In the seconds after Bill is gone, after Dipper lets himself settle back into his own body, he feels like jumping for joy—and he does, briefly. But then the tiredness and the pain hit like a truck and he grips his back and just tries to breathe through it. Underwhelming, indeed—he'd almost forgotten how heavy his body could feel sometimes.

Once everything's said and done, Mabel is looking triumphant and Dipper can't help but share it. The fist bump hurts more than it should have, but she's reassuring as always.

"Nothing a little sleep can't fix!"

And yeah, maybe they should go to the hospital, but everyone looks so happy—Grunkle Stan is busy congratulating Mabel on what he calls "the most entertaining thing since my last poker night!", Candy is halfway down the street following Gabe's car, Grenda is collecting puppets and doing some rather disturbing mini-scenes between some of the them in the process, and Wendy and Soos are looking on with a bemused sort of tolerance, not quite sure if they're supposed to be calling this a success or not. Yeah, best not to ruin the mood. He'll be fine in the morning.

Nothing a little sleep can't fix.

Dipper closes his eyes.

Dipper wakes up.

The Mabel puppet on the post of his sister's bed, previously looking down at its namesake, is now facing the wall.

Rationally, Dipper knows that Mabel probably moved it herself—she rarely sleeps solidly all the way through a night, courtesy of her frankly disturbing dreams (and he shudders to think about the few times he'd actually actively listened as she rambled on about them). It was probably something to do with more talking puppets and maybe something about puking rainbows and dogs with multiple heads. Who even knew with Mabel?

But no matter how much he tries to ignore it, to turn over and try to go back to sleep, he can't help the prickling in the back of his neck as he lays there. Because what if…?

The puppet is gone when Mabel wakes up the next morning. She doesn't ask about it—probably completely forgot it existed in the first place. Dipper carefully doesn't bring it up. The pile of ash behind the Shack blows away in the wind as if it had never existed.

In the week following, every time he finds a new bruise or cut on his body that he doesn't remember having put there, he can feel the anxiety clawing at his throat more and more. The first few were easy—Mabel had been as tender a nurse as she always is (that is to say, loud and obnoxious but still careful), and the fork stabs were treated to painful disinfecting and bandages, complete with unicorn stickers on top. (Dipper still thinks he maybe should have gone to the hospital, but that would have required being a bit more forthright with Grunkle Stan than they really wanted to be.) The grazes on his chin had only needed a scrub, and Mabel had pronounced him good as new.

The day after, in the shower, he finds several lumps on the back of his head, and remembers with a wince Bill's (his) long fall down the attic stairs. He's lucky he didn't break his neck, or anything else. He looks up the symptoms of concussion just in case. (It starts in his chest, like a little angry cat poking at his lungs.)

Later that afternoon, Wendy gives him a look of concern, and he goes to the bathroom to discover that both of his eyes are darkening more than a lack of sleep could do, and he has a vague recollection of Mabel and the journal and Bill's (his) face. (It claws a little higher, making his shoulders tighten and his stomach clench.)

Every few days he finds another little scrape or bruise (running down the back of his calf; blooming in the bend of his elbow; making his spine ache). Some of them he watched happen. Others, he can't even begin to guess where they came from. He carefully avoids showing Mabel, because she was so sure he was fine. (It seizes in his throat, taking his breath away and making every word sound strangled and wrong.)

He is fine, though. He is.

Mabel thinks he looked dashing but kind of villain-y in the black trench coat. She hangs it in the closet for the next time they need to "play the bad guys."

Dipper burns it in the middle of the night and feels just a little lighter for just a little while. (He tries not to think about the fact that burning things out back might be becoming a habit.)

He never had a problem with his sleep-walking before.

The first time it had happened at the Mystery Shack, he had wandered into the woods just past the parking lot. Mabel found him just after breakfast, sprawled against a tree, and woke him with a loud lecture on going to bed so late. Since then, it's been a regular occurrence, but nothing really worrying.

The first time Dipper wakes up not in his bed after the puppet show, the panic hits him like a freight train. The dirt under his hands and bare feet scratches at his skin as he jerks around, desperate for something familiar, and his mind is stuck on a loop that he can't break out of, because he doesn't know where he is or how he got here.

The world falls away for a little while.

