Here's the next chapter of Burning Skies! Hopefully you guys enjoy the chapter!
Thanks to my beta reader PhoenixWillowsRox88 for making sure this mess made sense - seriously, there'd be mistakes all over the show if it wasn't for her!
Disclaimer: I don't own Gravity Falls.
The boy that peered back at Gideon in the mirror was someone he did not recognize. Mournfully, he reached up to pet at still damp, black hair. His hand retracted immediately. He could barely touch it anymore without feeling a sickening sense of loss in the pit of his stomach.
A sharp rapping against the door drew his attention. Leaning back on his crutches, he hobbled back to the bed, seating himself. "Come in."
The door pulled open hard and Dipper poked his head inside. His eyes swiveled over to Gideon, half-lidded and scrutinizing. Finally, he gave an approving nod. "Good. I hardly recognized you."
"I feel like a commoner," he muttered, pulling at the drawstrings on the hoodie he'd been given so the edges of the hood scrunched up.
"You're lucky I gave you clean clothes. I was sorely tempted to give you the filthiest I could find," he retorted sharply.
Gideon said nothing, not giving him the satisfaction, but he felt his lips tighten into a thin line anyway. He went back to fiddling with the scrunched hood, stretching the fabric back out.
Leaning against the door, Dipper brushed a hand through his own hair. "Hey man, it was for the best. Your hair, I mean. That monster should have shown you that. I could have cut it all off, but I didn't. At the very least, appreciate that, yeah?"
He turned his back on Dipper. He couldn't win, but at the very least he could passively resist.
Time stretched out, thin and long around them. Even though there wasn't a clock in the room, he could still feel faint ticking within his own brain.
Finally, Dipper spoke up. "You wanna get some food?"
Gideon's stomach growled loudly in response. A blush heated up his cheeks, and he gave the slightest of nods. No point denying it now.
"Good!" The older teenager replied brightly. He turned his back, and when he spoke again, his voice had dimmed. "Hurry up." He briskly walked out of the room, and Gideon fumbled to catch up, shambling after him as fast as he could on his crutches.
Dipper had stopped outside a heavy door. His eyes took in the metal reinforcements crafted against the wooden door. From inside he could hear the moving of feet, the quiet murmurs of voices. Dipper leaned forward, hitting the door in a gentle rhythm. A key unbolted a lock on the other side with a hard thunk.
Wicked brown eyes fell on Gideon, something prideful burning within them.
"Welcome, Gideon," he said as he turned the knob, shoving the door open with his shoulder. "To your new life in the rebellion."
…rebellion?
Dipper walked confidently into the room, but Gideon found himself hovering in the door way, leaning on his crutches out of sheer shock rather than injury. People – so many people - wandered through an expansive room, weapons hanging at their hips or in makeshift holsters across their backs and under arms. Two teens and a woman were rushing around the room with a box each in their arms, and from the boxes the other survivors were drawing out plastic-wrapped cookies and little disposable bottles of water. His eyes fell on Candy when she let out a whoop of victory from the other side of the room, watching her pull a pile of poker chips towards a bigger stash while the other players looked on with discontent.
A smack on his shoulder grabbed at his attention and he jumped in shock, crutch clattering to the floor. "Jesus, don't scare me like that!" He bit out at Dipper.
He handed it back to Gideon, waiting for him to prop himself back up on it carefully before letting go of his shoulder. "Come get something to eat," he said as he waded through the crowd. Gideon grimaced as he was jostled through the mass, keeping an eye on Dipper as they moved. He'd have been lying to himself if he said he wasn't surprised by the amount of people hiding out here. Bill had always made it sound like almost all the survivors, in America at least, had been incapacitated in some way or another, and Gideon had really only been tasked in rounding up the ones stupid enough to stay in Gravity Falls.
Gideon stopped awkwardly behind Dipper when he paused to talk to one of the men carrying around the boxes.
"No luck on the last retrieval, then?" He asked as he pulled out two cookies and two bottles.
The teen jostled the box around, expression grim. "No. We ended up deciding that it wasn't safe. We…we didn't want to lose anyone else in there." His grip around the edge of the box tightened, hands shaking, and when he looked up at Dipper, Gideon felt a strange tightness grip inside his gut and spread out to run through his entire body.
This was a kid, not really a teen. He couldn't have been any older than thirteen, in any case.
"Can we…can we try again tomorrow?" He whispered hopefully.
Gideon leaned heavily on his crutch, silently reprimanding this boy for crying, if the mist in his eyes was any indication, but the vague sense of aversion vanished when Dipper spoke, voice the burning of ice.
"She's dead, kid. No point going out to get yourself killed, too."
Mouth open, Gideon stared as the kids shoulders slumped. "But…but I…" He sucked in a strange breath of air that was half sob. "O-Okay. I understand." Without another word, he was scurrying away back into the crowd.
Dipper pushed the cookie and bottle into his hands. He struggled to find a more comfortable grip on his crutches as grabbed them. "Eat," he said.
"What in the world was that?!" Gideon demanded.
"What was what?"
"That was just - cruel!"
A condescending brow cocked down at him. "…coming from you?"
Gideon felt a flush cover his cheeks. "W-well, I'm prob'ly the most qualified to be the judge of that!"
Dipper just made a noise in the back of his throat, before unscrewing the top on his bottle, taking a long sip. He gave the boy a small shove to order him over to an empty table. "I do what I have to do, Gideon. That's what it takes to be a leader."
"Wait, leader?"
"Of course. Why do you think it was me who did the interrogation?"
I'm an idiot.
Lips pursed, Gideon waddled his way to a chair, dropping down on the hard wood with a huff. "I can't believe I missed that."
