#in which alcor is extremely confused

[gnomewithalaptop]

Ok, finally getting to those other Asks I wanted to do. So the TAU blog reblog of ur "The last time I saw you (you were so young)" fic post, u said this: "'LISTEN I know I’m meant to be working on that one longfic but my mother told me a story about my deceased grandmother & then I just blacked out and wrote this idk what to tell you", I thought for a sec, u were talking about: "The Man Who Knew the Future You" (I love the idea of Alcor meeting a past Mizar; prob. so weird for both, lol), 2/?.

(Continuing on from my Last Ask(s)): , but then I realized u were prob. talking about "Cue the Sun" instead actually, which I found out from the Ask from toothpastecanyon asking: "What is cue the sun? 👀" (having trouble linking links), & now, I am obsessed w/ that idea/it. Like, a civil war, a R!Ford Mom having a R!Gideon (of all people) Troubled teen of all people (it's also cool to see more Ford & Gideon stuff in TAU & R's of them too), trying to find something to win the civil war 3?/?.

(Continued from Last Ask(s) again, sorry for how many Asks): , but then them finding like a 2016 (I think it was 2016) Gravity Falls and meeting a skeptical and/or sus. Stan (Stan meeting reincarnations of his brother and enemy and/or past enemy, man, oh man) and the OG Mystery Twins (Dipper and Mabel, right? Awesome. That/This should be very fun), and they all think it is 2016, and not, 7098 (man, the year differences is gonna be strange &/or confusing for everyone), &/or etc. 4?/?

(Continued from my Last Ask(s) again): Like, sign me up for "Cue the Sun"! And it is gonna be a longfic (probably)? Like, even if it wasn't, I would still be interested in it, but it being a longifc is even better (as a Gravity Falls, TAU, and/or etc. fan even more esp.). The map(s) u did for "Cue the Sun", & the thought u are putting into "Cue the Sun" is amazing. 4 or 5?/?. The next 1 should hopefully be my Last Ask. I didn't realize the/my Asks would get this many.

(Continued from my Other Asks. Just 1 more after this): Is there any more "Cue the Sun" posts besides that Ask I mentioned in my other Ask(s)? When I try searching up "cue the sun" on ur blog, this is all I get "Sorry, no results for cue the sun". I didn't even get that Ask I talked about, that literally has "cue the sun" in the Ask. Tumblr's Search can be so bad sometimes. Anyways, really excited for "Cue the Sun", whenever that is. & I love ur other TAU fics and posts too! 5 or 6?/?.

(original cue the sun post)

Oh dude. Dude. Never apologize for sending too many asks -- getting this in my inbox literally made my day. To your first question: yes! The longfic in question is Cue the Sun -- I'm still working through it rn, and I'm hoping to start publishing sometime this summer/fall -- woot woot graduation time! Right now, it's looking to be about 6-7 long-ish chapters? Which is def a longfic in my book lol (I'm trying to get it all written out before I start posting -- that way I can keep with a consistent update schedule)

I am SUPER excited about it though -- I've been having a blast working through the twists and turns of it all and making sure all the pieces fit together (and dropping Easter Eggs to as many other pieces of TAU lore as possible lmao)

But yes! OG Mystery Twins are 16-17 y/o Mabel and Dipper Pines, Stan is extremely sus (but lbr that's par the course for him), and Olya and Fatima (r!Gideon and r!Ford) are about to have the worst week of their lives.

Featuring: dead sisters who haunt the narrative, utopian society models gone wrong, weapons of mass destruction, the long-term effects of magical radiation (i.e. what happens when you stick a Chernobyl disaster inside Gravity Falls), and narratively significant golf carts

FINALLY: you can find all my writing posts under #this-is-gnomes-writing-tag, but since you're the second person to express interest in this fic, I'll start tagging Cue the Sun stuff with #cue the sun. Right now there isn't really much there (read: it is a barren wasteland) bc I tend to just vague post about things, but I'll make sure to tag any future excerpts/asks/milestones

[feferipeixes]

The Good Lines (1/3)

Trapped in an unfamiliar world, Alcor finds that he doesn’t mind the loneliness. He doesn’t care about finding a way out. He doesn’t even care about Mizar. All he cares about is solving puzzles, and drawing the good lines.

(or: I Think Dipper Should Play The Witness)

Chapter 1: Tutorial (link to chapter 2) (3)

I promised this a year ago and it’s finally happening! No knowledge about The Witness necessary -- this is basically a TAU fic. Thanks @toothpastecanyon for beta reading it!

(See the most updated version on AO3!)

===

One of the first signs that something was wrong was the silence.

Alcor didn't know when it had happened, but at some point he realized he couldn't remember the last time he'd heard a living thing. Sure, he could hear the grass crunch beneath his shoes, and the babble of the river cascading down the mountainside. When the silence got to be too much, he’d listen to those things as closely as he could.

He never heard a cicada screech, though, never heard a squirrel chitter, never heard a wolf howl. One time, he wandered through the forest and was assaulted by the chirping of birds, but when he looked closer he noticed that there were speakers hidden in the trees. That confused him even more, because who decided a forest needed assistance in creating an ambiance? Would the speakers switch from birds to crickets when it got dark out?

The next thing he noticed was that it never got dark out either.

Another strange thing: his magic wasn't working. He walked upon the ground instead of floating above it. He saw the physical shape of things instead of the shape of the ideas they embodied. And his hand didn't alight in flame when he snapped his fingers. He was still a demon -- he could see it in the pitch black reflection of his eyes when he looked in the ocean -- but it seemed less relevant right now. Which was without a doubt extremely odd.

However curious these things were though, he didn't have much of a chance to dwell on them. He was too busy drawing the good lines.

