Earth, July 25th, 2012

Tours were canceled. Soos needed to repair the Shack. Stan was already starting his repairs on the portal. Dipper was out, and no one asked him where he was going.

Wendy biked to work, passing by a cluster of confused tourists with suits and government-issue earpieces packed into the bus stop, arguing with each other about whose idea it was to use valuable vacation time to go to 'some bohunk town.' Wendy sprayed dirt on them as she passed.

When she showed up at ten, her bag slung over her shoulder, the gift shop was in tatters, the windows were all broken, and the vending machine had fallen on its side. This wouldn't be weird if it weren't for the fact that there was a stairwell behind the machine that Wendy had never seen before.

"Uh, Soos? Stan?" Wendy plopped her bag on the cracked cashier desk. Splinters fell away with a whoosh and settled on the floor. "Dipper? Mabel? Anyone?"

Silence. Except for the more-groaning-than-usual of the Shack, of course.

"Do I still get paid if everyone died?"

Familiar clomping came down the hall and Soos, carrying two toolboxes along with a tool belt, stuck his head into the gift shop. "Wendy! You're okay!"

"Hell—" she instinctively glanced around for Dipper or Mabel to make sure they didn't hear her swear, "—yeah, I am. Takes more than some whacko gravity to keep me down. Or up, I guess." Wendy picked her way over fallen postcard stands towards the vending machine, and more importantly, the entrance behind it. "Soooo I didn't know that was here. Did you guys go on some spooky basement adventures while I was gone? I bet the bunker was cooler."

"Wendy…"

The name didn't make her look so much as the way he said it. Soos wasn't supposed to be serious. Something in his face chilled her heart. The last time she saw that face on anyone was when her mom died.

"Wow, you look glum." She forced a laugh, but an anxious flutter had infiltrated her chest and it wasn't leaving. "Who died?"

The way Soos' entire demeanor crumpled turned the anxious flutter into a bomb.

"Oh shit." Wendy covered her mouth. "Soos, tell me no one died."

"I…" Soos trailed off and Wendy's heart thundered in her ears. Was it Stan? One of the kids? Oh, please don't be one of the kids. No one would ever recover if it was one of the kids. "I… I dunno."

"How can you not know if someone is dead, Soos?" Her voice was getting higher, her throat trying to strangle every noise, but she didn't care. She couldn't keep up a cool, uncaring persona in this situation. "Is the body breathing or not?"

"I-I dunno! We lost the body!"

"We WHAT?" Oh, this couldn't be happening. Someone was trapped or possibly dead under the rubble. Why weren't emergency vehicles everywhere trying to dig them out? Why was Soos just standing there? Ooooooh man, oh man, this was way above their paygrade—

"Mabel went through a portal!"

First thought: not Mabel.

Second thought: wait.

The fear and horror festering in Wendy was quickly overshadowed by confusion. "What?"

"Mr. Pines isn't Mr. Pines!" Soos blurted out, doing nothing for the confusion. "Except he is, but he's not the Mr. Pines we thought he was, he's that Mr. Pines' twin brother, who took his identity after they got in a fight and one of them was pushed into the portal in the basement, and Mr. Pines spent thirty years trying to fix it, and—" the diatribe was suddenly cut in half when tears gathered in the corners of his eyes, and Wendy didn't know what to do besides stay frozen "—I was supposed to keep the kids from messing with the vending machine, but we went down anyway, and we saw the portal and Mr. Pines didn't have time to explain anything because we were all scared it was going to break the world and then we were all floating everywhere and Mabel wasn't going to push the button so Dipper went to press it instead and—and he knocked her in. And the portal's broken, dude. We can't turn it on and get her back."

Soos pulled his hat off his head, squeezing it in hands already full of tools. "Also, I think I might've given some government agents brain damage."

The horror was back and gnawing on her rib cage. "Oh man. Oh man oh man oh man." Wendy twisted her fingers in her hair, trying to breathe. "This is—Soos, this is crazy. Long lost twins and portals and Mabel is—dude, we gotta do something." Her head was spinning, but she could grasp the important thing: Mabel was in trouble, and there was hope she was still alive out there.

