AN: So, it's been a while. Yeah. Sorry about that, but I did warn you ;) . Seriously though, I am sorry. I hope that the chapter makes up for it, though. I know you guys have been waiting, so without further ado, here you go!
Wendy kicked at a twig, cursing. She was stood in the woods with Soos and Stan, waiting for Robbie, who was now ten minutes late. This was not the way that she had envisioned her search for the twins going, and at that moment, she was positively fuming.
"I told you he wouldn't come!" She ground out after another moment. "He's a good for nothing loser who doesn't care about either of the twins. We've wasted another hour! Anything could've happened to them!"
Soos shrugged. "Come on, man. He's just late. I'm late for things all the time."
"No, Wendy's right." Stan replied. "If Robbie doesn't turn up in the next five minutes, we're leaving and he better not turn up after that at all. If he does, I'll do his head in."
Just as Wendy was about to respond, there was a rustling from behind her and the three friends froze, slowly turning to face whatever danger was coming their way.
"Robbie! You're late!" Wendy cried, seething with both anger and embarrassment when she realised how afraid she had been of the wannabe-goth.
Robbie shrugged. "I know. I'm sorry, but I had to avoid some people on the way here. They're looking for me, and if they find me, it won't end well." He lent back against a tree and sighed, rubbing his hand over his face in resignation.
What felt like two whole minutes, but was probably closer to fifteen seconds, passed before Stan spoke up, smoke practically coming out of his ears. "Alright, punk. You've dragged us here, obviously knowing something about the twins' disappearance, but all you've made us do is wait. Now speak up before I make you!"
"Okay, okay!" Robbie cried, his hand dropping to his side. "I'm sorry. Everything's just… hard. Really hard."
"Tough." Surprisingly, this came from Soos. "We've all had to do hard things, dude. But there are people that I care about, that we all care about, potentially in danger here. Either help us or don't, but either way, get on with it."
Robbie nodded. "Yeah. Sorry. Look, Lil' Gideon is out of prison. He came to me a couple of weeks ago and said that I could get revenge on Dipper if I wanted to, because he was pulling together some massive plan. I thought, brilliant, sounds like fun. I mean, the little git stole Wendy from me." Wendy snorted at this. "I thought it was going to be, like, throwing water balloons at him or maybe just roughing him up a little bit. But it's not."
"What is it? What's happening to him?" Wendy asked, concerned at the sudden remorse filling Robbie's voice.
"And what about Mabel?" Stan added. "She's gone missing too!"
"Well," Robbie continued, "Gideon's got this massive underground base thingy under the woods. He's got Dipper and Mabel in there, Dipper in a massive cave thing, and Mabel in a holding cell that overlooks it. There are a ton of people down there, all the people that have a reason to dislike the twins, and they're lining up to hurt Dipper. I think most of them have had their turn, but there's still the more violent ones left."
Robbie looked down in shock as a slender hand materialised around his neck. He looked back up to the angry red-head that it belonged to. "You helped them? You hurt Dipper?"
"No! No." Robbie cried, suddenly very fearful of what the lumberjack's daughter could do. "I mean, I hit him once or twice when I didn't know what was happening, but as soon as I realised how much pain he was in, I stopped."
"How much pain was he in?" Stan asked, his tough exterior fading at the prospect of one of his dear family members being in trouble.
Robbie swallowed nervously. "A lot. His back was covered in whip marks, and it looked like he had been cut in a couple of places as well. I heard him screaming as I left."
"What about Mabel?" This from Soos.
"I'm not sure. I think she's alright, I'm not sure though. I only know she's even there because I overheard Gideon talking with one of his cronies."
After a slight pause, it was evident that Robbie's storytelling was over. Wendy groaned. "Okay. So do you know how we can get to this underground hideout?"
Robbie nodded. "Um, yeah. It should be just here." He ran his hand over the bark of a nearby tree, evidently looking for something. When nothing appeared, he looked apprehensive. "Okay, so maybe this one?" Once again, running his hand over another tree, looking for whatever it was that would allow him entrance to Gideon's hideout. This tree had nothing, neither did the next, neither did the next.
By the time Robbie reached the fifth tree, there was a stream of curses flowing from his mouth. "I can't find it! I can't find it!" He finally called, slumping to the floor.
Wendy looked ready to hit the poor teen, when Soos came to his rescue. "Hey, it's okay, Robbie. There's only so many trees in the forest, right?"
Dipper looked up at the sound of the door to his cell opening. He closed his eyes, wishing for this all to be a horrible nightmare that he would wake up from soon, with Mabel by his side and Soos appearing with a hot chocolate for both of them.
Of course, this was just wishful thinking. He had barely had anything other than water since he arrived at this hellhole, and Soos didn't know where he was.
And there was the small fact that Mabel was dead.
Mabel is dead. It didn't feel right. For one Pine to be without the other just didn't make any sense. Mabel was the only reason that he was doing any of this, and without her, he may as well give up.
