Dimension ?, Day ?, 2012
The jungle was humid, the air thick with the smell of green, and a fine mist made it difficult to see beyond the knot of trees surrounding them. Ford could feel Filbrick's gaze boring into his back. He tried to ignore it. He only had eyes for the bassinet he was rocking.
The bassinet was painted with pink and glitter. There was no baby in it, but that hardly seemed to matter.
"What do you think it means to be a father, Stanford?"
Filbrick's voice was like slabs of concrete grinding together. Ford kept rocking the bassinet. "I haven't thought about it much," he confessed. "To make your children happy, maybe?"
"Give a kid candy for breakfast and he'll be happy. Doesn't make you a father."
Sweat beaded Ford's hairline, and it had nothing to do with the muggy air. He kept his eyes on the empty bassinet. He did everything he could to not look at his father. "What do you think a father's job is?"
"Make sure that your kids can survive when you're gone, no matter what."
Ford ran his hand through his hair, doing his best to memorize the pattern of glitter swirling on the bassinet's pillow. "She's small, and the world is dangerous."
"Then make her dangerous too." Filbrick's hand settled like a rock on Ford's shoulder. "Look at me."
Ford shuddered, keeping his eyes fixed on the bassinet.
"Look at me. "
Ford took a shaking breath, then forced his gaze onto his father.
Filbrick didn't have his sunglasses. His left eye was gouged out so completely that Ford could see the optical nerve in the empty socket.
Ford's stomach churned. He only ever saw his father's war wound in the worst of circumstances.
"Do you remember how I lost my eye, Stanford?"
It had been a terrible night that Ford heard that story. Stan and Ford had been five. Stanley had broken his jaw protecting Stanford from some bullies. Stanley was in the hospital, and Filbrick was drinking. It was the only time Ford could remember his father talking about the war.
The foliage creaked under their feet. Ford looked down, grateful for an excuse to avoid his father's empty eye, but the relief was short-lived. A boy lay under the ferns. A Japanese boy—he looked to be Mabel's age, but he couldn't be, he had a military uniform. His leg was mangled, possibly from a bayonet, and he stank of infection, but his eyes were bright and alive.
He whispered in Japanese, low and frightened, and he reached out his hand as if to grasp at the hem of Ford's jacket. Blood poured down his palm. Someone had cut off his finger. There was only a useless squirming stub.
"His people took his finger to bring home and prove he was dead. They didn't want to deal with a sick soldier. They left him in the mud to die."
Filbrick wasn't Ford's father anymore. He had both eyes, and his face was still round with baby fat and pockmarked with acne, his fingers nervously drumming the barrel of a gun. Fourteen, lying about his age to get into the military at a time no one asked too many questions. He looked like he could have been Ford's grandson.
There were shadows growing from the jungle, faceless soldiers that Ford had only vaguely imagined as a child. The Japanese boy turned his head to and fro, eyes rolling like a spooked horse.
"Put him out of his misery, Pines."
Filbrick hesitated, fingering his gun.
The boy pulled a knife from his boot.
He lunged at one of the shadows. Blood sprayed on the dirt. The wounded shadow's knees buckled and a gun went off.
The boy's skull split open with the bullet. Brain matter, blood, and bone splinters spattered the greenery, splashing arcs of red and gray on the bassinet. Filbrick's gun smoked. He dropped the gun to the ground and staggered away to throw up. Ford almost joined him, stomach heaving at the smell of blood and gunpowder. He'd seen so much violence, but he'd never seen a human being splattered open like that. The boy was nothing but meat.
The scene shifted. The jungle stank of smoke and blood. The shadows grew edges, the world began to crack, shaking in Ford's imagination.
"We can't leave him! We're not like those Jap bastards!"
Ford couldn't breathe between the smoke and gore. Filbrick was supporting another soldier. Was that Stanley? No, it couldn't be. A young man with a bandaged leg stinking of infection. The injury from the wounded Japanese boy. Too slow, they were walking too slow, then Japanese shadows dropped from the trees. Ford tried to cover his eyes, but he could see through his own flesh. Bayonets. Screaming. Americans cut down. The jungle watered with blood.
A bayonet caught the bassinet. The wood splintered. It was shards of glittering paint and linen on the ground.
Filbrick screamed, trying to carry his wounded fellow through, but then suddenly the crippled soldier had no head. A shadow jammed a bayonet through Filbrick's eye. The blade went too deep. No one could survive that.
Filbrick crumpled on the ground. Japanese shadows yanked the bayonet out from his eye and looted American weapons from corpses. The shadows went away. Eventually, Filbrick got up again. None of the other American shadows did.
The mist was thick with blood. Filbrick wiped the remains of his oozing punctured eye from his cheek, sitting on a rock next to Ford. "They died 'cuz I was too soft, boy. Learn how to cut the dead weight and teach her to survive."
Ford struggled to not see the bodies, but there was nothing he could do. If he turned away, they were still before him. If he covered his eyes, he saw through his hands. Even his eyelids could never close. "Was Stanley dead weight, Dad?"
"He spent his whole life getting you into trouble, then he destroyed your chances to better yourself and support the family just as we had a new baby to worry about. You tell me."
Ford ran his fingers through his hair. Blood and brain were still spattered on his front.
"It doesn't matter what you think of the choices I made. He was tough enough to survive with or without me, and so were you. I did my job." Filbrick's empty eye socket still oozed as he stood up and jabbed a bloody finger in Ford's face. "Now do your job. All the happiness in the world means nothing if she can't survive."
