Here's the next chapter of Burning Skies! I'd once again like to thank my amazing beta PhoenixWillowsRox88 for fixing up the mistakes that are undoubtedly rampant all across this fic because I'm too incompetent to find and fix them myself. She's seriously amazing!
Disclaimer: I don't own Gravity Falls.
"Oi. Gideon. Wake up," a voice called into his ear. It sounded far away, like an echo bouncing across an empty hall.
Gideon stirred, curling under the blankets. "G'way."
"Get your fat ass up before I kick you awake," the voice wasn't as passive this time, and felt much more in his face. He peeked an eye open to see sharp brown ones staring down at him.
"JESUS!" He shrieked, scrambling backwards until he fell off the bed, butt hitting the floor with a loud thud, legs sticking up in the air. "You scared the hell outta me!"
Dipper smiled, clearly enjoying the reaction. He straightened, reaching down to pull him up. "Get dressed, Gideon. I've got things to deal with today, and one of them includes dealing with you."
Gideon stared at him through narrowed eyes, shuffling up carefully after taking his offered hand and fumbling for a crutch. It had been a few days since he and Dipper had really talked, and while he'd managed to make some friends within the stronghold, they didn't hold the same ability to argue that Dipper did. It was strange, he realized, that he looked forward to their bickering. He almost hastened to call Dipper a…well, not a friend – he knew the older teen would have just laughed in his face if he were to ever even consider that – but…something that wasn't quite an acquaintance, and not an enemy. Maybe he only thought that because Dipper was a familiar face. Someone who shared the same goals that he did. There was Candy too, of course, but she was just a little bit strange for his tastes. He usually preferred to keep his distance. (Especially when she was grinning like a shark. That could only mean something bad.)
The few friends he had made – a girl about his age with cropped red hair called Sadie, and a beefy kid who looked like he could throw him across a football field that insisted his name was Chompy said that it was strange that Dipper had taken to hiding out in his office so often. They said that that he was usually busy discussing things or talking to the group, or just in general being around.
Gideon gathered from their talks that he was really the only one other than Candy in on Mabel's key. Half of him knew this was too good an opportunity not to use. He had something to use against Dipper for once, some sort of leverage, but how that leverage would help him wasn't apparent just yet.
The other half of him could just see that strange burning in the back of Dipper's eyes if he were to challenge him – see the enjoyment he would get out of making him squirm, how he'd hiss at him threateningly, daring him to fight back.
And Gideon really didn't want to get locked up again, or worse – tossed back into that mess of chaos only to be torn to shreds or turned to stone.
He grimaced down a shiver at the thought.
"Get dressed, Gideon, and you're skipping out on breakfast today."
He paused in grabbing the hoodie hanging off the back of the chair. "Wait, what? You're makin' me skip breakfast?" He said, feeling a tad offended. "Are you tryin' to starve me now?"
Dipper raised an eyebrow, a faint smirk shadowing over his face. "Well, if that's what you want me to do, Gideon, I'm sure I can work something out-"
"No! No, that's alright!" He blurted out quickly, waving his hands back and forth wildly. He barely got what he considered enough now, he didn't want to lose what privileges he did have.
"That's what I thought," he said. "Hurry up and get dressed. Find Candy when you're done. She'll tell you what's happening."
Gideon frowned after him as he left the room, kicking the door shut behind him. He slumped against the support, rubbing the side of his head. What Dipper could want after days of barely any words between them was beyond him. Of course, his first thought was that they'd made some progress with Mabel's key and that they needed his help, but he dropped that idea as soon as it fluttered into existence. There was no way Dipper trusted him enough to give him any intentional leverage. So really, he had no idea what the two resistance leaders were thinking, and that was enough to warrant some sense of urgency.
He hobbled out of the room he'd been sleeping in for the past few days – a small boxy area that housed four of the other resistances occupants. The first few nights he'd been awoken by rustling and quiet voices. Only after he'd spoken to Chompy about it did he realize they were going out hunting in the early dawn hours, trying to find food for the group. It was always exciting when they came back with actual food for once (the best so far had been rabbit stew), though sometimes there were…unexpected meals.
