Closer Than Ever Before

Author Note: Ok, so I really promise I haven't given up on One Day Reunited. I've just been having bad writer's block with that one, and worked on this in the meantime. I hope you enjoy it.

For those of you who didn't put the Latin stuff from the last chapter into Google Translate, here's what it's supposed to say:
Numquid Faciem Eius, Dirigentes Stella? = Do you accept him, Shooting Star?
Per Viam Judex = By way of the Judge,
Animo Transferendi Ex Arbore = Transfer the mind of the Tree
Gemini In Corpus = Into the body of his twin.


Chapter 2: Cogito, Ergo Sum

Location: Domain of the Axolotl

Time: Undefinable

Dipper screamed like a girl half his age. Then he looked back up and screamed again. This is the weirdest thing that has ever happened to me. And I died today… probably.

The owner of the impossible voice was a pinkish-white salamander the size of a skyscraper. Frilly scarlet gills traced intricate patterns around the creature's head as its tail waved lazily through the clouds.

"This… can't be real. I'm hallucinating… no wonder, I did just fall off a hundred-foot tower… but if I'm hallucinating, does that mean I'm not dead?

A serene smile crossed the colossal amphibian's face.

"THE STATE OF YOUR MORTALITY REMAINS TO BE SEEN, DIPPER PINES."

Dipper cowered before that infinite-sounding voice. "Who… what are you?" he asked. Despite its comical appearance, the creature radiated sheer power. "Are you… a god?"

The creature answered with what could have only been a laugh. "SOME OF YOUR RACE ONCE CALLED ME THAT. MANY ON OTHER WORLDS STILL DO. I AM KNOWN AS THE AXOLOTL."

Yeah, I can see that… he sure looks like one… Dipper thought. He then asked the first question that came to mind.

"Where… am I?"

"THIS IS MY DOMAIN. THINK OF IT AS THE TIME AND SPACE BETWEEN TIME AND SPACE."

Well, that sure clears things up...

"Does that mean… I'm dead?"

"NOT QUITE."

Every time this… Axolotl spoke, Dipper felt like he would blow away, or perhaps just break apart and dissolve into the endless clouds around them. The Axolotl must have either read Dipper's mind or there had been others in this situation before, because its next words were much less forceful. They still had a sort of ethereal quality, similar to how Bill's voice had echoed, but this creature's voice was deep and perfectly calm, unlike Bill's high, grating cackle.

"I understand that my presence can be rather… overwhelming for mortals, especially mortals in your condition. To answer your first question more fully, I am… a protector. A defender of order. One of many in the endless expanse of reality dedicated to its preservation."

Dipper considered this, wondering why such a being would take interest in him. This must have something to do with Bill… he thought. "Then what am I doing here?"

"I brought you here to offer you a choice."

"... What's the choice, then?" Dipper asked, one eyebrow raised. I'm questionably dead, in another dimension or something, and talking to a giant salamander who may or may not be a god. It was amazing how quickly he could accept weird stuff without continuously freaking out, but perhaps not so surprising after the events of the last few months.

The Axolotl stretched one webbed forelimb forward and said, "Look."

Turning around, Dipper saw a door. It looked just like the door to his and Mabel's attic bedroom in the Mystery Shack.

"Your sister has accepted you into her mind. Enter this door, and your spell will work as you intended it to."

Dipper immediately drifted toward that door, hand outstretched. Mabel needed him. But though Dipper found that he could indeed touch it, the knob would not turn.

He shot straight up, over the door, and glared at the Axolotl, not caring that this being could probably obliterate him just by blinking. "LET ME IN THERE!"

The Axolotl did indeed blink, but did not appear angered, rather it smiled. "Do not be so hasty."

"What do you mean?" Dipper inquired, "I've got to go back, right?"

"That is up to you. This is the choice I offer."

Another door appeared, this one plain whitewashed wood. Like the Axolotl, this door positively glowed with otherworldly power.

