Chapter Text
“Shit— shit— shit— shit!”
Mabel tried to force her foot down farther but the gas pedal wouldn’t move any more. Which was terrible— awful— horrible! Mostly due to the GIGANTIC GNOME MONSTER BEHIND THEM! the gigantic gnome monster about to crush them underneath its gigantic gnomey hands!
She glanced to the side, admonishing her twin. “Language!”
“Is that really your largest priority!?” Before Mabel could answer him, Dipper jumped and shouted at her. “Swerve— now!”
Mabel followed his instructions, trusting his reasons for asking her to do so blindly. It was a good thing she did, barely managing to escape the crashing gnome hand hitting the ground where they’d just been. Gnomes went flying every which way, but Mable couldn’t focus on that, currently much more worried about keeping the golf cart from crashing into a tree or suspiciously large rock.
She swerved the other direction to narrowly miss a second gnome hand, seeing Dipper punch even more gnomes off his side of the golf cart with his bare fists. His poor knuckles, facing against gnomes that used to be knuckles. Mabel passed over Soos’s bat, perfect for piñatas and for hitting attacking gnomes in the face!
Suddenly, Dipper pushed the wheel to the side himself, swinging the whole golf cart violently and causing it to tilt slightly in the air. Mabel managed to course correct it at the last moment before disaster thankfully, but that didn’t mean she was at all happy about having to do that. But… before she could even try to be angry at Dipper for passenger seat driving, a tree trunk crashed into the ground where Dipper had moved them away from. A tree trunk she hadn’t seen coming.
They could have just died. They could have just died!? What kind of town was this!? On one hand this was amazing! What a rush! She was totally like an action star right now! Mabel always hoped for a romance movie, but action movies often had romances too! On the other hand… Mabel tried not to think about it. Her death woes could be better spent focused on the road. If she drove well enough she wouldn’t have to think about it anyway! So! Win-win! Probably… that was probably how it worked.
focusing on the road was a great idea! Only slightly marred by her vision suddenly vanishing. Mabel wondered why her vision stopped working since her eyes were open, but the strong stench of gnome soon cleared that up. What did they use for their beard, because it smelled awful. She couldn’t see anything but she could feel claws in her cheeks and beard hair in her mouth. It was disgusting and painful! Luckily her accidental scream at the surprise caught Dipper’s attention.
Unluckily, the only way he knew how to help apparently was to punch her face until the gnome got knocked off. Which worked! It also really hurt, like a lot. But it did work so there was that. “… Thanks Dipdip.”
He breathed in through his teeth with a wince. “Sure, Mabel.” She didn’t look that bad, right? Her eye did hurt a lot. A dull pain probably from him helpfully punching her repeatedly! Well— purple was one of her colors! All colors were one of her colors and purple was a colo—
“Mabel! Mabel watch out!”
“Huh…?” Color fled Dipper’s face, his terrified expression showing he too wished to follow the color’s trail. Mabel turned to see exactly what had affected him so dearly. Only to quickly figure it out. “OoaaaaAAAAAAAAAH!”
That was a cliff! That wasn’t good! Mabel kept screaming! Maybe if she screamed loud enough the cliff would magically become not a cliff! Which was impossible but she was running out of good options here and she had always been told the impossible was possible if you believed hard enough and she really believed right now!
Mabel glanced around. Nope… they were surrounded by trees and worse terrain, veering off course meant crashing and that wasn’t a good idea at all! She looked behind her, the gnome monster was still there, in fact it was slowly gaining on them.
In fact… it was throwing another tree at them! Mabel, still screaming and not really thinking very well, swerved way too much to avoid it this time and then turned way too violently back in the other direction as a course correction. The terrible driving move that surely would’ve failed her had this been any sort of test caused the golf cart to spin out and lose traction from the ground entirely.
So, she didn’t really get a choice in what they did then, did she? It seemed the universe had chosen their next course of action for her! They were heading straight off the cliff no matter what. Both of the twins were screaming now. What else could they do? How did they get here? How did she get here? Why was anybody here?
