Earth, August 7th, 2012

If Wendy squinted after the sun went down, she could see a pink glimmer hovering around the Shack, faintly visible from her place on the driveway. It was from the unicorn hair barrier Dipper and Stan had laid down, keeping them all safe from Gideon's crazy triangle demon.

Wendy tried not to think too hard about it. That had been her strategy for the past two or so weeks. If she thought too hard, the situation would paralyze her, and Dipper and Stan needed her. If they could power through this, then damn it, so could she.

She just wished it wasn't so hard.

Wendy leaned against her bicycle in the dark, fumbling to put on her helmet while exhaustion made her fingers clumsy. It was hard work to put together a portal. It was, in fact, harder work than she'd ever done in her life. For the first time ever, she didn't try to sneak breaks or find ways to do as little as possible. She wouldn't be cheating Stan out of cash or getting a bad grade if she did that—she would be prolonging Mabel's chances of dying. Dying. She couldn't be lazy about this.

It wasn't like any others could pick up her slack, either. Soos was in bad shape, Stan was pushing sixty, and Dipper was twelve. Wendy was their best worker who could take the most weight, so she had to do most of the dragging and carrying. It left her gross and sweaty and ready to sleep a million years every night.

Her phone vibrated in the basket of her bike. Wendy groaned and ignored it, finally clipping her helmet to her head. It was probably one of her friends again. Maybe they were inviting her out to something cool that she wouldn't have the energy for. Maybe they were telling her to blow off this 'sudden need for overtime pay' (it was the best excuse she could come up with) and hang out with them. Maybe Tambry was asking her if she was avoiding them because she was still angry about her and Robbie. Maybe Robbie was telling her to get over herself. Maybe Thompson was begging her to come along because the group might splinter without her.

What could she say to them? 'A super awesome little girl might actually for real die if I blow off work to hang out with you'? She couldn't say that, and as much as she wanted to, she couldn't just skip out and hang with them anyway like usual either.

She didn't have the energy to make up an excuse, so she slumped against her bike with a groan and massaged her biceps. It was time to go home. She'd text back tomorrow. 'Oh, sorry, phone ran out of batteries during work, fell asleep without checking my texts…'

"Hey, dude." Soos walked past her, probably on his way to his Abuelita's house. He paused to look at her basket, which was glowing with more vibrations and texts. "Looks like someone is trying to text you."

"No kidding." Wendy narrowly kept herself from saying 'no shit', but she tried to keep the hardcore swearing to a minimum. She didn't want to slip up and swear in front of her youngest brothers or Dipper and Mabel. (Not that she would have many opportunities to swear in front of Mabel for a while…) "My friends are ringing my phone off the hook. Or I guess my soon to be ex-friends."

"Oh, right." Soos shoved his hands into his pockets, grinding the sole of his shoe into the dirt. "I guess you don't have much time to hang out with them, huh?"

Wendy wanted to whine to him. She wanted to complain about how unfair it all was, how she should be off vandalizing school buildings instead of spending all her time working on a stupid portal that shouldn't have been built in the first place, but what kind of person whined about something like this?

"Dipper and Stan are dealing with a lot worse. I'll put up with it." Wendy kicked her stand up and started walking her bike with Soos. She didn't have the energy to ride anyway, and at least this way she could talk to someone.

"Yeah, they're really not doing too well." Soos walked with her, and she had a feeling he wanted to talk to someone too. "Mr. Pines isn't yelling at me nearly as much now, and I'm always worried about Dipper having one of those attack thingies again."

"You mean when you think he might be having a stroke and he starts reciting random stuff in the utility closet?" Wendy said with an internal wince.

"I always thought he was praying."

"I'm not Jewish, but I don't think you're supposed to recite the lyrics of Disco Girl during prayer." Wendy shrugged, frowning at the ground. It was horrible to listen to Dipper falling apart in the closet when he had an attack, but less because the Hebrew mixed with pop songs was weird and more because she couldn't imagine how painful it was for him, and she had no idea what to do to make it better. "I think he just… says things. Things he needs to concentrate on, you know?"

"That sounds like the kind of thing Dipper would do." They came to the road, but it was ten at night and the streets were empty. Everyone was home by now except the two of them. "You know, just because Mr. Pines and Dipper are having trouble doesn't mean you can't too."

