Hiii! I just wanna say I miss your comics and I hope you're doing alright! 🥰
Happy Halloween!
Hi ML! Thank you <3 I'm doing alright. I know I've been extremely lackluster on making and posting stuff, but it feels like this whole year has been one big project after another, one secret thing after another, one important thing after the other...
It didn't quite left me burned out, but I'm trying to take things slow. Taking lots of breaks and all. I have a looot of doodles in store, but they're too poor to post lol
But I got a couple of alright ones I drew for Halloween!
Self insert x Ib crossover! Did you know a remake of Ib came out this year??
I dunno when I get back to comic making and posting - still feel drained, I have a project on my hands I'm preoccupied with, and a few things like art trades, commissions and hopefully birthday gifts to catch up on. So yeah, no promises... but worry not about me!
I dunno if any of you have heard of Ib (a rpg horror game) but Voltron having taken over my life to the extent it has, I made this crossover. I tried to imitate the art style, mood and pixelation, but the results were admittedly dubious.
Welcome to the startup screen of “Keith”.
Please do not steal, repost without credit or claim as your own.
Summary: It should have just been an interesting trip to an art gallery. But with the mystery of the long missing artist and artwork that almost seems to move, they might have found more than they ever bargained for. (Ib crossover project with @sightkeeper)
AN: The next chapter is already up on patreon here. Come check it out!
Chapter 9: Separation S T O P
“We can’t just- Dipper, please.”
Dipper gulped as Mabel continued her pleas, a litany of soft sad words that weren’t really filtering through to him, still unable to really talk or console her in any way. Everything felt like a daze, his feet working on autopilot as they turned him away from the door and up the nearby staircase. It was like another piece in the puzzle had clicked and suddenly everything was stark and real again.
Or perhaps too real, too overwhelming. All so brightly coloured and nauseating. Everything so close and tight as the corridor tunneled around him.
When he’d been hurt the first time everything had fallen into place. This wasn’t a dream, it was real. They could get hurt, they had to get through things, be careful and cautious, and get themselves home.
And then they’d met Stan.
And for a while it had felt like an adventure. The brightness, the daunting nature had all paled slightly. They had an adult with them, someone who knew this place and was happy to encourage them at every turn.
But now? Now Dipper couldn’t get his imagination to stop showing him what had probably happened once the door had closed and sealed him away from them.
Stan falling. Creaking bones and warbling moans as the zombies descended on him. Too many, there’s too many! There’s no way he can fight them all- Claws gouging, teeth gnashing. Blood spattering, s-so much blood. He couldn’t see Stan through the hoard but there’s blood pooling between their feet, rivulets running out to greet him where he stood locked in place. Blood seeping out from under the door to follow them wherever they went-
He shook his head, nails biting into his palms as Mabel’s voice came back into existence through the white noise, reminding him that they still had to move, still had to figure out how to get out of here.
Stan will be fine. He’s been fine for years here, he’ll know what to do. He’ll meet up with us later.
A steady stream of air left him, a breath he hadn’t even realised he was holding shaking out with the thoughts. He glanced at the walls, belatedly taking in the hallway the staircase opened out into with a grimace. Everything was sickly and yellow and he hated how much it turned his stomach. Hated how venomous and suffocating it looked, as if it was striping the hissing words right out of his head and on to the canvas of the walls.
Coward.
Useless. Spineless. Go back. You can’t, can you? Can’t do anything-
“Dipper! We’ve got to go back!”
“We can’t!” Dipper snapped back, finally finding his voice. He winced at the intensity of it, as it reverberated sharply around the stone to strike back at both of them. Everything was too much, his ears and head ringing, all the things he was trying to deny bubbling up in his hands even as he tried to stop them shaking. He tried to control his breathing, his volume as he took another shaky breath and turned to Mabel with a despondent look. “We can’t…”
“But-”
Dipper shook his head before she could continue, turning away from her plaintive gaze, gleaming with tears as her bottom lip shook. “We tried, Mabel, the door won’t open. We can’t get back to him.”
“But he might be able to get through to us! We’ll wait until he gets through.”
What if he doesn’t ever? Dipper bit his lip, trying to stop the words coming out. If he didn’t say them, then they weren’t true, they weren’t an option. But his mouth betrayed him, words slipping past to hint at that fate, his own stomach guiltily twisting into tight knots in the hope that Mabel would know what to say instead. “How long?”
