Earth, July 30th, 2012

Grunkle Stan was drinking. Dipper hadn't noticed at first, but that morning, he found empty bottles under the porch, some so fresh he could still smell the alcohol and his great uncle's cheap cologne on them.

Adults drank. That's just what they did. Dipper (and Mabel) never understood it because alcohol was gross, but all adults did it. Dipper was pretty sure not all adults hid a half dozen empty bottles under their house.

Dipper sat in a utility closet—he'd prefer to sit in that than their room—as he painstakingly rewrote all of the notes Old Man McGucket had given him, trying to focus on a problem that he knew how to actually help. McGucket was working too slowly, sometimes coherent and sometimes dissolving into raving. His notes were spattered with images of eyes and splotched halfway missives to 'Ford.'

'Ford do you think this might'

'told you not to rush me Pines'

'do we really have enough safety precautions'

'Dipper be careful to insulate this or it will make it all overheat'

'Ford where are you getting these ideas'

'who are you working for'

Dipper could feel McGucket's grasp on the present bubbling and writhing on the paper. Was he doing the wrong thing? Maybe McGucket wasn't ready to engage with this again. Maybe he needed more time to remember and heal.

Mabel didn't have time, though. McGucket would be fine, Dipper rationalized. Besides, it'd probably be good for him to do deal with his past. Probably.

What had Stanford Pines done? Was he the one to blame for everything? McGucket, Stan, Mabel, everything? Was he the one they all could point to for their pain and the unbearable knot that had tied itself in the Pines family?

A dark part of Dipper wanted to blame him. It'd be easy. It wasn't Grunkle Stan's fault he was drinking. It wasn't McGucket's fault he was crazy. It wasn't Dipper's fault Mabel was gone. It was all Stanford Pines, the author, the bogeyman. He ruined their lives.

Dipper hadn't written a word in nearly a minute. He growled and threw his pen against the wall before slumping over the half-mad notes.

Just because it would be easy to blame Stanford didn't mean it was right. It was Dipper's fault Mabel was gone. Dipper, who hadn't trusted her, Dipper who had wrestled over the button with her, Dipper who had shoved her in the direction of the portal when gravity was weak. Dipper was the reason she was gone and Stan was drinking. Stanford didn't do any of that. Stanford probably wasn't even alive to do any of that.

Dipper covered his eyes with the heels of his palms, taking shaky breath after shaky breath. He didn't know why. There wasn't any light in the leaky closet besides his penlight. He wondered what he would say to his parents the next time he called, but he had no idea.

What was Mabel doing right that moment? It was a question he kept asking himself, and he kept on thinking of different answers. Maybe she was in a dimension made of gummy bears. Maybe there were mountains of ice cream with tons of sprinkles and when it was time for her to go home, she'd beg them for five more minutes to finish eating a sprinkle the size of her head. Maybe she was in a world like old Wild West movies, where she rode horses and saved boys tied to railroads all day.

Maybe she was dead.

Dipper snapped his little notebook shut over McGucket's notes and marched out of the closet. No. No, he wasn't thinking about that. (Already, unwelcome images of his sister's lifeless body flashed through his head.) He wasn't thinking about that. He had to be like Mabel. He had to be positive. He had to believe in both of them: in her ability to survive and his ability to bring her back home.

He couldn't think of Stan. He couldn't think of McGucket. He couldn't think of Mabel. He just had to be positive and focus. Just focus.

The happy murmur of tourists and the cheerful boom of his grunkle's showman voice (it was all a lie; he would be drinking again after he sent Dipper to bed) told Dipper that another tour group was coming through. Dipper weaved through the private halls that skirted the exhibition areas and peeked into the gift shop. It looked like Stan had taken in all the tourists, because it was empty except for Wendy reading a magazine at the register.

Coast was clear.

Dipper hugged his book to his chest and ducked into the gift shop, making a beeline for the vending machine. If he could get to the portal, maybe he could set things up for the work tonight, like clear off some stray debris and lay out the instructions on what had to happen today and—

He reached up to the vending machine to insert the code when Wendy's foot was suddenly shoved in his way. "I don't think so, Dipper."

She had just materialized next to him, crossing her arms and frowning. "You know we're not supposed to go down there when it's work hours."

Dipper sputtered, clutching his book tighter to his chest. "Since when do you care about rules?"