"Yeah, but my issues are petty." Wendy heaved one great shrug to deflect. Her stupid phone kept vibrating in her basket. "I mean, we're saving Mabel. That's the most important thing. Who cares if my friends think I've totally ditched them and I can't go out anymore?"

"I dunno." Soos kept a slow pace, which was fine by Wendy. "You do."

Wendy grabbed her phone and put it on silent without looking at any of the messages. "Yeah, well I care more about Mabel."

"It's okay to miss things." Soos shrugged and gave her a cautious smile. "I miss having dinner with my abuelita."

Oh, right. Of course Soos had been sacrificing time with the people he cared about too. Wendy felt like an ass for not thinking about that, but the fist around her gut loosened a little to hear him admit that he wasn't completely hunky dory with losing all his time too. "I miss having dinner with my family too."

"And I don't get to Skype with Melody as much now. I miss that."

"And I don't get to stay up late. I just pass out as soon as I get home."

"I don't get to play video games anymore."

"I can't go goof off on the weekends."

"I want to tell Abuelita what's going on, but I can't."

"And I can't tell anyone the real reason I'm staying so late."

"I don't get to FCLORP anymore."

"I don't have my own life anymore, and I hate it!" Wendy surprised herself with her own volume. Her eyes darted side to side, checking to make sure Stan or Dipper didn't hear her even though that was crazy because they were literally all the way back at the Shack. There was only Soos, though. Soos, and the squirrels minding their own business in the trees.

"And it just looks like I'm not going to have it back again any time soon," Wendy said more quietly, mumbling like it was some dirty secret. And wasn't it? She resented the portal. She resented having to put all that work in, and she resented sacrificing her social life for it. But how could she look herself in the mirror if she didn't do it anyway?

"Dude, it's okay to be bummed out by all the stuff we can't do now." Soos had no judgment for her. He was much kinder than her conscience. "We're giving all that up for a good cause, but it doesn't mean we're not giving stuff up, you know?"

"Yeah, but how bratty is it to complain about it when Dipper's lost his sister, Stan lost his brother and niece, and some rich girl just got nearly killed by an angry demon possessing her dad?" Wendy ran her fingers through her hair, groaning in frustration. "My problems look pretty small next to that."

"So? You're complaining to me. Not any of them." Soos shrugged, giving her a rueful smile. "I guess we're the only ones we can complain to anyway, right?"

If anyone told Wendy that she would feel so grateful for the goody two-shoes Shack's handyman's presence in her life, she would have told them they were nuts. As it stood, she let out a bark of a laugh and looked down at her feet. "Yeah, I guess."

"So go ahead and complain to me. My brain's wide open, dude."

Wendy smiled at the ground. "Yeah. That sounds good."

For a mile they walked, trading complaints, Wendy more than Soos. A weight was lifted off of Wendy's chest.

When she got back home, she fired off a few texts. To Tambry and Robbie, she said that she wasn't angry, honest, just busy. To Thompson, she said she was too busy to spend much time with them right now, but he was totally up to the task to keep everyone together and he was the man.

To Dipper, she just texted a funny video she found online. She was support, and she could continue to be, especially now that she had some support of her own.

Dimension ?, Day ?, 2012

Mabel didn't know what ink needlers used for their tattoos, but whatever it was, it was itchy.

"If you scratch, it will take longer to heal," Ford said without looking up from scribbling in his journal.

"But it's so itchy!" Mabel clicked her bone knitting needles together extra hard to keep from tearing at the tender skin on her arm.

"That's what happens when you're healing from being prodded with needles."

Mabel's fingers drifted to her lip.

"Don't scratch your stitches either," Ford said.

Mabel groaned and flopped onto her back, letting her knitting sit on her stomach. Between her tattoo, her stitches, and her newly de-braced teeth, everything on her felt new and a little ill-fitting. They were sitting by one of the clear pools underground again, the best spot for light. Above them, needlers (or so Mabel called them) tapped around stalactites to pods of silk (full or eggs or bedding), and the yellow sun glared down through a filter of silken web over the holes and dark moss lining the edges.

There was also one particular needler parked right above them. Bubbles was sitting there, clicking her front needles together while a scarf blossomed between them.

