Sweater Town

Chapter 18 – The Epilogue

By Starwin


Abby was both somewhat bummed and a little happy that her vacation had ended almost three weeks early. She was supposed to stay in California until the end of July but her Uncle Mason had insisted she come home immediately.

She was bummed to leave because California had been pretty fun this year. There were awesome beaches, cute boys to chase after and a few new friends she had made. However, she was also happy to leave because her grandparents hardly let her do anything on her own! They were always hovering over her, always wanting to know where she was going and when she would be home. She couldn't even lie about it because they used the KidWatch app installed on her phone to see where she went! They were just so - so BLARGH!

That's what mom would have called them. What she had called them sometimes. Still they were nice. She knew her mom and dad didn't get along with her grandma and grandpa but that was okay.

The bright green Auto Speed Cab pulled up to the sidewalk in front of her and her phone beeped, letting her know this was her ride. She held her phone up to the door and it flashed green. Her name, route, travel time and fair all displayed on the floating image above her phone.

She hugged her grandparents, said goodbye to them as her grandpa loaded her bags into the storage compartment in the back. Then she climbed in and took her seat. Her phone helpfully reminded her that the vehicle would not depart until she engaged her safety belts. She waved goodbye to her grandparents and said goodbye one last time.

Abby pulled the safety harness around her shoulders and clicked it into place. The belts moved and adjusted to her body and tightened, although they weren't uncomfortable.

"Travel time to destination is one hour and twenty five minutes," said the electronic voice from her phone. Once again the information displayed for her with an accept button at the bottom. She pressed it. The cab pulled away from the sidewalk and accelerated away.

Uncle Mason had set up and scheduled the cab for her. All the stuff she had to do on her phone was just for show. She couldn't change the destination or even really do anything but just sit along for the ride. She didn't like feeling like she wasn't in control.

That's what she liked so much about Gravity Falls, it felt like she was in control. Her mom had always sort of let her do whatever she wanted. There were very few things she had ever said no to. And her dad…

Abby looked out the window as the buildings sped past. In a minute or so they would be on the hyper track lane. She had an hour before she would be home. An hour alone with herself in the back of a self driving cab. An hour to think.

Her dad. She knew of course. She had figured it out when she was ten. It wasn't Uncle Mason at all, it was dad. She also sort of understood why no one had ever told her. When she had found out it had only taken minutes on the internet to discover the forbidden taboos around her existence.

Still, she didn't understand why they had never told her. Had they just been waiting until she was older? Well, she was older now and still her dad had never told her he was her dad. She could handle knowing, obviously.

But knowing was part of the reason they had stopped doing stuff together. Okay, that and his total obsession with his secret studies.

He had lied to her. Her mom, the person she had trusted most in the world, had lied to her.

She didn't know how to feel about that or what to do about it. So she had just tried to avoid it. And avoiding it meant spending less and less time with her dad.

Abby turned her attention back to her phone. With a few quick taps and swipes she navigated to one of her favorite videos and hit play. She had been seven and her mom and unc - and dad had taken her on an adventure. The dragon cave. She had gotten to see a dragon, a sleeping dragon, but a dragon nonetheless.

Her dad recounted how her mom and him had ridden it across the sky when they had been younger. She flipped to another video and found one of her and her mom working on her adventure journal together. She missed her mom so much.

Why did she need to go home anyhow? Why hadn't her dad just told her what was going on. Remote Holo Presence was close enough to being there with someone. And, both their phones could handle the projection, even if it did cost a little extra to do. Of course you couldn't touch a hologram.

Not for the first time, Abby considered if she should just tell her dad that she knew. Like always though she wondered if that would only make things worse between them. He clearly didn't want to tell her. Would letting him know make things better at all?

The cab drifted across the traffic lanes. Abby felt the vehicle accelerating up to travel speed. She tapped her phone to see the specifics. A map with their route displayed on it. In the top corner was the time remaining, one hour, five minutes to destination. In the bottom corner of the screen was their current speed two hundred and seventy miles per hour and climbing.