Ford nodded, choking on the blood in the air. He couldn't say anything. All he could do was wait for his father's horror to melt away.
Earth, August 6th, 2012
Dipper heated up some canned soup for Pacifica and brought it up for her. She, of course, made faces and complained about the flavor, but she ate it anyway, and he told her the story of Stanford Pines and the portal downstairs. No more secrets, he promised. Pacifica had helped and suffered for it, and she earned the truth.
After he was finished with the story and she was finished with the soup, she shoved her dish into his hands and told him she was going to sleep some more now.
She was still mad. Dipper swallowed anything spiteful he might have to say and went downstairs to leave the bowl in the sink. Wendy was sitting on the kitchen table with her feet perched on the back of a chair, and she perked as soon as Dipper came in.
"Hey, Dipper!" She leapt off the table, the whole kitchen shaking when she hit the ground. "Stan filled Soos and me in on the good news. Must be a load off knowing Mabel's with your other great uncle, right?"
Anything that might have weighed his mood down dissolved. Dipper dropped Pacifica's bowl into the sink with lighter shoulders. "You have no idea. Honestly, I didn't even think he was still alive by now."
"If he's anything like Stan, then he's too stubborn to die. He and Mabel will take care of each other. You'll see." Wendy slid into a chair, leaning back and crossing her arms. "So… how are you feeling about all the other stuff?"
Dipper slumped in the chair next to her and tried to mirror her pose, but it didn't feel quite right. Instead, he let his arms dangle and sighed. "I don't know. It's a lot to take in. Pacifica's really mad at me, and I don't know if she'll keep helping us. I shouldn't have kept secrets, but I didn't know what else to do."
He waited for Wendy to respond, but she just kept watching him, tilting her chair back just a little.
"And Stanford still thinks we should tear down the portal, even though he's stuck inside of it." That meant the threat was real. The world could really end. Stanford was putting the good of the world over him and Mabel, but Dipper couldn't do the same. Did that make him a bad person? He didn't know. Wendy wasn't offering him answers. Resentment burrowed in Dipper's gut, resentment of Stanford and the fact that he showed Dipper and Stan's path wasn't the only one. But what other option did they have? Dipper couldn't fathom the thought of growing up without Mabel, especially when he could have done something to stop it.
He didn't want to think about it. Next revelation.
"And… and now we know that Gideon is a violent psycho." Dipper pressed the heels of his palms to his eyes. "Which… we knew already, but this is worse than before. I don't even know why he'd have Bill attack Pacifica like that. That doesn't sound like him. He's a monster, but I never thought he'd have someone killed."
"You think he's going to try to attack again?" Wendy asked, her jaw setting in a grim line.
"I don't know. Gideon isn't one to give up, but he gave up on Bill when he failed last time and I don't know how else he'd attack us while he's in jail." But either way, he'd proven to be a threat to take seriously. Dipper thought to Pacifica, upstairs fuming in Mabel's bed. "We have to do something to keep Bill out. He's Gideon's best weapon."
"I can get behind that. How do you think we should do it?"
Dipper wished he had a pen to chew on, but he didn't, so he had to drum his fingers on the bill of his cap instead. "I… don't know. Maybe…" Maybe the journals could help. Maybe… but it felt weird now. It felt weird to look to them for answers now that he knew the ghosts that lingered between the pages. "I'll try to figure something out. In the meantime, I guess we just all keep an eye out for him and don't make deals with triangle demons."
"I dunno, man. That throws a wrench in my weekend plans." Wendy winked. "But I bet I can figure something else out."
Dipper smiled at her, but it was weaker than he'd like. Mabel was okay, and he couldn't be happier about that, but now things were so much more complicated. He should consult the journals about anything that could deter possession and evil spirits, but the thought of doing it right now shot a flutter of anxiety in his heart and he figured it could wait until he digested everything.
It was like the weight of the world was slowly settling on his shoulders. He thought that the weight of Mabel had been enough, but he found himself pulling at his hair, curling it in his fingers, mind wandering to questions he didn't want to ask himself. Was Stanford right? Should they stop? Did it even matter to Dipper what they should and shouldn't do? He didn't think it did.
"Hey." Wendy tapped the bill of his cap and pushed it over his eyes. "I'm taking my break, so why don't we get some popsicles and hang out on the roof?"
Dipper's shoulders relaxed. "That sounds great."
They climbed out onto the rooftop and watched the tourists come in and out while they talked. Wendy pointed out the people who looked interesting, who dressed in bright colors or had distinct faces or argued with their children as they rolled out of their car. She would make up their life stories and make weird faces and Dipper would laugh and try to do the same. His stories were never as interesting, but she would laugh anyway.
Eventually Wendy had to go and actually work, but then Soos was there to be with Dipper instead.
"Great news about Mabel and the other Mr. Pines, right?" Soos said as he settled Dipper on his shoulders to help him repair a leaky pipe just out of his reach.
"Yeah, great news," Dipper said.
Soos must have been warned by Wendy or Stan not to pry too deeply, because he started telling Dipper about Melody. That was a safe topic, a pleasant one. Dipper was happier than he could say to learn that Mabel was okay and with someone who could look out for her, but the uncertainty caused by all the other things he learned squeezed his heart in that way that had just gotten infinitely worse without his twin.
Eventually, after popsicles with Wendy and repairs with Soos and a rollercoaster of alternating elation and existential dread, Dipper realized that Pacifica had been really quiet. He winced when he remembered that he had a severely wounded girl in his room and he'd forgotten he was supposed to be making sure she wasn't dead.