"Where will that take me?" Dipper asked.

"On," said the Axolotl simply.

Dipper looked between the two doors. Just as when he'd come up with the idea to magically transfer his mind, his thoughts were of Mabel. Though others may not see it, Dipper knows she is far more fragile than she appears. He knows that if the situation were reversed, losing Mabel would break him, and he couldn't do that to her.

"This is not a test," the Axolotl said, perceiving the reason for his indecision. "Neither choice is the wrong one. If you choose to move on, you may leave a final message, explaining your decision."

It was reassuring, Dipper supposed, that either way, Mabel wouldn't think he'd abandoned her. But in the end, there was no real decision to be made. Dipper turned back toward the bedroom door and floated in front of it.

"That is the harder path," warned the Axolotl.

Dipper couldn't leave Mabel alone like that, not when there was another option, but he still had some questions…

"I want to stay with Mabel, but..." he said, then carefully asked, "will I ever be able to get my own body back?"

"I am sorry," the massive eldritch being said, and it seemed genuine. "No matter your choice, the vessel of your birth cannot be recovered. Not even by me."

Dipper was confused. "But you're like, a god or something! You can probably do anthyding… I mean, anything!"

"Powerful I may be, but the full extent of my abilities cannot be exercised except in the discharge of my duty as a judge and protector of reality," the Axolotl explained, "Laws are not only the foundation of my power but of my very being. I could no more go against those laws than you in your mortal body could have torn out your own heart."

That wasn't an image Dipper needed in his mind. "And this isn't against your rules? Intervening to transfer my mind to Mabel? Not that I'm complaining, but…"

The Axolotl laughed again. "Your spell may very well have worked to that end even without my help, with such astounding love and willpower behind it. None of my power was exercised beyond that of communication; and even then, all the power necessary to complete that spell will have come from you. I just helped ensure your already-likely success, bringing you here in the process." The massive amphibian winked. "Bill Cipher isn't the only one who knows how to make use of loopholes, you know."

"Does that mean… you knew I would choose to return?" Dipper asked. Could this… god or whatever it was see the future?

"I hoped you would. But there is always a choice in these situations. Why, I remember another much like you (he even had a rather interesting mark on his forehead, as you do), from a world much like your own, who stood in a situation much like this one. He was offered a choice much like that which I now present to you, and also chose to return.

"In taking this path, you may have a chance to help many more than just your sister, and just because the vessel of your birth is lost does not mean another cannot be obtained."

I guess that's encouraging. At least it's possible, even if I don't know how, Dipper thought. "Is… is there anything else that those rules of yours will let you tell me?"

The Axolotl dipped its head. "All who enter my domain may have one question answered. If your question is one which I am not permitted to answer, you may ask another. Do not worry about what you have already asked. Those answers were owed by virtue of my bringing you here."

Wow. This is my chance to learn anything! I could ask how I can get a body of my own again… I could ask about my future, or Mabel's future, or who the Author is! Wait, no… if there's one thing I need answers about, it's him.

Dipper took a deep breath, or at least went through the motion of doing so, and asked, "What do you know about Bill Cipher?"

For the first time since Dipper had been here, the Axolotl's calm smile very briefly departed, its black eyes narrowing for the slightest instant in what could have been anger. "Is this the one question you wish me to answer?"

"Yes," Dipper said.

The Axolotl's deep black eyes began to glow, and its voice once again became impossibly vast, speaking what sounded like a prophecy.

"SIXTY DEGREES THAT COME IN THREES,

WATCHES FROM WITHIN BIRCH TREES.

SAW HIS OWN DIMENSION BURN,

MISSES HOME BUT CAN'T RETURN.

SAYS HE'S HAPPY, HE'S A LIAR,

BLAME THE ARSON FOR THE FIRE.

IF HE WANTS TO SHIRK THE BLAME,

HE'LL HAVE TO INVOKE MY NAME.

