Breakfast that morning was puddles of maple syrup with a side of pancakes added underneath them, accompanied with sugar dipped oranges and a tall glass of chocolate milk, a tried and true Mabel favorite. The Pines family sat around the table partaking together, happily catching up with the girl from California.
"...So then I told Chad that if he can't handle a bacon dog, then this relationship isn't going whole hog!" Mabel said with a laugh, eliciting chuckles from the other three around the table. Still grinning, she added "He broke up with me after that." without skipping a beat. The table was quiet for a moment, the three others exchanging uncertain looks. Then, she took the initiative with a question of her own. "So, what is a typical day out in beautiful Gravity Falls like for you Dipper?"
"Well, me and Grunkle Ford have a lot of projects going on around the town and the surviving wilderness, mostly mapping the long term effects of Bill's arrival on the natural and supernatural factors of the environment, which mostly consists of setting and checking survey devices and crunching the numbers they produce." Dipper explained. "You can come with me today, it's a great walk through the woods and all over the town."
"So, what kind of new flavor weirdness can we expect while out and about?" Mabel asked with a grin. "Mermen that live on land? Gnomes that learned how to date? Dipper with a girlfriend? Gideon being tall?" she asked the last with a mocking tone.
"The Gleeful family no longer resides in Gravity Falls." Stanford cut in with a serious tone. "Though you two were able to turn Gideon against Bill Cipher, the overwhelming majority of the town still despised him for forming an alliance with him in the first place. They wasted no time attempting to return him to prison to serve out the rest of his sentence, so he and his father went on the run. Mrs. Gleeful is still around town, poor woman."
"And good riddance to that little creep!" Stan added derisively. "Refusing to buy that little shi..." Stan trailed off as his words caught in his throat, looking at Mabel with sudden apprehension while Dipper and Ford mildly glared at him. "...p sucking barnacle's excuses was the smartest thing I've ever seen those townies do!"
Dipper just nodded in mild agreement while Mabel frowned a little over Mrs. Gleeful, but didn't really give it any further thought, aside from recalling Dipper's recounting of her stalker's turnabout, given while they were prepping their counter-attack on Bill. Dipper had quietly confessed that while staring down the devil serving sheriff and his posse of hardened outlaws, he'd resorted to pulling complete nonsense out of his ass and was completely shocked when it saved his life as well as Wendy's. Contrary to the small boy's hopes, that one act did not inspire Mabel to forgive his history of creepiness with her or the multiable murder attempts made against her family.
The rest of the breakfast passed over discussion of more mundane topics, and soon enough Dipper and Mabel were off for the woods, running and laughing as they did that very first summer, only stopping to check the occasional artificial construct; a video camera tied to a tree, a bear trap laid in unicorn pastures, a trap shaped like a bird house where wireless tags are attached, pollen collectors and air samplers. They ran and laughed like carefree children, jumping from logs and swinging from branches. Abruptly however, a chill settled over Dipper, and he came to a quick stop while frowning as Mabel pretended to be a pirate, swinging a stick cutlass.
"Hey Mabel, we should tread quietly for this next one." Dipper said nervously. "In fact, maybe it'd be better if you head back to the Shack and leave this to me."
"Oooh, Dippen-Dots got a secret experiment he won't share with his best ever sister!" Mabel whistled teasingly. "Is it a research camp for observing the red haired lumberjack in her natural habitat, maybe even while baaaaathing?" she drew out the last word as Dipper got increasingly flustered.
Rather than respond with annoyance, as he normally would when teased on this subject, Dipper got quiet for a moment, before letting out a sigh. "No, I suppose you do need to see all this. I'll never hear the end of it otherwise." He concluded before pushing through the trees, briefly stopping to turn around and add "But I'm serious, step lightly up ahead."
"Ah come on Dipper, I'm just joshing you a little!" Mabel replied while falling in beside him. "So what's this super secret special place you got out here? Did Grunkle Stan finally found that religion based on gambling he always talks about and declare a patch of dirt out here his holy land? Stop by the blessed gift shop and absolve your sins for a... a buck... fifty..."
