Sweater Town

Chapter 15 – The Crossroads

By Starwin


Mabel felt warmth spread out through her body as she tumbled forward into the light. She could feel the world untangle from her. The strangest sensation she had ever felt tingled all over her skin. It felt like she was made of dozens of threads that were all unraveling. It felt, like she was coming apart. Just like her sweater.

Her eyes weren't doing a lot better than her body. It didn't matter where she looked, every direction was the same. All she could see was endless, blinding, light. At first she had thought it was golden light but now it seemed almost, but not quite, white. She blinked and that oddly seemed to help. Well, not help. Everything was still blind endless nothingness. It was just a little less bright.

She raised a hand in front of her face but she didn't seem to have a hand... or she couldn't see it? Mabel wiggled her fingers and, well, she wasn't sure. Her hand was odd in a way she simply couldn't explain. There but not there. Attached but remote.

"Mabel!" cried a voice from the light. Mabel's eyes flicked towards the sound and for the briefest glimpse of a instant she saw the rough outline of her brother's face in the light. She couldn't have seen it correctly because he had looked younger than she remembered him.

"Mabel!" shouted a slightly different voice but still her brother's.

It had come from the opposite side. She turned her head? Maybe? It wasn't exactly like turning her head, she couldn't describe it. Movement felt weird here, unnatural. She wasn't moving. It was more like… like she stayed still and everything rearranged itself? No, that still wasn't right.

Her eyes fixed on the source of the sound and she caught the briefest glimpse of Dipper. There he was again. The faintest outline as if made from threads of white light against a white background. However, just as quickly as he had come into existence, the vision washed away. Much like waves wiping clean a sketch in the sand on a beach.

What the heck!

Mabel tried to focus her mind. She needed to come to grips with what was going on around her. She couldn't. She simply couldn't rationalize anything she was seeing. That was saying a lot because her imagination had made some pretty strange stuff for her over the years. This wasn't sweater town. It wasn't like any dream or fantasy she had ever experienced before. Because despite how it appeared to be empty white nothingness, it was anything but. She knew it was filled with things, she just didn't know what to make of those things. So, they stayed in the white, at the edge of her senses.

"MABEL!" something about that shout drew her full attention to it. She tried to focus on it. As she did, the light came into sharper focus. It was not a single faint outline of her brother but a dozen of them, one right after another flicking into existence as the previous one faded away.

These weren't simply images she was conjuring up. They were emotions and memories. Each Dipper that appeared filled her with moments of other lives. She remembered things that had never happened. Yet, when the image of her brother faded, so too did her attachment. It was as if each vision was a fleeting dream, in which she knew everything about it while she saw it, then nothing about it once it was gone.

She… she was going crazy. Her brain had finally broken. Was this what madness felt like? Yep, this had to be what it felt like. She had lost her marbles. Mabel's marbles were gone. She had let herself slip away too far. Now all that was left was insanity...

Mabel curled herself up or at least she hoped that's what she was doing. It wasn't enough that she had lost her brother twice. She had also lost a daughter she had never known in a world she had only caught glimpses of. She had lost everything…

"Dipper," she whimpered.

"MABEL! Mabel. Mabel? Mabel! MABEL? MABEL."

Hundreds of voices echoed through the light, from an infinite number of directions. Her eyes swept across the void as her brain tried to come to grips with what she was seeing. It was more Dipper's than she had ever seen before. After all, most of her life there had just been the one of him. They were all different ages, in all different places. She waved a hand towards them trying to touch them. As her hand (she assumed it was her hand, she couldn't actually see it) passed through them, each image unraveled as if made of loose threads.

Yep. Crazy. She was crazy. This was all crazy.

And if she was going crazy she might as well make the most of it. It was her crazy after all. She had been creeping ever closer to it for a while now. She thought of her brother again, trying to picture his face. He had always been there to bring her back from the brink of cuckoo town. Maybe that's where she was, crazy town, population her.

...Maybe he still might bring her back?

As she imagined him, Dipper's face began to draw itself in front of her. It was just a rough outline, like an uncolored picture. Mabel smiled at him and he smiled back.

"Mabel?" the face asked. She could feel how happy he was to see her, to see she was okay. The reality was just starting to pour into her. There had been a something chasing them and Dipper had fought it and...