ONE WAY TO ABSOLVE HIS CRIME:

A DIFFERENT FORM, A DIFFERENT TIME."

Though the glow in its eyes faded, the voice did not. "YOU WILL NOT REMEMBER OUR ENCOUNTER, ONLY WHAT YOU HAVE LEARNED. IS THIS YOUR FINAL CHOICE?"

Dipper nodded again. His mind was made up. "Yes. I'm not leaving Mabel."

"THEN KNOCK."

He did so, and once again, everything turned white. Everything except the door.


Soos parked his truck in a seemingly random section of the woods. The only sources of light were the moon, the stars, and the headlights.

"Are you sure this is the right place?" Soos asked, voice still brittle with emotion.

"Positive," Wendy answered, "I know these woods like the back of my hand. Look, there's the entrance." She pointed to one of the trees illuminated by the truck headlights. "Let's get this over with. I don't want to spend any more time down there than I absolutely have to."

Soos got out of the truck and walked around to open the passenger door for Wendy, whose arms were full of Dipper's broken body. She'd briefly considered putting him in the truck bed, but no. Dipper deserved better than that. As far as Wendy was concerned, her friend deserved one of those awesome yet still solemn Viking funerals she'd read about, where they put the body on a boat, lit it on fire, and pushed it out to sea. She didn't care if that all the evidence pointed to it being a suicide. Wendy could not believe that's what had happened.

She'd been contemplating the situation during the drive into the woods, only vaguely paying attention to the path and giving Soos occasional directions. Ever since she and Soos had picked up Dipper at the Mystery Shack to go to Mabel's play, he'd been acting strange. Wendy knew that strange actions were a warning sign of suicide (the entire high school had attended an assembly about suicide prevention after one of the juniors had unsuccessfully attempted it last year). When she thought about it though, even if Dipper had been acting weird, he definitely hadn't seemed depressed. In fact, he'd been grinning widely and giggling (which wasn't much like him) for almost the whole car ride while scribbling something on a piece of paper. Had that been a suicide note?

He had also been weirdly flirty, calling Wendy "Red" and even "Toots." She wasn't blind; she knew that even after letting him down easy last week, Dipper still wasn't over her, but since then he'd been a lot more comfortable around her, and hadn't tried to flirt at all. At least not until tonight. And then there's what he'd said to Soos while sitting between them in the theater… "Hey Soos! Wanna hear the exact time and date of your death?"

That hadn't sounded anything like Dipper. Wendy had thought it odd at the time, but Mabel's arrival drove those musings from her mind, and then Dipper had followed his sister to help her with the play. The next time she saw Dipper, he and Mabel were crashing down from the ceiling and wrestling on the floor, and right before running off, he'd screamed "So you want your brother's body back, huh, Shooting Star? Come and get it!" No, there's no way it was really a suicide. Something Weird was going on. Weird with a capital "W."

"Soos, you don't think Dipper really killed himself, do you?" Wendy asked as she carefully extracted herself from the passenger seat, making sure not to drop any part of what she was holding. This was probably the closest thing Dipper would have to a funeral, at least for a while. Wendy remembered her mother's funeral, and though this wasn't the same, it was still the definitely the worst she'd felt since then.

"(sniff)... Aw, I don't know…" Soos sniffed, a tear leaking from his eye.

"Well, I don't think so," Wendy said. "Here… take him so I can climb the tree."

She handed the body to Soos, who took it and immediately started sobbing again. Wendy climbed the tree, hit the fake branch, and dropped into the bushes when the ground around the tree started to lower.

With Wendy once again carrying Dipper, they descended into the Author's secret bunker for the second time in as many weeks. But after carefully negotiating the cluttered first room, Wendy remembered something crucial.

"Soos… how're we gonna get through that death-trap security room? Last time, Dipper," -her voice caught as she looked down at what she was holding- "found the right combination in his book, but I don't remember it. Do you?"