"Mr. Pines is already fixing the portal, but he said that there was less damage before and it still took him thirty years to finish it." Soos waved his toolboxes and squished around. "He told me to fix up the Shack while he works. Dipper ran off and I don't know where he is."

"He needs time." Wendy rolled up her flannel sleeves. "I'll go downstairs and do some heavy lifting for Stan. Let me know if Dipper shows up."

Soos bobbed his head before she went down the stairs to a… elevator? The door was open, so she just let herself in. It automatically went to the third level underground. What was in the second?

The elevator opened up to show… she wasn't sure. A wreck from a sci fi movie? There was a lot of sciencey junk, but if she gave herself a moment to look at it, she could see what probably had been a portal. There were pieces of twisted metal everywhere, some bits taller than she was and some smaller than her toe. Wires dangled from chunks of casing that was still slumped in some inverted triangle shape by the far wall, and it left her with the impression of guts hanging from a corpse. She took a deep, steadying breath as she saw how much work it was going to take.

Stan was working in his wife beater and boxers, dragging twisted shards of shrapnel into different piles. Well, if the old man was going to keep trucking, then Wendy had no excuse.

"Hey, Stan!" Her boss looked up at her as she strolled in. He looked awful. The bags under his eyes were so big, they'd have to be checked at an airport. "I'm here to carry heavy stuff. Show me what to do."

He was quiet for a hair longer than was normal, but then he let out a low huff. "Hell knows you can't be worse at it than manning the register. Get over here. I'm sorting the scrap into what I can reuse and what I can't. Your dad taught you how to tell the difference, right?"

"You can bet on it."

Maybe this wasn't much, but it was something, and a lot of somethings would eventually build into saving Mabel. Wendy could live with working hard for Mabel.

Earth, July 25th, 2012

Dipper hadn't slept the night before. He tossed and turned in his bed for about twenty minutes before he couldn't stand to be in his and Mabel's room anymore and he went to the kitchen instead. He leafed through all three of the journals, searching for something, anything that would help his sister, but there was nothing. It was just pages and pages of unhelpful nonsense, and after hours of going through the books, the ink felt like nothing but poison under his fingers.

Great Uncle Stanford. The author, the six-fingered man, the first twin lost to the portal. So many mysteries were solved, but he couldn't be happy. In every scenario he had considered when he thought about the end of his mysteries, Mabel had been by his side.

Stanford might already be dead, but Mabel still had a chance. He didn't care what universe-destroying powers he was dealing with. He had to save his sister.

That was why, before anyone had a chance to ask him where he was going, he left the Shack with journal number three tucked under his arm. He walked with his head down and a stormy face… all the way to the dump.

"Old Man McGucket! I need to talk to you!"

Dipper stood in the middle of piles of rancid scrap and trash, waiting for the telltale scuttling of bare hands and feet before the man he wanted climbed over someone's discarded bathtub. "Dipper! I'm so glad you're alive! The end of the world is coming!"

The old man was shaking, his eyes darting everywhere behind his broken bottle-green spectacles as he scampered closer. "I think we've been given some time, but we gotta—"

"We got to open the portal again."

McGucket froze midway over a gutted washing machine, one hand up like an animal paw, his eyes so wide all the whites showed. "P-portal?"

"You know what I'm talking about. At least you did, once." Dipper took the journal and held it out to show the cover. McGucket started to retreat on all fours, shaking his head like a cornered rat. "You worked with him on it. Stanford Pines. My great uncle."

"No… no… terrible things…" McGucket's eyes were wild. He scrabbled at the trash around his hands like he was going to burrow into it, smearing rust and mold on his bandages. "I said… no more, didn't know what he was thinking…"

"Did you ever care about him? Were you ever friends?" Dipper advanced on the pathetic bundle of growing panic, trying to fight the tears that wanted to come to his eyes again. "Or were you just lab partners?"

