the comfort and the confusion

The basement stairs are stained with the clear outlines of wet shoes and the drywall along the sides and overhead has black streaks and a generally greyish pallor thanks to the torches. Pacifica will worry about it later, if she even does. There's no possible way for her to sweep this under the rug. Even if she somehow manages to clean up every other trace of the Boss-Lobster's incursion there's still a big hole in the floor.

She descends the stairs and finds Mabel at work with a push broom (she has no idea where the other girl found it), sweeping the water and soggy cardboard down into the hole. It improves things a little, though not nearly enough.

"I had to sweep at the Shack sometimes," Mabel explains as she sends another small wave of filthy water running over the jagged concrete edge of the hole. "One time I spilled my cereal and a whole gallon of milk and I swept it into a crack in the floor. Grunkle Ford found it in his study later."

Pacifica watches another lump of cardboard go floating over the edge and is struck by an idea. "Maybe if we put all the cardboard down there, it'll just take it to eat and won't try to come back up."

Mabel rolls her eyes with a grin. "Boss-Lobster's so stupid it thinks cardboard is tasty. Even Gompers didn't like cardboard." She picks up an empty box and throws it into the pit. "Take your cardboard, you stupid Boss-Lobster! I hope you choke on it!"

Pacifica tosses her own box in with vindictive anger. "Yeah! Choke on it!"

Then the two girls are laughing and throwing every bit of cardboard they can get their hands on into the hole. And if their laughter has a slightly hysterical edge and the act of shouting at their retreated foe is more about catharsis than anger, it goes unremarked upon. Before long they have expended their ammunition and stand back, tired and satisfied, from the hole with its twin warding lights.

Pacifica looks down at herself. Her clothes are ruined, and thanks to the dumb monster's shell her shoes look like something's been chewing on them. Still, she's unharmed. Dipper isn't. She begins to worry that she might have dragged her only friends down with her.

"What are your parents going to say about Dipper?" Pacifica asks Mabel.

Mabel suddenly looks nervous. "Well, the funny thing about that is… they don't know we're here. Hooray, secrets…"

Pacifica stares at her. "What?"

"We called the driver you sent and met him at the park and told our parents we were going to the mall," Mabel says in rush.

"What are you going to tell them when you get back after midnight?"

"We lost track of time?"

Pacifica has a very uncomfortable feeling worming its way through her gut; she felt it when Dipper was hurt, and now it's worsening.

She knows what the feeling is. She'd felt it when confronted with a painted record of the Northwests' true history. She'd felt it when Dipper had accused her of lying, of being another link in the world's worst chain. She'd felt it when Mabel had offered a sweater despite all that had been said and done between them.

It is guilt. And Pacifica does not care for the feeling, not one bit.

She knows what to do to forestall the looming punishment ahead. It was that Pines boy, she can tell her parents. He'd shown up and summoned a monster to get revenge or something. She'd tried to stop him, but he knew magic and hated the Northwests for being better than him. His ridiculous sister was with him; they'd overpowered her! It isn't her fault. She'd tried to defend the family name. She is still their perfect daughter. She is trying to make amends.

Once, she probably could have pulled it off. Now, the thought of claiming she had tried to defend her family name makes her chest tight with an unnamable combination of anxiety, fury, and despair.

And the idea of betraying the twins brings bile to the back of her throat.

"You weren't supposed to get in trouble," she says, nails digging into the palms of her hands.

Infuriatingly, Mabel shrugs it off. "This was more important than not getting grounded. Besides, we're worried about you. Are you going to be okay?"

Pacifica is too tired and emotionally raw to downplay it. "I don't know. They're going to be really mad." She shivers at the thought. It's going to be the aftermath of the party all over again, except this time it's strike two. Maybe three, if they count the accumulation of all the small ways she has defied them over the past months.

"But will you be okay?" Mabel presses.

Pacifica has no idea what the fallout of all this is going to be. The Manor ghost estranged her from her parents, Weirdmageddon tore the family apart, and now a Boss-Lobster has ripped up the basement and eaten some boxes. She has no basis for this stuff. She's spent her entire life being what her parents wanted her to be. Only recently has there been room for doubt about what it means to be a Northwest. When she had opened the gates at the party it had been about Dipper and all the other people turned to wood, but it had also been the culmination of so many little moments: discovering her family name is based on fraud; seeing how much more accepting Mabel's friends are, even when she'd failed; just sharing a taco in a car because it turns out that isn't a big deal to most people.

