids. One had purple feathers and a long narrow beak while the others were snow-white, resembling ducks or geese. Given his considerable experience with alien species, Ford could tell that at least most of those in the group were related, probably an extended family. Four of the six children were nearly identical, and must be siblings or at least cousins. Though some smiled more widely than others, everyone pictured was clearly happy, Dipper included.
"That's me on the left of course, and my parallel is on the other side in the red hat. His name's Huey." Dipper held up the red polo shirt he'd been wearing before the shower. "This belonged to him; his brothers gave it to me 'cause mine was all ripped up."
"Fascinating…" Ford said, turning the garment inside out and squinting at the tiny bits of white feather caught in the fabric. I wonder why these didn't have some effect on Dipper? Perhaps because they're just cast-off feathers, much like the hairs and dead skin cells we constantly shed? Or is the parallel contact problem more of a metaphysical thing? Never mind, I'll write these theories down later… Right now, I need to focus on Dipper.
"I suppose this is their Mabel, then?" Ford said, pointing at the duckling in a pink-and-purple skirt and sweater-vest combo.
"Nope." Dipper tapped the duckling in the blue shirt. "Dewey is. I spent enough time in his memories to be absolutely certain of that."
This led into an explanation of why Dipper had been inside Dewey's mind, which resulted in Ford's jaw dropping when he was told of what happened when Dewey touched Mabel's stone remains.
"Y-you witnessed a dimensional paradox? That must have been the interference I detected! But I wonder how it was averted? I suppose Parallel Fiddleford could've been wrong about some things… I don't imagine the subject has been thoroughly studied, if such study would even be possible."
Dipper replied that he'd considered many of the same things, having remembered the relevant Journal entry at the time.
"Even though it was my fault Dewey nearly died, neither he nor the rest of the family held it against me. They were really nice, and… honestly, if it weren't so dangerous to be near my parallel… I might have stayed there," Dipper admitted.
"Stayed where?" asked a gravelly voice from the doorway. Stan had evidently finished his shower. "Oh, by the way, it's your turn now, Poindexter. No gettin' out of it."
As Ford reluctantly exited the room, Stan sat down on Dipper's other side, threw one arm over his shoulder, and picked up the photo on the table.
"So, these are some of the aliens you met out there? Well, I guess that explains the smell." With a sideways glance at Dipper, Stan repeated his earlier question. "You sayin' you would've stayed with these guys?"
"Yeah… Near as I could figure, they're that world's version of our family," Dipper replied. "Except that's exactly the problem. Huey, the one in the red hat, is their me. If we ever touched, even by accident, both ourselves and their entire universe could be gone just like that." He snapped his fingers for emphasis. "It would be too big of a risk to stay anywhere near them, and that world didn't have any other humans, so I couldn't have gone anywhere else."
Stan set the photo down and stared at the gray rock that was all that remained of Mabel.
"Somethin' tells me that's not what you were talkin' about back in the spaceship though," Stan prodded, "When you said you actually found a way to be with Mabel again."
No, that… that came later," Dipper said. After a short silence, he continued. "The last dimension I landed in was full of other versions of me, and apparently like the only kind of place in the Multiverse where parallels can safely interact. Imagine about a billion of me all in one place, except most of them aren't exact copies; they're younger, older, from different time periods, some kind of alien or monster, or all of those at the same time…"
What would that kind of place be like for me? Probably we'd all just annoy each other and get into fights. Heh… I wonder if Sixer's ever been somewhere like that… he wouldn't be any better than me, all the different Fords arguing about which one of them is the smartest…
Stan summed up these thoughts as "Sounds pretty crazy."
"It was," Dipper agreed, "I talked to some of them. One said Ford was my and Mabel's actual dad in his universe."
That got a laugh out of Stan. The thought of Ford as a father in any capacity was even stranger than the apparently factual idea of him being a notorious criminal, given that having kids would require Poindexter to have been intimately involved with a woman at some point. Even Stan's imagination wasn't that good. (Unless Other Stanford had grown them in cloning tubes or something like that boy band…)
Dipper ended up talking a lot about a few of his parallels who had also lost their Mabel, to either mundane or supernatural causes, and been able to move on from the loss in one way or another. That's about when Ford came back, just in time to hear about how Dipper's original goal had been within his grasp.