"No," Soos said, then despite his sorrowful expression, his eyes lit up and he said, "Wait here, dude," then ran back out of the bunker. He was back less than a minute later with two heartbreakingly familiar items: a blue vest, and the battered red Journal. "I grabbed Dipper's vest from the bathroom at the theater when I went in there during the intermission, and Mabel… dropped the Journal next to him… back there at the water tower…" he said, starting out almost like regular old Soos, but descending into sobs once more at the end as he slumped against the cabinet labeled "WEAPONS."

Wendy set Dipper carefully on the dusty old mattress, then took the Journal and vest from Soos and sat down herself. Rapidly flipping through the book, she saw a page covered in a hexagonal grid full of symbols she vaguely remembered from the last time they were down here, then rummaged through the pockets of Dipper's vest until she found a small portable blacklight amid the detritus of chewed-on pens and scraps of paper.

"Here we go," she said, and put both the Journal and black light back into the vest pockets (they'd be easier to carry that way). "Now help me get him through the passage."

Negotiating the cramped passage behind the vault-like door was pretty difficult with Dipper's body in tow, but they managed. In the security room, Soos held Dipper again while Wendy found the combination page, shone the black light on it, and committed the four symbols to memory. Then she stepped on the center plate and wasted no time in climbing the forest of stone pillars that extended from the walls, floor and ceiling to press all four symbols.

They rushed across the observation room, squeezed (very tightly and uncomfortably) into the decontamination closet, which had apparently broken down, because the faucet just dripped a little before the door on the other side opened. And that's when they saw it: the Shapeshifter, still frozen, and in about the most disturbing possible shape, especially when Wendy recalled what its last words had been.

"If you keep digging, you'll meet a fate worse than you can imagine, and this will be the last form you ever take!" the monster had said, and then shifted into Dipper's own shape just before screaming as it froze solid.

None of them had taken the creature seriously at the time, agreeing that it was just bitter at being defeated. However, though the shape was wrong, the Shapeshifter's words had proven prophetic. They were about to do exactly the same thing to the real Dipper. Had Wendy been a more typical fifteen-year-old, she might have broken down at this. But she was a Corduroy.

Wrenching her gaze away from the Shapeshifter, she approached the empty cryotube on the right. Just as she was about to push the button to open it, Soos (who'd been carrying Dipper's body since the death-trap room) shouted "AAAH, dude! What's going on?"

Wendy whirled around, thinking the Shapeshifter must have somehow escaped, but no, the false Dipper was still a block of ice. It was the real Dipper instead. He was glowing.

Soos dropped the body and backed away, but it didn't fall, instead floating in the air at chest height. Though the light coming off it was soft at first, it grew steadily brighter, and also hotter. After just a few seconds, being near Dipper's body was like standing in front of an open furnace, and it was starting to get too bright to look at. Wendy dodged behind the empty cryotube and Soos took cover behind a large pipe near the door.

Even facing away and behind the sturdy cryotube, Wendy still felt a blast of heat as the light suddenly flared brighter than the sun. She had no idea why this was happening, but it looked terrifyingly similar to the videos of nuclear tests she'd seen in history class, and she braced herself for the inevitable shockwave that would destroy her, even though she knew nothing could really protect her from something like that, not when she was this close.

In actuality, Wendy's guess was quite close to the truth. The atoms composing Dipper's body were being converted into energy; in total, nearly 4 trillion megajoules of it, tens of thousands of times more powerful than any man-made nuclear weapon. Were it not for what happened next, not only would Wendy, Soos, and the entire town have been vaporized, but a significant portion of North America would have been blasted into a radioactive wasteland.

But the shockwave never came. After a few seconds, when Wendy's brain confirmed that she had not in fact been changed into some variety of exotic plasma, she opened her eyes. Though the rock walls of the bunker were scorched black, the metal cryotubes and pipes had bent and warped from the heat, and Wendy's clothes and hair were singed, the searing light had dimmed. Or rather, it had changed.