She reached out and touched his outline. For the first time, she could see her own hand. It looked weird too. Just like the face she was uncolored lines as well. As the tips of her fingers brushed her brother's face, she could almost feel something there for a moment before he twisted apart. He untangled back into nothing and as he went, the moments of the memory faded too.

She lifted her limb to discover that fingers, palm, wrist and arm had indeed returned to her. They just looked a little funny. To ensure it was her hand she brought it to her face and gave it a lick. Yep. That was her hand. Okay, well, at least she had - oh, her other arm was back too, that was good.

Hands and arms returned she focused on what else she could do. Legs maybe? Did she have those? She looked down. Yep. There was her body, still the same funny outline without color, but she had a body and legs and feet for sure. It was her's for sure… most likely. She just didn't know if it was the right one. She was missing something, but she didn't know what.

Okay. So. If she imagined hard enough maybe she could make images and memories of her brother. She wondered if she could make other things. She tried to think of something else but she just kept drawing a blank. She couldn't even remember what her own face looked like.

Dipper it was then. She tried to recall her happiest memories of him. One-by-one threads began to flow out of the light, tangling themselves together in an elaborate dance. The threads became the ground, the trees, the sky, the people… Dipper.

Before long she found herself within a memory made real. It wasn't like recalling it in her head. She wasn't just passively watching them or remembering them, she was there. Emotions flowed through her, filling her up in a rush.

She and Dipper were riding bikes together, engaged in a race to the end of the street, the loser was a poop-face. Her bike sped out from under her, unraveling as it left Mabel behind. The threads twisted and respun as a different memory wove itself into existence around her. She started to run as she chased her brother with a water balloon. Dipper screamed like a little girl and Mabel nailed him in the back of the head with a sploosh.

Faster and faster the changes came. The threads of light spun and whirled as she slipped from one moment into the next. Some she didn't recognize. They weren't memories because they couldn't be. They were things that had never happened. She and Dipper were fighting off a giant two headed rat, but she felt much older than thirteen. And then they were sitting on the couch, curled under the same blanket. And then a moment of them dancing.

Mabel felt sadness wash over her. As it did, her direction in this directionless place changed. The threads that had been spinning into existence unfurled back into the light. Unwanted images began to tangle around her as new thoughts and dark emotions flowed through her head.

She saw Dipper staying in Gravity Falls to become Ford's apprentice while she returned to California alone. She watched her life race by as she went to high school then college without her twin at her side. Dipper faded away. She watched a whole life unfold before her where their paths parted forever.

Mabel shoved the - the things aside and they untangled back into threads of light. The thoughts that had come with the world drained away until she was just herself again. She was finally starting to feel an inkling of what it was she had just experienced.

These… these were sweater towns. Other sweater towns. They were the other worlds she might have gone to, other lives she might have lived. Some were filled with joy and others with sadness.

She was in a place between sweater worlds, a sweater limbo as it were. She had also discovered a very tiny amount of control over it. Control that was focused only towards her and Dipper. It seemed like she could jump to any moment, in any world, in any possibility that could ever be. She just had to find it. Or make it. Or whatever it was that she was doing with it.

Hundreds of moments raced through her mind. As she thought of each it spun into the air around her. She saw entire lifetimes spiral out like superfractals, filling her vision and mind completely with their existence. There were an infinite number of moments and realities to choose from.

It was too much! Blindly her hands swept them away. Yet as she touched them she could feel that same strange sensation as when she had first touched the tear in her sweater. It felt like if she pushed hard enough into any of them, she would slip through and become a real part of them. She would enter a new sweater town, become another Mabel.

She pulled her hands back. No. Not again. She didn't want to do that ever again. She just wanted her brother back. She just wanted Dipper.

A whole world spun out before her, trees, grass, a sidewalk, a street and her brother, smiling at her as he walked backwards, trying to cheer her up.

"-promise me you'll look up once in awhile," Dipper was saying to her. "The smiling thing is optional, but I think it looks good on you." It felt so real and yet oddly dreamlike. Color and sensation had flowed back into her but it was muted.

Her brain caught up with the memory she was reliving. No. Not this moment. Why had she picked this moment? She tried to stop herself. She tried to change it. Wait, no… It was different, reversed. Dipper was trying to cheer her up? That wasn't how it had happened… was it?

"I promise I -" answered Mabel's voice without her. Then she saw it, the gray SUV speeding towards them that her brother could not see. Her eyes widened and - "DIPPER!" she shouted. She dove into him, her eyes closed and her hands slamming against his chest, pushing him clear. As they fell she expected the car to smash into her. But she just kept falling.