He comes back to himself buried deep under a thorny bush, Mabel's voice echoing worriedly through the woods. He can feel the stinging cuts on his arms and the mud caked on the bottom of his feet, and his hair feels like it's full of bugs and leaves. All in all, it's thoroughly uncomfortable—but he can't bring himself to leave. The branches above him press down, a prickly weight that holds him in place, and the dappled sunlight can hardly reach all the way down to him. Something about it feels unutterably safe.

Somewhere in the distance, Grunkle Stan shouts some sort of threat of bodily harm that he can't quite make out, and Wendy's voice counters it, startlingly close. Dipper finds himself shrinking back into the bush, pressing himself against the ground, and the rational part of his mind is screaming at him because what? It's Wendy!

But that rational part isn't really in control, and he curls tighter, making himself as small as possible, his heart still hammering in his throat.

He doesn't know how long he lays there; he only knows that eventually, the concerned voices fade, and the forest noises start up again.

And then there's a head blocking what little view he has of the forest, and Mabel's smiling that big, brace-filled smile that says I was so worried about you, you big dummy, but I'm not going to say it because you already know and now it's time to move on and be happy again.

"Hey, bro-bro!" she chirps. Dipper doesn't even have the energy to be surprised; he just looks at her blankly, not quite sure what he's supposed to be feeling but knowing it should be more than he is.

"Hey Mabel." He carefully doesn't consider the dullness of his voice.

Her smile flickers for just a second, then stabilizes. "Let's get you back to the Shack. I bet you're hungry!" she singsongs, holding her hand out.

As he grabs her hand, Dipper doesn't mention that he hasn't really been hungry for a while now. This is ritual. This is normal. He just has to follow the script.

Mabel helps dust his pyjamas off as best as possible, as per usual. She makes no comment about the frankly unusual amount of mud.

By the time they make it back to the Shack, Dipper is ready to simply fall asleep—and apparently the sun agrees with him, because the world is already turning orange in the approaching sunset. They round the last tree, and stop dead upon seeing a police cruiser sitting in front of the Shack, and Blubs and Durland both standing on the lawn. With Grunkle Stan.

They aren't noticed until they're nearly beside them, and they can hear Grunkle Stan, sounding tense and… concerned? But they only catch the tail end of a sentence before Durland catches sight of them and elbows his partner.

"You called the police? For me?" It's the first thing Dipper's said that he feels actually sounds like it should—shocked and a bit disbelieving.

Grunkle Stan throws his hand in the air dramatically, his eyes shifting suspiciously. "Soos made me do it!" Then the arm comes down and points at Dipper. "And you're lucky I didn't leave you out there to rot, kid. Survival of the fittest! And also your parents would kill me," he adds, like an afterthought.

"Nice," Dipper deadpans, already feeling more like himself.

By the time they get inside—after both Wendy and Soos had made him thoroughly aware of how worried they were and how glad they are that he's okay—Mabel tries to get him to eat something. Dipper firmly shoots her down, claiming tiredness.

Mabel's next smile doesn't reach her eyes, and it says I know something's wrong and I'm going to figure it out, but she doesn't stop him from heading upstairs.

He lies awake until the sun sets fully and Mabel eventually finds her way up to the room. She doesn't disturb him as she climbs into bed. After he's sure she's asleep, he rolls quietly out of bed and pads over to the bookshelf. A minute later, there's a heavy novel balanced firmly on top of the slightly-open door.

The next morning, when he's awoken suddenly (and thankfully in his own bed) by the sound of the book hitting the floor with a bang—and hears Mabel kicking up a startled fuss—he curls more firmly into his blankets and feels just a little safer.

Mabel has decided that triangles are a no-go, and has taken it upon herself to be his knight in shining armour. The triangular window panes are the first victims, getting a liberal coat of glittery window paint that turn each of them into shining stained-glass monstrosities that barely let in light, let alone resemble a geometric shape. (Grunkle Stan tries to argue about it and gets pink glitter paint on his glasses for his trouble.)

Next, she pillages anything vaguely triangular from every room. Several boxes of cereal disappear from the kitchen without a trace. A few pictures on the wall are subtly rearranged into a more square-like formation. Several of Stan's more obscure… obscurities find themselves relocated to the very back of the Shack, where no one but he and his tourists ever wander. She even sets out to re-seed a patch of loosely triangular dead grass just outside the back door.

Dipper appreciates the support, but doesn't have the heart to tell her that it's really the eyes she should be worrying about.