Now the light was a deep azure blue that rippled like flames, and seemed confined into a small area roughly where Soos had been standing before the explosion. It was bright enough that it should have still hurt to look at, but for some reason it didn't. As Wendy and Soos watched, the light shaped itself into a simplistic outline of a very familiar pine tree, which hovered in the air and shrank slightly as the outline of a different symbol appeared around it. This one was bright pink, resembled a comet or a shooting star, and also looked kind of familiar. The combined symbol glowed brightly for a moment before vanishing with a strange echoing sound, like a mix between a thunderclap and a large gong being struck.

Now there was some kind of shock wave, which caused a sensation Wendy couldn't put to words, almost like a powerful wind had blown right through her for a few seconds before moving on. She opened her eyes, despite having no memory of closing them.

Wendy and Soos stared across the cave at each other for what could have been several minutes, mouths gaping. Then they heard a cracking sound off to the side and looked wildly around, before settling on the cryotube next to the one Wendy had used as cover. Like the others, its metal sides were warped and steaming, but through the spiderweb of cracks in the glass, Wendy could see something moving very slightly. That was the tube she and Dipper had pushed the Shapeshifter into the last time they were down here.

Neither Wendy nor Soos understood the slightest idea what had just happened, or why they weren't extremely dead, but they definitely didn't want to be around when the Shapeshifter finally woke up and extracted itself from the remains of the cryotube, so they hurried out of the bunker and back to Soos's truck as fast as they could, still blinking afterimages out of their eyes.

As Wendy sat down, she felt something in the seat beneath her, and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. Normally, this would have meant nothing, as Soos rarely cleaned out his truck, but something about the strange scene she'd just witnessed made Wendy think. Earlier that day, Dipper had been sitting here, scribbling something.

At the time, she'd thought nothing of it but while driving to the bunker, she'd briefly contemplated the possibility that it was a suicide note before shoving that horrible idea away, but maybe it could shed some light on what had really happened tonight.

Unfolding the paper, Wendy turned on her phone flashlight to read it:

Note to self: Possessing people is hilarious! To think of all the sensations I've been missing out on-burning, stabbing, drowning. It's like a buffet tray of fun! Once I destroy that journal, I'll enjoy giving this body its grand finale-by throwing it off the water tower! Best of all, people will just think Pine Tree lost his mind, and his mental form will wander the Mindscape forever. Want to join him, Shooting Star?

The note was not in Dipper's neat handwriting, but in a childish, sticklike scrawl, as if the writer lacked fine motor skills… or given its contents, was unfamiliar with a physical body. Apparently, Wendy had been right on the money in thinking that Dipper had not been himself tonight. He literally hadn't been himself, which meant he'd actually been murdered by some kind of evil mind control monster.

Wendy could think of no better way to honor Dipper's memory than to solve the supernatural mystery of his death, so she stuffed the note into her pocket resolving to hunt down whatever creature had killed her friend.


At the same time that Wendy and Soos walked into the last room of the underground bunker, and for the first time she could remember, Mabel awoke without having dreamed at all. Why hadn't she dreamed? After tonight, Mabel would have expected nightmares worse than anything she'd ever had before. But then, she realized, why should I? My worst nightmare already came true. Dipper is gone, and I'm alone forever.

Mabel sat up in her brother's bed and looked at his hat once again. When the fear and despair threatened to overwhelm her, Mabel started to pull up the neck of her sweater, but stopped when she heard a knock. Looking back up, she noticed that the bedroom door was glowing; rays of bright blue light shining through the keyhole and the cracks around the edges. Another knock told Mabel that someone was trying to open the door, but it was locked. She didn't remember locking the door when she came up here, but then, Mabel hadn't exactly been thinking about much of anything at that point.

Whoever it was knocked a third time, and called out in a muffled voice, "Mabel, it's me! Open the door!"