"You're doing great, girlfriend!" Mabel called up to Bubbles. The needler clicked the flat of her left back needles against her right back needles, which was a positive signal. Probably. Mabel was still sussing out needler body language.

"How can you tell their sex?" Ford asked.

"I can't. I just pick one and they don't care," Mabel said with a shrug. "Did you draw her?"

Ford tipped his journal to show her a delicately shaded picture of Bubbles hanging upside down knitting her scarf. In the corner, he had coded a message, using the same code Mabel and Dipper had cracked in his original journals.

Day Three: Second alien M has taught to knit. She leaves behind a legacy of sweaters.

Legacy of sweaters. Mabel liked that. "I wish I could draw that good."

"Well, sweetheart. Draw that well," he said as he closed his journal. "And you will. You have a good eye for it."

The cave always felt full of clicking from all the needlers on the ceiling, and now Mabel's knitting needles. While she knit on her back, Ford slowly settled to lie beside her.

Mabel wiggled so that their shoulder touched. The air relaxed. Ford obviously liked touching more than he used to. She had a feeling he was still getting over seeing her dead. Mabel was still getting over things too, so it worked out.

"We'll need to leave soon," Ford said.

"You're still hurt," Mabel said as she screwed up her face. Ford shrugged and waved one bandaged hand in the air.

"I've had worse. You mustn't forget that we're hunted, Mabel."

"Running away doesn't do much if something sneaks up and eats us because we're too sick to run." Mabel wasn't sure Ford was well enough to do that. He spent most of his time sleeping now, like she or Dipper would when they had the flu. He was getting better every day, but he wasn't better enough.

In the back of her head, she remembered trying to hobble to safety and hearing him tell her that she should go ahead without him. That wasn't going to happen again as long as she had a say.

"I could look around outside." As soon as she said it, Mabel latched to the idea. "Yeah! I could be like a scout in those war movies, except there aren't bombs!"

"I don't know about that, Mabel." Ford had that 'I don't want to make you unhappy but I'm saying no anyway' frown that adults had so much. "I don't like you wandering the wilderness on your own when I can't come get you."

"I don't have to be on my own!" Mabel looked up at Bubbles. "You want to show me around outside?"

Bubbles clicked her back needles again before saying, "It would be good if you are familiar with the terrain before you leave us."

Ford was still frowning, but it was accompanied by squinting up at Bubbles. That was his suspicious squint. Mabel could see all the paranoid gears turning in his head.

Mabel poked his side, making him wince and forcing the gears to halt. "Trust me. We'll just look around. Please?"

Ford gave Bubbles another suspicious glance, but his reserve was crumbling. He was worse at saying no than even Stan.

"Do you have everything you need?" he asked. The knife. He was talking about the knife. "Yes, Grunkle Ford." It was hard to not be a little exasperated by his distrust of their host, but Ford was still alive after thirty years and Mabel was more and more understanding how impressive that was. Maybe the paranoia was good for something. She nodded, resisting the urge to roll her eyes.

"We should fix your hair first."

Her hair was shorter now, just to her shoulder blades instead of past her waist. It was weird to not have all that weight on her head anymore. When Ford first cut it (struggling to keep it straight even though they only had a knife, which was nice of him), she had had to shake her head around a lot like a puppy to get used to how light it felt. Now, it was still grabbing length, but only if it wasn't in one of the braids Ford could make for her.

Ford combed her hair with his fingers before pulling out different pieces to pull together. Sometimes, it felt a little like her mother was doing it. Her mother liked to talk to her while fixing up her hair, but she didn't often have time for braiding before school. They would do it on special occasions, like the high holidays or the first day of school or Passover.

But this was different. That was aesthetic, and this was survival.

Ford pulled her hair up into a crown of braids around her head, like those fancy pictures from Ancient Greece. "Now go on." He squeezed her shoulder. "Be safe."

"I will." On impulse, Mabel leaned in and kissed his cheek. The corners of his eyes softened, and she stuffed her knitting into her bag before slinging it on. "Thanks, Grunkle Ford. Bub—"

But Bubbles had already tied off her knitting, throwing a thick silk scarf around her short, thick neck before weaving rope to lower herself to the ground.

