Earth, July 29th, 2012
"Mr. Pines?"
Stan stretched his back, popping the vertebrae as he hobbled out from behind the vending machine. Soos wiped grease off his hands as he followed, and Wendy wiped her hands on the flannel shirt tied around her hips as she trailed behind.
"Yeah?" Stan grunted and leaned against the register counter. Everything ached. Now that he wasn't working alone, he could see how he was lagging behind the young people. He didn't have another thirty years of work left in him. If it took that long to fix the portal all over again, he might be dead before he…
Best not think on it. Stan had never dwelled too hard on the future before.
"Should we be worried about Dipper?" Soos asked, pointing at the ceiling and hunching his shoulders before pulling at his fingers. "He's been asleep for two days."
"The kid didn't sleep for nearly four days before that. This is normal, trust me," Stan said. There was a package on the counter, something the mailman had handed him earlier that he hadn't had a chance to look at. He now dragged it close, checking the label as Wendy let out a loud teenager-y groan and sat on his counter, right next to the register. He briefly entertained the idea of snapping at her to get off, but it wasn't business hours and he couldn't be bothered.
"Why do I have no problem believing you know what you're talking about?" said Wendy. Stan ignored her. The package was actually meant for Dipper, but since Dipper was asleep and Stan had no respect for other people's things, he tore it open. "Still, I'm pretty worried about him. I mean… he's been through a lot."
Stan could feel his employees' eyes boring into him as he focused on the package. They were a nosey bunch and probably were 'worried' about Stan, too. Well, he didn't need anyone worrying about him. He hadn't had anyone to worry about him in over forty years. Who cared if that damned portal ate a second family member of his? Who cared if Mabel was his responsibility, and that she might still be here if he just were a little more honest? Who cared if the house was unbearably quiet and he'd be ready to kill a man to have just a little more glitter spattered around the Shack?
He clenched and unclenched his hand, clearing his head before pulling the paper off of… a box of Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons.
"Oh hey, I used to play that game," Soos said, suddenly perking and his fidgeting hands relaxing.
"Yeah? What is it?" Wendy said, leaning to check the box.
"DD&D," Stan said, ignoring the way his employees looked at him like he had turned into a bugman or something. "My brother used to play. Dipper must've ordered it."
The boards above them creaked with little feet. Stan didn't exactly smile, but his face relaxed. "There's the kid now. Told ya he was fine." He'd probably be pretty hungry. Stan thought to his fridge and frowned. He hadn't gone grocery shopping, and the store would be closed by now. Maybe he could order pizza.
After a moment, he noticed Soos and Wendy were being really quiet. They were also staring at him too long. Stan flashed them a scowl. "What, I have something on my face?"
"No, Mr. Pines, not at all…" Soos said, starting to fidget with his hands again.
"It's just you never talk about your brother." Wendy rested her elbows on her knees and frowned at him. "Even after all the… secret stuff came out."
"What, now it's weird if he comes up in conversation?" Stan hunched his shoulders and picked up the box. "He liked a stupid nerd game when we were kids. That's it."
They looked like they were about to ask more questions, but Stan really wasn't feeling like making this a 'make Stan talk about his feelings' night, so he pretended to examine the box art more closely. "Maybe I'll see if Dipper wants to play. It's been over forty years. It can't be as boring and convoluted as I remember."
Soos squinted, but Wendy jumped off the counter, grinning. "Hey, yeah! We could all play DD and whatever it is! What do you say, Soos?"
"I say yes!"
Maybe that'd be a good idea. Dipper could use a game night, though it was already pretty late for Soos and Wendy to be here. Oh well. Stan had sleeping bags to roll out on the floor if they stayed. Maybe they could have pizza too. They'd have to chip in, though.
The little footsteps on the floorboards turned into thumps. Dipper stumbled down the stairs, his hair looking like a warzone and his eyes bugged and wild.
"Grunkle Stan?" Dipper almost tripped down the last step, but he caught himself on the banister. "What time is it?"
