After the few minutes spent up on the catwalk which had dragged on like hours, Mabel felt as though the rest of the evening flew by in the space of a few seconds. Everything happened far too fast. The world had seemed to be at a stand-still, trapped in slow motion; now she felt as though she was fast-forwarding through her own life.
First came the police, and following them soon after were the paramedics, whose words confirmed what the girl had known deep down inside the instant she saw her brother's body hit the ground. Then came the onlookers, some there to sympathize, others just to gawk. So many people kept repeating the same hollow words as they passed by Mabel, saying how sorry they were, how hard it must be...
Gabe told her that her puppet show had gone perfectly up until the very end, that she had a bright future in the world of puppetry if she chose to pursue it, and earlier that day those words would have brought young Mabel to the peak of ecstasy... but now, they just served as a somber reminder that, in a way, this tragedy was all her fault. If she had just listened to her brother, just helped him out with his project as he had helped her out- as he had always helped her out- then... then...
When the crowds dispersed and Mabel and Grunkle Stan were alone in the Mystery Shack, he just patted her on the back and told her the same tripe as everybody else had, told her that it would be okay, and his voice cracked with every word and she most definitely felt a teardrop hit her shoulder, though her great-uncle adamantly denied it.
In the blink of an eye, night had fallen, Grunkle Stan had fallen asleep on the couch, and Mabel wormed her way under the covers as the moonlight from the attic's lone window illuminated the floor and all that lay upon it.
The girl yawned and turned to her right. "Good night Di-"
Only after almost finishing the sentence did it click that her brother was not going to say his part of their nightly exchange, that he never would again.
Tears streamed down the girl's face as she could no longer hold back the tidal wave of emotion that had been building up all that night. She cried and cried until she could cry no more, not because she had gotten over the pain but because there were simply no tears left to shed.
Waddles climbed onto Mabel's bed and snuggled against her side, and she wrapped her arms around him as she closed her eyes and wished for sleep, wished for this horrible night to finally be over.
The sleep that the girl so desired refused to come.
She broke her grasp on Waddles, who snorted but remained in place as Mabel tossed and turned, first burying herself in a pile of blankets and then letting them slowly but surely migrate to the foot of the bed. Every now and then, in the rare instances when the girl thought that she had finally found a comfortable spot that might just be conducive to nodding off, she would hear a noise too loud to ignore but too muddled to easily identify.
Dipper would have investigated it.
Dipper would have grabbed the journal and ran outside, middle of the night or no, ready to face whatever menace dared give off such an annoying noise and silence it for good.
And then it would probably turn out to be a woodpecker or the wind or something, and she would giggle when he came back and had to admit that he'd left the comfort of his warm bed for nothing.
Mabel turned away from the window, huddling against the wall.
The noise was getting louder. She still couldn't identify it, though something about it sounded vaguely familiar.
The girl sat up, accidentally resting her leg on Waddles' curly tail, and swung her legs onto the side of the bed. The pig squeaked and ran to the other side of the room. She obviously wasn't going to be getting any sleep tonight anyway, so she might as well accept that and do something with her time.
She tilted her head one way, then the other, trying to figure out the direction that the noise was coming from, to no avail. Sighing, she stood up and circled the room, grimacing as her feet squeaked against the wooden floor.
It wasn't any louder by the window, or on the other end of the room by the door...
Mabel crawled onto Dipper's bed (it was still littered with gnawed pens, and each time her knee collided with one, her hands started shaking and she had to take a deep breath before continuing to inch her way forward). No louder there. No softer, either.
So that meant...
She went to the middle of the room, where the moonlight fell upon clothes and books and other detritus that had made its way onto the floor over the course of the summer.
She could hear it better here.
The noise, whatever it was... it was coming from inside.
The girl knelt down and propped her ear against the floor to determine whether the noise was downstairs, closing her eyes so as to focus more fully on the sound. What if it was down there with Grunkle Stan? Or... it wasn't just Grunkle Stan snoring again, was it? Maybe it was, maybe she was getting all worked up over nothing...
"MABEL!"
Mabel leaped up, opening her eyes to a room gone dark as the moon was suddenly covered by a cloud. She knew that sound. She knew that voice.
And now, as her eye settled on a suspicious shadow that she could not recall seeing before, she knew where it was coming from.
She must be dreaming. That had to be it. This was just a dream.
The cloud moved on, and the moonlight returned. As light filled the attic once more, it revealed the floating shape of a puppet that Mabel had forgotten about, one that had managed to escape the massacre at the sock opera, one that bore her own visage.
She rubbed her eyes. Yep. Still there.
"Mabel, it's me!" The girl's heart raced as the room filled with the sound of a voice that she had no longer thought she would hear.
Mabel pinched herself, wrinkling her nose at the pain that followed. Wasn't that supposed to prove you weren't dreaming or something?
"...Dipper?"