[Summary: Having done what she does best after revealing her secret to the world, Vee now finds herself alone and hunting Philip in a world that's been flipped on its side, only to become distracted by an unexpected reunion. Meanwhile, Luz is worried sick for her sister, but must unfortunately bear the responsibility of explaining what happened to everyone else in Gravesfield, including someone from her past that she would rather forget.]
Chapter Twenty-Seven: Two Sisters Torn Apart[Summary: Having come to an uneasy truce, Vee and the rest of her basilisk siblings set out to put an end to Belos' schemes once and for all, only to find themselves interrupted by a much greater threat. Meanwhile, Luz struggles to retrace Philip's steps for her sister's sake, and ends up receiving some valuable advice from an unexpected place.]
Chapter Twenty-Eight: King's Lament[Summary: Although Vee has been roped into the Collector's games against her will, she comes to understand the poor Star-Child more with the help of Luz's long lost family. Meanwhile, Luz and her friends prepare to return to the Boiling Isles, only to attract some last-minute backup.]
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Seething Seas and Puppet Strings[Summary: While Vee and the Clawthornes attempt to neutralize the threat posed by The Collector without throwing their world into even greater chaos, the Hexsquad and the Cabin 7 Crew must do their best to get their bearings in this strange new world, hoping to find Vee before it's too late.]
Things get a little hectic after that.
Chapter Thirty: The Finale[Summary: It's up to Luz, Vee, and all of their loved ones to reach out to The Collector and stop Belos once and for all! However, before they can do that, they'll have to tie up all the loose ends that were left dangling since their departure, and even if they can accomplish that, saving the Isles will require some hard choices to be made...choices which could leave both realms changed forever.]
Part One: Three Blind MiceWhen Raine finally woke up, the first thing they heard was shouting.
"TITAN, I cannot tell you how ecstatic I am for the opportunity to say 'I told you so!'"
Yup, that was definitely Darius.
"Oh, I see how it is: you were miserable enough that you managed to catch on five minutes before we did, and you think that makes you some paragon of virtue?!"
And that could only be Terra. Great. So they had all been kept in the same place.
Gotta have the complete set of Coven Heads, right?
"I say we kill them now. Figure the rest out later," Vitimir hissed in his raspy voice.
Eberwolf bared his teeth, as clear a signal as any that the first one to try it gets mauled.
"And do what, exactly? Our world is in chaos!" Mason added, always the pragmatic one.
"Because of witches like them!" Adrian snapped, still looking just as rough as he had before.
"Oh, please, how could any of us have known this would happen?" Raine interjected finally, drawing their attention to them. Good. As long as the others were thinking about their words, they weren't thinking about killing each other over them. Or at least...they weren't thinking about it yet.
"I'm especially curious to know why the Oracle didn't see this coming," Hettie snarled, speaking with even more venom in her voice than Vitimir did, and that was saying something.
"...Well?" Darius asked eventually, as Osran looked at them all and didn't say a word.
His silence spoke volumes.
"Then why did you stop us?" Raine demanded almost immediately, angry and horrified in equal measure while the others were left scarcely able to respond at all, with one notable exception.
"Yes, I'd like to know that too!" Terra began, causing her and Raine to glance at each other. "Oh, great! Now I'm agreeing with THEM! Look what you made me do!" Terra cried out at the old man indignantly, but Raine ignored her barbs - the metaphorical ones, that is. Never the literal ones: they knew better than to make that mistake by this point.
"If you knew what was coming and you participated in it anyway, that makes you complicit in an attempted act of genocide, do you realize that?" Raine followed up harshly, deathly serious as their irritation gave way to a cool fury. "Do you even care? Or do you honestly believe that the ends justify the means, and if so...why? What in the name of all that's sacred could possibly justify that?!" Even in the face of such heavy accusations, ones he clearly knew he deserved and then some, still he stayed silent. Even when he did speak, it was hardly anything. Certainly not a satisfactory answer.
"They're finally awake," he finally said, and his voice sounded old. So very old.
"Yeah, we know The Collector is awake, now are we going to smother that brat or just-?!
"Not him. He is only a child, who does not know any better," Osran said insightfully, the elder cutting off the much younger Graye with a patience that made it all the more infuriating to the overdramatic illusionist. "The people are awake," he clarified in that same steady, raspy voice of his. "The people have been sleeping...but now they are, all of them, awake. And they will never go back to sleep." The others paused, knowing each other well enough that they knew they were going to have to actually consider the old Oracle's words. He may have been frustratingly cryptic and older than all of them put together, but there was wisdom to be had in experience, and to Oracles, wisdom was more valuable than air. And besides, as vague as his speech may have been, it was also the most words they had ever heard him say at once, so they could gather that this was a reasonably big deal.
"So...you helped Belos because you knew we would outlive him in the end," Raine began, filling in the blanks for him while trying to wrap their head around it. "You knew that the Day of Unity wouldn't actually kill anyone, but you also knew that it would be so terrible, so traumatizing that no one would ever let themselves be sucked into a cult like the Empire, ever again." Osran just nodded along slowly in response to Raine's assertions, but that wasn't the worst thing about the way he reacted to their words. The worst thing was the way that his eyes shone at being vindicated, even if only in his own flawed mind, and Raine didn't remotely know how to feel about it. Whether they should attack him, lecture him, scream at him, or just tiredly let him have that one small comfort, so that they could move on and fix this without this ending in bloodshed. They couldn't fathom how a person could do such horrible things in the short term, simply due to the guarantee of long term gains which only Osran could know. They didn't want to think about what they might have done, what they would consider to be "Good," if they had been gifted with his Sight. They didn't want to think about how much could have been avoided if he had said something before now. They didn't want to think about how his silence spoke such volumes that every word hinted at just how much more he knew and just wasn't telling them, either due to the nature of his Sight or simply because he knew that anyone else would have broken under the burden he bore. They didn't want to think about how much death, how much pain, how many broken hearts and broken promises could have been averted if he had just-!
Raine angrily shook their head, focusing their mind on the task at hand. They didn't want to look back at it all now and wonder what could have been, because they knew that if they did, they would fall right back into the pit of despair they kept falling into whenever she vanished from their life. And if they did fall right back into that pit, right now, at this moment...they knew that they just wouldn't climb out in time to make sure that The Owl Lady didn't vanish for good at the very end.
And if that happened, after everything...then they might as well have died on that awful day.
"What else do you know?" Darius asked, the others too busy weighing their own personal implications about what Osran had told them, and about what Osran hadn't told them. Osran just looked at Darius, glimpsed the future and knew that he deserved it, before giving him a simple look which conveyed nothing more than the most somber apology he could muster. After a moment of silence, Darius came to realize what that look was saying...and a great anger bubbled within him like a cauldron about to burst. "No," he said simply, damningly, before his eyes turned black-green and his body began to ripple as it was transmuted into what he considered to be his true form, in some ways. "You amoral, arrogant, cold-hearted BASTARD!" he cried, his hand forming into a scythe-
"Darius, don't-!" Raine cried as they attempted to hold him back with their bow, knowing above all that the first blood they spilled could mean war and death and the end of everything-!
"HOW LONG?! HOW LONG DID YOU KNOW AND DO NOTHING?!" he bellowed as it took every bit of self-control he had not to ignore his comrade's sensibility and tear the old fool apart. His was a rather paternal rage, one which the others hadn't expected from the lone wolf they had known. Their reactions varied: most of them didn't get what in Titan's name he was going on about, while both Mason and Raine's heart sank as they thought about Hunter and put the pieces together. For his part, Eberwolf bared his teeth in a bestial smile, proud that he had managed to help his friend develop such a strong nurturing instinct, and without any words needed! Frankly, as far as they were concerned, it was long past time to let the kid into their Pack already.
