August 5, 2012
Dipper stared out the window as Soos drove down the path to the Mystery Shack. He could hear Billeah and Mabel chatting away like best friends, and playing some sort of complicated patty cake game. The thought crossed Dipper's mind if it was really some ancient demonic ritual Billeah was trying to teach Mabel to unlock her hidden powers.
"No! You did it wrong! It's slap, slap, snap, high-five, underhand, and swish" Mabel corrected. Billeah giggled and the rhythmic and complicated choreography started again.
There goes that idea.
Dipper absently played with the gauze over his eye. It itched and was annoying to lose half his field of view. He knew Soos was to the left of him and he had to turn his head to see his friend, but he wasn't going to let a little thing like a missing eye or the death of his parents to cave his resolve of trapping Bill.
"What is going on here?" Dipper asked as they crested over the final hill. The entire merchandise of the Shack was out on the front lawn. There was a huge sign that said "Closed for remodeling" and Grunkle Stan, the real one, throwing various objects into a huge dumpster and swearing like a sailor.
Dipper rolled down his window to hear what the man was screaming about.
"What the heck is this? Did he just sew a monkey torso onto an alligator body and add a chicken head? That doesn't even make sense!" Stan complained and threw it into the trash bin.
"What are you doing?!" Mabel screamed and leapt out of the moving car. Soos had barely been able to slam on the brakes when her feet touched the ground. She bolted to dumpster and jumped in, throwing back out most of the things. "How could you do this?!"
"Hey!" Stan said. He reached into the dumpster and pulled out Mabel by the scruff of her sweater. He left her dangling over the gaping maw of the trash bin while she clung onto the chicken headed- monkey body-alligator legged creature.
"I helped you make this!" Mabel screamed. Everyone in the car gasped, just as she realized what she said, clung onto it even tighter and began to cry. "Grunkle Staaan!"
"I had nothing to do with this monstrosity or the hack that's been living here! It's garbage just like he is!" Stan shouted back. Mabel shown no sign of letting up her wail, or letting go of the monstrous creature she so lovingly created for the store. He shrugged and set Mabel and the monster back into the dumpster and began to sort his inventory.
"I know Mr. Pines… and that's definitely not Mr. Pines. I wonder how long the fake Mr. Pines had been lying to all of us. The real Mr. Pines said I can keep working here, and seemed nice enough…" Soos said. He was fidgeting with his fingers before deciding to pull into the driveway and stop the car.
"You going to say something to him about what he did to Mabel?" Billeah said.
"She's made her choice and trusted him…" Dipper said with a shrug and got out of the car. "I think I'll introduce myself."
Walking up to the mumbling old man Dipper held himself up and gave a tiny cough to let him know he was there.
"Oh, if it isn't the man of the hour." Stan said and looked Dipper up and down; he gave himself an approving grunt and went back to his sorting. "I can use some help going through these boxes. Anything made in Tijuana goes in the dumpster. I have an uphill battle of rebuilding the reputation of the Mystery Shack, and I won't be scamming tourists… like he did. This whole thing was his idea from the start… can't believe what he turned this place into without me around..."
"Oh umm… yeah." Dipper said, grabbing a box and sifting through the odds and ends. "I wanted to officially introduce myself. I'm Dipper Pines"
Dipper held out his hand. Stan looked at it oddly, and slowly extended his and grabbed it, giving it a good shake.
"Nice to find someone has manners around here." he said loudly, mostly towards the dumpster.
"You have… six fingers…" Dipper said, looking at the hand that was withdrawn.
"Yeah… so? Hand me that box, kid." Stan said. He pointed to a box full of question mark T-shirts. "Polyester? When did he have these made?"
"It's just… The journals..."
"We'll talk about that later…" Stan said, pointing to his nose and giving Billeah a glance. Dipper nodded and zipped his lip. "Hey, you two going to gawk or start going through boxes? Dipper just got out of the hospital and already he's helping out… unlike SOME PEOPLE!"
"NEVER!" screamed a voice from the dumpster. Soos slowly grabbed a box and moved closer to Stan while Billeah went to the dumpster and poked her head inside.
"She'll come around… she's my sister. I know her." Dipper said confidently.
"You do, huh?" he said and chuckled. "Alright then. We'll stick with that."
OoOoO
Dipper's first day back was wonderful. They got a lot of work done. Stan listened to Dipper's input as to what the customers would ask for, and some of the specialty items they tended to buy. He even got to call the distributors and put in the orders.
Dipper knew he wanted to keep busy so he doesn't think about the obvious. He spent all day and well into the evening sorting, shelving, and dusting the store until he felt a heavy hand on his shoulder.