She glanced out the window to her left to see an unbroken stream of self driving vehicles moving bumper to bumper like a train. They were still rushing past in a blur but she was gaining on them as her cab continued to speed up.

After a minute or so they were moving at the same speed as the cars beside them. Four hundred and fifty miles per hour. Seamlessly, the two vehicles next to her parted and her cab slipped in between them as if it had always been there. She didn't even feel a bump as the magnetic locks engaged. She became part of the long unbroken train of hyper speed vehicles in transit.

She glanced out the right window to see a blur of either manual cars or accelerating or decelerating vehicles joining or leaving the link. It was pretty neat to watch. At first. Than it just became the same sort of colorless blur after a while.

Her mom had never bought into the selfdrive stuff. She had bought a Geep years back with the selling point being that it was manual drive only. Which had worked out fine because a lot of selfdrive only worked on paved roads and they had done a lot of off road driving for their adventures.

Abby turned to her backpack and fished out her journal number 2 from it. She had left her first one at home. It was too important to take out of the house. She could never replace it. She ran her hand along the foil eight pointed star before flipping the book open. She smiled as she began to read.

She had grown up with a super phone in her hand. She had made videos of her own, videos with her mom and with her dad. She had a complete digital life spread across multiple social media platforms.

But there was something about having a physical book, about being able to touch the pages and feel the texture that just didn't translate into digital. Her friends all thought it was weird. Books were a novelty only made for the strange collectors who liked old things. She hadn't been able to understand where her friends were coming from until she had seen a vinyl record.

It was so big and bulky that it must have held a billion songs. She was surprised when she found that it had ten, five on each side. It had been hard to wrap her brain around that anyone would want such a thing. It had been even stranger to learn that companies still made them because people still wanted them.

That was like her books she guessed. She still prefered to read on paper. And she still prefered her physical journal to anything digital.

She flipped the page forward and found one of her favorite adventures with her parents, the floating mist. It was a fog that had given them the power to fly! Albeit only two feet off the ground. They had spent the day tumbling around through the air. There was even a picture of the three of them all hugging and floating.

She smiled at the image. How could anyone not see how much of a family they were. How was it possible no one had figured out who her dad was but her? She frowned as she thought of her dad.

No. He was Uncle Mason. She had to remind herself that was who he wanted to be. He didn't want to be her dad. She closed her journal and put it back into her backpack.

She had intended to write loads of stuff into it while she had been down in California but she just really hadn't had any adventures. She'd had fun for sure. Met some new friends and generally enjoyed herself. But it hadn't been anything she would have classified as adventure.

Her phone beeped at her again and Abby looked down to see what it wanted now.

"Ten minutes to destination," said the synthetic voice. She blinked, looking out the window. Time had flown by for her, she hadn't even noticed them pulled out of the hyper speed link or decelerate back to normal. Tall trees were flitting past the windows and she recognized the general area around her. They weren't that far from home now.

She was starting to feel a little nervous though. She had distracted herself along the way but now that she was only minutes out her mind began to wonder why her dad had brought her home so early.

Uncle Mason. Not dad. Get it right in your head. Uncle Mason.

The cab pulled to a stop. "No valid paved road beyond this point. Welcome to your destination." said the voice from her phone. Abby glanced down to see the travel completed notice hover over her screen. She dismissed it.

The car hadn't gone all the way to the Mystery Shack because the dirt road was not drivable by selfdrive. That wasn't a big deal though. She was a hiker, an adventure, a traveler! A few hundred feet of dirt road was nothing!

She collected her backpack and roller bag from the car and started down the path that would take her back to her house. She heard the cab silently depart behind her once she was far enough away and the vehicle ensured that she hadn't left anything behind.

It was a much shorter walk than she would have liked to the front of the house. She was hoping there would be more time for her to think. But it seemed like only seconds later she was climbing the front steps. And her dad - her Uncle, was waiting for her at the door.