"Apparently, this guy had been using me to find something in that bird world, but felt bad for having, in his words, 'acted just like Bill' and 'endangered an entire universe' by bringing me so close to my parallel.
"He offered to use the portal they had – oh yeah, there was a portal in there just like yours, Great-uncle Ford – to send me to a world exactly like this one… except where I died instead of Mabel. I could have replaced myself and grown up with her just like I wanted when I first jumped into that Rift in the forest. But I turned him down and… well, I already told you why earlier." He sighed. "I'm still not totally sure coming back here was the right choice, but… Anyway, since I didn't take the 'exception to the rules' offer, I got this instead."
Dipper then pulled a nondescript metallic orb about the size of a golf ball from his pocket, and twisted it. Despite having no visible seams, the ball separated, and suddenly the whole room was filled with an ethereal blue-black glow emanating from a tiny sphere of what looked like the night sky hovering over Dipper's outstretched hand. Whatever this thing was, it positively radiated power in the same way Bill Cipher had, and that wasn't the only thing it had in common with the hopefully late, less-than-great demonic triangle. In the center hung a slowly rotating image of the very same shape which could just barely be seen beneath Dipper's own messy brown bangs, surrounded by that weird caveman graffiti circle that Ford had said was Bill's secret weakness (though when Stan squinted, he thought some of the symbols might be different.)
Just another thing I screwed up. First Ford's project in high school, then pushing him into the portal, not listening to all those warnings, not even tryin' to patch things up with him before the literal apocalypse happened, so that just when it finally seems like things are looking up, we trip at the finish line, and boom: history repeats itself in the worst way possible.
Though seeing the look of utter amazement on Ford's face at least allowed Stan to paste a smile over his melancholy thoughts.
"Hey, Sixer. Close your mouth before bugs fly into it."
Ford did so, only to open it once again in a low whisper that just as easily conveyed his amazement. "I've only ever heard rumors of these things… They appear in many forms and are known by many names across the Multiverse: Cosmic Wishes, Divine Favors… even Calamity Stones by those who fear both their power and the greed which inevitably follows after it."
"I don't think we need to worry about that," Dipper said as he brought the two halves of the metal ball back together around the wish or whatever it was, extinguishing the otherworldly light. "No one can use it except me or one of my descendants, and it only works once. Or at least that's what the parallel version of me who created it said."
Another few seconds passed, and Ford's eyes widened once again in that same hilarious expression of incredulous amazement that just demands made-up words. Ford was gobsmacked.
"You're that 'Living Fulcrum' thing I've heard about?"
"I guess…? Some version of me is, anyway. He just called himself Dipper, same as everyone else in there." Dipper shrugged. "Honestly, he seemed sad. Even more than most of the others, really." He squinted at the once-more featureless metal ball before putting it back in his pocket. "Now that I think about it, I kind of wish I'd given him a hug… I'm sure he wanted one just as much as I did right then. Besides, it's what Mabel would've done."
A while later, after they'd finally eaten some thankfully-not-Brown Meat™ dinner (magical healing was all well and good, but did nothing to fill one's stomach), it was time for the phone call to Dipper's parents. It was Stan who made the actual call.
"Pines residence, Alex speaking."
"Alex…" Stan started, "It's me."
"Uncle Stan? What's going on? Are the kids OK?"
Stan tried to swallow the lump in his throat which blocked the single-word reply. But it wasn't necessary. His silence was enough of an answer on its own.
"They're not OK, are they?"
"No… No, they're not," Stan choked out. After taking a deep breath, he picked back up what they'd decided to say. "But it's a… not something I can explain over the phone. Can you be up at the Mystery Shack by tomorrow?"
There was a short whispered conversation on the other side of the phone before Alex answered.
"It's their birthday. Of course we'll be there."