There was something nagging at his insides, though. He and Mabel had always been close, as close as siblings could get, and he was certain that if Mabel was in fact dead, he would have been able to feel it, somehow. The fact that there wasn't a bottomless pit opened up inside his gut rang alarm bells inside his head, and there was something deep inside him that was hoping it was all a lie.
Can't argue with the evidence, weird inside-y thingy, He told himself, remembering the picture of his sister. He shuddered at the thought of it; it had been gruesome, his other half full of stab wounds, there seeming to be more blood surrounding her than he had thought there was inside a human body. The pain she must have been through was beyond imagination, and Dipper knew, just knew, that somehow it was his fault. It was him that Gideon wanted to hurt, after all, wasn't it? Not Mabel.
"Mabel." He whispered, wishing he had more than a photo of her mangled body to hold on to. "I'm sorry."
He was brought out of his reverie by a harsh scoff. "Mourning the weak one, are we?" A boot landed square in Dipper's vision, the voice of the owner cruel. Dipper looked up to see a man that he didn't recognize, flanked by three others. Marcus and Samuel, as per usual, had taken up their positions as guard dogs at the door, supposedly there to stop Dipper escaping (as if that would happen), but probably just there because they were sadists who enjoyed seeing a young boy getting tortured.
"She wasn't weak." His voice was hoarse from disuse, but he was proud of how strong the words were.
"Really? She was crying out, begging for us not to hurt her. That sounds pretty weak to me." Dipper simply shook his head, all his energy spent from uttering his first sentence. The man scoffed again. "She even begged us to hurt you instead. Weak little bitch."
There was a rumble of laughter from the other men in the room, and Dipper hung his head in shame. She was right, he thought, it should have been me.
After seeing that his plaything wasn't going to respond, the man with the boot sniffed. "Tie him up." He said to his three followers. "We're going to have some fun."
Dipper was faintly aware of two sets of arms hauling him to his feet and another securing chains to his wrists, but he was numb to the effects. He felt emotionally dead, now that his twin sister was gone, and nothing that they could do to him was worse than the knowledge that he had let her down.
The man with the boot crouched in order to be looking eye-to-eye with Dipper, sneering out his words. "Do you remember me, little Pine Tree? My name's John. And you took down my electricity company, destroying my income." Dipper faintly remembered this; John had been exploiting a Fae settlement in the woods, using their powers to power a turbine and create electricity last year. "My wife left me," John continued, "And my kids now hate me. It's all down to you, you little bastard."
John signalled and one of his cronies came forward holding a metal box with two wires coming out of it. "But see, Fae electricity doesn't disappear as quickly as normal electricity, and we still have a little bit left." He laughed, a moronic giggle. "We're going to fry you, little boy. Fry you until you're nothing more than ashes."
The old Dipper would have questioned the sanity of that statement, perhaps pointing out that electrically frying something did not turn it to ashes. However, the broken young man that he now was simply accepted it, almost welcoming the idea of slowly burning from the inside out, a just punishment for what he had caused for his innocent sister.
The two wires were inserted into his skin, one on his left wrist and the other on his right ankle. With a sadistic grin, John flicked a switch on his metal box, almost jumping for joy as Dipper howled in agony, the electricity surging through him.
A few seconds elapsed before John signalled for the man to turn the electricity off. "Well?" He asked Dipper, hoping for some sarcastic reply, or maybe even a defiant 'Screw You'. Instead, he was faced with a broken fourteen-year-old boy, limply hanging from the ceiling.
He turned to his cronies, determined to get some kind of response out of his young prey.
"Turn it up."
Gideon smiled as his saw his latest employees leave Dipper's cell.
"Howdy, ya'll. How'd it go?"
John grinned. "Perfectly. He screamed till his face went blue. This stuff is potent, you know." He said, pointing to the box that his friend was holding.
Gideon nodded. "It sure seems so. You wouldn't happen to have any left over, would you? You know, just for when I get bored?"
John smiled ruefully. "Sorry, little man, but this stuff is expensive. Plus, this is nearly the last of the stuff we have, ever since your new playmate busted our business."
"Yes. He-" Gideon gestured to Dipper's cell, "Seems to have made a lot of enemies. All the more fun for me, though!"
John chuckled. "Ah well, we better be getting on our way. But if you ever have anyone else that you want to torture, you just let me know. This was fun."
Gideon nodded. "Will do. Bye-bye now." He stalked past the older men, seeing Marcus and Samuel leaving Dipper's cell.
Marcus approached Gideon first. "I think you've done it, boss. That picture of his twin finished him off. He's pretty much broken."
"No he's not." Gideon replied.
Samuel shot his colleague a look before turning back to his boss. "No, Marcus is right. He didn't fight at all in that session. He's done."
"No he's not!" Gideon repeated, his age showing in a childish temper tantrum. "I still have things to do to him, and until then, he's not properly broken. Just… bent." And with that he walked off, not willing to carry on talking to his workers.
Marcus and Samuel shared a look before returning to their jobs. This child was insane, and they both knew it, but that was what they had signed up for. It could only be expected.
