The fire blazed as more fuel was thrown on, illuminating the area with a piercing orange light, in stark contrast to the blindingly white moonlight. Dipper pulled his feet back as embers landed around him. He was sat on a bench to the right of the fire. The whole event felt quite significant to him, as if it was the end of the era, which was odd, considering he had no idea why this was important to him. He could hear Stan laughing as he poured even more gasoline on and threw some triangular memorabilia (for some reason), the fire blazing even brighter than before. Next to Dipper sat three burgundy, leather-bound journals, each numbered over a six fingered hand on the cover, piled on top of each other. He reckoned they were probably Ford's journals due to the six fingers, but he could never be sure these days.

"Mabel?" he asked when his sister moved closer to him. "What are those books?"

Mabel looked at him with a distraught smile, picking up the one labelled 'three' and flicking through the pages for a moment. "I can't believe you don't remember this thing…" she muttered. "So much happened because of it. None of… this… would've happened if it wasn't for this thing. You'd still remember me."

Dipper knew he should have some memory of this, but he didn't want to panic his sister further. "Mabel… I do remember you, I just—"

"Do you remember the time you saved my photo day?" Mabel asked poking Dipper in the chest. "How about the time I saved your Valentine's Day?"

"… no."

"Exactly." Stray tears rolled down Mabel's face like raindrops on a window, her eyes red and puffy. "You remember the basics, like who I am, but not any of the stuff we did together. Y'know, the stuff that really matters."

Dipper gritted his teeth slightly, frustration rising in his tone. "Well that's not my fault, is it?" Usually, such a question would be rhetorical, and for the most part it was, but there was a voice in the back of his head that wondered whether it actually was his fault.

Up until now, Stan, Ford, Wendy, and Soos had been distracted, but what Mabel said next caught their attention.

"No, it's – IT'S MINE!" Mabel yelled. "It's my fault. All of this is my fault." She rubbed at a stray scar on her arm, hastily pulling her sleeve down over it.

"Sweetie, don't say that," Stan said, walking over and caressing her shoulder. "It's Bill's fault. No one else. Apart from maybe Ford."

Ford sighed, shaking his head at his twin's mockery, still knowing it was all in good spirit. "Stanley's right, Mabel. For the most part." He flashed Stan a look that read 'don't you try me.' "Maybe we should end this. That was the whole point of this in the first place, to give some closure." He walked over and picked up the first two journals, handing journal 2 to Stan and keeping the first for himself. Mabel stood up and clutched the third journal tightly, but there was something amiss in her eyes; she wasn't ready to do this.

"On three," Wendy said. "One, two, three!" On three, Ford and Stan threw their respective journals onto the fire, then looked over to Mabel. Her hands were empty, and she simply stared at the blaze absentmindedly.

"Then it's done," Ford said, the relief evident in his tone; as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders. "It's finally over."

"Come on dudes," Soos said, grabbing both Dipper and Mabel's shoulders. "Let's go inside."

Wendy smiled. "Yeah, I mean, this is late even for me."

And as the Pines walked away, the journals burnt on the fire, closing the book on their time with them.

That was about a week after Dipper had gotten home, the night before Pacifica had arrived at the Shack. It seemed like so long ago, but it had only been a week and a half since then. Too bad that Dipper and Ford's current situation would never be happening if they had just kept the journals, but no, Ford insisted on destroying them.

The two hurried through the woods, Dipper's hand still shaking, feeling so small within Ford's grip. They arrived at a familiar patch of woods not too far from the Shack, and stopped to rest. They had been running wordlessly for the most part up until now, so Dipper took this opportunity to question his great-uncle.

"Who the hell was that?" Dipper asked. "Why did he try to… to kill me?"

"I think that may have been someone from Stanley's past," Ford murmured, "since I've never met him before, I assume he mistook me for Stan."

"He said he wanted m-m-money or something, right?"

Ford sighed and knelt down to Dipper's height, not caring if mud soaked into his trousers. "Enough about that," he whispered. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," Dipper said, rubbing his hand over a scratch on his knee. "I skinned it when I was trying to escape."

"That's it? Nothing else?"

"I'm fine," Dipper spat. "Stop treating me like I'm helpless, I'm not. I can handle myself, and if I remember correctly, I was doing just fine before you arrived. So stop worrying."

Ford shook his head. He knew that Dipper's injury was causing him to be irritable and that he couldn't help it, but the venom in the boy's tone still stung. "Mason, I know it seems like we're all being a little overbearing, but it's just… what would you do if you nearly lost Mabel? Would not you feel a need to protect her afterwards, to make sure it didn't happen again?"

Dipper looked away in shame; he had nearly lost her, and it would've been to his own hand, but Ford didn't know that. No one could know that.