"I'll save you the math and say you slept two days." Stan cut Dipper's gaping short by tossing the game box at his head. Dipper just managed to catch it before it took out an eye, but that was with a girly yowl of surprise. "Your nerd game came in. We're playing it. What toppings do you want on your pizza?"
"Oh, we're getting pizza?" Soos said with a grin.
"You two have to chip in if you want to eat it," Stan said, pointing at Wendy and Soos as he made his way to the phone.
Dipper let out an extremely girly squeal as he looked at the box. "It came in!" For the first time in nearly a week, the kid was smiling. Something that had been knotted up in Stan's chest relaxed. Dipper hugged the box, looking at Soos and Wendy with wide, hopeful eyes. "Are you guys going to play too?"
"Pfff." Wendy sidestepped the rows of merchandise to slap Dipper on the back. "Sure thing, my man. Nothing else I'd rather do."
"I'd never pass up playing with all you dudes," Soos said.
"Oh man, oh man, this is the best game! I'll just go get Mabel and—"
Dipper stopped short. His knuckles were white on the box. His smile fell away all at once, his body stilling as if with the expectation of sudden collapse. The air left the room for a moment.
Something squeaked. It was Dipper's breathing. It was getting shorter.
"Hey, dude, I'll help you set up." Soos broke the spell by tapping Dipper's shoulder.
"Yeah, and hand me a rule book, would you? I've never played," Wendy said, brushing against Dipper's side on her way to the den. Before she was gone, she nudged Stan with her elbow, and he grunted, shaking himself before picking up the phone.
The absence of cheerful noise and glitter bit into them all, but Wendy and Soos could keep their heads above water.
Stan got extra pizza since he figured Dipper would be hungry after not eating for two days (and not at all because Soos and Wendy would probably be hungry too after working on the portal through dinner).
With pizza and graph paper scattered around the den, Stan learned two things: one, Dipper really, really liked this dumb game, and two, it was just as boring and convoluted as he remembered.
Wendy's eyes were glazing over. Dipper droned about 'move actions' and 'minor actions' and 'free actions' and Stan longed for death.
But the kid was smiling for the first time since the Incident. While Soos chirped about 'skill checks', Stan and Wendy made eye contact over Dipper's head and nodded to each other grimly. They had an understanding.
They would endure. God help them, they would endure.
(They loved this boy so damn much it was pathetic.)
Dimension ?, July 26th, 2012
It'd been years since Ford had a dream like this. He remembered even here. He rarely dreamed without consciously realizing it was a dream anymore, not since meeting Bill Cipher and learning how to use his dreams like tools… and then later learning how vulnerable he was in them.
He was on a beach. He knew it was meant to be Glass Shard Beach, but it was too dirty even for Jersey. The individual grains of sand were all literal microscopic shards of glass, radioactive moss grew on the rocks, and the seafoam swept in by the poisonous ocean was made of used needles.
Even so, a boy missing his front tooth was working on a moldy shamble of a boat on the shore, his feet bleeding into the glass sand.
Ford sat apart from the scene, just outside of it, like he was looking at a play. Nonetheless, he couldn't help but say, "It's dangerous, Stanley. Give it up."
The boy didn't stop pounding nails into the rotting hull, but he looked up and gave Ford a gap-toothed smile. "Don't be such a sissy. No pain, no gain."
A familiar smoldering fire lit in his gut. "Stanley," he snapped, "there won't be any gain. It will never work, and even if it does, there's nothing out there for you."
"You were always such a liar." Stanley's skin was burning in the too-hot sun, but he paid it no heed as he turned back to their thrice-damned boat. "Even to yourself."
Ford tightened his jaw, trying to remind himself that this was a dream and getting angry would do nothing, but it was hard not to get angry at Stanley. "Have you at least gotten a tetanus shot? Your feet are shredded."
Stanley laughed at him, but when he spoke, it wasn't his voice. It was someone else entirely.
"Grunkle Ford? You have to wake up!"
He snapped awake to his niece shaking his shoulder. The urgency in her eyes had him immediately sitting up and scanning the exit of their burrow. "What's wrong?"
