Gravity Falls: If I Can See You Smile
A Gravity Falls/Owl House Shared Universe Story
Universe: Post-canon Gravity Falls, Swooning Over Stans, pre-time skip Owl House series finale
Inspirations: Swooning Over Stans Dating Sim, Sailor Moon, Attack of the Clones, the ballets of Tchaikovsky, The Owl House and Gravity Falls, Gaelic and Greek mythology and folklore
Pairings: Ford Pines/Elizabeth Connor (OC), Dipper/Pacifica, Eda/Raine, others TBD
Rating T: implied peril, "boy's club" mentality in government positions, snogging, childbirth, trauma
Chapter 5: What Dreams tell Us
(Gravity Falls Full theme)
Liz was greeted heartily by the gang, who were beyond relieved she was okay. She was still somewhat lightheaded (understandable), so she sat next to Ford on the sofa, resting her head on his shoulder. Dipper went over their movie choices, "Let's see, we've watched Edward Scissorhands, the original Frankenweenie, and some odd version of Hansel and Gretel. Liz, it's your turn to pick. Mars Attacks or The Nightmare Before Christmas?" Having seen both films, Liz decided on the latte. It was a lighter film, if such a claim could be made regarding Tim Burton's filmography. Ford was inclined to agree, a lighter film would help lift the mood.
Liz, all things considered, fell asleep towards the middle of the film, and Ford let out a yawn. Today had been more tiring than he thought, so he excused himself and Liz, and retreated upstairs. "So much for the Chinese carry out we ordered," Wendy observed. Soos cast a look out the window, "Delivery's here, dudes." Stan got up, cracked his back, and ambled to the front door. "Here, make with the food, we're dying in here," he groused. Stan slammed the door, and announced dinner was served.
After a traumatic afternoon, everyone chowed and talked about all the goings on. "I am wiped, I don't know about you," Wendy confessed. Everyone was in agreement. Hopefully, Liz would get adjusted to life in Gravity Falls. A leaden weariness fell over the gang like a giant quilt, and when Wendy drove home, it was closing on 8:30 pm. Dipper looked at the clock, it was that early? Mabel yawned and told him, "Don't wait up making plans for Triple D- I'm going to bed." Dipper nodded, he had wanted to draft a round and invite Aunt Liz to join him and Grunkle Ford. When his head hit the pillow, he started snoring.
Ford held Liz in his arms as they slept. Liz dreamt of her past. She found herself alone, walking along a marble floor. Everything within sight was obscured by fog. Liz yelled in her sleep, startling Ford. "Liz, are you okay," he whispered. She called out again, and Ford kissed her feverish brow, "What are you dreaming about?" Shutting his eyes, he was determined to join Liz in her dream, and he did reach her. He touched her shoulder, "I'm here with you, sweetheart." Liz gave him a sad smile, and pressed forward, slipping from his grasp. He nodded, this was something she needed to do alone.
(Cursum Perficio)
Liz pressed onward, when she came across a frieze. It reminded her of the funerary scenes from Ancient Greece pictured in her high school history textbooks. The portrayed scene was indeed a funeral procession, but the attendees and mourners were all women and girls. Taking a closer look, Elizabeth discovered they were all wearing porcelain masks and had the same tattoos as here. What was going on?
There was an inscription on the casket, but it was carved in Gaelic. "Too bad Gaelic wasn't offered at Marymount when I was getting my degree, it would have come in handy," she told herself. She could make some of the names of the Muses: Terpsichore, Urania, Polyhymnia and Kalliope. The other 5 names were too worn to even decipher. Some of the other names invoked she could read: Nodens, Brigit and The Daghda. Her hands brushed over the Celtic deities, and pangs of ice shot up her arms, she yelped in pain. The faces in the frieze gazed upon her, and to her surprise, their eyes gazing at her with utmost longing. "Who are you, and what do you want of me," she demanded. A sudden burst of unbearable heat engulfed, and she screamed.
"AAAAAHHH," she shrieked, sitting up in Ford's bed. Gasping for a breath, she glanced at the clock radio, the time reading 8:12 am. What a freaky dream, I need to talk to Ford about it as soon as possible, she thought. She was the only person in the room, as soon as she was downstairs, Liz decided to speak to Ford. "Seems like the best place to start."
