Normalcy still hadn't quite made its way back for Dipper, and his eyes betrayed that fact as he looked around the bedroom. A portion of new wood stuck out amongst all the old timber; this was where the wrecking ball had taken out some of the roof. An almost-circle of off-color planks and supports decorated the middle of their ceiling, while the rest still bore moldy spots and splinters of all sorts. Across from him, Mabel was just sliding into bed – had he not looked over, he wouldn't have known she was even in the room with him.

"I see you've completed your ninja training," he quipped, drawing a tiny snort from her lips. "Seriously, is something up? You've been kinda pensive today."

She replied in almost flawless deadpan, ruined only by the shadow of a smile. "Pensive? I didn't eat any chili today."

"That's not what-" The humor struck him and forced him to release a brief burst of laughter. Grinning wide, he sat down on his own bed and eyed her. "Dang it, Mabel. Stop messing with me. I'm trying to be a worried sibling."

A full smirk finally broke out, but she was hugging her knees tightly. "I knoooooooow. I'm cool, just wrangling with all the junk that happened last week. It's a lot, bro bro. I dunno if you've noticed."

"Sure, but it's over now. Gideon's in jail, and we'll never have to worry about him again." Dipper peered down at a cockroach that was skittering dangerously to his foot. Any time it drew too close, he'd tense up and display clenched teeth. "Go away, bug."

Mabel glanced over at the offending creature and issued a nondescript grunt. Just as fast, she was looking away from her brother. "That's not what I'm freakin' out about," she said, resting her right cheek on her knees.

"Then what's up?" She refused to answer him. He crossed his arms after a few moments and bored a hole in the back of her head with his stare. "Mabel, the last few times you gave me the silent treatment, you ended up with a lobster and a candy monster tried to eat us." He blinked as the last few words of his statement made her raise her head. "Aha. Now we're getting somewhere."

Mabel turned to him with the most unreadable expression he'd ever seen her wearing. "We almost died, Dipper."

"I think that's happened before," he pointed out, only to be stilled by a harsh look. "What? Hasn't it?"

She threw her hands into the air so hard, their momentum took her down into a lying position on the bed. "Not the same thing. I mean, it kinda is, but no, we've never fallen off a bridge before, and you've never been bleeding all over the place, and we've never looked at each other like 'welp, this is it'. If I didn't have my grappling hook, we'd be adorable smears on the ground, bro."

"Point taken." He rubbed at the back of his head and tried to drum up something reassuring to say. "But we didn't end up that way. So no need to dwell." An expectant smile faded into a frown as she turned away from him again. "Mabel..."

"It's nooooooot that easy!" she whined, hands on her head as she rolled back and forth.

Dipper stood up and approached, unable to idly stand by while his sister struggled with something he didn't yet understand. "Why? What's bothering you so much?"

"It makes me think, man." She snapped upright and gazed at him with a blank face. "I keep thinking about what might have happened, but then I'm like you. It didn't happen, and okay, cool. Fine. I got that. The problem is it makes me think about other stuff."

"Okay, like...?" His gesticulations were meant to urge her on, but only succeeded in drawing a low snicker. "Mabel, please. We can laugh at my shoulder noodles another time. I need to know what's eating at you."

"What's gonna happen next?" He didn't get it, and despite knowing he wouldn't it still annoyed her. She quite literally tumbled off the bed and onto the floor, rotating until she was face up. At that point she inhaled a comically massive breath.

Dipper blinked down at her, trying to figure out if he should offer her a hand up or not. "Uh?"

Nothing could prepare him for the diatribe that poured out of her mouth. "All this crazy stuff happens to us and at the time we're all just like, 'Whoa! That was totally insaneballs!' Then it just fades away and we're doing normal stuff and I'm being awesome and you're being a dork and it's that way until the next insaneballs thing happens to us." He sat down next to her, forcing her to pause for just a moment. "It's all gonna fade away. We're going home at the end of the summer and if mom and dad finds out what happened to us, we're never coming back. Then you know what's gonna happen? We will drown in normal."

Dipper had to interrupt her and debunk that claim. "Mabel, there's no such thing as normal, living with you." He jerked back with surprise as she sat up and pointed at him.

"I'ma get to that! Just give me a minute. What I'm sayin' is, normal is boring. It blends together and it eats time and before any of us know it we're gonna be teenagers. Official teenagers! Going to college!"

