Dimension ?, Day ?, Year ?

"Today, I am grateful for the sun in the sky."

"This sun can burn the flesh off your bones."

"I am grateful for the sun in the sky."

Ford chuckled softly at his niece, who was perched on a rock, cross-legged and illuminated by the smothered embers of their campfire. Stars, completely different from the arrangement he grew up with, checkered the sky and their light filtered through the hard glass-like material that created the cave they were camped in. The light warped until there were millions of stars that weren't in the sky dotting the inside of the cave.

"I am grateful for the sun in the sky," Ford said, repeating his niece with amusement.

She grinned, her braces-less teeth glinting with the filtered light of stars. "I am grateful for the moose thing we ate."

"If we're drawing comparisons, I think it was closer to an elk…"

"I am grateful for the elk thing we ate."

Ford smiled. "I am grateful for the elk thing we ate." The meat they didn't eat dried nicely in the burning sunlight. It would last them two more days if they didn't find anything else. He was grateful for that.

Mabel waved her arms at her sides, gesturing to the world. Her loose sweater sleeve rode up and flashed the edge of the tattoo on her bicep. "I am grateful for the beautiful view outside!"

Ford glanced at the mouth of their cave. In the starlight, he could see the silhouette of the vast alien world they were in, with massive trees the size of skyscrapers and leaves the size of buses. Their cave sat on a cliff that looked down at this forest, and though they couldn't see it anymore, colors beyond comprehension speckled the surfaces of the leaves and the iridescent insects that lounged on them.

"I am grateful for the beautiful view outside," Ford said.

"And!" Mabel stood up from her rock with a yawn, walking around the campfire and flopping unceremoniously next to Ford. "I am grateful for my Grunkle Ford!"

She always ended her little gratitude sessions like that. Ford pet her hair, slowly working his fingers through the knots and tangles leftover from taking down her braids. He would redo them in the morning. She knew how to do it herself, but she liked it when he did it for her. "I am grateful for my grandniece, Mabel," he said quietly, and that was the end of their evening ritual.

Mabel had been the one to start it when they first found each other. It was a self-soothing mechanism, something to do to cope with the reality of their situation when Ford was utterly useless at tending to a child's emotional well-being, and she insisted he join her. He maintained that he did it because it helped her, but if he were being completely honest, he felt significantly calmer in general after they started doing it regularly.

He worked through most of her tangles with his fingers. She giggled, murmuring, "It's a whole finger more tickly." He shook his head, smiling despite himself, and patted her back. He didn't deserve her.

"Alright, Mabel. Time to sleep. I'll keep first watch."

One yawn, then a nod from the girl told him she was ready to sleep. She didn't move from her spot next to him before her breathing evened out. She had gotten significantly better at falling asleep in uncomfortable places.

He turned his attention to the mouth of their cave. He didn't expect anything to come for them, since it seemed the first half of this world's 'nighttime' was used to scour the forests for carrion and beasts that died from exposure during the day. The leaves would provide protection from the sun, but there were always a few unlucky animals that didn't move when the wind blew or trusted a cloud a little too much. Predators would be in the forest, hunting scavengers, and Ford and Mabel would be able to sleep.

This gave them fourteen hours before the second half of the night came, and certain beasts would come to the glass caves. By then, they should already be moving towards their only break in the vast expanse of forest, a glimmering purple ocean just off the horizon.

Ford's cheap detector, always tucked in his belt, indicated there was a lot of energy in the direction of that ocean. Lots of energy usually meant there was the chance of a portal forming, and while this place was pretty breathtaking, he didn't want to stay there for long.

He could study the area on their way. He used to stay in places like these for extended periods of time so he could research, but he had a child to look after now. She was a child more than capable of taking care of herself at this point, but he still didn't want to put her in extra danger. The risk of death or injury was too great, and the risk of Bill's agents reaching them across space were greater.

God help him, but his niece was more important than anything now.

Bill's Realm, July 24, 2012

One day, portals that had been closed opened and he got a sparkly preteen thrown at him.

Ford could feel the electricity tingling in his skin for days, getting stronger and stronger as time went on, making his hair stand on end and his teeth grind. It felt like the air around a forming portal, smelling of sulfur and ozone, but it followed him no matter where he went, and he'd never heard of a moving portal.

When a portal opened up under his feet in the middle of the night and dragged him in, he realized that was exactly what it was: a moving portal. He was the weak spot in the dimension.

