A/N: Sorry for the delay, everyone; it's been... eventful. Last chapter I mentioned I had doctors appointments to attend... and this month, the health issues were upgraded to require a visit to the hospital. I'm sure you don't want to hear the whole dreary story, but I've got a follow-up appointment with the doctor and I've been sweating spinal fluid over what results I might eventually discover. Needless to say, the hospital prep, visit, recovery and the inevitable worrying sessions have cut into writing time considerably; I can only apologize for the delay and try to be more prompt in future... although I should probably warn you that the nervousness probably had an effect on overall mood of the chapter.
In the meantime, a massive thank-you to everyone who reviewed, favourited and followed.
Northgalus2002: Loved your summation - and without saying too much, your guess is correct!
Kraven the Hunter: Well, here's a thing to remember - Mr A can't manifest himself or his full power in Bill's dominion, so he has to make do with possessing willing hosts. So, if he's ever able to bring his physical body to Gravity Falls, he might take a human form to make conversation easier, and - well, you never know - that form might very well be Alex Hirsch. As for how a salamander has the power... well, that's a longer story. As for Innsmouth, Nyarlathotep is from another version of Earth: the tuna came from his version of Innsmouth, which is still as weird and disturbing as ever. Meanwhile, the Reset Button... well, trying to conceive of a reset button for all this will be interested (but if it'll be used or not... you'll have to wait and see!) Thanks again!
Guest: Thanks for the review! Though - people have written Nyarlathotep as a good guy? Wow, I'm reading the wrong stories... As for the plaything struggling against the restraints... hmmm, I may need to upgrade the psychic shields. Good job!
Fantasy Fan 223: Glad you like the results of the Mr A arc and how things have gone so far. It's going to be interesting deciding Bill's eventual fate, but without saying too much, chances are it's going to be something suitably bizarre. Meanwhile, everyone's in line for escape attempts: it's a matter of who tries first - and who meets with success first. Remember, struggling against the restraints doesn't necessarily mean "breaking them."
Krista Perry: I love your overall review of the story! Gravity Falls already had a subtle touch of Lovecraftian flavour to it, so introducing full-blown Lovecraft to the setting is always fun. As for what's going to happen to Dipper - that's going to be in a few chapter's time, and I'm going to see if I can include a few subtle notes of hope before then. I'm glad you like the story so far, and I hope this chapter lives up to the level of quality established!
ImpossibleJedi4: Yep! Always a good sign.
Blind-Eyephone: Poor kiddo indeed - and without saying too much, Bill is going to make even this little joy turn to ash in his mouth; after all, remember how he handled his crush on Pacifica?
Anyway, without further ado: the latest chapter! Feel free to hypothesize, theorize, critique, recommend, nitpick, dissect and leave lovely long reviews as you please! Read, review and above all, enjoy!
Disclaimer: Gravity Falls is still not mine. Belay your shock, good people.
For almost two weeks, Mabel stayed in the world of Endless Summer. She knew what was waiting for her back in Mabeland, and even with the possibility of escape on offer, she'd no interest in playing along with Bill's sick games; and besides, she'd had more than enough of her private utopia the first time around. So, as soon as she'd had the chance to make her mind, she'd picked the portal to the now-frozen Gravity Falls and resolved to live with whatever it threw at her.
Or at least, that had been the plan.
Day-to-day survival wasn't a problem, of course: with time permanently frozen, it wasn't as if there was anything out there that could deliberately hurt her, and because most of the stores had been open at the time Weirdmageddon had begun, finding food was a simple matter of strolling in and taking whatever she needed. She'd even gotten into the habit of leaving handwritten apology notes on the counters of grocery stores she'd looted – just to soothe her conscience. And though sleep had been difficult with the afternoon sun always bright and never setting, Mabel was able to fix that little issue with a few cans of paint and a set of heavy drapes. And if that didn't work, there was always another place to sleep.
No, what got to her in the end were the people. Everywhere she went, she found herself face-to-face with another immobilized figure; everywhere she looked, she saw another citizen of Gravity Falls who'd never move again. Most were complete strangers, but as she wandered the streets in search of whatever supplies she needed to get through the day, Mabel always found herself noticing a few familiar faces: Grenda, Candy, Robbie, Pacifica, Wendy, Bud Gleeful, Lazy Susan, Sheriff Blubs, Deputy Durland, even Toby Determined's legendarily uninspiring mug stood out amidst the silent multitudes.
And even though all of them were frozen and always would be, even though their expressions couldn't change and never would, Mabel couldn't shake the feeling that they were watching her.
Judging her.
It was worse at the Mystery Shack: here, the horrified stares of Dipper and Grunkle Ford seemed to follow her inside the house and all the way up to the attic, while Grunkle Stan's bored expression seemed to turn suspicious and untrusting whenever she walked by.
Once, she'd gone so far as to sequester herself in the attic for an entire day just to avoid a glimpse of those motionless faces, but the sight of the vacant bed across from her had gnawed at her; for a time, she'd tried to pretend that Dipper was there, talking about the day's adventures he'd had with Ford, making her laugh… but the sense of loneliness that stirred up had only made things worse, forcing her out of exile long before hunger could.
Eventually, the guilt and anxiety got so bad that Mabel simply couldn't sleep in the Mystery Shack no matter how tired she was. After that, she made do with "sleepovers" in the few houses with doors left unlocked, snoozing on couches and unoccupied beds in the hope that when she finally awoke, the nightmare would be over. But no matter where she stayed, Mabel found herself driven out by a combination of guilt, loneliness, and a distinct sensation of being Goldilocks waiting for the bears to come home (though that last one might have been the expired milk she'd drank at Grenda's house).
In the end, Mabel finally realized that she'd never find peace anywhere in Gravity Falls: no matter where she went, there'd always be someone – human or otherwise – frozen in place, driving her to madness with their blank staring eyes and their maddening, accusatory silence.
Half-crazed from isolation and lack of sleep, she'd followed the road out of town in a desperate attempt to escape. Less than fifty yards from the highway, however, she found the path blocked by the curving wall of the bubble that now encased Gravity Falls – transparent as air but as solid as a brick wall and effectively unbreakable, as Mabel soon discovered. In her attempts to pierce the barrier, she ruined an entire hardware store's worth of equipment, wrecked the one jackhammer that she'd been able to get working, emptied the power cells of every single weapon in Grunkle Ford's considerable armoury, and wasted a perfectly decent parcel of illegal fireworks; and on every single try, the bubble didn't so much as waver, not even when Mabel went so far as to "borrow" a car from Bud Gleeful's lot and ram it into the barrier for twelve straight minutes. Just as Bill had promised, there was no escaping the time bubble.
Well Mabel, sneered a hateful little voice in the back of Mabel's head, It looks like you got exactly what you asked for: just a little more summer in Gravity Falls, and lots more time to spend with Dipper. Make the most of it – you've got eternity!
That had been the breaking point. As soon as Mabel had gotten back from the barrier, she'd said her goodbyes to Dipper and the others, promising that she'd make thing right somehow – and then made a beeline for the portal to Mabeland, cursing herself every step of the way. It was long, slow journey, made even slower by the fact that she didn't really want to leave, and kept stopping to peek over her shoulder at the receding figures of Dipper and Grunkle Ford. Even when the portal had opened to reveal Mabeland, a vision of enchantment gleaming silver under the moonlight, she couldn't stop herself from looking back – just to remind herself that she could return to the Endless Summer any time she liked.