The mention of his birthday caused Dipper to once again tear up. Even though he'd accepted the loss, celebrating this occasion without Mabel would feel… wrong. In fact, Dipper didn't know if he'd be able to celebrate their… his birthday ever again. Probably not for a very long time, at least. He understood why Soos used to hate his birthday now. It was too much of a reminder.
August 31
A lot of strange and frankly terrifying things had happened this summer, from love-crazed gnomes to the demonic apocalypse, so Dipper had hardly been a stranger to weirdness even before diving headlong into a dimensional rift, befriending a family of humanoid ducks, and accidentally earning the favor of a transcendent godlike alternate version of himself. But if you'd asked Dipper two weeks ago what he thought he'd be doing on his thirteenth birthday, this would not have been anywhere close to his top guess. (Mostly because he would have refused to accept or even consider the possibility of Mabel being dead before him.)
The now-technically-a-teen Dipper was currently seated at the card table in the Mystery Shack's living room, watching Great-uncle Ford draw the Zodiac circle (minus the Shooting Star symbol) onto an old sheet draped over the table. Also at the table were Grunkle Stan and Dipper's mother and father, the latter two wearing expressions which shifted between confusion, sorrow, and slight fear.
When his parents had arrived that morning, having driven through the night, Stan had answered the door and welcomed his niece and nephew into the living room, where Dipper and Ford were waiting with Mabel's scrapbook, all three of Ford's Journals, and several other items.
The conspicuous lack of Mabel was not lost on Mom and Dad. Without even acknowledging Ford, they'd immediately demanded the truth, and Stan gave it to them. Naturally, they did not believe him at first, which prompted the full story, starting with the discovery of the Stan O' War in the early '60s and continuing all the way through the last three action-packed months to the present moment. During the tale, Dipper and Ford showed them various items of proof: the dinosaur fang, the magic shrinking flashlight (which Dipper demonstrated by shrinking down to mouse-size and then returning to normal), the Journals, and most of all, Mabel's scrapbook full of photos documenting the summer.
At some point, Stan had disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a plate of sandwiches and some cans of Pitt. By the time the story was over, they were long gone.
Both parents had exclaimed in outrage upon hearing of Ford's plan to make Dipper his apprentice, proceeding to shout at him all of the reasons why that was a terrible idea, and not even close to legal, and how could Stanford even think of doing something like that after what happened to himself and Stanley as children?
When the shouting started, Ford flattened himself against the wall and plunged a hand inside his coat, instinctively drawing his laser pistol, only for it to be immediately snatched away by Stan, leaving Ford with no recourse but to cower under his nephew and niece-in-law's verbal onslaught. Once Mom and Dad finally stopped to take a breath, it took Dipper and Stan several minutes to calm Ford back down and then explain to Dipper's parents that he'd already realized all of these things and felt completely terrible about them and retelling this story was painful enough already, so could they please just finish without any further interruptions?
At the end of the (very) long story, Ford brought up his idea to summon Mabel's ghost for closure, and explained that the majority of what Mom and Dad had probably heard about communicating with the dead was just mystical hoo-ha and special effects that hokey mediums used to jazz up their performances. Even most of the few legitimate parts weren't going to be necessary on this particular occasion, considering that Mabel more than likely wanted to talk to them as much as they did to her, they weren't planning on doing anything other than talking, and they had the ancient magical connection of the Zodiac Wheel, which could apparently do a lot more than just "vanquish" Bill, whatever that was supposed to have entailed.
That brought things up to the current moment. While the two middle-aged adults in the room simply stared in apprehensive wide-eyed shock, Stan lit a candle in each of the nine segments of the Wheel traced out on the old sheet laid across the table. Once all the candles were lit, Dipper placed the last piece of Mabel, which bore the Shooting Star symbol, in the very center of the empty circle, where the image of Bill Cipher had been in the original version.
"Alright, now everyone link hands and focus your thoughts on Mabel," Ford instructed. "If her spirit is still on earth, it will be drawn to us."