Bubbles scooped Mabel up in her tangled needle arms, and then they were ascending, Mabel's stomach dropping to her feet with the speed. Mabel whooped before their abrupt stop at the stone ceiling (everything was upside down and Ford was frowning at her and she gave him a wave like she was on a rollercoaster), and Bubbles carefully peeled back one edge of the silk web covering the sunny hole to above. She crawled through, and Mabel was blind. She was dropped on a ground that flaked on her skin.

The sun was warm, and Mabel hadn't realized how much she missed sunlight up until that moment. She kept her eyes closed and let the sun burn the amassed darkness in her skin, stuck like oil from the man-eating dimension and the days recovering in a cave.

One needle made of bone covered in chitin nudged her arm.

"Did you die?" Bubbles clicked.

"No, silly. I'm sunbathing." Mabel rolled onto her belly to warm her back as well.

"I thought you called me Bubbles." It was hard to read the tone of a needler, but Mabel was pretty sure Bubbles was confused.

"Silly is just a thing to call people who are being silly," Mabel said.

Bubbles' long stare bore into Mabel's back. Then she nudged Mabel's arm with a needle again. "Silly."

"Now you're getting it." Mabel finally sat up and opened her eyes, and any sense of familiarity the sun gave her was promptly destroyed.

If she squinted and cocked her head just right, she could pretend that it was a little like Earth. There was grass, and there were some widely spaced trees, but it was all weird. The grass blades came away in flakes and weren't really grass at all—they were green rice paper growing and naturally folding to look like grass.

The trees looked less like trees and more like grown, transparent vascular systems of trees that somehow remained upright. Yellowish water mixed with pale blue in a tangle of veins sticking from the ground, and the ends of the highest and farthest veins were tipped with silvery nets—the veins of leaves.

Mabel and Bubbles had come out of the ground in a thicket of vegetation, all made of folded ricepaper. Mabel dug her bare toes into the dirt.

"This is amazing." She skipped to the nearest tree, the rice paper grass scraping her ankles, and took in the massive web of life. She wouldn't be able to reach her arms around the whole thing even if she tried.

"I have to draw a picture. Grunkle Ford would love this." He would ask questions about how the trees held themselves up, or what the rice paper was exactly. Honestly, Mabel was curious too.

She flopped on the flaky grass and pressed her finger against one vein tangled in all the others. It was waxy, but firm. Maybe like dry beeswax?

"Does the big one like sun too?" Bubbles' movement was muffled in the rice paper. Her needles rustled as she tapped close, but they didn't click.

"All humans like sun!" Mabel pulled out her journal, holding up her thumb to compare the size of the tree to something she could draw on a page. It was a trick she saw in cartoons, and Ford used it. "I wish I could bottle it up for him."

The facets in Bubbles' eyes rotated—Mabel didn't even know they could do that—before she stood on her hind needles and stabbed her front ones above Mabel. The needles tore through the webbing of veins, and tubes full of yellow and blue dropped in Mabel's lap.

"Oh!" The tubes didn't leak everywhere like Mabel expected. She peeked into one of the tubes, but the liquid still sloshed inside despite being torn open at both ends. It was like a magic honey stick. "Thank you?"

"Silly." Tiny droplets gathered at the torn ends of veins still attached to the tree structure. Bubbles dipped the end of a single needle into one of the beads of liquid, coming away with one trembling golden dot on the tip.

She held the needle out to Mabel. After a moment, Mabel realized she was meant to lick it. There was nothing that could go wrong with that.

She ran her tongue along the needle, the surface smoother than glass, and warmth exploded in her mouth.

Her pupils dilated, and suddenly the world was too bright and Mabel quickly covered her eyes. Her skin flushed and heat spread from her gut into her blood, into every vein and artery, and her skin glowed.

It was like she tasted… "Is this sunlight?"

There was clicking. Mabel assumed it was affirmative clicking. She flopped on the ground, grinning as the glow started to fade from her skin and her pupils contracted again. "This is amazing! How does it make sun syrup?"

Mabel peeked through her fingers to see Bubbles tap a needle against her triangular head, a gesture she'd learned was the same as a shrug.