The panels were everywhere on the island. They were all sorts of materials -- some made of metal with a plastic border, some made of glass so he could see the scenery as he drew, and some were just embedded into the concrete he walked on. Many of them were connected with thick wires. They all had a grid of some sort on them, sometimes containing fanciful shapes and dots. All had one or more bulbous circles somewhere on the grid, as well as one or more rounded off ends. Some of them were pretty to look at, but he knew they weren't just for show. They were puzzles.

He couldn't remember when he'd discovered it. Maybe someone had told him (who? He was all alone). Maybe there were instructions on one of the panels (but he'd never seen any text on the island). Or maybe it was just instinct that led him to reach out and touch a panel, right on one of the large circles. It made a little popping noise, letting him know this was okay to do, and to keep going. So he dragged his claw across the grid, and as he did so, he drew a line. It was simple, it was effortless, it was satisfying. He drew the line around intersections in the grid to one of the rounded off bits and lifted his finger. The panel flashed angrily and highlighted some of the symbols on the grid.

Oh no. That was a Bad Line.

Frowning, he tried again; touching the circle, dragging his claw through the grid in a different pattern this time, and letting go at an end. The panel made a squeaky little beep, and the wire leading out of it lit up.

Alcor smiled. That was a Good Line.

---

There was a mountain at one end of the island. Well, it looked like a mountain, and the climate at the top was dramatically different from that at the bottom, but there was no way it was tall enough to really be considered a mountain. It only took a few minutes for Alcor to follow the path to the top, and he wasn’t even using any kind of demonic superspeed.

The summit was covered in weird stuff, but at this point Alcor would’ve been surprised if such a significant-looking location on this weird island wasn’t covered in weird stuff. Still, he wouldn’t have guessed that it would be covered in random statues of humans. There was an old man speaking at a podium, a figure in a trenchcoat using a camera on a tripod, a librarian gesturing angrily, and so on.

There were two statues at the center under three parabolic arches. One was a young man with a strange ladle-shaped mark etched onto his forehead, struggling to carry a large yellow box covered in images of eyes and which had a thick cable coming out of it. The other was a young woman in a sweater, holding the box’s cable taut and seemingly trying to pull the first statue back. All of the statues seemed vaguely familiar -- especially the two in the middle -- but he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He eventually decided it was just because humans all look the same.

There was another thing he found while observing the statues: a tape recorder, sitting on a rock near the statue with the tripod. It looked positively archaic in design, and only had one button on it. When he pressed the button, the voice that came out was so clear that it was almost as if the words were being transmitted directly into his brain.

“Up there you go around every hour and a half, time after time after time.”

He frowned at the odd device and cocked his head. It was nice to hear a voice for the first time in what seemed like forever, but he had no idea what it was talking about. He pressed the button again to no effect. The voice just kept talking.

“And you realize that in one glance that what you’re seeing is what was the whole history of man for years.”

Whatever. He decided to ignore it and take in the lovely view instead. He could see almost the whole island from up there, from the desert to the quarry to the forest to the swamp. There was something stunning about the diversity of landscape he could see from one spot. And yet, it wasn’t quite the beauty of the sights before him that made him marvel. It was the thought of all of the unsolved puzzles he was yet to find.

“You finally come up across the coast of California and look for those friendly things.”

There only seemed to be one panel at the mountain’s summit, and it was hardly a puzzle -- just a single zigzagging line. Quick as a whistle, he tapped the starting node, dragged his finger up, and released. It made all of the same sounds the other panels did, but it was kind of disappointing. There was no challenge in it, nothing to occupy his mind or give him a sense of accomplishment. It wasn’t a Good Line or a Bad Line, it was just… a line.

Huh.

“And you do it again and again and again. You look forward to that, you anticipate it. And there it is. That whole process begins to shift of what it is you identify with.”

He set off down the mountain again, and headed toward the greenhouse he’d noticed on his way up. Just as he expected, it was full of puzzles. Surrounded by colorful flowers, he stared at a panel and thought, and thought, and thought.

Hours passed. He solved two more.

“You look down there and you can’t imagine how many borders and boundaries you crossed again and again and again. And you don’t even see ‘em. All of history and music and poetry and art and war and death and birth and love, tears, joy, games, all of it is on that little spot out there that you can cover with your thumb.”

Alcor bounced between areas on the island when he got stuck, always breezing past the scenery without a second glance because there were more important things to attend to. Across the island and toward the desert. Across the island to climb through a treehouse. Across the island to get lost in a boat. He waited for it to blur together but it never did.

“And you realize with that perspective that you’ve changed. That there’s something new there. That relationship is no longer what it was.”

It was peculiar, if he did let himself think about it. He didn’t want to -- didn’t want to give the voice that kind of victory -- but in between panels he sometimes needed a little break and there were only a limited number of things to put his attention to in this place. So, occasionally, he let himself wonder why he was alone.

This was not an unfamiliar question for him. He could come up with a million reasons for it right off the top of his head. He was immortal, so maybe everyone else in the universe was just dead. He was a monster, so maybe everyone else in the universe was just scared of him. He was a dream demon, so maybe he was just buried so deep in the Mindscape that he couldn’t find his way out.

Somehow, none of those reasons felt like the truth. If they were, he’d probably be sadder.

“And you think about what you’re experiencing and why. Do you deserve this? This fantastic experience? Have you earned this in some way? Are you separated out to be touched by God to have some special experience here that other men cannot have? You know the answer to that is No. There’s nothing that you’ve done that deserves that, that earned that.”

Besides, there wasn’t anything to be sad about, if he really really thought about it over and over again until words lost all meaning. He was Alcor the Dreambender, after all! He was the most powerful entity in the universe. Feared like a demon by the masses, revered like a deity by the foolish. All because he’d had the great fortune to rid the world of a villainous creature of destructive chaos.

He did deserve it. He was special. He spent a day lying face up on a rooftop in the town, thinking these things to himself on loop.