Focusing on Mabel was more instinctive for Dipper than even breathing (he'd known since before he even could breathe; that's why it had seemed impossible to do so when he'd first realized she was gone). It had always been that way, but over the past couple of days, he'd done almost literally nothing else. Even this exact practice was very similar to the mental focus Dipper had exerted to cleanse Dewey's memories, only less… obsessive. Though he'd made his peace with the decision not to continue seeking her in the Multiverse, Mabel's absence was still a cold, empty space inside Dipper's chest. At least now he'd get to say a proper goodbye.
Plus, talking about it with Donald and the alternate Dippers had helped a little bit at the time, so maybe this really was what he needed.
As Dipper held hands with his mother and Ford, the lines of the circle began to glow, and the candle flames had changed color, both now bearing the same bluish-white light that had briefly surrounded all of them (a lifetime ago) in the Fearamid, along with three of the symbols: the Pine Tree, Six-Fingered Hand, and the fishlike emblem from Stan's fez. Then two more symbols slowly lit up: the Question Mark and the Ice, though less brightly than the others.
Finally, the jagged stone in the center followed suit and slowly floated into the air. Whatever they were doing, it was working. The pale light flowed outward into a detailed outline, like a three-dimensional sketch. Once the outline was completed, there was a bright flash, and a translucent figure floated above the table. It looked similar to the other ghosts Dipper had encountered this summer, its "skin" an ethereal teal color that shone out as a cloudy ectoplasmic aura around itself. But ghost or not, there was zero doubt as to this figure's identity.
Especially when it exclaimed "DIPPER!" and immediately rushed forward, arms spread wide for a hug… then shot straight through his body, causing a sensation that was somehow both painful and not, kinda like when Bill shot that hole through his chest when they first encountered him all those months ago in Stan's Mindscape.
"Wh-what happened?" the ghost of Mabel Pines asked in surprise, floating a few feet behind Dipper while everyone stared at her, ethereal strings still tying her to the stone levitating above the table. "Why am I all see-through and glowy?"
"Because you're dead," Grunkle Ford said in his typical completely tactless manner. "You're a ghost."
Mabel looked down at her transparent body again, seeming to actually notice it for the first time, and experimentally stuck an arm through her chest, exactly as Dipper had done when Bill turned him into "basically a ghost." She looked back up at all of them and summed things up rather succinctly.
"Darn! Poop, heck, darn! I was really hoping it was just a dream from eating sugar before bed again…"
In complete defiance of the solemn setting and his melancholy mood, Dipper let out an involuntary snort of laughter. That statement in this sort of situation was so ridiculously Mabel that he couldn't help himself. At long last, she was here, and it was really her this time. Not a frog, a duck, a twisted copy, or even the completely human Mabel of a different dimension. It was just her, Dipper's twin, right here in front of him.
"Mabel… It's really you," he gasped, unable to think of anything more profound.
She floated right in front of Dipper and smiled. "Yep."
All of a sudden, the guilt from before came rushing back. "I'm sorry… I never should've said I'd take Grunkle Ford's apprenticeship. Maybe if I'd realized that that at the time—"
"Nuh-uh-uh, broseph!" Mabel's ghost interrupted, wagging a finger at him. "No more of this moping around and blaming yourself."
"But—"
"NO," Mabel insisted, getting right up in Dipper's face. "It's not your fault, Dipdop. It's Bill's fault, and he's gone. You know that."
He did. Dipper believed Ford. Besides, he had the feeling that if Bill did still pose a danger to this universe, his cosmic alternate self would have warned him about it, given that said alternate self seemed to hate Bill almost as much as he himself did.
"Yeah, I do," he said. "That's not what I was going to say." He took a deep breath. Saying this to Mabel herself was going to be harder than with anyone else he'd talked to about the situation so far. Despite thinking he'd run out of tears over the last week or so, evidently there were still more. "I was going to say that… I'm not ready to grow up without you. I… I don't think I ever was. That's what I realized in Mabeland: how bad a decision it would've been to take Ford up on his offer, even if Mom and Dad had been okay with it."
(Mrs. Pines shot Ford another death glare, but stayed silent.)
"Without you, I would have been miserable here no matter what I might be doing with Grunkle Ford."
