This chapter is to move things forward and set up the rest of the story. It's sort of a fluff chapter. I hope you enjoy it!

When the skyline of New York had disappeared at last, Stan pulled the car over. The rush of adrenaline he had gotten from the events of the last couple hours – diving off a building, flying, fighting, even killing a man – was starting to fade, and the full weight of the fact that he'd been responsible for Santiago's death was starting to hit. He felt almost guilty about it, but couldn't bring himself to regret it. The man had hurt people, blackmailed them, threatened them, murdered them. He was a man didn't deserve to be spared.

He let Mabel change into her own clothes in the car while he waited outside, leaning against the trunk and rubbing his temples. No, he didn't regret killing Santiago. But he did regret doing it in front of the kid. That had affected her. She still hadn't stopped shaking.

Mabel opened the door to the car and started to get out, but Stan stopped her, opening the trunk up and pulling out his first aid kit. He had Mabel sit in the passenger seat facing outside so he could crouch in front of her, disinfecting the burns dotting her arms like twisted constellations. She flinched. Stan sighed sympathetically. "Yeah, it stings, I know. Sorry, sweetie."

"It's fine," Mabel mumbled, watching as Stan replaced the disinfectant and pulled out a tube of burn cream.

"This'll help, I promise," Stan assured her, uncapping the tube and beginning to dab the ointment over the marks. She let out a long breath. "You okay?" he asked.

She nodded. "Yeah. That feels better. It doesn't hurt as much."

Stan smiled at her as he screwed the cap back on the tube. She was just so good. Burns up and down her arms, burns that probably hurt like hell, and she wasn't complaining at all.

He finished up with her arms by applying generous amounts of antibiotic cream to her burns and bandaging both her arms up to her elbows. "Those too tight for you?"

She shook her head. "Nope. It's good." She gave one of her arms an experimental flex and grinned back up at him, though the smile didn't quite reach her eyes. "They feel so much better," she commented as she put on her sweater, tugging the sleeves down to make sure the bandages on her arms were completely hidden. "Thank you."

Stan rubbed her head affectionately. "Get back in the car, Kid. We're gonna drive a couple hours before we stop for the night. We've got to get back to Pennsylvania. New Jersey isn't… well, New Jersey isn't really an option."

Mabel did as she was told, shutting the door amusedly as Stan went to put away the first aid kit. She remembered Grunkle Stan telling her and Dipper about how he was banned in several states, New Jersey being one of them. But then she wondered, if he was operating under a fake name, why it was an issue for him.

Maybe he just didn't want to dwell on the memories.

Stan got back in on the driver's side and passed Mabel the bread and peanut butter he'd bought yesterday, along with a butter knife he'd stolen from some diner ages ago. "Make a sandwich, okay?" he said. "You need to eat something. You're still recovering from all that blood you lost yesterday."

She hadn't eaten a thing all day and was more than happy to sloppily put together a couple sandwiches, passing one to Stan to eat as he drove. She munched on hers and watched the world roll past them, saying nothing when they crossed state lines into New Jersey. After a while she curled up in her chair and rested her forehead against the window, shutting her eyes. She still couldn't quite believe Stan had killed a man, though she knew without a doubt it had happened. Santiago had no wings. He couldn't have possibly survived that fall.

She wondered if it made her a bad person that she didn't feel bad for him at all before she started to think about her timeline again, her mind flickering to the broken time machine wedged between the cushions in the backseat. Did Grunkle Stan from her time cause Santiago's death, or was that exclusive to this Stan? And if it was, how would that affect her timeline? She didn't feel like she was fading, so she assumed things were alright.

Even so, she couldn't do this anymore. She couldn't keep acting like things were okay, going along after Stan like she could stay with him. She didn't belong here in 1977 – she needed to get back to 2012. She needed to fix the time machine, even if it was just a patch job good enough for a one-time use. The only problem was that she had no idea how. Technology had never really interested her.

Mabel hadn't said so out loud, but she knew she was nudging Stan towards Oregon, towards Gravity Falls. She knew he would go wherever she wanted him to, trying to make up for getting her kidnapped, for putting her through the entire ordeal she had just experienced. She couldn't think of anywhere else to go. The only person she could think of who could possibly help her was her Great Uncle Ford, but she wasn't even entirely sure he was in Gravity Falls yet. What if he was still in college? How long could she wait for him to show up? How long could she convince Stan to stay in once place long enough for Ford to show up?

She tried to think through things. If Ford was in Gravity Falls, would he be working on the portal? It was still five years before he got sucked into it. Had he ever said how long he was working on the portal for?

