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donutpwns · 7 years ago

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Journey to the Roots - Part 1

\o/ -- Part 2

So this was inspired by some fanart for this au by @illustratedacorns beep and @artsycrapfromsai boop. Go check out both of them, they’re both really great artists.

Her head was pounding; it felt like she’d drank a gallon of Mabel-juice with a Smile Dip chaser and was hitting the critical crashing stage. She groans, struggling to pull the collar of her sweater over her face and escape to Sweater Town until the feeling passed. Her stomach feels like it’s about to turn itself inside out. “Diiiiiipper, I’m dying!” the whine is out before she can even process the thought.

“No clue who Dipper is, kid, but if you’re going to die, could you do it somewhere else?” The voice is oddly familiar but most definitely not that of her brother.

Mabel’s eyes widened and she’s scrambling to get out of Sweater Town. “WHAT?!” her collar tugs down to only cover her mouth; she has to blink rapidly as she looks around where she’s at. She’s—wait, how did she get in the Stanley Mobile? And why was there so much more trash—ooh, new surprise tacos! She reaches to grab one only to have her wrist grabbed by a large hand. Oh. Right. The source of the voice. That was a thing. She traces up the arm, clad in a grimy red jacket that looked like a crime against heat as well as fashion, to the owner of both it and the voice. “WHAT?!” she screams again.

The circles under his eyes are much less pronounced with only the beginnings of crow’s feet at the corners, though they’re currently narrowed at her. His face is unshaven and unwashed; his hair is long and greasy and brown. It’s a little unnerving how much he resembles her dad. He drops her wrist at her second scream and lifts both hands in a telltale ‘no harm’ gesture.

“Easy, kid. You’re the one that broke into my car, if anyone should be screaming, it’s me.” He’s frowning at her before sighing. “Listen, if you’re trying to rob me, you picked the wrong target. I’m broke as they come.”

“Gr-Gr-Grunkle Stan?” her brain is spinning. Why was Grunkle Stan so young? It didn’t make sense. Something weird was going on; Dipper probably had the answer in the journal. No, wait, Grunkle Ford took the journal back. Oh, hey, Grunkle Ford would probably know what was going on.

Stan lifts a bushy brow at her; he’s got the look he gets whenever Dipper comes screaming about a new conspiracy theory. “No clue what a grunkle is, kid, nor how you know my name. But if this is a bit, it’s a weird one.” He reaches over her and opens the passenger side door. “If you work for someone that I owe money, tell them I ain’t gonna be paying up to a kid. Now scram.”

Mabel notices for the first time that the car doesn’t seem to be in Gravity Falls; it’s late at night and they’re parked in a sleazy looking alleyway between two large buildings. The air is icy cold when it hits her face. Gravity Falls doesn’t have any buildings this big. Ohh noooo. “Hot Belgian waffles…” she swears before grabbing the door and slamming it back shut and smashing the lock down. “Nope, nope! Not going out there, nope, hahahaha!” she turns back to Stan and jabs a finger towards him; he barely pulls back in time to avoid a good nose poking. “Younkle Stan! We have some weird stuff going down!”

“Youn—What are you on about?” he’s leaning back, back against the driver side door, twisted at the hips. “Kid, I don’t know you, so whatever you’re after—” he jumps when she scrambles to her knees in the passenger seat and leans super close to him.

This time he can’t escape the nose poke. “You! You’re Stanley Pines, you have a twin brother named Stanford and another brother named Grandpa Shermie—well, Grandpa isn’t part of his name but that’s what Dip Dop and me always called—NOT IMPORTANT!” she has to slam her hands on the middle console to de-distract herself. “POINT! You’re my great uncle but usually you’re all old and junk but now you’re young which, like, is not even close to the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen but it is definitely in the top fifteen, right after the time I found out my favorite boy band was made up of a bunch of clones grown by this real jerk who didn’t let them go outside but then I kinda did the same so—” a hand clamps over her mouth and she’s licking it on pure instinct.

Stan jerks his hand back at the same time she starts gagging; when was the last time he’d washed his hands?! “Holy shit, kid! Slow it down.” He starts wiping his hand on his jeans, which were about as filthy as his jacket. Grooooss. “Okay, okay, so you know more than most of the sharks I owe.” His eyes widen in a realization and it’s Mabel’s turn to jump back when suddenly he has a fist in her face, golden knuckles catching what little light the streetlights give. Wow could he put those on super-fast. “Did they send you to threaten my family? To let me know that you know who they are? Cause I don’t give a shit if they’re a bunch of assholes, nobody messes with my family! You hear that, you little punk?”