"Anise said someone from another world came here to find us. She told us to find portals on the other side of the world." The leather backpack (white—it was all they had) Ford had ordered for Mabel now sat on the ground, full of the clothes Anise had been commissioned to make. Mabel worried her lip, pulling at her sleeves. "Do you think we could get all the way there?"
"We don't know how big this planet is. Maybe." Ford opened up Mabel's bag and pulled out what she would need—boots, jacket, and pants, all made from the same white leather. Anise swore that the leather was waterproof and would keep Mabel warm and comfortable, and now it was time to put it to the test. "Put these on. You need to be dressed for the snow."
Mabel nodded and took the clothes from him, but she didn't start changing. After a second of her giving him a meaningful look, he remembered she was a pubescent girl and he was an old man.
He cleared his throat. "I'll wait outside." He slid on his own jacket and bag before crawling out of the burrow, wrapping his scarf around his mouth and pulling his goggles on. He had been hoping that they had gotten some breathing room from the destruction of the air bubbles in the dimension that led them here, but he should have known better. Bill Cipher was ready to offer a lot to anyone who could get him Ford, and the bounty hunters ready to try their luck were diverse enough that some would be able to naturally brave the previous dimension without the bubbles.
Normally, he could work with less than twenty-four hours of peace, but Mabel was injured and hadn't had enough time to heal. They would have to leave anyway and hope that his bandages and ointment kept her from bleeding again. If worse comes to worse, he could let her piggyback on him again, but he wasn't sure if that would be feasible all the way to the other side of the planet.
Mabel scurried out of the burrow like she was born in it, securing her bag on her shoulders and now dressed all in white, including a white knitted sweater and white knitted gloves he didn't remember seeing before. He didn't have time to ask questions, though.
"Take my hand and act like it's just any other day. We're just looking through the market for things to resupply," Ford said.
Mabel nodded with a grim turn of her lips and took his offered hand. For a moment, she stared at their fingers lacing together, a thoughtful crease in her brow.
Ford was glad his scarf concealed his expression. "It's okay. I know it feels strange to hold hands with six fingers."
"Strange in a good way," Mabel said immediately. While there was some tension in her eyes, she still managed a smile. "Like all my fingers are getting hugs."
She squeezed his hand gently. For a moment, there was only one thought in his head: no matter what, he had to make sure to keep this girl safe.
"Remember, we're just browsing the market." He kept his hand tight around hers as they started to wander between the stalls, the crush not nearly as bad as the day before. It didn't take long before he saw his niece favoring her injured leg, and all he could do was hope that it would hold out for them. "How do the clothes feel?"
"Like I'm wearing clouds! Except I'm not getting a rash." She still had a note of anxiety in her eyes, but her voice was bright and cheerful as ever as she swerved to avoid bumping into a stall covered in dead semi-transparent fish.
"Good. And what about your leg?" he said, pulling her out of the way of a massive insectoid.
"Oh, it'll be fine." Ford squinted at her suspiciously, but before he could say anything, something awful shrieked far back in the crowd.
"HUMAN!"
The shriek made Ford's bones rattle in their sockets. Damn. Damn damn damn, he knew that voice. Picking up the pace, Ford leaned in to hiss in Mabel's ear. "Do you remember the field of snow we were in when we first got here?"
"I feel you, human!" The crowd was thinning as people hurried to get out of the awful voice's way. Mabel's face was white, but she nodded.
"Go to the field," Ford said, forcing his voice to stay calm. "If I don't meet you in an hour, walk towards the black crystals we saw. Keep walking until you find another portal. I'll catch up."
And if he didn't, he prayed to a god he didn't believe in that she could survive without him.
"Now run." He tapped her back. The crowds were beginning to part, people trying to avoid the subjects of foreign screams, and Mabel wouldn't be able to blend in if she waited. With one painfully reluctant look, she took off, disappearing between alien feet. Ford reached for the gun strapped to his hip and walked in the opposite direction towards the voice. The metal was familiar against his fingers, not too dissimilar to the guns back on Earth. The use of controlled explosions to drive exploding pieces of metal into one's enemies was fairly universal. "If you can feel me, then come face me!" he shouted into the crowd.