"I…" McGucket's digging at the ground stopped, only for him to start digging at his head, pulling at his beard and what little hair was starting to grow back. "No… my friend, my best friend, didn't know where he was getting those ideas, he didn't—"

"Then why did you abandon him?" The tears were coming now, but he couldn't bring himself to be embarrassed by it. There was no one here to witness it besides a broken man.

"No, no, it wasn't that, he was doing a terrible thing!" McGucket tore patches of hair from his head and slammed his filthy fists down. The pile of trash trembled. "I wasn't going to have none of it, nosiree, not anymore, not—"

"He's been trapped in the portal for thirty years," Dipper shouted, his voice cracking. McGucket stopped abruptly, staring down at his hands, flexing his fingers like he were kneading the air. "You never remembered enough to realize?"

Flex. Flex. Flex. Dipper let out a shuddering breath. "Mabel is in there too now. The portal is broken, but you helped build it. You can help us build it again and save them both!"

Flex. Flex. Flex. The old man didn't look up from his fingers. "They're already dead," McGucket finally said.

"No, she's not!" Dipper slammed his foot down so hard the trash trembled and McGucket flinched away from him, instinctively covering his own face. "Mabel hasn't even been in there for a day yet. If we pull out all the stops, then—"

"I saw what was on the other side of that portal!"

Dipper's voice caught in his throat. McGucket turned to look at him, bearing his rotten teeth. "My head was in there for three seconds 'for I knew! I saw the future, boy! My head ain't nothing but flat glass eyes an' I could see the devil, an' he could see me back." McGucket slammed a fist against his temple, throwing his glasses askew, before he started to rock in place, mumbling, "When gravity falls and earth becomes sky, fear the beast with just one eye, when gravity falls and earth becomes sky, fear the beast with just one eye, when gravity falls…"

The journal fell at Dipper's side. It was too heavy to hold up anymore.

"Mabel is in there, McGucket. I've got to find her."

The mumbles paused for McGucket's eyes to slide to Dipper. The boy's face was wet.

"You'll cause the end of the world." McGucket's voice sounded like rust. "And you might not like what comes from the other side."

Dipper hugged the journal to his chest like it was the only thing that could keep him afloat anymore, but it burned his fingers. He could tear out all the pages and rip them to confetti to blow through the dump. He wanted to. The secrets could be lost under the refuse of the town that devoured his family—but he just kept hugging it, because he wasn't sure if he wouldn't be torn apart with it. "If you're there, I know we'll figure out how to do it safely."

A laugh covered in sharp edges was all McGucket gave. "There ain't nothing that could ever be safe about this." McGucket tucked his head between his knees, his beard trailing on the trash heap. "I shoulda tore that thing down thirty years ago."

Silence. Dipper stared as McGucket started to knead his scalp again. With a deep breath, McGucket pulled his head up again and readjusted his spectacles. "If you're set on opening it, I'll help you. Can't have kids paying for our mistakes. But you listen here—I warned ya."

Dipper's knees wobbled with relief. He bowed his head, pressing his dipper mark to the journal. "Thank you."

"Don't thank me." McGucket dragged himself up his trash heap, navigating holds of twisted metal and dead appliances like a rock climber. He worked with bare feet and hands. Dipper could see the calluses and scars from thirty years of it.

He had yelled at McGucket, but the weight of the journal forced another question. How could Stanford Pines leave his friend like this?

Maybe Stanford was going to help McGucket before he went through the portal. Maybe he wasn't. Dipper's stomach clenched.

"I've been running from this for years and I'm going to bring it back." McGucket paced around a nest of rusty screwdrivers and broken power tools before sitting there, cradling his head in his hands. "Don't know where it went wrong. It went so wrong."

He shook so hard the screwdrivers rattled and jabbed his skin red. It was like Dipper was kicking a dog, making McGucket help. It's for Mabel. You have to do it for Mabel.

