Closer Than Ever Before
Author Note:
Surprise! This story isn't dead, and this chapter is a doozy. Enjoy!
Chapter 3: Revelation of the Lost Twins
Location: The Mystery Shack, Gravity Falls, Oregon
Time: July 30, 2012 - Early morning
When Stan woke up, still slumped over the kitchen table, he knew there was something he had to do, something extremely unpleasant, but he couldn't remember what. Then he saw Ford's third Journal on the table, and the events of last night came crashing back. Dipper was dead, and now Stan had to tell his niece and nephew that he was literally the worst caretaker in the history of the world, that only one of their children would be coming home, and that there wasn't even a body to bury. He still didn't entirely believe Wendy's story of how that had happened.
About an hour after Stan had gotten home last night and made sure Mabel was actually sleeping, Soos and Wendy had pulled up in front of the Shack in Soos's truck. They didn't have Dipper's body with them, so Stan had assumed they'd done whatever Mabel had conveyed in her message. Stan asked them this when they entered, but Wendy shook her head. "We tried to, but something crazy happened to Dipper's body, Mr. Pines."
She and Soos had then proceeded to tell the story of what had happened down in what Stan now recognized must be the secret bunker that Ford had written about in his third Journal (which Wendy plonked on the table). Apparently, the kids had discovered it a couple of weeks ago when the Shack was being repaired. Based on their explanation, and from what Stan knew of nuclear physics (he'd read through Ford's nerd books plenty of times while trying to fix the portal), an explosion like that sounded like the Einstein thingamajig, E equals m-something, where matter got turned into a whole lot of energy. But apparently magic symbols were also involved somehow? And there might be a vengeful shape-shifting monster on the loose soon? Stan got the sense that they understood no more of it than he did.
"I called my dad about what happened after the play," Wendy had said, "He didn't even remember who Dipper was at first, but he's letting me stay here tonight to be there for Mabel when she wakes up."
Soos and Wendy had decided to sleep in the break room upstairs (Soos had insisted that Wendy take the couch/bed while he slept on the floor). Stan thought they'd still be asleep, but just as he was getting up from the table, Wendy walked into the room, followed closely by Soos, who volunteered to make breakfast while Stan checked on Mabel.
Stan trudged up the two flights of creaky stairs to the attic and paused in front of the bedroom door, not wanting to wake Mabel and force her to face the reality of last night's horrific events once again.
But as Stan reached for the doorknob, it opened on its own. There stood Mabel, looking like exactly the opposite of when Stan had seen her last. Gone were the silent tears and disturbing lack of expression, replaced by the same sparkly braces-filled smile that Stan would have expected from Mabel in literally any other situation. She was wearing a red sweater with a shooting star on it and holding Dipper's blue-and-white cap in one hand.
"Good morning, Grunkle Stan!" she said cheerily, as if this were any other typical morning.
Considering the events of last night, Stan didn't think Mabel's apparent overnight return to normal (or at least, normal for her) was a good thing. When Ford disappeared, Stan had felt like his heart was being ripped out all over again (especially because that time, it was undeniably his fault). Mabel was the most aggressively optimistic person he'd ever met, but last night she'd looked just like Stan had felt, both right then and thirty years ago after losing Ford.
At a loss for words, Stan just stared at Mabel, wondering what could possibly have caused such a dramatic change.
"Is something wrong, Grunkle Stan?" Mabel asked, before sniffing the air and exclaiming, "Ooh, pancakes!"
She squeezed past Stan and hurried down the stairs. Is she in denial about her brother's death? Stan wondered as he followed more slowly back downstairs. She's holding his hat, so maybe not, but…
When he got downstairs, Mabel was sitting at the kitchen table (next to Wendy, who was gaping at her, for several reasons) just like every morning since the beginning of summer, waiting for Soos to finish the pancakes while periodically sniffing to inhale their scent. Looking at her, you would think that Dipper was just sleeping in again and would be downstairs momentarily. Maybe it is denial…
"So what are we gonna do today, Grunkle Stan?" Mabel asked.
Stan still didn't know how to respond to this. "Uh… pumpkin… are… are you okay? 'Cause last night you were… scary."
"Yeah, Mabel, what's the deal?" Wendy asked.
Soos turned around from where he was flipping pancakes at the stove and said, "Did you like, see Dipper's ghost in your dreams and he told you not to be sad? My Abuelita told me she saw my mom in her dreams once or something."
Mabel's eyes widened. "Soos, how did you guess that? Are you psychic? What number am I thinking of?"