And it isn't just the summer, and it isn't just the Pines. She'd been getting older and gradually realizing that nobody else she knows had been trained to obey a bell. And that had brought about another nagging thought, one that's been festering for months: Who is she really if everything she is, is everything she's been made to be?

The lumberjack ghost just forced the issue. Now here she is in the midst of trying to be a better person, a path that has led her to be covered in filth in a wrecked basement with a girl she had once despised—and not even that long ago—because that was what she'd been expected to do.

So, if nothing else, not doing what she's supposed to is definitely the more interesting way to go.

Mabel is still looking at her anxiously. Pacifica's been lost in her own head so much recently that she is just sick and tired of it. How do nerds like Dipper think so much all the time? Introspection sucks. She thinks and thinks and just runs around her head in circles.

Pacifica kicks one last chunk of cardboard towards the hole and feels a little better. "Yeah. I guess we'll both be grounded," she says.

Mabel looks at the Boss-Lobster-free basement with satisfaction. "Totally worth it."

At least for the moment, Pacifica shares the feeling of accomplishment. "Let's go, it smells down here." She turns to leave and then recoils a step when she finds Mabel directly in her way with a wide, knowing smile.

"In a hurry, Pacifica?" Mabel says slyly.

"Yes, it's gross in here," Pacifica reiterates, confused.

"Or are you just in a hurry to help Dipper again, Dr. Northwest?" Mabel says, rocking on her heels gleefully.

"Um, yeah, I did that after you shoved me at him, weirdo," Pacifica retorts.

"You were getting a little personal with your patient, doc! Though I didn't see him complaining about your bedside manner…"

Pacifica crosses her arms. "Shut up, Mabel."

Mabel's finger points straight at Pacifica with accusatorial delight. "You like him!" she crows.

"Shut up, I do not!"

"You like him a lot!"

"What is your damage—"

"'Love lingers in the air, like the musk of a Boss-Lobster,'" Mabel narrates, clasping her hands to her chest. "'The beautiful doctor, her handsome young charge. She saves him from the evil claws of the basement monster, then holds him close to her ample bosom as she tenderly cares for his wound… Their hands entwined, their hearts in sync, their lips—'"

"Oh my god, Mabel, shut up!"

Mabel drops the narrative but remains excited. "Pacifica, not to brag, but I'm kind of a love expert. And I was catching some serious vibes when you two were over there!"

"The only thing you're catching is Boss-Lobster diseases," Pacifica says sourly. Unable to get past Mabel's impromptu dip into torrid romance fiction, she adds, "And I did not hold him against my 'bosom!'"

"Okay, I made that part up," Mabel allows.

"Duh."

"But you wanted to!"

Pacifica spins on her heel and stalks away. "You're crazy, and I'm done with this."

"But you'll be thinking about it laaaaaater," Mabel sings as she follows.

Pacifica rolls her eyes as she ascends the steps. "Yeah, right. Because I lay awake at night thinking about him," she sneers.

It's sometime after midnight and Pacifica is beneath her sheets. She's mercifully clean and the stench of the monster has slowly faded from her nostrils until all she smells is the faint hint of lavender that permeates her room. She's exhausted. She should already be asleep.

She wonders how Dipper and Mabel are doing. Their trip home might be finished, and she hopes they aren't in too much trouble. They'd managed to clean Dipper's wound fairly well and bandage it crudely but effectively. Pacifica doubts the twins will be able to come up with a story to explain away the injury, so hopefully it's hidden well enough. Dipper's relative insouciance towards his wound makes Pacifica wonder how often he's been hurt during his adventures in Gravity Falls.

Not that she's really worried about him or anything. No matter what Mabel says, Pacifica isn't going to be thinking about him like that; or any other way, for that matter. She can let it drop and has no need to contemplate the image of him beneath the Boss-Lobster's claw or the terror that had driven her to attack it, or the moment they'd shared in the aftermath that had been an even warmer echo of an exchange in a room hidden behind a painting. She isn't going to think about that. She is going to go to sleep.

She closes her eyes, but instead of the blissful void of sleep an image fills her mind. She sees Dipper sitting on the stairs. He's holding the flag to his side and she is next to him, her knee pressed to his. He tells her that he's there for her. He tells her how awesome she was to drive off the monster, how amazing he thinks she is. And then she presses her thumb to his upper lip and wipes away the soot streaked there, and his brown eyes are so adorably confused, and the gap between them is narrow enough that she barely has to lean forward to—

Pacifica opens her eyes and stares at the canopy over her bed.

"Uh-oh."