Like eyebat eyes, which, oddly enough, tasted like grape jelly. (Whoever had come up with the idea to eat those things was most assuredly messed up.)
He grimaced as a sharp pain tazed up his leg when he knocked it against the wall as he turned down the hall. It only really hurt when he knocked into things now, which was a relief, but he was also really bad at not knocking into things. So far though, he'd managed to avoid any serious crashes and hadn't reopened the injury. Candy had made it clear that if he did open it again, she wouldn't be sacrificing anymore medical supplies on him.
"We won't waste time burying you, either," her words from yesterday came back to him, from when she'd been checking his injuries. "No time for traitors."
The worst part of his predicament wasn't that he had to share his sleeping quarters with other people, or even that he'd been shot in the leg. Heck, even his hair was only a close second to the annoyance that he felt at not knowing just where in hell he stood with them.
Gideon leaned against his crutch as he knocked on the door to Candy's nursing office. A beat later, the door had flung open and the raven-haired girl was beaming at him. "Gideon!"
So he was on good terms with her today, apparently.
Her fingers wrapped over his shoulder. "Excited?"
"Annoyed. Why d'you and Pines have to be so gosh darn shifty all the time?"
"Duh. Because it's fun!" She hurried him along, hand sliding down to his wrist and half dragging him as he frantically began hopping after her, trying to keep up so he didn't face plant into the hard timber underneath their feet. Candy suddenly stopped, and Gideon smacked straight into her back with a grunt. She fished a key out from the pocket of her jacket, slotting a slim, rust-mottled key into a padlock. The lock clicked open, and she returned both items to her pockets. Pushing the door open and flicking a light switch on, she stepped aside to let him take a look.
Gideon's mouth fell open when he saw what was inside.
Rows upon rows of shelves, some gleaming silver and bolted down, others just stacked boxes with hastily scrawled labels across the side, and all stocked full of weapons.
He hobbled inside to the center of the room, taking in each shelf, box, and label with a surprised, almost ecstatic fervor. His eyes paused on one box, tucked into the back with thick black writing burned into it.
Jxdfz.
Magic.
He started towards it, but Candy's voice stopped him.
"I would not touch that one just yet. That is Dipper's."
"But-"
"I'm warning you," she said, and when he turned his head to look at her, he didn't see a threatening look on her face. Candy's expression was firm and serious. Cautioning. "Leave it and keep your head or touch it and lose it."
Not her threat then. Something passed on by someone who shot him in the goddamn leg.
He slowly backtracked away from the box, turning to face her completely. For a moment, he said nothing, processing her words. Finally, he settled on what he wanted to say.
"Why did you bring me here?" He asked.
"Dipper says it's time you start pulling your weight around here. So we start with defense!"
Gideon watched her as she walked around the different shelves, humming to herself, eyebrows slowly rising up to his forehead. "Uh…" He said as she turned with a dangerous looking baseball bat in her hands, grinning like a maniac. His eyes traveled across the nails and spikes embedded at the end. Candy weighted it up in her hands, then nodded.
He stared at it, then up at her as she tried to shove it in his hands. "Wait wait wait…" He said, waving a hand at her. "How can you expect me to…to defend anythin' when I'm on crutches?"
"You only need one. Your other leg is fine," she dismissed, trying to push it in his hands again. He backed up away from her. It wasn't the bat he had a problem with, or even what he might have been expected to do with it – okay, he wasn't too keen on getting his hands dirty. He usually left that for his henchmen – but…he really preferred not to think about the implications of having to learn to defend himself.
"You don't think I'm gonna have to fight somethin'?" He asked, trying to subdue the alarm in his voice.
"That's exactly what we think."
He was quiet for a moment, feeling like his brain had come to a squealing stop. Okay, yeah, he'd known he'd have to do it eventually, but he'd thought he'd at least get to hide away until his leg had healed…which according to Candy could be months away unless they could find an accelerant of some sort to speed up the process (the way she said it made him think what she was considering was magical in origin).