She couldn't read the expression on his face. It certainly wasn't anger or disappointment or anything that seemed to indicate she had done something wrong. Which was good, because she hadn't. Well, nothing he could possibly know about anyhow.

"Welcome home, starshine," he said. He almost knelt to hug her but patted her head at the last second. He used to hug her, before mom had passed away. Then everything had gotten weird and he had stopped. They only hugged when she did it.

"Hey, Uncle Mason," said Abby. "I'ma go to my room if that's okay." She was home and now that she was, she couldn't wait to get back out. Maybe a long hike or something would help her.

"Actually, just leave your stuff by the door, we need to talk," said Mason. Well, okay, that probably wasn't good. She thought about arguing but… but maybe he was going to finally tell her? "Come on." He waved for her to follow as he headed up the stairs to his room. To her mom's room.

Abby hadn't been upstairs for years now. After her mom had passed she couldn't even set foot inside her room. And her dad - Uncle Mason, had never once invited her up. There was a knot forming in her tummy. Something was wrong. There was something bad he wasn't telling her.

Her brain whirled around trying to get her mouth to talk and ask what had happened. But her feet just obeyed and followed him up the stairs. There was a feeling of dread working its way up her spine and she thought about turning around and running out the front door.

Instead, she stood motionless outside the door to the room where her mother had lived most of her life. She didn't want to go in.

Mason opened the door and all the panic and fear that Abby was feeling abruptly fell away as she saw… her mom? She didn't look like Abby remembered but she knew it was her.

"Mommy!" cried Abby, her voice breaking. Reason completely lost to her, Abby broke into a run and sprinted across the room the wrap her arms around her mom. "How…"

"That's sort of a long story," said her mom with a smile. "But I think you're ready to hear it, all of it."


The device in Ford's hand beeped again, they weren't far now. He was hoping against hope that what they were headed towards wasn't what he thought it was.

"Hey, Fordsie, can you slow down!" called his brother from behind him.

They had cut short their trip around the world to come back for their great nephews funeral. That had been almost a week ago. Afterwards they had returned to Gravity Falls. It had been their intent to start up their trip once more, but somehow, it didn't feel right.

Mabel hadn't been acting like herself. She wouldn't even talk to them at the wake. Her parents had confessed that things had been very hard for her and that she had been having problems ever since the accident. Ford had offered his help, but they said they were already seeking professional assistance.

Stanlee had confided in him how hard it had been to lose Ford all those years ago. He hadn't suffered quite the same level of breakdown as Mabel, but then again, he had never believed Ford to be dead, simply lost.

It was hard for Ford to imagine what it was like. When he had been lost between dimensions there hadn't been a lot of time to think about the world and people he had left behind. It had been an almost constant struggle for survival.

The device beeped again.

"It's not far now," said Ford, adjusting their heading slightly.

Of course, everything had changed yesterday. Ford had been busy organizing a search party for his missing niece when Mabel and against all odds her brother, her dead brother, had magically appeared at the Shack. They were both fine, both alive. And had a mind boggling impossible story to tell, even if Mabel had left some things out. He was good at noticing stuff like that.

However, while everyone else was amazed by her tale, For was worried by it. What she had described could mean only one thing and what she had done… well, it was impossible there wouldn't be consequences to her actions.

The device began to go crazy, beeping and whining. They had to be very close now - He felt a hand grab his arm, tugging him to a stop.

"Ford! It can't be," gasped Stanlee.

Ford looked up from the blinking screen and saw two of his worst fears confirmed. The first he had expected. Well, okay, he hadn't expected to find it here, but he had expected to find it. Bill. Or rather, the stone body he had left behind. That was slightly troubling in and of itself. If Bill was really gone than this thing should have crumbled to dust. That was a problem to be solved another time. They had bigger issues right now.

Kneeling down, Ford waved his device through the air in front of the statue. He couldn't see the other thing, but it was certainly here.

"How can it be Bill?" asked Stanlee. "I thought we erased him!"