"Wait, so that's why you're acting so… Mabel-like? You actually saw Dipper's ghost?" Wendy asked, her eyes almost as wide as Mabel's. "I mean, I'd totally believe that after the summer we've had, but really?"
Mabel shrugged and said, "Well, not exactly. It was just Dipper, not a ghost or anything. You see, he's not really dead at all!"
Yep, definitely denial, Stan thought grimly, Great, now I have to convince the happiest person I know that her brother is gone forever.
But Mabel wasn't done. "Here, you can talk to him if you want!" she said, then closed her eyes for a few seconds. When she opened them again, she stared at the hat on the table in front of her for a few seconds before taking a deep breath and putting it on. Then she spoke, and it was just as weird as the flat, expressionless voice they'd all heard last night, but in a very different way.
"Hey, guys. It's me, Dipper, and just like Mabel told you, I'm not actually dead," She poked her teeth and added, "Ugh, I forgot how horrible braces are… guess I gotta get used to it now."
Internally, Stan was now panicking. Just when I thought denial was the worst possible reaction… nope, now she's got a split personality. How the heck do I deal with this? I'm not a child psychiatrist…
Though the voice coming from Mabel's mouth was still discernibly hers, it didn't really sound like her. The tone, the inflection, the word choices… they were all Dipper's.
Mabel was still talking though, "I used that mind spell from the Journal to transfer my mind into Mabel's body. I know this is definitely the craziest thing that's happened this summer, which is saying a lot, but this is Gravity Falls! Everything is weird here!"
Stan had heard both Dipper and Mabel try to imitate their twin's voice before, and they were nowhere near as good at it as he and Ford had been. This voice didn't sound like Mabel's usual impression of Dipper. In fact, when Stan closed his eyes, he could imagine it was Dipper talking through one of those "voice changer" computer programs that Soos had shown him once when they were recording TV ads for the Mystery Shack.
Everyone was still staring blankly at Mabel, whose expression now greatly reminded Stan of Dipper's from a couple of weeks ago, when Stan had pretended not to take him seriously on the day of the Grand Reopening.
"Auuuugh! Guys, come on!" Mabel threw her hands into the air, "This isn't even the first time I've been in Mabel's body this summer!" She turned toward the stove. "Soos, remember that day we found that new room upstairs with the crazy body-swapping carpet? Mabel and I spent like half that day in the other's body!"
She winced and suddenly the voice was entirely Mabel's again. "Grunkle Stan, remember how you gave 'Dipper' that talk in your office after finding 'him' spying on our sleepover? She made air quotes around the words 'Dipper' and 'him.' "This is Mabel again, by the way."
Stan did remember that. Once he'd started reading from the puberty book that Soos's grandma had given him ten years ago, Dipper had mostly just sat frozen in his chair, looking terrified. But wait… how does Mabel know about that?
His unspoken question was answered in Mabel's next revelation, "That wasn't Dipper, it was me!"
Now that Stan thought of it, Mabel had been acting strange that day, too. The twins had been fighting over the new room, trying to suck up to him. (Later that day, Stan had felt really bad about goading them into fighting, and he felt even worse about it now.) Then after lunch they were doing the exact opposite, calling Stan names and knocking stuff over. At the time, Stan hadn't thought much of it, having always just thought the ugly shag carpet in Ford's bedroom was simply down to his brother being a tasteless nerd when it came to home furnishings, but what if the carpet was actually one of his crazy experiments? And this summer had certainly been the weirdest time of Stan's life, even in thirty years of living in Gravity Falls. Was what Mabel was suggesting really all that far-fetched for this town?
Wendy looked down at a crumpled piece of paper in her hand, then leaned forward and squinted at Mabel: first at her sweater, then at the hat on the younger girl's head, at which point she gasped. Pointing to the hat, she asked, "Mabel… or whoever you are… do you mind?"
Mabel shook her head, and Wendy reached forward, taking off the cap, then brushing away some strands of hair to reveal something that should not have been on Mabel's forehead. Something that Stan distinctly remembered seeing on his great-nephew's face, and which Wendy obviously recognized as well: a birthmark shaped exactly like the Big Dipper. Wendy pulled a small mirror from somewhere and handed it to Mabel, who also gasped.
"Wow… didn't expect that," she said under her breath, again in that strange blend of her own and Dipper's voice. "But this is proof that Dipper- I mean, that I'm actually in here! Look!"
She rubbed at the mark on her forehead and it didn't smudge or smear at all, as if it were actually a birthmark. Seeing that everyone was still just staring in silence, she said (in her normal voice again), "Fine, need more proof? Wendy, ask me something only Dipper would know!"