"That's how I feel, that's how we all feel, Mason. You don't quite understand how awful those months of uncertainty were. What Mabel nearly did, I…"

Dipper's eyes widened. "What? What did she nearly do?" The venom that once hung from his tone was quickly replaced by concern.

Ford thought back to that day on the cliffside, that quiet moment he and Mabel had shared, and the quiet understanding of what she had wanted to do.

"That's… not my truth to tell."

By the time they got back to the Shack, the sun was peeking over the horizon. Ford gently shut the creaky wooden door behind him, hoping that it would still be too early for anyone to be up.

"Where in the hell have you two been?"

Ford winced in frustration and quietly cursed under his breath, before turning to Stan, who was standing in the kitchen with the light off, obscured by shadow.

"For your information," Ford pushed his glasses up his nose, "we were trying to save the world. Again."

Suddenly, Mabel sprinted into the room and launched herself onto her brother, knocking him back slightly. "Where did you go? We were so worried, why would you leave without telling us?" she asked rapidly. "I thought we said no more secrets."

Dipper had no memory of promising that; but there was no point hurting Mabel any more, so he played along.

"I'm sorry," he said. "This was urgent."

"Ma – Dipper is right," Ford said, stumbling over his words as he remembered that he wasn't alone with Dipper. Behind him, Mabel gave Dipper a slight glance of confusion. "Stan, when we were out we got ambushed by a man who said you owed him money. He thought I was was you, do you know who it is?"

"Oh, so now you're trying to make me the bad guy," Stan laughed. "But seriously, I owe a lot of people money, you're gonna have to narrow it down a bit."

"Kinda short and muscly with a South American accent."

Stan cursed under his breath. "Rico… that son of a bitch, I thought I lost him."

"He thought you were dead, Stanley!" Ford yelled. "He threatened to kill Dipper because you got in way over your head!"

"Don't you get mad at me!" Stan spat. "That was like, thirty years ago, it's acceptable to do stupid shit at that age. And plus, I'm not the one that took Dipper out in the dead of night on a dangerous mission."

"We were only going to get some materials then come back," Ford said. "As I said, we got ambushed. We weren't looking for trouble. Ask Dipper, he'll tell you that if anything, we were trying to avoid it."

"Maybe you're both right and wrong?" Mabel suggested. She was about to get them to hug it out, but a duo of death glares sent her way made her think better of it. "Come on bro-bro," she said, grabbing Dipper's hand and leading him away. "The doctor said you need sleep."

When they got upstairs, Dipper explained everything; why he had to go with Ford, the plan to break the barrier, everything. By the end Mabel looked almost guilty.

"All of this only happened because you didn't have the journal," she muttered. "If you had it, Grunkle Ford wouldn't have had to bring you along."

Dipper tilted his head. "But the books are destroyed, right?" He had a slightly questioning tone, as if he was worried that he couldn't quite trust his own memory of the event.

Mabel sighed and ducked under her bed. She pulled a familiar, burgundy book out from the twilight zone under the bed and passed it to her brother. "It didn't feel right for me to be the one to destroy it, but I didn't want you to do it when you could barely remember it, so I pretended I threw it on the fire."

Dipper smiled widely. "Thanks, Mabel." In truth, he was glad to have a relic of his past on hand. It was the perfect gift for an amnesiac; a journal he wrote documenting his own adventures. Maybe this could help him rebuild himself after spending so long vegetating in the Mystery Shack

"You're welcome. I couldn't burn it… it's got all your notes in it." Mabel bit her lip. "When you were in your coma, I used to read it a lot. Other than my scrapbook and some pictures on my phone, it was the only big thing I had to remember you by. That book stopped me from doing something really bad, and… I think it's fair to let you be the one to decide what to do with it."

Stan sat with his feet up on his desk as Ford paced around the office, a situation they had been in countless times before, only now, there was an air of tension.

"Rico is bad news," Stan muttered. "He's the bastard who locked me in the trunk of a car and left me to die. Had 'ta chew my way out. If he's here, then he's still pissed that I never paid up.

"He let us go, Stan," Ford mused, only half listening to what his twin was saying. "Why would he do that? Surely it would make more sense to keep us as leverage?"

"Look, Sixer," Stan replied. "Rico… well, he's a bit of a dick in all honesty, but he's not some mad supervillain. As much as I hate to admit it, he's not completely amoral. He's fine with killing, but he doesn't enjoy it. He once told me that that pacifism can go a long way, but that you need to know when to cut loose, 'cos even that has its limits. I chose not to do things his way years ago and look where we are now."

"So you're saying we have to play his game?"

Stan laughed. "Not a chance in hell. I don't have that kinda money, and even if I did, I wouldn't be givin' it to him. No, we need to pretend to play his game. He's given us time, we should use it to figure out what to do next."

