Title: The Journals

Fandom: Gravity Falls

Rating: G

Characters: Stanford Pines, Dipper Pines, Mabel Pines, past Stanley Pines.

Description: Now they have two books. (AU)

Word Count: 3114

Notes: Part of Myosotis. Previous stories, in chronological order: Feast of the Tabernacles, Welcome to Gravity Falls, Journal in the Woods, A Tale of Two Stans, Hello to Widdle Ol’ Me, Secrets in the Mind

Gideon came in hard and fast. Also, he had a robot. Ford had honestly not expected that.

The little brat threatened the kids. Ford could have killed him for that. The psychopath caught Dipper in his robot fist and threatened to crush him if Mabel didn’t declare her love and Ford didn’t ‘reveal the secrets of the journal.’ Of course, Ford’s illness chose that moment to attack, but he managed to distract the child long enough for Dipper to escape and for the kids to bring down the robot.

But all was well that ended well. The boy was arrested, his scam revealed, and somehow the Pines family became the town heroes. Honestly, Ford wasn’t trying to think too hard about it. He was just happy that the kids were okay.

He had grabbed the journal Gideon was harping on so much about, intending to give it to the authorities, but he had accidentally slipped it into his bag instead. He told himself he would give it to the authorities later, but something strange and possessive grew in his gut, and he wasn’t sure why.

After trudging back home, he flopped on the couch, unable to imagine dragging himself to his bedroom in his state of exhaustion. The kids seemed to have the same feeling as him, because Mabel slumped onto his legs and Dipper tucked just under Ford’s arm. It was nice, actually. They used to cuddle up to him like that when they were much smaller during the rare times Ford would look after them while in Piedmont for the holidays.

Ford rested one arm on Dipper and one hand on Mabel’s head, reminding himself that they were there.

He drifted closer and closer to sleep before, in a whisper, Dipper said, “How did Great Uncle Stanley die?”

It was like someone wedged a cattle prod between his ribs. Ford winced, rattling a (probably) sleeping Mabel before biting his tongue. It was a painful topic, but he’d told himself that he’d be open about Stanley, didn’t he? He was open about Stanley with Shermy and his nephew, and he would be open with Dipper and Mabel too. Even if Dipper had a very poor sense of timing.

“I don’t know.” He rested his chin in Dipper’s hair. “All I know is that he was homeless for a while, and his regular contact with our mother suddenly stopped one day.”

“So… they never found him?” Dipper’s voice was tight. It’d been a stressful day. Ford knew distantly that Dipper and Mabel had somehow (how?) seen the inside of his head, but he couldn’t quite remember what happened in there, besides that it was horrible and nightmarish. Maybe the stress was getting to the boy.

“No, they didn’t.” Ford curled his fingers in Dipper’s hair, absently rubbing circles in the boy’s scalp in a way that he hadn’t since his nephew was a toddler. Dipper’s head drooped. Apparently, he still liked it. “There’s no way of knowing what really happened to him.” It haunted Ford, but he couldn’t bear to say that to Dipper. He was too young to hear about a grown man’s pain.

Dipper twisted his fingers along the hem of Ford’s jacket. It was a small childish gesture the boy hadn’t allowed himself recently, being so caught up in being grown up. It was what Dipper used to do when he was insecure or scared—grab onto the clothes of the nearest adult family member.

“Do you miss him?” he asked in a small voice.

Ford’s heart twisted. “Every day.”

Mabel was silent at Ford’s legs. He couldn’t be sure if she was asleep or only pretending to sleep, but he wanted to be quiet for her just in case.

“I believe you,” Dipper said softly. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be, Dipper. Don’t be.” Ford gave him a gentle squeeze and closed his eyes, but sleep was a long time coming.

When Dipper said he believed his great uncle, he meant that he believed that Ford missed Stanley. He wasn’t sure if he believed that Ford didn’t know how Stanley died.

He lay with his back against his great uncle’s chest, staring ahead at the window even though his body cried for sleep. This was ridiculous. Stupid! He knew Great Uncle Ford. This was the man who babysat them over holidays, who always encouraged them no matter what they were doing and who loved them to pieces. Dipper knew that. Even Dad would talk about how attentive an uncle Ford was for him when he was a kid and Grandpa Shermy was still in school. Mom said that because Ford didn’t have kids of his own, he loved his nephew and his niece-in-law and Mabel and Dipper like they were his kids. He didn’t say things like ‘I love you’, but he showed it their whole lives.

Someone like that wouldn’t murder their own twin brother. It was a betrayal that Dipper was even thinking it. So what if he had some questionable dreams? So what if an evil psychic triangle implied he did it? So what if there were memories of begging and screaming hidden deep in the recesses of his mind that probably all came from Stanley?

Dipper wanted to sleep, but he was scared of what he would see in his own dreams.

Could he just keep on going like normal when this was hanging over his head? The mysteries surrounding his uncle had been growing and growing since coming to Gravity Falls. Dipper thought that the journal he found was the product of a concussion-addled mind, but then he started actually finding the creatures it described, and he was forced to take another look. Had his great uncle been studying the mysteries in Gravity Falls? Why did he stop? Why did he stay, if it ended as badly as the journal implied? Did he really not remember, or was that something he just pretended?