And once she was back in her palatial bedchamber, lost in the mountain ranges of pillows, buried under a mantle of feather-soft blankets, lulled by soothing background music and drifting gently off to sleep… it was all she could do to keep herself from screaming.
She wanted to hate it here: she wanted to be uncomfortable, revolted and above all else, unable to sleep. If she could have only found it within herself to instinctively hate Mabeland as she had just before she'd left it the first time, she might just have been able to cope with the guilt. But no: in spite of everything that was wrong with this place, she was at peace here, even happy. Bill had originally tailored this world to suit Mabel's personality, and even with most of the old whimsy stripped away or militarized, it was still a place meant to make her feel comfortable; why else would he have bothered keeping Waddles here with her?
I'll find a way out, she thought, as she slowly nodded off. Somehow, I'll break out and find Dipper, and we'll find a way to stop Bill for good this time.
The next morning, Mabel awoke from an infuriatingly sound sleep to find that a small army of plush toy servants had arrived to deliver breakfast in bed: pancakes and icecream layered in edible glitter with a side of chocolate-coated strawberries, plus three episodes of Ducktective projected on a screen roughly the size of a football field.
However, sitting just under her plate was a small pile of forms, "to be signed at your earliest convenience" according to the Giant Pelican Butler. Leafing through the paperwork, Mabel found to her horror that the forms were all death warrants: the waffle guards had arrested three citizens caught protesting Mabel and Bill's dual rulership, and all three of them – Skydiver Kangaroo, The Huggable Sea Anemone and Rollerskating Panda – were to be hanged as soon as their paperwork was completed. Worse still, Mabel was expected to be in attendance, not only to watch every single minute of the execution as it played out, but to actually deliver a speech warning the population of "the deadly consequences of disloyalty."
As soon as the servants had left, Mabel dipped the paperwork in chocolate sauce and fed it to Waddles.
She knew this execution could only be the first of Bill's tests, and she wanted no part in it. Yes, the people she was being asked to execute probably weren't real, but after befriending two figments of her imagination and fighting alongside Rumble McSkirmish, Mabel wasn't about to start killing fantasy people just because she'd been ordered to. And yes, Bill had offered her the chance to see Dipper again, but by now she knew for a fact that Bill couldn't be trusted even if he was being honest: no more agreements, no more deals, especially with suspicious people in goggles. If she was ever going to see Dipper ever again – or any of her friends and family for that matter – she'd have to find her own way out of Mabeland.
So, once she'd finished wolfing down her own breakfast, she got up and started looking for escape routes. She'd been warned very pointedly that stepping out of line would be punished immediately, but after an entire week of petty theft and soul-crushing silence, Mabel wasn't interested in playing along with the rules. Fortunately, Bill had been true to his word in returning her power over Mabeland: all she had to do was wave a hand at the ceiling, and the roof unfolded into a massive spiral staircase heading directly upwards; bit by bit, she extended the palace tower until it was more than double its original height and its spire almost brushed the dome of the sky. Then, she gathered Waddles up in her arms, and began ascending the stairs towards the waiting clouds.
Given just how much Mabeland had changed, escaping probably wouldn't be as simple as finding the border of prison bubble and just bursting through it, but she had to at least give this method a try. So, as soon as she'd reached the top of the staircase (and set Waddles down on the landing), she conjured a needle-sharp lance from the guardrail, slowly extending it into the air; for perhaps thirty or forty feet it travelled, until it finally touched the prison bubble's membranous wall. But instead of bursting apart like it had the last time, the bubble remained intact, and the wall itself didn't so much as budge. Mabel gave the wall a sharp jab with the lance, hoping that she'd at least leave some kind of a dent in it; all she ended up doing was snapping the lance in half.
Okay, so bursting the bubble the old-fashioned way obviously isn't going to work. Question is, what will? And how much can I get away with before someone notices?
Drawing upon all the power she could command, she conjured a massive angle grinder about the size of Grunkle Stan's car and launched it into the wall of the prison bubble with an ear-splitting shriek of metal on stone, sending a veritable waterfall of sparks cascading across the electric-blue sky. Five minutes later, the grinder snapped clean in half, but the prison bubble was still completely unscathed.
Lips pursed in frustration, Mabel transformed her lance into a neon-pink guided missile and hurled it at the bubble wall; she was immediately rewarded with a spectacular explosion and a vivid display of lights to rival any illegal fireworks display, but once again, the barrier didn't so much as wobble.
Gritting her teeth, she remoulded the tower once again, summoning two massive arms from the exterior brickwork and sent them flying fist-first into the bubble; for twenty straight minutes, she pummelled at the wall with all the strength the arms could muster, but after both hands snapped off at the wrists, she was forced to admit defeat.
By now fighting the urge to use some of Grunkle Stan's more colourful expletives, Mabel tried the last and most unlikely trick in her repertoire: focussing all her willpower on the wall of the bubble ahead of her, she shouted "OPEN!"
Nothing happened.
"I want out!" she hollered.
Still nothing.
"Hello? I-don't-want-to-be-here-anymore! I want to be back in the real world with my brother!"
By way of an answer, a single cloud drifted past the landing: Mabel wasn't sure, but it looked suspiciously like a hand flipping the bird.
During her last visit to Mabeland, a single command had been enough to restructure the entire landscape: buildings had sprouted up or vanished into nothingness, mountains had ballooned out of the ground like rising bread dough in an oven, trees had bearded the ground with forests a hundred thousand strong, and rivers had flooded the valleys to form seas a hundred thousand miles across.
If a command wasn't going to burst the bubble, nothing would.
So, she scooped Waddles back into her arms and hurried back down the stairs, quietly dreading the inevitable fallout of what she'd just done: unless the citizens of Mabeland were all deaf, blind and stupid, there was no way in heck that anyone could have failed to notice the hullabaloo from the top of the tower.
Sure enough, Judge Kitty was waiting for her at the foot of the stairs, accompanied by quartet of waffle guards. Much like the rest of Mabeland, he'd changed: oh, he was still clearly a cat with an adorably oversized head and pink fur, and he was still dressed in the same ridiculous-looking suit and judge's wig that he'd worn during Mabel's first visit, but something about his appearance had been altered ever-so-subtly: his fur had darkened from neon pink to deep magenta; his body seemed less shrunken, his frame slightly taller; his cross-eyed stare was gone, both eyes now focussing on Mabel with a precision that was nothing short of unearthly… and unless she was deeply mistaken, the Judge's paws were now tipped with long, sickle-shaped talons.
"Well," he said briskly. "That didn't take long at all, did it? Bill told us to expect an escape attempt or two, but you're quicker off the mark than even he suspected: he thought you'd at least wait until after the execution-"
"-which I'm still not going to, by the way," Mabel interrupted.
"Non-negotiable, I'm afraid. If you want to stay here, then you have to play by the rules Bill established."
"But I don't want to be here! I thought we'd just established that!"