For his part, Osran was quiet, contemplative, and it hadn't made Darius want to stab him so badly until now, but eventually, the old man spoke...and the words he chose left nobody unscathed.
"We all knew, on some level...and we all did nothing," he said, his words hitting Mason and Raine especially hard before he turned to Darius, who was already trembling at the sudden shock of Osran's piercing insight into his very soul. "But not all of us felt the need to be cruel to him," he added, and just like that, the righteous fury within Darius' heart sputtered and died as the regrets that he had kept close to his chest bubbled up to the surface. With a stumbling step backwards, he reverted back to normal, his spirit crushed into dust as his present fondness grappled with his past hatred, a hatred which had been so cruelly, woefully misplaced for so long that a part of him always suspected that Jasper would have hated him for it. Eberwolf took Darius' hand in his much-smaller paw and tried to offer his fellow wolf-witch some comfort, leaving Raine with the unenviable task of salvaging this cart-wreck before it was too late.
"What happens now?" they asked, daring to broach that topic. Even as the coven heads all looked at each other and thought to themselves, Raine's keen eye noted the lines being drawn: the low rumble of Eberwolf's growl and the slight bubble of Darius' shoulder on their end, the various subtle twitches of the old guard on theirs, Osran still standing in the gray line between them. Four at most versus five if things went south, perhaps more on their side if Eda and Lilith and the CATs of their original team were alive and well and working on getting them some more recruits...or perhaps more of the enemy if the Coven Heads' "replacements" didn't follow in their footsteps. The mere thought of a brawler like Alador or a schemer like Odalia tipping the scales even further was-!
No! No, they could still save this! They just needed to be...reasonable. Hear the others out. Maybe they had a plan that wasn't just "New regime same as the old regime." Maybe it was good!
...No, no, they were definitely going to try to kill each other in the next few minutes.
Still...it was worth a shot, wasn't it?
"Here's how I see it," Mason spoke for the old guard at last, lifting Raine's spirits a bit. That was good: they could work with Mason. He was gruff, obstinate, set in his ways, and he may have been the biggest "true believer" at one point, but he was also pragmatic to a fault and strictly utilitarian. He loved order, he loved systems that ran like clockwork regardless of how "right" or "wrong" they were, and that was exactly why he had followed the Emperor so faithfully: because he had bought into all of his lies, and probably hated himself for it now that he knew the truth. By that same token, he was the one most likely out of all of them to now realize that the old ways were dead and fundamentally broken, and he was also the most well-equipped among them to devise a system for the interim which was fair, if not wholly just. One which wouldn't give them everything they wanted, but which would help them rebuild, give them breathing room to make an even better world later...for the children. Mason's two children were all that he talked about other than his work as the head of the Construction Coven, and his devotion to them was how he had justified all his labors. "I do this all for them," he had told Raine once, when they had subtly tried to gauge whether he might be an ally to their cause while they were supposedly rendered "pliable" by Terra's awful tea. They had walked away from that conversation knowing that he couldn't be an ally then, and finding themself a little concerned at what exactly he considered to be good parenting, given the example which Belos had once set as an idol in his mind. Even so, the important thing for right now was that Mason was the most likely out of the old guard to be reasonable about this. He may even be the most likely to switch sides, if it came to that.
And right now, they'd take any extra allies they could get at this stage.
"The biggest fault-line was the imbalance of power," he continued, talking about the flaws of their society like the Boiling Isles themselves were little different from a low-budget house he might have built in the Toes, muddied in the muck and likely to sink within the next fifty years - not an inaccurate analogy, really, if you gave it a little thought. "Absolute power only works if its wielder is without flaw, and as it turned out, the 'Emperor' was no more than a mask, a false god he made to hide a man made of nothing but flaws. Put simply: his world is not one I want my children to know any longer," he continued, speaking with his own, quieter version of the white hot anger that Darius had shown just moments earlier. The righteous anger of a father, scorned.
"What do you propose?" Raine asked in a business-like manner, which he could appreciate.
"The Concord of Covens," he replied authoritatively. "A democratic nation built upon the best aspects of the original Coven System, transforming them from departments of the government subservient to the executive and into political entities in and of themselves. Each of the Nine would send its own Coven Head, democratically elected by their own membership, to serve as the 'Coven Councilor' of the Isles, chief executives with fixed term limits and power distributed evenly between the nine in a Council of Covens governed by majority vote." Several of the old guard perked up at that, definitely liking the sound of having even a fraction of Belos' power for themselves, but this meant that Mason's proposal intrigued Raine and their allies as much as it worried them. It sounded like something they could work with if push came to shove, even if the thought of letting the old guard go "unpunished" to any extent made them hate themself a little. The only problem was the key word "sounded," in that it sounded good, but that just meant there was a catch, a catch they likely couldn't abide by as a matter of principle.
They just needed to figure out what the catch was, and see if they could find a way around it.
"What about the Emperor's Coven?" Raine asked, but Mason already had a response to that.
"Disbanded," he said: that, at least, everyone seemed to agree on. "Members who wish to remain enlisted may do so as part of a new 'Concord Army of the Titan,' managed by the Council of Covens such that a majority of the Nine must approve all operations." Something in Raine's brain appreciated how Mason was considerate enough to make sure the CATs were in his system, even if only in sharing the same acronym, really. "Any who do not wish to remain a part of their coven as a result of the Day of Unity will be compensated and given free medical treatment for any physical and...psychological scars which may have resulted from their service," he continued, surprising Raine and Darius even further with his degree of consideration, while Hettie scoffed indignantly.
"Oh, please, do you think healing stamps just grow on trees?" she asked disdainfully. "And what psychological scars? The Emperor's Coven was above us all, just like that little brat you're so attached to all of a sudden!" she added, digging her grave a bit deeper as Darius began to bubble again. Mason, too, now looked at her with equal derision, for reasons which were no doubt his own.
"It is not my fault you are a healer who lacks compassion," Mason countered with nothing but utter contempt in his voice, causing Hettie's eyes to glow blue as she pulled out her scalpel.
"Perhaps you'll feel differently when you've lost an eye, mud-for-brains!" she snapped, only for Osran's crackling magic hand to interpose itself between them, stopping her in her tracks.
"We cannot move forward without being ever-mindful of the Emperor's follies," he said in that circumspect way of his, leaving the rest of them confused and irritated to varying degrees.
"Oh, Titan, do you ever stop with the damn riddles?!" Graye snapped, his tail swishing back and forth like an angry cat. Raine held up a hand, not wanting things to start getting violent again.
"What do you mean by that?" Raine asked, keeping their tone neutral. Osran looked at them with what could almost be considered "warmth," save that it lacked any emotional component. For whatever reason, this conversation had caused him to decide that, out of all of them, Raine was the one who most understood where he was coming from.
They weren't even going to try unpacking their feelings on that.
"We are, each of us, the inversion of our role," he said. "This was done with purpose, albeit imperfectly, so that we would serve the Emperor and not the people." With this brief explanation finished, he turned to each of the coven heads and described what he believed Belos saw in them.
To Terra, he claimed that "You are a gardener, who plants only to take life."