The panic seizes his body as Mabel lifts her hands from the button, letting the portal complete its sequence. His grip is so tight his hands are shaking, and all he can think is close it close it please god just close it—

And then the figure emerging from the swirling vortex isn't laughing, isn't even vaguely triangle-shaped, and the light is blue, blessed blue, the exact opposite of black-and-white-on-yellow, and all he can hear is static.

It takes a good few minutes for him to register anything other than that the one who came out of the portal isn't Bill, and then another moment to actually tune in to what everyone else has been saying.

"Wait, you're the author of the journals?" He can't stop the manic energy that surges through him at the thought, and as he babbles he thinks he might actually throw up, but this is something he's been waiting for all summer. To get all that knowledge, to talk to someone who shares his passion for mysteries and the unknown—

To find someone who knows how to defeat Bill—

He's so caught up that he misses half of the story Grunkle Stan's twin—Stanford, and isn't that messed up?—shares, and then he's practically vibrating for answers. The impulse to punch Grunkle Stan when he says they have to go to bed is both unexpected and nearly uncontrollable—but he's never wanted to hit someone like that in his life, what in the world—

And before he knows it, they're lying in bed and Mabel has asked him existential questions that he can barely remember answering, even though they were probably important—she never gets serious unless it's important—and the light is out.

And all he can do is lay there, unable to sleep through the vibrating tension in his limbs and the echo in his head that keeps saying this is the answer to everything.

He can't spare even a second to think about exactly what everything is.

He never manages to corner Ford to question him, and he carefully doesn't think about how it might be because he hasn't been able to say the name Bill out loud since the puppet show.

He's fine.

Two weeks A.B. (After Bill, and he hates that he's keeping track), during one of the few moments Dipper has found to just veg in front of the TV alone, Mabel rises, grinning, over the arm of Grunkle Stan's chair and says in a conspiratorial voice, "From the deep dark of the forest, the creature comes…"

Dipper pulls his eyes away from the recent episode of Duck-tective and shuffles to the opposite side of the chair. "Mabel, don't—"

"A being so powerful, all fall before it!"

Dipper is already half-over the other side of the chair.

"It's the mighty TICKLE MONSTER!"

Mabel launches herself over the chair as Dipper stumbles to the floor, but as usual, he's not nearly fast enough. His sister's wiggling fingers find their way under his arms and into his sides as he tries to bat her hands away, and—

And there's something off in the way the laugh hiccups out of his throat, something unfamiliar, and he doesn't realize what it is until he feels his stomach muscles cramping up—but by then his mind has already flown back to a familiar place.

Because he's come to realize that even if his mind doesn't remember, his body certainly does.

The spasms hurt, but in a distant sort of way, and by now Mabel isn't even touching him anymore. He can see her big eyes just off to the right, and he knows his laughter has turned rather hysterical—but he can't stop.

Unbidden, his forearm comes up to cover his eyes, and that just makes him laugh harder because his body's doing more things he didn't tell it to, isn't it amazing?

He feels Mabel touch his other arm, and he flinches. She doesn't stop, though, and he feels a weight settle across his chest as she drapes herself over him, her face on his shoulder as he shakes and laughs and tries not to lose any more pieces.

Eventually, it goes quiet.

"Sorry," Mabel whispers, her voice very, very small.

Dipper tries to tell her it's okay, but he's starting to realize that it's not.

Every once in a while, he feels his hands go a little numb and the white noise buzzes at the back of his head. He doesn't say anything, even though his tongue feels heavy as he smiles and laughs and solves mysteries. The feeling runs up his arms and over his chest, making it that little bit harder to breathe, but by then he barely notices. Something must show in his face, because every time it happens, Mabel gives him a look that he's seen since they were four and he'd just found out about his best friend Matt moving away—one that says I know something's wrong but I don't know what it is or how to fix it. He knows it drives her crazy, but when it comes right down to it, he can't work up the energy to care in those moments. (Dipper isn't here right now. Leave a message after the beep.)

It feels like he should be scared all the time. He's not. But he's not much of anything else, either.

Of course, as soon as he thinks he's done feeling anything at all, the nightmares start.

At first he's just reliving that day, and he thought he'd be used to reliving it while awake, but apparently his sleeping brain likes to forget that it already happened. Every fall backwards down the stairs, every Pitt Cola stream dumped in his eyes, every frantic dash to the theatre—he watches them happen and feels the same fear, and sometimes he lives them, even though he knows he wasn't really even in his body when they happened, but either way he jerks awake at the end and stares unblinkingly at the tilted ceiling of the attic, shivering like it's twenty degrees, and feels his body echo with every ache it doesn't remember acquiring.