When he went to check on her, it turned out she wasn't dead, which was a relief. She was sitting on Mabel's bed, leafing through one of Mabel's teen romance books with a look of supreme disinterest. (Dipper supposed Pacifica wasn't a YA novel type.)
She also was dressed in some of Mabel's more understated pajamas (just colored stripes instead of big patterns or prints), which was probably a good thing. It was weird to see someone else wearing Mabel's clothes, but it meant that she was well enough to dress herself and walk around a little bit. Dipper had no idea who would have been taking care of her if she couldn't, because that level of care was way too awkward for him to give her.
"How are you feeling?" he asked. Dipper perched on the edge of his bed. It felt like the room got colder when she shot him a hard look over the pages. For a second, he wondered if she was going to answer or just ignore him.
She gave that haughty huff she used to give Mabel just before she insulted her clothes or earrings, then looked back down at her book. "Better since I hit up your bathroom for pain stuff."
Dipper winced. "Oh. Sorry. I should have thought to give you some ibuprofen or something."
"You take that stuff for headaches, not for cracked ribs." Her voice was still raspier than usual, but it was better since she woke up hours ago. The hand-shaped bruises around her neck were stark in the sun. "There was a whiskey bottle hiding behind the sink. I just had enough to fill a cap."
There was a whiskey bottle behind the sink? How had Dipper not found it before? "Does everyone use alcohol to deal with problems except me?"
"It's a painkiller," she said, as if that made it better, but maybe it did. It wasn't like they had anything else that could help her lying around, and it wasn't like it was supposed to be a long term solution. It wasn't like Stan.
Dipper wondered if maybe he should start looking around for the bottles. If they were hidden, then Stan was probably the one hiding them. Maybe he should throw them all out. He didn't like the idea of Stan hiding bottles all around the Shack.
"Have you heard anything from my parents?" she asked from behind her book.
Her parents? Dipper hadn't even thought about that. Mr. Northwest should have passed out by now if Bill hadn't just left his body when Pacifica escaped, and Mrs. Northwest must have noticed that her daughter was missing if Mr. Northwest didn't explain what happened.
Despite this, there hadn't been anything. No phone calls, no AMBER alerts, no searches…
"…No. Nothing."
"Hmmph." Pacifica looked back down at her book with the same cool expression she would have if he told her it was going to rain tomorrow, but her knuckles became white. Dipper was starting to learn that Pacifica felt a lot of things most of the time, but she hid them.
Silence stretched between them. Pacifica hid her face behind the book. Dipper's stomach twisted, but he was having trouble putting words to all the bad things he was feeling. Mabel would be able to help him. She was always better with people than he was. She could tell how they felt and say it in words that made them feel understood. Without her, he had to struggle to unpeel the ball of unpleasantness in his gut to check what it was made of.
One of the big feelings was anger. On Pacifica's behalf, specifically. There wasn't any news of violence at the Northwest Manor coming out, so Dipper could only assume that Bill Cipher left her parents alone after she escaped. That made sense. Dipper wouldn't put it past Bill to hurt a loved one to get at someone he was mad at, but he'd want to do it in front of them and make a big performance of it. If he wasn't here rubbing it in their faces, then her parents were fine. Why weren't they reaching out to find her, then? Did they want to keep everything quiet?
The biggest feeling, the feeling that stuck fast to the heavy weight in his stomach, was guilt. A lot of guilt. So much guilt that even looking at it made his heart beat fast and his palms sweat and a ghost of breathlessness begin to squeeze his throat.
Dipper grabbed journal three from under his bed. An old man's ghost lurked between the pages, but it was better to think of the ghost than to think of the guilt. The memory of Stanford, somehow so much more real now that Dipper knew he was alive, sat over his shoulder as he opened the book. Instead of the unsettling presence he had been before, Stanford now sat in judgment, heavy next to Dipper.
Maybe you're okay with never seeing your twin again, Dipper wanted to tell him. I'm not.
"That's your great uncle's journal?" Pacifica said, peering over the edge of her book again.
"Yeah. Except I didn't know it was his until a couple weeks ago." Dipper started to skim over the text, simultaneously curious and too sick to examine the sections where the author described his own experiences with the creatures he encountered. Dipper used to agonize over those sections, searching for clues, because the author always referred to his assistant as 'F' and dropped anecdotes that might lead to his identity, but now Dipper knew how all the pieces fit together and he didn't like the picture they made. "I'm going to see if he wrote anything we could use against Bill Cipher."
Pacifica wrinkled her nose before slowly easing back on Mabel's pillow to support her back. "Let me know if you find anything. I want to stick it to him."
"Sure thing."
The silence between them wasn't exactly comfortable, but it didn't make Dipper feel like he had to get away from the room either. Pacifica hadn't forgiven him, but he could put up with that.
Surprisingly, Pacifica wasn't too demanding of a patient. She complained about things like the bed and the food, but she didn't ask him to do much more than he was already doing. Eventually, the tourists went home and it was time for everyone to go downstairs to work on the portal, and Dipper hadn't found anything in the third journal. Dipper was worried about everyone being out of shouting distance from Pacifica, but Pacifica just gave him a curt, 'I'll be fine' before returning to Mabel's teen romance books.
Despite everything, the mood while they worked on the portal was high. Wendy put on some indie music made by bands Dipper had never heard of. Stan complained about music these days until Wendy switched to The Beatles. After that, they caught Stan wiggling to the music more than once.
Progress was made. After they were done and Soos and Wendy said goodbye, Dipper tucked journals one and two under his arm.