To Graye, he claimed that "You are an artist, who creates for his ego instead of his craft."
To Vitimir, he claimed that "You are a brewer, who brews anything but helpful remedies."
To Mason, he claimed that "You are a builder, who seeks perfection using imperfect tools."
With the old guard done with, he then turned to the troublemakers, and he almost smiled.
"Belos thought you were too mindless, spineless, and vain to oppose him," he said bluntly to Eberwolf, Raine, and Darius in turn, only to look even more pleased at their indignant expressions of shock, the old bastard. "How fortunate that he was wrong, on all counts," he said in what must have been a compliment, even if it was still couched in his cryptic seer-speak. Raine didn't know if they should be offended or not, but Darius and Eberwolf seemed to think they should be, as did most of the old guard...with the exception of Mason, who seemed to be genuinely shaken.
"And what about you?" Darius asked at last, his lingering disdain for this glorified fortune teller evident in his voice. Osran, as one would expect, wasn't especially surprised by the question, and had an answer of his own ready which he hoped would help them understand him a little more.
"I am a seer, one who sees too far...and has lived too long," he said in a hollow voice, hinting at centuries of regret and inaction and a long, plodding life story which they likely didn't have time to hear. They would simply have to judge based on his haunted expression and fill in the blanks of the story themselves. Most of them were too selfish to give him even that courtesy, but Mason seemed deeply moved by his words, and lingered especially on what Osran had said about him in particular.
It sounded a lot like what Steve had said to him not that long ago either, words spoken in the heat of anger and with the desperation of a child who is no longer a child, and needs his father to understand that. Words which Mason responded to in kind, his words spoken with indignance and the firmness which he had once believed a father needed to show towards their children in order to ensure they grew up properly, fixing any pain he may have caused his boys in the process with the same efficiency that he fixed a leaky pipe or a crumbling foundation. Words which had the effect of driving his firstborn son to scoff at his father's sacrifices and storm off on his bike - to join the CATs, no doubt. Words which Mason only now realized that he needed to apologize for if he had any hope of his two boys, both far too young to be caught up in this, ever speaking to him again.
All the more reason to get this one last "project" finished as quickly as possible.
"I believe I take your meaning," Mason remarked, speaking to Osran directly before turning to the others. "I concede that it is likely we will still hold our current positions to begin with...and that, perhaps, we do not deserve to do so any longer. However, our covens will have the power to elect us for only one term of four years, and the minor covens will form a legislative body of their own to keep us in check during our tenure, giving the common people a mechanism by which they can exercise their right to hold us accountable...and a precedent that can help guide their children." Now, that was by no means popular with the old guard - who were the rabble to tell them how to rule?! - but it was, to pardon the tortured pun, music to Raine's ears. "Our covens are like houses: we must examine the rot we have allowed to fester within them, both in ourselves and in those under us. Only then can we begin to make repairs." At these words, Osran now glowed with his odd sort of pride at Mason too, and that mindset was a very good sign in Raine's estimation. They just needed to get a few more questions answered, and maybe then...maybe then this could work.
Maybe they could save everyone after all.
"And we'll dismantle the Conformatorium, right?" they asked, their words laced with hope, hope which died more and more with each passing second as Mason remained silent, having made up his mind and yet now having second thoughts about voicing his answer aloud. "We'll...find a way to get rid of...everyone's sigils...won't we?" Raine added more hesitantly, a subtle signal for the three of them, Darius and Eberwolf and anyone else who was still on their side by now, to get ready at last. Osran glanced worriedly between the rebels and the old guard: it seemed as though he was now fully on the rebels' side in principle, but he clearly didn't want this conflict to occur. The only problem was...he was an Oracle, a seer of the future and an observer of the present. And as Osran and Raine both looked into Mason's eyes, as they all watched each Coven Head tense up and prepare in their own ways for outright war to break out across the entire Isles...they both knew that this conflict was inevitable, despite their best (and worst) intentions.
"Order must be maintained," Mason said at last, his words laced with a feeble attempt at an apology. Raine scowled at his cowardice, at his willingness to come so close and yet fall so short in the end because he was too afraid of change to let go of values he knew were wrong. Well, fine. If aggressive negotiations were always going to be the order of the day...then one thing was certain:
When the dust settled, nobody was going to say that they hadn't tried to reach out.
The problem was that half of them just didn't care.
"Damn," they replied, one word worth a thousand in a way that Osran would be proud of.
And it was at that point...that the Nine broke into Civil War.
Part Two: Mary, Mary, Quite ContraryPart Three: Baa, Baa, Black SheepPart Four: Hush, Little BabyPart Five: The Titan's Falling DownEpilogue, Part One: To Be Understood[Summary: A look at how the lives of everyone in both realms changed after all was said and done, as told through the eyes of a girl who finally felt like she belonged.]
Epilogue, Part Two: Thanks For Watching[Summary: On the anniversary of Reality Check's first summer session, Mabel reflects on her favorite camper and just how many lives they both changed for the better.]
"If you've ever taken a road trip along the coast of the Long Island Sound, you've probably seen a bumper sticker for a place called Gravesfield, Connecticut."
A young man in a flannel jacket and fur cap strolled into the old house in the woods with a massive rucksack on his back. He took a deep breath as he assessed the building with a critical eye, just as he did with most things in life. To say it was a "fixer-upper," even after all of the renovations which had been done before he got there, would have been exceedingly generous. For as sturdy as the house itself had become thanks to the Corduroys' efforts, he highly doubted that the house's vermin problem had been solved just because any possums the renovators encountered were put into a headlock until they ran away. Still, it wasn't like they were highly intelligent super-vermin in this one old house in the woods (probably), and even if they were, well...
Suffice to say, he'd dealt with much worse.
From a strictly practical standpoint, even a mostly liveable old shack like this was a massive improvement compared to an RV that was vintage ten years ago and seemed constantly on the verge of breaking down. He really only needed one or two rooms, utilities, and an office space, and this house could take care of all of that and more with a little more work. In fact, with all of the various oddities and paranormal doodads he had collected over the past few years, some of which were just rattling around in the very rucksack he now carried...he was beginning to have an idea about just what to do with all of this extra space which he had been given.
Oh yeah. This was going to be the start of something incredibly, beautifully weird.
"Welp!" Dipper Pines cried out jubilantly as he dropped his rucksack. "I'm moved in!"
"It's not on many maps, and most people have never even heard of it."
Weeks later, the final letter of the house's new name was embedded firmly into the exterior of the building, where it would hopefully remain without, say, the U and N turning upside down.
"Dipper's House of the Unexplained," as he had decided to call it after intense deliberation, was definitely going to be a difficult business to run, at least in Pacifica's estimation. Sure, the name helped tie it to his sleeper hit podcast, so they could at least count on good summer traffic from fans looking to make a pilgrimage to see how the paranormal sausage was made, but also, counterpoint? They were in the woods! Next to a neighborhood! What the hell kind of sense did that make?!
Sure, it wasn't quite as far out into the sticks as the Mystery Shack which had inspired it in the first place, but they couldn't exactly offer parking like the Shack could on account of their new location, and the neighbors were bound to complain sooner or later about all the extra cars clogging up the street. Dipper at least recognized this problem and suggested they install a bike rack to steer traffic in that direction, but it was still a band aid at best, and it did nothing to fix the fundamental logistical issues which Pacifica saw at the heart of his proposal.
