Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Mabel’s hands shook as she sketched, but she wouldn’t let that stop her. Her hands moved over the page with her pencil, making scattered marks and lines everywhere until a picture began to emerge. The movements were precise, yet she was hardly paying attention to what she was doing. If anyone were to look closely, they would see her eyes focused a little bit above her sketchbook, her mind lost in another world as she drew.

This trance continued on for about ten minutes, until Mabel finally snapped back into reality and looked down at what she’d created.

The scene depicted a young boy in the center of the page, kneeling over something, his back turned to the viewer. Closer inspection showed some hair, an arm, and a leg of a girl’s body, shielded by her brother. A few strokes of carbon depicted a pool of blood. On the side stood a third figure, covered in shadows, their face invisible to detail save one manic eye.

It took Mabel less than a second to take all this in, and she cried out, hitting her head on the wall as she shied away from the drawing.

“Mabel? You all right, kid?”

Mabel hurriedly flipped to a blank page in her sketchbook. Robbie Corduroy had turned around from his post at the checkout counter; he was watching her with a concerned look on his face.

 “I-I’m fine,” she stuttered, rubbing the back of her head.

Robbie didn’t seem convinced. “I dunno, kid: You’ve been hiding out in corners drawing for, like, three days now. Are you sure you’re okay?”

Mabel set her sketchbook down and drew her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around her ankles. “I’m fine,” she said again, looking away.

Robbie shrugged. “If you wanna lie, I guess I can’t stop you. Just know I’m here if you need to talk or anything.”

Mabel lifted her eyes from her shoes. “R-really?”

A customer wandered over to Robbie to purchase a Mystery Museum trinket. “Sure, kid,” Robbie replied, turning around and taking the money for the product. “Just don’t freak me out by hiding in corners, okay?” He shot her a wink.

Mabel’s attempt to make herself smaller felt more effective than it probably was.

She knew she could never confide in Robbie. Only Dipper had any idea what she was going through, and right now he was cleaning exhibits back in the Hall of Mysteries. She hadn’t shown him the increasingly dark drawings she’d been creating, though he probably knew about them anyway. This wasn’t the first time that her favorite escape — drawing out her frustrations — had become her prison.

Her fingers twitched. She had to keep drawing. She had to get it all out: get the nightmares out through her fingers. But it wasn’t working, not even after three days. Why wasn’t it working?

She picked up her pencil with trembling fingers, stared at it for a moment, and set it down again. What would she draw this time, if she let her fingers go unchecked? She grabbed her sketchbook and flipped through the last ten pages or so that she’d filled over the last few days. The pictures were all similar: shadows and vague figures lurking in the background, glowing auras around people or objects, small details of blood, subtle indications that someone was dead. . . .

“Hey, Robbie!”

Mabel fumbled again to close her sketchbook from prying eyes.

“Hey, Dip-kid,” came Robbie’s cool reply.

“Have you seen Mabel any—”  He stopped as he caught sight of her behind the checkout counter. Mabel drew her knees closer to her chest and rested her forehead on her kneecaps in an obvious gesture of, “Leave me alone, but I actually want you to come over here and comfort me.”

She heard a small thunk and footsteps as Dipper set down his cleaning supplies and made his way over to her. “Hey, Mabel,” he said softly. “Been drawing again?”

She nodded, her forehead scraping against her jeans.

“Can I see?”

A shake of her head.

“Please?” Proprioception told her that his hand was moving towards her sketchbook. She snatched it and stuffed it under her knees.

Dipper sighed. “Mabel, don’t you think it would help if you shared it with me?”

Mabel shook her head again and mumbled into her knees.

“What’s that?”

“I don’t want you to get the nightmares too.”

There was a pause, and then Dipper shifted from his crouch so that he was sitting next to her. “Is drawing it out helping?”

A shake of her head.

“Then maybe showing me will help. C’mon.”

Silence.

“Ford’s starting to wonder what’s wrong. I’ve been covering for you for work these past couple days. I don’t mind, but. . . are you sure you don’t want to tell him?”

That got her attention. She looked up sharply. “N-no!”

“He’s getting suspicious, Mabel, and I think he might be able to help.”

“Oh, sure,” Mabel muttered. “’Hey, Grunkle Ford, I almost got myself killed by that apparently fake psychic.’ ‘Suck it up, Mabel.’”

“That’s not what he would say,” Dipper replied softly.

Mabel was exaggerating, but she didn’t want to admit it. Ford was just so. . . uncaring. About everything.

“Well, speaking of Ford, maybe we could take his journal and go exploring. What do you think?”

Mabel did like that idea. They hadn’t really been exploring since their first time, when they’d run into some unfriendly fairies. Mabel didn’t like the idea of going out in the cold, but she did like the idea of finding all the magical things described in the Journal.

But then there was a risk of another encounter with someone like. . . like her.

“Mabes?”

“I-I dunno, Dip. What if it happened again? What if one of us really got hurt this time?”

There was a beat of silence.

“Nope!” Dipper suddenly exclaimed, jumping to his feet. “This isn’t like you at all. My sister jumps at any opportunity to go find mysteries and magic, no matter what the danger! Remember when we snuck into that high school because you were convinced there were ghosts there, and we almost got caught? But the next day you wanted to go back! ‘Cause it was worth it to you! Isn’t this worth it?” He held out his hand.