"I don't," she said with a shrug. "But you have to be smart about not getting caught, especially when we're probably breaking a hundred different laws. We gotta keep everything down there on the DL, and you never know when someone might come to the gift shop."

As if by some cosmic rude gesture to Dipper, a family of six crashed in from outside, bringing with them two toddlers and a flurry of noise. Wendy jerked her head towards them as she meandered back to the register. "Case in point. You want to hang with me instead?"

Dipper fiddled with the cover of his notebook. For a moment, he wanted to scream. He wanted to kick out all the stupid tourists and yell at Wendy and throw himself into the lab. Every moment he waited, Mabel was in trouble.

Wendy's brow creased. "Dipper?"

He struggled to breathe, but he only managed a tight, "I'm going outside," before pulling the brim of his cap over his eyes and sprinting past the babbling tourists.

He didn't stop running after he got into the forest. Brambles and branches caught on his clothes and skin as he tore through. Creatures lurking in the brush scurried away before he trampled them. He was floating away from his body but his feet were still going, faster and faster to outrun the horrible sense of impending doom crushing his chest.

A root snagged his ankle. He flipped into the ground, his leg on fire, rocks grinding into his cheek. Dipper pushed himself to his elbows, spitting out dirt and scrabbling for the book of notes in the ferns. He struggled to breathe, but it felt like he was choking. Was he dying? He was twelve, too young to just randomly choke and die.

He hugged the notebook to his chest and curled into a ball, struggling to breathe. The book didn't have the same reassuring weight as the journal. Something childish in him wanted the journal to hug and hold, but everything about it was ruined now.

Dipper wasn't one to pray. He never really thought much about God and angels and things like that, even when his parents dragged him and Mabel to synagogue. He found himself praying anyway, stringing together half-remembered blessings and songs in English and bastardized Hebrew. He fought to breathe and pray at the same time, and the struggle to remember even what few prayers he could muster helped him get his heartbeat down from a mouse's to a jackrabbit's.

Even though God was the one he named—Adonai, Eloheinu, Lord our God—he thought of the author, Stanford Pines, the dead man that had haunted their family for thirty years, and every word was directed to him.

Dipper didn't know if Stanford was alive or dead, or even if he was the kind of man that Dipper would have been proud to call his great uncle, but he prayed to his spirit anyway. Please, please, please, whether Stanford was alive or dead, please let him look out for Mabel.

Dipper had faith in family before any god, and he had to have faith that someone would be there for Mabel when he couldn't be.

The sense of impending doom eased with his heartbeat. Dipper's hair was damp with sweat and the half-blessings trailed off. The world was just as quiet as his head.

He didn't know how long he lay there, shaking and squeezing his notebook, when a familiar shadow fell over him.

"Getting comfortable down there?" Grunkle Stan's voice rolled like thunder that smoked too much. He was still dressed sharp in his Mr. Mystery outfit sans the iconic fez, and he leaned against a tree trunk with his cane resting comfortably between his legs. "I'm going to stay up here if you don't mind. Old bones make it hard to get up and down, you know."

Dipper slid into a sitting position. A part of Dipper wanted to just bury his head in Stan's stomach and cry like he used to do with his mother, but that wasn't the sort of thing that felt right with Stan. "How'd you find me?" he said instead, starting to brush the rocks from his face.

"Kid, you didn't get far." Stan jerked his head to the right, and Dipper could see the Mystery Shack through the trees. Dipper tried not to blush too much. "So what are you up to?"

Dipper considered lying, but Stan could always tell when he lied, even if he didn't call the lie out. Dipper looked down at his book and tried to wipe dirt from the cover, but he just smeared more on. "Praying," he mumbled.

"Praying?" Stan didn't sound as derisive as Dipper expected. "I don't think I've prayed in forty years. Me and the big guy aren't really on speaking terms, but maybe you'll have more luck."

Dipper shrugged, still focusing on ineffectually cleaning his book. "It wasn't really to anyone. I was just praying, I guess."

"Yeah?" Stan rested his arm on his cane, cocking his head at Dipper. "What were you praying for?"

For some reason, it felt wrong that the notebook's cover was just a plain gray. Dipper pressed his hand over it, but he was one finger short. "I was praying that Great Uncle Stanford would look after Mabel."

Stan was hard to read. He was a consummate conman and he was always hard to read when he really wanted to be. He sighed and tapped his fingers against his cane. "You know, my brother didn't know any more about kids than I do, but he'd love you two to bits."