“What?”
“H-How long do we wait?”
Mabel stared back at him, a few stray tears slipping down her cheeks, as her mouth opened and closed, trying her hardest to figure out how to respond. “He was- he’ll be right behind us.”
Dipper felt his heart sink, her voice still hesitant and pleading and cutting deep into his chest. “Yeah. Yeah he was.”
There was silence for a while longer as they stood, reluctant to move forward and unable to go back, right at the top of the stairwell. A stalemate as they both waited, almost hopeful that there’d be sudden footsteps ringing towards them. Or perhaps a shout. ‘Kids?’ ‘Sweetie?’ bouncing out through the air, panicked and worriedly trying to find them so that they wouldn’t have to make the decision at all.
Something they could respond to. A way to know that he was alright.
Anything to know he was alright.
Silence, cloying and thick swirled around them, bearing down on them as they hunched their shoulders and curled arms around themselves protectively.
There was no answer to their pleas, just the steady constant quiet.
They were alone again.
“He’d-” Mabel started, her voice seemingly snatched up by the quiet angrily, as if the noise was unwanted, unwelcome here. She gulped, trying again, straightening her back as she looked around the room. “He’d be angry at us if we stayed put for too long.”
Dipper felt the tightness to his muscles loosen slightly, his arms unhooking from their clawing hold to grasp at his bag instead, taking one last look down the stairs before following suit. “Yeah, he told us to go, after all.” He slipped his hand into Mabel’s, trying his hardest to school his face into an optimistic expression. “He’ll catch up to us, he told us that, right? You trust him, don’t you?”
Mabel sniffled, rubbing the tears away roughly with the heel of her palm. “Yeah, of course! We found him once, we can find him again!”
“That’s it.” Dipper grinned, before the expression fell, his insides squirming with guilt. “I’m sorry by the way. I didn’t mean to yell at you-”
“I know.” Mabel squeezed his hand once more before letting it drop. “You were just as worried as me, it just came out differently.”
Dipper nodded, relief soothing through the overwhelming nature of everything that had happened.
He still had Mabel, they’d get through this.
“But didn’t he also say to wait somewhere safe for him?”
Dipper blinked as Mabel appeared in front of him again, having been about to shuffle slowly around the room, her eyes determined and distraught. He couldn’t help agreeing with the expression, the contradictions stacking up between them.
“Go!”
“I’ll catch up to you!”
“Wait for me somewhere safe! I’ll find you, I promise!”
Stay or go. Stay or go. It looped around Dipper’s head in a mantra that he knew had to be addressed.
They had to make the decision and cut away the ‘what ifs’ that the other option would contain.
A bubbling laugh, hysterical and harsh left Dipper’s lips, Mabel’s face twisting into panicked fretting at the sound, her hands coming up tentatively towards him.
This coming from you? Not focusing on the ‘what ifs’? Like how Stan might need help and leaving him behind could be sealing his fate? Or how if you decide to stay you could be stuck here forever, waiting and waiting for someone who will never come through that door? Or-
“Dipper? Earth to Dipper. Time to come out of your head now, you’re scaring me.”
Dipper blinked, the fear tinged words instantly snapping him out of it. Mabel wasn’t allowed to be scared, especially because of him. At the same time his mind took the bait and focused wholeheartedly on the distraction, the decision made instantly without conscious effort, to think up a plan that would reassure Mabel in all aspects, instead of thinking about all the intruding possibilities.
“How about we find a way to mark our path?”
“What?”
Dipper nodded to himself, hand coming up to rub at his chin as his eyes finally sparked back to life, the gleam of an idea reassuring Mabel more than he would ever know. “Yeah! That’s it! Let’s find something we can mark a path with! That way we can continue to try and find the exit and if we do we’ll have a route back to Stan to tell him?”
Mabel’s perplexity split into a wide grin, her hands clapping together as she nodded along. “And if- when Stan does get out he has a path to follow to us too!”
“Yeah, exactly!” Dipper felt a weight lift from his chest, the stone of guilt and worry easing as Mabel beamed.
Stan would find them, it would be fine.
They had a plan again. They had each other.
