There were good days, Dipper Pines found, and then there were bad days.

Today had started as a bad day.

He'd tried to stay awake during math class, he had really tried. But not even ten minutes into Ms. Vezina's lecture Dipper's head had become heavy, so heavy, and the hard wood of his desk had seemed as comfy and inviting as a thick fluff pillow.

The teacher's dry, drawling quips had taken him out of his daydreams with all the subtlety of nails on chalkboard. Dipper had felt the heat of the other kids' stares on his back; he'd heard the snickering coming from behind him. His face had grown hot from shame and horror, his heart had painfully pounded against his chest… right until Mabel all but jumped out of her chair to shout some dumb joke, one that had nothing to do with her brother's impromptu bout of narcolepsy. The class burst into laughter while the fuming teacher strode away from Dipper's desk to head for Mabel's. Dipper had sighed from relief as his sister winked at him from her end of the classroom. Their secret was still safe—at least for now.

Because the last thing Dipper and his sister needed was for someone to find out that they were suffering from their own special brand of demonic triangle-infused PTSD.

Dipper would gladly face Bill Cipher and his cronies all over again rather than face the possibility of a summer without Gravity Falls—of a summer without his Grunkles and Wendy and Soos and all the others. He knew Mabel felt the same. Of course that meant their parents had to be kept in the dark about the fact that their precious children had risked certain death at the hands of a demon that just so happened to look like a demented Dorito while they'd been under their great-uncle's care.

Not that they would have believed them. Mr. and Mrs. Pines were rather unobservant by nature, taking more after even-tempered Grandpa Shermie than the kids' reckless great-uncles. Dipper never thought he'd be thankful for someone's cluelessness, but there he was, appreciating his parents' normalcy in ways he'd never thought possible. When you'd lived through an apocalypse triggered by a living, breathing (?) version of the Eye of Providence, you gained a healthy respect for the mundane, Dipper supposed.

"You okay there, bro-bro?" Mabel asked him as they left school that day. "It's the third time you fell asleep in class. I mean, your desk can't be that comfortable!"

"Nah, it really isn't," Dipper replied. "I just, well, y'know…" He made a vague hand gesture, but he knew Mabel was aware of what he meant. For that he was grateful; not everyone would be so understanding of triangle-related night terrors that weren't borne out of a distaste for trigonometry. "How d'you do it? You sleep as much as I do—meaning, not much—but you don't go around snoring in the teachers' faces like I do."

The sunlight caught in Mabel's braces as she grinned at him. "I took a page from Grunkle Ford's book."

"Coffee?"

"Nope. Lots and lots of Mabel Juice."

"Ew," Dipper said, "I'll pass, then."

"Grunkle Ford likes it, I'll have you know!"

Dipper did not attempt to hide his own grin. "Grunkle Ford survived on weird alien food for thirty years. I think he's immunized to about anything by now. On this part, I'll have to agree with the other Stan: your Mabel Juice is the stuff of nightmares."

Their conversation remained light-hearted and inconsequential as they walked home. Dipper's spirits rose up slightly. Bit by bit, the horrors of Bill Cipher's Nightmare Realm were loosing their grip on him. Bit by bit Dipper Pines was reclaiming his own life.

After dinner, Dipper gathered his things and went to Mabel's room. He worked on his homework while she fiddled with some glittering atroci—some beautiful, creative art project of hers. Dipper was nibbling on the tip of his pen, resting his feet on Waddles, when he noticed today's date.

"Hey, it's already October 1st!" he told Mabel. "I hadn't even realized."

From her spot on the carpet, Mabel perked up. "Yeah? So what?"

A cold, invisible hand twisted around Dipper's heart, but he did not let his dismay show. Mabel usually acted very differently when October rolled in. Some years, she had prepared for their Halloween night almost six months in advance, counting the days leading up to October 31st as eagerly as most kids did for Christmas.