Despite their similarities, the simple fact remained that Gravesfield wasn't Gravity Falls. The people there had spent their entire lives surrounded by weirdness and loved it, but their new patrons were only just starting to break out of a social ideology that encouraged conformity and punished any sign of weirdness through suffocating social isolation. If they turn out to have misread the mood of the community, Pacifica had argued, they could wind up a total laughingstock just like the Mystery Shack had been once, or face even more severe consequences. Dipper had countered that the town's old ways made what they were looking to do with this business all the more necessary: that a place where weirdness was allowed to thrive without judgment was exactly what Gravesfield needed to help them along. Pacifica could see where he was coming from, and she wouldn't have gone along with this if his logic wasn't sound, she just...she worried.
She loved Dipper so much that she couldn't bear to see him get hurt like that again.
"Wow - Pacifica Northwest doing hard labor," the man in question quipped from the old doorway as she wiped the sweat from her forehead, clad in a white tank top and khaki shorts that she wouldn't have been caught dead in ten years ago, especially not paired with the light, yet visible muscle which she had developed over the years. "Now I really have seen everything," he added cheekily, earning him a playful scoff from his girlfriend as she put away her tools.
"Well, somebody had to be the tough one in this relationship," she quipped right back, beginning another of the many witty repartees which had defined their relationship from the very moment they ended a centuries-old ancestral curse together almost ten years ago now.
"Hm, yes, remind me: how many spiders have I taken outside for you again?" he replied just a tad sarcastically, although judging by the besotted look in his eye, Pacifica immediately knew that Dipper had fallen just a little bit more in love with her than he'd been already. Great - maybe now he might work up the nerve to finally propose to her before she had no choice but to beat him to the punch and order some skywriting over the house, or whatever ideas Mabel had on that front.
"You're lucky you're cute," she said as she brushed past him intent upon entering the house and taking a shower. It was a toothless retort and they both knew it, just as they both knew that Pacifica historically employed it whenever she had fallen just a little bit more in love with him too.
"You know that line's lost all meaning at this point, right, mama llama?" he asked lovingly, yet no less sarcastically. Pacifica blushed profusely in spite of herself. It was the stupidest nickname he could have possibly come up with for her and she hated how much it worked on her somehow!
"Maybe a little bit," she conceded - point, Dipper. Still, he didn't feel quite as satisfied as he usually was after such a verbal victory, as something in the way Pacifica paused made him soften.
"Hey," he said gently, moving to place his hands on her shoulders and turning her around to face him, head down. "I know you're still worried, and you have every right to be. On paper, this just shouldn't work, and we have no way of knowing for sure that it will. But come on," he continued in an encouraging tone which let her finally meet his eyes. "We've done the impossible together, well, more times than I can count. We laid a Category 10 ghost to rest, we took down that equilateral jerk, we've seen things that people wouldn't believe and worked harder than anyone expected of us to get where we are now! If we can do all of that...then we can do anything, together." It was possibly the most generic line he could have said to her, and indeed the most generic line in the entire history of romance...but damn it all. The way he said it like it was a fundamental truth of the universe, while looking into her eyes like she was the most incredible person in the world - who could even blame her for grabbing him and kissing him senseless after he gave her a speech like that?
So that's exactly what she did, and they sorta lost track of time after that.
Until they heard a twig snap.
"Some people think it's a myth."
"Oh, God - sorry! Sorry, I can come back later, I just - Christ, this is embarrassing, I'm just gonna go and-!" a teenage girl called out from the edge of the woods, having evidently walked there on foot and knew what she was looking for, but hadn't expected to catch the owners in such an awkward position. Having immediately broken away from each other at the noise, the young couple quickly put together why exactly this girl was there and called out after her before she could leave.
"You're fine, you're fine! We should apologize, we don't normally, um, do that in front of other people," Dipper said, blushing as though he were still a teenager himself, one who'd just been caught making out with his girlfriend by her parents. Pacifica chuckled, slightly less embarrassed than he was and eager to take advantage of that. After all, turnabout's fair play, is it not?
"This is what you get for calling me 'mama llama,'" she whispered in his ear before kissing him on the cheek and letting him sort that out in his head while she got down to business. "Anyway, hi, yes, we are super sorry you had to see that, miss...?" Pacifica began, addressing the girl as kindly and nicely and professionally as she could under the circumstances, leaving her both surprised and unusually intimidated, such that her immediate reaction was to blurt out something stupid.
"I wanna be like you when I grow up," she muttered, awe-struck, flustered, and not nearly as quiet as she would have liked to be if she had to give a voice to that one stupid impulsive thought.
"What?" Pacifica asked, more bemused than anything, especially when the girl lit up like a Christmas tree once she realized she'd said that out loud.
"What?!" she repeated a little too loudly, then coughed a few times in an effort to regain her composure (and her dignity) as much as she could manage. "Sorry, sorry, um...my name's Karen. It's, um, nice to meet you, ma'am. Sir," she said as politely as she could under the circumstances, yet also very embarrassed over how this conversation was still going. Dipper still needed a minute to regain his composure, but Pacifica gave the girl a reassuring smile to help calm her down and move on.
"It's nice to meet you too, Karen," she said gently. "You're here because of the ad we bought in the paper, right?" she asked, referring to the ad she had purchased in the Gravesfield Reporter to solve another logistical issue of theirs. The problem was simple: Dipper was a so-called "paranormal investigator" masquerading as a podcaster, Pacifica was a real estate agent when she wasn't helping him out with those two jobs, and neither of them could afford to run this place full time, not even with Pacifica's sorry excuse for a "dowry." Hence, the ad in the paper, which listed open positions for "cashier," "maintenance person," and "social media manager." The first two were based on the original job positions at the Mystery Shack, which was naturally the best model for them to draw from here, but the last one was a more modern addition, as well as the job Wendy had transitioned to after Melody became the cashier. All in all, it had been a pretty successful employment model for the Mystery Shack in the last ten years, and Pacifica knew they'd need all three of those positions to be filled if they wanted this new venture to succeed against all odds.
Judging by the look on Karen's face, she was willing to take every job at once if she could.
"Yeah! Yeah, I, uh, I haven't had much luck elsewhere and, um, money is a little tighter than we're used to right now," Karen explained, and even though she was clearly beating around a pretty thorny bush, Pacifica could guess what she was dancing around even before she admitted it plainly. "My parents got divorced last year," she said, clearly still grappling with that harsh reality. "My, ah, my mom's getting help, but teachers don't make a lot of money, and we can't really count on me ever getting a cheer scholarship after I quit and sorta got my shitty coach fired on the way out, so-"
"You're hired," Pacifica interrupted, cutting off Karen before she could ramble on further about all of that unpleasant business. She knew exactly where the poor girl was right now, because she had been her five years ago: cut off, discarded by her father, left to fend for herself and try to assemble some sort of future from the wreckage of everything she thought she had wanted. If she hadn't had the Pines, if they hadn't helped her get emancipated and keep her savings account and did everything else they could to support her every step of the way...Pacifica knew that she might not still be here. And this girl may still have her mom and whatever support they were getting, but she was clearly still struggling, financially and especially emotionally. She needed this job, and as far as Pacifica was concerned...this girl could have whatever job she wanted
"I, ah...what?" Karen asked, utterly dumbfounded at what Pacifica was saying. "I'm sorry, just-just like that? You're not gonna interview me, or run a background check, or-?"
"We'll take care of all that later," Pacifica replied swiftly, leaving Karen even more confused and feeling like she was just being pitied, which naturally pissed her off a little bit.