They’d get through this.
“So, which way?”
Dipper finally took in the room properly, back still to the staircase, now not wanting to look down it and have his resolve to continue crumble away. The yellow room now felt fairly standard to what they’d seen so far, pale almost cream, it was actually nice and bland against a lot of the ghastly glaring colours they’d so far been subjected to. A door stood to their left with the room narrowing to a corridor straight ahead. The only difference that had Dipper staring was a rug that seemed to separate the corridor from the room, the royal blue fluff a suspicious contrast to the room and everything else they had seen previously.
He smiled, quirking an eyebrow at his sister in a mocking semblance. “Me? I thought you were the navigator? Though I think I’m getting the hang of it… are we on the white route now?”
Mabel rolled her eyes, her positive energy slowly fizzling back into place as they stood there. “Ha Ha, very funny. It’s obvious we’re on the yellow route now!”
“Oh, right. Of course.” Dipper grinned cheekily as Mabel pushed him.
“Alright, you can stop that now. I say… forward! We should go forward. What’s the saying? ‘Start as you mean to go on’?”
“That’s the one.” Dipper jolted as Mabel skipped forward, eyes trailing to the door. “But what if that’s just a small room and there’s something we can pick up in there to mark our route?”
“I thought you were going to trust in my navigational skills?” Mabel stopped in the room before the rug, hands on her hips and a pout on her face, though it kept twitching upwards into the smile she was trying to hold down. As she stood there though, her eyes zoned back to the gaping hole past Dipper’s shoulder, the dark staircase that seemed to accuse her, to hiss reproachfully at their plan. “I still feel bad leaving Stan behind though…”
“Right, you’re right, lead the way, navigator.” Dipper quickly piped up, moving forward so that her eyes fell on him instead. He could feel it too, the darkness taunting him, resting just above his shoulders and around his legs, ready to trip him at a moment’s notice. It was why he refused to turn back around, glaring eyes burning into the back of his skull, a lashing tongue cursing him for what they were doing. So instead he spoke up, refused to turn and give the voice entry into his head. Anything to keep her from doubting their plan and go back into the looping conversation they’d already had. They had to keep going, they’d come back if they had to.
Mabel gave him a grateful smile before stepping on to the rug, glancing down with a small smile. “Hey Dipper, this is really soft. Like the kind of carpet you wanna take your shoes off of and feel properly.” She shrugged before he could say anything, a soft disappointed sigh echoing through her. “Oh well, not the time, is it?”
“No, not really. Maybe next time.” Dipper chuckled, glad she was ready to go full steam ahead as he caught up to the edge of the rug. He raised an eyebrow when she didn’t move, crossing his arms. “Well, you going to go across or what?”
Mabel hummed, skipping the extra paces to the other side in a few bounds, turning round as she made a joking jump. “There we go! I resisted temptation!”
Dipper shook his head, exasperated fondness seeping through the cracks, opening his mouth to teasingly reply-
A loud grating sound cut him off, Mabel’s smile slipping into shock and worry, a flash of fear glowing in her wide eyes, as the room shook. Metal grated loudly as if a large machine was working around them, spluttering and groaning as unseen cogs whirred to life and filled the air with a metallic hum.
“Dipper?”
Before Dipper could respond, the rug between them seemed to twitch. His gaze locked on to it as the side closest to Mabel shifted upwards slightly, moving towards him. His eyes widened as it continued to move, realising belatedly what was happening. “Mabel!” He darted forward, jumping onto the rug as it continued to move, but the slant had become too great. He slipped back down, his last glimpse of Mabel, her hand outstretched towards him, face panicked.
And then the rug was vertical and solid, a blue wall separating them from one another.
No, no, no. Not Mabel too!
“Mabel!”
Mabel flinched back, eyes closing quickly as the world stopped shaking, suddenly fearful that it was a trap and the now solid stone ‘rug’ would fall back onto her again if she moved forwards. When nothing happened and the ringing in her ears slowly died away, she chanced peeking them open, her heart flying into her throat at what she saw.
There was no way back.
“Dipper?”
“Mabel!”
She could hear him pounding on the wall, the stone thin enough for the motion to vibrate through but strong enough not to crack at his fists impacts. She shuffled close, hands going up to push against it too, even though she knew it was futile. Somehow this was worse. Now not only couldn’t she get back to Stan but Dipper was stuck there too! If she found a way out, how could she get them out too?