"Halloween's coming up, Mabel, and we haven't even prepared anything yet!"

"Halloween?" Mabel's brows furrowed in a decidedly un-Mabel way. "But I thought you didn't want to celebrate Halloween anymore…"

Dipper sighed before chewing on his pen some more. "I guess I did, yeah, but… to tell the truth, I wouldn't mind being a dumb kid just for one more night." There was also the additional perk of going trick-or-treating without the imminent threat of a monster attack, but he did not voice his thought aloud.

A smile slowly crept on Mabel's features. "You just saying that 'cause you want candy, dumb-dumb."

"The call of sugar knows no age," Dipper said. "Who cares if we're technically teenagers, right?"

"I couldn't have said it better!" Mabel then looked thoughtful. "But what kind of costumes should we wear…?"

Dipper shrugged. He was the brains, the one who kept them grounded with cold, hard, boring facts; Mabel was the depositary of insane ideas and half-baked plots.

His sister's gaze wandered across her room, finally stopping on the spine of the large pink album she always kept on her nightstand: the copy she'd made of the scrapbook she had given Grunkle Stan when they had left Gravity Falls. Dipper knew she never went to bed without browsing through its glittery, stickers-filled pages at least once.

"Oh!" she said. "Oh, oh oh! I just had the perfectest idea!"

Dipper smiled. "Of course you had."

Not long after, they both rushed downstairs.

"Mom!" Mabel said as they irrupted into the living room, "I'm gonna need your sewing machine!"

Their mom raised her eyes from her book. From the couch, their father turned his attention away from the TV, his brows going comically high up his forehead.

"You do, sweetie?" their mother said. Dipper did not miss the look of relief she shared with their father. Oh. Perhaps they weren't as unobservant as Dipper thought. "That's great, honey! It's been so long since you made something!"

"Well, I can already buy most of what we need," Mabel said, "but I'm gonna have to make Dipper's costume from scratch. 'Cause you can't find in store the size we need. They don't make trench coats in, like, skinny nerd sizes, you see?" She gave an evil little giggle as Dipper rolled his eyes.

This time, the look Mrs. Pines exchanged with her husband was one of pure confusion. "Oh. Um, I see. Have fun, honey."

The rest of October was as auspicious as the first day of the month. Dipper contributed most of the funds necessary to make their costumes, since Mabel had spent most of her own money to make new warm woollen sweaters and socks for their seafaring Grunkles. Their trips to the thrift shop were welcome respites from the heavy atmospheres at school and back home. Watching Mabel running up and down in the alleys and hearing her high-pitched shrieks of glee ("oh my gosh, oh my gosh, this is perfect, no, wait, this is amazing!") never failed to make Dipper smile. She was worse than a little kid in a candy store.

Still, sometimes Dipper woke in the middle of the night, his body cold with sweat, his head ready to rip at the seams from the sheer number of terrifying images—Mabel screaming as Bill tightened and tightened his hold on her, Ford's unmoving and broken and battered body rising in the air above Dipper, Stan staring back at him, his eyes empty and glazed over like a dead man's—that would assault his mind. He'd then cross over to Mabel's room, carefully open the creaking door so he would not be heard by his parents, and wake her up. It was their secret pact. Whenever one of them had a nightmare, they would go find the other (they had encouraged their great-uncles to do the same, but of course there was no way to make sure the two old grumps followed their side of the bargain now that they were half a world away).

They would then sit at the edge of the bed – Dipper's or Mabel's, depending on who had the nightmare—and they would talk in hushed whispers and pet Waddles until their eyelids would be all but ready to fall off. Mabel had come up with a foolproof way to chase the shadows away: the What-Would-the-Grunkles-Do/Say method, or WWGD/S for short. It was hard to remain afraid when you remembered that you just happened to be related to a man who had made a habit of beating the crap out of zombies, dinosaurs and dream demons alike, and to another who had devised an array of weapons so potent it would make any stereotypical sci-fi bad guy green with envy.