Dipper sat opposite him, dark eyes darting through the crowd of people eating and socializing. "Neither can I. I always took you for a smart guy, Gideon, but it looks like you've had quite a few brain cells knocked out of that noggin of yours." He lifted his hand and waved in Candy's direction.
"Oh, shut it, Pines," he grumbled, ripping off the plastic packaging and munching hungrily into the cookie. Chocolate assaulted his senses, and he felt his mouth start to water. He hadn't had chocolate since being in Gravity Falls. He hadn't realized how much he'd missed the taste.
"Cookies good, yes?" Candy said brightly as she sat down next to Dipper.
Gideon mumbled an answer, eyes shut as he enjoyed the sensation. Swallowing, he got his words out. "It somewhat makes up for you two ruinin' mah hair…but only a little bit. Like zero point four percent makes up for it."
Candy hummed slightly, nodding her head. "Exact numbers. Very convincing!"
Gideon settled back into eating and chugging down his drink. His eyes settled back on the key around Dipper's neck, watching it swing around his neck as he leaned backwards in his seat, grinning at Candy when she launched into an explanation of a particularly nasty monster defeat from a few days ago.
"And then BOOM! Blown to pieces!" She finished with an explosion of her hands upwards, laughing. Dipper laughed back hard.
"Oh damn, I wish I'd been there to see it!"
"You missed out!" Candy agreed.
Gideon's gaze flickered between them, half incredulous. How they were joking around right now was beyond him. They were fugitives, rebels in the middle of a losing war. Dipper now had the literal key to winning on his neck and he wasn't…wasn't even doing anything about it? Half of him wanted to snap and yell at Dipper to get into gear, if he wanted Mabel back, but the other half of him also remembered that this wasn't someone he could push around anymore. The teen could flip the switch and turn on him within a few terse seconds, and he didn't doubt that he'd be royally screwed if that happened amongst a room full of his peers.
So instead of bursting out angrily, he just cleared his throat, drawing Candy and Dipper's attention to him.
"So what are we goin' to do about Mabel?" He asked.
The humor in their faces vanished immediately, replaced by identically clinical expressions.
"Well first we have to find where she is," Dipper said, leaning forward so his elbows rested on the table in front of them, propping his chin up on interlaced fingers. "And you're next to useless in regards to her location…" His mouth fell into a frown.
"Well…what information did you give to Dipper?" Candy questioned, blinking at Gideon behind her thick lenses.
"Well, Bill never told me much. Just that I was to look after her key and hunt down any survivors in the town," he said. "All I can say for sure is that he wanted to keep her somewhere she wouldn't be found by…" He trailed off, glancing at Dipper. "Well, you, I s'pose. People who know what Bill is truly capable of, in any case. Because of her weirdness."
Candy tapped the table gently, her brows deeply furrowed. "Dipper?"
"What?"
"Do we have a global map anywhere?"
He gave a small nod. "Sure we do, in my office. Why?"
She rushed away with a short, "See you later," leaving Dipper watching after her with knitted brows.
"Think she's on to somethin'?" Gideon asked hesitantly.
"Oh, definitely," Dipper said. "She isn't my second-in-command for no reason." A smug smile broke onto his face as he finished his water, screwing the cap back on the bottle. "Her expertise certainly lies in medicine, but make no mistake – she can be just as vicious as me if she has to be. Maybe even more so if the situation calls for it."
Gideon looked away from him, back down at his own half drunken water. He didn't like the sound of that at all. He fiddled with the cap, frowning hard. Neither he nor Dipper seemed inclined to continue the conversation, so they simply sat and waited in a strained silence. His eyes flickered up every few moments to catch Dipper's fingers twirling around the key's golden chain, catching the sharp shadow that dripped down his face as he thought.
Rushed footsteps grabbed his attention upwards to Candy as she came back with a rolled up scroll of thick paper. Gideon pulled his drink off the table when she smacked the paper down, unrolling it across the table. The map was old and faded, blowing up dust around them when Candy brushed it clean with the edge of her hand. She had a look on her face Gideon hadn't seen there before. He knew what it was, even though he hadn't seen it for four years.
Hope.
"You say he put her somewhere to protect her, because of her weirdness?"
Gideon nodded, unsure where her thought process was going, or why she was grinning so wide that he could practically see all of her teeth.
"Weirdness is key! Weird places around the globe – places like Gravity Falls!"
"You mean from before this whole mess started?"
"Exactly!" She gushed out. Her cheeks with pink with exertion, eyes bright and alive behind the cracked frames of her glasses.
Dipper was standing in his seat, looking over the map fervently. His eyes darted from state to state, country to country – across the seas and lands, lips moving silently. Snatching a pocket knife from his pocket, he bent down over the map, slashing out the square that represents Oregon within the United States.
"Well. She isn't anywhere here."
"It's a start." Candy said earnestly.
Gideon rubbed the back of his neck, eyes flitting back and forth between them.
"What's goin' on, exactly?"
Dipper lifted his head to look at him. Even though his expression had yet to change from the passivity he was prone to falling into, he could read the excitement in his eyes.
"Never you mind," he said. "Hey, Candy, let's go discuss this in private."
"Wait, you're just leaving me here?" Gideon demanded with obvious objection. Dipper was already rolling the map up, tucking it under his arm. "Hey, wait-"
The pair of them had disappeared in the throngs of the crowd before he could even stand.
"Gah!" He snapped, throwing the crutch down onto the floor. "I hate you both!"
So much for being useful. Assholes- the pair of 'em!
A little bit of plot development here - what's going on is gonna come to fruition a few chapters down the track!
Thanks for reading and reviewing, and I hope you enjoy the future chapters to come!