(Book of Days )
After taking a shower and throwing on a navy tank top and a pair of denim shorts, she joined the family at the dining table. Ford lit up when he saw her, "Good morning, Elizabeth. Sleep well?" Liz didn't have time to answer because Mabel ambushed her, who had a billion questions about what it had been like to work for the federal government. "Boring, depressing, and highly regimented, at least for me," was Liz's answer in between a glass of orange juice and plate of scrambled eggs. Mabel nodded, jotting down notes with colored pencils. Every so often, she would gaze adoringly at Ford and Liz, before going back to writing. Dipper raised an eyebrow, what was his sister doing?
"Hey Liz! You have car insurance, right?"
"Of course, I do! Wait, you're not committing tax fraud are you?"
"Me, commit fraud? You think so little of me, your future brother-in-law?"
"Stanley, knock it off!"
"All right, all right! Yeesh!"
Ford stood up from the table, "I'm doing some research out in the woods, Liz, would you like to go with me?" Liz jumped up, knocking over her glass. "You really want me to assist you?" Ford gazed into her golden eyes, "Sweetheart, you are my partner. Wherever I go, I want you at my side. Go put on some sunscreen and bug spray and meet in the parking lot in about an hour." Liz kissed his cheek before going to the basement to prep. "Take note, Dipper. That is how you sweep someone off their feet."
Liz brought a water bottle and a light jacket with her, and when she joined him, Ford thought his jaw would hit the ground. Liz's cobalt blue tats covered her body, but they added to her beauty. She smiled brightly, sunflowers crowning her head. "Shall we get going then?" Liz nodded, of course!
As they hiked along the myriad of hidden paths, Liz confessed to seeing a gnome on her drive in. "They're like racoons," she had joked. Ford nodded in agreement and explained, in many ways Gravity Falls gnomes were raccoons. He also mentioned how they tried to force Mabel to become their queen last summer. Liz frowned, creepy! Ford agreed with her.
"I want to head into the enchanted part of the forest. Apparently, a unicorn has been pushing into gnome territory, and someone needs to remind her she has her own enclave," Ford explained as they trekked through a shallow creek bed.
"What are unicorns like, anyway?"
"A lot of work, for starters. The whole 'virgin with a pure heart' is a baldfaced lie, all their horns can do is play rave music, light up and make shapes when they touch a solid object. I could never make inroads, but Mabel did- props to her."
(Fairy Tale)
They continued hiking in a comfortable silence, Ford rattling off ephemera about the anomalies within Gravity Falls, with Liz listening and asking questions with rapt attention. Her doe eyes were focused completely on him, and it was tying his hearts up in knots. Elizabeth felt she was discovering part of herself and was satisfied with her decision to leave Virginia for Oregon.
Eventually, they reached their destination, a clearing where a tree trunk had been hollowed out and turned into a biker bar. "A gnomish Mos Eisly cantina," Ford deadpanned to Elizabeth, making her snicker. The interior had tables, a long bar, pool tables, the whole nine yards. Gnomes were throwing back shots of mead, arm wrestling, and talking in small groups.
Ford entered first, followed by Liz. The bartender nodded and slid two shots glasses of hard cider down the bar. The cider was slightly bitter, but it was tasty. "Delicious!"
Geoff, the gnome's leader, strode over to them, "Ford! Mrs. Ford? Am I glad to see you! Celestabellebethabelle is wreaking havoc where we live! She's eating all our food, running up our phone bills, and gets all mopey when we try to force her to leave. Please, you two are our only hope!" Liz began to think of how to solve the problem, maybe she could grow some ivy and use it as a lasso. Could it work?
Ford caught the glint in her eye, and he smiled, "Lassos won't work. Unicorns burn through anything used to lasso or bridle them." He gave her a gentle kiss, before throwing some change down to pay for the cider. Liz leaned her head on his shoulder, and Ford grinned. They strolled along until they found the entrance to the gnomes' cavern. The main floor was down a mossy incline, so Ford and Liz traversed it carefully. There was a lip at the very bottom, so they had to jump it.
In the middle of the cavern sat a pretentious unicorn, surrounded by gossip rags and rainbows. It whinnied and tossed its mane, before deigning to gaze distastefully at the two humans in the room. "I am Celestabellebethabelle, and you can't make me leave." Liz pulled off her hiking boots, socks and jacket. She approached the unicorn and Celestabellebethabelle glared, "I am not leaving."
"Terpsichore, give me strength. You need to leave."