And sometimes, the WWGD/S method as just as good to deal with normal (that is, stupider) everyday problems. When Dipper squinted at himself in the mirror in the mornings, judging and sometimes hating those noodle-thin arms and the dark, deep bags under his eyes and—holy crap, was that a zit on his nose?!—he'd remind himself that Mabel had rejected a paradise made of her deepest wishes because he hadn't been in it. He'd remember that Grunkle Ford had been ready to let a demon violate his mind on the off-chance that the latter might let his nephew and niece live. He'd recall that Grunkle Stan had allowed his whole sense of self to be destroyed for the very same reason. It was hard to muster a viable sense of self-hatred when you kept in mind that there were people like that out there in the world.

By the time Halloween came, their costumes had been ready for a week. When Dipper and Mabel sauntered out of their respective rooms, their mother could only meet them with a bewildered smile.

"I still don't understand why you want to go trick-or-treating," she told them. "Last year, your sister had to drag out of the house, Dipper!"

Dipper gave Mabel a covert glance. He knew she was also thinking about the fiasco that had been Summerween. "Yeah, maybe we're getting a little too old for that, but…" He crossed his arms, cocking a brow. "I thought parents usually didn't want their children to grow up too fast."

Their mother slightly coloured. "Yes, of course, but…" She wrung her hands together. "Well, as long as you have fun."

As they descended the stairs, their mother asked, "What are your costumes, anyway? I'm sure I've seen them somewhere, Mabel. It reminds me of—"

Mabel squared her shoulders, putting on her best showman's (showwoman?) grin. "Oh, it's from this old nerd B-list movie we watched this summer with Grunkle Stan. Maybe you caught a rerun once?"

"Really? What's the story?"

Mabel's eyes twinkled with secret knowledge. "It's about these two brothers—one of them seems just like a gross cranky old fart at first, but later on there's a part where he fights off a bunch of zombies with the power of karaoke and it's awesome—"

"Well, um—"

"—and then the other brother's a big dork—he's like Dipper, but cooler—and he's trying to stop the apocalypse from happening, but then—"

Their mother's face was frozen stiff in an awkward smile. "Oh, um, that seems interesting, Mabel, honey…"

"Mabel," Dipper said, "stop it. You're giving away too many spoilers."

Mabel cackled. "Oops, sorry! You'll have to watch the movie, I guess!"

That, or ask their Grunkles for the true stories, Dipper thought.

"Yes, beside, you should hurry," their mother said as she opened the front door for the twins. "Aren't you meeting with some of your friends? You don't want to be late!"

"Yeah, yeah," Dipper said. Not a lot of their usual group had wanted to go trick-or-treating tonight—most of the kids at school weren't exactly willing to forgo typical teenage pride, even over the sweet promise of free candy.

"We'll be back by nine, Mom!" Mabel said, giving their mother a quick hug. "See you later!"

With one last wave of the hand, Dipper and Mabel were off.

The streets were reasonably full with costumed children. They all happened to be younger than the twins. Dipper suddenly felt a bit mindful of their gazes. "Do you…" he began, "do you think this was a good idea, after all? Besides, maybe Stan and Ford will find it weird, you know…"

"Puh-lease!" Mabel exclaimed. "You know how the Grunkles are. How could an appeal to vanity not work?"

"Heh," Dipper said. He couldn't help but mirror her grin. "I guess you're right. They'll get a kick out of this alright."

Mabel's arm shot up in the air. "Then, let's go, bro-bro! The night's young and full of possibilities! Destiny awaits us!" And so they went, ignoring the bewildered looks the other Halloween goers sent them as they strolled down the streets.

There were good days, Stanford Pines found, and then there were bad days.

Today was shaping up to be a good day.