But then it changes.

The first time he watches his body grab Mabel's arm on the catwalk—the first time something different happens—he doesn't really notice. But he does when he hears a distinct crack and sees Mabel's wrist, so small and fragile, hanging at an unnatural angle in his own hand—

That dream only lasts a few minutes. He manages to fall asleep again after a few hours.

Then it gets worse.

He watches, silently screaming, as Mabel is hauled out of the hanging cake and onto the catwalk, sliding across the coarse wood cruelly and tearing a hole in the front of her cheerful unicorn sweater. As Bill takes Dipper's hands and wraps them around her throat. As the air chokes through her lips in stuttering gasps, his name whispered with everlasting hope turning to despair.

He watches as Mabel is snatched up and dangled over the set below, Bill using Dipper's voice to cackle loudly and triumphantly. As her face turns from defiance to crippling fear as she realizes. As her wrist is released and she drops like a stone, tearing him into wakefulness with an echoing crunch.

He watches as Bill (is it really Bill? Or is it himself now?) catches up to Mabel on the stage and tears her head sideways on her neck. He watches as the fireworks misfire and set the theatre alight, one of them spiraling with deadly accuracy towards the people he loves. He watches as the car blows up on the way to the theatre, as the Mystery Shack is torn down plank by plank, as he breaks Mabel's fingers one by one where they're wrapped around the journal, down to the last illogically gripping pinkie.

He watches, and sometimes he forgets he can wake up.

The tired feeling starts dragging down on his limbs more and more with each passing day. He tries to bring himself to eat more, but each time the taste of ash grows stronger. (Even when he constantly requests soup—and the forks stay firmly in their spot in the drawer—he can barely force three swallows, and Mabel watches him like a hawk every time. Stan has started side-eyeing him at the dinner table.)

He tries downing a glass of Mabel Juice late one afternoon when no one's watching, and it burns up his nose and down his throat and he almost chokes on a pair of dice. Two minutes later he's in the bathroom, feeling like his stomach is going to turn him inside out and the image of a laptop lock screen flashing over and over and eight-letter words running through his head on a roller coaster repeat.

He hasn't touched Pitt Cola in a month. Ford doesn't seem to notice when his offers of a can before they go to do something are always turned down. Stan loudly complains whenever he brings home another case from the store, even though he's only doing it half as often as the beginning of the summer. Dipper doesn't think he's noticed (hopes against hope that he hasn't noticed), but Mabel certainly has, and she's taken to petulantly spitting the pits in his direction whenever they're outside. The scowl she gives him every time is less why aren't you drinking this with me, you spoilsport and more dang it, Dipper, you need to talk to me.

He doesn't.

The dizziness on top of the numbness seems like the logical next step, and it makes eating even harder rather than easier. Sometimes he hates how bodies work.

He tries not to think about how he's starting to look more and more like Bipper as the shadows under his eyes grow.

The day that Great Uncle Ford calls a family meeting, Dipper isn't expecting anything big. There've been a couple of these over the course of the weeks Ford's been around, and it's been a bit of a nice change from Grunkle Stan's lacklustre attempts to do things as a family, TV marathons notwithstanding. So he's completely blindsided when Ford holds up a picture of something all too familiar.

The numbness he's been battling all morning disappears in a burst of roaring static, and he only has a second to hear Mabel proclaim "Bill!" before it steals his hearing entirely. Ford puts the picture down almost immediately to begin throwing out questions about how they know his name, but Dipper feels like it's been burned into his retinas and he can't blink because he's only seen Bill in his nightmares and maybe this is another nightmare maybe it's not real—

"—right, Dipper?"

He nearly throws himself from the chair to get away from the near-smack on his arm, and then the world snaps back into focus and he can suddenly feel how fast his heart is jackhammering in his chest. He's half on his feet, back to the kitchen wall, and Mabel and Ford are both watching him with wide, wide eyes, startled and unsure.

"…Dipper?" Mabel ventures, her voice slow and scared and oh so careful.

His eyes dart between Mabel and Ford, from her slowly moistening eyes to his expression thoughtfully narrowing, and feels his hands shake as he presses them hard against his forehead, trying to stem the sudden influx of panic-run-terror-feeling.

He manages a strangled apology as he stumbles past his immobile family, barely making it to the bathroom and slamming the door behind him before he's losing what little lunch he had. His vision is practically vibrating from how hard he's shaking, and shivers wrack his frame as he struggles to breathe.