"So basically fake it till you make it?"

"That's my middle name."

Ford nodded. "I think you may be right. Now that I have a crystal, I'll be able to break the barrier with a bit of doing. However, once it's done, we need to tell Dipper and Mabel's parents about our situation."

"If they know there's an ex-crime lord who wants my head in the town I doubt they'd let them stay."

"Stanley, do you honestly think I'm that stupid?" Ford lamented, stopping his pacing for the first time. "I meant about the… Dipper situation. Rico can wait."

The next morning, Dipper walked downstairs blearily and made himself a coffee strong enough to power a jet engine, before sitting down at the kitchen table.

"Didn't know you were up."

He looked over to see Pacifica standing in the doorway, leant against the frame lazily. She wore a simple pink shirt and white trousers, which were the only clothes Stan could find on his shopping trip.

"I… forgot you were here, to be honest."

Pacifica smiled sadly as she walked into the kitchen. "I heard about what happened last night." She jumped up onto the countertop and dangled her legs. "Sounded pretty bad."

"Nah, it was nothing," Dipper lied, still a bit shaken from the whole ordeal. "It was just… aggressive negotiations."

"Not what I heard." Pacifica raised an eyebrow cheekily.

"What, did Mabel tell you I was scared out of my mind?"

"Yep," Pacifica sighed. "But why do you care? Most people would've been."

"I'm not…" Dipper ran a hand through his hair and searched for the right words. "Everyone thinks I'm a hero. Everyone thinks I'm supposed to be the best, just because I was the one that beat Bill, but I don't… I don't feel like the best. I don't even feel like the average dude, because I've got something wrong in my head so I can't think straight and I forget important shit – I froze. I don't want people to look up to me like that, but every time I go out that's what happens. Everybody thinks I'm a hero, and I'm going to disappoint them when they see who I am now."

Pacifica jumped down from the countertop and sat down at the at bel next to her friend. "You were a hero. But you don't have to be now, and I think most people will understand that. Take the weight of the world off your shoulders and have some time off."

Dipper smiled, and out of the corner of his eye, he swore he spotted Pacifica blush for a split second.

"You're not acting like yourself lately," she said.

"I don't even know what 'myself' even is anymore."

Pacifica frowned. "I thought your memories were returning?"

Dipper looked over to her with an expression utter disdain. "It's not that. I am remembering, but I'm not sure I can just go back to how I was before all this. I'm not sure even I want to. I know things have changed - I've changed, but I don't know if Mabel's ready to accept that."

"She's trying her best," Pacifica responded. "She was a complete mess when you were… gone. More than usual. And she tried to cope by hoping that everything would go back to how it was."

"I know…" Dipper muttered. "And I hate the fact that I'm the one who's going to have to pull the rug out from under her."

He let a long, somber sigh.

"I just… I just hope she can learn to love the new me… even though I'm…" he paused for a moment, "… different."

"She won't care. As long as you're still a good person she'll always care."

"I just don't know how I'm going to break it to her."

Pacifica grinned. "You broke her out of a fantasy once. What's one more time?"

It was only then that Dipper realised that Pacifica's hand was clasping his. It felt warm, almost comforting. It was different than when Mabel held his hand; when she did it, it was to reassure either him or herself that they'd always have each other, but this felt… different. The good kind of different.

But Pacifica made a panicked excuse to leave before he could say anything.

Stan's car zoomed away from the Mystery Shack as Dipper watched longingly from the window. He gulped slightly. He hated to admit it, but he felt so much more vulnerable now that Stan was gone. Ford had finished the device as soon as they'd gotten back; it had only taken him about twenty minutes. The device was supposed to absorb and store the energy from the barrier, effectively sucking it up until there was nothing left, hopefully destroying it for good, and seemingly, it had worked.

What really terrified Dipper was the notion that not only would he have to go home at some point, but that he would have to face his parents. He wasn't ready, he couldn't let them see him like this. He couldn't even remember their names, or what they looked like, and he hated the thought of that still persisting when they reunited. Any reasonable person would take him and Mabel away from Gravity Falls forever, but the town and its people were Dipper's only anchor to reality, the only people keeping him sane.

He knew if he wanted to be ready for what the future may hold, he needed to tie up his loose ends. He needed to break Mabel's bubble – again (only this time it was less literal). He knew it would hurt her, and as much as he would hate himself for it, he knew it was a necessary evil.

He wrote down what he wanted to say on a sheet of paper. He'd never had the best handwriting, but it turns out that when you have a somewhat recent brain injury that affects your motor functions, it renders said handwriting completely illegible. Thankfully, he could still read it, and he was the only person who would have to read it, so it was a moot point (although he couldn't help but think it was something he should probably address before it came back to bite him in the arse).