"Bedtime, squirt," Stan said as he pointed to the stairs.
"Uh, actually…" Dipper didn't want to find more empty bottles under the porch tomorrow morning. "I need to read through these journals, and I can't have the lights on if Pacifica is there, so I was wondering if I could stay up with you tonight."
Stan squinted at him from the corner of his eye, already turning off the porch lights. "We had a deal, remember? You sleep."
Dipper took a steadying breath and puffed his chest out. "Well, we're both supposed to take care of ourselves, so if you stay up, then I should too."
Stan scoffed and crossed his arms. "In case you didn't notice, I have nearly fifty years on you."
"So?" Dipper kept his chest puffed. "Old men need sleep too."
Stan kept staring him down. Dipper's chest threatened to deflate, but he held his breath to keep it up. If he went upstairs, Stan would keep thinking about Stanford and how he didn't want to be saved after all. He'd start drinking.
Stan sighed through his nose and rolled his eyes. "Yeesh, talk about a mother hen. You're supposed to leave nagging to the women." Dipper resisted the urge to tell Stan that they had no women, since Mabel was dimension hopping and Pacifica had cracked ribs, and that Dipper had always been the nagger of them all anyway and Stan knew it. "Fine. You can stay up. Go read your nerd books or something."
Stan started walking towards the den, but instead of going to the utility closet where it was nice and cozy, Dipper followed him. "I was wondering if we could look through them together."
"Hmm?" Stan slumped into his favorite chair, giving Dipper a skeptical look that was bellied by the way he kept his knees just together enough to allow Dipper room to squeeze next to him. "Whatever portal stuff you're looking at, I already know it back to front."
"It's not portal stuff this time." Dipper wiggled onto the seat next to his grunkle. Stan settled a hand on his shoulder, and the world felt better. "I just want to see if there's anything in here that can protect us against Bill. I'm worried about Pacifica."
"You mean you feel guilty about her."
Dipper worried his lip and shrugged. Yes, he did.
"I don't blame you, kid, but you couldn't have seen this coming." Stan took the first journal, weighing it in his hand before letting it fall open on his knee. "You got enough on your mind without beating yourself up for this one."
Dipper rested his cheek against Stan's side. He could hear his grunkle's heartbeat. He thought about Pacifica's parents. Even without demons, they did bad things to her. Bad enough to make her shudder and go quiet when they rang a bell. He'd seen that before the accident with the portal, but he still didn't think about it at all before he asked her to go behind their backs to help him.
He thought about McGucket, whose notes were becoming more and more splintered, who had barely started to recover before Dipper asked him to help.
"I'm worried I'm hurting people with this."
Stan kept his hand heavy and warm on Dipper's shoulder. "You're doing what it takes to protect your family. That's the important thing."
"But can't I do that in a way that doesn't put people in danger?" He wanted something to hug. The second journal dug into his leg, but it was too heavy with the ghost of Stanford. Dipper hugged himself instead. Stan's arm slid around his shoulders snugly. "Mabel wouldn't want people getting hurt."
"Sometimes you can't avoid it. Sometimes people get hurt." Stan flipped through the pages of the journal on his knee. "But you can do what you can to stop it. I'll help you with whatever exorcism mumbo jumbo my brother might have put in here."
Warding against Bill would be a good start, but Dipper knew that that wouldn't be enough. "It's more than just Bill."
"Hmm?" Stan frowned at him.
Dipper's stomach twisted. He didn't know if it was his place to say anything, but he couldn't deal with this alone. "I think Pacifica's parents will hurt her if they find out she helped us."
Stan's muscles tensed around Dipper. "What makes you say that?"
Anger began to radiate from Stan's skin. It was easy to feel, even if he wasn't yelling or anything. "Some stuff she's said. She was more scared of them than the ghost that was haunting her family. And…" Dipper fingered the corner of the first journal's cover. Was he betraying Pacifica by saying this? "And she said her dad wouldn't do anything that left marks someone else could see. Those words."
The silence weighed down between them. "Yeah." Stan's voice was rougher than usual. "That sounds pretty bad to me."
"Do you think we should call someone?" Dipper dragged the first journal onto his lap, but he didn't open it. The six-fingered hand stared at him.
"CPS wouldn't do anything. People that rich are untouchable." Stan was probably right. Dipper squeezed the journal, needing something to do with his hands, but Stan didn't stop talking. "Untouchable by the government, at least. You did the right thing saying something. I'll see what I can do."
The weight of the world got a little lighter on Dipper. He didn't know what his grunkle could do, but whatever it was, it was probably illegal. "Thank you, Grunkle Stan."
Stan shrugged and started leafing through Stanford's pages again. "I don't like people who treat their family like that. Now get to reading so we can go to bed soon."
Dipper kept his head rested against his grunkle's chest while he flipped through pages, and Stan kept his arm around Dipper. The absence of Mabel was always there lurking on the edge of awareness, but it wasn't as biting as it had been before.
Mabel would want them to make sure Pacifica didn't get hurt on her account. She wouldn't want McGucket to be hurt either, but Dipper had ideas for him. He'd figure it out.
Eventually, Dipper fell asleep cuddled against Stan.
Dimension ?, Day ?, 2012
Awareness came back slowly, like he was pulling himself out of mud. He really didn't want to keep dreaming, but he didn't really want to be aware. He couldn't remember why, so he just trudged to the land of the living while scolding himself for being so self-indulgent as to want to stay away.