And he was dragged straight into Bill Cipher's realm. It was a horrible place, just beyond the edge of human comprehension that every moment he spent there threatened to tear his mind apart. Two dimensional, up is down, left is right, trees are made of bones and the flying eyes are always watching. The portal had dragged him right to the spot that he had entered thirty years ago from his own world. A new portal was opening. This one would lead to Earth.

Bill and his agents would find him. They would feel the portal. They couldn't be allowed into Earth. He loaded his gun and waited for them, praying for the portal to abruptly short out and hoping it wouldn't at the same time.

Faceless beasts were coming, slobbering and gnashing without mouths or teeth, every one of their sharp lines curling away from each other and never touching at the corners, and he shot at them, shooting and shooting as some of them died and some of them wobbled like jelly and some of them were never there in the first place.

The portal sparked. Its heat frosted him. It was getting close to opening. It coughed and sputtered lightning, and the beasts lashed at him with wild sharps and bashes, peeling his mind back further and further as his too-human brain tried to force sense into senseless forms and show him what wasn't there.

Screams zapped from the portal like colors, and he could taste the sound of children's fear.

"Dipper!" English, shuddering out and in like a diseased lung, the word itself throwing images into the sky-ground of pine forests, filling his nose that wasn't there anymore with pine needles and and making the skin of the beasts ripple and yowl.

Sparks and color streaked from the portal.

"Mab—" The portal exploded, collapsed, but not before a burst of glitter flew into the world. Both Ford and the beasts reeled back, the colors too vivid and the light too bright, smelling like optimism and want, it was bleeding over the world and infecting it with stars. It hurt Ford's mind, it made him want to scratch his eyes out all the way to the optical nerve, and if it hurt him that much then it must be agony for the beasts.

"Where am I? Where am I?" The glimmering star's presence was bursting out with no restraint, its fear and confusion piercing Ford's tongue until his mouth filled with blood, and it wouldn't be long before Bill felt the star's presence.

The portal was gone, he was relieved without being relieved, and while the beasts thrashed he dared to touch the star, its brilliance cutting and threatening to burn through his skin and clothes, but he held it tightly and ran.

A star's cry of confusion painted the ground-sky, peppering the breathing landscape with flashing lights and streaks of color, and he feared it would leave so much of itself spread across the landscape that there would be nothing to run away with.

The world shook as Ford pawed at his energy reader, but he could see its buzzing without taking it from his belt. A great gold eye like the sun opened in the sky ground. "Hey! Long time, no see!"

"Is that Bill?" The star said, its light and heat and color flaring as scraps of form and splinters of landscape wobbled around them. The star had so much light he thought he would burn by touching it. "Leave us alone, you pointy demon!"

Edges burst from the light and pierced the all-knowing eye, and the world trembled with the Cipher's scream. Ford held the star tightly even as its edges cut and burned him and he decided he liked it even if it hurt.

Beasts were coming, galloping, stained in sparkle and light, but Ford knew this world even if no one could know it. The collapse of the portal to Earth would trigger the opening of another portal, and the world tasted like ozone as he ducked between bone trees and brittle plants made of nails. The star left a trail of light where they walked, so he couldn't hope to lose the beasts.

The air crackled. Another portal was opening.

He had no time to check if it was safe. He tucked the star against his chest, letting it burn and burrow all the way to his beating heart, and jumped into another world.

A star became one with him, and there was a rush of brilliant light that clutched his heart and threatened to stop it completely, but he couldn't care because the universe was laid out before him and the light was beautiful.

The universe abruptly tore them apart and spat them into another dimension, trembling and cold on a cloud of fiberglass insulation.

It was like all his organs had been torn out and put back wrong. He wanted the light back, wanted to see more of what it could show him, but his heart was back in the dark.

Sense filtered back into the world. Physics sense, body sense, third dimension sense. He wasn't burned and choked by light, but his palms were burnt and his clothes smoked. Ford wasn't lying next to a star bleeding light everywhere: he was sitting next to a little girl, a human girl, trying to sit up even though her long hair has gotten tangled in fiberglass. Immediately, he could see she wasn't meant for interdimensional travel—she had nothing on her but a headband and a sweater.

They were sitting on a giant pink cloud puffed up like cotton candy, but the whole thing was made of fiberglass. Ford remembered this world. The sky was in a seemingly perpetual sunset with bright reds and pinks, and the clouds that floated around them looked like they were cut from a child's dream. But the clouds would cause terrible rashes, the smell of fresh sawdust lingered on everything somehow, and there was absolutely nothing here except clouds, the void below, and skin problems waiting to happen.