"You don't even know what job I'm applying for!" she said a little more forcefully, falling back into old habits for just a second before taking a deep breath to center herself. That slimy little jerk may have started her down that path under false pretenses, but honestly? Deep breaths and daily meditation had done wonders for her in the past year or so. Luckily for her, Pacifica didn't take any umbrage with her tone, seeming to understand exactly what was going on inside her head. Somehow.
"Well, what job do you want? What are your qualifications?" she asked in a professional way, catching Karen a little off guard at how she was actually being taken seriously by this lady. Weird.
"I-I was mostly thinking 'cashier' or 'social media manager,' but I guess I could be the, ah, 'maintenance person' too. Probably not all at once, that'd be, like, super illegal, but, um..." Karen began tentatively, her confidence waning as she tried to think of why these people should hire her. "I-I'm good at talking to people! Or at least...I thought I was. And, and I'm pretty athletic, although that's...mostly from cheerleading, so it's probably not...super applicable, to the maintenance position. Um, I-I have a few hundred followers on Quippie, although that's, ah, gone down by...a lot." As she laid out each of her qualifications (and, with them, her apparent lack thereof), she couldn't help but shrink in on herself in embarrassment. She was an idiot - she had no qualifications, and if this was how she sold herself to these people, how on Earth could she expect them to-?!
"We can figure that out later too," Dipper chimed in at last, giving her the same reassuring look that Pacifica had given her earlier, once again throwing her for a loop. Again!
God, get it together, Karen!
"Excuse me?" she asked breathlessly. "Are you guys for real?" she followed up, her eyes just darting between them as if to check that she was understanding the situation. When they both just nodded and smiled at the same time, she couldn't help but scoff in disbelief. "I'm sorry, this is-what? After all this, you actually-? I've made a damn fool of myself like five times in as many minutes, what could possibly make you think that I'm qualified for anything?!" she demanded, flinching harshly at how she had snapped at the pair, and moving to apologize again before Dipper held up a hand.
"You showed up," he said simply, with a weight to his words which really surprised her.
"Huh?" she asked, prompting Pacifica to elaborate on behalf of her boyfriend.
"Hon, I'm gonna ask you a bit of an unusual question, and I want you to just answer me honestly: if you saw that ad in the paper, say, a year ago, how would you have taken it?" she asked, throwing Karen even more off-kilter before she took a deep breath and gave the lady her answer.
"Honestly? I'd think this place was just about the lamest money laundering scheme ever conceived," she said bluntly, causing both Dipper and Pacifica to burst into hysterical laughter.
"HA! Aaah-hahahaha, GOD!" Dipper cried joyously, not having busted a gut like that in a hot minute. "Damn, kid, if you weren't already hired, I'd hire you for that roast alone! Ohh man, I need to put that on a t-shirt and sell it ironically," he said, already pulling out his journal to write that down before Pacifica shakily reached out a hand to stop him from making that minor mistake.
"No, babe, don't-don't put that on a t-shirt, do-ho-hon't!" she said in the middle of her own laughing fit, one so contagious that Karen found herself chuckling along unconsciously. These two may have been the weirdest adults that she had ever met, but damn were they fun. She'd already thought about the possibility of working in a place like this just to make ends meet, but now that she'd actually met who she would be working for...she was starting to think she might actually like it.
"Anyway!" Dipper said as he pushed his hands out towards the others, having more or less gotten a hold of himself. "What I was trying to get at is...you look like you could use the work, and the fact that you were willing to give a place like ours a chance, the fact that you're clearly not the same person you were even a year ago...it says a lot. It says that you're the kind of person who could really benefit from working with us...and the kind of person who we'd be grateful to have on our, ah, team. Party. Sorry, bit of a tabletop nerd, and just a nerd in general, but you get the idea, so tell me: are you in?" With these words, he held out his hand and looked at Karen expectantly. She found herself hesitating for only a moment before taking it and shaking it firmly.
"I'm in," she said, determined to make the most of this opportunity. "What's first on the agenda, boss? Er, um, bosses?" she added a bit awkwardly, glancing between the two of them.
"Weeeell, as you mentioned, we will need to conduct a formal interview and all that other legal stuff, but, ah...we've got a background check of our own, sorta," Pacifica began in that same professional manner, hoping to God that she wasn't coming off as sketchy as she felt in her spine.
"Okay?" Karen asked, confirming that she was indeed doing that.
"It's nothing bad - just one question! A bit of a, ah, coded one, really, and the code is...a very outdated reference," she elaborated, wincing at even the vague allusion of what the 'code' was, while Dipper brightened up like a kid on Christmas morning at the merest mention of their little secret.
"What is it?" Karen asked, not finding that Pacifica had explained much of anything to her.
"Are you...ugh," Pacifica muttered instinctively, shooting an apologetic glance at her odd, odd boyfriend for not sharing his enthusiasm for the code he came up with. "'In the zone?'" She asked it under duress, leaving Karen confused yet again until she eventually put the pieces together.
"What the hell are you...oh. Oh! Ohhhh...shit," she said as she made the realization in real time, ending in what was almost a whisper and glancing over at the house like it was haunted. For all she knew, it may well have been, if she was really picking up what her new bosses were laying down. Pacifica chuckled as she watched Karen figure it out, made all the more amusing by the way Dipper's shoulders slumped with the knowledge that he wouldn't get to do the thing. Seeing that her Dipper's disappointment was very much genuine, Pacifica smiled and gave him a knowing look.
"Yes, you can still do the tourist trap thing," she said, causing him to cry out in triumph.
"YES!" he cried out exuberantly, instinctively running up to grab her by the shoulders and kiss her on the cheek in his excitement. "God, I love you!" he added happily before he turned away from Pacifica completely and focused on the new girl. "Come, come, let's get this show on the road, shall we?!" he asked Karen with just as much enthusiasm, practically dragging her by the arm and-!
"Agh-um-okay!" she stuttered out as he swept onto the porch with her in tow, Pacifica just laughing all the while. Much as she derided the set up, this bit showed no sign of getting old to her.
"Alexander Graham Bell often said that 'When one door closes, another one opens,' and so, dear audience, I invite you to do this: close the door on the world you thought you knew, and come with me as we open this new door together!" Dipper began giddily, speaking with the confidence of the showman which Grunkle Stan once told him he could be, as he proceeded to quote another of the great showmen from his Grunkles' day, one whose work had been very dear to Grunkle Ford's heart. "'You unlock this door with the key of imagination!'" he declared first, doing just that as he unlocked the door and ushered Karen inside. "'Beyond it is another dimension - a dimension of sound!'" he continued, ringing a gong he kept near the counter he'd installed. "'A dimension of sight!'" he added, walking behind a preservative jar whose shape distorted his reflection like a funhouse mirror. "'A dimension of mind,"' he finished, letting Karen take in all of the esoteric writing and paranormal doo-dads which covered almost every wall. "'You're moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas and things that either can be explained...or can't. You've crossed over into...the Twilight Zone,'" he finished with a dramatic flourish as he gestured to everything he had built. Karen instinctively moved to quietly applaud as soon as he was done, which just made him grin even wider. "Ha ha, yes! I told you it'd be cool - look at her, look at that face, tell me that that just wasn't the coolest thing ever!" he cried to Pacifica, causing her to laugh.
"It was pretty cool," she conceded lovingly, which was exactly what Dipper wanted to hear.