Judge Kitty took a deep breath. "Let me just rephrase that. Mabel, you were given the option of choosing your prison, and you were told – quite succinctly – that you'd have to operate to a very strict set of instructions in each one; the location might change, but the sanctity of the law doesn't. If you want to be imprisoned here and not in the Land of Endless Summer, then you've got to obey the rules: no escape attempts, no unhappiness, and above all else, no empathy. If you can't behave yourself, then you'll be punished as often as it takes for you to learn your lesson… starting right meow."
He cleared his throat. "Dippy Fresh? Restrain her, if you please."
Mabel had barely enough time to set Waddles down before something crashed into her at high speed with an earsplitting scream of "WIGGITY-WIGGITY WAZZUP?!", knocking her off her feet and slamming her hard against the carpet. Mabel tried to fight back, to grab her attacker and freeze him in mid-air, to turn the floor around her to quicksand, to bring down the ceiling on top of him, but nothing happened: her powers were gone once again. A moment later, she felt the distinctive chill of metal around her wrists, and realized she'd just been handcuffed.
"Captive cuffed and ready for desquarification, dude-judge! High five!" cackled a familiar voice.
"Good. Now, get her upright."
Cold hands seized her by the scruff of her neck, hauling her to her feet so violently that Mabel felt her back give an unpleasant pop, and shoving her into the waiting arms of the waffle guards. A quick glance over her shoulder revealed that figure who'd grabbed her was indeed Dippy Fresh, but like Judge Kitty, he'd changed in his own strange and disturbing way: instead of the cooler replicas of Dipper's real clothes, he wore a pitch-black officer's uniform, complete with medals, epaulettes and a pair of boots so shiny they probably would have gleamed in the dark like miniature spotlights. And though he still wore his usual cap backwards and his familiar sunglasses just low enough for Mabel to see his eyes, not a shred of colour remained in either of them… and looking past the pitch-black shades, she saw that his irises of his eyes now glowed a fiery orange – just as they had before Mabeland had begun disintegrating.
"As you can see, Bill's instituted a few important changes meownd here," said Judge Kitty. "Dippy Fresh is our new chief of security; more specifically, he's in charge of keeping you on your best behaviour, and he will remain in this position until such time as you're able to obey the rules without even thinking."
"And what about you?" Mabel snarled. "You're calling the shots all of a sudden?"
A distinctly smug smirk etched itself across Judge Kitty's face. "Bill's given me the position of deputy-administrator: as long as you're obeying the rules, I'm your right-hand cat. Step out of line, and I'm in charge until your punishment is over. Now, I advise you to think very carefully about what you do at this afternoon's execution-"
"I told you, I'm not going to go through with it! I don't care what you say or do to me, I'm not killing those people."
"Even if they're not real?"
"I don't care if they're not real! You can punish me all you want, you can even throw me right back in the Endless Summer, but I'm not playing along with you! You can tell Bill that he'd best forget any plans of making me like him: I'm not killing anybody!"
The smirk grew substantially. "Is that so?" Judge Kitty purred. "Well now, that's no problem. I'll understudy for you at the execution while you enjoy today's punishment. We'll just see how long it takes for you to reconsider…"
He waved a paw, and with a flicker of warping reality, an open doorway materialized directly in front of her – a doorway leading off into darkness. From Mabel's vantage point, it looked to be little more than a pitch-black rectangle cut into thin air, a deep well carved in the fabric of the world. Then, before she could get a closer look at what might be lurking in the shadows beyond, the nearest of the waffle guards slammed the handle of his knife into Mabel's back, sending her hurtling through the portal.
She landed heavily, and rose too slowly to reach the door before it slammed shut, plunging her into stygian darkness.
For the first five minutes, Mabel could only stand there, paralysed with fear as she tried desperately not to imagine what might be waiting for her in shadows that now surrounded her. She couldn't even guess at the space she'd been imprisoned in – for all she knew, this place might literally go on forever and those shadows might just be hiding an army, but there was no way she'd be able to tell: the darkness was omnipresent, impenetrable, all-encompassing, and utterly, utterly lightless; there was no way for her eyes to adjust to the gloom, no tiny glimmer of light on the horizon for her to focus on, just endless, silent void.
Five minutes came and went, and nothing reached out from the darkness to attack her. So, Mabel took a very tentative step forwards, hoping against hope that she wouldn't bump into anything – or anyone; finding nothing, she took another step, and then another, until she was able to slowly advance into the gloom at a halfway decent walking pace. All the same, she couldn't quite shake the feeling that she was about to bang her shins against something or stumble into the arms of some waiting monster, and it took a lot of effort to continue her forward stride without losing her nerve.
Eventually, the unending silence got the better of her; she didn't know if anyone was listening, or if by speaking she'd end up bringing the inevitable monster attack down on her head, but after about half an hour of total silence, she was past caring.
"Hello?" she called out. "Anyone there?"
No response.
"HELLO?"
Still nothing.
"ANYBODY!" she hollered, voice on the edge of hysteria.
If anything, the darkness seemed even quieter once the echoes had faded.
For what felt like hours, Mabel wandered the darkness, seeing nothing, finding nothing, and hearing nothing but the sound of her own voice echoing across the void. It seemed that wherever Judge Kitty had sent her, it really did go on forever: she had to have walked for miles on end and she still hadn't bumped into a single obstacle or found the walls of this place (if there were any). There didn't even seem to be a floor here, if that was possible, for though there was definitely something supporting her feet, her hand passed right through it whenever she reached down to investigate. Maybe she was floating in space, drifting aimlessly across a universe without stars or planets – an entire lifeless universe set up just for her.
Or maybe I'm in hell, she thought. That's what's supposed to happen to people like me, isn't it?
Time dragged on, and all fears of meeting something horrible in the darkness gradually faded away, to be replaced by a deep, crushing sense of isolation: being here – in this nowhere place, this emptiness that seemed to stretch into infinity – was so dull, so mind-numbing lonely that after a while, Mabel ended up talking to herself just to break the silence. It was a habit she'd picked up back in the Land of Endless Summer, but back there it had at least felt like someone would answer (it had to Mabel at any rate); here, talking to yourself was just another horrendous reminder of the loneliness. Of course, that didn't stop her from doing so, if only to keep herself from going completely insane… with mixed success, admittedly: at one point, she got into a long and distinctly heated argument with herself over what precise colour the shadows were, and went so far as to threaten violence over the correct use of the term "ultra-obsidian shadow ink mega-basalt gloom."
For a while, she even sang – loudly, reflexively and noticeably off-key – but eventually had to stop once she started listening to the lyrics and realized that she was singing musical numbers from her puppet show.
Eventually, even her attempts to fill the silence failed her, and she was forced to stop talking if only to spare her throat. Soon, she was forced to stop and rest as well, for despite the lack of anything tangible beneath her feet, her heels and legs ached from constant walking. But she couldn't stay still for long, though: for every minute she wasn't moving, the darkness seemed a thousand times more oppressive. At least when she was in motion, the all-pervasive darkness had occasionally made her feel as if she was wandering through some long-lost network of caverns, slowly but surely making her way to the surface; when she stood still, she felt as though she'd been buried alive. If she stood still long enough, she could actually smell the damp earth, hear the distant thud of fresh soil being shovelled onto her coffin, feel the air growing stale and thin as the minutes ticked by…
So she kept walking, too scared to stop for long unless she literally had no other choice. By then, she'd just about lost all sense of time: she could have been walking for days on end, or she could have only been walking for a few minutes. It was impossible to tell: the shadows around her ate what little certainties were left about this place.