She opened her eyes but found her arms empty and the world absent. She was back in the light and her brother was gone, again.

"Mabel?" asked a weak voice from above and behind her. She turned herself over, or, something like it. Already the color had begun to drain from the outlines above her, slowly fading back into the world of white. She felt her heart crumble in her chest. "Mabel." She watched her brother stagger down the road towards the heap of a person that lay ahead of him. "Mabel. Mabel. Mabel. Mabel. Mabel. Mabel. Mabel. Mabel." he chanted over and over as he limped towards her. "MABEL!" he screamed as he tumbled down beside her. "MABEL! MA - "

She moved her hand through the image and it pulled free into threads of light. The moment vanished.

All she ever did was make things worse. She just made everything worse!

What was even the point? All these worlds at her fingertips but whichever one she picked all she could do was bring them ruin.

She continued to fall… maybe? Was it falling in a place with no up or down? She didn't know. Or care really. It seemed to be her fate that she was lost with no way to escape. Was she doomed to witness these universes or fantasies or memories or whatever these were, over and over, forever. Unable to change them.

As if she had summoned it, because, she probably had, the moment began to replay once more. She felt herself slide into her body again. Yet this world was different than any before. It was more solid, more colorful. Still not right, but closer to being right.

"I could," Mabel heard herself say as her body spun on its heel and she started walking backwards so she could see her brother's bashful, grinning, face. No, not again. Please not again. "But only if you… if you..." her voice trailed off and she came to an abrupt stop. Dipper bumped into her, not expecting the sudden halt in motion.

"If I - whoa!" shouted Dipper. He pulled her towards him into a tight a hug. An instant later a green SUV barreled through the stop sign feet from them. Its tires screeched as the driver seemed to realize what they had done. However, instead of stopping, they sped up again and drove off. "Man, that idiot almost hit us."

Mabel closed her eyes and pressed her head against his chest. Holy-cheese-and-maple-syrup! She had done it! She had changed it. She had saved them both!

"Are you okay, Mabel?" asked her brother. She nodded, but something felt off about it. "Mabel?"

She opened her eyes to find the loose threads drifting out of her arms. She was back in the empty white world. OH YOU HAVE TO BE FUCKING KIDDING! Back here, again? What was it going to take!

If she could have grabbed her hair and pulled it out, she would have. Maybe she could if she tried. This was so frustrating. She didn't get it, what was she supposed to do?

"Supposed to do?" asked a voice that shouldn't exist. She turned her head very slightly. A swirling mass tangled itself into existence. The first thing that formed was a gold star. Threads spun out to form a fuchsia colored sweater and then a person in that sweater. The person waved at her. "Hello!" It was another Mabel, an older Mabel. "You're not supposed to do anything, May." No, not a Mabel it was...

"Bel?" asked Mabel in confusion. Her voice felt a little odd, like she was only sort of speaking with it. Maybe she was thinking it? Right, she was crazy.

"I knew you'd come up with a a cute name for me," said Bel with a nod. "And you're not crazy," said Bel. "Well, okay, maybe a little bit. We both are, if I'm being honest. This is probably all pretty crazy."

"That's possibly the biggest understatement of all time," said Mabel flatly.

"Yeah, I guess it sorta is," said Bel with a shrug. A thousand thoughts and emotions blinked around Bel like tiny little christmas lights. Mabel had no idea what they were.

"And I thought it was weird before but now I'm talking to myself and you're blinking with colors, so, I don't even know how to classify this…" said Mabel.

"Maybe I can help you out?" said Bel with a mischievous smile. "Those lights are my thoughts. We aren't exactly tangible here, more like ideas or emotions? We can speak," but we can also think. "Here, we aren't our bodies, we're our minds and we can look how we like and be how we want.

"For example," Bel kicked her legs. "My legs work here, although, there isn't really ground to walk on… but if there was, I could totally walk on it. I even got my favorite sweater, see?" Bel tugged on her shooting star sweater.

"You can looked however you want here. And you can, uh, can be naked if that's what you wanted," commented Bel with a smile that was trying to hold back a laugh.

Mabel looked down and realized what had been odd about her body. She let out a yelp of embarrassment and covered her naked form. Bel continued to giggle.

