Chapter Text
Bill’s eye, much like everyone else, is glued to the TV. The red letters roll across the bottom of the screen over and over again. A photo of Dipper’s truck — nothing more than a shapeless blob of white — is in the left corner of the screen. The right is live footage of the fire. It looks grisly. Even the support beams, previously thought to be metal, are burning. Mabel leans against the back of the chair. The others are giggling madly, exchanging excited praise, but she stands still, as stiff as a board. Bill’s eye adjusts to see her face in the reflection. She’s staring so intensely. He can’t think of a time he’s seen anyone stare that hard. He opens his mouth to speak, but falters, unsure of what he should say.
Waddles climbs off of Bill’s lap. He hits the floor sideways, scrambles upward, and trods around to Mabel, then lays down across her feet. She moves — thank the Heavens — and Bill twists to see what she’s doing. He leans over the top of his chair and sees her stroking the fat pig’s head. “Well?” he asked, his throat sore.
She assesses him, then lets her attention drop back down to the pig. “I don’t know,” she whispers. She glances toward Dipper, Pacifica and Gideon; they look happier than she’d seen them… ever, really. “I don’t feel anything,” she confesses. As if on cue, Stan enters the room, boisterously asking what all the chatter is about. He stills when he sees the TV.
“Oh,” he laughs, the hand on his back falling to his side. He holds the (alcoholic) pitt soda to his mouth and takes a swig, then turns over his shoulder, hollering for Ford. Bill isn’t sure if Stan saw him. Actually, Bill knew he did — he was in plain sight — Bill wasn’t sure if he was deliberately ignoring him or not. The former seemed more likely than the latter.
Ford stomped up the stairs. He struggled to make it past the happily chattering teens, but once he’d done so, his face dropped. He spun toward them and asked, “What the Hell?!”
The teens stop their chatting. They glance at one another silently, then toward Ford, who is somewhere between chuckling and seething. He glances at the TV, looks at Dipper, then shakes his head, a great grin cracking across his face, one that digs deeply into his cheeks. He walks up to Stan and snags his drink, takes one long sip, and swipes his lips with the back of his hand.
“I’ll wait outside for Sheriff Blubs,” he announces. Dipper’s beaming now, mumbling off thank yous and following Ford out, clearly happy to have been spared his wrath. Pacifica and Gideon giggle. Mabel stares as they disappear out the door, her face blank.
Bill stares at her.
‘I don’t know how to journal.’ His handwriting is stark, all caps, with a slight slant upward.
‘Mabel’s in no shape to explain it to me. I don’t understand what humans feel. I feel it, but it doesn’t make sense — it’s like a sickness. You sneeze, cough, and gag, and you don’t know why, but you do. Humanity is similar. She’s been distant. Still kind, as kind as always, but her smile doesn’t meet her eyes.’
‘I think she thought burning down that billboard was going to make her feel better. I think that it didn’t make her feel better, and now she doesn’t know what to do. Worse, I don’t know what to do.’
‘I barely remember being a teenager. One second you’re young, staring up at the stars; brilliant balls of fire and energy and light; and the next, the world around you is burning in that same light, and you’re alone. I don’t remember my teenage years. I cannot say if my experience is worse than hers. I cannot tell if I’m inclined to compare our experiences out of sympathy or self-pity. Regardless, I hate both of the motivators, and I wish they’d go away.’
‘Ford has been distant. Typical. He handled the cops well. I suppose interdimensional travel prepares you for all sorts of interactions. When Durland — or was it Darlin? — arrived, he put on this brilliant smile, clapped Dipper on the back, and said they’d been fishing. Apparently Dipper was sweating enough for it to look believable. I think it was probably due to the fact that the creator doesn’t make all humans equal, and some are clearly more intelligent than others; but, from what I can glean, you aren’t supposed to say that aloud. Everyone knows it, but you’re not supposed to say it.’
‘I’ve been having dreams lately. Terrible, terrible dreams. I’m young again. It doesn’t make sense. I’m young again, but as a human; the world around me is similar to the Shack, but if it were converted into a dollhouse, and only half of it was visible. It’s cartoonish, really, like the shows that play on Sundays before the news. I try to see my mother’s face, but the further I crane my head, the darker the room gets; at her face, it’s impossibly dark, and I surrender. It’s a simple dream from there. I fight with my shoelaces, until she gifts me a pair of velcro shoes — something I’ve learned humans also have. I wake up right when she asks me if they fit alright. They do. They always do.’
‘Being human is a complicated, awful experience, one I would most definitely wish on my worst enemies. Or, actually, enemies of any kind. If I still had those.’
“Bill?” Mabel’s voice chimes from the door behind him. He stirs in his seat, wedging his finger between the pages, leaning forward in the chair. She inches forward. Her face is obscured by shadows. He blinks, unsure of what to do. “I’m here,” he says, because it’s all he knows how to say.
She walks closer. The light from the TV begins to paint the details of her face: the slant of her nose, the curve of her chin, the dampness on her cheeks. She wipes it away frantically and sinks to her knees beside the edge of the chair. She leans her head against the arm of his chair. He hesitantly adjusts, moving so he leans on the opposing side of the chair, as far from her as possible. She snorts wryly in response. “It’s not contagious,” she hums.