"Hmm? Oh, right," said Ford. His brother sure could be slow sometimes. "That's just his physical body, the one he left behind when he entered your mind. Don't worry about it, we aren't in any danger from him. It's this we need to worry about!"

Ford pointed at the air in front of the statue and Stanlee gave him a skeptical look.

"The air?" asked his brother.

"What? No, not the air," said Ford, shaking his head. "Why would it be the air? No, Stanlee, it's a tear! A rip in reality!" He held up the device so his brother could see the readings he was seeing. Stan looked at it for a long while then shook his head again. Ford rolled his eyes.

"This is a similar rip to the one that was created when you reopened the portal," explained Ford, pulling off his pack and fishing inside for his portable containment unit.

"Wait, you mean like the one this guy came through?" asked Stanlee, jerking his thumb towards Bill. "I mean, he's right here though, not like he can come through again."

"We don't know what could come through, and there are more horrors in the Nightmare Realm than just Bill, although he was the worst of them," said Ford. "In any case, we can't just leave it here." He held up the containment globe, re-enforced from his previous design, and snapped it shut around the invisible crack in reality. The light on the unit switched from red, to yellow and finally green.

"There we go, all contained, at least for now," said Ford.

"You keep that thing safe this time, I don't want to have to save your butt again," said Stanlee with a chuckle.

"Stanlee, we have already agreed that we saved each other's butts," said Ford with a sigh.

"I know, I know, I just saved your butt more," taunted Stanlee.

"Can you please stop talking about butts," said Ford, slightly irritated. Stan just laughed. "Anyhow, we should get this back to my lab and into containment."

"Where did that thing come from anyhow?" asked Stanlee as they began to head back.

"I was always worried that Mason might follow in my footsteps, make the same mistakes that I did. I feared he would try to open doors that were never meant to be opened," explained Ford seriously. "But I think I might have been worried about the wrong twin. If even half of what Mabel said is true, and I believe it is, she might be a catastrophic risk to all existence." His words ended into a silence that settled heavily into the air.

"Wait, who's Mason?" asked Stan.

The End


Final thoughts and notes from the Author:

(This is pretty long and has some insights into some of the major factors that shaped this story. It's bonus material (a little like a behind the scenes). If you're not interested in any of that then - thanks for reading!)

I put a huge amount of effort into this story, almost a year and a half and over a thousand hours of writing, reading and editing to create this adventure. Honestly, it's been pretty rough. It was a very difficult story to write due to its themes and content (not to mention a main character that can't talk for most of it) and it's left me pretty drained emotionally.

I considered not even publishing this work because I didn't think it was something other people would want to read. In the end, one of my beta readers encouraged me to put it up and I did… but it was certainly difficult and pretty unfulfilling to do... so, this is more than likely the last fanfiction I'll ever post.

There are four major moments I want to share that shaped this story into its final form. The first was in the original draft. When I conceptualized the story, it was around the idea of what would Mabel see in sweater town. Where did she go when she tucked herself into her sweater? With the show, we got MabelLand, which I didn't want to repeat. As I tinkered around, the first draft of the story started to fall into place. What if she went to another universe (through a woolhole!), where things were different, better. And to be better, things would have to be worst first, thus, Dipper's death right at the start.

In the very first version of the story, the events of chapter one happened the year before they go to Gravity Falls, instead of the year after. It was supposed to be a reimagine of some moments from the show. But as I got further into the draft, a re-telling just felt… wrong. The show is already excellent and there was very little I thought I could improve on. But the time skip stuck and the story changed with far more focus on that.

The second major event came with forbidden relationship between the twins. I hadn't planned for any romance between characters. I'm not a shipper, I don't write shipping stories… because if I did I would have way more readers… I write stories and if an element improves a story I include it. No matter how much people might be against said element (and I guess there is a lot of hate for this particular one, which, I didn't even realize existed as a thing until I got comments on it).