He doesn't know how much later it is when he hears a quiet knock on the bathroom door. He's curled in the corner next to the bath tub, his knees drawn up to his chest, staring at the little crack in the paint running up the sink cabinet door. Great Uncle Ford's voice calls his name quietly.

"I'm okay," Dipper calls back, and he even manages to make his voice sound less like he's transforming into a wood chipper and more like he's got a particularly tenacious cold. He knows the embarrassment should be coming, has been preparing for it since he felt his breathing slow to manageable levels—but it's just not there. Instead, the numbness is creeping back up and he should feel frustrated about that but he can't.

Ford carefully opens the door and peers through, his eyebrows pulled together. "What's wrong, Dipper?"

"Nothing, lunch just didn't agree with me. I think I might be coming down with something." The excuse is automatic by now, but he can tell that this time even Ford isn't convinced, and he's usually the easiest one.

"You sure?"

"Positive." To prove it, Dipper stands on shaky legs and steps out of the bathroom, brushing past Ford and making his way into the living room. He can feel Ford following him. He grits his teeth and continues through to the kitchen. The papers on the table have mysteriously vanished—and so has his sister. "Where's Mabel?"

(He doesn't think about how she wasn't the first to come knocking on the bathroom door because that's not fair, it's not.)

"I found a way to ward the Shack that requires unicorn hair. She and her friends went out to get some." Ford comes around the table and picks up the black bag that's sitting on the chair there, and Dipper can feel his assessing stare. He pretends to investigate the fridge. "I had to convince her you were alright before she'd even think of leaving." Dipper pulls out the water pitcher and puts it on the counter, pulling down a glass on autopilot. He can hear Ford moving. "But Dipper, I can tell you're not." His hands still as he feels one on his shoulder, and Ford leans on the counter beside him, an urgent look on his face. "Dipper… What do you know about Bill?"

His breath catches slightly, and then he's turning back to the water pitcher and the glass. (He's okay.) "We fought him a couple of times, is all." (He can do this.) "He was weird and invasive, but we beat him." (There. Nothing to worry about.)

There's water on the counter. He's not exactly sure how it got there.

Ford turns him around and puts both hands on his shoulders. "Dipper. Hey, look at me."

He didn't realize he was looking down at his half-full glass of water until he looked up. Ford's eyes flicker over his face. He can see the moment the man realizes that Dipper isn't going to say anything more about it.

"…I think we need to do something in case Mabel can't get that unicorn hair."

Dipper isn't sure what he expects when they go down to the basement, but Ford's lab is exactly as he would have pictured it if he'd thought to do so. (He hadn't.) The computer at the end is intimidating, but he can't stop the sudden zing of anticipation when Ford mentions being able to keep Bill out of his mind.

"How?" he asks abruptly, cutting off Ford's words. The man seems unfazed, already hooking up his strange contraption and holding out the helmet for Dipper to take.

The thoughts that pop up on the screen surprise him—the words are a string of observations about the room, what's around him, elevator twelve feet back, spiral stairs six feet left, and he's not sure where they're coming from. But he supposes it's good to be aware. (Know your escape routes. Know where you can run.)

Great Uncle Ford lets the machine run and goes to sit at his desk, going through some papers. Time ticks by, and eventually he dozes off, head drifting down to rest on the desk and snores echoing quietly through the room.

Dipper wants to do the same, but he knows what happens when he closes his eyes these days.

Instead, he settles for gazing around the room, taking in exactly what Ford's secret lab looks like. Most of the walls are draped with heavy black fabric, and the books in the bookshelves have no names on the spines. In fact, besides the paper on the desk, there doesn't seem to be anything particularly identifying in the whole space. Nothing given away at all. Just like Ford himself.

Maybe he could find out something. Something about Bill.

He doesn't pause as he pulls the helmet contraption from his head and settles it on Ford's. The time for hesitation was weeks ago and nothing has gotten better.

The screen fills with Bill, and Dipper feels his heart stop. Then the laughter starts.

Then everything becomes a nightmare.

(Hello, Pine Tree!)

The gun is shaking in his hands, the rift cold under his arm, and he doesn't know where to look because Bill is everywhere, but the worst is that he's right there in front of him, possessing his great uncle, and there's nothing he can do about it.

Trust no one.

Trust no one.

When the gun fires, he almost doesn't duck.

TRUST NO ONE.