Mabel's words died in her throat as she broke the treeline and gazed upon a peaceful, elusive grove, a picturesque scene of natural beauty in the middle of the woods, spoiled by a single fact:
The grove was filled with gravestones.
"People were worried he might have done something weird to them, or they just might be contaminated in general, and we had some reports during cleanup of corpses moving or speaking, though we never confirmed if any of those reports were true or just the products of scared, damaged minds." Dipper remarked with equal parts sorrow and anger as dread began to build within Mabel. "The townsfolk decided to bury them away from the main cemetery. They talk about keeping potential zombies far away, but I think they knew that adding a whole new branch to the cemetery would just invite questions, so a mass grave hidden in the woods it is. Me and Grunkle Ford have kept watch for any kind of threat."
Mabel was shivering, chilled to the bone on a bright sunny day as the lines of headstones seemed to stretch into forever before her sight despite it being rather small, for a graveyard. "Who... who are they Dipper?" she asked, not wanting to know the answer that was blindingly clear.
"Everyone murdered by Bill Cipher."
Those words hit Mabel like a wave of sludge, knocking her over and drowning her in a tide of guilt, disgust, hatred, pain. The young woman collapsed to her knees and began gasping for air, pressure building in her stomach until she vomited onto the dirt, her body trying to purge itself of these negative emotions.
Dipper was on her in a second, gently patting her on the back and offering soft words. "It's okay Mabel, just get it all out. This is perfectly normal, the exact same thing happened to me when I can back here with Ford and Stan while everyone was still rebuilding."
"How many?" Mabel asked softly as soon as her throat was clear and she could stand up, away from her own vomit.
Dipper's face became concerned. "I... I don't really think you want to know..."
"HOW MANY!?" She demanded angrily, gushing out tears.
"...113, and we still sometimes uncover bodies in out of the way locations." Dipper stated, then looked at his feet in guilt. "And I couldn't tell you the name of a single one of them. I mean, I know I was never the most social guy, but I should have guessed, I should have KNOWN people had died! It... it was just so easy for it to slip my mind. I mean we won, all our friends and family survived, so we just... had a party I guess."
Both twins stood there in silence for a moment, guilt crushing both of them, though Dipper did not even suspect the depths of emotional turmoil Mabel was undergoing, simply thinking his more outgoing twin had probably made friends with some of these townsfolk who were buried here, not even guessing she was blaming herself for each and every one.
"It's all my fault!" Mabel screamed inside her head. "All of these people are dead because of what I did! I'm a monster, a killer, a woman with bloody hands and a..."
The train of thought abruptly ended as Dipper put his arms around her in a comforting hug. The growing warmth pushed back the self-loathing as Mabel felt her twin come close. "And a twin who still loves me." She realized. "Even after all these years." With newfound emotional strength, Mabel did what she did best with emotional problems; pushed them deep into her mind, locked the door and threw away the key. The pain, the disgust, the guilt and everything but the light receded into her mind's dark depths. When the tears stopped falling, she hugged her sibling back.
"And I'm NEVER losing him again!" She thought defiantly as the two separated again. Dipper looked about, not quite sure what to do. "Thanks for that Dipper. Now, let's go get your fancy data or whatever!"
Dipper looked back at her with a soft smile, then walked over to the first of the seismic sensors, explaining how they worked. "The red light on top activates in response to movement, right now it's being triggered by us." he stated while fiddling a USB flash drive into a side slot. "These things are security devices that you can wire into anything, lights, alarms, automatic doors, and when it detects movement it triggers whatever it is wired to, so Grunkle Ford modified them with a bigger data storage and set them to dump the information into these. Then we have a program in the lab which analyzes it for us."
"Couldn't just lay down some flypaper and see if you caught zombies in the morning, eh Dipper?" Mabel replied with a chuckle as she began to walk away, but suddenly realized Dipper wasn't following her.
Her twin brother seemed to be ignoring Mabel, have stopped his walk away to look over the grove one more time. "Dipper...?" she asked with trepidation, freshly buried feelings threatening to snap free.