Mabel smiled, though it was small, and took it. Dipper pulled her to her feet. “That’s my twin sister!” he said. “Let’s go find something supernatural!”

~~~~~

“Dipper! Dipper, wait!” Mabel closed the Journal around her thumb and ran to catch up with her brother. “We need directions!”

Dipper turned around, rolling his eyes as he walked backwards. “That totally ruins the point of the adventure, Mabes! And are there even directions in that thing?”

“Well, not really,” Mabel admitted. “It’s like Ford made up his own names for all the parts of the forest. They’re all kinda cliché.” She started flipping through the Journal. “Fairy Haven — we definitely don’t wanna go back there — Crystalline Cavern — Harbinger Hollow.”

“Woah, what was that last one?” Dipper backtracked so he could look over Mabel’s shoulder at the Journal.

“Harbinger Hollow,” Mabel repeated. “Looks like it’s a system of caves with a bunch of prophecies written all over.”

“Woah! Let’s go there!”

“We would if we could find it,” Mabel replied, a little irritable. “There are only little notes about it, like ‘Found a new prophecy in Harbinger Hollow today.’ He probably put the directions in a different journal.”

“Huh. I wonder where the other Journals are.” Dipper walked by Mabel, kicking up snow with each step. (She hurriedly moved the Journal out of the splash zone.) “Maybe they’re hidden in other secret compartments around the forest! Hey, is there any clues about where they are in Journal 3?”

“Are there any clues,” Mabel said under her breath. The only inclination that Dipper heard her was a slight roll of his eyes. “And no, I haven’t seen any clues to the other Journals. He hardly mentions them, other than the occasional footnote that says things like ‘See Journal 2 for more information.’” She sighed. “I still don’t get why he would hide them in the first place. He still does supernatural research; wouldn’t these be helpful?”

“Do magical mushrooms count as supernatural research?” said Dipper, referring to a project Ford had shared with them on their first day in Gravity Rises. Mabel shrugged.

“I wish we could just ask him what happened,” Mabel admitted, “but I still have a bad feeling about showing him that we found his Journal. Besides,” she added, mustering a smile, “it’ll be much more exciting to figure it out ourselves.” 

“Yeah! We’ll solve the mystery!” Dipper grinned at his sister. “Mystery Twins!”

Mabel’s forced smile turned genuine. “Yeah, Mystery Twins.” It was a name they’d used when they were younger, ghost- and treasure-hunting anywhere they were allowed — and some places they weren’t. They hadn’t used the name in a couple years, as they’d grown up, and it felt good to be the Mystery Twins again. Mabel had missed it.

It excited her, too. She imagined they would find a lot more mysteries here in Gravity Rises than they ever had before.

Just then, Dipper pointed into the distance. “Mabel, look, some caves! I wonder if that’s Harbinger Hollow!”

Grinning, Mabel ran after her brother.

Chapter Text

Hours later, the twins sat on the gift shop floor with Robbie, chatting with him as he counted the money from the till. Dipper told Robbie about the cave they’d found (no prophecies, so it wasn’t Harbinger Hollow, but it was still cool). Mabel listened idly to the boys, finding her eyes focused on Robbie a lot more than they were on Dipper.

“And then we heard something growling at us in the darkness, so of course Mabel ran out all scared — I totally would’ve stayed and fought the monster off, but—”

“Dipper!” Mabel cut in. “That’s not what happened! You got spooked first!”

Dipper waved a hand. “Yeah, yeah. Potato, tomato.”

“It’s ‘potato, potahto.’”

“Have you ever been exploring in the forest, Robbie? It’s really cool.”

“Yeah, some,” Robbie said. “I’ve been spelunking in some sweet caves with my friends.” He swatted Dipper’s hand away from the money as he spoke, not missing a beat in his sentence. “Hey, Mabel, could you hand me that stack of fives?”

Mabel blinked, a bit startled. “O-oh, yeah, sure.” She picked up the stack and handed it over, flushing as Robbie’s fingers brushed her own.

He didn’t seem to notice anything. “Thanks, kid.”

Mabel nodded, clamping her mouth shut so she couldn’t say anything embarrassing. Why did her crushes always leave her in such a blabbering mess? And. . . did she have a crush on Robbie? She thought she’d gotten over how cute he was days ago. But what he said to her earlier, when she was drawing in the corner. . . apparently that conversation had sparked something in her brain.

“Earth to Mabes!” called Dipper.

Mabel started, looking up at Robbie and her brother. “S-sorry, what?”

“It’s cool,” Robbie said, counting out a handful of bills. “I just asked if you were feeling better.”

“Uh, y-yeah, I am. It was, um, really nice to go exploring for a while.” Mabel tried to smile, then realized Robbie wasn’t making eye contact with her at the moment.

“That’s good. Hey, Dipper, you take care of your sister, ‘kay?” He gave the younger boy a nudge. “You are the man of the family, aren’t ya?”

Dipper grinned. “Yeah!”

“I’m older!” Mabel blurted. Her mouth closed with a snap, but the words were already out. Wonderful.

Robbie chuckled. Dipper was about to retort with something like “By six minutes!” but then paused. He slowly turned his head towards Mabel.

Uh-oh.

Yep, he had picked up on it. Dipper could sniff out a crush a mile away, which wasn’t exactly helpful when his sister, who was prone to having occasional crushes, never wanted to do anything about them. Honestly, it took him longer this time than Mabel expected. His face lit up in that look of his: the look when he was bursting with something to say but was trying to hold back. Mabel shot him a death glare when Robbie wasn’t looking, but the expression didn’t go away.

“Sorry to be such a bore,” Robbie said, “but Mr. Pines wanted this all counted tonight.”

Mabel blinked in surprised. She wasn’t bored at all, though she was a bit mortally embarrassed. “W-we could help you!”

“Yeah!” Dipper’s hand was slapped away again as he reached for the money piles.

“Nah, it’s good. So, where are you guys from, again?”

“Piedmont, California!” Dipper replied. “It never snows down there.”

“Is it your first time seeing snow, then?”

“Nah, we go visit our relatives up where it snows for Christmas sometimes. I’ve never seen it this deep, though! In some parts of the forest, we would sink to our knees every time we took a step. It’s so awesome.”

Mabel kept quiet. As long as Dipper was talking about something else, he wouldn’t say anything embarrassing about Mabel’s crush.

“And what about—”

Robbie was cut off as the door to the gift shop banged open. Mabel jumped; the Mystery Museum was closed, but they hadn’t locked up yet.

“Hey, Robbie, I thought I’d find you here.”

Mabel turned to see a girl with bright orange hair slouching in the doorway. A matching green beanie and jacket contrasted with her fiery hair, which framed a bored expression that bordered on a scowl. Her eyes scanned the scene before her, taking in Robbie and the twins sitting cross-legged on the floor with scattered piles of money in front of them.

“Oh, hey, Wendy,” said Robbie as the girl approached. She sat down right next to Mabel, shoving the smaller girl out of the way with her knee yet hardly seeming to notice her.

“Hey, Robs. Who are the squirts?”

Mabel’s face turned red, and she scooted away from the older teen.

“Oh, they’re Mr. Pines’ great-niece and -nephew.”

“Hi!” Dipper said. “I’m Dipper. I get my nickname from my birthmark, wanna see it?”

Wendy raised her eyebrows. “I’m good.”

Dipper and Robbie both looked at Mabel, expecting her to introduce herself; but she was staring at the floor, feeling as if her face were on fire.

Luckily, Dipper realized what was going on and responded tactfully. “And this is Mabel, my twin sister.” It wasn’t the first time he’d introduced her.

Wendy gave some kind of grunt in response and turned back to Robbie. “So the guys and me were gonna go hang out up by the Pleasure warehouse, wanna come?”

The guys and I, Mabel immediately thought; and in her mental correction, she almost missed the next part.

The Pleasure warehouse.

Dipper’s eyes widened, and Mabel felt him move a little closer to her. She didn’t dare close her eyes, or she would see her. Her eyes locked onto Dipper’s knee and traced the pattern of the polka-dot bandaid that rested there.

“Robbie?” Wendy prompted.

“Sure, that sounds fun. Hey, you guys wanna come?” Robbie nudged Dipper, who started a bit.

“Oh, no, we’re fine,” he said, sounding slightly nervous.

“You sure?” Robbie asked. Mabel saw Wendy scowl in her periphery. “It’s up on a cliff, and the view is amazing.”

“We’ve already been!” Dipper blurted. Mabel flinched.

“When?” Robbie asked. “Oh, yeah, when you dated the Pleasure girl. What happened to that?”

“Oh, we just haven’t talked for a while,” Dipper replied.

Dipper was a bad liar, but even he knew that was better than to say, “Oh, she went psycho and tried to torture my sister.” For which Mabel was grateful.

“Robbie, c’mon: We can’t just bring kids along. And they don’t wanna come, anyways,” said Wendy.

“We’re not kids!” Mabel blurted. She immediately bit her lip afterwards. What was wrong with her? First saying that she was older than Dip, now exclaiming that they weren’t kids. She’d always hated people treating her like the youth she was, because they always underestimated her — but couldn’t she keep quiet about it?

“We’re thirteen,” said Dipper, more conversationally than his indignant twin. “Technically teenagers. But yeah, we don’t wanna come. You need us to finish counting the money, Robbie?”

Robbie laughed. “No can do, little bud. Only I get to touch the money. I’m almost done, though. Are the guys on their way, Wendy?”

Mabel heard a faint beep as Wendy pressed a button on her flip phone. “They are now.”

“Awesome.” A few beats of awkward silence passed, with only the faint rustle of Robbie stacking the bills of money in his hands. “So, Mabel,” he finally said, without looking up, “you like to draw, right?”

“Um, yeah,” Mabel replied quietly.

“Wendy’s an artist too,” Robbie said casually. “Maybe you guys can talk about it sometime. It’d be cool.”

Mabel and Wendy glanced at each other; from the looks on their faces, neither one thought it likely that they would talk to each other about anything, much less art.

“Yeah, I started a new painting,” Wendy said, her voice monotone. She completely ignored the twins. “I’m trying to express how breaks from school are like gasps of air when you’re being drowned.”

“Very eloquent,” Mabel muttered under her breath.

Wendy paused. “Something to say, kid?” Her ‘kid’ wasn’t half as friendly as Robbie’s.

Mabel didn’t think Wendy could hear her. Whoops. “No,” she replied as her face reddened (again).

“One thousand two hundred and fifty seven. . . one thousand two hundred and fifty eight!” Robbie announced, placing the last bill into the pile. “All right, I’m gonna go give this to Mr. Pines, and then we can head out.”

A horn honked in the distance. “They’re here,” Wendy replied. “I’ll go tell them to wait for you.” She stood up and walked out without another word.

“Bye, Wendy!” Dipper called after her. Mabel thought she heard a grunt in reply, but it was masked by the slam of the door.

“Sorry about her,” Robbie said as he gathered the piles of money. “She’s not the friendliest person on the planet.” He winked down at Mabel, then turned to go find Ford.

“You okay?” Dipper asked his sister as soon as Robbie was gone.

“Yeah, I think so,” Mabel replied, getting to her feet with her brother. “That girl was kind of a jerk.”

“Yeah,” Dipper agreed. A beat passed, and a giant grin spread over his face. “Someone has a crush!” he sang.

Mabel flushed. “Shh, he might be coming back!”  

Dipper did her the favor of shutting up, but his face was still alight with his “Mabel has a crush” grin.

“Okay,” Mabel admitted, “Robbie is really dreamy — but he’s older than me, and there’s no way I’m telling him!” The last part came out in a rush, before Dipper could say anything.

“Aw, come on,” Dipper complained. “You never tell guys about your crushes.”

“That’s the point! You don’t just tell people about crushes unless you think you have an actual chance with them! And you might have a chance with anybody, but not me, and especially not with Robbie.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, Mabes.”

“Mabes” was about to retort that she wasn’t selling herself short when Robbie re-entered the gift shop.

“All right, well, I’m headed out,” he said, nodding at the twins. “Last chance: You sure you don’t wanna come?”

Dipper shook his head. “We’re good. Have fun!”

“Okay then.” Robbie opened the door. For a split second, he stood framed in the sunset, his black hair gleaming dully in the orange light. He almost seemed to be glowing. Then he closed the door behind him, and the moment was over.

Mabel wasn’t aware of anything until there was a hand waving in front of her face. “Earth to Mabel!”

She pushed Dipper’s hand away. “I’m going to bed.”

“Bed?” Dipper asked. “The sun sets early here, Mabel. It’s only four in the afternoon.”

“I’m still going to bed,” Mabel replied, hoping he’d understand. It was best if she was asleep before it was completely dark outside. At least, she hoped so. She hoped it would help ward off thoughts of her.

“What about dinner?”

With a sigh, she conceded, “I’ll grab something.”

Dipper followed her into the kitchen, where Melody was starting dinner preparations. Melody didn’t ask too many questions about Mabel going to bed so early, though she did give her a concerned look. Mabel tried to ignore it and made herself a simple dinner from leftovers. She ate silently and quickly, then put her dishes by the sink and left the room.

“Good night, Mabel,” called Dipper when she was halfway up the stairs.

She paused and looked back at him. “’Night, Dipper.” Then she trudged up the stairs, got ready for bed, and slipped under her covers, hoping sleep would overtake her sooner than later.

Chapter Text

Mabel woke up screaming.

One moment she was asleep lying on her back with her eyes closed. The next, she was sitting upright, her knees drawn halfway to her chest, her eyes wide open, her breathing heavy. Her head throbbed faintly from the sudden movement, but she hardly noticed. She couldn’t even remember what she was screaming about—

Then the images came back, and she remembered.

She wrapped her arms around her knees and shut her eyes tightly, trying to squeeze out the memories and the tears. But no tears came, and the memories played behind her eyelids, vivid and rebellious.

“Mabel?”

Mabel opened her eyes and glanced over at her brother without turning her head. In the predawn light, she watched him sit up blearily, his hair sticking out in various angles. She guessed it was about six-thirty in the morning, and it surprised her a little that she didn’t wake up like this earlier.

Dipper got up and made his way over to her, sitting down carefully on the bed next to his sister. It took him a couple tries of opening and closing his mouth to say something, but eventually he put his arm around Mabel and said simply, “It’s okay now.”

Mabel stared straight ahead and wondered why she wasn’t crying.

They sat there in silence for a minute. “Do you want me to sleep with you?” Dipper asked.

Mabel considered it. As the twins got older, it became increasingly more awkward for them to sleep in the same bed, what with them being different genders. Their parents generally discouraged this and had recently given them their own rooms, but sometimes one twin would go crawl in bed with the other if they were scared or sad or lonely. More often than not, Dipper would appear in Mabel’s doorway, claiming he could sense something was wrong with Mabel — and he was usually right. No, Mabel didn’t feel too weird sleeping next to her twin brother. But, she decided, she was done with sleeping for now.

She eased Dipper’s arm off her and stood up. “Thanks, Dip,” she said, “but I’m going to go for a walk.”

“Can I come with you?”

“No.”

He didn’t push her, and there was a rather tense quiet as Mabel changed out of her pajamas. That was another thing that had grown awkward between the two twins. (Mabel still remembered Dipper freaking out the day she got her first sports bra, just a couple months ago.) But Mabel was fast, and it was only a couple minutes before she was ready to go. She glanced at herself in the mirror, making sure she had her snow boots on over her jeans and her orange jacket over her pine tree shirt; then she grabbed the Journal and her compass off the bedside table and headed for the door.

“Mabes, wait. Why do you have the Journal?”

She stuffed it under her jacket. “No reason.”

“Mabel, please, let me come with you.”

But she was already gone.

~~~~~

Mabel now knew that a forest in the predawn winter was cold.

Maybe it was for the better this way. The chill seemed to chase away the memories that danced behind her eyes, at least temporarily. All Mabel knew was that she had to keep going: so she forged on, her boots sinking into the deep snow. It didn’t feel like she was running away from her problems, since her progress was so slow. It felt like she was. . .

Okay, so she was running away from her problems.

A huge shiver started from her head and radiated to her toes. She pulled out her Journal with cold fingers — why hadn’t she brought gloves? — and opened it, hoping to find a warm place described in its pages. She might be running from her problems, but that didn’t mean she had to freeze to death.

Finding snowless shelter underneath the boughs of a pine tree, Mabel flipped through the Journal until a picture of a cave caught her eye. Unlike Harbinger Hollow, which was simply mentioned in various places, this cave seemed to be a newer discovery: The page was filled with drawings and descriptions of the crystals found within. The name “Crystalline Cavern” headed the top of the page, and Mabel recognized the entry. She found directions scribbled in a margin and soon realized that they began at the Mystery Museum. Well, she’d just have to find the path from here. She couldn’t go back to the Mystery Museum, not yet. Not until she found a way to more permanently chase away the nightmares.

The next ten minutes were a dizzying cycle of looking down at the book for landmarks, looking up at the landscape, and turning around in all directions to find said landmarks. Mabel growled in frustration. Who knows how long ago Ford even wrote this Journal? The guy was ancient! The forest could have completely changed since he wrote these notes.

Finally, she found herself at the entrance of the cave.

“Hey,” she said to herself, “this is the same cave Dip and I found yesterday.”

She then resolved not to talk out loud again. It felt too lonely.

The cave was as good as any, she supposed. It may not be the cave she was looking for (she hadn’t seen any crystals in here yesterday), but it would do. She closed the Journal around her thumb, keeping her spot just in case, and trudged into the cave.

It wasn’t much warmer.

But at least there wasn’t any snow. Mabel sighed and leaned against the wall and closed her eyes, letting her body sag a bit as she slowly let out a breath.

Her eyes snapped open again.

The images were still there.

A sudden panic overtook her, and Mabel pushed herself off the wall and started running. She dashed deeper into the cave and finally felt like she was making progress without having to sludge through any snow. She didn’t pay attention to anything, save the feeling of her feet pounding on the stone, until she realized that it was almost pitch black. She skidded to a stop, noticing for the first time a few other things:

It was warm.

There was no light anywhere to be seen.

And she was completely lost.

Well, maybe it was better this way. Where better to hide than deep in an uncharted cave?

Except, maybe it was charted. Maybe it was somewhere in the Journal. Maybe it was even the Crystalline Cavern she had been reading about.

If only she could see.

She groped carefully for a wall and, finding one, followed it for a while with slow, careful steps. She forced herself to breathe just as slowly as she walked, telling herself she could find her way out.

A light!

It was a tiny dot in the upper left corner of her vision. Her sense of direction must have been all messed up; she could have sworn the way back was to her right. But, light was light, and Mabel changed her course to head towards the dot, now growing into a sliver.

As the glow grew closer, Mabel quickened her pace. This turned out to be a mistake, as she suddenly felt herself flying through the air and hitting the ground face-first. “Ow,” she moaned, pushing herself up onto her elbow. Luckily she’d caught herself with her hands, but now they were all scraped up. She rubbed her hands together to loosen some of the grit now lodged there, wincing as she did.

She still couldn’t see.

“All right, Mabel, let’s try this again. Slowly.” The talking that had felt lonely earlier now served to reinforce Mabel’s existence in this darkness. How did she get herself into this, again?

Countless minutes of countless careful steps later, Mabel could finally see her hand in front of her face. It didn’t look so great: Multiple scrapes lacerated her palms. It wasn’t serious, and it didn’t hurt that badly; but Mabel could do without scraped-up hands and knees, thank you.

The light was above her head, and a pile of rocks formed a make-shift staircase up to it. This definitely wasn’t the way Mabel had come. Great. But it still appeared to be an exit, so Mabel approached the ramp of rocks and started climbing. It didn’t take that long, though she slipped a few times and further scraped her hands. A few minutes later, she pulled herself up into the light, which shone on her face brighter than she expected. She squinted and lifted herself up over the last couple of rocks, finding solid ground to stand on. As her vision cleared, she couldn’t help but think that something was. . . off. But what?