"Dipper…" the young ghost girl said, "This was always going to happen eventually."
Mabel did her best impression of placing a consoling hand on Dipper's shoulder. He appreciated the gesture, even if he couldn't feel anything there.
"Even if I'd lived, we eventually would've had to discover who we are apart from each other. This isn't the way it should have happened… but that's still true."
"I don't – I just – " Dipper sniffed, and then swallowed against the lump in his throat, and then regretted it, since it felt like that was responsible for his eyes spilling over again. "I don't know what I'm supposed to do without you."
"That's easy, brotato," Mabel said, half-smiling. "Keep being awesome! Just like you've always been." Dipper stared mutely at the translucent face of his sister, and she sighed, apparently guessing what he was thinking in that way no one else could. "It's just like when Grunkle Stan 'borrowed' the journal after the whole giant robot thing with Gideon," she said, "You didn't need that book to be a hero – and you don't need me to be amazing." Her smile reappeared and she added, "I mean, I know it's gonna be waaaaaay harder," with a half-roll of her eyes, "But if you could do even… half the stuff you did this summer, then I think you can pull this off, too."
Up until this point, her smile had been gentle and reassuring, a bit like the one she'd given him immediately after escaping from Mabeland, but now her face suddenly became stern.
"At least as long as you don't do some stupid over-thinky thing like tell yourself that you can't enjoy anything ever again just because I'm dead, or let my death turn you into something you're not," she said to him, crossing her arms and glaring intensely. "You know, like you've been doing for the past week. Seriously, bro, if it weren't for Louie pulling you out of that funk, I don't even want to know what would have happened."
Shock washed over DIpper, temporarily blanking out the multitude of other conflicting emotions filling him up to the brim. "You… you… how do you know about that? Were you… following me the entire time?"
Mabel laughed. "Of course I was, Dipdop! What, you thought I was just hanging around here all week? Even if I thought it might be another weird sugar coma dream, I saw everything! Except for that last dimension for some reason… but when you were playing games and eating pizza with those bird guys, I cheered for joy, because you were letting yourself be happy again, even if you didn't want to."
"Wh-what about back home? You were my only friend in the world before we came here. I'll be all alone. I can't make friends the way you do… People like me just don't fit in…"
(Ford was crying now, not that anyone except Stan noticed.)
Mabel narrowed her eyes. "Don't you dare listen to all those stupid losers, bro-bro. They're just jealous that your awesomeness makes them look bad," Mabel's face softened a bit and she smiled at Dipper. "You might not be as outgoing as I was, but that's fine. You're smart, brave, selfless, and kind. The world has enough dumb jerks. It needs more people like you, Dippingsauce, not less."
Then her face shifted back into a glare. "And I mean it – if you turn into another dumb jerk just to 'fit in' or whatever, I will make sure every ghost in the afterlife avoids you like… whatever ghosts have instead of the plague!" she yelled at him, her cloudy blue aura briefly flaring into blazing orange. Dipper couldn't help but chuckle, and she relaxed again.
"It's gonna be okay," she said, then glanced around the circle at her parents and Grunkles. "And that goes for the rest of you, too! You've all got to stick together and take care of each other and not be dumb about stuff just because I'm not around to stop you. And our friends, too. And take care of Waddles. And–" Mabel sighed and waved a translucent bluish hand. "Look, if I could hold a pencil right now, I'd make a list just like the ones Dipper's always writing."
Mabel glared at the elder Mystery Twins with all the ferocious intensity a preteen ghost girl could muster. "Grunkle Stan, Grunkle Ford, you guys need to hug out your issues and actually talk to each other without getting all stupid about everything."
"We will, Pumpkin," Stan assured her. "Sixer and I have a lot of catching up to do." Ford only nodded his agreement.
Then she turned to her parents, and her tone was almost apologetic. "Mom… Dad… I'm sorry things turned out this way. None of it was your fault either, so please don't do something dumb like get a divorce or whatever. Dipper's gonna need you even more now that I'm not around." Then she brightened, seeming to get an idea. "Hey, I know! Maybe you can give us a new little brother or sister sometime! Even though no one could ever replace the one and only Mabel Pines, I know for a fact that Dipdop would be the best big brother ever."