“When you come back, there’s a difference in that world now, there’s a difference in that relationship between you and that planet, and you and all those other forms of life on that planet, because you’ve had that kind of experience.”

Past the town there was a little peninsula with some sort of old building on it. Alcor made his way over, but when he got there he was dismayed to find not a single puzzle in sight. There was, however, a statue of a man kneeling on the floor. Alcor jumped when he saw it out of the corner of his eye, reaching for him with a crazed look on its face, but relaxed when he realized it wasn’t alive.

It was an odd sight, to be sure. Alcor followed its gaze to a glass shelf behind him, on which sat a chalice of some sort. He reached up to grab it -- almost knocking the shelf over as he did -- and cautiously stuck his tongue in.

Whatever was in the cup, he thought as he walked away from the building, it was delicious.

“And all through this I’ve used the word ‘you’ because it’s not me, it’s you. It’s us. It’s we. It’s life. And it’s not just my problem to integrate, it’s not my challenge to integrate, my joy to integrate -- it’s yours, it’s everybody’s.”

There was a long pause, and Alcor thought the recording might finally be over. He took a sip of his drink and smiled. Back to thinking about the current puzzle. It was a tough one -- three different colors of symbols on it -- and he was glad that the voice wasn’t distracting him from it anymore.

And then:

”Please come back, Dipper.”

Alcor did a spit take at the sound of his true name. The panel he was working on made a sizzling noise and deactivated.

“Did that work? Can you hear me?”

He shot to his feet and looked around in all directions. No one. He was still as alone as ever.

“You’re not responding so I don’t know if what you’re doing is just a coincidence.”

“What? Hello?” he yelled.

“Oh, thank the stars, it worked! Dipper you have to get out of here.”

“What are you talking about?” he sputtered. “Who are you?”

There was the sound of a deep breath, inexplicably broadcast from the sky. “I’m your sister, S- I mean, uh. Mizar. I’m Mizar.”

Alcor’s eyes widened. “Mizar?”

“Yeah. I’ve been trying to contact you for so long. I can’t believe it finally worked.”

“I don’t understand. What finally worked?”

“You need to listen to me. This isn’t the real world. You’re in a virtual reality game.”

“I’m what?” Alcor said. He backed up, accidentally leading himself to the edge of the platform he was standing on, but instead of falling off, his back hit a wall. He spun around to see what had happened, but there was nothing there. “Mizar? I’m- I’m so confused.”

Mizar sighed. “I told you. None of this is real. It’s a computer program. Haven’t you noticed that things aren’t quite right?”

“Well, yeah,” Alcor replied. He flapped his wings, but stayed firmly glued to the ground. “My demon powers don’t work. Honestly though that’s fine with me. I’m just having fun drawing the good lines.”

“The what?” Mizar demanded, incredulous.

“The good lines!” Alcor squeaked, and waved at the puzzles behind him. “I don’t know what they’re for or what they do, but I’ve been so busy solving all these puzzles that I’ve barely thought about… why… things are… off…”

He trailed off, and Mizar sniffed.

“That’s the point. They’re there to keep you occupied.”

Alcor frowned. “Why though? Who’d go to so much effort to make all of this for me?”

There was no response.

---

Alcor continued to solve puzzles. He didn’t know why Mizar’s voice had stopped, but he was glad it had -- she was the true distraction, not the puzzles. And yet every once in a while, he’d be staring at a particularly difficult panel with one of those Y-shaped symbols on it that made no sense to him, and his mind would begin to wander.

And when it did, he’d notice another one of those tape recorders nearby. There were a lot of them on the island, and they all had boring quotes from philosophers or whatever on them. But then Mizar’s voice would cut in, with a note of glee like she’d thought he’d never speak to her again. Every time she sounded more and more desperate for him to leave. And every time it made him feel more and more frustrated.

“Okay, so,” Alcor said as Mizar's voice faded in for the 20th or so time, “you said last time you might’ve figured out who made this island.” He didn't look up or take his finger off the panel in front of him.

There was a rustling noise, and then a loud pop. “Sorry, had to plug in my headphones. That’s right, though. I’ve done some more research since then and I’m sure of it now.”

He raised an eyebrow. “And?”

“It was an advanced artificial intelligence,” Mizar replied. “I think you might be familiar with it. It’s called ‘the Alcor Virus’.”

“Oh.” Alcor paused for a moment. “Yeah, I wrote him to mess with fanfic writers. Why do you think he made the island?”

“I don’t think,” Mizar said. “It definitely did. There’s traces of it all over the computer network in this building.”

“There’s traces of him all over every device with a processor in the whole world,” Alcor countered. “He’s a really good virus. I’m very proud of him.”

Mizar groaned. “I also found its executable embedded in the binary for this game. Also a few summoning circles, and a big ASCII art picture of it giving me the middle finger.”

“Okay, maybe you’re right,” he conceded. “Why, though?”

“How should I know?” Mizar said, with more than a note of irritation in her voice. “I’m not a psychologist and I’m definitely not a computer scientist. Also why does it matter ‘why’ it’s doing this? Isn’t it time to get out of there already? I’ve already asked you like a million times!”

“No!” Alcor exclaimed, throwing his hands up. He walked out of the structure he’d been standing in and headed toward an area with some shady trees in which he’d noticed puzzles he hadn’t solved yet. “I like it here. It’s fun for me. And I deserve a vacation from all the people who bother me all the time. Why would I leave?”

“Because you can’t just run away from your problems!” Mizar shot back. “You think this is healthy? Literally living in a virtual reality world so you don’t have to talk to anyone anymore? How do you think I feel?”

“How do you feel?” he asked.

“Horrible! I thought you cared about me, Dipper, but all you care about are those stupid puzzles! Stars, sometimes you act like such a demon!”