The light. Her eyes adjusted until she could see the source of the light: and it wasn’t the sun. “What the. . . ,” Mabel murmured, stepping forward. “What is that?”

A huge blue crystal floated in the air, giving off a bright, pale blue glow.

Mabel looked around the new cavern, vaguely aware that her mouth was hanging open. Crystals lined the walls and speckled the ground and hung from the ceiling, shaded in blues and purples and pinks. A soft ambiance filled the room; the center crystal wasn’t the only one giving off light, though it was definitely the biggest in sight. It hovered a few feet off the ground and a few feet under the ceiling, suspended by what seemed to be nothing.

“Well,” Mabel said, her voice echoing off the sharp points of the crystals, “it looks like I’ve found the Crystalline Cavern.”

Chapter Text

Dipper tore down the stairs, pulling a t-shirt over his warmer, long-sleeved one. “Grunkle Ford! Grunkle Ford, have you seen Mabel?”

Ford stuck a finger in his ear, wincing at Dipper’s loud voice. “No, I haven’t seen her all morning. Which means I need you to—”

“Sorry, Grunkle Ford, but I gotta go find Mabel — see ya later, bye!” Dipper ran out the door and slammed it behind him before Ford could stop him. Thumping his way down the porch steps, he ran from the Mystery Museum into the town of Gravity Rises.

“Mabel’s probably in the woods somewhere,” he said to himself. “But it’s easier to start around town, right? Gah, I shouldn’t have let her just run off like that.” She’d been gone for at least an hour.

Dipper shivered and quickened his pace. Why did it have to be so dang cold in this town? He liked playing in the snow, but in this weather it was no fun being a kid who always wore shorts. He ran down the mostly empty streets, scanning for Mabel.

A flash of movement caught the corner of his eye. Dipper skidded to a stop and backtracked a couple steps, turning to the source of the motion. Then he gasped loudly. A boy about Dipper’s age was sitting in a tiny alley between two buildings — and there was a lizard on his shoulder.

A smaller girl sat next to the boy; the pair jumped at Dipper’s loud gasp and turned to look at him. “Uh, hi,” the boy said. His voice was surprisingly deep.

“Hi!” Dipper said. “Is that a pet lizard?”

The boy grinned. “Yep. His name’s Fred.” His face fell a bit. “I really should be getting him home, but. . .”

“But what?” Dipper asked.

“None of your business!” the girl exclaimed, jumping to her feet. Compared to Dipper she was small; compared to her friend she was tiny.

“Hey, Candy, chill,” the boy told her. “He’s just asking.” He got to his feet as well, brushing dirt off his pants. “I’m Greyson,” he said, extending a hand to shake Dipper’s.

Dipper gave him a fist bump instead. “Dipper Pines! I get my name from my birthmark, look!” He lifted up his bangs to show the Big Dipper birthmark that sat proudly on his forehead.

“Woah, cool!” Greyson said. His deep voice resonated in a way that a tween boy’s shouldn’t be able to, but his larger girth seemed to be partly responsible. “I wish I had a cool name like that. Candy goes by Candy because—”

“He doesn’t need to know that!” Candy yelped. Her eyebrows drew together. “Dipper isn’t actually your name, is it?”

Dipper shrugged. "Well, no. It's a nickname. But it's a cool one, isn't it?" He grinned at Candy.

She didn’t seem impressed.

“Sure,” she said. “Well, I think — get down!”

Next thing he knew, Dipper was pulled into the alleyway by a tiny girl with deceptive strength. He tumbled past her, landed in the dust with a small moan. Candy leapt over him to get deeper into the alley while Greyson crouched next to him, shooting him a sympathetic look.

“What—?”

Greyson clapped a hand over Dipper’s mouth, shaking his head. Dipper pushed the hand away and gave the boy a confused look.

“I thought I saw something, over here,” a voice said from the street. Dipper could hear footsteps growing closer. He opened his mouth to whisper something, but he was once again cut off by Candy giving him a threatening glare.

“Where are you hiding, freaks?” a different voice said. Well, Dipper thought, that wasn’t very nice. Was the voice talking to Candy and Greyson?

“Over here!” another voice called.

Suddenly, Dipper felt himself being pushed forward, and he looked back in alarm to see Candy shoving him. Greyson started frantically shaking his head, but Candy looked determined. She pushed at Dipper again. It was like she was wanting him to go talk to whoever was out there. Dipper shrugged and started for the entrance to the alleyway.

He exited to see a group of four boys headed towards him. “Hey there!” he said, waving. “Looking for anybody?”

“Who are you?” one of the boys asked, narrowing his eyes.

“Name’s Dipper Pines!”

“As in, Stanford Pines?” another boy asked.

“Yep, he’s my great uncle!”

A third boy rolled his eyes. “Seen any freaks around here?”

“Nope, just some new friends. I have a birthmark, though, that — Hey!”

The fourth boy looked back and forth between Dipper and Dipper’s pointing finger. “Don’t point at me,” he said, sounding offended.

“I know you!” Dipper said. “You were at—”

The boy turned his nose up with a swish of his white cape. “Well, I’m certain you know of me, but you certainly don’t know me. I’d never be seen with riffraff like you.”

A couple of his friends chuckled.

Dipper frowned. “But you were at the warehouse when. . . Gideon, right? That’s your name?”

“Gideon Northwest, of course,” Gideon replied, folding his arms. Dipper could see the blue amulet on his chest, where it fastened his cape. That amulet had magical powers, if Dipper wasn’t mistaken. “You must be new in town if you don’t even remember my name.”

“Well, yeah, Mabel and I are just visiting our Grunkle for the winter. But, dude, you showed up when—”

“Felix, Vincent, Marius, don’t you have some freaks to find? I bet they’re around here somewhere, and this kid is just a decoy.” At that, the three boys grinned and started for the alleyway.

“Wait—” Dipper started, but Gideon grabbed his arm.

“Listen, kid, I was not at the Pleasure warehouse that night, got it?”

“But you were!” Dipper replied. “You stopped Mabel and me from smashing Pacifica’s amulet!”

“Yeah, and you’re welcome,” Gideon replied. “If you’d succeeded, she would’ve made your life miserable. But, as far as anybody is concerned, that night didn’t happen.”

Dipper narrowed his eyes. He generally liked people, but this Gideon was going too far. He pulled his arm away from Gideon’s grasp. “As far as my sister is concerned, it happened. She’s getting nightmares about what Pacifica did to her! In fact, I should be out looking for her, because she ran away this morning!”

“Not my problem. I didn’t tell Pacifica to do what she did. Pacifica is insane, and I’m the only one who can stop her, so you’d best be grateful that I intervened. And, in return, you keep your mouth shut about all of it. Got it? No mentioning Pacifica, the warehouse, the amulets, nothing.”

“I’m not just gonna lie about it.”

“You don’t have to lie about anything,” Gideon replied, sounding exasperated. “Just don’t say anything to people who don’t need to hear about it.”

“You sound just like Mabel,” Dipper muttered, thinking of her silent crush on Robbie.

“Then maybe your sister is worth something. Aren’t you supposed to be looking for her?”

Dipper wasn’t sure, but he thought Gideon just insulted his sister. And that was not okay.

“There you are, freaks!”

Dipper turned to see Greyson and Candy being dragged out of the alleyway. Greyson was held by two of Gideon’s friends, who looked exactly the same, while the third handled a thrashing Candy who looked like she was trying to bite him.

“Hey, what’s going on?” Dipper demanded.

“Keep ahold of the little one, Felix,” Gideon laughed. That made the other two Vincent and Marius. They must’ve been twins.

“Let them go!” Dipper said.

Vincent, or maybe it was Marius, shot Dipper a jeering expression. “We can’t do that.”

Marius, or maybe it was Vincent, grinned in a similar manner. “They’re freaks. We have to teach them a lesson.”

Greyson struggled against the bullyboys, who were about the same size as he. “Fred! I gotta get Fred, or he’ll freeze!”

Dipper noticed Greyson’s little lizard had fallen onto the cold street. Without thinking, Dipper dashed forward and snatched up the lizard, cupping it in his hands to give it warmth. “Let Greyson go,” he told Vincent and Marius. “It isn’t nice to call people names.”

“It’s tradition, Pines,” said Gideon, sauntering up to him. “They’re used to it.”

Dipper almost clenched his fists, but then remembered he was still holding Fred. “You can’t just—”

Felix yelped suddenly, dropping Candy and sinking to his knees. Candy landed on all fours, leaving Felix to moan and cover the tender spot in which she’d kicked him, and dashed towards the twins holding Greyson. What she lacked in size, she made up for in speed; with a battle cry, she launched herself at Marius, grabbing his arm and biting down. Marius screamed, letting go of Greyson and stumbling back. Greyson, with his arm now free, brought it around to punch Vincent in the gut.

Dipper watched in awe as, thanks to Candy and Greyson, Gideon’s friends were incapacitated in a matter of seconds. “C’mon!” Candy yelled to Dipper, running away with Greyson on her heels. Dipper jumped into action and raced after them, looking back only once so he could shoot a triumphant grin in Gideon’s direction.

“This way!” said Greyson, and he slid into a turn. “Do you have Fred?”

“Yeah,” Dipper panted between breaths. “Yeah, he’s here.”

They ran for another block before Greyson made a hard right and dashed up the front steps of what Dipper assumed was his house. He threw open the door and ran in with Dipper and Candy behind him. Candy closed the door, and they all skidded to a stop in the entry way, breathing heavily.

“What. . . just happened?” Dipper asked, catching his breath. He held out his hands and offered Fred to Greyson, who had his hands on his knees.

Candy didn’t look nearly as winded as her friend. “You distracted them for us, that’s what happened. Thanks, Dip.”

“Uh, you’re welcome,” Dipper replied, still not exactly sure what had transpired.

“Sorry you had to see that,” Greyson said, slipping Fred into a tank nearby. “Those guys have been after me basically my whole life. But ever since Candy has started hanging out with me, we’ve been able to get away from them more often.”

“What do they have against you?” Dipper asked.

Greyson shrugged. “I’m a fat kid with a lizard and a weird voice,” he replied. “What else do they need?”

“That’s stupid!” Dipper said. “Kids used to try to make fun of me for my birthmark, but it’s way too awesome for that to work. And so’s your lizard, and your voice.”

“Really?” Greyson asked, blinking. “I. . . I’ve never thought of it that way.”

“Well, it’s true!” Dipper replied. He grinned.

Greyson grinned back.

“You’re a cool kid,” Candy said, giving Dipper a punch on the arm.

Dipper laughed, rubbing his arm. “Ow,” he said through his smiling teeth. That was going to leave a bruise.

There was a beat of silence as the three new friends looked at each other and smiled. Then Dipper’s eyes widened. “Oh my gosh, I gotta go find Mabel!”

“Who?” Greyson asked.

“My twin sister. She went to go for a walk this morning, but she went into the forest, and she’d just had some nightmares, and she could be anywhere now. I gotta go find her. It was nice meeting you guys!” Dipper turned the doorknob on Greyson’s front door before feeling a strong hand on his wrist. He looked back to see Candy. “What?”

“We’re coming with you,” Candy declared. “Don’t want you to get lost too.”

Dipper blinked. He was all for company; but if they went with him, they might find out about Pacifica and what she had done to him and Mabel. And Gideon said not to tell anyone.

Well, who cared what Gideon Northwest said? That jerk had tried to beat up Dipper’s new friends! And besides, Candy and Greyson didn’t have to find out. Dipper’s face split into another grin.

“Great! Thanks, guys! Let’s go!”

Finding Dipper’s sister was more important than Gideon Northwest and his pride any day.

Chapter Text

The giant floating crystal was so high up off the ground that Mabel could walk underneath it. She stood there, strangely unafraid of it falling on top of her, as she flipped through the Journal to find the page on the Crystalline Cavern. Where did it go?

A slip of paper fell from the Journal.

Mabel watched it drift down, dancing on impalpable winds, and settle on the ground face-up. Her breath caught in her throat. No. . . no, no, no. . .

It was a shadowy drawing of her.

Mabel didn’t remember putting any of her sketches from the last couple of days into the Journal, but that didn’t matter now. All the memories — all the flashing images that had been absent from her mind for the past hour or so — came flooding back in full force. Mabel cried out, dropping the Journal and putting her hands on the sides of her head. “No,” she said out loud. Her voice didn’t seem to echo anymore. There didn’t seem to be any air at all anymore. She couldn’t breathe; she couldn’t think; there were voices, sounds, screams—

“Stop! I don’t want these!”