More than once, she thought she heard Dipper's voice in the distance – sometimes howling in agony, sometimes angry and accusing, sometimes begging for Mabel's help – but no matter how fast she ran and how far she travelled, she could never catch up with the source of those distant cries. Once or twice, she tried calling out, hoping that Dipper would actually answer her or even follow the sound of her voice, but even if the real Dipper was somewhere out there in the darkness, he never gave any sign that he'd heard her – or that Mabel wasn't totally alone in this bleak, lightness nightmare.
At some point, Mabel started screaming.
She still wasn't sure why; by then, she was so wearied and footsore from roaming the shadows that she didn't even feel in control of her own body anymore: walking was an automatic process, singing and speaking just something her mouth happened to do of its own accord, and even her own anger, fear and desperation seemed out of her control. So Mabel could only watch, reduced to a spectator in her own body as it began to scream louder and louder until every last inch of darkness echoed with the sound.
And then…
Light flooded the void.
Suddenly in control of her own body again, Mabel let out a yelp of pain and crashed to the ground, hands clamped across her eyes. For a moment she could only lie there, eyes struggling to adjust to the blinding light; eventually, the pain receded, and she was able to look out at the world without cringing.
Immediately, she realized she was back in her palatial bedchamber, lying on the floor in a crumpled heap. A duo of waffle guards now hovered over her, one keeping her pinned to the ground with the butt of his knife while his partner undid Mabel's handcuffs; less than a few feet away, Judge Kitty and Dippy Fresh were staring down at her with undisguised amusement.
"It looks to me that you've had an interesting time on the inside," said Judge Kitty. "Are you ready to behave now?"
"…I… what?"
"The answer to my question had better be yes, Mabel: you've been in there for over a week. I'd think you'd have enough time to think on your mistakes."
"A week? I… what… what did you do to me?"
"Nothing. All we did was make sure all those troublesome human bodily functions weren't there to distract you and let your mind do the rest. Sensory deprivation's funny like that: a little darkness, some gold-old-fashioned peace and quiet, a few days without mental stimulation, and… well, the human brain turns to so much soggy oatmeal after a while."
"But I heard Dipper's voice!"
Judge Kitty shrugged. "I'm not surprised."
"Was he there? Was he real? Is he still there?"
There was a pause, and then a malignant-looking smirk slowly played out across the Judge's features. "He might be… or he might not be," he said smugly. "It's not my job to answer these sorts of questions, Mabel, so I suppose you'll just have to find some way to live with the ambiguity of it all – or go insane. But then again, it's not your problem anymore: the Dipper you heard could have been a figment of your imagination, or he could have been the genuine article. You'll never know, and you'll never need to know. After all, you've got Dippy Fresh."
"But he's-"
"Exactly what you wanted," Dippy Fresh snickered. "Remember? You wanted a better bro, so here I am, dude: cooler, slicker, and more supportive – just like you asked. High five!"
Mabel cringed with guilt, remembering how enraged Dipper had been when he'd first met the "replacement." Looking back, she could only wonder what the hell she'd been thinking on the day she decided she wanted a better brother – and the day she decided it would be funny to let Dipper see it in action… though the simple answer was that she hadn't been thinking at all.
"I take it back, okay?" she all but screamed. "Everything I said about what I wanted, every proclamation I made when I was in charge of Mabeland, I take it all back! I don't want this anymore! I don't want any of it!"
"Oh but you do," the Judge purred. "This is exactly what you wanted the first time you were here, and it's exactly what you want here and now; the only difference is that, this time meownd, you'll have to earn what you want. If you want to be the selfless all-caring little miss messiah you've always wanted to be, that's fine by us: you can enjoy that altruism in solitary confinement – or any one of the other punishments Bill has prepared for you. But when you feel like being honest about yourself, you can reclaim control of Mabeland anytime you please."
"Dudebros!" Dippy Fresh shrieked. "A choice between being miserable and being queen of Mabeland? Do you even have to decide, Mabes? This place is here to make you happy! Who cares who has to suffer for it?"
"But-"
"We'll give you a chance to consider things," said the Judge. "In the meantime, no more escape attempts – or you go back in the void for another week. As for the execution, you missed out on the execution this time… but there'll be plenty more in future. You'd best find some time to recover; after all, you never know when you'll be tested next."
In the end, it turned out that Mabel didn't even need to wait for the next execution to be tested: the "test," if you could call it that, arrived the moment she sat down at her desk to waste time.
By then, she'd been out of solitary confinement for a grand total of five hours, most of which had been spent recovering. With as much time away from her official duties as she could successfully beg for, she'd taken a hot bath, enjoyed a quick nap on the tennis court-sized couch, binge-watched Ducktective, basked in the warm midmorning sun, and cuddled Waddles until she was absolutely certain that she wasn't going to find herself back in the void the next time she closed her eyes. She'd had lunch by then – pancakes marinaded in chocolate and caramel, layered in strawberries, drizzled with maple syrup and thoroughly garnished with sugar – so she decided to make sure that her nerves were well and truly settled by sitting down to a little arts and crafts.
So, she drew upon her powers to conjure up all the supplies she needed: wool, knitting needles, paper, pencils, crayons, glue, paint, clay, wax, plus a few things that could only exist in Mabeland. On her first visit, she'd barely even considered using this stuff, having been too busy skysurfing across clouds of candyfloss or ricocheting down roads in hopelessly overambitious bumper-car games; right now, though, Mabel desperately needed something to clear her head, something that would give her the time and the peace of mind to think of her next move.
She began with drawings – not of her usual fantastic faire, which was pretty much visible at all times in Mabeland – but of the real world and the people she knew there: she drew Gravity Falls before Weirdmageddon, in all its mundane-yet-quirky glory; she drew Grenda and Candy, just as they'd been when she'd first met them – Grenda cradling her iguana in her enormous arms, Candy with her fingers tipped with dinner forks, expressions of purest exuberance on both their faces; she drew Wendy, relaxed and self-assured as ever, with an axe over her shoulder and her vivid red hair flowing behind her; she drew Soos, fresh from the latest round of repairs about the Mystery Shack, wide-eyed with excitement and ready for another adventure; she drew Grunkle Ford, resplendent in his trenchcoat and adventurer's gear, a confident smile on his face and a story of the supernatural ready to tell; she drew Grunkle Stan in the Mr Mystery suit and fez, his familiar roguish grin softening as she spread his arms wide for a hug; she drew Dipper – her Dipper – with his notebook and well-chewed pen and endless fascination with the mysteries of Gravity Falls, smiling at her over the edge of his notebook just as he'd done on so many past adventures. All these individuals and more she drew in exacting detail, reaching levels of precision she'd previously only achieved when working with wax – until it looked as though the images might leap off the page and come to life.
Once she'd finished drawing, finished venting everything she'd had to vent over what was lost, she set aside her pencils and took up the knitting needles, hoping that a return to comforting routines would be enough to clear her head-
And in that moment, Dippy Fresh burst in through the open window on his skateboard, scattering her work in all directions.