She couldn’t leave without them.
“Mabel? Are you OK? Can you hear me?”
She couldn’t leave at all, not when she could practically hear Dipper hyperventilating through the wall.
“Yeah… what do we do, Dipper?”
“S-stay there! I’ll think- it’s got to be another puzzle! There must be a switch here somewhere.”
Mabel bit her lip. She’d already looked around the room, while Dipper had been stuck in his head.
If nothing had changed then the likelihood was that this was just a way to keep them going forward, to keep them on whatever path this place wanted them on. The only problem was they hadn’t been fast enough, hadn’t stuck close enough together.
Maybe there was something important in that room like Dipper thought and this was to make sure we couldn’t go back and get it once we’d made our decision-
Mabel blinked, thoughts shifting to a sharper focus through the bubbling, fizzing trepidation that had been tying them in knots. “Dipper! The door!”
“W-what? What are you talking about?”
“The other door where you are. Does it open?”
“Uhh- hold on.” She waited patiently, or rather impatiently, hopping from foot to foot as she worried at her lip, listening to his footsteps go further away and then come back again. “Yeah, it seems to be another yellow corridor.”
“Perfect. OK, go down there.”
“What? Mabel, we can’t just split up- I mean, I don’t know- that’s not a good option!”
“It’s the only option we’ve got, Dip-Dop.” Mabel wrapped her hands around her forearms, hugging herself tight as she looked down the corridor she had to take, glad that Dipper couldn’t see her. “We need to meet back up somewhere. We have a way to navigate, remember? Get to the most yellow room on this path. So if we both keep heading into yellower and yellower rooms…”
“We’ll hopefully find a junction that we meet up in. Like when we first woke up here?”
Mabel smiled, hoping that Dipper was actually debating it as she leant against the rug wall. Part of her couldn’t help but be irrationally irritated that it still felt soft and fluffy against her, feeling oddly betrayed by something that felt so warm and comforting. “Yeah, that. I mean, as much as I don’t want to split up- I feel like this place has decided for us.”
Dipper didn’t respond for a while. Mabel frowned, wondering if he’d left without a goodbye. As she went to ask though, he suddenly spoke up. “Yeah, we can’t help each other on either side of a wall if anything happened anyway. OK. Right. We’ll meet back up as soon as we can. It’s all we can do. Just…” His voice died away, apprehension and concern ringing through every word a few seconds later. “Just look after that sketchbook of yours, alright?”
Stay safe.
Mabel hummed, gripping her bag tightly, letting the feeling ground and reassure her. “Yeah, same to you. And you remember- go towards yellow, whatever rooms you try they have to be a brighter yellow than the one before.”
Follow the path.
“Right, go towards yellow until it blinds me, got it.” Mabel snorted, glad when a hysterical giggle bounced back at her through the stone. At least they could laugh about this. That was something in her eyes. “See you on the other side, then.”
“See you, bro-bro.”
Mabel waited, still leaning against the wall until his footsteps were too far away to hear and the door shut with an audible click.
Her breath hitched as the silence took over.
She was all alone.
“Hey, it’s not like you and Dipper haven’t done things alone before.” Mabel stood up straight, pushing off of the wall with a determined glint to her face, her small hands brushing down her skirt in a fidget. “You just have to get through a few puzzles alone, no big deal. Just think of it as a story to tell Dipper once you meet back up.” She chuckled to herself, the sound flat and hollow in the room but she took every sound she could get, unwilling to fall into silence in this place. Not willing to let it eat away at her resolve and optimism as she started to walk down the narrow hallway. “He’ll be so proud! A-and it can be a race! I’ll get to the yellowest room first and I’ll be able to crow about it.” She didn’t let the thought in that Dipper would be happy to lose that particular race, that more likely than not he’d just be very relieved to see her again.
She didn’t let it enter her head either that once she saw him again all thoughts of fake competitions might dissipate into utter relief as well, at the sight of him completely unharmed.
Or hopefully unharmed.
Her heart thumped painfully against her ribs at the sudden unwelcome image, glaring at nothing as she strode forward with resolute steps.