Silence.

A split second of silence, and then Mabel could hear the faint echoes of her outburst. But the voices were gone. She could breathe again, and she sucked in a few gulps of air. There were a few moments of peace.

Then the room exploded with blue light.

Mabel thought she felt a scream leaving her throat, but she couldn’t hear it. Her vision was filled with nothing but scalding blue light, until a sudden curtain of black replaced it, and Mabel realized she had closed her eyes. Whooshing sounds were responsible for her saturated hearing, and she could feel gusts of air whipping about her. “What is going on!” she tried to yell; but, again, she couldn’t hear the words after they left her mouth.

She wasn’t sure how long this strange whirlwind lasted; but eventually the light dimmed, and the wind stilled. Mabel cracked open an eye.

And saw crystals, just like before.

“What just happened?” she breathed, opening her eyes all the way. Had she imagined it? Was it all part of some kind of trauma reaction?

“There she is!” a voice yelled. Something hit Mabel from behind, knocking her to the ground.

“Hey! Get off of her!” another voice said. Except. . . it sounded exactly the same as the first one.

“Are you the original?” demanded the person on top of Mabel. Why did that voice sound so familiar?

“I said get off!” The pressure on Mabel’s back lifted, and she pushed herself onto her elbows.

A hand took Mabel’s arm. “Are you okay?”

“Wh-who are you?” Mabel asked, turning around to look at whoever was touching her.

She found herself staring into her own face.

“Aah!” Mabel scrambled away, her eyes widening in horror as she saw herself standing over her. And then. . . another Mabel stood there with folded arms, glaring at the other. There was another behind them, and another, and another.

The entire Crystalline Cavern was filled with Mabels.

Nine pairs of brown eyes stared back at Mabel, framed by brown hair and bunched-up orange hoods. White shirts with dark blue symbols showed through the hoodies; but instead of pine trees, each symbol was a different shape. The Mabel standing closest to, well, Mabel, had a pine tree on her shirt, except it was upside down. The Mabel standing a few feet away had her arms crossed over a dark blue lightning bolt.

“Wh-wh-wh. . . what is going on?” Mabel asked. Her head whipped back and forth between all the Mabels. She couldn’t make out any of the other symbols, but she was hardly concerned about that right now.

“You said you didn’t want these,” said Lightning Bolt Mabel, gesturing to the other Mabels. “So here we are.”

Mabel recognized the voice now. It was the voice she had on recordings of herself: that weird camera voice that people hate but that sounds normal to everyone else. “That. . . that didn’t help,” she replied, slowly getting to her feet. Upside-Down Pine Tree Mabel rushed over, looking like she wanted to help, but Mabel shook her head violently. She didn’t want to be touched again by. . . whoever these people were.

“We’re you,” another Mabel said, stepping up. Her shirt bore a star. “You didn’t want all those feelings, and the crystal heard you. It made us.”

“Still making no sense.” Mabel put a hand on the wall behind her to steady herself. So. . . these were a bunch of copies of her? What did the Journal have to say about this? She spotted the book on the floor of the Cavern, where she had stood a moment ago before scrambling away from her clones. She wasn’t sure she could walk through all these other Mabels to get it.

But she didn’t have to worry about it. Two other Mabels followed her line of sight and spotted the Journal. “There it is!” one yelled. Was that a hand on her shirt? She started running forward, but a Mabel with a cloud on her shirt held her back. The other Mabel that saw the Journal, who also seemed to have a hand on her shirt, was held back by a Mabel with a broken heart on her chest.

“Guys, stop it!” said Upside-Down Pine Tree Mabel. The Hand Mabels stopped struggling against Cloud Mabel and Broken Heart Mabel, but they still glared at each other from across the Cavern. “Original Mabel still doesn’t know what’s going on here!”

“That’s accurate,” said Mabel under her breath.

Upside-Down Pine Tree Mabel stepped forward. “You had so many conflicting and horrible feelings, right? When you said you didn’t want them, the crystal heard you.” She pointed up to the giant crystal that floated in the middle of the Cavern. “It created all of us to take those feelings away. There are ten Mabels now, including you. We each have opposing traits. You didn’t want those feelings, but you have them, so I don’t have any of them.” She pointed to the Hand Mabels, still held back by Cloud Mabel and Broken Heart Mabel. “She, with the six fingers on the hand, wants to tell Ford about the Journal and learn from him; but she, with the five fingers, wants to hide it from him. One of us is infatuated with Robbie—”

“He’s so dreamy,” said a Mabel with a heart picture on her chest.

“—but another one is terrified of talking to him.”

Broken Heart Mabel suddenly shied back; she let go of Six-Fingered Hand Mabel, who rushed to the Journal, only to be caught by yet another Mabel.

“So,” Upside-Down Pine Tree Mabel continued, “we’ll take care of all of your feelings for you.”

Mabel’s eyes widened. “Wh-what does that mean?”

“It means I’m gonna take care of that rat Pleasure!” Lightning Bolt Mabel shouted.

“I’m gonna tell Robbie how I feel about him!” Heart Mabel added.

“I’m gonna tell Ford about the Journal!” Six-Fingered Mabel yelled.

“No, you’re not!” shouted three Mabels at once.

“No, wait, you can’t do any of that!” Mabel protested. She was getting extremely confused. “I’m me! I can take care of my own problems!”

“But you can’t,” Upside-Down Pine Tree Mabel countered. “You can’t take care of it, so we’re going to do it for you. And whichever Mabel is successful in each pair, that’s the feeling that gets to stay inside of you.”

“Successful?”

“We all want to do our jobs as Mabel, but we all have another Mabel opposing us. Whoever is stronger deserves to be a part of the real Mabel.” She stated this like it was obvious. Well it wasn’t obvious to “the real Mabel,” not in the least.

“So. . . if you’re my opposite. . . what’s your job?” she asked Upside-Down Pine Tree Mabel carefully.

“To keep you trapped in here so you don’t interfere, of course,” UDPT Mabel replied, almost cheerfully.

“What?!”

“All right, everybody, go ahead! I’ll make sure Original Mabel stays here!” UDPT Mabel shouted.

The Crystalline Cavern erupted into chaos as eight Mabels scrambled for the entrance. Five- and Six-Fingered Hand Mabel stopped to grab the Journal; Five-Fingered Hand Mabel snatched it first and ran off, with Six-Fingered Hand Mabel close behind.

“Wait! Stay here!” Mabel lunged forward, but UDPT Mabel grabbed her by the hood and pulled her back. “Let me go!”

“Can’t. It’s my job to keep you here.” As she said it, the crystals in the Cavern started to move. They rumbled and shifted, covering up the opening to the Cavern.

“No! Wait! You can’t trap me in here!” Mabel slipped her arms out of her sweater and ran for the entrance, but the opening sealed just as she reached it. She pounded her fists on the crystal. It didn’t budge. “Let me out!”

UDPT Mabel sauntered up behind Mabel, unworried. “You and I will be in here for some time, while the other Mabels do their thing. Since we’re waiting, I think I should give myself a name.”

Mabel wasn’t paying attention. She had her forehead on the cool crystal blocking her way, trying not to cry.

“Your middle name is Elizabeth, right?” She didn’t wait for Mabel to reply. “I think I’ll go by Lizzie. It has a nice ring to it.”

Mabel suddenly whipped around to face Lizzie, the tears breaking through and trailing down her face. “You’ve trapped me in here, and you’re talking about names like it’s nothing? Y-you’re just as bad as — as her!”

Mabel’s words echoed through the Cavern as she sank to the ground, drawing her knees to her chest.

“Ouch. I hope not,” Lizzie replied, not sounding too concerned about being compared to her. She regarded Mabel with a discerning eye. “Well, you look comfortable. That’s good, because like I said, we’re going to be here for quite a while.”

Mabel moaned and buried her head in her knees.

Chapter Text

“Maaaaaaaaaaaabeeeeeeeeeeeelll!” Dipper yelled as loud as his lungs would let him for as long as they would let him. Then he took a deep breath and prepared to do it again. “Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa—”

“Wait, what’s that?” Candy said, nudging Dipper violently in the side to get him to shut up. The air left his lungs in an oomph!

Dipper couldn’t hear anything, since he was concerned with catching his breath, but apparently Candy could. “Over there!” She pointed off the path, towards a cluster of bushes. Dipper followed her finger, expecting a bunny to hop out of it like in the cartoons when people thought there was a monster.

Instead, Mabel emerged from the undergrowth.

“Dipper! I found you!” she exclaimed, running towards him and giving him a hug.

“Uh, hi, Mabes,” Dipper said, a little shocked. “Are you okay?” If she was hugging him so tightly, maybe something scary happened.

Mabel pulled away, beaming at her brother. “Everything is fine, now that I’ve found you! What were you doing out here in the forest?”

“Looking for you,” Dipper replied. He could see Greyson and Candy watching him and his sister, the former looking surprised and the latter snickering behind her hand. Dipper took a step back from Mabel. “Mabel, these are my new friends, Greyson and Candy.” Now that he was a little further away, he realized that Mabel’s white shirt had a dark blue star on it, rather than a pine tree. Did Mabel have any other white-and-blue shirts? Dipper thought she only had the pine tree one.

“Hi.” Mabel gave Candy and Greyson a cheery wave, then turned back to Dipper. “Listen, we gotta get out of here.” Her voice took on a sudden tone of urgency.

“Uh, why?”

“We have to get away from someone. I’ll explain later.” She started tugging on his sleeve.

“Wait, get away from someone? Is Pacifica out here?”

“No, she’s not out here. Come on.” Mabel gripped Dipper’s wrist and started pulling him along behind her.

“Mabel! Mabel, wait! Who are we running from?”

“Dipper, look out!”

In the same moment that Candy yelled his name, another figure burst from the tree line and tackled Dipper from the side. He felt his wrist tear away from Mabel’s grasp right before he hit the ground, tumbling over and over. Wow, he was getting beat up today. First by Candy, now by this mystery attacker. He rolled over and propped himself up with his elbows as his assailant moved off of him. “Get away from her!” they demanded.

Wait.

That was Mabel’s voice.

Dipper looked up to see Mabel scowling down at him. What the heck? She had been pulling on his wrist, not jumping on him from the trees! Vaguely, he realized that the symbol on her shirt had changed: Now, the star was upside-down.

“Why would you do that! He didn’t deserve that!”

“He totally did — and even if he didn’t, I had to get him away from you.”

Dipper looked past Mabel to see. . . another Mabel?

Two Mabels, one with a star on her shirt and the other with an upside-down star, were arguing with each other in the middle of the path.

Dipper glanced over to Greyson and Candy, who looked as shocked and confused as he felt. So he wasn’t the only one seeing this? What had happened to his sister?

Star Mabel ran over to help Dipper to his feet, shoving Upside-Down Star Mabel away as she tried to stop her. “Get off me! You know I’m going to win!” she shouted over her shoulder as she held out her hand for Dipper.

He didn’t take it. His mouth hung open as the other Mabel retorted, “No, you’re not! Dipper is way too annoying to deserve our love!”

Dipper’s jaw snapped shut. Well, that was rude.

“Don’t say that! Dipper is our brother, and we love him!”

“You do!”

Dipper jumped to his feet. “Shut up!”

The Mabels fell silent. Dipper rarely told Mabel to shut up, unless in jest. But as far as he was concerned, neither of these Mabels was his sister.

Dipper stalked up to the pair of them. “Who are you and where is my sister?” he demanded.

“We are your sister!” Star Mabel replied. “And I promise I’m stronger than her; we really do love you!”

“No, I’m stronger, and we don’t.”

Dipper pointed at Upside-Down Star Mabel. “Okay, you’re mean. I want to talk to the other Mabel.”

Star Mabel shot UDS Mabel a satisfied smirk.

“Now, where is Mabel?”

“Dipper, I’m Mabel.”

“Well, there’s another one, right? The real Mabel. Where is she?” He was quickly losing his patience.

“Can’t tell you,” Star Mabel replied, sounding slightly apologetic. “Not until one of us wins.”

“Wins what?” Dipper asked.

“I love you because you’re my brother and you’re a great kid.”

“Um, thanks,” Dipper said. That didn’t answer his question.

“But she,” Star Mabel continued, glaring at UDS Mabel, “thinks you’re the most annoying kid on the planet. Which you’re totally not.”

“Which you totally are.”