Then there's a hand on his arm and Ford's voice—but it's not Ford's voice anymore, is it? It's Bill. It's always Bill.

His foot connects with something soft, and he's released. He's on autopilot, elevator twelve feet back, and then the grate is closing and he can see Ford—Bill!—rushing forward, but the elevator's already moving. Then there's the stairs, and then the vending machine, and then sixteen feet past the desk to the door—

"Whoa! Hey, kid, what's got you in such a hurry?"

There's an arm in front of him and he dodges around it, the door is right there—

"Dipper! Hey! What's wrong?"

A hand is grabbing the back of his vest, and the energy surges up and through his limbs and he lashes out, but there's no cry of pain—Grunkle Stan is too good for him to make contact, and he feels his wrist being held and his momentum used against him. His back is pressed against something wide and arms are wrapped round him as Stan's voice says in his ear, "Calm down! What's gotten into you?"

The elevator dings.

"Stanley!"

TRUST NO ONE.

He throws his entire body backwards, his throat tearing around the noises he's making; they don't sound human, but he doesn't care, can't care, because maybe he's not human any more at all—

His wrist comes loose, and he lashes out with claws and teeth, Bill is coming, escape!

The door bursts open under his hands and he stumbles through, adrenaline pumping through his legs as he covers the twenty feet across the parking lot to the trees, almost there—

His foot catches on something and he goes sprawling, the gravel digging into his cheek and hands. He can barely feel it, already scrambling to get up again, but for some reason his feet don't want to place themselves in a way that makes sense. The trees are right there, he can disappear, he can get away—

"Dipper?!"

He grabs the hand that touches his shoulder and yanks, and with a cry the other hits the ground hard. He can feel the arm under his fingers, fragile wrist bones grinding together, small and slender and—

Mabel.

He stares in horror at the startled look in her eyes, at the wrist in his unnaturally tight grip.

The nightmares are real.

Someone is screaming and the world is flickering in and out as the monster rises in his chest—but is it a monster? Or is it his real self?

Did Bill ever leave?

Trust no one.

Not even himself.

There are hands everywhere. Which ones are his? He doesn't know anymore. He's not in control. Someone's laughing, and he can't tell where it's coming from.

He just needs to wake up. Wake up. WAKE UP!

The darkness is a blessing.

He comes to with a heavy weight on his chest, and it takes several minutes to work up the energy to open his eyes. He's greeted by a wealth of tangled brown hair and the feeling of breath ghosting over his collarbone. Mabel is sprawled mostly on top of him, her arms bracketing his sides and her head tucked under his chin. The weight of her presses him down into the bed beneath him, and he feels…

Safe.

He breathes in, feeling the tickle of hair in his nose and against the bandaging on his cheek, making it itch. The window is open, the last of the deep orange sunset peeking through the pane, and he can hear the wind picking up in preparation for evening, leave rustling, a single bird chirping… and shouting.

"—don't know what the hell you did, but—"

"—need to stop thinking about yourself and start thinking about that boy upstairs—"

"Don't you dare pin this one on me, Stanford—"

It's muffled and broken, carrying all the way from the main floor, but he can hear enough to know it's not pretty.

"—looked past your own nose for just one second—"

"—have any idea how long it's been going on—"

"—keeping secrets, at a time like this—"

"—nothing to do with me—"

"Of course it has nothing to do with you! This isn't about you! It's about Dipper!"

Things go quiet enough that he can't hear them anymore. He lays calmly, breathing deeply enough to feel the press of Mabel's weight on his chest increase, the pressure grounding him. It's the most real thing he's felt in weeks.

"Dipper?"

He jerks slightly. He'd thought she was asleep.

She doesn't move—leaves her head tucked gently under his chin. He can't see anything but her hair. "What… what's happening?"

The question is quiet, unsteady. He keeps his eyes fixed on the cracking ceiling, tracing lines like he's been doing since the beginning of the summer.

They both jerk slightly when something breaks downstairs. There's silence in its wake.

"Dipper?" This time, she shifts slightly, her head tilting. He can feel her eyes on him. The silence this time is more expectant, and he finally forces himself to look down at her. Mabel's eyes are wide and wet, rimmed with red. The sudden shame is like a punch to the gut—he did this.

(He can't help but feel a tiny, tiny part of him that reaches for the feeling, the one that just wants something other than numb or fear.)

"Are you okay?" she whispers, voice wavering as another round of shouting rises from the main floor.