Well… that last question wasn’t one she could answer. But she could answer the other two pretty easily. This was the perfect time for a flashback after all! Her life was already flashing across her eyes.
Mabel Pines was getting antsy.
She was half a water bottle worth of Mabel Juice from bouncing straight out of her bus seat! She couldn’t help it! Today Mabel would be meeting her long lost twin! That was cause for celebration! It was a storyline straight out of a TV show, or a graphic novel, or a choose your own adventure book! Or like a… really poorly thought out fanfiction. She couldn’t wait to meet him!
Apparently his name was Dipper Pines, a name just strange enough to not be fake and just normal enough to be real. A good name! The other plus was that it had amazing nickname potential.
He lived in Gravity Falls, Oregon, with their Great-Uncle Stanford Pines! A man she’d never met! Which only added to her excitement, a Great-Uncle and a Twin on the same day?! It was like her birthday had come early— and Christmas— and Hanukkah— and… well like New Years too! It was going to be the most amazing, incredible, outstanding reunion of her life and she was so! Dang! Excited dagnabbit! Sure… Mabel only knew of his existence because of pure luck mixed with five weeks of internet sleuthing and stalking of his admittedly pitiful online social presence!
But still!
Her whole life Mabel had been missing this presence on her side, a giant hole in her heart. There was this emptiness she just couldn’t fill no matter how hard she tried. And then suddenly she discovered that not only did that secret sibling that just fit right into that hole exist, but he lived on the same side of the country that she did! He was two bus ticket away! There was this pull in her soul that told her she had to go immediately, and Mabel trusted her soul even more than her gut— which she trusted a whole heck of a ton! So, she saved up all of her allowances for the last couple of weeks before summer started, and hopped the first group of linked bus rides she could find up north to the sleepy old town of Gravity Falls.
Yes… she was running away— but don’t worry! Mabel had left a note! A note with a copy of the news article she’d found! And! It had stickers on it too! Nobody could be mad at stickers! It just didn’t stick!
Besides, they were the ones who’d kept this from her, if her parents didn’t understand, nobody would. She’d tried to tell them. All Mabel got for that was being called crazy or imaginative respectively. They told her she didn’t have any siblings, that she was an only child. But Mabel knew the truth. Mabel was much better at the hands-on experimental side of science class over any actual homework, but she knew how a hypothesis functioned. The evidence supporting hers? It was beyond any kind of reasonable doubt.
And also… they’d been fighting a lot recently, Mabel really didn’t want to stick around for that. She didn’t know why they’d been fighting but…
‘How could you keep that from me!?’
Not important right now. This wasn’t about them. This was about Dipper!
That boy shared her birthday, shared her face, shared her last name, and shared her Great-Uncle! No doubt he was related to her, beyond that only one position made sense. Her parents were definitely lying. Only one solution made sense, run away. She couldn’t tell her Great-Uncle Stanford she was coming because then he would surely tell her parents and then she wouldn’t be allowed to go! It had to be a surprise!
Besides, who didn’t love a surprise? Mabel knew that if her twin brother appeared out of the blue to surprise her, she would love that! It would go great. After all, nobody understood her, so who would understand her more than her own twin?
Nobody! That’s who! Wait… was that supposed to be rhetorical? Never mind.
Needless to say, it didn’t surprise her to find the Gravity Falls bus stop empty of people. Instead of panicking she simply followed the road deeper into town. Not before taking a picture of herself in front of the town sign on her camera! It was a camera that printed out the photos immediately! Perfect for scrapbooking. At this point she’d been taking it everywhere with her.
She was holding onto it for the perfect moment. The moment her and her twin became true siblings! Whatever that meant. That way it could be immortalized in the amazing art of scrapbooking!
She didn’t want to be walking for too long though, not with Mabel’s sizable amount of luggage. A whole summer’s worth of stuff, her suitcase rivaled her! If rivaling meant it was too tall for her to pull without a substantial lean. It would all be worth it once she saw her brother for the first time. All the bad stuff she’d done, all the lies to her parents… all the people she’d left behind. Mabel was so excited!