Star Mabel shoved at UDS Mabel. “And whichever one of us is stronger,” she finished, “is the one who lives on in the Original Mabel.”

Dipper noticed Candy and Greyson edging closer to him and the Mabels in his periphery. Candy looked pretty mad. “’Lives on in the Original Mabel’?” Dipper repeated. “What does that mean? Where’s my sister?”

“Look, Dipper, for the rest of the day, we are your sister, got it?” said UDS Mabel. “So shut up about it.”

“Seriously, quit talking to me,” Dipper replied. He’d been made fun of before, but few people were flat-out rude to him, least of all Mabel. He didn’t like the sound of those words in her voice, even if UDS Mabel wasn’t his real sister.

“You know what?” He turned to Greyson and Candy. “I came out here to find my sister, and I haven’t done that yet. So our quest isn’t over, friends; let’s go!”

“Good idea,” Greyson said with a nervous glance at the Mabels. Candy was too busy having a glare showdown with UDS Mabel to respond. Dipper started marching down the path away from the Mabels; Greyson and Candy followed close behind.

“Dipper! Get back here!”

“Dipper, I promise I won’t be mean to you! We can get rid of her together!”

“Do you hear something, Candy?” Dipper asked loudly. “’Cause I sure don’t!”

“Me neither!” Candy yelled back. Dipper couldn’t help but smile when she immediately picked up on his vibe. (She didn’t seem like one to use the silent treatment often — unless it was silent like ninjas were silent — so he wasn’t sure if she’d catch on.)

“Dipper, come back, please!”

“Well, don’t just stand there, you idiot, go after him!”

“But if he doesn’t want me around. . .”

The voices of the bickering Mabels faded into the distance as Dipper, Candy, and Greyson picked up speed to get away from them.

“Okay, that was seriously creepy,” Greyson said as soon as they turned a bend and the Mabels were out of sight. “What the heck just happened?”

“I told you these woods were unnatural!” Candy hissed. Dipper shot her a surprised glance; she seemed rather spooked. He wouldn’t have expected that.

“Oh, yeah, Mabel and I have found all sorts of stuff in these woods!” As soon as the words left his mouth, Dipper realized that all they’d found so far were some fairies, the Journal, a psychotic tween, and a cool cave. Well. . . it felt like all sorts of stuff. “Let me tell you, don’t mess with the fairies around here. Mabel and I went to go find them once, and they totally attacked us. Didn’t really hurt, but they said they could hurt us worse if they wanted to. They may have been lying, but they were magical.”

Candy and Greyson shared a look. “You really met fairies?” Greyson asked in awe.

“Yep! Just for a bit, ‘cause Mabel got us out of there before anything bad happened. But they were pretty cool.”

Candy was unimpressed. “So, were those girls back there some kind of trick from the fairies?” she asked with eyebrows raised.

“No, I think they’re some kind of clones of my sister,” Dipper replied. “Which means the real Mabel is still out here somewhere.”

“How would your sister make clones of herself?” Candy pointed out.

“I have no idea. I don’t think she did it on purpose, based on the way those clones were acting. She could be in trouble.”

“So, where is she?”

“Good question. We gotta find her, just like before.”

“Yeah,” Candy agreed, “but we probably shouldn’t go screaming our lungs out or we might attract those clones again. Or something else.”

“You think there are more clones?” Greyson asked.

“Maybe. Or other creepy creatures.”

“So how do we find Mabel?” Dipper looked over at Candy for suggestions.

She grinned. It was a bit unnerving. “My way.”

Chapter Text

Gideon Northwest was done with people.

This was a common occurrence, but today was worse than usual. First, he had to go into town, which always resulted in annoying attention from idiot locals; then, he got dragged into a dumb hunt by his so-called friends, even though that wimp Greyson was once again protected by his little Asian hyena of a bodyguard; and, to top it all off, that ridiculous Dipper Pines showed up and tried to speak to him, just because Gideon saved his life the other day.

Everyone was such a pain.

Gideon huffed as he stomped through the forest, creating deep holes in the deeper snow. He knew that Pacifica liked to use her amulet to glide over the snow when she needed to get away in the forest, but he liked the feeling of force as he sank through the snow with each step. He liked creating a path for himself, too. It made him feel like he owned the forest. Perhaps he actually did; he lost track of how much property his family owned around this little town.

Either way, the forest was his.

Gideon stopped to rest, standing ankle-deep in the snow in the middle of a small clearing. The weak sun shone through the evergreen branches. No people here. Just him, his amulet, and his thoughts.

A screech cut through the air.

Gideon groaned. Of course. Perfect timing!

As the screech continued, taking on the timbre of a dying wildcat (even worse than the noises that Candy had made earlier), Gideon could tell it was Pacifica. The only other time he had heard her make that sound was when they were kids and he’d levitated gum into her hair with his amulet. Good times.

Gideon considered waiting until Pacifica stopped screaming at the top of her lungs, but that probably wouldn’t happen anytime soon. With a sigh, he activated his amulet, floating above the snow in a blue haze. He would need the convenience for this.

He followed the sound of the screeching — it wasn’t exactly hard — until he could see Pacifica’s purple glow through the trees. She was on the edge of the forest, that idiot! What if someone saw her? For a girl so good at hiding insanity behind make-up and a smile, Pacifica had a shockingly small sense of discretion. Now that her powers were back in business, Gideon thought that she used them way too much.

He cleared the last line of trees. Now he could fully see Pacifica. She floated in the middle of her astral projection, directing her inhuman shriek at. . .

Mabel Pines?

“Get away from me!” yelled Pacifica, her projection taking a step backwards.

Mabel didn’t appear to even be doing anything, except yelling back. “Not until you promise never to touch me or my brother again!”

Gideon decided to hang back a bit and watch. This was interesting.

“Gideon! Thank goodness you’re here!”

Oh, right. He was glowing.

He sighed and floated into sight. Mabel looked over at him. “You! Gideon, right? Can you get her down from there so I can pound her?”

Gideon blinked. He had only interacted with Mabel once (plus heard a bit about her from her brother), and he wouldn’t have expected her to act so violent. After all, she’d run from Pacifica as soon as she had the chance the other day.

“Gideon, get that freak away from me!” Pacifica whined. Gideon had no idea what she was so worried about. She was floating a yard or so above Mabel’s head in a giant astral projection, for Cipher’s sake. Gideon had to admit, she made a good astral projection; he usually just settled for a blue haze around him when he needed to hover.

“Okay,” he said, addressing both Mabel and Pacifica, “what exactly is going on here?”

“She just showed up and—”

“Pacifica has to pay for—”

Gideon was about to yell at them to go one at a time when a figure bolted from the trees and ran into Mabel with full force. He peered into the snow cloud that had flown up around them, waiting for it to clear. When it did, he saw two Mabels on the ground.

“Finally grow a backbone?” said one Mabel to the other. “I thought you were scared.”

“I’m scared of her, not you! And I’m not going to let you put us in danger by provoking her!”

Pacifica shot Gideon a bewildered look. He didn’t return it: Instead, he stared in vague horror at the Mabels. Something about this. . . This was familiar.

“Don’t you want her to face justice?” the first Mabel demanded, getting to her feet. The other Mabel jumped up as well, and Gideon realized there was only one difference in their appearance: One had a dark blue lightning bolt on her shirt, the other a cloud of the same color.

“I want to stay alive!” Cloud Mabel retorted.

“Um, are you guys talking about me?” Pacifica asked. Her astral projection got a bit smaller.

“Shut up,” Lightning Bolt Mabel snapped.

Cloud Mabel flinched.

All right, that was enough. “Why are there two of you?” Gideon said, floating over to and landing near the Mabels. He didn’t yell, but his voice carried over the scene.

“Wouldn’t you like to know,” Lightning Bolt Mabel said, folding her arms.

Cloud Mabel punched LB Mabel on the shoulder and approached Gideon. He warily stepped back a bit. “You’re the one who saved us, aren’t you?” she asked. “Saved me and Dipper?”

“I saved Dipper, maybe, but I don’t know about you,” Gideon replied. “You aren’t the real Mabel, are you? Neither of you are.”

Cloud Mabel’s eyes filled with tears. “You saved us,” she said, and she reached out for him.

Augh! What was she doing? Gideon dodged to the left, and Cloud Mabel’s hands grabbed at empty air. Pacifica laughed from above. “She was trying to give you a hug, you idiot!”

Gideon straightened his shirt. “I knew that,” he said imperiously.

He had not known that.

“He still can’t be trusted!” Lightning Bolt Mabel said to Cloud Mabel. “He didn’t do anything; we were about to smash the amulet, but he stopped us. He saved her, not us.”

Cloud Mabel hesitated.

“Yeah, okay, but who are you?” Gideon asked again — though if the feeling of dread in his stomach was any indication, he knew the answer to his question. But he couldn’t quite remember.

“We’re Mabel,” the girls said at the same time. Gideon pursed his lips, watching them carefully. The memory was almost in his awareness, but it lingered just off to the side.

Wait. There it was. An image flashed across his vision: one from years ago. A glowing crystal. . . his own self staring at him, but with a differently colored amulet. . . “You’re clones,” he realized aloud.

“Well, that much is obvious,” Pacifica said.

Gideon held up a hand to quiet her. “One of you has to overpower the other in order to decide what the real Mabel feels,” he continued.

“How do you know?” Cloud Mabel asked. LB Mabel shot her an incredulous look, as if shocked that Cloud Mabel would confirm Gideon’s words.

Gideon ignored them both. “Paz, stay here. I’m going to go get Mabel. The real one.” He looked back and forth from Pacifica and her projection and the two Mabel clones. “Um, just sit up in a tree or something so this one doesn’t murder you.” He jabbed a thumb at LB Mabel.

“No way!” Pacifica retorted. “If they’re clones, can’t I hurt them? It’ll feel good.”

Cloud Mabel clung to LB Mabel’s shirt, but the latter pushed her off.

Gideon rolled his eyes. “Whatever. Try not to attract attention. All of you.” He floated up into the air again and flew away. Immature, all of them, but he couldn’t be spared to babysit.

Time to go get Mabel. Now she would owe him twice. She’d better not think that this meant she could associate with him, like her brother thought. Just because he saved someone doesn’t mean they were friends or anything.

Gideon Northwest didn’t have friends.

Chapter Text

Dipper poked his head out of the bushes, then got pulled down by Candy. “Do you want them to see you?” she hissed.

“Candy—”

“Shush!” She put a hand over Greyson’s mouth.

Dipper peered through the leaves to look at the two Mabel clones they’d found. They were wrestling on the ground, trying to grab the Journal from each other’s arms. Dipper couldn’t tell if one of them was the real Mabel, but the way they were fighting (Mabel never fought) convinced him that they were both copies. And if they had the Journal, then Mabel couldn’t be too far away, right?

“Candy, if we don’t go soon, one will win and get away,” Greyson whispered.

He wasn’t a very good whisperer.

“Now!” shouted Candy, leaping from the bushes. Before Dipper could even get out from behind the shrubs, Candy had launched herself onto the Mabels; she pulled them apart and kicked the Journal in Dipper’s direction. Dipper rushed out and grabbed it, holding it close to his chest and closing his eyes. He felt for a moment as if he had Mabel back.

When he opened his eyes and turned around, Greyson and Candy each had a Mabel pinned. Greyson was holding one Mabel (with a five-fingered hand on her shirt) primarily with his generous weight, whereas Candy had the other Mabel (with a six-fingered hand on her shirt) pinned with carefully placed arms. Both clones struggled in vain.

Dipper took a split second to marvel at the fact that Greyson and Candy could do to these clones what the bullies had done to them just an hour or so earlier. Then he shook it off and assumed his scariest demeanor. “All right! We can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way,” he said, narrowing his eyes at the Mabels. “Where’s my sister?”

The Mabels stared at him, then burst out laughing.

“You’re — so — adorable!” Five-Fingered Mabel gasped between peals of laughter. Six-Fingered Mabel nodded along.

Dipper glowered. “I’m trying to be scary!”

“You’re not,” Six-Fingered Mabel informed him. “Try something else, ‘cause we can’t tell you where Mabel is and you definitely” —she giggled again— “aren’t going to scare us into it.”

Dipper pouted, folding his arms. “Why can’t you tell me?”

“Because Mabel can’t interfere until one of us has triumphed over the other,” Six-Fingered Mabel said in a duh tone.

“Yeah,” said Dipper, “the clones arguing over me said that too. How come I can’t go see her, even if she can’t interfere?”

“One,” Five-Fingered Mabel said, “because you’re part of the process; and two, because you would try to spring her.”