Alcor frowned. “You know that I -”

“Yes, I get it, you ARE a demon and you can’t help it that you’re a selfish piece of shit. I GET it. Is this how it’s really going to end? You’re just going to turn me down after I’ve spent all this time trying to get you out?”

Alcor’s ears turned red as he felt Mizar’s furious, extraplanar glare land on him. “It really means that much to you that I leave?”

He heard Mizar smack herself in the face. “Yes, yes, a hundred times yes! It kills me that you’re not in my life anymore! You probably thought I could get along just fine without you and no one would be affected by you staying forever on your fantasy puzzle island vacation, huh? Why do you think I keep asking you? I’m starting to get sick of it!”

Alcor felt every muscle in his body tense up at that. He squeezed his eyes shut as Mizar continued to shout, tried to fend off the words violently striking at his ego, and only opened them again when she cut off mid-word. The light on the tape recorder had turned off.

He tried to let himself relax again but he couldn’t. It felt like his chest had become a black hole and it was taking all he had not to shrink up into a tiny little dot and vanish. He hated being yelled at. Hated it.

Maybe Mizar was right, though. Maybe he was just being a selfish jerk. He'd done it before. Countless times, to countless Mizars, his self-serving actions had caused harm to mortals and it was always his fault because he couldn't put himself in their shoes. Maybe he was a monster after all. It was just like a monster to have wants and needs that inevitably end up hurting people.

Alcor exhaled, long and heavy, and pressed the button on the tape again. When the pre-recorded message ended and Mizar’s shouts returned, he interrupted her.

“Okay. I’ll go.”

[swordofpolariis-blog]

            “It seems that this blog’s occupancy has been temporarily increased...” He doesn’t quite know how to react to the newcomers, but at least a familiar face stands among them, albeit very hesitantly. Alcor can’t blame him. The others don't seem particularly approachable or friendly.

[feferipeixes]

Innocence Is Not Knowing That You’re Innocent (1/5)

Belle knows her brother pretty well. He likes comic books, he cheats at board games, and he wants more than anything to be human again. So, when he wakes up one morning with no memory of the fact that he’s a demon, she figures there’s no reason to remind him just yet. He deserves some time to just enjoy being Dipper, and not have to be Alcor.

Unfortunately, she can’t hide Dipper from the demon forever.

Happy 5th anniversary to @transcendence-au! Here’s an RRR fic I’ve been working on for a while. Updates will be weekly!

Thanks to @toothpastecanyon​ for beta reading and generally being awesome!

(See the most updated version on AO3!)

===

“Hey Belle?”

Belle, from the kitchen, blew a large bubble and let it pop. “Yeah bro-bro?”

“Uh… what’s this?” Dipper’s voice sounded off, like he’d been staring at a problem for hours and was finally begrudgingly asking for help. This didn’t happen as often as it used to, what with him turning out to be a demon of unparalleled knowledge, but when it did he still got just as pouty and defensive when Belle teased him about it.

(Possibly poutier, even, since he loved to inform them that actually he did know everything and that he sometimes just doesn’t have access to that info.)

Which was always fun. She could use a good chuckle today. “What’s what?” she replied in a singsong voice.

“I don’t know. A hat I think? Can you come look at it?”

Belle shrugged to herself, and unceremoniously dropped the plate she had been scrubbing into the sink. She tucked the gum she was chewing into the corner of her mouth, for later use. Then she skipped into the living room, half-expecting Dipper to be holding some sort of grotesque, otherworldly horror.

What she did not expect was to find him staring forlornly at a black top hat.

“Where’d it go?” she asked, making a show of peering around the room.

“What?”

“The thing you want to show me.” She pulled a cushion off the couch and tuttered. “Where’d it go?”

“Uhh… it’s right here. The thing I’m holding. Obviously.”

Now Belle was even more confused. “Why are you asking me wh- wait a minute. Is this some sort of mind game you’re playing on me? What are the rules? Am I winning?”

“No, c’mon, Belle, seriously. Can you just tell me if you’ve seen this before?”

“I, uh… I don’t know?” Her brain was doing gymnastics trying to figure out what was going on in this conversation. Dipper really didn’t seem to be budging on whatever weird game he was playing with her, but it had to be something, because obviously the great and powerful Dreambender would be able to recognize his own hat, right?

Unless…

“Oh, okay.” He looked back down at the hat. “It’s… it’s just so weird, it’s like, it feels like I’ve seen this before, like it was mine when I was really young or something. You think that’s why I found it up in the attic?”

Belle screwed her face up. It was happening again.

“Belle? Belle?” He snapped his fingers, and she shuddered.

“That’s weird! Looks like just a hat to me, broseph!” She giggled nervously. “You said you found it in the attic? I’ll go ask dad about it!” With that, she snatched the hat out of her brother’s hands, and dashed from the room before he could complain.

Lionel was in the kitchen when she returned. He looked up from the messy pile of dishes in the sink, to his daughter who had just ran into the room and closed the door.

He raised an eyebrow. “Everything alright?”

For a minute, she just leaned against the door and breathed, big heaving breaths as if she’d just run a mile. Then she launched herself at her dad and hugged him.

“Dad!” she squeaked. “It’s happening again!”

He stared blankly at the bubbly girl attached to him. “What’s going on? What are you doing with Dipper’s hat?”

The glee in Belle’s eyes was practically tangible. “He’s doing the thing, the forget-y thing!”

It took a moment for Lionel to realize what she meant, and then he sucked in a breath. “He doesn’t remember that he’s Alcor?”

She nodded vigorously. “He’s back to -” She cut off just in time, but the word “normal” still sat heavy in the air.

“Belle…” Lionel took a deep breath in and out. “You know that’s not what’s happening. Remember what he said last time? His body is malfunctioning -- something about it trying to reapply the memory loss part of the deal I made with him. It’ll wear off sooner or later.”

There was a beat. “You know that he’s still Alcor, even when he doesn’t know he’s Alcor, right?”

