Authors note: Chapter 4 has arrived, and let me tell you this, it's gonna get pretty dark in this chapter, and a certain scene came out pretty messed up as I was just writing it in my head. Sure it might not be the best description in here, but it's even worse when you picture it and take in the psychological factors as well. Nothing else to say except, I hope you enjoy, but not too much, or I'll send you to Arkham asylum to play cards with the Joker. See ya!
Chapter 4: Guilt and Loss
O-O-O
The hours seemed to go by slow for the twins, which may be due to the speakers making an announcement every minute, always repeating messages about staying at work, trusting your authorities, avoid trouble, have a nice day, etc. Pretty much the same propaganda that they've heard so many times that you could recite the announcements word to word, exactly what the government wanted, to be remembered by everyone for their messages, no matter if they were true or not, people still listened and remembered and that was all they needed to get in your head.
But all the twins could think of was going home right now, usually they would just work like they did normally, but today wasn't a good day at work for them.
Dipper had a tougher time carrying the supplies this time around, but that was because of how skinny he was, sure he gained some muscle over the years and lifting crates for ten years can do that, but the benefits of natural growth and "exercise", if you want to call it that, were outweighed by Dipper just being skinny genetically and the strict restriction of food for civilians, eating one can of food every week only guarantees a short break from starvation, which has left everyone in the town, including the twins, physically weaker than they should be.
So when Dipper accidently dropped one of the crates he was carrying and almost collapsed from exhaustion, the Guanian guards weren't too happy over it as they walked over to him as he laid on the ground.
"Get up." Sternly ordered one of the guards, as Dipper managed to quickly get up despite his exhaustion.
"I'm sorry sir, I-
The guard interrupted Dipper by hitting him in the gut with the butt of his assault rifle, knocking the breath out of his lungs.
"Next time you fuck up, I'm calling an officer to take care of you." Said the guard as he let Dipper off the hook, which surprised his partner as they turned back to walk to their posts.
"What was that?" Asked his partner curiously, Dipper still able to hear the guards within of earshot.
"I'm not letting an officer take the glory for this one." Replied the other guard, the conversation growing fainter to Dipper as he picked up the crate he dropped and resumed work.
Dipper thought he was extremely lucky after that, usually the guards would have just sent him away just like that, but there has been some recent tension going on within the CSF between the guardsmen and officers.
Even though the guardsman had superior training, equipment, and weaponry over the officers, the problems arose when the officers were tasked with enforcing the law and pretty much dictating whatever they wanted, while the guardsman, who are supposed to be the CSF's version of SWAT, were demoted to being stuck at posts, due to actual Sleg military either busy defending the Black Citadel or busy sweeping the planet for the rumored rebel resistance, not doing anything interesting while the officers got to have all the fun, sometimes even doing the jobs the SWAT were supposed to do, such as breaching buildings to take down suspected dissidents, so SWAT started to become more lenient to citizens who made mistakes, sometimes they would just hit them once in the gut to "motivate" the citizen and be on their way, sometimes the guards would just brush it off completely just to piss off the officers and get them in trouble, which the officers replied to that by gaining enough privileges to enforce the law on the SWAT themselves, which meant the officers could police the police, so tensions were high between the officers and SWAT, but their little feud was far from enough to cause major problems to CSF, since both parties still did their jobs accordingly and efficiently, the feud was almost like an illusion to the CSF.
Dipper was still thankful since he really wasn't a fan of being beaten to death, if it was an officer he pissed off, the situation he had before would have been resolved with a trip to the police station and thrown in a dirty cell, while the cops took turns beating him to a bloody pulp like Robbie. Dipper didn't want to think about Robbie, not because he didn't like him, but because he didn't want to think back to what he just saw happen to Robbie earlier in the morning, it made him worry about Mabel's safety.
He knew Mabel had been affected quite a bit after all these years, first with Grunkle Stan being taken away and interrogated, and after months of his disappearance, he came back a broken man, whatever good was left of him was gone, taken away by the Slegs who put Stan through God know what, and turned him into someone who seemed useless and defenseless, constantly forgetting how to take care of himself one moment and remembering it in the next, that's what made Mabel more of a motherly figure for Dipper and Stan over these years, but the event that really traumatized his sister was Waddles.