Furry merchants gnashed razor teeth at him. "Fight somewhere else, foreigner!" They stomped their feet, causing the insectoids to crawl up the ice walls to avoid the shaking. Ford grinned as the familiar voice shrieked in frustrated confusion and he started running into one of the larger tunnels shooting off from the market, where the crowds thinned to people glaring at him from small burrows and cells peppering the walls of the tunnel like honeycomb. If he remembered right, this tunnel would loop into the snow fields outside, and maybe he was lucky and lost his hunter in the commotion—
But he was never lucky.
"Human!"
Ford looked up to see a familiar tangled black mass of thrashing barbed hairs crawling along the ceiling. Every word from her sounded like it was scraped into the ice, grinded out through vibrations in her hairs.
Immediately, Ford pointed his gun at the bounty hunter and fired. The spines and hairs thrashing all over her caterpillar-like body suddenly came together to catch the bullet between them like some sea urchin from hell. Some spines crunched from the pressure, but the bullet didn't burst like it was supposed to, the impact not being powerful enough, and then the spines were thrashing again and long hairs like antennae skimmed on the ice, the hunter none the worse for wear.
"Haven't you learned by now that it's not worth it to hunt me, Anette?" Ford said, keeping his gun steady even though he knew it would do nothing at this angle.
Anette—that wasn't her real name, but Ford didn't have prehensile hairs, spines, and antennae to pronounce her real name, so it was what he was going with—dropped down from ceiling and hit the ground with a thud, her antennae brushing against the floor to feel his heartbeat and her spines and hairs dragging her forward.
"You escaped once. You're cocky."
It was luck that saved him last time, really. He had been in a hub world in a desert made of fibrous strands of wool. The fibers made it easier for her to move quickly. It also made it harder for her to sense the footsteps and heartbeat of Ford, who was able to make his escape after accidentally causing a riot among the merchants and refugees there. He didn't escape before sustaining serious injuries, though.
But now he knew her weakness.
As she approached, he had to back up. She was aiming to pin him to a wall where she could wrap her hairs around him. He tried to shimmy towards the exit, but Annette snapped down a barbed hair in his path like a whip. "Cipher has increased your bounty. They say you have a little human now."
Ford did his best to keep his poker face, but he couldn't keep his heart from suddenly thundering in his chest. Annette's spines made an awful clicking noise as she vibrated them together.
"Come with me and I won't eat the little one."
Ford fired his gun at the beast, not bothering to watch her catch another bullet with splintering spines before he sprinted towards the mouth of the cave. He barely had time to rip out the knife he kept hidden on his thigh before hairs snapped around his ankles, yanking his feet from under him.
His back slammed into the ice. The hunter was already pulling him in. Ford sat up, slicing the hairs around his ankles just as more started to wrap around him. That wasn't going to get him free.
He slammed his foot into the hunter's body, crunching the spines under his shoe. Annette hissed as more spines moved to compensate, but Ford started to shoot. Spines shifted faster than he could blink to catch the bullets, but the force was crushing them. The hairs loosened around his ankles as the spines thinned, and with one last crushing kick, he was scrambling free, stumbling towards the exit. If he could just get out into the snow, her ability to feel his movements in the ground would be severely hampered, and he stood a chance of getting away.
"HUMAN!"
Hairs snapped around his thighs, barbs digging through his pants and slamming on the ground again. Ford cursed, twisting to face Annette again as she reared up, her spines clicking against each other as her hairs wrapped his legs together.
"That is more than enough—" she didn't have time to finish, because a streak of silver shot from above and hooked into Annette's mass of spines and hair.
"GRAPPLING HOOK!" came a very familiar voice, just as the hook started retracting upwards again, pulling Annette's top half up with it. Annette hissed, thrashing and cursing, but her underbelly was revealed—a fleshy, throbbing distended stomach with a hooked beak.
Ford didn't think. He shot her in the stomach. It burst with the bullet, her innards falling on the ice as Ford cut himself and Mabel's hook loose. Annette lay in a pool of her own alien organs, still and silent.