"This is what we're working to avert." Dipper stated with resolve, after a long moment. "In the world Great Uncle Ford and I will build, the human species will be free from mass slaughters and dark predation, for we will be armed with knowledge." he said with firm resolve in his voice, unclear if he was meant to be addressing Mabel or not.
The twin sister seemed a little uncomfortable by Dipper's turn for the broody, and quietly mouthed "Uhh... that sounds great Dipper..." just to have something to say, but the uncomfortable moment was put behind them as the two vanished back into the forest together.
A shame they didn't notice the seismic sensor was glowing bright red, and showed no signs of going out.
The twin's journey took them into the town proper next, with a friendly face welcoming the female mystery twin back to town every couple of steps. Though officially Dipper was out in town to collect water samples, he was happy to take it slow so his twin could socialize.
As the two passed a little restaurant on the side of the street, Dipper abruptly pulled Mabel into the outdoor dining area and plopped her down on a table already occupied by someone she didn't recognize. "Hey, glad I caught you today, would hate for you to miss Mabel coming back to town!" Dipper exclaimed excitedly.
Mabel cocked her head sideways in confusion, until the table's occupant pushed aside their ice cream float and lowered her sunglasses. "Pacifica Northwest!?" Mabel asked, surprised and a little confused. Though still a tall, purple clad blond like she'd been years ago, the local heiress looked different. It abruptly occurred to Mabel she was devoid of makeup, seemed short on obvious jewelry, and was wearing a much lower quality version of her "discreet" outfit she'd worn when she'd first asked Dipper for help all those years ago.
Though her eyes looked tired, the Northwest grew a genuine smile at seeing the twins. "Welcome back Mabel. Sorry I wasn't able to come out and greet her Dipper, I just... lost track of the date."
"It's alright, everyone forgets things." Dipper replied, returning her smile. "Mabel, Pacifica's been helping me a lot with Grunkle Ford's research over the years. Remind me to tell you about the time we were trapped on top of the water tower and she pushed a vampire off of it!"
"It just feels good to help with something that matters." Pacifica responded. "Your brother is doing some really amazing stuff out here Mabel. He's a real genius." she complemented as Dipper pulled his hat over his face and blushed a little, while a complementary ice cream float was placed on his side of the table.
Though her outward smile was maintained, Mable was feeling confused and mildly upset by the scene in front of her. Mentally, she pictured sparks flying out of her neck beneath a stiff smile as her brain calculated on overdrive. "Waaaaait a minute here, Mabel's matchmaking mind is picking up some chemistry in front of me... Why wouldn't Dipper tell me about this?" Then, she mentally slapped herself. "Because he doesn't recognize it, the big dork. But still, why didn't he tell me about Pacifica at all? He hasn't mentioned her once, not over the internet, not during the holiday, not nothing! Did... did Dipper replace me? Well, no bleach blond stereotype is gonna steal my spot as Dipper's mystery buddy!"
"So you're helping Dippen-Dots out with all his research huh? What's he got you doing, running on a hamster wheel to power the laboratory, or are you testing new cosmetics out before they move to animal testing?" The twin asked teasingly, preemptively playing it off as a joke.
"Mabel! That was rude!" Dipper chastised, and Mabel flinched involuntarily. She hadn't expected Dipper to respond so strongly. "Pacifica is more intelligent then you think." Then he looked over at the other girl and said apologetically "I'm sorry for that Paz, Mabel didn't mean anything, she's just, uh..."
"It's alright Dipper." The blond waved off. "I know from all your stories Mabel is just can't help being a little different. I'm sure she didn't mean anything by that and thinks those are very important roles in the process of discovery." She said warmly to Dipper, before addressing his twin, still smiling but somewhat barbed in tone. "I might not be on the same level as your brother or your great uncle, (but then again who else is?) but I did have the best private schools and tutors money can buy growing up, so I keep up with them and help out where I can. It's all really fascinating."