Dipper feels the weariness dragging at his limbs as he says quietly, "No, Mabel. I don't think so."

Ford is livid when they tell him.

"He was in your head and you didn't think it was important to tell me?"

Dipper's staring at his shoes. They're grimy from the parking lot still. He can see a rock ground into the side of one sole, sharp but not long enough to push through to his foot.

"It was my fault, Grunkle Ford!" Mabel insists, her leg pressed against his where she sits beside him on the armchair. "The puppet show was my idea, and I didn't help him figure out the code—"

"What were you doing with any of that in the first place?" Dipper can imagine that Ford's got his hands fisted in his hair; the man's feet pass back and forth in the corner of his vision, pacing loudly.

Mabel doesn't answer. He's asked this question in various forms at least three times now.

Grunkle Stan hasn't said anything from where he stands off by the doorway to the living room, arms crossed and leaning on the jamb. Dipper blinks, and suddenly he's there, kneeling down in front of the armchair. Dipper stares at the shoe resting right beside his.

"Dipper. Hey, kid, look at me."

The voice is so calm and quiet—still gruff and quintessentially Stan, but not… quite. Dipper can't find it in himself to ignore it. The glimpse he gets of his grunkle's eyes shows him something so achingly sincere that he's frozen.

"What can we do to help?"

What can we do to help?

He can feel his breathing pick up as the question probes something deeper than the others that Ford was throwing; his chest tightens as he realizes, "I… I don't know." His voice is stuttering like an engine unable to start, breath coming quicker and quicker as the realization digs into his lungs and gets stuck. "I don't know, I can't—" He breaks eye contact, staring again at his shoes, but this time he can't see them, not really. How can they help him, really? It's all in his head. All stuck inside his brain and his dreams and how the hell is anyone supposed to get rid of Bill, he's a goddamn dream demon—

It's only when Ford starts saying, "We warded the house, he can't get anywhere near it—" that Dipper realizes he's been speaking aloud. He feels the crushing weight of panic—he's out of control again—

"Can it, Sixer." Stan's voice is just as calm as before, but Great Uncle Ford immediately quiets. And then there's a hand on Dipper's shoulder, another grounding weight, and he can't help but lean into it, letting it pull him down until he's bent double over his knees, just breathing. Mabel leans over, her arms coming to wrap around him so tightly that it should hurt, but…

It helps.

Eventually he feels another set of hands (bigger than the others—Ford?) on his lower back and knee, unmoving, more warm patches of contact that put weight on his body and take it off of his lungs. Grunkle Stan's other hand has wound its was into Dipper's hair, a forehead pressed against the top of his head, quiet murmurs that don't sound like anything in his ear.

It feels… safe.

They sit like that for a long time

Things don't get better, but they do get… better.

Some days are worse than others.

Great Uncle Ford suggests therapy, but Stan shoots him down. What the hell would they even say?

"No," Stan says resolutely. "This one's on us. We'll take care of him."

And they do. Dipper expects the kid gloves to come out—can feel the muted indignation, a shadow of what he would usually feel, when he thinks about it. But then, everything just… continues as normal.

He can tell some things are different—he's never really left alone, not if any of them can help it, but he doesn't feel any of the smothering he was anticipating. It's not that they're watching him, or that they're hovering to catch him if he goes off the deep end again. They're just… there.

(He doesn't know why there's a distinction, or which of them is the mastermind behind it, but it matters.)

No one demands answers. He can sometimes see the questions in Ford's eyes, or the way Mabel stares just a little too long when he drops off in the middle of a sentence as they're sitting on the porch, but there's no push. They're just there, and waiting. Patiently.

One evening he finds Stan alone in the living room, secretly watching The Duchess Approves, and something draws him to sit against his grunkle's knees, curled up facing the TV, silent as the movie plays. Stan doesn't even pretend to change the channel.

"…How do you do it?"

He also doesn't pretend to misunderstand. "You just keep pushin' through. Sometimes there's bad days, sometimes there's good days, and you make the best of those ones. And then…" He sighs, but it doesn't sound unhappy. "And then one day you look up and there's people waitin' for ya, ready to make sure you have more good days than bad, and you realize they've been there the whole darn time."

Dipper leans his head on Grunkle Stan's knee, eyes somewhere in the middle distance. "…Yeah," he says quietly, and feels a hand fall onto his head. The Duchess smiles on the screen.