A headache was beginning to make itself felt; in an attempt to intercept it he began to massage his temples. "Which has what to do with us falling off a bridge?"

"I almost didn't catch you. I know I made it look pro easy with my skills, but I seriously almost didn't catch you." Lying down again, she curled up into a ball – but this time she continued to face him, which gave her full view of his seemingly annoyed pose. "I almost lost you. And – yeah, shut up, I'm taking the scenic route to my point, okay?"

"No kidding." A toothy smile smoothed things over, but for the sake of politeness he dropped his hands into his lap. "Keep going. Just trying to process all of it."

"Bleh. I guess..." The thought slammed into her heart with the tremendous force that only the inevitable can bring to bear. "I guess I just realized I'm gonna lose you anyway."

"Okay, no." A fetid brew of anxiety and revulsion bubbled up at her words, so fierce he couldn't help but stand up. "Why would you think that? Especially after, oh, I don't know, countless years of us saying to each other that that will never happen?"

"We can't beat time, Dip. And don't even say 'blargh college or whatever, all that's like totally six years away and that's foreeeeeeeever'. No. I stared death in the face twice last Friday. Once it was looking at me, the next time it was looking at you. It made me realize...there is no such thing as forever."

A stunned Dipper sank back down to the floor. "Wow. That's deep."

"And it hurts, 'cause..." Trailing off, she curled into an even tighter ball and suddenly refused to make eye contact. "You're gonna laugh at me. This is so sappy."

"No I won't." And it was the honest truth; he had been completely disarmed by Mabel's words and only wanted to find some way to make her feel better. "I swear."

"Better not, otherwise you'd best get ready to eat my fist." Her threat allowed both of them to decompress for just a moment. She even snickered again, but her laugh died quickly. Awkwardly, she cleared her throat. "Think about it. Ever since me and you were tiny little pre-babies, we've always been with each other."

He considered that image for a moment or two and nodded. "Yeah. We have."

Mabel deflated and uncurled at the same time, once more choosing to lie on her back. "But it's not gonna stay that way. Life is gonna pull us apart."

Dipper wanted to rebuke her, but only found silence in his throat. Instead, he lay down on the floor, now knowing why she was in that position. It was a heavy concept, one which he was no more capable of holding back than she.

"This is the point where you activate your brain parts, start talking, and make me feel okay," she blurted out, desperate to swat away the dense quiet.

It was too late for him to even try. His mind was running thousands of days into their prospective future, up to the point where he got accepted to an Ivy League school and she ended up enrolling at California for some major that would utilize her boundless creativity. A bitterly sad goodbye played out before his eyes; in short order he had to hide them lest Mabel see him start to cry. "I don't really know what to say."

He failed; she knew he was weeping instantly by the tension in his shoulders. She sat up and started to shake him. "What the heck? I'm the one that's been ready to cry for days and boom, you beat me to it in like ten minutes?"

"I think you might be right. If we can't get into the same college, we'll be miles apart. And even if we do, what happens after college?" There was a wispy stress leaking into his voice which grew more apparent with every word. The images were shooting fuel directly into the afterburner of his anxiety. Always the pessimist, he leaped right to the ultimate end. "Oh man, oh man. And guys die sooner than girls! I really am gonna le—agh!" He crinkled up in pain as something hard slammed into his stomach. Moving his arm, he saw Mabel leaned over him and sneering with anger. Her left hand was balled up into a fist. "Why did you-"

Tears were clinging to her eyes, but had somehow managed not to fall. "Don't you dare. It's bad enough that I keep thinking it, but hearing it from you is about a gazillion times worse."

Struggling, Dipper got upright again, but the cascading worry had shut off his verbose nature. "Sorry." That was all he could utter before slumping over in something that looked suspiciously like defeat.

Seeing this, Mabel slugged him in the arm. "Dang it, Dipper! You've always got answers! Give me some!"

"Not always." He looked directly into his lap and sighed.

His tone was exactly the same as the one she'd heard after Gideon took 3 from him. It made her deeply upset. "Dipper Pines! You're giving me a really awful case of the sads here! Stop!"

"But you're right. It all just seems so...inevitable." He made a move to hide his face in his hands, but something stopped him. "Is this how you were feeling the past two days? How in the heck did you hide it all?"