"Mind powers, just think yourself up some clothes," said Bel. Mabel did and she felt clothing wrap around her, along with undergarments and socks and shoes. Even her headband snapped into place. "I love your headband!" Bel showed off a blue headband, exactly the same as Mabel's.

Mabel looked at her now clothed body and frowned. They were the same clothes she had been wearing in sweater town, before she had stepped into the gap in the universe. These were Abby's clothes. Blue shirt, purple shorts and worn boots. Where was her shooting star sweater? She tried to imagine herself wearing it but she couldn't.

"Hey, don't try too hard, it takes time to get used to stuff here," said Bel. "You'll get it when you're ready."

"How long did it take you to get your sweater?" asked Mabel. Bel shrugged.

"Oh, I started with it," said Bel. Mabel frowned. "Anyhow, I bet you have some questions, I know I did. And unlike you, I wasn't lucky enough to have someone here to answer them. I can see you want to ask, so, ask."

"Where are we?" asked Mabel.

"That was the first thing I wanted to know too," said Bel with a smile and a nod. "I guess knowing where you are is kinda like the first question a lot of people have when they end up in a place where they don't know where they are. But, I mean, you do know where this is. This is the sweater!"

Mabel opened her mouth to clarify but Bel was already ahead of her.

"What I think you really wanted to know is what this is. Honestly, I don't know what this place is," admitted Bel. "I don't think it's a dream, at least not how you're imagining it. And it certainly isn't an afterlife or anything. Not enough puppies." Mabel nodded in agreement. This place was certainly lacking in the puppy department. "As near as I can tell this is sort of like an in-between place, a space separating other worlds, other universes maybe? Definitely other sweater towns."

"That's what I was thinking it might be," whispered Mabel half to herself.

"Yeah, well, that's because you're me. And we're smart," said Bel with a nod. "Welcome to the sweater crossroads!"

"I was thinking the sweater limbo," said Mabel. Bel smiled.

"Oh, that's pretty good too! I mean, I don't actually know what it's called,but that's as good a name as any?" said Bel thoughtfully, more to herself. Mabel shrugged. "Right. So, you might have seen some crazy stuff so far." Mabel nodded. Again, understatement. "And it takes a little getting used to. I've just got a bit more time with it."

"A bit?" asked Mabel wearly.

"Like, maybe five years or something?" she said with a shrug. "Not exactly any clocks floating around in here or anything. I've been here ever since I died. Well, I mean, since a year after I died… I think… Again, time is sort of uneven in this place."

"Wait! I'm dead?" exclaimed Mabel. Hot fudge, it all made sense now. She was dead.

"No, no, no… your not... probably not," said Bel with another shrug. "I watched you fall in through a tear in reality and you looked pretty alive then, just like you do now." Mabel tilted her head.

"You were watching me?" asked Mabel in complete confusion.

"Maybe I should start from the beginning?" said Bel, a tone of uncertainty in her voice. "I said I think I figured some stuff out. I mean, there's never been another me, or anyone else for that matter, here, before. So, no one has ever really explain anything to me. And this place didn't exactly come with an instruction manual." Mabel nodded, she was just thinking that. "Okay, here we go, you ready?" Nod. "This is going to make your brain hurt. I know it makes mine hurt.

"Right, so the start," began Bel. "I sort of… you know. Died. And I thought that was kinda the end of it, because, you know, death is kinda the end and all. But it wasn't, at least for me. I was gone. Poof. Into nothing. Then when you came back to sweater town, so did I. I was there with you when you were eating ice cream with our bro-bro. I was there when you unlocked my phone... I mean, 'kittie' as my password, really, that was your first guess? We haven't used that in years! I deliberately picked Dipper as my password because we thought that would be all you could type!"

That… that actually made a lot of sense. It was just too bad her brain had betrayed her again and let her type whatever she wanted instead of her brother's name. She remembered the video that had changed everything for her. Nope. Nope it was good she had gotten the wrong password! Stupid brain for figuring it out in the end!

"I was trying to direct you to the right folder," interjected Bel. Mabel could feel her other self looking at her thoughts. Mabel waved a hand above her head trying to shoo them away. "You know, the one labeled specifically for 'Other Mabel,' which, you didn't click on." Mabel felt herself blush, could she even blush here?

"What do you mean you were there?" asked Mabel, trying to redirect the conversation away from the phone.