This wasn't anywhere near the first time Mabel had begged their parents for more siblings…
Mr. and Mrs. Pines looked at each other and smiled weakly. "We'll have to think about that, Mabel."
…But for some reason, Dipper thought it might actually happen this time around. I wonder what that'll be like… what they'll be like…
With her words to the rest of their family complete, Mabel once again floated right in front of her twin. "You wanna try for one last awkward sibling hug, bro-bro?"
In answer, Dipper just spread his arms, and Mabel drifted in between them to wrap her own insubstantial ones around his back. Her presence felt like stepping into the warmth of home after a chilly evening out, or lying in a nice soft bed while rain pounded outside. Though not physical, the feeling was still everything Dipper loved about hugging his sister.
"Pat, pat," they said in unison, each of their hands going right through the other's back before finally pulling apart. Mabel's cloudy ghost aura had begun shifting to white instead of blue. A sourceless beam of white light enveloped her form, and Mabel began drifting upward.
"What's happening?" Dipper and his dad asked at the same time. 'Is the spell wearing off?
"No," Great-uncle Ford answered, "Mabel is moving On."
They all looked at Ford in confusion. "On to… what?" Mom asked.
"To whatever's next," the old scientist replied simply, "As a wise man I once met on my travels said, 'to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.'"
"Hmph," Stan grunted, "Sounds like a real crackpot to me, but whatever floats your boat, I guess."
Mabel had become even more transparent, fading into the light. She glanced back down at all of them and said, "One more thing… I think you guys could really use a celebration after getting rid of that pointy jerk. Why not send me off in style with one last awesome birthday party?"
September 1st
It was definitely the strangest party Dipper had ever attended, including all of his past birthday parties jointly organized with Mabel. Of course, the event was part thirteenth birthday, part memorial service, so that was definitely most of the reason.
All of them knew there was no way Mabel would stand for her memorial/funeral service being all sad and somber, so Grunkle Stan called up all their friends in town to help put together a (slightly late) birthday party worthy of celebrating Mabel's memory.
There was pizza. There was cake. There was Dipper's best attempt at heavily diluted Mabel Juice. There was definitely glitter. There were piñatas with smaller piñatas inside. Almost the entire town came, even the Northwests, though they left after dropping off Pacifica, with Preston muttering something about "our reputation is already ruined, so what's one more indignity?"
Plenty of unexpected or supernatural guests showed up as well. Some had known Mabel from their time as refugees during Weirdmaggedon, such as Jeff and a half-dozen or so gnomes, two of the Manotaurs, the Multi-bear, Sev'Ral Timez, and Celestabellabethabelle's pink unicorn friend, who was very grateful to no longer be mostly petrified. Even Quentin Trembley showed up, and for once refrained from removing his pants, claiming it was a sign of "mourning."
Nobody dressed in black, since Mabel would have hated that. Instead, everyone came in the most colorful attire they had (both Manotaurs and the Multibear wore the sweaters Mabel had knitted for them).
They had a karaoke competition, which culminated in an epic final battle between the Multibear and the defending champion, Pacifica. To no one's surprise, Pacifica kept her title. (Dipper's cover of "Disco Girl" hadn't won him any rounds, but was still quite a sight to see. Normally he wouldn't have dared sing anything in front of a non-dead audience, let alone that… particular song, but in honor of Mabel, he swallowed his pride. Plus… it actually felt kind of nice not to worry about looking cool. Maybe he could get used to this after all…)
Dipper, Stan, and Ford spent a lot of time making introductions between the town residents and Mom and Dad, since everyone wanted to meet the parents of the town heroes… and express their condolences.
Among those who took the news particularly hard were Candy and Grenda (the latter kept trying to "punch her feelings away" and would have done so for Candy as well had their mothers not put a stop to it), and Gideon, who actually broke down crying. Upon regaining composure, the diminutive fake psychic vowed to honor her memory by trying to become someone she could have loved back, no matter how long or how hard the process.