Wendy didn't know what to do. Though unaware of it, she'd initially come to the same conclusion as Stan: Mabel was in denial over her brother's death, and her grief had caused her to manifest a split personality mimicking her brother's (there was a woman in town with no less than fifteen separate personas, so she'd seen this before). Wendy certainly didn't want Dipper to be dead, but she'd carried his broken body! She'd watched it vanish in some kind of crazy magical explosion!
But she'd also heard Mabel try to imitate Dipper before (hilarious, but not very accurate), and then there was the birthmark… Mabel definitely not had that before, and makeup or even permanent marker would have smeared a little bit. Then, there's what she'd noticed just prior to seeing the birthmark: Mabel's shooting star-patterned sweater and Dipper's pine tree hat. Whoever had written the creepy note Wendy found in Soos's truck had referred to Dipper as "Pine Tree," and she'd bet that Mabel was the "Shooting Star" to whom the last threatening line was addressed, and what's more, the symbols on the sweater and hat were the same ones that had appeared down in the bunker, and it also said something about Dipper's "mental form" being cursed to wander the "Mindscape." That sounded a lot like what Mabel had just said.
Maybe, just maybe... all of those things together meant that Dipper might not really be dead. What would he know that Mabel wouldn't? I've only known them for two months and they've been together almost the whole time… Wendy racked her brains, thinking through the events of the summer. Wait, that's it!
"OK then" she said, "how did Dipper save us from the ghosts at the Dusk2Dawn?"
Upon hearing the question, Mabel immediately burst into giggles. "Aww, that's adorable, bro!" she said amid tears of laughter, "But no wonder you never told me… yeah, you'd better say it yourself."
The giggling abruptly stopped, replaced by an expression of utter mortification which Wendy had definitely seen on Dipper before, after exiting the bunker for the first time, when she'd told him she'd always known about his crush on her.
Mabel sighed (even that sounded more like her brother) and, in a very Dipper-like tone that matched the expression of total mortification, answered the question. "The ghosts had a thing against teenagers, so I said I wasn't one and they appeared and dropped Mabel. Then, uh… I asked if there was anything I could do to help my friends, and the ghost asked if I knew any 'funny little dances.'" Mabel took a deep breath. "And then… the ghost turned my clothes into a… lamb costume… and I did the… the Lamby Lamby Dance."
After saying this, Mabel slumped over and put her head on the table, but popped back up a second later, once again giggling just like before and whispering (in her normal voice), "So adorable…"
That settled it for Wendy. She was the only person (besides the ghosts) who'd seen Dipper do that stupid dance, she knew he'd never told Mabel or anyone else, and Wendy herself hadn't told anyone either. "Guys…" she told Stan and Soos, "it's him… I don't know how, but he's in there."
"Of course my bro-bro's in here!" Mabel said, "He's sulking now, though… I can feel it. That was really brave, Dipper. Both the thing with the ghosts, and telling everyone about it just now."
Mabel was still mentally squee-ing over the memory Dipper had involuntarily shared when Wendy asked what had happened in the convenience store. Dipper and Mabel had never really kept secrets from each other, but they were now closer than they had ever been before. It was impossible to hide anything when you were sharing someone else's body. Every thought and every feeling was experienced by both of them simultaneously.
It had taken an hour or so to get used to when they had woken up for real that morning. They both saw, heard, and felt exactly the same, but Mabel's consciousness was in control of the body. Dipper compared it to Mabel being in the driver's seat of a car while he sat next to her in the passenger seat, and she felt his worry that if this lasted too long, they'd lose themselves and merge into a single person. She reassured Dipper that nothing like that would ever happen.
That was for sure. Like showering. She could hear Dipper simultaneously trying to think of solutions to that problem and trying not to think about it at all. It was very confusing.
Right before Grunkle Stan had come upstairs, Mabel had been wondering about the "driver's seat" analogy that Dipper had made. Could she let him drive, so to speak? But she'd heard Stan's distinctive footsteps and remembered it was time for breakfast, so she quickly switched the horse sweater she'd fallen asleep in last night for her favorite red shooting star one and rushed to open the door.
When Grunkle Stan and the others hadn't believed them, Mabel saw it as the perfect opportunity to try giving Dipper control, so he could talk to them himself. It wasn't difficult at all. She'd just said Your turn, broseph! in her head, and then she was the "passenger." Even though he'd surely heard her thinking about this, Dipper had been alarmed at her so easily handing over control of her body to him. But then, the whole reason they were in this situation was because he'd been tricked into doing the same thing for Bill.