It was the mention of the Muse that got Celestabellebethabelle upset. Sne whinnied, before bucking onto her rear legs, and then charged at Liz, top speed. Liz, not even flinching, stood calmly, reached out a hand, and grabbed Celestabellebethabelle by the horn and looked her straight in the eye, "You are heading back to the unicorn enclave. Now." Another whinny, and the unicorn fled to her home. Ford was flabbergasted by what had just happened. He had been journaling the confrontation, and he asked Liz about what she had said to the unicorn. It was now Liz told him everything she had seen in her dream. She would pause and let Ford ask his questions, to which she would follow up to the best of her ability.
"It's not much, but we have some leads we can start tracking down. Let's go home. Dipper probably has the Dungeons, Dungeons and More Dungeons game set up," Ford informed Liz. She smiled, sounded like fun!
While Ford and Liz had been gallivanting around in the woods, Mabel had ridden a bike over to her friend Candy's house. Candy was one the friends she had made last summer, along with another girl named Grenda. They were all pen-pals, and their letters were weekly highlights. Mabel had brought them both up to speed with Ford and Liz's relationship.
They were all in Candy's bedroom, scrolling through the pictures Mabel had taken of the couple. "I have to say, Mabel, your Grunkle Ford and Aunt Elizabeth are quite the photogenic couple. When do you think they'll get married? Do you think we'll get to be bridesmaids?" Candy gazed dreamily up at the ceiling. Grenda leafed through some loose-leaf issues of Princess Tutu, "Ugh, I ship them so much!"
Mabel nodded and verbally agreed with them, as she doodled the two adults in different outfits. Her personal favorite was a drawing of them as The Nutcracker and Clara from the Tchaikovsky ballet. Grenda glanced at the picture, "That's my favorite of all the pictures you've drawn, Mabel."
Mabel nodded, "Yeah, they are fun to draw. I need your help with the music. I plan to deejay at their wedding. I have a list going, but I could use some help compiling more songs." Grenda and Candy were eager to assist Mabel, what had she come up with? Mabel's song list included some old standards, quite a few songs from Japanese anime with any hint of romance themes, and a few from classical music. "The love theme from Romeo and Juliet is overrated," Mabel informed her friends, and they nodded in agreement. It was overplayed.
Back at the Shack, Dipper had been working on a dungeon worthy of Aunt Liz. Back home in California, girls normally didn't play Dungeons, Dungeons and More Dungeons. What would Liz like? Would she play the love interest? Nah, he couldn't see her doing that. "Looks like I'm going to have to wait and see what happens next."
The door opened, and in walked Liz and Ford, laughing at some private joke. Taking off her jacket, Liz glanced towards the den. "Dipper, did you create all of this?" Dipper beamed at her praise and asked if she ever played. Elizabeth admitted she had always wanted to, but never knew anyone who played. Ergo, she had collected the core rulebooks and scribbled down her own additions and personal notes. Ford was intrigued, what had she written down? Running down to the basement, she returned to the den with four slim volumes. Ford leafed through the books, wondering at Liz's stubborn insistence of stat blocking evenly of base scores. "Is this a homebrew setting," he finally asked. Liz said it was, and asked if everything was okay. Ford looked at the books, "Liz, you can't stack the stat blocks like that, the stats grow with the character. You wouldn't expect Luke Skywalker to start off with a base score of 17 charisma at the start of A New Hope, would you? Maybe by the end of Return of the Jedi… what are you doing?"
Liz had slid down the straps of her tank top and was biting her bottom lip playfully, putting poor Ford in a difficult position, as Dipper was watching this with wide eyes. "Well, I put a lot of thought into what I wrote," she told Ford before pulling him into a deep kiss. Ford pulled the straps back up and nuzzled her, "You're playing a dangerous game, my dear." Liz smiled, "That's how you roll a nat 20 in charisma, Sixer." Ford burst out laughing at her confession and held her close. "I've been beaten by my girlfriend," he laughed. They shared another kiss, before checking on Dipper.
Dipper was still in a state of shock, and now Ford and Liz were concerned they broke the poor kid. Ford knelt down and asked Dipper if he was okay. Dipper was okay, but he was grossed about with the PDA he just witnessed. "Are you two done snogging," he shouted. Liz and Ford blushed before sitting down to commit to the game.
The game got underway.
-Atbash Code-
Vcxvohrli!