The town itself did not disappoint, a picture perfect valley. A postcard adjacent small town not featured on any maps. Like a place in the old west, it’s community felt lively and together. Something straight out of a fairy-tale. Something Mabel couldn’t wait to be a part of.
Her hometown was so lonely. She had ‘friends’ but… nobody who really understood her. And even the word friends was overselling it. Peers perhaps, people who didn’t bully you but would scoff if you ever asked to have a sleepover with them. It’s what you traded for being in a place with so much so close. So many people meant you didn’t really know any of them. That was fine though, nobody needed to understand Mabel, she was Mabel and that was enough! It meant lovable! Weird was her middle name! Well… no, it was Sherman, but it could’ve been Weird! It wasn’t like anybody ever asked. Maybe one day it would be. Nah, Weird was a dumb middle name.
She’d have a cooler middle name. Like Star! Or Barnard or something.
But Gravity falls! Everybody she passed looked interesting— in a good way! Unique characters who only happened to all live in one place, each with their own stories and lives beyond what she could see. Which of course, they did! Everybody did! But here she could really feel how each person of the town brought their own little flavor to the world. It was sweet. It was the type of town where everybody knew each other, she could tell that because everybody was openly staring her way as she walked down the street. A stranger in this place stuck out like a sore thumb. She gave them all a big grin and a wave and they all collectively shrugged and kept walking.
Mabel could see herself staying here forever!
Despite telling herself repeatedly to not get her hopes up, they were already through the roof! It was fine… it would be fine. Everything was going to go great because her twin would feel exactly the same way she did! It would be like love at first sight! In a platonic twin sibling way! He would understand that she was his other half, the hole he’d been missing his whole life in the same way she’d been missing him.
Everything would finally feel alright. For once she’d feel like somebody actually understood her. For once Mabel could know she wasn’t alone. How could you be alone with a twin? First things first however, she needed a map!
The ding of the shop broke her out of her thoughts. It smelled like scented pine needles in here! Mabel took a big whiff and tried to commit the smell to memory. It was a small convenience store, mostly empty Mabel soon realized, except for the teenage girl manning the counter. Manning was the wrong word for it, she was dead to the world, typing busiedly on her phone. She hadn’t even looked up once since Mabel had entered.
A real teenager!
She looked cute, her soft reddish purple hair framed her face well, especially with the lock of pink hair on her left side hiding her ear. Mabel grabbed a trifold map of the area off of a shelf and bounded to the front of the store, slamming it down with all the energy she could. A good first impression! Mabel had to make a good first impression! She shouted loudly, as to be heard, and shoved her hand out over the counter. “Hi new friend! I’m Mabel! What’s your name!?”
The girl barely even flinched, which was very impressive given how out of nowhere and loud Mabel had been. Once she did look up, Mabel couldn’t ignore the way her eyes widened ever so slightly. As if Mabel had been recognized for a moment before it flashed to confusion. Both emotions went away rather quickly though. There was a click, signifying that the girl had just taken a photo of her. Not that Mabel minded! She was always ready for a photo-op. As a fellow amateur photographer she understood the desire to capture everything interesting that happened around oneself.
And Mabel, if she could so claim of herself, was very interesting!
The girl sighed without putting her phone down and pointed at the map on the counter. “That’ll be five bucks.” Her voice was soft but apathetic. Mabel frowned, fishing out the money and pushing it forward and taking the map back.
“I’m looking for my long lost twin brother, Dipper Pines! Have you seen him? He’s like— my height and he has my face and he looks… uh… a lot like me!”
Once again, the girl looked the most shocked Mabel had ever seen her. Which wasn’t all that shocked but it was more emotion than she’d usually shown the whole time Mabel had been watching her. “Yeah, I know him.”
“You do?”
“Yeah.”
Mabel grinned as the girl stopped talking. She did not start talking again. “… Do you know where he lives?”
“Uh-huh.”
”… So… where does he live?”
After another moment, the teenager continued. “Lives at the Mystery Shack with that weird science-ey guy— like his uncle or whatever? Tricks tourists with fake attractions. Easy marks. Like you.” A small smile appeared on her face, before vanishing entirely. The girl looked back down at her phone and it seemed like the conversation was over.