Dipper was never much of a pig person, but he loved the little butterball nonetheless, but not like Mabel did. She said it herself, Waddles was her soul mate, and Dipper couldn't argue with that at all, he saw how close they were all the time, so he knew how devastated Mabel would be if anything happened to him, and unfortunately something did happen to him.
Even if it was years ago, he still remembered the whole incident Mabel told him about since he wasn't there to see it, how she was just walking with her pig one day when two Slegs wanted to do another "loyalty check" on her, how they forcefully took Waddles away from her arms as she cried, begging for them to give her pet back, and then what they did to the pig, forcing Mabel to watch as they burned the pig alive and ate his flesh just to nail that image in her head, telling her that this is what will happen to her if she disobeys them, and how she came back home soaked in her own tears, she was never the same again.
Now his sister uses her old happy go lucky personality as a mask, to hide her true feelings, feelings of sadness and depression, it made Dipper feel guilt beyond belief that he wasn't there that one day, and he swore to her that he would always be there for her and never let any more harm come to her again, no matter what.
"I wonder how she's doing." Dipper thought to himself as he was lifting more supply crates, hoping that Mabel was having a better day then him, now that the guards were watching him more closely as he still struggled to lift the supplies as the same guard came back to him to give him another hit to the gut. "Just please be okay."
Unknown to Dipper and the Slegs however, they were being watched from the distance from the cliffs far across the town, as three figures were observing the town from the distance, laying down in the ground as one of the figures observed the warehouse and saw Dipper in the person's lens of their binoculars.
"Don't you dare touch him, you mother fucker." The figure whispered as it saw Dipper getting hit again, silently infuriating the person.
"You know we can't do anything for him." Whispered another figure next to the one with the binoculars.
"I'm the one leading you, so whatever I say goes. End of discussion." The figure with the binoculars replied, ending the conversation as it signaled the others to move out before whispering silently.
"Hang on Dipper, I'm coming for you."
O-O-O
Mabel was stressed.
She was always stressed when dealing with patients without proper medical supplies and experience, but it didn't help that every time she and her co-workers stopped someone from convulsing, someone else needed help and CSF officers would just barge in the church and literally toss out new beating victims from their arms onto the floor, as if they were disposing them in a trash can, sometimes cracking the victim's skulls open when they fell, making their condition worse when they started bleeding on the floor and had to constantly switch between each patient, not to mention all the blood, both fresh and dry, that stained most of the floor and was never cleaned, all while the two guards watching over the church just ignored the commotion and casually spoke to each other about their day, even making a few jokes about the dying victims to pass time, so Mabel was having a REALLY bad day.
As Mabel ran over to help another victim that was bleeding out from his head, she slipped on freshly spilt blood on the floor, falling in front of herself and braced the fall with her hands, her sweater getting stained with the blood.
"Mabel!" Cried out Candy as she went over to help Mabel up. "Are you-?
"I'm fine." Replied Mabel, attempting to keep her cool as she rejected her friend's help and got herself up. "Just go get some more bandages."
Candy nodded and went to get new bandages while Mabel went over to help the patient in need, using the bandages she already had in her hands to wrap his head.
As Mabel was wrapping the man's head, another announcement could be heard.
"THE TIME IS NOW TWO P.M. ALL CITIZENS ARE TEMPORARILY RELIEVED FROM THEIR ACTIVE DUTIES UNTIL THREE P.M. FAILURE TO ARRIVE ON TIME ON THREE P.M. WILL RESULT IN SEVERE PENELTIES. THANK YOU.
Mabel would have been relieved to hear that, but she knew that she had to stay behind to tend to the patients more, but Grenda came up to her.
"Don't worry about them Mabel, we can take care of it." Said Grenda, able to tell from Mabel's face that she was exhausted.
"Really?" Asked Mabel relieved.
"We can take care of everyone here, just go to your brother." Said Candy as she was bandaging up another patient.
Mabel smiled and nodded in thanks to her friends as she prepared to go outside to meet with Dipper at the town square, but as she reached the doors, they were busted open by a CSF officer, who had yet another beating victim who had appeared to have been dragged all the way here.
"You have a live one." Quipped the officer as he threw the man in front of Mabel, who caught him just in time before he completely fell.
When the officer shut the doors behind him, Mabel would have just followed and left to go back to the square, but then Mabel took a quick glance at the CSF's new victim and her eyes widened in shock when she saw who it was, Robbie.
