@ersapines who sort of asked for this but also didn’t.
it’s a bad day. mabel hates when days are bad. it’s been two years since the fall of bill cipher and honest to god, mabel feels like the week before her 13th birthday. it feels like the same deadly aura that surrounded her. that made her want to throw up and cry all at once. it’s been two years since that and dipper is absolutely still under ford’s companionship and while stan is great and all, it’s hard to have your twin brother completely ignore you for your great uncle. they’re fifteen ! sixteen at the end of the summer. their SWEET SIXTEEN. it was supposed to be something awesome to kick them into their junior year -- THEIR MOST IMPORTANT YEAR OF HIGH SCHOOL -- and the summer was just a way to enjoy gravity falls ( as their usual summer vacations landed them there ) before going back to california for the rest of the year. but this year was different. ford and stan were home this summer. adventuring here. stan resumed the role of mr. mystery SENIOR while mr. mystery JUNIOR ( soos ) ran alongside him. it was a great time at the shack, and wendy being here for summer break from college helped a lot.
but she was just so angry to have dipper - for the third time that week - tell her he was going to hang out with ford and that her ideas for doing things together would be on a rain check. she’d blame her actions on hysteria, because for once- though she had ditched the tears and the sobbing so easily for her ‘ younger years ‘ - she really didn’t understand what she was doing until she was there, at the statue of bill cipher ; mounted into the floor, frozen from that moment two years ago when he was defeated. her hand interlocked with his stone one. his echoing L A U G H T E R abruptly had brought her to realize what she had done.
her words stammered into panic as she jumped back, staring at her own hand - unaware if she had imagined what had happened or not - and god, she was so utterly terrified. all she had remembered was telling the statue that she knew if he was back, they’d at least be able to work as a family again and beat him like they did before- that he could bring them back together as a family once more.
she didn’t actually MEAN to lunge forward. it was almost as if she was forced to do it. or... .persuaded. some other force. “ oh no, oh gosh oh geeze oh no ! “ her hands went over her cheeks as they dragged down in utter horror. what had mabel DONE ? what if she was completely imagining it ? she glanced around herself at all the trees and their creepy eye markings just staring at her. NO. maybe she had completely imagined it. bill was GONE, right ---- ? wiping her eyes from the tears, she backed up and decided she might as well warn someone. but WHO ? she’d just be yelled at. her great uncle stan had lost his ENTIRE MEMORY because of bill cipher. they were all just lucky they were able to lodge his memories the way they had. but if his memories had come back, could it mean that bill also had the capability to come back ?
( “ WHAT’S THE MATTER / SHOOTING STAR ? / SCARED OF ME ? / YOU ALWAYS WERE MY BIGGEST ENEMY AND GREATEST ALLY, HUH ? “ )
MABEL wasn’t even fully POSITIVE if the voice she had heard was real or not, but it sent her screaming through the woods in utter terror, racing through the trees as fast as she could away from the statue which hadn’t moved. she was almost at the mystery shack when she tripped over a large tree root and scraped her entire leg. she hissed in pain and glanced behind her. oh GOD, she was going insane. she had to have imagined that. there was no way. NO HOW.
it couldn’t be possible... it COULDN’T BE. the second she burst into the shack and yelled ‘ GRUNKLE STAN ‘, she realized the shop was full of tourists, that were looking at her and her bleeding skin as if she was a rabid monster. “ sorry, uh.. “ she cleared her throat and rushed through the tourist trap to try and find him. the second she found him, she clung to his jacket, tugging it as hard as she could. “ grunkle stan, we need to talk. it’s.. it’s a big emergency. bigger than the time i was scared because i accidentally let waddles eat bacon that soos had because i wasn’t really paying attention ! “ she tugged even harder, almost as if the pure energy of her thirteen year old self had been resurrected in her.
THIS WAS SO BAD. which was worse ? the wrath of BILL CIPHER ? or the wrath of the rest of the PINES FAMILY ? mabel wasn’t really sure, honestly.