No. He hadn't. But even so, if he wasn't then he'd be investigating the paranormal, filling up his journals. Maybe if they got there in time she could prevent the whole Bill mess from happening in the first place, the portal could be dismantled – or not even built – and Stan and his twin could make up without losing Ford to some other dimension for thirty years. And if she could prevent the portal from destroying things, so much could be better. Even Old Man McGucket—

Old Man McGucket. Fiddleford McGucket. Why hadn't she thought about him before?! He'd built robots. Mabel had seen his handiwork. He knew computers even after his rational mind had failed him, and what had Great Uncle Ford said the man was doing when he called him up to help with his research in Gravity Falls? Building personal computers. Mabel could only imagine how tech-savvy McGucket was when he still had his wits about him.

She made the decision to keep pushing Stan towards Gravity Falls. If Ford was there, she would try to talk him out of building his portal, or finishing the portal, if he'd started it. If McGucket was there, even better. She'd tell him everything and have him look at her broken time machine. If he wasn't there, she'd find a way to get to California and find him there.

Either way, it was time to stop avoiding her problems. It was probably time to let Stan in on her predicament, too, but no matter how Mabel tried to imagine having that conversation with him, she couldn't bring herself to actually strike it up. If she told him she was from the future he'd think she was crazy. Telling him she was his great niece from the future might cause him to make her seek more help than he could give her for insanity.

For now, she supposed she'd just keep quiet.

They stopped in Hershey, Pennsylvania for the night, staying in a cheap motel room with only one bed so that Mabel slept curled up next to Stan, though not restfully. Her dreams were nightmarish; Bill Cipher floated through them, taunting her for messing everything up and telling her she'd never get home before he swirled, turning into Gordon with his cigarettes and kicks before his face melted into Santiago's. The floor crumbled beneath the drug lord, sending him falling fast to the ground—

Mabel woke up before she could watch the man's death, but she was thoroughly shaken. Stan slept on, blissfully unaware of the things that haunted her, and she shifted closer to him, crying quietly and shivering. In his sleep, he wrapped an arm around her, which helped a bit. She drifted back to sleep after a while, but woke up every half hour or so with more nightmares.

Stan slept like a rock, content that he was finally free of Santiago and his goons. He thought he felt Mabel shivering in the middle of the night during an episode of consciousness somewhere between dreams and awake, so he pulled her a bit closer before succumbing to sleep again.

They were back on the road early the next morning after a cheap breakfast of bagels, and Mabel fell asleep pretty quickly, cheek pressed against the window and covered with Stan's jacket. Stan listened to music, careful not to play it too loud, quietly humming as he drove. He wondered where they'd stop. Mabel seemed to want to get as far away from New York as possible, which was fine by him, though he did spend a lot more time than he would have liked thinking about Carla McCorkle and her hot pants. He wondered if he could coax Mabel back to the big city in the next couple weeks. Maybe they could settle in one of the surrounding areas, and he could get some sort of job—

Stan abruptly pulled himself from his thoughts. What was he doing? Imagining a future, one where he took care of Mabel forever, where he dated Carla, where everyone was happy? He hadn't dared to dream of anything that good for ages. He had accepted long ago his life was going to be one spent on the road, never settling anywhere, never caring for anyone and never having anyone care about him. But now… that future seemed so depressing, so lonely. He wanted more.

He'd known Mabel for only a few days. Now, not only had she proven he was capable of caring about someone – loving someone – she had managed to make him shift his plans, his desires. He had always dreamed, when he dared to dream, about getting rich and proving his family was wrong about him. But somewhere along the line that dream had faded until he was content to imagine small things only – like where his next meal was coming from.

Sad life, really.

They stopped in Cleveland for food and gas, and at Mabel's insistence Stan agreed to taking a walk that lasted a couple hours longer than he wanted it to because they got quite lost. They stumbled upon a craft store while trying to find their way back to his car, and Mabel squealed so loudly with excitement Stan flinched.

"Jesus, Kid, it's not that exciting," Stan said, shaking his head in amusement.

"They probably have knitting needles!" Mabel exclaimed, pulling on his arm. She was making in very clear she wanted to go inside. "I still have some money from singing in the park a couple days ago!"

Stan had no choice but to go in with her, following her as she wandered about. She got so excited when she found the yarn Stan thought she might just explode with happiness. Mabel bought a set of knitting needles and a few skeins of the blue yarn, and when they left the store and at last found his car about a half hour later, she was casting on with incredible speed as Stan started up the car again.

"You're pretty good at that, sweetie," Stan commented.

She beamed. "I knit all my own sweaters! I've got twenty-three of them!"

Stan decided it was better not to mention that she'd probably never see them again if she had run so far away from home. Well, yarn wasn't that expensive. He could make sure she started a new collection.

There he went thinking about that future with Mabel again. It was hard not to.

"We're going to try to make it to Chicago for the night," Stan told her as he got onto the highway. "It's about five hours away."