Belle rested one hand on her hip and waved dismissively at her father with the other. “Duh, Dipper’s a demon, I know that. But right now, he doesn’t! I’ve been waiting so long for this to happen a second time! This could be a chance for things to be -”

There it was again, that pressure in the air from the word that Belle had now twice felt too self-conscious to say out loud. Lionel frowned during this pause, and she saw the gears turning in his head. She knew what he was thinking, what he thought she was saying, and he was totally 100% wrong because she had no problem with that fact that Dipper was actually a demon! She didn’t care what he was as long as he was still her brother, honest, and she found it quite insulting thank-you-very-much that her father didn’t understand that.

“Belle...” Lionel finally said. “He was really upset when he figured out who he was and all the memories came back. I know you’re excited, but I think it’d be best just to go ahead and tell him now, so that we can minimize the damage.”

“He’ll still be upset if we remind him now! Can’t we just let him be Dipper for a while?”

He glared at her. “He is Dipper,” he said in a tone that sent a chill down her spine, that “settle down, kids” voice that all parents have. He saw her flinch, and his expression softened, but his voice stayed firm. “Demon or not, he’s always Dipper.”

She puffed out her chest. “I know that! That’s not what I meant! I meant that he’s always saying how he wishes he could just be a normal human again. I just want him to have that chance! Please? I swear I’ll tell him eventually. That’s a Belle promise!”

She stuck her tongue out. It bumped against something in her mouth -- the gum she’d forgotten she’d been chewing. A silly idea quickly blossomed in her head. She started rapidly chewing it, staring intently at her dad as she did so, and then blew a massive, bright pink bubble. When it was about two-thirds the size of her head, she pinched the end and pulled it out of her mouth, holding it like a balloon.

“See?” she said, grinning. “I can stop before things go too far. It’s like, a metaphor!”

She giggled at her dad’s bemused expression, and dropped the gum bubble into the trash. “You’ll see! Dipper’s going to be happy, I’m going to be happy, and you’re going to be happy! Everything’s going to be great.”

There was a knock at the door to the living room. “What are you guys talking about?” came Dipper’s muffled voice.

Belle lowered her voice. “Trust me on this, dad, please?”

He sighed. “Alright.”

“Yay! You’re the best dad ever!” she squealed, clapping excitedly. She gave her dad a quick hug, and then swung the door open. Dipper, who had apparently been trying to listen to their conversation through the door, yelped and crumpled to the floor.

“Belle, ow! What the hell was that for?” Rubbing his head, he sat up, and noticed Lionel watching from behind Belle. He blanched. “I mean, heck, what the heck was that for? Sorry dad.”

Belle looked around worriedly, but Lionel was smiling. “It’s alright. Belle, apologize to your brother.”

“Come on, dad, what are we, seven?”

Dipper pushed himself to his feet and sneered, “Yeah, Belle, apologize. Look what you’ve done to me! I could’ve broken a bone!”

He laughed to himself, and for a minute, Belle just stared. Then a big grin spread across her face, and she wrapped him in a massive hug.

“Yeah, you could have! Sorry bro. It was an accident, honestly!” She let go, saw his confused expression, and could only smile wider because of it. “Things’ll be better now, alright? I’ll make sure of it.”

---

It was 6am, and Belle had never been so excited for school.

“Come on, Dipper, we’re going to be late!”

He groaned, and pulled the covers over his head. “Five more minutes, please.”

She ran over and pulled the covers off the bed. He squeaked and curled up into a ball. “Hey!”

“Sorry, bro-bro, but you can’t sleep in!”

He sat up, and stretched his arms. “Not fair. I was having the weirdest dream and you took me right out of it.”

She tilted her head. “Dream?”

He closed his eyes and nodded lazily. “Yeah, it was like something out of a movie. I had these bat wings and was flying around and casting spells on people. I know you can cast spells but I can’t, so it was pretty cool. Maybe if I write it down right now I’ll remember more of it...” He reached for the dream journal on his bedside table, and Belle flinched.

“Uhh… nope!” She knocked the journal into an open drawer and closed it. “No time for weird dreams, bro-bro! We’ve got to get to school! It’s going to be a great day!”

He opened his eyes, and for a moment Belle thought she could see something gold shimmering in them -- but then it was gone. “Okay, fine, I’m getting up. I hope you’re happy!”

“I totally am!” She danced over on arched feet to her closet to get changed, but then paused and let herself fall back to the ground. “I, uh… I hope you’re happy too.”

He gave her a look that could only be described as unimpressed. “Uh, definitely not. Why are you acting so weird?”

“Oh, psshaw, I’m always acting weird. It’s endearing!”

With that, she hopped into the closet and shut the door. She pulled on her space leggings, she tied a ribbon in her hair, and she saw herself frowning in the mirror. Dipper wasn’t happy yet -- not the end of the world, but she did sort of think he’d be happy right away, especially because waking up early to go somewhere you don’t want to go was an extremely typical human activity. But that was no matter, she told herself, because the main attraction of the day was still ahead.

School could be rather touch-and-go for Belle, but today she was really feeling alive. She waved goodbye to Dipper as he went off to his first class, and she could see through the sleepy, half-bored look in his eye and see that he was excited for the day, she knew it had to be true, because even she was excited.

She skipped down the hall, stopping to chat with Alistair; to grab a water bottle from her locker because she left her pretty glittery unicorn one at home; and to give a high five to the janitor because he was really nice once you got past the whole spitting acid thing.

She took her usual seat when she arrived at class, and sat with her back straight and her hands folded over. Today, not even her fantastical thoughts could distract her from class, because her fantastical thoughts were about class. She couldn’t care less about the different types of rocks and how they were formed, but she was attentive because she was imagining how happy Dipper must be in his class, receiving some equally boring lecture.