“So she’s trapped somewhere?” Dipper asked.

Five-Fingered Mabel snapped her mouth shut while Six-Fingered Mabel glared at her.

“Well, now that I have this,” Dipper said, holding up the Journal, “maybe I can find whatever Mabel found that made you guys.”

“Give that back!” Six-Fingered Mabel demanded. “We need it!”

“No, Dipper, keep it!” said Five-Fingered Mabel. “Keep it away from her! She wants to take it to Grunkle Ford!”

“All the more reason to keep it, then,” Dipper said, grasping it a little tighter.

“Well, you can’t let him have it!” Six-Fingered Mabel protested. “He’ll use it to find Mabel!”

“Dipper, hurry up,” Candy said as SF Mabel struggled against her grip.

“Right,” Dipper said, flipping the Journal open. He started flicking through the pages, looking for any drawings or words depicting clones or copies.

“Dipper—!” Greyson shouted, right before the Journal was snatched from Dipper’s hands. His eyes snapped up to see FF Mabel, running away from him with the Journal in tow.

SF Mabel beat against Candy with her fists. “Lemme go!” she yelled until she broke free. She immediately bolted after FF Mabel, catching her by the hood of her sweater and pulling her to the ground with a thump and a spray of snow. Dipper winced; even though the clones weren’t his sister, they still looked like her.

“Give it to me! I have to show Ford!”

“No! He’ll take it away!”

“No, he won’t! Imagine all the cool things he’ll show us!”

“He won’t show us anything! It isn’t worth the risk!”

Dipper, Candy, and Greyson watched the clones in spell-bound silence. It wasn’t every day you saw two identical girls wrestling over a book in the snow.

Although, if Mabel was to wrestle over anything, it would probably be a book.

“Let go! Just let me show him!”

“No! He probably hid it for a reason!”

“Or maybe someone stole it from him!”

Five-Fingered Mabel was on top of SF Mabel, trying to pry the Journal from her fingers. “I will not — let you — jeopardize — our freedom!”

With a final tug, she pulled the Journal away from SF Mabel and held it over her head. Six-Fingered Mabel disappeared into a puff of white smoke that was soon indeterminable from the snow.

“I. . . I did it,” FF Mabel said. She got to her feet, still holding the Journal up high. “I won! I’m stronger!”

“Uh. . . congrats?” said Greyson. FF Mabel beamed at him.

“What exactly does winning mean?” asked Dipper, glancing down at the patch of snow that used to be the other Mabel.

“It means that I’m the stronger feeling in the real Mabel. She won’t show Ford the Journal, because I just won.”

“So. . . can I have the Journal back?”

FF Mabel shook her head and held it to her chest. “You still can’t know where Original Mabel is until three other Mabels have won.”

Time for desperate measures, then.

Dipper looked down at the snow.

“What are you doing?” FF Mabel asked, a suspicious note in her voice.

Dipper looked up at her, having arranged his face into his best puppy-dog eyes.

FF Mabel moaned. “Dipper, please don’t.”

“Pweeeeeeease?” Dipper asked, trembling his lip. Mabel could never resist her twin’s puppy-dog eyes.

“No!” FF Mabel said, spinning on her heel.

Dipper tried again, using the same voice. “Mabel, can I pwease have it?”

FF Mabel hesitated, looking between Dipper and the Journal. “Well. . . I don’t think you can use it to find her. . . and I’m just a clone; I don’t want it to get lost. . . .”

Dipper continued staring at her with his pleading eyes.

“Fine!” FF Mabel said, closing her eyes and holding out the Journal.

Dipper bounded over and snatched it, abandoning his puppy-dog eyes for a big grin. “Thanks, sis!” He said, taking it from her. Not that she was his sister.

FF Mabel gave one more worried look to Dipper and the Journal before running off into the trees.

“Huh. Impressive,” said Candy, folding her arms. “So, how exactly are we supposed to use a book to find your sister?”

“We might have bigger problems than that,” Greyson said, pointing to something behind Dipper. He turned and followed Greyson’s finger with his eyes.

Star Mabel and UDS Mabel were running at him, only a couple yards away.

Chapter Text

“Help! Help, I’m in here!”

In her periphery, Mabel saw Lizzie massaging her temples. “Mabel, please: That isn’t going to work. We’re pretty deep into this cave, remember?”

Mabel’s hands clenched into fists, and she whirled on Lizzie. “How come you won’t listen to me? It’s my brain, isn’t it? I’m the original, and I don’t want all these Mabels fighting over who’s stronger!”

“It’s not about what you want, it’s about what you need,” Lizzie said calmly. “The crystal has done this before; it helps people understand how they really feel. You’ll thank me once this is all over. You’ll thank all of us.”

“No, I won’t,” Mabel muttered, leaning against the crystal wall.

Lizzie shrugged.

After a couple minutes of awkward silence, Lizzie said, “It would be courteous to make some light conversation.”

Mabel looked up at her. “You’re not actually me, are you? Because I’m never that rude.”

“You’re never this open,” Lizzie corrected.

Mabel bit her lip to stop herself from retorting. “Look, just. . . just tell me. . . is my brother okay?”

Lizzie met Mabel’s eyes. “Would you ever hurt your brother?”

“No! I mean, not on purpose. . .”

“Then he’s fine. The Mabels fighting over him won’t hurt him.”

“Fighting over him?”

“Sure. You love your brother, but you also find him annoying, right?”

“Well, yeah, sometimes,” said Mabel, glancing to the floor.

“So, one Mabel out there loves Dipper with all the sibling love she has, and she’s fighting against another Mabel who finds him too annoying to stand it.”

“But. . . neither of those things are true, not like that.”

“I know,” Lizzie replied. “The copies are all extreme versions of you.”

“If. . . ,” Mabel began. “If the one who thinks Dipper is annoying won. . . would I stop loving him?” Her voice gradually dropped into a whisper as she spoke.

“Of course not,” Lizzie said. “None of your feelings are going to disappear. They’re just going to be sorted out, so you know for sure which side of the spectrum you lean towards. Can’t you see this is a privilege? The crystal is helping you, and you’re complaining about it.”

Mabel’s mouth started moving, but no words came out. She didn’t know what to say to that.

“Right,” Lizzie said, after letting Mabel struggle for words for a few seconds. “Honestly, if anyone’s being rude—”  

But she didn’t get to finish her thought, because just then the wall next to Mabel exploded.

Mabel cried out and jumped away as shards of pale rock flew across the room. Ducking and covering her head, Mabel listened to the shattering sounds lessen and then stop, almost as quickly as they started. She peeked up from beneath her hands to see the dust settle around a figure standing in the violently formed entrance.

Him again?

“Who are you?” Lizzie demanded, stepping forward.

He glanced from Mabel to Lizzie and back. What was his name? Gideon? “I take it you’re the guard?” he asked.

“What?”

Mabel got slowly to her feet. “I’m the real Mabel,” she said. For some reason, it felt good to say that.

Gideon’s eyes flicked back and forth again, taking in the pine tree on Mabel’s shirt and the upside-down one on Lizzie’s. “Yes, you are,” he replied. “Well, let’s go, then.”

“You can’t just barge in here—!” Lizzie started.

“I just did,” Gideon replied, “and we’re leaving.” He turned to Mabel. “Close your eyes.”

“What?”

“Just do it,” he said. “Close your eyes, turn around, whatever. Now.” His hand gripped the amulet pinned to his collar.

Wow, he was bossy. But Mabel did as he said, closing her eyes and covering them with her hands. There was a flash of light against her eyelids, a sudden scream, and a thud.

“Don’t open your eyes.” Gideon’s voice was closer to her now.

“Wh. . . what. . . ?”

“Follow me.” She felt a hand on her arm, guiding her towards the entrance. “You can open your eyes, but don’t look behind you.”

“Wh-why not?” She opened her eyes to see that they had entered the passageway in the cave. The only light came from Gideon’s amulet, glowing a soft blue.

A moment later, Mabel realized she was glowing, too. She cried out, but Gideon said, “It’s okay; I’m just lowering you down. Relax.”

Mabel tried her best to relax as she floated down the hill of rocks she had climbed earlier, but it was all she could do not to hyperventilate. This felt way too much like. . . her. She was positive she was about to burst into hysteria when she finally landed. The glow disappeared. Mabel immediately braced herself against a nearby wall and took slow, deep breaths. Gideon flew down himself and waited silently for her to recover.

“Ready?” he asked when Mabel’s breathing steadied. He sounded neither concerned nor impatient; his voice was near monotone.

“Yeah,” Mabel replied. They started through the cave again, their way lit by Gideon’s amulet. “What. . . what did you do? What happened to Lizzie?” She had her suspicions, based on what she heard, but she didn’t want to think—

“I killed her.”

Mabel stopped walking. The words from Gideon’s mouth that sounded so casual and easy stopped her in her tracks like a wall. Gideon stopped as well, a few feet ahead of her. “That’s why I told you not to look.”

Mabel took a step back.

“She wasn’t you,” Gideon said. “She wasn’t really a person, either. I’d never hurt you like that, if that’s what you’re afraid of. Now, come on: We have to get out of here. Don’t you want to see sunlight again?”

But Mabel couldn’t get herself to move. Or speak.

Gideon sighed. “I can levitate you out of here, if you want.”

That snapped Mabel out of it. “N-no! I can walk.” And to prove it, she started stomping ahead of Gideon, stuffing the horror she felt somewhere deep down inside — somewhere she could pay attention to it later.

It wasn’t too long before Mabel and Gideon reached the entrance to the cave, and Mabel couldn’t help but gasp in relief when the mid-morning sun washed over her. She gave herself a moment to take it in before turning on Gideon. “You just killed someone.”

“I killed something,” Gideon replied. “Her body disappeared into a puff of smoke after we left the cavern; I saw it.”

“How could you do that?” Mabel demanded.

“When you roam these woods long enough, you learn to off anything that poses a danger to you,” Gideon replied smoothly. “I know this forest inside out; I also know the creatures in this forest and what they’re like. And if they’re expendable.”

Mabel just stared at him. He looked back at her coolly, but something in his eyes dared her to challenge him. She decided not to push him. She’d had enough for one day. “How did you find me?” she asked instead.

“I told you: I know this forest inside out.”

“But how did you know I was trapped in there in the first place? Did you see some of the clones? That would mean that you know what the Cavern does, and. . .” She paused. “Has this whole clone thing happened to you too?”

“I have my ways of knowing things,” was all Gideon replied.

“It has!”

Gideon rolled his eyes. “Are you going to thank me, Pines?”

Mabel raised an eyebrow at him. Well, that was cold. “Fine then,” she said. “Thank you.” She threw in a sarcastic curtsy to accentuate the words.

“You’re welcome,” Gideon replied. “Now—”

He stopped and turned his head. Mabel could hear it too: the sound of running feet.

A Mabel clone burst from the trees and skidded to a stop. Mabel glanced down at the five-fingered hand on her shirt. “Wh-what are you doing out here? Where’s the first clone?”

Mabel opened her mouth to reply, but she didn’t exactly know what to say.

“Did you win?” Gideon asked Five-Fingered Mabel.

She nodded. “Yeah, I won. Has anyone else come back? Am I the first one?”

“Y-you’re the first,” Mabel said.

A grin flickered over FF Mabel’s face but soon disappeared. “Where’s the first clone?” she repeated.

“Dead,” Gideon replied.

“Oh.” FF Mabel didn’t seem too fazed about that. “You’re not going to interfere with the other Mabels, are you?” She asked Mabel.

“Yeah, I am!” Mabel said defiantly.

FF Mabel sighed. “Here, let me help you change your mind.”

“What do you—?”

Mabel was cut off as FF Mabel reached out and touched her hand. The moment they connected, FF Mabel burst into white smoke, twisting and curling in the air. Mabel breathed in with surprise, and the smoke rushed towards her, entering her body through her mouth and nose. Mabel jumped back, alarmed, but then a new feeling washed over her.

A bit of Mabel’s pent-up anxiety — just a bit — melted away. She knew for certain that she couldn’t tell Ford about the Journal, and she wouldn’t. She hadn’t even been thinking about that; but it must’ve been on the back of her mind all day, because now that she knew what she was going to do, she felt so. . . peaceful.

She could also feel all her other anxieties weighing in on her. Worry for Robbie finding out how she felt about him — guilt from not loving Dipper as much as she should — and, of course, petrifying fear of her. She suddenly wanted all those anxieties to be smoothed away in the same way as the one about Ford.

“Mabel?” Gideon asked.

“I. . . I feel. . .”