"Okay," Mabel said distractedly, beginning the process of actually knitting. Stan sort of wished he could watch her work. He knew nothing about knitting, but he was pretty sure at the rate she was going she'd have about half that sweater done by the time they hit Chicago.

Mabel chattered about art and knitting and Stan listened with a grin on his face. Man, that kid could talk. She would get really excited about something and talk without talking a breath so she would have to take a long pause and inhale deeply before she resumed talking.

They made it to Chicago late that night, crashing once again in a motel room. Stan didn't think he'd slept in a bed three consecutive nights since he was a teenager. It felt good. It was nice to actually sleep without the fear someone would come after him. Nice to wake up without a stiff neck from sleeping with his head rolled back against the seat of his car or a wing sore because he'd slept on it in a weird way.

As they were getting ready to turn in, Mabel content to wear one of Stan's t-shirts as a nightshirt, he asked, "Where are we heading, anyway, Mabel?"

Mabel, who had up to that point still been happy to talk about various things, fell silent.

"Because we could stay in Chicago for a while," Stan suggested. "There's plenty to do in a city this size—"

"No," Mabel interrupted stiffly, crawling under the covers. "No big cities."

Stan couldn't think of how to respond. He was quiet for a few moments. "Okay, then," he sighed, pulling back the covers on his side of the bed. "How about Montana? Not a lot of big cities there."

Mabel shook her head. "I was thinking about Oregon."

"Oregon?" Stan repeated, an unpleasant twinge in his gut. The last time he'd heard mention of Oregon it was during one of those rare phone calls to home to talk to his mother about six months ago, a secret she kept hidden from her husband. She told him his brother had gotten a research grant to go to Oregon and study there. Where in Oregon his brother was Stan wasn't sure. He didn't even know what his brother was studying. Either way, Stan wasn't too keen on the idea of running into him.

But then, Oregon was a big place, Stan thought as he crawled into bed and shut off the light. What were the chances Mabel would choose to go to the city his brother was in?

They made their way to Oregon more slowly than Stan would usually be able to, as he was delaying their arrival a bit. He told Mabel it was because he wanted her to recover and she couldn't do that cooped up in a car at all hours of the day, but in all honestly he was nervous. Even though he knew the chances of running into his brother were slim, it still made him apprehensive to be going so close.

They made it to Omaha the next day, and Cheyenne the day after that. Mabel didn't like Wyoming and wanted Stan to keep driving, but he refused. She was very happy when they left the next morning, and when they reached Twin Falls in Idaho Stan decided to call it a day. Mabel was now wearing the new blue sweater she'd finished a couple hours earlier and was begging him to find another craft store with her so she could stock up on more yarn, insisting she would knit him one next. Stan let her have her fun, this time buying her several skeins of red yarn, and for the rest of the day she worked on her new project, stopping only when Stan brought her his map and spread it out in front of her.

"Okay, Kid. We're almost to Oregon. I need to know where I'm heading," Stan announced, sitting down next to her. "If you want to go all the way to the coast we might have to split this trip up into two more days."

Mabel shook her head, scanning the map. "No, not the coast," she said. "Um… oh!" her eyes lit up and she pointed at a spot on the map. "Here. This is where we're going."

Stan looked at where she was pointing, a small town called Gravity Falls. Weird name. He had no idea what could possibly be there, but he wasn't going to try to talk her out of it. In such a tiny town Mabel would probably get bored in a couple days and they'd leave. He gauged the distance and calculated out how long it would take to get there. "Alright, then," he said, folding the map back up. "We'll be there by tomorrow afternoon."

Mabel was unusually quiet the rest of the evening, mulling over whether she should tell Stan about her being from the future or not. After all, they were headed somewhere he was going to hate once he found out she was taking him where Ford was. Just before bed she had almost mustered up the courage.

As Stan was reaching for the light switch on the bedside lamp, Mabel piped up, "Stan?"

He paused. "What is it, sweetie?"

She opened her mouth, but she couldn't find the words. She didn't know how to drop this bombshell on him. She wasn't even sure she could. So she rolled over and mumbled, "Um… never mind."

Stan sighed. He felt like the kid had something on her mind, but didn't want to ask. So he shut the light off and laid down, shutting his eyes and trying to sleep. After a few minutes he felt the bed shift and Mabel snuggled up next to him like she had done every night this week, and he placed a hand on her shoulder. He didn't know what was wrong, but somehow he got the feeling things were all going to be okay.

In the grand tradition of the Timestuck AU, Mabel and Stan are headed for Gravity Falls. At this point, meeting Ford and Fidds is an inevitability.

Please review (even though I know there wasn't much action this chapter), and watch for Chapter 9. Thanks for reading!