"It felt like… like I was a part of you," explained Bel. There were emotions and thoughts flashing all around her that Mabel could feel too. "I wasn't trapped inside you or spying through your eyes, it was as if - "

"You were me," whispered Mabel, understanding how Bel had felt. Bel nodded. She had just experienced something very similar to what Bel was describing. Those glimpses into other worlds. She had been there, she had felt it, but she couldn't control it, she could just watch.

"Yeah, like that," said Bel. "Like it was me but it was us! I couldn't control anything but I didn't want to. Well, no, okay, I was trying to help you look in the right places. But like, I didn't want to take over your body or anything. Sorry, that came out wrong, what I meant - "

"I get it," said Mabel with a sad smile. "I'm sorry I was doing that to you all these years." Bel shrugged but the emotions above her head were mixed unreadable uncertainty. Clearly, Bel didn't know how to feel about this whole thing either.

"Anyhow," continued Bel. "When you left, I just kinda stayed behind. I drifted around without a body. I'm not really sure why or how but I did. At first, I thought I was like a ghost or something. And, I guess I sort of am? I tried using sock puppets to communicate, but that didn't work. I couldn't interact with anything and no one could hear or see me. I didn't need to eat or drink or go to the bathroom or sleep.

"At first it was really hard to watch Mason and Abby go on without me but at least I got to watch. I waited for you to come back to be in your body, to hold Abby in my arms or kiss Mason. I just wanted to have one more moment to be with them again. But as time went on and you didn't come back, the world started to become less real to me. I began to drift in and out of it and into this place.

"I thought I was just going to vanish, like I had before. However, once I was here I began to discover things, like you've been doing since you arrived. I found that I could look in on other worlds or travel to different sweater towns. But I could never stay in any of them. I was like a ghost, just passing through."

"But how?" asked Mabel. Bel seemed to have an answer to that as well. She tapped her forehead and for a very brief moment, Mabel could see the outline of a golden triangle. "Bill…"

"Gift or curse," said Bel. "Whatever this thing is, however it works, I think it let me be here… or… something. Again, no instructions. I've tried getting it to do what I want, but, short of slipping into woven images of other places, it hasn't listened.

"You're a big part of it too, when you came back this time, I was pulled back into your… our… I have no idea what to call it, body. I was there while you were fighting off Bill," Bel frowned and her thoughts seeme to explode out of her, one of which made Mabel look away in shame. You did give me cancer. "I mean, you couldn't have known… and… well, I guess, it went both ways.

"Anyhow, I think there's another part," continued Bel. "A reason I can't just pop back into existence in my world, or go to any other sweater town. I'm missing something. Something important."

"What?" asked Mabel, but she thought she already knew the answer.

"A sweater," said Bel.

"But you have a sweater!" Mabel pointed out. She tugged on her own blue shirt. She was the one currently missing a sweater.

"No, this, this isn't real," said Bel. "I just imagined it. We're just thoughts here." Mabel shook her head, she didn't feel like just a thought. "Maybe you aren't, but I am. Somehow your sweater is like a guided pathway into another world - "

"A woolhole," interjected Mabel.

"Yeah. It's like a string that ties you to other versions of yourself. Without that it's as if we're trying to dive into reflections on a lake or something. The sweater acts like a pathway through this place," Bel waved her arms around. "And pathways have three things. A start, an end and something they travel through. I mean, if it was a circular pathway it doesn't have a start or end… but I don't think - sorry, a lot of time talking to myself.

"The start of your path was your world and for some reason, the end of it was my world. Because you had that path, you could move freely between them."

That didn't seem exactly right but Mabel couldn't put her finger on it. It felt like Bel had missed something important. She didn't know what though and as her counterpart continued, she let the notion slip away.

"I mean, I'm mostly guessing here," continued Bel. "I've had a lot of time to ask myself questions and try and come up with answers. The biggest one is where we started. What is this in-between place?" She held her arms out to the white world around them."I think this place is just for us. Our connection to every sweater town we exist in, every moment of every world. Every second of every universe that could ever be."

"Okay, so…" said Mabel not following.

"So," said Bel. "Any world where you exist, you can look in on it. You can go anywhere, live in any moment, be a part of anything." Mabel felt her face fall. There was only one thing she wanted. "But all you want is Dipper back, right?" Mabel nodded.

"I tried, I really did," said Mabel. "But… but I can't stay in any of those worlds…" Bel nodded.