“We have to go stop the other clones,” said Gideon.

She turned to him. “But. . .”

“I know it feels good,” he said, “but trust me, this isn’t the way to work out your feelings. It might feel nice now, but it doesn’t actually solve anything. Trust me.”

Why should I trust him? As soon as she asked the question, she remembered the answer: This had happened to him before.

“It. . . it doesn’t?” she asked.

Gideon nodded. “Now, come on. We have to go stop the other clones before they conquer each other.”

Mabel’s expression hardened. “Stopping them doesn’t involve doing what you did to Lizzie, does it?”

“When one wins, we have to off them — before they touch you.”

“No killing!”

Gideon sighed. “We don’t have room for your sense of morality, Pines.”

“They’re my clones!” Mabel retorted. “I might be torn over a lot of things, but killing is not one of them. I’d rather Lizzie get what she wanted than anybody else die today.”

“Don’t you get it?” Gideon asked. “Your clones are already killing each other. When that Mabel that just touched you won earlier, the Mabel she was fighting disappeared in a cloud of smoke. They’re not real people, Pines, and they all know it. You seem to be the only one out of the loop.”

“No killing,” Mabel repeated firmly.

Gideon looked at her for a moment, then shrugged. “I may not have to, anyway. Pacifica might’ve taken care of both of the ones with her after I left.”

Mabel’s eyes widened.

He said her name.

She was frozen, paralyzed by the name now echoing through her head over and over again. Pacifica. Pacifica. Pacifica.

She wasn’t aware that she was stepping backwards until she nearly tripped over a boulder. She sat down on it, eyes staring off into the trees.

Gideon muttered something that sounded along the lines of, “Well, we know who’s winning that one,” and approached Mabel carefully. She shook her head, and he stepped back. “Tell me when you’re ready to go,” he said, a note of impatience lacing his voice.  

Mabel took longer to calm down from this one than she did from the whole levitating thing. She would much rather have a clone touch her and take away all this anxiety about P. . . Paci. . . about her than deal with feeling like this every time someone so much as said her name. After a while, she took a final deep breath and let it out. “All right. I’m okay.” For now. “I want to find Dipper. Two clones are fighting about him.”

“Shouldn’t be too hard,” Gideon replied.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Gideon shrugged. “He’s loud.”

At that moment, Mabel could’ve sworn she heard her brother scream in the distance.

Chapter Text

Wendy Valentino slouched across the street, glowering at everything as she passed. The sun was too bright for a winter day; the weather was chilly, but not that cold. Even winter couldn’t get it right in this backwards town.

Wendy settled against a brick wall, the spray paint cans in her hoodie pocket rattling slightly. She’d lean against this wall until she got the inspiration for her next greatest achievement. Her best ideas were reserved for paint and canvas, but any idea that could be expressed to the public on a nice, graffiti-free wall was an idea that needed to be shared. Wendy often wished she could live somewhere with a subway or train station where graffiti was never cleaned off, where street artists like her were immortal. But, at the same time, she liked being the only graffiti artist in town; that way, people could really admire her work. Until they scrubbed it off, of course.

She could feel an idea itching at the back of her brain. Another few minutes of patiently waiting and it would be realized. She could almost. . . see. . .

“Wendy! Wendy I need your help!”

Wendy was pulled out of her trance, and she blinked wildly before growling. She had almost had her idea! How did people know the perfectly wrong time to interrupt her?

She looked down to see none other than the little Pines squirt that had been hanging around with Robbie last night. Mabel? What an old lady’s name. “What do you want?” Wendy grunted, folding her arms and glaring at the girl.

“Please, you have to go visit Robbie right now, otherwise something terrible will happen. You gotta stop it!”

“Stop what?” Wendy asked, bewildered.

“Please just come! I don’t know how to explain.” Mabel clasped her hands over the dark blue broken-heart symbol on her shirt. Huh, it looked kinda like the stitched heart on Wendy’s hoodie.

“I’m busy, kid.”

“You’re just standing here!” Mabel said. “C’mon, please? You don’t want me dating Robbie, do you?”

Wendy stared at the girl incredulously. “What does that have to do with anything? Why would a kid like you ever date Robbie?”

“I wouldn’t!” Mabel replied. “But if you don’t come I might! I mean. . . please just come! There’s no time to waste!”

Wendy blinked. She was very confused. But, now that her creative process had already been interrupted by the squirt, she might as well go pay Robbie a visit. “Fine, fine. Calm down, kid. We can head over to the Museum.”

“Thank you, thank you!”

Wendy put out a hand to shut her up and started towards the Museum; it was just down the street.

Mabel bounced up and down impatiently as Wendy ambled down the road until Wendy stopped and shot her a look. “Are you wanting me to go faster, kid?”

“Yes, please!”

What was with this girl? She wasn’t half this energetic last night. Wasn’t her brother the hyper one or whatever?

Mabel suddenly took off running, shouting, “Come on!” over her shoulder. Wendy grumbled to herself as she picked up her speed, jogging down the street until she came to the Museum, where Mabel had already torn the door open and run inside.

Wendy entered the Museum to see Robbie behind the counter, talking to. . . Mabel?

The two turned and looked at her, and Mabel’s face quickly turned from happiness to thinly veiled anger. “Hey, Robbie,” Wendy said casually, leaning against the doorjamb.

“Hey, Wendy! I thought you were painting.”

Wendy shrugged. “No ideas.” There was going to be one, but somebody had ruined that. “What exactly is this game you’re playing, kid?” she said to Mabel.

Mabel looked confused. “What do you. . . ?” She stopped, and her expression turned to one of understanding. “Never mind. I’m not playing any games.” There was something different about her than there had been just a minute ago, and it wasn’t just her attitude.

“You lead me on a goose chase just to come. . . what?”

Mabel stared at Wendy for a moment before glowering at nothing in particular. “Give me a second,” she growled, hopping down from her stool and stomping off into another room.

As she did, Wendy could clearly see her shirt. The broken heart that had been on there just a minute ago was now whole. Huh? “Okay,” Wendy said slowly, watching Mabel go.

“What was that about?” Robbie asked as soon as the kid was out of sight.

 Wendy shrugged again. “She came running up to me and begged me to come see you, or else something bad would happen. Well, I’m here now, so. . . I guess I stopped it.” She added a sardonic grin to her last words.

Robbie smiled back. “I guess so.” Wendy loved it when he smiled.

A sudden thump came from the other room, like something had hit the wall. Another thump, this one on the floor, followed. Wendy and Robbie looked over in surprise.  “Uh, what’s going on in there?” asked Wendy.

“I’m not sure,” Robbie said. “I could have sworn I saw somebody run through here just before you came in, but I couldn’t tell who they were. Maybe it was Dipper; that kid is fast. And now they’re fighting, I guess?” Then he frowned. “Wait, Wendy. You said Mabel came up to you and asked you to come to the Museum just now?”

“Yeah.”

“But. . . she’s been here with me for the past five, maybe ten minutes.”

Wendy frowned too. “How could she. . . ? She was outside bothering me.”

The two stared at each other in a confused quiet.

The sound of running feet broke the silence as Mabel burst into the gift shop. “I won!” she announced, bearing the broken heart on her chest proudly. Maybe Wendy had seen wrong before?

“Uh, good job?” Wendy asked, cocking an eyebrow.

Mabel grinned at her. “Thanks so much for coming, Wendy; I couldn’t have done it without you!” With that, she ran out of the Mystery Museum at top speed.

Wendy watched her go until she turned a corner and ran out of sight. Then she glanced back at Robbie, who looked as confused as she felt.