-What if it's permanent? he'd worried before actually doing anything.
Don't worry, Dipper. It's not like with Bill yesterday. He yanked you out and took your place. We're both in here, and I know you would never do something like that to me. I trust you.
-Thanks, Mabel.
The strangest thing so far had been truly seeing how the other thought. Wow, Mabel had thought, we're really different… but not as much as I'd thought before.
Though Dipper was mostly thinking about how crazy this whole situation was, Mabel could hear dozens of other thoughts in the background.
What did Bill mean when he said 'soon you'll be just like me? Did he mean stranded in the Mindscape?... I need to look through the Journal and see if anything else in there can help… Is Mabel always thinking about kittens?... Yes, apparently… Did the Author ever deal with anything like this? Who is the Author? I think he used to live in this house… So that's what Mabel Juice is made of. At least it tastes better now… Why did it have to be the Lamby Dance? I'm so embarrassed…
And so on. If Dipper always had this many thoughts running through his head, it's no wonder he was so awkward.
-Hey!
Sorry, bro. I keep forgetting you can hear everything I think, Mabel thought back.
-It's okay. We're still figuring this out. There's a lot of stuff that's gonna be weird from now on.
That was for sure. Like showering. She could hear Dipper trying to simultaneously think of solutions to that problem and avoid thinking about it altogether, which was very confusing.
After seeing the birthmark, Mabel could tell that even if Wendy and Soos had been swayed, Grunkle Stan still didn't believe them. He'll come around eventually, she thought, pouring liberal amounts of syrup on the plate of pancakes Soos set in front of her.
-But what if he doesn't? He probably thinks you're in denial over my death or something. Even for Gravity Falls, this is pretty weird.
"So, dudes," Soos asked, "How'd this even happen? Did you just like, wake up and, poof, Dipper was in there, hambone?"
"Well," Mabel said, "not exactly. It's kinda complicated. Remember that triangle guy?"
It took longer than expected to explain because they first needed to recount the story of how Gideon had summoned Bill a few weeks ago in order to steal the safe combination from Stan's mind, and how they'd used a spell from the Journal (they flipped to the relevant page) to follow Bill into Stan's mind and stop him.
Then, switching control back and forth almost seamlessly (though it was probably pretty confusing for the others), they'd explained what had really happened at the theater last night, including the fact that Dipper did not, in fact, commit suicide, but was thrown off the water tower by Bill Cipher, and with his last breath, had used the same spell from before to transfer his mind into Mabel's body.
By the end of the story, both Soos and Wendy's mouths were hanging open, but Stan was still just grimacing like his pancakes were bad (they were not, as Mabel confirmed by sneaking one of them off his plate). Finally, for the first time since Mabel and Dipper had started their mutual explanation, Stan spoke up.
"Kid… or kids… there's something I… need to tell you. Something I probably should have told you a while ago, like when you showed me that Journal for the first time."
"Yeah, you know about all the weird stuff around here," Mabel said (as herself).
"You promised that you didn't have any more secrets about the town," Dipper said, "and I promised not to go looking for trouble."
Stan sighed. "Well, just like Dipper… er, you... definitely didn't keep his… your promise, I… wasn't telling the truth either." Then he pinched the bridge of his nose and said, "Look, we've gotta figure out a way for the rest of us to tell which one of you is talking."
After a mental conversation that took all of two seconds, Dipper put the cap he'd been wearing since the beginning of summer back on his/Mabel's head. "How about this? If the hat's on, it's Dipper."
Standing up and sweeping the hat off her head in a bow, she said, "And if the hat's off, then it's-a me, Mabel!"
Mabel sat back down. "So, back to you having a mysterious secret…"
Sighing deeply again, Stan said, "Dipper, you've been tryin' to find out who wrote that book since the beginning of the summer." He reached forward and tapped Journal 3 on the table in front of them. "That's why ya shook that one-eyed demon's hand in the first place, right?"
Mabel slumped over and nodded, then quickly put the hat on, indicating it was Dipper's response.
"Well, then this whole thing is really my fault," Stan said heavily. "If I hadn't lied to you after that mess with the zombies… if I'd told you then…"
"Grunkle Stan, are you saying that you've known all this time who the Author of the Journals is, and you never told me?!"
"Technically, you never asked me," Stan pointed out, "But... yeah."
"Well? Who is it? What happened to him? Is he still alive? Does he live here in town? Have I met him before?"