"Mmm!" he responded, clutching his chest dramatically before letting go and blowing her a kiss. "You complete me!" he said briskly before turning back to Karen, who could scarcely keep up with him when he was "in the zone" like this. "So! What do you think?" he asked his new employee at last, letting Karen think about it for a moment before giving them her honest thoughts with the most genuine smile she had ever made in her life.
"I think I'm gonna like it here."
"But if you're curious? Don't wait."
Months later, the Gravesfield Historical Society stood empty for the first time in months.
Not because nobody was interested in learning about the town's history, oh no: under the direction of Masha Hubbard, curator-in-training, the society's attendance rates had skyrocketed to historical heights, pun fully intended. No, the reason it was left empty was because everyone in the building had been funneled into a circular formation around a familiar landmark. A crowd far larger than the town had ever had in one place stood gathered to witness the unveiling of new statues that were built to replace the ones that had stood there for over a century. They were a work of art, painstakingly crafted by town-weirdo-turned-town-hero Luz Noceda, albeit with the help of a woman who had become something of an honorary resident herself:
Mabel Pines.
Star-Crossed Lovers, as the statues had been dubbed by the sculptors with input from the public, represented the history of Gravesfield that was worth celebrating. No longer would Philip Wittebane ever be regarded as a tragic hero from a bygone age like he had been for oh so many decades...not after everything they knew he had done. Instead, only Caleb remained in the square, smiling and pressing his forehead together with his once-mythical, now-very-historical lover Evelyn Clawthorne, who bore an uncanny resemblance to historical town menace "Marilyn" Clawthorne that nobody was especially inclined to look too deeply into. Most crucially, however, was a little girl standing in between her two parents, smiling wide with a cardinal in her hands. Their daughter, a girl whose name was listed on the statue as Rosalyn Clawthorne...had never known her father, or his old beloved pet, as they had both been ripped away from her because of her uncle's actions. Actions that were motivated by a wicked ideology that had left its horrible mark on Gravesfield forever.
And the people of Gravesfield were now even more determined to let it all die with Philip.
"Take a trip."
There were many faces in the crowd when the statues were unveiled. The Nocedas were there, of course, given that Camila's little Luz was the one who designed the statues in the first place. Friends of the Noceda family could likewise be found in abundance at the unveiling, and the vast majority of them visiting from "out of state." Each Noceda sibling's respective romantic partner naturally stood by their sides, smiling at the statue as though it were a symbol of a better world that they had fought for, together. Given his similarly uncanny resemblance to Caleb, many curious eyes were naturally drawn to Hunter Noceda, but the Nocedas' partners were quick to deter any undue questions about his own parentage with the same withering look which made everyone agree that two of them were likewise from "out of state." As it happened, the only other noteworthy locals in attendance were the "Cabin 7 Crew," the weird kids who had once been outcasts just like Luz, but now stood tall as Town Heroes due to their bravery during the Gravesfield High Crisis. As the one who had been instrumental in organizing this whole project, Mx. Hubbard themself stood proudest among the kids gathered alongside their girlfriend, the lovable Vee Noceda, who was definitely a, ah, normal human girl and had always been a U.S. citizen, how could you possibly think otherwise?
As one could plainly gather in the way that Gravesfield's residents talked about these people, knowledge of magic and monsters was still kept as hush-hush as it could possibly be, for now. Even if nobody was painfully in denial about it anymore, no one was prepared to admit openly that these witches from another world now walked among them disguised as humans from "out of state." The families of the Cabin 7 Crew were particularly determined to keep this secret, with Teresa Palmer of the Palmers being quoted as saying that she'd be dead before she said something to anybody who came snooping around: not the amateur paranormal grifters who drifted in occasionally (Hopkins. Ugh, what a piece of work he turned into, right?) and they certainly would not let in those weird government agents that had come knocking shortly after the crisis. To betray the confidence of the local people who saved their town from a monster like Philip? Why, that would be nothing less than punishing them for their good deeds, and many of Gravesfield's residents already owed Luz, Vee, and the rest of the Noceda family many apologies for how they had been treated in the past. Keeping quiet about all of these oddities was the least they could do, really. Right? Right.
Of course, even a collective vow of silence in a town like Gravesfield wasn't a total guarantee that the Noceda family's secrets would be safe forever, even when it was officially backed up by legal precedent taken from Gravity Falls of all places. Some things had undoubtedly slipped through the cracks during the initial panic, and while most people would dismiss them as fake and go back to the more interesting fictions of their social media feeds...some people could get curious. Some people could start looking. Some people might be amazed by what they find and fall in love with that new world, just like Caleb and Luz did...or they may seek to burn it all down, just as Philip had done.
Almost.
Never again.
Not on their watch.
In any case, the Nocedas weren't worried about that. Through a series of happy accidents and meaningful choices, Camila, Luz, and Vee had apparently become the heart, mind and soul of the most tightly-knit community of demons, witches, and other assorted badasses in existence. So, if anyone ever tried to come for any of the Nocedas and anyone they considered family...well.
Suffice it to say that they would teach that person why you never mess with Family.
Still, for now at least, the Noceda family's secrets were safe. To the rest of the world, little ol' Vee Noceda was Luz Noceda's biological twin. She had always been Luz Noceda's biological twin.
I mean, where else could such identical girls have come from, right?
Right. Must just be another happy accident...one that had clearly happened for a reason.
"Find it."
Hours later, long after the unveiling ceremony had finished and the crowd returned to their lives, wherever they may be, a gaggle of teens carefully made their way through the woods to what was now known as Dipper's House of the Unexplained. It was a location they had visited before, of course, both back when it was an old shack in the woods and earlier that week, when the odd shop had first opened its doors to a modestly sized crowd. All told, a resounding success for a shop which operated out of a centuries-old colonial house in the woods. Naturally, the shop's attendance rates had trickled in the days since its debut, but that was almost by design. For as only a select group of people who were "in the zone" were made aware, tucked away in the basement was something far weirder, something incredible and just far more valuable than anything the store had for sale:
A permanent portal to the Boiling Isles.
"Are you guys sure about this?" Vee asked nervously as she turned at the threshold to talk with her friends. "I know you've been there before, but it's, uh...very different from what you guys saw last time. It's gotten nicer, but it's still very grimy, and very messy, and there's a lot of, ah, bizarre weather patterns and odd cultural norms and plenty of monsters that'll still try to eat you if they get the chance. It's not for everyone, it...it wasn't for me." Vee paused for a long time as she said those words, a part of her still wondering if such a sentiment was truly in the past tense for her. "I'm not sure if it ever can be, and as much as I want to find that out for myself, I won't put any of you in harm's way unless you fully understand the risks. I love you guys more than words than say, and I know you can handle this...but I need you to be sure. For me," she finished with all the seriousness that this situation demanded, at least in her estimation. Recognizing this, the rest of the crew knew better than to respond with some kind of cheeky quip or show of swagger to try and cheer her up. Instead, they deliberated amongst themselves on how to voice their decision, and in the end, it was Masha who elected to come up with the whole group's consensus on the subject.