Sense of touch filtered in first. Everything hurt, but that was a relatively normal occurrence. He didn't have his shirt or his jacket on, and that was not a relatively normal occurrence. Normally, waking up without half his clothing was cause for alarm, but bandages were wrapped snuggly all over his body, including his hands. He didn't quite remember how he got injured, but if someone was taking care of him, they were friendly… or they were the worst kind of unfriendly.
Ford opened his eyes, just to see smears of color. Right. Glasses. The ground was soft and spongey when he pawed around until he found them. Great, whoever had him didn't leave him completely blind.
He pushed his glasses up his nose. He was in a burrow-like space made of what looked like spider silk. The room was empty, and his neck was stiff with soft but thick bandaging. He looked around instinctively for Mabel, but she wasn't there.
The memories came rushing back.
Something invisible ripped his heart from his chest. Mabel. The blood, the dead eyes, he remembered her—where was her body? Had someone taken it from him? She deserved a burial, a proper send off, not to be left alone in that awful dark place, he couldn't just abandon her like he did to Stanley—
He should have been examining his surroundings, checking if he had all his belongings, but he couldn't breathe. He had to find her. He'd failed her, he'd failed her so badly, those doppelgangers were right, his father was right, everyone he ever cared about had been ruined because of his stupid arrogant mistakes and he had to make sure that she was at least laid to rest properly—
The time between cradling her body and waking up here was smudged and blurred, but he thought he remembered her coming back to him, even saving his life from things that were devouring him as they spoke. He grabbed onto the memory, clung to it as hard as he could even though he also remembered her with a halo of multicolored light and it was more likely she was a dream or a hallucination. It was possible her death was a trick. She might still be alive.
"Mabel?" he said. "Mabel?" He raised his voice as he pushed himself to his knees.
"Grunkle Ford?"
Time stopped, but she was still moving. A familiar face poked through the burrow's circular entrance.
Mabel was in new clothes. White, airy, semi-translucent shirt and skirt. She had a brace on her wrist. Closely spaced stitches tied together a vertical cut on her upper lip to her lower lip. A dark lightning tree ran from her shoulder down her arm and along her chest. Her braids were completely undone.
"That's a relief. We've been waiting for—whoa!"
He swept her up off her feet and squeezed her close, pressing a quick kiss to her warm temple before resting his face in her hair. "I thought you were dead." His voice came out too thick, but he couldn't bring himself to care.
"You did?" She was rigid in his arms. He should have asked before he touched her. She was probably still mad at him. Then his niece relaxed and looped her arms around his neck. "I'm not dead, silly. Would a dead girl be able to do this?" She pulled away just enough to poke his nose. "Boop."
His laugh was wet and thick and he had to quickly scrub one eye. "No, I don't think a dead girl could do that."
Ford would swear to anyone, god or man, that nothing was more beautiful than his niece at that very moment.
"I'm okay, Grunkle Ford." Her eyes softened and she bumped their foreheads together. "Promise."
Ford closed his eyes. He had to breathe to get control of himself again. It had been so long since anything could inspire such pain and joy that he didn't remember how to deal with it. All he wanted was to just never let her go.
Her little fingers curled against his neck. Her breath wavered. "I'm sorry. If I didn't run away, you wouldn't have—"
"Don't. Don't." She fell silent, and he focused on her heartbeat against his chest, the heat radiating from her skin.
Another shaky breath and he could work the thickness from his throat and open his eyes again. "What happened?" he said, frowning at the stitches on her lip. "You're hurt."
"So are you." She poked his shoulder, making him wince. It was definitely tender and wrapped up in bandages. "Do you really not remember any of it?"
Ford leaned back against the silk wall, adjusting to sit Mabel down in his lap but not letting her go yet. She didn't seem to mind. Something in his chest loosened and relaxed when she rested her head against him. "I remember… something. It seems more like a nightmare than anything real, though." He frowned and squinted down at the top of her head. "Were you glowing at some point?"
"Yep."
"Ah." Some of it filtered back. Darkness, all-consuming, the sensation that it was better for him to sleep because he would never have a good day again and it was easier to fade away. Mabel, sweeping in like a beacon of rainbow light more suited for a dance party than a dark place like that. Blood, something lurking in the shadows, yelling, a pop pop— "Did you use my gun?" He carefully took her wrist wrapped tightly in a brace. "Is that how you hurt this?"
"Partly. I also hurt it when I stuck one of the evil tube things into my wrist so I could force the monster eating you to eat my happiness."
Hardly the weirdest thing he'd ever heard. The important part was that she used his gun to shoot things and she willfully fed herself to a beast devouring a grown man.
"Mabel, that was incredibly—" Stupid, reckless, irresponsible, except not actually. Mabel quirked one skeptical eyebrow, her mouth twisting in expectation of a scolding. She didn't deserve one, though. He knew she didn't. "…You did really well thinking on your feet like that."
The genuine surprise on her face made his heart twinge with guilt. He thought of his dream, too vivid to forget, his father hardly older than her with a gun in his hands. "I haven't been giving you enough credit." He smoothed her hair back, grateful that she allowed him to touch her. "If it weren't for you, I would be dead. You were able to get us both out of a terrible situation intact, and that isamazing. "
As much as it pained him to admit it, he had underestimated his niece, and he had done her a great disservice in doing so. They were lucky that she was able to draw on herself to save them, because he certainly hadn't been teaching her all the skills she'd need to face off against an alien hostile without him around. That had to change.
"I want you to tell me everything that happened," he said.
The story came slowly. Mabel kept eyeing his face, as if expecting disapproval or distress at various points, so he stayed impassive as much as possible. As she spoke, her hands became animated and the story came to life with them. Slowly, the pieces came together.