Any remaining doubt of Dipper being in Mabel's body was now unequivocally removed.
"Heh. Calm down, kid. I'll answer all the questions I can." Stan then seemed to realize that Wendy and Soos were still there, and had been silently watching this whole exchange. "Soos… Wendy… since I know if I make you two leave before sayin' this, the kids will tell you anyway, you can stay. It's time all of you learned the real mystery of the Mystery Shack."
Mabel could hear Dipper's thoughts going wild with theories. They were practically vibrating with his excitement, like it was Christmas morning. Since they were apparently about to learn the secret he'd been chasing all summer, she felt that he should be able to react appropriately, and let him retain control of their body.
"Follow me," Stan said, standing up from the table. "And bring that book with you."
Dipper picked up the Journal and followed as Stan led the four of them (or five, depending on how you counted) through the Shack and into the gift shop.
After very suspiciously lowering all the blinds on the windows, Stan stood in front of the vending machine and said, "What I'm about to show you all stays between us, got it? Wendy, Soos: If you tell anyone else about this, including your families, you're both fired and banned from the Mystery Shack for life."
Soos looked horrified at the possibility of Stan firing him, and even Wendy (whom Stan threatened to fire at least once a week) could tell he was serious this time. They both nodded their assent.
"Stand back," Stan said, then turned and hit five buttons on the vending machine keypad: A, 1 B, C3. The entire machine swung outward on a hinge, revealing a tiny room behind it with a lantern hanging from the ceiling, and a narrow staircase descending down to the left. All of them gasped.
Switching on the lantern, Stan waved them all into the small room, then entered himself and pushed a button on the wall, causing the vending machine to swing back into place. The only sources of light now were the lantern, and a bare lightbulb on the ceiling halfway down the stairs.
"It's like something from a video game…" Soos whispered as they walked down the short stairway to what looked like an elevator with an old-fashioned indicator above it, showing two more floors.
"Or a spy movie," said Wendy.
Or a dream, thought Mabel, and though only Dipper heard her, his observation was somewhat more chilling. "Or a nightmare."
Stan typed another code into the keypad adjoining the elevator and pressed the down arrow, opening the doors. It was a tight squeeze, but once they were all inside, Stan pushed another button, and the tiny elevator car shuddered and began to descend.
As they moved slowly downward, an elaborate door, deep red with gold trim, was briefly visible. It looks just like the cover of the Journal! Dipper thought. But they were going even further down, to the third level, where a bright light shone through the windows. When the doors slid open, they followed Stan out into what looked like a mad scientist's lab.
Blinking, beeping machines lined the walls, tanks of viscous green liquid bubbled, hoses and wires hung from the ceiling, and through a window at the far end glowed a circle of brilliant white light.
"This… can't be real," Dipper whispered.
"What is all this, Mr. Pines?" Soos asked.
"It's just like that bunker in the woods," said Wendy.
Stan stood in front of some kind of control panel beneath the observation window, which they could now see looked into a cavernous room filled with a massive machine shaped like an inverted triangle with a hole in the middle. Above the window, computer code and strange symbols scrolled down a screen. Then Stan stepped aside.
On the control panel desk behind him sat two books bound in cracking red leather, almost identical to the Journal in Dipper's hands, save for the numbers "1" and "2" in the center of the golden six-fingered hand adorning each of their covers.
"No… It can't be… It's impossible…" Dipper whispered.
"The other two Journals?!" He nearly shouted at Stan, "All this time, all this time… YOU had them?"
"Not quite. That little troll Gideon had the second one; I took it when he got arrested," Stan explained, "But I've had the first one for thirty years."
Dipper shook his head. "Unbelievable…"
Stan picked up a fallen chair from the ground and sat down. "I told you I knew who wrote them." He opened the first Journal and all of them leaned in close to see. A paper was taped inside the front cover, just like in Journal 3, but this one wasn't ripped in half. It read "Property of Stanford Pines."
Eyes rolling backward, Mabel's body started to fall over in a faint. Wendy reached out to catch her, but Mabel's eyes quickly snapped open again and she caught herself before hitting the ground, instead only stumbling back a few steps and colliding with Soos's ample stomach.
"Hi, Mabel here again," she said, then scrunched up her face in confusion, because she'd just seen something even crazier than the idea of Grunkle Stan being the Author. "What the… Dipper?" Right where she'd been standing when Grunkle Stan dropped his bombshell, Dipper was lying on the ground, seemingly unconscious, but very much outside Mabel's body.