The questions were heavy on his shoulders. Ford loved him, yes, but was that enough to banish the doubts Dipper had? Could he ever spend time with his uncle again without thinking about monsters in a book and dreams of drowning brothers?

Dipper couldn’t do this. He couldn’t live his life with these questions. He was going to talk to Ford once and for all about everything—the journals, the dreams, the mysteries, everything. He’d coordinate with Mabel, and they were going to talk to their great uncle, and they’d settle it all.

Clenching his fingers along the hem of Ford’s jacket, Dipper struggled to sleep.

“Mabel and I have been talking, and we wanted to show you this.”

It was dinner time, and by dinner time, Ford meant it was ten at night and they had only woken up on the couch an hour prior. They sat around an empty pizza box on the den floor, surrounded by the various family pictures and artwork Mabel had insisted on hanging on the walls. It left the den feeling much homier.

Dipper dragged his bag to him, rifling through its contents. Ford leaned against the front of the couch, arching one eyebrow. “Oh?”

The boy looked serious, but that wasn’t too unusual. What was weird was that suddenly Mabel looked serious as well, though she quickly tried to hide it by nibbling on discarded pizza crust.

“Early this summer, I found this in the woods.”

Dipper pulled out a book.

A book with a golden six-fingered hand on it.

The familiar headache and nausea rose up just at the sight of it. There was a sudden urge to slap it out of Dipper’s hand, to take it far away and burn it to ash. The boy shouldn’t be touching it. It wasn’t safe.

“That looks Gideon’s journal,” Ford said, taking off his glasses to dab the cold sweat suddenly gathering at his temples.

“Gideon’s was number two. This is three. You see, there’s your hand.” Dipper opened up the pages, but Ford’s eyes darted to the window instead. Something happened in the woods, a voice whispered in his ear. He looked away again and stared at a picture of the kids fishing in the lake hung up on the wall. “And this is—Great Uncle Ford, look, it’s your handwriting!”

“Dipper, put that book down.” Ford said it without thinking. His mouth was running. His head was pounding. “You shouldn’t have found it.”

“So you do remember it!” Dipper said like a prosecutor. “Why do you—”

“I don’t remember it, Dipper. I’ve never seen it in my life!” He tore into his words like an animal, and they came out harsher than he meant them to. Dipper immediately fell silent. Ford should apologize, hear the boy out.

There’s something in the basement.

Ford didn’t even have a basement, but the thought came to him unbidden. Teeth clenched, head pounding, he pushed himself to his feet. “I’m not feeling well. We should go to bed.”

“Every time we start talking about something weird, you get sick!” Dipper jumped to his feet, puffing out his chest and hefting up the journal’s open pages like a talisman, even though there was still hurt in his face. Ford kept staring at the pictures on the wall. “Why don’t you want to talk about this? What happened thirty years ago?”

You have to go back.

The headache was growing. The lights hurt Ford’s eyes. He shielded them with his palm. “Dipper, it’s too late for this.” You have to go back. There were voices he couldn’t pin down, and he scratched his ear, like maybe he could make them go away like that. “Now go to bed.”

“We just want to know what’s going on, Great Uncle Ford,” Mabel finally said in a much softer voice than her brother’s. “We won’t judge you, promise!”

“Does it have something to do with Stanley?” Dipper said.

Something exploded in Ford’s temple, and it wasn’t his headache.

“Do NOT bring my brother into your fantasy world!”

Both the kids jumped, Dipper dropping the book like a rock and letting it clatter to the floor. Their little pale faces shrank back, and he should have felt bad, but there was only anger.

“I didn’t tell you about Stanley so you could turn him into one of your mysteries! Now go to your room!”

He had never seen the kids run so fast. They tripped over their feet and stumbled to their room, slamming the door behind them.

The silence they left behind only magnified the pain in his head. Ford slouched onto the couch, covering his eyes and sighing into his hands. The world creaked and swung uneasily around him, like he was on a boat rather than solid ground.

Once the anger faded, guilt settled in instead. Sure, Dipper should know better, but Ford shouldn’t have lost his temper.

He’d apologize in the morning. He’d take them out for pancakes. After light stopped hurting.

There’s something in the basement.

Ford gently shook his head, trying to dislodge the voices without encouraging the headache. They weren’t good. He had to get rid of them. They were going to swallow him up.

You left it unfinished.

They’d never been so loud. He tried to massage his temples, but they were clawing his brain like hooks, climbing through it until they could get to the stem. He just had to ride them out. Ride them out.

He opened his eyes while his head was bowed. They landed on the abandoned book on the floor. A golden six-fingered hand with a three winked at him.

Cold sweat dripped down his cheek. His hands drifted to his knees, shaking. It was like wind could blow through him, he was so hollow.

The voices were silent. Everything was silent. He only heard his heartbeat in his ears.

He stood on the precipice of something. His whole body tensed in preparation. Something was wrong.