"You're real bad at doing what Bill says, dudebro!" he cackled. "No sadness allowed, Mabes - and that includes no homesickness. This is your home now, so drop the 'tude."
"I wasn't homesick," Mabel lied. "I was just drawing a few-"
"And that's another problem right there! You don't need to draw anymore, dude; as long as you're here, you shouldn't need to make art at all: no drawing, no knitting, no modelling, no painting, no nothing!"
Mabel blinked. "What," she mumbled. "I… what."
"You know what art is, Mabes? It's what squares need to do to make themselves feel better about being squares; it's what losers have to do to feel like winners. People like them, they can only make their dreams real by putting it on paper or canvas or whatever and pretending it's important, when all it means is that they didn't have the guts to go out and take what they wanted, and they didn't have the power to change the world. You're not a square, dude; you don't settle for less: you want something, all you gotta do is wave a hand and make it happen. You know it, Bill knows it, and that's why you're both in charge."
Mabel took a deep breath, hands instinctively bunching into fists, fingernails slowly digging into her palms. "In other words, I'm not allowed arts and crafts anymore," she said quietly.
"You're not allowed to be a square, dudebro. Simple as that!"
"And here I was thinking I was allowed to do anything that made me happy."
"Art doesn't make you happy, remember? It makes you a loser! Besides, you were only doing this because you missed home – no breaking the rules either, Mabes. So, first thing's first, all this-" he indicated the pile of drawings "-has got to go bye-bye."
Mabel thought for a moment. "Aren't you breaking the rules just by existing?" she asked.
For the first time since he'd been willed into existence, Dippy Fresh's effortlessly confident expression went blank. "Do what with the who now?"
"I created you, sure, but that wasn't what I really wanted even back then: I wanted the real Dipper around so I could convince him to stay in Mabeland with me, and I couldn't just make a copy of him, not without feeling like the whole thing was a fake. Plus, I was afraid of what he'd say to me if I made him too close to the genuine article. So I made you – to be more 'supportive' than I thought my real brother could be," she added, barely managing to hide the self-loathing in her voice. "Now, call me crazy but that sounds an awful lot like settling for less… which, by your standards, would make you the perfect example of an arts and crafts project, Dippy Fresh."
"What."
"Sure, you're a lot livelier than most of my earlier works, but when all's said and done, you're just another thing I cooked up because I couldn't change the real world. So you tell me, why shouldn't you just vanish right here and now?"
Dippy Fresh's mouth flapped wordlessly for several seconds, his jaw hanging open in mute incredulity. "That… that's cheating!" he shrieked. "You can't weasel me out of existence like that!"
"Can't I? I thought this place was supposed to make more like Bill – more ruthless, more heartless, more cunning. Don't you think this is something he'd make you do if he couldn't be bothered to just rip your head off?"
"No," said Dippy; he was struggling to recover his cool, but Mabel could easily tell that she'd rattled him badly. "I'm not some cheap knock-off: I'm better than the real thing, just like everything else here. 'sides, you don't get to worm outta this one, Mabes. You're the one getting punished, not me. You wanna make me do anything like that, you've gotta pass his tests and obey the rules. So that means…" He reached over and scooped a handful of drawings off the desk. "This has to go!"
The drawing of Gravity Falls went first, torn right down the middle and scattered into the wastebasket. Then went Grenda and Candy, then Stan, then Ford; finally, Dipper's drawing was torn apart, balled up and spat on. For good measure, the knitting was set on fire and the rest of the craft supplies thrown out the window.
"See?" said Dippy Fresh. "That wasn't too hard, was it? Next time don't dream it, do it."
Mabel smiled. "Alright then," she said calmly.
And without another word, she drew back her fist and slugged Dippy Fresh hard in the nose.
"What was that for?!" he shouted, hands clasped protectively over his face.
"Because I wanted to, of course. Don't dream it, do it, remember?"
Dippy Fresh's expression shifted rapidly from astonishment to outright anger, the emotion strange and distinctly alien to his casually-amiable features. "Alright then," he said, visibly struggling to force a smile back on his face. "Alright then. You wanna make the punishment worse, not my problemo."
"Worse? Worse? How could being locked up in the void for another week possibly be worse?"
All of a sudden, there was a smile on his face once again – not his usual lazy grin but a malicious, hateful smirk. This wasn't the Dippy Fresh she'd created back in her first visit; this was a mocking upgrade on the original concept, courtesy of Bill Cipher. "Weren't you listening, Mabes?" he giggled. "The void's for escape attempts. Wishing for the real world gets you something different…"
He snapped his fingers; once again, the fabric of reality folded open into another doorway – this one a hatchway leading off into a blazing whirl of colours swirling in kaleidoscopic frenzy across infinite space. Halos and coronas blazed across the alien horizon, tributaries of semi-tangible power pulsed and oozed, and tendrils of liquescent energy reached tentatively over the edge of the portal, into Mabeland – making a beeline straight for Mabel herself.
"You want outta here, right? You wish you never made that deal with Bill? You wish you hadn't given him the Rift? Fine. You take a nice long dose of reality, Mabel; see how that works out for ya."
"What are you ta-"
And then reality shifts.
Dipper's dead.
Less than a week after his thirteenth birthday, a drunk-driver veered off the road and crushed him against a brick wall; Mabel was walking home from school with him when it happened, and the sound of squealing tyres and the sickening crack of splintering bones still echoes across her mind no matter how hard she tries to blot it out. Time and again, the scene replays itself across her nightmares, always forcing her to awake screaming and inconsolable.
By now, the funeral's already over. Soos, Wendy, Grunkle Ford and Grunkle Stan have all said their tearful farewells. The tributes have already been made in the newspapers. Dipper's killer is already in court and will soon be in jail for a very long time. To everyone else, the tragedy is already over.
But it will never be over, not to Mabel. She can't erase the moment from her memories, nor can she ever rid herself of her regrets – regret that she couldn't save Dipper, that she never got a chance to say goodbye to him, that she couldn't hold her composure on the day she was called as a witness to the drunk-driver's trial… and perhaps most humiliatingly, that after all their adventures in Gravity Falls, after all the dangers they'd faced together, that Dipper had to die in such a mundane way. In the end, it wasn't a godlike being from another dimension that killed her brother, nor was it a shapeshifting horror or a vengeful ghost – just some nobody who'd decided to down half a bottle of vodka at three in the afternoon and drive home drunk.
And this is the worst part, because she can't tell Mom and Dad. She can't explain what happened in Gravity Falls, that Dipper was a hero and deserved so much better; she knows they won't believe her, and the knowledge has left her isolated. The only people who know the truth are back in Gravity Falls, only intermittently reachable by email. In the days following their return home, Dipper was the only one who could comfort her when the burden of secrecy got too much; but now he's gone, and there's nobody to talk to.
Now Mabel is alone, and nothing in the world can fill the void left in her life… except –
And then reality shifts.
It's her fourth year at high school, and Mabel is struggling. It's even worse than Wendy led her to believe: by now, she's been outed as the school freak and the other students hate her. Scarcely a week goes by without the other girls ganging up on her for one reason or another: her homework is destroyed, her art projects are ruined, her locker is almost always stuffed with something repulsive, and there's nothing anyone can do about it.