He looked pretty much the same as he normally did: red t-shirt, blue vest, gray shorts, pine tree cap on top of messy brown hair. Mabel tried to grab his hand and pull him up, but right when she touched his arm, he vanished.
-Sorry, Mabel. I blacked out for a second. Are you okay?
"Dipper? What happened? You were right there!" Mabel said.
After getting the rundown on what had happened from Mabel's recent memories, Dipper's mind once again started buzzing with theories, which brought to mind what had initially caused him to faint in the first place. Hoping to avoid a repeat fainting, Mabel retained control and said, "Sorry, guys. I guess finding out that the guy Dipper's been searching for was actually our great-uncle that we've been living with all summer was a bit too much for him. He's fine now."
Mabel picked up Dipper's hat, which had fallen on the ground when he fainted, and put it back on, thinking to him as she did, You've been looking forward to this all summer, so I get it. Go ahead and ask questions, bro-bro, but please don't pass out on me again.
-Got it. We'll figure out the "me being outside of you" thing later. We're finally meeting the Author! I can't believe it!
All of this had only taken about a minute, and Dipper's frantic barrage of questions began. "I… I can't believe it. You're the Author of the Journals! I have so many questions…"
"Hold your horses, kid," Stan said, holding up a hand and spreading his fingers wide. "I'm not the Author. Do I look like I've got six fingers?"
Stopped in his tracks, Dipper stared at Stan's hand, then down at the cover of the Journal in his hand. He immediately started recalling sections of the Journal from memory. Mabel could see the growing realization as Dipper put the pieces together. The Journal mentioned the Author's brother a few times... protecting him from bullies, wondering how his "brother and mother" would react to the truth teeth... when that hipster ghost gave him nightmares... the scribbled out notes about going camping and building tree forts... the Twin Bed Motel... and the last page said "all there is left to do is wait for S" to take Journal 1... whenever I suspected Stan was the Author, I thought the "brother" was Grandpa Sherman... Wait a minute! "S"... Stan's license plate... the lake! Dipper quickly flipped through Journal 3 to a page with a drawing of Gravity Falls Lake, where the Author had suspected the existence of the Island-Head Beast that had nearly eaten the two of them earlier in the summer. Next to a scribbled-out drawing of a sailboat was what looked like nonsense to Mabel, but of course Dipper had solved the code long ago: "I still recall that one summer Stanley and I hunted for the Jersey Devil..."
So quietly that only Mabel and Stan heard him, Dipper whispered, "Stanford... Stanley." He looked into the guilt-filled eyes of the old man in the chair before him, and said more loudly, though still shakily, as though he still couldn't believe it, "You're Stanley Pines, aren't you? The Author's twin brother."
"Yes," Stan answered.
"WHAT?!" shouted everyone in the room except Stan (including Mabel, though only Dipper heard her) and Dipper himself, having already come to this conclusion. Fortunately, no one fainted this time, though Soos looked pretty close to it.
"Then who have we been living with? Why all the lies, Grunkle Stan? Why pretend to be your brother?" Dipper said, once again pointing the finger of scorn.
Stan visibly flinched at seeing that come from Mabel, even though he knew it wasn't really her. "It's a very long story, kid... kids, one I'm sorry I couldn't tell you before… You two weren't the first Pines twins to get mixed up in this town's weirdness."
Pulling a wrinkled, worn photograph from inside his jacket, Stan handed it to Dipper/Mabel, and Wendy and Soos crowded closer to see. Two young boys, both of whom looked quite a lot like Dipper, waved at the camera. One wore square glasses, and both had very familiar-looking large noses.
"That's me on the right." Stan said, indicating the photo. "Y'see, twins run in the family... and yeah, my real name is Stanley Pines. Stanford was… no, he's still my twin brother."
"So what happened?" Wendy asked, eyebrows raised.
"Yeah, Grunkle Stan, no more lies," Dipper said, folding Mabel's arms over her sweater. "You owe us some answers. Like, what's the deal with this mad scientist lab? Why did you keep so many secrets?"
"And what happened between you and your brother? Where's the real Stanford?" Wendy asked.
"I'm hoping all this aligns exactly with my fanfic, Stan," declared Soos. "If not, I shall be very disappointed."
"Okay, okay, I know I've got a lot of explaining to do," Stan said, "You might want to sit down, or… we could go back upstairs?"
In answer, Dipper just sat down on the floor next to one of the many whirring, blinking machines, followed by Wendy and Soos.