But! Mabel was ecstatic! That meant her twin was real! And that he existed! And that she was right. He did live at the Mystery Shack with her Great-Uncle!
”Thank you!” Mabel ran out of the store before momentarily poking her head back inside. “Your hair-game’s on fire by the way!” The second time she ran out there was even more pep in her step. Not a lethal amount though, yet. Her hands shakily unfolded the map! She was extra-careful not to rip it in her excitement, but it was close. Apparently the Shack was just a short skip, hop, and a jump through the woods! It was so close too! Mabel didn’t know the scale of the map but how big could a small town be?
So! She turned off the main road onto a dirt trail and started exploring!
The woods were really pretty, just like the town! Tall trees blocked the sky from sight, letting in thin slivers of light from the heavens. It bathed everything in an otherworldly glow. A whole new universe had opened itself up to her. The woods in Piedmont were similar, like an adventure waiting to be found… but there was something here that made this more magical than the woods of her home. An illusionary effect that made everything weirdly sparkly. She couldn’t exactly put her finger on what was different from any normal woods, though. Maybe it was just how new everything was to her. Or maybe it was that she was still bouncing on her feet from being about to meet her twin!
Likely it was the excitement of the moment getting to her, but Mabel did not let that discount how pretty everything was here.
Weirdly though, she couldn’t get the feeling out of her head that there was something strangely… wrong. Something rotting behind the trees. In the trees. A vague intuition hit her mind that told her she was being watched. By what… she didn’t know. There were only trees around her. It wasn’t a very pleasant thought. She chose to ignore it, after all, Mabel was probably making it up.
She didn’t like paranoia, so she tried her best to shove it down where it couldn’t hurt her. Cover it in rainbows and unicorns and all the things that couldn’t be scary. After all, going around thinking that the world was against you was the very opposite of what she was about— even if her mind liked to trick her otherwise sometimes. And this moment was too grand! Too special to be ruined by something so stupid as her continuous unchecked paranoia.
She was so lost in her own head that she didn’t even notice as she accidentally bumped into a man on the path. Falling backwards onto her backpack and dropping both of her bags and her map. She shook the dizziness from her thoughts as her eyes trailed up the tall and rugged individual. Mabel couldn’t help as she felt her heart leap, eyes searching him from bottom to top and doing a double-take. “… Woah! Do my eyes deceive me? Who are you?!”
The look of guilt quickly washed off the man’s face as he suddenly looked very excited. Was that jam? Woah! That was simply adorable! “Normal… Man!”
“Huh?” Mabel stood up and dusted herself off. That wasn’t a name… maybe she misheard it? Well, she didn’t want to call somebody by the wrong name, so she hedged a guess. “Norman?”
“Yes!” He rumbled gravely. Voice dripping with the kind of gravity that all strong men had. Mabel flushed.
Suddenly though, Mabel soon realized that her hands were empty. She panicked, glancing around wildly for the map before finding it soaking up a puddle nearby. Completely ruined. Her anger spiked as she looked back at the man, who did, fairly enough, look rather guilty again. Mabel couldn’t help but lose her rage. After all, it was equally her fault for bumping into him as well, right? Still… she needed that map. Mabel didn’t know this town. “Well, since my map is ruined… do you happen to know where the Mystery Shack is, Norman?”
He nodded, eyes widening as he picked up her luggage and began walking. Mabel huffed and chased after him, boy was he fast! “Hey! Wait up!” The man stopped and looked back at her impassively. She jumped onto the back of the rolling bag, that way she wouldn’t be left behind. With that all settled, the man began to walk again. Presumably leading her towards the Mystery Shack and her Twin. “So! What’s it like living here, you’re a local right?”
The man nodded.
“Do you like it? I think it’s been magical! Everything I see is even more pretty than the last!”
The man grunted. “It is a nice…. Place.”
”You're so right! We’re totally on the same brain-wave right now!”
“Though… It is very dangerous. Especially for a small girl like you… on her own.”