Dipper brought his knees under his chin and hugged them, staring at his hand on his book.

"You're a little like him. You're both complete nerds."

Dipper let out a huff that vaguely resembled a laugh. It was hard to imagine himself being much like the mysterious author, Stanford Pines.

"You laugh now, but it was tragic. You actually have a leg up on him in not being hopeless." A thread of nostalgic cheer made its way into Stan's voice, and Dipper wondered how long it had been since his grunkle had been able to talk to anyone about his twin. "When we were your age, Stanford would get so nervous that he'd forget how to talk whenever we were even near a girl. He didn't get much better in high school, let me tell you."

Stan crouched down to Dipper's level. A rueful smile lined his face even while his knees popped. "The point is, he's a man like any other, and he'd be a total sucker for you and Mabel. I may not have seen him in thirty years, but if I know anything about him, I know this: if he's still out there somewhere, then he'll find Mabel, and he'll protect her with his life."

Gently, Stan rested a hand on Dipper's shoulder, giving it a little squeeze. "And hey, she'd be good for him. Get him to stop taking himself so seriously. I bet he'd be fixing her hair within a day. Two, tops."

Dipper let out another huff. It was the closest thing to a laugh he had right now, but it was something. "I don't think anyone can take themselves seriously with Mabel for long."

"Exactly." Stan nudged Dipper's shoulder again before letting it go. "You want to hang out in the woods forever or do you want to come back to the Shack? I don't want Soos to be doing too many tours."

Dipper's grip loosened a little on his book, but he hesitated. He wanted to talk to Stan about the bottles, about the way that they were both dealing with things, but he couldn't think of how to bring it up. Instead, he said, "Soos is doing tours? I bet he loves that."

"Yeah. He got pretty emotional about it. I should get back." Stan stood up, grunting when all his joints popped again. He held out a hand to Dipper. "We both should."

Dipper hugged his book and nodded before taking his grunkle's hand.

Dimension ?, July 26th, 2012

They were on an ice planet, and so far, Ford had seen no indication that the sun would ever set. It only stood to reason that there was another side of the planet that was far colder and never saw the light of day.

He didn't know how long it would take to get there. His energy detector promised that there was enough energy to indicate several portals over a day's walk away, but he couldn't know if that was the place Anise was talking about.

Mabel was a trooper, as if she hadn't been through this whole ordeal. She was silent as they walked for a couple hours before she started picking up snow and eating it.

"Careful not to have too much at once. You don't want to bring down your body temperature," Ford said to her, but he couldn't argue against hydration and ate some for himself.

Eventually, she wasn't eating the snow anymore. After too many hours passed, she was picking up handfuls of it and sculpting faces.

"This is Snowdy," she said, holding up a disturbingly well-crafted grumpy male snow face. "And this is Elicea," she said, presenting an equally disturbing feminine face. "They're in love, but Snowdy is a prince betrothed to the queen of the frost elves and Elicea is poor."

The empty eyes of the snow faces bore into Ford's soul, but he listened anyway. When was the last time he got to hear an old-fashioned fairytale?

"But Elicea lives in a cemetery, and she was a witch like her mother and her grandmother and her great-grandmother and so on." Mabel shoved her creepy snow faces into Ford's hands, and suddenly he was holding them a foot away from his body as she picked up another handful of snow and started sculpting it. "So Elicea called upon the dark powers that be to summon the dead, and she called a ghost to scare the queen of the frost elves away from Snowdy."

It couldn't be seen through his goggles and scarf, but Ford couldn't help but squint at his niece. He wondered how much of this was influenced by the things she had seen and how much was just from a dark imagination.

"But the ghost she summoned was her long lost childhood friend, Flakelin!" Mabel held up another masculine face, this one looking younger. "Flakelin tragically sacrificed his life to save Elicea from a house fire when they were kids because he was in love, and that love never went away, even in death! Now Elicea wanted him to go scare the queen of frost elves and ruin a dynasty so she could run away with Snowdy, and Flakelin couldn't bear it! So Flakelin went to the queen in secret to plot. The queen could get rid of Elicea, and Flakelin could have her for himself."

Well, she wouldn't be a Pines if she weren't weird.