"Oh my god." Mabel gasped as she saw Robbie's condition.
Although she knew he was in bad shape after the CSF officers from earlier beat him, he somehow looked even worse than before as Mabel set him down gently on the floor, since there were to mattresses left available, and called out to her friends for help, forgetting about leaving the church and instead was focused on Robbie.
The most noticeable detail about Robbie was his face, if you could call it that, it looked swelled and bruised black and blue, with multiple lacerations on his body, as if someone ran him over with wheels made of daggers, he groaned in pain from the broken bones he had, not just his ribs but also his arms and legs, some of his bones were even sticking out from his body, Robbie coughed up blood from his mouth, further staining Mabel's sweater with blood as she began trying her best to help him, with Candy giving her the new bandages she asked for.
"Robbie?" Mabel said softly and sternly. "Just look at me Robbie."
"The… the…" Robbie attempted to speak, but Mabel hushed him.
"Sh. don't speak. Just look at me, okay" Said Mabel trying to comfort him. "You'll be fine."
Mabel was lying to herself, she didn't want to believe this was happening, she felt guilt rush through her veins as she fruitlessly attempted to bandage Robbie from bleeding out, but his wounds were too great, there were too many openings and not enough bandages to seal them all, but Mabel still tried anyways, she used every method she could think of for Robbie, but to no avail.
She didn't want to live with guilt again, first with Stan, just letting the Slegs take him away and throw him back out, twisted and broken, unable to bring him back to his old self no matter what she did, then Waddles, her soul mate, letting him get taken from her arms, forced to watch helplessly as the Slegs ate him alive, and now Robbie, who she refused to help on the streets, begging for someone, anyone, for aid, was now right in front of her, lying to him that he would live another day, as he coughed more blood on her, and hot tears began streaking down from his face.
"The… pain!" Robbie cried out, as Mabel franticly tried making a splint for his leg, until realizing that his leg bones were sticking out and dropped the bandages, out of fear that she would make things even worse.
"Listen to me, Robbie. You're going to make it, okay? You can pull through." Mabel franticly said as Robbie gurgled blood, unable to speak any more words while Mabel was on the verge of tears.
Her friends tried to pull her away from the hopleless struggle, but she responded by pushing them away from her.
"Don't you dare touch me!" She screamed out as hot tears poured down her face.
Mabel then turned to the guards, who were this whole time ignoring the events happening before them, as if it were never happening, and begged them to help while Robbie began convulsing.
"Please. We need to help him! He needs help!" Mabel begged to the Guanian guards while she tried holding Robbie down to stop his rapid movements.
"This is your duty, not ours." Responded one of the guards coldly, brushing off Mabel's plea as if it were nothing.
Mabel begged again, "We can save him! Please! Don't do this!" She cried out.
The guard then cocked his gun and pointed at Mabel. "Ask me again." He threatened.
Mabel just went back to Robbie, who was now chocking on his own blood, and turned his head to Mabel and threw up the blood on her, horrifying her but still stayed with him.
"Please...Please." It was all Robbie could say as Mabel began crying profoundly, still not willing to let another lost life be her burden to carry, all because she didn't want help him.
Before Mabel could react, the guard who cocked his weapon pointed at Robbie's face and unloaded two bullets into his skull in front of her, instantly ending his life as the force of the bullets, much stronger than your average bullets due to the size requirement for a Guanian, splattered his brains all over the floor, spilling a red mess on the floor as some of the blood splattered on Mabel's face, who froze in shock and terror at what she just saw.
"He was getting on my nerves." Said the Guanian guard casually before stepping back to the door, leaving Mabel to just stare at the body of yet another life lost.
"Finally, I was getting sick and tired of his whining." Said the other guard, relieved that Robbie was dead.
"Humans. They never want to die clean." Quipped the guard who shot Robbie, making the other chuckle at the sick joke.
Mabel just kept staring at Robbie's corpse, feeling guilt, sadness, and anger all at the same time. Grenda and Candy gravely helped Mabel up as tears dropped down from her blood stain face, and took her away in the church to clean her up. There was only one thing on Mabel's mind now.
Why?
O-O-O
Disclaimer: I don't own Gravity Falls, but I do own the Slegs.