Even if the culprits are caught in the act, little things like detention or suspension do nothing to deter them: as soon as the punishments are over with, they go right back to tormenting Mabel as if nothing had happened. There's no explanation for this, no good reason for the girls to despise her so. The nearest thing to justification she gets is "maybe if you were normal, you wouldn't be so easy to hate."
Dipper fares little better: he's always bruised and black-eyed and miserable, and though the two of them are able to bond for a time over their shared misfortunes, it doesn't last. He's beginning to retreat from the real world, slowly withdrawing deeper and deeper into his work in a desperate attempt to withstand the abuse, and the teachers only encourage this: they can already smell the future academic prestige wafting off their newest prodigy, and all of them want to profit from paving his way to success – even if it means separating him from Mabel. Bit by bit, the Mystery Twins are drifting apart. Soon, Mabel will be all alone, and there's nothing she can do to stop it… except –
And then reality shifts.
She's twenty-two and looking at herself in the mirror. Her body is withered and fail, her skin drawn taught across her bones, her ribs jutting from her chest like grasping claws; her hair's turned brittle, and she's pretty sure it's starting to fall out in clumps; worst of all are her eyes, bloodshot and tired and so very, very lost.
She's been crying for hours now, courtesy of the latest humiliation at the office, exacerbated by a HR department unwilling to tolerate complaints about management. She has exactly two hours left until she's supposed to get to work, and even with forty-eight hours without sleep and what looks to be a dose of the flu on the way, she can't afford to ask for a day off: she can't afford to risk dismissal. She hasn't called Dipper or Grenda or Candy or any of her friends for weeks; she hasn't touched her art supplies in over two months; she hasn't even thought of having a life outside work.
She's alone. Alone, exhausted and without hope… except for –
And then reality shifts.
Three possibilities, all of them painting a picture of the inevitable tragedy in Mabel's life, had she refused "Blendin's" bargain and resolved the conflict with Dipper amicably. But there are other possibilities – so many more: there is heartbreak, broken marriages, stillbirths, deaths in the family, dashed dreams, failed ambitions, madness, even war.
But in each of them, Mabel knows that there is one way to escape from her endless misery.
The Rift is still active – hidden but still very much active.
In every iteration of this story, Dipper and Ford were able to seal the cracks in its containment shell once and for all… but for all Ford's brilliance, there are still gaps in his knowledge. He doesn't know that the UFO's crew might have foreseen the need for a solvent to dissolve their adhesive; he doesn't know that bottles of the solvent were scattered across the forest when the ship crashed so many eons ago… and he doesn't know that the last surviving bottle was buried under a mountain of rubble just beyond the boundaries of the town he explored so diligently.
But Bill Cipher knows.
And he is always willing to share such secrets with those who would do his bidding.
And then-
Without warning, the visions pouring into Mabel's brain suddenly cease, leaving her to collapse to the ground in an agonized heap.
"See?" Dippy Fresh said smugly. "Your life would have been miserable without us; all the timelines confirm it. Bill saved you from all the misery you would have had to deal with in the real world… and you want to go back to it?"
Mabel said nothing: she was too busy trying not to vomit.
Dippy Fresh just laughed. "I'll leave you to it, dudebro. No more art in the meantime, yeah? You've got a lot of fun on the way, and we don't need you distracted with all that square business…"
Three days went by.
Every day, another round of paperwork arrived on her breakfast table, every single form demanding fresh acts of cruelty: eviction notices, arrest warrants, permission slips for torture, formal demands for flesh and blood, and the ever-popular death warrants. Every day, Bill tried to force Mabel to commit an atrocity, and every day, Mabel refused.
And every day, Mabel was punished for it in some new and exotic way: once-mundane furniture turned to solid steel and caged her arms in constricting bands of metal, leaving her trapped for hours on end; the carpet turned to razorblades and needles underfoot, pincushioning her toes a thousand times over; living nightmares escaped from her mind to wreak havoc on the few parts of Mabeland where she could still find peace; her most unpleasant memories surrounded her in an endless tapestry of humiliations and embarrassments, forcing her to relive them over and over again; visions of Bill's new empire trickled across the wall separating her from the rest of the world, giving her a few brief but horrific snapshots of what humanity now suffered under his domain – and sometimes, Bill let her feel just a fraction of the agony all those people now felt.
About the only upside to the whole ordeal was the simple fact that solitary confinement and possible futures never came into play again – if only because those particular punishments were reserved for very particular crimes.
For her part, Mabel did her best to withstand the torment. She knew the terms of Bill's little arrangement, and she'd no interest in playing along with any of it: if the torture got too much, she'd just go straight back to the Land of Endless Summer and stew there for a while until she was ready to continue looking for escape routes in Mabeland.
All the same, she couldn't quite shake the feeling that she was just exchanging one kind of torture for another: after all, Gravity Falls in Endless Summer was just as miserable as any of the punishments Mabeland could throw at her.
By the third day, Mabel had the distinct impression that Bill was running out of ideas for the next punishment: the breaks between sessions were getting longer and longer, and though the demented corn chip hadn't shown his face since the start of this sick little game, she could almost sense his presence hovering over Mabeland, feel his anger crackling through the air like a thunderstorm waiting to happen; in fact, she'd sworn she could hear the distant sounds of him grumbling once or twice between punishment sessions. He was looking for something that would finally get her to play along, something that would push her over the edge, but she couldn't imagine what.
Or maybe she just didn't want to imagine.
On the morning of the fourth day, Mabel awoke from a deep and dreamless sleep to find herself surrounded on all sides by shadows: her bedroom, normally brightly-lit and kept at a downright summery climate, had been plunged into a deep grey twilight not commonly seen outside of rainy autumn sunsets, and was now so cold that Mabel had to drag out an extra blanket just to keep out the chill. Groggy as she was, she knew at once that this was clearly something out of the ordinary: Mabeland had never seen this kind of weather, not even when it had finally collapsed into ruin during her first escape.
By now extremely nervous, she sat up in bed and scanned the room for any sign of imminent threats, to no avail: the bleak grey stormclouds allowed for barely enough light to see the room by, but it also allowed far too many shadows. For all she knew, the room could be filled with monsters and she'd never know it until one of them made a grab for her; by now, she could already tell that this was some new and terrible punishment Bill had cooked up, but she couldn't guess at what it involved.
And then, just as she was starting to wonder just how long it would take for the pain and the suffering to set in, something in the darkness moved.
For twelve heartstopping seconds, Mabel remained frozen in bed, staring out into the inscrutable gloom.
Then, from just a few feet in front of her, there was a low, rasping cough.
"Who's there?" Mabel whispered.
Deep in the shadows, something let out a weak and decidedly mirthless burst of laughter that swiftly dissolved into another spate of coughing. Eventually, the coughing subsided, and in the ringing silence that followed, a hoarse voice whispered, "Just a toy."
Mabel shivered; something about the voice sounded distinctly familiar, but she couldn't quite place it.
"What…" She took a deep breath. "What do you want with me?"
Another weak, gasping chuckle echoed across the room. "Want is such a strong word, isn't it? I don't think I'm in a position to want anything: I'm a toy, remember?"
"But who are you?"