Ford might know. Once Mabel's eyes readjusted, she gathered up the tubes of syrup and carefully put them in her bag. She bet they could make up for Ford getting no sun, and he'd be interested in studying it. It wouldn't surprise her if he had a microscope in that backpack of his specifically to look at this kind of stuff.

She had to take notes for him and make sure her pictures were good. Bubbles leaned into the tree, tiny little pincers licking up the droplets of syrup gathering at the torn edges of veins while Mabel drew.

"Is everything this beautiful?" Mabel said.

Bubbles tapped the side of her head, pausing in her lapping only to say, "You have a different idea of beauty than we do."

"I want to see everything! What other crazy things can you eat?"

"There is a spring at the edge of the island. You will need to drink from it to float to the next island with a portal, but only someone with a light heart can float."

Mabel gasped, pressing her palms to her cheeks and peering at the horizon as if she'd be able to see a fountain that could make her fly.

"The blades on the ground can give you visions, but they are unreliable. They show you what can be or could have been, but it is hard to tell which it is."

Mabel ran her fingers through the rice paper grass, plucking out the longest and strongest blades to fold together and put away. She'd check that out later.

"The meat here is good if you drain the acid blood." Bubbles finished off the spilled syrup and bowed her head, offering her back to Mabel. "I will show you the holes to more caves. Avoid them if you can. We decided to give to you, but others may decide to take."

"Oh, there are more of you?" Mabel scrambled onto Bubble's back, covered in shimmering bubble tattoos, and pulled out her knitting. "I'm going to teach them all how to make scarves!"

"You give indiscriminately." Needlers rarely had any kind of inflection in their tone, so Mabel couldn't tell if Bubbles thought that was a good thing or a bad thing. "They might like that. They might eat you. I will break their eyes if they try."

"Sounds like a plan!" Mabel grinned at the back of Bubbles' head as she delicately stepped away from the tree and into the vegetation. "Do you think they'd like hats?"

Bubbles tapped the side of her head. "I will show you the way to the closest portal out of our world. It is always open. It goes to a strange land where the sun burns hard enough to kill and the trees are bigger than giants. Beyond that world, there is a market full of people from many dimensions."

"I thought that people couldn't stay in one dimension that wasn't their own for long," Mabel said, frowning over her knitting as she gently rocked with Bubbles' motion. "Grunkle Ford said that the dimensions get weak."

"That is why it is dangerous, and the portals leading there stay open." Bubbles tilted her head upwards so the edges of her faceted eyes could face Mabel. "One day, their hub world will collapse, and the merchants will find another hub to destroy. When you and the big one are there, take care of your business quickly and move on. They take there more than they give, and they are clever in cruelty."

Mabel nodded, not pausing in her knitting even as she considered what she had been told. She'd like to think that she could just make friends like she did in the market made of ice and crystal, but sometimes people didn't want to be friends, as crazy as it was. Sometimes people were like the scream skin things and they just wanted to eat you.

"Thanks, Bubbles." She kept knitting and paid careful attention to what Bubbles showed her. Ford wasn't here to take notes, but she could hear his voice in his head.

Listen closely, Mabel, he would say. Our lives might depend on it.

Earth, August 8th, 2012

Mabel knew people. Dipper knew numbers and facts. His teachers would smile indulgently at Mabel's talents, but they would applaud Dipper's. It felt good. It was something to remind himself of when Mabel consistently got more friends than him.

It was moments like this that Dipper remembered how much he wished he could trade in his talents for hers.

The dump was a small hilly cluster nestled not far from downtown. All the grass rimming the back end of its chain link fence had gone yellow and brittle. Dipper could have walked in from the street, but he didn't want to wander where there were too many people. The back end was up against the edge of the woods, and that was where he was comfortable.

The closer he got to the dump, the harder it was to breathe. At first, he thought it was the stink, but then there was the familiar feeling of his lungs refusing to inflate and his chest being crushed.

He could climb the rusty fence pushed against the unkempt shrubs of the forest, but instead, Dipper sat down on a discarded tire and focused on breathing. He didn't want an episode where he floated out of his skin and needed to recite things, so he rubbed his tightening chest to force air into it.

Mabel was okay. She was with Stanford.

(It had been three days. A lot could happen in three days.)