"Because greatness," she droned hollowly in reply while doubling over. Both had been emptied of words, and he was still sniffling, but try as she might Mabel couldn't make herself cry along with him. She was too exhausted.

However, unlike her slowly simmering mental stew, Dipper's worry burned itself out faster. While they languished against fate – or their view of it – for ten minutes in wallowing misery, his anxiety reached an end and faded away. It was then that he noticed both of them were struggling against their fear, but in separate little worlds. Scowling, he decided to hearken back to Mabel's own words to begin digging them out. "Hey."

Mabel looked over at him with red eyes and a stuffy nose, through which she noisily tried to suck air. "Blargh. What."

He stood up and offered her a hand to do the same. "You're right. We've been together since before we were born. That means we've got something that can't be broken by distance or time or anything else."

"What?" she said, taking his grip and hefting herself to her feet. "Whatchu talkin' 'bout?"

"Come on, Mabel. We almost always know when one of us is upset. We can find each other in a house – any house – without anyone else giving us help." She chuckled, so he paused to let her finish. "You remember that time at Aunt Ethel's." After drying his eyes with the back of his arm, he started to grin. "We finish-

"-each other's sentences!" she chirped, visibly beginning to perk up. "We have that thing!" In an instant, though, her face went blank. "What is it again?"

Dipper facepalmed and let loose a sigh dripping with mock exasperation. "Bond, Mabel. We have a bond."

"Yeah!" She snapped her fingers and pointed. "That!" A thought occurred to both of them at about the same time, and in a second they were hugging. "Hey, I was gonna do that."

Dipper patted her gently on the back. "And apparently we can read each other's minds. Who cares if we end up on different coasts, we're telepaths."

His wit made her snort, but the idea was still prickly. "I'd still rather we didn't."

"We're going to have lives, Mabel. We might be twins, but we're totally different people. I mean, we didn't even come from the same egg." Out of the blue, her fist slammed into his shoulder blades. "Agh! Stop hitting me!"

"You had to use the freaking book to make your point, didn't you." Although her words were hissed, she displayed a broad smile. "You're right, as usual. But dang, it's scary to think about."

Dipper pulled away, rubbing at his shoulder and nodding. "Sure is. But it's easier to get your arms around if you have four instead of just two."

She stared at him blankly, not quite sure of his meaning at first. When it struck, she burst out laughing. "You utter and complete dork. And I thought what I said earlier was sappy."

"Wait, it gets worse. We may not be around each other physically, but we will never be alooooooone," he said, going through an entire set of dramatic poses that made Mabel blue in the face with laughter.

"Oh my sweet jambalaya, you're like the lead dork in the dorkiest rom-com ever made." Gasping for air, she sat on the edge of her bed. "I guess I get what you're saying, though."

He sat down with her. "And besides, they've invented this thing called a smartphone. Seeing my ugly mug is just a few swipes of your thumb and several horribly overpriced monthly minutes away." She giggled again, provoking another smile. "And don't forget Skype. Heck, by the time we're thirty, someone will have invented teleportation technology. I'd be all up in your living room at totally random times!"

"Oh my gosh stop!" she wheezed, stomach and chest hurting from the peals of laughter. "Dude! What if I ended up turning into a fly like that movie, or stuck in a wall?"

He attained a haughty air and posed again, one hand on his chest and nose upturned in what he assumed was a dignified manner. "It'll be fine. I'm sure I'll have enough doctorate degrees by then to fix you."

"You!" Mabel brought Dipper down a few pegs with rapid fire pokes to the ribs. Before he could withdraw too far, she clamped on to him again. "I feel kinda dumb for worrying."

He couldn't see anything for her mousy hair, and so hugged her back if only to keep himself from falling off the end of her bed. "Don't. Just don't let yourself worry alone. That's why I'm here."

"Thanks, bro bro. You're a nerd, but thanks."

"Better than dork," he chuckled. Mabel finally let him go, allowing him to start back toward his own bed. "It's like I'm a-"

"Super dork?" She grinned enormously at his surprised glance. "Don't look so shocked. You should be used to this by now." Standing up, she began to wag her finger in time to a beat only she could hear. "'Cause we're...one...two...three..."

He no idea what she was doing as he heard her say one, but at two he began to get the drift. By the time three came, he was already in position and prepared. The next word they said together, dancing and waving their hands as if begging for candy on the mother of all Summerweens.

"Twiiiiiiiiiiiins!"