Positivity. Her love for Dipper defeated the monster that tried to entrap her the same way they entrapped Ford. After weeks away from her brother, a hug was enough to unravel the illusion, and that love for family protected her.
No wonder it was able to get him so easily, he thought. After thirty years, his first instinct when he saw his brother was to yell at him.
The imposters were right about one thing: he wasn't a very good brother.
"And when we got through a portal, a bunch of good aliens met us!" Mabel slid off his lap and grabbed his hand. "Come meet them with me!"
He might not be a good brother, but there wasn't much he could do about that now. What he could do was be a better uncle. He squeezed her hand, giving her a smile before popping a universal translator into his ear and easing to his feet.
She finally grinned at him, one of those big grins full of metal, except there wasn't much metal anymore. The wires had all been removed from her braces, leaving only the brackets. He would have to help her get rid of those. "They're really nice people. They made these clothes for me in less than five minutes!"
As she walked him out of the burrow, she waved her arm, letting the gossamer sleeve flutter around her like wings. They were in a cool underground cave with natural holes punching through the stone and dirt ceiling. Moss dangled from the edges of the holes, dripping water down into clear ponds. Dangling from the rocks were giant pods made of the same silk that made Mabel's clothes.
Out of one pod crawled what was clearly an alien. Its torso and the upper half of its four legs were fleshy and covered in shimmering tattoos, but the lower half of its legs were made of intertwined, twisting needles that skimmed and skittered over the floor. Its head was triangular with faceted eyes and a crown of twisted needles weeping silk threads that it grabbed with its front points and used to reinforce its fibrous pod.
"Spindy! Spindy!" Mabel waved at the alien on the ceiling. "Come meet my grunkle!"
The alien twisted the threads of its pod together and shook excess silk off its head before tapping along the ceiling to the wall.
"His name's not really Spindy," Mabel said. "I just don't know how to pronounce his real name. It's a bunch of clicking."
"That happens," said Ford. "I have named more aliens 'Molly' than I care to count."
"Why Molly?"
Ford could only shrug. "Beats me."
"You're the big one." 'Spindy' was on the ground now, approaching them. Up close, he was tall. He managed to be at Ford's eye level even on all fours. "Your little one was worried about you."
Ford squeezed Mabel's hand. "Well, I can't say I blame her." Mabel leaned against his leg. Where he would have been uncomfortable a couple weeks ago, the closeness was reassuring. "I suppose I have you to thank for us both being so well taken care of?"
The creature sat back on his haunches, folding his back legs together until it was hard to tell whether the needles were from one leg or another. There was something insect-like about his movement. Ford would love to draw him later.
"We were able to put you both back together." Spindy tangled the needles of one front leg into the silk coming from his head, pulling out the silk and twisting it between 'fingers' to make thicker thread. "Your little one said that your kind's flesh can be woven if the materials are clean. Our silk will dissolve in your skin once you have healed yourself."
Ford hadn't checked under his bandages, so he didn't know how many stitches he needed, but seeing how well Mabel's body was responding to the fine stitching on her lips, he had confidence that he would be in okay shape.
"I can't thank you enough," Ford said. "I don't know if there's any way we can repay you."
"No repayment. Why repayment?" Spindy clicked his needles together, which made a sound like a sharper tap of fingernails. "We don't ask for repayment. We give or we take. We give now because we are impressed."
Spindy slid to all fours again, bumping Ford with one fleshy shoulder covered in a tattoo of hanging moss before clicking towards the nearest pool. "We put guards where the portal appears. The facestealers hunt us if we don't. They come into our world and lure victims back to theirs to be eaten."
Ford kept a hold of Mabel's hand as he started to follow the alien. "Why would they hunt outside of their own world?"
"They devoured everything in theirs, if it's even theirs." Spindy sat at the edge of the water. He eased his sharp front points back, staring at the pool, so still that it created a perfect reflection of the world above. "They want to settle ours and make it like their own. We won't let them."
He shot his arm into the water. The splash sprayed Ford and Mabel, the latter letting out a surprised whoop. When he drew his front leg out, a completely translucent flat fish flopped, speared on his needles. "They are dangerous because they know how to tell the truth, but we fight by remembering the truth they don't tell."
Spindy tossed the fish at Mabel. She caught it with a wet smack. "Ew," she giggled. "It's all slimy. Feel how slimy it is!"
"You have a special little one," Spindy said as though Mabel didn't speak. "So we will provide for you both until you can move on." He pointed one needle at the fish Mabel was now making fish kiss faces at. "Eat that. It's good for you."
"Grunkle Ford, its fins are still twitching!"
"Thank you," said Ford as Mabel played around with their dinner. "We appreciate your hospitality." When he looked down at his niece, she was puppeteering the dead fish by its fins. "Mabel, you're going to learn how to filet a fish."
"Cool! What does that mean?"
"You'll find out in a minute."
They left Spindy to hunt his own dinner, but Ford still picked a spot near a pool to make a cooking fire. It wouldn't be good form to fill up their hosts' cave with smoke nowhere near ventilation.
Even when Mabel figured out what it meant to filet a fish and gave him a skeptical look, he still insisted on teaching her how to properly butcher it. He almost died. He would have died if she hadn't been so quick to think on her feet. Mabel wasn't ready to survive on her own because he hadn't forced her to learn all the things she'd need to know.
She had to learn. If he died, he had to die knowing she would be okay.
"Don't cut towards yourself." Ford took Mabel's thumb off the fish and repositioned it so her palm was flat on it.