School was totally something he wouldn’t be able to enjoy as much as a demon, partially because his powers gave him access to almost all knowledge anyway, but also because getting beaten into the ground by the American public education system was a privilege that only mortals tended to get. She knew that he hadn’t gotten to go to high school, since the Transcendence had happened when he was 12, and though he had been attending it with her this whole time anyway, he occasionally complained about the fact that he couldn’t have a genuine experience with it because he wasn’t a powerless teenager. She didn’t 100% understand his motivations for that, because she was a powerless teenager and everything about school that she did like (mostly the friends she made along the way) was attainable outside of a school environment, but she’d heard the spiel enough times to know it was what he wanted.

They didn’t share any classes in the morning, so she wouldn’t get to see how much he was enjoying things until lunch. When the bell finally rang, she scampered off to the lunch hall, scooped whatever mush they were serving today onto her tray, and sat at an empty lunch table, just like always.

Dipper was often late to lunch because he liked to hang back after class and ask the teachers questions they wouldn’t be able to answer (yes, even before Gravity Falls). When he sauntered up to the table with a tray similarly filled with mush, she was positively vibrating with excitement, her bracelets jangling against each other in a symphony of uninhibited joy.

Dipper, on the other hand, seemed nonplussed. Not upset, but not overjoyed either. He didn’t say anything when he sat at the table, just started eating his nondescript lunch, and she stared at him for a bit before nervously asking:

“Are you feeling any better?”

He swallowed the bite of food he’d been nursing, and grimaced. “Hmm, I don’t know.” He opened the cup of applesauce on his tray, took a bite, and smiled wide. “Mm, yeah. Much better.”

Belle beamed, her intentions justified. “So, would you say, on a scale from 1 to 10, that you’re having a Good Time, a Great Time, or an Excellent Time?”

“I’m going to ignore how weird you’re being right now because this apple sauce is so good.”

“Hmm... I’ll just put you down as Apple Sauce out of 10.”

He swallowed the spoonful he had been savouring. “How about you?”

“What?”

He gestured at her with the spoon. “Are you… happy? Yknow, the same question you’re asking me?”

She spluttered. “Yeah, I’m having a great time! Why wouldn’t I be?”

He narrowed his eyes. “Why wouldn’t I be? You keep asking, there must be some reason.”

“Oh shush, just eat your apple sauce.”

He shrugged, and went back to his food. “People call me weird, but I guess it runs in the family.”

Belle giggled, perhaps a little too much. “It sure does! You big weirdo!”

When they finished eating, she dropped her tray off in the servery and gave him a big hug again. He blushed and yowled that he was at school, seriously Belle, you’re embarrassing me, and she laughed and stole his hat, which made him steam even more.

“Alright,” he said after he’d gotten his hat back, starting down the hall and waving at her. “See you later then.”

“Not if I see you sooner!”

He gave her a weird look, and she just finger gunned him in response. That put a smile on his face, and she skipped off to her next class, satisfied.

And for a little while, it seemed to go on like that. They high fived in the halls, they ate lunch together, they argued over the TV remote at home. Some tiny part of Belle whispered to her that this was pretty much how things went even when Dipper knew he was Alcor -- but she knew that wasn’t right. She could see that this was different, that he was smiling just a little more than he normally would, that there was something more genuine about him because, at least for a little while, he was getting to be the human he so desperately wanted to be.

So, she jumped out at him occasionally in the halls, because now she could spook him without him teleporting away. She stole his french fries at lunch because there would be no flash of serrated teeth slyly asking her to make a deal for them. At home, she threw a pillow at him so he’d drop the TV remote, because she knew a pillow fight wouldn’t end with claws out, pillows shredded, and an angry father shaking his head at them. Instead, it’d end with giggling twins telling ghost stories under a blanket fort.

And this was good, she told herself. All was right with the world. All was as it should be.

(AO3 link)

[feferipeixes]

Innocence Is Not Knowing That You’re Innocent (3/5)

Belle knows her brother pretty well. He likes comic books, he cheats at board games, and he wants more than anything to be human again. So, when he wakes up one morning with no memory of the fact that he’s a demon, she figures there’s no reason to remind him just yet. He deserves some time to just enjoy being Dipper, and not have to be Alcor.

Unfortunately, she can’t hide Dipper from the demon forever.

Chapter 3: Your Eyes Shine So Bright (link to chapter 1) (2)

Thanks as always to my awesome beta reader @toothpastecanyon​!

Content warning: suicidal thoughts (or rather lack thereof) are briefly discussed.

(See the most updated version on AO3!)

===

“Hey, Dipper! Hey!”

Dipper kept walking, not seeming to hear his sister’s calls. He slunk through the crowd of students bustling about the entrance to the school, and slipped out the double doors in front. Belle frowned, and pushed through after him.

“Yo, DIP!” she hollered. “It’s me, your sister Belle, cmon I know you can hear me!”

Though he was at least 20 feet away, he seemed to shrink a bit. He lowered his head and sped up.

Alright, something was up. Belle hadn’t been born yesterday -- maybe she wasn’t quite as old as Dipper, but she’d still grown up with him and knew how to identify the signs of Sad Brother-itis. She just hoped that the issue wasn’t demonic in nature.

She took a deep breath, put a big smile on, and sprinted to catch up with him. She leapt into his path and yelled “SURPRISE!”

He flinched, and seemed to narrowly avoid falling over. She reached for his arm to help him balance, but he corrected his momentum quickly and swatted her away. This wasn’t entirely strange behavior for Dipper when he was grumpy, so she put it aside and readied herself for some cheering up. “What’s going -”

Her smile died when she got a good look at him. His face was a red and blotchy mess, still wet from the crying that he was clearly too embarrassed to admit he’d done, and she didn’t have to ask to see why. The skin around his left eye was swollen and bruised, and he seemed to wince every time he blinked.