"Don't move." The scarf over his mouth muffled his voice, but she seemed to understand well enough because she stopped squirming. She stared at him suspiciously, and he could hardly blame her. Outside of Bill's dimension, where it was hard to keep track of form, he would look frightening to an average human, all in black with goggles and protective gear. "You're not dressed for this world. It will be faster if I just carry you. We need to get away as fast as possible."

The girl—and her humanity, complete with baby fat and chapped lips and smudged nail polish, seemed so underwhelming after witnessing the burn and edges of her presence in Bill's world—grinned at him, flashing a mouth full of metal. "Well, I'm never saying no to a piggy back ride."

It only took him a moment to shift his bags and kneel down for her to climb onto his back. Already, he could see her hands and arms becoming red with rash when she hooked them on his shoulders.

"We're running from Bill, right?" she asked as he started walking. They had already wasted enough time; Bill's agents would be coming through the portal as soon as they could.

"Exactly." A ball of dread hardened in his stomach to hear her say the name. The girl hid her face in his hair as they reached the end of the fiberglass cloud. They were so high in the sky that they could look over the edge and see stars, but he knew from experience there was nothing worth finding downward. Nonetheless, the stars hung there, too dim for glory but too bright to be ignored. The world was trapped in twilight.

There were more clouds to walk on, but it would take jumping. "How do you know him?"

"Long story," the girl mumbled into the back of his neck. Familiar smells clung to her sweater. Earth grass, dirt, maple syrup, gasoline, something else that begged for his attention but he couldn't name it. His eyes stung from decades-old nostalgia. "He possessed my brother once. I got him out with tickles."

"Tickling works? I should remember that." It would be a little pathetic if he went through all the trouble of putting a metal plate in his head and it turned out tickles were all he needed to get rid of Cipher.

At the edge of the fiberglass cloud, Ford judged the distance to the next one carefully in his head. "Hold tightly."

"I'm not gonna like this." She tensed up, but she was holding onto him so he took the leap.

The girl squeaked in his ear, shaking against his back as the void of stars stretched under them, but then he hit the glass on the other side, keeping his pace at a trot. "You don't have to be afraid. I've done this before."

"I trust you," she said earnestly, so earnestly that it caught him off guard. How could she witness Cipher's influence and ever trust anyone so easily again? "I just don't like heights. Also a long story about video games coming to life and trying to get my grunkle over his fear of heights."

"You have a lot of long stories. I'd love to hear them once we're safe." She was from Gravity Falls. She had to be. That was where his portal was, after all. (Why was it still around for a child to play with? Why hadn't Stan or Fiddleford dismantled it?)

She nodded against his neck, and he turned his focus on jumping from cloud to cloud and getting as far away from the portal to Bill's realm as possible. The wind in this world was deceptively gentle. Even the slightest breeze moved the clouds into new pathways. Excellent for losing tails, but difficult if one is trying to find their way.

Luckily, portals popped up in this world like kettle corn, blinking in and out as electrical surges traveled through the clouds. A brilliant blue portal flickered into existence on one of their clouds, and as the girl on his back gasped softly at the images came into view—dark water, full of bobbing lights with flickers of wide eyes illuminated in the dark—Ford reached into his pocket and took out a pebble, throwing it into the portal and straining his ears.

After a moment, he heard the clack clack clack of the stone skidding across a solid surface.

"Brace yourself," he said before he dove into the portal.

This dimension shift was less violent than the last. There was no sense of fatal, burning unity, just of closeness. Their physical forms were inconsequential to their presences, which blurred together until he wasn't sure who he was anymore. Was this how dimension jumping felt with a partner? He'd never tried it before.

The girl was light and color all around him, and she could hear her laugh in his head. This feels funny.

Light and color bled everywhere, but he didn't dare reach for it, not knowing what would happen if he did.

They slammed against a solid surface and the light was snatched away again, all wrapped up in the little girl next to him. All light was gone, in fact, except for the bobbing glows all around them.

"Are you okay?" the girl asked, her voice echoing in the dark. She rolled off his back when he tapped her foot, and he sat up to dig through his pockets.

"Fine. We just need…" He pulled a glowstick from his pocket and snapped it. The light shined and flickered like a campfire, showing them the world.

They were in a small bubble on the stone ground that seemed to be connected to many tunnels leading to more small bubbles. Above, there was no sign of the surface, if there even was any—just inky blackness and swimming bright spots. He couldn't see anything keeping the water from filling the bubbles up, but they stayed perfectly formed and full of breathable air. In the glowstick's light, he could see the creatures with illuminated bobs—and their massive teeth before they quickly swam away.

