She was stumbling through her house - no, wait, The Shack - no, the rental cabin - she had a feeling of being chased. Something was wrong. She couldn't put her finger on it, but a manic laugh tipped her off. She rounded a corner and found Bill, more grotesque and menacing than before, looming over her father's limp form. Her father was sliced straight in half at the waist - a clean cut, no blood, like a red tree cut clean in two - his eyes half-open and glassy.
"You want to know what happened thirty years ago?" Bill's voice echoed as terror and panic consumed her,
"ME"
Cassandra's eyes shot open, heart racing, fists full of sleeping bag. She stared at the ceiling for a long moment, trying to regain her bearings. She was in The Mystery Shack, she realized.
She'd gone back in time.
She could only reassure herself so much, knowing that her dad really was possessed, and feeling very, very far away from anything truly familiar. After all, she had brought only her cousin and the clothes on her back - actually, she didn't even have the clothes at the moment, she realized; Mabel had lent her a night shirt and pajama pants. Drowsy, but afraid of falling back asleep and into the same dream, she sat up and looked around the room. She all but jumped out of her skin when she saw Dipper sitting up on his bed, leaning against the wall.
"Y'alright?" he asked, barely a whisper.
She only nodded.
"Gonna' go back to sleep?" he prompted.
She didn't have a response.
"C'mon," he said after a moment of silence between them, climbing out of bed and padding quietly out of the room. Cassandra followed behind him without question until they reached the bottom of the stairs.
"Where are we going?" she breathed, trying not to make much sound at all.
"There's a secret in the gift shop," Dipper explained.
"There's a lot of secrets in the gift shop," Cassandra muttered more to herself than to Dipper.
"OK, so maybe 'secret' is a stretch," he admitted, slipping carefully through the swinging 'employees only' door and trying not to let it creak, "there is a giant, obvious curtain in front of it," he noted, walking up to an old, tattered wall of fabric, "but it's still a ladder to the roof, and not everybody knows about it."
"So that's how you get up there," she mused to herself. She could remember seeing the Ramirez twins hanging out on the roof sometimes.
"Yeah, but watch your step," he added, clambering out of the trap-door type hole in the roof, "it's not exactly even ground."
"What do you-? Oh," she discovered, looking out at the steep roof, suddenly feeling a little less strength in her knees, "gotcha'."
She made it up the roof and to the outcropping without incident, though also slowly, very unsure of her pajama-clad legs. She was grateful to be able to sit down on a flat surface and lean against her dad.
She did not fully recognize or remember that her dad was currently also fourteen and not-at-all-a-dad-yet until Dipper cleared his throat and let out an,
"Uum…"
"Oh, jeez, sorry," she acknowledged, sitting up straight, as a normal person should when around someone they met less than 12 hours ago, "it's just- sorry, dude. I didn't-"
"Don't- don't worry about it," Dipper assured her half-heartedly. "Are you OK?" he prodded after a moment.
"Are you?" she turned it back to him.
"That's not the question."
"Yeah, well, people aren't usually up in the middle of the night with no lights on watching other people sleep," she commented, "I'm wondering about you, too."
"I was not watching people sleep," Dipper insisted, "I was looking out the window. It just grabs your attention when someone gasps."
Cassandra's cheeks burned; she wished he hadn't brought that up.
"So?!" she half-snapped back, "So I had a nightmare. What's it to you?"
"I dunno, just thought you might want to talk about it or something?"
Cassandra snorted. That probably would make her feel better, but,
"I can't, dude."
"Why not?"
"Dude," she shot, giving him a stern look, "I just can't, OK? You need to learn to drop things." she fell silent for a moment, too focused on her own emotions to notice Dipper's concerned glances.
She turned her gaze to the sky, searching for two constellations, "Hmm…" she muttered to herself, "I see the north star, but no orion…"
"You don't see many stars through the trees," Dipper agreed, "but what you can see is really clear."
Cassandra 'hmm'ed back a confirmation.
"Why're you looking?" he asked.
"Oh, um, it's just- it's kinda' stupid, but I feel kinda' like Orion protects me. If I can see Orion," she hesitated, unsure how to put it into words, "I don't know, it just reassures me." She stared up at the big dipper above her head; the reminder of her father would do for the time being.
"So you aren't OK," Dipper concluded.