He had woken up after four hours of uninterrupted, dreamless sleep—the longest Ford had slept for the better part of forty years. As he opened his eyes, he was greeted by the soft hum of the radio and his brother's off-key accompaniment. The song was a romantic ballad that clashed horribly with Stan's gravelly tones; Ford was reminded of a crow trying to capture the loveliness of a canary's melody. Still, he felt a smile tugging on the edges of his mouth. Years of resentment and alienation were slowly being filled with the sounds of life again—with the background noise of people who cared whether Ford existed or not.

Bit by bit, decades' worth of unspeakable horrors and soul-crushing loneliness were releasing him from their hold. Bit by bit, Stanford Pines was reclaiming his own mind.

"Morning, nerd!" Stan called out as Ford entered the little cabin that served as living room, kitchen and dining room in the cramped space of the Stan O'War II. "I got up before you did! What's the world's coming to?"

"You did," Ford said. "What time is it, anyway?"

"Seven-something," Stan replied with a shrug. "I've been up for a bit, but I just started breakfast." I was waiting for you, Ford understood. "Dammit, I'm starving!"

"You could have eaten without me," Ford mumbled.

"Nah," Stan said, waving his hand around. "'s all good. An' I didn't want to disrupt your beauty sleep, what with you gettin' uglier with age."

"Stanley, we're identical twins."

"Heh! We both know I'm the handsome one!"

"Stan, do you know what identical means—"

"It's my new beard, see? You wouldn't know since you missed all the latest trends, but the ladies dig facial hair!"

"I doubt it. Your beard is an abomination onto this earth."

The smell of burning filled the air of the cabin. "Oh, hell!" Stan cried out. "My eggs!"

Swearing a blue streak, Ford's brother went to tend to the stove. Ford thanked whatever deity there might be that they weren't eating Stancakes this morning. Still, perhaps his brother's scrambled eggs happened to include some stray body hair as well. The thought made Ford shudder. He hoped not.

"There you go, Sixer!" Stan slipped Ford a plate containing the charred remains of a Stanomelette. "But I'll let you make your own coffee! I'm not your butler, after all!"

"Of course I'll make my own coffee," Ford said with a little snort.

"Your coffee tastes like nightmares anyway!"

Ford raised a brow. "You take your coffee with cream and sugar, Stanley. You can't possibly lecture me on my own tastes."

"Ma drank her coffee that way, and she was a classy lady!"

"And you are as classy of a lady as she was."

"Damn right I'm classy!" Stan then sat down to scarf down his own omelette.

His twin watched him eat with fond eyes. He remembers our mother, at least, Ford thought with some relief. Stan's memory was still very spotty—he could describe to Ford some scam he'd pulled seventeen years ago in minute details, but he had needed the kids' help to recall the name of their grandfather Shermie, his very own brother. Stan remembered the last ten or fifteen years of his life best; the recollections of young Soos Ramirez and the rest of Gravity Falls had anchored most of his errant memories, slowly reversing the terrible price of his sacrifice. The scrapbook Mabel had made him filled in the rest: Stan never went to sleep without skimming through its pages at least once.

And Ford had patiently, painfully guided Stan through seventeen years' worth of shared childhood. It had been a bittersweet, but oddly liberating experience. Still, an invisible hand had squeezed Ford's heart the first time he had mentioned their father; Stan's gaze had turned a bit glassy, in a frightful reminder of the expression he'd worn after his mind had been shattered by the memory gun. Stanley did not remember the man who had thrown him out of the family home before he had even graduated from high school. Dad saw me as a meal ticket and you as the worthless weight pulling me down, Ford could have said to Stan. He instead chose not to explore the topic further.

(And then there was the decade that Stan had lost forever, the ten years he'd spent going back and forth from the streets to prison and back to the streets again, the ten years of which he was now so blissfully unaware. No, YOU don't know what I'VE been through! Stan had screamed to Ford on that fateful day, thirty years ago. No, I don't know, Ford thought mournfully. And now I never will.)