"Because there's no woolhole," said Bel. "There's no connection. You just see reflections, or moments, you aren't really going there… I've… I've tried that too... a lot. But without a sweater it's just not possible."

"So, what, we're just trapped here forever?" asked Mabel. "Reliving moments but unable to change anything. This is a nightmare!" Bel frowned.

"Or a blessing…" she said quietly. "I've been able to watch my daughter grow up… and my Mason…" She looked away. "I'm sorry, it's been a long time since I felt sad… I just sort of accepted this… I made myself believe I was a ghost, watching over them…"

"Bel," said Mabel quietly.

"Still a cute name," said Bel with an approving nod.

"Why… why Mason?" asked Mabel. For a moment Bel looked confused then her eyes widened. It was the same reaction Mabel had to a similar vague insinuation that Ford had made. Mabel watched as the realization swept over Bel. She understood what Mabel meant, even without seeing her thoughts floating in the air. "He's our brother and you two were, doing the thing you don't do with your brother! You had a daughter together! What the heck!" Bel tugged some of her hair into her mouth and chewed on it. When she didn't answer Mabel pressed her. "Well?"

"You - you saw the videos, right?" asked Bel. Mabel nodded. "I think the real reason it happened was you. I think every time you came you made me love him more. When your visits started I was just filled with so much emotion I felt like I was overflowing. It wasn't just for Mason, it was for like everything. You have no idea how much sugar I ate after every visit.

"And my stupid body didn't help, it completely turned against me!" complained Bel, her eyes fixed on Mabel. "Besides, I like feeling good. I know we love feeling good. It's like our real mission in life. To find stuff that makes us feel amazing! We love hugging. We love kissing. We love cuddling. And we love having sex with -"

"Nope! Nope! Nope! I'm not listening! I can't hear you! LA-LA-LA-LA!" shouted Mabel covering her ears.

"WE LOVE HAVING SEX WITH OUR BROTHER BECAUSE IT IS AMAZING!" shouted Bel at the top of her lungs. "He was safe and comforting and everything we've ever wanted in someone that cares about us! Because he cares about us! He really, truly, with all his heart, cares about us!"

"But he's our brother!" cried Mabel.

"So what, May?! He loves us. He loves us more than anyone else in the world ever could!" said Bel shaking her head. "You don't understand. How could you, you've only seen moments of him, glimpses. You didn't grow up with him at your side keeping you safe all your life. You haven't experienced the things I have. And you didn't have another, unbelievably desperate mind in your head longing uncontrollably for just one more moment with her twin."

Mabel didn't have anything to say to that. Bel was right, Mabel didn't have any idea what it had been like for Bel. They floated in silence for a long while.

"So, what now?" asked Mabel. "Do we just float around arguing for all eternity and watching worlds we can't ever be a part of?" Bel shrugged at her. "Mason's right, that's really annoying." Bel laughed and some of the tension between them slipped away.

"Well, again, I don't know," she said. "I don't have all the answers. You have a way home if you want to take it." Below Bel, lines began to draw themselves into existence and a whole world emerged. It was like looking through a very detailed TV screen or a window into another universe.

Standing alone, out in the forest, feet from the unraveling woolen wall, was Mason. The Mason she must have left behind hours ago, yet he hadn't moved. How long had it been… there weren't any floating clocks here so it was hard to tell.

And there was still the sweater sky above, slowly unraveling.

"Your connection is still open," said Bel. "I bet that if you went back into sweater town you could maybe still return to your world… instead of being stuck here."

"How did you do that?"

"Do what?" Bel asked. "You already figured out how to look into other sweater towns."

"No, how did you find your sweater town?"

"Oh, I mean, it took me a while," said Bel. "There are a lot like it." She spread her hands out and the image of Mason standing alone in the woods multiplied an uncountable number of times. However the sweater wall was only in that one image. It was absent from every other version. Additionally, something else was also different in each one. The color was not right or Mason wasn't even there. In many of them his clothing was not the same. In one of them, there were two other people standing with him. Bel noticed Mabel looking at that one.

"I like this one too," said Bel, moving it forefront and the letting the others dissolve. "In this sweater town I didn't pass away. I don't linger on what could have been too long… It's not really mine." It flittered away and Mason, standing alone before the sweater wall, returned. "The big give away is the sweater, none of the other's have it. But really, I can just sort of feel it. You'll probably know it too when you see yours. It's more colorful, more solid." Mabel nodded.