"Where are we?" the girl asked.

"Somewhere far enough away from Bill that we've given ourselves room to breathe." Ford sat down on the rocky floor, dropping the glowstick between them. The girl was sitting with her legs splayed, her hands and arms and back of her neck red and swollen as she started to scratch. "Don't touch the rash."

She pouted at him. "It's so itchy, though!"

"This will take care of it." He pawed through his bag before pulling out a jar of ointment. "A little goes a long way. Put some wherever you're red."

"Oooh. Thanks." She flashed him another metal smile before opening up the jar and dabbing ointment on. Ford took some for himself to smooth over the burns on his palms left from grabbing the girl in Bill's world (or should he call what he had held a shooting star?).

The silence didn't last long. "Sooooo… what's your name?" the girl said, squinting at him.

"Oh. Right." Ford cleared his throat, suddenly feeling warm under all his gear. "Sorry. I haven't spoken to another human in…" How long? He couldn't count human years anymore so far from home. "A really long time. You can call me Ford."

"Nice to meet you." Another smile. "I'm Mabel." She dabbed some of the ointment on her jaw, and he only just noticed the redness there too. How did the fiberglass get there? "Now that we got that out of the way…" she flung her arms out, "what the heck was all that?" She paused a beat and her hands dropped. "And do you mind checking if my back is rashy too? It's feeling itchy."

"That was dimension jumping. I don't know how you got to Bill's realm, but you're lucky that the force of our dimension pulled me to the portal's location, or something terrible could have happened." He held up a finger and twirled it to get her to turn around, but she didn't. Her smile disappeared, her eyes narrowing in a squint as one hand went to her greased chin.

"You have six fingers."

Ford stared at her for a moment.

"Yes. I do."

She kept squinting at him. "My twin brother has been looking for someone with six fingers." Her squinting was interrupted by a little laugh. "This isn't a Princess Bride reference."

"What's Princess Bride?"

She ignored him and pressed her hand against his, her hand tiny and soft in comparison. He winced, but he didn't pull away and neither did she. He hadn't touched another human's hand since before he was pushed into another world. It felt wrong and weird, but he didn't want to stop it.

"Yep, definitely six fingers," she said with a tone of profundity that rattled a dry chuckle from his chest.

"I'm glad you can count." He reached up with his free hand and pulled off his goggles and scarf, letting them fall on the ground and giving his neck and face a nice reprieve from the heat. "I doubt I'm the one your brother is looking for. I haven't been to our world for—"

One look at his face from the girl. Suddenly, she was reeling back, snatching her hand away from his. His fingers curled over the absence of her palm and she was crawling away, her smile gone, her eyes sharp. "Who are you?"

"I…" He sputtered, pulling his hand away from empty air. "I just told you. I'm Ford."

"That's not true! You have my grunkle's face!" She pulled out a grappling hook (where had she been keeping that?) and pointed it at him, stumbling to her feet. "Are you a shapeshifter? Because I already dealt with one and I can deal with another!"

"Now, now, just calm down…" Ford held up his hands. "There's no need for that. Just think. If I were a shapeshifter, why would I give myself six fingers and draw attention rather than just having five fingers like everyone else?"

The grappling hook was still aimed at his face, but the edge in her gaze began to dull a little. "Why do you look like my Grunkle Stan?"

Stan.

The name made all his muscles lock up like he was attached to strings. The girl jerked her grappling hook and he immediately clenched and unclenched his hands, trying to work the tension out of his body. "How do you know Stanley Pines?"

Wrinkles appeared on her nose. "His name isn't Stanley. It's Stanford." She furrowed her brow. "At least I think it is."

"You're kidding." Stanford wanted very much to punch something. Preferably his useless brother. He had a sinking suspicion he knew exactly how a defenseless child ended up in his portal. He tried to keep his anger from his face, but the girl was getting more tense, so he wasn't doing too good of a job. "He took my name. Why am I surprised?"

The girl was staring at him. Her grappling hook shook in her hands. Her skin was still red and swollen from fiberglass. He was forced back decades ago, when he was also scared in a new dimension for the first time. He had been a grown man with some context for what he was experiencing, but she was a girl who hadn't even hit adolescence yet.

Grunkle. She had called Stanley her 'grunkle.'