Her head’s spinning from so many swears, also the pounding headache that still hasn’t really gone away. Her eyes water before she can really process it because hello Grunkle Stan is threatening to hit her. She gives a loud sniff and mimics his hand gesture from a few minutes ago. “C-c’mon, Grunkle Stan. It’s—it’s me, Mabel! Your favorite great niece?” she pushes on her cheeks, trying to make her eyes as wide and cute as possible. “Don’t you remember me?”

Stan was doing his best to look unimpressed but she can see him cracking. After a moment, he gives a huff and lowers his fist. All the air seemed to deflate from him with the movement; she’s frowning as he slumps so far into the seat that his knees are pressed to the console. He groans, rubbing at his eyes with one hand. Mabel takes that as a good sign to relax. She shifts in her seat so she’s sitting cross-legged, taking the time to tug her sweater over her knees.

Well. This was awkward.

With a sigh of her own, paired with a pout, she reaches for the surprise taco she’d seen earlier. It’s practically grease-glued to the fast food bag it was in; when she finally peels the paper bag away, she sees a receipt similarly stuck to the taco wrapper. She doesn’t recognize the name of the restaurant listed at the top of the nearly translucent paper. Then her eyes fall on the date and she drops the taco entirely.

“81?! Is this taco right, Stan?!” she winces when Stan jumps at her shout, swearing even more at the way his knees banged into the steering wheel. Okay, so maybe she should stop yelling in an enclosed space with someone that didn’t seem to know her. Dipper may have been right about that. Not that she’d ever admit that. She was the Alpha Twin and therefore always right forever. But if this receipt was right, then that meant that Stan hadn’t forgotten her, this Stan hadn’t met her yet!

Stan was rubbing at his knees, frowning. “Of course it’s—how did you not know what year it is?” he’s reaching for her as if to feel her forehead before seeming to think better of it. “Are you, I dunno, sick, kid? I can give you a ride to a…hospital or something. I might have some quarters for you to call your parents?” his hand returns to rubbing at his eyes, “Shit, a kid breaks into your car and you offer her a ride. Going soft, Stanley…”

Mabel leans forward, checking the messy floorboards for a tape measure. She doesn’t remember seeing Blandin or messing with a time device. And wasn’t she with Dipper before…whatever happened? Huh. Now that she thought about it, she couldn’t remember exactly what she was doing before waking up curled up in the front seat of the Stan Mobile. She remembered breakfast with Stan and Dipper; she remembered dressing Waddles in the new sweater she’d made him. She remembered wanting to show Grunkle Ford the new finger puppets she’d made him: one for each of the Mystery family to try to get him to warm up to everyone else. Everything else is fuzzy and makes her head hurt to think about.

“Where are we? Like…are we in Oregon?” she’s hopeful; if she could get back to the Mystery Shack then maybe Grunkle Ford could figure out what was going on. Plus if Dipper was here too that’s where he’d go so that’s where she needed to look for him.

Stan gives a bark of a laugh, “Where—Okay, actually, never mind. I’m going to stop asking questions cause you’ll just scream and start talking nonsense again. Oregon? Nah, Arizona, kid.” His mouth twists for a moment, “…fuck it, one question. What’s in Oregon?”

“Home! Your home, and mine and Dipper’s for the summer. Though I think it’s technically Grunkle Ford’s house but, like, you’ve paid the bills for like thirty years—or you will after—WAIT!” her eyes go wide and she has to slam her hands on the console again. “This is before! Which means you and him haven’t! So maybe if we get there before there doesn’t have to be an after and we can fix everything right now!” she’s grinning, imagining what things will be like if her grunkles were the best friends they were supposed to be because twins are supposed to be the best of friends. Like her and Dipper, they were going to be together forever once she found him again. Yeah! “I need you to take me to Gravity Falls!”

“…did you say that’s where Ford is?” Stan’s face is softer, like when they went fishing with him or when Ford first stepped out of the portal. He shakes his head, the look lost with the gesture, “No. Listen, if you know anything about my family, then you know I’m the last person my brother wants to see.”

“But he’s in danger, Younkle Stan!” she bites her lower lip. When did Bill first start talking with Ford? “Aghhhh, Dipper would know when everything happened.” Her stomach was starting to twist again. Was Dipper okay? Maybe she’d been sent back alone. Oh, he had to be so worried about her. Him and the grunkles and Soos and Wendy. She has to rub at her nose as another loud sniff escapes her. It was hard to be optimistic when she was all alone. “We gotta get to Gravity Falls. We gotta!” she turns her eyes, cute set to full wattage, back to Stan and sticks out her bottom lip.