Everywhere she had been so far had felt off to her. She hadn't been able to put it into words until now. But it had been the color. The color was always wrong in the other sweater towns she had jumped into. Like the world was half painted or muted.

Mabel focused her thoughts on her world, her sweater town. It came surprisingly easy to her. A moment later color and shape swirled into existence. Mabel could see herself huddled alone in the forest, tucked inside a sweater.

"Huh," said Bel looking over her shoulder. "There you are. It's always easier to find yourself, we're like a beacon. Mason too. Maybe it's a twin thing or something? Other people are way harder. I can almost never see Abby when she isn't near Mason. And a world where you don't exist, forget it. Not even possible."

Mabel, frowned. Okay, so, her body was still in her world, still wrapped in a sweater… assuming any of this was really happening and she wasn't just having a complete mental breakdown right now. That left the lingering question. Who the heck's body was she inside of in sweater town? Because it couldn't be Bel's.

No, wait, there was something odd about her now that she was looking properly. Mabel realized what it was and let out a gasp of surprise. She wasn't in her sweater. Or, if she was, her body was completely transparent or something because she could see down through the neck hole and into sweater town. It was a birds eye view, high, high above, looking down on the tiny town below and the forest surrounding it.

"Whoa, that's kinda freaky," said Bel, apparently also seeing what Mabel was.

Mabel felt her thoughts flashback to when Ford had told her about the end of the world… and her brother's affection for her. As she remembered it, the window into her world bent and altered. She was rewatching that past moment of her curled up on the couch, trying to escape from what she had just been told. Mabel was looking into an infinite spiral of sweater towns. Down one neck hole of her pink sweater and into the neck hole of her orange sweater, alternating forever into an incomprehensible distant dot.

"Ouch! Shut it off! That makes my brain hurt!" cried Bel, waving at the image. Mabel let the window into her reality close and the infinite sweater loop ended.

"These sweater towns," said Mabel. "They… they travel through time, right?"

"Maybe? Sort of? I mean, I don't know how it works," said Bel with a shrug.

"Have you ever wanted to go back and change something?" asked Mabel quietly.

"Uh, duh! Of course I have!" cried Bel. "There are so many things I wish I could do over! Like - oh, you were being rhetorical, weren't you?" Mabel nodded half heartedly. "Look, like I said, I don't know how all this stuff works. I've just got guesses from the time I've spent with it. So, I mean, maybe it's possible? But… honestly, I don't think so."

"Why not?" asked Mabel.

"Because it happened," said Bel. Mabel frowned. "I mean, it all happened, every possible way you think it could have happened has happened. Look. I'll show you." Bel held out her hand and a window into the past spun into existence before them. Mabel felt a shiver run down her body. Bel apparently knew what Mabel wanted to change.

She watched the worst moment of her life replay before her eyes. She listened to the banter between her and Dipper. She almost closed her eyes as Dipper pushed his sister out of the way and the car slammed into him. Worst of all she could feel all of it, like a fresh wound opening up inside her and spilling out into her mind.

The Mabel in the little window staggered towards her motionless brother, his name echoing from her mouth. She collapsed beside him, clutching his lifeless body in her arms and sobbing into him.

Why was Bel making her watch this again. She didn't need to see this again. She never wanted to remember… Dipper's eyes opened as the past Mabel held him. He - he was alive. Her brother was alive! Bel had done it! She had fixed the past! She - one glance at Bel told Mabel she was completely wrong about what she was seeing.

"That's my reality," whispered Bel. Oh. "Dipper was badly hurt but he survived." Bel did a strange little twirl with her hand and a second, smaller window opened into yet another world. A world that Mabel instantly knew was her own, where she did indeed clutch her dead brother to her chest.

"There are countless other outcomes," explained Bel, her other hand twirled and a long chain of glimpses into other possible worlds spiraled out from Bel's window. At first, Mabel thought they were all the same, Dipper had unfairly survived in each of them. However, she noticed that the further away from her window each new one was, the more fine Dipper was. In the very last one both he and Mabel dodged the oncoming SUV completely, tumbling out of its path altogether.

"That's not fair," said Mabel. "I'm the only one that lost my brother? Every other version of me got to keep him?"