There was a rustle of ancient cloth somewhere in the darkness; then, from out of the shadows by the doorway, a figure began shambling wearily into the half-light. At first, Mabel thought she was looking at a zombie, for the intruder's body was little more than a scarecrow of tattered grey flesh and crooked old bones, but as it drew closer she realized that the figure was actually alive and breathing – somehow. Its face was horribly mangled: deep trenches had been carved in the withered flesh, diagonal scars criss-crossing the ragged features over and over again; one eye was missing, and the other was almost scarlet from burst blood vessels; all that was left of the nose was a gaping crater.
With all these wounds, this sad creature seemed at first unrecognizable. It wasn't until Mabel took in the distinctive jawline, looked down at this apparition's clothes, and saw those telltale hands propping it up against the wall that she finally realized that she was looking at the disfigured, emaciated form of Stanford Pines.
"Grunkle Ford?" she whispered.
"Maybe," he muttered. "We were all different once. Now we're just his toys."
For a moment, Mabel could only stare in horror, not just at the wounds that had been inflicted on Ford, but at his change in demeanour. Before Weirdmageddon – even during their brief reunion at the Fearamid, in fact – Grunkle Ford had been alive and active in every sense of the word: brilliant, decisive, almost impossibly sure of himself, he'd been the first to act against Bill when he'd arrived in Gravity Falls, and up until Grunkle Stan's last, desperate gambit, she'd never seen him looking demoralized or even defeated. And yet here he was, a ruin of his former self, crushed by despair and all but dead in spirit.
"Wha… what are you doing here?"
"Bill let us out for a bit. We've been looking for you. Can't stay long, though, have to move on: he doesn't like the others getting a look at us – upsets them."
"We?" Mabel echoed. "You mean there's more of you?"
By way of an answer, something in the shadows just beyond the windows glowed faintly, accompanied by a hiss of smoke and the sound of a human voice whimpering in pain. Once again, a mangled figure stepped into the light, quivering and smouldering as he went: burned almost beyond recognition, this new arrival was a mass of scorched clothes, burn scars and so much charred meat; indeed, parts of it were still burning, a few patches of errant flesh still glowing like coals in the darkness. However, though the unfortunate victim's hair had been scorched away and most of the skull had been seared from his skull, his face was still intact for the most part – just enough for Mabel to recognize him at any rate.
"Grunkle Stan?" she whispered.
Stan's only answer was an agonized moan; between whimpers, a few errant tendrils of smoke oozed from between broken teeth. Bill hadn't just burned him, but had done so from the inside-out.
"He's the only reason why we were let out in the first place," Ford said quietly.
"What do you mean?"
"He'd seen what had happened to the rest of us – well, Bill showed him, just to make him suffer a little more. Stanley wanted freedom for all of us, and he wanted us to be a family again… so he made a deal with Bill: he agreed to play along with whatever games were arranged for him, all in exchange for a chance to leave and meet up with the rest of us… so Bill did this to him first."
"That's… that's…" Mabel floundered, unable to find a word to describe what had been done; this was beyond words. "I'm sorry," she said at last.
"Not as sorry as I am," said Ford quietly.
At that moment, Stan let out a loud groan of pain and almost collapsed against the windowsill. All fear forgotten, Mabel leapt out of bed and hurried towards him with a cry of "Grunkle Stan!"
But at the last minute, Ford grabbed her by the collar before she could reach him. "Best not touch him," he whispered. "He's in enough pain already."
"Can't I just-"
"Say hello? Comfort him? Look at his skull, Mabel; look at what Bill did to his eyes."
By now running on instinct, Mabel looked up at Grunkle Stan's scar-framed face, and realized with a thrill of horror that his eyes had been seared bare by the fire: all that remained were milky-grey lumps of jelly sitting limply in sockets haloed with burn scars. And judging by the charred ruins of the rest of his cranium, he didn't even have ears left either.
"That's the joke, you see," said Ford. "He burned him, blinded him, deafened him, left every single nerve ending in his body alight… and then released him into the wild to find a family he couldn't see, hear or touch. The only reason he found us at all was because Bill was… charitable enough to open a portal in front of him; we followed him out one by one, and we've been looking for you ever since."
"You're here to take me with you?"
In spite of herself, in spite of all the horrors that had been inflicted on Stan and Ford, Mabel felt something she hadn't felt in all the time she'd been here: hope. With it came relief – immediate and explosive and without dignity whatsoever.
"Thank you," she babbled pathetically, "Thank you, thank you, thank you! I promise I'll help you, I'll find some way of patching both of you up, I'll make things right, I'll carry things, I'll fetch things, I'll do whatever you need to-"
Ford sighed. "I'm afraid it's not as simple as that, Mabel."
"What do you mean?"
In the awkward silence that followed, Grunkle Stan let out another pained moan. This time, however, he actually managed to force out a few coherent words: "Why won't he just let us die?" he muttered – in a tone of voice suggesting that he didn't expect anyone to answer him.
As expected, Ford didn't.
"Bill won't allow us to stay together for very long," he continued. "He'll only let the reunion last until we've seen everything that's been inflicted upon one another… and then we go back to our little corners of the toybox and wait until he's ready to play with us again. He might play with us gently, or he'll play with us until we break – again; one way or the other, we probably won't see each other again."
"But… but we can't just leave it like this! We've got to find a way out! We've got to find a way to stop Bill!"
"Yes, and look what good that did us last time."
"Oh come on!" Mabel exploded. "You were the first to try and stop Bill back when all this started! You got us to form the Wheel – and it would have worked if we'd been able to get it assembled in time! How can you just... give up like this? There's got to be something we can do, something to hope-"
Ford spread his arms wide, allowing Mabel to take in the sight of his tattered clothes, his wasted frame and shredded flesh. "Hope?" he said bitterly. "Hope? Look around you, Mabel; look at the playground that's been built from the ashes of reality. Do you think there's any room for hope left in this planet? And look at what we've become: we're not even human beings anymore, just toys. Trite amusements for Bill to play with when conquering the universe bores him. That's all the human race is to him now – a race of pliable, pitiful diversions: porcelain dolls, teddy bears, tin soldiers, puppets, call us what you like, but we're all playthings no matter what name you give us. All the world's a toybox, and all the men and women merely toys." He laughed mirthlessly, once again dissolving into a fit of coughing. "No, Mabel. There's no hope here, no chance of escape, no possibility of redemption. There is only suffering… and blind submission to his will."
"Then why did you even bother following Stan out here?"
"Because Bill decided it was time you had a birthday party… and your brother had a present he wanted to give you."
"He's here too? Why hasn't he-"
The look on Ford's mangled face killed the question before she could finish voicing it: even with one eye missing and the rest of his features little more than bloody gristle, Mabel could still recognize the pitying expression on the unfortunate scientist's face.
"I'm sorry, Mabel," he said quietly.
There was a pause, and then from the shadows, there came a muffled shuffling – the sound of something heavy sliding across the carpet towards her. Mabel soon realized that it was a cardboard box almost twice as tall as she was, covered in bright pink wrapping paper and bedecked with gaudy green-and-silver ribbons; because of the box's height, she couldn't see the figure pushing it into the room, though she could just about recognize the bloodied hands gripping its sides. By the time the box finally ground to a halt in the middle of the room, she was already hazarding a guess or two as to who was standing behind it… but then at last the figure stepped forward – and now there could be no doubt whatsoever.