He forced his shoulders to loosen and his brow to smooth out. When he spoke, he made himself speak softly. "What does 'grunkle' mean?"

Her hands shook on the grip of the grappling hook. He could only see the shadows of her fingers in the glowstick's light. "Great uncle. He's my grandpa Shermy's brother."

Ford tried to swallow, but his mouth was suddenly too dry. A niece. He had a grandniece, and she was colorful and brave and stabbed Bill in the eye and points grappling guns at strange men she doesn't trust. She was perfect, in short.

And she had a brother! He had a grandnephew too! For the first time in years, he didn't think of all the places on Earth he missed—he thought about the people and the lives that went on without him instead.

"Stanley Pines is my twin brother. I'm Stanford." This time, he didn't need force his voice to be soft. Maybe it was a trick of the light, but he thought he could maybe see the resemblance now. She had the same thick brown hair and wide dark eyes as all the other Pines. "That means I'm your great uncle too."

She was slowly lowering the grappling hook. He smiled at her, and it hurt his cheeks, but it was a good hurt.

"Would you like to start over?" Ford held out one hand to her. "Greetings. I'm Stanford Pines."

Mabel hesitated a moment longer, eyeing the hand, but with trust that Ford only had when he was her age, she let the grappling hook fall limp at her side before she took his hand. His hand was big enough for his fingers to wrap hers up completely. "I'm Mabel Pines, and I have a new grunkle. One I've never heard of before. Why is that?"

He patted the ground, inviting her to sit next to him, which she did without question. The company of someone else, of his own niece no less, excited him more than he really wanted to acknowledge. He wanted to push aside her questions and just ask all of his own, ask her about her and her brother, their lives, their parents, and their grandfather. (And Stan? No, he pushed that thought aside.) He wanted to learn all about the things he missed and the people far away who were still his family, even if they had no idea who he was.

But there would be time for that. Right now, there were more immediate concerns. "My brother, Stanley, was estranged from the family before Shermy was old enough to remember him. We didn't talk about him after that, so it makes sense he wouldn't talk to his children or grandchildren about him either. Stanley must have stolen my identity when I went through the portal." Which pissed him off to no end, but he did his best to keep a lid on that. What was important was that he now had the privilege to talk to his niece.

Her face fell as she pulled at her shirt. "Why was Grunkle Stan estranged? What could he do that you wouldn't talk to him anymore?"

That story stung, but not as much as it used to. After his hair became gray and he had spent a few decades hopping through worlds, it seemed foolish to hold grudges about what college he could have gone to. A degree from West Coast wouldn't do much more for him in Bill's realm than a degree from Backupsmore did. No, what he really held a grudge for was pushing him through a portal, but that wasn't something he needed to focus on at the moment.

"It's a long story." Ford gave Mabel a gentle nudge on the shoulder when she started to pout. "I'm more interested to hear how you got here. It's not exactly as easy as buying a bus ticket."

"Ugh." She groaned and flopped against Ford's side. He flinched, and suddenly he wasn't sure what to do with his hands. Should he keep them on the ground or put one on her shoulder or her head or what? It had been a while since he'd dealt with humans in general, and even longer since he'd dealt with children. Ignoring his awkwardness, she ploughed forward. "It was an accident. Stan got arrested, and my brother and I found the portal in his basement, and we were going to turn it off because it could destroy the world, but then Grunkle Stan came in and said he needed it on, then everyone was floating and I was the only one who could reach the button anymore. My brother wanted me to shut the portal down, but Grunkle Stan was telling me not to, and I decided to trust Grunkle Stan, but then Dipper—that's my twin—went to close the portal himself, but he accidentally knocked me when he grabbed at the button, and then I fell in. And he couldn't stop it from closing."

She looked up at him, her persistent spirit finally wilting in their dimly lit bubble under an ocean. "How long do you think it will take them to open it again?"

Any joy he felt at getting to meet her fell like lead in his gut. He was getting to finally see a tiny part of his family, but now they were both stuck. The reality of their situation took the moment to punch him in the face.

How was he going to tell her that she was never going back?

And… shit, what was he going to do with her?

"Mabel…" She must have heard the truth in his voice. She started to shake her head, but he forced himself to continue anyway. "Opening that portal enough to bring us back to Earth threatens our whole universe. It would tear a hole in our reality that Bill could use to enter and take over. That kind of power, even if you didn't let the portal open all the way, would have destroyed most of the portal's machinery."

The glowstick and bobbing lights in the water reflected the glassiness coming to her eyes. Ford's heart ached. He remembered the same feelings she was going through. "We're not going back home."