“Weird Pines kids,” Wendy muttered, shaking her head.

~~~~~

Dipper didn’t like feeling cornered by two versions of his sister.

“I have an idea!” Dipper said to the Mabels closing in on him. “Why don’t you guys fight and stuff without, you know, involving me?”

Upside-Down Star Mabel grinned in a way that Dipper never wanted to see on his sister’s face again. “Oh, we’re going to involve you, for sure.”

“No, we’re not!” Star Mabel yelled, shoving at UDS Mabel. “I can’t believe you would consider hurting our brother!”

“Just because he’s our brother doesn’t mean he gets some special treatment!”

“But he’s not just our brother! He’s our best friend!”

“He might be your best friend, but he certainly isn’t mine.”

Star Mabel let out a war cry and pounced on UDS Mabel. Dipper, Candy, and Greyson all stepped back.

“Well, I guess you got your request,” Greyson said with a nervous chuckle.

“This is really, really weird,” is all Dipper could say.

Star Mabel and UDS Mabel tussled on the ground for a while. Dipper watched and stepped back every time UDS Mabel tried to grab at his ankle and pull him down. All it did was make Dipper wish for his real sister even more.

Star Mabel suddenly broke away from the fight and jumped to her feet, running over to Dipper. Dipper shied back, but she already had her arm around him. “Dipper’s our brother, and I won’t let you hurt him!” she shouted, kicking at UDS Mabel as she tried to stand.

UDS Mabel fell back and didn’t move. Her body turned to white smoke and mingled with the snow.

Dipper blinked, looking at Star Mabel. “Well, that was. . . easy?”

Star Mabel looked at him, grinning fiercely. “I knew I would win! I knew it, I knew it, I knew it! Nothing beats good ol’ sibling love, right Dip?”

Dipper grinned back. “Yeah! Nothing beats it!” Maybe she wasn’t his real sister, but she sure was nice to him.

Star Mabel hugged him and then stepped back, still smiling. “I gotta go back to the base and all. Bye Dip!”

“Wait, wait,” Dipper said, grabbing her arm. “You’re going back to Mabel?”

Star Mabel bit her lip.

“Could you please take us with you? I really, really want to see my sister again.”

“You will,” Star Mabel promised. “You will soon, but you can’t follow me, okay?”

Well, if it worked on FF Mabel it would work on Star Mabel, right? Dipper brought the puppy-dog eyes back out.

“Aw, Dipper, please, don’t do that! I’m doing this for your good as well as Mabel’s. Trust me!”

“Dipper, let’s try this my way,” said Candy behind him. He shook his head without looking back, though he thought he heard Candy pound one fist into another.

“C’mon, Mabel, you don’t even have to say you led us there. You can say we followed you. Pwease?”

Mabel stared at him, and then started shaking her head slowly. “I. . . I can’t, Dip. I’m doing this because I love you. And I promise that once I’m back in Mabel and it’s all over, she’ll come and find you and love you the same way I do. Please, don’t give me that look!” She closed her eyes and turned away.

“Mabel, c’mon. . .”

Mabel shook her head vehemently. “I’m sorry! Don’t. . . don’t follow me!” She took off running.

“Huh,” Greyson said, “I thought that would work.”

So had Dipper. But it didn’t. So he did the only thing he could think of to stop Star Mabel in her tracks: He screamed at the top of his lungs.

Chapter Text

“This way!” Mabel shouted, running through the trees. Gideon was behind her, and their progress was slow (which was problematic, considering that they were on a rescue mission of sorts).

“You know, I could just levitate—”

“No!” Better to take a little longer to get to Dipper and be in one piece than to fall apart from the trauma of being levitated by Gideon’s amulet.

Dipper kept screaming, and Mabel was getting a little less worried. If he had the air to scream that loud and for that long, he couldn’t really be getting hurt, right? But then, why was he screaming in the first place? Mabel quickened her pace.

“Your brother,” Gideon said between breaths, “is really loud.”

“Tell me about it,” Mabel panted back.

As they drew nearer, Mabel could hear other voices floating beneath Dipper’s. One was deep, one was high-pitched, and one was. . . hers. “Don’t do that. . . . Please, Dip, don’t make me feel bad. . . .”

A clone! Mabel shot around a tree and skidded to a stop, finally able to see her brother. He was standing there, untouched, simply screaming.

Oh, no. He did this sometimes. It was his last resort whenever Mabel wouldn’t give him his way.

“Dip, c’mon: I already told you that—”

The Mabel clone’s voice cut off, along with Dipper’s screaming. He, Star Mabel, and the two kids behind them had all seen her. “Mabel!” Dipper yelled, breaking the silence and running to his twin sister. He threw his arms around her. “Are you okay?” he asked. “I’ve been trying to find you all morning, but the clones wouldn’t tell me where you were, and I never should’ve let you go out alone, and I should’ve been here for you when you were scared, and—”

“Hey, hey, I’m okay,” Mabel said softly, cutting him off. She smiled. “Were you really that worried about me?”

Dipper stepped back and held up two fingers, almost touching. “A little bit,” he said. His eyes traveled past his sister, and she turned her head to see Gideon standing over her shoulder, a few feet away. “Did you save her?” Dipper asked him.

Gideon nodded once.

“I’m not a damsel in distress,” Mabel said, folding her arms. She wasn’t really annoyed, though; she was too happy to see her brother again.

But Dipper didn’t look happy anymore. “You told me not to bother you anymore,” he said to Gideon, “and then you come out here and find my sister for me?”

“That isn’t how it happened,” Gideon said defensively. “There were these two clones bothering” —he glanced at Mabel— “an acquaintance of mine, and I figured out what was going on and decided to go help Mabel out. In fact, I should probably go check on them.”

“How did you figure out where she was?” Dipper demanded.

Before Gideon could answer, a Mabel clone burst through the trees at top speed. She came to a sudden stop, spraying up snow, and stared at the group in front of her. “What’s going on here?” she asked. Mabel took note of the broken heart symbol on her chest.

“Did you win?” Star Mabel asked. Mabel had almost forgotten she was there; she hadn’t tried to touch her or anything.

“Yeah, you?” Broken Heart Mabel replied.

Star Mabel nodded. Both clones then turned simultaneously to look at Mabel.

“Mabel, don’t let them touch you,” Gideon said in a low voice.

Oh, but Mabel wanted to. She wanted the same sense of peace she had gotten from Five-Fingered Mabel. Why couldn’t she have that?

It doesn’t actually solve anything, her brain reminded her. That’s what Gideon said, and he knows from experience.

Mabel set her jaw and moved back towards Gideon. “Can I take care of them now?” he asked when she was next to him.

“No killing,” she repeated in an equally low voice.

Gideon sighed and stepped forward. His amulet started to glow. “You can’t come near her,” he said firmly to the clones.

They charged.

Star Mabel was immediately lifted off the ground by a blue glow. One of the kids behind Dipper, the small Asian-looking girl, bounded after Broken Heart Mabel and launched onto her from behind, landing on her shoulders and pushing her to the ground. Meanwhile, Star Mabel floated higher and higher, looking more and more scared. The expression made Mabel’s stomach churn as she remembered her own fear at being levitated. “Gideon!” she shouted to get his attention.

He turned around quickly, which broke his eye contact with Star Mabel and sent her flying. With a scream, she cartwheeled through the air into the distance. Gideon and Mabel watched her go. “Oh,” he said.

Mabel groaned.

Gideon’s feet lifted off the ground, and he started flying away, hovering just above the snow. Mabel looked back at Dipper and his friends, wrestling Broken Heart Mabel to the ground, and decided to follow Gideon. She trudged through the snow, following the faint blue glow in the trees, until she came across Gideon and Star Mabel, facing each other in the snow. Star Mabel seemed unharmed; Gideon must’ve slowed her fall.

Star Mabel glowered at Gideon and looked ready to charge him. Gideon, for his part, gripped his amulet, which was glowing brighter and brighter. He glanced to the side and saw Mabel standing there.

Star Mabel ran for him with a war cry.

There was a flash of bright blue light; for a second, Mabel couldn’t see a thing. Then her vision cleared, and Star Mabel was nowhere to be seen.

Mabel gasped. He killed her! After everything she said, he still—

Oink oink.

Mabel’s eyes traveled down to the ground, to see, sitting at Gideon’s feet. . . a pig?

Gideon looked back and forth between Mabel and the pig, looking as surprised as Mabel felt. “A. . . pig,” Mabel said, stepping forward. “You turned her. . . into a pig.”

“I didn’t know I could do that,” Gideon said, staring down at it.

“She’s a pig now.”

“Yep.”

They stood there silently for another moment, ignoring the yelling in the distance. Then they looked up at each other. “Um, will she still get absorbed if she touches me?” Mabel asked.

“I’m. . . not sure,” Gideon replied. “But. . . let’s go.” He looked down at his amulet and seemed to decide to walk rather than levitate, lest he accidentally turn himself into a pig. Good choice, Mabel thought.

They headed back to Dipper, trudging in silence through the snow, both still weirded out by what had just happened. When they made it back, Dipper’s fierce little friend had Broken Heart Mabel in a chokehold.

“Yield! I yield!” she croaked.

“Um, you can let go now, Candy,” Dipper said nervously.

The girl, Candy, released her hold, and Broken Heart Mabel stood up, massaging her neck. She saw Mabel and Gideon come from the trees; but with a nervous glance at Candy, she didn’t move.

“Got any more tricks up your sleeve?” Mabel asked Gideon over her shoulder.

He shook his head.

Broken Heart Mabel suddenly danced away from Candy before she could grab her again. “You guys don’t get it, do you? I can’t abandon my mission, no matter what!”

She ran at Mabel, who dodged. Like an enraged bull, it was too late for Broken Heart Mabel to change directions, and she was on a crash course straight for Gideon.

Gideon grabbed his amulet on impulse; and, with a blue flash, Broken Heart Mabel went flying through the air. Mabel saw her burst into white smoke only halfway through her arc of travel. The smoke dissipated in the air as Mabel whirled around to face Gideon. “What did I tell you?” she yelled.

Gideon looked unrepentant. “I just saved you. Again. How many times do you owe me now?”

“None!” Mabel replied vehemently. “Every time you’ve ‘saved’ me, I would’ve been fine; but instead you barge in and kill people and stop me from destroying the thing that almost killed me!”

Gideon put his hands up. “Woah, calm down.”

“I will not calm down! You haven’t helped anything! I nearly died thanks to your friend, and what do you do? You stop me from smashing the amulet, and you kill my clones without any remorse; and no, it doesn’t matter that they weren’t even people, because — because—”

Her voice cracked and then stopped working completely, and she was vaguely aware of Dipper’s arms around her as she sank to her knees in the snow. “I almost died,” she whispered. “And. . . and now I’ve seen myself die.” She could hardly hear the whispered words, but she knew she was saying them.

Dipper held her close. “It’s okay, sis, you’re safe now.” His head moved as he turned it towards Gideon. “Are there any more clones running around?”

“Possibly,” Mabel heard Gideon reply, “but it’s best if I go find out myself.”

She heard what he wasn’t saying: The only clones left were the ones that went after Pacifica. One who was terrified of her and one who wanted revenge. Mabel wondered vaguely which clone won. The way she had felt all the time lately, it was sure to be the scared one.

Mabel wasn’t sure when Gideon left, and she wasn’t sure how long she cried in her twin’s arms. She had already cried over all this once, right after she’d been attacked by her; but then she’d been more shocked than anything. Now, she’d had time to process everything. Now, she could cry it out.

As she did, she realized something: This was how you worked out your emotions. Not with running away, not with yelling at people, not with magical clones.

You worked them out with support from a loved one. With a quiet moment to stop and think. And, finally: with a good, messy cry.

Chapter Text

When Gideon found the spot in which he had left Pacifica, all he could see were a few broken tree branches and some lingering wisps of smoke in the air. He sighed. “Pacifica. . .”

Grabbing onto his amulet, he leapt into the air and hovered over the trees to see if Pacifica or her astral projection were anywhere in sight. It felt nice to be out in the open; even though he’d only been in that cave for a few minutes, it had brought back bad memories.

He soon found the object of his search. A translucent purple dome — the top of Pacifica’s astral projection — poked out of the trees. It seemed to be roaming aimlessly, like a golem ambling along. Was she looking for him?

Gideon zoomed over the treetops, his cape fluttering out behind him. This was why he wore this cape, no matter what Pacifica said. It felt awesome. “Paz,” he called when he was nearly on top of her, “up here.”

The astral projection stopped and craned its purple head to look at him. He could see Pacifica herself, floating in the middle of the purple haze. She watched him as he descended (even if she could wave without her projection knocking down a tree or two, Pacifica wasn’t one for waving). Gideon landed in a tree branch directly across from Pacifica herself. She — and her projection — folded her arms. Already on the defensive, was she?

“So what happened to the clones?” Gideon asked, nonchalant.

“I suppose I got a little carried away,” Pacifica said simply.

Note to self: Don’t leave Pacifica alone with two copies of her self-proclaimed arch-nemesis, unless you expect her to hurt them. At least it saved him the work of killing them off. “So they’re both gone?” he said aloud.

“Yeah,” Pacifica said. “They didn’t even do me the decency of bleeding before they turned to smoke, though. Quite rude of them.” Blood was probably the only thing Pacifica would allow on her clothes without freaking out like a total drama queen. “And where were you?” she asked.

Gideon thought back to Mabel, crying in her brother’s arms. That girl seemed to have a spark of adventure — the same one Gideon had — but she was far too sensitive for these forests. Anything could do. . . anything, out here. He almost said something like that to Pacifica, but he decided it would be wise not to mention that the Pines were here in the forest. If she got “carried away” with some Mabel clones, who knew what Pacifica might do to the real deal? As much as Mabel might deny it, he did have a sense of morality; and as annoying as those Pines could be, they were still people.

“I went to make sure there weren’t any more Mabel clones,” he finally answered.

“And were there?”

“No.” For a millisecond, he tried to think of a way to justify the lie, then decided he didn’t care. He had told Pacifica he would “help” her get revenge, but he wasn’t going to be responsible for anything she did. Telling her the whereabouts of the Pines twins would make him partly responsible.

“This forest is weird,” Pacifica decided.

Once again, the image of Mabel breaking down and Dipper comforting her flashed across Gideon’s vision. He knew Pacifica meant the creatures and supernatural happenings of the forest, but he was thinking of something else entirely when he said, “That’s for sure.”

~~~~~

Note to self: Don’t have a mental breakdown in front of your twin brother’s new friends.

“Um, hi,” she said, wiping her eyes one more time and smiling at the two of them. “I’m Mabel.”

“We figured,” Candy said, a little rudely.

The boy next to her nudged her. “Nice to meet you. I’m Greyson.” His voice was unnaturally deep; Mabel guessed he just had a lot of space to resonate it. Then she felt a little bad for thinking that, and she gave a bigger smile to Greyson than she did Candy.

“You wanna talk about all this when we get home?” Dipper asked Mabel softly. She nodded, spending a moment to think about his word choice. Home. Was the Mystery Museum home?

Well, it sure felt like it after being in this forest all morning. With that thought, Mabel’s stomach growled. She looked down at it in surprise, remembering that she hadn’t eaten anything yet today. Dipper laughed. “I have an idea! Why don’t we all go back to the Mystery Museum for brunch? It’ll be on Ford!” Mabel considered pointing out that Ford might not appreciate that; but brunch was Dipper’s favorite meal, so she kept her peace.

“Oh, hey, Mabes: Here’s your Journal,” said Dipper, handing it to her.

“Thanks!” Mabel had nearly forgotten about that. She held it close for a second before slipping it inside her jacket. It would stay out of sight for now: If there’s one thing she knew with clarity after this whole mess, it was that she wouldn’t be showing Ford the Journal anytime soon.

“Ready to go?” Dipper asked.

Mabel was about to nod when there was a squealing sound behind her. They all turned to see Star Mabel the Pig looking innocently up at them.

Mabel’s eyes widened. “Uh. . .”

But she couldn’t explain, because Dipper was squealing, “Oh my gosh, it’s so cute! What are you doing out here, little guy?” He knelt down to its level.

The pig squealed again and ran to Dipper, practically jumping into his arms. Dipper laughed in surprise and joy as it nuzzled him. “Mabel, look! He loves me!”

“Um, Dipper, I don’t think. . . ,” Mabel began.

“Do you wanna come home with me? You do? Great! I’m sure Ford won’t mind.”

Mabel was pretty sure Ford would mind, but she was also pretty sure there was nothing stopping her twin now.

“What should I call you, huh, little guy? Ooh, I know, Waddles!” He looked up at Mabel, waving the pig’s front hooves in the air. “’Cause he waddles.”

Mabel attempted a smile, and it must have been convincing, because Dipper didn’t seem to notice it wasn’t sincere. She didn’t have the heart to explain who “Waddles” really was, or that “he” was technically a “she.” It was a little concerning that a clone who would burst into white smoke on contact with her was now going to be living with them. Mabel guessed she would just have to. . . not touch the pig?

Dipper stood up, and Waddles frolicked at his ankles as he, Mabel, Candy, and Greyson started their trek out of the forest. Star Mabel had been the clone that focused on her love for Dipper, right? A fitting clone to be turned into an adorable pet pig, Mabel supposed.

As the band of kids and their newly christened pig headed back to the Mystery Museum, Mabel knew her problems hadn’t been solved. She was still confused, and she was still scared of her. But she also knew she had her brother and all the time in the world to recover.

So, for now, she was happy.