"I feel like I'm desecrating a dead body," Mabel said with a grimace. "Do you think fish have ghosts that come back to haunt you?"
"I doubt it," Ford said. "But you never know."
"I bet the sewers have whole cities of ghost fish." Her filet was absolutely terrible, but they weren't cooking for food critics here. Her tiny fingers dug into the flesh to pick out the bones, ripping apart the mutilated fish. "They're all going to come for me, Grunkle Ford."
"Then we'll have to figure out how to eat them too."
She giggled. For a moment, things felt normal.
Ford wanted so badly to just keep up the banter and move on like nothing happened, but he couldn't. It would only be a matter of time before resentment bubbled up between them again if he buried it. He had ruined many relationships in his life, but he didn't want to ruin what he had with Mabel.
He led her through setting up the fire and tossing the mutilated fish into a pan. It smelled like roasted rose petals.
"How do you feel?" he said. It was stilted, some pale imitation of the sort of thing his ma would say after Ford had time to cool down from a fight. Mabel flashed him a smile and waved her bound wrist like a carnival toy.
"Healing up just fine!"
Ford focused on the cooking fish, on the needle creatures crawling on the ceiling, on the shimmers of transparent fish in the water. Anything that wasn't Mabel. "That wasn't what I meant."
"Oh." Her smile withered like a frostbitten flower. She pulled her knees under her chin and hugged them. Ford was a coward. He didn't look at her.
Silence hung over them like the humidity just before a summer storm. Part of him, a selfish part, wanted to take back his words and go back to the off-kilter but passable intimacy they had moments before.
"I wish…" Mabel's voice was devoid of cheer. It was all wrong. "…I wish I had gotten to say goodbye to my brother."
Breath burned Ford's chest. His hands twisted in his lap, but he wasn't sure what to do with them. He didn't know if he was allowed to touch her, and he didn't know how to ask.
"What happened between you and Grunkle Stan?"
Her knees muffled her voice. Ford ran his fingers through his hair with a sigh, shaking his head. He couldn't think of something he wanted to talk about less, but maybe she had a right to know. Stan and Ford and their fucked up relationship were the reasons she was here, anyway.
"Honestly? I just don't know anymore." One day, there was no one he'd rather be with, and the next, they were sworn to never speak again. It made so much sense at the time.
"The aliens showed Grunkle Stan getting kicked out of the house," said Mabel. Ford's stomach clenched until it was nothing but a rock nestled amongst the rest of his organs. Mabel's eyes were heavy on him. "Why would your parents do that?" And why would you let them?
It had made so much sense at the time. It had felt right. Stanley had betrayed him, betrayed the whole family. He deserved what he got. He would be fine, anyway. He was street smart. The family was better off without him.
All those justifications felt far away, and their ghosts withered in his throat when he dared to look at his niece. No reason was going to be enough for those eyes. Nothing was going to satisfy her. She was waiting for him to do the impossible: to convince her that leaving his brother on the street was right.
"He broke a project of mine." The story was lead in his mouth. "It was supposed to get me into a premier college and jumpstart my career. Stanley said it was an accident, but we didn't believe him. I thought he just wanted to sabotage my ability to go anywhere without him. Maybe he did. Maybe it was a little of both. Either way, our father kicked him out and that was the last I saw of him for over ten years."
For the first time in his life, he wished he had asked his father why. Why was that the solution he jumped to? Had he ever had any regrets? Had he ever considered it before? Did he ever miss Stan? But his father had never been a forthcoming man, and now all Ford had were dreams and memories.
The way Mabel looked at him, like she wanted to cry, made him want to hide his face in shame. It was worse than facing the imposter Stanley. With Stanley, he could always use his own anger and resentment as a shield for anything else he might ever feel (the hurt, the disappointment, the nostalgia, even flickers of guilt he quashed over and over), but with Mabel, there was no shield. He'd let her come too close.
"Didn't you ever want to see him again? Didn't you love him?" she asked with a shaky voice that just made it so much worse.
"Of course I loved him. He's my brother." The gruff words stumbled out without conscious thought, without permission, and the truth in them shocked him. Of course he loved his brother. He never said it in so many words—no one said that in their family, not even Ma, better to show than to tell—but it was the truth, and the truth was all he had in the face of a niece on the edge of crying. "He was my best friend. Only friend, really. But I had felt suffocated for a while by then. Our whole lives were defined by our relationship to each other. Stanley was happy with that. I was getting tired of it. Then he betrayed me, and I didn't want to be around him anymore. I thought I could make a better life for myself if I just forgot he was ever there."
The truth burst from him like he was draining a rancid wound. It oozed out into the world for Mabel's judgment. He couldn't stop now.
"I couldn't forget him. He was always in the back of my head no matter how hard I tried to get rid of it. So instead of forgetting, I just focused on how much I resented him, because it was easier to hate him than miss him."
More wounds lanced. More truth foaming out like infection and pus and death that had been left to fester for forty years. Mabel's hands were twisted up in her skirt. Her hands were so little.
"I moved on with my life, but without him to keep me in check, I made the worst mistake of my life. Bill Cipher flattered me and tricked me into building a portal for him. Stanley would have seen him for the con artist he was, but I was taken in because I was too proud and naïve to recognize his manipulations."
Too much truth. He hadn't meant to tell her about Cipher. Her cheeks were colorless. Still, he couldn't stop. He felt sick. All the baggage he had ignored and locked up was going to crush him.