"No." Her voice trembled. She twisted her hands in her sweater. "Dipper and Grunkle Stan will figure something out. Grunkle Stan got the portal working once! I bet he could do it again!"

Fire crackled in Ford's gut in a way only Stanley Pines could inspire. "He shouldn't have opened it this time!" The girl winced at his snapping, but he couldn't stop himself, all the day's fuming at his brother spilling out. "I warned him. I wrote it all in my journals—" that caused another wince and owlish blinks, but not of fear, not that he was paying attention "—and told him that it needed to be dismantled, but he couldn't listen, could he? And now look what he's done."

He'd damned not one, but two family members to hopping dimensions for the rest of their lives. If Stanley were there, Stanford would give him some sarcastic applause and a punch in the jaw. What, his twin wasn't enough, so he had to toss in their niece? Maybe he thought Ford would like some company after a few decades. Hell, with a track record like this, maybe Stan will open up the portal again just to throw in their grandnephew for free. The whole Pines family could get dumped in Bill's realm and experience the joy of complete banishment from home.

"Stanley was a fool to toy with the portal, and we can only hope for the world's sake that he's learned his lesson. What possessed him to do it this time, I'll never know."

"You're here, aren't you?"

He looked down at his niece and immediately felt guilty. Her eyes were starting to overflow. His fingers twitched on the ground, but he didn't know what to do with them. "What do you mean?"

"You're here. You're his twin, but you're trapped here." She moved to wipe her eyes with the reddened heel of her hand, but he grabbed her wrist just before she could. The last thing either of them needed was for her to get fiberglass in her eye. Instead, he wiped the tears away with his own thumb, and that seemed to soothe her. "He said that everything he worked for was for the family. He wanted to save you." She leaned her head against his side again, her voice getting quieter. "If Dipper was the one who went into the portal, I'd do anything to save him too."

Her tears dampened his anger more than her words, but he would be lying if he said the words had no effect. There once was a time when the idea of Stanley foregoing all sense to help him would have been obvious. Stanley was reckless at the best of times, but especially for the people he cared about. Now that the girl had said it, it seemed obvious again. Why else would Stanley bother with the portal? He wasn't interested in the science behind it, and it would probably be worth more as scrap without Stanford or Fiddleford around to operate it. The only reason he'd slog through the copious amounts of reading and steps to even turn it on would be to undo his past mistakes.

Ford wondered when that had stopped being obvious to him.

"I know that Dipper won't give up on me, and I know that Grunkle Stan won't give up on either of us. I know we'll go home."

Even if his heart wanted it, his brain prayed that she was wrong. He didn't say so, though. He just sighed softly. "Do you still want me to look at your back?"

"Oh, right." She turned around and pulled the back of her sweater and shirt up, and when he found a large rash spread across her spine, he started to dab ointment on it.

He wanted to ask questions, but his tongue was too heavy. Instead of talking, he was thinking. Maybe Stanley's intentions were pure, and maybe it wasn't completely his fault that their niece was sent into the portal, but that didn't change the fact that Mabel was here now and Ford had no idea what to do. He barely survived day to day, and he was a grown man. He didn't know if he could protect her from all the things he had to face.

But protecting her was his only option. Even if she weren't his niece, he wouldn't be able to live with himself if he just ditched a little girl to die. Even the more hospitable worlds out there wouldn't be safe for long; Bill had to be looking for them both now.

"Sooo… you're the author of the journals?" Mabel said, breaking his spiraling train of thought.

"You've read my journals?" He hadn't thought about the three journals he left behind in a long time. For some reason, despite the dangers between all those pages, he liked the idea of a niece or nephew of his finding them if anyone had to. Maybe it was just a way he could impart some of his legacy to the next generation of Pines, even if they didn't remember him.

"Yeah, Dipper found number three in the woods, and we had all these crazy adventures because he really wanted to find out who wrote them." She pulled a lock of hair over her shoulder and started running her fingers through it as he worked on her back. "He'll be really happy to meet you. He's a big nerd."

Ford bit his tongue before he could say I wish I could meet him. Not only was it wrong—or it should be, it really should be, because he knew what would have to happen for him to meet his grandnephew—but it would do nothing more than upset her. He patted her shoulder to let her know he was done fixing her back and started digging through his bag for food. She let her shirt drop back to her hips, but she pulled her sweater off completely.