"But…But…" He searched for some kind of excuse, raising his finger to strike a point, only to let it fold in on itself glumly. "I…I got nothin'." He snatched the bat away from her after dropping one of his crutches. She was right – it wasn't like he really needed that one.
The raven haired girl messed Gideon's own inky black locks, either missing or ignoring the scowl on his face. "Let us go!" She said brightly, pushing him out of the artillery room with an enthusiastic bounce to her step. The door was swiftly padlocked again.
Following Candy as she continued on down the hall, he said, "So why don't I get a gun?"
Even without having to see her face, he heard the mirth in her voice. "What? And give you the ability to really kill someone? Don't be silly!" She smacked him jovially across the back.
Face falling into one of annoyance, he hobbled after her on his one crutch, the other clenched around the bat. Part of him itched to whack her with it – get out of here, maybe run back to Bill and beg to be allowed back into his circles and tell him all about Dipper Pines and his stronghold.
But he knew that wouldn't end well for him at all. So it was with a huge, drawn in breath and an even longer, drawn out sigh that he relaxed his grip on the bat and half hopped after her as quick as he could. It was decidedly harder to move with only one support.
He hesitated only for the briefest of seconds when Candy pulled open a sliding door and stepped outside – hesitated because why were they going outside that was crazy, and only briefly because they were going outside, oh hell yes!
Fresh – fresh! – air greeted his lungs, and he took three of the largest, gasping breaths that he could. He hadn't realized quite how stuffy it had been inside. His eyes took in large fences guarding the backyard of the resistance fortress. He noticed the strategically placed canopy, dead center of the yard with one broken leg tilting it sideways, and umbrellas positioned in such a way that they looked like they'd been toppled over in a panic.
Slowly, his eyes traveled to Dipper, who was sparring underneath the canopy with a gangly girl who had little sprockets of blonde hair spiking out all over an otherwise shaved head.
The girl let out a surprised yelping sound when the thick brown stick Dipper was holding swiped her legs out from under her and came to rest between her eyes.
"And that's why you need to listen when Wes tells you to hone your reflexes. The monsters might not get to you like this, but other survivors will. You're strong, Kate, stronger than me, but if you can't recognize your weaknesses, you may as well just lay down and die." Candy was nodding her head hard from where she stood next to Gideon, silently agreeing.
The girl – Kate – nodded solemnly. "I'll do better."
"Don't just say it. Swear it," Dipper said as he hauled her back up.
"I swear it!" She echoed strongly. "Thanks, Dipper!" She turned and squeezed passed Gideon and Candy back inside. Dipper looked at Gideon.
"A bat, huh? Violent weapon to pick," he said skeptically.
"I didn't pick it. You're wench did – ow!" Gideon glared at Candy, rubbing the sore arm she'd just punched.
Dipper rolled his eyes. "Yeah yeah, okay, get over here."
Candy disappeared back inside the stronghold as Gideon walked over to Dipper, leaning on his crutch and holding his bat. Dipper took it from him and inspected it carefully.
"Candy picked well. It's light for a bat, but the spikes look threatening enough for any survivors who aren't out for your blood to leave you be. This'll do you good until you're free to use both hands again. Or until I think I can trust you with something a little more damaging." He handed it back.
"Like some of 'em magical weapons?"
Dipper's bark of laughter cut him short. His eyebrows furrowed down in confusion. "What? What's so funny?" He demanded.
Dipper muffled his laughs with his hand. "You!" He spoke from behind his palm. "Thinking I'm gonna ever let you touch my stuff!"
"But-"
"Gideon. I'm never going to trust you enough to let you touch them. I'd have to be dead to even give you the option – and even then I'd come back to tear you to pieces for so much as putting a pinky on them."
Gideon's shoulder slumped. "Well jeez, you coulda just said so. Jerk."
Dipper shook his head, stepping back from Gideon. "Okay, so show me how you'd hold your weapon."
Gideon blinked up at him, then down at the bat in his hand. Slowly, he lifted the bat into the air, so it was at the height of his shoulder.
"Okay…" Dipper said, blinking slowly. "That's…well, that's completely wrong."
"Well how am I meant to know! I've never done somethin' like this before!"