The hook snapped up into one of the small cells, where he could see the shock of his niece's brown hair and a familiar glass insectoid with a knitted sweater and hat.
"Go on, little foreigner," the insectoid said, tapping Mabel in the back with one leg before she shot her hook to the wall and grappled down.
"This isn't the snow field, Mabel," Ford said, frowning as he caught her in the air. She was grinning at him, but her grin wavered at his expression. He felt like an ass, especially since she had just been so brave, but she had to know that she had to follow his directions.
"I wanted to help." Mabel said, her smile falling away completely. Ford shook his head before putting her down and resting a hand on her shoulder.
"I know, and I appreciate it, but that was very dangerous and I would have been okay on my own." He took her hand again, walking her past the growing pool of blood around Anette. "There are more bounty hunters like her. We need to go."
Mabel looked back at Annette, worrying her lip. "She'll be okay, right?"
Ford's voice caught in his throat. He swallowed the lump down and pulled her into the blue-washed snow outside of the ice caves. "The important thing is that we're okay."
Her face fell. It had been decades since killing in self-defense bothered Ford, but it looked like Mabel was going to be sick.
There was nothing to say, so he laced their fingers together and kept walking.
Earth, July 30th, 2012
"Now, boy, I'm sure it's nothing."
Bud's words rang through Gideon's head as he stormed through the halls of his prison. The plain gray walls trembled and the cell bars rattled with his rage—or at least they did in his head, and he'd try to pound on them as hard as he could with his fist to make them do so in reality as well.
"She's probably just sick in bed."
The guards glanced at him only to smile indulgently before getting back to their work ushering prisoners back from the visiting center. Only the prisoners cared about the storm cloud following him. A man with a burn blotching the entire side of his face from when he set a building on fire bent over to whisper to him. "Gideon, something wrong?"
"No one's seen your girl around for near a week, is all it is. I'm sure I'll have some pictures for you next week."
Gideon brushed off his fellow prisoner before stomping to his cell and yanking out a precious box from under his bed, throwing it on his pillow and tearing the lid off.
Dozens and dozens of pictures, all of his precious Mabel. Some of them had torn or burnt edges where he had removed the image of that wretched Dipper or that thrice-darned Stanford. His father was always good for pictures. He knew how to find them, and he knew people who didn't mind taking them for him. No matter what, there were always pictures. Even if Bud had to pay someone off to pose as a tourist in the Shack, there were always pictures. If there weren't pictures, something was wrong.
"Oh, my sweet Mabel, what'd they do to you?" Gideon sat on the edge of his bed to flip through the pictures, heart bursting with longing as he traced her perfect smile and chocolate eyes with his gaze. "I knew something like this would happen. Dipper and Stanford Pines are menaces. Only I can take care of you."
He slowly stroked one fingertip over the curve of her cheek in an image of her knitting on her porch. He memorized every detail, from the grass stains on her delightful knees to her adorable bare toes to the lovely gleam of sun reflecting off her blessed braces.
"I'll save you from whatever they did," Gideon said to the picture. He laid it in a place of honor right next to his pillow before approaching a cat poster on his wall.
He tore it down, revealing Bill Cipher's insignia, stark in chalk on cement. He bared his teeth, slamming his own cell shut as the other prisoners meandered about their business.
"Bill Cipher! I'm ready to make a deal."
A passing guard gave him an odd look, but laughter rang in Gideon's mind and all color washed away from the world.
Motion halted. Only Gideon's orange suit maintained its hue, and the insignia on the wall burned as the laughter got louder and louder, reaching a crescendo that threatened to split Gideon's skull.
Then the image of Bill on the wall became yellow and the beast himself melted out of the rock. As usual, his appearance was a little underwhelming after all the hype.
"Well, if it isn't my favorite fake psychic!" Bill bobbed around the room, putting his hands on his… hips? Putting his hands on the edges of his triangle form as he swept the prison's sparse accommodations. "I love what you've done with the place! It's so… devoid of personality! Except your stalker box. That has loads of personality!"
"Prison has policies about decoration." Gideon pouted as he crossed his arms. "And I'm stuck here, no thanks to you."
