It was a quarter past seven in the morning when Mabel got the call. Thirteen minutes past, to be precise. The exact time was burnt into her memory as she checked her watch, groaned at being woken up far earlier than was acceptable on her day off, and swearing that it better be an emergency before finally answering. She remembered how she had been thirsty, and her dry throat make her voice crack a little as she greeted her mother on the other end of the call, that the romance novel she had been reading before she slept had, at some point in the night, been kicked to the floor, the pages crumpling and the bookmark fluttering off under the bed. She remembered those, and other little details, with a startling clarity. She remembered those things in an effort to not remember the actual conversation her mother had called her to have.
Grunkle Stan had passed away.
The world felt less real around her when she heard the words, like reality itself had gone blurry. Her mother's voice was echoey and distant. A stroke, she was explaining, in his sleep, totally painless. Her father was on the phone to Dipper at the same time, Mabel could hear that conversation happening in the background, overlapping with her own and making it even harder for her to follow what her mother was telling her.
The funeral would be in Gravity Falls, she said. Mabel was as pleased as she could feel in the moment, anywhere else would have felt profoundly wrong.
"I hate to ask sweetie," her mother said, "but your grandfather isn't well enough to travel all the way to Oregon, and your father and I want to stay with him. It wouldn't be fair to leave him on his own just now, but someone needs to oversee the arrangements…"
"What about Great Uncle Ford?"
Her mother paused before replying.
"I'm sure Stanford will want to help as much as he can," she said, carefully, "but he isn't very well either, and I can't imagine what this will be doing to him. I think he'll feel much better with you and your brother there to take the reins."
"Yeah, of course. That'll be fine," Mabel was reassuring herself as much as her mother, "I'll get the bus later today."
"Actually," her mother put her hand over the phone and had a brief, muffled conversation with her father, then back to Mabel, "Dipper will be driving. He can pick you up on the way."
"It's fine. It'll add like five hours to the drive-"
"I'd rather the two of you went together."
"Ok, I'll call him and work it out."
They said their goodbyes and hung up.
Mabel sat in bed staring at, or rather through, her phone. She only noticed she was crying when one of her tears dripped from the end of her nose and splashed against the screen. Another soon followed, then another. She felt drained, too tired to even reach up and wipe her face. Eventually she would need to get up, make calls and collect her things, but not then. Then she just needed to sit.
The orange glow of the setting sun cast long shadows on the sidewalk outside Mable's apartment. With scuffed flats she kicked at the dust on the ground as she perched on her suitcase. It was, in all honesty, far too big for the trip. A holiday suitcase. But her more appropriately sized holdall was buried somewhere among moving boxes, still only partially unpacked after three years, and she had the energy neither for finding it, or taking the care in packing that a smaller bag would necessitate. So, inside the hastily packed case, was a near random assortment of clothes and toiletries that were quickly wrinkling and tangling together. Clutched to her chest was her knitting bag and, absentmindedly, she picked at a loose thread on the seam.
A car, the paint faded with age but clean and well cared for, pulled up in front of her. The door opened and her brother stepped out, hurrying around to her. Without a word he pulled her into a hug and she buried her face in his shoulder. The smell of cigarettes lingered under an unsuccessful cover of bodyspray and Mabel had the brief urge to chastise him for it. That was not the time for it, and so she bit her tongue and stepped back. Dipper lifted her case, momentarily sent off balance by it being far lighter than he expected, and stowed it in the trunk of the car. He looked tired, with shadows under his eyes and hunched shoulders, though Mabel couldn't quite figure out if that was from the stress of the day or if it was normal Dipper stress. She chose to believe it was normal Dipper stress.
"So if we went all night we could probably do the trip in one," he said, scratching at the too long stubble on his face, "but honestly I don't know if I'd be road safe for the whole way, so I booked a motel room. We should get there maybe eleven? We can do the rest in the morning. Think tomorrow should be an extra four hours so we could be in Gravity Falls by noon. Did Soos call you too?"
"About staying at the shack?"
"Yeah," Dipper paused, one hand on the car door, "I don't know about it, you know? I know he wants to be there for us, but I don't know if I want to be in the shack."
They looked at each other over the roof.
"I don't know if he offered so he could be there for us. I think it might be the other way around."
Dipper nodded and slipped into the car. Mabel followed suit, setting her laptop bag at her feet, putting on her seat belt, and pulling out her knitting as Dipper pulled away. In the back seat were two bags; one old rucksack, Mabel was willing to bet it was grab bag, rather than one packed that day, and one large grocery bag, which seemed to contain the entirety of a grocery store snack aisle. Without a word Mabel took a bag of gummy koalas off the top and set the open packet in the cupholder between them and settled in for the drive.
They drove in near silence, with only the sound of the road and the rhythmic clicking of Mabel's knitting needles providing a soundtrack. Miles passed them by, more or less identical. In daylight, they would have been able to see the landscape shift from yellow sand to green forests, but as night creeped in all there was to look at was the monotonous grey concrete of the highways. Dipper moved from cans of Pitt Cola to energy drink as his eyes grew heavy, and his brain fuzzy.
From his right the sharp clicks became irregular and he glanced over at the rapidly growing garment on Mabel's lap. He was no expert on knitting by any measure, but he had spent enough time around his sister over the years to know that it was a mess, full of dropped stitches, irregular tension and a dozen other little mistakes that she hadn't made since they were kids. Her hair was in front of her face and her hands moved shakily.
"What you working on?" he asked, forcing a cheery tone. Mabel didn't answer for a long while.
"When Soos called me, he mentioned that they were thinking that Grunkle Stan could be- Could wear the jumper I made that summer."
"You mean the one when we were twelve? He still has that?"
"But that one's more than a decade old. It'll be all worn and old and gross and I don't want him to wear something gross. I want him to be-" her voice cracked, "I want him to be buried in something new and nice. But I don't know if I can finish it in time but if I couldn't be there when he- I at least could do this for him now but I might let him down and - and I-"
She dropped her knitting to her lap and put her face in her hands, the tears breaking out in tight, gasping sobs.
"Hey hey," Dipper squeezed her shoulder, keeping his eyes, "Mabel, you're not letting anyone down."
"But it's - it's old- and -"
"If he kept it this long then must have been really special to him," tears stung Dipper's eyes, but he blinked them away as best he could, "It's the perfect thing for him and there's no way he would ever want anyone to let you believe you let him down, do you hear me?"
"But-"
"No buts Mabel. Stan would be honoured to wear your sweater for eternity and I am genuinely afraid that if I don't cheer you up he'll come back and haunt me."
She snorted a quiet laugh in between sobs and wiped her face on her sleeve. He could just about spot the beginnings of a smile behind the curtain of her hair and after a pause she spoke in a small, uneven voice.
"What category do you think he would be?"
"Category seven, minimum. He'd definitely cause trouble," he said. She laughed again, louder this time.
"What's even going on, Dipper? How are we gonna do this?"
"I don't know. I really don't. But… we'll figure it out."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah," he said," Hey. Mystery Twins?"
He held a fist out towards her. She bumped it with his.
"Mystery Twins."
[A/N: So I literally rewatched all of Gravity Falls three times in August and for some reason I couldn't get this idea out of my head. I won't lie, it's (obviously) not going to be super cheery, but I am going to try and make it not entirely dire. I don't think, at this point, this is going to be super plot heavy, mostly just slices of life for where I think the residents of Gravity Falls would be after a decade and a half, and how they might be affected by the passing of everyone's favourite con art.]