"Time to wrap it up kid, you just got out of the hospital, I know you're stir crazy and all… Anyway, I wanted to give you this. The imposter had a box full of them, lord knows why." Stan said and handed Dipper an eye patch. "It's just… it will make ya look cooler, and the whole gauze thing is kinda grossing me out."
Dipper took the eye patch and felt it in his hand. He remembered when he wore it when Mabel ran the store for the weekend, and felt a twinge of guilt.
"Is that how we're going to refer to him? The imposter?" Dipper said softly, rubbing the eye patch between his fingers.
"That's what he did, Family or not, he was reckless and endangered everyone pulling a stunt like that. You at least listened to me and tried to stop him. So yeah, he's no brother of mine, he's an imposter. He stole my life from me."
"There was a fez…" Dipper said softly.
"It's in the office; it's yours if you want it." Stan said and walked to the kitchen.
"He wasn't always bad…" Dipper said softly.
"We can agree on that… but he made his choice, and got caught like an idiot." Stan said and opened the fridge. He pulled out a beer and popped it open. Sitting down at the kitchen table, Stan used his foot to push out another chair.
Dipper put on the eye patch and joined the strange Grunkle in the kitchen. He offered the open beer to him, Dipper shook his head no.
"Hell, after all you've done, I figured you deserved a toast." Stan said, shot gunning the can. "Ahh, it's been awhile since I've had one of those."
"I… I have so many questions." Dipper said.
"You may be disappointed with the answers, if I even give them to you." Stan said. "First, I gotta ask. What's Bill doing here, and why is he in a dress?"
"How… do you know about Bill?" Dipper said shocked.
"Bill and me go way back. He can get dolled up in whatever skin suit he wants, but I know him when I see him. He's… different though. Who'd he possess? I don't remember having any more siblings, so I don't buy the whole "cousin" thing, no matter how adamant your parents explained it to me on the phone before… they decided to come here."
"He's… no, She's human." Dipper said. Stan looked at him, and cocked an eyebrow.
"Human? Like… human human?" Stan said with a chuckle. "Like, I can take her out into the woods for a 'walk' and we'd be done with Bill forever human?"
"I'm not sure… if that happened, and I wouldn't condone such a thing." Dipper said, shocked to hear Stan ponder the death of a twelve year old girl.
"I'm talking hypotheticals, kid. Don't get your underwear in a knot." Stan said and took a drink, "How?"
"The portal… I fell in." Dipper said.
"And you lived… which, by all the math, you shouldn't have… so you didn't?"
"Oh, I lived… but no one else did." Dipper said. He felt such a relief talking to someone about this. Stan was the Author, he knew what was going on and he was probably the only one he could open up to about all of this.
"So, how bad was the destruction? The town?" Stan said.
"Bigger…" Dipper said.
"The state?" Stan said.
"Bigger." Dipper said.
"Not the country…" Stan said in astonishment. Dipper shook his head no. "It blew up the earth?"
"You're still thinking too small…" Dipper said solemnly, remembering what Bill had said to him.
"You gotta help me out here kid, how much did it destroy?"
"Everything but the mindscape." Dipper said. His hands were shaking. "I tried to hit the shut off switch… and missed. I failed us all. Grunkle… we found the articles of Stan Pine's death, and all of his fake ID's… He begged us to let the portal open, and that he'd explain to us why he was doing it. All summer long, and he lied to us. I had journal 3 the whole time, and he had the other two. He could have told us."
"You're what? 12-13 years old? That's a lot of responsibility for a kid." Stan said. "And how do you know everything was destroyed?"
"What?" Dipper asked. "I… It was black all around us; I was in an endless void."
"Sounds right…" Stanly nodded. "But, you didn't observe the destruction of the multiverse… You were told it was destroyed… by Bill."
Dipper froze. The words of the journal, of the man in front of him flashed in front of him.
"Trust no one…" he whispered.
"Words to live by." Stan said, and raised his second beer. "So, what's the deal? What bargain did you agree too?"
"I… I didn't trust him. I never trust him. He wanted to be free of the Mindscape and in our world without having to be summoned. I said the only way I'd do that is if he was human, and our cousin so I could keep an eye on him."
"That explains that…" Stan said, pointing to Dipper's eye patch. "So… Bill's contracts are based on his intention, and yours. Do you remember the exact wording?"
"Bill said he could change our reality any time I wanted to fix things. I didn't trust him, so I said he could only make changes to the re-created world if I told him to do it. When I asked him to bring my parents and my eye back, he said he couldn't unless we struck a bargain, because that's how his powers work."