"Tell me about you both. I'm sorry I couldn't be a bigger part of your lives until now, but…" He gestured to the bobbing lights and glimmers of teeth swimming above them before pulling out a bag of alien seeds.

"Understandable." Mabel immediately started popping seeds in her mouth. It took her a moment (and minor choking) to realize she was supposed to de-shell them first. "Weeeeell… Dipper and I are from California."

Ford listened closely as she talked about their lives. Piedmont, California, not too far from a lake. It didn't sound like Stanley visited them much, but he was a part of their lives. Stanford smothered a flash of jealousy. Dipper was bright with academics and Mabel was vibrant in art and her social life. They were good kids, smart kids, and he listened about their lives until Mabel began to wind down and yawn.

"You should sleep. It's been a long day." He pulled a soft ball from his bag and tossed it at her, which she caught easily between her fingers. "Eat that. It cleans your teeth and supplements for the nutrients the seeds won't give you."

As he put the seeds away in his bag, Mabel popped the ball in her mouth. He heard it burst and she immediately gagged. "It also tastes disgusting," Ford said before quickly swallowing one of his own.

"Ewwww it tastes like moldy sticks," she said, smacking her mouth as her eyes watered.

"That's a very specific analogy."

Even in the dimming glowstick light, he could see her face flush. "…I didn't try eating sticks once."

He smiled before resting his arms on his knees. "Go to sleep."

"Are you sleeping too?"

Soft lights reflecting off the silhouettes of teeth bobbed all around their bubble of air. "I'm going to stay awake a little longer. I'll sleep soon enough." He wondered if perhaps he should set up a watch now that there were two of them, but he didn't have the heart to force her to stay awake while he slept. She was small and exhausted, and he'd survived by sleeping lightly so far.

All he got from her was a squint. "…Okay." She bunched her sweater up as a pillow as she curled up on the ground. "Just remember that you should rest up for all the super cool adventures we'll have tomorrow! Dipper will be so jealous when I tell him about it later."

Gentle corrections stuck in his throat, but he swallowed them. She'd work through the knowledge that she was not likely to see her brother ever again on her own. She didn't need to accept the reality of their situation right now. "I'll remember."

"Okay. Good." She shut her eyes. "Good."

The glowstick wasn't going to last forever, but it gave him time to take out a journal and start to write down the day's events. He wrote as much as he remembered about the worlds he visited—he had already been in Bill's Realm many years ago, and he had been in the cloud world as well, but this underwater bubble was new.

He indulged himself and, among his pictures of the glowing bubble, he drew his sleeping niece, curled up around a pink sweater. A part of him was afraid of her dissipating like smoke. It was almost too amazing to be believed, to be dragged to Bill's realm and come out with something as precious and terrifying as a little girl. The pleasure he felt at having her was nothing short of selfish. She should have stayed on Earth with their family.

After he finished his recounting of the day, he put his journal in the watertight holding pouch within his bag (bigger on the inside; he'd lost track of how many books were in there) and tried to sleep with all the lights staring down at him from above.

Earth, July 24th, 2012

The portal sputtered out of existence and crashed to the earth. Gravity smacked the failsafe button against Dipper's jaw, but he didn't feel the bruise bloom on his cheek. He saw the empty portal. He saw the broken machinery scattered on the ground.

He saw no Mabel.

"No. No no no no—" He stumbled to the portal, his knees weak from new gravity, and he scrambled into the massive hole in the middle of the inverted triangle, checking over it, searching for a sign of pink or braces or anything. "Mabel? Mabel!"

There was nothing. No sweaters, no squealing, no teasing, nothing. Dipper jumped down from the circle, his knees buckling as he hit the ground and scattered scrap biting into his shins. He staggered to the lever and shoved it.

It wouldn't move.

It wouldn't move.

He threw himself at it, covering his ears to block out a horrible noise that started bouncing off the walls, but it just made the noise louder. The lever refused to budge, the noise got louder and louder, and he slowly realized he was the one making it and the lever wasn't going to move, the portal was broken and Mabel was gone.

There wasn't any air. His chest was going to explode. Dipper fell back from the lever, struggling to breathe, but his lungs couldn't inflate. This wasn't happening. This couldn't be happening. It was like being ripped from his body all over again, flailing uselessly, soundlessly as the world went on without him. It was a horrible dream. Mabel would wake him up.

He swung around, scrambling for something, anything, he wasn't sure what. He just saw Soos and Stan. Soos was standing, staring at him, open-mouthed, eyes bugging out, but Stan hadn't even stood. He sat where he fell with all the other scrap, looking like someone had unscrewed his head and scooped out everything important from his brain and body and reassembled an empty shell.