As I wrote the main plot threads, the aspect of Dipper and Mabel's relationship (that people rage quit the story over) just sort of happened. It filled in gaps and holes that otherwise didn't work. One of the big things it solved was narrowing the character focus. Instead of adding new characters as we neared the conclusion it let me focus on the two that mattered the most. And once it was there, it was simply impossible to remove it without scraping the whole story and approaching it with a completely different idea.

And then there was Abby, who nearly managed to kill the whole story. Originally she was just supposed to be a tool to help the reader visualize the gaps in time (going from 2 to 7 years old between chapters). But, during one of my continuity reviews of the story, where I read through the whole thing (usually, in one sitting) to see if it all still makes sense, or, if things have been misplaced or repeated, I discovered something unexpected. An emergent aspect of the story that I had included without realizing it was there. Abby, was actually Mabel and Mason's secret daughter.

Once I saw it, my brain simply wouldn't accept that she could be anything else. As a result, Abby's role in the story also had to change. She went from a background set piece to a major plot element. And her arrival threw a huge hurdle down that nearly made me give up on the story completely. It wrecked the ending.

Which brings us to the fourth (and final) major event that changed the course of this story, the ending. I suck at endings. I've written hundreds of stories, published a handful of them, and hate the ending on almost every single one.

I'm not good at endings. I know I'm not. I write cliffhangers. The problem with endings is that life doesn't have an ending. Because that ending is death. And every story can't just end with every character dying (no matter how hard I try (I killed off enough of them already))!

So, I've worked hard to improve my conclusions. I try to resolve the major goals of the characters, give the audience clouser, things like that… but I still suck at it.

Abby, nearly destroyed this story, and me in the process. Once she existed, I couldn't unexist her, she was here to stay. And this caused a major, MAJOR, problem with the ending. Because the ending I wanted was Mabel's Plan A, to drag Mason home with her, back into his thirteen-year-old self. But then there was Abby. So, Mabel couldn't take Mason with her because it was such an irredeemable action for the character.

Now, you might be thinking, okay, so, this is an easy fix. Just get rid of Abby, or, heck, go with plan A. They're just fictional characters, who cares? But, well, that's not how I write stories. I'm not afraid to take things out when they don't work. There were moments in this story that were amazing, but simply didn't service the goals, so they got cut. Abby's inclusion though is a major element of the story. And while I could have cut her out or changed her back, the final work felt poorer for it.

This left me in a difficult position because my ending was no longer viable. Every chapter so far had taken a couple of days or a week to write. But the ending. Wow, draft after failed draft. Months went by and I still didn't have a workable conclusion. Even after I started publishing I hadn't finalized the ending, it was still up in the air by the time chapter six went up, more than a month and a half into posting. The closest attempt I had was a version of the 'The Outside' where Mabel stayed with her brother in sweater town. Except, that wasn't where I wanted the story to end. It would be my last resort if I couldn't discover something better.

On and on I toiled, trying to find a solution. Something that would get me closer to where I wanted the story to be. An ending that was, for lack of a better word, happy because so much of this story is downright depressing. I had several other attempts at endings (eighteen in total, at various stages of completion). They were different ideas on similar themes, but they were all… bad.

Then I wrote what would later become 'The Inside' and that was nearly the end… of everything.

I hated it. No words can express my disdain for this chapter in its original form. I felt unfulfilled, cheated and downright angry that it even existed. What the fuck was the point of the whole story if this was the ending? I felt as if I had failed in my task, that everything I had written for this was pointless. I was pretty close to just giving up, taking the story down and moving on to something else, that's how much I didn't like the ending (and how much interest I had lost in even finishing this story).

But in a moment of realization I found what I was looking for. The balance I was missing. 'The Inside' and 'The Outside' didn't work on their own, they were two halves of the same story. They aren't alternate endings, or a choose your own adventure. They are the fulfillment of both possible options, stay or go, the only way this kind of story can end. The hero either goes home or they stay in their new world. And Mabel is the kind of person that wouldn't let a small thing like only being able to choose one outcome stand in her way.

And with that, dear reader, we have reached the end. Thanks for reading.