Dipper's breath shuddered. He pressed the heel of his palm harder into his chest as he wet his lips. The landfill air was sour in his mouth, like decades of rot and forgetting.

Stan would be okay. There hadn't been any new bottles under the porch for the last two nights when Dipper stayed up with him. It worked.

(For two nights.)

Dipper closed his eyes, leaning onto the fence as his throat closed up. It was like breathing through a straw.

Mabel was okay. Stan would be okay, Pacifica was safe, and he was going to help McGucket. He'd messed up, he'd messed up so badly and so many people were paying for it, but he was fixing it. He had to fix it.

But to fix it, he had to breathe.

The Shack now had a border of unicorn hair glued to the foundation. There was hair left over, but not enough to surround the Northwest's land. As long as Pacifica stayed with them, she was safe, and so was everyone else in the Shack. That problem was dealt with.

Dipper slid his backpack onto his lap. It was light. He didn't want to take Stanford Pines' journals to this place. It felt wrong to take his ghost here with all that happened to McGucket. Instead, the bag was full of food. He fingered the zipper, his breath finally evening out as he focused on that.

"Dipper?"

Dipper jumped with a yelp, fumbling with his backpack before falling off the tire and landing on his face.

Spitting out dead grass, Dipper rolled to his knees. On the other side of the rusted fence, McGucket perched on the hood of a stripped car, his bottle green spectacles missing and his eyes pointing in different directions, one pupil a little larger than the other. He frowned, but it didn't do anything to make his gaze look clearer.

"Do you need a second?" McGucket asked.

"No! No, I'm okay, that's normal, I just did a normal thing right there," Dipper babbled as he scrambled to his feet. "I, uh, where are your glasses?"

"Oh…" McGucket waved his hand, sitting back on the car's hood. "Somewhere. Scrabdoodled away. What do you need?" He drummed his fingers on the jagged ripped metal and tilted his head towards the sky instead of making eye contact. "Is there a problem with the doohickey?"

"Nnnnnnnot so far?" Dipper briefly considered telling McGucket about Bill, but looking at him, he didn't seem to be in a very good headspace to be told that demons were out possessing people. It wasn't like Gideon would have any reason to target McGucket, really.

McGucket tapped his hands on the car like a cat kneading a cushion, except fragments of rust and dirt were just getting caught in his nails and the metal squealed when he scratched too much. "Then why are you here?"

Dipper had a speech prepared. It started off with a dumb joke to break the tension. Then a gentle acknowledgement that Dipper was asking a lot of McGucket. An assurance that the old man was appreciated, and a proposal that they have something to eat together and work on a puzzle book Dipper brought.

All the words died in his throat. McGucket wasn't making eye contact. He was crouched down more like an animal than a man. Had he really retained all that much of the progress he had made?

Dipper tried to wet his lips. Mabel would know what to say. Mabel would know how to fix him.

"I brought food." Dipper thrust his backpack towards McGucket. He didn't know why he did that. There was a fence in between them. "I thought we could share."

"Share?" McGucket didn't make eye contact, but at least his mouth quirked into a smile that didn't look vacant. "Well, why didn't you just say so?"

McGucket jumped off the car and latched onto the fence, climbing it with monkey-like agility before perching on the top and hanging his arm down. Dipper managed a smile before hoisting his bag onto his back and climbing up the fence just far enough to grab McGucket's hand.

"Hold on to your undergarments!" Then McGucket swung him over the fence like a sling. Dipper barely had time to squeal before he hit a lone car door with an 'oof.'

Dipper stood up, trying to brush the thick oily grease from his shirt but only serving to smear it. Oh well. He'd figure out how to clean it. McGucket leapt from the fence and landed on a tire-less car with a bang like a gunshot. Dipper flinched with a yelp, but McGucket didn't skip a beat, jumping onto a pile of metal that had become a mountain.

"This ain't the best place for kids to eat." He almost sounded apologetic as he scampered up a hill of discarded appliances.

Dipper picked his way around a toaster, suppressing a shudder when he saw a rat tail whipping out of the slots. "No, it's okay. Less people out here."