”I can handle it!” Mabel claimed with unchecked ego. “This one time I fell like right out of a really high tree and I was like totally fine! I did get banned from climbing trees though.”
“Maybe… maybe you would be better served traveling home with me? I could keep… you safe.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Woah! No way Mister Norman! You seem really nice but I don’t know you— and my parents taught me never to go home with strangers!” She shook her head. “Besides! I’ve already got a place! I’m going to meet my brother Dipper!”
“The Mystery Shack is… not a good place…” Norman groaned out. “The people there are not very nice… don’t think you would like it there…”
“I’ll be the judge of that!” Mabel frowned. He was being weird. Maybe that’s just how people here were though. She didn’t know! She just got here! “But, just so I can consider all of my options, where do you suggest we go instead?”
Norman’s hand seemed to slip off of the bag ever so slightly, before it latched on even harder than before. It looked weirdly fake? But, who was Mabel to judge? “There’s this place… in the woods…”
Mabel giggled, waving out a hand as she adorably rolled her eyes. “I’m sure you offer to take all of the girl’s to your secret spot in the woods.” She crossed her arms. “But I’m sorry Norman. I’m gonna have to turn you down for now! Like I said! I got places to be! Somebody I gotta meet!” She leaned backwards, head upside down over the back of the bag as she met his eyes. “Somebody real important! But you seem super nice! I’d love to stay friends!”
“That… would be…” Did he sound annoyed? It was hard to tell. His voice was so monotone. “Nice…”
“You mean it, Norman? I didn’t want to come on too strong but— woah!“
Suddenly the bag stopped being dragged and tipped over entirely, forcing Mabel to spin over herself as she landed backwards onto the forest floor, dazed. There had been a flash of silver, as if the sunlight had reflected off of something metal shooting towards them. But that was crazy…
As she slowly sat up, Mabel realized three things in quick succession. One! Norman was gone and in his place was a grey sweatshirt and some pants on the ground, and a bunch of… gnomes? Yep… those were definitely gnomes! Or really short people who liked especially pointy hats! Maybe the hats covered a bunch of really terrible haircuts.
Two! There was a boy standing there who hadn’t been there before, he looked… really familiar. Incredibly familiar. He was dressed in a brown jacket and a maroon colored shirt and his hair was combed back, revealing what looked like the Big Dipper constellation on his forehead. She felt like an idiot for not connecting a name to who she knew she should’ve recognized. But her brain wasn’t really working at the moment due to the whole hitting her head on the forest floor thingie. At least she assumed she must have… because there were gnomes now! Usually seeing gnomes meant your brain broke.
Three! the boy was yelling something at the quickly scampering away gnomes. Something her brain was only now tuning into. “Give it up— Jeff! She’s never going to want to become your queen! And that’s Dipper— Dipper Pines! With two ‘p’s and one ‘r’!”
“Dipper?” Her own voice came out weak and a little warbly. The boy— Dipper— faced her, putting what appeared to be a grappling hook back on a belt underneath his jacket. Dipper… Dipper. Dipper. The Big Dipper…
Dipper! Her twin! Dipper Pines! That was her twin! Right there! He was right there!
Mabel wanted to burst towards him immediately but found herself stuck in his gaze. Frozen at his face as if he were the sun itself. How could she help that? The moment was simply too overwhelming for her. “Sorry about that, Jeff has tried that with every girl in these woods since forever.” He sounded exactly like she knew he would! Well… a little tired and a bit annoyed but it obviously wasn’t aimed at her! He was joking with her! He was joking with her like they were already old pals! “He’s all talk though, he won’t try anything if— oof!”
That was all she needed to knock herself out of her funk! Mabel raced to her feet and into Dipper’s chest, throwing her arms around him with a scream of joy. It was perfect! “Dipper! Oh my gosh! Hi!”
For a moment.
She found herself back on the ground, Dipper having pushed her violently off of him. He looked shocked, annoyed, upset, and vaguely weirded out. That wasn’t supposed to be how it went at all. “What the hell!? Who even are you?! What was that?!”
“Y-you don’t recognize me?”
“No…? S-should I?” He still looked weirded out, although his anger seemed to wane its way into bafflement. The sureness in her question making him question himself.