"I think I speak for all of us when I say that, honestly? Before we met you, our world wasn't really for us either," Masha began, and Vee could see the others nod their heads in agreement one by one, Clara hesitating for mere seconds before she followed suit. "We've grown up in a world where people have picked on us for all kinds of stupid reasons - being chubby, being nerdy, being gay or-or trans or whatever else they wanna use to justify their hatred. We just did our best to get through each day and coped with that isolation in different ways...some of them better than others," they added, glancing at Clara with a mixed, yet ultimately sympathetic look which said a thousand words all on its own. "We all felt like the world was against us, like all the colors had been squeezed out until there was nothing but gray and misery...and then you came along, Vee." At this, Masha took Vee's hands in their own and smiled at her like she had hung up the stars in the sky, because she might as well have as far as Masha was concerned. "You had more reason to close yourself off and lash out at the world than any of us did, and yet, time and time again, you have chosen to be kind," they finished warmly, and Titan dammit, Vee was tearing up already. "You stumbled into our lives like a beautiful sunrise on a cloudy day, and little by little, you taught us how to see the world we'd known our whole lives with the same wonder that you did, seeing it all for the very first time. The ugly bits didn't ever go away, but you helped us learn how to deal with them, how to take the good things in life as well as the bad...and all of us were better for it. We...we love you too, Vee."
With these final words, Masha leaned up on their tiptoes and kissed Vee on the forehead, a beautiful gesture of affection which somehow felt even more intimate than if they had kissed her on the lips. And sure, they had, y'know, done that, a few times, but this...this was a Declaration of Love Everlasting. They might as well have exchanged jewelry with how much love had been infused into that kiss, it-! Vee was literally rendered speechless as she endeavored to process just how much that Masha loved her...and how much she loved them in return, for that and a million other tiny things.
"Titan, I love you so much," Vee whispered breathlessly, unable to find it within herself to care that she voiced the thought aloud for the first time in their entire relationship. From the way Masha's smile widened in response to that heartfelt sentiment, Vee didn't have to worry about the possibility that she had said it too soon: they had clearly been dying to say it for months now. Shoot.
"I love you too, Vee," they said warmly, without missing a beat in their response.
"We all do," Sam added, speaking with more emotion than Vee had ever heard from him.
"So much," Alex continued, Juniper smiling and squeezing their arm to signal her agreement.
"And you deserve every bit of it," Clara finished in a similar manner, the combined effect of it all leaving Vee with too many emotions to process until they all moved to wrap her up in a hug.
They stayed like that for a very long time, but evidently, they had a schedule to keep. Their parents expected them back by Monday, and Vee seemed to remember Luz telling her that the last crystal ball forecast said there would be boiling rain by nightfall. As such, once she had managed to regain her composure, she took a deep breath, looked at all of her friends one last time, and finally opened the door to Dipper's House of the Unexplained. There, she and the others returned Karen's wave with the degree of politeness and warmth which was appropriate for a good acquaintance, then walked to the door to Dipper's office in what was quickly becoming a well-established procedure.
First, they would knock in a very particular way, a signal which told him that people "in the zone" wished to be granted access to the basement. Then, he would open the door and guide them to what he publicly referred to as "a gateway between dimensions," an overly dramatic title which he said helped to disguise the fact that it was anything but. He would take the new portal key out of his pocket, open the new portal door which now sat in the basement, and lock it up again until whoever went through texted him to unlock the door from the other side. With the help of McGucket's new Titan's Blood Filtration Device Mk. I (which Gravesfield County thought was one of McGucket's perfectly normal desalination units that he'd been planting like trees on every coastline he could for the last ten years), Dipper's stewardship of the portal door had seen him not only plug up the large transdimensional leak at the edge of colonial Gravesfield's borders, but also do what he could to give all of the remaining Titan's Blood back to the Boiling Isles...right where it belonged. From what he understood, the gradual reintegration of Titan's Blood into the Isles was likely to kick off an arcane and technological revolution which would help them recover even faster from the effects of Philip's rule, taking their society leaps and bounds beyond anything humanity yet boasted.
Good for the Isles, honestly. From what Mabel told him, they had earned that much.
In any case, when Vee and her friends came knocking, he followed the procedure which he had devised flawlessly, leading them into the basement and pulling out the portal key once more.
"Ready to head into the unknown?" he asked, as he did every time. It was his favorite part.
"Nope!" Vee replied cheerfully, yet no less honestly, before glancing back towards her friends and smiling despite her lingering apprehension. "Let's do it," she said, to which Dipper paused, then smiled in turn as he dutifully turned the key, opened the door...and bid them farewell.
What happened afterwards...well.
That is a tale meant for them alone.
"It's out there, somewhere in the woods...waiting."
By the time the campers had gone to bed and Mabel was fixing to turn in herself, she found herself inclined to reach into her desk drawer and pull out the bus ticket she'd given Vee the last day she'd spent in camp, and the ticket which Vee had given back in turn.
She hadn't really thought about it that much since then - too much to do, too little time. And yet, now she found herself staring at it and wondering whether there was more to it than she had initially assumed. She thought to check the back first and foremost, and it turned out there was indeed one detail she had missed when she had first received it that made her smile. It had been difficult to fit them all due to the ticket's size, but that hadn't stopped the Cabin 7 Crew from finding a place to write each of their initials onto the back of the ticket. They were hardly the only ones, either, as Mabel recognized Luz's initials along with those of her friends and even Camila, somehow. However, what mattered most to Mabel, as loathe as she was to play favorites, was Vee's signature, as lying right in the exact center of the ticket was a single letter whose deeper significance Mabel was able to understand instantly, without even needing to think about it.
If Mabel had told herself a year ago that she would be crying over a single letter written onto a bus ticket, she wouldn't have believed it. However, that was then, and this was now, and with what she knew about what it represented to Vee in particular, and just how significant it was that she was able to use it for herself without fear, she simply couldn't help herself. Mabel could never have even imagined that she'd meet so many great and wonderful people in such a short span of time. People who she could say had changed her life for the better, maybe even saved her life in a way she hadn't experienced since her first trip to Gravity Falls.
People who she could now carry a memento of, always.
After taking a picture of the ticket on both sides, if only to ensure that this would remain the case, Mabel decided the best place for it was face down, center-stage on her corkboard overlooking her desk. There it would sit for as long as she remained in this profession, subtly reminding her of her favorite camper and all that she meant to her. The camper who had proved that Mabel had done everything she'd set out to do and then some. The camper who had changed Mabel's life, along with the lives of countless others both in Gravesfield and beyond. The camper who helped change not just one world, but two worlds for the better.
"V."
Bonus Content Cut For Time Hunter Thinks About FamilyNo, no, he was being ridiculous! They weren't related at all!
Except...except neither were Luz and Vee, were they?
Not biologically, at least. And yet they acted exactly like Wane and Wax from Rulers Reach, all smiles and tenderness and whispers of affection and holding on to each other like they were both afraid the ground would open up beneath them the moment they let go. Hunter was the opposite of sentimental, he knew that now more than ever, and yet even he had to admit that it warmed, well, he guessed whatever passed for a heart inside his own chest to see Luz and Vee being so close despite only knowing each other for a short time. It was confusing, to say the least. Grimwalkers weren't supposed to feel love, or pain, or any other emotion, according to the books he'd read. All they could do was mimic those responses, just another aspect of the illusion, the lie that he and every previous Golden Guard had been made to propagate for the sake of Philip's own twisted mind.
And yet...Hunter felt all of those things and more, especially when he looked at his Friends.
He cared for Luz so much, trusted her more than he'd ever trusted another person in his life, because she had seen everything he was and yet she never gave up on him. His relationship with Amity felt a little...fragile still, but she likewise understood him in a way that no one else did, thank the Titan, and it seemed as though she didn't hold Eclipse Lake against him. He had seen the scared little boy that Gus tried so hard to pretend he wasn't, and he wanted nothing more than to fight off all of the bullies and the monsters that lurked inside his mind. And-and being around Willow made him do stupid things and he wished it didn't, because she saw the boy behind the mask and she still cared for him even after he put the mask back on, not to mention she was so strong and so funny and the way that she alone laughed at his jokes made his chest feel all fuzzy for some reason and-!