Stan stares at her for a long moment. He looks down at his lap then pulls down his visor, looking at a tiny map of the United States with most of the states crossed out. Arizona was already crossed out, huh, that was weird. But Oregon wasn’t, score. “…you say Ford’s in trouble? And going there will help you and him?”

Mabel nods so hard that her pounding head threatens to make her puke. “Yup! And my brother, Dipper! He’s my twin, like you and Grunkle Ford. And if I’m here then he’s gotta be here too cause, like, we never time travel without each other or go on adventures alone. So if I’m here he’s probably there cause that just makes sense. Or if he’s not, he will be cause that’s where I’m going so that’s where he’s gotta be going too. Right? Right!”

Stan’s mouth twists again and he drops his head back against his seat. “I really am going soft. Fuck it. Pretty sure there’s no warrants for me in Oregon. And if Ford is in trouble…” he shakes his head before giving Mabel a hard look. “I can’t believe I’m doing this, but fine. I’ll get you to Gravity Falls. But once we’re there and I’m sure Ford isn’t about to keel over, I’m bouncing. You got that, Mabel?”

Another bout of near-puke-inducing nodding. “Right! Thank you so much, Younkle Stan!” she can’t help climbing over the middle console to wrap her arms around his neck, nuzzling him with the force of the hug. “Eee, I get to go on a road trip with Stan! Dipper’s gonna be so jealous when we meet up.”

“Alright, alright, get off.” Stan pushes her back to the front seat, brows furrowed. “There’s no way we’re related.” He sighs before starting up the car. “Whatever. Let’s get this over with.”

-----------------

He’s freezing, cold down to his very bones, with a pounding in his skull. It feels like Bill has put his body through a ringer then locked him in a deep freeze. He groans and tries to push himself up, only to feel his hand go through something insanely cold and wet. His scream is high pitched as he scrambles up, blinking repeatedly to clear his vision. For a moment he thinks he’s gone blind as all he sees is white until he realizes that. Oh. Snow. There’s snow everywhere.

He was on the porch of the Mystery Shack and there was snow everywhere. No wonder he was so cold. He wipes his wet hand on his shorts, eyeing the outline of where he’d stuck his hand through. The snow had drifted nearly halfway up the door, haphazardly cleared like someone had kicked at the snow. Which sounds like something Stan would do; how long had Dipper been outside?

Sudden weather issues and memory issues? Geez, he hoped no one had gotten ahold of the memory gun; that was the last thing he needed. He was going to need to check with Grunkle Ford, see if he’d ever seen something like this before. Also, get something for his head. It was hurting bad enough to make him feel kinda sick, especially when coupled with how cold it was. Definitely not good weather for shorts and a T-shirt. He might have to finally give in and wear one of the sweaters Mabel had made for him.

Wrapping his arms around himself and rubbing at them, he stumbles his way to the front door. When he tries to open the door, however, he finds it locked. That’s…weird. Why would it be locked? Stan’s definition of home safety was a bat and his knuckledusters. Also why would they lock Dipper out? He rolls his eyes; Mabel must be playing a joke on him. “Real funny, Mabel. Yeah, let’s lock Dipper out. We’ll see whose laughing when I sneeze all over you.” He brings his fist down on the edge of the doorframe, “Hey! Let me in, Mabel! It’s cold!”

Instead of Mabel’s grinning face, he’s instead greeted with a crossbow in his face. Another high pitched scream and his sneaker slips on snow when he tries to jump back from the weapon. Cold bites into his butt and thighs; his stomach gives a lurch at the sudden drop. “Wh-wh-wh—”

“Who sent you?! How did you find this place?!” the holder of the crossbow yells at him, poking his head out of the doorway. His eyes are bloodshot, hair sticking out in all directions, and even from a distance Dipper can smell that he hasn’t showered in at least several days. He looks even more tired than Dipper remembers seeing him yesterday, the bags under his eyes deeper and darker than usual. But even with that, and the extreme scruff on his cheeks, he still looks younger.

Ford takes another step out the door and lines up the bolt with Dipper’s head, “I said: who sent you?!”

Dipper put his arms over his head, “Ahh! My name is Dipper Pines! I’m your great nephew, please don’t shoot me!” oh god, he was going to be killed by his grunkle. His idol of the summer was going to kill him with a crossbow. He was going to—wait, why hasn’t a painful but hopefully swift death came yet? He peaks his eyes open; Ford is giving him a suspect look, but the crossbow has been lowered just a bit. “Grunkle Ford?”

