The only look Dipper could have expected from Mabel was that of shock and/or horror.
He didn't get to see either, as she began the walk upstairs at around the halfway point. Maybe it's for the best, Dipper thought, remembering what was to come. God only knows she couldn't handle the rats.
He walked upstairs an hour later with the look he expected from his sister, if only to a lesser degree.
There isn't much to say about the second morning but that it was quieter than the first. The alarm sounded (thankfully), waking the pair and spurring them on their way. Bagged lunches waited for them on the kitchen counter.
Butch smiled when Mabel walked in but did little to lighten her quickly darkening mood. The first stages of withdrawal were setting in, the shaking, the lack of focus, the aggravation.
Dipper absentmindedly took notes while the teacher babbled aimlessly about their easiest unit. Highlight this, highlight that, write this down, color that, wham bam, thank you ma'am, and there came the bell.
Then lunch hit. The pair met along the same hallway they had talked down on the first day, Mabel with a look of genuine anger and dipper with looks of boredom and sadness, mixed to be greater than the sum of the two looks.
"Still angry?" Dipper asked. She glared at him with her answer.
"Oh, what do you think?" Mabel said angrily, Arms crossed and sweater wrapped around the waist. She dripped sass.
"I think you need that camera back." Dipper said like it was something his sister didn't know.
"Well why not?" Mabel asked angrily. "Why wouldn't I want back the only useful gift from a family reunion three years ago?"
The pair were silent for a long while before Mabel, straining her neck and standing on tip-toes, spotted something deep into the crowd of tables.
"Wanna sit with a new friend?" She asked fro her heightened perch.
"Sure, why not." Dipper responded, Mabel taking his hand and leading him as best she could through a sea of squirming bodies and prying elbows.
"Hey!" "watch where you're going!" "Sorry." "'THE HELL ARE YOU" came to the pair in varying order, into which they sent, "sorry," "excuse me," "pardon," "coming through," also in varying order with a myriad of variations.
"You think they could do with a bigger cafeteria, though," Dipper said, squeezing his way through a pair of horrendously overstuffed backpacks.
"Yeah, sure." came her passing and almost inaudible response over the crowd. "Hey Butch!" she turned, looking at a strange, thick glassed boy who in turn stood his lighthouse of a frame up to greet her.
"Hey!" he replied, walking forwards for a strange hug that dipper inadvertently found himself a part of when Mabel failed to let go of his hand.
"So I take it you're Butch?" Dipper yelled through the crowd's volume.
"Yep. Come now, sit." Butch responded, pulling away and gesturing for the table of his origin before he himself returned. Mabel, Dipper close in tow, were not far behind.
It was a fine enough table with a mixed bag of people spilled from other tables, rejected as the outcast they looked to be. The pair were quick to sling backpacks off and sit down, or they at least tried to. It was largely unsuccessful when a small hooded kid let rip a hateful, gravelly scream upon dipper's action of sitting, swinging loose arms wildly until Dipper moved himself out of the way of the onslaught.
"What was that for!?" Dipper screamed, his face still behind his own shielding arm while he waited for a response. There stood Mabel behind him, hand subtly reaching for both her and Dipper's backpacks.
"You were in my bubble!" came his tearful reply, turning around and slouching lower into his tray before continuing with, "what the hell was I supposed to do!?"
"Look, I'm sorry!" Dipper screamed back through the slowly quieting crowd around him. "I didn't know."
There came no response from the hooded boy, still apparently fuming over Dippers 'transgression.'
"...A-are you okay?" Dipper asked, extending a hand to the hooded boy's shoulder. At the touch of a finger, the boy's entire body seemed to contract and swing into a fist headed directly for Dipper's_
"OWWWW!" Came Dipper's scream, clutching his nose and turning away into the very surprised figure of Mabel behind him. Her free arm wrapped around her brother's pained figure while her eyes darted between the shocked, heaving brother in her embrace and the fearful, heaving figure behind her brother.
"My gosh are you okay?" Mabel stumbled out at Dipper, dropping the bags momentarily to move his face up for inspection. "'Cause-'cause it really doesn't look like it." she was leading him away and out of the crowd with the arm she still had wrapped around her brother's shoulder. Forcing his eyes open and prying his hands from his nose, Dipper was surprised and horrified to find his hands, covered with thin blood spitting a weak river down his arm and down to the clean white tile below. It was all he could do not to vomit, clasping his eyes shut and hands back onto his nose.
"Oh, gosh..." was all he could get out, pinching the bridge of his nose while he put his other arm around Mabel. She could feel the unsure manner by which he placed his feet, the way his weight seemed to teeter with every step. This man wasn't okay.
"Come on. Let's find an empty table." Mabel said, scanning the small empty spaces left between innumerable square pillars at the outskirts of the lunch room. "Okay, not there. Not there. Maybe... no, definitely not." Mabel mumbled, doing her best to support her brother.
She saw it; a table with only one occupant and his bags doing something twitchy on a laptop, it was almost too good to be true.
"Oh thank god!" she exclaimed through a sigh of relief. "Just hang in there, Dip. We're almost there."
with a trail of this red splotches left in their wake, Mabel led her brother to that miracle of a table, tossing hers, and soon after Dipper's, backpacks onto the table. The clattering thump that resounded was just enough to draw the lonesome kid's eyes up to a glance, firmly targeting them back onto the screen with a somewhat annoyed groan after less than a second.
"Seriously? You got nowhere better to sit?" he asked, tapping at the keyboard frantically. "like – anywhere else?"
"Not when the last place we tried to sit bought me a bloody nose." Dipper got out in a nasal voice, easing himself down onto a plastic stool opposite the kid. There sat Mabel next to him, her arm still wreathed across her brother's back with eyebrows arced in concern.