And so, backlit by the mysterious machine in the next room, Stan began his tale. "It all started… a lifetime ago. 1960-something, Glass Shard Beach, New Jersey…"
"... Thanks to one dumb mistake, I had no brother, no home, no nothin'. But I had a plan to fix everything."
"Aww! This story's so sad!" Mabel said, Dipper having given her back the reins during the story. "You and your brother need to hug it out! Where is he anyway…?"
-Yeah… Dipper thought back. How did Grunkle Stan get from "homeless New Jersey teen" to "professional Oregon con man/moonlight mad scientist?"
"We'll get there, kid. Now, would ya knock it off? I'm tryin' to tell my life story here," Stan grumbled before continuing. "I decided I wouldn't show my face back home until I proved I could make something of myself…"
"I traveled the whole country, sometimes outside of it, always one step ahead of the law, looking for something that would be my big break."
"But… wait," Wendy said, "What about your brother? Did he end up going to that dream school or whatever?"
Stan sighed. "I don't really know the details of what happened to Ford. He didn't write much about that kind of stuff in his Journals… or anywhere else I could find. What I do know is all stuff I've found out since then while pretending to be him, either from Ma or from people in town.
"Even without that stupid machine, Ford's brains were impressive enough to get him a scholarship to some second-chance school called Backupsmore University. If I know Ford, even somewhere like that, he'd have worked himself to the bone. He graduated with a degree or seven, wrote some fancy science paper, and got a whole bunch of money for his research. Like I said before, my brother was always obsessed with sci-fi mystery weirdness, so that's what he decided to study: weird stuff. Anomalies. The kind of stuff that's all over this town. Apparently, there's more stuff like that here than anywhere else in the world, so Ford had this house built as his personal laboratory, and started keeping a Journal of his discoveries."
Stan held up Journal 1 from the desk next to him, and Mabel gritted her teeth at Dipper's mental fanboy squeal, but in the dimly lit lab, no one else noticed.
- Sorry, Mabel. Just got excited there… about the Journals.
""Excited" barely covered it. Mabel could feel Dipper's elation at finally finding out the origin of the books he'd obsessed over for so long. The closest comparison she had was… Christmas morning, maybe? Creating art? Winning Waddles? Making other people happy? Mabel realized that she'd never really asked herself this kind of question before.
-Really? Knowing you, I'd have thought…
Family secrets now, feelings later, Mabel thought firmly.
-Alright…
Meanwhile, Stan continued his story. "You've probably read about some of this stuff in Ford's third Journal already, but he was tryin' to discover some kinda 'Grand Theory of Weirdness' that would explain why so much crazy stuff is attracted to this town. He thought maybe all the weird stuff was comin' from another dimension, so he built a portal to try to get there and prove his theory. That's what this giant glowin' thing behind me is. If you hadn't noticed while you were readin' it yourself, a lot of the pages in the third Journal are scribbled all over, and I think some might've been ripped out, so I don't know exactly how he came by that idea.
"Anyway, Ford and some mechanical-genius college roommate of his built this thing-"
Mabel could feel Dipper itching to interject something, so she put on the hat and gave him control. "-and his assistant was sucked headfirst into the portal during their first test! I read about this! The assistant, referred to only as 'F,' quit the project after that, saying something about 'the apocalypse.'"
Dipper flipped through Journal 3 again to the relevant page, but the next few pages after it were all scribbled out, and the next remotely legible one was the page on Bill Cipher, which was splattered with dried blood and even more scribbled-out text.
Stan coughed and continued, "That must have been right around when Ford contacted me. I dunno how he got the address of the crappy New Mexico motel I was livin' in at the time; probably Ma had somethin' to do with it. I needed to get outta there anyway, and it was the first I'd heard from Ford in over ten years, so I headed north.
"When I finally got here, in the middle of a blizzard, no less, I knocked on the door only to have my brother point a crossbow in my face. He looked half-insane, which I've since found out wasn't a bad guess. Ford told me he'd made huge mistakes and didn't know who to trust. 'I have something to show you,' he said, 'something you won't believe.' That 'something' turned out to be this portal, though it was switched off at the time. He said it was an interdimensional gateway he'd created to 'unlock the secrets of the universe,' but that it could 'just as easily be harnessed for terrible destruction,' which is why he'd shut it down and hidden two of his Journals.
"See, he'd split the instructions to operate the thing between all three Journals; that's what the crazy blueprint-looking page was, but there were other instructions scattered throughout the books too. He'd hidden these two" -Stan pointed to Journals 2 and 3- "but for whatever reason, he couldn't just bury the first one. Sentimental value, maybe. He said I was the only person he could trust to take it, then asked if I remembered our childhood dream to sail around the world.