"How…" On the cover of the journal, the six-fingered hand glimmered, but the shine looked duller than usual. "I'm sorry."

"Don't you apologize neither!" McGucket snapped at him, sounding much younger for a second, like he might have before his mind broke. Dipper winced, biting his tongue, and McGucket went back to cradling his head.

The only noise was the rustle of vermin moving trash around and the rattle of the screwdrivers jabbing McGucket's skin. The stink stuck to Dipper's clothes and in his nose, but while he could force McGucket to help rebuild his nightmare, he couldn't bring himself to just leave him.

Slowly, the rattling became quieter.

Then it stopped.

"He was my friend. I don't know if he was a good man or a bad man anymore, but he was my friend." McGucket was still cradling his head. Dipper didn't know if the man was talking to him or to himself, but it seemed only right that he listen.

(It's what Mabel would have done.)

"He was proud. He was always too proud, from beginning to end. Pride goes before destruction." Slowly, carefully, McGucket uncovered his head, readjusting his glasses again, gently rubbing grime off with the back of his hand. "He fell in with someone bad. I never knew who, but I knew it was bad. He tampered with something he shouldn't have, an' he wouldn't tell me a thing, not after ten years of friendship."

McGucket pushed himself up to sit. Dipper craned his neck to make eye contact despite the old man sitting high on the trash. McGucket stared down at him, eyes clear, mouth grim. Maybe there was a ghost of a younger man there.

"But I shouldn't 'a run like I did. He was proud, but so was I, and a coward to boot. I mighta been able to do something if I didn't get so caught up in forgetting my own mistakes," he said. Dipper hugged the journal, but it didn't provide him any comfort under the heavy gaze of McGucket. "I made my choices then. I'm making my choice now. Maybe it's a mistake, but it's mine. Don't you apologize for the mistakes I make, Dipper."

Finally, McGucket deflated. He hunched over and lay down in the nest, halfway buried in a blanket of rust. His eyelids drooped like thirty years were settling on them. "You get me copies of the designs. I'll get to seeing what I can come up with."

A 'thank you' rose in Dipper's throat, but he swallowed it down. McGucket wouldn't want it. Instead, he quietly decided that maybe he could bring something nice to eat with him when he brought all the portal designs.

"I'll do that. Sleep well, Mr. McGucket."

Dipper retreated from the dump. McGucket didn't say another word.

Dimension ?, July 25th, 2012

Ford woke up to a world illuminated only by bobbing glowing lures above him. He blinked, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the dim light. He could still barely see anything, and not for the first time, he wished he was one of those aliens with special night vision.

His spine popped as he sat up and dug in his pocket for a lighter. Another sign of age. Great.

The lighter flared to life and showed him the giant bubble he was inside. The bubble, and a bundle wrapped around a sweater next to a spent glowstick. For a moment, he squinted at the bundle, then yesterday rushed back.

Okay. He had a small child to take care of now.

…Fuck.

Allowing her to sleep for now, Ford turned his attention to his energy detector to map out where the next portal might be. There was no indication of a civilization they could access here, so it would be best not to linger. Mabel would need… things. What did kids need? She'd need protective gear, a bag of her own, and some clothes. She'd also need to do something with her hair. Maybe she'd need toys? He wasn't sure what kind of kid toys there were out there, but if he remembered anything from being a kid himself, it was that kids need something to distract themselves with when the adults weren't paying attention.

What kind of things did Mabel like? From her stories of her life, she liked her brother, Dipper. She also liked crafts. He could work with that. Probably.

He was so out of his depth.

Once he mapped out his idea of where the next portal would form, he was able to calculate when it would form, which was soon. Much sooner than expected. All he could do was hope that the portal would be within one of the bubble tunnels as he reached over to gently touch his niece's back. "Mabel, time to wake up. We need to go."

The girl mumbled and swatted his hand. It was like being batted by a declawed kitten. He held up his lighter while rocking her gently again. "Come along, Mabel."