"You know what?" Cassandra snapped, turning on him with a rueful smirk, "If we're gonna' play this game you better tell me what's up with you. Why were you up in the middle of the night?"
Dipper winced at having the question turned on him,
"Yeah, alright," he finally relented, "I had a nightmare, too. It's always nightmares," he added under his breath.
"See, there. Now, do you want to talk about it?"
He let out an uncomfortable laugh as he realized,
"I can't talk about it either."
"Well there you go," Cassandra responded, "we're just two kids who can't sleep and can't talk about it."
"Yeah…"
They sat under the stars together for a while, brains whirling with their own problems and nightmares.
"You weren't here, two years ago, were you?" Dipper asked, breaking the silence.
Cassandra shook her head.
"Figures," he chuckled to himself.
"Why?" she asked, tantalizingly close to even a clue of what happened in 2012.
"I just wondered if I really could talk about it, but if you weren't there…" he trailed off, eyes glazing over as he stared into the woods.
"Dipper, what happened?" she finally asked him, unable to let this opportunity for answers pass her by.
"What? N-nothing," he insisted, shaking it off, "never mind. It- you don't need to know. You don't want to know," he added, a weary smirk flickering across his face.
She hesitated for a moment, processing how impossible it seemed for her to ever know this information, and then she crumbled, a long, disappointed sigh crashing out as he head dropped down.
"I'll never know," she whimpered.
Dipper turned cautiously to look at this distraught girl. He swallowed hard, and after a long moment's hesitation,
"Look, nothing happened," he repeated, "but… if anything did happen… my great uncle Ford would know."
A lightbulb went on for Cassandra and she shot back up, beaming with realization,
"Of course! Ford!" she exclaimed, "Of course he would know! Why didn't I think of that! Oh man-! I guess we can't ask him 'till morning," she realized, slightly crestfallen,
"I don't know," Dipper shrugged, "he doesn't exactly have a normal sleeping schedule. If the light's on in his study-"
"Let's do it!" she decided, jumping up, "I have so little sleep and so much emotional instability and adrenaline that I could kill a man! OK, not really," she qualified, "but I would totally go raid a quick-rip or something, no problem."
Cassandra was still bouncing on her heels when they walked up to Ford's study to find light leaking out from under the door.
Dipper knocked softly, still aware of the other sleeping residents of the house. Egged on by a nearly inaudible grunt of confirmation he tentatively opened the door,
"Great Uncle Ford?" Dipper put forward, "This is Carrie. We've been hanging out with her today, and she just had some questions, and I thought maybe you could answer them,"
"Certainly," Ford responded genially, turing to face them.
"Great," Dipper responded, before a yawn slipped out, "Though, I really should get back to sleep. See you in the morning," he added, giving Cassandra a pat on the shoulder and padding back towards the staircase.
As the odd pair was left alone Ford prompted Cassandra on,
"Alright, Carrie, what can I help you with?"
"What happened thir- in 2012?" she asked, breathless, "What happened that nobody will tell me about?"
Ford paused a moment, before laughing it off,
"What do you mean? Nothing happened."
"Wha-? Nothing?!" Cassandra echoed, "What do you mean nothing? N-Nothing-nothing?"
"Well, I suppose you hang around Dipper, so you know this is no ordinary area, but, by Gravity Falls' standards, nothing out of the ordinary happened."
Cassandra was speechless for a moment.
"But- but he said- would he lie? Well, OK, yeah, he would lie," Cassandra admitted to herself, remembering Bill's answer to her question. "But Dipper said-"
"And besides, you said no one will tell you, right?" Ford prompted.
"Well, yeah…"
"Are these people you trust?"
"I mean, yeah, but-"
"So what makes you doubt them?"
Cassandra thought for a moment,
"But, everyone gives the same answer. Everybody! Without fail, it's always-"
"Don't you trust these people?"
"…yes," she admitted.
"Then did it ever occur to you," he continued, leaning forward, "that even if something did happen, and they really were keeping something from you, that they might be trying to protect you?"
Cassandra stared into space for a moment, gears turning,
"Protect…?" she muttered, thinking it over, "Ms. Candy, Ms. Wendy… Ms. Kathy… Grunkle Soos… Dad… You think they're trying to- to protect me?"
"You think they would withhold information maliciously?" Ford chuckled. (Though he said nothing to the girl, he wondered for a moment about her mention of Soos.)