Dipper wanted to scream. He was screaming. He threw himself at his shell of an uncle and started scratching, punching, anything to break him open. "Give her back!"

"I can't." Stan's voice sounded like broken glass. He didn't fight. It made Dipper's screams louder, like he could force Stan to hit him and punch out the breathlessness and the choking and the bad dream. "The portal is broken, kid. They're both trapped."

"Both?" Dipper's voice cracked. "What do you mean both?"

"Why do you think I was trying to open that thing in the first place?" Stan didn't even sound angry. He just stared at the empty portal. "I was trying to save my twin brother."

"You what?" Dipper's arms were too heavy to lift, and Stan couldn't be broken any more than he already was. His arms flopped on his grunkle's chest. "What brother?"

"Stanford Pines." The world spun. It was a dream, a terrible dream. It felt like Dipper was floating away from his own body. "The author of the journals. The brainiac of the family. The man who built this thing in the first place!" Stan jerked his hand at the portal, like maybe he would curse it, but he didn't have energy. He was a sock puppet with no hand and Dipper was floating away. "I pushed him in by accident thirty years ago. I tried to fix it. Thirty years and history just repeated itself. How's that for irony?"

The Author? Twin? Stanford? It had to be a dream. Dipper couldn't breathe and he was getting dizzy. He braced himself on Stan's slumped shoulders. Every word his grunkle said sounded like shards of glass, brittle and sharp and awful.

"You're…" Questions slid down his throat and dissolved in his gut. If the man he was leaning on wasn't Stanford Pines, who was he? Why had Stan never shared any of this? Why had Stanford made the portal? The identity of the Author—he'd chased it so hard, and now it tasted like nothing. "What about Mabel?"

The look in Stan's eyes made him want to scream again. It was defeat. Utter defeat. "I worked for thirty years to get that portal working, and it didn't have nearly this damage before."

"What are you saying?" Dipper's voice cracked into a thousand jagged pieces, and Stan winced, like he could draw away and not hear. "What are you saying, Grunkle Stan?"

"I'm saying…" Stan's voice sounded too heavy. Dipper forced eye contact even if the world was blurring—he realized too late he was crying—and Stan's face looked like someone had pricked it and let all the air out. "I'm saying it will probably take a lot of time to even try getting her back."

"She might not have that time!"

He had to get up, he had to look at the journals, he had to fix the portal, he had to bring her back, but all he could do was make that horrible, wretched keening noise. Dipper buried his face in his hands, tearing at his bangs, and squeezed his eyes shut in a desperate bid to just wake up. This isn't real, he couldn't have pushed her in, he didn't mean to, he didn't mean to— "I didn't mean to…"

Meaty arms wrapped around him and pulled him against Grunkle Stan's chest, and he just cried like he hadn't since he was a baby.

Everything was a blur.

"Dudes, I…"

Dipper couldn't see anything. The tears were too thick.

"Dudes, there are agents upstairs."

Dipper didn't care. A big hand pressed on his hair and it was like being cradled by his father after scraping his knee, but the pain was filling him up until there was nothing left and his soul was floating above it all and nothing was safe.

"I'll just…" Soos was the only one talking. The only one moving like his pieces still fit together. He skittered around them, searching, muttering, but Dipper didn't listen. Shifting rubble, dragging metal, unzipped bags, useless things tossed on the floor until a familiar click.

"I got this one, dudes." Soos had the memory gun now. His footsteps trailed away towards the elevator. "I think."

Dipper couldn't bring himself to care.

He was the reason Mabel was gone.

He would be the reason she would come back.

I hope you enjoyed that! And thank you to Tsukara for betaing for me.

I apologize for my long absence to those who have wanted more writing from me. I made a rule that I wouldn't begin posting a new story again unless I could reasonably believe I was going to finish it. You'll be happy to find out that I have about 78,000 words of this story written already, and I will post as they are edited. Constructive criticism, comments, and compliments are all greatly encouraged.

A note about warnings: to avoid spoiling the story, I will not put content warnings in the tags. If you aren't comfortable reading a story without content warnings, no fear. I will include content warnings on the end notes of a given chapter if I believe it should have one. Just check the end notes if you are concerned about content, and if you are not, then they are easy to ignore.

Credit where it is due: I got the original idea of this AU from Drifting Stars by the_subpar_ghost on AO3. Go and read their story if you like this AU idea.