Mabel shivered in her holding cell, despite the moderate temperature in her little room. Watching her brother get tortured endlessly was not good for her mental state, not in the slightest.
What had terrified her most about the session she had just witnessed was not the men hurting Dipper, or the electricity they were pumping through him, although that had been petrifying in its own right. No, it was the look of sheer defeat on her usually brave and defiant brother's face. She had never seen him so downcast, not even when Wendy had rejected him, or when they had to leave Gravity Falls after their first summer there.
Dipper was broken.
It was scary, as he was the one that she could always turn to for support. Now, he thought she was dead and the one time that he needed her help, she couldn't give it to him.
She had heard him apologising to her earlier on, and it had forced more and more tears still from her eyes. At first she had screamed and banged on the window of her cell, crying out that it wasn't his fault, that she was alive, dammit! But after a while she realised that he couldn't hear her, couldn't see her, and nothing she could do would convince him that he had nothing to be sorry for.
The way that he was carrying around the picture of her dead body was one of the more disturbing facts of his recent mental break. Whenever he stood up and moved, it was scrunched up into a tight ball in his fist, and whenever he stopped and stood or sat down, he just held it in front of him, staring at it like it might hold the answers to everything.
Of course, it didn't. And every time Dipper finished studying the photo, he seemed more and more downcast.
Right now, he was sat down against the wall of his cell, the photo clasped between his hands. His thumbs were slowly rubbing up and down the thin piece of paper, as if he was seeking comfort and support from it. Mabel felt a tear leak from her eye. This was so unfair to the both of them. All they had ever tried to do was help people who needed them, and this was the repayment that they were getting. Her poor brother.
A scrape just outside her door had Mabel on her feet in seconds. The door swung open and Gideon strutted in, closely followed by his two groupies, Marcus and Samuel. The two men sneered at her, whilst Gideon walked closer, close enough to reach out and take her hand. At this thought, Mabel clasped her hands firmly behind her back.
"Hello, my sweet. How are you today?" The little creep asked, his face lit up with joy.
"Shut up." Mabel murmured, starting resolutely at the ground.
"What was that? I'm sorry, you'll have to speak up." He said, grinning manically.
"I said shut up, you little sadist! You know how I am today! You're torturing my brother!"
"Now, now, sweetheart, you don't want to get to angry. Or will I have to hurt Dipper again?"
"What more could you possibly do?" Mabel cried. "You told him I was dead! He's broken inside! You're a monster. You're a monster and I wish none of this had ever happened!"
Gideon chuckled. "Aww, honey. Is there anything I could do to make this better?" He raised an eyebrow, his lips quirking up to the left.
"Let us go, you moron!"
"Well then, I'm not going to do that. Anything else?" A smile was playing on Gideon's lips, like he knew what Mabel was going to say and was looking forward to it.
And then she realised why. "Kill him." She whispered, barely audible. She knew that this was what Gideon had been hoping for, but she also knew that it was the only way to give her brother a release from his suffering.
"Speak up, darling."
"I said kill him!" Mabel practically yelled, her frustration boiling over. "You've already broken him inside! Finish the job!" She broke down in sobs, her hands covering her face. "Just let him go. Let him die. Please."
Gideon looked at his two cohorts, smiling wickedly. "Well, I definitely know what my next move is going to be. But I don't think you'll ever find out. Marcus, Samuel, grab her."
Mabel looked up in confusion. "What?"
She received no reply as she was hauled to her feet by the two muscular men, despite her protests.
Gideon smiled at her. "My next step is a secret. Maybe Dipper will tell you about it one day. You know, if he ever gets out of here."
Mabel blanched as she realised that she was being moved. "No. No! Don't take me away from my brother!" She struggled against the men holding her, but it was no use. They were too strong, and soon enough she was being dragged down a maze of corridors to another cell, this one windowless and a lot barer than her previous one. She was roughly thrown in, and before she even had the chance to cry out, the door had been slammed and locked, leaving her all alone.
"No." She murmured. "No, please no." Slowly her pleas increased in volume, her breath hitching with sobs. Whether Dipper was killed or not, she knew that she couldn't be there for him this time. The mere thought that this might be the last time she saw her brother alive was enough to drive her insane.
Still crying and pleading with the empty air, Mabel sunk to the ground, her fists clenching and unclenching as she tried to gain a purchase on her situation.
"No! Dipper, please!"
AN: And I think that's a good place to leave it. I tried to make it extra long for you guys to make up for the long wait. Sorry if there are any mistakes or anyone's really OOC, it's really late right now and I'm really tired, and I haven't read through it.
Also, just a quick note, if you PM me about this story and I don't reply, I am very sorry. Every single review and PM and follow and favourite means a lot to me, but sometimes I can feel a little bit overwhelmed when talking to people and messaging them and that has been happening recently, so I haven't been using PM for a while. Please, keep them coming and hopefully I will start replying again soon. But yeah, sorry about that.
So, I hope you enjoyed the chapter, and please leave your responses in the reviews!
Thanks,
Randomguest xxx