"They- they were trying to protect me…" Cassandra sank down to the floor and sat with the thought for a moment. The thought placed a pinprick in the dam she'd built up to keep all her emotions from the past twelve hours or so from overflowing. "They were protecting me and I couldn't take no for an answer…" the prick grew into a crack as she felt hot tears build up behind her eyes. "Something terrible happened," she realized, thinking over Bill's answer and her dad's reaction to the demon, "And now- now I got greedy, and I didn't listen, and I bought into it," she listed off, thinking of the notebooks' warnings of 'Trust no one,' and of Bill's sweet-talk, "and they had good reason not to tell me all along, and now dad's gonna' die and it's all my fault!" she whimpered, the dam bursting as the first tears dripped down.
Ford looked on with apprehension and uncertainty as she sniffled into her knees; he was never good with kids. Or people, for that matter.
"Why? Why did I trust him at all?" she chided herself, choking back sobs, "Who does that?! Who doesn't ask for more specifics? Who makes a deal with a demon?!"
"Demon?" Stanford echoed,
"Yeah! I made a deal with a demon," Cassandra repeated with exasperation, overcome with full-on, red-faced, tear-streaked sobbing. "what kind of idiot does that?! Me, apparently," she muttered. "Oh god, and he's gonna' kill dad!" she sobbed, curling tighter into a ball.
"Now, I know a thing or two about demons," Ford mentioned, sitting down on the floor with her, "maybe I could help."
Cassandra looked up at him, breathing calmer for a moment. Sure, he was a different man than the one she'd grown up with, but 30 years did a lot less between 60-something and 90-something than it did between 14 and 42.
"You'd do that?" she managed, her voice quiet and inhibited, "You- You'd help an idiot kid who's gonna' get her dad k-ki-" another sob cut off any words she could hope to get out, and she rubbed persistently at her eyes, trying to stop the tears.
"Of course! And nothing will happen to your father," he assured her, disregarding how little he knew about her plight, "everything will be just fine."
Regaining some composure she looked back up at him again,
"OK, but I gotta' level with you," she admitted, still swiping away tears as they fell. She took a deep breath, and began: "my name's not Carrie. My name is actually Cassandra Gwendoline Pines. I'm from the future. No really," she insisted, before the look of disbelief could fully form on Ford's face, "look, this is the time device," she explained, producing the tape-measure, "I got it from an almost-bald guy. Listen, Dipper's time traveled too, he'll know what I'm talking about if you need me to prove it. I've read his notebooks. Though also, I'm his daughter, so it'd be great if we didn't have to have that conversation. You know, paradoxes and all," she added with a shrug.
Even with Ford's experience with the abnormal and the bizarre, this was a bit much, but he wasn't about to mention that.
"But, see, Bill used me to possess Dad, and now- now I don't even know what to do. Blendin offered to let me go back and fix my mistakes, but I didn't. I'm too selfish…" she whimpered, the tears returning. "I can't do anything right," she realized, "I try to be the hero, the smart one, but I'll never be as smart as Dad, or you," she added, tossing a gesture towards her future-great-grunkle.
"Well, hold on," Ford interjected, "who said I was a pinnacle of intelligence? I've done some pretty stupid things!"
"Bet I've done worse," Cassandra grumbled.
"I shave with an open flame," Ford pointed out.
"Yeah, but that works!" Cassandra retorted.
"It didn't always. Took a lot of trial and error."
"Ok, but, like, I ate an entire bag of three-year-old easter jellybeans once."
"When was this?"
"About two years ago," Cassandra explained, "I've never vomited so many colors in my life."
Ford winced through a smile, before attempting to one-up her:
"I once ate part of a dead fish off the beach because Stan dared me. That was a bad couple of days."
"OK, but Ashwin is the reason I ever broke a bone in my body," Cassandra shot back, "he convinced me to try surfing. It didn't end well."
"Fiddleford made me try to surf at a convention in Florida. Really the whole trip was a bad idea. The ridiculous shirt I got out of it was even worse."
"But- wait-" Cassandra blurted, remembering that she was supposed to be miserable, "none of that's the point! I was stupid enough to let a demon sweet talk me into possession!"
"So was I."
Cassandra paused,
"You did not," she insisted, shooting him a glance, "you're smarter than that."
"Maybe I am now," Ford allowed, "but only because I fell for it before."
"Bull," Cassandra retorted, "you're just saying this to make me feel better."