Mabel blames herself. Dipper knows this like he knows his own name, even if she never says it. She's his twin, and she should have been watching more carefully—that's what she's thinking, because he'd be thinking the same. He sees it in the way she starts following him around every second of every day that she can get away with, in the way she greets him overly-cheerfully every morning, in the very carefully-phrased inquiries into how he's feeling every other hour.

"S'not your fault, y'know," he says one night as he's about to drift off, having just taken the mild sleep aid Grunkle Stan had given him four days ago.

("I take these when the neighbours are gettin' rowdy," he'd said flippantly, as though there's anyone within ten miles of the Shack to actually make any noise. "Slept quiet as a baby—didn't even dream!" Dipper knows he didn't imagine the significant slant of Stan's eyes, even if his voice was the same as ever.

He's never slept so good in his life, and he knows the shadows under his eyes are already lightening.)

"What?" Mabel mumbles from her bed, turning over.

"You didn't make it happen," he says more clearly this time, even as his eyes droop. "You didn't… He's evil. It was Bill's fault."

He doesn't hear Mabel's sharply indrawn breath (he hasn't said that name in so long—but for some reason it doesn't feel like glass falling from his lips this time) because he's already asleep.

Wendy invites him for video games every second afternoon, and they spend hours just shooting aliens and zombies and not talking about anything important unless Dipper wants to. Soos teaches him how to fix the golf cart, calm and quirky and never afraid to put a hand on Dipper's arm or pat him on the head. (If he does it a little more often than before, no one's saying anything.) Ford takes him out into the woods (never into the basement lab; Dipper knows everything Bill is gone, has been gone since the second day, but no one even suggests it) and they explore and learn and fill in a few pages of the journal together.

(They also spend one afternoon sitting against a giant oak tree, talking quietly about things that only the two of them really understand. When they finally return well after dark, it's with shoulders a little less weighted, minds a little clearer. If there are tears, they're the only ones who know.)

Mabel hosts slumber parties. Dipper tries to avoid being invited, and ends up with his nails painted and a blush dusting his cheeks every time.

Stan is… Stan. And somehow he understands, too.

They go on a road trip. Stan almost gets eaten by a spider woman. Dipper… Dipper laughs. Slowly, slowly, the ice thaws. The clawing at his lungs recedes. The cotton wool starts to flake off, and he can feel his thoughts lining back up.

By the time Bill's form rises above the treeline and the sky darkens, Dipper feels almost like himself again. A little more jagged, a little older, but still himself. But the laughter lances through him like a knife, and he can feel the shaking starting in his hands, the claws coming up from his gut—

And Great Uncle Ford is there, hands gripping his hard enough to make his bones creak, eyes wide and wild and—fierce.

"He won't win, Dipper." The voice is almost a growl, deep and determined. "He's taken enough already. He can't have anything more. He will. Not. Win."

And the shakes start to recede. The beast starts to change, the tightening in his body transforming to a buzzing energy. And the emotion rising in his chest this time isn't fear.

It's determination. And anger.

Dipper meets his great uncle's eyes. "He can't have us."

Ford's mouth quirks up slightly, his brows tightening.

"Let's go beat this bastard."

And they do.

The night before they leave Gravity Falls, Mabel crawls into his bed beside him. Her feet are cold as they contact his shins, but he doesn't pull away. He stares up at the cracks in the ceiling, a few more than there were before they turned the entire house into a Shacktron.

Mabel rests her head on his shoulder, her arm flung across his chest, and just breathes for a few minutes. He almost thinks she's asleep when she finally shifts and says quietly, "A lot happened this summer."

He hums in agreement.

"It's gonna be weird going back to… to normal. Leaving all this behind."

Dipper shrugs just slightly, mind skipping slightly over the way that Stan still pauses in the middle of sentences to remember what he was saying, and how Wendy keeps her axe in easy reach under the shop counter. The way that both Soos and Melody can't seem to stand being out of each other's sight, like one of them will suddenly disappear, and how Great Uncle Ford has barely left his lab in three days.

The way that now it's not just Dipper startling his twin awake in the middle of the night with choked-off screams.

"We're not leaving all of it behind."

Mabel sniffs against his shoulder, then lifts her head. "Is… Are we gonna be okay?"

Dipper looks over at her, feeling old and tired but also… lighter than he thought he would. "Yeah. I think, eventually, we will be."

She gives him a watery little smile. "Good." Then she buries her head in his pillow, breathes deeply twice, and is asleep. Just like that.

Dipper follows not long after.

He doesn't dream.