"Oh, no, no," said Bel. She let the other realities fade away as she returned focus to the two, side-by-side. Bel's world, where Dipper had lived and Mabel's world, where he had not. "These two are the closest together, there isn't anything between them. If I had to guess, and, I do, because I have to. I think that's the reason you came to my world, it is the path of least resistance, the shortest distance, the world closest to your own where Dipper survived. The spiral goes the other way too but - "

Mabel felt her hands moving before she had even considered what she was doing. Just like Bel had done, Mabel opened the reality spiral in the opposite direction. A nightmare spun into existence before her. A million billion trillion universes in which her brother died in each. Halfway through the spiral of infinite other deaths, the alternate versions of Dipper weren't able to push her completely clear of the SUV. It began to hit her too.

Worse, Mabel could feel it. Not the full force but a reasonating after-sense of the impact. She had forgotten they weren't just windows or images, they were thoughts and feelings, emotions and senses. She could feel the emotional distress of every reality where Dipper died. She experienced the pain of all the worlds where the SUV struck her as well.

Finally the infinite spiral concluded with the universe in which she hadn't dodged the SUV at all. There was nothing after that one, because those were the realities where she no longer existed.

Bel waved a hand and all of the windows into the other sweater worlds poofed out of existence. The memories and feelings of the worlds had vanished with them.

Bel looked like she was about to hug Mabel but seemed to think better of it at the last second. She just hugged herself instead. That was too bad, Mabel could really have done with a hug right now. But something told her that physical contact with Bel in a place like this might lead to some unintended results. She didn't know what, it was just a feeling afterall, but it felt… dangerous, like she might lose herself.

"Sorry," said Bel. "I… I should have warned you." Mabel shook her head. "You probably can't change the past, because, it is changed, it all happened. Anything you do would just be one of these other sweater worlds, not your own world."

"So you really can't change the past…" said Mabel.

"No idea," answered Bel with a shrug. Okay, that really was getting annoying now. "I've never been able to change anything in any sweater town. But it's not like I can interact with them, ghost, remember? I think Ford wrote about it once, that he couldn't change the past…

"May," said Bel softly after a long moment of silence. "I… I tried not to look but I can still see some of your thoughts…"

"Uh, could you not do that?" asked Mabel.

"Sorry, it… it just kinda happens," said Bel, looking away, feeling ashamed. Great, now Mabel was doing it too. "See, it's hard not to!" Mabel smiled weakly but Bel looked almost frightened as she continued. "Mason… you aren't… you're not going to try and take him… with you? Are you?"

It was Mabel's turn to feel ashamed.

"I was," admitted Mabel. "That was Plan A. It's what I came here to do. To try and bring him back with me…" Bel looked horrified. "But I won't, Bel, I promise that I won't. It was selfish for me to even think I could do that. To take him from you or from Abby." Bel looked slightly relieved, although her thoughts said otherwise.

"You're… you're going to try and stay here, aren't you?" asked Bel. Mabel didn't answer for a long moment. Bel could see her thoughts, "I can, sorry," she was probably seeing the mixed up uncertainty tumbling around inside her. "Yes, I am." Mabel didn't know what she wanted to do.

Sweater town was so different from her own. Dip - Mason, was here but he was so much older now. When they had been the same physical age, at least in appearance, things had been fine… well, not fine but less strange. If she did manage to stay, she would be thirteen. And how would they explain her sudden appearance to anyone? Would she have to keep going to school?

"School's what you're worried about?" asked Bel with a half smile.

"BLARGH! I'm worried about everything!" cried Mabel out loud. "Staying, going, it's a mess on both ends! But at least… at least here..." She looked at Bel who didn't need to see what she was thinking, to know what she was thinking.

"I don't know if it'll work," said Bel as she floated sideways.

Mabel followed her and found, much to her surprise, a very familiar triangular rip in the world of white. She couldn't see anything through it except golden light. It was the tear she had come in through. Bel shook her head.

"No, it's the other side of the tear, we're in the sweater right now, remember?" She nodded past Mabel. Mabel looked over her shoulder to see a very similar rip. Through it she could see the shadowy form of her brother standing just beyond it.

"Wait? I haven't moved?" asked Mabel in confusion, remembering the falling and tumbling. Bel shrugged. "Not helpful," mutter Mabel.

"So now you're at a crossroads, May," said Bel. "Which life do you want?"


Note from the Author:

Final chapter(s) next week! We are almost at the conclusion of this insane story! Next week will be the two part ending and epilogue posted Fri, Sat and Sun!