"Now, now, ain't you a little young to be running away from people?" McGucket squinted in his direction. While the scrutiny was uncomfortable and McGucket's two eyes couldn't quite look at him at once, maybe it was a good sign that he could pick up on this kind of stuff. Had he really been able to do that before? Dipper wasn't sure because, he realized with a pang, he had never really paid attention.

"I just don't want to deal with crowds," he said. That would be a problem when he went back to Piedmont. If he ever went back to Piedmont. He still hadn't told his parents that he was staying. Anxiety fluttered in his chest and he pushed it from his mind.

"Can't find a place less crowded than this." McGucket padded on all fours up the mountain of twisted metal. He could press his bandaged palms on knife-like juts and the edges only left imprints on his skin. Dipper had to carefully shimmy to keep from getting shredded.

"This here's a good spot," McGucket said as he got to the peak of the metal mountain. The smell of wet mold and abandoned garage hung thick in the humidity, settling on Dipper's skin and soaking into his clothes. He had a feeling there wasn't a 'good place' anywhere in this dump, and he was forced to wonder if offering to eat here had been such a good idea.

He trudged up anyway. From the top of decades of refuse, the town was laid bare.

Clusters of children in neon camp shirts trailed after adults on the streets. Teenagers clumped outside of storefronts. Cars rolled from sign to sign, like they were taking in the scenery instead of going anywhere in particular.

Beyond were the suspended hanging cliffs overlooking them all, and the Northwest Mansion lurked like a shadow on the mountain.

"Pretty, ain't it?" McGucket kicked a shattered blender off the peak to curl up on his haunches.

"Definitely, as long as you look past the dump." Dipper cast around for a seat until settling on an old freezer. The smell of rotten vegetables floated off of it, but at least it wasn't sharp. "I brought a sandwich. I hope you like baloney, because I put in a lot."

McGucket gave him a bright smile, but it was marred by rotten teeth and swollen red gums. Should Dipper have gotten him something softer? Could McGucket still eat chewy things?

McGucket took to the sandwich well enough, so Dipper put it out of his mind.

Dipper picked at his own food. Stan wasn't there to hover and comment on how little he was eating, and the smell settling in his clothes ruined his already shaky appetite.

They sat in comfortable silence while McGucket ate. Dipper offered his own sandwich, but McGucket waved a hand at him.

"Keep it. You've gone and lost weight," he said.

"I've what? No I haven't!" Color came to Dipper's cheeks. Being told by a crazy homeless man that he wasn't looking great was a hit to the ego he didn't need. "Look, I have so much fat, see?"

He pinched his stomach, but he had to scrunch himself into a ball before he squeezed a solid finger full. "See?"

His voice came out squished. McGucket raised a skeptical eyebrow, but then he shook his head and turned to admire the view of the town.

"Dipper, why are you really here?"

Dipper's cheeks darkened even more, but not of embarrassment. "What do you mean?"

"It's mighty nice of ya to spend time with me, but I know you didn't come here just to slap knees with an old hillbilly. Why are you here?"

Dipper looked down at his hands. Grime streaked his knuckles. He didn't know from where. "That's… kind of exactly why I'm here. It's getting crowded at the Shack."

"Then why come here?"

Dipper shrugged, debating honesty, wondering what the honest answer really was. "…It's what Mabel would have done."

Mabel, who couldn't stand the thought of someone else being unhappy. Mabel would have been checking on McGucket the moment she realized that he was deteriorating from the work she was making him do. Dipper wasn't like Mabel. Dipper ignored the signs that he was hurting people. Dipper didn't want to be like that. He didn't want to be like Stanford Pines.

McGucket nodded, propping his elbows on his knees. "You really miss your sister, huh?"

An invisible fist squeezed his throat. "Yeah," he said. His voice cracked. He breathed deeply and looked away. The dump's air was making his eyes water. "Sorry."

"Now don't you apologize. Not for that." For the first time this afternoon, McGucket's voice sounded rooted, like they weren't going to drift off into fog at any moment. "I miss my sister too, and she ain't nowhere but a hop, skip, and a jump down in Tennessee. I'd be worried if you didn't miss her."

Dipper scrubbed his eyes with the heel of his cleanest hand. "I didn't know you had a sister."