Look, suffice it to say he felt things, okay? Whoop-de-doo! Doesn't everyone? A-doy, right?
Maybe the books were wrong about him, and maybe the books were wrong about Vee, too. After all, they said a lot of the same exact things about both of them: that they couldn't feel things, that they lacked empathy, that they would never truly belong in society. Hunter knew, if nothing else, that the books were wrong about that last part, at least. Vee had clearly found a place where she felt that she belonged, more or less, even if she couldn't share every aspect of what made her "Vee" with most of the people she loved. And, although it was still too early and fragile and wonderfully strange to really say for certain...Hunter was beginning to think that he found a place where he belonged as well, especially when even Vee could still smile at him...like he was someone worth smiling at.
What more needs to be said?
Human Movie Night
Overall, the film was far from universally praised among the witches in its audience.
Both Amity and Willow were especially unimpressed with the coven of three "witches" at the heart of the movie, with their unenthusiastic reactions to the trio's antics in the first few minutes providing the perfect opportunity for Hunter to snap a photo of his own. Everyone realized what had happened rather quickly after the photo was taken, and there was far more laughter to be had over that than there had ever been during the first few nights they had spent together in the Noceda household. Although the movie was far from over by that point, the sheer number of movies the Nocedas had on hand had already made it pretty clear that "Human Movie Night" could easily be a nightly occurrence, a little tradition they could share with each other during however many more days of portal research and human activities they had yet to spend together.
Everyone knew that this wasn't a vacation. They had families and friends they'd left behind on the other side of a portal door that had been blown to bits and a world that had turned into a funhouse version of itself. They had no idea whether they'd be able to make a portal back home on their own, and no idea whether they'd be able to save the Boiling Isles from The Collector's games even if they could make it back. They had to face the very real possibility that a yet-unknown number of their loved ones were dead or worse, or even that they might be unable to ever make it back home in the first place. As the past few nights had shown, contemplating that reality for too long ended up doing more harm than good, producing nothing save more nightmares and more tears that served only to distract them from their mission. So, they would press on.
Luz and Hunter would help them with their single-minded focus.
Amity and Willow would help them with their can-do attitude and natural leadership.
Gus would help them with his enthusiasm and knowing just when to distract his friends.
And Vee and the adults? They would help them with their empathy and support, taking them in and giving them a shoulder to cry on when they needed it most.
Still, at the end of the day, no matter how powerful or smart or talented they were, Camila and Mabel knew all too well that Luz, her friends, Vee...they were all still kids. Kids who had endured a horrific degree of trauma and had been lucky to come out of it relatively unharmed, at least physically speaking. Kids who were still hurting badly in the wake of that trauma, even as a great deal of healing had occurred over the course of this tumultuous weekend. Kids who needed to take care of themselves first and foremost if they had any hope of saving everybody else, whether that meant just hanging out at the house or going out to explore a human city for the first time or...or having a movie night every now and then. That was what Camila and Mabel were here for, at the end of the day. They were here to protect these kids, to give them the love and safety that they sorely needed right now as they headed into an uncertain future.
A future that might just be more harrowing than they could possibly imagine.
The Most Well-Laid Plans
"In hindsight, I, uh...maybe should have thought about the scar," he admitted reluctantly as he gestured to Luz's face. Sensing that his current good mood could easily crumble if they weren't careful, Luz rushed to reassure him.
"No, no, that's fine! I'm...I'm okay with keeping it as is," she said, a little surprised to find that she meant it. "I mean, I know it's made things a little trickier since I don't look like Vee as much anymore, but I think that's ultimately good for the whole, uh, 'Parent Trap' thing in the long run." She said the words a bit feebly, finding that the inspiration for the twin sisters' plan sounded, just especially childish when spoken aloud in front of a group. "Not to mention it actually looks kinda sick!" Luz pivoted, her enthusiasm mostly genuine as she tried putting on a slightly 'cooler' pose for them all, only to ultimately flub it somewhere down the line and laugh at how ridiculous she looked.
The others found themselves comforted by her familiar antics, while Camila smiled a little more nervously. Luz seemed to be taking this a lot better than she had been before, but...she knew her daughter. She couldn't overlook the fact that everything that had happened was still incredibly fresh inside her mind, and she knew when she was trying so hard to distract herself from painful reminders. The one sitting right on her face was pretty much inescapable, and Camila could only hope that Luz's apparent enthusiasm over her new 'bad girl look' was a sign that the weight had gotten easier to bear...at least when it came to the visible marks that Philip had left behind.
"Well, I'm a little sad that the beanies were rendered obsolete so fast, but hey, it's always good to have a backup plan!" Mabel remarked to get the conversation back on track. "In the, ah, in the meantime, anything else, any ideas?" she asked, only for the group to glance at each other.
"I mean, as far as building a portal goes, we're sort of just operating on the assumption that all we really need is more Titan's Blood, yeah?" Vee asked, to which the others generally nodded in response. "And that's gonna take forever to get back, unless we just-stumble onto these little 'secret codes' Masha talked about or-" Vee paused as her eyes widened and she inadvertently blinked them sideways in surprise. "Omigosh, duh! I can smell it!" she exclaimed, a little caught off-guard by how she had somehow not considered that until now. Perhaps she had simply been so caught up in just dealing with everything else except for the one thing that would make everything else easier. In any case, she was clearly onto something now, although she did have a few concerns. "I-I mean, it might be harder to sniff out if the Titan's Blood is, like, buried or something: I certainly haven't picked up on anything like that yet in Gravesfield itself, at least," she admitted, although even this last note, it-it failed to completely tamper down the others' enthusiasm at Vee's makeshift plan.
"But?" Hunter prompted, adopting a tone that was a curious mixture of both encouraging her and teasing her all at once. In other words, the exact kind of tone that a big brother would use.
"But I still haven't seen everything there is to see here, not to mention I'd never really felt the need to go sniffing around outside of the day I met Luz for the first time," Vee answered with a sheepish smile. "I can't promise anything, but if there's any raw Titan's Blood left in Gravesfield-"
"You'll find it," Camila finished for her with a beaming, proud smile. "I know you will, mija," she added, and this certainly wasn't the first time she had been called that by her mother, but, ah, I dunno, something about hearing it while everyone else was smiling made Vee misty-eyed. She had spent this whole weekend feeling like she was scrambling to put out fires and wondering when her efforts to help the others would blow up in her face, and yet, for the most part...things were better now. Things were better because of her, and they all recognized that. Even as they were headed into an uncertain future stranded in the Human Realm, the others took some measure of comfort in the fact that Vee was there. That she had helped them, that she would continue to help them in every way she could until they found their way back to the Boiling Isles, and then Vee would...she would...
Huh. She hadn't actually thought about that...and she wasn't going to. Not yet, anyway.
For better or worse, there'd be plenty of time to dwell on that hellish riddle once Belos was-
"I'll do my best, at least," she finished a little quickly, quick enough that most of the people gathered around her didn't notice the pause. Camila did, though, and she had a couple guesses as to what her daughter had been thinking about, but...there'd be time to talk about it later. For now, there were other things which had to be settled on first.