The triangle's eye squinted in some facsimile of a smile as he laughed. "Oh, you're cute. Don't do anything for free, kid! If you want something from me, you gotta make a deal so I can have something in return." Bill descended so he was floating just above Gideon's bed, like he wanted the appearance of sitting without actually doing so. "Is that what you want from me? 'Cuz I can break you outta here in a snap." He wiggled his fingers as they began to burn blue. "Wanna deal?"
"That's not what I want," Gideon said, waving off the burning hand. Bill heaved an impressive sigh for someone without a mouth and wrung his burning hand, extinguishing all the flames.
"Okay, Pentagram. If you don't want to bust out of prison, what's up?"
Gideon stayed standing since it made him feel like he was intimidating Bill while the triangle was sitting. Bill looked thoroughly unintimidated. "I want Mabel Pines."
The singular eye narrowed thoughtfully. Bill scratched the spot on his body that might have been a chin if he were a human. "Oh yeah?"
Clenching his fists, Gideon began to stalk around the room. His mother would cower and his father would be silenced when he was in this sort of mood, and Bill's nonplussed expression wasn't making him any less angry. "She's been missing for a week, but no one's reported she's missing. I know that wretched Pines family did something terrible to her, probably because she realized how much she loved me and they didn't approve!" Gideon beat his fists against his legs as he bent down to shove his face into Bill's. "I want her back!"
Gideon immediately regretted getting his face so close to Bill's eye. Inside of it, images flickered too fast for him to understand, and it tugged at the edges of his brain, like it was letting him know that it could tear him apart in a moment.
"Well, look at that. You're smarter than you look." Instead of cowering, Cipher just poked one finger against Gideon's forehead, forcing him to step back. Gideon tried not to look too relieved when he could no longer see the images in Bill's eye. "You're right. They did something terrible. Pine Tree pushed her into another dimension, and now she's trapped!"
What?
Gideon sucked in a sour lungful. He was right. He knew he had been right all along, but to hear the extent of the crimes from someone else was horrifying. What sort of Cain and Abel story was this?
"Lucky for you!" Bill waved a finger in the air. "I can figure out how to get her back. The trouble is that it'll take a lot of time. Like, possibly thirty years."
"No!" Gideon stomped his foot and glared at Cipher, his fists shaking at his sides. "That's not acceptable!"
"Well! Then you're going to need to help me." Bill steepled his fingers and leaned forward, his single eye narrowing. "There are some things you can do that will make it a lot easier for me to work. I can get her back to Earth. And, of course, if I do this for you, you gotta do something for me."
"Great!" The tension rolled away from Gideon and he tapped his fingers together, grinning at his hands. "When I save Mabel, she'll stay with me forever! I'll do what you need me to, and I will destroy the Pines family so you—"
"Whoa there, Pentagram," Bill held up his hands, his body shaking as if he were shaking his head. "You kill the Pines right now, and you'll make my job a lot harder."
Kill? Killing seemed strong, but a slow smolder began in Gideon's stomach. Didn't they deserve it for harming his beloved Mabel?
"Leave them for now. You can have whatever revenge fantasy you want after Shooting Star is back and we've all gotten what we want."
Gideon grinded his teeth together. He played out various scenarios of Stanford and Dipper Pines' deaths in his head, becoming more and more attached to them. "Agreed." But the moment it looked to him that Bill would fail to provide Mabel in a timely manner, he would avenge her in an appropriate fashion.
Bill raised one hand, blue flames bursting from his palm and licking his fingertips. "Then let's make a deal."
Gideon's gut burned. I'm coming for you, my peach dumpling.
And if he couldn't have her, then he would make sure her family paid for their sins.
"Deal."
No warnings for this chapter.
Thank you once again to Tsukara for betaing this. Also, thank you everyone who has reviewed. Comments, compliments, and critiques are all very warmly welcomed.
For those who don't know, I have a Tumblr called Themadqueenmab. Alongside the usual reblogs of fan content, I will sometimes talk about my writing process or drop little bits about what's going on in the drafting of the story. If you're interested in that kind of back of house stuff, feel free to follow me.