“Dipper will be fine. He knows his way around these weird rooms. And I’ll be fine. We can both do this and then when we meet up we’ll… we’ll be that much closer to the exit! And Dipper will have a route back to Stan! Yeah!” Mabel nodded, her heart calming as the optimistic map in her head created a route where everything would work out perfectly. She’d find the yellow room that would lead them to the next path, Dipper would then find her and he’d remember the route back to Stan so they could go back and check on him.
She was sure Stan would have gotten out of the zombie room by then. He must have! And now there was only one route for him to go with that wall having shot up – he’d have to go the way Dipper went!
“See? This was a good thing. This had to happen. Otherwise Stan could have gotten lost later and then he might never have found us.”
Mabel continued her slow cautious walk through the narrow hallway, glancing up at a few doors she passed before continuing down the corridor she was already traversing without pausing to try them. It might not be much but she was sure the cream walls were slowly turning yellower the further she walked and the doors so far had been paler in comparison.
“Follow the path, follow the path. You told Dipper to follow the yellow, so you can’t ignore that otherwise he’ll never find yo- there!”
Mabel beamed as a buttercup yellow door seemed to glow at her, a beacon to where she needed to go. With a small whispered prayer, she gasped happily as it opened without issue, her feet stumbling at the sudden forward shift before she straightened up.
The fact that she was in another similarly small corridor with only one door at the end did nothing to dissuade her rising positivity.
“See? One route. That’s perfect. That just means I’m going the right way!”
She found herself speeding up as she scurried forward, eyes locked on the slightly ajar door at the other end. Another small noise left her as she took to running, unable to keep up her litany of optimism as she started to exert herself.
It must be Dipper! He beat me there! But that’s OK, it’s fine because Dipper-
The door started to close.
“Dipper! Dipper, can you hear me?”
The words bit out of her in a shout, fear and adrenaline keeping her going as she cried out towards the door that slowed at her words.
She was too fixated on the door, too anxious to get there that she didn’t notice anything in the room around her.
If she had been a little more curious, a little more suspicious…
She didn’t notice the familiar image, one that moved and followed her as she entered the room.
A singular slitted eye stared down at her, two inky black, bisecting, shaking lines cutting off what little vision it had as it hung above her darting frame, reminiscent of the one that had been gouged into the desk. It burned yellow as it watched her, life coming to it that had not been there before if only she had taken slower cautious steps and taken in her surroundings.
A series of paintings covered the walls to one side, each one the same eye that rolled as she went passed, her feet pitter pattering loudly around her.
In each one the eyelids fell steadily closer, the black lines painted across the iris smothered by thick gold paint as they descended, until in the centre of the hallway the eye closed entirely. The paintings continued for a second, completely still as if something was holding its breath, before the eye slowly began to reopen again as she got closer and closer to the exit.
The eye gleamed, gleeful and glowing, as it gazed down at the girl that was propelling herself full speed at the door before it clicked shut. Painted lines no longer blocked its vision, blinked away along the route, discarding the hindrance without a second thought.
If she had paused to look, just taken a second to stop, she might have wondered what the eye was laughing at.
Mabel fell through the doorway in a cacophony of noise, the door slamming against the wall in a clatter of plaster as she stumbled into the room. Her breaths came in heaving gulps of air, eyes darting around one side of the now open room.
“Dipper? Dipper, are you in here?”
Before she could turn towards the other side of the room, a shadow fell across her, her muscles holding her in place as she belatedly took in that it was far too big to be her brother.
It wasn’t Dipper that had been closing the door.
A deep booming voice made her breath hitch, catching in her throat, her mind blanking out as she fumbled with how to react.
“You really shouldn’t make so much noise. Do you have any idea where you are?”
Mabel gulped, her heart pounding high in her throat as she slowly shuffled around.
.
AN: Finding a use for the rug made me so happy. I’m still loving how much fun it is to make Gravity Falls episodes into puzzles in Ib. It just works so well!
Yo so I thought of a name for the Ib AU (since Ib AU doesn’t sound too interesting)
It’s under the tag of “Bouquet of Emotions”. Combining the ideas of roses (a bouquet of roses) and what the Sides represent: aspects of Thomas himself. So yeah if you’re interested in any of the Ib crossover content then search for “bouquet of emotions” in the tags.