Ford scowls and lifts the crossbow again. “Show me your eyes! Your eyes! Before I put a bolt through that stupid hat!”

Eyes—oh! Oh, of course! Dipper pushes up to his feet, trying not to slip while doing so. He uses his hand to push his hair out of his eyes. “Look, see! Normal eyes! No yellow, no slitted pupils! I am not possessed by Bill!” that is apparently the wrong thing to say, as Ford’s eyes go wide and somehow even crazier.

“How do you know who Bill is?!” Ford takes a small step back inside. “This is a trick—a-a shape shifter or-or something. Trust no one, trust no one.”

Dipper lunged forward to try to keep up. “W-wait! I’m not a shape-shifter and I’m not working with Bill! I’m—well, I think I might be from the future, considering this isn’t exactly the Mystery Shack and—listen! I’m Shermie’s grandson!” he’s still shivering, but it’s easier to ignore the cold in favor of not getting locked out by his paranoid grunkle. “If you let me in, you can examine me however you need to prove I’m a normal human.”

Ford narrows his eyes at him for a moment before taking another step back and gesturing towards the inside of the house with the crossbow. He never stopped pointing it at Dipper’s head, but he’d take the victory of not being in the freezing cold.

Dipper was pretty sure he’d never seen the Mystery Shack so messy, bar maybe when Gideon destroyed it or when the zombies attacked. All the fake attractions and souvenirs were gone, replaced instead by piles and piles of books and loose papers. Dipper has to step over a pile of what looked like elongated bones, only bright purple. There’s also lots of drawings of triangles pinned to the walls, most with red Xs drawn across them or Ford’s paranoid mantra of ‘TRUST NO ONE’ written in dripping ink.

Okay, so he’d thought they’d been exaggerating how insane Ford was when they’d told him about the portal accident. This was…concerning. Even Dipper thought this was excessive. He didn’t really like seeing his great uncle like this. The number of times he’d imagined meeting Ford back in the days when he was writing the journals, he’d always pictured him as very similar to the Ford he knew. Excited in the same manic way that Dipper could get when there was a new mystery; fun and ready to play board games when not on an adventure. This wasn’t nearly as fun as he would’ve thought it would be.

Ford was peeking out the blinds even as he kept the crossbow pointed at Dipper. “Take a seat, kid. I have a lot of questions, as you can imagine.”

Dipper casts another look around the living room, eyeing the books that seem to take up every inch of the couch. There’s a stool in the corner, but there’s something that looks like half melted lime Jello on it and dripping down the sides. “Uhh, I’d prefer to stand?” despite the cold, Dipper can feel himself sweating under his collar. He wants to ask for a towel for the rapidly melting snow on his butt or a blanket to fight the still-present cold, but he’s honestly afraid to see what said items would look like given the state of the house and Ford himself.

“What?” Ford looks around, as if just noticing the mess that was his house. He seems to still have a small sense of decency as his cheeks turn a deeper red than just that from the cold and he points the crossbow towards the floor. “Oh, right. That’s—” he clears his throat and raises the weapon once more, “Never mind all that. You said you’re from the future?”

Dipper starts to nod furiously only to stop when it causes the pounding in his head to flare up. Ohhh, yeah, no. Can’t do that. Verbal confirmation then. “Yes! Or, at least, I’m pretty sure this the past. Well, relative to where I’m from, or when I’m from, heh.” He snorts at his own joke—Mabel would’ve loved that— before catching himself and straightening his posture. He mimics Ford’s throat clear, “Ahem, right. Yeah. My name’s Dipper, Dipper Pines. I’m from the year 2012.”

Ford’s frowning that deep frown he always got whenever Dipper first started asking him questions after he stepped through the portal. “There was the anomaly in the time readings a few years ago...my theory that time travel was possible, even though Fidds said…” His voice trails off into something too low for Dipper to hear before clearing his throat yet again. “Right. So, you’re my great nephew from 30 years in the future. Let’s say for the sake of argument that I believe that, given it is theoretically possible and you do bear a passing resemblance to Sherman. What are you doing here?”

Dipper hesitates, trying once more to push through the headache to remember what he’d been doing before waking up on the porch. Stan had made them Stancakes in the morning. Soos had showed him the new parts for version 2.0 of the rocket golf cart that they were going to work on come the weekend. He remembered wanting to show something to Ford and going to punch the code into the vending machine, but he can’t remember actually doing that. His stomach is twisting itself into knots as he tries to chase the memories that seem to be melting away like the snow on his shorts. Something had distracted him. What—

“Easy, kid.” A hand catches his shoulder, halting the swaying he hadn’t realized he’d been doing. Ford looks almost worried as Dipper tries to swallow down the nausea and dizziness that had suddenly taken over. “You’re white as a sheet, kid.”