Throughout the party, Dipper kept catching glimpses of a couple kids who looked a lot like him, and finally cornered them behind the Shack, discovering that they were the only two remaining clones from his botched attempt to impress Wendy at the first Mystery Shack party of the summer. After a heartfelt apology for their fellow clones' unfortunate deaths (wherein Dipper showed them what he'd written in the Journal after their entry), he learned that Three and Four, still calling themselves Tracey and Quattro as written in Journal 3, had been alternately living in the woods and the abandoned Dusk2Dawn convenience store (with permission from the ghosts), trying to figure out what to do with themselves. They had seen Stan's posters for the party in town, and decided that despite having technically never met Mabel, attending her memorial was the least they could do to pay their respects. The three Dippers were exchanging stories of their respective adventures since that initial party night when Mom and Dad found them. That had been an interesting explanation, to say the least.
Eventually, they managed to pull Ford away from persuading Mr. McGucket to patent and sell the "doodles" of various mechanical marvels he'd made over the last thirty years. The old scientist found the clones "fascinating." Apparently, he'd bought/stolen the possibly-magical copy machine from the Gravity Falls copier store back in 1979, but never had a chance to properly test it before becoming absorbed in chasing the Grand Unified Theory of Weirdness. Ford promised he'd look into means of either more reliably preserving their fragile bodies, or perhaps even transmuting them into flesh and blood rather than paper and ink.
However, the most astounding revelation came at the end of the night after everyone but the Pines had drifted back to their own homes.
"A-are you sure?" Dipper could scarcely believe his ears.
"It'll be an… adjustment," His mother said. "But at this point, anything we do would be."
Dipper's father agreed. "We've discussed it, and we think that this will be the best way to help you recover. You need to be around friends, and… well, let's just say that your mother and I aren't as ignorant of your and Mabel's social situation at home as you two thought we were."
"S-so, you really mean it?" He had to make sure he wasn't hearing things from the combination of possibly Mabel Juice and recently-turned-off loud music.
"Yes," Mom said. "We're moving to Gravity Falls."
September 5th
It had taken a few days to get Dipper properly registered at Gravity Falls Junior High, so he was starting slightly late, but the time had also been helpful to adjust to the fact that he'd be living here permanently now.
Stan and Ford planned to finally embark on the voyage around the world which they had dreamed of as children, sailing off to investigate some new anomalies Ford had detected in the Arctic. But they agreed to put that on hold until the Pines could sell their house in Piedmont and find one here in Gravity Falls, and naturally allowed them to stay in the Mystery Shack until then. Once the Pines were settled in their own house, Stan had decided to retire as Mr. Mystery and pass the title on to Soos, who after ten years of working there, was more than capable, and certainly cared about the rickety tourist trap at least as much as Stan himself did.
As Stan drove Dipper to his first day of school in Gravity Falls, the now-technically-a-teen fingered the small pendant hanging around his neck. Grunkle Ford had made it from the last remnant of Mabel, the one which Dipper had carried on his journey through the Multiverse and used to summon her ghost for that last goodbye. After using the shrink ray to reduce the stone to a size more appropriate for jewelry, Ford very carefully painted it with the last of the alien adhesive which he and Dipper had recovered from the crashed spaceship, and set the shimmering pink stone into the frame from one of Stan's many gold chains, which was then strung onto a light yet sturdy string. According to Ford, with that stuff covering it, even a jackhammer wouldn't so much as scratch the stone. All of the Pines agreed that the adhesive's shimmering pink, slightly luminous color was perfect for Mabel, and the shooting star from her sweater could still be seen etched into its surface. Now, Dipper would literally always have Mabel with him, as much as she still could be.
He tried to keep that in mind as he walked through the halls of the school to his first class. They had always been Mabel and Dipper Pines, always together against the world. Now it was just Dipper. But he wasn't alone. Before opening the door to the classroom, Dipper fingered the necklace once more and imagined Mabel's encouraging smile.
I miss you, Mabel. I wish more than anything that you were here… but I'll be okay.
THE END