“I find that unlikely,” he retorts, immediately regretting it. He clears his throat.
“Why’re… you… here?” he asked, the question feeling stupider out loud than it did in his head. The question dangles in the air for an uncomfortable amount of time.
“I don’t know,” she admits, her words leaving her like a sigh. He hums in disgust and crosses his legs. “I guess I don’t want to be upstairs.”
He understood. Why she chose to sit by him was beyond him, though. He looked down at her — her glossy face, her deep set eyes — and groaned, his hand coming up to his face. His fingers pressed harshly into his eyes before landing on his knee with a dramatic ‘plap’. “I don’t understand,” he whispered. “You did what you wanted, and yet…”
She looked toward him. He stilled, then blurted, “You’re not happy.”
She blinked, then smiled, looking back at the TV. Ducktective is playing. It’s trashy, but he leaves it on. “Yeah,” she confirms. A heavy silence settles between them. Then, quietly, she said, “I don’t know. It’s like… it’s like some part of me shut down. I don’t know how to fix it anymore. Fix me, I mean.”
Several more agonizing minutes of Ducktective play. Bill pushes out of his seat. Mabel straightens up as he grabs the cane, his hand wrapping firmly around the head. “Where’re you going?” she asked, sounding genuinely upset.
He sucks in a breath. “Getting us drinks. We’re gonna be here a while, so…”
They end up on the roof again. It’s quieter up there. They’re both on their backs. Bill took off his jacket and balled it up, now it’s beneath Mabel’s head. She stares vacantly at the stars, her breathing shallow and even, nearing mechanical. He steers his gaze back up to the moon, willing the stars to fall to put him out of his misery. “Y’know, Shooting Star,” he hummed, crossing his hands over his chest, “I think the prophecy said you were supposed to be more chipper.”
The words barely reach her ears. She laughs, distantly, and closes her eyes. “Guess the prophecy lied,” she muttered humorlessly.
He doesn’t know what to do. She hasn’t prepared him for this — for her — but here she was.
“The prophecy doesn’t lie,” he said, his hands drumming rhythmically against his forearms. Then, with trepidation, “You’ll get over it. Whatever you’re going through, you’ll get over it.”
Her head rolls to the side. She looks him over, then back to the sky, her eyebrows pinched together. “I think you should try saying ‘get through it’ instead of ‘over it’,” she suggested.
A temporary anger washed over him, but he chased it back, knowing damn well that lashing out would be an unintelligent thing to do right now. He sighed, digging his head harder into the panel he was laying on. “I don’t mean ‘through it’,” he said through clenched teeth, “I mean ‘over it’. You probably won’t ever get through it. That implies moving on. I don’t think people ever move on. Getting over it means… pushing past. Moving forward in spite of it. You’ll recover.”
A different kind of silence passes over them.
It’s less inorganic than before. It weighs heavy on them both, but it’s not unwelcome. Mabel puffs up her chest, then sighs dramatically, pushing up and onto her forearms. She rakes a hand through her hair. “Bill?” she asks.
“Yeah?”
“You got an extra soda?”
‘I can’t tell if the rest of the family knows.’
Someone’s in the kitchen. Soos, judging by the terrible music radiating from the speakers. He’s singing along. Bill pushes his head firmly into one side of the chair, and one hand against the other ear; his free hand returns to writing.
‘She’s upset. She eats in her room, goes on frequent walks, and barely talks to anyone but her stupid pig. Sometimes she’ll join me to watch Ducktective, but she’ll fall asleep within the first fifteen minutes, and then I’m relegated to staying there until she wakes up. Not that I had anything else to do, but I like having the illusion that I can walk out if I wanted.’
‘I haven’t seen anyone else around frequently. Dipper’s been out and about, and Pacifica hasn’t been at work at all. She’s generally gone when he’s gone. Mabel looks like she knows where they are, but she never tells Stan or Ford when they ask; it looks like they’re proud of her for lying. Maybe that’s what family is — lying to make other people happy, or proud, or whatever synonym you want to use.’
‘I haven’t seen Ford at all. I don’t think he leaves the basement. I don’t think he wants to see me. Not that I can blame him after all that happened. I wish he did.’
Bill paused, looking down at what he’d just written. He then frantically scribbled it out. He didn’t stop until the spot was cavernous, and there was no sign of Ford’s name anywhere on the page. He clicked the pen several times before writing, ‘I feel something I’ve never felt before. I’m afraid to write it down, because I’m afraid that it makes it significantly more real than not writing it.’
‘I think — no, I know — that I feel guilty. I feel guilty for something that I did centuries ago in my mind. To her, it wasn’t even a decade ago. I’ve lived eons since then, and she’s stuck in the past. I want to undo it. I want to undo my biggest success, and not because I failed, but because I hurt someone I previously thought was expendable.’
He pressed the pen to his lips, looking up from the chair. The sleeping girl was barely a foot away, his jacket slumped over her shoulder, a pillow beneath her head. Waddles snored mucusy snores, nestled perfectly below her arm. She looks peaceful. She looks safe. Younger.
‘I hate being human.’