Oh. Well. That was fair. They’d laugh about this simple misunderstanding later, she knew it! Mabel just came on too strong, that was all. This was still perfectly okay! Mabel stood up and dusted herself off again! “Why Dipper! I’m your long lost twin sister, Mabel! The best twin sister you’ll ever have! And the only one!” She gave him the biggest grin she could, sticking her fingers into her cheeks to up the adorableness factor!
Dipper couldn’t look any more confused and weirded-out if he tried, she was sure of it. His face was twisted into an expression she didn’t recognize from her own mimicking of human emotions in the mirror. Then he snrked, snorted, and soon was laughing uproariously, as if she had said something hilarious. “My twin? Seriously? That’s what you’re going with?”
“Huh?”
“I don’t have a twin.”
She tried her best to not lose her smile, and mostly succeeded. “Yes you do! I should know— it’s me!” She booped his nose and he pulled back. “Boop! I know— I know I was shocked too when I found out about you but— just let it settle in bro-bro! Isn’t it amazing! You have a twin! It’s me! We’re twins!”
He scoffed. “Yeah, as if I’m being tricked by that whole shebang. I know a con when I see one, lady. And trust me, I’ve seen better.”
“Mabel!”
“Okay. Sure.” Dipper turned around and started walking off. “See you later, ‘Mabel’.”
Mabel couldn’t hide the annoyance on her face now, or in her voice. This wasn’t how this was supposed to go! He was supposed to be happy! He was supposed to believe her! He was supposed to understand! Mabel grabbed all of her luggage and raced after him. “Wait! No! Dipper! Look— I know it’s crazy! Enough people have told me it’s crazy! But haven’t you always wanted a twin?! Haven’t you always felt like something was missing?!”
Dipper paused in his stride, shoulders hunching ever so slightly. Before he shook his head and kept walking. Mabel didn’t let that deter her. “I— I’ll prove it to you! J— just let me talk to Great— to Grunkle Stanford! I’ll—“
That made him fully turn around. He raised an eyebrow. “Grunkle?”
She smiled back at him. Knocking a hand on her own head. “Great-Uncle! I made it up— just now! Just think of all of the other cool nicknames I can offer you too! Like… uh, Dip-Dop! Dipping Sauce! Dipperoni Pizza!”
His eyebrows pinched together ever so slightly. “Don’t call me that.” He looked over his shoulder at the other end of the road, where the Mystery Shack had recently come into view. “Look, I don’t believe you.” Her heart broke at those words. “Big whoop, you managed to somehow learn my Great Uncle’s name, however did you do that?” He added sarcastically. She couldn’t hide how much his doubt affected her on her expression because even Dipper seemed phased by her drop in mood. “But… let me guess, telling you to go away isn’t gonna work, is it?”
“Uh… no?” Mabel’s frown deepened further, feeling confused more than anything. Tell her to go away? He wanted her to go away?
“But… if I let you talk to him, then you’ll be happy, right?”
She nodded viciously. So fast she made herself dizzy.
He sighed, a small grin appearing on his face. A smug one that said, ‘I’m onto your tricks lady’, and not, ‘wow Mabel you’re so awesome’, but it was progress! “So, go! He’s right in there. Prove it. Twin sister.” He added under his breath as if it were an in-joke of some kind. As if after it could be added, ‘how dumb do you think I am?’
Dipper looked like he had won whatever game he thought they were playing. But Mabel knew the truth. Not even Dipper could dissuade that. She smiled back at him wider than ever. Walking towards the shack with her luggage trailing behind her. She shot him a look as she passed him. “Sure thing, Dipperino! I will prove it! And then you’ll have to believe me and everything will be perfect forever!”
He seemed taken aback by her confidence, his facade of victory cracking a little bit as she all but ran to what she hoped would be her new home for a little while. She felt his eyes on her back as she heard soft footsteps trailing hesitantly after her.
So, it hadn’t gone exactly to plan just yet. That was okay! She knew if she just kept believing in family and love and stars and rainbows… everything would turn out okay!
She just knew it!