"Wait...what?" the keystrokes came to an abrupt halt as the kids eyes followed up to Dipper, the moment their eyes locked sparking a light of vague recollection.
"Hey, weren't you in my_" Dipper started, looking up only to be cut off by frantic key strokes and an aggravated, "Ah, Christ!" from who Dipper now realized to be Caesar.
"Sorry about that." Caesar continued, his eyes still scanning the screen with keystroke accompaniment. "Please, continue."
"Uhhh... yeah. You're Caesar, right? From my math class?" Dipper asked in split discomfort and confusion. There appeared Mabel beside Caesar, bent over his shoulder as best she could, watching with a steadily lowering jaw at whatever she saw on screen.
"Yeah, probably." Caesar answered, taking a rapid glance over his shoulder to see Mabel and a double take to affirm. "Do you mind?" he asked her.
"How can you tell whats even going on?!" she asked, taking a step back and straightening herself slightly.
"Oh Jesus Christ, the lag isn't even that bad!" he replied, aggressively twisting his body to reply.
"Actually, what are you doing over there?" Dipper asked, thrusting his bloody hands onto the table to push himself up.
"A game. What's it look like I'm doin'?" Caesar answered.
"You should see this." came Mabel's comment, looking up from the screen with eyes thankfully drained of grief.
"Gimme a second." Dipper confirmed, stepping uneasily over his chair and walking around for a view.
"Dude, dude. No." Caesar commanded, holding his hand up to stop dipper. "I'd prefer there be no blood on this thing for a little while."
"Why not? The red stuff's already everywhere!" Mabel punched in, gesturing towards the screen in a manner that only aggravated Dipper further. With a confused shrug, he sat down as near to Caesar as his defensive palm would let him.
A half minute had passed when Caesar violently slammed the table with one of his hands and, through a toothed exhale, folded his laptop and slipped it into his bag.
"...Huh." was all Mabel had to say, taking a seat between her brother and new potential dream. With a long exhale Caesar stretched back, hands on his face before tottering and snapping one of his hands out to the edge of the table and pulling himself back to a sit.
"So." he started, setting his tired eyes upon Dipper. "Apparently I know you."
"Yeah, I'm Dipper from your math class." He claimed, receiving a crooked, confused glare from Caesar.
"I sat right next to you_"
"I'm just gonna stop you right there." Caesar said, cutting off a rather surprised Dipper. "Like, seriously. You gave me no reason to remember you. Nobody remembers who played 'moody teen #06,'"
"oh. Moody teen #06." Dipper mumbled to himself, looking down at the table for a brief few seconds before snapping up and continuing with, "Well anyhow, I'm_"
"Dipper, yes. You told me already." Cut in Caesar, leaning forward onto the table with folded hands.
"So then what's her name?"
"I'm Mabel, and I've got_" started Mabel
"Maple? As in the tree?" Caesar again cut in, shaking his head and looking up into nowhere as he said, "What Parent names their child after a tree?"
"MABEL. M. A. B. E. L." she spelled out, not nearly as annoyed as she should have been. "And I was gonna ask you – why aren't you sitting with anyone?"
"Simple. I don't have anyone I can stand to sit with." answered Caesar, gesturing with one of his folded hands like it didn't matter one bit.
"Well why not?" Mabel followed up, rather confused. "everyone's gotta have someone_"
"Frankly, I find human relationships less than desirable." started Caesar. "it's like 'oh hey, we're a lot alike! Wanna hang out and do nothing?' 'okay!' - like, no. I don't see the purpose."
"you realize how little sense that makes, right?" Dipper asked, dabbling at his face with the corner of his sleeve.
"Yes. Anyhow!" he replied, clapping his hands together. Only then, with Mabel's attention drawn to them, did she notice the little brown splotches marring their surface. "seems like somethings_"
"What happened to your hands?" cut in Mabel.
"What are you...oh yeah!" Dipper said, squinting and looking where his sister did. In stark contrast to the pale, spidery hands Caesar beheld, there lay far too many brown splotches, uneven and asymmetrical. They were shallow pits in his hand, almost too shallow to tell.
"Tha-it's nothing." he responded, pulling his hands into his shirt sleeves and his arms further back from the table. With a drastic shift of expression he leaned forward and sarcastically asked, "Can I finish?"
"Oh. Yeah." Dipper responded giving Mabel a light bump with his knee. The grief had crept back into her, manifesting itself as a rapid, disturbed tapping of the fingers against the table.
"I was..." his eyes dropped and his face turned confused. "Oh god what was I gonna say?" the lull found itself filled by the sound of Mabel's tapping, pulling confusion into Caesars face. "Are you alright?" he asked her.
"I guess." she answered, unknowingly restrained with her eyes scanning the false wood table. "I'm…I'm just getting over something right now."
"A school official took her Camera earlier." Dipper answered, look from Mabel to Caesar. "Although it seems like the kind of thing she would_"
"THEY TOOK MY CAMERA!" Mabel cried, slamming the table in a sudden burst of rage. "THEY HAD NO RIGHT! NO RIGHT!"
"There it is." joked Dipper, scooting a seat over to avoid the onslaught.
"GOSH DARN IT WHY'S THIS ALWAYS GOTTA HAPPEN TO ME? WHY?" she continued, growing lightly red in the face.
"You know you're probably not going to get it back, right?" Caesar cut in, calm as ever.
"WH...what?" there she came falling from the steam cloud, breathing hard and fast with a spreading brow.
"What form'd they tell you to fill out? C13-A? H-14?"
"Y-yeah... I think so..." answered Mabel, a state of shock biting the anger, the sadness, everything from her eyes. It was all too easy to imagine the emotion draining from her with every inch she took towards sitting.