There was no mistaking the voice Mabel most wanted to hear; the voice she thought she'd never hear again. She didn't hesitate, jumping up and running to pull open the door. Only the briefest glimpse was necessary before Mabel grabbed her not-dead brother's hand and pulled him into the biggest hug she'd ever given him, lifting her twin off the floor just like when he'd let her win Waddles. "DIPPER! IT'SYOUIT'SYOUIT'SYOUIT'SYOUIT'SYOU!"

"M-Mabel… please… ribs… already… crushed once… today…" Despite his words, Dipper was grinning just as much as his sister.

Mabel loosened her hold, but only enough for Dipper to extract his arms and hug Mabel back, though not quite as rib-crushingly hard. For a long time, they just stood there in each other's embrace. Finally, they broke apart (with the customary "pat, pat"), and Mabel sat back down on her own bed. "Thank goodness," she sighed. "I thought you were gone forever, but it was just another nightmare. I'm never losing you again, not ever."

Dipper smiled apologetically and picked up his hat from the bed next to him, saying as he put it back on, "Mabel… all that stuff… with the water tower, and the Journal… it wasn't a dream."

"What do you mean, Dipper?" Mabel asked, confused.

"Look around, Mabel," he answered, gesturing around the room.

Mabel did so, and noticed that aside from herself and Dipper, the attic bedroom was completely devoid of color. Even Mabel's boy band posters and stuffed animals on the other bed were gray. That meant… this wasn't really their room. It was the Mindscape again. She was still asleep.

"But… this is a dream?" The despair Mabel had felt, which had fled when she'd heard Dipper's voice through the door, began to return with a vengeance. Mabel's voice quavered as she started to panic. "You're just a dream?!"

"Yes, Mabel. This is a dream," Dipper said. He walked across the room and sat next to Mabel, putting his arm around her shoulder. "But I'm not. The spell worked. We're both inside your mind."

Relief washed away Mabel's encroaching sadness. The crazy brain magic had just taken a little while to work, that was all. "So when I wake up for real…"

"... I'll still be in here," Dipper finished. "How will this all work? I don't know. I've never shared someone's body before."

Mabel shoved him lightly and laughed, "Sure you have, Dip-dop! Remember when we fought over that new room downstairs with the body-switching carpet? You swapped with me, Candy, Grenda, and even Waddles!" She'd certainly never forget that day, even if she wanted to sometimes, especially what she'd learned in Grunkle Stan's office. I guess it did help me understand Dipper better, though.

"That was different, Mabel," Dipper said, "We might have swapped bodies, but we were still in total control of whichever body we were in. This time, we're really sharing. I guess the only way to know how this works is to wake up and figure it out for ourselves."

"I guess you're right, bro-bro," Mabel agreed. She took a deep breath. "Ready to head into the unknown?"

Dipper shook his head. "Nope. Let's do it."


Author Note:

And there we go! Mostly a talky chapter, but I hope I did the Axolotl justice. My idea of him (it?) is mostly based on the excellent story All The World's A Toybox. Its author, Straightjacketed, is one of the great masters of the Gravity Falls fandom and I would highly recommend checking out his stuff, though fair warning: a box of tissues and a strong stomach may be necessary, and you probably shouldn't read it before bed. The story earns its "Horror" genre label very thoroughly.

Just in case you're wondering, I didn't just pull the "nearly 4 trillion megajoules" measurement out of nowhere. According to Einstein's equation of special relativity (the famous E=mc^2), that is indeed the amount of energy (rounded up) contained in the roughly 42-kilogram mass of a typical twelve-year-old. That's equivalent to around 900,000 megatons of TNT. For comparison, this is around the same amount of energy released by the last eruption of the Yellowstone supervolcano millions of years ago. Special relativity is crazy.

But if all that energy didn't devastate North America, where did it go? Another mystery...

Any ideas who the "other one" the Axolotl mentions might be? (Hint: it's not any AU version of Dipper.)

PM me with theories and ideas, reviews are inspiration, wear a mask! BYE!