She swatted at him again, but this time, she seemed to be aiming at his coat. She giggled as she got the coat to move. The kitten analogy seemed to be making more sense. "Morning, Grunkle Ford." She pushed herself into a sitting position and Ford put his goggles and scarf on. "You ready for super cool adventures?"

"Well, there's definitely going to be adventures," he said as he pulled his bag over his shoulders and Mabel pulled on her sweater. "But there is danger around every corner, Mabel. Make sure that you respect…"

He trailed off because Mabel wasn't looking at him anymore. She was looking up. "Grunkle Ford?" She shrank in on herself. "Is the bubble supposed to be getting… smaller?"

Ford looked up. He could see the fight from his lighter reflecting off of thousands of eyes bearing down from the water above. They were bearing down, the bubble becoming smaller and smaller.

Straining.

"Oh no." Ford grabbed Mabel by the back of her sweater. "Run. Run!"

Ford's strides were long, but Mabel was quick. They sprinted to one of the bubble tunnels just as their main bubble popped and water rushed in.

An entire ocean's worth of water and snapping teeth was behind them. Ford struggled to hold up his lighter as they ran, their only light not attached to something that sounded like it wanted to eat them. The portal. He knew where the portal was and that was their only chance, he wasn't going to let them die—

They were almost at another big bubble when the tunnel burst. Water rushed in. Mabel was too small, she was losing her footing in the current, just a little further to the big bubble—

"Grunk—" A wave swept Mabel into a wall of water and lights. Her sweater tore from Ford's grasp.

"NO!" He plunged his hand in the water, grasping in the dark, his lighter showed a net of floating hair dragging away, he grabbed and pulled, sharp pain in his hand and blood.

The blue-faced girl came out, gagging water, but so did something else, something with silvery hair that tore through his skin like tiny scalpels. He grabbed Mabel and ran. Too much time lost, the water was coming, a splash and his lighter was out.

"Shit." They were in the dark. He couldn't see what was air and what was water.

"Follow the dark!" His niece choked out words around gobs of water and hair. "The only lights are in the water!"

She was right. He carried the girl and barreled between walls of light, trying to outrun the water at his feet, but none of the bubbles were popping anymore, not that it would do them much good since the whole thing was still filling up.

Water rushed over his shoes. Something was behind him. He could feel it pulling on his trench coat. Mabel was still coughing. He pulled his coat and counted in his head, trying to find the portal, it had to be here—

Pop pop pop his hair was standing on end and he could see the portal forming, bright and blue, just beyond the water barrier.

Hair floated in front of it. He tucked Mabel under his trench coat. He could feel her thrashing in a coughing fit next to his chest.

"Brace yourself!" He ducked his head down, protecting his face with one arm and holding Mabel tight against his chest with the other, and dove through the hair into the portal.

He couldn't breathe. The portal was mashing them together again, too much light and color and not enough air. He gulped at the universe, waiting to jump out on the other side, but it didn't happen. They were being pulled. The hair was tangled all around them and it was pulling them back.

No no no no no his fear flared out in prongs like static, he couldn't hide it from her here, they were going to drown and be devoured. He tried to tear at the hair, energy flaring out, but he was dexterous, not sharp, and it became tighter, dragging him back, he could feel his feet dunked in water again and something was coming—

NO!

The preteen yowl was so loud in his head that it rattled his fillings, and the color and light burned his skin.

No no NO!

It was like she was pounding her fists against the inside of his skull. Everything burned, blistering and dry and the hair shriveled behind them. Just as something dug its teeth into the steel toe of his boot, Ford kicked, sending them through the portal.

They hit snow a few feet away from each other. Mabel got to shaky hands and knees and vomited seawater all over it.

The portal popped out of existence behind them.

Thank you once again to Tsukara for betaing this.

No warnings for this chapter. Once again, constructive criticism, comments, and compliments are all highly encouraged. It really brightens up my day whenever I see that people are responding to my work, and I live for when someone has suggestions for improvement.