Ford bit his tongue. No, no, no, back it up, close the eyes, burn the book, wait for the pain to go away. That was what he always did. He needed to do it again. There was something dangerous lurking here.

Spine cracking, he leaned down and picked up the book just by the corner of its cover. The smell of dirt and must rolled off of it, making his stomach lurch.

He picked up the bag he had carelessly dropped by the door and walked to his room. He meant to go outside and burn the book. His feet took him to his desk.

There, he lay out two books. Both with six fingered hands, both with numbers. Two. Three.

He knew exactly where number one was.

The knowledge was ice dripping into his gut. In the woods, there was a house. In the house, there was a secret basement. The first journal had been dropped on its floor carelessly when he… when he…

It was a blur. A familiar blur. Memories he thought were completely lost bubbled at the surface, just out of his reach, but they were coming closer.

Thirty years ago, he had been in a car accident. He woke up in the hospital to a carny with strange head tattoos explaining that they had hit each other. He had forgotten the previous seven years in their entirety, but his house (which he didn’t remember buying) near the town diner was full to the brim of inventions and prototypes and blueprints, so he had been able to surmise that his research grant had been going to inventing and he had just kept at it.

He had never recovered those seven years, but not long after the accident, the nightmares started. He never remembered them, but he kept waking up in the middle of the night, heart thundering like death was upon him. Every time, he woke up with a feeling that Stanley was dead, and it was all Ford’s fault.

The doctors told him that he had suffered brain trauma and that this was probably just some strange symptoms, but it finally pushed him to actually get in touch with Stanley for the first time in over ten years. He got an address from Ma and sent a letter that said simply that he had been in an accident and it had shown him that he didn’t want to die before talking to Stanley again.

Stanley never responded.

Ford sent more letters. Angry letters, yelling at Stanley for ignoring his gracious olive branch. Penitent letters, apologizing for losing his temper. Sad letters, finally admitting that he missed Stanley and he was scared now that his memory was in shambles.

Eventually, they all came back to him, never delivered. Stanley didn’t even live at that address anymore. Ford asked his mother where Stanley was now, but she was just as confused as he was. Stanley had abruptly stopped communicating with her. No one knew where he was, and he didn’t resurface once in the next thirty years.

Ford tried to hold out hope that Stanley was alive, just avoiding them. The thought of his brother hating his guts enough to fall off the radar hurt less than the thought of his brother dead. He lost that hope when Ma died and Stanley didn’t come to the funeral.

He kept writing letters, like somehow thirty years of them after Stanley was dead would make up for over ten years of radio silence while he was alive. Ford had missed the end of his brother’s life because he had been too caught on one stupid mistake. Writing letters was all he could do, and yet it did nothing to take the edge off the guilt that revisited him every night.

Would Stanley still be alive if Ford had gotten over himself sooner and sent a letter? Could Ford have done something? Was this his fault?

The letters piled up in a trunk under Ford’s desk. He was running out of room, but he couldn’t stand to throw them away. Why? Did he really still hope after all these years that maybe he was wrong, that maybe Stanley had just ran away to Mongolia and he would come back to read the letters any day?

Dear Stanley,

I slept terribly last night, big surprise. I have to work so I’m taking my coffee without cream to compensate. It tastes terrible. I’m sure you would agree.

Stanford

Dear Stanley,

We’re great uncles now. Mabel and Mason were born 7:26pm last night. Mason had an umbilical cord wrapped around his neck, but the doctors saved him and it doesn’t look like there’s lasting damage. Mabel punched the doctor. She reminds me of you.

They’re beautiful children. You’d love them.

Stanford

Dear Stanley,

I miss you.

Stanford

The trunk of letters swelled with grief and regret over the years, the heaviest thing in his whole house, but Ford kept filling it and filling it in the solitude of his bedroom. He couldn’t stop, and he couldn’t leave the town. He didn’t know why. The guilt never went away. Neither did the nightmares.

He’d always felt that this was meant to be a punishment. This was what he got for abandoning his brother. He could live his life and Stanley couldn’t, so he owed it to Stanley to dedicate a piece of his life to him.

But now, a mystery.

He had two books.

The headache was starting to clear. There weren’t any voices, but left behind was only a trembling sense of foreboding, a dam in his head beginning to crack, prepared to destroy everything in its path. The books were his. He wrote them. He didn’t know what he had written, though.

There was evil inside of them. This, he knew. He knew it deeper than anything else. That truth was in his bones. There was evil in the books, and they should have been destroyed a long time ago. He could still destroy them. He could burn them in the yard and let those memories be gone forever.

But somewhere in that evil, there might be a clue about Stanley. He didn’t know why he thought that, what some books he wrote while he was estranged from his brother would tell him about Stanley’s death, but that was another lurking truth. The answer to the thirty-year mystery that tormented him every night could be in there. He knew this the same way he knew that he knew where the first journal was.

He didn’t know what would happen if he pursued this. Something in his head was splitting, breaking. The books would only lead him to ruin. He knew that.

Was it worth it just to find out how Stanley died? Could Ford risk everything for that?

He flipped Journal 2 open and started to read.