Belle’s jaw dropped. “Oh my stars, Dipper, your eye!”

“Shhh!” he hissed. He grabbed her arm, looked both ways, and pulled her across the street, away from the other students milling about. “It’s not a big deal.”

“Yes it is!” she yelped. He shushed her again, but she kept going. “What happened? Who did this? Do you need your big sister to beat someone up for you?” She slid the bangles off her right arm and flexed her bicep dramatically. “Let me at ‘em -- no one messes with a Sterling and gets away from these guns!”

Dipper did not seem impressed. “Stop, you’re just going to make things worse!”

Belle frowned, and put her bangles back on. “Sorry, bro-bro, I just -- what happened? You can tell me, right?”

“Okay, but… Don’t tell anyone, alright? That includes Onika, Alistair, Mindy, and Dad.”

“Yeah, alright. Now tell me.”

“Well…” He looked at his feet again. “I took your advice. About… trying to make some new friends. So I talked to Jacen and Farah from Math club. You know them, right? They seemed nice, but they wouldn’t look me in the eye the whole time we were talking, and then they both said they had to leave and their excuses kinda sounded made up… Maybe I’m just paranoid.”

“You’re definitely paranoid, goober.” Belle poked him on the nose, and he scrunched his face up adorably. “That sucks though. And then you tripped, right?”

“No. A few of the football players came by, and…” Belle winced. “Yeah,” he finished, hand behind his head like he was trying to convince her that it was no big deal. As if he didn’t know that ship had already long sailed.

To his surprise, though, Belle smiled. “You know what this means? Time to come up with a payback plan! This’ll be fun, we can stop by the supermarket on the way home and get all the supplies we need, and if we do it at school then dad doesn’t have to know, and -”

“Belle, no, stop, this is serious. I’m having a really bad time right now and it feels like you’re not taking me seriously!”

Her grin slid back into a sickly grimace. “Okay, sure, this is bad. Y- you’re happy, though, right? In general?”

He threw his hands up. “What are you talking about? Of course I’m not happy! I failed a test, someone threw milk at me, and now I got beat up!”

She opened her mouth to try to respond, but it felt like her throat was shaking. Dipper didn’t notice this. He threw his notebook on the ground, and then grumbled:

“My life really sucks!”

Belle felt his words like a physical slap in the face. “But it’s better than the alternative, right?” she blurted.

He looked directly at her, and she gasped, because she could’ve sworn there was blue fire behind his eyes. “What alternative?” he asked, his voice slow and cold, sounding less like her dopey brother and more like something older and harsher.

She felt her heartbeat speed up, felt the thumping in her chest harder than the thoughts screaming in her head, and she couldn’t look away from the fire because this might be it, this might be the moment when it finally came back out. She wasn’t prepared to do this right now, she wasn’t prepared to comfort a sad demon who had been enjoying his humanity until his stupid sister opened her stupid mouth and accidentally poked him in the right direction torwards remembering.

Now she was sweating, and her throat felt tight. She was dimly aware of a voice hammering at her, but it sounded like it she was underwater, and all the thoughts and worries from the past couple of weeks were keeping her anchored at the bottom. Gradually, the pressure in her chest lightened, and the voice got clearer, until she could make out:

“Belle? Belle! Are you okay?”

She looked up -- when had she sat down? -- and saw her brother still looking at her. Whatever traces of Alcor she had seen a moment ago were gone -- now there was nothing but worry in his face. His face, which kept fading in and out, in and out…

“Belle, you’re hyperventilating, please…”

Oh, huh, she was. That was… a problem, right? The look on Dipper’s face certainly indicated so. She reached into her pocket and fished around -- aha! A fresh pack of gum. She stuffed a couple of sticks of it into her mouth and started chewing. As she did, her breathing started to slow down and her brain started to uncloud. She felt silly -- this kind of thing hadn’t happened to her in a while.

Which, she supposed, made sense. Alcor had promised to keep her safe.

As her breathing continued to stabilize, she felt Dipper sit down next to her. He pulled his knees up to his chest and sighed, long and dramatic.

“I’m sorry.”

She sniffed. “What are you sorry for?”

“I dunno. Acting so mopey lately?”

“Y-you’re allowed to not be happy.”

“I know, but…” He sighed. “I just don’t want you to think I’m going to do something extreme.”

She frowned. “Uh… what are you talking about?”

“Well, you know… You were talking about life being better than ‘the alternative’, and…” His voice kept getting quieter, and Belle had to lean in to hear him finish his statement. “I don’t want you to think that I want to die.”

She stared at him with a look of utter confusion. After a moment, he returned it. He opened his mouth to say something else, and then her brain finally parsed what he’d said.

“No, what?” she spluttered. “I wasn’t thinking -- I don’t think you -- wow, uh, no. Sorry to worry you, bro-ntasaurs. I know you want to live.” A thought drifted into her head, about a demon who long outlived his twin sister, and her voice wavered. “I don’t doubt it at all!”

He looked surprised, and then cleared his throat. “W-well, good. Because I do. Want to live, that is. Not doubt it. Ugh.” He leaned forward, resting his forehead on his palms. “This is so awkward.”

He looked at that moment more anxious and uncomfortable -- more human -- than he had since before Gravity Falls, and Belle couldn’t help but smile. In a weird way, it felt reassuring, that maybe he actually was getting the awkward human experience he so desired.

“I know, isn’t it great?” He looked up, confused, and she stuck her tongue out. “Want me to make it worse and tell you all about my current crushes?”

His lip quivered, and then he laughed. “Yeah, sure thing! Then I can talk about my favorite conspiracy theories!”

She joined in the laughter, and for a minute, all was good.

Then his face twisted, and again she saw something shimmer in his eyes.

“Wait a minute. If you didn’t think I wanted to… yknow… then what did you mean by ‘the alternative’?”

She froze. “I, uh, what?”