Ford started to smile, even as the story spiraled into a tale of attempted assassination, necromancy, and witchcraft. She used him to juggle the faces she wasn't using to tell the story, the number of which grew and grew as she got her hands on more snow. Soon, the elf queen's angular features joined the pile, as well as Elicea's witchy mother's heavy eyelids and the human king's lined forehead—"Heavy is the head that wears the crown," Mabel intoned as she packed the king's face around an ice ball—and Ford admired how skilled she was sculpting things during pauses in her narrative.

She spun her yarn and the snow eventually gave way under their feet until they were walking on a massive expanse of multicolored crystal. The crystal was hardened in ripples with tall, sharp spires littering the land. They avoided the black crystals, and under their feet, there was the outline of something big swimming beneath the surface.

There was no snow, but the world had just gotten colder. The further they walked, the more the blue sun sank over the horizon. They were well on their way to 'the other side of the world.'

"And then Elicea seized the throne and the elven race descended into anarchy. The end!" Mabel started to arrange her sculptures, now freezing in the rapidly dropping temperatures, on her shoulders and head.

"And what about the elven prince? What happened to him?" Ford said as he pulled a glowstick from his bag. He had a feeling they would need the illumination soon.

"The ghost of witches past took him away to the spirit world so he could one day return and bring his people back to their former glory!"

She had a big metallic smile, but her movements were getting sluggish. The sun disappeared over the horizon and Ford cracked his glowstick. "Do you make up stories like that on the spot?"

"Sometimes." Mabel rolled her sculpted snow faces up and down her arms before letting them smash to the ground. In Ford's chest, there was the tiniest twinge to see them go. "Sometimes I just use the stories I already made up. Or dreams. The dream stories get weird."

Ford kept his glowstick low so he could watch Mabel. It washed her out even more than the blue sun had. She looked like a ghost straight out of her story. "I liked it," he said, earning a bright grin that didn't make her look any more alive.

They had been walking at a leisurely pace for hours, but they hadn't had breaks and now it was more important than ever to keep moving. Frost was forming on Mabel's exposed eyelashes and hair. Her clothes were meant to withstand the cold, but she was still healing and it was possible for the sunless side of an ice planet to get beyond the temperatures any clothing could save them from.

"How does your leg feel?" Ford had periodically forgotten to actually keep an eye on her leg, and now that he was paying attention again, her limp was getting worse.

"Oh, that? Pfffffff…" Mabel tried to make a dismissive sound, but it wasn't terribly convincing, especially when her teeth started to chatter. She was losing spark the further he pushed her. "I'll be better once we're gone."

He wanted to check, but at these temperatures, any pause would pose more danger of frostbite. With a twinge, he noticed that Mabel's ears and lips had turned blue. He should have thought to buy a scarf from Anise. Excellent caretaking, Ford: not even a week and your niece is already losing pieces.

"Here." He pulled off his own black scarf. The cold bit into his neck and face, tearing at his skin and freezing his blood, but he ignored it and wrapped the fabric around Mabel's neck instead. She made a soft noise in the back of her throat, but she didn't protest as he made sure her mouth and ears were covered up by a scarf far too big for her.

"It's like I have a fuzzy igloo on my head," Mabel said. Her teeth still chattered, but not quite as badly, which was a comfort as Ford's own teeth started to chatter.

He double-checked his energy detector. There were going to be multiple portals cropping up nearby, but not yet. A curse danced on his tongue, but he swallowed it. "Keep your hands in your pockets, Mabel."

Her gloves wouldn't protect her from temperatures this bad. She dutifully shoved her hands in her pockets, but she was wilting in the cold. Back slouching, eyelids drooping, she began to lag behind him.

"Mabel, you need to stay with me." Ford wanted to take her hand, but their hands needed to stay in their pockets. He couldn't afford for them to lose dexterity when they needed to be able to operate the energy detector.

"I'm with you. Where else would I be?" A sleepy giggle told him he couldn't let her stand still. At this point, they were just circling the area the portals were going to form. A part of him wanted to pick her up and zip her in his jacket, but that would just make it easier for her to fall asleep.

"Would you like to hear a story?" Ford was grasping at straws, but Mabel perked, her eyes fluttering as she stumbled next to him. Their pace was slowing to a crawl.

"I like stories," she said.

Ford mentally urged the portals to hurry the hell up. The glowstick was going to dim soon, and he needed to keep Mabel awake. "What kind of story do you want to hear?"