"For one glorious moment, I thought all my dreams had come true, that I'd finally have my brother back, that for once in my life, things were finally going right. Ford's next words brought all of that crashing down. He told me to 'take this book, get on a boat, and sail as far away as you can! To the edge of the earth!' I had thought Ford was finally ready to be my brother again… but he just wanted me to be his errand boy. I… didn't take it well.
"Neither of us were really in a good place right then. I hadn't slept for a couple of days, and based on the number of coffee cups I saw around the house, Ford was even worse. We both said things we probably didn't really mean. I told Ford that if he wanted me to get rid of his book, I'd do it right then and there, and pulled out my lighter. Ford tackled me, and we started fighting, really fighting, not like our boxing classes back when we were kids. Our fight took us in here" -he gestured around the control room- "and we must have accidentally hit some switches that turned the portal on to some kinda default setting. Ford kicked me into the side of the control panel here…"
Stan stood up and pointed to a glowing orange mark on the side of the control desk. "That's where my 'tattoo' that you were so curious about came from. It's not a tattoo, it's a brand. Ford mighta tried to apologize, but I didn't hear him. Instead I punched him through the door and he stumbled back into the main power switch out there in the other room, but neither of us noticed the machine powering up. I got back up and followed him out there, my shoulder literally burning. All I could think about was how selfish my brother had been. I said, 'Some brother you turned out to be. You care more about your dumb mysteries than your family? Then you can have 'em!' and shoved his Journal right into his chest. But that shove pushed Ford too close to the portal, and it started to pull him in.
"I didn't know what was goin' on. He yelled my name, calling desperately for help, but I didn't know what to do. Right before he was pulled all the way in, Ford threw his Journal back at me. There was a flash of light, and he was gone. All that was left of my twin were his glasses and that book, the cause of all this.
"The portal was out of fuel and went into automatic shutdown. No matter how hard I pulled that power switch, nothing happened, and shouting Ford's name into the darkened portal did about as much good as you'd think. I'd lost him. I didn't know if my brother was dead or alive in some distant galaxy, but I knew his Journal must have the answer to getting him back… somehow. I didn't get much sleep that night… or the one after that. I tried for weeks to turn that dumb machine back on, but without the other two Journals, it was hopeless. Finally, I ran out of food. I had no choice but to go into town…"
"So I came up with a plan. I couldn't leave my brother's house until I figured out how to save him, but I needed to pay his mortgage somehow. For once in my life, people were actually buying what I was selling. And so, the Murder Hut was born… later renamed the Mystery Shack. I had finally found something I was good at. For once, bein' a liar and a cheat paid off. Stanley Pines was dead, and I faked a car crash to prove it. By day, I was Stanford Pines: Mr. Mystery! But by night, I was down in the basement, working to bring the real Stanford back.
"I couldn't risk anyone finding out the truth and sabotaging my mission, so I lied to everyone: the town, my family, your parents… even you kids."
Voice hoarse, Stan finished his tragic story. "And now, just last week, you kids gave me the last Journal. Finally, after thirty long years, I had them all. I started up the portal that very night, and it's been searching for Ford ever since. That's why those government agents showed up here. For all I know, Ford died the minute he went through there..."
Stan started sobbing, just like he'd done the previous night, when they all thought Dipper was gone for good. "Dipper… I'm so sorry. It's my fault this happened to you, not Mabel's or anyone else's. But… if you can freakin' come back from the dead, then… then maybe my brother can, too."
Author Note:
And there we go! The Author is revealed, but they only got Stan's perspective, and even if Dipper wants to do something about the potentially dangerous portal, Mabel won't let him.
However, I have some unfortunate news, at least unfortunate for anyone who may be expecting more updates soon. My online college semester just started today, and it's going to take me a while to get used to the schedule. It's been a few years since I attended college, so I'm a bit rusty when it comes to study habits and whatnot. The classes I'm taking will also require a lot of writing, and after several hours of classes, I am not exactly in the mood to write more, even for these stories, which I definitely enjoy. I'm sure Dipper and Ford would agree that education comes first, even if my aspirations are less lofty than theirs.
So this might be the last chapter in any of my stories for a while. I'm not giving up writing and none of my stories are on hiatus; it's just going to be a lot more sporadic from now on, and there probably won't be any updates at all for several weeks until I get used to college again.
Reviews are inspiration, PM me with theories and suggestions, wear a mask, BYEEEEE!
