Stan headed out into the clearing in front of the Mystery Shack, worry gnawing at his insides. He didn't think that Vic was going to run, but if he'd ran from his parents like he thought, he couldn't be so sure. He hoped not, but . . .

Thankfully, it looked like he'd been right. Vic had come to a stop to the right of the Shack and was panting and clutching at clumps of his hair, grabbing at the tree for balance tightly enough that his knuckles went white. He was mumbling and breathing heavily and his eyes were switching between super wide and squeezed shut.

He noticed Stan before he had the chance to say anything and stumbled back, wiping his face with his sleeve and keeping space between them.

"Nope. Nope. Stay . . . stay back. Please." His voice was strained.

Stan backed off, and though Vic's 'danger!' position loosened, he was still tight as a wire. After Stan was still enough, he finally looked away, folding his arms and shuffling his feet in the dead leaves, fidgeting with his sleeves and letting his puffy hair hide him.

They stood there for a while. It was getting dark, but the golden light from inside spilled out, pulling away the cover of twilight just enough for Stan to make out the shape of tears.

"It's okay," Stan said softly, reaching out, and Vic flinched back. "You're okay. Look at me. Look at me, Vic."

After a second, he did.

"It's okay. What's wrong?"

He froze and Stan could visibly see the panic setting in again, the looseness vanishing like that.

"Hey. Hey. Are you not ready to talk about it yet?"

He nodded slowly.

"Okay. Okay." Stan looked around, then up at the sky. "Come with me, kid, we're gonna head into town, I'll get you an ice cream, okay? C'mon."

Vic looked down at the proffered hand and then up at Stan again, and his heart ached to know what had freaked out the normally calm kid so bad. But he didn't push it.

"Okay," Vic mumbled, taking the hand awkwardly and pulling a tuft of hair behind his ear.

The Stanmobile was behind the Shack, but Stan intentionally went to the front to tell Soos and the twins (who all had made their way to the front door and were hiding the fact that they had been trying to see what was going on), "I'm taking Vic into town for a little bit, hold down the Shack until I get back, okay?"

Soos nodded with a salute, though his determined expression faded when he looked at Vic. Dipper seemed to be looking everywhere except towards his friend, and Mabel was the exact opposite, seeming incapable of looking away, her eyes filled with guilt.

"C'mon, the car's in the back."

As they got into the car, he was silent, and for most of the drive it was the same (Stan taking extra precautions to drive carefully with a distressed preteen in the car). They were mostly there by the time he actually said anything.

"Thanks," he mumbled, and when Stan glanced over, he was staring out the window.

"No problem, kid."

They parked and went inside Martha's Milkshakes, which was mostly empty except for a couple in the corner. Vic spoke enough to order a chocolate and strawberry sundae, and even though his voice shook a little, it was definitely better than silence.

Stan ordered a vanilla shake, mostly just so it wouldn't be ridiculously awkward as the kid ate. They took one of the seats outside, and throughout most of the last-minute snack, he was staring into his food or into the distance, an apathetic look on his face.

It was only after the last bits were melting in the bottom of his cup that he talked to Stan. "Why . . . are you being so nice right now?"

"Huh?"

"You're not usually . . . very . . . nice. What's with the ice cream and giving me space and whatnot?"

Stan sat there, realizing for the first time that that was a very valid question. This was the biggest interaction they'd had since Stan had first grilled him about running away. He'd never really paid special attention to Vic, since he'd never really seemed like he needed it.

Maybe that had been a mistake.

"You needed it," he said simply. "And I had a feeling that the last people you wanted to see right now were the twins."

Vic looked down at the table at that.

"Are you ready to talk about it now?"

His hand tightened on the plastic spoon and his shoulders got tense, but it released after a moment. ". . . maybe." It took a deep breath and steeling himself for him to continue. "I told Dipper that I didn't want him to do something, since it was . . . really, really . . . really personal. But he . . . he did it anyway, and he got Mabel and Soos in on it, and . . ."

He looked back out into the distance, his voice breaking and his eyes watering.

"They know . . . so much now. Everything about me that I wanted to keep a secret. It wouldn't've been that bad, but they did it behind my back. They tried to keep it a secret."

Stan frowned. He'd known Soos for years now, and he'd gotten familiar enough with the twins to know that that was not the sort of thing that any of them would do. "Why'd they do it?"

He choked out a humorless laugh. "Dipper saw something in that stupid Journal and thought I had some kind of dream demon in my head. And I dunno, maybe he was right, but . . . it sucks that he did it like . . . that."

He took another shaky breath. "How am I supposed to trust them?"

That . . . was an extremely hard question to answer.

"I can't tell you that, kid. It depends on you, and what the mistake was, and who made it. Everyone's answer is gonna be a little different. But look at me. You need to make that decision. It's up to you. And if I know them as well as a think I do, they're gonna be feeling bad and try to make it up to you."

Quiet filled the empty space in the conversation.

"Okay," he said, rubbing his eyes. "Thanks. For the advice and the ice cream."

"Like I said, no problem, kid. You wanna do anything else before I take you to Soos's house?"

The plastic spoon creaked a tiny bit as it bended in his hands. "Yeah."

"Okay, what?"

"I dunno. I just . . . I'm not ready yet."

"You got it. Random adventures of Vic and Stanl . . . ford start now!"

He giggled, and Stan took that to mean he was making progress.

They were just driving around, talking and looking for something to do, when Stan took a turn he didn't mean to and put them within sight of a stupid cutesy blue and white house with an aggravating billboard out front.