“When I was complaining about how much my life sucks. You said it was still better than the alternative. If the alternative wasn’t death, what was it?”

“Uhh, haha, I don’t, I don’t know, -”

“Because I’ve been thinking,” he cut in, “about why my life sucks, and I’ve… been coming up with some weird theories.”

Her eyes grew wide. “Oh, no, weird theories? That doesn’t sound like you at all!”

“Maybe I’m looking into things too far. But things have been really weird lately and I’m wondering if you’ve noticed it, and if maybe that’s why you thought…”

“Thought? I didn’t think anything at all!” She hopped up and balanced on the tips of her toes. “All I thought was that Dipper, my brother, my twinteresting siblocity, was a funny fellow who needed a smile on his face and a bunch of rhinestones embedded on his clothes.”

He looked shocked for a moment, and then scowled. “Nevermind.”

Her smile faltered, and she dropped her heels. “Wait, no, ahh, I- I didn’t mean to be dismissive. You can tell me.”

“Can I?” he asked, with a sarcastic bite that Belle had rarely heard him use before. “Can I really?”

“Of course you can!”

“It doesn’t feel like it. You’re always deflecting whenever anything strange happens, and you keep pulling people aside to talk to them so that I can’t hear! Do you think I haven’t noticed that?”

“I’m sorry... I didn’t mean…”

“Then why? What’s going on? I thought, yknow, twins, we’re going to stick together and trust each other and stuff. But now it feels like you don’t trust me for some reason and it kind of scares me. It makes me feel like there’s something wrong with me, and with all the other weird stuff going on lately, well…”

He trailed off, but Belle knew well enough to see where that line of thinking was leading. In one quick motion, she jumped up and wrapped him in a tight hug. He squeaked as the air was knocked out of him, but was prevented from crumpling to the ground by her vice-like grip.

“Dipper, I’m sorry.” She rubbed her face into his shoulder, trying to hide the tears that were coming out to play. “I trust you, I really honestly do, and I’m such a doofus for making you think I didn’t.”

“You’re not a doofus…”

“Yeah, I am!” she huffed. She detached herself from him, and slumped a bit. “Listen, bro-bro, I know I’ve been acting super weird, and yeah it’s about you. But I can’t tell you why, because that’ll ruin it.”

“But…”

“I know that’s a huge cop-out! But you gotta believe me, everything I’m doing is for you! I just want you to be happy and if I tell you what I’m doing it would ruin it. Please…” She grabbed his shoulders and looked directly into his eyes. He squirmed a bit under her gaze, but didn’t wrench himself away. “Please. Can you trust me on this?”

“Belle…”

“Look at me, Dipper! You really think I don’t trust you, or that I think there’s something wrong with you?”

He sighed, and then locked eyes with her. There was something shimmering, burning behind his, something grand and horrible, something loving and immeasurably ancient. It was so intense that her brain screamed at her to turn away, to not let herself fall victim to the monster in front of her, but that was a ridiculous, primal instinct. She didn’t stop trusting him when they found out he was really Alcor, and she wasn’t about to stop now. No, if there was anything she should be afraid of, it was the fact that she allowed herself to break his trust in her. So she kept her gaze, and after a moment, Dipper deflated.

“Okay. I trust you.”

She grinned, let go of his shoulders, and gave him another big hug. “Thanks, m’brony. It means a lot to me.”

He smiled weakly, and then picked up his backpack. “Should we… be getting home?”

“Oh yeah.” She put her own back on, and then grabbed her brother’s hand. “Let’s-a-go!”

“No skipping, please, I’m too tired,” he groaned, but light-heartedly.

“Oh, alright, party pooper.”

They headed toward home, unlocking hands after a few minutes (because “Belle I love you but holding your sister’s hand in public is mortifying”). Dipper didn’t seem to want to talk, so Belle loaded in a fresh couple of sticks of gum and set away chewing.

She tried to drown out her thoughts with the art of bubble blowing, but couldn’t help but play their conversation over and over again in her head. Truth be told, she still felt rather anxious after that close call -- she hadn’t expected him to trust her enough to stop asking questions, and the fact that she had doubted him made her feel… weird. Almost like she knew him less now that he didn’t know he was Alcor.

Because when she thought about it, he must’ve been missing memories of their friendship too, since him being a demon was inextricably tied to a bunch of their interactions. So it was kinda like she was talking to someone who she hadn’t known for two years. The whole act of keeping him in the dark about his true nature was suddenly leaving a bad taste in her mouth.

“Hey Belle?”

She snapped her head up, her brother’s voice breaking her out of her thoughts.

“I know you said you can’t tell me about this big secret now since it’ll ‘ruin everything’, but is it the kind of thing you’ll be able to tell me eventually?”

She opened her mouth to respond, quite forgetting that she was in the middle of blowing a bubble. The wad of gum, outweighed by the large air-filled bubble it was attached to, fell out of her mouth and landed on the ground.

“Oh, gross, why’d you do that?” Dipper moaned.

Belle stared at the gum, and then up at him. “Oh, uh, sorry.” She wrapped her hands around the bubble, which somehow hadn’t popped, and picked it up like a ceramic bowl. “And yeah. I’ll be able to tell you soon. Just not now.” She carefully stepped the bubble over to a nearby trash can, and dropped it in, where it again landed without popping.

“Okay. Thanks.”

Belle stared at the bulb of gum in the trash, and then shook her head. “Yeah, sure thing.” She skipped back over to him, and hooked her arm around his. “Is this better than holding hands?”

“Now I can’t tell if you’re deflecting or just being silly.”

“Why can’t it be both?”

He laughed, genuinely laughed, the smile unmistakable in his flame-less eyes. “Fair enough. But actually?” He unhooked his arm from hers, and grabbed her hand instead. “Maybe... this isn’t so bad either.”

(AO3 link)