Dipper's body was a hideous patchwork of scar tissue and pallid grey skin, tied together with iron staples and interrupted by tiny patches of skinless red muscle; he was still dressed in the tattered remains of his usual clothes – but that was only because he'd been sewn into them, crude stitches running through the ragged fabric and deep into his withered flesh. Worst of all were his arms and legs: long, barbed hooks had been driven deep into bones of his wrists and ankles, leaving deep craters in his already-tortured flesh – all four of which were now haloed with tiny rings of sickly, gangrenous tissue. Attached to each hook was a long, sturdy-looking thread leading off into the darkness, and with a fresh jolt of horror, Mabel realized that Dipper was once again Bill's puppet.
At long last, Dipper looked up, revealing that his face had also endured the same grisly collaging… except alongside the stitches, the staples, the flayed muscles and the dead, grey, chemically-preserved skin, tiny jagged shards of broken mirror stood out. Unbidden, a horrific image appeared in Mabel's mind – Bill grabbing Dipper by the back of his head in a fit of pique and slamming headfirst into a mirror, again and again and again, until nothing was left of the looking glass but an empty frame and her brother's face was a mosaic of shattered mirror.
Once again, Mabel couldn't stop herself from rushing forward: she knew Dipper had to be in unimaginable pain, and she knew that touching him was about the dumbest thing she could do under the circumstances, but after so many weeks separated from him and the others, Mabel was almost sick with worry. Charging over with a shriek of "Dipper!" she spread her arms wide for a hug-
-only for Dipper to shove her away, his mangled face a mask of hurt and fear.
"Hey! I'm sorry if I hurt you but-"
Instinctively, Mabel reached out to put a comforting hand on his shoulder, only for Dipper to slap her hand aside again.
"Dipper, what's wrong? Why aren't you-"
By way of an answer, Dipper raised his chin ever-so-slightly, revealing a long thin scar stretching from his Adam's apple all the way to his collarbone. The message was clear: he hadn't said anything yet because he couldn't.
Dipper reached into his pocket and held out a folded letter, and as Mabel opened it, she recognized – too late – the look on her brother's face: it wasn't despair, like with Ford, nor was it pain, as it was with Stan. Instead, the expression on his face was purest hatred.
Dear Mabel, the letter read.
I know what you did.
Bill showed me everything.
I didn't have much reason to trust him at first, but after a while he started making too much sense to ignore. I mean, it seemed a little suspicious that the Rift just broke in your backpack by accident after surviving a droid crash. I probably should have wondered when I saw the prison bubble and what was inside it; I mean, why would Bill imprison you in your own dreamworld when he could have easily just left you to rot in Gravity Falls with the rest of us? And I thought it was a little weird that you "didn't remember" the Rift breaking… but I never thought it could have been you.
I didn't want to believe it was you, but it was. You sold us out. That you didn't know who you were dealing with is no excuse: you bought yourself a paradise with the lives of everyone on Earth and you didn't even have the guts to admit it when we saw each other again. While I was eating things out of dumpsters and trying not to get petrified by the eyebats, you were living it up in Mabeland. While Wendy, Soos and Grunkle Stan were carving out a living from the wasteland, you were ruling a kingdom Bill had set aside just for you. While Grunkle Ford and everyone else in Gravity Falls were petrified and turned into building blocks, you were free to do whatever you wanted. And now you're back here again, this time with two paradises to enjoy while the rest of us get tortured for all eternity. Back when you first arrived in Mabeland, did you ever imagine what might be happening to Mom and Dad when Weirdmageddon reached them? Well, I don't. Bill showed me. He showed me everything.
Do you remember the puppet show? Do you remember what Bill said to you? "Who would sacrifice everything they'd worked for just for their dumb sibling?"
You said "Dipper would."
I'm tired of being the one who would, Mabel.
I wasn't lying when I said I'd give up my apprenticeship with Ford for you. I wasn't just trying to get you out of Mabeland when I got out in front of a crowd and tore my heart out. After the way I screwed things up, I would have given anything to set things right – to make you happy… and nothing hurts more than realizing that you didn't feel the same way. Nothing hurts more than betrayal.
Grunkle Ford was right all along: in Gravity Falls, you can't trust anyone.
Not even family.
I hope you're happy with the way things have turned out… because right now you're only human being in the entire universe who'll ever have a chance to be happy ever again.
But it's your birthday, so I suppose I might as well give you one last present for old time's sake: you'll find it in the cardboard box.
Trembling, Mabel looked down at the box lying at her feet. For twelve seconds, she dithered aimlessly about it, too scared to open the lid and see what was inside. But eventually Dipper's baleful glare got the better of her, and she began tearing through the wrapping paper, finally wrenching the lid open.
Inside the box were puppets – hundreds of sock puppets, many of them identical to the ones that she'd made for her puppet show. Somehow, despite being well and truly blown to kingdom come by the pyrotechnics, they were all here on display: Dipper, Mabel, Grunkle Stan, Soos, and the rest of the cast – along with puppets that Mabel herself had never made; for one thing, there was a Grunkle Ford puppet here, a Gideon puppet, a Mayor Cutebiker puppet, a Shandra Jiminez puppet – the entire population of Gravity Falls replicated in sock puppet format.
And sitting atop the pile of puppets was another note:
This is us, Mabel, it read.
This is us in the only form that you'll ever be happy with. The world is your puppet show, now. Enjoy it: you're the only one who can.
Goodbye forever,
Your Dumb Sibling
Mabel looked up, hoping that she'd be able to explain herself, to make Dipper understand that she hadn't meant for this to happy, to say that she was sorry.
But Dipper was gone, along with Grunkle Ford and Grunkle Stan. All that remained to mark their passing was the box of puppets.
Suddenly, Mabel couldn't breathe. Everything she'd experienced in the last few weeks of Weirdmageddon seemed to hit her at once – all the fear, the terror, the uncertainty, the anger, the grief, the despair and most of all, the guilt; all of it descended on her – and enveloped her.
She knew it was possible that Bill had faked the reunion, that Dipper was unharmed and he didn't know what she'd done, and that everything she'd witnessed had been an illusion cooked up to torture her. But she couldn't tell: certainty was for people who could trust their senses, and Mabel couldn't even trust herself at that point.
But even if the Dipper who'd written the letter had been nothing more than smoke and mirrors, it didn't matter: he'd been right about her. Everything the letter said was correct: she'd sold out the world for a chance at happiness, and she'd lived in luxury while Gravity Falls had suffered under Weirdmageddon; and while other playthings endured the most horrific tortures, she was being groomed to become as big a monster as Bill. She was a horrible person, and no matter how many times she'd told herself that she wasn't selfish and didn't want to be selfish, the simple fact was that she deserved every punishment she received.
Very slowly, she collapsed to her knees, slumped to the floor, and curled herself into a ball.
And there, lying on the carpet in the darkness and silence of her tailor-made prison, Mabel began to cry.
A/N: This chapter's soundtrack is Bran Bal the Soulless Village by Nobuo Uematsu (piano edition).
Coming up next - a meeting of the minds, and salvation found in dreams! Any guesses? Feel free to theorize!