"After I realized what Cipher intended, I contacted Stanley. He was the only one I could trust—only one who could help regardless of trust, really, since I had destroyed any friendships I might have had—but we got into a fight. I seriously injured him and he accidentally pushed me into the portal."
Ford spread his fingers out in his lap. "That's why we're trapped here. I was proud, and Stanley was rash. I'm sorry you and your brother got wrapped up in it."
And it was all out. He was empty, like the only thing that had ever been holding him up was all the resentment he had for Stan. He didn't want to look at Mabel. He didn't want her judgment.
The silence stuck to them, like they had walked through a field of burrs and hadn't bothered to notice until they were impossible to pull off anymore.
"That story is so sad."
He laced his fingers together. It was a trick he learned when he was a child. It was harder for people to see something was wrong with his hands when he tangled up the fingers. It was a habit he kept long after there were any humans around to judge them. "It is."
He couldn't let himself sink into it, though. She deserved better. He heaved a soft sigh before prying his hands apart and poking at the crisping fish with a spatula. "I always told myself that I did the right thing, that Dad did the right thing. Maybe that's not as true as I'd like it to be. I'm honestly not sure anymore. "
Did Stanley ask these questions? For the first time in thirty years, he wondered how it must have felt to be in Stanley's shoes, to watch his brother fly into the portal and be powerless to stop it. What would Ford have done? Would he have been able to leave the portal closed even if it meant condemning his brother?
The anger and resentment at his brother was long-lived and had deep roots, but he never stopped loving the godforsaken man. Clearly, Stanley had never stopped loving him either, if he was still working on the portal after thirty years. It was weird to think of it that way. Fixing the portal was unfathomably reckless, but Stanley wouldn't have done it for anyone else.
"Have you ever thought about what you'd say to him if you had the chance?" said Mabel, staring at the ground and speaking softer than someone so lively ever should.
He wanted to tell her something she'd like to hear. He wanted to say that, yes, he'd thought about it, and he'd tell him that bygones should be bygones, but that was the furthest thing from the truth.
"I did at first," he admitted. "I thought about the way I'd tell him it was all his fault my life was ruined and I'd tell him I was better off when he was gone. The kind of thing you believe when you're angry." The kind of thing he'd actually believed before yesterday, but now was reconsidering. Mabel's shoulders slumped. He knew that she would be unhappy hearing the truth, but he couldn't stand the thought of giving her anything else. "Then, I suppose… I just let any thought of home be buried. I could go years without thinking about anyone I left behind. It was easier that way."
"It was easier to just… act like they'd never been there?" she asked, her voice small.
"It was." He wished he could give her a different answer. "I didn't realize how much I had let myself forget before you came along." He forgot Stanley. Of course, he remembered Stanley Pines, the man who came out of the womb with him and pushed him into a portal, but he forgot Stanley , the man who always stuck by his side until a sudden and awful fight, and then who came back over ten years later when Stanford needed him most. He forgot that Stanley liked to pickpocket beachgoers when they were kids, and that he always ended up with sunburns because he hated the feeling of sunscreen on his skin. He forgot that Shermy would have grown up by now, that he'd have a family. He forgot to wonder what on Earth his family would do when he disappeared. He forgot.
"I don't want to forget them." Mabel stared at her hands as she pulled at her skirt. It was a wonder how it didn't tear.
He wished he could touch her, to give her a hug or a pat on the shoulder. He hadn't touched another human being for thirty years before she came along, but he never wished he could touch one more than in that moment.
"You're stronger than I am," was what he said instead. "You don't have to if you don't want to."
She had fewer memories to keep hold of, but maybe that made them more precious. She didn't have the same bitterness he had had when he arrived. She would take care of her memories rather than let them fade like he did.
But maybe that would just make it harder for her.
"I'm sorry for ruining our chances to go back home like I did." Now she was the one avoiding eye contact. She stared at the rock, pressing a finger on the floor and tracing imaginary patterns. "But I did it because the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. I don't expect you to understand that, and I don't expect you to forgive me."
"Pff." She flipped her hair over so it covered her eyes. "I have to forgive you. You're family."
"I think we just settled that family can hold onto grudges too."
"But you're all I have now." She pressed her face into her knees, hugging them like she was trying to wake from a bad dream and keeping her expression hidden in her hair. "You're the only one here. I won't see any of the rest of my family or friends ever again."
It saved the world, but Ford still hated himself for taking her hope of home away from her. "I'm sorry that I am such a poor substitute for them," he said, looking at the rocky ground.
She peeked from between locks of hair. She offered him a smile that didn't show her teeth. "There's nothing poor about you." Finally, she leaned against his side. The knot in his heart loosened. Resting a hand on her shoulder, his fidgeting ceased. "For what it's worth, I think you're a good person, even if you made mistakes."
If he only had one person with him for the rest of his life, Ford was never going to complain that it was Mabel. "That's because you make me a better person." He squeezed her shoulder, using his free hand to poke at the fish. It was a little more awkward to do anything with his non-dominant hand, but he didn't want to end the contact so soon.
Needle aliens (he had to think of a good name for their species, since they would be here recovering for a while) walked along the ceiling, making intermittent clicking sounds as they settled on their haunches and started weaving pods from silk and little nets around holes leading to the outside world, catching dewdrops and presumably any unfortunate small animal that happened by.
"Once we finish eating, what would you say to drawing one of them?" Ford said.
"I'd say that's a great idea."
Content warning for violence against children and a racial slur accompanying in-character racism.
Thank you to Eregyrn-Falls for betaing this chapter. Also, thank you to everyone who commented. Comments, compliments, and critiques are always warmly welcomed.
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