Ford chuckled,
"I wouldn't go that far. You said it was Bill, right?"
"What?"
"Bill - triangular dream demon, yellow, one eye, piece of work-?"
"Yeah, that's the one," Cassandra confirmed.
"Bill's a nasty little fucker. Er, pardon my-"
"It's cool," Cassandra waved him off, "he's a total motherfucker."
"Well, I wasn't going to go that far, but you certainly aren't wrong," Ford accepted. "Bill convinced me he was a 'muse,' that he would help me change the world,"
Cassandra nodded to herself in recognition as Ford continued,
"he tricked me into building a portal that, eventually, led to him trying to take over the world."
"What?!" Cassandra blurted, "Taking- Bill- what?!"
"That's what happened," Ford clarified, "it's the reason the 'never mind all that act' exists in the first place. The apocalypse - or, as it's colloquially known, wierdmageddon - nearly took place in 2012. That's what no one wants you to know."
"Woah…" Cassandra breathed, "…the apocalypse?"
"The apocalypse," Ford confirmed.
"Wow, yeah, I was a jerk," Cassandra concluded, "I'm not sure I needed to know the apocalypse almost happened."
"Well, now you know," Ford responded, "which is probably for the better, if you're going to save…" he hesitated on what to call the man Bill had possessed in Cassandra's time, "…your father."
"Wait- are you saying you can help me?" Cassandra perked up, "This wasn't a total loss? I didn't just screw up again, you can actually help me save Dad?"
"Of course!" Ford assured her, "No great-nephew of mine is going to be possessed by Bill if I can help it. Here-" he started scribbling on a piece of paper, "there's a wheel, that, if completed, is said to defeat Bill,"
Cassandra looked over his shoulder as he drew ten symbols around a sketch of the demon himself,
"Now, during weirdmageddon there were ten people who were clearly represented by these symbols. I'm not sure if that-"
"There's the reunion," Cassandra realized, "it's what got me thinking about 2012 in the first place! A bunch of people came back into town; it's why I'm even here."
"Then maybe you can track everyone down!" Ford realized, "So, let's see now, the tree is your father, the star is Mabel, not to be confused with that Gideon boy's star, Soos is the question mark, I believe the ice represents the Corduroy girl, the heart is that moody boy - I think his name is Robert? - I'm not sure why, exactly, but Pacifica is the Llama, then Fiddleford is represented by the glasses,"
Cassandra wondered who Fiddleford was. She'd have to ask when she got back to her own time.
"And then Stanley and I are this symbol here and the six-fingered hand."
Cassandra's face quirked with concern, was there a way to get her great-grunkles to Gravity Falls? If Dad didn't think they should make the trip… If they had decided not to make the trip…
"Now, the wheel needs to stay connected- Is there a problem?" Ford asked, catching her expression.
Cassandra hesitated,
"It's just- I don't know how to get you and great-grunkle Stan into town. You're not dead!" she hastily added as his face fell, "It's just- you're, like, 90 now, and… I'm sure I'll think of something," she assured him, also trying to convince herself. As she stood there wondering how she really could manage that, a yawn snuck out, and she realized how heavy her eyelids really were. "Oh, jeez, I'm sorry Great-Grunkle Ford," she managed, before another yawn overtook her, "it's just-"
"No need to apologize," he assured her, "it is three in the morning. You should get back to sleep."
Cassandra gave a weak smile and a nod, and yawned again. There was a long pause in the room while Cassandra zoned completely out staring at the floor, suddenly weighed down and drained by the emotional roller coaster of the last 24 hours.
"…Would you like to sleep here?" Ford offered, unsure of what to do with this girl, his future-relative, who was clearly in distress, even if she worked hard to keep it hidden. "The sofa is really quite comfortable."
"M'kay," Cassandra agreed, curling up on the old couch without hesitation.
After a moment Ford draped his coat over Cassandra.
"Thanks grea'grunkleFord…" she managed, sleepily.
"Anytime, Cassandra."
HLWF BB GHMXY RPMW JFMLW GGJIHD H GWOJW
'NEKKOAVFF' PHW DFXXCIV TM TJSFM-NVJNCEP JGJR
Hi! Sorry to break the fourth wall, but with the release of the official Journal 3 (which is super cool) we know now - surprise surprise - the real name I chose for Dipper is wrong.
Should I go through and change it, or leave it as Abel and put a disclaimer on the beginning of the fic?