"Wait," Vic said, reading the billboard. "Is this Gideon's house? Actually, wait, no, I'm not surprised he lives somewhere that looks like that."

"What kind of little idiot advertises where they live? That's just begging for them to get stuff . . . stolen . . ."

Vic glanced back at Stan and gave him a deadpan look at the wide grin splitting his face. "Stan, no, we are not breaking into somebody's house."

Aw, buzzkill.

". . . do you have any large markers in the car?"

"Why do you wanna know?"

Vic gave him an evil grin of his own, and Stan caught on.

One quick edit to the sign later, and they left the house snickering with the billboard reading, 'NOT THE Home of Li'l Gideon! NOT as seen on TV! LEAVE US ALONE", the cutesy face of Stan's archenemy with thick angry eyebrows.

However, Gideon was not paying attention to the vandalism outside. After Bill was unhelpful with his foray into the boy's mind, Gideon had once again set his sights on his initial goal: getting Journal 1. If Victor knew about it, then it was either with him or the other boy, since sweet little Mabel wouldn't have kept that secret from him.

Soon, Gideon would have both Journals, and he would be unstoppable.

But how to retrieve it? He didn't have the power to beat them in a fight, not since his amulet had been broken. Maybe Journal 2 would have something for him to use.

Or maybe . . . all he needed was some good-ol'-fashioned manipulation. He had the town wrapped around his little finger, and Stan was enough of a criminal that it wouldn't be too hard to frame him. Come up with a good story, get him sent to the lockup, and extort the boys to give him the Journal. If they did, he'd stop pressing charges, and it would all work out.

He cackled to himself, ignoring his mother's vaccuuming getting exponentially louder outside his bedroom door.

"You have got to be kidding me."

After a very emotionally charged night, when Soos left for the Shack, Vic was expecting the day pretty much to himself, maybe watching some of those bad infomercials with Abuelita. (Why would someone deal with owls so much they need a trowel specifically for it?)

He was not expecting a mob outside.

When he ended up shoving himself out of the house and up to the Shack, where it was located, who did he find making problems? Gideon. Naturally. He was stood in front of the Shack, moaning and whining about how Stan had ruined his public image with vandalism.

. . . well . . . uh . . .

Eventually it got loud enough that even Stan got up to see what was going on, and the idiot cops put him in cuffs for it. Seriously, how did the town function with starcrossed-lover idiots like them as cops? Dipper and Mabel rushed out with Soos a moment later and problems were everywhere.

Vic was tired of solving the problems and tired of having to fix things for Dipper and Mabel, so he . . . just left. The story that he ended up getting from Soos later went a little like this:

So, Stan was super locked up, and dude, Dipper was panicking, and Mabel too, kinda. There was this whole legal battle and stuff, and he won by proving Gideon was infiringing on some kinda privacy law and got the kid locked up. So you don't gotta worry about nothing, dude.

"Hm. Sounds . . . vaguely interesting. Maybe I should've been there after all," he said with a shrug, his eyes still on Soos.

What did you see in my head? How bad are things gonna be between us?

Am I brave enough to ask?

He sat there in awkward silence, Abuelita's TV playing softly in the background. He needed to know, but he was also afraid of the answer he might get. How many secrets had been spilled? How much did he know? What—"

"I'm sorry, dude," Soos said softly, looking at the floor, regret all over his face. Vic pulled up short, looking at the handyman, surprised. "I didn't wanna do it, but I should've stopped the twins. It was too much."

Vic stayed in thoughtful silence, before he worked up the courage. "What did you see?"

". . . I took the memory hall. I saw a lot of your fuzzy life, and . . . and I know what we are in . . . in your world."

He froze, watching his friend's face for any facial clues.

". . . when you look at me . . . is that all you think? A dumb kid's show character?"

He didn't know how to answer that. It was weird. They were definitely more than that, anymore, but . . . he saw the hard edges and dark lines. He saw how two dimensional it was, but it didn't feel two dimensional.

The hug that he wrapped Soos in felt like a hug. He could feel the Mystery Shack shirt rubbing his arms, he could feel the warmth coming from the big guy, he could feel the tenderness when he was hugged back.

He could feel his tear trickle down his cheek.

"No," he whispered. Every word mattered here. "Maybe you were at first, but . . . not anymore. You're my friend, Soos. You've looked out for me on tons of adventures. Even though you look like a cartoon, you're so much more than that. I'm sorry if I made you think that."

His words were starting to blur together, but he didn't care. They needed to be said.

"I forgive you," he said, barely audible. "You made a mistake, but I forgive you."

Soos hugged him back, and they just sat there on the couch, wordlessly.

The darkness in the backs of his eyelids wasn't two dimensional, apparently. When he closed his eyes, everything felt normal. When he closed his eyes, it felt like home.

It was nice to be home.

This chapter is so much shorter than the others, it feels wrong ending it here, but then again, putting an actual plot to this very emotional thing also feels wrong. There was supposed to be a genuine storyline here, but I couldn't think one up, and it was preventing me from writing. I realized that I'd rather have a couple weak chapters to keep the story going so I can get to the plot points I've been dreaming of.

Unfortunately, the next big step for Vic's main plot is with Ford, so it might feel more like filler, focusing on other characters for a while.

I really do wanna get to the good parts of this thing, so . . . there might be some more shorter chapters soon, focusing on strong character moments and stuff like this and building on it.

Hang in there, and thanks for reading this far. Hopefully I can get my brain into gear to write something longer for the next one. So long. ~RTW