Despite Ford's dark musings, the rest of breakfast was peppered with good-natured jabs and dumb jokes ("Uncle jokes," as Dipper and Mabel liked to call them). Ford tried to muster the most judgmental of looks when Stan slipped some whiskey into his coffee, but he could not maintain the expression without dissolving into laughter. And when Stan handed him the little metallic flask, Ford could not help but add a few drops—okay, more like four tablespoons, really—into his own coffee. They went outside to drink and toast the sun rising on the horizon.

They spent the day lazily, lounging around the boat like a pair of schoolboys on the first morning of summer vacation. Ford sat on the deck and enjoyed the sea breeze tickling his cheeks, his book lying almost forgotten in his lap. Stan was watching some videos on their laptop—Ford had set it so they had a surprisingly good Internet connection even in the middle of nowhere. Ford could hear him letting out the occasional bark of gruff laughter. Before they'd left Gravity Falls, young Soos had taught his old employer the joys of—what was it? Fail compilation videos? Ford wasn't sure, but it involved stupid teenagers in potentially harmful situations. Stan, of course, had been instantly hooked (Mabel had tried to get him to watch cute cats videos instead, but she hadn't been so successful; for the good of his brother's sanity, Ford wished that she had).

The sounds of the waves and the salty smell of the sea were more soothing than a mother's lullaby. Soon, Ford drifted into sleep and—

—the flames licked the edges of his vision. Ford whirled on his feet, attempting to whip out his ray gun from its holster, but his unseen enemy was quicker than him. Tendrils of white-hot fire snaked up around him, their touch burning holes through the fabric of his coat and sweater. Ford cried out in pain as his skin blistered under the fiery assault. The smoke and the stench of charred skin invaded his nostrils, making him want to retch…

WELL WELL WELL WELL WELL WELL WELL—

It was hard to breath. Ford was writhing and choking and burning. His throat chafed as silent screams struggled to get out.

MAYBE IF YOU HADN'T RESISTED WE WOULDN'T BE IN THIS SITUATION, SIX FINGERS.

A large eye was fixed on Ford like a spotlight. An array of psychedelic colours flashed rapidly. On the blood-red brick floor of the pyramid, the dark outlines of a pine tree and a shooting star were alternating in quick succession.

I THINK I'M GONNA KILL ONE OF THEM JUST FOR THE HELL OF IT – WHICH ONE'S YOUR FAVOURITE, FORDSIE? THE BOY OR THE GIRL?

Demented laughter rung out in the vast empty space, bouncing off on the pyramid's walls in ripples, rising and rising until it attained a level of unbearable intensity. Ford wished he could cover his ears, wished that he could tear out his eardrums, wished that he could do anything to just make it STOP—

"—hey! Hey, Sixer! Dammit, Ford, wake up!"

With a loud gasp, Stanford sprang awake. There was no fire, only two large expenses of blue – the sea and the sky. There were no flaming manacles binding him—he was simply laying on his back on the deck of the Stan O'War II. And the voice calling out his name belonged to—

"You okay there, Ford?"

For a split-second, Ford thought of brushing him off. I'm fine, don't bother, he could have said. I don't need your help, he could have added. It's my burden to bear. It's my fault all of this has happened in the first place… Instead, Ford closed his eyes, pictured Dipper and Mabel's smiling faces in his mind and said, "I had a nightmare."

"Oh," Stan said. "Wanna talk about it?"

That's what the kids had told them to do. "I always talk things through with Mabel," Dipper had said. "It's hard sometimes, but it always makes me feel better." Mabel's advice had been slightly different. "Hug. Hug all the times. Awkward hugs, sincere hugs, surprise hugs—just promise me you'll have tons and tons of sweet, sappy hugs, will you?" (unfortunately for her, her counsel had fallen on somewhat deaf ears).

"It's nothing out of the ordinary," Ford said. "I'm already feeling better, really."