"But… you refused. Kid, you can get your parents back… why didn't you?"
"Billeah… wanted to be Bill again. A human version of a fully powered Bill. Right now, Billeah is a twelve year old cousin who grew up with us. She lived that life. Mabel and her are best friends. I don't remember any of it, since I was outside of the world when that reality came to pass, like I assume you were. Billeah said you came out of the portal."
"Yea, we can talk about that later." Stan said.
"Last night at the hospital… Billeah cried all night. Not because I denied her omnipotence… but because she lost Mom and Dad. She's trapped like this, and I'm the only way she can exercise her powers." Dipper said softly.
"Is that so?" Stan said. Faster than Dipper could comprehend Stan stood up and threw a kitchen knife at the wall dividing the kitchen and the living room. The force of the blow drove the knife all the way down the handle.
"Oh my god!" Dipper shouted. He heard a high pitched scream from behind the wall.
"You crazy old man!" screamed Billeah, she ran into the kitchen holding her cheek. Mabel was down the stairs in a flash with Waddles trailing behind.
"What did you do?" Mabel screamed and looked at the cut across Billeah's face. "It's bleeding! We need to go to the hospital!"
"Why didn't you stop it?" Stan screamed back, "Always snooping around aren't ya! Always watching! I was aiming for your head… I'm sure you moved it just enough…"
"Who does that?" Dipper screamed and rushed over to Billeah.
"Careful whose side you rush to." Stan said, glaring at Mabel.
"I'm fine Mabel, It's just a scratch." Billeah said with a smile. Blood was clearly running down her porcelain skinned cheek. Dipper looked it over, and washed away the blood. It was just a shallow cut. If they bandaged it right, it wouldn't even leave a scar. He ran to the front counter of the store and pulled out the first aid kit. He gingerly applied ointment on the cut and patched it up.
"I can't believe you're patching… that thing… up" Stan said coldly.
"She's my cousin… and your great niece. You should treat her as such." Dipper said defiantly. Billeah's sniffed back tears as Dipper finished his first aid. "Mabel, help her to bed, I'll be up shortly."
"You sure?" Mabel said pleading. "I really miss you…"
"Yes, I'll be up soon." Dipper said and gave her a hug. Billeah leaned in and hugged the two of them. Dipper noticed how warm she was, it only reaffirmed Bill's trapped as a human girl.
Mabel and shook up Billeah left upstairs. Dipper and Stan listened to the footsteps and said nothing until the movement stopped, and they were in bed.
"Are you crazy?" he whispered.
"What?" Stan asked.
"You threw a knife through a wall! It could have killed her!" Dipper hissed.
"And?" Stan asked, opening a third beer.
"What if it was Mabel?" Dipper asked.
"I wouldn't make that mistake. Mabel walks like a hurricane followed by a Macy's fair. Bil...leah is like a cat."
"You realized she's registered as living here now… and you're her legal guardian. Should she end up dead under your care, you could be sharing a cell with… him." Dipper pointed out.
"Meh…" Stan shrugged. "I've been to worse places."
"Everything's legal…" Dipper said.
"...When there are no cops around." Stan chuckled. His face lit up for a moment, and became serious. "You need to go to bed. I promise I won't try to assassinate that being… for now."
Dipper gave up and decided to tally this in the win column. He got a drink of water, brushed his teeth and trudged up stairs.
Mabel and Billeah were in the same bed, holding each other and sleeping soundly. Dipper undressed, got into his pajamas and got into his bed and rolled over.
As he was drifting off, he smelled a combination of glue and glitter and felt the familiar arms of his sister wrap around him. He missed her so much. He grabbed her hand and interlocked his fingers with her and laid on his back. She laid on his chest and was sound asleep.
"Dipper?" Billeah said softly, holding her pillow to her chest and looked away, rather shyly.
"What?" he asked annoyed.
"Mabel… usually… and we…" Billeah said. She stammered and turned around, heading back to the bed on the other side of the room "I'm sorry, I'll leave you two alone."
"Hey," Dipper said, wondering if he's going to regret this. "There's room"
Billeah's face lit up. She gently crawled into bed with him, taking the other side, opposite of Mabel. The two of them locked hands over his heart and fell asleep. Dipper wanted to hate Billeah, but seeing her sleeping on him like this, made him want to protect her and keep her safe, just like Mabel. Was this all a master plan of Bill's or was Billeah the result of a deal gone wrong and was really just a young girl, alone and scared, who lost the only family she had, and felt just as vulnerable as Mabel and he?
It didn't take long for him to drift off to sleep. But as he fell into slumber, he could swear he felt someone watching him.