"Neither did I!" McGucket laughed long and loud, like it was the best kind of joke that didn't make Dipper want to cry. "Clean forgot her for thirty years. But you—" the laughter stopped abruptly "—you're better than I was. You don't give up or hide even if it'd be easy. It's okay to be sad, Dipper. It means that you remember her."

Dipper didn't want to cry. If he cried, he might not stop. Instead, he drew up his knees to his cheek and hugged his legs.

"She's alive."

"I know," McGucket said, the corners of his eyes drooping with a lie.

"No, I mean, we know she's alive. Pacifica found this—it's a long story. But she's alive, and so is Stanford."

It was like someone was gradually tugging all the strings in McGucket's body taut, and his head lolled to the side, like he needed his ear closer to Dipper. "What do you mean?"

Dipper had expected something bigger—he wasn't sure what, but bigger—so his voice creeped over the words hesitantly as he said, "They're both alive."

"Huh." McGucket's eyes didn't focus on anything. "Shoulda known Ford was too ornery to die, even in hell."

The air was charged with something weird. Dipper didn't know what to call it. Maybe it didn't have a name at all.

"Do you think you'd be able to forgive him if he came home?" Dipper asked.

"He made a lotta mistakes thirty years ago," McGucket said, eyes still unfocused. "That makes ya pretty mad after you've known someone so long. You get mad that they don't trust ya, or maybe they think they're better than you are. He had a problem with that. He was never mean or nothing, but he thought he was better than people who couldn't keep up. But that's what all young people are like, and we ain't young anymore."

McGucket plucked a stray wire from their trash heap, flicking it over the edge. "Forgetting didn't help anything, so I think I'd be ready to try forgiving if he asked me. If we get through this without destroying the world, that is."

Right. End of the world. Stanford Pines' warning. Dipper's gut twisted. He didn't want to talk about that.

"What's your sister's name?" Dipper said instead.

The corners of McGucket's mouth quirked up. It didn't show any teeth, but it was a smile. "Viola."

McGucket's accent rolled over the name like he was born to say it, and it didn't have any of the ragged edges his voice usually did.

"What's Viola like? Do you remember?"

"Well, I remember bits and pieces. I remember she was the best darn hog wrestler in all of Tennessee!" He chuckled, but it wasn't the same off-kilter laugh Dipper was used to. "She kept picking out the pigs that wrestled her best and kept them as pets up until slaughter. She'd put little bows on 'em and everything."

Dipper thought of Waddles. "She sounds really cool."

"By darn it, she was, and I bet she still is. Maybe she's had some kids by now."

The whole conversation was making Dipper sad, but in a mild way that didn't hurt him as much as a lot of his feelings had been lately. This sadness didn't have teeth like Mabel's absence did. It sat in his gut, but it didn't bite. "Are you going to visit her?"

"Maybe if we're still here after this mess." McGucket threaded his fingers through his beard. At some point, he must have started taking better care of it, because it was missing the random bandages and looked less tangled than usual. "I need to get my head on straight first, but I'd like to see her."

He wouldn't be able to if the world ended or he went crazy working on the portal, but that thought made Dipper's stomach twist. "Can you tell me about the pig wrestling?"

"Oh, wrestling! I remember all the town picking their prized wrassling hogs and got together for a big competition."

Sometimes McGucket stumbled over details he couldn't remember, but the more he talked, the more grounded he sounded, and that eased the knot in Dipper's gut.

Maybe this was all McGucket really needed. Maybe he just needed someone to spend time with him sometimes to help him recover. Dipper could do that, couldn't he?

Everything he heard about the events of thirty years ago was sad. From Stanford's relationship with his brother to the accident with the portal to McGucket's fate, everything was sad. Mabel would insist on not adding to that sad story, and Dipper was going to make sure they didn't. This story would have a happy ending, even if he had to spend the rest of his life on it.

No content warnings this time!

Thank you to Eregyrn-Falls for betaing this chapter. Also, thank you to everyone who commented or even drew fanart. Even in the long times between my updates, I love going back to see what everyone things of the story and it inspires me to keep coming back. Comments, compliments, and critiques are always warmly welcomed.

For those who don't know, I have a Tumblr called Themadqueenmab. I post unbeta'd ficlets, comissions, fandom reblogs, and writing tips I come across, so if that interests you, feel free to follow.