Mabel narrowed her eyes a little while Dipper continued to look uncomfortable. "Well, I'm still sorry about that, but thank you for being so understanding Paz. Anyway, me and Mabel need to finish up our sampling for today, maybe we can all hang out more tomorrow?"
With the twins disappearing down the street, Pacifica Northwest's expression fell and she resumed drinking her ice cream float. When it was drained to nothing, she meandered around town until the sun began to set and it was time to return home.
Home for the Northwest family was a small, poorly maintained house on the opposite side of town from their former manor. In the aftermath of the huge financial losses they sustained when their local industries had been annihilated in the apocalypse, Preston Northwest had opted to liquidate the majority of the family's assets and try to rebuild back to the opulence they'd once enjoyed, despite the fact that the remaining money was more than enough for a family of three to live safe, secure and without a need for work at a middle class level for a lifetime.
The current house was a reflection of this determination: It had been low quality even before the town turned into a hellscape and killed the previous owners, but the Northwest Patriarch refused to invest a cent into repairing it, fully confident they'd be moving back into a mansion in no time. Instead, he'd opted to add a high tech office space to the dilapidated shack, within which Preston would lock himself for days on end, traversing the modern electronic market in an attempt to turn his liquid assets into a new business empire.
Pacifica entered her house and made her way to her room, seeing neither her mother or father about. This made her happy.
Retreating to her room, a small, cold space with a few personal effects, Pacifica carefully shut the door then reached under the air mattress that she slept on to review her own plans for rebuilding the family fortune.
Scattered across dozens of loose pieces of paper were sketches, schematics and plans for dozens of hypothetical products and services with only a single thread connecting them all: they were all the product of the research into the supernatural the Pines family had conducted. If these rough sketches could survive the long road to final product, she'd have the means to take the market by storm, a line of products light years ahead of the competition technologically and impossible to reproduce or knock off.
It was a tenuous dream, Pacifica realized, but a dream none the less. For the moment, all she can do is help the Pines family progress forward and hope the Northwest family fortune is still there by the time she's old enough to use it.
Across the house, inside a tightly locked office illuminated by a dozen computer screens, Preston Northwest fiddled away at the stock market, attempting to multiply his slowly dwindling fortune on get rich quick stock schemes. Unfortunately the man's economic prowess are were somewhat underdeveloped, as the gears of the Northwest industry were in perpetual motion well before he was born, and over the course of his life the most he'd needed to do to stay rich was not cause a catastrophic disaster.
But now such a disaster fell upon him through no particular action of his own, and Preston had no way to solve it. He couldn't even resort to white collar crime, since all the experts who'd traditionally worked with the Northwests in that field were unwilling to become involved with a family in such a precarious position, afraid they might not be able to buy their freedom should it go badly.
"I'll show them. I will show them all the price of abandoning the Northwest family." Preston thought to himself as his tired eyes and fingers worked away. "The investors, the townsfolk! My treacherous wife, already searching for a new meal ticket. My daughter, consorting with commoners!"
"I'D INVEST IN WATER PURIFIERS, CYANIDE AND COFFINS!"
"Who's there!?" Preston called angrily, reaching across to a nearby drawer to retrieve the contents in a rush. The answer came to him however, when every screen in the room suddenly projected a glowing yellow background with a single, unblinking eye starting back.
"JUST A FRIENDLY LITTLE DREAM DEMON DROPPING IN TO HELP RETURN MY HORSEMAN OF THE APOCALYPSE TO THE LAP OF LUXURY! I MEAN WHAT KIND OF DEMONIC FIGURE WOULD I BE IF I DIDN'T HELP MY FAVORITE HUMANS FULFILL THEIR CORRUPT DESIRES?"
Throat tightening up in fear, Preston stuttered back "No... no you're not here, you're dead! Leave me alone!"
"WHAT'S WITH THE HOSTILITY HORSEY? GETTING COLD FEET ABOUT THE WHOLE SELL OUT THE HUMAN RACE THING? SAY, HAVE YOU DONE SOMETHING WITH YOUR FACIAL ORIFICE? THEY'RE LOOKING A LITTLE... SYMMETRICAL. CAN'T SAY I LIKE IT!"