Stan sat cross-legged, Indian-style, and huffed. For a moment, despite the grey hair and wrinkles, he surprisingly looked like his twelve-year-old self. Nostalgia rushed into Ford, warming him up better than a bowl of homemade soup would have. For a moment he could almost hear the cries of the seagulls and the distant honking of the boats anchoring at Glass Shard Beach.

"Well, sorry Dr. Stan isn't good of a shrink as Dr. Mabel," Stan said, sounding like a ticked-off little boy as well. "I ain't got like thirteen PhDs or whatever."

Ford laughed. A smile gradually emerged on Stan's features.

"You're doing quite fine, Stanley. This is just what I need."

"Alright," Stan said. "The only thing remaining is to say the magic phrase, then."

Ford's ears burned with embarrassment. "Not this again—"

"We promised Mabel, remember?"

Ford sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "Okay, then. Since Mabel has asked us so nicely." He schooled his features into the most serious of expressions and said, "The triangle guy looks like a stupid nacho and I'm not scared of him."

(Ford never uttered Bill Cipher's name in the presence of Stan. Never.)

Mabel had come up with the idea. "Whenever I say it out loud," she had told her Grunkles on Skype one night, "it makes him seem juuust a little less scary. Besides, he really looks like a nacho!" She'd been adamant that they try her new form of therapy; Ford hadn't told her, but it worked.

"You good, then?" Stan said. Ford nodded. "Great! I was going to wake you up soon, anyway. The kids sent us a message!" He would have announced he'd won a million dollar and he wouldn't have sounded half as excited.

Stan brought the laptop to Ford. The latter squinted his eyes at the screen, reading:

To: GrunkOnABoat12, SFPines82
From: fightingunicornsbymoonlight
Cc: ursamajor16

Subject: Our Halloween pictures :D :D :D

heyyy u guys! how re things?! have u found romance with a pretty mermaid lady yet?! ;) ;) ;) jk , lolll

("'Jk'? 'Lol?' What does that even mean, Stanley?" "Do I look like someone who knows weird teenage slang, Poindexter?!" "Well, at least you got to spend the last thirty years on Earth! …although I have learned how to insult the elderly in the youth lingo of Dimension 16/x—" "Can it, nerd!")

me and Dipper went treat or treeating tonite lol we had a gr8 time. ee took picutres for u grunks :)

Attached to the message was a series of photos. A few children in assorted costumes were posing for the camera. Of course, Stan and Ford only had eyes for the two familiar figures standing at the front of the group.

"They're…" Ford sputtered. "T-They're…!"

"They're us! They're dressed as us!" Stan exclaimed. "See, Mabel's got the fez an' the suit, and Dipper's wearing that stupid trench coat and turtleneck sweater combo of yours—"

"Stupid?!"

Stan didn't care; he was laughing his ass off. Tears were forming in the creak of his eyes. "Man, do they have the best costumes or what?! I knew I'd manage to teach these two the basics of good taste one of these days!"

Ford scrolled down to see the other pictures. "Oh, see, now they've changed outfits." Mabel, now in the makeshift Ford-costume, was striking a pose with a plastic pistol that bore an uncanny resemblance to her great-uncle's ray gun. Her smile was a little unhinged. Dipper stood with his chest puffed out, looking smug and dapper in the black suit, the red fez a little crooked on his head.

"The boy's nailed your attitude, I'd say," Ford told Stan.

Stan shot him a childish scowl. "What's that supposed to mean?!"

Ford echoed his brother's earlier laugh. "We taught them well, Stanley. We taught them well."

They taught us well, too, he added in his mind, his heart swelling with pride and affection. They taught us well, too…

if i could begin to be
half of what you think of me
i could do about anything
i could even learn how to love

( love me like you )

Love Like You, Aivi & Surasshu

A/N: …this is just me vomiting about every feeling I had about the finale onto my word processor. I'm sorry for this sappy gooey mess OTL