"Just-" Dipper huffed, pinching the bridge of his nose and closing his eyes. He opened them again, walking up to Gideon, and pulled him hand off of the weapon. "You're protecting no part of your body like that, first off. And the way you're standing is totally wrong – and yeah, no, I don't mean because you can't walk on one leg before you say anything smart." Dipper positioned himself with one leg behind the other, raising the bat so it was diagonal across his torso. "Now, if I had a crutch, I wouldn't be wanting to put all of my weight onto it. Instead, use your good leg as the bracer behind you."
Gideon hesitated, positioning his good leg behind him and putting all the weight of his body onto it.
"Good," Dipper said. "So you aren't completely useless." He handed the bat back to Gideon, who adjusted his grip on it to grasp it like Dipper had been. The tall teenager pried his fingers off and put them back on in a different hold. "Holding it like this will give you a better twist in your wrist," he explained. He shuffled away again, eyes raking him up and down before he gave a taunt nod. "Much better."
"I still don't see how this is goin' to help me."
Dipper paused, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jacket, tilting his head thoughtfully. "...let me be straight with you, Gideon," he finally said, glancing down his nose at him. "You're pretty much a sitting duck right now. If the base gets attacked, you're gonna die unless you can hide somewhere."
Gideon swallowed thickly. That…well that didn't sound good at all. The way he was speaking it was like he expected them to be attacked or something. Maybe he was speaking from experience.
"If that does happen, no one is going to come and save you, Gideon. You might know some things that I don't about Bill, about Mabel, about Gravity Falls, but that doesn't mean I give a shit about you. There are others ways to get information, in the end. Your life isn't all that important. It's just convenient."
"…thanks for the boost of confidence," he muttered scathingly.
"But," Dipper stressed. "Because you are convenient, I would prefer you to stay alive. At least learning this will give you some semblance of a chance."
Gideon's gaze flickered to the ground, staring at the scuffed marks of shoes imprinted on the ground from others, like that Kate girl, and Dipper, who'd trained and learned to fight just like he was going to have to.
"I don't want to die," he murmured.
"No. Nobody does." Dipper's voice was quiet, a little more somber. "But not wanting to means absolutely nothing. That's just the way it is."
Gideon lowered his weapon so it dangled at his side, hand clenching tight around the handle. "Hey…Dipper? Did you ever think that Mabel might have…I dunno - died?"
He was silent for a while, and when Gideon finally raised his gaze to look at him, his shoulders had hunched, his gaze had darkened into a strange sort of twisted emotion he couldn't place, and he wouldn't meet Gideon's eyes. For a long time, he didn't think Dipper was going to answer.
"I did." He sounded guilty when he did speak. "For a really long time, I did. You know, the idea didn't really hit until I saw this…this girl – just a kid, really – die right in front of me. Infection, and I…I couldn't save her." His voice had tightened, choking out more like a whisper. "And I just remember thinking 'she's dead, isn't she? I'm the only Pines left, aren't I?'" Dipper shook his head. When he eventually looked Gideon in the eye, his dark brown were clear and confident, the mist that had overhung them just a moment before closed behind shutters. "But that was stupid, of course." His voice was a little cockier now. For the first time, Gideon wondered just how fake that ego was. "I would have felt something if she'd died. We're twins – best friends. But I felt nothing. So there was no way she was dead. The idea stuck for a really long time. That is, of course, until I found you. And then that key." His hand moved up to twist around it. "And now I know what I have to do – I have to get her back." His words had taken on a sharp edge, almost fervent, and it was with a start that Gideon finally understood why Dipper had been so vacant the last few days.
"You've found her. Haven't you?" He asked in such a soft tone he didn't think Dipper had heard. The grim, determined, but happy smile fighting to grow across his face said otherwise.
"Yeah. We found her."
Gideon swore he felt his heart stop.
"We found her."
A little bit longer of a chapter this time around. Hopefully this shed's a little bit of light on what Dipper's been getting up to in the last couple of years (though this is by far the last you'll be reading about his misadventures on the way to rebellion leader and gun-toting badass).
Until next time!