Now shivering in fear, Preston Northwest crawled under his desk and curled into a ball, trying to hide from the gazing eyes. He wanted to scream in fear, but was so choked up that he could barely breathe out "You can't hurt me anymore! You're not real, you're not real!"
CIPHER SITS INSIDE YOUR HEAD
CIPHER LIVES AMONG THE DEAD
CIPHER SEES YOU IN YOUR BED
AND EATS YOU WHEN YOU'RE SLEEPING
The simple little rhyme screamed louder and louder inside Preston Northwest's head as he hid beneath his desk long into the night, as his array of computer screens simply continued to display the ever shifting market trends and stock markets.
The twins similarly arrived back home as the sun was setting, having spent the rest of the day collecting data around town and afterwards Dipper treated his twin to a greasy, unhealthy dinner out in town. Inside the warmth of the Shack, they were kicking off shoes and shedding layers.
"That was a full day there Dipper! How'd you find the time to make any friends with a schedule like that!?" Mabel asked excitedly. Dipper frowned somewhat.
"Actually, we don't do this every day of the week. With the exception of some stuff stored inside the Shack, most of these can be left alone for a day or so, so we alternate collecting data and analyzing data day by day. Not tomorrow though, actually. Saturday is the day off." He explained, then looked at Mabel rather seriously. "Look, I know you didn't mean anything by it, but I need you to be a little more sensitive around Pacifica."
"Oooh, Dipper's picked up a chivalrous side while I was away!" Mabel teased. "And to think that once upon a time you were gonna let her get disemboweled by living golf balls!"
Dipper looked at his feet in response to that particular incident being brought back up, but continued. "I know she hides it well but she's had it rough these last few years. She took awhile to adapt to living normally and her parents are completely uninterested in her well-being anymore. Back when Wendy was still in town I asked her to help Pacifica out over at the town's high school, and I was hoping you'd be willing to be her friend as well."
Mabel's expression softened, and she felt kinda bad now. "Okay Dipper, I see whatcha mean. I'll make sure to apologize next time I see her." she said, while the two began to head upstairs to the attic bedroom.
"Great!" Dipper said, perking up a little. "That will be tomorrow actually. As part of our Saturday off, me and Grunkle Ford have a Dungeons, Dungeons and More Dungeons game we play in the evening, and Pacifica has been joining us for awhile now."
Mabel's mouth was agape. "That fancy rich girl likes that dusty old nerd game?"
At that, Dipper smiled. "Yeah, she was skeptical at first, but she gave it a try and really enjoyed herself. She's a good friend." By then, they'd reached Mabel's bedroom. "Anyways, have a good night Mabel."
As soon as she was alone in her room, Mabel cradled her head in her hand. "Dipper, you are hopeless." She said in exasperation.
AUTHORS NOTE
So this chapter introduces two of the longer components of this fic: The aftermath of Weirdmageddon and the relationship Dipper and Pacifica have developed, and how Mabel fits into that. Now, on the first point, as far as this story in concerned, Bill killed people, both humans and anomalies during his invasion of reality, often horrifically and always for his own amusement. I was somewhat let down by how tame the end of the world ultimately seemed after the brief, incredible horror of Preston having his face rearranged (which he recovered from offscreen) and the terrifying credit scene at the end of "Dipper and Mabel vs The Future," so for the purposes of this story, death has touched the town and the scar run incredibly deep.
On the second, lighter point: This is a Dipifica fic, though it may be too slow burning for some, I apologize. They're already emotionally close and more or less head over heels for each other already, but have some personal issues holding them back. As for Pacifica specifically, I'm trying write her as still having something of an edge to her. I'm not really fond of stories where her redemption turns her into a complete nice girl. I think some of the flaws and aggressive mannerisms she could still possess despite a few years of trying to make herself a good person make her more compatible with Dipper instead of less. Also, she's trying to learn goodness from Dipper, who while heroic, is hardly squeaky-clean in the ethics department.