He found Mabel later that day as he walked into their room. She was reading a fashion magazine on her bed, which was strangely neat. That was odd, Mabel never made her bed.

"Hey," Dipper said. "I, uh… I n-n-need to talk to you."

"What is it?" Mabel asked, flipping her magazine shut.

Dipper felt for the note in his pocket. The lined paper crinkled against his thigh quietly, before he clenched his fist around it in exasperation.

"I need to talk to you about…" He paused. He couldn't do this. He couldn't do this. But he couldn't get out now, he had to say something. "About… what's her… what's her name again?" he stammered, snapping his fingers in a vain attempt to jog his memory. "The blonde girl?"

"Pacifica?"

"Pacifica, right, right." He rubbed his forehead and sighed. "Do you think she might have a crush on me?"

Mabel was lost in thought for a second.

"Yeah." She stood up from her bed. "Definitely, do you like her?"

For some reason, even though such a question would usually catch Dipper off guard, he felt as if he already knew what she was going to ask. Not in the sense that he predicted it… but something else.

"Like her?" he muttered, pushing the thought aside. "I don't - I've never – I don't know. No." He ran his hand through his hair. "Maybe? I don't know, I just feel like I've got too much on my plate just now, and I don't want to deal with all that too, and it's just…" his words were replaced by raspy panting as he tried to catch his breath.

"I need to – I need some time alone."

Mabel nodded. "I'll be downstairs if you need me."

As soon as she shut the door, Dipper crumpled down and huddled up in a ball on the floor, trying his best to calm himself and get his breathing under control. He tried to remember what Stan had told him the last time he'd had a panic attack – god, even that night after the puppet show felt like an age ago now – and after about five minutes, he breathed a sigh of relief, not caring when tears ran down his cheeks.

Tyler Cutebiker clicked his pen repeatedly, the incessant bickering starting to get on his nerves. The Gravity Falls council was made up of seven people including himself, most of whom seemed to have an ulterior motive for being there. Preston Northwest was the obvious one – he'd bribed and cheated his way in, because having influence let you do stuff like hide your shady dealings and illegal business practices. Sheriff Blubs was simply there because the council needed a representative for the police by law.

Farmer Sprott was there exclusively to be annoying and make laws that benefitted farmers exclusively, everyone else be damned. How Bud Gleeful had managed to get elected was a mystery, but all the investigations into his election had come up clean. He said he was there to repay the town for letting Gideon do what he did.

Tyler believed that, but he still didn't trust the man.

Greg Valentino seemed creepy on the surface, but he was actually quite nice once you got to know him, and nobody questioned the fact that he won his election fair and square.

That also applied to the most recent addition to their roster, Fiddleford H. McGucket. He was still a bit… out there, but he knew what it was like to be at a dead end in life, which helped when making decisions that would mostly affect the poor.

They'd created the council a few years ago, and it was originally a volunteer scheme, but they had to change it after never mind all that due to increasing pressures to make hard decisions quickly.

"Now that Stanford's got the bubble down, we can restock on essential supplies." McGucket said. "But they're running out, so we have to act fast."

"I don't trust Stanford," Preston sneered, his legs sat up on the desk, a lit cigar hanging from his mouth. "Why should I? Was it not him that brought Bill here in the first place? Was it not him that wanted to repeal the Never mind all that act not last month?"

"The bubble's down, we know that," Tyler said. "What could he lie about.

Preston blew a large cloud of thick black smoke from his mouth. "His portal caused several thousand dollars in damages. I'm not saying that we shouldn't go for supplies, on the contrary, but how do we know that this device of his won't have any… side effects, shall we say?"

Blubs sighed. "We don't have a choice."

"I agree with Sheriff Blubs," Greg said. "But Preston does have a point. We should probably look into it just in case."

Bud Gleeful spoke next. "From what we Fiddleford told us, it's made out of the same tech that that damned portal was made out of. What if he hasn't ironed out all the kinks yet?"

"Stanford wouldn't use it if he didn't know it was safe," McGucket countered, although there was a slight uncertainty in his tone.

"I can't believe I'm sayin' this, but I agree with Bud," Farmer Sprott said. "We can't afford to take any risks, what if the livestock get hurt?"

Tyler sighed in exasperation. "We'll put it to a vote the . Who is for investigating Ford's invention?"

Preston raised his hand instantly, followed by Bud and Sprott. Tyler faltered for a second. He agreed with McGucket to an extent, but he could see Preston's point. The man was being rational for once, although Tyler doubted it was out of altruism. He clenched his fist and shakily raised his hand, ignoring McGucket's shocked expression of betrayal. Four out of seven. The majority rules, so it was decided.

Chapter 10 already? Never thought I'd get here on this story, to be honest. But hey, there's still more to go (also, I updated the icon for this story).