Mabel bumped into his leg. It'd be cute if it weren't for the fact he was pretty sure she didn't mean to. "Maybe something about you and Grunkle Stan when you were little?"

Normally, the mere mention of Stan would clam him up, but Ford couldn't really think beyond needing to keep Mabel awake. He thought back to Glass Shard, to two little boys that got sunburnt on the beach. The memory always felt like a spike slowly going through his ribs—painful, but at the same time, there were times it was the only thing keeping him standing. The picture he kept inside his coat but rarely looked at these days burned against his chest. "I was bullied as a child. I had six fingers and a high IQ, so I was an easy target. My father wanted us both to learn how to box to deal with the bullies ourselves, but Stanley was better at it than I was. He said it was okay because he'd always be there to beat up the bullies for me anyway."

The cold did a good job of numbing the twinge in his heart. Instead of thinking too hard about little Stanley's cocksure smile and protective (possessive) attitude, he concentrated on Mabel and making sure she was still walking with him.

"I told him he could never beat up the bullies all at once, which he decided was a challenge. He decided to trap all the boys together and beat them up for me. I thought this was an incredibly stupid idea, but he somehow talked me into it."

Electricity crackled in the air and Ford's hair stood on end. The portals were gathering, but Mabel was slowing down and Ford's lips were numb.

Mania was bleeding into his voice, forcing energy he didn't have, but he had to keep the girl awake. "We dug a hole in the beach. We heard about soldiers making traps overseas and decided to try doing the same thing. We were going to camouflage the hole and lure bullies into falling into it so we could get them all together."

The ice under their feet groaned. Was something moving under it? He couldn't see with the glowstick.

"The trouble was we forgot where we put the hole. We went looking for it. I managed to fall in and cut my foot on a piece of glass. The moral of the story is don't try to use Vietnam tactics on a beach." Mabel stumbled. Dexterity be damned, he snapped a hand out to catch her by the back of her jacket. "Mabel?" The cold tore into his hand and drilled into his bones.

Mabel sagged from his grip. He gave her a sharp jerk, forcing her lolling head to tilt up again. He licked his lips, trying to force some feeling back into them. "Mabel," he snapped.

The glowstick gleamed in her eyes as they slid open. "How'd you get out of the hole?" she said too softly.

The air crackled. Electric fissures split open around them, washing out the world in flickering blue light and creating spires of shadow painted on the ground. The ice beneath their feet started to groan louder.

Ford sucked in the frigid air, but he had to keep Mabel awake and calm. The portals didn't even show an image of the place they led to yet, so it wouldn't be safe to go through them. He kicked the ground, skittering shards of ice everywhere.

He thought back to a faraway beach, one with a warm sun and normal childlike problems. "Stanley carried me out." The ice shards weren't rocks, but they'd do in a pinch. The ice under them cracked. Something was coming from under it. Heart battering itself against his ribs, he focused on the portals. They were all that mattered. "Our father took out the glass and wrapped my foot. Stanley never suggested trapping bullies again."

Mabel didn't answer. He had to look to see her hanging limp in his hand. She wasn't shivering anymore. "Mabel?"

Images shimmered in the portals. There was a variety of environments, from fire and brimstone to mountaintops made of something wobbling and gel-like. With a crunch, the ice beneath their feet started to splinter and rise.

Stanford hoisted Mabel into his arms and threw a handful of ice chips into any portal that looked habitable.

Just as something began to rise from the ice, he heard noise from one of the portals. He ducked and lunged.

There was an immediate difference between the portals. Instead of frenzied and overwhelming, the color and light he was becoming used to was washed out and floated, motionless. It didn't seek anything out or create anything within itself.

Space stretched. The heart of color was floating away.

No.

Ford grabbed the vivid flares and dragged them closer. It shuddered and flickered and thrashed in his grip, and he could see. The universe was laid out for him in all its breathtaking wonder. Everything burst with potential. The tiniest flower petal was worth awe, and they unfolded all around him with the stars.

Something in his head screamed. The light bucked his grip, and they were on the other side.

Ford stepped out into a dead field with Mabel squirming weakly in his arms. Her eyes fluttered, her skin smoked, then she slumped against his chest, still again.

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. I mentioned it in the end notes of the previous chapter, but since then, I've started posting some ficlets and other fan content I don't currently post anywhere else. If you're interested in that, feel free to follow me.