Dipper shakes his head and takes a deep breath. What’s wrong with him? “I’m fine. I just can’t—I don’t remember how I got here.” McGucket hadn’t mentioned anything about physical side effects of the memory gun, just the affect it had on long-term memory retention. Why did he feel so sick trying to remember what had happened? He pats his pockets to make sure he didn’t have Blandin’s tape measurer again. Aside from some chewed up pens and a wadded up scrap of paper with ‘Wendy Pines’ written enough times to make his neck burn, he comes up empty. “I think I was talking with Mabel and—Mabel!”

He pushes past Ford, who lets out a very owl-like squawk as he nearly drops the crossbow, and rushes to the door. A blast of cold air hits him in the face—okay Outside was definitely colder than Inside— when he swings the door open, forcing him to squint as he scans the yard. How could he forget to check for Mabel? Oh god, if she was still unconscious in the snow…

The only tracks in the snow are from him and a kicked path that leads to a sign with big bold “STAY OUT” letters on it and barbwire on top of it. At the edge of the yard he can see what looks like rabbit tracks, but otherwise it’s all a blanket of untouched white. No other tracks and no Mabel-sized lumps. That’s both a relief and not. Dipper cups his hands around his mouth, “Mabel! Mabel, are you out there?!” his voice cracks on a yelp when a hand closes around his shoulder again, jerking him back into the house. He’s shoved back, nearly tripping over the pile of bones that seem to glow when his sneaker touches them. “Gah, Great Uncle Ford!”

Ford pulls the door closed and proceeds to lock a fairly frightening number of deadbolts. He’s got the manic look back on his face; his glare is enough to dry up Dipper’s indignation at being manhandled. “Calm down! Who the hell is Mabel?”

“Who—she’s Mabel!” he’s exasperated for a moment before, oh, right, past. It’s so weird to think of anyone not knowing who Mabel is at this point, what with the way that she seems to just be all the time. “She’s my sister; my twin. If I’m here, that means she’s probably here too. I’m pretty sure we were together before…before whatever happened.” He digs his fingers in his hair under his hat, still trying to fight past the headache and the nausea to remember what happened to his sister. “Ughhhh, why can’t I remember?! I had breakfast with her and Stan and then I wanted to talk to you about something but she was there and then—”

“Did you say Stan?” Ford’s voice cut through his own mania; he looks up at him to see a mix of anger and something soft warring on his uncle’s face. Apparently Ford has deemed him a non-threat as the crossbow has been hung up next to the door. “You know who Stan is?”

Dipper’s brow furrows before he remembers what Stan and Ford had told them. About their fight and the not seeing each other for ten years and then for thirty years because of the portal and the burn on Stan’s shoulder—Moses, Dipper had bugged Stan so much about that he was the worst— and the way the two glared at each other whenever they were forced to be in the same room. This was before the portal accident.

Dipper nods, rubbing at his arms. “I mean, yeah. He’s your twin brother. Mabel and I were staying with him for the summer.” He leaves it vague, not sure how much he should tell. You’d think after the thing with Waddles and epic Time Laser Tag he’d know how to handle being in the past. Plus the idea of telling Ford about him being trapped for thirty years hopping through dimensions makes him feel extra super sweaty.

Ford gives a huffing sort of a snort, “Your parents left you two with Stan? Once this is all done I’ll need to have a talk with Sherman about teaching his kids some sense.” He says it so casually, like it’s a practiced thing to dismiss Stan, and that irks Dipper a little but he keeps his mouth shut. Ford sighs and runs a hand through his hair; further messing it up if that was even possible. “Time traveling niblings. That’s gotta be too crazy, even for Bill…maybe. Damn it, all my notes about the time anomaly are in…Journal…”

It’s apparently Ford’s turn to sway. Dipper realizes, as Ford stumbles back against the door and begins slipping down the surface, that he might not be the only Pines that worked himself until he passed out. And if Ford paid as much attention to eating and sleeping as he did to his personal hygiene, then they were in all kinds of trouble. Dipper moves forward to try to prop his uncle up but only really manages to marginally slow down his descent to the floor where he proceeds to promptly start snoring.

Oh geez.

#gravity falls #timetrapped AU #timestuck AU #mabel pines #dipper pines #stanford pines #stanley pines #kainichivonwrites #fanfiction #fanfic #journey to the roots

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